Finding the Reason for Reduced Customer Rating in Call Center (Case Study), Symptom Cause and Effect Relation, Evidence Base Decision, PADIL(Management Strategy for Performance)

As said by Albert Einstein, "If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it” the same proverb goes in analogy with the case of declining customer rating for the call center. The reduction in the customer rating is the halfway of cause and effects, i.e. it is the effect or the result of customer's dissatisfaction those have already availed the service. So, cautious has to be maintained in misrepresentation between the symptoms, cause and effect relation.

As stated by (Wedellsborg, 2017), managers switch quickly to the solution mode rather than checking to understand the real problem, this tendency could jeopardize the scenario making the manager work for wrong problem leading to collapse the scared resources. To being with I personally think, as stated above, enough time should be devoted to carry root cause analysis. Here the cause of customer un-satisfaction ultimately has bubbled as the problem for the service provider.

So, at first, I like to go deeper to understand the stakeholders and factors included in the process, i.e. clients, call service representative, a technology we are using to serve the client, competitors and the management. Now, upon analyzing and isolating each stakeholder through evidence-based management, previous researches, and analytical intuitions we can conclude that the point of contact between the client and company happens only during the service transmission through our contemporary technology that is being used.

Other stakeholders like management plays a back-end role. So, at first, it could be concluded that the call representatives provides the pivotal role in customer satisfaction. His/her attributes like the clarity of voice, level of empathy in learning customer's issue, knowledge of products and services matters a lot. The customer satisfaction could be upgraded by bringing professionalism in the call representatives.

But interesting as put forth by (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013), in the system approach of problem analysis where critical emphasis is given to understand "the iceberg above and below the water surface", the analogy could be drawn in our case too. The hidden factor that may not directly contribute and has subdued implication in performance like management philosophy, competitors, representative motivation level has to be analyzed.

As mentioned above the search would be fundamentally based on evidence-based decision making, and will follow the PADIL approach. The information search will be based on two fundament methods, i.e. primary and secondary. The primary methods will be through digital questioners to share customer experience where they will be asked to rate their experience with and behavior of call representatives and secondary research will focus on evidencing the previous data on the subject matter conducted by other firms in the industry. For the latter one, I will use the finding of other service centers. Once the problem along with stakeholder and their implication is defined, it will make our work easier to concretize in the issue, i.e. is it due to the employee or due to technology or due to competitors et cetera.

Hence, having done with the stakeholder analysis (within and out of organization), expected reason of performance deviation (due to employee or industry turbulence), other things remaining constant, if the impact is due to our own weakness, like poor technology, lack of motivated representatives, lack of training, I will recommend various intrinsic as well as extrinsic packages on the basis of individual performances. It could be free family dinner coupons(extrinsic) or circulating employee of the month award(intrinsic). Whereas, for the technical portion if they are outdated than new advanced technologies will be emulated so it can come across customer's expectation.

Here, as mentioned above the problem could be limited only up to employee or it could be due to other market turbulence. The above mention alternatives like a reward system, training, technologies advancement require resources in terms of money, time and energy. So, I will concisely work on it. Brainstorming and Brainwriting will be organized so that further details could be collected and will try my best not to commit hasty generalizations. The flowchart of problem-solving for the scenario is detailed below:-

Figure: Flowchart for the problem analysis and solving 

The success of decision making and problem-solving happens only after the verification of the actual outcome and if scientific, logical and analytical steps are incorporated the chances of success increases.

Bibliography

Baldwin, T. T., Bommer, W. H., & Rubin, S. R. (2013). Managing Organizational Behavior: What Great Managers Know and Do. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Wedellsborg, T. (2017, February). Are You Solving the Right Problems? Retrieved January 15, 2018, from www.hbr.org: https://hbr.org/2017/01/are-you-solving-the-right-problems

Importance of Self-Management and Self -Awareness while Preparing for New Managerial Position(Management Strategy for Performance)

It is always well said that the ability of the manager to manage his employees depends upon his own personal ability of self-management. So it is my firm conviction that knowing myself is critically important before I desire to amalgamate myself to the new working scenario, but, I would also like to spend some time in understanding the corporate culture and organizational dynamism of my new premises so that I can be acquainted well. And I strongly believe that we all are uniquely geniuses in one or another way and have to value the individual difference that we have in.

My self-assessment, as stated by (McLeod, 2016) about Bandura social learning theory starts after my careful observation of the environment (my new organization), demographics of employee (internal variable) and my study of their actual behavior to various stimuli currently prevailing and their future prospective behavior implication. From this observation, I believe it will help me to extrapolate or predict the trajectory of the behavior of my new employees.

I truly value the human capital of the organization, the most important and equipped one to maneuver and control other resources, i.e. financial, informational, physical et cetera. So I will convey them that I am a manager who focuses more on the human interpersonal dynamics and desires to practice and apply the participatory mode of decision making, free and fair of any biases and prejudices.

As stated by (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013), the self-awareness  will help to improve my self-management skills, for the purpose, observation and experimentation will help to harness my goals and will motive me ultimately enhance my managerial performances leveraging my conceptual, technical and interpersonal skills

Rather than intuition and my experiences, my values for cognitive skills are higher as I believe cognitions are based on evidence, and a well-framed decision making with logical steps has higher chances of succeeding a problem (structured or unstructured).  Similarly, I will be there helping the employee through my coaching, nurturing, guiding and navigating skills. As a manager I had hardly practiced the harder approach of management since I strongly advocate for deeper understanding of emotions and human interpersonal skills, I definitely believe that these will help employees to relax their views on management and their approach.  There could be the difference within the personal cultural which may impact the corporate culture, my values for cultural differences will always be high but equal caution has to be maintained as cross-cultural etiquettes often could carry multiple and misleading meanings.

Personally and professionally, I am always down to earth with open doors for suggestions; I always prefer collectivism over individualism and believe that manger success is utterly dependent on the success of employees. I will make them clear on the very first day that overall management strategies will focus on creating the win-win situation through the effective and productive use of scared resources.

My, as well as the wellbeing of the overall employee, depends on our ability to have SMART goals, so I will be constantly scanning the environment to strategize and re-strategize my strategic, business and operational goals and for this, unequivocally employee skills and knowledge up-gradation is paramount. So, for the purpose, I will focus on various training and management development programs.

To sum up, I will introduce myself to them as a friendly manager who is gregarious, altruist, cooperative, has high self-esteem, self -efficacy, and self- discipline but equally self -aware. Through my previous experiences, knowledge, and skills I think this will motivate my employees not only to work for me but also to work with me. As mentioned earlier, human capital is the most critical and important as it has the ability to control other precious resources. I believe my prioritization for scientific human approach focusing on evidence-based management will help to scintillate my positivity and motivate my employees.

Bibliography

Baldwin, T. T., Bommer, W. H., & Rubin, S. R. (2013). Managing Organizational Behavior: What Great Managers Know and Do. New York: McGraw-Hill.

McLeod, S. (2016). Bandura - Social Learning Theory. Retrieved January 11, 2018, from www.simplypsychology.org: https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html

Evidence-Based Management and Decision Making and Reason for Leader Reluctance for it.(Management Strategy for Performance)

Yes, often it is seen that most of today’s management decisions are not based on evidence, firstly, they seemed to be guided by sensationalism, guts feeling and, intuitions (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013) which I think is the halfway truth towards actuality. Except this psychological variable which propagates a false sense of self-gratification in decision maker, the company is also constrained by lack of evidence due to their inadequate knowledge about the subject matter, i.e., how to gather the data and perform the research. Whereas the evidence-based decision making is a logical, systematic, scientific and analytical way of data collection and inferences which require resources in terms of money, knowledge, and skills but sadly all the business entities or the decision makers might not afford it.

As per (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013), the evidence-based management decision could be practiced and calibrated into individual and organizational well-being through detailed and in-depth analysis of circumstances and situations, i.e. through cause and relation analysis, had companies like Nokia Inc. and Kodak Inc. understood the  issue of decreasing demand for their products(profit) were due to  consumer inclination towards android platform and  market demand for photo digitalization respectively, they would not have failed (Sull, 1999). Similarly, no process holds the best approach; it depends upon the situation and decision should be contingent on various internal and external environmental factors.

Further, knowledge management helps to create a pool of data which could be retrieved for future assistance supporting to validate the evidence. And unequivocally, the organization and managers determination of practicing evidence-based decision making and researches through training, seminars, on and off the job learning and benchmarking from other well-doing organization could be an asset.

The applicability of evidence-based management is also crucially important; understanding of organizational behavior and business environment analysis supports the accumulation of the raw data which we can find from internal and external environments for decision making. As opted by (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013) these evidences can be collected through well modeled and planned process called “Big E Evidence” and often could also be within the organization periphery gathered through mundane and straightforward process. Depending upon the situation, problems, its impact, and risk associated the manager chooses the ways of collecting evidences.

The imposition of the findings and outcome of the evidence-based decision making depends upon circumstances, i.e., is the company going through structured or unstructured problems, is the phenomenon happening in an organization programmed or are they completely new? The best approach is always to being with self-audit, it helps the manager to be vivid of his own strength and weakness, and it helps him to be self-aware of himself. It is really important that he should erase his biases and predisposition that he has acquired previously from his learning. Further, the manager extracts phenomenal cues and understanding from the mutual interaction of person, environment and the business as advocated by the “social learning theory”

Having fair presence and research-based evidences, the manager, after identifying the scenario opt to set the goal, which should be SMART, i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, reliable and time-bound. He then allocates the resources the organization has in the best optimum and efficient way, he links result with rewards which mostly persuades and motivates the employees evolving to effective learning by doing organizational culture.

Pfeffer and Robert (2005) in their research entitled “Evidence-Based management” published in Harvard Business Review has also focused on the importance of evidence-based management, it not only provides the decision maker with required pool of data to make informed decisions but also revitalizes and creates a conducive, motivated working environment in an organization through an integrative and holistic approach . The evidence which proceeds from premises using and analyzing deeper knowledge, employing facts makes it more reliable but equal caution has to be maintained as these process could be situation specific and often it’s hard to create an analogy and replica of existing model as management scenarios could be unique in their own ways.

If we see the real business scenario, the companies like Amazon.com, Facebook.com are focused more on the evidences and scientific ways of making decisions and are outperforming than those following traditional procedure. It not only energies the strategic level of the company but also benefits overall hierarchy of the company through increased productivity.

For example, a recent hike in the general interest rate in the economy of the USA by Federal Reserve was an evidence-based decision to solve the macroeconomic turbulences; Federal Reserve was determined to increase the general inflation rate. Similarly, reduction in the corporate tax rate was also evidence-based management decision where the Republicans slashed the tax rate to create positive economic impacts. So, whether it is a small organization(private entity) or government(public institutions), the decision makers are always benefited by this scientific way of decision making but should be cautious as each situation are unique in their own way and often the analogy could be a fallacy.

The evidence-based decision making is a scientific, analytical, planned and logical step which has higher chances of rewards in compare to intuitions and guts feelings. And could be practiced and learned well by the managers creating a paradigm shift in management undertakings.

Bibliography

Baldwin, T. T., Bommer, W. H., & Rubin, S. R. (2013). Managing Organizational Behavior: What Great Managers Know and Do. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Sull, D. N. (1999). Why good companies go bad. Harvard Business Review, 42-52

EU debt crises: "An In-depth Study of its Impact in PIIGS” Incorporating Sovereign Debt, Trade Deficit, Social Expenditure, Balance of Payment,Austerity Measures

The inception of OECD goes back to 1948 when the countries came together for better integration of economies ravaged by the war. The organization founded on the principle of co-operation comprises major nations of Europe along with developed countries like USA, Japan and developing countries like India and China (OECD, 2017).

An analogy, if we preview back to see the economic trade cycles in the global arena, undisputedly we can infer, the global economy has a cycle, after every destruction, there was construction, after every recession, there was a boom. If left unmanaged than after every boom there was a bubble. A bubble is a proliferation in values of resources (oil or asset or derivative products) which often is projected high or subjugated less by laissez-faire market to the point which compels a market to crash. Perfect apotheosis could be a great depression 1930, OPEC oil price crises, sub-prime mortgage crisis of USA 2008 and EU debt crises 2008 which created a global economic, social-political and cultural turmoil in the history of the world and had given a fundamental economic doctrine to the humanity.

The paper herein will focus on conceptualizing the causes and implication of EU debt crises underpinning the factors like public debt, budget deficit, government social expenditure, exchange rate and its implication in global trade competitiveness. Let’s retrospect European Union (EU) from 1999 the year when Greece, a so-called lucrative global investment platform for many countries was enlisted as a member of EU.  The cluster of debt-ridden and burdening budget deficits countries; Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain initially celebrated under the canopy of countries like Germany and France where they enjoyed low-cost borrowing but unfortunately the generosity of these pro-socialist countries with their implied self-interest approach (Appleyard & Field, 2014)  created a financial imbalance as the use of debt went into unproductive sector or for the settlement of recurring expenses of the country

The three main reasons as summarized by (European Commission, 2009), i. Upward pressure on European exchange rates with the US dollar ii. Carry trades which disharmonized the global liquidity in the European financial markets; investors borrowed currencies with low-interest rates and invest them in higher return yielding currencies and iii. The large capital flows made viable by the integration of the global financial market which was unfortunately invested in the unproductive sectors of the economy like real estate which created a global economic negative repercussion.

The countries were identically different in terms of their socio-cultural dimensions. Germany, on the one hand, was precise when it came about its financial obligation whereas PIIGS seems to be procrastinating. The convergence of multi-variability of various countries into single monetary mechanism was also a reason for the failure, PIIGS already overrode the Maastricht accord and other major players of EU like Germany and France had already crossed the threshold of public debt and budget deficit by 60% and 3% respectively (Steiner, 2012)

The aggressive lending by the US banks and financial institutions, where the original loans were securitized and distributed to other institutions created  leniency in determining the creditworthiness of the initial borrower, creation of the new convoluted financial derivative markets, overutilization of the capital by the banks, high leveraged, weak supervision in the off-balance sheet activities all ignited and fuel the creation of the subprime housing effects in the USA  and collapse of so-called “too big to fall” banks  like Lehman and Brothers in the US cascading global financial turmoil which soon penetrated into the  EU countries which were financially linked to the  US financial markets.

The non-reciprocity for less developed countries where the euphoria of low-cost borrowing that created a fiscal imbalance could also be seen as the laid foundation for the EU debt crises. The event synchronization could be depicted as in the figure below.

Source: www.bankrate.com, (Steiner, 2012)

Economic crisis never happens at once as an unexpected nightmare, the failure of the economy is a catastrophe brought by series of symptoms that are manifested by ineffective policies and practices. The same happened in PIIGS, the budget deficit to GDP ratio of these countries had already breached the level required by Maastricht Accord, as shown in the graph below

 Source: www. economics.rabobank.com.

Each year budget is allocated by the government of the country to come across its current and capital expenses. These gaps, either be a deficit or surplus has an impact on the way government forms its taxation and spending policies and directly or indirectly impacts various economic parameters like inflation, foreign exchange rate, interest rate et cetera.

Globalization and liberalization have not only opened the borders for free trade and cooperation between the countries, but these also been a mechanism for the flow of contagious financial crisis as we can see the impact of subprime housing effect of the US that reached to EU countries as investments were made across the countries.

In general, the portion of deficit budget of the overall OECD countries was on the rise, except for some limited countries in EU, the deficit was alarming. As mentioned above about the Maastricht Criteria in 1993, it was made compulsory to limit the government deficit and debt to 3% and 60% of the GDP respectively(Ismet & Mehmet, 2012). To put in the layman views, high public spending but in contrast decreasing public revenue is also the reason for the collapse of PIIGS.

Table: 1, Government Budget Deficit, 2008(Source: OECD Factbook 2014)\

Admits populism and intent to be voted back, Greece government opted for unaffordable pensions for the country which was amalgamated with falling tax collections; ultimately raising the deficit in the budget (Buckley, 2015). This self-interest approach (Appleyard & Field, 2014) of the political alignment though temporary glamorized Greece but jeopardize it in long run. PIIGS are the neo-socialist where they unfavorably pressured the private sector to bear the burden of public initiatives.

In an event of gloomy economic failure, the budget deficit was followed by the high amount of public debt. The economic crises in PIIGS were so deeply embedded that the crises started to proliferate at various sectors of the economy. The countries in PIIGS were already losing their government revenues, Spain and Ireland lost them in the form of property tax brought by the asset bubble which was one or other way around affected by US sub-prime housing effect and Greece by higher cost of borrowing which was twice the rate being enjoyed by Germany. The bubbling sovereign debt was to burst with significant microeconomic ripples. Due to higher debt and deficit, the cost of doing business increased exponentially in PIIGS in compare to other stronger economics leading to crowd out the private investment which significantly reduced the government tax revenues impacting their fiscal balance. The higher tax, heavy regulations, and globalization were the force to induce producers to outsource resources from other developing countries or go into China, drastically reducing the export of the country. The line graph below provides us some insight on increasing borrowing cost for PIGS.

Source: www. economics.rabobank.com

Interestingly,  if we analyze from table 1 and 2, the percentage of the budget deficit and public debt for countries like France, Germany, Norway, and Finland were relatively lower increasing their reliability in the eyes of investor and ultimately with low cost of borrowings.

Table:2, Government Debt, 2008 (Source: OECD Factbook 2014)

As per IMF study, a percentage rise in the global debt/GDP ratio escalates the long-term interest rate by 0.1. The debt ratio of the PIIGS and most of the EU countries were on the rise, pushed the real interest upwards leading to crowd out private investment and rise in unemployment rate. (Davies, 1995)

Source: www. economics.rabobank.com

The soaring debt of PIIGS exponentially raised the tax rate which was to come across sovereign financial obligation, the recurring and repetitive debt requirement during the recessionary turmoil drastically raised the cost of borrowing. The increased demand for the debt also raises the cost of doing business within the nation and crowd out enterprises. In 2010 Athens planned to issue $75 billion bonds to come across its financial obligations. By 2010, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal has the budget deficit of 11.1%, 15.4%, 14.4% and 9.3 % respectively and the debt of 53.2%,126.8%,65.5% 76.1% of GDP (The Telegraph, 2010). Greece public debt (177%) was highest among the EU countries which are followed by Italy (132) and Portugal (129) as per 2015 data provided by Eurostat.

Alarmingly five EU countries; i.e. United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain alone has a debt standing over €1trn (Wikipedia, 2017).

The balance of payment (BOP), on the other hand, is also a prime indicator in depicting the financial health of the economy. Generally, other things remaining constant, a positive BOP refers higher exports in compare to the imports and it could be in goods as well as services, on the happening of this, countries with higher BOP holds more foreign exchange reserves making their economies stronger in the global trade platform. If we follow the OECD Factbook, PIIGS have negative BOP from 2007 onwards. Unfortunately, Greece only has continued with this in 2014 whereas Germany and Norway had maintained their positive BOP to date.

Figure: 1, Bar graph of BOP for year 2007, 2008 and 2014, (Source: OCED Factbook 2015)

From the above figure 1, we can see countries in PIIGS were underperforming since 2007 but with tightening regulatory measures from European Central Bank (ECB) and other stern monetary measures countries except for Greece in PIIGS has positive BOP from 2014 onwards manifesting a growth in intra-Eurozone trade.

Till the point, on inferring the economic and financial history of above mentioned EU countries we found, three economic parameters which also has direct implication in the international trade, i.e. budget deficit, public debt and balance of payment (BOP) were underperforming, the impact of which was higher cost of doing business leading to crowd out private investment (capital flight) and tax revenue for the governments along with other socio-cultural violence, leading to run the country into deficit and low public saving.

Similarly upon the analysis of the disposable income and saving in the same time among the above mentioned sampled countries it was observed that disposable income as well as saving as the percentage of disposable income was in decreasing trend for the countries under PIIGS which can also be seen from the table below.

  

Table: 3, Percentage increase in the disposable income, 2008 (Source: OCED Factbook 2015)

From the table 3, we can infer that the impact of the national economic crisis has been throughout the Eurozone, Greece has the greatest percentage of decline in disposable income in 2010 whereas France, Germany was able to maintain their economy

Table: 4, Percentage increase in the saving as a portion of disposable income, 2008 (Source: OECD Factbook 2015)

Similarly, the impact of low income can be seen in the private household saving in table 4. From the data of table 3 and 4, it can be concluded that not only the PIIGS were lacking in public saving (i.e. their budget deficit) but also were having lesser private saving, the impact was the supply of lesser loanable fund for the investment and lesser national output. The lesser output forced for higher imports but depreciated currency in the PIIGS leading to increase in the trade deficit even more. The household debt and non-profit institutions serving households as a percentage of net disposable income increased between 2007-2014, France and Germany, Greece recorded the largest

Interesting, a trend has been observed among the population growth rate and GDP growth rate in sampled countries. To put it another way, it could be concluded that the countries that were under-performing had higher population growth rate relative to the growth in GDP. And these could have a direct implication in their social expenditure.

Graph: 1, Comparison between GDP and population growth rates of sampled countries for 2008.

The developing countries of Asia, namely China and India were doing relatively better than countries under PIIGS and other Eurozone, probably as the developing models of those countries was focused more in internal consumption whereas the EU countries relied heavily on intra-Eurozone trading.

The social expenditure, the amount that the country spends to protect and promote the standard of living of marginalized and poor people of the country could be an additional financial and fiscal burden during the time of recession. These could be in the form of sick allowances, unemployment allowances, pension et cetera. These pro-socialist countries of PIIGS were in no mood to reduce the generosity they have been granting their citizens, the reason could be i. nationwide mass protest ii. government natures to be benevolent so that they can be re-elected back.

Graph: 2, percentage of social expenditure of sampled countries for year 2005,2009,2014, Source OCED Factbook 2015.

The social expenditures of all the sampled countries have increased throughout the observed period 2005, 2009 and 2014. The only difference was how the burden was born in the country. In case of most of the EU countries, they were assumed by the government itself which pressured their fiscal deficit grossly but some well-performing country were shifting these kinds of burden to the private sectors, releasing more funds for economic development and capital investment. The pension burden of PIIGS in 2008 ranges from 10-15% of their GDP whereas at the same period it was just 5.9% of GPD in the USA.

Sooner bailout was inevitable, in 2010 Athens planned to issue $75billions bonds to come across their financial obligations and Greece and Ireland was the first to be bailed out. The bailout came with the cost in the form of extreme and stern austerity measures shrinking the economy deeper. International Monetary Fund (IMF) reciprocated tightening fiscal balances, i.e. increased tax, social expenditure, wage cut, these created political and social havoc in already jeopardized economics, a massive protest came in streets against the austerity apparatus.

A pervasive euro currency did also create problems for countries in PIIGS as they lost the control over their monetary policies and its apparatus. A state of fixed exchange rate regime and un-autonomous monetary policy leads to decrease the output of economy (Appleyard & Field, 2014). As the countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Iceland, and Ireland started to have the trade deficit, the option left to them was to incline towards the lender of last resort; European Central Bank(ECB). These countries could neither depreciate their currency so that they make their export cheaper.

Ultimately it created a detrimental situation for the net importing country (due to trade deficit), they were spending the huge amount of their weak currency to import the goods and services. Had the government of the country been able to print their currency upon requirement or been able to devaluate or reevaluate their currency, to some extent crisis could have been managed. Interestingly, United Kingdom (UK) pulled it out from the same currency regime and protected itself whereas Greece currency appreciation and Germany devaluation during the joining into Eurozone make the export dearer for Greece whereas cheaper for Germany, a strong reason for current account surplus of Germany.

Whereas countries like France and Germany were doing satisfactory from the very beginning as well as were less harmed by the EU debt crisis relative to those in the PIIGS. From the OCED Factbook, it was seen that GDP growth rate was higher than population growth rate, savings were higher with higher income of public and BOP was positive in the countries that were found to be less devastated by EU debt crises. The same could be found in other sampled countries like South Korea, USA, Finland et cetera. The line graph depicting the current account surplus of Germany also provide us clear stance on disused points.

Source: www. economics.rabobank.com.

France focused on learning from others approach, i.e.it benchmarked with other soundly performing EU countries to reduce its ballooning public debt. It centralized public expenditure to control social expenditure and focused on the fiscal savings; prioritize maintenance rather than uncontrolled expansion of public spending. (Hallaert & Queyranne, 2016)

Having gone through the above-mentioned facts, figures, cases, and illustrations, can we now infer that the sovereign debt was the only possible cause for the turmoil in EU that propagated throughout the globe. Perhaps, economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman denies. In 2016 the amount of GDP to debt ratio of the USA and Japan was 106.1 and  250.40 respectively, has the case been so than these two countries should also have fallen into economic crises but Krugman says PIIGS were collapsed by the higher interest spread, i.e. higher cost of borrowing.

Graph: 3, Proportion of debt as the percentage of GDP for the USA and Japan

Due to the significant amount of risk perceived by the investors, PIIGS were paying up to around 30% as interest rate when Germany was just paying around 2-3 %. These higher costs of borrowing had an economy-wide shock that makes the PIGS, even more, worse off.

Nevertheless, debts are not bad either, many economies of the world are performing excellently well with their budget deficit which they had fulfilled by debt. The debt was utilized by the well-performing countries by investing in capital and social infrastructure whereas those in the PIIGS were used for the repayment of debt and its interest.

As per (Arkoh, 2013) government often takes debts so that it can use it to come across its capital expenses and uses the taxes for recurring expenses. Furthermore, the use of the debt prevents the economy from the inflationary pressure that could come due to the printing of new currencies. In 1988-1990 the increase in 1264% of money supply in Argentina created an inflation of 1912%. As per (Kenny, 2017), 2010, 2011 and 2012 were volatile EU periods as the country like Greece was too small to save whereas Italy and Spain, too big to be protected.

Whatever be the scenario then, now the circumstance has changed, slowly the PIIGS economy has started to recover after the imposition of strict austerity plans followed by the bailouts. And the EU debt crises could be termed as the financial turbulence occurred in the EU zone due to higher leverage in the utilization of debt by the country's, deteriorating monetary policy due to the loss of control in monetary policy and inflating trade deficit.

To conclude, the escalated  Debt and Budget deficit increased the cost of borrowing for the PIIGS, it makes doing work harder, private sectors were crowd out declining the government  tax revenue, meantime asset bubble in Ireland and Spain was impacted by US subprime mortgage crisis, due to negative BOP; trade deficit enlarged, stern austerity for refinancing hit the domestic economy hard and  controlled Monetary Policy by European Central Bank (ECB) but individualized Fiscal policies by the countries make the EU debt crises happen in 2008.

But for the mankind, EU debt crises will remain as an undisputed history of global macroeconomic shocks which was triggered by the euphoria of low-cost borrowing by EU countries into their unproductive sectors, where the regular citizens in that time had experienced inflation through depreciated currency, students and scholars might had practiced shifting and moving of IS and LM curve the way that increases the interest rate and had decreased the BOP and national output. And last but not least, these all events have focused on better integration within the EU with tightening regulation because if there were no measures from ECB, IMF and other stronger economies like Germany, France, it would have been hard for the countries in PIIGS to bounce back  

  

Bibliography

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Hallaert, J.-J., & Queyranne, M. (2016). From Containment to Rationalization: Increasing Public Expenditure Efficiency in France. International Monetary Fund.

Ismet, G., & Mehmet, M. (2012). Budget Deficits Sustainability Of Selected Eu Countries And Turkey: Panel. 3rd International Symposium on Sustainable Development, (pp. 238-240). Sarajevo.

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Lewis, S. W. (2015, December 13). Who is responsible for the eurozone crisis? The simple answer: Germany. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from www.independent.co.u: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/who-is-responsible-for-the-eurozone-crisis-the-simple-answer-germany-a6771536.html

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Classic Change Curve , Its Understanding and Importance to the Change Leader(Leading Change)

The classic change cure is a diagrammatic representation of various stages through which the change process takes place. Its beauty manifests by featuring the cycle of the change that comes across the initiation, implementation and concluding along with sustainability. And according if the change leader, if can maintain his pro-activeness, the resistance to change can be reduced, leading to making change accepted, implemented and sustained soon. Discomfort initiates the changes but this dissatisfaction has to be positive, a thrive or a zeal to get something new and this in terms of Kurt Lewin is unfreezing; a state where a change leader creates a passion for change, having done with this he deconstructs the inertia to the new level, termed as moving but as there are always the chances of change decay, the leader should focus on making it sustainable through refreezing, preventing people from drifting back.

The curve focuses on the non-linearity of performance of change with the elapsed of time, in general the change phenomenon initiates with high expectation which generally declines during the middle of change process where they feel to be in the valley of despair but if managed well then this gloomy situation cloud be transmitted soon for better performance (Palmer, Dunford, & Buchanan, 2016). Each stage is characterized by their qualities, so if the leaders can project before the happening, they can minimize the risk of failure. Besides the change in the organization, there should also be the change in employees. Employees resistance leads to the loss of organization resources like money, energy and time. So, the organizational change process and employee acceptance to a new level should go hand in hand. Thus, this curve helps the change manager to understand the organization change and manage employee transition accordingly.

This curve could further amalgamate various change model like of Kotter’s eight stage mode, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross five stages of grieving, and lets the change initiator use dialogic OD, appreciative inquiry and sense-making. The implementation stage, which I believe could be termed as a preparation or an attraction stage is all about arousing a positive discomfort for the change, here a leader could lure his employees for the change depending upon the nature, some could be intrinsically motivated whereas others extrinsically, this phase, if synchronized with (Kotter, 2007) Eight Stage model, could be about establishing a sense of urgency for the change. My friend previous organization(bank), where he initially worked, during the annual general meeting (AGM) shared the necessity of restructuring the company in a bid to be competitive, the management disclosed various volunteer retirement schemes and pension funds programs. Soon, then it became a company-wide issue, some appreciated whereas some agitated. In an active co-ordination of Government, Donors and banks management, the process was inducted. The bank management was initially prepared for negotiation with trade unions which they had already projected to happen, the valley of despair didn’t last for long, in terms of Kotter Eight stages bank formed a powerful guiding coalition, effective inducing, clear and transparent vision, communicated well and trusted its middle-level manager for the change process.

Now most recently, the bank earned pretty good profit, ranking it in the first position in the industry. With all high tech accounting software, attractive infrastructure, educated and well-trained staffs bank did well but still the risked of divergence exist, out of the three objectives of change, the third one which is to be started now is about privatizing the government-owned bank, donors have already declared financial support of worth millions of dollars, but employee are agitating, against the management projection of smooth streamlining of the process. The chances of employee drifting back to the valley of despair are higher as with the privatization, employees feel to lose their rights. If reconciled with Kuber –Ross change curve, the issue of privatization regressed backed the whole change process to the stage called denial. So with two of the objectives completed (i.e., computerization and downsizing), regarding classic curve, the privatization is to be accomplished before the refreezing the corporate culture.

Had the classic curve incorporated the theory of retrospection, it would have helped to extrapolate the past experiences, similarly, if the change manager in context of my friend's organization if had reviewed previous cases of failure and employees resistance to privatization, other modality could have been created, i.e. joint venturing or progressive privatization to minimize this unanticipated outcome. So as wisely directed by the classic curve, leader has to follow a light of hope which appears after crossing a valley of despair and as precaution by (Kotter, 2007), the change, basically transformational  are always an ongoing process, until the changes are fully embedded in firm, victory should not be declared as chances of change decaying are higher. So, in context of my friend's organization, they had just celebrated some of our achievements that were in route.

Indeed thorough out the change process, the leader should be pro-active enough to analyze various impacting variables that may support or de-rail the change process like organization culture, organization structure policies or any other external factors.  So to make the change sustainable and to protect it from pre-mature decay the leader should be able to redesign the reward system effectively, its example can be extra financial benefits of the basic salary linked to overall branch performance, free and fair communication path, delegate the power for prompt action et cetera.

An in-depth understanding of the classic change curve helps the change leaders to thoroughly understand the change phenomena assisting in reconciling the journey towards the change of organization and employee. Moreover, unexpected happens and to minimize those fluctuations, overall skills of appreciative inquiry, and contingency planning is an essence.

Bibliography

Kotter, J. P. (2007). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review.

Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. A. (2016). Managing Organizational Change A Multiple Perspective Approach. MC GrawHill Education.