Investigating Business: Rolls Royce and Asda - Essay Example

Characteristics of an effective organisation

An efficient organisation is an organisation that emphasises on infusing excellence in all its activities. Every personality in the group clearly understands their duties and any activity they undertake aim at achieving results. It seeks to attain its mission and remain viable within its operational environment by ensuring coexistence at workstation and development of open communication. Everyone believes that continuous learning fosters excellence. Note that an efficient organisation does not develop by chance but grows as a result of the emphasis on attaining excellence valuing of its employees and consumers, hence increasing the capacity of the organisation to produce sustainable results. Therefore, this section deals with a brief description of characteristics of an efficient team.

The first characteristic is the group's commitment to excellence. An effective organisation integrates excellence standards into the management, governance and operation activities. Any individual willing to or set to join the organisation is first oriented to the excellence level of the organisation and the person makes a commitment to meet these standards. The organisation must provide continuous support, coaching, and freedom to people to enable them to act in ways consistent with the standards of the organisation.

The second characteristic is that the organisation has a clearly stipulated purpose as well as desired results. The employees, managers and board members of the organisation have a better understanding of the mission statement of the organisation and can recite it without a struggle. Therefore, these organisations often have well-defined missions that clearly present the purpose and goals of the organisation as well as inspire other people to join their cause. The third characteristic is the presence of an effective change management process. The organisations are characterised by flexibility in adapting to changes that arise in the business environment. These organisations anticipate any changes that might affect the organisation's operations and have strong leadership to ensure that any change implemented results in high performance.

The fourth characteristic is that these organisations have open and multidirectional communication. The sharing of information is timely done and relayed to the appropriate persons in aiding formation of informed decisions. Communication can be across peer groups, bottom to top, top to bottom. The last characteristic is the existence of a culture of continuous learning. An efficient organisation fosters the professional development of its employees by offering training, classes and reading materials.

Aims, Objectives, Values of Rolls Royce and Asda

Rolls-Royce is a public limited company whereas Asda is a private limited company. Rolls-Royce plc deals with the provision of power systems used in sea, land and air transport throughout the world. Rolls-Royce has achieved tremendous success in its aerospace, marine, and energy sector due to consistent strides to meet needs and requirements of customers as well as recruiting of skilled people. The first aim of Rolls-Royce is the provision of mobility with comfort, speed, and style in all transport sectors such as water, land or air. Another goal is achieving customer satisfaction through provision of excellent services in its sales and after sales service.

An objective of Rolls-Royce is to expand its market reach as well as ensure that the products the company produces a significant share of the market. Another objective is to ensure it gains financial, competitive power, continues to provide quality products and consistent focus on service deliverables. The core values of Rolls-Royce include trust, deliver and excellence; The Company seeks to earn the confidence of its colleagues, partners, shareholders and customers always. It aims to ensure that these people can rely on the enterprise to carry out its activities in the right way.

The company also seeks to deliver on its promises as one of its strategies to earn trust. Thus, the company emphasises on meeting the needs of customers by emphasising on producing quality and reliable products. It also ensures that it provides first class services and high-performance products. Excellence is another core value that guides the daily company operations. Through gaining trust and delivering on its promises the company can be termed as an excellent company. It seeks to create a business whereby people feel proud to work with, work for, and invest in the enterprise.

Asda Plc, a subsidiary of Wal-Mart, is one of the largest retailers in the UK. The competition in the UK market is stiff, and the company has set out strategies to ensure its success that includes clear aims and objectives. The company aims at providing cheap and affordable products and services to consumers. Other purposes include offering quality products at a relatively low price, ensuring efficient waste recycling, designing well-packaged products, and building a sustainable business. Furthermore, it seeks to support various voluntary services as well as assist charities in the UK. It also aims at improving the quality of its products, reduces its energy consumption and remains environment-friendly.

Asda Plc key objective is reducing packaging costs, wastes, and reduction of its label pre-packed products. Another objective is to develop new ways of solving the issue of food wastage, increase sales of its products, continual improvement of its services year after year and be known as one of the most inexpensive supermarket in the UK. Moreover, Asda Plc seeks to be a sustainable business and has developed three core values that guide its operations. They include an emphasis on achieving excellence (striving to be the best it can be every day), respect for individuals or colleagues, and putting customers first.

Therefore, it can be seen from the analysis of Asda and Rolls-Royce aims, objectives and values some are different while some are similar. The difference observed might be associated with the different business nature of the companies. Asda mainly deals in the retail sector especially food products whereas Rolls-Royce focused on the manufacturing industries, particularly technology products. Hence since Rolls-Royce operates in the aerospace, defence, marine, and energy sector the objectives and aims in its strides to achieve success would be different when compared to Asda a company focused on the retail sector of foods and other accessories in the supermarket industry.

Comparison of Legal Status of Rolls Royce and Asda

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is a British-owned multinational company whereas Asda is a British retailer and a subsidiary of Wal-Mart. Therefore, a public limited company just like a private limited company is an integrated business. The public limited company is owned by shareholders whom each enjoys limited liability benefit. Limited liability implies that after they have paid for their shares, the members of the enterprise have no further liability to contribute towards debts incurred by the business.

The public limited company has the capability to sell it shares public through the recognised stock exchange, unlike private limited company. Therefore, advantages of a public limited company include the potential to raise its capital market share by selling shares to the general public. Another advantage is that it has limited liability thus any loss incurred by the company d not affect particular shareholders. In the case of damages the shareholders only lose their money, they invested in the enterprise. Since a public limited company has a legal existence separate from that of its owners hence it is not affected in case one shareholder decides to sell his/her share thus maintaining its continuity. Also due to the broad nature of a public limited company, there is the existence of specialisation and division of labour which can spur the company into success by making it efficient and productive.

Nevertheless, a public limited company has also disadvantages such as a high initial set up costs due to the necessary official procedures that need to be completed to ensure the company complies fully with established laws of creating a business. Also, the separation of owners from those who run the day to day activities can be problematic if the objectives of these parties differ. A public limited company is led by directors and managers while shareholders own it and therefore a difference in goals will cause difficulties. Also, a public limited company has less privacy since it is required by law to avail to the certain public aspects of its affairs for scrutiny and inspection. This information can reveal valuable business operations and management strategies of the company to its competitors (Korchak, 2016). Also because a public limited company offers to sell its shares in the stock exchange, then other firms may attempt to buy these shares to gain control of the enterprise. A hostile takeover occurs when other companies buy shares of the company against the wishes of the board of directors.

A private limited company belongs to shareholders and unlike a public limited company its shares are only sold those agreed to by current shareholders. Private limited company shareholders have limited liability to the enterprise. Another advantage is that the current shareholders have the power to control over who becomes a shareholder or owner of the business. A new shareholder that intends to join the company must be agreed or denied entry through a 51% vote cast. However, it is important to note that the voting mechanism may also be a disadvantage since it can raise disagreements between shareholders hence causing the limited amount of capital channelled into the company. Another disadvantage is that a private limited company similar to a public limited company is complicated to set up due to the various legal documents required. Also, it is obligated to make its affairs public by the law which will give its competitors insight into its operations and management strategies.

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