Essay: Ambidexterity In Management And Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Performance Evaluation.

You will be presented with a ‘Hot Topic’ of contemporary relevance to leading and managing organisational resources of the Block.   This will be either related to a live project in a contemporary organisation or to a topical issue in the news.

1. You are required to critically analyse the “hot topic” in theory or practice from the perspective of leadership, operations, information systems and finance, as relevant to the topic.
2. Your analysis must be informed and supported by quality academic sources from influential contributors in these areas.

Ambidexterity in Management

Ambidexterity in management is when a person uses both the right and the left hands in operations. In a company, ambidexterity is when the company cannot forfeit innovation in order to have something else. Innovation leads to productivity and the reason why we have good leadership in a company.  When hyper convergent solutions only began to be actively introduced, the main motive of companies choosing this model of building infrastructure was the desire to consolidate resources while saving and simplicity of solutions. By virtualizing the infrastructure, they first of all hoped to increase operational efficiency, as well as to make the infrastructure more homogeneous, while not going beyond the budget (Arena, Cross, Sims, and Uhl-Bien, 2017).

In the case when a large range of products is produced, the labor method of measuring labor productivity is applied. The scope of work and production is determined in the labor dimension - in normal hours and man hours.

For example, As is often the case with young technologies, most companies for a long time did not venture to bring Tier I-level business-critical applications to hyper-convergent computing environments, leaving them to work on the basis of traditional servers. Most often, the hyper-convergent infrastructure became a field for experimentation, as well as a place to deploy low-priority applications, such as virtual desktops (Ghazzawi, El Shoughari, and El Osta, 2017).But gradually the situation changes. The experience that companies have already gained allows us to change the formulation of the question regarding the hyper-convergent infrastructure from “Can it support the company's requirements?” To “How well can it support them?”. Most of these requirements are somehow related to performance.

Traditionally, the criteria for evaluating the performance of a computing infrastructure are the speed of data processing and the capacity of the channels. The millions of I / O operations per second (IOPS - input / output per second) and high throughput almost guarantee the choice of companies in favor of a solution that can demonstrate such results (Kele?, and Kele?, 2018). Ambidexterity in today's IT market, when the number of hyper-converged infrastructure use scenarios is growing, various performance testing methodologies are needed that will allow us to evaluate not only the storage system used. To adequately evaluate the hyper-converged infrastructure, it is necessary to emulate workflows to test the operation of the computational part and memory together. In fact, it is necessary to find the answer to three key questions:

1. How quickly can the company's applications run on this infrastructure?
2. What happens if the number of applications and the infrastructure itself grows?
3. How will applications behave in the event of a failure?

Speed ??is an aspect of performance that shows how quickly the system copes with workloads. The speed estimate can be divided into theoretical and real (Lane, 2016).Theoretical performance testing is conducted to determine how the system handles potential workloads and where bottlenecks may occur. Usually, one resource is taken for this and the maximum of its capabilities is evaluated, and for this reason, testing can be carried out using public and well-recommended tools, whose methodology is documented (Martinsen, and Amundsen, 2016).

A semi-natural method of measuring labor productivity is also used. This method expands the scope of using the natural method of measuring labor productivity. In this case, various types of products within a certain set of them are equated to a conditionally natural meter by a certain parameter, in particular, by normalized labor input (McCleskey, 2014). Different varieties of products are converted to a certain conditional grade. For example, gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel, fuel oil - for conditional fuel. Or various types of agricultural products are converted to protein content.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Performance Evaluation

Practical performance can be tested on the basis of an emulator of a real working environment using real-world applications. For hyper convergent productivity, such testing is very important, because it uses various resources together, and their performance separately does not reflect the possibility of sharing them. At the same time, the results of evaluating theoretical performance can be used to predict the outcome of practical tests.

The problem with practical tests is only that they require much more time and effort to prepare all the necessary applications, data and environment for testing. In such tests, IOPS, throughput and response time also remain basic indicators, but specific metrics provide much more insight into the potential of the hyper-convergent infrastructure (Nauman, and Qamar, 2018). In general, for a hyper-converged infrastructure, an assessment of the performance of individual resources is only a necessary first step. Practical testing makes it possible to cluster various computational and storage resources into clusters in order to understand how they will interact. It can be described as an understanding of business strategy and its execution. Therefore, this includes how the organization presents itself to customers and how it treats its employees and is responsible for the consequences of evaluating how differently employees perceive success (Northouse, 2018). Nevertheless, as the authors note, interest is more than a two-way process. And they define it as follows: “The employee’s positive attitude towards the organization and its values. An interested employee knows the business and works with colleagues to increase productivity in the workplace for the benefit of the organization.

 The organization should work to develop and nurture interest, which requires bilateral relations between the employee and the employer. ” In their studies, analyzing the employees of the public health service, the authors found a relationship between the level of interest and some other factors, such as age and length of service. Usually those who were older or worked longer in the organization were less interested, with the exception of those who were over 60 years old, who were more interested than anyone else (Parker, Holesgrove, and Pathak, 2015). An accident, injury at work or experienced harassment (especially if the source of harassment was the manager) also have a negative effect on interest. Conversely, those who had a personal development plan and received an official assessment of the performance over the past year have a higher level of interest than those who have not received it. In general, those who occupy managerial or professional positions are more passionate than support staff. The latter is due to what is called the leading interest. In addition, the main thing was that managers were guided by example. The study also analyzed the relationship between employment in companies and its effect on financial performance.

Increasing labor productivity is essential as a factor in increasing output, reducing costs and increasing the mass and rate of profit, ensuring the well-being of workers, increasing the competitiveness of an organization, and at the macro level - as a determining factor in economic growth and raising living standards.

Theoretical Performance Testing

For example, Determine the monthly production of one worker in a team of 3-person moulders and the percentage of compliance with the standards, if within one month the team produced 659.3 cubic meters of hollow-core slabs. A brigade of 4 people produced 20 products A with a labor intensity of 8 standard-h and 16 products with a labor-intensiveness of 12 standard-h. Determine the conditional-natural volume of production and the actual production of one worker.

In the case when a large range of products is produced, the labor method of measuring labor productivity is applied. The scope of work and production is determined in the labor dimension - in normal hours and man hours.

Productivity is the most common criterion for a country, industry, or enterprise to use its resources (or production factors) efficiently. In the broadest sense, it is determined by the following relationship:

Total output

Performance =

Total input

To improve the performance of the company, it is necessary to strive for the greatest increase in this ratio.Performance is a relative measure. In other words, in order for it to have any meaning, this indicator should be compared with any other. So, for example, what will one tell you about the fact that the productivity of your restaurant for the last week was 8.4 visitors per working hour? Almost nothing!

There are two ways to compare performance (Rehman, Rahman, Zahid, and Asif, 2018). First, a company can compare itself with similar firms operating in the same industry or service sector, or use data from its industry after they are published (for example, compare the performance of different stores operating in the same system).

Secondly, you can determine the performance of their performance over a long time. In this case, the data for the same company are compared for different periods.As can be seen from the, productivity can be expressed in the form of private, multivariate indicators and a general indicator.

If the ratio of the "output" and any individual resource at the "input" is determined, we get a private measure of performance. If we want to find out how the "output" and a certain group of resources at the "input" (but not all) are related, we get a multi-factor productivity indicator; when determining the ratio of the total "output" to the sum of "inputs", an overall performance indicator is obtained, which can be used to describe the performance of the organization as a whole or even the entire state.

A strategic map, offered a “strategic map” that, in general terms, reflects her theory of the strategic orientation of production. This theory fits well into our discussion of competitive priorities, as well as issues related to adding value and evaluative criteria for companies' performance (Solaja, Idowu,. and James, 2016).

You see this map showing the production strategy in historical development and taking into account future changes.

Professor Roth states that there were several major strategic epochs (they are shown on the map by vertical bars). These epochs represent strategic periods of time in which the vision of top management personnel of what competitive opportunities their companies need for successful competition radically changed.

Practical Performance Testing

Throughout the book, the authors use such technical terms of the black box as input and output. In some cases, , these terms do not require explanation, since we are talking about any movement, such as the movement of a material flow. However, when considering performance indicators, it would be more correct to use the term instead of "input"

We hope that this chapter clearly describes how important and close the connection of operations with other functional areas of the company, in particular with marketing. The concepts of "order winners" and "order qualifiers", priorities and opportunities apply to virtually any decisions in the field of marketing, finance or personnel management (Singh, 2015). Performance indicators are extremely useful in determining and comparing the effectiveness of a company's progress. All these concepts and terms are extremely important, they constituted the modern language of the operational strategy, and, therefore, they organically fit into the general terminology of business.

The data in this table displays the quantitative indicators of "input" and "output" associated with the production of a particular product. Please note that to get private and multifactor productivity indicators, the total output of the production is not necessarily used as the numerator. Often, the goal is to identify indicators that would reflect performance in relation to a particular “exit”. For example, the production manager may be interested in the total volume of units produced by his company, and the technical director - the total volume of production. Such a process of aggregation and disaggregation of performance indicators provides an analysis of the company's activity at any level of management at which the achievement of various goals is assessed (Singh, 2015).

The measurement of labor productivity is an expression of the level of labor productivity (PT) through accepted measures of output or services. The natural method of measuring labor productivity is used in determining production at individual workplaces, in teams and in areas producing homogeneous products. Productivity in this case is determined in natural units: pieces, tons, square meters, cubic meters, liters, etc.

However, it is often easier for managers to understand how efficiently their enterprise works, if for this purpose it is used not any monetary expression, but any other units. In such cases, you can use only private performance indicators, since it is impossible to combine such different units of measurement as, for example, the number of working hours spent on the production of a particular product and the weight of materials. Examples of the most typical private performance indicators are presented. Such indicators provide managers with information expressed in understandable and familiar to them units, making them easier to compare with the actual results of the company.

How to recruit with the above in mind so that high-quality individuals are attracted to the organisation and buy into the culture

The conclusion was that companies with employment levels above the average in their industrial sector exceeded their “allies” by an average of 17% in terms of operating margin. Nevertheless, the report did not dare to assess the direct relationship between interest and profitability, given the very large number of parameters involved. In all likelihood, interest varies depending on various factors in different organizations. Therefore, given the importance of evaluation in this area, it is extremely important that any attempts to assess and observe the interest be made on a customized basis, taking into account the specifics of the organization (Tamkin, and Luanaigh, 2016). The relationship between employee performance, customer satisfaction and, on the other hand, shareholder earnings became known as employee-client benefit chains. The report was followed by an important twist in the company's fate after a period of decline.

Labor productivity is an indicator characterizing the return of each unit of labor resource used. This return can be defined as the productivity of work and as a cost-effectiveness associated with attracting and using a labor resource (Yan, 2018).

Conclusion

Labor productivity is an indicator of the economic efficiency of the labor activity of workers. It is determined by the ratio of the amount of output of products or services to the cost of labor, i.e. the production per unit of labor costs, or the amount of time spent per unit of production, i.e. labor intensiveness

References

Arena, M., Cross, R., Sims, J. and Uhl-Bien, M., 2017. How to catalyze innovation in your organization. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(4), pp.38-48.

Ghazzawi, K., El Shoughari, R. and El Osta, B., 2017. Situational Leadership and Its Effectiveness in Rising Employee Productivity: A Study on North Lebanon Organization. Human Resource Management Research, 7(3), pp.102-110.

Kele?, A.E. and Kele?, M.K., 2018. Determination and Classification of Crew Productivity with Data Mining Methods. In Data Mining. IntechOpen.

Lane, D.A., 2016. Innovation cascades: artefacts, organization and attributions. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 371(1690), p.20150194.

Martinsen, Ø.L. and Amundsen, S., 2016. ‘Empowering leadership’improves firm productivity. LSE Business Review.

McCleskey, J.A., 2014. Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), p.117.

Nauman, R. and Qamar, A., 2018. The Impact Of Ethical Leadership On Employee Productivity. Journal of Management and Human Resource (JMHR), 1, pp.66-84.

Northouse, P.G., 2018. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Parker, D.W., Holesgrove, M. and Pathak, R., 2015. Improving productivity with self-organised teams and agile leadership. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 64(1), pp.112-128.

Rehman, S., Rahman, H.U., Zahid, M. and Asif, M., 2018. Leadership Styles, Organizational Culture and Employees’ Productivity: Fresh Evidence from Private Banks of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Abasyn University Journal of Social Sciences.

Solaja, M.O., Idowu, E.F. and James, E.A., 2016. Exploring the relationship between leadership communication style, personality trait and organizational productivity. Serbian Journal of Management, 11(1), pp.99-117.

Singh, K., 2015. Leadership Style and Employee Productivity: A Case Study of Indian Banking Organizations. Journal of Knowledge Globalization, 8(2).

Tamkin, P. and Luanaigh, A.N., 2016. The Relationship between UK Management and Leadership and productivity.

Yan, B., 2018. Modeling the Effects of Innovative Leadership on Productivity and Profitability.