Organisational Facilities - Essay Example

Managing Organizational Design & Change Introduction The organizational design refers to a deliberate process used to configure organizational structures, reward systems, processes as well as the people’s practices so as to generate efficient and effective organization that can achieve the business strategy. Essentially, any organization is not simply an end by itself, but it is a means of achieving the business strategic tasks. Employees working in a well-designed organization will do their work effectively. However, a poorly designed organization will hinder and frustrate its workers within and without the workplace. The main purpose of the organizational design is to create solid structures that suits the requirements and the demands of the strategies to be implemented. On the other hand, the organizational change modifies the prevailing structures that no longer suit the organizational demands or may have been dormant for a long time. At the moment, business environments have marked constant change in their operations. This calls for redesigning the available structures to suit the change. The strategies laid down will help it to navigate through the complexities of designing. It will also aid in improving the customer relations, employee engagement and facilitate easy decision making. This is only applicable to a focused organization. An organizational strategies’ approach towards change is systematic and comprehensive, aiming at achieving outstanding performance basing on specific objectives to be achieved. An innovative and responsive organization will be known by its ability to handle effectively various changing conditions. Also, it can be known by its readiness to work with the people in embracing the change, executing good strategies and adopting new platforms (McGrath, 2007). Question 1 Benefits of ranking scenarios Scenarios centre on joint effect of several factors and give alternative opinions of what the future holds. They detect some of the significant occasions, co-actors and their intentions, as well as interpret how the world operates. Scenarios help the planners to explore and discover what the future may look like and the possible changes of handling it. A deep understanding of the scenarios will trigger options of what the future might be, how the planners can arrive there and possible encounters on the way. Predictions on future will facilitate easy decision making. This is because as time goes by, potential scenarios tend to be real while others tend to draw back. This implies that planers will develop a mutual understanding very easily on very important issues to sustainable development. However, scenario planning does not decide on the correct scenario but looks at every plausible future scenario and imminently inspect how the organization is for any change and consequences. Essentially, it is not easy to manage several scenarios at a go. This calls for identification of identification of the most important and least preferred and identify an area of commonness. This can only be achieved by careful planning. Once an area of commonness has been arrived at, the correct path can be followed. Failure to take a correct analysis may call for wrong routes. Furthermore, it will assist the planners to predict hidden inflexibilities, weaknesses, methods as well as policy/plan/programs (PPPs) in an organization. This will assist them in boosting the organizational at the time of low performance (Heijden, 2005). Question two Strategic drift happens when an organization, even the well-established, takes a very slow response to change in the external environment and assumes the previous strategy that had served best, despite the fact that it is working out of external trends. When such happens, managers ought to be aware of proper strategies so as to keep the company running effectively. First, they should be aware that the company’s strategic plan is not a concrete device. All strategies are created with a very limited factual information. In fact, in most cases, they are developed basing on expectations and assumptions that not last. Therefore, it is how the organization reacts to the changing environment and its effects on the strategic plan that will suggest the impact of drift. It translates that they should be flexible to embrace change and reduce possibility of drift. Strategic drift affects the status quo of the managers. When an organization faces the drift, organizational performance is shaken. First, the employees are not the subject, but the top managers. This calls for changing the form of leadership. Leadership change begins with the process of planning at all levels. It is the strategic plan that will outline the key area that require change. If managers have poor strategic planning and implementation procedures, ultimately the strategic drift arise. Lastly, Organizational “taboo” should be upheld. There are topics that are not supposed to be discussed in public to avoid offending others. The strengths and weaknesses of the organization should be deal professionally to facilitate an ample platform for better strategies (Zikmund & Babin, 2006). Question 3 Quality tools Flow chart is one of the quality tools that most organizations use to analyse sequence of events. It maps out clearly a series of events that takes place either in parallel or in sequence. This quality tool helps people to understand better the complicated processes so as to find the interactions and dependencies between the events. The coca cola company was venturing into the market and it was facing a lot of competition. The management team tried all they could to curb the condition. The top management team held a meeting one day to plan how they could penetrate the market. They had to restructure the design process of their operation to beat the market demands. They developed a process template and put down their mission statement. This was the best way for a good start. The team agreed to implement the idea and went to the field to collect market data. They made use of the media to facilitate the process. The report from the field was tabled and the findings analysed. Amazingly, the report was promising and they drafted product specifications. Indeed, the process is systematic. However, not all plans are manageable. Some go beyond human control. If the company did not have strong management team, probably the process would have been void. Nevertheless, assuming that all the companies had the same idea, the result could have been the same: equal market opportunities. However, it was only the company that made use of the quality process tools that made them rise up to the world’s best soft drink company. The diagram below shows the flow chart that the company used to achieve it total quality management system (Morfaw, 2009). Fig1: Flow chart Question 4 W Edwards Deming Edwards Deming was one of the gurus who taught in the SQC various militants during the Second World War in US. He taught over 10000 engineers on quality control. He was well known for giving guidelines on quality improvement. Nevertheless, his impact has been felt by individuals as well as the organizations. He argued that approximately 94% of quality problems are a result of management. This prompted him to develop a cycle that provided a summary of addressing the problem. He further came up with seven deadly sins of embracing western management where he provided fourteen principles to curb on the same. His expertise in management has improved management of other institutions like schools. Relevance of his study Deming’s research have formed the core values of the organizations. Those which adopted have used is principles as ethical values that should be adhered to. This has called them to maintain high standard of organization in maintaining their missions. In most cases, organizations exploit the consumers by providing substandard product. However, his 14 principles has changed the face of organizational performance. As a result, strategic designs and plans has driven the organization. Most of the organizations that have employed the quality standards have recorded high performance. The coca cola company has been one of the company that adopted the Deming’s principles this ranked one of the best soft drinks company in the world. Moreover, his principles are a source of motivation to workers. Employees are aware of their expectations and the repercussions of their misbehavior at work place (Tennant, 2011). Question five Most of the organizations, have not captured fully their returns when they embrace TQM. Essentially, to meet international certification for quality management is very costly to the organization. If there is low returns, then most organizations tend to avoid it. Actually, their interests surpasses the quality of their products and services. According to statistics, most of the organizations that fully embrace the TQM policies record insignificant growth. Although this may not be true, they have taken that hypothesis. Implementation of TQM and related frameworks is very demanding. To follow the laid down structures is very involving. In essence, it must start with corporate commitment. This means that the organization should “work the talk” every day. This demands an ideal leadership to handle this. This is hard to manage for large organizations because of high demand of veterans. This may divert the organization from achieving its objectives. It is clear that withdrawal of the top management from quality services have contributed to effective adoption of quality management. Factually, the bigger the organization, the more complex the management. If the top management withdraws from implementing, the entire organization grounds. The reason for their withdrawal may be due to involvement and associated rigid regulations. To maintain high standard level in organizational performance is hard. The rewards may take centuries to materialize. So organizations tend to run away from such hard tasks and take shortest routes to achieve. Lastly, adoption of quality management requires a lot of resources. For instance, personnel, teaching materials and infrastructure some of which could have been compromised or done using modern technology ( Vink, A, & Steven, 2008). Question six This is a metric performance that is used in strategic management to recognize as well as improve different inter-functions and their final external results. It measures and give a feedback to the concerned organizations so as to assist them in the implementation of their strategies and objectives. As opposed to traditional management system, the scorecard translates the vision and the strategy of the company into a rational set of performance measures. Furthermore, a balanced scorecard has four coherent perspectives: customer knowledge, financial measures, learning and growth and the internal business process. These perspectives provide a balance between the desired outcomes and the driver’s performance of the outcomes, between the long-term and short term perspectives. Essentially, a balanced scorecard should take a general perspective of the entire of organization by coordinating Early Metric-Driven Incentives (MDIs) so that all the department can be very efficient. In the traditional management system, management is disorganize because there is no common ground for all the departments. Scorecard drives the organization to understand well its vision and mission statements, its financial status, how it is structured and operating, expertise level of the workers and the level of customer satisfaction. These features make it outstanding from other management systems. Furthermore, a balance scorecard tend to retain the traditional financial measures. However, these financial measures tell a lot of the previous events. In order to create valuable future financial measures, companies should make use of the scorecard by investing in suppliers, customers and employees. The figure below is one of the ways in which the scorecard can be used as a tool for strategic management system (Rawlins, 2008). Figure 2: using a scorecard Conclusion Having said and done, organization design and change is inevitable. Any organization initiating the design and change should first start the discussion by asking the workers how the outside environment may influence the operations of the organization. Amazingly, there is no organization that exists in away from the external influence. It should therefore be noted that any change affects the organization. As much as the organization is under external influence, it should maintain its quality management system. The workers should be aware of the attributes of a good organization. The organization should be in a position to predict the scenarios and take affirmative action in advance. This goes in hand with the type of strategies to be laid. The yield should uphold the organization standards. To maintain a good reputation of quality management is not easy, but organization should not compromise their standards. There are several views that organizations can borrow hand from. These are experts who can provide exclusive guide on how to manage effective organizational design and change. However, when an organization wants to adopt design, the following steps are necessary: i. Giving the scope of system to be designed ii. Defining the environmental demands iii. Making the vision statement iv. Giving education to members v. Generating the change structure vi. Carrying out the analysis vii. Formulating the design proposal viii. Executing the desired change ix. Assessing the change Just like any other organization, a research organization has to operate in congruence with the external environment. The effectiveness mainly depends on how it has been designed. Therefore, there should be a nice ‘fit’ with other design elements for effective change (Kelada, 2009) Reference A, Vink, P., E. P., & Steven, D. (2008). Human Factors in Organizational Design and Management Series. Elsevier. Heijden, K. v. (2005). Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. London: John Wiley & Sons. Kelada, J. N. (2009). Integrating Reengineering with Total Quality. Cambridge: ASQ Quality Press. McGrath, J. A. (2007). Intervention, Organisation Design and Change Management:. London: University of London. Morfaw, J. N. (2009). Total Quality Management (TQM): A Model for the Sustainability of Projects and Programs in Africa. London: University Press of America. Rawlins, R. A. (2008). Total Quality Management (TQM). Sydney: AuthorHouse. Tennant, G. (2011). Six Sigma: SPC and TQM in Manufacturing and Services. Chicago: Gower Publishing, Ltd. Zikmund, W., & Babin, B. (2006). Exploring Marketing Research. Cengage Learning. Read More