Business Process Reengineering and BRIC countries - Assignment Example

Final Exam Question a. Describe some of the strategies that fit the markets of emerging Countries, give some brief examples. Identify what are BRIC countries. Identifying strategies used by new international markets, or figuring out which countries are best to correspond with on the professional and business level is difficult. Many Western countries do not consider all of the aspects that affect new international markets and the various countries at hand, and decide to proceed with their own knowledge without doing any other outside research. This is not a good strategy, since the western company will probably not achieve the goal without the proper information. Without a good strategy, competition will be difficult for these Western country. It is important, therefore, for the western countries to understand that there are profound differences in international institutions, including the soft infrastructures of many third world nations. Therefore, in order to understand these markets, it is important for the western country to comprehend these differences from country to country by using the five contexts of framework. The five contexts include a country's social and political arrangements, openness, product, labor, and capital markets. Business executives can form their strategies around this by asking questions that relate to the five contexts, and thus begin to develop upon the country's individual strengths. While doing this, it is also important for the business to measure the positives and negatives of forming a relationship with this country. If they discover that the negatives outweigh the positives, other aspects may need to be considered. b. Is it a good idea to link social performance targets to executive competition Why or why not It is a good idea to link social performance targets to executive competition, in the researcher's opinion. Social performance targets give the company an overall goal and focus when entering into any new business strategy or plan, and therefore help to give the company a stronger approach to accomplishment. Competition, and certainly executive competition, is always a good way to trigger the best and brightest ideas. By allowing executive competition, hopefully the best ideas and goals will come into play in the atmosphere of the business. With this occurring, the business could then link social performance targets to executive competition, seeing which goals are the best, and figuring out the direction the company would need to take in order to proceed and reach the best possible goals. Thus, competition should put forth several good options, and the social performance target can then be chosen and used to provide solid direction. Question 2. a. Companies have used centralized Organizational Structures. However, the current organizational trends are to change then into lean, flatter decentralized structures. Describe briefly some of these changes taking place in the organizations. Decentralization removes the focus of power, or shifts the focus of power, from few individuals to more individuals. The concept allows for power to be spread out more equally in the business, thus allowing individuals to all have a part of company decision making. Decentralization still relies on authority for decision making, but it also must rely on lateral relationships rather than a direct order from above. More and more companies are chosing to use decentralization because it brings many minds into the framework. With several people in the decision making strategy, the hope is that many ideas will come to light, and that way, the best of these ideas can be chosen and acted upon. Therefore, these industries are seeking what is best for the business. Many of these companies are therefore spreading out power as well as the decision making process instead of putting all of the power in the hands of a few individuals. While this process may make decision making take longer, the hope is that for the company, it will provide the best possible answers and reflections when having to act upon something. b. Why do you think the strategies (or strategic planning) fail to deliver the desired results Be brief and precise. The major problem with strategic planning is the implementation of the actual plan itself. While the plan may be a good one or sound wonderful on paper, putting the plan into action can often be more difficult than initially considered. Furthermore, strategic planning cannot work by itself; it has to be pushed. Therefore, there must be motivation behind the leadership and those that desire to implement something, or else the plan will fall flat. This is often a huge problem in the corporate world. While people may initially be motivated about an idea, often times they have so many other projects to consider that they can forget about the strategic plan, or push it to the side. If members of the plan are doing this, the leader needs to remind the members of the importance of the project. However, again, the leader can also be spread thin with assignments, and if this happens, the implementation of the plan becomes even more remote. Communication is also another important issue, and another focus that often falls short when implementing strategic planning. Many businesses have issues with communication, and if communication is bad in the particular company, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to execute strategic planning. Therefore, communication is at the heart of this concept, and many corporations often find that they need to improve their communication skills. A common theme, and a common problem with businesses is often the lack of communication between employees; this basically ensures the failure of strategic planning on any level, even if the notion seemed like a fantastic idea to all team members at the outset of the conversations. Question 3 a. Describe briefly what is: Business Process Reengineering, Total Quality Management. What are the differences Business process reengineering focuses on being efficient, and taking a very close look at the business process within the organization. The best way to attempt to use this concept in order to redevelop a company strategy is to look at the business from a fresh perspective, and review how to revise certain business strategies. Many firms, for instance, decide that it is better to organize itself into a series of processes rather than making the focus of organization functional specialties. Total quality management, on the other hand, is actually a business strategy. It attempts to take a close look at the quality of the actual organization within the company. Quality standard is thus the focus, and the business attempts to make sure that everything is being done up to the highest quality standards. Thus, these processes are similar because they both hope to improve the standards and organization within the company. However, they do this from two different perspectives, and thus they do have contrasting notions at hand. Business process reengineering takes a look at the organization and determines if something fresh needs to be presented-thus, there could be wide sweeping changes with this type of approach. Total quality management, however, makes sure there is quality in the actual organization-thus the idea is not necessarily to contribute a fresh perspective, but instead to build off what is already going on within the corporation. b. Define empowered employee. How does management exercise adequate controls over empowered employees Empowering an employee means that that employee feels that he or she can behave, think, take action, and actually contribute to the decision making within the company. Thus, it creates a strong feeling of self-empowerment in the employee, and makes the employee feel that he or she is a very important part of the company. Some individuals feel that management actually has to bestow power on the employee. This could be a way to control employees and empowered employees. However, it can also present the problem of feeling less than worthy for those individuals who do not feel that power has been bestowed upon them. It can also create further miscommunication because management may not be aware the employees are waiting for this. While empowered employees generally do well and perform as confident individuals, they still do need to stay within the confines of management. Thus, management can make sure this is done by reviewing with the employees what is expected of them. If the employee steps out of bounds, a warning can be issued. Certain levels of punishment could them be brought out from there, such as losing empowerment status or even getting fired. All of these concepts can help management control the empowered employee that tries to take advantage of the situation. Question 4 a. Identify the characteristics of high-performance cultures. The characteristics of high-performance cultures include a team-based focus, decentralized structure, a strong focus on customers and markets, strong partners and networks, managers with good vision, a well focused staff, the reduction of unnecessary management, and a solid contact point for customers. All of these factors help to contribute to the success of a business by getting rid of unnecessary positions and unnecessary people that may bog down the business process in itself. Furthermore, by having a strong contact point for customers, confusion is virtually eliminated when customers need to reach out to the business for anything. Having a team-based focus and making outside alliances also helps company productivity. By making employees feel that they are part of a team and contributing well to the business, productivity within the business should increase. b. Compare and contrast the corporate cultures at Google and Alberto-Culver. Alberto-Culver has made many changes in its culture since its original starting point. Perhaps the biggest overhaul they have made is when focusing on culture. First, the company focused on its strengths and began to call attention to those, rather than simply allowing them to sit in the shadows. This helped to raise morale within the employees of the company. They also worked on building a team-centered approach, and getting strong commitments from employees and management. Another idea was to make the environment fun for the employees, so that they would look forward to their work day. Another focus was to get all of the employees on the same page by getting everybody to focus on the same goals. They also developed the idea of "individual economic values," or IEVs-short statements that describe how employees are necessary as individuals to the increase of profitability. This helped to make sure all employees felt important. Like Alberto-Culver, Google focuses on making the employment area a place of fun. There are things to do all around-like pool tables, for instance, in order to provide entertainment. This creates a strong bond of friendship between employees. Google, also like Alberto-Culver, makes sure its employees share the same focus and ideas, so that ideas progress well. They also believe in making sure each employee gets to contribute to the company; thus, in their eyes, everybody is important, and all employees have a voice. However, it must be admitted that as Google becomes larger, its focus has become more and more corporate. Thus, both of these companies share very similar ideas and perspectives when it comes to corporate culture. Read More