The International Institute for Educational Excellence - Literature review Example

LITERATURE REVIEW Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Introduction In this paper, the focus will be in the International Institute for Education Excellence (IIEE) joint venture. At first, the IIEE joint venture was successful, wherein they implemented a simple, but a strong governance structure with all parent organizations having a member on the board (Wardale, 2014). A number of issues arise from the case; for instance, although all new individuals were highly conscientious as well as capable, knowledge sharing and capture from one position to another was insignificant. As it will be evidenced in the paper, Knowledge sharing is crucial for generating new knowledge so as to realize competitive advantage and to improve employees’ turnover. As indicated in the case, the issues of strategy, governance, budget as well as business development gradually slipped deeper into the background. Janet Stone after being appointed as the Institute Director in 2012 was shocked to establish that board had not held a meeting for more than a year. Even though there were some exchanging of emails and action lists had not been drawn up, actions nor had neither resolutions been embarked on since the end of 2010. Besides that, the joint venture agreement that stipulated the number of times the board was to meet had expired early in 2011 (Wardale, 2014). Actually, the IIEE was offering services as well as getting money while it was no more a formalized entity. Regrettably, IEEE had no operational plan, strategic plan, and business development plan. Furthermore, when Janet begun working at IIEE, it had just one major client, one suitable program, the JV agreement was not legally registered, the company had high staff and with no clear future (Wardale, 2014). Nowadays, the majority of managers consider knowledge as a strategic asset, and they have espoused numerous knowledge management programs to proactively and explicitly harness as well as exploit their organizations’ intellectual resources. Still, in spite of the potential strategic advantage attributed to development and application of knowledge, numerous knowledge management projects these days are not explicitly in line with the competitive strategy. The concept if strategic planning is undoubtedly crucial for business success. The paper will discuss key issues facing IIEE, and provide a literature review of the key concepts associated with the highlighted issues. Discussion The legal team representing the organizations in the IIEE JV disagreed with the board members on the essence of joint decision making, collegiality, as well as mutual profitability (Wardale, 2014). As mentioned by Freedman (2009, p.378), the effective and smooth operation of a company needs a collegiality spirit that both fosters and reflects mutual respect amongst every member of the company. Collegiality entails a shared decision-making process as well as a set of attitudes that enable members to regard other members as responsible for the company success. Collegial decision-making allows all members of the team to take part in ways suitable to their responsibility as well as knowledge. In joint decision making, the involved parties must be sensitive to others concerns and must shun acting unilaterally (Freedman, 2009, p.379). Evidently, IIEE had no strategic plan as well as clear future strategy, bearing in mind that Strategic planning is crucial for any organization since it offers a sense of direction and highlights measurable goals. According to Ilesanmi (2011, p.18), a strategic vision is a key step in creating and executing a strategy. The strategic vision of a company offers the rational reason for future directions as well as plans, and the organization is aimed in a certain direction, offering an organizational strategic direction to pursue. Imperatively, the vision has to be definite concerning how leaders of the organization aim to position the company further than where it is currently. Strategic planning as stated by Aldehayyat and Twaissi (2011, p.255), is a useful tool for guiding everyday decisions as well as for assessing progress and altering approaches. Furthermore, strategic planning may offer the management an overall strategic direction and provide a particular direction to areas such as marketing strategy, financial strategy, HR strategy, and organizational development strategy with the goal of realizing business success. The company’s basic foundation is a strategic plan since it offers a solid reference frame for decision making (Bohlander & Snell, 2006, p.52). Strategic plan consists of a clear outline of the financial as well as functional assets and system requirements required to realize the plan. Besides that IIEE lacked an operational plan, which involves the process of planning strategic objectives and goals to tactical objectives as well as goals. According to Gordon (2008, p.21), operational plan is crucial for the success of the company because it highlights conditions and milestones for success and provide details on how or what part of strategic plan need to be implemented during a certain operational period. Importantly, the Operational Plan must be aligned with the overall objectives of the company as stipulated in the strategic plan. Vagadia (2013, p.63) posits that this alignment may be realised by making sure that the department or team purpose is aligned with the strategic plan objectives. In view of this, the operational plans must contain: clear objectives, quality standards, activities that must be delivered, the needed results, resource and staffing requirements, implementation schedule, and a monitoring progress process. A successful operational planning is achieved through continuous open communication between the top management and other staffs. IIEE as indicated in the case study, lacked business development plan; and when initiatives or projects reach implementation stage, the require resources for overseeing and coordinating their implementation, which becomes more challenging. After a while, the needed resources are allocated to take part in various forms of projects all over the organization with almost no consideration of the strategic agenda. In consequence, the business development investment turns out to more scattered across the organization resulting in confusion. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the purpose of the business development function as the need for systematization as well as formalized planning increases (Nunn & McGuire, 2010, p.95). Business development as pointed out by Nunn and McGuire (2010), has turned out to be a value-adding and viable investment, but lack of clear meaning of its tasks, role and purpose is overriding and leaves the evaluation as well as assessment of business development efforts unclear. In order for business development to achieve its purpose of being the integrative connection between execution and strategy, it required an interplay that is clearly defined with other support functions, the line organization as well as top management. Business development being a corporate support function focuses on business development management from both an external and internal viewpoint (Rodenberg, 2007, p.117). Generally, a business development plan is crucial because it is concerned with identifying crucial new business opportunities, facilitates fact-based and quick decision making and allows for smooth business operations. Another issue highlighted in the case study, is that there was little knowledge capture and sharing from one position to another at IIEE. According to Zack (1999), companies compete by owning distinctive resources, which competitors find challenging to comprehend and imitate or produce substitutes. Such strategic resources support the capability of the organization to generate superior services or products for certain markets; thus, eliminating overreliance one major client as it was the case at IIEE. Traditionally, companies depended on factors of production as their main resources, but these days, organization structure and culture are believed to offer strategic resources for the organization. Ability to access financial resources, according to Zack (1999) offers the capability of investing in more technological solutions for enhanced quality. The key objective of knowledge sharing is to facilitate the distribution of the appropriate content at the right time to the right people. Therefore, knowledge sharing should allow members of the organization to effectively and quickly find appropriate expertise and information that facilitates problem solving as well as decision-making (Paulin & Suneson, 2012, p.82). In view of this, meetings are considered to be the best means as well as ways of knowledge sharing, where the board members should formally come together so as to discuss the projects, problems, opinions, experiences, as well as take decisions. In a meeting like that initiated by Janet at IIEE, opinions and knowledge are expressed, which consequently, improves the knowledge of other members resulting in knowledge sharing. Conclusion In conclusion, as evidenced in the literature review, there is need for a company to both align its strategy with its learning capabilities as well as existing knowledge resources, and look for way to sufficiently improve those capabilities as well as resources so as to support its strategy. For IIEE to strategically manage knowledge, it must identify what facilitate knowledge sharing. As argued above, the business development has to be integrated and managed so as to become successful. As mentioned in the paper, a strategic plan ascertains the key factors of success that a company requires so as to realize plan objectives and identifies how these can be developed into core competencies. The paper has focused on numerous issues; knowledge sharing, joint decision making, and operational, business, and strategic plan. References Aldehayyat, J.S. & Twaissi, N., 2011. Strategic Planning and Corporate Performance Relationship in Small Business Firms: Evidence from a Middle East Country Context. International Journal of Business and Management, vol. 6, no. 8, pp.255-63. Bohlander, G. & Snell, S., 2006. Managing Human Resources. New York: Cengage Learning. Freedman, S., 2009. Collegiality Matters: How Do We Work With Others? In Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference. Charleston, South Carolina, 2009. Gordon, S.R., 2008. Supplier Evaluation and Performance Excellence: A Guide to Meaningful Metrics and Successful Results. Fort Lauderdale: J. Ross Publishing. Ilesanmi, O.A., 2011. The Role of Strategic Vision Process in Business Development in Nigeria. Global Journal of Management and Business Research, vol. 11, no. 9, pp.17-22. Nunn, L. & McGuire, B., 2010. The Importance Of A Good Business Plan. Journal of Business & Economics Research, vol. 8, no. 2, pp.95-106. Paulin, D. & Suneson, K., 2012. Knowledge Transfer, Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Barriers – Three Blurry Terms in KM. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 10, no. 1, pp.81-91. Rodenberg, J.H.A.M., 2007. Competitive Intelligence and Senior Management: "The Best Solution to where to Place the Office of Competitive Intelligence is on a Par with Functions that Report Directly to the Board". HJ Delft, Netherlands: Eburon Uitgeverij B.V. Vagadia, B., 2013. Enterprise Governance: Driving Enterprise Performance Through Strategic Alignment. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Wardale, D., 2014. Case Study 5. Managing up – the power of personal influence. In Waddell, D., Creed, A., Cummings, T. & Worley, C. Organisational Change. Development and tansformation. Melbourne, Australia: Cengage Learning Australia Pty Ltd. pp.470 - 475. Zack, M.H., 1999. Competing on Knowledge. [Online] Available at: http://web.cba.neu.edu/~mzack/articles/compknow/compknow.htm [Accessed 12 August 2015]. Read More