Task 1
Management is basically the act of controlling, planning, directing, organizing and leading the activities or operations of a business with an aim of achieving the objectives or goals set. Robert and Leidner says that it is the role of an organizational manager to do all of the above things. In that case, for management to be successful, effective and efficient, every manager must have some objectives or goals and strategies to implement. In addition to that, the organizational management team should be able to make sound and right decisions to be able to be effective as well as beneficial. They have to understand and follow the organizational structure that is in place and utilize all the resources available with an aim of achieving the organizational needs. Charles, Jones and Schilling argues that through the help of the organizational structure, the managers will be in a position to schedule and allocate the business activities and operation on the right direction. Therefore, it is important for every business organization to have a functional and effective management team to help it in its operations. In addition to that, it will be easier for the business to improve and increase its performance through the help of a management team.
Types Of Organizational Structures
Organizational structure refer to the hierarchical responsibility of allocating, coordinating and dividing duties and roles to the employees in a business with an aim of achieving certain objectives. There are three main organizational structure used by business to run their operations. They are:
Functional Structure
In this structure, the organizational departments are grouped according to their purposes whereby the sections will entirely be depending on the knowledge, skills and expertise of its immediate employees. Slack Nigel states indicates some of the functions that may be included in this structure, including: human resource management, marketing, procurement, accounting, production to name a few. This kind of structure is mostly used by small business organizations with few sections to run.
Advantages
- There is increased co-ordinations of the business operations. This is possible because every department focuses on its operations alone.
- There is increased specialization of responsibilities simply because every department is run by employees who are experienced and skilled in that exact area.
- It encourages and fulfills production efficiency in the organization. This is in relation to production of more products or services at low cost simply because of the specialization aspect of the organization.
Disadvantages
- It encourages lack of cooperation in the business. The departments may not be in a position to communicate well. In most organizations, there are boundaries set for the departments to work separately and this compromises with the communication process in the organization.
Divisional Structure
Mostly used by large organizations having smaller branches called divisions which are in charge of producing different products and dealing with different markets. However, these divisions are capable of carrying out production process to produce a product of their own.
Advantage
- Specific consumer needs are often met. This is possible because the business will be able to concentrate more on their product and market only.
Disadvantage
- Communication between employees is inhibited because they are not working together and therefore cannot share information.
- It is expensive to implement and manage because of its size and scope. Large organizations are generally difficult to manage, so when they add more branches and offices in different regions, it becomes even harder.
Matrix Structure
Basically, it originates from a combination of both divisional and functional structures. It groups the employees according to their functions and products simultaneously. This means that, the employee with a certain specific function will be producing or dealing with a certain type of product. It is mostly used by multinational organizations.
Advantages
- The employees are able to communicate and share information easily and with no restrictions.
- It encourages specialization of responsibility especially when an employee is always working at a specific sector of the organization.
Disadvantages
- Can create power or authority challenges especially from the managers and in departments with dual management. The employees may be confused about who is in command at one point or the other.
Contemporary management is basically the use of new management techniques to run a business. However, it specifies the management process by stating that the techniques should be modern, effective, efficient and directly related to the organization’s operational status. This means that the manager should be ready to use modern technology to make organizational decisions with an aim of addressing the business issues as they arise. Vandeveer and Menefee says that contemporary management involves the correction of past issues, dealing with the current issues and anticipating for certain future issues of the business operations. This is actually management that deal with current business status or context. Currently, many business are making great use of this type of management system to improve themselves. Most of them are able easily get solutions to certain challenges that the business may be facing which is pretty effective and efficient for the system.
Task 2
For instance, in the United Kingdom (UK), the private business sector is doing well but effort should still be put to encourage more growth. However, the capital venture sectors must be improved in order to cause more growth and development in the country. This is certainly a scenario in which contemporary management is needed and should be implemented. Therefore, business managers should be able to utilize the contemporary management to make sure that their business are thriving when it comes to the capital market. The ventures may be risky to invest in but the benefits that accrue to such investments are always very high and valuable. Nevertheless, business managers should be able to deal with any of their business situations one at a time. Therefore, the key thing to note is that, they need to run the organizations using modern knowledge and do away with what was done in the past.
Leadership Theories
Leadership theories have been researched and studied by a number of researchers in the past. However. It has been often agreed that leadership is not really a character but has to be learned. Therefore, the following is a discussion of two types of theories:
Contingency Theory
This theory argues that there is no leadership techniques that is always right, instead, the degree of success of the leadership will depend on certain situations. This means that the best leadership style will be entirely determined by the circumstance of the situation. This means that there are leaders who may not be successful in a certain situation but will be in a different situation. Therefore, every situation calls for a different kind of leadership style.
Trait Theory
It argues that for a person to be a leader, they must have certain special character or traits. It says that a person can be identified as a leader if they are either born or made to have certain qualities like: good decision making skills, empathy, integrity, open-ness to experience to name a few, which help them excel. However, there are cases when such traits cannot really guarantee a leader’s success.
Strategic Management
This involves the identification, formulation and implementation of business strategies through the use of available organizational resources with an aim of achieving business objectives, increasing the competitive advantage of the organization as well as improve business performance. Richard, Ethiraj, Gambardella, Helfat, and Mitchell argues that Strategic management precisely involves the setting of business objectives or goals, analyzing the external as well as the internal environment of the business, analyzing the state of the business’s competitive advantage, analyzing the performance level of the business and evaluating the current management strategies to ensure that they are working in accordance to organizational aims. Strategic management is generally used to evaluate the position of an organization in relation to its competitors. A business is said to be having a competitive advantage when its profitability rates or level are generally higher than those of its competitors.
Strategic management is the responsibility of the organizational manager(s). Therefore, this means that they are the people to make the decision of choosing the strategy to be used by the organization for success purposes. Sendil, Gambardella and Helfat argues that the managers must ensure that they have as much knowledge as possible about their business competitors, about the surrounding environment and the current internal environment of the business. In that case, the managers should make use of the different strategies that can be used to analyze all the aspects of the business mentioned above. This may include: the use of SWOT analysis tool which evaluates the strengths, weaknesses. Opportunities and threats of the business. They should make sure that they make use of the strengths and opportunities available and minimize the threats and weaknesses that may arise. Also, they can use the PESTEL analysis tool especially for the analysis of the external business environment. This tool will be able to give them information on the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and the legal aspects of the external environment.
Task 3
Therefore, strategic management is a way in which strategies set help the business managers make decisions which they focus on achieving as well. It basically help and organization set its future direction and also helps a business to know whether they are going towards the right direction or not.
Start-up Business and Strategies to Use in the Business
A fruit parlor is the business of my choice and the following are the types of business objectives that will help me rum the business:
Increase of market share objective
Every business needs to grow and develop with time in its market. However, it has to find ways in which it can increase its competitive advantage by increasing its market share. Therefore, it has to go back to the overall strategic market plan and identify specific ways in which it can improve its market. As for my business, I will look up for ways to provide product offering, how to effectively price my product, how to promote the product, ways of better product placement in the market and doing more research on the product market by specifying the target markets. Through all of the above techniques, it is possible to not only attract more customers but I will also be able to maintain them and have their loyalty.
Increase in efficiency objective
It is normal for every business to desire to improve its efficiency in productivity. This simply means that every business would want to use less costs in producing their product but getting more profits by selling them. Therefore, as for business, I will make sure that the cost of producing the fruits is decreasing with time but still maintain the quality and amount of production. This will definitely increase the business efficiency.
Effective usage of physical resources objective
Apparently, every product or service is produced from either a machine/machine or a plant. However, it is important for a business to have the best resources available for the production of good quality product. Therefore, for the sake of my fruit parlor, I will make sure that the plants are healthy, well cared for and mature enough to produce the fruits. I will ensure that the plant is certainly able to produce the best fruit quality in the market.
Conclusion
Management in every organization is very vital for it to be successful. Organizational management is basically a major integral part of every business’s success objectives and goals. However, the organizational structure of a business can affect it performance in difference ways. This is simply because it can entirely affect the business management structure as well as the business operations. Therefore, for all these two to perform their organizational responsibilities, they have to follow an effective and efficient strategic management structure. This is simply where they all work together as one (the management team and the employees) to come up with the best strategies to use in their business operations. However, the overall decision is to be made by the management team who should consider the views and opinions raised even by the employees. Therefore, every business’s success is entirely determined by the organizational management team.
References
Drafke M and Murtaugh J, ‘The Human Side of Organizations’, 10th ed., prentice Hall (2009).
Mullins L. J. and Christy G, ‘Management & Organizational Behavior’, 10th ed., prentice Hall (2013).
Robbins S. P. and Judge T. A, ‘Essentials of Organizational Behavior’, 12th ed., prentice Hall (2014).
Vandeveer R and Menefee M, ‘Human Behavior in Organizations’, 4th ed., Prentice Hall (2010).
Ethiraj K Sendil, Alfonso Gambardella and Constance E. Helfat, ‘Reviews of strategic management research,’ Strategic Management Journal, 38, no. 1 (2017): 3-3.
Bettis A Richard, Sendil Ethiraj, Alfonso Gambardella, Constance Helfat, and Will Mitchell, ‘Creating repeatable cumulative knowledge in strategic management’, Strategic Management Journal 37, no. 2 (2016): 257-261.
Galliers D Robert and Dorothy E Leidner, “Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems’, Routledge, (2014).
Slack Nigel. Operations strategy, (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015)
Hill WL Charles, Gareth R Jones and Melissa A Schilling, ‘Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach’, (Cengage Learning, 2014).
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