Case Study & GAC Consulting 417 Case Study 8: A Global Partnership at GFAC Consulting Read the GAC Consulting case and answer the following questions What are the different sources of conflict between the two groups? What role do national culture and organizational culture play in this conflict? What intervention approach might you take in this case? Global Financial Advising Consultants (GFAC) is a financial services consulting firm headquartered in New York City, with offices in London and Tokyo. GFAC provides outsourced financial services to multinational corporations to advise them in areas such as tax strategies and subsidiary financial structures. The company is structured as a set of global consulting teams led by a senior consultant that work with just one or two clients in depth in order to best understand their business structure and detailed financials. The senior consultants analyze the financial situation of the dient company to provide advice and counsel Every GFAC employee worldwide goes through a rigorous orientation program to ensure that all employees understand the company's core values of "(1) Above all, client partnerships and satisfaction, (2) Operate with agility, (3) Dedication to team, (4) Respect and integrity, and (5) Sustainable long-term results. During orientation, employees watch a video showing the company president, Mark Rhoades, telling an apocryphal story of a client relationship early in the company's history that is intended to reinforce these core values. Apparently one consulting team was prepar- ing to make a big presentation, and it spent an entire night in the New York office poring through financial reports for a large and important client. At 4 a.m., one of the analysts noted a major discrepancy in the data, and an investigation revealed unethical financial manipulation by the client. The consulting team conferred, and the next morning went into the presentation, immediately notifying the client that GFAC would no longer accept their business. "Sometimes respect, integrity, and sus. tainable long-term results can only be achieved by going against the grain," Rhoades says in the video. "We can only be partners with our clients as 'one team' if we have integrity." As a part of the significant analysis work done at GFAC, the senior consultants require a great deal of reporting generated from the client financial software systems, so each consulting team initially had a staff of local analysts who were responsible for managing the reports needed from the systems. Two years ago the company opened a shared services center in India, where the global consulting teams now share a team of financial analysts who produce the necessary reports for the senior consultants. Most of the local financial analysts' jobs were moved to the India center and the local employees were let go. This change was intended to streamline the analysis process ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT and provide global consistency by having are expert reporting team provide the same reports for all conting teams (The model is displayed in the figure below.) GFAC hinda staff of the professionals in India, most of whom hold public accounting certification and degrees from India's top business Schools Consulting Team New York 1000 India Shared Services Center London Clients Tokyo Implementation of this change has been rocky worldwide, but this new process has not been well received by the New York team in particular. Specifically, the New York team seems to receive reports late (well beyond the agreed-upon deadlines), with errors and in what it terms an "unprofessional presentation format. Turnover at the India center quickly approached 35 percent to 50 percent, and now most shared services center employees stay employed at GFAC only for an average of 6 months before leav- ing to a competitor You have been invited as an organization development practitioner to help design an intervention that will increase the partnership between the New York and India teams. Following are excerpts taken from interviews with each group. Each interview was conducted by a native of the respective culture. New York Team "It's impossible to get a direct answer out of them. We are under a tight deadline each week to get the reports produced in enough time for us to prepare for client meet- ings, and every week we seem to run into another difficulty. I wish they would just tell us when they can't get them done so we could plan better." "There is so much turnover on the team, it's hard to keep track of who is doing what." "I never agreed to this offshoring model in the first place, and I said this was going to happen from the start. We spend much more time and energy trying to work with a team thousands of miles away than when the team was downstairs in this building