Improving the Management of Sydney Theatre Company - Example

A Report on Improving the Management of Sydney Theatre Company Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Background Information The process of managing a business is a platform, which assists all participants within a business to take part in improvement of the business to ensure it attains its goals. The approaches for managing a business are usually provided by the managers of the business who offer guidance on the processes and designs of management. Businesses approaches enable participants to collaborate in processes within an organization to enable it to reach its goals (Reijers, 2003). In the review of management and design of the STC, it is the manager’s roles to provide the robustness and the power required for accomplishing various missions of an organization. This would entail analysing the structure and how management in the organization occurs. Introduction An organizational design is considered as a process whereby an organization aligns its mission with its structure. The STC organizational design has facilitated the investigation of the relationships between workflows, tasks, responsibilities and authority. Harmonisation of all these functions has been central in ensuring that the relationships reinforce the business objectives. The design as adopted by STC has to be improved to facilitate productivity, communications, and innovation thereby creating an environment whereby individuals within the organization worked effectively (Reijers, 2003). Management processes are four in number and they include planning, directing, controlling and organizing. These are to be developed upon to ensure that the company attains its goals even in the long term. Objectives of the Report The main aim of this report is to ensure that the management processes and designs currently used in the Sydney Theatre Company provide holistic management in the sense that the organization can manage its business processes in line with the customer’s expectations. The effectiveness and efficiency of the business should be promoted while the business strives for integration, innovation and flexibility to ensure long term sustainability. Many businesses usually prepare reports on how to improve the management operations and their organizational design to meet their main goals. The organization design to be adopted by STC should enable it to be more effective, efficient, and adaptable tothe current business operations. Thus, the organizations can change its functionality from the traditional management approaches it has utilized to current trends applied by modern organizations. A change in the business management processes and designs is a great milestone in effecting critical changes required in this particular organization. When such processes are successfully integrated into its operations, there will be generation of revenue and savings in costs. The effective management processes are considered as STC’s strategic assets which are supposed to be understood, well managed, and thereafter improved to ensure there is delivery of value-added goods or services to their customers (Reijers, 2003). In the company, the foundations for delivery of value to customers are a close resemblance of the emblems of total quality improvement and management processes. In order for the organization to be sustainable, a number of issues touching on the organization’s structure and management are highly recommended. Recommendations for STC Company a) Transforming the Organization’s Design and Management Processes Improving the profits, performance and productivity of the STC can be attained by changing the organization design and management processes. The great employees, great mission and great leadership in the company have performed well due to its well organized organization design. The company made great strides in subdividing its departmental units, so that every department focused their efforts in a particular facet in the operations of the organization. Integration in the STC links the different units to ensured harmony is generated so that the organization attains its set objectives (Reijers, 2003). However, the managers can also strive to change the organization’s design and management processes from the simple traditional structures to the contemporary organization structure to ensure attainment of set objectives. The business operations of the company can be improved by changing its central authority, departmentalization, spans of control, and in formalization of activities. In the traditional design, there exist no standards of procedures and policies. The contemporary structure adoptedwould ensure that there is greater coherence in the organization’s activities as opposed to the traditional structures, the management can come up with different teams and every of these teams assigned its roles. Thus, teams could be held responsible for any management functions of the business as opposed to leaving it to individuals. Structured organization designs eliminate all hierarchy or command chains. Therefore, teams work independently in ways that allow them to be creative enough to come up with their own ways to deliver the assigned tasks. This will encourage innovativeness amongst the team members through the guidance of their team leaders. Alternatively, the organization can adopt a matrix kind of organizational design whereby specialists are assigned duties in different functional departments which ensure that projects of the business are delivered upon. Project manager should be assigned to each project within the business. Such a manager would allocate the necessary resources required to attain the goals stipulate in the projects. In such a design, the STC would ensure that its various facets in accounting, operations, marketing, sales, human resources and engineering excel. Thus the management would be able to ensure that the projects managers in every department assign duties to specialists in every business function to ensure that projects are successfully completed. This would be sustainable in the long-term. b) Creation of a competitive advantage in the Organisation’s Design In order to improve its performance, the STC can create a competitive advantage in its design to enable it to attain its set objectives. Thus, the company can configurecompetitive advantage elements using their organization design. This would likely transform the business because this would be an extremely powerful management tool.Alignment of the design of theorganization withits business strategy can bring about efficiencies that willboost the performance of the STC. The recommendation here is that STC should establish theright structure within it to improve on theabilities in meeting the needs of the customers and development of a shareholder value. The adopted organizational design would enable the business to attain competitive advantages through facilitating the strategies of the business. By aligning its business strategy with its organization design, STC would be better positioned to improve on its performance and to attain the set goals. Effective organization design for the organization through the created competitive advantage would provide a vehicle for ensuring that strategy is delivered and creation of a working environment that would open up other opportunities for creating new possibilities in the strategic functions of the business (Broadbent & Weill, 1993). The company should also focus on driving value through an effective organization design. Thus, through effective design, there would be improved quality, branding, reputation and satisfaction of the customers and employees. This design would improve the company’s decision making by improving the organization’s metrics. This will eventually increase the productivity of the employees as well as business profitability. Adopting the right organization design, will make the company to be more adaptable in responding to the changes in the market place. c) Focussing On Financial Tracking and Proper Accounting As far as management of businesses is concerned, it is necessary that business processes are effectively managed to ensure the set targets are attained. A business like the STC has to ensure that there is great efficiency in its office best practices to allow the company to experience unrestrained growth. One of the ways of improving the performance of the business is focussing on financial tracking and proper accounting. Proper management of the finances andaccounting decisions would result in the STC attaining its set objectives in the long-term. It is very essential that the company carves out time to comprehend well its general practices of accountingas well as setting up the best administrative practices. These would track the finances of the company leading to more sustainability (Reijers, 2003). The tracking of finances would potentially be improved through implementation of software, educating the employees and looking for help that would strengthen the footing of the business making it to expand. Thus, basic accounting practices as well as administrative practices would ensure that the finances of STC are tracked. Acquisition of finance and accounting software is a recommendation for the business in attaining this goal. The software eliminates record keeping on prayers and wishes. It is necessary that a business like STC abandons spread sheets which are time consuming. The best way to go is for the business to use simple accounting software to track its finances (Broadbent & Weill, 1993). d) Training Employees to Improve their Skills The STC can invest in training its employees to improve on their skills so as to increase their productivity and quantity of labour employed within the business. Inadequate levels of skills and education usually traps many businesses in vicious circles of low incomes and productivity. If the management improves on the skills of the current workers by imparting them with new information, changing trends in business and consumer expectations could be a necessary step or strategy for upgrading and enhancing the employee’s relevance in the modern times (Broadbent & Weill, 1993). The relevant skills and training would open up chances for exploration of new business opportunities through modification of goods and services in line with the emerging market demands. Development of skills is important in improving productivity of any business. For the STC, skills development would improve on productivity which in turn is a significant source of better standards of living as well as growth. Other critical factors that would maximise employment growth, social dialogue, and enable environment and fundamental investments in health, basic education would ensure sustainability of the business in the long term. Consistent and effective development of skills that better connect technical training to education and to the labour market to the place of work and lifelong learning would ensure that the STC attains productivity growth which would be sustainable in the long term. The company should strive to address the challenges which happen at different developmentlevels. In the process, the employees would be updated on the changing expectations of consumers. e) Technology Application to Improve Management Functions Technology is important in maintaining networks with other organizations. The management of any business expects that cutting edge leadership and technology would improve the operations of such a business. Application of the latest technology will help in ensuring that the STC meets its business needs on a daily basis. This particularly applies with its systems, processes, data distribution, telecommunications, and database management. Information Technology is important in improving business performance. Application of technology would thus enable the company to improve its productions, innovation, critical thinking and the business’ competitive advantage. The revenues as well as profits are would be greatly improved with adoption and application of emerging and improved technology that is infiltrated within an organization. Technology plays important and specific strategic management roles of an organization. Management in services of quality technology would in the long run enable sustainability of STC as it strives to meet its needs as well as those of its consumers (Davenport & Short, 2003). New technology would offer inventive and ground-breaking initiatives that would ensure STC meets its set objectives. Through new technology, better decisions will be made because of information generated from the same. The four functions of management include organizing, planning, controlling and leading, would be more operative through introduction of cutting technology within the systems of the company. The technology would ensure that functional operations in the information systems, programs, and improved software and hardware. The management of the STC can also incorporate initiatives for professional training and development for equipping the staff with necessary skills. Investment in training and certificationof ICT is highly recommended for a company like STC. The training represents immediate return on the investments for the company. Employees who are ICT-trained are usually more efficient, make few errors and they work quicker (Davenport & Short, 2003). The time which supervisors and their colleagues use in dealing with challenges in the organization would be reduced upon improving their ICT skills. The company would also benefit by gaining access to accurate knowledge regarding the levels of skills of their employees.Management is of STC can be motivated by the operational staff in the use of technology for an efficient management based on plans, organization, directing and leading. Therefore, it is up to the management to invest in relevant technology which would improve the usefulness and organization of the business at every level strategic procedures of decision-making. Conclusion Businesses approaches provide that participants are to take part in processes within the organization to enable it to attain its goals. The organization design and management trends to be adopted by STC should assist the company to be more effective, efficient, and adaptable tothe changing business operations. The Sydney Theatre Company can change its functionality from the traditional management approaches to the contemporary systems currently applied by modern organizations. In order to ensure long-term sustainability, a number of issues touching on the organization’s structure and management are highly recommended. These recommendations are; transforming the organization’s design and management processes, creating a competitive advantage in the organisation’s design, focussing on financial tracking and proper accounting, training employees to improve their skills and finally technology application to improve on the management functions. References Broadbent, M., & Weill, P. (1993). Improving business and information strategy alignment: Learning from the banking industry. IBM systems Journal, 32(1), 162-179. Davenport, T. H., & Short, J. E. (2003). Information technology and business process redesign. Operations management: critical perspectives on business and management, 1, 1-27. Reijers, H. A. (2003). Design and control of workflow processes: business process management for the service industry. USA, Springer-Verlag Read More