Strategy and Operations Management of a Company - Assignment Example

Name Instructor Course Code Due Date Management Robin Hood’s Strategy and Operations Management Robin Longstride, commonly known a s Robin Hood, is an English outlaw who in the 12th century A.D. was famed for stealing from the rich and giving the loot to the poor. Robin Hood operated with a gang of fellow outlaws, the Merry Men, with their base in Sherwood Forest. With Robin Hood as their leader, the gang managed to set up raids on rich noblemen property and waylay convoys and soldier patrols in the remote passageways through the forest. The group was able to achieve much success in their operations, especially in the early part, against much opposition from the law and with limited manpower and resources. The gang's success show a remarkable leadership quality on Robin Hood's part, while the successful execution of the group's plans show much commitment to their cause on the part of the former soldiers. The organization's success and ability to survive external change and internal challenges resulted from careful strategy formulation and implementation, strategic leadership, and competitive advantage. History And Basis Of The Problem Robin Hood fought as a common archer and swordsman in Richard the Lionheart's army in the Third Crusade and in France. At the beginning of the legend, during the siege of Chalus Castle in Jerusalem, Robin Hood falls out with the king over his honest opinion about the war and the king's rule. He and his comrades are thrown into prison to await the end of the siege, but they succeed in planning an escape and deserting the Army. The band, which by then was a loosely knit organization sought their way to England where they found that the King had been overthrown in his absence by his brother, who had a cruel and tyrannical rule. The band head to Nottingham, Robin's hometown, to find an equally cruel Sherriff had taken over his and others' family lands for the state, and thereby begins a fight to drive him out. The group hide in Sherwood forest where they join up with another gang, the Merry Men, and together they carry out raids and ambushes on the rich barons' and state property, and on soldiers and convoys passing through the forest. The band enjoys much success in robbing the rich and giving the proceeds to the poor. However, the organization faced a number of challenges mainly relating to shortages in supplies and in organizing and maintaining the internal structure of the group. The sheriff and state had by far a larger numbers of soldiers and resources which gave them an upper hand against Robin Hood's organization. The hard operating environment and the risky mission in which the organization engaged in had a negative effect on the motivation of the soldiers and made the task of leading them more difficult for Robin Hood. As the leader, Robin Hood was faced with leading and managing a larger organization with resource constraints and in a changing, challenging and uncertain environment. Despite this, he was able to lead the organization to remarkable success and the eventual realization of their main objectives. This is evidence of a carefully formulated strategy and well executed plans, both which require strategic leadership qualities and motivated team members especially for a military organization like this one. The small size of the organization and its limited resources compared to its opposition required Robin Hood and the Merry Men to establish and maintain a high competitive advantage to survive and to achieve the strategic objectives set. Strategy Formulation The strategy formulation process by organizations takes the general form of nine major steps, which are: formulation of organizational goals; environmental analysis; quantitative valuing of the goals; strategy formulation process; gap analysis; strategic search; considering strategic alternatives; strategy implementation, and; feedback and evaluation (Cohen and Cyert, 1973). This process aims at identifying and exploiting organizational aspects which provide competitive advantage over opponents and competition (Ehmke, 2002). The steps constitute a dynamic process which is supported by continuous feedback, re-evaluation and adjustments, with no clear-cut distinctions between the steps. The formulation of strategic goals for Robin Hood and his band came about out of necessity for members of the organization to adapt to the environmental situation prevalent in England at the time. There was ongoing war, civil unrest and tyrannical rule which necessitated the members of the organization to adopt a defensive stance against the state and its agents. The organization aimed at stopping the injustices and inequality which was being carried out by the rich bourgeoisie on the poor, and to alleviate hunger and suffering amongst the peasant villagers. The band also aimed at restoring sustainable peace by ensuring that the king did not get overthrown in his absence. To achieve this objective, Robin Hood and his men devised a strategy whereby they would take from the rich to give to the poor, and hide in the forest within proximity of their targets. The members of the group consisted of former archers and soldiers in the army and hunters in the forest, which provided the necessary experience for competitive advantage in warfare and combat. The suitability of Robin Hood as the leader of the group necessitated strategic leadership qualities in terms of physical and mental skill, and experience. He had remarkable archery skills which provided an important advantage for the group. He had great initiative as is displayed by his successfully getting his comrades out of prison in Jerusalem and back to England, and in his planning for attacks and defenses against the organization's competition. Robin Hood also had interpersonal and communication skills which enabled the effective conveyance of the organizational strategy to his followers. Good interpersonal skill is especially brought out in his handling of internal conflict in the forest whereby some members sought to challenge his fitness for leadership. He was able to amicably quell the unrest through the use of both mental wit and physical strength. The gradual growth of the organization since leaving prison and returning home, to being outlaws in the forest tasked with fighting a state army posed leadership challenges in terms of managing operations and organizational logistics. Their outlaw nature and their hideout in the forest created limited opportunity for contact with the outside, thereby limiting the resources available to the organization. This necessitated the group to formulate even more daring strategy for infiltrating the rival camp and acquire supplies. The organization had to meet with challenging objectives and tackle them to remain viable and popular with the villagers. The evolving nature of the organization as it lost soldiers and gained new ones required changing leadership strategy, as is evident in Robin Hood's hiring of an army from Scotland to assist in the fight against the sheriff's army. Works Cited Cohen, Kalman, J., and Cyert, Richard, M., (1973). 'Strategy: Formulation, Implementation and Monitoring', The Journal of Business, 46.3(1973): 349 -367. Print. Ehmke, Cole, (2002). Strategies for Competitive Advantage. Laramie, WY: University of Wyoming, 2002. Print. Elenkov, Delin, S., Judge, William, and Wright Peter, (2005). “Strategic Leadership and Executive Innovation Influence”, Strategic Management Journal, pp. 666 - 682. Print. Question 1: The "Fast Five" is a term that was coined in the late 1990s to differentiate a group of rapidly growing and profitable ICT firms, namely Viant, Scient, iXL, USWeb and Razorfish Inc., from the "Big Five" prevalent in the accounting consultancy industry at the time. These companies were formed at a time when the internet was experiencing phenomenal growth rate. The firms were characterized by a unique organizational strategy which included innovative technologies, extensive marketing drives, staffing and consultancy. Razorfish was established in 1995 and provided services in consultancy in technology management, website design and back-end internet infrastructure. Razorfish achieved an internal environment that sought to obtain maximum utility from three main disciplines; creativity and constant innovation, business managerial strategy, and technical software developers. The firm adopted a culture of team consensus which sought input from all three disciplines to maintain its strategic advantage in the industry. The Fast-Five firms engaged in aggressive marketing and branding effort aimed at differentiating themselves in their managerial style as well as products offered. Razorfish sought to differentiate itself in terms of its employees and their professional image portrayed to customers. An example is the unique business cards characteristic of its workers at the time. in line with this, the company had focused on staffing and knowledge management aimed at spurring and sustaining innovation. These included conducive office spaces with internal intranet aimed at encouraging communication and information sharing within the firm. The company's external environment in the late 1990s enabled its widespread recognition amongst investors as a firm to recon with. The opportune entry of Razorfish and other Fast-Five firms into the ICT scene coincided with a period when the internet was recording its most pronounced growth rate ever. This enabled the firms to expand rapidly in terms of size and revenue, often managing to increase profits and staff at more than 100 percent annually. Initially in 1995, the two founders of Razorfish worked from an apartment in New York, only managing to move into a commercial building after receiving funding from Omnicom Group. In 1998, the company acquired Avalance Systems of New York, and in 1999 Spray, a Swedish ICT company. In 1999, the company went public with an initial public offering on NASDAQ. However, the company started experiencing financial difficulties in 2000 with the gradual waning of investor confidence in the internet bubble. The general inflation of stock value of companies in the ICT industry prompted analysts to push for the revaluation of their stock prices. The bursting of the internet bubble forced many companies in the industry including Razorfish to cut production and staff or cease operations entirely. The value of the company's stock had depreciated to below $5 a share, a fraction of the $80 per share it had been a few months earlier. Question 2: Razorfish was able to surpass Agency.com, the leader in internet advertising agencies at the time, in terms of revenues and profitability with a $3.6 million in sales for 1997. The increasing demand for the firm's services led it to merge with Avalance Systems and to hire more staff, moving into even larger office space in the same year. This represented a more than double increase in its employees to reach 150. Other acquisitions included the San Francisco firm Plastic, an advertising company, acquired in 1998, and CHBi London later that year. n the same year, the company also acquired Tag Media of Los Angeles, and its biggest acquisition, Spray, a Stockholm-based interactive advertising agency. Despite going public in 1999 at $16 per share, its stock price hitting the $80 mark seven months later and a growth in sales from $13.8 million in 1998 to 170 million, Razorfish posted a loss of $14.5 million that year. This had been blamed on the rapid expansion drive aimed at bolstering its reputation globally. The company had gained a reputation as a Web advertising and graphics design agency. The company, with the acquisition of Tag Media, diversified into the music industry and sought to change its image to include more products in the digital world. The firm diversified into broadcast design with the further acquisition of I-Cube, a Massachusetts company, and the opening of a wireless media laboratory in Helsinki. By 2000, the firm eventually gained a poor reputation for turning away from its earlier image of web advertising and design and failing staff satisfaction. Despite the gradually increasing decline in industry fortunes, the company continued its aggressive growth strategy with the opening up of new offices in Europe to take advantage of the growing mobile telephony industry, and the acquisition of the German e-business company, Medialab. The over-diversification in its service provision, coupled with the bursting of the internet bubble, has been blamed for the decline of the company in 2000 and 2001. Question 3: Investor confidence in the internet industry prior to 2000 was spurred by the rapidly growing and new business opportunities in the internet industry, and the relatively high profitability reported by the companies operating in that sector. The companies had managed to develop innovative management practices which gained appeal in the business world as the new way of doing business. The aggressive marketing efforts especially by Web and interactive media companies had managed to entice investors and the public into gaining confidence in the presumed longevity of the high industry growth rate. The characteristic nature of financial booms, especially in the stock market, to attract many investors who come in late into the investment in question was no exception for the internet boom. The late rush for the stocks of these companies led to these shares being largely overvalued by the market in 2000. The momentary high performance of the Fast-Five and similar companies had outperformed that of the Big-Five consultancy firms. This had led to the diversion of some of the investment in the big management and technology consultancy firms to the smaller emergent internet-based companies. The smaller nature of the fast-five companies and the high growth period they were undergoing indicated very attractive profitability figures in terms of revenues over costs as compared to the larger companies. This prompted some larger investors to move capital from these and other large investments. The smaller nature of this companies provided versatile alternatives for investor money compared to larger corporations. In addition, the fast-five and similar companies happened to go public at a time when the internet boom was at its highest, thereby getting a significant amount of the abundance in investment. Cited Works Razorfish, Inc History, International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 37. St. James Press, 2001. Accessed from http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/razorfish-inc-history/ Read More