Introduction to Global Management - Assignment Example

? Introduction to Global Management Executive Summary: INDEX Topic Page Number Introduction 4 2. Definition of Leadership Leadership characteristics Of Royal Mail Chief Executive 4 2.1. Leadership: Definition and characteristics 4 2.2. Leadership characteristics of Royal Mail Chief Executive 5 3. Purpose and Benefit of Balance Score Card: 5 3.1 Analysis of four different perspectives of Balance Score Card 6 4. Stakeholder Analysis 6 4.1. Purpose of conducting a Stakeholder Analysis 6 4.2. Stakeholder Analysis for Privatization Identifying at Five Stakeholders 7 5. Concept of Diversity Management 7 5.1. Royal Mail’s Action to Maintain gender Balance 8 6. Concept of a Competency Framework 8 6.1. Five Competencies of a successful Royal Mail Manager: 8 7. References 10 1. Introduction Global business management is a dynamic process at it always changing with the time. By virtue of global business management organizations across the world are now able to operate in more than one country and able to expand their product and service services to the people across the globe. The global business management process is enterprising as a business leader carries out new innovations for the benefit of the end users. With that they are able to exploit the market as well as able to bring down the production cost to ensure more operating profit for the organizations. According to Adekola & Sergi(2012), globalization was started more than 3000 years ago as the roots of it went back to the formation of state communities in the European countries way back in the fourteenth century. The rapid expansion was started from the seventeenth century onwards. (Adekola & Sergi, 2012, p.1). In this discussion our main focus is on the management strategies taken by the Royal Mail Chief Executive in order to change to outlooks as well as functioning process of the organization when everyone was considering that Royal Mail might not be able to regain its market position. 2. Definition of Leadership Leadership characteristics of Royal Mail Chief Executive: 2.1. Leadership: Definition and characteristics: The success of any organization has been always dependent on how good the top management is on their decision making, strategy development, motivating people and overall management of the organization itself. According to Dubrin(2012), leadership can be defined as a the principal dynamic force which motivates and coordinates the people of any organization to achieve its objective. (Dubrin, 2012, p.4) According to Weth (2007), leaders have to tolerate a certain amount of chaos in the organization and also have to effectively solve those. On the other hand, managers are there to ensure that there are stability and control in the organization or in different departments. (Weth, 2007, p.5). According to Gosling, Sutherland, Jones (2012); there are few important theories which are essential in order to understand the specific traits or characteristics that a leader should have. Some of the key theories are trait theories, behaviorist theories, Situational leadership, transformational and contingency theory. According to them, there are several leadership traits which are associated with particular skills. Adapting to the situation, Assertiveness, Decisive, cooperative, energetic, result orientation is few traits to name about (Gosling, Sutherland, Jones, 2012, pp.18-20). 2.2. Leadership characteristics of Royal Mail Chief Executive: Moya Greene was appointed as the CEO of Royal Mail in the year 2010. Before taking the charge of Royal Mail she has been in charge at Canada Post since 2005. She was the first lady to get appointed in the top most position of Royal Mail. (BBC News, 2010). When she took charge of the organization, Britain’s centuries-old state-owned postal service was over-involved in trouble: it faced a rapid de-growth revenue from letters, a large deficit in pension ; opposition to government proposal for privatization from the staff union, and a most importantly unworkable regulatory framework that prevented the business from introducing new products and services as well as restricted it from setting its own prices.(McKinsey & company, 2012). If we consider the report published in The Telegraph on May, 2013; it is very clear that the leadership characteristics of Moya Greene are more based on transformational model. From day one itself her main objective was to change the working pattern of the company. Along with that she also wanted to have the complete freedom while making any kind of decision in favor of the organization. Her mindset of changing the work culture, improving the pension and other facilities of the employees, going forward with more innovation based approach all are clear indication of the transformational model of leadership. According to Riley (2013); the development story of Royal Mail is a great demonstration of the transformational leadership model. According to his view, the organization after Greene took charge change drastically in all aspects which helped them to increase the profit although the increase was very little but still it is better than running at a loss and going through the complicated process of operations day in and day out. (Riley, 2013). Her approach towards work and decision making process, clear thought process, eagerness to take decisions independently and moreover taking the responsibility on own all these points are resembling to the transformational model of leadership. As discussed by Gosling, Sutherland, Jones, (2012), her creative skills is associated with achievement oriented traits, her administrative ability associated with dependability trait and her experience group task management referred to the decisive trait of leadership. All these traits, according to them are key for the success of any leader. ( Gosling, Sutherland, Jones, 2012, p.20) 3. Purpose and Benefit of Balance Score Card: According to Eigenmann (2007), the purpose of using balance score card approach in any organization is both short term as well as long term. The short term objective of this approach is associated with the financial part of the organization with the aim of making it more financially strong. Whereas, for the long term perspective , the balance score card approach considered as a tool for changing/ updating vision of the company. This vision change is not only in terms of strategy, but also associated with the organizational culture and with its values. According to his analysis, the key benefit of using balance score card approach is that, it provides a simple a unique communication tool for both internal as well as the external stakeholders of the organization.( Eigenmann, 2007, p.31). According to Kaplan and Norton(1996), balance score card helps to link the results of multiple parameters in one place which help the organization to design a perfect strategy to reach their goal.( to Kaplan and Norton,1996. p.29). 3.1. Analysis of four different perspectives of Balance Score Card The four different perspectives of balance score card are People, customer, operational measures and strategic and financial measures. Among customer the key part is customer satisfaction. According to Niven(2008); there are four important parameters associated with the measurement of customer satisfaction. These are accuracy, availability, partnership and meeting the needs. Overall responses of the customers in all these aspects are important to figure out the customer satisfaction level of the organization’s customer base. (Niven, 2008, p.217). The safety of the employees is the key in the people measure part of the balance scorecard. Here the main questions that an organization have to look for are level of job satisfaction of the employees, their mental and physical conditions-whether those are getting affected by the work pressure/culture or not, is the job allocation is right and on the basis of the capabilities of the employees or not. In case of strategic and financial measurement the key is measuring profitability of the organization and designing proper strategies to achieve the growth. The key question that organization has to be focused on is whether they are profitable and able to get a good return on investment or not. In operational measures key area is the measurement of productivity and service quality. Good and improve service quality help any organization to gain more customer base where as to meet the demand of the increasing customer base they have to maintain a good productivity rate. (Brown, 2007, pp.47-50). 4. Stakeholder Analysis: 4.1. Purpose of conducting a Stakeholder Analysis Schwalbe (2006), in his book discussed about the importance of stakeholder analysis. According to him, this analysis provides information about the key stakeholders of any organization, and also helps the top management to maintain a good relationship with them. According to him, this analysis helps to design the corporate strategy for the organization, give information about what is the expectation that the stakeholders have about the organization itself. This is a very sensitive issue and therefore this analysis is never being a part of any report published by the organization. (Schwalbe, 2006, p.71). According to Harrison and Wicks (2010), stakeholder analysis helps to develop good policy management approach as well as organizations with the help of this theory able to achieve their long term goal. (Harrison and Wicks, 2010, p.179). 4.2. Stakeholder Analysis for Privatization Identifying at Five Stakeholders: For any organization the most important peoples are the stakeholders. Among the stakeholders the five major members are the employees, government, shareholders, customers, and suppliers. If the organization becomes a private one then there will be different kind of impacts on the above five stakeholders. From the government perspective they lose control in decision making as in case of private organization any decision related to the organization are taken by the CEO of the company which then to go to the board of directors for approval. Hence there will not be any direct say about the government in decision making. For shareholders, it will be a positive sign as they can buy more share which in turn help the organization in raising capital, for customers it is also beneficial as the service will get more proactive. For employees it is positive in a way that their salary will get increased and the rate of increment may also get revised. Moreover privatization will give value to the performers as they will get proper recognition. According to Ibadan (2008), privatization effect micro economics and macro economically in any organization, where the stakeholders are mainly subjected to the micro economical effects except the customers. The benefit of the customers is more macroeconomic in nature (Ibadan, 2008, p. 46). 5. Concept of Diversity Management: Diversity management is a kind of organizational intrapreneurship in which the organization always tries to use human capital in a best possible way to gain value added benefits. In depth analysis shows that both diversity and management have been merged together with the organizations across the world to develop a managerial concept in the workplace. According to him, diversity always acts as a catalyst for the change in the functionality of any organization. These changes are implemented to ensure the growth of the organization. In his study he also mentioned that diversity management must be implemented for creating a healthy workplace. Generally the main focus of this is to ensure that there is a proper distribution of job responsibility among the employees irrespective of their gender and the work assigned to them is based on their expertise. Diversity management not only helps to increase the job satisfaction level among the employees but also helps to reduce the attrition rate. (Robinson, 2009, pp.17-19). 5.1 Royal Mail’s Action to Maintain gender Balance: Royal Mail as an organization wanted to develop a work culture where every staff member gets equal opportunity to perform as well as get equal importance. Their work culture always ensures that there is gender balance, opportunity for training to all, involvement of everyone, opportunity for the disadvantaged people. To maintain the gender balance, the organization always encourages women to be a part of it. Presently 16% of the total workforce are women. To maintain a proper balance several initiatives such as: better training program, involvement of all, starting the springboard development program, focusing on the women's network to recruit more, are taken by the organization. Among all these initiatives the best one is a springboard development program. The main motto of this initiative is to encourage the non management women employees of the organization to take up and get involved in more management job roles. The main focus of this initiative is to encourage women to get involved in ‘Frontline’ roles, and also to develop their self-confidence, goal-setting mentality and improve their personal skills. Women across the organization also benefited from the initiation of Women’s Network, which is set up to support the professional development female employees. This process includes a mentoring scheme, which is organized and monitor by the Chief Executive Moya Greene, for women at junior management level (Royal Mail, Diversity, Equality and Faireness). 6. Concept of a Competency Framework: The definition of professionalism has been changed drastically over the year. With the implementation of different management perspective into practice it is now absolutely important for the HR department to develop a key competency framework for each set of employee assigned a particular duty. Competency can be defined as the ability of an individual to perform a specific job role in real life condition.( Gupta, 2011, p.5). The main characteristic features of the competency are: associated with a role, defined proficiency, ability to perform, demonstrate, certification. For any individual competency can be classified into following heads: essential competency, desirable competency, optional, present, peripheral, routine and non-routine competencies, and innovative competencies. Among all these essential and desirable competencies are must for any individual to perform his per her assigned job. This can be improved by training but cannot be taught to anyone. These two are the basic competencies based on which job roles are given to the employees. (Gupta, 2011, pp.7, 9-11). 6.1. Five Competencies of a successful Royal Mail Manager: After Moya Greene took over the charge of Royal Mail in the year 2010, there is a significant change in the way the organization used to function over the year. The most significant changes took place in the freedom of decision making, a variety of jobs among the employee and in the employee training section. At present competency is a key factor for this organization and its employees. According to Cole(2000), the key competency that a manager of Royal Mail must have effective communicating skill both orally and written to get results, the capability to make effective decisions, ability to manage as well as motivate resources, improving the business by value addition, satisfying the customers by means of providing effective services. The majority of these are applicable for all kinds of jobs. The degree at which these competencies are required is dependent on the volume of job as well as on the level at which manager is working (Cole, 2000, 366). References Adekola, A; Sergi, B.S. (2012), Global Business Management: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd Brown, M.G. (2007), Beyond the Balanced Scorecard: Improving Business Intelligence with Analytics, Productivity Press Cole, G.A. (2000), Organisational Behaviour: Theory and Practice, Cengage Learning EMEA. Dubrin, A.J. (2012), Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills, Cengage Learning. Diversity, equality, fairness, (n.d) Royal Mail group, retrieved on 1.11.2013 from http://www.royalmailgroup.com/our-people/our-culture/diversity-equality-fairness. Eigenmann, U. (2007), Design and Implementation of a Human Capital Oriented Balanced Scorecard in an Engineering Services Unit, GRIN Verlag. Gosling, J., Sutherland, I., Jones, S. (2012), Key Concepts in Leadership, SAGE. Gupta, B (2011), Competency Framework for Human Resources Management, Concept Publishing Company Harrison J.S., Wicks, A.C. (2010), Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art, Cambridge University Press Kaplan R.S., Norton, D.P .(1996), The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action, Harvard Business Press Leading in the 21st century: An interview with Moya Greene(2012);McKinsey & Company; retrieved on 1.11.2013 from http://www.mckinsey.com/features/leading_in_the_21st_century/moya_greene Niven, P.R. (2008), Balanced Scorecard: Step-by-Step for Government and Nonprofit Agencies, John Wiley & Sons Obadan, I.M., (2008), The Economic and Social Impact of Privatisation of State-owned Enterprises in Africa, African Books Collective Riley, J. (2013), Researching the Royal Mail- A Great Case Study in management, retrieved on 1.11.2013 from http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/business-studies/comments/researching-the-royal-mail-a-great-case-study-in-change-management Robinson, C.L. (2009), Diversity Management Pantheons: A Regime of Truths, Fultus Corporation Royal Mail names Moya Greene as new chief executive, (2010), BBC News, retrieved on 1.11.2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10175621 Schwalbe, K. (2006), Introduction to Project Management, Cengage Weth, A, (2007), Key Leadership Traits of an Effective CIO for Managing and Developing Teams in Culturally Diverse Work Groups, GRIN Verlag. Read More