Question

At the top level are three Senior Partners who provide overall supervision to all staff. They also will have ultimate responsibility for certain large auditing projects. (The partners mentioned in the case were both Senior Partners. At the next level are 4 General Partners who are ultimately responsible for any projects that the Senior Partners are not leading. Next, there are two Accounting Managers. These are certified accountants who were promoted to this position. They have authority to organize the work of the staff accountants on the projects to ensure the schedule is met. They will report to either the senior or general partners, depending upon which partner has the ultimate responsibility for the project.

There also three tax managers who will provide a final review for any tax related work carried out by staff accountants. They report to the Tax Partner who is one of the senior partners. They do not exert any direct supervision over accounting staff. Four Senior Accountants work on key audit projects and will either work under the guidance of an Accounting Manager or directly with a Partner. In the latter case, the Senior Accountant s often have to self-organize the work, as the involved partner may not exert much hands-on  supervision, until the final review of the work. When it occurs, this lack of supervision is sometimes a source of friction and conflict among staff, especially when the review is not positive.

Three Intermediate and two Junior Accountants are supposed to work on projects under the supervision of an Accounting Manager. Exceptions occur, such as the incident with Alicia. When Intermediate and Junior Accountants are working on projects with Senior Accountants instead of a Manager, the relationship between the Seniors and the other accountants is ambiguous and sometimes tense..)

An IT Manager is responsible for all the computers, networks, website, software, etc…  He reports to a Senior Partner. This is source of frustration when the IT needs of Staff Accountants are not being met. They have very little influence over the IT Manager, and they are reluctant to go over his head to the Senior Partner.
A Human Resources Manager reports to a Senior Partner, performs support functions such as payroll administration, but has no supervisory role.
Four secretaries report to both the General and Senior Partners.  They handle all secretarial tasks for Staff Accountants, Managers and Partners. Staff Accountants and Managers sometimes find it difficult to request work from this group as they may “drag their feet” on such requests. However, they respond well to the Senior and General Partners.

Partially because clients are often slow to respond to requests for information, auditing projects and the clients’ corporate tax returns frequently run up against tight deadlines.  A prevalent pattern in this firm is that the responsible Partner (often along with a Manager) runs around when the deadline is approaching  to insist that the team working on it work overtime until it’s done.  Accounting Staff find this disruptive to their lives and frustrating. Frequently, the Accounting Staff finish the bulk of their work on time and submit it for final review. The Partner (and sometimes the Manager) then has the file sitting on his or her desk for several days, reviews it at the last minute, and finds areas that he or she wants to correct or change.  Then, the Staff Accountants, who have been waiting for the review, have to work long hours to meet a deadline they thought they had already met. Late nights working at the firm were common for Staff Accountants and often for Managers, but rarely for Partners.
Draw an organizational chart showing the firm as described above.

Reorganize the firm with a revised structure and positions to increase managerial effectiveness. Your reorganization should apply the course content from the beginning of the term up to Unit 5. In particular, explicitly apply the principles in the multimedia lecture for Unit 5 (Modules 1 and 2) as well as the readings listed for Lecture 5. Your answer must fully explain the new structure and positions you are suggesting, justifying each change you make by reference to the theoretical course content.

Summary

The question in Human Resource Management deals with organization structure and management. The question here deals with a company where the managers report to the partners and there is ambiguity among the senior level and junior level executives in the organization. The present structure of the organization along with improvements in the present structure have been given in the solution.

Total Word Count 2148

 

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