Diversified Energy

DIVERSIFIED ENERGY
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Diversified Energy
Diversified Energy (DE) is a privately owned corporation that designs, sells, installs, and maintains commercial and industrial solar equipment and cogeneration energy systems in Australia. It is the recognised leader in the commercial solar business, and it is trying to expand into cogeneration. The cogeneration systems from DE are designed to convert vegetable oil, bioethanol, and waste products into power and heat. The DE philosophy is "Power, people, and profit"source? Cite this as it is a direct quote. Because DE is in the renewable and recyclable power industry, it believes strongly that it is a socially responsible company. Rather than consuming the earth`s resources, it makes effective use of energy that is already there. It does not pollute; it only contributes. Thus, DE views itself as highly ethical.DE is a power company that puts is people foremost. The DE Corporation is a worker-owned cooperative run by the members, with its profits shared among them. The company takes pride in nurturing an atmosphere in which members can philosophise and relate with other members on the job. DE encourages open interaction among members and views it as an essential part of the creative problem-solving function.always leave spaces after punctuation marksProfit is also important to the owner-workers at DE. Although profit has not been the company`s top priority, everyone realises that profit is necessary to keep the organisation alive and healthy.
Organisational Structure
The company employs 40 people. Half of the employees work on solar and cogeneration projects under the operations manager. Five people sell and work for the sales manager. Five people design systems, and the rest of the employees perform administrative and staff functions.DE is a project-centred organisation. Hence, the company is involved in considerable group problem solving and decision making. The board of directors is one of the primary problem-solving groups. Construction projects are a good example of other problem-solving group opportunities.
This case study is about the Australian privately owned company Diversified Energy which is specialized on commercial and industrial solar equipment and cogeneration energy systems. The corporation is worker-owned, run by their members with its profits shared among each of them. Their service designing, selling, installing and maintaining their systems for their customers. Since Diversified Energy has been very successful in the commercial solar business, they now want to expand their business into cogenerated systems that uses renewable and recycable materials rather than consuming the earths resources. This paper will handle the communication aand decision-making problems that arise in a company like DE,the possible consequences and effects that might emerge solutions and recommendations to all these factors.
Communication and decision making problems arising
Acccording to Johanssen (1990),decisions made on ethics depend on man`s behaviour over what he considers to be right and wrong.Communication is a gateway of passing ideas or notion among workers in an organization.He adds that,communication as a way of passing information affects people in the way they make decisions,solve problems,make choices between alternatives and later on decide on which values to adopt in the organization.Communication entails the passing on of messages from one person to another. Messages carry a lot of weight since they draw a picture of what a sender requests of the receiver.They can be potrayed as ethical or unethical depending on what it contains. An unethical message can lead to unethical behaviours and reactions among workers since they are aimed at attacking and supressing the receiver`s feelings. Moreover, an ethical message motivates and encourages workers since it is morally accepted (Redding,1991). Unethical messages can be destructive in that the sender aims at destroying the receiver`s reputation by using abuses on him.They can also be coercive in that the sender shows a degree of authority over the receiver by threatening him with words either to offend him or put him off.The sender can also use untruthful words as a way of covering up an unlawful behaviour. Some team members who potray fear and lack of confidence normally face manipulation from their counterparts. For instance, words used on Bud,terming him as slow,a liability than an asset, destroys his ego and thus he ends up being un-productive. In some companies, the managers work under assumptions and they end up categorizing their workers into groups of unproductive and lazy verses the responsible and hardworking (Neuliep,1987).
Some team members would wish to cover their own interest since they fear that the ideas they might raise might not be of value and cannot be taken.Therefore, team members like Bud decide not to be open and as a result communication is weakened. Others fear to be out-witted or branded daft. Therefore, team members like Luke often potray themselves as opinionated and hot-tempered .
When members have different perspectives on how things are supposed to be done or how to handle issues, then the expectations tend to vary (Photo 2 on Functional Theory).Most of the times, conflicts may arise because of indifferences in responsibilities,positions or roles (Neuliep, 1987).
A lot of times, there might be confusion between members over roles and responsibilities.At times some members may fail to carry out their tasks effectively because they feel that another person must do it.Other members like Len prefer to avoid such confusion by working alone.
Frustrations may arise when some members of the company feel left out or pulled back from the company`s plans. Hence, success might not be fully realised since some members tend to feel that they are not in the schedule or part of the company`s agenda list.
When team members fail to commit themselves to a certain task at hand then decision making becomes a big problem.This is because, they will not give their best and at times they end up making excuses for not making every effort.
When members are not open towards corrections or criticisms,they endup feeling that they know it all and that they know much. Hence, approaching them becomes difficult, knowledge sharing becomes...