. Outline and discuss the key HRM issues in the case study that are at the heart of the decline of the company (there are at least five).
There are many significant HRM issues evident at Clayton’s Brewed Drinks and they all stem from the top with the functionality of senior management, cascading down the organisation affecting many areas.
Managers fulfil many different roles every day and are constantly switching roles as tasks, situations, and expectations change (Mintzberg, 1989). These roles can be can be categorised, as presented by Mintzberg in Table 1, into interpersonal, informational and decisional.
Category Roles
Interpersonal Figurehead
Leader
Liaison
Informational Monitor
Disseminator
Spokesperson
Decisional Entrepreneur
Disturbance Handler
Resource Allocator
Negotiator
Table 1. Mintzberg, H. (1989). Mintzsberg on Management. New York: The Free Press.
At present, it appears that senior management are focusing on the roles within the interpersonal category, albeit ineffectively. They spend much of their time promoting the idea that their people are the organisation’s most valuable resource when the perception held by the employees beneath them is in contradiction to this. Senior management’s superficial presentation of their leadership only inflames the degeneration of the culture and morale within the organisation where trust and loyalty is quickly evaporating. Rather than function with more focus on the decisional category where information is sourced and used, management are trying to focus on the interpersonal category where the roles involves providing information and ideas. Their lack of broad private sector experience and limited areas of expertise covered by the executive means they are ill equipped to function effectively with a focus on interpersonal roles. This is evidenced within the case study which states that the executive