Examining Management Theories In Business Practice And Solving Employee Management Problems In A Resort, An Essay.

This assignment will allow you to apply the concepts and skills covered in this subject. Its purpose is to draw on the concepts and models used in this course to:

a) analyse a particular situation and the management process involved in it

b) reflect on management theories to determine if and how they are still relevant to organisations today.

Choose a specific incident from your life where you have used the four primary management functions of Planning, Organising, eadership and Controlling.

Analyse the incident and describe the main areas where you used each of these 4 management functions. Reflect on how effective your management of this task/incident was and which areas you would change if you had the opportunity to manage the same thing again and why.

Solving Employee Management Problems in a Resort

This incident is related to the employee management problem where I was designated as general manager in a resort located in the West Indies. The organization was suffering from management failure where the expatriate employees were constantly resigning as they were failing to manage their local staff. The attitudes and understanding of these local staffs were far from expectations of the guests. Most of them had language issue and needed physical demonstration for making them understand the desired action. Moreover, there was a prohibition of reducing local employees according to the regional regulation which completed the organization to keep the inefficient staff in the resort. Despite there were various sports and sites to be enjoyed but the local staffs were inattentive as they had guaranteed job. They were not even interested in learning the customer management through which they could replace the expatriates also. There was a problem in higher authorities too as the owner of board members indulged in a very short visit to investigate these matters. Beside all these, there was a tough competition because all the resort presented in that place had similar kind of advantages and drawbacks. For this reason, the resort’s service was gradually deteriorating and customer complaints were fast increasing.

In solving this issue, I needed to set missions and objectives to work accordingly. Firstly, I planned to provide training to the local staffs who had different language and attitudes that chiefly created problem for the expatriate staffs as well as the guests. Next I planned to introduce a set of fresh sports for guest attraction which would obviously increase the competitive advantage. I planned to employ the local staff in the outer sports and sightseeing because they had advantage of being local and the resort would be benefitted with their knowledge of the region.

Organizing involves establishing a planned structure of roles for people to fill in an organization. After planning new initiatives, I decided to form groups of these regional staff so that their efforts could be triggered through proper training. Despite they had undergone a short learning process but that did not affect actually. It included recruiting new candidates, selecting them, placing in proper position, promoting, compensating and developing both new joiners and current jobholders to accomplish their tasks efficiently.

As mentioned before that the higher authority visited the resort very often, so I led in these training because I understood that these staffs lacked motivation. I became well informed with the local traditions and attitudes, desires and demands of the local employees so that I could effectively motivate them. On the other hand, I motivated the expatriate staff to mingle with local people so that the cultural barrier disappears gradually.

Introduction of New Initiatives to Improve Staff Performance and Customer Satisfaction

Controlling is measuring performance against goals and plans. In bringing these changes, I needed to measure the budget for expenses. Introducing new employees and sports, providing trainings had a considerable amount of expense that the organization had to bear. If I had opportunity to manage the whole thing again I would certainly take measures to reduce the communication gap between the high officials and the employees by increasing their visit. This would motivate the employees more and they would get fresh impetus by understanding what the organization want from them.

Scientific theory of management analyses as well as synthesizes workflows. This theory aims to improve economic efficiency depending on labour productivity. This theory is also known as Taylorism as Fredrick Taylor applied his ideas to transformation of manual labour to mechanisation and automation (Jopp et al. 2014). This theory centres round the systematic study of the employees, their behaviour as well as tasks. The base of Taylor’s theory is that it follows the method of breaking the work process into some sub-tasks even least possible components (Trujillo 2014). This method is applied in order to regulate the complete task in most efficient way.

This approach enhances production, enables the management to control the employees effectively, decreases inaccuracy in the task. It helps the authority to monitor the relation between labour units and their payment system to prevail a good working system (Huarng and Ribeiro-Soriano 2014). However, this approach is overly bureaucratic which is not suitable for teams.

This theory has developed two sets of assumptions regarding human behaviour where theory X is about the negative assumptions and theory Y describes positive assumptions about human behaviour. In order to devise motivational technologies, these alternative assumptions are needed to be realised by the managers.

This set of motivational theory is a very good guide to the management that not only helps to develop motivational techniques but to attune entire managerial systems around assumptions of human behaviour (Igbaekemen 2014). These behavioural assumptions are realistic as practice finds people corresponding to these type of behaviours. However, the critics state that these are two extreme sets about human behaviour but the human behaviour can be variable at times.

During early 20^th century, Taylor had developed the scientific theory that led the business practices to grow exponentially. This theory shaped the methods of mass production as well as structural organization. This was the time when Henry Ford was developing his automobile company and he applied this theory in his organization to fulfil his ambitious production effort thus reduced production cost (Wambugu 2014). The scientific management theory was originated from the concept that the individual employees would increase their productivity when they are assigned works which properly suit to their personal abilities as well as strengths. In this theory, Taylor also argued that elimination of the pointless physical movement ultimately increases productivity. According to the researchers, the automobile company Ford produced cars naming alphabetically in which Model T become most successful. It was popular among the consumers that was sold over 10,000 units.

Examining the Scientific Theory of Management and Its Relevance in Modern Organizations

During this time the owner hired Taylor in order to observe the workers as well as determine some time saving and most efficient methods for enhancing the productivity. At first he evaluated all the individual parts needed for building automobile from every smallest to largest elements. Ford incorporated all findings in the assembly stage which sped up the company’s production process expressively (Corporate.ford.com, 2018). In order to reduce the building time of the cars, Ford had his labourers to remain stationary within an assembly line because the frames of the cars were moved through separate workstations. Still today, both Fordism share common themes with the Scientific Management.

Ford follows the theory that encourages to find the fastest method so that work can be accomplished and impose firm guidelines upon the employees as well as their work descriptions. This theory implies that the contemporary organisations along with their managers must consider the ideas of labours to avoid disunion. Managers in Ford today see their workers as multi-skilled as well as more involved with the procedure of production through teamwork. This theory has helped Ford’s management to reintegrate the manual and intellectual labour along with the empowerment of production workers. The company has moved towards building more flexible workplace with incorporating new technologies to avoid strict guidelines forced upon labours (Wang et al. 2016). The management of Ford is encouraging to learn scientific areas of workplace which has assisted other companies to follow them.

Starbucks started its journey in 1971 at Seattle since when it became popular coffee shop and running business in all over the world. The company is successful not only because of its quality of products but also for the quality of service provided by the well trained staff (Li et al. 2014). Starbucks recognises the importance of staff motivation because it is one of the essential factor that can help the organization to achieve its objectives. According to McGregor, the management implication for the Theory X employees aims to achieve the organisational objectives and rewards of various kinds are found to be most prevalent motivator (Gürbüz, ?ahin and Köksal 2014). The challenge to manage the Theory Y employees is to build a healthy working culture or environment where they can prove and advance their creativity.

The theory stresses on the motivation of the employees where the companies create room for the workers so that they can invest themselves and get rewarded with their share of benefits. For most of the people salary can be a good option for motivating the employees but it is a psychological factor that only Starbucks realised (Lawter, Kopelman and Prottas 2015). This company is completely depended upon their workforce and their happiness is mandatory for customer satisfaction. Happy staffs help the organization to create more loyal customers. These motivated staffs obey their managers and work accordingly to increase profits for their company. The managers in this company are well informed about skills and capabilities of their employees so that they can organize, motivate, measure results, review and plan daily targets (O’Toole and Meier 2014). Through these staffs Starbucks gets information about the customer requirements as well as popular trends. For making the staffs satisfied, the company takes help from interior designing so that it can create a relaxing environment for the customers as well as employees (Starbucks.com, 2018).

The organization also provides scope for other rewards like partner discount, free products, voluntary benefits, competitive salary and pension scheme. Starbucks realizes to build a relation of trust and respect with its staff. It values its employees by recognising their success, providing them goals as well as interesting atmosphere for working thus increased employee motivation.

Reference:

Corporate.ford.com 2018. Home. [online] Ford Corporate. Available at: https://corporate.ford.com/homepage.html [Accessed 1 Jan. 2018].

Gürbüz, S., ?ahin, F. and Köksal, O., 2014. Revisiting of Theory X and Y: A multilevel analysis of the effects of leaders’ managerial assumptions on followers’ attitudes. Management Decision, 52(10), pp.1888-1906.

Huarng, K.H. and Ribeiro-Soriano, D.E., 2014. Developmental management: Theories, methods, and applications in entrepreneurship, innovation, and sensemaking. Journal of Business Research, 67(5), pp.657-662.

Igbaekemen, G.O., 2014. Impact of leadership style on organisation performance: A strategic literature review. Public Policy and Administrafion Research, 4(9), pp.126-135.

Jopp, D.S., Wozniak, D., Damarin, A.K., De Feo, M., Jung, S. and Jeswani, S., 2014. How could lay perspectives on successful aging complement scientific theory? Findings from a US and a German life-span sample. The Gerontologist, 55(1), pp.91-106.

Lawter, L., Kopelman, R.E. and Prottas, D.J., 2015. McGregor's theory X/Y and job performance: A multilevel, multi-source analysis. Journal of Managerial Issues, 27(1-4), p.84.

Li, W.D., Fay, D., Frese, M., Harms, P.D. and Gao, X.Y., 2014. Reciprocal relationship between proactive personality and work characteristics: A latent change score approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(5), p.948.

O’Toole Jr, L.J. and Meier, K.J., 2014. Public management, context, and performance: In quest of a more general theory. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 25(1), pp.237-256.

Starbucks.com. 2018. Starbucks Company Profile. Starbucks Coffee Company. Retrieved 30 December 2017, from https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/starbucks-company-profile

Trujillo, T., 2014. The modern cult of efficiency: Intermediary organizations and the new scientific management. Educational Policy, 28(2), pp.207-232.

Wambugu, L.W., 2014. Effects of Organizational Culture on Employee Performance (Case Study of Wartsila–kipevu Ii Power Plant). European Journal of Business and Management, 6(32).

Wang, X.Y., Hattaf, K., Huo, H.F. and Xiang, H., 2016. Stability analysis of a delayed social epidemics model with general contact rate and its optimal control. Journal of Industrial & Management Optimization, 12(4), pp.1267-1285.