Digital Strategy, Active management, Total Quality Management and Strategic Management - Coursework Example

Most commonly used management strategies include digital strategy, active management, total quality management and strategic management. TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT This a management strategy aimed at integrating prudent management practice in the entire organization process. It is widely used in education, government, call centers service industries as well as NASA space and science programs. Total involves the whole management, supply chain and product development and evaluation. Quality usually deals with all its complexities. Management usually involves steps like planning, staff recruitment and enumerations, sales and marketing, accounting and taxation plan, internal policies and system controls. Its major aim is to reduce variation from every process so that efficiency of effort is obtained. OUALITY MANAGEMENT It encompasses three main ingredients that is quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement .Quality management is not only aimed on product quality but also the means o attain it .Therefore it uses quality assurance and control process as well as products to achieve more consistent quality QUALITY MANAGEMNT EVOLUTION Quality management has come a long way. Advanced civilizations that supported the craftsmanship allowed clients to choose goods meeting higher quality standards than normal goods. In societies where art and craft were valued, one of the responsibilities of a master craftsman (and similarly for artists) was to lead their studio, train, mentor and supervise the work of their craftsmen and apprentices. The master craftsman set standards, reviewed the work of others and ordered rework and revision as necessary. One of the major disadvantages of the craft approach was that relatively few goods could be produced within a wide scope of time , on the other hand an advantage was that each item produced could be individually shaped to suit the client. This craft based approach to quality and the practices used were major inputs when quality management was created as a management science. During industrial evolution significance of craftsmen became redundant and mass production and repetitive work practices were instilled. The first proponent in the US for this approach was Eli Whitney who proposed (interchangeable) parts manufacture for muskets, hence producing the identical components and creating a musket assembly line. Quality and quantity was enhanced. The next step forward was promoted by several people including Frederick Winslow Taylor a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is sometimes called "the father of scientific management." He was one of the intellectual DIGITAL STRATEGY Digital strategy is the process of specifying an organization objective and process in order to deploy their on line assets , these include wed sites ,mini sites digital audio and video content ,innovative internet applications ,community groups ,banner ads ,search engine marketing in a manner to utilize business benefits they provide to the organization . There are numerous approaches to conducting digital strategy, but at their core, all go through four steps: 1. identifying the key opportunities and/or challenges in a business where online assets can provide a solution; 2. identifying the unmet needs and goals of the customers that most closely align with those key business opportunities and/or challenges; 3. developing a vision around how the online assets will fulfill those business and customer needs, goals, opportunities and challenges, and 4. prioritizing a set of online initiatives which can deliver on this vision. Within each of those stages, a number of techniques and analyses may be employed. ACTIVE MANAGEMENT This refers to a collection management method wherein the manger makes a specific investment with the aim of outperforming an investment bench mark index. Investors or mutual funds that do not aspire to create a return in excess of the market benchmark index will often invest in an index fund that replicates as closely as possible the investment weighting and returns of that index. This is called passive management. Active management is the opposite of passive management, because the manager or passive management fund does not seek to outperform the benchmark index. STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Strategic or institutional management is the demeanor of drafting, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives. It is the process of specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives and then allocating resources to implement the policies, and plans, projects and programs. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives. Strategic management is a combination of three main processes which are as follows Strategy formulation Performing a condition analysis, self- assessment and opponent analysis: both internal and external; These objectives should, in the light of the state analysis, propose a strategic plan. The plan provides the details of how to attain these goals. This three-step strategy implementation method this sometimes referred to as determining where you are now, determining where you want to go, and then determining how to get there. These three questions are the core of strategic planning. Strategy implementation Providing management with a detailed budget and financial plan. Establishing an administration structure Assigning responsibility and accountability of precise duties or processes to specific individuals. Thus, when the strategy execution processes, there have been many impediments such as work force relations and/or the employee-communication. At this stage, the greatest implementation difficulty usually involves marketing strategy, with emphasis on the suitable timing of new products. An organization, with an effective management, should try to implement its plans without signaling the fact to its competitors. Strategy evaluation Analyzing success of the organizational strategy, it is enormously important to conduct a SWOT analysis to figure out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (both internal and external) of the entity in question. COMPARISON AND CONTRUST OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND ACTIVE MANAGEMENT Total quality management is a business management strategy aimed at embedding consciousness of quality in all organizational process. While active management refers to portfolio management strategy the management makes precise investment with the goal of outperforming an investment bench mark index. TQM is the organization wide management of quality .Management consists of scheduling, organizing, directing, control and assurance. Total quality is called total because it consists of two qualities .Quality of return to please needs of shareholders and quality of products. While active management exploits market inefficiencies by purchasing securities that are undervalued or buy short selling securities that are over valued. Active management most mutual funds do not have board members and directors with an equity stake in mutual fund that their managers are administering .In other words directors and board members don’t directly impact future performance of funds as opposed to total quality management where management approach for organization, is centered on quality, base on participation of all its members and aiming at long term success through customer satisfaction and benefits to all members of organization and to society Advantages of quality management Quality management is attentive not only on product, but also the means to accomplish it. Therefore uses quality assurance and control practice as well as product to achieve more constant quality. Production is at a lower cost with increased efficiency Use of stastical methods lead to improving quality in manufacture of products Disadvantage of quality management Any progress (Change) takes time to execute, gain reception and stabilize as an acknowledged practices. Total Quality management has not been free of its vicinity Advantages of Active management The primary magnetism of active management is that it allows assortment of a variety of investments instead of investing in the market as a whole. Investors may have adiversity of motivations for following such a strategy: They may be cynical of the efficient market speculation, or believe that some market segments are less efficient in creating profits than others. They may want to administer instability by investing in less-risky, high-quality companies rather than in the market as a whole, even at the cost of considerably lower returns. Conversely, some investors may want to take on extra risk in exchange for the prospect of obtaining higher-than-market returns. Investments that are not highly associated to the market are useful as a range diversifier and may diminish overall portfolio instability. Some investors may wish to pursue an approach that avoids or underweight’s certain industries compared to the market as a whole, and may find an actively-managed fund more in line with their scrupulous investment goals. (For instance, an employee of a high-technology growth company who receives company stock or stock options as a benefit might rather not to have additional funds invested in the same industry.) Disadvantages of Active management The most obvious disadvantage of active management is that the fund manager may make terrible investment choices or follow a rickety theory in managing the portfolio. The amounts linked with active management are also higher than those associated with passive management, even if numerous trading is not present. Those who are considering investing in an actively-managed mutual fund should assess the fund's prospectus carefully. Data from recent decades demonstrates that the majority of actively-managed large and mid-cap stock funds in United States fail to outperform their passive stock index counterparts. Active fund management strategies that involve frequent trading create higher transaction costs which cut down the fund's return. In addition, the short-term capital gains resulting from frequent trades often have an unfavorable income tax impact when such funds are held in a taxable account. When the asset base of an actively-managed fund becomes too huge, it begins to take on index-like characteristics because it must invest in an increasingly varied set of investments instead of those limited to the fund manager's best ideas. Many mutual fund companies close their funds before they reach this point, but there is prospective for a divergence of interest between mutual fund management and shareholders because closing the fund will result in a loss of income (management fees) for the mutual fund company. References Selden, P. H., (1998).Sales Process Engineering: An Emerging Quality Application. Quality Progress: 59-63.  Pyzdek, T, (2003), Quality Engineering Handbook. Godfrey, A. B., (1999) Juran’s Quality Handbook: Process Assessments and Improvement Malkiel, B. G. & Norton.W. (1996)A Random Walk Down Wall Street John Bogle, (1994) Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor Hebner, M. T. (2007) The 12-Step Program for Active Investors Centre for Digital Strategies (2003): Enabling a Customer-Focused Organization: Thought Leadership Summit on Digital Strategies, Centre for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business and Cisco Systems Quinn (2006): Ready for the Digital Future? Supply Chain Management Review. 30-31 Alertbox, J. N. (2004): How Big is the Difference between Websites?, McFadden (2005): Optimizing the Online Business Channel with Web Analytics, Tactical Uses of Web Analytics, Web Analytics Association. Bean (2001): The Application of Technology to Marketing: A Twenty Year Perspective, Centre for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business. 5 Kim (2006): Reinventing The Marketing Organization: Customer Groups Should Trump Channels, Products, Or Geography. Forrester. Burns (2006): Leaders Take A Strategic Approach To Web Analytics. Forrester Read More