Claymore Consultants: Organizing for Survival

The study identifies a significant connection of dualities with the structure, process and boundary of a business. The study presents and discusses the challenges faced by Claymore Consultants in recent times. It identifies its incapability to manage dualities in structures, processes and boundaries. The study also recommends Claymore Consultants to manage dualities effectively across its structures, processes and boundaries. It can do this by developing relevant skills, following extended paradigm for change processes and so forth.

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[Claymore Consultants: Organizing for Survival]
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Executive summary
The organizing of firms across their structures, processes and boundaries in a response to
growing business needs did pick up after recession and deregulation in the 1980s. However, very
few could actually respond effectively to this change. In this study also, the topic was studied in
the context of Claymore Consultants. The study identifies a significant connection of dualities
with the structure, process and boundary of a business. The study presents and discusses the
challenges faced by Claymore Consultants in recent times. It identifies its incapability to manage
dualities in structures, processes and boundaries. People were hired to support the expanded
paradigm of management; however, was managed less strategically. It created confusion and
conflicts between the members of Claymore Consultants. The study also recommends Claymore
Consultants to manage dualities effectively across its structures, processes and boundaries. It can
do this by developing relevant skills, following extended paradigm for change processes and so
forth.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Problems......................................................................................................................................3
Explanation of the problems using change management theory.................................................5
Explaining the forms of organizing in Claymore Consultants................................................5
Explanation of problems using Duality Theory.......................................................................5
Conclusion and Recommendations..................................................................................................8
Recommendations........................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The traditional form of organizing has worked well in the 1950s and 1960s as during
those times companies used to operate in a limited and a local environment. However, this form
of organizing became less effective when the business environment became more complex
following the recession in the 1980s. The deregulation that followed soon increased the
complexity even further (Bakker et al., 2016).The whole world started to respond to this change.
Like for other countries Australia also witnessed increased privatization of firms and reduced
tariff barriers. The mechanisms of operating a business in traditional times witnessed a
revolution during this period. Companies looked for faster integration of expertise to manage the
business challenges that grew as a result of increased privatization and deregulation of the
business during the period. Collaborations between different business entities soon became a
corporate practice (Birkinshaw et al., 2016). However, all these became a challenge as the
changing business landscape during those times required organizations to ensure a strategic and
productive collaboration between their changing structures, processes and boundaries. This is
also the purpose attached to this study. It studies and tries to identify the problems faced by
Claymore Consultants in its recent few years into operations. The study will recommend
possible ways to Claymore Consultants in which to organize strategically, so that, there is a drop
in increasing employee turnover. Moreover, the purpose is to help the Company to organize into
the much modernized and productive structures, processes and boundaries.
Main Body
Problems
The form of organizing that once proved beneficial for Claymore Consultants became
less effective when it expanded to become a comparatively larger firm. The Company that once
dealt with just a few clients now needs to take care of its clients spread across the country.
Moreover, it is now operative in the Asia-Pacific region as well. Due to being operative with the
same form of organizing they started to lose projects to multinational corporations. Multinational
firms faired comparatively better than Claymore Consultants in terms of advertising and project
handling capabilities. Internally, it started facing many organizational issues. The information

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sharing, the communication and collaborative working between its project teams and people
started to disappear in a noticeable way (Grigoriou and Rothaermel, 2017).
Taking into account the concerns expressed as above the need to reorganize in better
shape can be felt. The study will now discuss the problems in Claymore Consultants, which need
attention from the company. The problems will be explained using the “Duality Theory” in the
later section of this task. This section is more aimed at identifying the problems faced by
Claymore Consultants. Hence;
The problems will be identified using the structures-processes-boundaries framework.
The framework helps to identify nine indicators of organizational change. These indicators will
be clustered under three distinct organizational design dimensions. These are changing
structures, changing processes and changing boundaries (K. Smith et al., 2017).
Changing structures as found from the case study indicate the change in respect to three
distinct areas. These are delayering, decentralizing of strategic and operational decision-making,
and organizing based on projects (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). Delayering was identified in not
designing and deploying the middle management layers while Claymore Consultants continued
to expand. Decentralization could be traced in the devolution of the decision-making authority.
Organizing based on projects was identified in the establishment of cross-functional teams. The
cross-functional teams were established to promote collaboration between traditional business
boundaries.
Changing processes inform on spending made by Claymore Consultants in horizontal
and vertical communication linkages, information technology infrastructure, and new human
resource practices (Papachroni, Heracleous and Paroutis, 2015). Investments in information
technology (IT) were done to serve the technology needs of the business. The horizontal and
vertical communication linkages were introduced to communicate more effectively with
customers and suppliers. Human resource practices were implemented to cater to the needs of the
growing business such as training and development.
Changing boundaries help to measure outsourcing, downscoping and strategic alliances
(Pina e Cunha et al., 2017). Downscoping is used to represent the business diversification. The

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business diversification can be related or unrelated and focused or diverse. Outsourcing helps to
identify whether the organization has approached external business service provider to outsource
its various operations’ activities such as research and development, recruitment and selection,
and security. Strategic alliances denote whether the organization has considered any strategic
partnership within and outside home country. The purpose of alliances can be many such as to
share skills and expertise, knowledge, and resources.
Explanation of the problems using change management theory
Explaining the forms of organizing in Claymore Consultants
Using the structures-processes-boundaries framework and the case study evidence on
Claymore Consultants the forms of organizing in the company can be explained. Hence, the most
significant change was observed along with its different process elements mentioned above.
Changes could also be traced along with their structures and boundaries. However, the changes
are less apparent. It is because the degree of activity varied in intensity. Also, it rarely appeared
that its direction was intended at new and productive forms of organizing (Schad et al., 2016).
Claymore Consultants was found as using a flatter structure. However, with its times it proved
significantly unproductive. The general trend in the company was more towards decentralized
organizational structures, it significantly appeared as moving towards dual behavior. The
operational decision-making had largely followed a centralized structure. On the other hand,
strategic decision-making was also controlled under a centralized structure (Schad et al., 2016).
The results, therefore, indicate that organizing was not taken care strategically in
Claymore Consultants. It could manage certain things efficiently like it could bring changes to
processes. However, on a whole, it struggled to integrate various things. For example,
operational and strategic decision-making was controlled under a centralized organizational
structure. The decision-makers lost their faith in employees those who used to be a part of the
decision-making process. It affected workplace collaboration, which used to be one of the
strengths of Claymore Consultants.
Explanation of problems using Duality Theory

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The problems can be understood more elaborately by discussing dualities concerning
structures, processes and boundaries.
Dualities in structures
The business faced no challenge and rather moved smoothly in its early days. However,
with the deregulation of the industry and the growing size of the business, the environment
became more complex. The situation demanded a more professional approach to managing all
management activities. The need was created for a decentralized structure to involve all relevant
stakeholders in the decision-making. The flatter structure required a change into a hierarchical
structure comprising of separate business units to handle different activities. More elaborately, it
created the needs to have a human resource department, a sales department and so forth. It
created the needs to recognize the nature of duality characteristics in human resources activities
(Smith and Tracey, 2016). On the contrary, the responses from Claymore Consultants to these
needs were very different. Instead of adopting a hierarchical structure to ensure collaboration
between different business units Claymore Consultants continued with the same flatter structure.
As a result, it struggled to manage its internal activities and lost projects to multinational
organizations. The decision-makers sitting at a higher managerial level lost their trust in
employees those who used to be the part of the decision-making process. The situation
demanded the managers look to more complex activities than taking care of the projects.
However, they could not do that as they doubt the competency and skills of their people.
Dualities in processes
The level of complexity in the business grew with the growing number of clients. There
was a need to recruit more people for both specialized and generalized tasks. However,
Claymore Consultants did not even think of developing a human resource department. The
supervisors at Claymore Consultants thought it being their job. Indeed, human resource
professionals are trained in a more professional approach to recruitment and selection of people
(Bakker et al., 2016). Claymore Consultants lacked an organized team of experts to handle
business-related activities. It required the supervisors to take a more professional approach
towards the more complex activity of the business. Instead, they continued handling the projects
along with making strategic decisions. It did question their capability to handle dual tasks
simultaneously. Indeed, there should have been a few people selected from within the firm as

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project managers (Bakker et al., 2016). The mismanagement of the situation affected the
workplace culture as well as the competency of the firm in terms of winning projects.
The workplace culture that once used to be more integrated became significantly
dispersed. People started working with their client. They developed less sense of belonging to
Claymore Consultants. The sense of attachment between people was affected as well. Effective
communication that once used to be a part of Claymore Consultants had soon lost its ground.
Workplace collaboration and knowledge sharing was the essence of this company. However,
with growing complexity in the business and relatively less strategic responses from its leaders
did noticeably affect the competency. The duality in processes has significantly affected the
competency of Claymore Consultants in the long-term. It expanded to the Asia-Pacific region
and formed a team of consultants in different expertise. However, it could not sense the urgency
to improve its competency at the process level (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). Instead of
strengthening its structure and process in Australia Claymore Consultants thought of doing well
by targeting a niche market in the Asia-Pacific region. There is no problem in moving to other
parts of the world when a business has the relevant competency. However, it is least advisable to
one that has weak bases in its country of origin. The structures-processes-boundaries framework
suggests adopting uniform strategies across these components (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). On
the contrary, Claymore Consultants adopted a more dualistic approach.
Dualities in boundaries
The findings related to changes in boundaries illustrate that Claymore Consultants has
been limited in adopting strategies. In instances, it appeared to have picked a strategy to be able
to operate under increasing business pressure. This is evidenced by its expansion into the Asia-
Pacific region when they realized its business to have performed averagely in Australia in recent
few years. In the Asia-Pacific region, it hired few consultants having expertise in various skills.
They were being hired to take care of different business needs in the region. However, the
decision proved wrong when few of the hired consultants quit the job. Consequently, Claymore
Consultants had to face attrition. In the context of its business in the Asia-Pacific region, it could
have adopted better strategies to increase its boundary of operation and attain a robust structure
to cater to the business needs in the region. Claymore Consultants lacked a formal and

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professional approach to business setup in the region (Birkinshaw et al., 2016). This is nothing
but operating while keeping the boundaries of expertise limited.
In addition to this, there were other areas also that indicate dualities in boundaries. For
example, Claymore Consultants did consider expanding its team of experts in Australia when the
demand for the business grew. It did so by hiring new people and by designing different project
teams. However, Claymore Consultants was found in many cases as reluctant to go for changes
(Birkinshaw et al., 2016). For example, the two supervisors at Claymore Consultants had the
least trust in their subordinates. As a result of which they did not allow their tenured and
experienced people to become the project leaders. On the other hand, the business needs to be
demanded to concentrate more on professional activities such as strategic alliances rather than
leading projects (Pina e Cunha et al., 2017). The move did not just affect the effectiveness of its
business in Australia but also the internal organizational culture.
While boundaries could be found as having very small connectivity to dualities its
existence in the said context could be found. The existence could be traced in the range of
empirical and industrial case examples. However, it may or may not include components such as
delayering and outsourcing, and a few other forms of organizing (Smith and Tracey, 2016).
Conclusion and Recommendations
Therefore, the study suggests that the development of the dualities characteristics as
presented in this study helped to develop a good understanding of the business behavior. The
evidence of dualities across the structures processes and boundaries as described in this study
contribute to the theory development. The evaluation of the structures-processes-boundaries
framework in this study suggests the need for an expanded paradigm of management to manage
efficiently the dual forms of organizing. There is a need to strike a balance between the
traditional and modern style of doing business. The inability to manage dualities across the
structures, processes and boundaries will limit the tendency to go for the change. If this happens
there will be more management challenges than opportunities for the business in concern. The
study reveals how Claymore Consultants made a mess of dualities across its structures, processes

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and boundaries. It due to this lost its business effectiveness both in Australia and in the Asia-
Pacific region.
Recommendations
Hence, Claymore Consultants can be recommended a few sets of suggestions to
effectively manage dualities across its structures, processes and boundaries.
In respect to Process elements, the starting and utmost point of focus should be on human
resource practices. It is required immensely in leading the change projects.
The long-term sustenance of boundary changes in various forms should be determined by
the skills, competencies, and abilities to transfer from changes to processes. The boundary
changes will include the likes of strategic alliances and outsourcing.
In the context of Structures, the changes should be supported with situational and
flexible leadership, change management skills, and effective organizing of its people. The trust
should prevail there. There should be a support to effective collaboration between teams and
leaders.

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References
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