Controlling Aspect of Business and Creative Aspect of Entrepreneurship - Assignment Example

Topic: The need for the controlling aspect of business and the creative aspect of entrepreneurship could be seen as being diametrically opposed. With reference to an organisation with which you are familiar describe and discuss how you would manage the two so that they may peaceably co-exist. Introduction

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between the needs for controlling aspect of business and the creative aspect of entrepreneurship that they could be seen as diametrically opposed. Since these concepts are business realities in an organisation, there must be a way of handling the same in terms of an existing organisation. I have therefore chosen the examination and application of the concepts to General Motors.

Definition of controlling aspect of business

The controlling aspect of business involves setting corporate objectives and trying to attain these corporate targets. It is one of the most popular management functions.

Another definition is given by Business Process Reference Models, 2005, p.48, which talks about the control aspect as follows:

The control aspect defines the order in which the tasks of a business process are

instantiated and in which the corresponding activities are executed. Note that

the order of the execution does not need to be sequential; it can be a partial

order representing the causal dependencies among the activities.

For defining this order, the formalism refers to the tasks defined in the integral

part of the business process. (Business Process Reference Models, 2005, p.48)

It is clear there is a process that must be followed.

Definition of creative aspect of entrepreneurship

Knowing what is the meaning of words creativity and entrepreneurship would lead us to a clearer understanding.

Definition of Entrepreneurship Today, n.d., discusses the concept of entrepreneurship as follows:

In almost all of the definitions of entrepreneurship, there is agreement that we are talking about a kind of behaviour that includes: (1) initiative taking, (2) the organizing and reorganizing of social and economic mechanisms to turn resources and situations to practical account, (3) the acceptance of risk or failure.

Entrepreneurship is the dynamic process of creating incremental wealth. The wealth is created by individuals who assume the major risks in terms of equity, time and/or career commitment or provide value for some product or service. The product or service may or may not be new or unique, but value must somehow be infused by the entrepreneur by receiving and locating the necessary skills and resources.

By the concept of entrepreneurship is the concept of creativity. In other words, an

entrepreneur must be creative.

Why the concepts are diametrically opposed?

After introducing the concepts of the two we can now analyze and posit that in controlling aspect there is an order in which the tasks of a business processes are

instantiated and in which the corresponding activities are executed but in creativity, what is important is that there must be a value added. In trying to be creative there need not be order or the order of tasks might limit or control the generation of value.

Another characteristic of an entrepreneur is that of being visionary that is inherent in new and emerging business. In relation to this, Di-Masi, n.d. says:

The visionary who starts a business with a fresh idea -- to make something better or less expensively, to make it in a new way or to satisfy a unique need -- is often not primarily interested in making money. The visionary wants to do something that no one else has done because they can, because it is interesting and exciting, and because it may be meeting a need. Once the business begins to have some success, then the nature of the processes needed change.

Di-Masi, n.d., explains that at this stage, the infant business experiences its first set of challenges: How does the visionary entrepreneur transfer the skills and the inspiration that made the little enterprise a success into something larger? How does the business deal with cash flow constraints? How does it obtain the legitimacy necessary to enable it to borrow? The author resolves these questions saying:

Often, the visionary is not interested in these issues. Visionaries are notoriously poor at supervising staff, negotiating with investors, or training successors. The business now needs a professional management focus, which calls on a different set of skills, to manage and sustain growth, that are distinct from the skills necessary to start an enterprise and promote a vision.

Comments: Based on the above article it could mean that being a visionary would not fit the idea of control in management which includes supervising staff, negotiating with investors, or training successors. It is therefore in this case that one area of the two aspects maybe diametrically opposed. To manage is to control with preset objectives but to be creative is to look at the future with too much possibilities.

How would the two concepts be applied and in the life of a business entity then?

I will use General Motors to find out the interplay of the two concepts. The application is

just focus on one segment or division of said company, that is, in its management program for GM’s intranet needs which we call Socrates. General Motors is a manufacturer of cars in the and is described by the writer as $161 billion corporation, hence we could just imagine how big the company also in terms of employees which is estimated to be about 600,000. (Kalin, n.d,)

Kalin, n.d. said that GM’s communication Director Wiley pictured the intranet as a central directory site that would link to locally controlled divisional and departmental sites. She also said that the central site would become a virtual shuttle to GM and that it would let users browse and search through all internal GM sites, adding links as new sites went online. The project would also become GM employees' primary home page, offering news, information and services related to GM as a whole and their divisions in particular.

Balancing Creativity and Control

Kalin, n.d, said that back in 1996, GM's communications group explored building an intranet to distribute press releases and other materials among its worldwide staff. She also mentioned about GM's finance and HR groups also getting the intranet bug. Hence, she said that departments formed a team to brainstorm about building a GM-wide intranet for all employees.

The author reported about the hurdles of of putting up the intranet and one of which was the cumbersome process of getting browsers onto 100,000 employees' desktops.  She then discussed the other hurdle saying:

Another hurdle was balancing the need for creativity against the need for control. The intranet team feared that if it didn't soon establish companywide standards and structure, GM's intranet would become as chaotic as the Web itself; indeed, several GM engineering groups had already developed numerous intranet sites. But the team knew that it would be impossible-even undesirable-to have iron-fisted control over every intranet site. "On the Web, you want to be fast to market, and you don't want to put up a lot of impediments," says Mark Bougeaud, GM's director of Internet technology, who was involved in Socrates from the early stages. "But you have to have some level of process around it, otherwise you have the Wild West."

Comment: Creative aspect of enterprenurship is best illustratedbu by the fact that several GM engineering groups had already developed numerous intranet sites. These were accomplished under an environement of freedom on the part of the engineering groups. By their creativity they were able to develop the sites. However, they could not be left alone continously, for as feared, there must be a process around. It could not be that there are no rules. This must be very logical for otherwise, excessive or unncessary intranet sites would be a waste of resources and time and resoureces if they they will not serve the need for which General Motors have on them. Corporations have limited resources through their annual budgets. Every project costs money and each project must be evaluated in terms of financial feasibility.

What happened next? GM would need to make it easy for departments and divisions to develop and maintain their own sites. With this practice, creativy is allowed to flourished and in response, Kalin, n.d., says that many guidelines were made in response to the limits of the client environment at the time (until 1998, Navigator 2.0 was standard, as were 13-inch monitors). What happened however was the intranet team acted with liberality by not making the constraints too rigid, since team members wanted to make it as easy as possible for departments and divisions to launch sites and add them to Socrates, the name of GM’s intranet. (Kalin,.n.d) (Pharaphrasing made)

Conclusion:

We have found that although the controlling aspect of business and creative aspect of entrepreneurship could be seen as diametrically opposed, they could be of a way of making one the complementary of the other. This means there is need to balance the two.

General Motors allowed freedom for its engineers

It is just like the left brain and right brain. Each has its own purpose and in fact the beauty of two may not consist of having one having to shine too much over the other but a healthy respect of the function of one over the other and finding a way of making them complementary to each other would put the concepts in proper perspective.

Recommendation

Balancing controlling and creativity concepts in business is attainable through allowable means. Companywide standards and structure needs not be restrictive; they should allow the allow the accomplishment of the purpose

The intranet team feared that if it didn't soon establish companywide standards and structure, GM's intranet would become as chaotic as the Web itself; indeed, several GM engineering groups had already developed numerous intranet sites. It is very apt to quote one again what Mark Bougeaud, GM's director of Internet technology said: "On the Web, you want to be fast to market, and you don't want to put up a lot of impediments,"