As a leader, you must be able to present your management plans and leadership strategies to inform stakeholders and gain buy-in. For this assignment, you’ll practice this by developing a proposal for

Running head: task force committee report: issues and solutions 0

Task Force Committee Report: Issues and Solutions

Organization and the Issue to Resolve

Everybody in the modern world is well aware of the social media platform, "Facebook." It will not be an exaggeration if someone says that Facebook has changed the whole way of communication and information. Currently, there are more than 2.8 billion users of Facebook actively participating every month; their participation includes photo sharing, comments, memories, and games. In 2004, some college students put the foundation of this social website from a small room. Today, this social media platform has become one of the giants in the corporate world with a $537b market value.

No one can deny the fact that Facebook is a multi-billionaire corporation that is growing continuously. Still, along with all these attributes, inevitable hiccups may come in the middle from time to time. Likewise, in 2016, it revealed that an outside company accessed accounts of thousands of Facebook users for the sake of data mining. Grayson (2019) states that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has instructed Facebook in 2011 to implement more precautionary measures on privacy matters of users. Still, it seems that no action has been taken so far since the incident of 2016 took place. It has been observed that most of the employees involving the issue are being transferred internally instead of receiving severe consequences for a data breach. According to Newton (2018), a large number of FB users have quit Facebook due to the incident, and there is a considerable amount of employees who are morally no more willing to work with the organization after the unpleasant event. I, as a task force leader, have been given a task to prepare a task force committee report based on the issue to reinstate the trust of both employees and users of Facebook.

Analysis of Current Corporate Culture

The corporate culture of an organization consists of values, traditions, and customs that potentially affect the behavior of those individuals working within the organization (Chauhan, Buckley & Harvey, 2013). The business operations of Facebook depend upon the internet, people, and social networking. The fierce competition and rapid technological changes in the market keep compelling Facebook to bring new ideas, innovation, and quality in its services. The corporate culture of the company strictly follows the three principles, i.e., innovation, problem-solving, and nonstop improvement. Facebook acknowledges the strength and importance of its employees; therefore, employees are offered a different kind of perks such as onsite healthcare, free food, maternity or paternity leaves, etc. apart from regular salaries (Chauhan, Buckley & Harvey, 2013). Some of the distinguishing characteristics of organizational culture being provided by Facebook at the workplace include; boldness, rewards, encouragement to employees for problem-solving, decision-making, speed, and openness.

The organization strictly follows the recognition and reward system to keep its employees motivated. The employees who perform well during the year and the employees who participate in the decision-making process bringing innovative and novel ideas into the system are recognized and appreciated at annual meetings along with both monetary and non-monetary rewards. The employees are always encouraged to share their productive thoughts freely to top management at any time, particularly in get-to-gather meetings. New ideas are warmly welcomed and implemented as fast as possible to provide more quality services to its users. Facebook does not like deep hierarchies since the nature of developments keeps changing. This is the reason; the employees are divided into small groups to complete the project at a fast speed. To attain maximum performance and keep employees motivated, the top management keeps monitoring and changing the perks and other benefits available for employees.

Mission and Vision Statements

Mission Statement

"To connect families, friends, and groups."

Vision Statement

" To give people the power to build a community to bring the world closer together."

As stated, the concept behind the formation of Facebook was socializing, so its mission statement remained the same till Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook, changed it to “bring the world closer together” on the 13th anniversary of the company in 2017 (Statt, 2017). Mark is a visionary entrepreneur, and he has a goal to create communities. He aims to provide a place for all individuals where they have a purpose and can have a connection with others.

Current Corporate Culture and Relationship to Issue

There is a direct relationship between the issue arising after the incident of 2016 and the current corporate culture of Facebook. The organization has been showing precedents as to how it gives importance to employees, how it considers them as family, and why employees are important for the organization. The incident of 2016 relating to the privacy violation from Cambridge Analytica a third party using information of Facebook users for data mining badly impacted the overall reputation of the organization compelling hundreds of thousands of users to quit the social platform due to failure of the company in keeping their identity, information, and other private details protected. As stated above, a large number of employees who were involved in that project dealing with the third parties in data mining considered themselves morally culprit because directly or indirectly, they were involved in that failure; the company was also facing the curse of the public. Openness is the core concept of Facebook's corporate culture that is aligned with the mission and vision of the company that invoked employees and the public how privacy invasion broke the ethical standards of the company. The growth and expansion of the company are so fast as there may arise unavoidable issues. Facebook is a company that works day and night and keeps focusing on improvement with small groups of employees and professionals working together, so issues or conflicts are certain to happen.

Organization’s Areas of Weakness

In any organization, there are different weakness areas or sectors within the organization that keep disturbing the management during settlement. Talking about areas of weakness relating to Facebook, it is essential to discriminate Facebook as an organization to Facebook as a social media platform. Facebook, Inc. falls under the top five companies of the world, and some competitors always seek to copy the innovative concepts of Facebook according to their approaches. The perks being offered to the employees of Facebook is striking since it not only attracts them but also creates job happiness for them so that they could be loyal to the organization; only compensation package is sufficient for them to remain motivated. Excellence stands at the top of company's goals that is the reason; the company is passionate to hire the best of the best employee whether he/she may live at the second corner of the world and emphasizes continuously on the necessity of teamwork, diversity, and ultimately the corporate culture of the organization. The operations of the organization are going smoothly, and unlike other companies, there are no such employee-specific weaknesses within the organization that could not be overcome timely and appropriately. The company believes in diversity; it hires talent, not professionals, so what the talent belongs to any region, color, race, culture, or country. Team building within an organization leads to capacity building, working relationships, and appreciation. Facebook encourages its employees to build teams specifically for small projects because the leader can take the project to success or failure (Walter, 2013). Facebook provides a workplace to its employees as they are staying at their homes while working. For motivation purposes, the employees are served breakfast and lunch even at their working table; they are allowed to avail of unlimited sick leave. The employees are also regarded generously for bringing problem-solving and new and innovative ideas for the company. Apart from all these positive elements, there is one weakness associated with the infrastructure of the company that the company has a shortage of top management. The company prefers to work in small groups with leaders, it encourages self-monitoring of work, but when a major incident arises like the privacy breach of 2016, there is no one who stands and takes the responsibility to tackle the issue.

The challenges relating to the social media platform, the commitment to keep users happy, and the aspiration to remain competitive are some of the factors that are considered some of the weaknesses that Facebook keeps facing. The incidents like the Cambridge Analytica 2016 ignites ethical issues within the organization, which invokes the organization to take action to make everything right, settle the issue, and find solid measures to avoid such unpleasant events in the future. The incident of 2016 badly affected the employees, their morale, commitment, and motivation; a large number of employees had considered themselves culprit being involved in the project.

Proposed Solutions

The problems or issues within the organization always bring solutions. The leadership of the company keeps finding solutions to deal with the issues appropriately. In the light of above-mentioned issues, I, as the leader of the task force, would recommend some solutions to fix both the inside and outside issues. Some of the proposed solutions are as follows;

1. Trust and ethical concerns should follow the hiring of new employees replacing those leaving the company.

2. Creation of another level of management between employees and top management. 

3. Revision of existing practice guidelines or the creation of new practice guidelines based on ethical and moral standards. 

Incidents take place and are handled, but no one can guarantee that the same kind of event would not take place again that is handled already. Since there is an apprehension that the privacy breach may occur again in the future, the employees and the users must be addressed in the form of an apology that the company is taking effective measures to avoid such events taking place in the future. The initiation of inquiry to find out the root causes of the incident would also be a good tool to ensure the employees and general public that the company is concerned about the privacy breach and wants to settle the matter happily. Doing this will not only attract the employees leaving the organization but also the users who have already left using Facebook.

The creation of new level management would be an excellent decision to look after the activities of small groups working on projects within the company. This activity will give the employees someone who will be closely monitoring their work; the employees will be reporting to this level management instead of reporting to the top management, which is already monitoring different other groups working on various projects; this will reduce the workload from senior management. This will show that the company is concerned about the workload and wants to distribute it to some other level of management to keep transparency, accuracy, and appropriateness; this will create the opportunity of new hiring.

The revision of existing practice guidelines or replacement of the same is the third recommendation r. The employees should be shown that their organization is still the top giant that works for the welfare of its employees and users. The revision or replacement of the existing practice guideline should be done by taking the input of employees. This will create a sense of ownership, and they will realize that their opinion matters.

Executive Summary

Facebook is a well-known social media platform that has changed the way of socializing. The company started its operation in 2004 from a small room by college students, and now it has become one of the social media giants with 2.8 billion users all over the world. The continuous growth has opened many concerns for the company, and the privacy breach is one of them. The privacy invasion by the third party has led to many issues, and some of the employees have started feeling that this kind of unethical issue (Privacy Invasion) discourages their morality.

Facebook has a corporate culture that is a combination of diversity, motivation, and attraction that encourages talented professionals to be a part of the organization. The organization treats its employees as a family, and every employee is given equal importance. Welfare and betterment of employees are the top concerns of the organization. The privacy breach was caused by the third-party stealing the users' information, but the employees involving the project may consider themselves culprit for not protecting the information of their users.

There is a large number of strengths associated with Facebook, but only a few weaknesses are also there. The strengths of the company making it the leader of the social media platform. Though the strong corporate culture, enrich diversity, and solid team-work all are there, an interruption, i.e., the Cambridge Analytica (Privacy breach), shows the weakness of the company as to how weak the company is. This weakness leads to establishing doubt in the heart of its employees.

Facebook should address the issues relating to trust and ethics. It should hire new employees to replace those who are leaving the company. The creation of new level management is also required to maintain the corporate culture of the organization. Facebook should also revise its existing guideline practice or replace it with a new one. The revision or replacement of current practice guidelines should engage employees to take their input/opinion.

References

Chauhan, R., Buckley, M., & Harvey, M. (2013). Facebook and personnel selection: Organizational Dynamics, 42(2), 126-134. doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2013.03.006

Grayson, K. (2019). What Facebook Users Should Look For in Mark Zuckerberg's Testimony Before Congress. Retrieved 3 November 2019, from https://www.inc.com/kent-grayson/what-facebook-users-should-look-for-in-mark-zuckerbergs-testimony-before-congress.html

Newton, C. (2018). Facebook’s morale problem is getting worse. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128267/facebook-morale-uk-parliament-emails-privacy-competition

Statt, N. (2017). Mark Zuckerberg just unveiled Facebook's new mission statement. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/22/15855202/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-new-mission-statement-groups

Walter, E. (2013). Lessons about Building a Team from Zuckerberg and Facebook. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225369