BST720 Leadership, Work and Organization Assignment Sample

Question

You will provide a critical evaluation of organisational culture in Uber; identify the problems and provide a set of recommendations for consideration by the Senior Executive Team (SET).

Overall Comments On The Written Part:

This part of the assignment provides you with the opportunity to interpret organisational culture in a number of ways but try not to be too broad in your discussion.

You may wish to consider some of the following in relation to Uber:

Leadership and consequences as well as impact/influence on organisation culture

• The relationship between leadership and followership in organisations in perpetuating organisation culture. You may also want to critically consider the different ways in which these roles are recognised, rewarded and developed in organisations

• You may decide to look at gender diversity as well as organisational practice to ensure the answer is grounded in terms of a critical organisational analysis

• The role of HR in leadership, organisation culture and change

Important to any discussion would be a clear structure and ‘line of logic/analysis’ which leads you to some recommendations that will be practical to the organisation. It must be noted that this is an academic paper with a practical application.

Solution

Introduction

Work culture and organizational behaviour is something which is one of the most important concerns that is needed to be in any organization. Leadership is one of the crucial jobs of HR practice upon which the whole organizational culture depends. This assignment is an essay on work, leadership and organization of Uber. This essay will critically analyze this service based company on the basis of an case study named “Uber: #WhatDoYouDo”. Susan Fowler, a former Uber employee had posted a blog in 2017 revealing sexual discrimination, sexism and sexual harassment within that organization. This essay will critically discuss the role of leadership, HR practice, and organizational culture with consideration of this incident.

Company background: Uber is a globally renowned cab service company which was founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick in 2009. The company has its headquarters in San Francisco, California, and runs its operations in more than 900 metropolitan areas throughout the world. This company was formerly started up to offer cab services but now it provides services like rentals, couriers, food delivery, bike or scooter riding, package delivery and many more like these. Uber only offers riding services, they do not own any car, they only share a 25% commission from every ride or booking. This company had managed to earn approximately 14.1 billion USD in 2019 from rides and food delivery services (statista, 2022). They have been able to raise their profit from food delivery services to 3.9 billion USD during the lockdown period last year. Uber technologies run its functional operations with more than 22800 employees globally.

Critical Discussion

Organisational Leadership

Leadership has a tremendous impact on organizational culture as leaders act like the pillars in a workforce of any organization. Leaders not only guide a team, but also they conduct the actual functional operation in any business. Leaders are the ones who manage their whole team and make an organization perpetuate. Efficient leaders need to display a positive vibe in them so that other team members can follow them. It is found that employees in an organization are very much influenced by their leaders in terms of motivation to perform well. A good leader makes his subordinate employees feel themselves as important parts of an organization, which leads those employees to try harder in terms of good performance. Leaders are those ones who help their team members to understand their job roles clearly and achieve success in short goals (Hauff et al. 2018). These short goals in various tasks lead to the overall progress of a business. Managers or team leaders help a team to prioritize among several activities which not only saves time but also saves energy as well as resources. In this modern and digital era, international companies such as Uber can implement a contemporary leadership style instead of an autocratic one. Leaders as well as management need to make decisions on applying different strategies according to requirements of different situations.

There are several negative impacts of improper leadership as an inefficient leader can lead to a mess in the whole functional operation in a business. A manager or team leader needs to maintain adequate communication with other team members. Strong words or rude attitude of a leader can demotivate their subordinate employees and it can break their confidence as well. Managers or team leaders have to play a vital role in an organization as only they can control a healthy atmosphere inside an office or any kind of workplace. Proper communication only can help employees to understand the instructions given by their manager or supervisor. A leader needs to convey messages or instructions in clear as well as firm language, otherwise the team members can be misguided (Hauff et al. 2018). In this case, Susan had received an unethical indication from her boss which is strictly against effective leadership. Unprofessional as well as emotional words need to be avoided by a leader while giving instructions; otherwise a misunderstanding can take place, which can disrupt a healthy atmosphere in a workplace.

Organisational Culture and HRM Roles

Members of a HRM team always try to retain their most efficient workforce as much as possible as it lies under their job roles on behalf of a business firm or organization. This is a quite common tendency of HR professionals but this incident reveals something else that is more like ignoring a serious complaint coming from a newcomer is not at all acceptable at any cost. Susan was also a part of the workforce in this business and there was a huge probability of getting her as another star to the workforce in Uber technologies. Moreover, HR professionals are there to solve any kinds of issues raised from their employees for the sake of a good and healthy work culture in an organization (Yang et al. 2021). They can at least create an investigating team to verify complaints if there are any, coming from their employees. This tendency of the HR management team can be considered as not only an issue of negligence but also a case of biases towards older employees. Any of the employees, whether he or she is one of the most committed or efficient towards a job, should not be allowed to conduct any sort of unethical behavior to other employees within an office. These kinds of behavior are huge barriers for creating an efficient organizational culture.

Employees remain motivated towards their work when they get appreciation as well as positive reinforcements from their team leaders. As per Susan’s blog, she did not get the desired transfer even after proving herself in several jobs and scoring perfect in terms of performance. Rather than she got a negative review from her manager for personal issues. No manager is supposed to target any employee and rate her negatively without any documented reason (Van Mierlo et al. 2018). This is strictly against an efficient leadership practice in an organization. A potential employee can expect appreciation instead of wrong as well as illegal indications from her colleagues or managers. A healthy atmosphere and competent work culture should not support or entertain these kinds of incidents in their office.

Equality and Gender Diversity in Organisational Culture

According to her blog, Uber technologies was full of sexism as well as sexual discrimination, as female engineers were accounted only 6 among 150 engineers of the workforce in this company. She had mentioned in her post that female engineers even after scoring well in terms of performance did not get leather jackets that were given to all male engineers as the company was getting a huge discount for a bulk order of male jackets. They were not ready to buy jackets with fewer discounts for only six women at the office. This is clear racism! Employees regardless of their gender are supposed to be treated equally and deserve to be rewarded according to their performance. Female employees, in a good organizational culture, deserve to get equal appraisal or consideration from the supervisors as men.

According to Forbes report, there is at least a 7% of discrimination in the payment process between male and female employees in this company, that is male engineers are paid 7% more than female ones for equivalent designation (Forbes, 2022). Even it is clear from their report that chances of getting a promotion is totally ‘gender blind’ here! This tendency among any workforce is strictly against the work policy of the HR professionals. HR management members are supposed to display a behaviour of complete equality irrespective of gender, skin colour, or cultural as well as religious belief. The management of Uber technologies is to be terribly criticized. Uber management claims to pose fourteen moral values and meritocracy are one of them, but this tendency of them is completely contradictory to their claimed values (uber, 2022). It is clear that they do not always support meritocracy in reality and let people get what they actually deserve according to their merit and performance. Another significant value that this cab service company claims to pose is toe-stepping or sharing ideas regardless of their post or seniority during a meeting. The fact is, employees as well as senior managers in this organization use this idiom for being rude and behave badly to others inside their office. Often newcomers have to face this kind of behaviour from their seniors. Job roles of the HRM is not only creating business strategies and executing action plans, but also they are supposed to show respect to every employee as a human and consider the moral values and ethics of each of them.

Role of HR in Leadership, Organisation Culture and Change

Leaders have the power to control or defuse any scopes of gossiping inside an office. In addition to that, leaders or managers are the one who can deal with any complaints coming from one of their employee bases. Fowler met other female engineers in her office and got to know their stories of getting the same indications from that very same person. She decided to escalate this to the higher authority, but was not entertained again. She was even threatened for talking to other girls or gossiping at office premises. Here, the HR professional is quite right as defusing or at least discouraging gossip inside office premises are duly expected from management, but in this case, they could have listened to her as her problem was more serious than gossiping.

It has been also found out that a nasty booze culture was common in the Friday night party arranged at Uber office premises. These parties were full of sex, drugs, Marijuana and many like this and they call it “Bro culture”. This is not an example of a healthy office culture as not all employees are supposed to be comfortable with these kinds of party culture, and if they do not, their decision should be respected by other employees. Fowler could not fit herself into this culture and decided to change her job though she was not the only one who wanted to quit job at Uber. This company had at least 25% of female engineers by 2015 and the number had reduced to only 3% by 2017 (susanjfowler, 2022). However, Uber management claims to have now somehow changed their policies and work culture and has been able to raise their female employee number to 40% by the year 2021. A rich organisational culture not only maintains stability in the workplace but also increase the employee retention that also helps to minimise the overhead cost. Hence HRM plays an important role in organisational culture. The culture is not a healthy culture in Uber and there should be limitations. Such cultures also degrade the goodwill of the company as well. Uber HR must consider such aspects and try to maintain a healthier approach towards organisational cultural aspects. Human resource leaders are vital to corporate growth. They help achieve strategic goals and objectives by providing complex and innovative leadership strategies. HR leaders mediate between senior management and employees and defend matters on behalf of employees. They promote awareness and guide all levels of the organization through change and transformation. They train both managers and employees on company culture and best practices for living and working together (Zhao et al., 2020). In addition, HR leaders develop metrics and other performance indicators and continually make changes based on overall performance. When an organization has at least one person overseeing these activities, it ensures that the strategies remain effective and bring return on investment (ROI) for change. Personal empathy reinforces leadership qualities in HR activities because it helps HR professionals assist employees with personal problems. These problems can occur when an employee is facing a death in their family or is in a difficult work environment like Uber where bad culture impacted the organisational growth aspect.

Whether change is needed, needed, right or all three, respect is an important part of it. And human resources have an important role to play in ensuring that change is defined, developed and implemented respectfully. The behavioural skills required by HR professionals allow employees to participate in necessary change in their own hands through things like relationship management, critical evaluation, and leadership mentoring and roaming. Change is important for HR as human resource work will keep on changing along with it and in this case, Uber desperately in need of cultural change. Changes in HR are long-term structural changes. Therefore, although many HR principles are still the same, the way HR is run will and will continue to change. These changes will require organizational leadership, but for change to occur, change must occur from the bottom to up. Therefore, for it to be truly successful, the focus must be on change in human resources at all levels (Cohen, 2016). Importantly, the human resources department of Uber should be encouraged to seek potential contributors to convert and encourage other employees to join the program. Since there are people in the human resources department with organizational and personal competencies, getting their help to sustain change is an important factor in the change management process.

Recommendations

These kinds of incidents are harmful for the reputation of an organization and can impact on their sales rate as well. Chances of these kinds of events can be reduced or avoided through proper actions taken by the governing bodies and managing directors in an organization. Managers of this company can be given training on leadership practice as some of them are found to misuse the power of a leader. They need to understand the concept of an efficient leadership so that they can implicate that knowledge in their daily activities for the sake of this organization. All employees including team leaders and managers need to participate in gender equality awareness programs arranged within the office premises. Employees can be given activity tasks such as role playing activities that can make them feel things from a woman’s perspective. Strong HR policies can be created as well as activated in the work culture as soon as possible and tough penalties can be declared in case of violation of those policies. More female employees can be hired in the HR management team so that they can deal with these matters with empathy. ‘Green HRM’ practice can be introduced within the work culture of this company so that a healthy work atmosphere can be retained and an efficient organizational behavior can be ensured (Peng et al. 2020). Safety and security of female employees can be ensured thus more female candidates can be encouraged to join this company.

Conclusion

Leadership and work culture are inevitable parts of an organization for which an efficient leadership practice and a healthy work culture is necessary for a good reputation of a company. This essay has discussed critical evaluation of the case study of Susan Fowler who worked as an engineer in Uber technologies. This essay has critically discussed the role of leadership, HR practice, and organizational culture with consideration of this incident. It has analyzed and criticized this cab service provider company on the basis of a blog posted by Susan in 2017. This essay has also recommended some potential strategies that can be suitable for this organization to regain their reputation.
 

Reference List

Cohen, D. (2016). What is HR’s Role in Managing Change? [online] SHRM. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/pages/deb-cohen.aspx [Accessed 13 Jan. 2022].

Forbes (2022) Uber's Gender Pay Gap Study May Show The Opposite Of What Researchers Were Trying To Prove Available at; https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2018/09/23/gender-paygap-uber-case-study/?sh=650a3f9eb555 [Accessed on 12.1.22]

Hauff, S., Guerci, M., Dul, J. and van Rhee, H., 2021. Exploring necessary conditions in HRM research: Fundamental issues and methodological implications. Human Resource Management Journal, 31(1), pp.18-36.

Peng, J., Yin, K., Hou, N., Zou, Y. and Nie, Q., 2020. How to facilitate employee green behavior: The joint role of green transformational leadership and green human resource management practice. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 52(9), p.1105.

Susanjfowler (2022) Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Available at; Uberhttps://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber [Accessed on 12.1.22]

Uber (2022) About Us Available at; https://www.uber.com/in/en/about/?utm_campaign=CM2058205-search-google-brand_77_-99_IN-National_driver_web_acq_cpc_en_Generic_Exact_uber_kwd- 169801042_496400217099_122940583368_e_c&utm_source=AdWords_Brand [Accessed on 12.1.22]

Van Mierlo, J., Bondarouk, T. and Sanders, K., 2018. The dynamic nature of HRM implementation: a structuration perspective. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 29(22), pp.3026-3045.

Yang, F., Huang, X., Tang, D., Yang, J. and Wu, L., 2021. How guanxi HRM practice relates to emotional exhaustion and job performance: the moderating role of individual pay for performance. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(11), pp.2493-2518.

Zhao, S., Liu, M., Zhu, C.J. and Liu, H. (2020). The role of leadership in human resource management: perspectives and evidence from Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific Business Review, [online] pp.1–5. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13602381.2020.1779496.

PROJ6012 Managing Information Systems/Technology Projects Assignment Sample

Question

Consider the organization where you are currently working or an organisation with which you are familiar with and select a project. Alternatively, you may choose a project case study from the existing published literature for your analysis. For the considered case study you will be required to understand the background of the project and the business value that it is providing to the organisation. The project selected should be such that you can do a deep analysis by considering different aspects of project management discipline. A project manager needs to balance the three competing goals of the project, namely, scope, time and cost. These are commonly known as the triple constraints in project management. You will be required to analyse different methods and tools used to manage the scope, time and cost of the project and present the project management artefacts used to balance these constraints.

Please consider some general instructions for preparing your assignments provided in this document.

For completing your Assessment 1 you need to consider the following

1. Analysis of the selected project case and its organisational context (size, budget, problem statement, project objectives)

2. An evaluation of the current state of the organisation’s IS/IT technology and its dependence on it.

3. Evaluate the impact that the selected project has on the society and the organization’s success (may consider SWOT analysis). You may provide some reasoning for selecting the project as a case study.

4. Analyse the process (es) and methods used to select that particular IS/IT project.

5. Provide justification for the methodology (predictive or agile) selected for project execution. Give reasoning, if you think a better methodology could have been used.

6. Enquire and evaluate the tools (i.e., graphical representations) or software applications the organisation utilises in the system development processes. If you cannot find that information, suggest which ones you would utilise.

7. Critically analyse how the selected project is aligned to the strategic goals of the organization. Suggest opportunities for improvement in the management of IS/IT strategies and approaches.

8. Examine the scope of the project, major features, project limitations and issues related to scope changes. You may present the relevant artefacts like scope statement, requirements analysis document or project charter for clarification. If the project is using Agile method, you provide artefacts which define scope like a set of user stories and acceptance tests.

9. Investigate the method used for creating the schedule of the project and the methods used by the project manager (or team) to control the project schedule. You may present the schedule plan like Gantt chart or other relevant document.

10. Analyse the methods used by the project manager to keep the project within the allocated budget. You may present the budget documents, cost estimate, cost baseline for the project.

11. If it is a failed or challenged project you may provide justification for its poor performance. Provide your suggestions which could have prevented project failure.

12. All your claims and recommendations must be supported by relevant literature. Hence, a significant amount of academic references must be included in the report.

Answer

Introduction

As per current market trends ensuring effective document management are crucial for better market competitive advantages; it helps the organizations in providing better services to their customers which is essential to gain better market positioning. Here, in this study better document management process implementation requirements for the Torrens University will be discussed in this study (Field, 2019). In order to do that this study will propose development of their existing record management system which is TRIM along with that it will also discuss implementation of a new system for effective document management purposes. In that consideration as per new market trends cloud computing is very effective and efficient for that purposes which is the reason here implication of cloud computing for the institution for its future scope development will be ensured in this project.

Project Case Analysis and Organizational Context

Based on that given case scenario related to Torrens University, Australia, it has mainly been found that within its key field of Document as well as Record Management System, existing TRIM Context has not delivered adequate opportunities and advantages. As stated by Guggilla et al. (2017), there must also be a need for a better system which supports both records and document management with a diverse range of positive outcomes and benefits altogether.

Now, in the sense of Size, it has been expected that this project must determine a positive scope with a great extent. In detail, this project must help to ensure a positive infrastructure of managing existing systems with the help derived from effective and efficient project management practices with better applications (Brewer, Jeffrey & Kevin 2018). That specifically means, through successful delivery of expert opinions along with Gartner’s Consulting report regarding appropriate suitability and applicability of TU’s document and record management system, all kinds of future and current requirements of this university have been fulfilled as well.
On the other hand, in the case of Budget, there must be a need for adequate monetary resources with extra funding facilities. Additionally, through feasibility, it has been assumed to arrange a funding worth around $1,500 at the start.

Now, in the sense of Problem Statement, it has been identified that TU’s existing TRIM Context system is not suitable for its document management system. However, the existing system has stood at version 3.x, whereas the current system has supported only its upgraded version of 7.x. Moreover, it has also been found that such TRIM infrastructure might be useful for record management but not fully for document management at all (Altinay, 2017).

Henceforth, in the case of Project Objectives, it has aimed ‘to implement a better management system replacing or upgrading existing TRIM Context with Cloud Computing and other requirements likely’.

IT/IS Technology with Dependency

In this modern era of globalization, it has mainly been observed that there are numerous kinds of different IT/IS technology, which are also extensively utilized in various organizations seamlessly. Those technologies have consisted of communication, construction, product, medical, architectural, business, educational, information and many more. As mentioned by Paquette & Frankl (2016), all of these advanced and modern technology and innovation aspects have played pivotal roles towards an organization’s further growth, success and development accordingly.

Now, based on that given case scenario, it has mainly been found that within its existing record and document management infrastructure, there have been utilized TRIM Context management systems for the past several years. In addition to this, such a multi-faceted venture has also tried a lot to ensure a seamless experience in those segments of record and document management with its key version of 3.x, which now can also be upgraded towards 7.x.

From another point of view, in the case of this specific management software’s dependency, it has been stated that various records as well as some sensitive documents of this university have been handled properly (Sva?rd Proscovia, 2017). Additionally, employees’ shared knowledge along with adequate skills have also supported this whole situation with a diverse range of positive results after all.

Project Impact on Success

In this specific segment of study, as per that case study, overall project impact on organizational and societal success has been demonstrated. In this way, here might also be considered to conduct a SWOT analysis as follows:

Table 1: SWOT Analysis of Project
(Source: Created by Author)

Now, as observed from that upper clear depiction, it has mainly been realized that through successful incorporation of this project in TU, it has been able to reform as well as develop its existing record and document management platform with new possibilities. In addition to this, as this new project of implementing Cloud Computing by replacing or upgrading its existing TRIM context, better approaches have been availed thereafter. As reported by Beynon-Davies (2020), as this project has also helped to ensure enhanced data safety and security of some relevant and important data with sensitive documents properly, it must protect societal rights with a reasonable choice as well as proper justification thereafter.

Analysis of Project Methods

In order to ensure effective document management in Torrens University as suggested in this organization, implementation of cloud computing is crucial. That is because with cloud computing a better accessibilities to the document can be ensured as well as it will also help in optimization of the whole process as in the organization as well, that is because then the information will be there for everyone who is related to the system. That will help in understanding their roles in the organizational management process (Altinay, Dagli & Alt?nay 2017). In that aspect as for effective project development better communication within the project team is also crucial as well, that will help them in understanding the project needs and their responsibilities in that regards which will help them in ensuring better effectiveness in the project. As well as during the project development ensuring effective communication and collaborations with different teams is essential because it will help in ensuring efficiency in the project development process. In that aspect ensuring Agile methodologies for the development of the software project can be very effective. That is because Agile is a collaborative and evolving way to self organize a project implication across various teams within the project which ensures effective collaboration among the team as well as helps them in understanding their importance’s in the project at the same time which is essential for more effective project development. Along with that Agile is adaptive to the project development plans, evolutionary, and always open to include changes as per the market trends, for that reason selection of Agile for the document system development project management for Torrens University is very effective. According to Field (2019), other methodologies like Waterfall are not that flexible to ensure changes in an organization with time which can create generation gaps in the organization, for that reason also implementation of agile method for this project is also effective as well.

Justification for Project Methodology

For the project development process in Torrens University agile project development methodology is considered, one of the main reason for that agile methodologies work the best when the project developers does not have an estimating of the needed time for the project as well as does not have an better understanding about the full scope of the project. For the document system development in Torrens it can be seen that requirements needed for the project are not clarified among the project members. For that reason mapping out the business needs is very complicated, and only can be achieved through the process of trial and error, which can be measured through the agile project development methodology (Stark & hoopla digital 2017). For that reason selection of agile is very effective for this project. With agile project methodology the members of the project can eventually map out the requirements of the organization and implement the document management system effectively. Along with that as this is a continuous development process as per the needs and changes of the market, where the project members do not need to deliver a fully functional system at once, rather than they can make changes in the system with time to ensure the scalability of the system. That also ensures better effectiveness and efficiencies for the system which is also one of the main reasons for selecting the project development methodology Agile (Janson, 2019). As the organization does not need to complete the whole system for deployment, the customers can get value sooner with this project methodology. Moreover, with agile resources waste is also fewer as the project members only need to update the tasks, instead of implementing new tasks in the system. Further more agile project methodology also ensures faster fix of any issues as well as it also detects issues fathers as well. Based on these considerations it can be suggested implementation of agile project methodology is very effective for the selected project.

Enquiry and Evaluation of Project Tools/Software Applications in System Development

In order to ensure effective agile project management process for the Torrens university’s document management system implementation there are various tools needed, which will be discussed below:

Tools for enterprise integration: In the issues related to data integration process and supporting integration deployment these tools are very crucial. Along with that these tools also help in paving the way for adhering IT control and governance in an organization like Torrens University. As indicated by Wysocki (2019), these tools are also essential for ensuring analogous situations as well, which helps the system in having a governing body to integrate different parts of location in an area with the system. As the organization has more than one campus it will help them in ensuring effective management of the document in Torrens university’s branches. Some examples of these tools can be Informatica cloud, AtomSphere by Dell, and cloudHub by MuleSoft.

Figure 1: Enterprise integration needs and tools
(Source: Influence by Wysocki 2019)

Enterprise monitoring and management tools: Ensuring scalability of a system and effective management of a system is crucial for assuring its effectiveness. In that consideration, for the project enterprise monitoring and management tools are crucial at the time of ensuring agile methodologies for the development of the document management system in the organization (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). For that various effective enterprise monitoring systems are Amazon cloudwatch, Nagios and others. In order to ensure effective enterprise management, examples of various tools can be Puppet, Enstratius by Dell and others.

Figure 2: Example of enterprise monitoring and management tools interface
(Source: Influence by Wells, Kathryn & Timothy 2018)

Critical Analysis of Project

In this section of the study, there has been critical analysis of this project aligning with strategic goals of TU in Australia. In this way, here have been presented some strategic goals of TU as follows:

? To engage quality-standard professionals in the fields of strategic thinking, planning as well as action properly

? To improve overall business, organizational along with individual success, growth and development

? To deliver quality strategy-oriented events as well as contents altogether

In this way, it can also be said that through successful implementation of this project regarding Cloud Computing installation replacing TRIM context, a better record and document management platform has been built. Additionally, all kinds of relevant data along with sensitive documents have also been able to be protected with enhanced safety and security measures thereafter. As contrasted by Wells, Kathryn & Timothy (2018), in contrast to this, sometimes, mainly due to high level of change constraints and lack of knowledge and skills might hamper this whole situation apparently.

On the other hand, in the case of opportunities for improvement in IT/IS managerial approaches, it becomes possible to implement some valued and positive aspects altogether. For example, through better time, communication and cooperation management, it has been able to acquire the key opportunity of improving record and document management in a hassle-free manner.

Project Scope, Features, Limitations and Issues

Project scope: The implementation of a new document management system will help the organization in providing a better service to its customers, which is crucial to gain better market share development. It will help the organization in having a better portfolio image in the market as well as will also ensure the scalability of the organization with the changes in the market (Wysocki, 2019). That is also essential for ensuring better market positioning for Torrens University. Main consideration of this project is ensuring generation gaps in the organization as well as improving its services providing process and decision making process for better future development.

Major features: With cloud computing various major features can be ensured in this organization, such as better flexibility in ensuring information across its branches and stakeholders, which also ensures transparency for the organization. Along with that cloud computing also helps the organization in better decision making as well as it also ensures optimization of different processes in the organization (Guggilla, 2017). As in this project agile methodology will be implemented for developing the project, that will help the organization in incorporation with the changes in the market as well. These are crucial features for the company to gain a better future development process.

Project limitation and issues: Some of the main limitation of this project is change resistance among the stakeholders as they were already used to the existing system implementation of new system is a problem for those stakeholders. As well as coping with the new changes in the market also can be problematic if a better tool for analyzing the changes in the market is not there in Torrens University. For that implementation of effective decision making porches is also crucial (Wysocki, 2019). Along with that limited skills of the employees and operational management of the system by those employees also will be crucial problems in this project development process. However with better awareness and training programs that can be managed by the institution. Here project artifacts for using agile methods are provided below:

Figure 4: Agile scrum artifacts
(Source: Influence by Guggilla, 2017)

User story

In the Torrens University as a newcomer John was very confused and worried as he lost his registration details in his first year. In order to gain back detailed information regarding his registration in the organization, there was only one path left which is sorting the registration of that year by section and streams. However, it was informed to him by his friends but he does not think that is possible without making a legal approach to this situation. However, he still thought that it would be better if he considered the suggestion provided to him by his classmates. After asking for that to the administrator of the organization he is able to know that it can be gained from the college authorities if he comes back on another day after lunch period. There, he came to know that as the organization has installed a new relational database system, the organization is able to collect all information provided to him by their students. It helped John in greater manner in his life.

Project Scheduling

Project scheduling is a crucial aspect for effectively developing the project, in order to effectively schedule for the project usages of Gantt chart is very effective. That is because from the Gantt chart project members are able to have a better understanding about the scope of their task as well as time ensured for those tasks can be achieved (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). Moreover, within project scheduling all activities, deliverables, milestones of project with start and finish date have been highly determined. That helps in ensuring project effectiveness and efficiencies for the project. Here, a depiction of the Gnatt chart and its implication is provided below.

Table 2: Gantt chart
(Source: Created by author)

For effectively managing the developed schedule the project managers need to ensure that they have a better understanding about time management in a project. In that regard, ensuring Eisenhower time management tools is very crucial. That is because with the help of this matrix the project managers will have a better understanding of the importance of different tasks and implementation needs at the same time. It will help in optimization of project schedule in amore collective manner.

Figure 3: Time management matrix of Eisenhower
(Source: Stark & hoopla digital, 2017
 

Project Budget

In this specific segment of this project, here have been evaluated some important aspects including budgeting process, cost estimation and baseline along with relevant budgeting documents by the project manager. Now, that whole budget process with methods has been depicted below:

? Firstly, the project manager should have to break down project activities into several tasks and milestones. Additionally, it must also help to fulfill project scope further

? As per every project item towards project needs should be needed to include in the task list with enhanced level of optimization

? Finally, all budget estimations should be gathered. In this way, through successful utilization of spreadsheets, in different columns consisting tasks and costs altogether (Janson, 2019).

? Furthermore, there must also be a need for developing a feasible contingency plan with expert opinions along with final approval towards successful conduction of that project.

Now, in the field of Budgeting Documents, following things must be needed to prepare:

? In-detailed Project Charter
? Work Statement
? Contracts and Requirements
? Stakeholder Register
? Change Control Register with Activity Logs
? Quality Metrics
? Risk Register
? Issue Logs and many others.

Here has been depicted an in-detailed Cost Estimation of this project below:

Table 3: Cost Estimation
(Source: Created by author)

Finally, it must also be denoted that in the case of Cost Baseline, approved time-based plan has been highlighted at the most. In this way, after successful development of detailed budget and approval, the project manager should have to publish a specific deadline with actual performance progress (Janson, 2019). Finally, this budgeting tool has also been utilized for measuring project changes that also affects project schedule and overall budget thereafter.

Justification and Suggestions against Project Failure

From the above discussion it can be suggested that the proposed project will help the organization in ensuring a better future scope development process. For that reason it can be suggested that the proposed project for the organization to ensure their document management system, is very effective and not a failure by any means. However, as opined by Wells et al. (2018), various problems in the project development process can be seen throughout the deployment time of this project. One of the main problems can be change resistance, for effectively handling that ensuring awareness programs and training programs can be considered in this organization. Along with that limited skills among the employees to effectively implement the project also can create various problems but training and development can effectively handle those problems in this project as well along with outsourcing of talents can be considered in that regards as well.

Recommendations

In this segment of current study, several recommended ways have been demonstrated against this project as follows:

Assurance for Cloud Users

In this segment, it has been recommended to implement the best security standard practices with the core purpose of mitigating possible risks among customers and providers. In addition to this, possible risks in cloud service provider offerings with enhanced physical security and policy issues.

Legal Aspects

In this segment, it has mainly been recommended to implement traditional internet services as per maintaining standard contract clauses should have been needed to review first (Stark & hoopla digital. 2017). In detail, within the field of legal recommendations under the category of European Commission, certain issues regarding Data Prevention directive, cloud provider’s obligations, liability exemptions with intermediaries as well as minimum data protection levels should be adopted at the very first.

Completion of Relevant Stages

In this specific context, it has mainly been opined to follow all kinds of relevant aspects along with stages of better record and document management seamlessly. In detail, some stages including better planning, directing, organizing, controlling, classification, indexing and other types of managerial activities must be needed to handle properly.

Finally, it has also been suggested to incur the better approaches of reviewing documents with proper retention schedules. Besides, it should be kept in mind that such an accurate retention schedule must help to establish a successful record management infrastructure further (Stark & hoopla digital. 2017). In addition to this, some other activities consisting of disposition of expired files, reduced clutters for regaining spaces must be prioritized to monitor that whole record management program without any trace of further disruptions at all.

Conclusion

From that upper in-detailed discussion, it can be concluded that within a business organization, successful management of information systems or infrastructure has played a pivotal role. Concerning this fact, as that given case study is all about successful implementation of better record and document management systems replacing TRIM context with cloud computing, there must be a need for productive requirements thereafter. In this way, with the help of proper recommendations, feasible cost estimation, better software and hardware requirements, it has been able to establish a safe as well as secured data management system with a diverse range of positive outcomes and benefits.
 

References

Altinay, F., Dagli, G., & Altinay, Z. (2017). Role of technology and management in tolerance and reconciliation education. Quality and Quantity, 51(6), 2725–2736. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-016-0419-x

Beynon-Davies, P. (2020). Business information systems (Third). Macmillan Education

Brewer, J. L., & Dittman, K. C. (2018). Methods of project management (Third, Ser. Book collections on project muse). Purdue University Press

Field, A. (2019). Implementing an integrated management system (ims) : the strategic approach. IT Governance.

Guggilla, Ajaykumar. (2017). Servicenow It Operations Management : Demystifying It Operations Management. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing.

Harvard Business Review Press. (2020). Agile (Ser. Insights you need from harvard business review)

Janson, S. (Ed.). (2019). Be creative on the job : implement ideas, creativity techniques & innovation, agile project management & communication, solve problems, shape change successfully, overcome your fears (1st ed.). Best of HR - Berufebilder.de.

Paquette, P., & Frankl, M. (2016). Agile project management for business transformation success (First, Ser. Portfolio and project management collection). Business Expert Press

Stark, E., & hoopla digital. (2017). Agile project management quickstart guide : a simplified beginners guide to agile project management (Second). ClydeBank Media LLC.

Sva?rd Proscovia. (2017). Enterprise content management, records management and information culture amidst e-government development. Elsevier Science. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=4843142.

Wells, K., & Kloppenborg, T. J. (2015). Project management essentials (Ser. Portfolio and project management collection). Business Expert Press

Wysocki, R. K. (2019). Effective project management : traditional, agile, extreme (8th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=5747804.

PROJ6005 Program and Portfolio Management Assignment Sample

Governance and Stakeholder Management

Assignment Brief

Learning Outcomes addressed:

Evaluate the governance process within an existing contemporary project

Aim

Application of program management processes via a case study – Governance and Stakeholder
Management

1. Western Australian Auditor General (OAG). 2018. WA Schools Public Private Partnership Project.
Perth, West Australia: OAG.
Link: https://audit.wa.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/report2018_11-PPP.pdf
o or see the reading list in BB for Assignment 2

Resources

The following resources are needed in order to complete this assessment, these are available via your Leganto

Reading List in Blackboard:

Bourne, Lynda and Derek H.T Walker. 2005. “Visualizing and mapping stakeholder influence.”
Management Decision 43 (5): 649-60.

Governance and Stakeholder Management

This assignment is based on answering questions in regard to the Case Study assignment help from Assessment 2 (. In answering the assignment, make any necessary but reasonable assumptions.

1. Summarise the Governance problems and suggest solutions (30 marks)

2. Using Borne and Walker’s article, draw a Stakeholder Circle to show the influence and power of all
Stakeholders in this project. Remember to include a legend to clarify each stakeholder. (30 marks)

3. Using your Stakeholder Circle, Identify TWO key stakeholders, analyse their interests, influence and
distance, and suggest and justify how they should be managed. (40 marks)

Format

The assignment must be typed in A4 format in single space typing. Students should use the template provided in the assignment folder. All papers should be numbered. All assignments should be thoroughly checked for typing, spelling and grammatical errors before being submitted.

Word length should be approximately (1000-1500 words)

Points to note:

Submit your assessment via the Turnitin link under the Assessments tab in Blackboard (not through email or in person) by the due date.

Late submissions will be penalised as per the Curtin Late Assessment Policy in the Unit Outline.

All assessments should be referenced correctly (see unit outline for more details) and in accordance Curtin University policy.

All source material MUST be acknowledged and any form of plagiarism will result in the appropriate measures being taken. Do not copy other student’s work or assist by showing your work to others.

Solution

Introduction

The success of a project depends upon numerous factors. Project governance and stakeholder management are two such factors that can lead to the successful project outcomes if properly managed.

The report covers governance and stakeholder management aspects for WA Schools Public Private Partnership (PPP) project. WA Government signed a contract with EduWest in 2015 to design, build, and maintain eight schools. The completion time for the project is in 2047. It is a large-scale project will several stakeholders associated with it (WA, 2018).

Governance Problems and Solutions

It has been two and a half years since the contract between the two parties has been signed. The program is found to be on track. EduWest has been successful in the opening of four primary and first stage of a secondary school. The rest of the project activities are also on track. There are also a few issues identified in the project. The transition to the school operations in 2017 had a few complexities due to the underestimation of the resources by the Department of Education, DoE and EduWest. The lack of effective communication and training is another factors identified with the model. Such issues may further result in conflicts and disputes in the advanced project stages (Muller et al., 2016).

The project includes adequate high-level governance. Also, the work relationship between EduWest and DoE is also up to the mark. However, DoE does not have a well-defined contract management plan. DoE also lacks in the effective audit program to keep a track of the contract and the associated performance.

DoE has also not made it a point to implement adequate tools and processes for contract management. Since, the project is a long-term and large-scale project, constant auditing and performance checks are essential to determine and fill the gaps.

For effective governance, it is recommended for DoE to define a contract management plan. It shall focus on the terms and conditions, audit program and schedule, performance monitoring, and management. DoE must have a detailed audit schedule and it shall then be used to perform the audits to determine the existing gaps and areas of improvement. Training is one of the aspects that must be focussed upon.

Stakeholder Circle

There are several stakeholders involved in the PPP project. Each of the stakeholders involved has varied interest and level of influence in the project. For example, the WA Government and DoE are the stakeholders with high levels of interest, influence, and power to kill a project. The same goes for EduWest.

The Steering Committee and Senior Leadership also has major influence in the project as the decision-making authorities are provided to these stakeholders. The potential customers, such as the students and their parents have limited influence but they have the power to kill the project. The project is a long-term and large-scale project with several vendors and suppliers associated with it. These stakeholders may be from WA or the other remote regions with significant influence. This is because the delay in the supplies can have major impact on the project (Fontana, 2017).

Project team is also a significant project stakeholder with considerable influence in the project as a group.

Key Stakeholders

Department of Education (DoE)

DoE is one of the key stakeholders in the project with high levels of interest, influence, and power on the project. PPP project has provided a novel approach to deliver the school facilities and services. The shift from the existing methods to the new approach has been challenging. The initial project activities have gone well with the design and build of the schools as per the expectations and requirements. The challenges are observed in the transition and maintenance processes. DoE is the stakeholder responsible for the overall handling and management of the project. The stakeholder is accountable for the outcomes of the project and for any of the issues in the project.

DoE has acknowledged that there were gaps in initial management of the project activities, operations, and training. The stakeholder has the responsibility of carrying out effective governance so that the project goals and objectives are attained. DoE is the governing body of the WA Government with high interest in the project due to the positive impacts the project can have on the quality of education in the region. Also, the project involves massive costs and DoE has the responsibility to ensure effective distribution and usage of these costs. The level of influence is also high as DoE can make decisions for the project in terms of approvals, changes, audits, etc. It is directly in contact with EduWest to ascertain effective progress and performance of the project (Holloway, 2017).

DoE has identified the need to develop and implement contract management, performance management, and audit management plans. With these plans and programs, the stakeholder will be able to effectively guide the project teams and also make sure that the risks are prevented or managed well.

EduWest

The contract for the eight schools has been provided by the WA Government to EduWest. The contract between WA Government and EduWest has been signed for $631 Million.

EduWest has major interest in the project due to financial and non-financial returns attached with the project. EduWest will receive the recognition with successful delivery and completion of the project. Also, the returns and revenues generated as part of the project will be high.

The level of influence of EduWest on the project is also significant. This is because EduWest is the primary contractor for the project. The design and construction decisions along with the procurement, internal management, development, and maintenance are taken by the stakeholder group (Greenwood & Mir, 2018).
It is in direct contact with the DoE to discuss the individual schools’ requirements and the changes to be made in the designs or layout. Based on these discussions, the stakeholder group then implements the requirements and the identified changes.

Stakeholder Management Techniques

It is important to effective manage the stakeholders identified for the project.

Communication is one of the key aspects in the project and shall be used to manage DoE, EduWest, and all the other stakeholders associated with the WA PPP project.

The project shall include daily and weekly reporting of the project status to keep a track of the project progress and gaps. This will keep the stakeholders involved with the project and will also make sure that the stakeholders come up with the ideas on the changes and improvements. For example, the transition from the existing model has been a major cause of concern for DoE. The impacts of such issues are relevant on the other project stakeholders. With discussions and brainstorming sessions, it would be possible to identify the plans and strategies to implement.

EduWest must have an internal procedure of daily reporting and the compiled report shall be shared with the DoE. DoE shall then compile the reports and shall share the project status with the steering committee and WA Government (Eskerod et al., 2015).

Training and development is identified as one of the techniques to manage EduWest. EduWest has been successful in completing four primary schools and the first stage of a secondary school. There is a lot of work that is still required to be completed to meet the project goals. DoE shall perform performance and project audits on the work accomplished so far to identify the training needs for EduWest members. The organization and completion of training activities will improve the stakeholder engagement and it will also lead to the positive impacts on the quality of the project activities.

Every stakeholder has a varied interest and influence in the project. For example, the level of interest and influence of DoE is not the same as the project team or the suppliers. Similarly, the area of interest of each of the stakeholders identified is also different from the other. DoE is primarily interested in the compliance rate, project performance, variance, and quality. EduWest, on the other hand is interested in the project costs, requirements, implementation, design, and likewise. It is important to identify the level of interest and influence of the stakeholders along with the area of interest for each of these stakeholders. The power-interest grid will provide an understanding of the management aspects to follow. For example, both DoE and EduWest have high interest and high influence in the project. It is important that the stakeholders are regularly communicated about the project status, changes, and conflicts.

Conclusion

Stakeholder management is one of the key aspects in the project lifecycle. In the WA PPP project, numerous stakeholders are involved and are identified. DoE and EduWest are the two key stakeholders with high levels of interest and influence in the project. It is necessary that the stakeholders are managed with effective communication, reporting, engagement, and training processes. The use of governance and control by the DoE will also assist in the identification of the gaps and areas of improvement. It will be useful in stakeholder and the overall management of the project.
 

References

Eskerod, P., Huemann, M., & Ringhofer, C. (2015). Stakeholder Inclusiveness: Enriching Project Management with General Stakeholder Theory1. Project Management Journal, 46(6), 42–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21546

Fontana, E. (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility as Stakeholder Engagement: Firm-NGO Collaboration in Sweden. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(4), 327–338. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1463

Greenwood, M., & Mir, R. (2018). Critical Management Studies and Stakeholder Theory: Possibilities for a Critical Stakeholder Theory. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3234947
Holloway, G. (2017). Stakeholder Management. Xlibris Corp.

Muller, R., Zhai, L., Wang, A., & Shao, J. (2016). A framework for governance of projects: Governmentality, governance structure and projectification. International Journal of Project Management, 34(6), 957–969. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.05.002

WA. (2018). WA Schools Public Private Partnership Project. https://audit.wa.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/report2018_11-PPP.pdf

MGT607 Innovation, Creativity & Entrepreneurship Assignment Sample

Assignment Brief

Individual/Group - Individual

Length - 1000 words

Learning Outcomes:

a) Critically evaluate, synthesize and apply the fundamentals theories of creative entrepreneurship.

b) Critically evaluate and justify the perspective of the user and the unique value proposition aimed at them in the development of the enterprise.

Submission - By 11:55pm AEST/AEDT Friday of Module 2.2 (Week 4)
Weighting - 15%
Total Marks - 15 marks

Context

Innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship can come in many different forms and be successful for many reasons. As such, being able to recognize these will broaden your understanding and appreciation for the important role of entrepreneurship and innovation in society today.

This assessment requires students to critically analyze a case study utilizing the theory learnt in Module 1 and Module 2. It is important you draw on the concepts of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship and link them to the case study to support your discussion and any recommendations you may have.

Instructions:

For assignment help, you must select ONE of the following three case studies below for your assessment. These case studies provide different examples of entrepreneurship and innovation.

1. Majora Carter: 3 stories of local eco-entrepreneurship
https://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_3_stories_of_local_ecoactivism#t-186688

2. Krista Donaldson: The $80 prosthetic knee that’s changing lives
https://www.ted.com/talks/krista_donaldson_the_80_prosthetic_knee_that_s_changing_liv
es#t-434865

3. Navi Radjou: Creative problem solving in the face of extreme limits
https://www.ted.com/talks/navi_radjou_creative_problem_solving_in_the_face_of_extrem
e_limits#t-500868

You will be required to watch the video and prepare a business style report. You must ensure that you incorporate the theories, which you learn in Module 1 and Module 2 to support your discussion.

Specifically, some of the questions you should be considering are:

• How does the case specifically demonstrate an entrepreneurial mindset?
• How does the case adopt theories of creativity to solve the specific problem?
• How does the case show an innovative approach to meeting a customer need?
 

Whilst the format may vary for your report, below is suggested format for you to follow:

• Cover page

• Background [approximately 150 words] This will provide an introduction to your case study.

• Main Discussion / Opportunity [500-600 words]
This section should use the questions above as the basis for your discussion.

• Recommendations / Conclusion [200-300 words]

Is there anything you think could have been done differently?

What are your key learnings, which you have taken away from the case study?

• Appendices where applicable

• Your case study will be assessed based on the Rubric below and is limited to a word count of 1000 words excluding the cover page.

Referencing:

You must recognize all sources of information; including images that you include in your work. Reference your work according to the APA 6th edition guidelines. Please see more information on referencing here http://library.laureate.net.au/research_skills/referencing

Submission Instructions:

Submit your Case Study in the Assessment 1 Case Study submission link in the Assessment section found in the main navigation menu of the subject Blackboard site. A rubric will be attached to the assessment. The Learning Facilitator will provide feedback via the Grade Centre in the LMS portal. Feedback can be viewed in My Grades.

Please note the following additional information

• You should adhere to the correct use of academic writing, presentation and grammar.

• It is important to check your similarity in turnitin. All sentences highlighted must be either paraphrased in your own words or put in quotes and referenced accordingly. You should be aiming for as low a similarity score as you can. Similarity highlighted in a contents page, reference list or appendices are nothing to be concerned about.

• It is important to adopt the appropriate use of the APA 6th edition style when citing and referencing research. Please comply with all academic standards of legibility, referencing and bibliographical details (including reference list).

• You are advised to include a minimum of four (4) academic references, which should be textbooks or academic journals. Appropriate websites may be used in addition to these.

Solution

Introduction

Globalisation and technological innovation have brought revolutionary changes within the modern-day world as it allows demonstrating public-centric entrepreneurship spirit and innovation-seeking creativity in resolving contemporary social challenges. As poverty, social inequalities, resources inaccessibility and supply chain disruptions continue to impose comprehensive limitations to mitigate social challenges, creative entrepreneurs must consider techno-centric visionaries, social causes and problem-solving abilities to improve livelihoods. The second case study involving Krista Donaldson’s discussion on ted talks regarding the development of a prosthetic knee has been taken into account for evaluation within this study (ted.com, 2013).

As lifetime healthcare costs for people with limb loss is $509275 and more than 1 million annual limb amputations are required globally, the development of re-motion knee is a revolutionary innovation to mitigate disabilities for underprivileged people. Krista Donaldson perfectly aligned creativity and imagination into re-motion knee development programs and distribution channels to maximize its usability, accessibility and sustainability while considering amputees as a prominent social challenge. This exploratory study is intended to demonstrate entrepreneurial spirit and its implications on users while considering creativity theories and holistic innovation approaches.

Discussion

Technology has changed the world and brought enormous positive changes within a modernised contemporary society by bringing social entrepreneurship spirit and innovation-seeking creativity into product-based design and manufacturing principles to optimize structural transformation towards sustainability and continual improvement (Crum & Hines, 2019, p.8). Through the re-motion knee development program, social entrepreneur Krista Donaldson has leveraged economic factors, sustainability-conscious development policies and problem-solving entrepreneurship skills to articulate permissible visionaries and usability of the fibre-infused prosthetic knee for people in need. She creatively crafted workmanship in prosthetic knee development and engaged with multiple agencies and establishments to provide cutting-edge solutions for people with amputees and walk disabilities. In essence, she considered the core principles and competencies of altruistic entrepreneurship and combined commerce and distinct social issues to improve the lives of millions of people connected to the cause. Inevitably, she put affordability and reliability as the core foundation of the product and confined an earned income business model to reach out to poor and underprivileged people worldwide. She also predominantly focused on the value-creating processes while recognising and resourcefully pursuing ample opportunities to create social values and a centralised notion of change. During participating in the development process of re-motion knees, she demonstrated an innovation-seeking entrepreneurship spirit and a result-focused business model to maximize organizational competencies and adaptability properties to ensure productive livelihoods and infrastructure for people with limb amputation. However, as accessibility, acceptability and supply chain issues have created significant bottlenecks to establish strong brand awareness, she perfectly demonstrated distinct characteristics of social entrepreneurship including decisiveness, confidence, accountability, resilience and humility to stay focused and centred and leverage service-oriented activities and continuous improvement plans to move forward with innovative products and customization policies.

Creativity and imagination capabilities are directly related to the practical implications of fact-driven resource utilisation schemes and competency-based brainstorming ideas into reality to resolve generic consumer needs and maintain supply-demand dynamics (Engel, 2018, p.41). The source of creativity lies in strategic planning and fact-driven decision-making processes alongside individualistic mindsets and external factors including social issues, mega-trends and mainstream transformation need to sustainability and continual improvement. In the current scenario, Krista Donaldson significantly attempted to ensure usability and scalability of the adoption of the prosthetic knee at affordable cost and reliability to showcase her creative insights and abilities to bring revolutionary changes for people with limb amputation requirements. As creativity and innovation are such diverse and dynamic concepts, adequate alignment of theoretical perspectives of creativity is significantly important to understand core competencies and insights of a distinctive product.

As Krista Donaldson extensively focuses on the all-around development and implementation process of business, Guilford's structure of intellect model and model for creativity is a relevant perspective to define her creative insights. According to the theory, each mental task is made up of three dimensions: an operation, a content and a product (Sternberg, 2020, p.230). According to the Theory, Krista Donaldson elaborated her divergent thinking capabilities and considered a divergent production model to demonstrate the relevance and importance of technology in resolving distinct social issues. The author explained that individualistic craftsmanship, aesthetic values and personal experience are the foundation of creativity. In contrast, Krista Donaldson has experienced difficulties and gained first-hand experience from her duties in Iraq and encompassed different types of fluency including ideational fluency, associational fluency, expressional fluency alongside spontaneous flexibility and adaptive flexibility to deliver the product. She also demonstrated the two core factors of the Unpacking creativity model such as problem type and motivation.

According to the unpacking creativity model, she considered expected creativity, contributory and proactive factors of creativity to resolve limb amputation issues. Moreover, as a holistic innovation approach, she focused on for-profit business operations with minimal profit margins and ROI standards. Additionally, a systematic and organized supply chain network was also considered to leverage customer-centric visionaries, improved market value propositions and sustainability-consciousness to secure productive growth and economic development through creating job opportunities for regional areas (Schramm, 2017, p.17). As she intends to reach globally, such high robustness of innovation and technology-driven approaches have assisted her to reach an enormous scale of people ranging from Asian territories to African countries.

Recommendations/Conclusion

Creativity and imagination capabilities are significantly important to understand and counteract social problems with problem-solving attributes and goal-oriented entrepreneurial spirit. In the current study, social entrepreneur Krista Donaldson has created a prosthetic knee for improving millions of lives worldwide who are suffering from amputees at affordable prices and top-notch quality assurance. She has effectively demonstrated social entrepreneurship skills and practices to minimise the psychological and physiological effects of limb amputation. The study also found that, rather than focusing on government subsidy schemes and free distribution of prosthetic knees, organisations must consider a proactive research framework and streamlined R&D pipelines and supply chain networks to aid greater flexibility and market value of distinct products. However, affordability, eco-friendly credentials and aesthetic values of such products should be demonstrated by leveraging techno-capitalism perspectives and empathic entrepreneurship spirit.

Entrepreneurs are directly responsible for economic development, job creation, innovation and philanthropic activities which attempt to make the world a better place. She explained business as a prominent arena and social issues as a prominent source of motivation and inspiration for creating value-adding products with top-notch quality assurance and security measures. She perfectly demonstrated that creating a centralised manufacturing practice and production-distribution framework is distinctive to reach out to people with disabilities globally which can trigger creativity and imaginations. Based on the study findings, the researcher found that the company can implement cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence, IoT, automation and robotics to improve quality and forecast demands and consider merger and acquisition policies to emphasize global expansion and growth opportunities.
 

Reference List

Crum, J., & Hines, S. S. (Eds.). (2019). Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. ProQuest EBook Central. Retrieved on 20th June 2021 from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.torrens.idm.oclc.org/lib/think/reader.action?docID=5751485

Engel, A. (2018). Practical creativity and innovation in systems engineering. ProQuest EBook Central. Retrieved on 20th June 2021 from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.torrens.idm.oclc.org/lib/think/reader.action?docID=5478990

Schramm, L. (2017). Technological innovation: An introduction. ProQuest EBook Central Retrieved on 20th June 2021 from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.torrens.idm.oclc.org/lib/think/reader.action?docID=5157324

Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Creativity from Start to Finish: A “Straight?A” Model of Creative Process and Its Relation to Intelligence. Journal of Creative Behavior, 54(2), 229–241. Retrieved on 20th June 2021 from https://doi-org.torrens.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/jocb.223

Ted.com, (2013) The $80 prosthetic knee that’s changing lives Retrieved on 20th June 2021 from https://www.ted.com/talks/krista_donaldson_the_80_prosthetic_knee_that_s_changing_lives#t-434865

MBA5006 Managing Organisational Behaviour Assignment Sample

Assignment Brief

Case Study – individual level (30%). Approximately 1,500 (-/+10%) words aimed at testing student’s understanding at this level and their ability to critically reflect on organizational behaviour.
You must write a Case Study Report, discussing the organizational behavior characteristics of an organisation. This should draw on learning from modules A & B of this subject. Specifically, you should include at least two of the following: attributes, motivation, empowerment, learning and development. Furthermore, key terms and concepts should be defined wherever possible. Be analytical within your report and examine key terms and theoretical relationships in depth.

The Case Study Report should be written in appropriate business language so that your analysis and discussion have an objective tone. Your writing should be clear and concise and be in your own words. Use headings to guide the reader and include tables or diagrams that make the case clearer.

Examples:
• http://www.academia.edu/8516165/Organisational_Behaviour_A_case_study_of_Coca-Cola_Company
• https://www.scribd.com/doc/138053993/Organization- al-Behavior-A-Case-Analysis-of-Google

In a Case Study Report, include the following:
> Introduces the case, including the background and the scenario.
> Describes the purpose and the background of the study and the specific questions you are addressing.
> Describe what you found through your investigations, e.g. the main themes that came out in interviews, responses to questionnaires, significant observations.
> Explain the significance of the study and what can be learnt from it.
> Note that a case study is a study of a situation so you can’t generalize the results to all other situations. That means your report should focus on what can be learnt about that situation and the individuals involved.
> Recommendations provides proposals for future action to solve the problem or improve the situation.

How to present a high-quality scenario case study?

> Analyse the problem
> Provide solutions
> Reveal real business difficulties
> Include specific, quantifiable results
> Build suspense, have a satisfying conclusion
> Solve a business problem

Please take take note for your assignment:
a. Structure the written report: Background information is relevant, Issues are logically ordered, Recommendations clearly relate to the issues.

b. Identify main issues: Prioritise choices, justify and prioritise issues chosen rovide solution.

c. Analyse the issues: Each issue is discussed using relevant concepts and principles. Insight is shown in analyzing the information.

d. Discuss alternatives: Consider all viable short term and long-term alternatives to solve each issue. Examine the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.

e. Explain resources: Individuals from the case, time frame and monitoring processes required for the recommendations to be put into practice build suspense, have a satisfying conclusion.
f. Write clearly and concisely: Arguments are explicit and succinct, appropriate headings are used, grammar and spelling are accurate.

Submission formatting style guide:

For all major assignments, both formative and summative, the preferred layout is in 12-point Calibri, with 1.5-line spacing, 2.5 centimeters left-hand margins and bold headings.

All assignments must be submitted with a completed and signed cover sheet. Whenever you use the ideas and arguments of other writers, you must make reference to the writers and their work. By acknowledging the work of others, you avoid plagiarism. The Harvard style requires a reference list at the end of your assignment. It is arranged in alphabetical order by author surname.

Solution

Introduction

Organizational behavior is related to the understanding, prediction, and controlling of human behavior associated with a particular organization. It can be considered as a study where it takes place among the groups and individuals in order to measure the activity and performance level within the organization. The study is concentric on the organizational behavior of Amazon Plc., and associated issues that have been identified in the process. It has been seen that organizational behavior depends upon two different characteristics and those are the nature of the individual and the nature of the organization. In this study, the main focus will concentrate on the identification of the issues that the organization faced and probable alternatives that can be used as an overcoming agent.

Background

Amazon Inc. is an American Multinational Technology Company that generally deals with e-commerce and cloud computing facilities. From the survey among the employees of Amazon and interviewing some of the experienced high-level staff, it has been seen that the company has faced some of the issues in the field of motivation and empowerment despite one of the leading brands across the globe (Hara et al., 2018). The main purpose of the study is to identify the organizational behavior of Amazon along with the characteristics that have created those challenges in the workplace. It has been witnessed from the responses that the company mainly faced issues due to the lack of motivation and ill-practice of empowerment. According to Mr. Ross man, the employees of Amazon in the United States have faced difficulties with the organization's behavior. From the testimony of the former and current employees, it has been seen that the intention of improved production has created the harsh condition for the employees diminishing the motivational levels. The study has based on some of the questions and those are the formative approach for the study. The questions are

? Which organizational characteristics are responsible for the organizational issues?

? What are the issues that the employees of Amazon have been faced?

? What are the attributes that are responsible for the issues?

? What are the probable alternatives that are essential for overcoming the issues?

Investigation

The researcher has constructed a survey among the current employees so that the present organizational scenario can be identified. Moreover, the interview process has also taken place among the former employees who have left amazon for a sudden reason (Cheung, Burns, Sinclair and Sliter, 2016). These approaches are made for the identification of the current issues and existing challenges related to organizational behavior. From the analysis of the results, it has been seen that the major problem areas are motivation and empowerment. From the information of the former employees, it has been seen that they have left due to the lack of motivation in the workplace, and on the other hand, the current employees mainly highlighted the issues regarding the empowerment crisis.

From the survey among the current employees, it has been seen that the company has lacking practice regarding empowerment and current leadership has restricted to allow employees to make their own decisions.

Table 1: Empowerment Issues in Amazon

Moreover, the information from the former employees has stated that the company workplace is full of de-motivational factors, and in most cases, employees do not feel motivated inside the company.
 

Table 2: Motivational Issues in Amazon

Significance

Identification of ongoing issues has a tremendous significance in understanding organizational behavior. From the analysis of the statements, it has been understood that the company is facing issues regarding empowerment and motivational factors. In the case of empowerment, it has been seen that the lack of ideal leadership has encouraged the scenario. The great man theory can be considered as an alternative process where it has stated that the ideal leaders are born and they cannot be created. In this case, the scenario is similar but has responded negatively. It has the advantage of dealing with the issues in a natural manner but Mr. Bezos has created the problematic options himself. On the other hand, Prentice, Jayawickreme and Fleeson, (2018) has stated that The Trait Theory can put the light on the crisis and works as a proper alternative for the scenario. It has stated that leaders must be adaptive in nature and should be innovative with time so that the workplace can gather harmony. It is helpful in sharpening the leadership role and it will helpful for the employees to find the right path. As the organization is considering high standards, the employees must be well trained and developed similar kinds of solutions so that results can be identical for similar issues. The entire process is wholly dependent upon the development of the leadership capability according to the environment (Matthews, 2017).

On the contrary, the workplace also faced motivational issues as the unhealthy competition and intensive management is the fueling agent behind it. In this case, the behavioral theory has indicated the path. According to the theory, leaders are developed with time and experience. Mr. Bezos has identified that workers must be hard, long, and smart working in nature. However, he has to understand that it is not possible to do all the aspects at the same time in the long run. Moreover, Herzberg's motivational theory of needs suggests that the workplace can remain motivated when the organization has taken care of the requirements of the employees (Mehrad, 2020). It can be done with the observation of the working pattern and identification of the comfortability of the situation for the employees. Although these practices can be lengthy and do not provide the immediate effect it is one of the most impactful strategies for the long run.

Recommendations

In order to make the solutions into practice, the organization has to put a positive involvement in reconstructing the traditional practices.

? It has been seen that the major problem is based on the leadership style as it is bureaucratic in nature. According to the Trait theory, the organization has to focus on developing the leadership style as the organization is concentric on high performance. It is essential to provide efficient training to the employees rather than instructing the works only. Leadership management is required in this case as it may take a long timeframe.

? The behavior of the employees is essential for the development and the organization should encourage the employee to take the decision of their own so that they can develop the problem-solving personality.

? Motivational factor is another big thing in organizational behavior. In order to develop a motivating workplace, the leaders must be co-operative and understanding in nature. Irrespective of putting pressure on the employees, leaders must identify the scenario and responses of the environment first and lead the employees according to their capabilities. It also a long time process and it can be expected that the result can get in the long run with positivity.

? On the other hand, the leaders must take a good step in fulfilling the needs of the employees so that they can be loyal to the organization by feeling safe with the career.

Conclusion

From the entire study and reports of interviews and surveys, it can be concluded that Amazon has faced issues in organizational behavior and the core reason for that is the improper leadership style. It has been seen that bureaucracy has created challenges in the workplace resulting lack of motivation and a less-empowered workplace. With the help of Trait theory and Herzberg's hierarchy of needs theory, the organization can produce amendments in the leadership style which can produce harmony in the workplace. As it is applicable in management, it is expected that it can be effective in the long run.

Reference List

Cheung, J., Burns, D., Sinclair, R. and Sliter, M., 2016. Amazon Mechanical Turk in Organizational Psychology: An Evaluation and Practical Recommendations. Journal of Business and Psychology, 32(4), pp.347-361.

Gagné, M., 2018. From Strategy to Action: Transforming Organizational Goals into Organizational Behavior. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20, pp.S83-S104.

Graham, K., Resick, C., Margolis, J., Shao, P., Hargis, M. and Kiker, J., 2019. Egoistic norms, organizational identification, and the perceived ethicality of unethical pro-organizational behavior: A moral maturation perspective. Human Relations, 73(9), pp.1249-1277.

Hara, K., Adams, A., Milland, K., Savage, S., Callison-Burch, C. and Bigham, J., 2018. A Data-Driven Analysis of Workers' Earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems,.

Matthews, G., 2017. Cognitive-Adaptive Trait Theory: A Shift in Perspective on Personality. Journal of Personality, 86(1), pp.69-82.

Mehrad, A., 2020. Evaluation of Academic Staff Job Satisfaction at Malaysian Universities in the Context of Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory. JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH, 15, pp.157-166.

Prentice, M., Jayawickreme, E. and Fleeson, W., 2018. Integrating whole trait theory and self-determination theory. Journal of Personality, 87(1), pp.56-69.

Root, G., 2021. Challenges of Employee Empowerment. [online] Small Business - Chron.com. Available at: <https://smallbusiness.chron.com/challenges-employee-empowerment-705.html> [Accessed 23 March 2021].

MBA402 Corporate Governance, Sustainability and Ethics Assignment Sample

Word Count: 2,000 Words (+/-10%)
Weighting: 40 %
Total Marks: 40
Submission: Via Turnitin on MyKBS
Due Date: Monday of Week 13

Your Task

You are required to write a case study report to a corporate board summarizing your views on corporate governance, sustainability and risk management practices.

Assessment Description

• On Monday of Week 10 at 9 am, you will get access to a case study on MyKBS under the assessments tab. This document will have all the necessary case facts and the specific questions which you are required to answer for this assessment which is due to be submitted in week 13.

Assessment Instructions

• You are required to prepare a report and submit it via Turnitin via MyKBS.
• You should adhere to KBS’s referencing and Academic integrity requirements.
• Please refer to the assessment marking guide to assist you in completing all the assessment criteria.

Word Limits for Written Assessments

Submissions that exceed the word limit by more than 10% will cease to be marked from the point at which that limit is exceeded.

Study Assistance for assignment help

Students may seek study assistance from their local Academic Learning Advisor or refer to the resources on the MyKBS Academic Success Centre page. Click here for this information.

MBA402 – Assessment 3 Case Study

Focus Logistics Pty Ltd (Focus) has engaged you as an independent consultant, and they are seeking your advice on several corporate governances, sustainability and risk management issues. You have just returned from a board meeting with Jennifer White (company’s founder and the current Chair), Geena Rose (CEO), Jacob Rose (COO) and David Rose (CFO). You have gathered the following information about this company:

History

Mrs. White Established Focus Logistics in 1965 in Horsham, Victoria, providing state-widem logistics services to local businesses. The community supported Focus because of Mrs. hite’s slogan “Go Local”. The company grew steadily for the next 30 years and expanded its operations into VIC, NSW, and TAS.

Mrs. White retired from day-to-day operations in 1997 and assumed the role of board’s Chair. Mrs. White’s daughter Geena took on the company reins and, since then, has completely transformed the business. Focus now has 19% of the total market share and is Australia’s fifth-largest private logistics company. Focus has grown from 28 customers in 1970 to 650 customers in 1997 to more than 11,000 customers today (including a few ASX listed companies).

Current plans: expansion

Now, Focus needs additional capital to fund its expansion plans, and Mrs. Rose has met with several potential investors and private equity groups over the last six months. The senior management team has prepared a very impressive prospectus highlighting all of Focus’s recent achievements and a business forecast for the next ten years. However, these investors are concerned that Focus doesn’t have the proper operation and governance structure to justify the additional funding and expansion plans.

Investor concerns:

They have criticized that even though Focus is a large company, the business is still run like a family-owned business with limited oversight over management and a lack of operational controls and reporting. In addition, the various management positions, especially the executive positions, are held by family members and close friends. Therefore, there seems to be a lack of appropriate performance reviews and necessary succession planning. The investors also highlighted that Focus doesn’t have any board committees.

The board unanimously agrees that since they own most of the company, there is no need to spend any money on non-value adding reporting like a sustainability report. The board acknowledges that the company might benefit from some regular reporting and performance reviews. Still, it is concerned about its impact on the family members – after all, trust and patience are the most important traits of a family-run business. Plus, it is the boards view that there is a reason why such reporting is optional and not mandatory at all. Mrs. Rose has already notified these investors that Mrs. White will soon retire from the board, and Mrs. Rose will nominate herself as the next Chair. She believes that the board will benefit immensely if the Chair and the CEO is the same person – that’s because this person will have a lot of knowledge about the company’s operations and, therefore, will be able to question and oversee the management more meticulously.

The potential investors are also apprehensive about the lack of sustainability reporting by this company. Focus’s carbon footprint is enormous – their B-Double trucks alone consume almost a million litters of diesel a year. It is anyone’s guess how much fuel the company consumes in total because, along with its own fleet of trucks, the company also has hundreds of sub-contractors. Mrs. Rose is aware that all national banks oppose supporting a business that does not have a sustainability plan and target.

The last primary concern of these investors is the lack of risk management initiatives at Focus. Recently, Focus has taken on a lot of debt (by using their Victorian fleet as security), and therefore the board must constantly monitor Focus’s exposure to financial risk. The investors acknowledge that even though Focus’s operations were not affected by COVID-19 (because the business is classified as an essential service), Focus needs to prioritise operational risk management and urgently draft a business continuity plan.

Board/Management opinions

Mrs. White completely dismissed the investor’s views on operational risk. She stated, “Trucks are the backbone of Australia and will continue to work round-the-clock – as they have done for the last 55 years. I cannot think of a simpler business – buy a truck, get someone to drive it, and a few days later – the customer settles the account. Involving lawyers and consultants in expensive suits will make matters unnecessarily complicated”.

The company’s COO, Jacob Rose (Mrs. Rose’s 26-year old son), is genuinely concerned about what these potential investors are demanding. He stated, “Corporate governance always slows down the board’s decision-making process and makes running a company unnecessarily complicated, hindering innovation and creativity.

For example, I want to add autonomous vehicles to our fleet, and I am confident that a formal governance structure will delay such adaptation. As long as we aren’t in trouble with the tax office and the corporate watchdog, the board’s only priority should always be on maximizing shareholder returns. Therefore, we shouldn’t be worried about the compliance issues, which are unlikely to get audited. And even if we do get audited, it is better to pay a small fine instead of investing thousands, possibly millions, of dollars in meaningless and endless compliance and “tick-the-box” exercises.

A family-run business should always focus on performance and not so much on conformance. We have to stop this madness”. Jacob is confident that Focus’s legal counsel, Melissa Wright (Jacob’s childhood friend and a current law student), will concur with his views. Unfortunately, Melissa was unable to attend the meeting because she is on extended personal leave.

The company’s CFO, David Rose (Mrs. Rose’s other son), has a different view. He said, “For what’s it’s worth, I can understand where the investors are coming from. However, we are no longer a “local” business. A lot has changed since Nan started this business on her kitchen table, and Uncle Sam was the only truck driver. Today, we have operations across Australia, employ more than 2,000 people – and I am not even counting the 3,000+ contractors we have on our books.

I believe there was a recent ruling whereby businesses like ours have a lot more responsibility of looking after our employees, especially our sub-contractors. When Melissa is back, I’m sure she will be able to shed some light on this. Plus, we should endeavor to go beyond the mandatory requirements. Wouldn’t it be great if our peers recognize us as the pioneers in corporate governance and sustainability practices? After all, we consume a crazy amount of fuel every year, and with climate change being a pressing political topic –
the last thing we want is to be boycotted.

These investors will own 12% of our company and probably get a seat at the board table. So, we have to be careful about making any throwaway comments. We might be a private company, but the business media and journalists are very well aware of our operations and ownership structure. It is impossible to hide when you are this big. In the world of social media and Twitter, information travels much faster than we can imagine”.

Mrs. White concurs with David’s views. She said,

“I want to continue looking after our loyal customers and faithful employees who have supported us all these years. We already do a lot for the community, and it would be great to consolidate all the information about our various programs in one easily accessible location. But I am not sure about preparing these fancy reports which no one is ever going to read. Surely, we can put our money to better use?”.

Towards the end of your meeting, Geena said,

“Honestly, we are just testing the waters with these private investors. We want an accurate company valuation and want to see what’s it like to work with a private equity group. Even though we will go ahead with this equity sale, Focus’s ultimate goal is to be an ASX listed company by the end of next year”.

REQUIREMENTS

You are required to write a report to Focus’s board summarizing your views on corporate governance, sustainability and risk management practices.

In your report, you must address the following three areas:

1. Discuss at least four good corporate governance practices and the importance of good governance for a large private company such as Focus Logistics that wants to transition into an ASX listed entity. (15 marks) (1,000 to 1,100 words)

2. Summarise the significance, benefits and challenges of producing a sustainability report for Focus Logistics, especially for a business within the logistics industry. (10 marks) (600 – 660 words)

3. Summarise the benefits and challenges of sound risk management practices for Focus Logistics.
(7 marks) (400 – 440 words)

Within the answers to the above three questions, you should refer to:

1. The views of the four people you have recently met (Mrs. White, Mrs. Rose, David and Jacob).
2. Recent news releases relating to best practice corporate governance, sustainability and risk management practices.

Solution

Four good corporate governance practices and the importance of good governance for a large private company such as Focus Logistics that wants to transition into an ASX listed entity-

In the given case study lack of proper corporate governance structure is been stated by the investors of the Focus Logistics. For the purpose of improving this structure the company must prioritize good corporate governance practices in order to get listed in the ASX entities by the end of the current year. In essence the board of governance or the corporate governance are the providers of standard rules and regulations for the organizational practices that ensures serving the interest of their investors, stakeholders, customers, employees and rest of the management team responsibly as well as effectively (Wardhana, 2018). Hence it is very important for the company to form an appropriate corporate governance structure. It entails by taking look on the board members, way of approaching governance in organization and who are they as the people. For the best practices board work is incorporated with various aspects and governance could incorporate many different practices. In order to assist the organization or a company to follow good corporate practices some of the suggestions are discussed such as-

Building a Competent Board-

It states that the board must be consist of diversified and independent board members as per the current new focuses. The reason for such is that board have to deal with a lot issue which are complex in nature and sometimes the technical issues are to be faced. Many opinions and suggestion results in quality of decision making around the board table (Crisóstomo, & Girão, 2019). Also, the board consist of majority of independent directors is favoured by the governance experts. The composition of board must be in such a way that it incorporates required skills and abilities to make a sound decision for the company. Further the trust must be implicit among the board directors in order to make productive decisions and strong opinions through the long debates and wrought. In addition to this the board committee, its members and the directors must also practice self- evaluation to identify their weaknesses and strengths. Hence this would help the Focus Logistics to build a competent and effective board committee to serve its investors as well as customers.

Aligning Strategies with Goals

Another important corporate governance practice to be followed by the board is aligning their strategies with the goals of company. Primarily the board must use all its resources to identify the possibilities of risk in the near future. The collective work from the bard will help the company to enhance its profile and risk tolerance capacity. This way the Focus logistics too could enhance its risk management practices and have an eye on the debt taken already. In addition to this the company must also have proper framework as well the control in order to mitigate risk or monitor such risks (Báez-Roa, Puentes-Montañez, & Sosa, 2021). It is one the best practice of corporate governance that board must apply to look at its strategy and risk management for long and short durations.

Being Accountable

There are many scandals that highlights the importance of accountability as the good corporate governance practice to acquire the strong position in the market. There is need for the development of strong board strong and regular checking on them. Further the other important part of such practice toa accurately and transparently report its reporting’s to the investors with adequate checks and balance system. This way the issue of unsatisfied investors for the Focus Logistics regarding the unappropriated corporate governance by board could be minimized. Additionally, the practice for accountability includes decision regarding selection of appropriate board member and offer the compensation adequate to his job without raising any conflict of interest (Arslan, & Alqatan, 2020). It is basically most important to overview the compensation of the board committee.

Having a High Level of Ethics and Integrity

High level of ethics, integrity and honesty must be reflected in the work, speech, relationship within the corporation with peoples by the board nominees. As it is their fiduciary duty to consider all these while presenting the company in front of public or whenever they speak bout or for the organization. The board is the voice of the corporation hence it must take all these ethics and integrity int consideration.
The board must also have a clear-cut policy regarding the conflict of interest and refrain such conflicts through voting system on specific matters of conflict.

These are the practices of corporate governance that must be followed by the board to make its corporate system sounder (Muda, et al 2018). The goals of practicing a good corporate governance or importance of such for the large companies like Focus Logistics and the other companies within the logistics industry must be to protect the interest of management, members and the investors. Also, it ensures the proper recording of company’s books and transactions. Further the other importance’s of the good corporate governance practices are-

• Ensuring the equal treatment among all the shareholders.

• Ensures ethical as well integrate behaviour in the corporate

• Ensures disclosure of each report including financial information to all of its stakeholders transparently.

• Additionally, it ensures the availability of adequate talent and skills among the board to challenge the competitiveness of the management and review their performance and actions.

• Balancing and considering all the obligation of the corporation toward the legal, social, contractual market. Also balancing the interest of shareholders as well as non- shareholders including investors, customers, local community, policy makers, creditors and others.

The benefits from the good corporate practice are boundless and also have potential impact on the board performance. Further it improves the performance of overall corporation, promotes trust factor among both stakeholders as well as shareholders (Chatchawanchanchanakij, Arpornpisal, & Jermsittiparsert, 2019). The corporations which apply and follow such practices move forward in the long run towards the sustainability of the organization. In such way the conflict among the investors of the Focus Logistics could also be solved by building the sound system of governance in the organizations.

The significance, benefits and challenges of producing a sustainability report for Focus Logistics, especially for a business within the logistics industry.

Significances

Reduce energy related cost

Under the sustainable reporting the energy and the water cost would be reduced which are the main concern for the manufacturers in the logistics industry. This could also reduce the expenses of the corporation by annual savings, cost reduction for short term plans. Switching to the energy efficient procedures the electrical cost could be reduced on long term basis. Sustainability could further improve the bottom line of the corporation.

Attract new customers as well investors.

Sustainable practices can make the company more marketable in the industry. In current scenario the consumers are environment conscious, and making improvement in your practices to improve environment will attract them (Tsalis, et al 2020). Also, there are some investment banks that invest in only those company that are working under sustainable practices. Such problem is also faced by the Focus Logistics in the case study, which caused difficulty in raising their funds for expansion purpose. Further highlighting your such practices to the suppliers and the consumers will enhance the customer base for company and result in increased sales. The technology and social medio have made easier for the public to criticize the companies that lack in following the sustainable practices, which could distort the company reputation. Hence practicing such sustainability will maintain the portion and the reputation of the company. Further its world help in expansion of business.

Tax benefits

Tax rebates and variety of tax credits are granted to the company who follow such practices by the government. The practical implementation of sustainable development at both federal and state level are benefited from the taxes (Loh, Thomas, & Wang, 2017).

Encourages innovation and boost morale of workforce

Sustainable development requires collective effort of the human resource of organization. When these resources work together the culture of the organization gets promotes and fosters the team work spirits within them. Also, employees work harder when they feel sense of pride for their company. In short it brings the positivity in environment and boost the morale of the employees and encourage them to think creatively. Innovation could be encouraged by the challenges faced by the engineers of such organization such as reducing scraps, recycling etc.

Societal impact

Apart from increasing profitability it also has impact on the reducing of carbon foot prints of the organization in the atmosphere. This would be helpful for the future generation due to availability of fresh air, water and other resources from the environment (Shad, et al, 2019).

The Focus Logistics has enormous carbon foot prints into atmosphere which makes them unattractable from the environment conscious public and investors point of view.

Challenges

Apart from various benefits from the sustainability practices there are some of the drawbacks of its, which enables the company to perform such practices.

Multiple reporting frameworks

Proper and adequate framework plays essential role by the sustainable development in enhancing decision making and quality of performance. But the multiple frameworks by the sustainable development could appear as conflicting and confusing. Especially when each framework is given with different priorities and different metrics and definitions, they tend to become complicated. Hence practitioners struggle in efficient reporting process.

Volume of ratings and rankings

This further possess difficulty in sustainable reporting as-
• Responding on request which are of no use to company.
• Time consuming
• Credibility is challenged

Multiple target audiences

Report of sustainability is catered among various target audience. It comes as challenge for the practitioners to provide the report in diverse set to its stakeholders (Beira, & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2020). Disclosing information related to the companies sustainable working among the multiple targeted audience comes as challenge to the company.

The benefits and challenges of sound risk management practices for Focus Logistics.

Risk management enables the company to achieve the desired goals and objectives by putting at place the tool which could direct them towards the success. Evaluation of risks and implementing policies for such within the business plans made for execution makes an effective risk management. This would further be useful for the Focus Logistics to mitigate the risk in the path of their expansion process (El Baz, & Ruel, 2021). There are some benefits as well as challenges of risk management discussed below-

Benefits-

Knowledge of a contingency budget

Risk management enables managers to explore each area of the plan and mitigate the area which over budget the project. They could also identify the amount required for the project to make it occur. Further managers could go through each area of project to see the impact of cost and mange it effectively.

Determining pre-determined responses to problems

Everything is uncertain, maybe the project not goes as per the plans, anything could happen in the middle of the project (Manab, & Aziz, 2019). Hence managers could develop plans for such unfavourable events in the mis of project through effective risk management.

Increase return on investment

Managers can also increase their return on the investment made in project by projecting the unforeseen risks and planning accurately to mitigate such risks. Also, it provided the advantage to the company to reinvest the money or funds that were not being included in the exemplary planning.

Challenges

Identifying risk

Identifying risks is not an easy task it might serve as challenging. It is next to impossible that the company can get aware of all the future risks. However, the full-on risk analysis by the company may result in time consuming and a complicated process. Hence all the actions associated with the risk identification process may prove to be overwhelming for the project managers as well as the company.

A lack of buy-in

The lack of value for such risk management by the buy in can affect the efficiency of the process. Other may not understand its importance as the top management and co -workers, but the project manager needs the involvement of another buy in in the project (Vincent, N E, Higgs, & Pinsker, 2019).

Cannot precisely predict the future

The process of prediction has no way to occur correctly as predicted, hence no matter how precisely the risk management practice was done there will remain some points or areas of uncertainty within the management. Regarding the future perspective, one could only guess not identify correctly each circumstance.

References

Wardhana, D Y, 2018, ‘Good Corporate Governance Practices in Family Business: A Case Study in Indonesia’ Petra International Journal of Business Studies, vol 1 no (1), pp.35-44. http://ijbs.petra.ac.id/index.php/ijbs/article/download/6/6

Crisóstomo, V L & Girão, A M C, 2019, ‘Analysis of the compliance of Brazilian firms with good corporate governance practices’ REVISTA AMBIENTE CONTÁBIL-Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte-ISSN 2176-9036, vol 11 no (2). https://periodicos.ufrn.br/ambiente/article/view/18167

Báez-Roa, M D P, Puentes-Montañez, G A & Sosa, V C, 2021, ‘Good corporate governance practices in family businesses in the coach building sector of Duitama, Colombia’ Revista de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación, vol 11 no (2), pp.261-272. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bse.2509

Arslan, M & Alqatan, A, 2020, ‘Role of institutions in shaping corporate governance system: evidence from emerging economy’ Heliyon, vol 6 no (3), p.e03520. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020303650

Muda, I, Maulana, W, Sakti Siregar, H & Indra, N, 2018, ‘The analysis of effects of good corporate governance on earnings management in Indonesia with panel data approach’ Iranian Economic Review, vol 22 no (2), pp.599-625. https://ier.ut.ac.ir/article_66169.html

Chatchawanchanchanakij, P, Arpornpisal, C & Jermsittiparsert, K, 2019, ‘The role of corporate governance in creating a capable supply chain: A case of Indonesian Tin industry’ International Journal of Supply Chain Management, vol 8 no (3), pp.854-864. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kittisak-Jermsittiparsert/publication/334001423_The_Role_of_Corporate_Governance_in_Creating_a_Capable_Supply_Chain_A_Case_of_Indonesian_Tin_Industry/links/5d1269aa92851cf4404c1f8a/The-Role-of-Corporate-Governance-in-Creating-a-Capable-Supply-Chain-A-Case-of-Indonesian-Tin-Industry.pdf

Tsalis, T A, Malamateniou, K E, Koulouriotis, D & Nikolaou, I E, 2020, ‘New challenges for corporate sustainability reporting: United Nations' 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and the sustainable development goals’ Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, vol 27 no (4), pp.1617-1629. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/csr.1910

Loh, L, Thomas, T &Wang, Y, 2017, ‘Sustainability reporting and firm value: Evidence from Singapore-listed companies. Sustainability, vol 9 no (11), p.2112. https://www.mdpi.com/238542

Shad, M K, Lai, F W, Fatt, C L, Klemeš, J J & Bokhari, A, 2019, ‘Integrating sustainability reporting into enterprise risk management and its relationship with business performance: A conceptual framework’ Journal of Cleaner production, vol 208, pp.415-425. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652618331366

Boiral, O & Heras-Saizarbitoria, I, 2020, ‘Sustainability reporting assurance: Creating stakeholder accountability through hyperreality? Journal of Cleaner Production, vol 243, p.118596. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619334663
El Baz, J & Ruel, S, 2021, ‘Can supply chain risk management practices mitigate the disruption impacts on supply chains’ resilience and robustness? Evidence from an empirical survey in a COVID-19 outbreak era’ International Journal of Production Economics, vol 233, p.107972. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527320303224

Manab, N & Aziz, N, 2019, ‘Integrating knowledge management in sustainability risk management practices for company survival’ Management Science Letters, vol 9 no (4), pp.585-594. http://m.growingscience.com/beta/msl/3073-integrating-knowledge-management-in-sustainability-risk-management-practices-for-company-survival.html

Vincent, N E, Higgs, J L & Pinsker, R E, 2019, ‘Board and management-level factors affecting the maturity of IT risk management practices’ Journal of information systems, vol 33 no (3), pp.117-135. https://meridian.allenpress.com/jis/article-abstract/33/3/117/10582

MBA5005 Managing Human Capital Assignment Sample

Assignment 2 guide

Report format with Harvard style referencing
Word count: 3000 words

Font and font size: Calibri, size 12 as per assessment guide

Task: you have to choose an organisation (Australian based organisation or based in any other country), as long as you have access to vital information from the organisation and you have to write about three key issues relating to that organisation. Furthermore within your work you have to have evidence of research too (as this is a vital area of academia too).

Recommended structure (this is just a guide).

Title page:

Have a title page with your name, student number and title of assignment too.

Table of contents:

Have a clear table of contents

Executive Summary

Executive Summary includes the scope and the main findings of the report that is generally written in past tense. Ensure in the executive summary you give an overview of what the report is about and give summary of all the main points. Please try and have the executive summary at about 300 words. Please kindly ensure that this part here is concise and specific.

Introduction

Introduce the role of Human Resource Management, its importance and the challenges facing operations in today’s business environment. Ensure you clearly state the topics examined and provide background information about the organisation and outline the structure of the report. Please dedicate about 200-300 words to the introduction. Please ensure that in your work, you are concise and clear in terms of what you want to say. Remember to have short and clear sentences too.

Body

Critically discuss the three topics using the questions to direct your discussion. From a human resource management perspective discuss how these concepts are used/managed within an organisation. (Try and have about 800 words per section)

Section 1: Introducing performance management and linking it back to the organisation. Please ensure you provide evidence of academic research within your work too.

Section 2: Handling economic shock in your organisation (so link it here back to the organisation again. Please ensure that you provide evidence of research within your work also.

Section 3: Crisis management planning and link it back to the organisation (please again make sure that you provide evidence of research)

Please kindly keep in mind the following for assignment help

1. give examples to back up your discussion in each of the sections

2. Each paragraph has to be about 10-12 lines of writing with clear arguments, evidence of linking to examples and use of in text referencing also.

3. introduce relevant theory (support your statements with academic/ industry references) and 3. link to practice. Remember to reference the examples you have taken from literature within the main body of your report

4. Please ensure that you try not to directly quote other peoples work. So for this assignment please try and ensure that you have about 2 or 3 direct quotes maximum within your work (please listen to the session we had on the 04th March with our librarian Jenny, where she chats about APA referencing).

5. Please have about approximately 25-30 references (so have a mixture of company reports and academic references within your work). Please kindly remember to use the VIT library for further advice. Please ensure that for every paragraph you try and have about 2 to 3 in text references within your work too. Please also have a look at the APA referencing guide that has been uploaded onto LMS.

Conclusion:

A full conclusion should draw together all the key points discussed. Thisdoes not bring in any new information, but summarises discussions that have already taken place within the main body of your essay (200-300 words).

References:

Have a reference list here and please ensure that adheres to havard style referencing too. Remember to have your reference list in alphabetical order
Appendix (optional)

This is completely optional. If you want to include any extra information here, ie a table from your company or a graph please kindly include it in here

Solution

Introduction

Human resource management plays an important role in the development of an organisation. The role played by the human resource management for an organisation includes that of recruiting, developing policies, training employees, compensating the employees as well as ensuring that grievances are addressed. The importance of human resource management is that it helps bridge any gap between the employers and the employees and manage the performance of the employees while signifying the strategic objectives associated with the organisation. Human resource management also helps ensure that the employees find a comfortable working environment while addressing any form of issues from motivation to grievances. At the same time, as stated by DeNisi and Murphy (2017), challenges in attracting top talents, managing the multi-generational workforce, and managing diversity are faced by human resource management in the modern world.

The report provides an account of human resource management's perspective while trying to cope with the concepts of performance management, economic shock, and crisis management planning. For this, a case study organisation is undertaken to understand the application of these aspects. Wesfarmers is selected as the case study organisation to highlight the perspective of human resource management. Wesfarmers is a retail organisation that is considered among the top 10 organisations in the country with a high market share. The company dominates the Australian market and has its base in New Zealand, making it a major retail conglomerate(Wesfarmers.com.au 2021).

The report tries to highlight how performance management can be linked with the activities undertaken by the employees at Wesfarmers. At the same time, an account of the way economic shock is handled is provided. Furthermore, crisis management planning methods undertaken by Wesfarmers are also provided to identify the strategies undertaken.
Body

Section 1: Performance management

Performancemanagement can be considered a process that ensures certain activities and outputs are met to achieve the organisational goal. Usually,as Schleicheret al. (2018) pointed out, performance management is considered as focusing on the performances undertaken by an employee. However, it is not so as the term can be related to the performances achieved by an organisation and the departments. In the words of Franco?Santos and Otley (2018), it involves the development of an employee, coaching, and taking corrective actions so that mistakes are not repeated. It also involves goal setting, monitoring as well as providing feedback on the performances undertaken.

The problem that Wesfarmers faces with performance management can be directed at the employees. As of 2020, Wesfarmers have 107,000 employees working across Australia and New Zealand(Wesfarmers.com.au 2021). With the recent COVID case, organisations aim to reduce the number of employees. For Wesfarmers, such an action needs to be based on the employees' performances during the crisis while maintaining the protocols(Wesfarmers.com.au 2021). As such, performance management guidelines and assessment needed to be made based on the employees' responses during the pandemic.

In this case, the solution is to ensure thatWesfarmers identify those employees who were hard-working and aware of the situation during the pandemic. It is evidenced that during the pandemic, it had been suggested that Wesfarmers are to work with limited staff. For example, the Wesfarmers branch in Victoria had worked with 3000 employees in the branches across the state to ensure safety protocol(Wesfarmers.com.au 2021). Hence, in this case, the solution to manage the performance is directed at the number of employees who had only been enrolled for work. In this case, a goal-setting theory can be applied to manage the performance undertaken by the employees.

The goal-setting theory defines that conscience goals define the actions undertaken by an employee. In Wesfarmers' case, the goals set for the employees had been to maintain the safety protocols while providing a prompt response to the customers in lockdown. According to Schleicheret al.(2019), one of the theory's characteristics is that the performance at the individual level and the organisational level is analysed. Hence, it is important that Wesfarmers set up the goals achievable by the employees in the challenge faced in the business environment.

The real business difficulties that Wesfarmers can face is that of managing the presence of the employees. Wesfarmers had issued a 14-day quarantine break for any employee suffering from the virus(Wesfarmers.com.au 2021). Therefore, in this case, the company will need to maintain the gaps between works done so that performance management can be judged fairly. As observed by Richardset al.(2019), this can hinder the flow of performance management and identify the faults that the employees had undergone during the pandemic. Hence, a fair performance evaluation of the employees cannot be gained due to such policies as well as the application of the goal-setting theory.

From the analysis conducted, results that can be obtained include the difficulty during which Wesfarmers can find itself in the evaluation of the employees' performance. As stated by Tseng and Levy (2019), the short-term and long-term alternative action that can be considered for the issue is that Wesfarmers identify those employees that have worked well in the past and take lay-off decisions based on it.The advantage of the alternative is that it can allow Wesfarmers to maintain the ethical dilemmas in laying-off employees. However, the disadvantage is that experienced employees might have to be laid off.

As such, a conclusion can be made, which can point to the fact that Wesfarmers had taken effective decisions in maintaining the safety protocols during the pandemic. The employees had provided with the benefit to remain quarantine which provides evidence that the company tends to focus on the interest and the problems faced by the employees. However, owing to the budget cut and employ lay-off that is prevalent in the business market, Wesfarmers might need to undertake decisions on such matters. Application of performance management might provide the company with unsatisfactory results due to the uncertainty and lack of fair evidence about the work.

In general, a business problem can be associated with ethics. Raffoniet al.(2018) are of the opinion that on the one hand, owing to the financial depression in the country as well as in the organisation, Wesfarmers might be involved in employee lay-off; on the other hand, the company cannot find a proper explanation for such an action. With a lack of evidence to judge the performance of each employee despite limiting the number of employee appearances, Wesfarmers need to apply ethical consideration while trying to deal with the situation at hand.

Section 2: Economic Shock

The pandemic had brought about a downfall in the economic balance as well as the GDP in every country. According to Sheth (2020), industries being under lockdown for more than six months as well as having a stopgap working hour had hindered the smooth growth of the economy.The analysis made by Bakeret al.(2020) stated that in the case of Australia, the pandemic had lowered the economy drastically. Records indicate that since March 2020, the economy of Australia had plunged down by 7%, the largest fall in 1959.Compared with the 2019 fall, the GDP had dropped 5.1% more.

The problem with the organisations due to this is that strategic changes in the approaches needed to be made. According to Morkunas, Paschen and Boon (2019), job losses are certain, and the income level of the employees are also expected to fall. As such, for a company like Wesfarmers, the response to the economic shock needed to be made by identifying the ways by which job seekers can be kept at bay, and the existing employees be lay-off without causing any ethical violation(Wesfarmers.com.au 2021). Although the CEO, Rob Scott, urged the employees to deal with the crisis as a constant in the country, solutions related to the fall of the economy need to be made to handle the situation perfectly.

As such, the solution in this case for Wesfarmers is to apply a normalcy approach in the undertaking business. As observed by Grizane and Jurgelane (2017), due to the economic crisis, Wesfarmers need to address some of the economic, intellectual operations that are undertaken in business. For example, any form of highly equipped technology that can monitor employee progress or make delivery easy need to be laid-off so that the cost of upgrading such technologies can be saved. In the words of Burkaltsevaet al.(2017), it is necessary that the economic shock be addressed by digging the roots of the company and downsizing its operations to meet the times during which technology had not been of a stable and dominant position in the market.

As such, the Neoclassical economic theory associated with economics can be applied to address the situation of the company. According to Morkunas, Paschen and Boon (2019), the application of the Neoclassical economic theory can allow for managing the supply and demand of the products. For Wesfarmers, the economic crisis not only has to deal with the number of sales made but also with the operations of the company. Hence, factors of production need to be identified in a way that does not indulge excessive requirement of finance.

The real business difficulties, in this case, are to manage the quality of the products as well as ensure that the operations do not account for the excessive financial drain. At the same time, another problem that can be faced is that of the constant economic fluctuation. As evidenced by the analysis earlier, about the economic situation, before the pandemic, the economy of Australia had fallen by 6.1%. Hence, stability in the economy is rare in the country and can have a negative impact on the overall growth of an organisation(Burkaltsevaet al., 2017). In the case of Wesfarmers, it can be evidenced that the difficulties can stretch to a cautious approach in the overall running of its business.

The results that can be gained from this is that Wesfarmers need to manage not only the quality of its products but also ensure that it maintains an overall successful approach for its operations. Hence, as stated by Abbas and Hassan (2017) alternative way in terms of cutting down technology and going back to its roots is necessary for Wesfarmers. This can be both short-term as well as long-term given the fact that it is needed for the company to sustain the fluctuation in the economy. The advantage of this is that Wesfarmers can maintain its heavy financial drain while the disadvantage is that latest technology cannot be used justly.

As such, a conclusion can be made which can justify the exact nature of the changes that Wesfarmers need to make while commencing with the strategic involvement of the economic crisis. It is, in fact, necessary that the company tend to manage the rapid decline in the economy by contributing towards the economic growth with CSR activities. However, it is also necessary that the company maintain the reputation in terms of customer satisfaction and for ensuring that the working conditions of the employees remain stable.

In general, the business problem with economic depression can be related to the loss of sales. With the pandemic already lowering the sales, the further decline can lead a successful company like Wesfarmers into a huge loss. As such, not just lower-level employees, higher employees need to be laid off along with changes in the operations and departments that need to be made by Wesfarmers.

Section 3: Crisis Management Planning

Crisis management involves the process which an organisation undertakes to deal with the disruptive changes that can threaten an organisation or a stakeholder.According to Bundyet al.(2017), crisis management involves three phrases which include the pre-crisis, response to the crisis and the post-crisis phase. As stated by Jankelováet al.(2018), crisis management planning is a document that helps in underlining the plans that are required to be followed so that an effective response to the crisis can be provided. It usually helps in planning infrastructure so that the crisis can be respondent to well and clearly. In the modern world, the coronavirus pandemic is the main crisis that every organisation needs to address.

The problem associated with crisis management and its planning is that it is necessary to understand the basic issue concerning the crisis. In the case of Wesfarmers, the problem with the crisis management planning is that the company need to point to the exact issue which can hinder the growth of the company. According to Reuter, Hughes and Kaufhold (2018), the financial crisis for Wesfarmers had been reported due to the advent of the coronavirus, and as such, it is necessary that the company try to manage the financial condition of the business. Hence, the planning needs to be directed at the increase in budget for the company.

The solution to this can be to fulfil the specific requirements and demands of the customers as well as that of the employees. In the words of Williamset al.(2017), the maximisation of returns can be one of the solutions that Wesfarmers can adopt so that it can manage the crisis. As stated by Tokakis, Polychroniou and Boustras (2019), the planning, however, need to be directed at the overall management of the organisation, which includes preparing a budget for operations, employees, as well as the input of materials. This can allow Wesfarmers to understand the returns it can gain and, at the same time, make future plan keeping in mind the three stages of crisis management.

As such, the theories associated with crisis management that Wesfarmers can adopt is that of the five-stage crisis management theory of Mitroff. As identified by Uitdewilligen and Waller (2018) in this theory, the crisis signal is detected initially and based on the detection; prevention steps are measured. For example, with Wesfarmers, the financial crisis due to the pandemic needs to be mitigated by the possibility of employee lay-off as well as a reduction in operations of the company. At the same time, Bowers, Hall and Srinivasan (2017) are of the opinion that containment of the crisis can be managed by monitoring the movement of the finances and recovery of the finances can be done by identifying the returns that exist in the market. Finally, the crisis managed can serve as a learning experience for Wesfarmers to manage the same in the future.

The real business difficulties that can be associated with the solution is that it is not always possible to understand the financial crisis and predict whether the finance lost can be gained in a quick time. Hence as stated by Williamset al.(2017), the uncertainty of the plan is always a possibility, and despite the risk management techniques, financial planning cannot be considered to have a positive impact on the overall strategic planning of the organisation.

The results that can be predicted in this case for Wesfarmers can be based on the evidence that with the uncertainty of the financial management, the crisis management planning needs to be directed at understanding the areas which can have a positive impact on Wesfarmers. For example, as a short-term as well as long-term alternative customer satisfaction can be considered as a form of crisis management activity that Wesfarmers need to implement so that losses incurred can be curbed. The advantage is that Wesfarmers can be directly associated with the customers while the disadvantage is that it might divertWesfarmers from focusing on its financial crisis from its internal affairs.

Hence, the conclusion can be provided in this case that crisis management can have a satisfying impact on Wesfarmers and can lead to an overall understanding of the business situation. With the advent of the pandemic, various companies had to undergo financial changes, and the crisis management planning had been directed at such changes keeping in mind the ongoing pandemic and its impact. For Wesfarmers, such crisis management can lead the company to understand the various possibilities of financial implications in the business market.

In general, the problem identified can have a negative impact on the growth and reputation of Wesfarmers. This is mainly because Wesfarmers might not be able to manage the financial dents that the pandemic had brought about and thus can lose its position as a top 10 market share holder in Australia. As stated by Uitdewilligen and Waller (2018), this can also hinder the opportunities of the company to maintain a stable business and dominate the market of the country by gaining trust form its stakeholders.

Conclusion

From the overall analysis of the scenarios and the condition in Wesfarmers, it can be concluded that in terms of performance management, Wesfarmers might not be able to make a fair judgement about the actions of the employees. With a vast number of employees reducedfor safety protocol, Wesfarmers would want a different approach that can help the company to maintain its ethical approach in the business.The performance management does not provide an overall proper response for the problems of Wesfarmers and thus can be considered to not have a positive impact on the solution related to employee lay-off post-pandemic.
In terms of the handing of the economic shock, it can be concluded that Wesfarmers has managed well in identifying the crisis and ensuring that the crisis is made part of the organisation for the future. Although a huge loss isexpectedin the sales of the company, Wesfarmers also need to make changes in the overall operations so that any form of excessive financial strain can be eliminated. This can provide the company with some stability, although it cannot guarantee success for the changes it might bring about in the operations of the company.

The analysis of the crisis management provides a conclusion that Wesfarmers hold a strong position in the business market and, as such, can be considered to have a positive impact on the overall scenario of the business. The financial crisis had brought about problems in the operations of the company, although the crisis management planning might not be able to bring about a stable scenario for the overall operations of the business. Thus, it can be stated that for Wesfarmers, each of the three situations can be handled well by human resource management only if a specific identification of the problem can be made. 

Bibliography

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Baker, S.R., Bloom, N., Davis, S.J. and Terry, S.J., 2020. Covid-induced economic uncertainty (No. w26983). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bowers, M.R., Hall, J.R. and Srinivasan, M.M., 2017. Organisational culture and leadership style: The missing combination for selecting the right leader for effective crisis management. Business Horizons, 60(4), pp.551-563.

Bundy, J., Pfarrer, M.D., Short, C.E. and Coombs, W.T., 2017. Crises and crisis management: Integration, interpretation, and research development. Journal of management, 43(6), pp.1661-1692.

Burkaltseva, D.D., Borsch, L.M., Blazhevich, O.G., Frolova, E.E. and Labonin, I.V., 2017. Financial and economic security of business as a primary element in the economic system. Espacios, 38(33), p.3.

DeNisi, A.S. and Murphy, K.R., 2017. Performance appraisal and performance management: 100 years of progress?. Journal of applied psychology, 102(3), p.421.

Franco?Santos, M. and Otley, D., 2018. Reviewing and theorising the unintended consequences of performance management systems. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(3), pp.696-730.

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BUSM4738 Strategy Assignment Sample

Word Limit – 2250
Due date – Sunday of week 5
Weighting – 30%

Overview

This case study assessment task is designed to expose you to a strategic perspective on issues that concern the organisation. You will be required to understand the strategy problems and opportunities for the organisation at the network, corporate, business and functional levels. You will develop a strategy for the organisation in the case study.

Case study analysis solution development is a classic strategy course assessment task in business schools. Case study assessment allows students to gain insight by understanding and experiencing a variety of businesses across industries in a range of countries.

Assessment criteria and weighting

• Overall impact of your executive summary, writing quality and referencing(15%)

• External environment analysis, industry analysis and critical success factor identification and prioritization (20%)

• Company analysis (20%)

• SWOT analysis (15%)

• Recommendations on how you will take this forward into the short, medium and long term(30%)

Learning Outcomes for Assignment Help

After completion of this assessment you should be able to:

Apply business concepts to construct a strategic plan for a business (CLO1)

Create a sustainable competitive strategy for an ongoing business entity (CLO2)

Develop strategies alternatives using design thinking to facilitate organisational decision-making and problem solving (CLO3)

Demonstrate an understanding of legal, ethical social, economic and environmental implications of business processes (CLO4).

Solution

External environment, Industry analysis and critical success factors

Strategic management is all about increasing the performance of any organization in the country. According to Tafti et al. (2017), a company that adopts strategic management as a process of a company can provide a better performance instead of others. It is the approach that is used to specify the objectives of the company, develop the policies and help the company to implement all of these. In other words, strategic management is a process that is made by the completion of strategy creation, implementation and evaluation. But the strategic management can be affected by many external and internal factors of the company which is discussed below.

1. External environment analysis

External environment factors are dependent upon the many factors of the strategic management like- political, economic and social, competitors, customers etc. These all factors are uncontrollable that can affect the performance and the operations of the organisation. There is an alignment between the structure of the company and the external environment. According to Shtal et al. (2018), the external environment is changing day by day that can affect the strategies of the company and may create a problem. Therefore, the strategy of any company should be like that it can be performed in any situation. Adani Group created a very effective strategy to handle the external environment factor in the COVID-19 situation all over the world.

The company uses the PESTEL analysis technique to identifying the problem areas in the External environment which are as follows-

PESTEL ANALYSIS

? POLITICAL(P): the government of any country has been changed after an interval of time. In this way, the policies of the company or any organization can change according to the new government.

? ECONOMICAL(E): As stated by Matovic (2020, p.96), the company can suffer from the Financial problems which can be caused by the inflation rate, market growth and recession of the country. In this pandemic situation the economy of Adani Group also affected but after that they resolved the problem.

? SOCIAL: Increment in the working employees and the latest fashion of the environment may create a problem in the social environment of the company. The social effect of the Adani group plays the same role in pandemic too because they are always aware about the latest trends.

? TECHNOLOGICAL: The older version of the technology of the company can go down in front of rapidly changing technologies.

? LEGAL: The different new rules and regulations of the government can affect the working of the company. The new regulations like the lockdowns in the pandemic affected many areas of the Adani group too.

? ENVIRONMENTAL: Increment in the population and global warming can affect the production of the company.

2. Industry Analysis

Industry analysis is increasing the development of the company’s strategy to compete with the other external forces and the competitions which can affect the business of the company. As stated by Chase et al. (2018, p.13), the company can highlight the strengths and the weaknesses of the company to understand the development of the competitive forces industry analysis uses a tool named Porter’s Five Force analysis which is used to make the business strategies of the company. This tool is used to analyze the profit margins between the different companies, which can be evaluated by the structure of the company. As stated by Bruijl(2018), in the pandemic situation of Covid -19, there were very high competition in the current market. But Adani group created the effective strategy with the help of Porter’s Five Force Analysis and able to give a high competition to its competitors.

Porter’s Five Force Analysis:

There are the following five forces that are used to analyze the competitive forces.

? Rivalry in the Industry [low]-: As stated by Adani.com (2021), it is used to define the competition among the existing firms and also decreases the profit potential of the different countries.

? Substitution Threat [low]-: The substitute of any product of the company can reduce the sale of the particular product.

? Buyer’s Bargain[low] -: The powerful buyer has the power or the potential to purchase the item at a low price.

? Supplier’s Bargain[low]-: The suppliers can ask for premium prices which can also decrease the profit of the company.

? New Competition [low] If there are new competitors entered in the market that it can also decrease the sale of the company.

3. Critical success factor identification and prioritisation

Sometimes, it is very difficult to identify the real matter of the team which creates problems in the team, therefore the Critical Success Factor is used to identify the real problem and also provides the solution to the particular problem. According to Moeyuf et al. (2020, p.1384), the critical success factor is created by the strategic mission and the goals of the company. There are six steps to identity and develop the critical success factor which are-

? Create the strategies and set the goals of the organization.
? In each strategy, find out the areas which can help to achieve the goal
? Create a list of the persons who are able to achieve that goal.
? Spend time in monitoring and measurement of the Critical Success Factors.
? Communicate continuously with those persons who are appointed for work.
? Take monitoring in each work of Critical Success Factor and take surety that everything is on track.

Section 3: Company analysis

1. Explain case study organisation strategy, businesses, key stakeholders and their values

Strategy

According to Cappa, Cetrini&Oriani (2020, p.379), corporate-level strategy is the way through which a firm can add value with proper configuration and organizing multi-market activities. This consists of three aspects such as the addition of values, configuration and organization. Value addition is helpful in generating superior financial performance from multi-market activities further creating competitive advantage.

On further company analysis, it has been discovered that Adani Group took the help of Porter’s Generic strategy for defining its strategies. The cost leadership strategy of the Adani group involves integration. With the help of this strategy, the concerned organization successfully synchronized information technology and cultures and objectives of the business. As a result, integration led to greater efficiency, reduction of costs and a better environment to work (Adani.com, 2021). Adani group believes in high capital-intensive projects and this is involved in the product differentiation strategy. This strategy of Adani Group in Australia has resulted in delivering the products efficiently within the specified parameters like cost, quality and time as this utilizes more capital, technology and skilled manpower. Taking the help of such a strategy, it is possible for the company to reduce human error, increasing efficiency and there is no problem with the shortage of labour. Lastly, the company focuses (Focus) on developing infrastructure (Mungai &Ogot, 2017, p.148).

Businesses

Adani Group involves diverse businesses consisting of resources, energy, logistics, agribusiness, real estate, defence, aerospace and financial services. The annual revenue of the concerned company is over US$13 billion as it is operating at 70 locations in 50 different nations (Adani.com, 2021). In a country like Australia, this group has resorted to self-financing of rail haulage works for the Queensland rail project and Carmichael coal mine with the port units.

Key stakeholders and values

Table 1: Stakeholder register
(Source: Influenced by Gornitzka&Krick, 2018, p.51)

2. Prepare an analysis into the functions of the business

Adani Group has functional organizational structure. Here, the COO (Chief Operating Officer) is responsible for making major decisions. The COO is then delegating the job to EO, then, EO assigns the job to different departments such as marketing, HR, finance and so on.

Figure 4: Organizational structure of Adani Group
(Source: Adani.com, 2021)

Marketing department of Adani Group has AGM and Sr. Officer. AGM is responsible for coordinating, planning and making decisions for the business operations, and then asks the Sr, Officer to carry out further tasks. Sr. Officer ensures that all the tasks are done properly and hence manages the marketing team.

Figure 5: Marketing Department
(Source: Adani.com, 2021)

Then, comes the finance department which is responsible for managing the cash flow of Adani Group and hence makes sure that enough funds are available for meeting daily requirements and payments. Thus, the Finance department is mainly run by Finance manager assisted by Assistant manager, Accounts and Clerk and Peon.

Figure 6: Finance Department
(Source: Adani.com, 2021)

The HR department at Adani is continuously working to manage the life cycle of employees efficiently by hiring, recruiting, training, onboarding and also firing the employees. It can be observed that this department at Adani is decomposed functionally. HR is decomposed into HR operations, IR & Compensation operations and T&D employee engagement. HR operations are mainly carried out by the manager, IR by Senior manager and T&D by Deputy manager (Joseph & Gaba, 2020, p.267). So, it can be inferred from the company’s situation that each of these departments are working collaboratively to meet the organizational goals.

Figure 7: HRM Department
(Source: Adani.com, 2021)
Section 4: SWOT analysis

Table 2: SWOT Analysis of Adani Group
(Source: Marketing91.com, 2021)

Presence of this company into diverse core industries has resulted in strong presence in major areas of industrial development. Ethical issues are the major one due to which the company also faced charges under the law court. Moreover, the shareholders are also not satisfied and this is evident by the fact that the group lost 14 to 24% of wealth in this pandemic situation. Moreover, risky investments in the mines of Australia are also a weakness. The government has provided lots of impetus to renewable and sustainable energy so the company has opportunity in this area. Due to Covid 19, massive disruptions to the flow of foreign investments have been observed. The rate of trading with other countries gradually slowed down due to such a threat.

Section 5: Recommendation

1. Recommendations for shareholder and stakeholder value added overall

The shareholder value is just a financial term which is used to describe the owner of the company about the shares owned by the company. The shareholder value can be increased when the company gets the earning of return on the invested capital of the company. The company should increase the sales price of their product and the services after an interval of time. According to Chase et al. (2018, p.18), a business can increase the revenue with the combination of high volume and high price in the products of the company.

2. Impact of individual recommendations on shareholder and/or stakeholder value

The impact of the individual recommendations on shareholders and the value of the stakeholders are very high. The individuals are recommended in many ways and the strategies which are used to generate the value of the stakeholders. They also work for creating the values for the multiple groups of stakeholders. There is impact of each recommendations which are as follows-

Recommendation 1: High Revenue growth

References

Adani.com 2021 Company Overview, Adani Group, viewed 8th April 2021, <https://www.adani.com/>
Cappa, F., Cetrini, G. &Oriani, R., 2020. The impact of corporate strategy on capital structure: evidence from Italian listed firms. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 76, pp.379-385.

Chase, L.C., Stewart, M., Schilling, B., Smith, B. and Walk, M., 2018. Agritourism: Toward a conceptual framework for industry analysis. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 8(1), pp.13-19.

Gornitzka, Å. &Krick, E., 2018. The expertisation of stakeholder involvement in EU policymaking. Expertisation and democracy in Europe, pp.51-70.

Joseph, J. & Gaba, V., 2020. Organizational structure, information processing, and decision-making: a retrospective and road map for research. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1), pp.267-302.
Linkedin.com 2021 About Us. LinkedIn, viewed 8th April 2021, <https://au.linkedin.com/company/adani-australia>

Marketing91.com, 2021 SWOT ANALYSIS. Marketing, viewed 8th April 2021, <https://www.marketing91.com/swot-analysis-adani-group/>
Matovic, I.M., 2020. PESTEL Analysis of External Environment as a Success Factor of Startup Business. ConScienS, p.96.

Moeuf, A., Lamouri, S., Pellerin, R., Tamayo-Giraldo, S., Tobon-Valencia, E. and Eburdy, R., 2020. Identification of critical success factors, risks and opportunities of Industry 4.0 in SMEs. International Journal of Production Research, 58(5), pp.1384-1400.

Mungai, E. &Ogot, M., 2017. Generic strategies and firm performance: An investigation of informal sector micro-enterprises in Kenya. International Journal of Business and Management, 12(3), p.148.

Shtal, T., Buriak, M., Ukubassova, G., Amirbekuly, Y., Toiboldinova, Z. and Tlegen, T., 2018. Methods of analysis of the external environment of business activities.

Tafti, M.M., Mahmoudsalehi, M. and Amiri, M., 2017. Critical success factors, challenges and obstacles in talent management. Industrial and Commercial Training.

BSBLDR801 Lead Personal and Strategic Transformation Assignment Sample

Case Study:

As part of the latest workplace agreement, an organisation is about to introduce multiskilling for all employees. The goal is to enhance efficiency, flexibility and job satisfaction and help the organisation become an employer of choice.

Tom, the Section Manager is responsible for developing and implementing learning plans for the employees in their sections. These are put in place to ensure that all the employees can benefit from equal opportunity and health, safety and welfare professional development and that a net 3% gain in productivity six months after the training is completed. Measures of each section’s success also include attendance rate, labour retention rates, number of grievances registered and output to costs ratios. Tom can see many apparent benefits for the employees. A great variety of tasks and increased skills will provide better job satisfaction, and flexibility resulting from multiskilling taking place. Employees will have the opportunity to undertake complete projects and take on more responsibility and decision making in their roles. Tom can see plenty of other benefits to the organisation apart from those stated in the workplace agreement: multi-skilled staff, improved occupational health and safety, improved and easier recruitment and retention due to increased level of job satisfaction, more effective use of technology, improved staff morale, it sounds too good to be true.

Read the case study carefully and answer the questions in the spreadsheet below for assignment help -

Q1: Give examples of how Tom can communicate the new organisational direction and values to the staff. (150 – 200 words)

Q2: What impact will Tom’s role as a leader have during this organisational change? What strategies can he use? (100-150 words).

Q3: Explain how Tom should analyse and confirm the capacity and competence of relevant team members to find out how they can contribute to the change process and implementation plans. (100 – 150 words).

Q4: What strategies can Tom use to develop a learning and communication solutions to address any problems and risks arising for individuals during organisational change. (100-150 words)

Q5: If you were Tom, how would you develop, plan and introduce this change? (100-150 words)

Q6: What leadership style and approaches should Tom use to best respond to the impact of change on people and processes (50-100 words)

Q7: How you would deal with the resistance to change? (50-100 words)

Q8: What relevant legislation, information and intelligence sources does Tom need to analyse and keep in mind during the change process? (50 – 100 words)

Solution

Ans 1)

? Talk about the core values and their implications: Tom needs to first describe the core values and how they are beneficial for the company. He needs to explain how the following values will help in increasing the flexibility, job satisfaction and efficiency of the organisation (Mitrevski et al.,nd).

? Use eye-catching and attention-grabbing methods of conveying the message: Just showing people a ppt of why one needs to become more efficient and how that will help in a boring presentation, one must make it interesting. If Tom goes up and talks about what he feels and what he wants to convey and then follows to show a video on how the whole thing would work, it will grab the attention of the people listening (Mitrevski et al., nd).

? Tom should make sure he takes everyone’s opinions in a way that they feel included in the meeting and by the end let them know about what the changes are and why they are vital. Without proper reasoning, it could be a very hard value to build but having solid reasoning with proper examples helps build a tight agreement with the staff and the leader

Keeping these basic elements in their mind it would be easy for Tom to get his words through to his staff.

Ans 2)

To bring in changes in this organisation, it is important for Tom to follow the correct strategy as his path of leading would carry a lot of responsibility. If he succeeds in passing down the values to the staff, it will benefit the organisation positively and help it achieve flexibility, efficiency and job satisfaction of the company (Kwiatkowski, 2019). However, if Tom fails, it will not only affect the team members, staff and his job but the organisation as a whole.

Tom can take the help of values-based leadership:

Values-based leadership determines the strategy of the business by establishing clear implications that serve as a guide for employees. This type of leadership provides direction and significance to workers, supervisors, stakeholders, and the organisation as a whole. It helps employees take to evaluate the objective of the organization in every decision they make. Firms established responsive cultures based on appropriate values, which increased the overall ultimate sense of stakeholders of the company. The organizations depend on the cooperation of its consumers and clients to attain its goals. Values-based leading benefits individuals since it engages in the learning and collaboration of all partners (Kwiatkowski, 2019). It also enables staff by developing leaders and inspiring other leaders to do the same.

Ans 3)

As a team leader, it is given that Tom is required to analyse and confirm the team’s competence and capacity.
To get successful results Tom himself has to become a good leader who is able to lead his team to success. If Tom learns the basics of how to make sure you work for and along with the team and not make the teamwork for you, along with other points. Given that Tom is extremely fast-paced and leads the teams efficiently, he also needs to keep a check on whether everyone on his team is working up to their full potential or not (Errida and Lotfi, 2021).

Doing that would require him to keep an eye on every single one of them. If Tom goes up to each member and strikes up a conversation related to work which later moves into something casual, it would form a bond between them which would help them improve their relationship and make them feel closer as a whole team. Once close enough they would all try their level best to work up as a team altogether and work towards success as a team (Errida and Lotfi, 2021).

Ans 4)

Tom should introduce 5 basic strategies of effortless communication in times of problems-

? Verbal Communication: Whenever we converse with people and engage in verbal communication, It could be face-to-face, over the telephone, via Skype or video chat, or indeed any means. Some verbal contacts are informal, also including chatting with a co-worker over espresso or in the office kitchen, and few are more formal, other than a planned meeting. (Nwabueze And Mileski, 2018).

? Non-verbal Communication: Everything Most often, everything we do while communicating conveys over and above what we say. communication involves facial expressions, position, human touch, hand gestures, and sensation.

? Written Communication: Whether it's a contract memo whether it's a Facebook post, research, an email, a Twitter tweet, or just about anything else, every written language seems to have the same purpose which is to communicate a message in a concise and brief manner - a goal that is usually not accomplished. In actuality, poor writing skills usually lead to misinterpretation and embarrassment, but also significant legal consequences. (Nwabueze And Mileski, 2018).

? Listening: Hearing is not commonly considered in many kinds of communication. Listening skills are the most significant characteristics of contact since if we don't attend to the person next to each other, they will not be capable of engaging with them.

? Visual Communication: Our civilization is built around images. Bear this in mind: screens are all on 24 hours per day every day, Fb has visual jokes, videos, images, and so forth, Instagram is a photographic platform, and marketers use imagery to promote ideas and products.

Ans 5) If I was Tom I would introduce this change step by step.

I would begin with getting every team member together. I would then present my ideas and the topic for discussion. After taking everybody’s thoughts on it, I would proceed to give my reasoning and backups for the statements I would make and the changes I would want to implement. By the end of the meeting, I would have given them a brief about how the process of change would take place. I would make sure the process is subtle and not sudden as sudden changes are hard to adapt to. I would also be open to any suggestions related to improving the implications of the said change.

Ans 6)

To bring about major changes in a big organization Tom should take the help of a transformational leader. Given that the change is about implementing new values, it would help to try and create stronger bonds with the teams and work together towards successfully becoming multiskilled, leading o efficiency in the workforce (Oreg and Berson, 2019).

Ans 7)

Given that changes are not easy to adapt to, it could very well be possible that the people towards whom change Is targeted refuses to adapt. In situations like those, I would approach each of them personally and listen to their side of the thoughts. After rationalising them and logically explaining why they are wrong I would persuade them to adapt to change or have to let go of them.

Ans 8)

During the tough change process of the working of the organization, Tom needs to analyse how their teammates and staff are performing. Tom should be carrying out tasks as per the regulations or legislation of Occupational Safety and Health. When an organization is undergoing change it is extremely important to ensure that besides the physical resources the confidential data are also protected. Thus Tom should also comply by the Data Protection Act and ensure there is no breach of organisational data (Abdow, 2019).It would be an intelligent for Tom to consider the Corporate Governance regulations, as the process of change management includes legal as well as security regulations thus to ensure safe practices these should be considered.

References

Mitrevski, V., Stefanovska22, L. and Vasilevski, G., IMPROVING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION AS A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE FOR RELEVANT RESULTS IN ORGANIZATIONS. ?????????? ?????? ???????–?????? ????????? ??????????, p.60. https://mnd-bitola.mk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/pr25.pdf#page=61

Kwiatkowski, C., 2019. Effective team leader and interpersonal communication skills. In Sustainable Leadership for Entrepreneurs and Academics (pp. 121-130). Springer, Cham. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ganna-

Kashina/publication/334825763_Commercialization_of_Research_and_Education_as_a_Factor_of_Leadership_in_the_Global_Educational_Space/links/5d42d98d4585153e5932c643/Commercialization-of-Research-and-Education-as-a-Factor-of-Leadership-in-the-Global-Educational-Space.pdf#page=125

Errida, A. and Lotfi, B., 2021. The determinants of organizational change management success: Literature review and case study. International Journal of Engineering Business Management, 13, p.18479790211016273. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/18479790211016273

Oreg, S. and Berson, Y., 2019. Leaders’ impact on organizational change: Bridging theoretical and methodological chasms. Academy of Management Annals, 13(1), pp.272-307. https://bschool-en.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/businesshe/files/oreg_berson_2019.pdf

Nwabueze, U. And Mileski, J., 2018. Achieving competitive advantage through effective communication in a global environment. Journal of International Studies, 11(1).
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=718147

Abdow, A.I., 2019. Influence of strategic leadership on organizational change in the petroleum industry in Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, JKUAT-COHRED). http://ir.jkuat.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/123456789/4904/Abdikarim%20Project%20%20%28final%20process%29%2026th%20Sept%202018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

TBUS610 E–Business Strategies Assignment Sample

For 125 years, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has been a venerated newspaper with a focus on business and a welI educated, discerning readership. It consistently ranks as one of the top publications world¬ wide in terms of number of sub¬ scribers (currently approximately 2.8 million). Despite its pedigree as one of the most recognizable and respected newspapers in the world, WSJ has also made an effort to stay on the cutting edge in an industry that has seen significant disruption in the past decade. It was a pioneer in developing a pay wall for its digital content in 1997, Which met with skepticism and even ridicule at first, but is now increasingly common among online newspapers? WSJ was also one of the first news organizations with its own app for the iPad, released in 2010.

From 2010 to 2015, however, WSJ began to lag behind other newspapers and web¬ sites as devices became smaller, more streamlined, and more specialized. Although it was a first mover into the mobile space, other papers like the Financial Times and USA Today made sweeping changes to their websites and mobile offerings during this time period that better suited mobile browsing. WSJ had not redesigned its website since 2008. To make matters worse, in 2015, Google updated its search algorithms to prioritize sites that are optimized for mobile devices, which caused WSJ's search results to suffer. The company wasn't alone in that regard, with nearly half of the websites belonging to Fortune 500 companies failing to achieve "mobile-friendliness," according to Google, including a surprising 29% of retail sites, where mobile search is critical to maintaining revenue growth. However, with many publishing companies already struggling to adjust to the new online world, WSJ decided it had no more time to waste.

In 2015, WSJ undertook a complete redesign of its website and mobile apps across multiple platforms. It released new I Pad and Android apps with a variety of new features to improve user experience, and followed those up with the release of apps for the Apple Watch and for the Windows 10 operating system. It also added its first mobile-only product, an app that features a curated digest of 10 stories that is refreshed during the day, patterned after the what’s News column that appears on the front page of the print version. WSJ also launched a London-specific app called WSJ City that provides frequent updates on the most significant business news in London. In 2016, WSJ announced plans to launch more apps with specific functions akin to what’s News and WSJ City. The paper also launched the WSJ.D niche site, which focuses on technology news, analysis, commentary, and product reviews. The overhaul was more than just cosmetic. Organizationally, it also integrated the team that works on new technology products and design elements into the news room, so that the editors themselves can have direct input into shaping the technological future of WSJ. This move has helped WSJ keep pace with other top newspapers, including the Washington Post, which has almost 50 engineers working in its newsroom. In 2016, WSJ also announced continued changes to the organizational structure of its newsroom to improve its digital efforts further.

One of the most critical objectives of the overhaul was to ensure that the user experi¬ence was consistent across all of the different devices that readers use today and in the future. Being able to save an article on the i Pad and open the app on your i Phone or log in to the website and see the same article with your progress saved was a top priority for WSJ. The number of options for navigating articles was reduced for simplicity and ease of use, with the number of exposed navigation options dropping by nearly half on many pages. In the past, options were different on different devices and appeared in different places on the screen, confusing readers attempting to move from one device to another. Using an iOS feature called Handoff, WSJ allows users to save stories across all of their devices and to carry over the "graying out" of article headlines that have been read across those devices as well. It also allows users to access its Watch list stock portfolio service across all I devices.

In addition to making the user experience more consistent across devices, WSJ hoped to improve it. The app versions of WSJ are more responsive and more visually appealing. Graphical elements are more prominent and even interactive. The app loads faster, which had been an area where it trailed its competitors in the past. WSJ wanted the reading experience to feel natural on any device, which required it to optimize its apps for the screen size of the latest generation of Apple and Android phones. As devices continue to evolve in size, so too will the WSJ app experience. On a desktop, users can mouse over and click precise areas, but on a mobile device, users can swipe and tilt the device. In general, WSJ seeks to minimize interactions requiring precise taps on mobile as well as to reduce the amount of the screen that is fixed from page to page. Making interactive maps suitable for mobile can be particularly difficult, but WSJ is fine-tuning its approach.

Most of the feedback on the design changes has been positive. Elements that many readers had requested were added, including a II Market Data Center" featured prominently on the new website home page with essential information on the status of the stock markets that day. The iOS app also includes a Journal widget that places top stories of the day alongside other daily notifications, such as appointments and weather alerts. Users can swipe directly from their widget menu to move straight to the story within the WSJ app. From a user perspective, the new site and apps provide a large number of content choices, while also offering a variety of advertising opportunities, which is beneficial from WSJ's perspective.

As traffic continues to shift to the mobile platform, providing these advertising opportunities will become increasingly important to WSJ's continued success. In 2008, 10% of WSJ's traffic came via mobile devices. That figure sits at 55% in 2016 and continues to grow quickly. WSJ has about 900,000 digital-only subscribers, trailing the New York Times (1 million) and coming in ahead of the Financial Times (over 520,000), but most of its 1.5 million print edition subscribers also have all-access subscriptions. Although measuring subscription numbers has become more complicated as the number of digital devices and reading platforms has grown, the trend away from print and towards digital has long been clear throughout the industry. But despite the proliferation of the mobile platform, two-thirds of WSJ's subscribers visit the website home page each month. Realizing this, WSJ included the website as a key component of its redesign. As it turns out, readers use whatever device is convenient at the time-desktop in the office and mobile devices when moving about.

Another effect of the wider array of options for WSJ subscribers is that different trends and reading patterns emerge on each platform. To capture this new data, WSJ is upgrading its analytics capabilities, with the goal of using them in the newsroom and in its larger business strategy. One example of this approach already delivering results is the breakdown of device usage by WSJ readers. Tablet usage of the WSJ app is growing at approximately 10% per year, but smartphone usage is growing by 30% to 40%, sug¬ gesting that the smartphone app experience should be WSJ's major focus going forward. Additionally, WSJ has found that app users are more active and engaged than web browser users, spending more time in the app and reading more articles than other types of users. App users are also likelier to maintain their subscriptions than any other type of user. WSJ also dropped its Linkedln share button in 2016 because its analytics indicated that it siphoned off more traffic than it returned.

Many of the features that WSJ engineers are working on are tailored specifically for the app experience. One goal is to provide live video coverage via mobile devices. Another is to improve push alerts to make them more relevant to users. By analyzing reader data to understand what types of stories are most appealing to individual users or different demographics of users, WSJ can provide custom push alerts that are likeliest to motivate readers to swipe and move to the app. Another feature in development is a" Read-it-later" button that allows users to tag stories on any platform and view them later within their app. WSJ will also continue to optimize its Apple Watch app, which allows users to tilt the watch while looking at a headline to make that story available on the i Phone app.

Going forward, WSJ hopes to begin work on other features that will help in the future as early as possible. This means the paper will be continuously redesigning itself on a rolling basis. By integrating its engineering and product teams into the newsroom, it is much better positioned to achieve this level of development. For example, WSJ is one of the first organizations experimenting with virtual reality technology to improve its reporting. To that end, it updated its apps with built-in 360-degree video and virtual reality capability. With its sweeping redesign across all platforms, WSJ has once again solidified its status as an industry leader, even in this brave new world of news media.

Questions need to be answer for online case study assignment help -

Q1. What were Wall Street Journal’s objectives in redesigning its e-business presence?
Q2. What considerations unique to the newspaper business were involved?
Q3. What are the revenue models newspapers are using to go online?
Q4. What did Wall Street Journal do to meet the needs of mobile device users?
Q5. What advantages do pure digital news sites have over print newspapers? What
advantages traditional newspapers have over pure digital news sites?

Solution

Question 1

It is evident from the case study in Wall Street Journal that this Publishing House had not redesigned its website since 2008. As a result, the company faced huge challenges in attracting readers and gaining maximum profit in the competitive business world. This problem became more intense when in 2015; Google refurbished its algorithms regarding the search sites and gave enhanced priority to those sites which were optimised more on mobile gadgets. Furthermore, facing huge losses after this incident, Walsall Street Journal soon redesigned its website in 2015. The major motive behind redesigning its website was to attract more readers and engage them in reading newspapers so that the market revenue of the company could be increased. Another intention behind refurbishing this company's website is to provide users with better experiences. Hence, the organisation has also developed mobile applications across various social media channels. Significantly, it is also observed that the company has also developed iPad and Android applications, which can help fascinate more readers and achieve maximum financial gain. In the competitive business world, a sense of trust and better satisfaction to consumers is important as it helps in building consumer loyalty and bringing profit maximisation for the company. Hence, the companies need to develop a proper website as it is considered the liaison that helps bring loyalty and satisfaction to consumers from the seller's end (Wijaya et al., 2021). It can also be noted that in the digital era, companies must have an official website containing information about their products and services. This helps support the company's services and better communication with consumers and other stakeholders (Azizan, Munti & Adeswastoto, 2022). Another objective behind this overhaul was to provide better experiences through advanced technologies in different mobile gadgets readers intend to use in the present and future scenarios.

Question 2

Certain considerations of the Wall Street Journal have made the company unique compared to its competitive rivals. This company has decided to offer a better user experience. Due to this, it has overhauled its data analytics, intending to use these analytics in the newsrooms to gain maximum profit margin. Moreover, this company's engineers are developing some unique attributes that help the users receive the best experiences of using the mobile applications of WSJ. It is one of the first firms among the other rival companies that have initiated the usage of virtual reality technologies that helps the company improve its reporting system (GlobeNewswire, 2015). Notably, this company is the first to launch 360-degree video and virtual reality technologies. With refurbished technologies and overhauled website of the company across all the social media platforms, it is significant to note that WSJ has tried to retain its status in the industry in which it operates.

Furthermore, the company has developed an iOS application that comprises several widgets of journals and it also helps in placing the best stories of the day, including the top news (Wang, 2016). WSJ has 900,000 online subscribers, whereas, on the other hand, its competitive rivals, like Financial Times, have 520,000 subscribers. It is due to the fact that Tablet usage of WSJ applications is increasing rapidly by 10% and the usage of mobile phones is rapidly increasing by approximately 30%-40% as the company is providing unique features in its user-friendly mobile applications. Moreover, the company is trying to analyse the facts and data of users. Another feature named "Read It Later" helps users tag the stories on a single channel and view them later by utilising the mobile application of WSJ (Lichterman et al., 2015).

Question 3

It is significant to note that there are certain revenue models that newspapers use for going online. One such model is the transaction-based model, a traditional model that helps newspapers go online and earn money. Through this model, newspaper companies are trying to put all the important news on social media platforms to help readers get easy access. In addition, some newspapers put subscription fees with the help of which the newspapers can gain more money and success in the business market. Revenue models are used in assessing the legitimacy of the consumers as the security and privacy concerns differ from one revenue model to the other. (vanAngeren et al., 2022). Affiliate revenue is another revenue model that helps gain maximum financial profits by showing the advertisements of other brands on the official website of the companies. Newspapers on their online website show different promotional advertisements of other companies and earn huge amounts of money. It uses revenue and affiliate models to help gain huge income (Mathur, Narayanan & Chetty, 2018). In addition, this revenue model is highly used in replacing CPC practices in which the advertiser has high powers of negotiation. However, it is also evident that the publisher's power deals with receiving overall revenue from the affiliates. Accession to readers for online research is another model in which the site owner tries to generate more income standards. It helps show the practices that help assess the various effective pages on the companies' websites for more revenue. This also helps affiliate marketers for making more money by commissioning the consumers clicking through the third parties of the retail sites (Kemppainen et al., 2018)

Question 4

Wall Street Journal has adopted many strategies to cope with mobile gadget users' needs. One such strategy it implemented was the refurbishment of the online website, which it revamped in 2015, containing all the important facts and information regarding the news and other information of the company. It is also observed that to make mobile users happy, Wall Street Journal has developed certain mobile applications that help users use and access the company's online portal across various platforms. To cope with the requirements of online users, the company has also brought iPad and other Android applications that possess manifold characteristics in ameliorating the users' experiences (GlobeNewswire, 2015). It has also released appropriate and easy-to-access applications through Apple Phones and watches and another application with characteristics that aid in curetting the top 10 stories during the day (Doctor et al., 2015).

Moreover, it has also developed the Wall Street’s New Column that appears on the front page of the online news portal. WSJ had launched a particular application for the users of London named WSJ City in which frequent overhauls of the fundamental news regarding business and other news can be accessed. It is significant to note that the newspaper has also inaugurated a niche site that puts more stress on the technological news, commentary and review of products. Moreover, a consumer who wants to buy products can review the products-review section and get an idea about the item before purchasing. The WSJ applications' versions are quite appealing regarding their videos and responsiveness (Southern, 2016). These applications can be loaded efficiently, giving the company a competitive advantage compared to its rivals. Due to a similar reason, the company has 500,000 subscribers online, whereas other companies failed to gain such huge subscribers.

Question 5

There are several advantages that print media have over online news portals. One of the biggest advantages of print news media is that it is considered more credible than online news media. Research invariably emphasises the fact that the credibility of print media stems from a suitable impression developed by the true nature and atmosphere of the word printed and on the "halo effect". Consumers also view print media as the most appropriate form of news media in providing news. In print media, the recall value is higher than the online media as it is easy for print media to recall an enhanced number of advertisements and readers intend to react to them. Print media does not face interruption in the process of marketing. Some people postulate that print media is more reliable than online media and hence is considered the traditional form of providing accurate news to people across the globe (Saragih & Harahap, 2020).

On the other hand, online news portals can also be considered better in the digital age, where people are busy and have no time to view news on television. Hence, they use online media newspapers to gain more facts in a shorter period of time. Another advantage of online news media is that it is cost-efficient and people can save money as these newspapers do not require access (Saragih & Harahap, 2020). However, some newspaper portals require subscription fees which are not huge. In the current circumstances, environmental challenges are becoming adverse. Print media requires cutting trees to obtain papers, posing threats to the environment (Gutierrez, Martinez & Myrick, 2020).

Moreover, online portals it does not require chemical inks and papers and hence pose low threats to the environment. Another advantage of online newspapers is that it helps in allowing the readers to interact with the paper and is also able to give feedback and reviews. Online news portals help in giving facts regarding the happenings. The traditional print media do the same process by collecting and printing and distributing the facts, requiring much time. On the other hand, online news portals are time and cost-efficient.

Reference list

Azizan, I., Munti, N. Y. S., &Adeswastoto, H. (2022). Planning Design A Website-Based Mechanic Information System InBangkinang Kota. Journal of Engineering Science and Technology Management (JES-TM), 2(2), 65-70. Retrieved from: https://jes-tm.org/index.php/jestm/article/download/23/11

Doctor, K., Benton, J., Owen, L., & Benton, J. (2015). Newsonomics: The Wall Street Journal is playing a game of digital catchup. Nieman Lab. Retrieved 7 October 2022, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/04/newsonomics-the-wall-street-journal-is-playing-a-game-of-digital-catchup/.

GlobeNewswire. (2015). Wall Street Journal Launches In-App 360° Video and Virtual Reality. GlobeNewswire News Room. Retrieved 7 October 2022, from https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/11/04/783603/0/en/Wall-Street-Journal-Launches-In-App-360-Video-and-Virtual-Reality.html.

Gutierrez, E. J., Martinez, M., & Myrick, M. (2020). Which is more Reliable Print media or Online Media?.UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal, 12(2). DOI: 10.5070/M4122048061

Kemppainen, L., Koivumäki, T., Pikkarainen, M., &Poikola, A. (2018). Emerging revenue models for personal data platform operators: when individuals are in control of their data. Journal of Business Models, 6(3), 79-105. Retrieved from: https://somaesthetics.aau.dk/index.php/JOBM/article/download/2053/2101

Lichterman, J., Benton, J., Owen, L., & Benton, J. (2015). Push it: How The Wall Street Journal plans to make its push alerts more personal. Nieman Lab. Retrieved 7 October 2022, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/push-it-how-the-wall-street-journal-plans-to-make-its-push-alerts-more-personal/.

Mathur, A., Narayanan, A., & Chetty, M. (2018). Endorsements on social media: An empirical study of affiliate marketing disclosures on youtube and pinterest. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(CSCW), 1-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274388

Saragih, M. Y., &Harahap, A. I. (2020). The Challenges of Print Media Journalism in the Digital Era. Budapest International Research and Critics Institute-Journal (BIRCI-Journal) Vol, 3(1), 540-548. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33258/birci.v3i1.805

Southern, L. (2016). The Wall Street Journal plans three more vertical apps. Digiday. Retrieved 7 October 2022, from https://digiday.com/media/wall-street-journals-apps-take-laser-focus/.

Van Angeren, J., Vroom, G., McCann, B. T., Podoynitsyna, K., &Langerak, F. (2022). Optimal distinctiveness across revenue models: Performance effects of differentiation of paid and free products in a mobile app market. Strategic Management Journal. DOI: 10.1002/smj.3394

Wang, S. (2016). Small screens, full art, can’t lose: Despite their size, phones open up new opportunities for interactives. Nieman Lab. Retrieved 7 October 2022, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2016/03/small-screens-full-art-despite-their-size-smartphones-open-up-new-opportunities-for-interactives/.

Wijaya, I. G. N. S., Triandini, E., Kabnani, E. T. G., & Arifin, S. (2021). E-commerce website service quality and customer loyalty using WebQual 4.0 with importance performances analysis, and structural equation model: An empirical study in shopee. Register: JurnalIlmiahTeknologiSistemInformasi, 7(2), 107-124. DOI:http://doi.org/10.26594/register.v7i2.2266

MBA5007 Managing Strategy and Innovation Assignment Sample

Assessment Task:

You must write a Case Study Report about a production based company discussing the strategic plan of an organisation. This should draw on learning from Modules C and E (Chapter 5, 6, 9, 10) of this subject. Furthermore, key terms and concepts should be defined wherever possible. Be analytical within your report and examine key terms and theoretical relationships in depth.

The Case Study report should be written in appropriate business language so that your analysis and discussion have an objective tone. Your writing should be clear and concise and be in your own words. Use headings to guide the reader and include tables or diagrams that make the case clearer.

Aim: To present a case study based on the selected organisation’s current business strategy and the recommended strategy. The Case Study report must be in the range of 1,500-2,500 words in length excluding references. The referencing style must follow the APA referencing style.

In a case study report, include following:

1. Introduce the case study, including the background.

2. Describe the purpose and the background of the study and the specific questions you are addressing.

3. Discuss the possible competitive strategy options focusing on the strategic planning activity of the chosen enterprise.

4. Understand and be able to research the impact that strategic planning has on organisations and the consequent changes that have occurred to the role of business managers.

5. Explain the significance of the study and what can be learnt from it.

6. Note that a case study is a study of a situation, so you must not generalise the results to all other situations. That means your report should focus on what can be learnt about that particular situation and the individuals involved.

7. Recommendations that provide proposals for future action to solve the problem or improve the situation.

Each company typically seeks to enhance its performance and build competitive advantage via its own custom tailored competitive strategy based on more attractive pricing, greater advertising, a wider selection of models, more appealing performance/quality, longer warranties, a better image/reputation, and so on.

You must demonstrate what type of competitive strategy options the selected organisation has decided to employ, e.g. low-cost leadership, differentiation, best-cost provider, focused low-cost, and focused differentiation to pursue competitive advantage and good company performance.

You will be assessed as follows:

A. Structure of the written report: Background information is relevant, issues are logically ordered, recommendations clearly relate to the issues.

B. Identify main issues: Prioritise choices, justify and prioritise issues chosen.

C. Analyse the issues: Each issue is discussed using relevant concepts and principles, insight is shown in analysing the information.

D. Discuss alternatives: Consider all viable short-term and long-term alternatives to potentially solve each issue, examine the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.

E. Explain resources: Identify individuals from the case study, enumerate the time frame and monitoring processes required for the recommendations to be put into practice.

F. Write clearly and concisely: Arguments are explicit and succinct, appropriate headings are used, grammar and spelling are accurate.

Solution

1. Introduction

Online grocery shopping is beneficial for customers. Online grocery or fresh food services companies have achieved popularity in recent days. Several companies can flourish their business growth with the help of online grocery shopping. Therefore, the venture AmazonFresh by Amazon inc. is trying to provide the home delivery of grocery due to recent pandemic situations amidst Covid-19 situations, people need to maintain distance. By this, they can easily bring or collect their essential grocery items online. This will help to save their time and money. Online grocery shopping will help customers to prevent impulsive shopping. They can easily buy their products online which will help customers to track the exact amount which they spend on grocery items. With a couple of clicks, the customer easily grabs all the essential products on their doorsteps. This report will be discussed about the online grocery services of the well-known company Amazon. Amazon has expanded its area of the network in grocery and included perishable items in it (Polacco& Backes, 2018). For this change, Amazon has revised and added significant changes in its distribution and warehousing model.

Background of the study

Amazon launched its online grocery services in the year 2007. The name of this online grocery service is AmazonFresh. AmazonFresh got success on a national scale in a short period. AmazonFresh has to face numerous challenges to get success. Before AmazonFresh started their business there were countless competitors available in the market. Grocery refers to the largest retail sector with a 2010 revenue of $600 billion (Cdn.fbsbx.com, 2021). Consumers shopped for grocery items online 2.2 times per week. AmazonFresh develops partnerships with local merchants to get fresh items for their customers. They serve several delivery options for their customers. AmazonFresh also created its tagline 'ConvenienceDelivered' to promote convenience over price to draw the attention of the customers in the year 2009 (Cdn.fbsbx.com, 2021). In the process of selling their grocery items to the customers, they face several problems which have to be mitigated to better the business growth of the company. Amazon has expanded its area of the network in grocery and included perishable items in it. For this change, Amazon has revised and added significant changes in its distribution and warehousing model. There are numerous competitors available such as Safeway, Wal-Mart, and Stop & Shop which will be a great threat for AmazonFresh.

2. Purpose and Research question

Purpose of this project to identify the competitive strategies of the company named AmazonFresh. This project will be discussed about the impact of the strategic plan of the company. The other purpose of the research question is to understand the challenges of the company to mitigate all the issues to better the growth of the company. Amazon has expanded its area of the network in grocery and included perishable items in it. For this change, Amazon has revised and added significant changes in its distribution and warehousing model.

Research Question

What are the competitive strategies of the company AmazonFresh?
What is the impact of the strategic plan of the company AmazonFresh?
What is the significance of the case study?
What are the learning outcomes of the company?
What are the recommendations for the company to mitigate all the problems?

3. Competitive strategy

Amazon, which is a well-known or famous retail company worldwide, was launched to sell books. But in the year 2007, the company introduced their new online grocery services named AmazonFresh. There are numerous competitors of AmazonFresh such as Safeway, Wal-Mart, and Stop & Shop which will be a great threat for AmazonFresh. Amazon becomes a common name carrying major significance in the online retail business. However, Amazon has overcome all of its market entry barriers through drawing strategic plans. The first barrier to the business was the freshness of the products. Here the AmazonFresh company uses 'Focus Strategy’ to sustain itself in this competitive and globalised world (Etumnu&Widmar, 2020). The other retail company faces several problems regarding their products and delivering the products in a short period. By this, the AmazonFresh company uses Focus Strategy. Focus strategy will help to match market attributes with the company's competitive advantages. As evaluated by Galea & Walton (2017), quality is important to sustain in the competitive and globalized world. This strategy helps the company to focus on its products, revenue, and profit. By this, the company focuses on giving fresh products to the customers (Phillips-Connolly & Connolly, 2017). Customers prefer good quality products in a short time. By this, the company serves high-quality fresh grocery and perishable items to their customers. AmazonFresh gives its products to their customers on their doorsteps. This helps the company to grab the attention of the customers. Customer service is highly focused by the retail online companies. With a couple of clicks, the customer easily grabs all the essential products on their doorsteps. AmazonFresh provides a unique facility to its customers (Easter & Dave, 2017). The customers can select the timing for delivering their products to them at their doorsteps. This will enhance the competitive strategy of the company. Customers are the most important key to sustain in the competitive and globalised world. The AmazonFresh company took care of the customer satisfaction segment by creating a feedback section. The customers easily share their reviews with the company which will enhance customer satisfaction for assignment help.

4. Impact of the strategic plan

Amazon started its career as a business by selling books. Gradually, it further moved to grocery sales. Today Amazon becomes a common name carrying the major significance of online retail business. However, Amazon has overcome all of its market entry barriers by drawing a strategic plan. As assessed by Robischon (2017), the first barrier to the business was the freshness of the products. Earlier, E-commerce businesses have majorly relied on FedEx and other delivery options to ensure the freshness of grocery and other food items. Webvan, a grocery selling online platform, has collapsed in the US market in the beginning for not having a proper business model (Galea & Walton, 2017). Different experts in this field also have voiced their opinion about the business model because many companies failed just because of not having it. Amazon has expanded its area of the network in grocery and included perishable items in it. For this change, Amazon has revised and added significant changes in its distribution and warehousing model. On the other hand, Amazon before launching “AmazonFresh” had conducted the beta test with the help of Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, to monitor customers' experience in the website. A dedicated website and “bucket” have been proposed as a technical change in the business apart from supply chain management.

The focus of AmazonFresh was to deliver the items as quickly as possible to bypass the competitiveness of the industry. As reviewed by Kang et al. (2016), to promote goodwill, Amazon has distributed free samples along with delivery initially. To provide fresh items, Amazon is also agreeing with local businessmen and merchants. For instance, fresh fish from the neighbouring Pike Place Market is distributed across Seattle within a few hours (Polacco& Backes, 2018). This has also increased the reliability of customers and added more competitive advantages to the company. Delivery options were increased as the customer can order any items at any time without any complication. As assessed by Lamas & Liang (2016), the company has planned its "Tight Sleep” service for the late orders where groceries are getting delivered at midnight. This wide range of delivery options has fetched nearly USD 5.2 billion in profit to Amazon during the peak time of the Covid-19 pandemic (Geekwire.com, 2021). The company modified the warehouse plan as it has seen many businesses in the industry have failed for not maintaining the warehouse properly. Amazon strategically re-built the distribution channels and created ample space for perishable items. The scheduling system has also been modernised and reliance on the third-party provider has been minimised gradually. The strategic plan has helped the company to establish its feet in the industry efficiently.

5. Significance of the case study

The case study of AmazonFresh has provided a significant journey from selling books to becoming one of the world's largest E-commerce. The case study has shown different aspects of Amazon from different perspectives. For instance, the company was facing a challenge for extending its sphere in the grocery market. However, later on, the leadership in Amazon has curbed the issue by adopting a strategic plan for the business establishment. The significance of the case study can be analysed from different perspectives. In the supply chain system, Amazon has started selling perishable items since 2007 and it has been widely adopted by the customers as well because the company delivers only fresh and quality items (Lingyu, Lauren &Zhijie, 2019). Initially, the company rented cars and refrigerators from third-party businesses. Later on, it has purchased the essential equipment to avoid delays in supply. The company is one of the earliest companies that introduced one-day delivery.

In the delivery of items, Amazon only delivers fresh items from the local market by not degrading the quality at all. Added to that, Amazon offers several options for delivery of packages including "pick and drop" services. Most interestingly, the company also launched an initiative namely "tight sleep" for those customers who need fresh groceries early in the morning. Thus, it can be said that the company has adopted very unique and different strategies to make itself successful in this e-commerce business. In technology, the company has dedicated a separate website for AmazonFreshand tracked its traffic rate regularly (Etumnu&Widmar, 2020). It was recognised that the new website lacks reviews related to products and thus the leadership of AmazonFresh has decided to include this aspect quickly in the platform. In leadership, the company has performed great because of its leadership only. The company majorly focused on digital technology for growth.

Thus, this case study has almost detailed each aspect of a business in a broad framework. From the case study, the aspects of supply chain management, delivery, leadership, digital technology and other aspects also.

6. Learning outcomes

The online grocery selling market of the United States is quite big and AmazonFresh has successfully occupied its place in it through its elaborated strategic plan. The growth rate of AmazonFresh in the United Kingdom stood nearly 76.2 per cent in the year 2020 (Theguardian.com, 2021). The company has fetched positive growth amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The company has started from scratch where it has seen the major failure of Webvan, an online retailer, and learned a different perspective from this lesson. The company majorly focuses on competitive strategies and introduced an extensive digital platform as per the customers' convenience. Amazon has taken a focus strategy to improve the quality of its products and introduced new benefits for the customers through this strategy. The company has increased its minimum size of order and offered "prime membership" on the other to waive the additional charges (Bongard, 2017). This has proved a success factor to the company because it flows regular profit to the company.

Comparison between AmazonFresh and their rivals

1. How does the mean wholesale cost of AmazonFresh for retailers contrast with the estimated spending per industry for wholesalers?

- The mean wholesale cost of AmazonFresh for retailers can be determined as the success of Amazon Fresh could rest in the counting of its operations. Brick and mortar food businesses consist mostly of fixed expenses, however, AmazonFresh is trying to provide promotional offers in order to gain the market share. The aim is to achieve a little increase in the narrow gross sales margins to profitability, considerably more than operating expenses (rentals, utilities, shop workers). The cost is largely changeable in comparison with online foodstuffs. Therefore more purchases, the more pickup, packaging, transportation and shipping the firm must pay. Hence, profitability has few possibilities (Lingyu, Lauren &Zhijie, 2019).

2. How does every quality of the product contrast broad effectiveness/excellence to the sector?

- On the other hand, though, there are more — preferably more — items to load the shipment. Hence, Amazon Fresh begins to seem smart here. The firm has a distinct supply chain set up than its competitors such as Big Basket and Grofers. Additional participants often transfer orders to shops that choose either in conjunction with and even as business segments of supermarket local companies delivering from the supermarket shelves directly on customers doors. Amazon Fresh employs rehabilitation centres outside city centres. This offers Amazon offering approximately 500,000 non-consumable products for shipping with AmazonFresh to enhance the standard offer assortment (Etumnu&Widmar, 2020).

3. How does AmazonFresh's weekly sales effort count towards the local average amount of weekly incentives for each province?

- Calling for sales is not what they have been formerly for AmazonFresh before the Pandemic situation. Firstly, because of the accessibility of online and in-person platforms, sales employees deal with clients who are equipped with masses of previous studies. Contemporary salespeople meet more individuals and are supposed to market new sorts of complicated digital items. They must influence consumer groups. The typical purchasing cycle is therefore lengthier, such that consumer demand is tougher to foresee and used for objectives (The Guardian, 2021).

4. How can we assess the extent of each AmazonFresh's retail reductions to the average residual discounted throughout advertising campaigns?

- Many organisations have undertaken key modifications, such as the development of a new online platform, Similar steps were taken by the venture of AmazonFresh.
Hence, the inclusion of specialist jobs and the implementation of team sales to develop in this changed and competitive market climate. However, it is nevertheless important to disregard this shift. Taking the current difficulties fully into account requires developing new, deliberate models of remuneration that clearly motivate
a sales staff to keep selling efficiently. Salesmen need not be taught what to perform; they ought to be convinced of conducts that complement the marketing approach of a corporation (Robischon, 2017).

5. How do the annual spending of individual companies relate to the area average spending on marketing?

- The combination of incentives, quotas, wages and business unit incentives may be a driving factor for growth. Intelligent modifications of pay models showed a 50% larger sales effectiveness than adjustments in advertising spending. The perception of the company through various engagements and several conversations with the marketing professionals demonstrate that the functional requirements are necessary to redesign sales pay models and to assist sales organisations in responding effectively to some of the most important concerns presently (The Guardian, 2021).

7. Recommendation

The company AmazonFresh faces several problems as they launched their online services in a competitive market. By this, the company has to know the exact knowledge about market growth. Without knowing about the market growth the company cannot improve its quality of work. The company should know about their competitors' market policies and market growth to better sustain in this competitive and globalised world. The company has to make a good relationship with other companies to know their strategic plan.

On other hand, it is discussed that the Amazon company was not good at all in their technology. They create another website for AmazonFresh which creates a problematic and complicated situation for the customers. The company has dedicated a separate website for AmazonFresh and tracked its traffic rate regularly. It was recognised that the new website lacks reviews related to products and thus the leadership of AmazonFresh has decided to include this aspect quickly in the platform. The company has performed great because of its leadership only. The company majorly focused on digital technology for growth. By this, the company has to take good care of their technological error. They also have to create a single website for them. By this, the customer easily shops their essential items through the main website.

8. Conclusion

The case study report highlights the business of AmazonFresh and discusses it elaborately. In the report, the sections are allotted to explain the key insight about the company and its business extensively. Amazon has successfully operated in the field of e-commerce from the beginning because of its wide competitive strategies. Thus, the element of competitive strategy that the company has gained through its journey is elaborated in this report. The learning outcome of this case study is also attached in the bottom section of the report. Finally, the report ends with some suitable recommendations that the company may follow for its future ventures. 

References

Bongard, S. (2017). Online Grocery Shopping: A Boom, Hype, or Black Ice?. In International Scientific Conference „Contemporary Issues in Business, Management and Education “. Retrieved from: http://cbme.vgtu.lt/index.php/verslas/2017/paper/view/19/0 [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Cdn.fbsbx.com. (2021). case study assignment. Retrieved from: https://cdn.fbsbx.com/v/t59.2708-21/188162217_1707414302776530_1840700047146772248_n.pdf/Case-Study-Assignment-2-VIT.pdf?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=0cab14&_nc_ohc=C9nCtDIR7-EAX9Xb6Ak&_nc_ht=cdn.fbsbx.com&oh=f16d4b849a2073bdc8001b95d7b24e68&oe=60BA18E7&dl=1 [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Etumnu, C. E., &Widmar, N. O. (2020). Grocery Shopping in the Digital Era. Choices, 35(316-2020-1118). Retrieved from: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/303805/files/cmsarticle_739.pdf [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Galea, C., & Walton, S. (2017). Is E-commerce Sustainable?: Lessons from Webvan. In The Ecology of the New Economy (pp. 100-109). Routledge. Retrieved from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351282048-8/commerce-sustainable-chris-galea-steve-walton

Lingyu, M., Lauren, C., &Zhijie, D. (2019). Strategic development of fresh e-commerce with respect to new retail. In 2019 IEEE 16th International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC) (pp. 373-378). IEEE. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zhijie_Dong/publication/334022734_Strategic_Development_of_Fresh_E-
Commerce_With_Respect_to_New_Retail/links/5edfb46045851516e6656582/Strategic-Development-of-Fresh-E-Commerce-With-Respect-to-New-Retail.pdf [Accessed 3 June 2021]
Polacco, A., & Backes, K. (2018). The amazon go concept: Implications, applications, and sustainability. Journal of Business and Management, 24(1), 79-92. Retrieved from: http://gebrc.nccu.edu.tw/JBM/pdf/volume/2401/JBM-vol-2401.pdf#page=88 [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Soper, T., (2021). Amazon's online grocery sales triple in Q2 as more people get food delivered amid the pandemic. [online] GeekWire. Available at: <https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazons-online-grocery-sales-triple-q2-people-get-food-delivered-amid-pandemic/> [Accessed 4 June 2021].

The Guardian. (2021). Amazon plans big expansion of UK online grocery service. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/28/amazon-plans-big-expansion-of-uk-online-grocery-service#:~:text=The%20bold%20move%20by%20Amazon,the%20Covid%2D19%20lockdown%20restrictions.&text=%E2%80%9CGrocery%20delivery%20is%20one%20of,fastest%2Dgrowing%20businesses%20at%20Amazon%20%E2%80%A6> [Accessed 4 June 2021].

Lamas, G., Le, S., & Liang, H. (2016). The Supply Chain of Amazon. com Fresh. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2012/cwucenters/7/ [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Kang, C., Moon, J., Kim, T., & Choe, Y. (2016). Why consumers go to online grocery: Comparing vegetables with grains. In 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (pp. 3604-3613). IEEE. Retrieved from: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7427634/ [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Robischon, N. O. A. H. (2017). Why Amazon is the world’s most innovative company of 2017. Fast Company Magazine, 2. Retrieved from: https://publicaffairs-sme.com/PatriotFamily/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Why_Amazon_is_most_innovative_company_13_Feb_2017.pdf [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Easter, M., & Dave, P. (2017). Remember When Amazon Only Sold Books?.Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://www.greifco.com/new-site/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Remember-when-Amazon-only-sold-books_LAT_061817.pdf [Accessed 3 June 2021]

Phillips-Connolly, K., & Connolly, A. J. (2017). When Amazon ate Whole Foods: Big changes for big food. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 20(1030-2018-016), 615-621. Retrieved from: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266407/files/ifamr2017.0074.pdf [Accessed 3 June 202]

BUS500 Business and Management Assignment Sample

Assignment Brief

3,000 words

Based on FedEx – HR practices Case Study

Description

A case study will be provided related to a management issue. Students are to use case study analysis method to answer five (5) questions related to the case, providing analysis and recommendations for the case.

When

The report is due to be submitted by Sunday 2nd October, 11:59pm. This is to be submitted via the Turnitin similarity checking link.

Format

Provide a case study analysis of the case FedEx – HR practices publicly available. Answer the five (5) questions provided that relate to the case. Each answer to the question is between 550 to 650 words each. You may use additional external references to support your answer. Use in-text referencing and a reference list. Use theories and concepts from the textbook, to support each of your answers.

1) What is the corporate philosophy of FedEx? How does this vision and purpose engage and motivate employees?

2) How does FedEx use rewards and recognition to motivate their employees?

3) How does FedEx continuously receive feedback from their employees for continuous improvement of their human resource management?

4) How does FedEx leadership program develop leaders that are aligned to the corporate philosophy?

5) Diversity management is a key component of FedEx’s human resource management. Analyse these initiatives against diversity management good practice, as outlined in the textbook and other references.

Solution

Answer 1:

To impart the kind of quality and service essential to become the leading player in the air cargo transport industry and remain there for good, FedEx has adopted the people-first corporate philosophy to develop an intimate relationship with all its employees (Qing et al. 2020). The CEO and founder of FedEx, Frederick Smith, decided to not only include employees in the process of decision-making but also make them an integral part of the same. This was on account of his belief that when people are given the highest priority, they will impart the best service possible, and profits will follow naturally (Courelas, 2020). Based on this very principle and resulting from it is the corporate philosophy of FedEx- People-Service-Profit for best assignment help. All business deals and decisions made by the company are based on the trinity of these three corporate goals (Yuan & Chen, 2022).

The emphasis on prioritising people is an acknowledgement of the significance of employee empowerment and satisfaction for the creation of an atmosphere in which employees feel safe and secure and are motivated enough to take risks and engage in innovation in the pursuit of service, quality, and customer satisfaction (Qing et al. 2020).

The term service is with reference to the service quality aim of 100 per cent, which has been a clearly stated and consistent goal for the company at all times. If the goals of service and people are achieved, corporate profit should be the natural outcome (Qing et al. 2020).

To ensure that the people-service-profit philosophy becomes a reality and a way of life for all employees, FedEx has put various programs and processes in place. These processes and programs highlight the strength of the commitment made by the company to the people-first philosophy (Courelas, 2020). The company organises an employee satisfaction survey every year, which is based on the survey-feedback-action principle. The survey requires employees to rate the performance of the company’s management, which subsequently becomes the basis for bringing about improvements and changes. The company also adopts a policy of promotions from within, which means that in the case of filling vacancies, the promotion of existing employees is given priority (Courelas, 2020). The company also has a system of online computer job posting in place for employees who work on an hourly basis. There is also a program dedicated to the recognition of hard work by employees as well as a program for rewarding the same. This goes a long way in motivating employees and encouraging them to work harder and better. The company has a separate program for the evaluation of leadership skills (Yuan & Chen, 2022). This is a program known as the Leadership Evaluation and Awareness Process that must be completed if employees wish to progress to the level of management. The company makes sure that there is regular communication between the management and other employees through both print as well as broadcast programming (Yuan & Chen, 2022). Employees are paid for their performance on the basis of project-by-objective and management-by-objective processes of goal-setting.

The company also has an Open Door program. This program involves a detailed process which seeks to deal with all the questions as well as complaints that the employees of the company may have regarding the various policies of the company (Yuan & Chen, 2022). This program helps employees give their feedback regarding company policies and is one of the great ways to redress their concerns. In fact, the company also has a separate process for employees to make appeals so that their complaints and issues are heard by the management of the company (Courelas, 2020). This process is better known as the Guaranteed Fair Treatment Procedure.
All these processes reinforce the corporate philosophy of people-service-profit, which FedEx believes in and help improve employee motivation and engagement.

Answer 2:

FedEx has a robust program for employee recognition and rewards. The bonus program of FedEx is based on the sharing of goals. The program motivates employees to attain strategic goals by setting individual bonus levels on the basis of business unit goals, comprising up to 10 per cent of the total compensation of the employee (Madhani, 2021). The formula adopted by FedEx for the calculation of bonuses comprises various corporate variables such as net sales, corporate ROE, operating margin, shipped kilometres, customer returns, and total unit cost.

FedEx acknowledges and rewards its employees in accordance with its people-first policy (Madhani, 2019). The workers who work on an hourly basis are compensated on the basis of their performance. Apart from this incentive, there is also the ‘Best Practice Pays’ incentive that is given on the basis of team performance.
FedEx uses various reward programs to keep its employees motivated (Venkatesh et al. 2021). The recognition is given both locally and throughout the world to employees who perform well in their respective branches as well as to those employees whose positive contributions are felt all across the organisation (Madhani, 2021). The motivation received by employees as a result of these reward programs demonstrates the culture of innovation within the company. Two instances of the reward program of

FedEx are as follows:

The Five Star

This reward is for those team members who have improved profitability and service apart from working to promote a robust team environment (Madhani, 2021). The reward is given annually and is considered a huge honour within the community of FedEx employees. FedEx continues to emphasise team effort and cooperation by rewarding the same through this reward (Madhani, 2021). Teams which have cooperative environments, do not have issues with the sharing of information and do not make poor and rushed decisions are considered for this reward. The reward enables FedEx to keep its workers motivated and happy and encourages them to give the best output possible (Venkatesh et al. 2021). Although the concept of employee reward and recognition is nothing new, FedEx gives it a fresh makeover. All employees are expected to engage in innovation as part of their everyday jobs. Innovation is a challenging task, especially when it is on a regular basis (Venkatesh et al. 2021). FedEx is able to motivate its employees to do the same by means of such rewards.

Bravo Zulu

This literally means well done and is an award given to individuals who have performed remarkably well, exceeding regular professional expectations. These awards, which are given along with rewards, are usually small, and managers give them out on the spot (Venkatesh et al. 2021). The rewards typically include dinner gift vouchers, cash bonuses, and tickets to the theatre. Despite the fact that the rewards have gradually been diminished in view of the degradation in the economy, the awards are still given out by FedEx (Madhani, 2019). Managers now send personalised letters known as Bravo Zulu letters to the winners of the award in the presence of their teams. This award defines the organisational culture of FedEx, which involves two aspects- catching workers doing the right thing and articulation of praise (Madhani, 2019). Many managers keep themselves from praising their employees because they feel it will make employees take things for granted. However, in the case of FedEx, it is different- praising employees is encouraged all across the organisation (Madhani, 2019). This small award, although not as prestigious as the Five Star award, goes a long way in helping the company carry on its operations in a smooth and successful manner (Venkatesh et al. 2021).

Although recognition and rewards are not innovative in themselves, the way, FedEx approaches the same definitely is. The company recognises both individuals as well as group efforts. The awards given by the company are not based solely on job performance but may also be based on other activities which contribute to the brand image and reputation of the company (Venkatesh et al. 2021).

Answer 3

FedEx has a robust employee feedback system. One example is the FedEx Survey Feedback Action or the SFA program. This program involves a survey conducted anonymously that enables employees to express what they feel about the organisation and their managers and also about the pay, service, and benefits (Tilahun, 2022). The managers then make use of the results of the survey to design plans for the improvement of workgroup commitment and engagement.

There are three stages in Survey Feedback Action. First of all, the survey involves an anonymous standard questionnaire given to employees every year (Dixit, 2021). The questions are framed in such a way that it helps provide information regarding what hinders and helps employees in their professional environment (Rony et al. 2020). The questions seek answers to such issues as whether an employee can share what they think with their managers or if managers are clear about what is expected of employees.

The results of the workgroup survey are gathered and sent to the manager anonymously. The second stage of the SFA program involves a feedback mechanism which takes place between the managers and their respective workgroups (Tilahun, 2022). The main aim of this stage is to identify problems and specific pain points, investigate the causes that lead to these problems, and design plans of action to address the problems and rectify them. After the feedback stage comes the third stage of the SFA program, known as the action plan stage (Tilahun, 2022). The action plan stage yields a series of actions that are to be performed by the managers to solve the problems faced by the employees and improve results. The actions are devised based on what the concern is, the analysis of the concern, the cause of the concern, and an evaluation of what should be done to mitigate it (Rony et al. 2020).

Apart from the SFA program, FedEx has a grievance redressal process known as the Guaranteed Fair Treatment Process (GFTP). An appeal made through this process reaches up to the top management of FedEx (Rony et al. 2020). This ensures that the complaints do not get accumulated and that all managers are discouraged from acting in an unfair manner. Matters such as disciplinary actions, ambiguous performance reviews, and terminations are dealt with by the GFTP, which is available to all employees of FedEx (Rony et al. 2020).

Guaranteed Fair Treatment Process packets, made available by the HR department, are made use of by employees to lodge complaints through GFTP. These packets include tracking sheets for the names of the various complaints, the name of the complainant, their work history, a mechanism for tracking the resolution of the complaint, the rationale of the management, space for necessary documents, witness statements, etc. (Dixit, 2021). The employee filing the appeal through GFTP must first try to resolve the issue with their immediate supervisor.

There are three stages in GFTP. The first stage is known as Management Review, wherein the employee gives a written complaint to a senior manager within a period of seven days from the date of occurrence of the related incident (Dixit, 2021). The manager then scrutinises the relevant information, gets in touch with the complainant through a meeting or telephone call, makes a decision and communicates the same to the employee in writing (Dixit, 2021).
The second stage is called Officer Complaint. If turned down in the previous stage, the employee submits the complaint in writing to a senior officer within seven days of the decision made in the first stage (Dixit, 2021).

In the final stage, known as the Executive Appeals Review, the complainant submits the complaint in writing to the employee relations department if necessary. The final decision is made by the appeals board consisting of senior executives of the company, wherein necessary action is suggested to redress the grievance (Dixit, 2021). The decision of the board is final.

Answer 4

Senior managers at FedEx Services and FedEx TechConnect may participate in the nine-month Purple Pipeline (PPL) director development programme. Participants' capacity for strategic thinking and innovative problem-solving will be honed via a sequential learning curriculum incorporating various teaching methods. Workshops, interactions with subject matter experts, field visits, real-world application activities (like director shadowing and job rotations), executive mentoring, and required reading all play a role in the curriculum. In addition, a battery of leadership tests will be administered, and the results will be discussed in detail with the participants (Chehab et al. nd.). Within FedEx Services, there is a need for highly promising managers/sr. Managers to get the training and education necessary to advance to director positions. Hence PPL was established to meet this need. After completing the programme, graduates should be qualified for director-level positions in Services and TechConnect (Hanscom, 2022).

Five workshops make up the content: Self-awareness, an upbeat demeanour, and a willingness to face challenges head-on are hallmarks of personal leadership. Participants will be asked to complete a battery of mental tests in addition to various physical activities, such as a high-ropes course, over the length of the programme. As a thought leader, one must be able to synthesise data from many sources to assess possibilities and make sound judgments (Chehab et al. nd.). This course requires participants to complete an innovation workshop with some other Fortune 500 organisation. Fiscal literacy, career development, and creative problem-solving classes are offered. Working as a unit, inspiring enthusiasm in others, and making it crystal obvious how each member of the team fits into the bigger picture are all hallmarks of effective people leadership. The Memphis Grizzlies, an NBA franchise, and Crucial Conversations are both part of the course requirements (Hanscom, 2022). Leadership focused on achieving results entails making good choices that help achieve objectives and seizing chances to provide value. Activities like visiting the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and participating in a Harvard Business School simulation are part of the programme. Leadership that gets results in the real world, or "living leadership." The final event is a simulated job interview with a panel of executives, in which students demonstrate their abilities as a director (Chehab et al. nd.).

The programme's main benefit is that it gives participants the chance to develop their skills and advance their careers to the level of director at FedEx. Education-wise, the examinations, seminars, and reading will provide each participant with the information they need for their future position. At the end of the programme, each graduate gets a detailed report on how they have improved, which they may use to impress future employers and further their professional growth (Hanscom, 2022). If one thinks about the program's reach, it consists of managers from around the company. It allows each member to make connections throughout the whole company.

Moreover, each participant is assigned a vice president-level or higher executive coach from inside the organisation. During the programme, each participant receives guidance and observes the work of at least four (4) established directors. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in conversation with Olympic athletes, the Memphis Grizzlies, and published writers during the programme (Chehab et al. nd.). As a capstone, participants connect with another Fortune 500 company's Leadership Development programme to learn from their strategies and practices.

Answer 5

The founders of FedEx had faith in the power of inclusion and diversity. The management of the company is dedicated to the promotion of safe, respectful, and inclusive work environments, celebrating the contribution of each employee (Ury & Jammaers, n.d.). With the continued determination and focus of the leadership, the company invests in programs and policies throughout its workforce, marketplace, culture, and communities, acknowledging the unique needs, experiences, and backgrounds of people (Lee et al. 2020). There are various initiatives taken by the company in line with its commitment to be a part of the process that brings systematic racism in the community to an end.

Workforce

The company is proactive in investing in the recruitment and maintenance of diversity in the workforce that reflects the communities served by it (Ohunakin et al. 2019). Diversity is one of the strengths of FedEx. The ability of the company to engage in innovation and provide leadership with a diverse team serves its mission to resourcefully and responsibly connect the whole world (Ury & Jammaers, n.d.). In the year 2019, 29 per cent of the workforce of FedEx comprised African Americans and Blacks, while Hispanic or Latin comprised 16 per cent. Thirty-seven per cent of the management of FedEx in the USA was composed of people of colour. The Board of Directors in FedEx includes thirteen directors, including four women, of whom three belong to ethnically diverse backgrounds (Lee et al. 2020).

Diverse Young Talent

The internship program at the FedEx Services College Connections intends to fill nearly 170 intern positions each year during the summer. The recruitments are targeted to reach out to Black students with the help of events at 16 HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and career fairs at the National Black MBA Conference and the Thurgood Marshall Leadership Conference (Lee et al. 2020). The company also makes recruiting Latinos at universities and colleges a priority, which is accomplished through events in association with Hispanic organisations such as the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, Hispanic Scholarship Fund and UnidosUS. FedEx Freight (Lee et al. 2020). FedEx, in association with these organisations, has opened the doors for Hispanic, Black and other minority students for careers at FedEx. This is a part of the organisation’s efforts to introduce diversity in entry-level and internship talent.

Culture

The people-first philosophy forms the foundation of FedEx, and respect for all has been an inherent part of the culture of the organisation (Ohunakin et al. 2019). The company believes that a culturally inclusive and competent workplace enables all members of the team to get their authentic and real selves to work. The employees of the organisation are encouraged to engage in open dialogue leading to action (Ohunakin et al. 2019).

Platform for Executive Leadership

The top leadership of the company is engaged in executive steering committees related to inclusion and diversity. The leaders belong to a range of functional areas, including engineering, Human Resources, finance, and air ops (Ohunakin et al. 2019). These leaders set their goals, visions, and expectations to incorporate diversity, hold one another responsible for progress, and share best practices.

Black Female Leaders

There is a professional program for the development of Black female employees known as My Sister's Keeper. The program incorporates relationship-building and mentoring activities and workshops led by directors and officers who are female and Black (Ohunakin et al. 2019). The rationale behind the program is to lift Black women up and help them climb up the corporate ladder through the use of knowledge, experience, and established influence (Ohunakin et al. 2019). 

References

Chehab, A., Kabbara, A., Hallak, B., & Shamseddine, Y. Trends in Developing Employee Emotional Intelligence. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ahmad-Chehab/publication/348716217_Trends_in_Developing_Employee_Emotional_Intelligence/links/600c5c03299bf14088b8c1f4/Trends-in-Developing-Employee-Emotional-Intelligence.pdf

Courelas, C. M. M. (2020). TNT will become FedEx-Reframing Performance Pay and its Impact on Acquired Employees´ Behaviours: an Analysis of Compensation Harmonisation at FedEx Portugal (Doctoral dissertation). https://run.unl.pt/bitstream/10362/134293/1/Courelas_2020.pdf

Dixit, S. (2021). Performance Management Practices: A Decisive Approach to Improve Employee Productivity. Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education (TURCOMAT), 12(3), 3318-3324. https://turcomat.org/index.php/turkbilmat/article/download/1586/1338

Hanscom, J. (2022). Emotional Intelligence and Diversity: How Does Emotional Intelligence Create a Culture that Promotes Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace? https://archives.granite.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12975/385/MSLD_12532_jaimee_hanscom_hanscom_capstone_paper_1583001_389331447.docx.pdf?sequence=1

Lee, Y., Tao, W., Li, J. Y. Q., & Sun, R. (2020). Enhancing employees’ knowledge sharing through diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal communication during the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Knowledge Management. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yeunjae-Lee/publication/348522862_Enhancing_employees'_knowledge_sharing_through_diversity-oriented_leadership_and_strategic_internal_communication_during_the_COVID-19_outbreak/links/60022d27a6fdccdcb8589b68/Enhancing-employees-knowledge-sharing-through-diversity-oriented-leadership-and-strategic-internal-communication-during-the-COVID-19-outbreak.pdf

Madhani, P. M. (2019). How Compensation and Benefits Build and Sustain a Customer-Focused Culture. WorldatWork Journal, 28(2), 45-58. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dr-Pankaj-Madhani/publication/333133865_How_Compensation_and_Benefits_Build_and_Sustain_a_Customer-_Focused_Culture/links/5cdd4a0b458515712eae45aa/How-Compensation-and-Benefits-Build-and-Sustain-a-Customer-Focused-Culture.pdf

Madhani, P. M. (2021). Building a customer-focused culture with rewards alignment: a cross-sectional analysis. International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 13(1), 45-80. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dr-Pankaj-Madhani/publication/352204874_Building_a_customer-focused_culture_with_rewards_alignment_a_cross-sectional_analysis/links/61e53fb45779d35951b53a70/Building-a-customer-focused-culture-with-rewards-alignment-a-cross-sectional-analysis.pdf

Ohunakin, F., Adeniji, A. A., Ogunnaike, O. O., Igbadume, F., & Akintayo, D. I. (2019). The effects of diversity management and inclusion on organisational outcomes: a case of multinational corporation. Verslas: Teorija ir praktika/Business: Theory and Practice, 20, 93-102. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/247962/1/1667980033.pdf

Qing, K. J., Kee, D. M. H., Soon, J. C. T., Hui, C. K., Singh, A., Kurniawan, O. E., ... & Sin, L. G. (2020). The impact of employee satisfaction, organisational commitment, job performance and teamwork as the success factors in FedEx: A study of FedEx’s employees in Malaysia. International journal of Tourism and hospitality in Asia Pasific (IJTHAP), 3(2), 48-56. https://ejournal.aibpm.org/index.php/IJTHAP/article/viewFile/822/784

Rony, Z. T., Yasin, M., Lubis, F. M., & Syarief, F. (2020). The role of active constructive feedback in building employee performance (Case study at a private construction company in Indonesia 2018-2019). International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilation, 24(08), 9350-9359. http://repository.ubharajaya.ac.id/3211/1/The%20Role%20of%20Active.pdf

Tilahun, Y. (2022). Employee Performance Management System: the case NIB International Bank (Doctoral dissertation, St. Mary’s university). http://www.repository.smuc.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/7223/1/yonatan%20Final%20Research.pdf

Ury, L., & Jammaers, E. " The role of'diversity'and'disability'on the CSR agenda of MNCs. https://dial.uclouvain.be/downloader/downloader.php?pid=thesis%3A26043&datastream=PDF_04&cover=cover-mem

Venkatesh, V., Ganster, D. C., Schuetz, S. W., & Sykes, T. A. (2021). Risks and rewards of conscientiousness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(5), 643. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/110346/Venkatesh_etal_2021_JAP.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Yuan, Y., & Chen, T. (2022). The Influence of Enterprise Culture Innovation on Organizational Knowledge Creation and Innovation under the Ecological Environment. Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 2022. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2022/3419918/

MCR003 Management Attributes and Skills Assignment Sample

Please read the Case Study “Sun Spot”

You are required to submit meaningful responses to the three questions that appear underneath the case study
Please use a minimum of five academic references not older that 2015.

Use Harvard Referencing to include appropriate in–text citations

Sun Spots

SunDax CEO Dax Hollandsworth turns his leather desk chair from the blinding sunlight stream- ing through the large office window and leans back, facing Mark Roberts, the company CFO.

"You know, Mark, on the surface this seems impossible. We look at the numbers, we look at energy trends, we look at tax breaks and the grants and loans poured into this effort, and..." his voice trails off as he raises his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"I dread the quarterly meeting and video teed," Mark says. "Everyone has been working really hard and they've come to expect the year-end bonus. Hell, they plan for it, their families budget for it."

"I realize this will come as a huge disappointment, but I really don't think it will come as a big shock to them. Do you want some of these?" Dax asks, taking a handful of jelly beans and extending the jar to Mark who takes a few. "They're working their tails off, but I've detected a decline in overall morale. Everyone here keeps a close eye on the industry and on the mood and efforts at the federal level. They deal every day with the competition from the Chinese, and they see this big trend toward mergers and acquisitions. They may not want to admit it any more than we want to say it, but I think they know the bonus pool is empty and they wonder what the future holds."

The question hanging over the offices throughout the U.S. solar industry echoes that of California-based SunDax, "how could this happen?"

To the outsider, things appear great for solar power. The numbers are staggering, with an overall increase in usage of more than 60 percent over the previous year. And American home and commercial construction shows the rising popularity of solar energy as a viable power alternative. Like the electric automobile, it is the wave of the future. But the public sees only the sun; industry insiders are looking at the sunspots.

Private investments in the early years followed by federal tax credits and Energy Depart- ment loan guarantees enabled solar companies such as SunDax to refine their products, increase inventory, and expand sales worldwide. Boom time brought U.S. Treasury grants to the industry of several hundred million dollars, and as sales increased so did employee bonuses. Many bonuses equaled up to a third of an employee's salary-money for a child's college tuition, down payments on homes, trips, and other luxuries.

Now, amid shaky global economic conditions, SunDax and others see a decline in U.S. and European solar energy incentives while Chinese competitors undercut costs, providing an inventory glut for many U.S. producers. In this climate, there is reluctance on the part of Congress to renew mini-grants or to extend tax credits. The stimulus packages upon which so many companies depended to jump-start market expansion are a thing of the past.

"I'm afraid that employees will believe we are bending to public pressure in withholding their bonuses or they will think we are holding onto financial assets in order to look stronger for a potential merger or acquisition," Dax tells Mark.

"Mergers and acquisitions are the trend right now, and some big names have given in. It we are acquired, they can share in the gains."
"We're not there yet," Dax says. "Our challenge is to shore up faith in our future among employees while dealing with the realities of the market. But if you say 'look at all of these challenges" and, "oh, by the way, don't expect a year-end bonus,' what can we offer to shore up that faith and restore enthusiasm?"

QUESTIONS

1. What options can you think of for Dax and Mark to mitigate the damage from untul- filled expectations for the annual bonus?

2. What specific steps would you take it you were a senior manager in this situation? Explain why for each step.

3. Do you consider it motivational and equitable when a substantial part of an employee's pay is a bonus based on company results in a highly uncertain environment?

Why?

Solution

(1) Options to mitigate the damage from unfulfilled expectations for bonuses

The case study shows how Dax and Mark have a casual approach towards the employees and their failure as a leader. More and more employees desire transparency and accountability from their leaders in the organisation. They want to know the specifications of the packages that they are offered. The year-end bonusesact as a way of encouragement to the innovation, hard work, and loyalty implying the accomplishments achieved on a personal level especially the one connected with the employees' annual performance appraisal (Sanyal and Hisam, 2018). However, it can happen that the bonuses do not materialise because of factors like lower profits than what was anticipated or may be due to a sudden financial distress. Breaking the news about lower bonuses to the workers after they have put so much effort right from setting goals to meeting the deadline in anticipation of some monetary incentive—can never be an easy task to doc Almost 65% of the companies listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange are expected to inform prospective employees that the company offers a bonus(Miftah and Murwaningsari, 2018). However, some companies qualify their policies by stating that bonuses are not guaranteed; it is discretionary. Before breaking any news, the company may also consider delivering bonus regardless of the actual earned profits. Firstly, SunDax must ensure the salaries are commensurate with the market base pay. The company must ensure that the workers feel that they are being paid a good wage. The company should also articulate, if it feels possible, their plans of improvement in the company's performance and let the workers understand what they should do to improve for a bonus in the future. Dax and Mark who arethe employers can put up and share all the reasons why it is essential to support the circumstances and indeed explain the future anticipations of better business. However, they must be open to their employees. They could have told the actual situation and the impact of the current market scenarios on the benefits given to the employees. The company might decide to allocate ESOPs to the top performers of the company which might help them to keep motivated. In addition to the employers might provide bonuses in kind such as paid vacation or other benefits for management assignment help.

(2) Steps to be taken as a senior manager

As a senior manager, one needs to reassess how SunDax came into the current situation of dilemma. Even though the numbers of solar powers are showing growth to the outsider, but to the insiders, the downward trend is not a surprise. Therefore, careful examination of the reasons for the current predicament is necessary. Therefore, the steps to be taken as a senior manager to address the situation have been discussed below:

Step 1: Investigation: As a senior manager it is very important the factors that are pushing the company to become less profitable must be investigated. This allows the company to remove or counter the problems and thereby, avoid repetition of the situation.

Step 2: Communication: The workers must communicate the actual situation promptly. Finally, their representation will give them a sense of belongingness to the organisation. Delaying the process of breaking news that is not satisfactory will make the company delay opportunities to improve.

Step 3: Inclusiveness: The employees must be included in the decisions related to the bonus pay out. They must be given a clear picture of the company's financial situation and prospects.

Step 4: Transparency: Being transparent with the employees fosters trust and makes the employees feel cared for and valued. Openness is about embracing changes and new experiences in the organisation. At the workplace, it cannot follow an approach of one size fits all. Different solutions for different companies are required depending on the culture and relationships.

Step 5: Applying the principles of servant leadership and stewardship: Servant leadership is a style of management that puts the growth of the team and their wellbeing first over the companies or the leader's ambitions (Eva et al., 2019). The principles of servant leadership that can be applied includes listening, healing, being empathetic, persuasive, stewardship, and many more.

(3) Commenting on bonus based on firm’s result on highly uncertain situation

It can never be justified to link a bonus with a company's performance in a volatile environment. However, one of the popular types of bonuses is the bonus based on profit. The purpose of bonuses related to profit sharing is to make the workers aware of how their efforts are directly connected with the business's overall performance and increase the company's profitability. At the same time, it may seem evident that employees are motivated to work harder because of bonuses. But the recent studies find that employees are driven more by engagement than by financial rewards. Furthermore, the company's performance-based payments are applicable only for specific organisations and not all organisations.

The decisions related to bonuses are made by the people who do not regularly work with the employees in a closed room.A business is not just about financial performance but also values and ethics. A key to connect organisational strategy and employees is compensation(Sarkar, 2018). It can attract as well as retain employees and even impacts optimal performance. The equity theory of Adams is of the view that after an individual has decided to choose an action that is expected the needs, he further moves to assess the fairness or equity of the outcome(The World of Work Project, 2022).

Issues with inequality and entitlement

The employees may lose productivity over time if the novelty of the mechanism wears off. In addition, there may be problems with the perception that unequal and unjust treatment exists. Forinstance,a hard-working employee may be dissatisfied if he or she feels that others work less and receive higher profit share.A significant problem in the profit-sharing bonus plans is that an individual worker enjoys the higher productivity(Albert et al., 2019). However, they do not realise the impact of their performance on the profitability performance of the company. Thus, they may not find ways of improvement. However, in an unstable environment, a team member may feel demotivated to work hard as there is no certainty of receiving an incentive for their efforts to increase the company's profitability. The main reason is an insignificant relationship between individual performance and profitability of the company in an unstable environment.

References

Albert, J.R.G., Mendoza, R.U., Cuenca, J.S., Opiniano, G.A., Decena-Monje, J., Pastor, M.A. and Muñoz, M.S., 2019. Process evaluation of the Performance-Based Bonus (PBB) scheme (No. 2019-15). PIDS Discussion Paper Series.https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/240966/1/pidsdps1915.pdf

Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., Van Dierendonck, D. and Liden, R.C., 2019. Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The leadership quarterly, 30(1), pp.111-132.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984317307774

Miftah, D. and Murwaningsari, E., 2018. Bonus plan and income smoothing on the selection of accounting policy and corporate governance determination manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange evidence. Journal of Resources Development and Management: An international peer-reviewed journal, 41.https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234696569.pdf

Sanyal, S. and Hisam, M.W., 2018. The impact of teamwork on work performance of employees: A study of faculty members in Dhofar University. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 20(3), pp.15-22.https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shouvik-Sanyal/publication/325287860_The_Impact_of_Teamwork_on_Work_Performance_of_Employees_A_Study_of_Faculty_Members_in_Dhofar_University/links/5b040753a6fdccf9e4f7cdfd/The-Impact-of-Teamwork-on-Work-Performance-of-Employees-A-Study-of-Faculty-Members-in-Dhofar-University.pdf

Sarkar, J., 2018. Linking Compensation and Turnover: Retrospection and Future Directions. IUP Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17(1).https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeeta-Sarkar/publication/348690823_Linking_Compensation_and_Turnover_Retrospection_and_Future_Directions_Linking_Compensation_and_Turnover_Retrospection_and_Future_Directions/links/600b23c592851c13fe2d75f5/Linking-Compensation-and-Turnover-Retrospection-and-Future-Directions-Linking-Compensation-and-Turnover-Retrospection-and-Future-Directions.pdf

The World of Work Project. 2022. Adams' Equity Theory of Motivation: A Simple Summary - The World of Work Project. [online] Available at: <https://worldofwork.io/2019/02/adams-equity-theory-of-motivation/> [Accessed 19 March 2022]. https://worldofwork.io/2019/02/adams-equity-theory-of-motivation/