Success and Excellence in Business - Essay Example

The 5 Ways to Success and Excellence in Business: Aristotelian Ethics and its application in Business in Thomas Morris's "If Aristotle Ran General Motors" In the business sector, logical thinking, objectivity, and empirical results are the measures from which a business organization gauges its performance in operating and implementing a business endeavor. More often than not, focus centers mainly on how well the business has delivered in terms of its products and services, not taking into account how, more than anything else, the organization's human resource and image had also contributed to its success as a business entity. In today's brand- and image-centric business world, organizations are re-focusing their objectives, assessing the internal operations and dynamics of their organization not only as a business entity, but as a social group/organization as well. This change in focus of assessment is triggered by studies and findings that show how a business organization's performance is also influenced by the quality of human resource and management it has. In effect, the contemporary business scene brings in the "qualitative aspect" of business organizations in order to improve and become highly competent in an environment where image and human resource-based management decisions are considered vital to the organization's survival. Thomas Morris's "If Aristotle Ran General Motors" brought into fore this issue: re-focusing the organization's objectives, centering on the qualitative aspects of an organization for its improvement and increased competence. In it, he used Aristotelian ethics as his gauge in assessing how effective and efficient a business organization is. Through the virtues of beauty, goodness, truth, and unity, Aristotelian ethics provided a different meaning when applied in the context of the business environment. This paper discusses the application of each virtue as it is interpreted and utilized in the business sector. Going further, each application also generates five (5) ways in which a business organization can achieve excellence and success. These ways are enumerated as follows: (1) achieving unity while recognizing diversity; (2) providing continuous learning to the organization's human resource; (3) stimulating creativeness in the organization's human resource; (4) observing humane and proper business practices; and (5) running the business for the sake of society's development and progress. Among the most basic objectives of any business organization today is to at least achieve unity among its members. This is a very difficult endeavor especially now that diversity is not only recognized, but a reality that pervades every aspect of people's lives. Latent characteristics such as race, gender, age, geographic, and even value differences make unity difficult, if not entirely remote. The urgency of achieving unity while, at the same time, recognizing diversity, is a challenge that was already recognized in Senge's (1990) analysis of business organizations as being led by the "new leader" (manager). In his analysis, he showed how 'new leaders' should adapt to the systems thinking model to achieve unity. Focus was given to organizational unity because it is through unity that the organization achieves order, and with order comes efficient and effective operations-both in production and human resource management. The new leader in the contemporary business organization must first recognize the presence of diversity. It is through recognition that the leader can get a better and more holistic "picture" of the organization's nature and dynamics. This means that new leaders must 'see interrelationships, not things, and processes, not snapshots" (15). This description is expressive of the nature in which managers have always assessed their organizations: objective, segmented, and too much attention to detail. While these aspects are also important in implementing business, particularly in the organization's operations, it is important for managers to have a strong grasp on what the organization is and how it operates. Learning these-the organization's nature and dynamics-will then enable the manager to develop effective solutions to problems and implement agreeable policies for the human resource. Another important learning that managers have failed to recognize is that, contrary to the general perception, employees actually seek more learning despite automated and almost standardized processes that they do everyday, as part of their jobs. Continuous learning means not only learning new or additional information relevant to the organization's business and processes, but it can also stem from the interactions that the employee encounters everyday, such as dealing with subordinates and leaders of the company and group decision-making, among others. As Worthington (2001) articulated in his study of learning processes within the organization (5), The learning process often begins with a person carrying out a particular action and then seeing the effect of the action in this situation. Following this, the second step is to understand these effects in the particular instance so that if the same action was taken in the same circumstances, it would be possible to anticipate what would follow from the actionthe third step would be understanding the general principle under which the particular instance falls. In this passage, it becomes clear that learning is a process towards self-development that benefits both the individual and the organization. In promoting continuous learning, the manager gives the people the independence to develop themselves as managers as well, who are able to make and formulate decisions, taking into consideration his/her holistic view of the organization in the process of decision-making. In line with continuous learning, stimulating creativity is an important aspect that business organizations must promote within among its employees. The objective, logical, and empirical nature of today's businesses hinder the production of creative ideas, which are actually revolutionary and ingenuous ideas that spur development and progress in the business sector and human knowledge in general. From Im and Workman's (2004) meta-analysis of creativity applied in technology-oriented companies, the relevance of creativity and promoting creativeness in employees is reflected in the following definition of creativity: "[Organizational] creativity is defined as the creation of a new product, service, idea, or process by persons working together in a complex social systemproduction of novel, socially-valued products." The last ways to achieve success and excellence in the organization is to promote both transparency and honesty in its operations, both external and internal. Morris emphasized how honesty has been a benchmark for people to determine the organization's trustworthiness as a producer of a product or service; the weight put upon business ethics and proper business conduct is a virtue that organizations must follow not because their survival depends on following them, but these policies actually provide the appropriate (if not right) path towards further organizational development. In effect, when organizations value the importance of honesty and ethics in the conduct of business, development will not be hindered, and society will benefit most and directly from these honest, ingenuous, and continuously developing processes of the organization. Bibliography Im, S. and Workman, J. (2004). "Market Orientation, Creativity and New Product Performance in High-Technology Firms." Journal of Marketing, Vol. 68, Issue 2. Morris, T. (1997). If Aristotle Ran General Motors. NY: Holt and Co. Senge, P. (1990). "The leader's new work: Building learning organizations." Sloan Management Review, Vol. 32, No. 1. Worthington, P. (2001). "Developing project management skills in managing death march projects." 4th Western Australian Workshop on Information Systems Research. Read More