BUS104: Harvest Software Company (HSC) Has Had a Humble Beginning as a Small Software Development Company: Organisational Behaviour in the Technology Era Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

SECTION II

Read the case Harvest Software Company (A) case (below) and answer the following questions.

Note that there is also a Harvest Software Company (B) case included in the Group-based Assignment (GBA) but it should not be used to answer the TMA questions below.

Harvest Software Company (A)

Background

Since its creation, Harvest Software Company (HSC) has had a humble beginning as a small software development company. However, with the rise of the digital economy, its business has grown rapidly, and particularly so in recent months.

Mr Samuel Tan, CEO and founder of HSC, is very proud of HSC’s achievements. Known for his ambitious personality, he clinched numerous new major software development projects but to meet the resource demands of these new projects, Mr Tan knows he has to hire a substantial number of programmers quickly. However, the office space that HSC has rented is insufficient to accommodate these additional employees and he has also realised how difficult it now is to hire programmers locally.

Expansion Plans

Faced with these problems, Mr Tan had to quickly think of solutions. He decided that he would hire new programmers who would be telecommuting on a full-time basis. In other words, the new programmers would not need to work in the office at all but would work from home or from any other location.

With this arrangement, Mr Tan was able to attract a sufficient number of qualified job applicants who wanted the flexibility of working from home. Furthermore, he is confident that the latest online collaboration software that his company recently adopted will enable his programmers to work seamlessly from different locations.

With this approach, office space would no longer be an issue as he would not need to provide space for the new programmers that he hired. He is now even considering hiring offshore programmers. “After all, since technology knows no boundaries, organisations should have no boundaries either,” Mr Tan declared to his staff as he shared his plans to expand HSC.

Important Notes:

• Answer the following questions using concepts covered in this course. You should support your views by drawing on evidence from the case. You can also make reasonable assumptions where you think the case is lacking in details.
• You are encouraged to support your answers with relevant studies.
• Your answers should follow an essay format with an introduction, a body, and a
  conclusion.

Question 1

(a) “Organisations should have no boundaries…” Based on what you learned about organisations in this course, comment on Mr Tan’s statement after indicating the extent to which you agree with it.

(b) Imagine that you are a consultant engaged by Mr Tan to study the impact of using online collaboration tools to enable remote teams at the workplace. Using specific examples, describe to Mr Tan the benefits and issues of using online collaboration tools, with a focus on areas of interest in organisational behaviour.

(c) Discuss why a sound understanding of organisational behaviour would be useful to an organisation such as HSC