Fluent Essays

Assignment value 5 pointsAssignment Thompson Ch 10 Building Organization Structure due May 26Read Chapter 10 Select any three L.O.s and discuss how the author succeeded with you – i.e. explain the learnings from your perspective (minimum 100 words for each of the 3 examples). Apply the concepts toward your final paper.this is my new assignment for mgmt490 I attached tow examples .. assignment_10.docx ch._10_l.o..docx Unformatted Attachment Preview 1 Chris Morales Assignment Chapter Ten May 26, 2020 2 While organization continue their core competencies, it is important that they continually invest towards strategy that is capable for integrating the various components together. The strategy must be executable at all levels, and using available resources to optimize on capabilities. Among the resources that should be integrated in the strategy include the human resource, infrastructural elements (capabilities), and organizational structure. In chapter ten, among the learning objectives include what managers must do in order to execute strategy successfully. This learning objective has been discussed well in the chapter, with key aspects of discussion allowing one to understand it well. Managers must ensure that they hire the correct human resource for their strategies. Among the three key actions that managers must do is staffing the organization in order to put together a strong working team at various levels. Looking at General Motors hiring and training strategies, it is well to say that the human resource element in the organizational structure has been well organized to meet the various objectives at various levels. Just like in the previous chapter discussion, the current CEO has built the organization’s core competencies based on the surroundings, and among them is the human resource. The ability of General Motors to use regional management for their operations ensures that they are able to hire the right staff for the jobs. The same strategy can be applied in the European market, where uniqueness and authority oversight are among the key surrounding factors. The building of a capable organization also focuses on acquiring and development of viable resources in order to support strategy. Managers must ensure that they are able to utilize the available resources, combining them efficiently to meet the desired objectives. General Motors has a strong brand across the globe, and through this it has a large pool of resources. The regional managers in place must ensure that they use the allocated resources adequately, exploiting core competencies in their operations. In Europe, the 3 allocation of government subsidies to sustainable automotive manufacturers should be an area of exploitation by the regional manager in order to increase the company’s revenue. Lastly, managers should ensure that the organization is structured according to its capabilities. While an organization might have a good strategy, at times they become incapable of meeting their objectives due to inadequate structuring and work effort. For General Motors its continued investment as a multinational should allow regional structuring to uniquely identify with a given market in order to meet the market preferences. Through this, it will find that the European market is penetrable over time. Specifically concentrating on the hiring, training and retaining as a key component of strategy execution, this learning objective has also been well discussed in this chapter. Among the necessities behind this as a key component is the reducing of staff turnover, which then allows the organization to achieve its objectives efficiently. When General Motors is able to avoid a high staff turnover, they will be efficient in their operations since there is no need of rehiring human resource in their organizational process. In the penetration to the European market that has been proved to be quite delicate, effective management of human resource should allow competitive advantage, especially when the right staff have been hired in the region. This means that in their market penetration, General Motors will be able to make key decisions adequately over time, allowing them to become effective over time. Through consistency, regional and lower level management will be executors of the organizational strategy, allowing it to become competitive in the market no matter the type of competition that surrounds them. As a manufacturing company, it is important that General Motors exploits the large pool of human resource through job division and rotation. This is quite important in order to boost the company’s productivity and innovation over time in order to be able to compete with other 4 organizations in the same industry. In Europe, this is a main concern for employees and by doing so, General Motors should be able to achieve effectiveness in the management of human resource for its strategy. Also among the learning objectives is the pros and cons of centralized and decentralized decision-making in strategy implementation. Given the huge structure of General Motors, A centralized organizational structure may be challenging to implement in various markets. While this is the case, it is important that the top management remains with the power to make decisions pertaining brands and market penetration, leaving operational strategies to regional and other hierarchical-based managers. Among the advantages of such a strategy is that the top management will be able to take charge of important decisions, and allowing to be a uniform standard of operations throughout the organization no matter its regional operations. The CEO will be able to maintain a strong grip on the management of the organization, ensuring that they do not lose control of core competencies aimed at coordinating company operations. Before the incoming of the current CEO, the previous one had lost grip on the organizational operations due to their dependency on decentralized organizational structuring. Over time, General Motors lost its competitive advantage even in America, a market that it had controlled for so long. Since the incoming of the Mary T. Barra, she has gained control over the organizational operations and has continually exploited emerging opportunities, while at the same time discarding weaknesses in their strategies. While she maintains a firm grip, she has been able to delegate operational strategies to regional-based managers, who are more informed about day-to-day operations in their markets. This allows them to gather important market information that can be used to help the top management to make more informed decisions. General Motors decision making strategy can be identified as a hybrid that incorporates either centralized and/or decentralized decision 5 making at various levels. This has allowed it to maintain efficiency and effectiveness in their global operations, no matter how huge the organization is. Strategy is not just a one-time thing, but rather is a process that incorporates building of various elements in order to exploit the core competencies for competitive advantage. Organizations must ensure that they continually build a strategy that can be executed effectively in line with organizational objectives. The strategy must put into consideration the surrounding aspects of people, capabilities and structure in order to achieve the desired output. General Motors should base their operations on their core competencies for effective strategy execution based on the surrounding factors in the new target market. 6 Work Cited Darmstadter, Howard. The Times And General Motors: What Went Wrong?. Cogent Arts & Humanities, vol 3, no. 1, 2016. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.1080/23311983.2015.1134030. Accessed 21 May 2020. Kimberly, Matt. 6 Famous Car Brands General Motors Failed. Car Throttle, 2020, https://www.carthrottle.com/post/6-famous-car-brands-general-motors-failed/. Accessed 21 May 2020. Kissinger, Daniel. General Motors’ Organizational Structure For Flexibility In Regional Markets - Panmore Institute. Panmore Institute, 2018, http://panmore.com/general-motorsorganizational-structure-flexibility-regional-markets. Accessed 21 May 2020. Sahadi, Jeanne. Mary Barras Early Lesson: Stop Saying Sorry. CNN, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/11/success/mary-barra-gm/index.html. Accessed 21 May 2020. Tetzeli, Rick. Mary Barra Is Remaking GM’S Culture—And The Company Itself. Fast Company, 2018, https://www.fastcompany.com/3064064/mary-barra-is-remaking-gmsculture-and-the-company-itself. Accessed 21 May 2020. Thompson, Arthur A et al. Crafting And Executing Strategy. 22nd ed., Mcgraw-Hill Higher Education, 2019. Thompson’s Crafting & Executing Strategy Chapter 10 “Building an Organization Capable of Good Strategy Execution: People, Capabilities, and Structure” Nancy Romero Management 490 May 26, 2020 Introduction: The following will be discussing chapter 10 from “Thompson’s Crafting and executing Strategy”. Chapter 10 -Building an Organization Capable of Good Strategy Execution: People, Capabilities, and Structure, explains the steps that company managers take to execute successful strategies. It also explains about how to continuously keep building the company’s resources and capabilities. Chapter 10: “Building an Organization Capable of Good Strategy Execution: People, Capabilities, and Structure” L.O. 1- Why hiring, training, and retaining the right people constitute a key component of the strategy execution process Good strategy execution requires a team effort. All managers have strategy executing responsibility in their areas of authority, and all employees are active participants in the strategy execution process. Putting together a talented management team with the right mix of experiences, skills, and abilities to get things done is one of the first steps to take in launching the strategy executing process. 1. Provide training programs throughout employee careers. Companies create formal training programs to give their employees better skills for the work environment. The best companies make a point of recruiting and retaining talented employees; the objective is to make the firm’s entire workforce a genuine competitive asset. Lush gets their new staff members in Vancouver near their manufacturing factory to spend time learning the process behind making Lush’s products. Many of the staff members get the chance to participate in their charity events during the first 90 days of working at Lush. Across all areas of our business, there’s a strong potential for internal promotion and the chance to develop your skills in specialized project teams and roles. In each of the retail shops there are specialized roles supporting their Charity Pot, sustainability and visual merchandising teams. 2. Make the work environment stimulating and engaging so that the firm is considered a great place to work. Use assorted financial incentives and perks to retain employees. At Lush employees are gifted bathing and body products aplenty. They treat their employees as family and make sure they all use the best skincare products. Plus, this works as wordof-mouth marketing so that the employees can share their products with their friends and family. They pay their staff members a competitive wage and reward outstanding results with a strong bonus structure. 3. Encourage employees to propose creative ways of operating better, and to push ideas for new products or businesses. Companies coach average performers to improve their skills and capabilities, while weeding out underperformers. Lush is all about trying to better the environment which is why they are always encouraging their staff to become more ecofriendly. For example, they promote a healthy and sustainable lifestyle with subsidized transit passes and a corporate gym membership for employees located in the Vancouver and Toronto areas. For their U.S locations they offer our full-time managers and managers-in-training (MITs) a paid childcare leave benefit, which begins after one year of management service. L.O. 2-That good strategy execution requires continuously building and upgrading the organization’s resources and capabilities Building new competencies and capabilities is a multistage process that occurs over a period of months and years. It is not something that is accomplished overnight. Approaches to building and strengthening capabilities include: developing capabilities internally, acquiring capabilities through mergers and acquisitions, and access capabilities via collaborative partnerships. 1. Develop capabilities internally. A company’s capabilities must be continually refreshed and renewed to remain aligned with changing customer expectations, altered competitive conditions, and new strategic initiatives. Companies need to keep refreshing, updating, and upgrading competencies and capabilities as necessary to gain and maintain competitive advantage. Lush is constantly innovating new products and ideas. For example, Lush is always thinking of new ways to reduce waste in their company like eliminating product packaging. Majority of their products are package-free to promote more sustainability. 2. Acquire capabilities through mergers and acquisitions. Some ways to acquire capabilities through mergers and acquisitions are: a question of market opportunity; which is when a market opportunity can slip by faster than a needed capability can be created internally. There is also a question of competitive necessity; when industry conditions, technology, or competitors are moving at such a rapid clip that time is of the essence. Finally, there’s the question of successful integration; tacit knowledge and complex routines may not transfer readily from one organizational unit to another. This is where Lush needs to work on as they expand into new markets. They should merge with another large company, for example, Macy’s, as they have a larger presence globally. 3. Access capabilities via collaborative partnerships. There are approaches to acquiring capabilities from external sources. For example, outsourcing the function requires the capabilities to a key supplier or another provider. Collaborating with a firm that has complementary resources and capabilities. Engage in a collaborative partnership for the purpose of learning how the partner does things. It would be a good idea for Lush to collaborate with The Body Shop as they have similar values and beliefs within their company. Thus, Lush can get some of its resources from more local suppliers and it can increase its customer base in new markets. L.O. 3- The pros and cons of centralized and decentralized decision making in implementing the chosen strategy A functional structure is organized into functional departments, with departmental managers who report to the CEO and small corporate staff.A simple structure consists of a central executive who handles all major decisions and oversees all operations with the help of a small staff. A multidivisional structure is a decentralized structure consisting of a set of operating divisions organized along business, product, customer group, or geographic lines, and a central corporate headquarters that allocates resources, provides support functions, and monitors divisional activities. 1. Centralized Decision Making: Decisions on most matters of importance should be in the hands of top-level managers who have the experience, expertise, and judgment to decide what is the best course of action. Lower-level personnel have neither the knowledge, time, nor inclination to properly manage the tasks they are performing. Strong control from the top is a more effective means for coordinating company actions. At Lush it is important for them to have strong decisions from top managers about their products to successfully run the company. Lush runs a top-down manganet team where the top CEO makes all the large decisions for the company. They have a small team at the top level that decide everything: the two CEOs and directors, the Chief Digital Officer, and the Head of Raw Materials and Safe Synthetic Sourcing. 2. Decentralized Decision Making: Decision-making authority should be put in the hands of the people closest to, and most familiar with, the situation. Those with decision-making authority should be trained to exercise good judgment. A company that draws on the combined intellectual capital of all its employees can outperform a command-and-control company. The ultimate goal of decentralized decision making is to put authority in the hands of those persons closest to and most knowledgeable about the situation. At Lush they value their employees a lot which is why they are trained and taken to the companys manufacturing area so they can learn more about their products. That way employees can contribute in the future with new innovative ideas for products and ways to better help the planet. 3. Advantages and Disadvantages. An advantage of centralized decision making eliminates potential for conflicting goals and actions on the part of lower-level managers. It facilitates quick decision making and strong leadership in crisis situations. A primary disadvantage of this decision making is it lengthens response times by those closest to the market conditions because they must seek approval for their actions. An advantage of decentralized decision making is it encourages company employees to exercise initiative and act responsibly and promotes greater motivation and involvement in the business on the part of more company personnel. A disadvantage of this is it may result in higher- level managers being unaware of actions taken by empowered personnel under their supervision. Although it would be easier and quicker to have a centralized decision making strategy for the company, a decentralized decision making strategy would get the employees more involved in the company. Lower-level employees should have a say too on what goes on at the company as they are the ones who are interacting with the customers daily. Conclusion: In conclusion, chapter 10 tells us how companies can build a good, successful strategy through its people it hires, its internal resources and capabilities and its organizational structure. Companies should hire and train their employees to have them as assets in their company. They should continuously be innovating new resources to keep a sustainable competitive advantage. Works Cited Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics. “Why Work at Lush?: Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics.” Link to LushUSA Website> , Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics, 27 Mar. 2020, www.lushusa.com/stories/article_why-work-at-lush.html. Thompson, Arthur A., et al. Crafting and Executing Strategy: Concepts and Readings. McGraw-Hill Education, 2016. ... Purchase answer to see full attachment