Organizational Challenges in Telstra: Strategies for Ethics, Diversity, Competitive Advantage and Innovation

This paper discusses the challenges faced by Telstra in maintaining organizational ethics, cultural diversity, competitive advantage and innovation. It also suggests strategic objectives and recommended actions to tackle these challenges.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
Organizational challenges
Name of Student:
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Author Note:

1ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
Table of Contents
1. Introduction:........................................................................................................................2
2. Challenges involved............................................................................................................2
3. Strategic objectives.............................................................................................................3
4. Recommended actions........................................................................................................3
References:.................................................................................................................................5

2ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
1. Introduction:
A manager always needs to think strategically to tackle and solve the problems that he faces.
The company chosen for this paper is Telstra, which is the largest telecommunication and
technology company.
2. Challenges involved
Organization ethics is defined as the way an organization should react to external
factors (Chun et al., 2013). Certain values are to be kept in mind while maintaining
organizational ethics. Employees often tend to destruct and manipulate data and information
to achieve results. This should be prohibited. Clarity of information often comes across as a
challenge in the managerial functions.
Cultural diversity has several challenges. People from different cultures working
together may face problems in integrating with each other due to the cultural stereotypes.
Language might come across as a barrier of communication. Furthermore, the various work
culture of different teams belonging to different cultures can create conflicts.
The challenge associated with this factor is to maintain the competitive advantage in
the market by building and maintaining a good reputation of the country in the market (Sakas,
Vlachos & Nasiopoulos, 2014). A downfall in the competitive advantage is interpreted as a
loss for the organization.
The managers face challenges in emphasizing innovation in employees due to the lack
of a proper structure. Lack of motivation of the employees cause a hindrance in the process of
innovation. In addition, lack of diversity and collaboration with each other cause challenges
for innovation.

3ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
3. Strategic objectives
The strategic objective for achieving an ethical organization should be ensuring
ethical and legal activities within every regulatory guidelines. The ethics strategies should
monitor organizational activities to prevent violations of law and ethics. Cultural diversity is
required for an organization for reaching a larger client base, creating better performing
teams, finding and retaining more employees and becoming a good corporate citizen for
improving brand image. Competitive advantage identifies and inspects the economics of the
business of a firm focussing on the ability to achieve excess returns for the shareholders and
retain the brand image. Finally, the objective for implementing innovation is to increase
productivity in a short period, along with efficiency, improving the quality of the product and
satisfying customer needs and experience.
4. Recommended actions
There should be clarity and fairness in monetary and other forms of transactions and
trading with the client. Discrimination should be eradicated completely from any
organization. Exploitation of any employee should be avoided. Safety and security of the
employees should be one of the prime concerns of the organization. Lastly, interests of clients
should be given prime attention and dealt in a fair manner.
The first strategy or adaptation involves acknowledging cultural gaps and working on
them. Structural intervention as the name suggests, involves changing the shape of the team
(Podsiadlowski et al., 2013). Managerial intervention deals with setting of policies and even
involving the higher management of the organization. Finally, exit includes the removal of a
team member in case of failing of all the options.
There are two determinants of evaluating competitive advantage. Firstly, a manager
should identify the benefits provided by the product of the company. Secondly, identifying

4ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
the target market is important for a manager. Unless a manager identifies whom the product
is targeted to, no action towards gaining competitive advantage can be taken.
A manager must maintain communication of the employees with the upper management
(Yesil, & Sozbilir, 2013). Organizing brainstorming sessions and engaging the employees
into sharing creative ideas stimulates them being innovative.

5ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
References:
Chun, J. S., Shin, Y., Choi, J. N., & Kim, M. S. (2013). How does corporate ethics contribute
to firm financial performance? The mediating role of collective organizational
commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Management, 39(4),
853-877.
Podsiadlowski, A., Gröschke, D., Kogler, M., Springer, C., & Van Der Zee, K. (2013).
Managing a culturally diverse workforce: Diversity perspectives in organizations.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 37(2), 159-175.
Sakas, D., Vlachos, D., & Nasiopoulos, D. (2014). Modelling strategic management for the
development of competitive advantage, based on technology. Journal of Systems and
Information Technology, 16(3), 187-209.
Yesil, S., & Sozbilir, F. (2013). An empirical investigation into the impact of personality on
individual innovation behaviour in the workplace. Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 81, 540-551.