Responses to Management Issues - Assignment Example

Week Response It is the implementation part of a mission that realates to strategy. It is always necessary to strike a balance between strategic plans and the subsequent financial demands. Strategy has to be in tune with the ground realities of the company including finance. Response-2 Strategy must have the changing competitive environment included in it as an integral variable. Though the middle managers are responsible for the implementation side, they must have a clear vision of what the over all mission is. Response-3 Middle managers cannoy be left out of the strategic planning process. Because only they can fulfill the demands at a functional level. A specific business model in a specific time frame can have a fool proof strategy if formulated carefully. Then all the drawbacks listed can be avoided. Response-4 Though strategic planning is a top to bottom process initially, once it starts working, there should be constant information flow both ways. Only with routine revisions in small degrees, can a strategic plan can rise up to the demands put forth by the real environment Response-5 Only if a mission statement is clear and to the point, the strategy will be flawless. The objectives have to be spelled out in the mission statement. And also the overall value system that governs the objectives need to be provided to give guidance to the implementers. The strategy should not go in the opposite direction to these values or the whole cause is lost. Week-2 Response-1 Eco-friendly is seen as synonymous with expensive by many. But in the long term, it is vice versa. By protecting the environment, humans can have great health benefits and an unexhaustable pool of resources which can be put to use with some discretion. When we calculate the value of all this, the cost of shifting to eco-friendly technology is more than compensated. Response-2 Even the time will come when the customers themselves will pressurize the companies to turn green. Customer awareness is the ultimate weapon in the armoury of a green business warrior. Response-3 Companies should focus all their innovations around green approaches. To become an eco-friendly business venture is also related to maintaining transparency on every action of the company. Thus a company can give a honest picture of its wish to adopt green approaches and thereby win the loyalty of the customers as well Response-4 Even an effort to show the company in a green light can be seen as a positive step forward. It shows that the awareness is there. Sooner or later, the real solutions will follow with the development of cost-effective eco-friendly production methods. Response-5 Reducing the environmental damage and redicung the cost must go hand in hand in a ideal situation. Even the PR exercise by BP has have a domino effect. There should be strict monitoring mechanism from the corporate world as well as the governments so that eco-friendly talk of businesses does not end up as just words. Week-3 Response-1 In every SWOT analysis, though the strengths may be over emphasized the tendency is always to correct and remedy the weaknesses. So the relevance of a SWOT analysis cannot be underestimated. Response-2 Types of analyses other than SWOT can be simultaneously conducted and results compared. This will help find out the weak nesses that have been left out in the attempt to paint a glorified picture. Readyness to change and innovate is the key of success. SWOT analyses can only function as s first step of the ladder. Response-3 Strategy has to be based on measurable parameters as well as within the ground realities in a given space and time. A balanced score card gains relevance in this context. It helps to find out certain solutions based on real data and experience. So nothing has to be assumed by looking into future. It is the experience of the past that enriches the future. Response-4 When the vision aspect replaces control aspect, there is more scope for team work. A balanced score card can without contradiction, prove what works and what do not. So there is no need to struggle with compiling different view points. The facts are bare before the eyes for all to see, in a balanced score card Response-5 Strategies can only be time specific and space specific. All the articles have success as the underlying principle. But the methods may vary slightly. H&P, Grant and Porter have stressed the aspect of understanding the resources of the company before formulating a strategy. Week-4 Response-1 Diversification can include the product aspect as well as production method, labor involvement, marketing, and packaging aspect. But always it is better to have a common base line for all these strategies. Diversification in the wrong direction will end up in loosing the existing advantages. Response-2 Horizontal and vertical integration has their own drawbacks as well. Horizontal integration will expand the customer base but may affect the quality and brand images in the long run. Veritcal integration is possible only when each product in the diversification bouquet has the exact characteristics necessary for attracting its prospective buyer. Response-3 The blue ocean strategy is suitable only for the real innovators. A blue ocean company may be having the advantage of the lack of competition. But it is the competitor himself who can introduce you to the market when you are on a new venture. And competition also makes you more innovative rather than a blue ocean atmosphere. Response-4 The HQ has a strategy responsibility. Only it can have an over all picture of the changing environment and identify the changes that are relevant to the company. Coordination is another function that is very important. Strategic planning, control and financial control must be flexible for innovations to happen. Response-5 There can be unexplored core competencies for any company. Only when innovations reveal a new area of development, that the unidentified core competencies come to the surface. Week-5 Response-1 Though the global myth is important to the customer, it is the quality of the product that eventually helps a global brand to establish. Associating with a cosmopolitan culture in the right way, is yet another significant aspect of global brand building. The cultural connotations should not be too nation-specific and not too away from the culture in which the product is born. Respone-2 Consistency is a good attribute of a global brand. But apart from that, yet another strategy can be adopted by adding some degree of local flavor in each context. Pizza adds spice a little more when going to Asian countries, for example. Response-3 A global strategy can get out of the frame works of a blanket plan and rise up to the occasions within the given parameters. The middle managers have a great role to play in this. But the mission has always to be kept in mind even when making some strategic changes. Response-4 Finance & budgeting, human resources, legal counsel, operations & production, and marketing can have common global strategies if one is considering them at the broader level. But for short term strategies, it is better to go regional rathe rthan global. The dynamics of local markets can be fed back to the HQ by middle managers and corresponding revisions made to plans on a short term basis. Response-5 The multiple reporting structure can be simplified by making each of them a self-sufficient and independent entity. Only the information at the macro level need to be reported in between them. The corporate HQ can have a separate cell to monitor this sharing of information and even filter any if needed. Week-6 Response-1 Objectives should directly link to the mission and must be measurable. This helps middle managers to get the connection between their piece meal actions and the over all functioning of the company. Response-2 Objectives generally held as even unattainable can be attained if proper strategies are worked out. So, the vision has to be concretized into objectives there by making it easier to devise strategies. Response-3 Customer focus is a multi-faceted process. Work division and integration should go hand in hand in this process. But long term customer satisfaction only comes with quality. Response-4 Profit has to be proportionate to the customer satisfaction if long term success is expected. If some evident draw back exists, the customer should be told in clear terms that there are also some strong advantages compensating them. The pricing system should also be modest in such situations. And it is not that you can charge the customer enormously for good quality. Good quality is a responsibility rather than an exchange agreement. Response-5 Internal customers can be more demanding. And they always need an immediate explanation, if their demands are not wholly met. They are the yard stick for measuring the effective ness of the internal mechanism. External customers will decide the fate. So the process has to have the internal customers as the litmus test for the external customer satisfaction. Week-7 Response-1 Though in a military structure, there may have good work division, that kind of organization is primarily concerned with maintaining status quo. The external factors are minimum in such a situation. But the scope for innovation is far far less. The strong nature of the system imparts it certain amount of rigidity. There will also be the bureaucratic red tape that slows down the processes of change and updation. Response-2 Flexibility and creativity must be clubbed with control and responsibility. Such an ideal situation only exists in textbooks. But what is important is that each of these variables do exist in a minimum certain degrees. Response-3 The informal structure of an organization is a very decisive part. The personnel relations department has to be always alert and innovative to maintain a good atmosphere In this regard. It is the ultimate pool from which accurate feed back on all aspects of the organization can come. Response-4 Good leaders are those who now the dynamics of the informal organizational structure. But as good administrators, they must be aware of the limits within which the informal structure can change and express itself. Response-5 Emergent strategies are more challenging as well. They really need an innovator to take care of them. The planning process based on emerging strategies involves, reining the new changes in to help the advancement of the mission without letting them go wild. Making the changed atmosphere the jumping board for new plans, emerging strategies have the potential to benefit the company more than deliberate strategies. Week-8 Response-1 Incentives and punishments are complementary and should balance each other. Employee development is beneficial to the company when the company has identified new tasks for each potential employee who has made a leap forward. The unutilized potential is hazardous and brews up discontent. Response-2 Managers of color and female managers have to face the major hurdle to prove themselves by action rather than their qualification documents. Continual training process, and efforts to boost the morale of the discriminated persons must go hand in hand from the side of the management. The company can also involve good outside organizations working for racial and gender equality in this process. Response-3 Though the management may be having strategies for empowerment of less privileged sections, there will always be resistance from the orthodox section. Hence, there should be a conscious effort to put trust in the discriminated persons and project them as the cultural ambassadors of the organization. Response-4 Employees should be provided role models within the company so that they try to copy the values from them. Constant flow of information and feed backs are necessary, not only from bottom to top but on the other way as well. Response-5 The responsibility of avoiding discrimination based on gender or racial qualities must be vested with an organizational level committee as well as an employee level committee. The employees should feel that it is their duty, not an enforced thing. The loopholes inside the rules regarding this subject should be remedied based on each singular complaint or observation made in this area. Week-9 Response-1 Quality is a social responsibility as well as a responsibility towards the customer. The certification processes should not stop after the approval part over. The constant monitoring devices should be developed at the certification agency level, customer level and the company level as well Response-2 Risk management is more related to a lapse in any stage of the production process or organizational process. To have effective pre-plans to manage such risks will ensure timely correction. The employees should be given proper knowledge regarding the risks involved in their area of work. The system should be designed in such a way as to make it easy to locate the wrong doer. Response-3 The innovations of middle managers have to be approved by the top level managers primarily and also acceptable to the subordinates in terms of ethics and employee rights. Even in military, can’t the middle managers act innovatively through the informal structure of the organization? Isn’t that how a middle manager’s style of functioning differs from another and one is more looked up with respect than others? Response-4 Theories can be the same, but one implementation plan can succeed while another one based on the same theory can fail. Theories are experiences and logic consolidated and simplified for practical purposes. There is no need of theory if there is not a practical situation at hand. Response-5 To decide, one particular stand is provocative, needs certain subjective frame of reference. For Domino’s, can the blue ocean theory be termed as provocative? Read More