Success of Business Organization - Term Paper Example

Introduction The success of business operations is not solely dependent on the controlling aspect of business management and administration. Most of business organizations were able to achieve their business goals and objectives by incorporating creative entrepreneurship. There are observations which claim that companies are constantly challenge by the fact that the control and creative aspect of business are diametrically opposed. But the achievements of a number of entrepreneurs are evidence that these business aspects should be both exhausted by the management. As such, effective planning, control, organization, and coordination within a typical travel agency must be evident fro the efficiency and effectiveness of the services offered. The past studies and researchers on business management and entrepreneurship has extensively criticized the pure approach to formal strategic planning. Mintzberg (1978) argued that “contemporary prescription and normative techniques to business analysis and planning seem unable to address the complex reality of strategy formation”. This was supported by Peters and Waterman (1982) when they concluded that formal strategic planning leads to “paralysis induced by analysis”. Hills (1994) similarly found out that formal strategic planning was useful in the evaluation of opportunities, setting priorities, and implementation but not at the creative stage of identifying opportunities. In this regard, it appears that a good business strategy makes it a point to integrate and harmonize the goals, policies and actions of the organization into a tactical coherence in order to ensure and guarantee the success in the industry. The integration of the conservative and traditional management practices was observed in the ever-increasing complexity of the business environment. The technological advancements that characterizes the information era at present paved the way to the efficient conceptualization of more creative and effective business frameworks which when utilized by business companies will open more possibilities and better position in the competitive atmosphere in the industry. Hence, identifying the use of the control and the creative aspects in operating a business should be distinguished by a well-rounded entrepreneur. These will serve as the key to achieving the economic goals set by the by the entrepreneur for the overall success of the business since pure approach to operating a business venture will not exhaust the full potential of a particular business establishment. This paper aims to define what a “best entrepreneur” is, the qualities and characteristics of a good entrepreneur will be presented. The study chose two best entrepreneurs from United Kingdom, and they are Anita Riddick, the founder of The Body Shop and Joe Ashburner of Noonoo Designs. Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is valuable to the enterprise and also necessitates creativity as this aspect involves a constant search for new ways to compete in the market place. As all firms are always on the constant renewal mode, creative ideas must always be within reach. Indeed, the enterprise needs individuals who can couple a firm’s capability and adapt to the rapid changes of the marketplace. This is not a role shouldered by the management alone, but must be shared with the participants as well, especially those working closely closest to the customers. Value-added entrepreneurial capability includes the ability and willingness to remain alert to the opportunities to the firm and to participate in the development of a solution. So as to make the most of each individual’s contribution and productivity, it is probably more effective if each will be given an area of expertise. In this way, an individual can develop a capability in that arena, which will not only apply to individuals but also to their organizations. Network leadership must also enlist coalition attitudes so as to rekindle a sense of community. For an organization, this is a sense of belonging even if it is for a short period of time. This goes beyond the provision of orientation activities for the new employees by the organization. The effort of the enterprise must include methods of introducing the new employees to colleagues, improvement of social interaction and attention to career congruence directed towards skill training and increased expertise. The expectations of the company to the individual and vice versa must be made clear. The enterprise’s personal growth plan for each individual is a paramount motivator. Goals should not override self-interest, but rather to identify congruence. United Kingdom has been known to be one of European’s most active business nations. In addition to its successful local businessmen, entrepreneurship has also contributed to the country’s business and economic success. However, issues regarding the minority entrepreneurs’ under representation within United Kingdom have been raised. Moreover, problems about the business and financial support provided by United Kingdom to its entrepreneurs have been a common issue. Leadership Leadership can refer both to the process of leading, and to those entities that do the leading. Leadership has been a central, and sometimes controversial, topic in the study of organizations. In spite of claims to the contrary, there is substantial evidence that leadership is positively related to a variety of individual and organizational outcomes. Leaders, by their very roles, are responsible for making decisions that help their organizations adapt and succeed in competitive environments. Leaders do not merely impose goals on followers, but work with others to create a shared sense of purpose and direction. Leaders primarily work through and with other people. They also help to establish the conditions that enable others to be effective. Leadership is a function more than a role. Although leadership is often invested in - or expected of – persons in positions of formal authority, leadership encompasses a set of functions that may be performed by any different persons in different roles throughout a community. Coordination. As leaders and managers, managing the information that the company uses in its daily operations is crucial in any business organization. Information is the blood stream of every company on which every staff; employee and supervisor work on to be able to meet the demands of the clients and customers of the business. This is the reason why there should be proper management flow within the organization. Anita Riddick has a direct link between the supervisors and the subordinate employees to ensure efficiency in answering the company’s daily work loads of the members of the organization. While in the case of Joe Ashburn, there is an open communication between and among the members of the organization should be prioritized in order to provide a well-functioning business operation within and outside an organization. Commitment. Since an organization’s culture is about how much members trust each other, about attitudes and emotions and their impact on team performance, organizations are defined best in these terms and in ideas like change, trust, cohesion, conformity and adaptability. Both entrepreneurs requires their employees to have the capacity to be adaptable equipped with quick and intelligent responses to the constant changes in the business environment along with the responsibility to create a culture that integrates the teams and their members so that individual actions will strengthen the results of a particular business endeavor. In this regard, commitment of the members with the business organization to ensure loyalty to the company should be inculcated and maintained among its people. Competency. Leaders manage and managers lead, but the two activities are not synonymous. Management functions can potentially provide leadership; leadership activities can contribute to managing. According to Kousez and Posner (2002), credibility is the foundation of leadership. A leader should be credible for him to lead. In addition to this characteristic, both Riddick and Ashburn possess honesty, competence, aspiration, and a forward-looking approach. Moreover, team leaders are tasked to enhance the potential of the staff and employees through training programs and team-building exercises since it is apparent that the employees need to avail of the opportunities of developing their skills further and enriching their knowledge from which the entire business will benefit. For Riddick, leadership is an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structuring and restructuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations of the members. Leaders are agents of change-persons whose acts affect other people more than other people’s acts affect them. Leadership has been seen as the focus of group processes, as a personality attribute, as the art of inducing compliance, as an exercise of influence, as a particular kind of act, as a form of persuasion, as an effect of interaction, an as a differentiated role ( Bass, 1990). Presently, our understanding of the principalship has become even more aligned with our concept of teacher leadership. Sergiovanni (1999) put forth the concept of moral leadership based on the assumption of schools as professional learning communities and that communities are defined by their efforts toward making shared values explicit and these shared values become sources for informal norms that govern behavior. At the same time Ashburn believes, that leadership is a complex process by which a person influences others to by which a person influences others to accomplish a mission, task, or objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. A person carries out this process by applying their leadership attributes (belief, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills. Leadership makes people want to achieve high goals and objectives. (Clark) Unlike the leaders of the past, many of today’s principals are “not lone rangers who depend on charisma and individuals genius to transform schools” (Stacey, 1992). The principals who are engaged in real school change recognize that every teacher can be leader in partnership with the principal and the roles of teaching, learning, and leading can be played by everyone in an organization that is described by Stacey (1992) as “leadership dense” (p.46). Successful principals recall the hopes, dreams, frustrations and aspirations they had when they were teacher leaders and capitalize on the teacher leadership in their schools to accomplish their goals. The focus of many that try to define leadership is on the leader, as if to say leadership can only be understood by studying specific individuals in specific situations. Some go beyond the mere study of the leader. Recognizing that studying individual leaders may not get you to a better understanding of leadership, these researchers reject, implicitly or explicitly, the idea per se is a summation of the qualities, behaviors, or situational responses of individuals in a position of authority. To study leaders is not, in this sense, to study leadership. In saying this there is implicit acceptance that leadership is something larger than leader. If leaders are characterized with coordination, commitment and competence, their influence towards colleagues and subordinates will highly result to increase productivity and better quality services offered to the clients and customers of the business organization. Unfortunately, this so-called effective leadership is not that easy to attain; effective management is not as easy as writing down notes. Good leadership entails a lot of hard work, dedication, and many other factors. Innovative Activity Innovation has rapidly assumed a position of prominence in world competition. Today's marketplace is characterized by fast-paced and unremitting competition on a global scale. To compete in this environment, organizations need a level of innovation to survive in the stiff competition of the market place. As competition becomes more global and time-based, corporations must develop and deliver better new products in less time (Adler, 1991). The challenge for modern organizations is to revitalize them so they can successfully and continuously develop new products and new businesses. Internal or external drivers are the factors that force changes (Bennis and Nanus, 1985), innovations may be done at different level in the structure of any organization (Swenson, 1997) and that reforms may be universal or limited in nature. Internal drivers for change could include evolving business requirements, organizational restructuring or revision to corporate strategy/business objectives. External drivers could include developments in technology, economic trends that affect the profitability/value for money of the relationship and the need for electronic or technical service. In order to have a successful innovative activity and to be able to attain the purpose of innovation, organizations must consider the elements of innovative activity. Experts have distinguished five vital elements of innovative activity. These includes the innovation strategy, innovation skills, innovation shared values, innovation systems and innovation leadership. Innovation strategy is one of the most important elements for innovative activity. Herein, the organization should be able to know what challenges them to implement innovation and determine the best strategy to use in its implementation to be able to achieve the core objective of the project. This is where the Body Shop of Riddick got their strategic plan for innovation, stating the objective of the innovative activity. The second element for innovative activity is the innovation skills. Developing new capacities and improved competencies of the organization internally, is the main concept of innovation skills. Herein, the Ashburn was able to know who will be responsible for the innovative activity and its implementation. Both give importance to selected individuals must have the appropriate skills to sustain the innovative activity until such time that the organization has achieved the objective set for the said innovation (Milne, 1993). Both entrepreneurs believe in Innovation shared values is another element that should be considered in innovative activity. The organization should be able to build a competent shared ideas and common objective in order to drive and motivate desire and strategies which would serve as the guidelines of the member of the innovation team to reach the purpose of innovation. Each member of the innovation team should share their knowledge and ideas to have a creative and effective innovation for the benefit of the organization as a whole. The next is the innovation system. In this manner, the organization should have a systematic approach in implementing innovative activity. It is essential that the innovation team should follow the strategic plan to serve as a pattern for their activity. And lastly, the innovation leadership or the leadership ability of the management to imposed the changes for innovation. Innovations had better be capable of being started small, requiring at first little money, few people, and only a small and limited market. Otherwise, there is not enough time to make the adjustments and changes that are almost always needed for an innovation to succeed. Initially innovations rarely are more than almost right (Yukl, 1994). The necessary changes can be made only if the scale is small and the requirements for people and money fairly modest. However, the most important element for a successful innovation is leadership. Innovation does not necessarily aim at becoming eventually a "big business"; in fact, no one can foretell whether a given innovation will end up as a big business or a modest achievement. But if an innovative activity does not have an effective leadership from the beginning, it is unlikely to be innovative enough, and therefore unlikely to be capable of establishing itself. Conclusion Both Anita Riddick and Joe Ashburn are no doubt the best entrepreneurs globally. They can potentially provide leadership; leadership activities can contribute to managing. As such, both are creative as well as discerning when it comes to analyzing and assessing the resources of the company. Developing and evaluating the efficiency of a particular operation strategy will be helpful in maintaining the overall competitiveness of the business organization. In effect, being able to contemplate the factors that will greatly influence the success of the business should be highly considered through objective investigation of the current conditions of the business environment particularly the industry to which the company belongs. References Adler, N.J. (1991). International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior. Boston, MA: Kent. Bass, B.M. (1985). Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations. New York: The Free Press. Bennis, W. and Nanus, B. (1985). Leaders. New York: Harper and Row, p. 26-28, 225. Hills, GE 1994, Marketing and Entrepreneurship: Research Ideas and Opportunities. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, p. 70. Kouzes, JM & Posner BS 2002, The Leader Challenge, Third Edition. San Francisco, California: Jossey Bass Wiley. Milne, A. (1993). Organizational and Educational Innovation. ENVISIONEERING at Penn State”, Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference, Champaign-Urbana, IL Mintzberg, H 1978, "Patterns in Strategy Formation" Management Science, p. 948. Peters, TJ & Waterman, Jr RH 1982, In Search of Excellence, New York: Harper and Row, p. 49. Reigeluth, C.M., (1994). The imperative for systemic change. In C.M. Reigeluth & R.J. Sergiovanni, T. (1999) Value-added leadership: How to get extraordinary performance in schools. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Swenson, D.X. (1997), Change Drivers. Available. Online, Updated Aug 31, 1977. Accessed [03/20/2007]. Yukl, G. A. (1994) Leadership in Organizations, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Read More