Importance Of Managers In Achieving Organizational Success And Analysis Of Size And Strategy's Effect On Organizational Structure

Task 1: Significance of Managers in Achieving Organizational Success

Briefly explain: manager, management and organisation. Assess the significance of managers in achieving organisational success for a company of your own choice.

Analyse how size and strategy of a company can affect its organisational structure? Support your answer with relevant examples.

Tesco has said it will close 43 unprofitable stores across the UK, The firm is also shelving plans to open a further 49 new "very large" stores. Additionally, Tesco is closing its staff pension scheme, will make cuts of £250m and reduce overheads by 30%.

The organizations have various structures which they follow and structure is very important to achieve results allowing great no. of people to work as teams to handle various projects effectively. Organizational culture is conceptualized as values which are shared in an organization and they help to shape the behavioral methods of employees (Kotter, 1992). The organizational culture follows a strategy where it recognizes the efforts and contributions of the employees of the organization and it provides an understanding of how these results are to be achieved, the various ways in which they can align their objectives to their organizational objectives and how the employees can achieve their objectives. This concept emphasizes that the organizational culture could be a way of maintaining the employees in line and encouraging them to achieve the organizational objectives. All these different activities are performed by various levels of employees in an Organization like Managers and the people from the Management (Adair, J 1988).

Manager – A person or an employee who has control or direction of an institution, a business or a specific division. The Managers also help in keeping a track of all their team members and their performance in order to work towards enhancing the performance of the Organization.

Management – This in itself could be called as a team or a board which is comprised of all the critical employees from an Organizational perspective

Organization – An organization is a functional unit which is formed in order to perform service or any business of some activity. It mainly comprises of people and based on the scale of the business and the no. of employees it can be further classified as a small or a bigger Organization.

Organizational culture is conceptualized as values which are shared in an organization and they help to shape the behavioural methods of employees (Kotter, 1992). We have discussed that an Organizational structure is very important to achieve results allowing great no.of people to work as teams to handle various projects effectively.

Task 2: Analysis of How Size and Strategy of a Company can Affect its Organizational Structure

 The organizational culture follows a strategy where it recognizes the efforts and contributions of the employees of the organization and it provides an understanding of how these results are to be achieved, the various ways in which they can align their objectives to their organizational objectives and how the employees can achieve their objectives. This concept emphasizes that the organizational culture could be a way of maintaining the employees in line and encouraging them to achieve the organizational objectives. All these factors contribute a lot to the organizational success (Adair, J 1988).

 John Adair has developed a simple leadership model which provides a great leadership model to the employees or an organization. Action centred leadership model is also a simple leadership and a management model which is good to adapt in any situation.

The 3 parts of Adair’s Action Centred Leadership Model have 3 main responsibilities like

• Achieving the task
• Managing the teams
• Managing the people

This model has a great advantage which would guide the manager with his responsibilities like responsibilities of a manager to achieve the task and the responsibilities of a manager for the group like

• Identify the activity
• Identify the resources, people, processes, systems, skills and tools
• Create a plan to conduct the task which would include evaluation tools, timelines which are critical for the completion of the projects, strategy and policies which are to be implemented
• Decide on major factors like responsibilities of the team, organizational objectives, accountability and measures of the team
• Planning and Strategizing the standards, quality of work, time and reporting standards which are to be followed
• Monitor and maintain the overall performance plan
• Report on the progress which has been achieved for the group’s objective
• Timely evaluation and review process of the plan and methods which are used to conduct different processes and work on any of the processes if the results are not effective

In all these responsibilities the major factors which are critical for the leadership model are

The Action Centred Leadership Model is a model which has a method of managing and leading and this also includes a strong emphasis on applying the principles by using various methods. This model also promotes various situations which involve 2 people who can influence where 50% of motivation is in an individual and 50% of the motivation is from an external source.

The Organizational structure is a framework which most of the companies use to specify their authority and communication processes which they might follow. This framework generally consists of policies, rules and responsibilities for all the individuals in an Organization and most of the times it is employee specific. There are various organizational structures like horizontal structures, vertical structures and virtual structures which can be structured in different ways. The organizations align their activities in a way where they can structure their organization’s specialization in some specific markets of international markets. This is done by dividing various tasks into various groups. This can be done by adapting and implementing a structure which is a combination of various aspects which are critical for an organization like

• Results of the processes
• The main business processes
• Target groups
• Skills of the employees
• Locations of the business
• Work timings

The organizations have their own form of structures where the employees work in various processes with some responsibilities.  The way in which the work gets cascades and the approaches which are followed depend on factors like the skills, performance of the processes and employees, groups and location of the business (Indevelopment, 2012).

Task 3: Case Study on Tesco's Recent Announcement of Cost-Cutting Measures

 The method of grouping depends on a lot of factors where the grouping should be able to enhance the progress of various processes in the organization. The effectiveness of the organizational structure also depends on the effectiveness of the processes. The structure influences the motivation levels of the employees. 

There are various advantages and disadvantages which the grouping process has like the standardization of the processes.  The operational processes are divided into various sub processes and each sub process requires employees with various skills, various levels of education and other personal characteristics which are of various advantages. The most critical aspect of this process is that all the processes operate independently without each other (Business Balls 2011).

The disadvantage of this process is that all the employees of these processes work independently without any interaction with each other. This might result in a lot of operational differences which might not produce the desired results which could be aligned with the organizational objectives (Todnem, R 2005).

Structuring of the organizations would also depend on the cost which would be involved and the skills of the employees which would enhance the organizational performance.

We could choose an organization which is an international organization of any business like finance or health based organization.

If we consider a health care company into account then there would be the main departments or the processes of the company mainly which are businesses which are outsources from major clients in the world. Such processes have different roles to play where in the health care business, the Organization would have processes like Customer Service, Collections, Billing, Denials, Operations, Audits, Client Services and many others. The major role which these processes would play is interactions with customers be it customers to the company or clients to the company (Higgs, A.C., 1996).  In some of the processes like denials there would be cases where the processes would interact with the 3^rd party agencies like in the case of health care business the processes would interact with insurance companies where they have to deal with denials of claims, billing of the claims, collections and Clients.

 There are departments like Operations which ensure a smooth functioning of the processes by enhancing their skills by organizing and delivering trainings in various fields like health care processes, customer service requests, communication skills and any other skill set required for efficient processing of claims (Todnem, R, 2005). There are departments like portfolio processes which handle any external vendors for organizing any high level strategies with a very little input from the management. Such teams are internally managed by the management in terms of their budgeting, travel, training and any other external vendor management cases (Sjsu 2010).

Examples of Organizational Structure Designs

a) Tesco’s current mission, vision and corporate strategy

Tesco is an Organization which was built around its customers and colleagues. Its vision helps set the direction of the Organization and the direction it takes to implement its business.

Tesco’s vision is

To be the highly valued business by: The customers they serve, the communities in which they operate, their loyal and committed colleagues and their shareholders.

Tesco’s mission statement is

We make what matters better, together

Tesco’s corporate strategy is to devise the functional areas and devise the department based specific strategies to ensure their objectives are achieved. They believe that their vision drives their business by embedding their values throughout their strategic planning process.

b) Tesco should focus more on diversity by setting up newer stores as their decision was already embraced by their stakeholders and customers. If we consider the example of a consumer brand industry they are significant with their presence in various locations and they are getting more effective in their presence with their marketing initiatives(Robert, M, 2012). Diversity is simply viewed as a multi - cultural aspect where the business is done in multiple locations. Diversity is all about embracing different types of people along with various cultures they come from and it is about supporting different types of people who are believed to be known for various ideas and thinking. Diversity is to have spread into various business organizations however the different ways in which the management implements their business matters the most (Renee, D, 2013).

 c) Organizational Culture is way different from the World’s culture, histories, languages and beliefs where they have their own source of identity. Cultures in the world have been changing drastically in different countries and different cultures could be different in terms of their behaviors, culture, language and other differences. The same can be applicable to an Organizational culture as Tesco as well because an Organization is not different from a society or a community. A society or a community are comprised of different people from various backgrounds and cultural beliefs where as an Organization is also the same but it comprises of smaller groups of people than the community or a society as a whole (Balzer, W, 2012).

Conclusion

All the organizations work towards achieving their objectives by implementing strategies and policies which they might have implemented during their inception to achieve the organizational objectives and to motivate their employees by enhancing their skills to change the organization in a way where it works in an effective way.

References

Business Balls, Inc; Change Management, viewed on April 14^th 2015 https://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm

Balzer, W, 2012, Organizational Diagnosis: An Evidence Based Appraoch, Pgs 223 – 246.

Change Management, Inc; Definition of change management, Viewed on April 14^th 2015

https://www.change-management.com/tutorial-defining-change-management.htm

Indevelopment, Inc; Organization Structure, Viewed on April 14^th 2015

https://www.indevelopment.nl/PDFfiles/organisationStructure.pdf

Public Navy, Inc;  Theory of Constraints Project Management, Viewed on April 14^th 2015

https://www.public.navy.mil/airfor/nae/AIRSpeed%20Documents/TOC%20and%20Project%20Management.pdf

Sjsu, Inc; Managerial role, Viewed on April 14^th 2015

https://www.sjsu.edu/people/phyllis.connolly/courses/c17/s1/kane_umanageroleorgcul20060177.pdf

T&F Online, 2013, Journal of Change Management, Routledge, Vol 13, Issue 2.

Riley, R 2000,  Managing Change: An Overview, Riley Associates, Pgs 116 - 224.

Todnem, R, 2005, Organizational Change Management: A Critical Overview, Journal of Change Management, Routledge, Vol 5, Pgs 369 – 380.

Kotler, P, 1999, Strategies of Network Economy, Journal of Marketing, Pgs 146 – 163.

Welsh M Jordan, 2011,  ‘Cultural diversity and Ethnic Minority’. ‘Social Psychological aspects’. Pgs 84 - 164

Robert, M, 2012,  ‘Cultural Minority and Ethnic Minority Psychology’. ‘Relationships with Natural Mentors’. Pgs 76 - 85

Wiley, J.W., 2000, The high-performance organizational climate: How workers describe top performing units. The Handbook of Organizational Culture & Climate (pp.177-191). Sage Publications

Higgs, A.C., 1996, Organizational Surveys: Tools for Assessment and Research. In A.I.

Kraut (Ed.), Organizational Surveys (pp.19-40). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass