Principles Of Management And Organisational Structure In A London-based Cleaning Business

Learning outcomes assessed:

Identify the principles of management and organisational structure in relation to size and purpose.

Explain the nature of management culture and how this may vary from one company to another as well as the impact it has on corporate success.

• Identify the relationship between business planning and operations and  the problems of ensuring consistency.

• Illustrate the importance of effective communication between managers with different responsibilities.

Management Principles and Functions

Management is the administration and the coordination of the actions of a business in order of “achieve defined objectives” of business. It is also incorporated as a factor of production all along with machines, materials and money (Drucker 2012).

 Effective management is achieved when the managers or the leaders in authoritative positions achieve the most out of the people who are working under them. In order to be effective, the mangers need to do two things extremely well, namely achieving their targets and making the best possible utilization of all the resources available.  Management has a vital role to play in such activities.

Efficient management comprises of ensuring that the individuals are able to fulfil the tasks ad requirements in the least amount of time and the least amount of resources possible by the use of specific time-saving strategies (Williams 2015).

A manager is basically an individual who is in charge of a certain group of function and tasks in a certain subsection of an organisation.

Studies conducted till the present times in relation to the well known as well as lesser famous organisations reveal several categories of managers. These comprise the “predicament solving manager, the pitchfork manager, the pontificating manager, the presumptuous manager, the perfect manager, the passive manager and finally the proactive manager”.

The company which is being discussed in this particular study is a London based business in the cleaning industry. It is basically a family run business and operates under the name “Cleaning Linen”. It was established in the year 2008 and recently completed 10 long years of its service. It started from a meagre number of 5employees and at present it boasts of approximately 200 employees.

The four functions of management approach include those of planning, organising, leading and controlling. Planning the day to day activities specifically in case of a cleaning business is extremely important. It is ideal therefore to keep a chart with all the aspects of the work that need to be completed in a day based on records of the past 10 years. Ideally it helps if one client is matched with one cleaning team (Conkright 2015).

Organising the daily cleaning activities is also important to ensure that all the orders are given and reach their respective customers on time.  Leading the teams from the front is crucial. In case of the cleaning business the leaders can motivate their teams by keeping performance appraisals and rewards for best services. Controlling the daily activities by keeping a tab on the progress on the orders of each of the clients is desirable (Conkright 2015).

Organisational Structure in Cleaning Linen

The team members of the company can be motivated in case the leaders are more like friends and always lead a hearing ear to the needs of the employees.

“Organisational structure” is typically the “hierarchical arrangement” of the lines of authority, rights and the responsibilities of an organisation.  The structure of an organisation ensures how the roles, power as well as the responsibilities are assigned, controlled and coordinated.  There are different existent organisational structures namely “pre-bureaucratic, bureaucratic, post-bureaucratic, functional, divisional, matrix structure, organisational circle and team structure”. Each organisational structure has several benefits as well as drawbacks which need to be understood with reference to the particular industry concerned.

Structure helps in the decision making of an organisation. The communication among the team members and the managers is also facilitated by an organisational structure. In addition to this it is helpful in the evaluation of the employee performance, achievement of goals of the organisation and enables companies to manage change in the workplace better. A well planned structure indirectly helps in the business performance as the management of both challenges and risks become easy for the organisational managers (Stensaker and Vabø 2013).

The structure of the “Cleaning Linen” organisation is a team structure. This adopted structure has been chosen due to the many benefits of team based organisations. The team structure helps the team members achieve their individual goals as well as the aims of the organisation. In addition to this proper communication can be maintained at all levels. Since the company started to expand rapidly particularly from the year 2010, the team structure which has been adopted has led to the rapid success the company has achieved in the past decade (Goetsch and Davis 2014).

Organisational culture includes the expectations of an organisation, experiences, philosophy and also the values which guide the behaviour of the members and is expressed in the overall workings and performances of the members of the organisation. It can be said that the culture is based on the organisation’s vision, values, norms, systems, language, assumption and beliefs (Cacciattolo 2014).

Management culture is basically the way in which the organisation thinks and considers its people to be. Culture is extremely important for an organisation. Organisational culture helps in the maintenance of unity in an organisation, the loyalty of the employees is also maintained by the balance of a proper organisational culture. Culture of an organisation helps it maintain a proper direction so that the employees earn recognition and appreciation from their superiors. Culture also helps an organisation maintain a proper direction and the expectations from themselves and their organisations help keep the employees on a proper track (Lawrence and Lee 2013).

Management Culture in Cleaning Linen

The Charles Handy’s model on organisational culture briefly explains four major types of organisational culture namely power culture, task culture, person culture and role culture. The power culture is an organisation where power resides in the hands of only a few people and they are authorised to take decisions. These people also enjoy special privileges.

In the task culture, teams are formed to achieve the specific targets of the company or solve critical problems. In this case similar interest possessing individuals come to work together as a team (Cacciattolo 2014).

Person culture is when the employees of an organisation are more important than the organisation itself. This situation often leads individuals who are employees to feel and remain more concerned about their own needs than about the needs of the organisation.  

In case of the role culture, each employee is designated roles and responsibilities based on the “specialization, educational qualification and interest” to bring out the best out of him or her. In such cultures employees are willing and decide the best which they can perform.

The organisational culture of “Cleaning Linen” follows a role culture. Here each employee is given roles and responsibilities based on his or her specialization, educational qualification and their area of interest. This has led the company to achieve the success it has reached in the present times. Every employee focuses on the tasks which he or she has to perform and this helps facilitate the overall development and success of the company (Carlström and Ekman 2012).

The importance of culture in any organisation is huge. It paves the way for proper team work and positive team effort in order to realize the organisational objectives. Thus culture, in short shapes the way an organisation functions (Cacciattolo 2014).

Communication is basically the procedure of reaching a two way understanding in which the people not only get involved in an exchange of information but also create and share meaning. There are several methods of effective communication in the workplace which include verbal, non-verbal, written and visual.

Calling people by name is one of the most effective means and in fact the first step in the communication of people where they feel respected and valued in the workplace. This culture is followed diligently in the “Cleaning linen” company.  

Thanking people for what they do is also an effective means of ensuring the fact that they communicate well in an organisation. People also feel valued. Calling people by name and thanking people are effective strategies of verbal communication (Keyton et al. 2013).

Communication Strategies in Cleaning Linen

The effective methods of non verbal communication which is adopted in this particular scenario includes the concept of making proper eye contact and body gestures suitable enough to ensure that a particular person is feeling at ease in the organisation. Proper eye contact is always maintained at the time of communicating with team members and all employees of the company (Zhang and Venkatesh 2013).

Written communication strategies applied in the company includes sending handwritten notes or emails to the employees who have been performing exceptionally well in the organisation. This coupled with a bouquet of flowers has gone a long way in keeping the employees loyal and happy towards their company.

Effective visual communication strategies involve the concept of creating training videos to be shown to the employees to follow and emulate and help in the avoidance of any sort of conflict (Moore 2014).

The company always tries to adopt policies to avoid the concept of conflict. The managers try to clarify what the disagreement is at all times. They also try to establish reasonable goals keeping the requirements of both the clients and the employees in mind. Other than that there are always team and organisation meetings to discuss goals as well as understand and agree on the best way to resolve conflict (Moore 2014). Solutions adopted in the meetings are often acknowledged and agreed upon to determine the best situation in each case. This has lead “Cleaning Linen” to enjoy the success it does today (De Dreu and Gelfand 2012).

References:

Cacciattolo, K., 2014. Understanding organisational cultures. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 10(10).

Carlström, E.D. and Ekman, I., 2012. Organisational culture and change: implementing person-centred care. Journal of health organization and management, 26(2), pp.175-191.

Conkright, T.A., 2015. Using the four functions of management for sustainable employee engagement. Performance Improvement, 54(8), pp.15-21.

De Dreu, C.K. and Gelfand, M.J., 2012. Conflict in the Workplace: Sources, Functions, and Dynamics Across Multiple Levels of Analysis: Carsten KW De Dreu and Michele J. Gelfand. In The psychology of conflict and conflict management in organizations (pp. 23-74). Psychology Press.

Drucker, P., 2012. The practice of management. Routledge.

Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Keyton, J., Caputo, J.M., Ford, E.A., Fu, R., Leibowitz, S.A., Liu, T., Polasik, S.S., Ghosh, P. and Wu, C., 2013. Investigating verbal workplace communication behaviors. The Journal of Business Communication (1973), 50(2), pp.152-169.

Lawrence, P. and Lee, R., 2013. Organizational Behaviour (RLE: Organizations): Politics at Work. Routledge.

Moore, C.W., 2014. The mediation process: Practical strategies for resolving conflict. John

Stensaker, B. and Vabø, A., 2013. Re?inventing shared governance: Implications for organisational culture and institutional leadership. Higher Education Quarterly, 67(3), pp.256-274.

Williams, C., 2015. Effective management. Cengage Learning.

Zhang, X. and Venkatesh, V., 2013. Explaining employee job performance: The role of online and offline workplace communication networks. Mis Quarterly, 37(3), pp.695-722