Effective Processes of Management - Essay Example

Discuss issues of importance in relation to effective processes of strategic management, financial management and change management within an educational or training context. Where possible relate your response to an environment with which you are familiar. Your response must be supported by reference to appropriate literature. Strategic management deals mainly with corporate strategy, and how the organization functions according to this strategy. It tries to achieve competitive and comparative advantage. It involves all the departments of the company and is particularly important for decision making. The strategic management processes are three: strategy analysis, strategy formulation and strategy implementation. These processes are strongly interrelated. None of these processes comes first and the others follow. The order of these processes is not sequential. Henry Mintzberg supports the idea that the decisions in an organization are not always taken on optimal rationality and that the business environment is not predictable. He proposed another model of strategic management where the realized strategy of an organization is a combination of deliberate and emergent strategies. Financial management, on the other hand, is the economic planning of the organization having as main goal the creation of positive cash flow. It also studies the risks of the various projects. The processes of the financial management are the following: financial planning and financial control. Financial planning controls the financial resources of the organization and it plans the timing and the size of expenses. The financial processes help the organization to generate profits. Financial planning tries to increase the resources of the organization and it takes care of the money invested to the organization by external third parties/investors. Talking about investors, financial planning takes care that the investors will receive reasonable amounts of return on their investments. Financial management contains also the financial decision- making. Financial decisions are important for achieving the decisions that benefit the organization financially. Concerning change management, there must be first a definition of change and change occurs primarily in people’s minds. There are a lot of definitions for change management and these are the following: Change management is not a stand-alone process for designing a business solution. Change management is the processes, tools and techniques for managing the people-side of change. Change management is not a process improvement method. Change management is a method for reducing and managing resistance to change when implementing process, technology or organizational change. Change management is not a stand-alone technique for improving organizational performance. Change management is a necessary component for any organizational performance improvement process to succeed, including programs like: Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering, Total Quality Management, Organizational Development, Restructuring and continuous process improvement. Change management is about managing change to realize business results. Change management includes the following: Change management process Readiness assessments Communication and communication planning Coaching and manager training for change management Training and employee training development Sponsor activities and sponsor roadmaps Resistance management Data collection, feedback analysis and corrective action Celebrating and recognizing success The change management process involves various steps.  Based on Proscis research of the most effective and commonly applied change, most change management processes contain the following three phases: Phase 1 - Preparing for change (definition of change management strategy, preparation of change management team, developing the sponsorship model) Phase 2 - Managing change (developing change management plans, taking action and implementation of plans) Phase 3 - Reinforcing change (collecting and analyzing feedback, diagnosing gaps and managing resistance, gathering, implementation of corrective actions and celebration of successes) Strategic Human Resource Management includes strategies concerning learning and development. There is a distinction between learning and development. Pedler, Boydell and Burgoyne (1989) see learning as being concerned with an increase in knowledge or a higher degree of an existing skill, whereas development is more towards a different state of being or functioning. The strategy for development is called Strategic Human Resource Development. As defined by Walton (1999): “ Strategic human resource development involves introducing, eliminating, modifying, directing, and guiding processes in such a way that all individuals and teams are equipped with the skills, knowledge and competences they require to undertake current and future tasks required by the organization.” As Armstrong (2008) mentioned: “SHRD is about developing the intellectual capital required by the organization as well as ensuring that the right quality of people is available to meet present and future needs.” The SHRD philosophy encourages every employee to develop its skills and it promotes personal learning through coaching, mentoring and formal training. One of the key elements of human resource development of this strategy is the growth of the person’s ability and potential. Concerning learning it is important to mention that as every HRM strategy, a learning strategy cannot be fulfilled without the organization having the adequate culture which in this case is the learning culture and certainly the vision. The elements of the learning culture are the following: autonomy of employees in performing their work, supportive learning environment, coaching which will draw out people’s strengths and potential, providing people with feedback, managers acting as role models, encouragement of networks, less bureaucracy. Harrison (1997) defines five principles of organizational learning: The need for a powerful and cohering vision of the organization to be communicated and maintained across the workforce in order to promote awareness of the need for strategic thinking at all levels. The need to develop strategy in the context of a vision that is not only powerful but also open-minded and unambiguous. This will encourage a search for a wide rather than a narrow range of strategic options, will promote lateral thinking and will orient the knowledge-creating activities of employees. Within the framework of vision and goals, frequent dialogue, communication and conversations are major facilitators of organizational learning. It is essential continuously to challenge people to re-examine what they take for granted. It is essential to develop a conductive learning and innovation climate. Regarding the learning organization strategy Senge (1990) advocated that it should focus on collective problem solving within an organization which can be achieved by the use of team learning and a “soft systems” methodology whereby all the possible causes of a problem are considered in order to define more clearly those that can be dealt with and those that are insoluble. Considering learning it is important to mention that organizational learning cannot be achieved without individual learning. Regarding change we have two theories, the theory E and the theory O. The theory O is a soft approach to change and its goal is to develop corporate culture and human capability through individual and organizational learning – the process of changing, obtaining feedback, reflecting, and making further changes (Beer, 1980). The ideal is the combination of theory O and the theory E .Theory O develops organizational capabilities, it encourages participation from the bottom up, it focuses on corporate culture, the employees’ behavior and attitudes, as a process it follows the experiment and the evolvement and the reward is motivation through commitment. Referring to a particular environment and the implementation of the above i.e. strategic management, finance management and change management the case of University of Wales and its branch at a European country will be analyzed. University of Wales cooperates with various institutions around Europe. It gives the rights to the owners of these institutions to use the name of the university and conduct BScs, MScs, and MBAs studies. The University controls the performance of the institutions and realizes periodical checks on the delivered programs and the academic value of the lecturers. This is done through an inspection team. The University provides diplomas of the above at graduate students although they are located in other countries. The reason for implementing this kind of strategy on behalf of the university is that there was a growing need in some European countries for university degrees provided from well known British Universities. University education in these countries belongs to the state and there are no education fees (free state education). Due to this fact, there are strict examination procedures for a student to succeed. These two factors consist the university’s comparative and competitive advantage. The University follows an expansion strategy which is also strengthened by the fact that the number of students willing to pay for their university studies is increasing steadily. The average fee that a student pays for his/her studies at the University of Wales where studies are not realized at the University premises but other Institutions in other countries is approximately 15,000 Euros. The funding of the studies is done individually since there are no sponsorships provided. So, the actual target group for this kind of studies is people who belong to middle and upper class. In addition to the above the University has to face local governmental reactions. One basic argument is that the Institutions which cooperate with the University do not offer studies of the same quality as the State Universities do and that it has inadequate academic premises. So, the University of Wales follows very strict quality rules and sends periodically an academic inspection team that investigates quality issues. Additionally, it cooperates with the management team of the Institution in strategic management aspects i.e. everything that concerns the diplomas offered by the Institution in the name of the University. The inspection team checks the following: 1 (1) How good is the institution’s performance in respect of the area of responsibility that is being inspected? The institution’s performance is rated on a four-point scale as follows: 1 • excellent - good with outstanding features 2 • good - good features and no important shortcomings 3 • fair - good features outweigh shortcomings 4 • poor - many important shortcomings 1 (2) Will the institution’s performance improve in respect of the area of responsibility that is being inspected? 2 The prospects of improvement are rated on a four-point scale: 1 • excellent - improvement prospects are good, with significant improvements already in place 1 • promising - improvement prospects are good, with no major barriers 2 • uncertain - some good prospects, but barriers in important areas 3 • poor - many important barriers to improvement The results for the year 2007 were the following: The institution’s performance in relation to strategic management is good. Good features of the Institution’s performance are that: 1 Read More