Week 4
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Week 4: Planning and Strategic Management Concept/ Mode/ Theory Definition: _ Planning is defined as formal planning and specific goals covering a period of years are written down and shared with organizational members. Finally, specific action program exist for the achievement of these goals (Robbins et al, 2006, p238) _ There are five reasons why managers plan (Robbins et al, 2006, p238) o Planning gives direction to groups o Planning reduces the negative impact of change o Planning minimizes waste and duplication o Planning sets the goals and standards used in control o Overall, planning improves performance _ According to the study (Robbins et al, 2006, p242) supports that there are two types of plans: o Strategic plans are plans that establish the organisation’s overall goals and seek to position the organization in terms of its environment. This include some characteristics:
Long term
Directional (Point A to Point B)
Single use or one-time
o Operational plans are plans that specify the details of how the overall goals are to be achieved. This include some characteristics:
Short term
Specific (Path we will take between Point A and Point B)
Standing or ongoing
_ Management by Objectives (MBO) is a management system in which specific performance goals are jointly determined by employees and
their managers, process towards accomplishing these goals is periodically reviewed and rewards are allocated on the basis of this process. However, there have some common elements of MBO supported by the figure below: (Robbins et al, 2006, p246)
Goal Specificity
Management by Objectives (MBO)
Participative Decision-making Explicit Time Period Performance Feedback
_ The strategic management process is a six-step process that encompasses strategic planning, implementation and evaluation (Robbins et al, 2006, p246) o Identify the organization’s current mission. vision, objectives and strategies o Analyze the environment o Identify the opportunities and threats o Analyze resources o Identify strength and weaknesses o Formulate strategies o Implement strategies o Evaluate results _ There have two type of statements through the strategic management process are (Gross, 2007, week 4, slide 22-3): o Mission statement- a statement of the identify of an organization and it’s the purpose
o Vision statement- a statement of what the organization is trying to achieve _ According to Gross (2007, week 4, page 5) SWOT Analysis is divided into two focuses: o Internal Focus
Strength is internal characteristic that improves competitive advantage
Weakness is internal characteristic that makes organization vulnerable to competition
o External Focus
Opportunity is external environmental condition that offers hope for improving competitive advantage
Threat is external environmental condition that may undermine competitiveness
_ There have 5 competitive forces included many important ideas in strategic management which have come from the work of Michael Porter. Together, these five forces determine industry attractiveness and profitability (Robbins et al, 2006, p275) o Rivalry: how easy to lower competitor’s profits, such as price war o Bargaining Power of Customers: how easy to switch to different product o Bargain Power of Suppliers: how easy to switch to another supplier o Threat of New Entrants: how easy to enter industry, such as set up costs, exit costs o Threat of Substitutes: what else (outside of industry) can do the same job as product or service Rich Description of Practice in Group:
On tutorial week 4, we had a meeting group on 15/08/2007 to discuss about what we will do next for the rest of our assignment, and review again our proposal before submitting in our tutorial. Actually, we wrote so many words than its requirement, for instance, we wrote 900 words while it just requires 400-500 works for poster proposal. That is the reason why we had to meet and found out which points in the proposal we should cut down to make the proposal shorter and more relevant. The basic for doing this is we just cut down or summarized some points that don’t cost too many marks and focus more on the important point (point number 2). We all worked together to find the better and effectively way to do so. After that Louiza gave us her new first idea on the poster design, it was so fantastic idea. She designed it from the Photoshop program, in this draft design, there have the picture of Sir Richard Branson who invented Virgin group, the logo of Virgin group and one important thing is the title of the poster “Leadership lost its Virginity” that was put in the middle. Although it was just a draft one, but I think it should be an amazing poster and obviously attract lots of readers. Finally, we decide about what we will discuss and prepare for the next week. James sent a timetable for preparation for the whole assignment until week 7 as well. It contained specific time, dates and what we should do for our assignment; certainly, it divided by our responsibilities separately like Nick took role as text editor so he asked Mac for whatever information he need for the poster’s content, then Mac did the head researchers role, he gave me and Jing that information. Therefore, I and Jing research information on journal or website or books, summarize all of these things and give to Mac later. Subsequently, James will review the finished work for Nick and give them to Louiza to estimate the space and put on the poster. Overall, James looks through the
process and solves the problem if it occurs. The group timetable was shown as below:
Date:
Things need to be done
24 Aug
Research to be submitted to Text Editor
29 Aug
*Group Meeting* 12:30, Library Final submission of poster design to group meeting
31 Aug
Text editor to submit finalised written work to Designer
05 Sept
*Group Meeting* 12:30, Library
06 Sept Poster due One important thing is that we did the Bedlin Test on this week tutorial, it really useful to identify what each member in our group is good at after doing all the part in this test. To understand more clearly about this test, this is the explanations for this: each part is a question with the some answer, our job was taking some of those and gave the points for our choices, but we just had 10 points allocation for each question. After all we calculated the total mark we got for each answer, and then we could determine which roles in group we should do well, it was up to two roles that we got the highest points. For example, after finishing that, here is the result that we took: I and Jing can do Resource Investigator role, for the Team Worker role had Louiza, Jing and me. Louiza and James can do Coordinator role, and only Nick can do Completer Finisher role. And final thing was Shaper role that had Nick and James. There also had two short answers that we had to complete as well. Anyway, by doing this test, we can have a general view about team role working and how to make it efficient and effective while working together.
This test was analyzed exactly what we are doing role in our group now. Analysis and Critical Reflection of relationship between Theory and Practice in Group: As mentioned on planning concept, our group was set a formal planning which involved in clear goals and plans for our final poster covered until week 7. It was discussed by all members and wrote down in a timetable list to be shared for everyone in group. We all know we can overcome all the weaknesses while doing in group and set a clearly and specific goal for the group. In fact, we are planning now is operational plan that we have specific details on it to achieve our determined goals for about 7 weeks. As things are going on, our group is managed by Management By Objective (MBO) system, we have a specific goal to finish our poster completely in about 3 week after submitting the poster proposal with the participation of all members in our group for decide what we should do our poster in the best way. Through out this process, we also have some feed back from other member so that we can make it better. That is why we have a meeting every week and several emails to discuss on our poster. For the strategic management process, we follow all the stages in the whole process, from identify our goal and strategiesto finish the poster before week 7 with many task works, do the SWOT analysis to determine our internal or external sources that can affect our group . Here is our SWOT analysis: for poster group assignment:
Leadership loses its virginity Strengths • Louiza’s high-level graphic design skills • Nick’s forensic methods in completing academic work Weaknesses • Research organisation • Initial task delegation
•
Initial task organisation and structure of what needed to be completed • Limited strategic planning Opportunities • What we need to achieve is identifiable through the subject outline • Tutor/Subject coordinator have also outlined their personal expectations of what should be in the task: in identifying these we can maximise our outcome (marks achieved) Threats • Limited time frame still remaining • Under contribution by some group members And before the final step is implement our strategic, and we are currently standing at this stage now. We are deploying all the tasks for each member in order to finish it soon and then we can evaluate the outcomes. And in our strategic management process, we have mission and vision statements for group as well. For instance: o Mission statement: is to complete the analysis of a management issue through active collaboration in an environment that is helpful and welcoming whilst still remaining academically challenging. o Vision statement: is to achieve full marks in the poster assessment by creatively presenting our management issue through using academically rigorous methodology and outstanding artistic design. Reference: Robbins S., Bergman R., Stagg I., and Coulter M., 2006, 4th edition, Management, Pearson Education, Sydney.
Long term
Directional (Point A to Point B)
Single use or one-time
o Operational plans are plans that specify the details of how the overall goals are to be achieved. This include some characteristics:
Short term
Specific (Path we will take between Point A and Point B)
Standing or ongoing
_ Management by Objectives (MBO) is a management system in which specific performance goals are jointly determined by employees and
their managers, process towards accomplishing these goals is periodically reviewed and rewards are allocated on the basis of this process. However, there have some common elements of MBO supported by the figure below: (Robbins et al, 2006, p246)
Goal Specificity
Management by Objectives (MBO)
Participative Decision-making Explicit Time Period Performance Feedback
_ The strategic management process is a six-step process that encompasses strategic planning, implementation and evaluation (Robbins et al, 2006, p246) o Identify the organization’s current mission. vision, objectives and strategies o Analyze the environment o Identify the opportunities and threats o Analyze resources o Identify strength and weaknesses o Formulate strategies o Implement strategies o Evaluate results _ There have two type of statements through the strategic management process are (Gross, 2007, week 4, slide 22-3): o Mission statement- a statement of the identify of an organization and it’s the purpose
o Vision statement- a statement of what the organization is trying to achieve _ According to Gross (2007, week 4, page 5) SWOT Analysis is divided into two focuses: o Internal Focus
Strength is internal characteristic that improves competitive advantage
Weakness is internal characteristic that makes organization vulnerable to competition
o External Focus
Opportunity is external environmental condition that offers hope for improving competitive advantage
Threat is external environmental condition that may undermine competitiveness
_ There have 5 competitive forces included many important ideas in strategic management which have come from the work of Michael Porter. Together, these five forces determine industry attractiveness and profitability (Robbins et al, 2006, p275) o Rivalry: how easy to lower competitor’s profits, such as price war o Bargaining Power of Customers: how easy to switch to different product o Bargain Power of Suppliers: how easy to switch to another supplier o Threat of New Entrants: how easy to enter industry, such as set up costs, exit costs o Threat of Substitutes: what else (outside of industry) can do the same job as product or service Rich Description of Practice in Group:
On tutorial week 4, we had a meeting group on 15/08/2007 to discuss about what we will do next for the rest of our assignment, and review again our proposal before submitting in our tutorial. Actually, we wrote so many words than its requirement, for instance, we wrote 900 words while it just requires 400-500 works for poster proposal. That is the reason why we had to meet and found out which points in the proposal we should cut down to make the proposal shorter and more relevant. The basic for doing this is we just cut down or summarized some points that don’t cost too many marks and focus more on the important point (point number 2). We all worked together to find the better and effectively way to do so. After that Louiza gave us her new first idea on the poster design, it was so fantastic idea. She designed it from the Photoshop program, in this draft design, there have the picture of Sir Richard Branson who invented Virgin group, the logo of Virgin group and one important thing is the title of the poster “Leadership lost its Virginity” that was put in the middle. Although it was just a draft one, but I think it should be an amazing poster and obviously attract lots of readers. Finally, we decide about what we will discuss and prepare for the next week. James sent a timetable for preparation for the whole assignment until week 7 as well. It contained specific time, dates and what we should do for our assignment; certainly, it divided by our responsibilities separately like Nick took role as text editor so he asked Mac for whatever information he need for the poster’s content, then Mac did the head researchers role, he gave me and Jing that information. Therefore, I and Jing research information on journal or website or books, summarize all of these things and give to Mac later. Subsequently, James will review the finished work for Nick and give them to Louiza to estimate the space and put on the poster. Overall, James looks through the
process and solves the problem if it occurs. The group timetable was shown as below:
Date:
Things need to be done
24 Aug
Research to be submitted to Text Editor
29 Aug
*Group Meeting* 12:30, Library Final submission of poster design to group meeting
31 Aug
Text editor to submit finalised written work to Designer
05 Sept
*Group Meeting* 12:30, Library
06 Sept Poster due One important thing is that we did the Bedlin Test on this week tutorial, it really useful to identify what each member in our group is good at after doing all the part in this test. To understand more clearly about this test, this is the explanations for this: each part is a question with the some answer, our job was taking some of those and gave the points for our choices, but we just had 10 points allocation for each question. After all we calculated the total mark we got for each answer, and then we could determine which roles in group we should do well, it was up to two roles that we got the highest points. For example, after finishing that, here is the result that we took: I and Jing can do Resource Investigator role, for the Team Worker role had Louiza, Jing and me. Louiza and James can do Coordinator role, and only Nick can do Completer Finisher role. And final thing was Shaper role that had Nick and James. There also had two short answers that we had to complete as well. Anyway, by doing this test, we can have a general view about team role working and how to make it efficient and effective while working together.
This test was analyzed exactly what we are doing role in our group now. Analysis and Critical Reflection of relationship between Theory and Practice in Group: As mentioned on planning concept, our group was set a formal planning which involved in clear goals and plans for our final poster covered until week 7. It was discussed by all members and wrote down in a timetable list to be shared for everyone in group. We all know we can overcome all the weaknesses while doing in group and set a clearly and specific goal for the group. In fact, we are planning now is operational plan that we have specific details on it to achieve our determined goals for about 7 weeks. As things are going on, our group is managed by Management By Objective (MBO) system, we have a specific goal to finish our poster completely in about 3 week after submitting the poster proposal with the participation of all members in our group for decide what we should do our poster in the best way. Through out this process, we also have some feed back from other member so that we can make it better. That is why we have a meeting every week and several emails to discuss on our poster. For the strategic management process, we follow all the stages in the whole process, from identify our goal and strategiesto finish the poster before week 7 with many task works, do the SWOT analysis to determine our internal or external sources that can affect our group . Here is our SWOT analysis: for poster group assignment:
Leadership loses its virginity Strengths • Louiza’s high-level graphic design skills • Nick’s forensic methods in completing academic work Weaknesses • Research organisation • Initial task delegation
•
Initial task organisation and structure of what needed to be completed • Limited strategic planning Opportunities • What we need to achieve is identifiable through the subject outline • Tutor/Subject coordinator have also outlined their personal expectations of what should be in the task: in identifying these we can maximise our outcome (marks achieved) Threats • Limited time frame still remaining • Under contribution by some group members And before the final step is implement our strategic, and we are currently standing at this stage now. We are deploying all the tasks for each member in order to finish it soon and then we can evaluate the outcomes. And in our strategic management process, we have mission and vision statements for group as well. For instance: o Mission statement: is to complete the analysis of a management issue through active collaboration in an environment that is helpful and welcoming whilst still remaining academically challenging. o Vision statement: is to achieve full marks in the poster assessment by creatively presenting our management issue through using academically rigorous methodology and outstanding artistic design. Reference: Robbins S., Bergman R., Stagg I., and Coulter M., 2006, 4th edition, Management, Pearson Education, Sydney.
