Sydney Theatre Company - Market Environment - Case Study Example

Report To Assist In Annual Review Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Introduction The five critical issues to consider in the annual review of the organization design and management processes of Sydney Theatre Company to ensure that it survives in the long term are strategy, size, market environment, human factor, and incentives. Overall, the organization design of the theatre should be aligned with the business strategy as well as the market environment in which it operates. It should have the right flexibility, right business controls, right incentives, the right people as well as the right resources. The organization design of the theatre should support the business strategy. It must also consider the size of the organization. The theatre can gain economies of scale through maintaining functionally specialist teams and departments, as it is a large organization. It also has more complex decision-making needs and hence the need for various responsibilities to be decentralized. When it comes to the market environment that the theatre operates in, it is highly volatile or unpredictable and hence the organization should put in measures that ensure it is enough to react to this. The rewards and incentives should be aligned with the business purpose and strategy. When there is misalignment, the units are usually at a risk of becoming self-serving. The long-term success of the theatre also depends on keeping, developing, and motivating people. Human factors usually provide the motivation and energy to be successful, through having a better understanding of the energy; the theatre can tap it and draw the best in people. With every change or stage of growth, there is also need to reassess and realign the design needs as necessary in order to deal with competition and maintain a competitive edge in the long term. These critical factors will ensure the success of the theatre in the long term. For the organization design to facilitate long-term survival of the theatre there is need for the management to ensure that it creates benefits of scale, it shapes behavior and the patterns of information processing. There is need to align the theatre structure with its missions-this means that there is need to look at complex relationships between responsibility, workflow, tasks, authority, and ensuring that they all support the theatre objectives. A good organization design will help innovation, communication, and productivity and create an environment whereby people can work in an effective manner. i. Organization Strategy Organization strategy is an important critical factor in ensuring the long-term success of the theatre. The management should focus on establishing high value services, which support the achievement of strategic objectives as established. The services should be the focus of the theatre operational resilience management activities and they should directly support the attainment of strategic objectives and hence have to be protected and sustained to the extent necessary to minimize disruption. Failure to keep the services productive and viable will lead to a significant inability to realize strategic objectives and organization mission. In order to appropriately cope the operational resilience management system of the theatre and the corresponding operational resilience management activities, the management should identify, prioritize, and communicate the high value services as a common target for success. The management should ensure that the theatre assets such as technology, information, people, and facilities fuel the services. There is need to increase the attractiveness of the theatre in order to provide an even better customer experience and to encourage regular visitor. There is also need for more entertainment programmes, which provide value for money, sufficient variety of acts as well as ensuring that patrons enjoy the experience of visiting the theatre. There is also need for more quality supporting services such as well-maintained and clean facility, good catering or food offers, and services offered by trained, efficient and dedicated staff. The management also needs to ensure that there is good management of information and increased target marketing activity, which will ensure that the theatre if able to react in a timely manner to changing audience trends or circumstances. This can be achieved by generating a sustainable and effective financial plan, providing an affordable venue for exhibitions, community events, and amateur dramatics among other events. The theatre can make a significant contribution to the town centre activities and economy. The management should incorporate corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in the theatre operations. Implementing responsible business practices has become one of the most issues in the contemporary competitive business environment. This entails a continuous commitment by an organization to act in an ethical way whilst improving the quality of life of the personnel as well as the local community. The theatre management should play a key role in achieving corporate social responsibility-there is need for a direction and a person behind the CSR initiatives in a company. According to Bacher (2007), to ensure successful involvement in CSR throughout the company, it is vital to have leaders serve as active proponents of CSR. The management should recognize the sustainability objective ensuring that the CSR sustainable vision is in line with the company strategies, culture, and policies and convey the information to the employees. The management should also improve the quality and range of facilities on offer at the theatre and offer a variety of professional entertainment programmes which customers will be happy to pay for. Over the years, the management should be able to diversify its programme successfully and the customers should be able to watch a large variety of productions, which range from comedy to ballet. The key to success in the theatre also entails being capable of communicating with potential customers regarding what is happening at the theatre effectively and quickly. The management should use marketing to increase customer attendance to shows and to increase the use of the catering facilities. The management should also understand its market base, for instance they can use a ticket management system to understand the customer base so that they can identify the main target group to focus their marketing activities on. Afterward, the management can organize suitable marketing activities to raise ticket sales. In order to attract a wide range of customers, the management should continuously review its work and programme to ensure that it is diverse and that it is attracting new customers and return visits, which will ensure long-term success of the theatre. The management should also conduct regular market research to obtain important information, which will enable them to identify target market, and offer services and products that will satisfy the needs of the customers. The information will enable the management to understand the market better and make good decisions. Market research will also plays a predictive function; forecasting or predicting what will happen in the market in the future or how the customers will respond to a new service. This will enable the management to be well prepared for dealing with any change, as the theatre industry is very volatile. Market research will help in ensuring long-term success of the theatre as the management will obtain information on the opportunities and draw up marketing plans for using the opportunities. ii. Human Factors Human factors are one of the critical factors that will ensure the long-term success of the theatre. These factors represent the diversity of individuals. It is widely accepted that the workforce diversity usually create better results as well as a higher organizational performance. The management will have to create an inclusive work environment, which generate better ideas, production, and quality services through effectively managing team dynamics and diversity in order to maximize the power of human factors. Team dynamics and human factors are important aspects. To being out the best in people, the theatre should have a good work environment and management systems, which supports its diversity of human factors. The challenge lies in learning ways to operationalize diversity in the work environment as well as integrating diversity in planning, execution, and control of business functions. In running a successful team, there are three key elements-content, behavior, and process-the human factors are embodied in these three elements. The content refers to “what” or the team intent-the objectives, vision, opportunities, direction, and assumptions. Vision represents the highest motivating force for the team. There is need for teams to be inspired by visions and hope for success, and the strategies and objectives should offer a direction for the vision. Process refers to the “how”-the procedures and the tools that will help the team to reach its objectives. Behavior refers to the collective human interactions of the team. These three aspects will help to strengthen the staff skills and help build effective team planning. Teamwork will help to bridge any gaps that may exist in individual competencies. In addition, greater collaboration among the theatre employees will help to achieve collective organizational objectives and develop a competitive advantage. Through taking into account human factors, the theatre organization design will create benefits of scale. This will create value through bringing together sets of teams or individuals. The organization design will also play an important role of shaping behavior. The work design and formal arrangement for getting the wok done will focus the attention of individuals on various tasks, motivate their performance, enable and empower them in their jobs performance and constrain behavior, which might be counterproductive. Leadership is also an important critical factor in dealing with volatility within the theatre industry and allowing the Sydney Theatre Company to survive in the long term. The leadership has to focus on relentlessly achieving the objectives of the organization and finding opportunities for ensuring that the theatre remains competitive. The leadership should lead the industry in creating an innovative and sustainable business platform. Competition is high and hence the leaders should diversify the theatre services and take advantage of the latest technologies in order to provide better and additional services than the other theatres in the region. The leadership should also come up with various packaging and pricing initiatives to ensure that the experience of the theatre is as accessible as possible. The theatre should form strategic partnerships with other organizations in the arts and theatre industry in order to improve its services. The success of the theatre will depend on offering value added services to customers and outdoing the competitors. The leadership should also harness the digital age-they should use the social media platforms to attract customers. iii. Market Environment The theatre market environment is highly volatile and hence there is need for the management to ensure that it is always ready to deal with sudden changes. Regular market research will play an important role in ensuring that the management is up to date on any changes in the market. It will also offer any information on the prices of services that the competitors’ offers and this will help the management to decide if they should reduce the prices of their services or give a discount. It will also help to get information on what customers want before they develop their services. To ensure survival in the competitive environment, there is need for facility development. The theatre should better use the different rooms such as boardroom and other areas to encourage business and community use from organizations and groups out of the normal theatre business. The management should also constantly market its auditoriums and studios for commercial and community use. The infrastructure refurbishment will support the aim of the theatre of generating an increased income. The returns will play an important role in reducing the overhead costs of the theatre. The key refurbishment changes should be geared to make the facility to potential and current customers and to maintain the building. The management should also expand the theatre programme so that it can offer about 50 professional shows every years to the customers, which range from children shows to comedy, in order to maintain and increase its average capacity. The management should also develop separate programmes for their studies in order to allow a mix of professional and amateur shows to be scheduled. In order to manage effectively in the competitive environment, there is need to boost the theatre marketing. A marketing team should be formed to ensure delivery of marketing campaigns. A new ticket management system should be put in place to enable in depth customer profiling targeted marketing to help in building a popular and appealing program. The marketing resources will help in promotion of the theatre resources and services. The marketing team will be responsible for implementing targeted marketing promotions, audience development, hiring and specific show advertising, and marketing of catering services. The 50 professional shows should be balanced between comedy, music, children’s tributes, and others for instance wrestling events. iv. Incentives and Rewards Incentives and rewards will also play an important role in ensuring the long-term success of the theatre through motivating the employees. They will help achieve the business objectives in terms of creating a high performance culture. An organization usually becomes what it reward and the incentives and reward system in the theatre will drive organizational performance if it is well connected with and supports the business strategy. The theatre will benefit from potential returns in terms of greater profitability, greater productivity, as well as other key business measures. The reward program will help create sustainable and affordable costs through helping the theatre assess and better manage the general costs of the total reward package and hence make better choices regarding where to invest reward budgets which is very important in the current competitive business environment. The human resources should focus on recruitment processes, training programs, reward systems and communication mechanisms and all these systems should be aligned with sustainability goals, vision, and strategies in order to build a business culture, which embodies the sustainability value. This will also help to increase the motivation of the employees to achieve the theatre objectives. v. Organizational Size Organizational size is an important factor that affects the degree of flexibility; the theatre is a large organization and thus has a higher flexibility level for effectively implementing change attempts because of the diversity of resources. The theatre will gain economies of scale through maintaining functionally specialist teams and departments, as it is a large organization. This will help to improve the effectiveness of the theatre. Size is a critical contingency for organizational design. The management should have a cross-functional team and for the team to be successful, it is important that they have a clear purpose, receive support from each functional area, and take steps to increase the trust levels of the members. The cross-functional team members should include employees from all the departments in the organization. The team will offer a wide array of skills as well as perspectives and help to formulate actionable solutions to problems. They will also offer the engagement required to ensure the successful implementation of the different strategies. Conclusion Strategy, size, market environment, human factor, and incentives are thus the five critical factors for management to get right to ensure that the Sydney Theatre Company survives into the long term. The strategy will help to increase the attractiveness of the theatre to provide an even better customer experience and to encourage regular customers. References Bacher, C. (2007). Corporate social responsibility. Grin-Verlag. Read More