Implementation of a Sustainable and Effective Competitive Strategy - Essay Example

?Introduction Implementation of a sustainable and effective competitive strategy requires both the prevailing conditions of scar and relevance ofa resource. Over the last few decades, the dynamics of highly competitive global industry have forced organizations to rethink and re-evaluate the way they design competitive strategies in accordance with the fluctuating demand and diverse technologies. According to Robert Grant (2005), “When the external environment is in a state of flux, the firm itself, in terms of its bundle of resources and capabilities, may be a much more stable basis on which to define its identity”. In order to meet volatile customer preferences and needs, established businesses worldwide are focusing more on strengthening their internal resources and capabilities rather than just following the market trends. The human resources available to an organization have a key strategic role in acquiring, implementing and maintaining a competitive strategy. Supervisors, trainers and developers play a pivotal role in improving the transfer of training by communicating their support for potential learning. The attitude and responses of supervisors, peers and trainers to the trainee can either hurt or help the whole process. The action taken by these partners before, during and after the training directly affects the likelihood that transfer will occur properly. Although organizations spend a lot of time and money on employees’ training annually, there exists no significant relationship between learning and actual job performance. However, when the learned skills are successfully transferred into effective performance, organizations can surely produce better outcomes. As the technological, economic, social and political environment is in a state of continual flux, it is critical for learning organizations to adjust and adapt to the dynamic market trends. Over the last decade, the role of trainers and developers has changed in an increasingly integrated world where phones, internet and improvements in infrastructure have progressively changed relationships. The pace of development is so rapid that even trained experts are unable to regulate, monitor and control its impacts properly. What may be regarded as a cultural shift in many organizations, trainers and developers need to adopt a different attitude towards their own involvement in organizations. Such prevailing market conditions also make it imperative that trainers and developers play a more active role in communicating the benefits of training and dealing with the performance problems. This paper attempts to investigate as to how and why has the role of trainers and developers changed in the last ten years. The study will also suggest future developments in the changing role of trainers and developers. Finally, the conclusion will analyze factors influencing the change and suggest effective measures for further improvements. Theory For decades, training and development of human resources is believed to have key strategic importance in determining the organization’s overall performance. As a field, training and development is considered to have evolved during the industrial revolution in America. In the present era of globalization, technological expansions have diversified the traditional role played by trainers and developers. According to a survey, a trainer these days assumes the job of a “corporate trainer, performance practitioner, lecturer, OD specialist, performance analyst, training leader, employee development specialist, operations improvement coordinator, leadership training associate, training sergeant, and continuous learning and improvement coach at the same time” (ASTD, 1996). From 2000 onwards, the role has become even more versatile with the industrial integration and advent of various technological aids. As the term suggests, human resource development is itself “the process of moving from one place to another, a process that we normally count as ‘change’” (Wilson, 2005). In fact, the trainer’s and developer’s role has considerably changed due to the nature of organizational change, that itself changes with respect to external environment. The cultural, physical and technological environments of the organizations are inter-related and interact to bring a change. Therefore, the involvement of trainers and developers is crucial from the beginning of the change process. With developing the change process, they also have a core responsibility of training the employees in new and emerging skills. The trainers and developers also have to ensure the acquisition of new technical skills at levels including senior management. Once the change has taken place, trainers and developers have to audit and improve the effects of change. The compilation of a strategic plan identical to competitors seldom creates a sustainable advantage. As the overall performance of an organization also depends on its employee behavior, management policies and techniques should be distinctive according to the firm’s economic conditions and changing environmental variables. Trainers and developers are teachers and designers who provide employees a sense of purpose and meaning at work. According to Kontoghiorghes, Awbre, and Feurig (2005), “open communications, risk taking, support and recognition for learning, resources to perform the job, teams, rewards for learning, training and learning environment, and knowledge management", are a list of common characteristics that will help trainers and developers to cope with the challenges of fluctuating market trends. Organizations that possessed the tendency to adapt and adjust to external variables along with development of internal resources and capabilities have survived and flourished over the past decade. Trainers and developers have to do more than just transfer training to employees. They have to face challenges of creating a continuous learning environment which is able to react quickly to a change, encourages innovation, and has leaders as mentors and teachers. The development pace is so rapid that trainers and developers are not only bound to ensure effective transfer of learning but also to ensure the transfer faster than market competitors. Formal training and informal learning both influence the overall learning process at a workplace (Jacobs and Park, 2009). In organizational settings, training and development moves across all positions. However, the movement is significantly larger in lower positions than middle or senior managers. These days, developers are fully aware of the need for recruiting qualified and skilled employees. However, there still exists a room for meeting employees’ current and anticipated competence needs. It is therefore vital for trainers and developers to support formal and informal learning at both personal and organizational levels. New economic developments internationally have played an important role in fading the spatial barriers between nations. The formation of an international industrial and financial system is contributing towards free flow of information, products, people and investments across the globe. This concern has driven growing interest in the area of human resource development. Also, such dynamic and huge external environments have brought human resource development within a much broader framework. The role of these professionals was quite passive and limited previously. In recent years, firms have realized their significance in decision making. The performance goals set by these employees and motivation of staff is the key to form competitive and sustainable organizational culture. While implementing a strategy, an organization should analyze its human resources closely as if they are durable, transferable and replicable or not. Most organizations spend billions of dollars for training and development annually. However, much of this investment is wasted in failed interventions (Awoniyi, Griego, and Morgan. 2002). Either the unskilled trainer provides invalid training or the skilled trainer provides invalid training. From another angle, either the skilled practitioner provides valid training but learning does not transfer, or skilled practitioner provides valid training and learning transfers but still failure is perceived (Bunch, 2007). Along with other implications, such failures also result in undervaluing of training and development. The Example of Google Inc. Over the past decade, several giant organizations have completely failed because of their underdeveloped workforce for coping with the impacts of globalization. On the contrary, organizations from nowhere emerged into huge industry giants all of a sudden. Google Inc. is one such organization that utilized human resource development as part of its competitive strategy. Its co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, put every effort to design Googleplex (headquarters complex of Google) as a lively and fun place to work. From a small web firm, Google Inc. has emerged as a dominant industry giant over the past 12 years. Google’s set of available resources and capabilities enabled it to build a strategy focused on company’s internal environment. The firm values its employees with a number of benefits, performance rewards and is also considering wide expansion to its current human resource. Trainers and developers at Google have planned development in such a way that employees are encouraged to learn, share knowledge, join the teams they want to, be innovative, and follow leaders who are also mentors and teachers. Google tends to systematically evaluate potential employees in terms of setting up future performance targets at the time of hiring. Google is fully aware of the fact that employees’ commitment and devotion are the keys in developing a long-term competitive strategy. So, trainers and developers at Google have their own unique way to encourage and value employed workforce in order to motivate their commitment towards innovative pursuits. The passive role of trainers and developers directly affects employees that may become adaptive to certain work attitudes and habits affecting the overall performance adversely. At Google, if any of the employees has a problem, human resource department helps to solve the issue in advisory meetings. The firm states itself as an open organization where any member can approach any management level directly. Future Prospects A growing number of scholars argue that the widely modified and diversified role of trainers and developers is still inadequate for fulfilling future demands in human resource development (e.g., Osman-Gani & Hyder, 2008). For instance, trainers and developers will have to consider the cross-cultural differences such as gender and ethnic background while formulating strategies for training and development. The use of new technologies is likely to increase in future due to lower operational, training and development costs. These technologies will help trainers and developers to create a diverse learning environment. Additionally, technological improvements will allow timely delivery of training without issues of appropriate learning place. With advancements in technology, training and development products will also become much more sophisticated in operation and design. Virtual work environments will allow inter-organizational as well as intra-organizational collaboration among employees. However, all these improvements imply that trainers and developers must be well-literate technologically to ensure there involvement from the beginning. They must be able to analyze the strengths and weaknesses in advanced technological systems. The issues of implementing strategies such as overcoming employee’s resistance towards change would also be considered (Noe, 2002). Learning on the job according to needs will become more prevalent in future through online collaboration saving considerable time, space and money. Conclusion It is evident from research that rapid integration of global market over the last decade has greatly influenced the typical role played by trainers and developers in any learning organization. Apart from developing human capital, trainers and developers also have significant contribution in decision making. When organizational change is inconsistent with prevailing culture, failures are far more likely to occur. However, the cultural change itself requires considerable effort and dedication from trainers and developers. The utmost challenge for these professionals is creation of a continuously learning environment. Thus the present role of trainers and developers is active and includes the encouragement of employees to learn, share knowledge, join the teams they want to, innovative and creative, and its leaders should also be great teachers. In order to ensure sustainable growth of organizations, trainers and developers must be able to attract and keep talented employees. Most organizations in the current wave of globalization have survived and flourished only because of being able to maintain a balance between strategic targets, strategic thrusts, reward systems and human resource development. The dynamic market trends require organizations to think over building effective business strategies in their respective market environments. In the present scenario, it is the sole responsibility of trainers and developers to keep trail of these changing trends, establishing directions for organizational change and also ensure their own involvement from the beginning. Maintaining a fair balance between the pros and cons associated with the changing face of globalization will probably help trainers and developers to ensure unsustainable development in the long run. References Awoniyi, E.A. Griego, O.V. and Morgan, G.A., 2002. Person-environment fit and transfer of training. International Journal of Training and Development, 6, pp.25–35. Buckley, R. and Caple, J., 2007. The theory and practice of training. London: 5th ed. Kogan Page. Bunch, K., 2007. Training failure as a consequence of organizational culture. Human Resource Development Review, 6(2), pp.142-163. Grant, R. M., 2005. Analyzing resources and capabilities: contemporary strategy analysis. 5th ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Jacobs, R.L. and Park, Y., 2009. A proposed conceptual framework of workplace learning: implications for theory development and research in human resource development. Human Resource Development Review, 8(2), pp.133-150. Kontoghiorghes, C. Awbre, S.M. and Feurig, P.L., 2005. Examining the relationship between learning organization characteristics and change adaptation, innovation, and organizational performance. Human Resources Quarterly, 16(2), pp.85-212. Noe, R. A., 2008. Employee training and development. New York: McGraw-Hill. Osman-Gani, A. and Hyder, A., 2008. Repatriation readjustment of international managers: an empirical study of HRD interventions. Career Development International, 13, pp.456-475. Wilson, J. ed., 2005. Human Resource Development: Learning and Training for individuals and organizations. London: Kogan Page. Read More