, Cebu

CASE ANALYSIS PAPER

Date: October 9, 2021

Name : PABLEO, GERLINE MAE O.

Program : Master of Business Administration
Subject : HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
Professor : ROEL A. MONSANTO, Ph.D.

Case Study 2.1 Mother London

Title of the Case

PROCEEDINGS/DETAILS OF THE CASE:

Mother London established in 1996, is a creative organisation employing around 280 people and
part of Mother Holdings, which has 20 companies with around 700 people including freelancers. It is
independently owned by its seven partners who include the three founding partners. Mother’s main
outputs are producing commercials for television, and cinema as well experience events and some
online output. It has also developed creative ideas in addition to traditional advertising including an
award winning feature film, graphic novels and various ‘house projects’. It has an extremely high
reputation for its creative output. This company has core principles, creativity and values that drive their
relationships with their clients and employees.

FACTS OF THE CASE:

Mother has its core principles which reflect the beliefs of its founders and has effect on how the
company is managed and structured and the relationships with its clients. The quality of creative output
is at the heart of its products. This quality of output is emphasized by Mother through a set of values
that specifies how the company work and this drives the relationships with its employees and clients.
The values are: Produce high quality creative output; Have fun; and Make money. Mother is also
different from other inter-companies, in the way they organize and work with clients. They prefer their
creative staff, strategists and producers to have direct contact with clients. Mother has a highly
collaborative style of work environment. This involves the specialists and non-specialists. Staff often
perform multiple roles and will move across different teams. Rewards and recognition for the creative
output are attributed to the company and not on individuals. Mother has brand teams that work with
both the internal and external parties in order to produce work for clients. These teams work with the
client representatives to focus on the problem. Mother has key sources of capital to which the company
draws to develop its creative output, which in turn contributes to the success of Mother. The human
capital of the company, have very high reputations in the industry, highly skilled and very experienced
staffs. They employ staff who have gained experience and are attracted to work at the company because
of the people who worked in the company. The company’s social capital is the organisational culture
which gives priority to creativity that will result to a high level of emotional attachment to the work
produced. The organisational structure in Mother is not hierarchical in nature but flat structure with
only three levels and there is a high interaction between the partners and more junior staff and there is
also staff rotation every eight weeks that is believed to allow relationships to be formed and contribute
to development of social capital.

PROBLEMS:

The forms of capital of Mother are being supported by the company’s people management
practices. In the company’s area of recruitment, external recruitment is mostly in the hands of the
Discipline Heads and Partners, new staff is recruited based on personal networks of senior staff, the HR
department does not have a role or participation in this area. HR only deals with the unsolicited
applications and internships. The recruitment and selection of staff is biased and the requirement for
the job vacancy or the need of a talent is not being advertised. The pool of applicants for Mother is very
limited.
There is internal hiring in Mother which is headed by the Head of Creative Resource in
collaboration with the Partners. Again, HR does not spearhead in this area, this may be promotion to
other industries but in Mother, staff are only moved or transferred to teams. The company is very aware
of the risk of their best staff being poached by competitors. In the area of Human Resources, Mother
employs less cost strategy. In this area, the staff may grow complacent and lazy owing to his/her good
performance; there is little certainty on the star potential of an internally hired staff while shutting out
potential stars, talents and ideas into the company.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

People management practices of Mother such as on resourcing, supports its human capital by
developing and absorbing talents internally; Training and Development supports its organizational
capital through team management; and Performance management and rewards supports the
development of social capital through annual performance appraisal.

The risks and problems Mother might encounter in the future in the people management area
are:
There is collaborative style of environment in Mother, the staffs work closely with external
clients to address the problem and create output. This creates the opportunity for the employee to
become committed to these parties rather than to the organisation which employs them. The parties
may be competing for the commitment of these employees. Lacking traditional organisational ties they
may find themselves floating between their firm and their client, but anchored to neither. This may
reduce their willingness to engage in extra role behaviour towards their employer. This will be
addressed through a specified line of authority with team leaders initiating careful team management,
setting clear expectations throughout the project and outline expectations for each staff so the staff will
be accountable for their portion of work.
As products grow and decline there may need to be redundancies for some employees but also
the need to retain good employees and to develop them but not the extent of limiting human resources.
The company should advertise their job qualifications in cost-effective means together with mass
exposure and advertising of their company as a whole.
 The lines of authority become blurred overtime as junior staff work alongside much more senior
staff. Employees learn by working with other experienced people, by being challenged by new creative
tasks and from clients. The company should do annual regular formal training to address the
development of staff. There should be an annual performance appraisal discussed not only with the
Partners but also the staff and HR department.