Introduction
The current modern world is dynamically changing every day. According to Burnes (2014), this constant alteration leads to the gradual change of the business environment necessitating companies to be aware of the changing styles of carrying out business. FitzRoy and Kraft assert that the business angle of every company is the most important that ensure the company remains profitable to every shareholder (FitzRoy, F., and Kraft, K., 1987). However, due to the changing business environment, companies keep facing the major problem that works towards depriving most companies of the potential profits to be made. One such company facing such problems is Hogan Lovell.
Hogan Lovell is a multinational law company that is headquartered in Washington D.C. and London. The company was formed on 1st May 2010 after the merger of two companies. The two companies that merged include Lovells that was based in London and Hogan and Hartson, a Washington-based law firm (Hogan Lovells LLP|Company Profile|Vault.com., 2017). The company operates in over four continents with around 2500 lawyers employed in their offices across the world. The law firm was named the 11th largest law firm in the world in the year 2013. Its size was determined from a number of revenues it has generated.
In connection with this consultancy project, the company has been facing some major managerial problems that have been the bane of their organisational operations. These problems necessitated the conducting of a consultancy project to locate the pertinent issues and offer viable solutions. The problems being experienced in the firm took a managerial perspective which is “the most significant perspective that ensures the success of operations of any organisation in the world” (Kerzner, 2013). The consultancy project was, therefore, conducted, and the findings of the project were included in this report. The details of the report entail the problems being faced by the organisation and the proposed solutions that if implemented will ensure the success of the organisational operations.
Aims and Objectives
The overall purpose of the consultancy was to improve the managerial quality of the organisation Hogan and Lovell after carefully studying the underlying case. The consultancy project’s main purpose is to ensure the improvement of the modern-day management practices that are being implemented in the said organisation (Buttrick, 2005). The objectives therein will work towards achieving a definition of the underlying causes or the problems and difficulties being faced by the organisation from a modern managerial perspective. According to Baron and Armstrong (2007), the pertinent issues that align with modern day management practices include political influence on organisational operations and the implementation of poor quality management practices that hinder the appropriate objectivity of the managers. Another objective of the consultancy project was the determination of the impending effects of the management challenges being faced at Hogan Lovell.
Some of the obvious effects present in the modern day business environment include the decline in stock prices, eventual failure of the business, and the loss of esteemed customers who bring significant revenue to the organisation (Brown, Caldwell, and White, 2004). Third, the consultancy project aimed at the implicit definition of the various viable, practical, and applicable ways of ensuring that different approaches to solving these problems are successfully implemented (Aaltonen and Ikävalko, 2002). The consultancy project eventually aims at the determination of the future of companies as affected by managerial problems (Project Management Institute n.d.). These would include issues like how the different trends of issues pertaining management practices would affect the organisation or rather how managers would adopt in responding to the organisational problem from a managerial perspective (Cameron and Green, 2012).
The objectives of the project mainly include the following:
To determine the root causes of the management problems Hogan Lovell from a managerial perspective.
The first objective was to determine the underlying causes of the problems that are faced by Hogan Lovell from a managerial perspective. The managerial problems will be determined through the thorough evaluation of the organisation (Merchant and Otley, 2006). This will be a trend of their financial statements will be evaluated as they have proved to be significant in the determination of problems facing a company. Furthermore, the value attached to the financial statements is due to their ability to inform even outsiders of the organisation the true financial situation of a given organisation and what practices are deemed responsible for placing the organisation at such a difficult financial position (Gardiner, 2005). According to Wickham and Wilcock (2012), the main approach of a consultancy project is utilization of different operations aiming at the identification of trends and changes in this specific organisation. The trends and changes that were evaluated gave a complete picture of what went wrong before the occurrence of the managerial problems faced at Hogan Lovell.
To determine the ultimate end of the management challenges as witnessed by trends in the financial and operational information of the organisation.
The second objective of the consultancy project was to carry out operations that would identify the consequences caused by the managerial problems. This feat was accomplished through evaluation of trends present in Hogan Lovell. The analysis of this trend included the critical analysis of their financial statements which majorly include income statements, balance sheets, and cash flows. The analysis that was carried out is important because the culmination of management challenges are transferred towards financial trends that affect the profitability of the company (Davis, 2001). Therefore, the link between the increase and decrease in their profits will be solely attributed to their initial causes which have a root link to managerial problems. According to Feldman and Pentland (2003), the underlying ideology that is implemented by this objective is the evaluation of the performance trends of the organisation in relation to the specific occurrence of management problems to come up with a detailed analysis of these two significant aspects as they relate to organisational operations.
To determine the distinct approaches through which the problems may be addressed.
The consultancy project also focused on the existing methods that are viable in addressing the managerial challenges being faced by Hogan Lovell. These approaches to addressing the identified issues will be gathered from information on how other organisations have dealt with such issues ensuring organisational success in all their operations (Maylor, 2010). To ensure this objective is met, the main skill which includes the evaluation of the actions taken by an organisation which has faced similar management challenges and have realized success. Hence, the main issue that the consultancy project faced was the process of identifying internal and external measures taken in organisations all over the world that have fallen prey to such management problems and have succeeded in dealing with the problems in an appropriate manner.
To determine the future of Hogan Lovell regarding management problems
The fourth objective of the consultancy project was to determine the future of Hogan Lovell regarding management problems. This objective was undertaken to find out the effects of the management problems on the ability of the organisation to succeed in their normal operations. The impending effect of the determined problems must be defined to come up with a good evaluation of why these problems need to be dealt with, or the company will become vulnerable to these challenges thereby creating more negative financial implications for the organisation (Crossan, 1999). This objective strives to inform the organisational managers the need and significance of weeding out the existing problems by showing them the impact of the potential implications due to the suffering of the existing problems. The specific addresses for this objective would be:
- What will Hogan Lovell lose in the long run if they do not adopt decisive control action?
- What will be the chances of Hogan Lovell’s success if poor management actions continue?
- How will well managed Hogan Lovell surpass competitors that are not well-managed?
In the race for actualizing this objective, the consultancy project made a comparison between companies that were poorly managed and those that were managed properly. The comparison also entailed the differences between the two categories of companies and in various significant aspects, as this is considered a significant strategy (Porter and Kramer, 2002). The consultancy project was also involved in the investigation of the eventuality of the specific problems being faced at the organisational level. The primary goal of the last objective of the consultancy project was aimed at getting a clear picture of what might ensue if the management problems being faced by Hogan Lovell are not dealt with appropriately in a time conscious manner.
Findings and Critical Analysis
There were many significant findings that were made as a result of carrying out the consultancy project. Some of the findings held a very strict connection to the managerial connections of the modern day business environment. Also, the findings indicated that internal relations between the manager and employee in various aspects had a major role to play in the culmination of the problems being faced by the organisation in a managerial perspective. This section of the consultancy project report aims at defining the findings pertaining the given organisation in the internal and external aspects. It is paramount that these two important aspects of the findings are looked at through unbiased perception that will succeed in informing correctly the evaluator of the existing problems and their underlying causes that were pertinent to or linked with failed management practices (Todnem, 2005). The findings were categorized into two sections that aim at informing the reader in a comprehensible manner to help them achieve a deep understanding of the existing problems and how these problems have been compounded over to me to culminate to the adverse organisational situation that Hogan and Lovell currently operate in.
From an internal point of view; various problems existed in Hogan and Lovell. These problems affected various if not all aspects of organisational operations resulting to the negative implications that were witnessed necessitating the carrying out of the consultancy project. From a managerial perspective, we are informed of the need for managers to maintain a good communication channel between them and their employees. The channel of communication important in ensuring continued cooperation among fellow employees and managers. According to Jo and Shim (2005), the continued operation guides the intended actions of various employees towards attaining a common organisational goal. However, in the case of Hogan Lovell, this channel of communication was not properly applied or rather integrated with the operations of the organisation. Putting in mind that Hogan Lovell is a multinational law firm, constant communication between employees is a significant aspect of their business operation. Communication of the inappropriate or rather irrelevant information would lead to the conduction of irrelevant operations which might have dire consequences on the ability to achieve the organisational goal in every aspect of business operations (Proctor and Doukakis, 2003).
Another internal problem that was noticed from the trends in financial statements was the case of poor planning. Poor planning in any organisation of this size would translate to poor organisational operations which would affect the financial situation of the firm (Biggs, 2010). Poor planning means poor operations resulting to poor business performance. In turn, poor business performance extremely affects financial aspect of an organisation adversely (Obioma, 2017). The issue of poor planning as indicated by the findings of the consultancy project was derived from another issue of managerial conflicts in Hogan and Lovell. The conflicts resulted from individual relationships between various managers and their employees. It is noticed that it is significant that managers and employees maintain a friendly yet professional working relationship that would not translate into interpersonal conflicts that may result in a hostile working environment for both parties (Brierley, 2006). A hostile working environment would lead to the issue of poor planning since the two parties cannot agree professionally on the performance of different operations to achieve organisational goals and objectives.
On the other hand, there is the issue of the use of the right management practices has been noticed to affect organisational operations in Hogan Lovell. The modern world of business demands that managers employ practices pertaining to the modernity of the working environment. The use of traditional management practices is highly discouraged in this modern age of information and technology (Porter and Kramer, 2011). In relation to Hogan Lovell, the management practices being employed have aspects of traditionalist attached to them. One traditional aspect of management being employed is the aspect of the manager being in full control of what the employees are doing (Lahti and Beyerlein, 2000). In the modern world, the aspect of leadership from the perspective of the manager is a leader that included the employees in the leadership process. According to Burns and Vaivio (2001), if poor control attributed to improper use of employee skills, capacity, abilities, and resources are employed. Then employee performance is ensured to below as employees do not feel completely involved in the leadership process. This would be evident through the lack of motivation and self-drive in employees.
The eventual situation that Hogan Lovell finds itself is one who makes their survival in the market difficult. The ability of the aspect of their survival in the legal market can be very slim with continuing problems being caused by their manager. The combination of the problems being witnessed at a managerial level has led to the lack of accountability and integration of individual employee efforts to achieve a common organisational goal (Bardram, 1998). According to Davenport, in his review “Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system”, this lack of integration highly affects the ability of the growth of the overall organisation performance (Davenport, 1998). Furthermore, individual employee performance has been adversely affected by different notions depicted in the findings after evaluation of Hogan Lovell. As such, it is considered prudent that the company has an implementation phase that will ensure the integration of recommended solutions that are viable to the specific organisation. The implementation of the recommendations made below will ensure that the organisational performance grows incredibly in the next two financial years as reflected by the immense positive growth noticed in their financial statements (Adams and Frost, 2008).
Recommendations
The recommendations included in this section have been derived from the challenges being faced by Hogan and Lovell. Due to these challenges, the consultancy project saw fit to analyze the causes of each challenge with its corresponding negative effect to find out the appropriate action to be taken to mitigate such challenges. Therefore, each specific recommendation will be considering the problem or challenge faced thereby creating a viable solution to these challenges. The following recommendations were realized to be appropriate for reconstructing the management organisation in the law firm.
Due to the significance of information in the modern world, it is prudent that the organisation adopts appropriate communication channels and structure that will ensure relevant and useful information is relayed in time to help the planning process in an organisation (Birdi et al, 2008). For Hogan and Lovell to attain optimum potential operations, the aspect of communication must be highly appreciated as information is critical in guiding various actions taken in an organisation. Quinn and Rohrbaugh suggest that the communication between the manager and the employee should be created and maintained in a friendly yet professional manner to ensure that the organisational processes and operations are carried out efficiently and effectively at every process or operational level (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983). The ability to communicate efficiently and pass the intended message will guarantee the cohesion of the activities of each and every employee in the organisation.
Secondly, as depicted by the findings, Hogan and Lovell have fallen vulnerable to the rather persisting issue of poor planning. As indicated in the earlier paragraph, communication may highly affect the planning of the coordination and therefore the realized cohesion of individual efforts of employees culminating to the eventual realizations of the organisational goals and objectives. According to Kerzner, planning is the first step before conducting any operation that would have an immense impact on an organisation (Kerzner, 2013). As for Hogan Lovell, planning is crucial to the realization of their organisational goal which includes achieving success in almost each and every legal battle they are involved. Moreover, information is regarded as a very crucial component of the planning process. Without proper communication, the information would not be available thus leading to poor planning which has dire consequences for the organisational operations (Paine, 1994). For Hogan Lovell to achieve organisational success, the planning aspect of the organisational processes should be taken with high regard and be conducted with the carefulness it deserves.
Lastly, any organisation in the modern world ought to be changing with the times. It is evident that the business environment is changing all and around the world. With this thought in mind, the management practices that are the backbone of each organisation also ought to change (Johnson, 2005). The dynamics of doing business in this age of information and technology has demanded that companies adopt modern management practices if they wish to survive. It is, therefore, crucial that Hogan Lovell gets to adapt the use of theoretical and practical aspects of modern management practices if they wish to continue being successful in the modern business environment.
The recommendations mentioned above form part of the basic but fundamental aspects of organisational success. Furthermore, the recommendations touch majorly on the aspect of the ability of the manager to steer an organisation into becoming a successful venture (Mizik and Jacobson, 2003). Therefore, Hogan and Lovell will be successful if they consider the implementations of the recommendations made in this consultancy project report. With the successful implementation of these recommendations, Hogan and Lovell stand to correctly mitigate the challenges they have been facing from the managerial perspective which have translated in negative implications as notice from key trends in their financial statements.
Conclusion
This consultancy project report entails intricate details that entail the different problems being faced by Hogan and Lovell. The background of the problem and history of the organisation has been of immense value to the project report. Moreover, the report has included the aims and objectives of the consultancy project that was carried out. Apart from the aims and Objectives of the project, there were findings that were realized after carrying out a critical analysis of the managerial problems that were faced by Hogan and Lovell. The recommendations that would ensure the successful mitigation of the challenges faces has also been included in the report.
Hogan and Lovell have been facing challenges in the aspect of management problems. These challenges include poor planning due to lack of proper communication structure and channels and use of traditional management practices which are not viable in this age of information and technology of doing business. These challenges have been witnessed through the trends in financial statements that pointed to the underlying causes. The consultancy project was carried out, and the results included recommendations of how the challenges faced would be solved effectively and efficiently.
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