Managing Organizational Design and Change - Essay Example

?Managing Organizational Design and Change Introduction Organizational design is the way a company functions or the way a company carries out its business activities. It is very important for the managers of a company to manage the organizational design properly because it plays a key role in the success of a company. Good organizational design makes a company reach its desired goals and objectives successfully whereas flawed organizational design disturbs the alignment of company’s activities with the desired goals and objectives. “The most effective way to organize a company depends entirely upon the company’s specific needs, functions, and goals” (Rogier n.d.). A company’s goals never depend on design and strategy of a company rather it is design, which depends on a company’s goals because organizational design is developed to meet the company’s goals. Understanding of goals makes it easy to organize the company’s functions accordingly. Organizational change is also a very important process related to roles and cultural management of a company. Organizational change is the restructuring of a company or reshaping the roles of the employees of the company. Organization change is a change in overall behaviors and roles of the employees of a company for bringing improvement in the overall productivity of the company. In this paper, we will provide answers to different questions based on academic literature related to organizational design and change in order to get a proper understanding of different issues related to management of an organization. Answer: No: 1 Before going into the discussion regarding ranking scenarios and identifying commonness in them, let us get a better understanding of what scenario planning actually is. Tatum (n.d.) states, “Scenario planning is the strategy of identifying and projecting the different sequence of events that could occur should a particular decision be made or a specific process implemented” scenarios are different situations, which have the possibility to occur when a firm develops a strategy to achieve its short-term and long-term goals. Borjesson (2007) states, “Scenario planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world”. Developing the scenarios is one of the main strategic planning processes for the managers of a company. A company needs to develop its business strategy based on the analysis of different possible scenarios in order to get an awareness of threats and challenges that may occur in future. This process of analyzing all possible future scenarios while developing strategies or defining short-term and long-term goals holds an important place in ensuring success of a company. The planners need to rank the possible scenarios considering all internal and external factors and positive and negative consequences of each factor. The planners also need to identify commonness in all possible future scenarios in order to prepare in advance for the potential outcomes of the scenarios. Some of the most common benefits of ranking the scenarios include selecting the best possible business strategy, identification of possible threats and challenges to the business, identification of the competitors, designing a result-oriented marketing strategy, and achievement of business goals and objectives by designing a good business strategy based on the analysis of scenarios. Answer: No: 2 Strategic drift refers to the flaws in a strategy, which prove their existence when the strategy cannot go along with the changes in the environment. Strategic drift occurs when the pace of strategy is not fast enough to keep up with the pace of the changing environment. Two important factors, which create strategic drift for a company, include culture and history. History of a company plays a significant role in shaping the overall culture of the company. If the managers neglect the importance of history while developing a strategy for the company, chances of strategic drift increase. Successful managers always consider history and culture of their companies while developing the business strategies in order to eliminate the chances of strategic drift. Some other factors, which cause strategic drift, include unfamiliarity with the external environment, inability to detect ongoing changes, inability to forecast market trends, and inability to find new opportunities. Unfamiliarity with the external environment of the company is an important reason of strategic drift. Some managers lack the skills to judge actual environment of the company, which results in the development of flawed business strategies. Some managers lack the ability to detect ongoing changes in the market. They cannot find new market trends, and as a result, their business strategy becomes unable to move along with the changes in the market. Managers must be able to forecast future scenarios and predict future trends in order to eliminate the chances of strategic drift. Some ways for the managers to prevent the occurrence of strategic drift include developing effective business strategies by considering the internal and external environments, incorporating history of the company in the business strategy, developing dynamic business strategies, forecasting future business scenarios effectively, and making required changes in the strategies according to the changes in the environment. Answer: No: 3 Akins (2008) states, “The most fundamental definition of a quality product is one that meets the expectations of the customer”. Quality in the products and services is very important for a company to achieve success in market. Quality is based on some acceptable performances, which make a company meet its desired goals and objectives successfully. Let us discuss an article, which will show how a company makes use of quality to achieve desired results. The name of the article is What Does Product Quality Really Mean?. The author describes the importance of quality in different business activities by synthesizing the varying definition of product quality, which arises from marketing, economics, philosophy, and operation management. The article focuses the importance of quality in meeting goals and requirements of a business. Maintaining high quality in products and services is integral to gain competitive advantage in the market (Garvin 1984). Quality is the excellence in products and their ability to meet the needs of the customers. There are different dimensions of product quality, which include performance, reliability, features, serviceability, conformance, and consistency. One can never deny the strategic importance of these quality dimensions for a company. These dimensions not only create a high level of customer demand for a company’s products but also make the company achieve increased profits and productivity. All these dimensions are interdependent on each other depending on the type of industry. Interactions between these dimensions are very important during the development stages of a product. Increased quality can lead to higher levels of productivity in many ways, such as, improving efficiency, reducing maintenance costs, increasing the business, and gaining more customers. Therefore, we can say that quality is one of the most influencing factors behind the success of any organization or a company. Answer: No: 4 A quality guru is a person who develops long lasting concepts of quality and develops effective approaches to quality within organizations. Quality gurus develop valuable concepts of quality, which make companies get success in the markets. Two of the main gurus of pre 1940s era were F. W. Taylor and Walter Shewhart. They developed quality control and assurance concepts and provided the foundations for the quality move in Japan. Some other famous quality gurus include Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Philip Crosby, Genichi Taguchi, Kaoru Ishikawa, and Armand Feigenbaum. All of these quality gurus provided a significant input in injecting the concept of quality in products and services. Let us discuss the work of Joseph Juran, who provided a strong concept of quality to the Japanese people in 1950s. Juran firmly believed that a product is of good quality if it satisfies a large number of customers whereas a product, which is not able to satisfy customers, is not of good quality. Customer satisfaction can be achieved by providing extreme quality to the customers. Hernon and Whitman (2001, p. x) state, “Delivering satisfaction and service quality provides a conceptual framework that should prove useful in understanding, thinking, and talking about service quality and customer satisfaction”. Customers do not link defected products. Defected products result in decreasing customer satisfaction, which also decreases the level of profitability of the company. Juran also believed in breakthroughs in the products. Breakthroughs can be achieved by creating a deliberate change in the performance of the products and services. Summing it up, we can say that Joseph Juran was one of the great quality gurus who integrated a sense of continuous improvement and quality in the minds of the Japanese people. Answer: No: Five Total Quality Management and Six Sigma are two of the best approaches towards achieving quality in the products and services. Most of the companies make use of these techniques to inject quality in their business processes and to flourish their businesses. TQM focuses both internal and external customers of a company and needs to be integrated in every business process. Hakes (1991, p. 3) states, “It is a philosophy of management that strives to make the best use of all available resources and opportunities by constant improvement”. A company can achieve TQM by continuously improving the business processes in order to develop high quality products and services. Fiegenbaum introduced the concept of TQM in 1957 in order to improve organizational performance by improving the quality of products and services. Quality does not mean to add excellence at the end of a process; rather it means to inject all dimensions of quality at every stage of the product development. Some of the disadvantages, which make some organizations move away from TQM, include continuous demand for organizational change, elimination of goals and objectives, and elimination of performance assessments. 6 Sigma is another approach used to improve the performance of a company by improving the manufacturing and business processes capabilities. Most of the companies make use of 6 Sigma approach to bring continuous improvement in processes and to reduce the occurrence of defects. 6 Sigma is basically a measure which indicates whether a product or a process is performing as expected or not. Some of the disadvantages, which make some organizations move away from adopting 6 Sigma, include reduction in creativity due to rigidity of processes, outsourcing of projects, and quality standards not being related to tasks. Answer: No: Six Balanced scorecard, originated by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, is a strategic planning and communication system, which is used to make an alignment between business strategies and business vision. McNamara (n.d.) asserts, “The Balanced Scorecard is a performance management approach that focuses on various overall performance indicators”. It is also used to improve business communication and to monitor organizational performance. It helps companies translate their visions and strategies into realistic activities. Nair (2004, p. 5) found that a balanced scorecard shows us how we can make actionable strategies. It makes the employees recognize that taking part in the successful implementation of strategies is the job of every employee. Employees need to know their roles and responsibilities regarding implementation of a strategy. Balanced scorecard also motivates the leaders of the organizations to enforce necessary changes in the organizations. A balanced scorecard focuses on entire business strategy in order to judge the performance of the organizations. It translates business strategies into measurable objectives and outcomes. The four main perspectives measured by balanced scorecard system include internal business processes, customer relations, financial processes, and innovation and growth. It injects a sense of motivation in all business processes and provides a mechanism to the managers to judge performance against the goals of the company. A balanced scorecard is different from a traditional performance management system in a sense that balanced scorecard considers business vision and strategies to measure actual performance of the employees whereas traditional performance management system defines key result areas and establishes performance standards for the achievement of each goal and objective. Conclusion Summing it up, management of organizational design and change is a very important aspect of managing an organization. Strategy of a business plays a vital role in the success of a business. No company can ever be successful without developing an effective business strategy. A number of issues are related to business strategies, which managers need to understand properly in order to run the businesses successfully. Some of those issues include ranking of scenarios, strategic drift, lack of proper knowledge, integration of quality systems in business strategies, and business scorecards. Managers need to consider these issues while developing business strategies in order to make the strategies effective and successful. References Akins, C 2008, 8 Dimensions of Quality, viewed 20 March, 2011, . Borjesson, M 2007, Scenario Planning Resources, viewed 20 March, 2011, . Garvin, D 1984, 'What Does Product Quality Really Mean?', MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 25-43. Hakes, C 1991, Total Quality Management: A Key to Business Improvement, St Edmunds burry Press Ltd., Suffolk. Hernon, P & Whitman, J 2001, Delivering Satisfaction and Service Quality: A Customer Based Approach for Libraries, American Library Association, U.S.A. McNamara, C n.d., Balanced Scorecard, viewed 20 March, 2011, . Nair, M 2004, Essentials of Balanced Scorecards, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey. Rogier, M n.d., What is Organizational Design?, viewed 20 March, 2011, . Tatum, M n.d., What is Scenario Planning?, viewed 20 March, 2011, . Read More