Competition Commission - Essay Example

? Competition Commission Introduction: background of Competition Commission (UK) The Competition Commission ofis a public body in the United Kingdom. The commission is responsible for investigating markets and mergers within the national market. The competition law in the United Kingdom gives the commission power to receive enquires and make determinations to ensure fair competition among stakeholders in the United Kingdom. This protects the economy and consumers from unnecessary or unreasonable exploitation. The CC serves as a competition regulator under the BIS i.e. Business innovation and skills department. History and development The Competition Commission was created through the influence of the Competition Act 1998. Most of the powers of CC were governed by the Enterprise Act 2002. The CC replaced MMC (monopolies and mergers commission) in 1999. The powers and influence of the competition commission were enhanced. The commission was given the independence to make decisions and recommendations to the government after investigations. The commission makes enquiries and recommends the appropriate remedies arising from competition on the market. The Competition Commission is a public body. The commissions have been charged with a responsibility to ensure that major industries are regulated and a healthy competitive and fair relationship exists between companies, economy and consumers. The enquiry must be referred to the Competition Commission by other selected authorities. This ensures that the Competition Commission deals with merited cases. The referring authorities include OFT (office of fair trading) or a sector regulator in the UK market. The government of the United Kingdom is committed to ensuring reforms in the competition regime in the United Kingdom. The government of the United Kingdom retains the power to intervene in secluded cases. The cases include matters of public or national interest like national security and media. The Competation Commission was established to introduce a new regime of merger assessment in the markets within the United Kingdom. This was in response to the Enterprise Act. The commission must identify and provide remedy on issues affecting competition. The Competition Commission is also an appellate body for price controls and other regulatory roles. The government aims at launching a more efficient body i.e. CMA (competition market authority) by the year 2014. This development shields the consumers from unhealthy business practices like monopolises that exploit consumers. Mission and aims Mission: working to create a better future every day. This includes developing new ways of conducting business leading to increases revenues while reducing environmental impact. Aims: Working with integrity Creating a positive impact in the society Doubling the size of the company while creating a better future Management structure and leadership Communication has a two-tire hierarchical management structure. The commission has a chief executive who works with a seven directors. The commission has strong legal advisors and enquiry teams to ensure all the stakeholders has direct access to the referral authorities when in needed of redress. The leadership has professional skills in corporate management and economic analysis (Bercusson & Estlund 2008). The commission has set out a management structure capable of fostering faster decision making. The leadership and management structure is flexible in its response to external stimulus and stakeholder concerns. The structure makes it easier to relay advisory or arbitration information. Leadership team is empowered by the legislature to make strategic decisions based on the information from the market. Commission management must facilitate inclusive decision making and encourage teamwork (Leisering 2011). The information technology department must have the capacity to install platforms that enable the CEO to link with other directors within the commission. The management structure and leadership of the Competition Commission gives a suitable balance between flexibility and institutional governance. Each level in the commission leadership serves a unique role. This allows the other levels to perform their roles in a specialized manner (Bercusson & Estlund 2008). The chief executive serves as a figurehead to the CC. The Competition Commission governance consists of seven directors. The directors have expertise in their respective fields and are drawn from a wide range of backgrounds (Leisering 2011). This empowers management team to provide checks and balances in the CC operations. The executive team is responsible to management. The team must deliver excellent oversight across the market. This oversight and advisory role should be reflected in functions and categories. The executive committee have a functional link with the regional directors drawn from various nationalities. A group of senior corporate officers are responsible for ensuring the commission makes timely and profitable decisions. This is essential for strategic and operational basis of the Competition Commission. The commission has an effective support team that are to ensure strategic response in the markets’ needs. Technology has allowed the CC to harmonise the management and leadership through the use of mobile applications as an informal way of reporting organizational progress. This has eliminated the conventional bureaucratic approach. Main contemporary concerns The challenge of the evolving strategic and procurement sourcing has been one of the major contemporary concerning for Competition Commission. The management and strategic team of the commission are evaluating suppliers against critical attributes like delivery, technology, responsiveness, innovation and quality (Bercusson & Estlund 2008). The commission has embarked on assessing the optimum value from suppliers while dealing with competition and mergers. This is perceived to be one of the best indicators for business constraints. The Competition Commission assumes that consolidating and streamlining the purchase of non-direct inputs can cut up to 25 percent of NPI (non-production items) cost alone (Rivera & Bueno 2011). The CC has been concerned by the means to increase efficiency during in the line of duty. This has forced the management to establish a system that addresses the stakeholders concerns while at the same time increasing the efficiency of the employees (Leisering 2011). The spend-management system of commission has offered some stakeholders with numerous benefits and caused increased profitability (Bercusson & Estlund 2008). The mode of consumer interactions has been one of the main concerns for Competition Commission. The system has resulted to increased productivity and efficiency through a drastic reduction of paper work and transactional aspects (Leisering 2011). The commissioners have a chance of interacting directly with the stakeholders through the virtual-online platform. The management of the CC has been concerned by the inflexible approaches in most of the organizational engagements especially during conflicts. This left the organization with sole option of ensuring a peer to peer connection with almost all stakeholders. A system has been introduced to address this concern (Leisering 2011). The initiative enables companies, government and consumers’ representative to commit and participate in meaningful commercial engagements. This has altered the commerce environment (Rosselli 2012). Consumer friendly commerce environment is an essential aspect of organizational profitability. The CC has had to make decisive moves to embrace the modern day technology while conducting the oversight and arbitration roles. The multinational has a commanding presence in the global market (Pack 2005). The management of commission has been concerned with the harmonization of procedures to ensure that all market segments operate within the confines of the goals and mission of the commission (Bercusson & Estlund 2008). Synchronization of the market interests among players remains one of the major main contemporary concerns (Leisering 2011). The commission is working to ensure that the deployment superior systems with built-in business processes and databases that synchronise the activities of all the stakeholders. This includes provision of access to guidelines that regulate services and products to the targets markets. The competition commission has to apply new and marketing approach is the UK to react a national appeal among market players (Pack 2005). This marketing team has had to evolve to meet the evolving demands of the suppliers, retailers and consumers participation in the UK market. Key policies Market behaviour The competition commission in UK has a number of policies. The company is committed to ensuring proper legislations and regulations. This is in line with the enhancing positive market, environmental and social outcomes. The company is committed to reducing unnecessary price hikes and protecting consumer interest (Pack 2005). The institution has a policy of influencing the corporate behavior to nurture responsible market behavior (Leisering 2011). Furthermore, the commission hopes to improve stakeholder relations to ease market tensions. The company has a policy of ensuing sustainability in the sourced commodities. This encourages a paradigm shift in sustainable commercial and market practices. Regulation The Competition Commission is committed to regulation constraints within the market and segmentation. The CC must indentify market participants and products that adversely affect the market trends. Public policy engagement The CC believes in engaging with stakeholders and government. This policy promotes mutual understanding between communities and the companies involved. The CC is considering a robust corporate social responsibility program. The Competition Commission engages in multi-stakeholder debates that deal with social progress in the market. A critical appraisal of the institutions; strengths and weaknesses Strengths Weaknesses The commission has a strong legislative support of services An immense respect in the national and international market. The competition commission enjoys a multiple powers targeting different markets. A strong reputation and image Effective and attractive method of investigation Significant autonomy High quality manpower No departments making decision making easier The enterprise Act 2002 gave the commission more powers Monopoly could lead to abuse of power during market investigations Prone to government interference Internet crimes making it difficult to investigate technological market controversies Lack of control in the market Reduced spending in capacity building for the institution Competition Commission has a strong image and brand services portfolio. The management of the commission has a vibrant and energetic manpower. The talent and reward management system of the company insists on merit and inspires commitment and motivation among the commissioners (Leisering 2011). The commission is known to develop careers for the employees. The Competition Commission has strong market presence in UK giving it a commanding influence and inspires confidence among the competing stakeholders (Rivera & Bueno 2011). The commission is committed to restrain in case of unnecessary conflicts within the market. This allows the market forces to be free of interference. This has presented the commission as a solution to some of the issues facing the UK market. The commission is prone to governmental or political interference (Rivera & Bueno 2011). This can lead to compromised decision making during arbitration. The global economic crunch has led to increased conflicts giving the commission difficulties in regulating competition (Bercusson & Estlund 2008). The CC faces High expectations from consumers especially in cases of inflated prices. Commission’s future The CC must be committed to addressing the emerging trends in the market. This shall ensure the commission remains relevant in the national and international market. The Competition Commission needs to invest in the technology in order to remain relevant in the coming decades. The move is likely to strengthen the forthcoming competition and market authority set for launch in 2014 (Roselli 2012). The market forces demand innovation and technological milestones in regulation of competition among organizations. The company must invest in a world-class information and technology department in order to salvage its performance reputation in future (Rivera & Bueno 2011). The company has partner with technological giants to deliver products and applications that attract buyers across the international markets. At the moment, the electronic invoicing is facing challenges in a number of locations. Revamped technological approach holds the bright future for the institution. The company needs to introduce strong policies that govern new entrants in the market. The new entrants have reduced the multinationals market share significantly in some markets sparking bitter competition and rivalry. The company needs to have dedicated departments which can deliver quality oversight (Roselli 2012). The diversification of monitoring capabilities is going to be an asset. The management of the organization must deal with the perception that Competition Commission lacks the specialization offered by the competing oversight institutions. New entrants have branded themselves as specialists in their product offers. The future of the institution lies on concrete plans that ensure the semi-autonomous branches are synchronised in a productive and practical way. References Bercusson, B., & Estlund, C. 2008. Regulating labour in the wake of globalisation: New challenges, new institutions. Oxford: Hart Pub. Leisering, L. 2011. The new regulatory state: Regulating pensions in Germany and the UK. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pack, J. R. 2005. Sunbelt/frostbelt: Public policies and market forces in metropolitan development. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press. Rivera, H. O., & Bueno, C. E. 2011. Handbook of research on communities of practice for organizational management and networking: Methodologies for competitive advantage. Hershey, PA: Business Science Reference. Roselli, A. 2012. Financial structures and regulation: a comparison of crises in the UK, USA and Italy. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Read More