Summarization of Organization - Essay Example

 Adult learners face many challenges in today’s society. Many adult learners that are returning to college have limited time to dedicate to various aspects of their lives, as most of them have family, school, and college, among other things occupying their lives. However, part of education is learning how to do one’s chosen career, and therefore adult learners are expected to interact with organizations on the learning level while still performing well in the job. The researcher decided to focus on a physician’s office that hires assistants working their way up as EMTs and nurses. The physician’s office is an independently run office that also functions as a business organization in itself, and it must compete with other local physician’s offices. The organization is named after the physician, Dr. Brown, and is referred to as “Dr. Brown’s Medical Office.” The medical office, which focuses in dermatology, has provided a good organizational structure to assist adult learners and those working to gain knowledge of the field. Trainees, for instance, are always working under somebody, and they usually participate in several aspects of examinations and do other jobs around the office. The training is a very hands on experience. The office also continues to offer training courses and opportunities to learn one on one with the doctor as necessary, thus encouraging the learners. The business is attempting to improve its prospects by moving its skin care products online and thus reaching a larger target audience, since it had always been recognized as a local business. Therefore, an analysis of this organization and its interactions with its adult learners is necessary to understanding how the business could better focus on use of technology and the Internet to achieve goals. Dr. Brown’s office has been in business for twenty-one years. They are a local business venture and provide many services. Since the dermatology services offered at this office are not always covered by health insurance, the company must do what they can to keep prices low and attract customers. A variety of local advertising is used in local newspapers and pamphlets. The advertising focuses on the services offered, and the fact that the services here are usually better priced than services at other local offices. The company has been successful, even regardless of the recent recession. It has been able to retain its customers by offering price slashes and returning customer discounts. Furthermore, it has also ventured into offering its own skin care line, which can be sold nationwide on a website, and thus increase the target audience of the company. Therefore, while the company has been hurt a bit by the recession, it has managed to keep itself progressing. It has always welcomed students and adult learners into its environment to assist them with learning about various skin procedures. Sometimes these adult learners work under internship status, and others are assistants that are hired by the company. Both of these adult learners are usually still attending college and learning about both skin care and the business aspects of this type of industry. The environment of the office is very friendly and very clean. It emulates the feeling of a very well-taken care of office. The office itself is located in an old house, and when renovating the office it was decided to keep some of the more “homey” aspects of the house. The waiting room is setup with couches for comfortability, as it is very inviting to the customers. However, the actual rooms set up for patients to visit the doctors are all setup to meet medical standards. Each has a sink, the necessary medical supplies for the various procedures and check-ups involved, and a place for the patients to lie down. The environment itself has the employees function on a variety of levels. Depending on the procedures that occur that day, the adult learners may or may not be participating in part of the process with patients. For instance, several patients are interested in light procedures like Botox and light laser resurfacing. When this occurs, the patients must have their skin numbed; it is usually the adult learner that comes in, cleans the patient’s skin, and applies the numbing cream. The doctor will then follow with the procedure, with the assistant watching and learning. The assistants always work under the nurses or the doctor that are present at the office that particular day. The environment of the market is focused on a very local business organization. This office competes against seven other local offices, all which offer the same types of services. With the recession and the economy, all of these businesses have been hurt by something. Thus, Dr. Brown dropped his prices in order to be more competitive, and also offered incentives for returning customers. This has assisted the company in keeping a good level of customers. Dr. Brown, as mentioned before, is also considering taking his business outside of its current local boundaries by going online with skin care products that can be sold via the Internet all over the world. Previously, Dr. Brown was kept in the boundary of his local community. Thus, by taking this avenue, Dr. Brown can move above and beyond his current boundary. Because this is a small business organization, the organizational structure itself is small. At the top level is the doctor, who owns the business, and pays for all materials needed for the business, as well as rent and salaries. The doctor is therefore the main individual, and the business revolves around him. Second to the doctor are the five available nurses. Either the doctor or a nurse is always in the office during business hours assisting patients and also making sure the adult learners are doing what they need to be doing. Thus, the doctors and the nurses act as the administration in the office, running things on a daily basis. There are also three receptionists that work in shifts at the office. They interact with patients only to keep records, to call and remind patients about appointments, and to check patients in. They do not figure into the organizational structure heavily, nor do they perform any time of procedures on the patients. Further discussing the organizational structure, formal and informal systems revolve around the inputs and outputs of the company. The inputs of the company include what the company must purchase to keep itself going. There is a large overhead in this type of field, and this can often create issues on months when there is a lack of customers. Dr. Brown must purchase all of the proper medical supplies and supplies used in the procedures; items such as numbing creams, botox, restalyne, acids for skin peels, rubber gloves, soap, etc. On top of this, he must also pay for the machines that he uses for procedures that use them, like laser procedures. Most of the lasers are hooked up to a machine and also to a computer, and are costly items to not only have, but also to keep running. The machines are generally on all day, thus affecting electricity as well. The outputs of the company are also important to discuss. The company has resulted in several outputs—Dr. Brown himself has become a bit of a local success and a celebrity. He has also provided jobs for people interested in dermatology and has been willing, as has already been stated, to bring on people who wish to learn more about the field. Furthermore, he has helped the community by providing jobs, and this has helped to stimulate the economy. He also has many satisfied customers; individuals with scarring from accidents and other embarrassing facial marks, such as birth marks, have been able to get their problem areas removed successfully through things such as laser treatments. The doctor has also had a lot of success stories in the cases of individuals with acne. A series of peels and some medicine generally solves the problem. Thus, the doctor has been praised for providing a wide variety of services and generally helping people gain more self-confidence because they feel better about their looks (Identifying, Classifying, and Evaluating Inputs and Outputs, n.d.) The purpose of the company has also helped the company to stay in business for a number of years. The organization has a very good goal considering its environment. As stated before, the environment initially consisted of being local only. However, with the Internet age, the company will now be able to provide its skin care products, which already exist, online to people around the world. Thus, they can hope to spread the word about themselves and perhaps even have people visit from other areas to receive good dermatological care. Given the focus on technology on the present time, this is a very appropriate goal. The goal is very clear and focused, and the members working at the doctor’s office understand this need completely. The need to spread the word and to advertise as much as possible to bring more customers in is a goal also shared by members of the organization. Because of the economic issues all businesses are currently suffering from, the individuals that work at the doctor’s office certainly want to keep their jobs and keep the business open. They do realize how the recession affects the company’s success. Thus, finding a way to reach out to a larger target audience will hopefully help to resolve these issues. Furthermore, the relationships between the employees at the business are very steady and very good. Watching the organization, the individuals work well together, and all share the common goal of expanding the business and keeping the business as active as possible while the recession continues to hurt it. The employees are all motivated to begin to provide outside advertising and to reach out to other areas in order to sell more skin care products, and to perhaps even attract more individuals to their business. These goals can only contribute to the success of the company. Also, the company is focused more and more on using the technology available to create success. For instance, they are planning on using the Internet to reach out to people and to advertise their skin care products. The communication style of the company is therefore successful, because everybody understands the needs and goals of the company. The organization offers several rewards for those working there. First, as mentioned before, there is the intrinsic reward of helping individuals with embarrassing skin problems. By solving these problems, the individuals often gain increased self-confidence and happiness. The pay is also good for the business, and Dr. Brown pays competitively in comparison to the competition around him. Nurses make around 45K and assistants around 20-25K. Much of this also depends on the years the individuals have worked in the office. The leadership is also very effective; Dr. Brown is very clear with his employees, and makes sure to hold regular weekly meetings in order to go over new ideas, inform employees of where the company is heading, and to answer general questions and concerns about patients and procedures. He keeps his staff very well informed and offers training classes for them. They are also encouraged to take classes related to the field, and often the office will pay for them if the classes can be applied to dermatology. Therefore, the organization is acting with successful ideas at this point. The employees seem to be happy, and Dr. Brown has several outstanding ideas for expanding his target audience and his company. By using the Internet to expand on his product selling and his skin care line, he will be able to attract a larger number of customers and get the word out about his existence. The advertising will also hopefully pull in a few customers who may not be locals, and who may not have otherwise come to the office. Consider the six box model below for an understanding of structure (Six Box Model, n.d.): References “Identifying, Classifying, and Evaluating Inputs and Outputs.” (n.d.) Sustainable Operating Strategies for Business. Retrieved June 11, 2009, from http://www.susops.com/business/inoutputs.html Six Box Model. (n.d.) Marvin Weisberg.com. Retrieved June 11, 2009 from http://www.marvinweisbord.com/sixboxmodel.html. Read More