HRM3704 Assignment 2 (COMPLETE ANSWERS) Semester 1 2025 (145080) - DUE 24 April 2025; 100%, correct solutions and explanations.

HRM3704 Assignment 2 (COMPLETE ANSWERS) Semester 1 2025 (145080) - DUE 24 April 2025; 100%, correct solutions and explanations. QUESTION 1 [16] Read the following case study and then answer questions 1.1 to 1.4. Zelensky Ivan Zelensky was a civil engineer and a South African who emigrated from Ukraine long before the war between Russia and Ukraine started. He established a successful civil engineering business in South Africa in early 1990 and named it ‘Zelensky’. His company grew to have branches in most provinces of South Africa. Apart from studying engineering he also acquired an HR degree from a local university to strengthen his knowledge of people management. He then created a strong HR department that would support employees of Zelensky and also appointed a strategic HR business partner to represent HR at senior management levels. He tragically passed on at the beginning of 2021 because of COVID-related complications. Maksym, his youngest son, an electrical engineer took over as CEO after his father’s death. Immediately after taking over, he concentrated on investing in physical capital resources because he added the electrical engineering component to the business. His focus on the unplanned addition of the electrical engineering component of the business caused the company to start incurring debts because of the size of the electrical engineering unit. The finance unit disagreed with Maksym about the addition of the electrical engineering unit citing not having enough funding to start the unit as a challenge. Their advice was that the unit could be implemented gradually from the year 2026 but Maksym started it in 2022. HR was also critical of the fact that because of financial challenges, it would be difficult for the company to attract well-qualified people to start working in the electrical engineering unit. The HR unit was a well-recognised component of strategic management at Zelensky and an HR representative in the form of an HR business partner participated in the top-level meetings of Zelensky. However, when Finance complained about the lack of funds, Maksym criticized his late father’s emphasis on investing ‘too much’ in human capital resources and as a result, he cancelled the position of an HR business partner from senior management. He said that HR representatives may not be necessary at the senior management level because of their specialised background in people management which makes them not understand the serious business matters that are discussed at senior management meetings. The company culture, structure and even reputation started to collapse under Maksym’s leadership. He also temporarily cancelled a training and development subdivision of the HR function because of temporary funding challenges. He used those funds to strengthen the physical capital resources of the new electrical engineering unit. He said that he did not see training and development as benefitting Zelensky because they had trained many people in the past who had left the company and their training and development was a waste of resources. When the HR function was no longer prioritised, talented people started leaving the organisation. Quality had also become a challenge in their newly added electrical engineering unit because of the failure to attract correctly skilled individuals. Two of the buildings in which they did electrical installations burned down because of faulty installations. The company started to run short of customers because of reputational damage. After all these challenges the board was no longer happy with the leadership of Maksym and as a result, they removed him as the CEO. Oleksandra Zelensky, a brother of Maksym was HRM3704: Assignment 02 Semester 01 (2025) 6 temporarily asked to take the position of CEO. On his first day in office, he said that the company needed to conduct serious leadership training and development to strengthen Zelensky. He organised monthly training for all managers and leaders to improve their skills. Source: Gumede (2025) 1.1 Explain the basic principles of strategic