The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement - Paper Example

Introduction

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian organization millions of people working for it, as members, staffs, and volunteers across the world. The movement was founded in 1919, and today it has 190 members with its secretariat stationed in Geneva and has more than 65 delegations located in different parts of the world. The Red Crescent in Islamic countries in place of the Red Cross. The movement was started with the aim of protecting the health and lives of human, by ensuring that all human beings are respected and that any form of pain and human suffering is prevented or alleviated. It is the largest humanitarian organization in the world. To achieve its goals; it assists people of all nationality, race, class, political opinions, and religious beliefs without discrimination. The movement conducts its relief operations to help victims of disasters, while at the same time, combining its development activities to improve the abilities of its national member societies, by focusing on four main areas, namely: disasters response, promoting humanitarian values, health, and community care, and promoting humanitarian values.

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The organization has various and smaller organization the independent from the other; however, they are united to the entire movement with the common principles, symbols, status, objectives, and a governing organization. This unique network of its national member societies is the principal strength of the movement - the cooperation seen between societies at the national level five the organization a greater strength to develop capacities and help those in needs. At this national and local level, the network enables the movement to reach each community in the grass root.

The functions of the secretariat are to mobilize and coordinate relief aid for emergencies at the international level, represent the national organizations at the international level and promote cooperation between these national societies.

The movement vision is to encourage, inspire, promote and facilitate at all times all types of humanitarian actions by National Societies, with the aim alleviating and preventing human suffering and therefore contributing to the promotion and maintenance of peace and human dignity in the world. The organization is operated under the guidance of seven fundamental principles: of voluntary service, independence, neutrality, humanity, unity, universality, and impartiality. This is achieved through promotion of health and social welfare and prevention of disease, to enhance voluntary service and continuous readiness to give assistance and, lastly, to promote a universal sense of solidarity targeting all those requiring the assistance and protection from the movement (Collins and Redcross ).

The structure of IMRC is made up of the complex component with operating together its fundamental principles. These components are governed by three main bodies; namely the international conference of IMRC, the standing commission and the council of delegates. The international conference is among some of the world most important humanitarian forums, which the various component of the movement. It is the supreme deliberative body of the movement, which is entitled with the responsibility of investigating and deciding on issues of shared humanitarian needs to be addressed by the movement. The conference holds a meeting once after every four years (Countess of Limerick).

The council of delegates, on the other hand, is a body which provides a platform to the components of the movement to meet to discuss issues of interest to the movement as a whole. The members of the council of delegates are those who are delegated by the ICRC, National Societies, and the International Federation. The function of the council is to give opinions and if necessary to make decisions on the regulatory policies of the movement on matters of interest to the entire components of the organization. This council is also entitled with the responsibility adopting the provisional agenda made by the international conference, prepares methodologies, and proposes suitable candidates for different conference post such as Chairpersons, Vice-chairperson, Secretary-General, chairpersons, and Vice-chairpersons of commissions.

The trustee of the international conference between difference conferences is the Standing Commission. This commission is made up of nine members, with five of them picked from different national societies. In the remaining fours, two are representatives of the international federations while the other two are the representatives of the ICRC. From among its members, the standing commission, choose a chairperson and a Vice-Chairman from among its members. The function of the Standing Commission is to make the necessary preparation required for the international conference and the council delegates meetings. It also handles all matters of concerning about the entire movement and last it makes the Henry Dunant Metal awards to people who have presented a sense of exceptional devotion and outstanding courage in working for the movement. This commission meets twice in a year.

The other importance six governing bodies of the commission are the assembly, the Assembly Council, the office of the president, the directorate, the data protection commission, and the internal audit unit. The composition of the workforce in this governing bodies and the entire movement comes from people from all spheres of life, with different education qualifications ranging from those with the highest university education for those who are in the managerial offices in the governing bodies to the volunteers with almost no academic qualification at the grassroots who work as volunteers. The race, religions, and gender of the worker do not matter, as long as they can perform as expected to achieve the goals and vision of the company - the international Redcross as over 15000 staff members in this six governing body with various level of management with positions such as finance professionals, HR specialists, and management assistants. These staff members are divided into two, the mobile and resident staff. The resident staff are those workers employed to work on local contracts and posted to their specific home country. The second type, the mobile field staff are those employed on Geneva-based contract and can be posted to work in any nation requiring their skills. In this group, though cannot work in their country of origin.

One critical office in the governing body is the Global Compliance Office (GCO), which uses the Conduct Compliance (CoC) team. This office is entitled with the responsibility of solidification of ICRC'S management capability in detection and prevention efforts in issues dealing with corruption, fraud, employee relations including the Harassment and other sectors covered by the code of conduct. The Investigation Case Manager is the highest level administrative officer managing code of conduct compliance.

The responsibility of the Investigation Case Manager is to register, classify and respond to incoming complaints (external and internal) in line with the movement case intake procedure. They also input investigation case information such as closure, recommendation, and sanction. Also, they perform and maintaining the required updates on the matters relating to the case management system.

The investigation case manager is a lucrative managerial position in the organization, with this manager entitle with sensitive responsibilities and enormous benefits as well. One a person to be given this management responsibility in the organization, he/she must meet the minimum requirement that normally accompanies the job vacancy advertisement. In the movement, for a person to be promoted, he/she must also meet the minimum qualifications and must have performed exemplary well in their previous job, and therefore, calling for promotion. The investigation case manager interviewed in this paper came from a different organization after seeing the job advertisement on Redcross website.

From the interview, the satisfaction and reward from the management post are the high financial rewards given to managers, and other benefits such as living in the house owned by the movements, the company driver, the organization's Car and first-class fight to different destinations of the world on official duties. Also, the manager have some functional authority given to them as a result of them to influence their group to certain success by their wishes.

The disadvantage of being a manager is that it is time-consuming. A manager has no time to rest since they are supposed to meet tight schedules of attending meetings in a different part of the world or their country of operation. As a result, the time a person should be resting is preparing for the next meeting or traveling. As a result, therefore, the manager is always traveling, when he/she is not working. The other disadvantage of being a manager is that their jobs are characterized by legal liabilities that other employees do not have. These legal liabilities can be sensitive and can easily land a manager in jail in case of a mistake. Also, in case of a failure, the manager is held responsible.

The main difference between the manager and the employee emanates from the responsibilities given to them. The employees are only supposed to implement a given policy while the managers are entitled to making decisions on matters affecting the organization. As a result of these, the difference the employees tend to do the same responsibilities repeatedly over time, while the manager faces different challenges every new day. The failure by the employee to perform his job may not have a great impact to the organization, because their tasks can be performed by more than one person, while regarding the manager, there, is always nobody completes the tasks given to the managers (John).

In management, there several leadership styles that a leader may choose to use to achieve the desired goal. The best leadership style, though, is the one that can lead to positive performance. Managers often use different styles in different situations. The manager interviewed in this paper prefers three styles of leadership depending on the task and the response of the employees. These styles are transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and servant leadership. The investigative case manager uses transformational leadership to inspire employees through effective communication and promoting a conducive environment that stimulates intellectual development. He also uses transactional leadership to create a clear chain of command. By using this style, the manager can secure cooperation from the employees, and demand respect. The last style is the servant leaders, which according to the manager inspire workers to perform to the best of their abilities by using the manager as their role models.

Regarding communication, the manager uses several ways to achieve effective communication. These methods include open meeting, one on one conversation, use of emails. The manager also prefers using simple words in communication. According to the manager, he can communicate with passion and get a direct response from the team. On official matters that are documented, the manager uses email because, in an email, the sender and the receiver can retain the document for future reference. However, in helping the employees, he preferred personal and one on one conversation.

To deal with issues such as sexual harassment and cultural difference, the manager to initiating an open discussion to address the issue whenever it arises. Both men and women are treated equally and are given equal opportunities for growth. Gender discrimination and sexual ha...