Dell Change Management

COURSEWORK ASSIGNMENT


The organization being chosen to carry out such change management process analysis is the computer industry and the organization company in focus is amicably, Dell Computers. Thus, change processes in business organizations involves the reality behind every process and is considered as a daily cycle in dealing to various issues and concerns of the organization as it depends on the managements actions and its respected change of nature in dealing with effective change management as directed at overcoming anger and resentment evolving into a program that supports acceptance and internalization. As a consultant commenting on the organizational change process choosing Dell organization as the focal point for discussion and analysis for this presentation, my role to the organization is to have a clear emphasis dealing to the external and internal change drivers and other essential points needed for the realization of purpose for this report presentation for the senior management of the Dell in providing factual information that will be able to give a better substantive spontaneity of understanding of such organizational state needed for selection and the application of the appropriate management models as well as its respected concept frameworks.



OVERVIEW

DELL, as founded by Michael Dell involves the selling of computer software to customers, (Coates, 1985) Dell understand certain needs and provide effective computing solutions. Dell provides better product and service worldwide in building information technology and renowned name in the computer industry for customers worldwide. (Draft, 1999)



CHALLENGES AND ISSUES


The Chinese government promotes national PC vendors to foreign companies and strict control of internet usage. The technological advancement is getting better at a quicker pace. The economy of the country is also doing well but the societal view of internet sales is rather blinkered and Dell does not have much success in its online sales. (Edwards et al., 1995) DELL initiated ways to overcome its weaknesses and use its strengths to gain advantages over its competitors by careful analyzing factors in contributing Dell's success in the industry in such strategies that had implemented created the path for the company's continued success. (Edwards et al., 1995)


ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS


In general, Dell Company is dynamic and complex organization because of its proven best quality services and being dedicated in serving the world with its management values that has kept them the best and renowned in relation to Dell's climb in terms of leadership as the outcome of delivering customer experience in the market. (Wison, 1992) The external environment of Dell has outside condition affecting performance and be able to identify key conditions beyond Dell control within the external environment (Hicks and Gulliet, 1998) There are a lot of factors affecting Dell's business from the external environment. DELL has tight competency with other big computer sellers like Compaq and HP as the social factors also affect the business environment of Dell. (Needle, 1999)


ANALYSIS

DELL has approximately 39,000 employees around the globe and has a large
and diverse corporate organization. Dell Company has lot of computer
systems in many locations such as Austin, Texas and Nashville that could be of high staffing cost and value that has contributed in maintaining sales to over thirty four offices around and then serves as the front line in terms of selling its products and services worldwide. (Fahey, King and Narayan, 1981) In human resource side, DELL conducts training for all employees in order to reduce absenteeism and human errors as well because better quality staffs is required in enhancing the best quality performance of the company.



Dell faces some forces from its competitors in terms of Information Technology as the EDI tool gives very effective opportunities in reducing costs and it can establish the tight linkage between DELL with its suppliers and DELL with its customer. (Fahey, King and Narayan, 1981) There are some applications that are currently being used by DELL and they are critical to the core operations of DELL business and the DELL direct which are its operational factors for success. Some applications that are currently being used by Dell that is valuable but are not considered for certain critical success.

Sources of Resistance

Dell's source of resistance is focused on its strengths and opportunities as it involving such resource of Dell's competency for better culture. (Fahey, King and Narayan, 1981) Dell provides the mode to custom the computers of the customers' choice and taste and delivers the system to the customer as it is the most crucial and critical success factor behind DELL Computers. (Fahey and Narayan, 1986)

Sources of Leadership

The existing style of leadership DELL uses is the ''transformational leadership style'' as the CEO Michael Dell applies this particular style of leadership that involves inspiring employees to DELL articulates a vision that convinces subordinates to make important and positive changes in business process and management and relates to profound belief on beliefs and values that goes beyond its changes and achieving ways to transcend proper decision making engaging through such utilization factors as DELL utilizes the IT as a factor for the successful running of its business. (Morrison, 1985) The acquisition by means of using some of the leadership styles as DELL will make sure to value their customers and business partners in a form of interpersonal style of expressing and by having customer information in achieving the mass customization. (Morrison, 1985) Dell expects that the success would be forever and they expect that other companies might implement such leadership models and believed that Information Technology play role in success of Dell business accordingly.

Growth Stages Framework

In developing growth stages framework it is important to note down change effectiveness as it can be different from the practice of organization development. There has to be series of growth stages and events that Dell has gone through in connection to the central work areas as being attended to in structuring an effective change in the organization and modify ways based from growth stage Dell is dealing with. There must be tools as it is essential for the change success and in order to start up the framework model, there should be consideration of growth stages that Dell Company must work upon and think about the internal factors that are most critical in every given stage. Thus, every growth stage tends to have certain organization characteristics and pattern in which change factors are most critical and that such stage will terminate sets of precise issues that must be overcome by means of key changes to Dell organization and its strategic model as there range from strategic planning and executive team building to process assessment and surveys as intended to cover familiar technique for dealing with change situation factors that distinguish Dell organization culture respectively. Knowing where Dell in terms of particular Stages of Growth that are able to: adapt to the organization change in rapidly changing economic site, Focusing on resources such as people, time as well as attention of Dell on right goals and change approaches, successfully forecast industry behaviour in advancement of crucial decisions to be done. Dell Company as there continue forward to success will likely started at Stage One and will go through Stage Seven in the growth model.



Stage One: Initiation

Proliferation in application, users enthusiastic about use of data, management control are lax, treatment of computer by management, growth of computer use throughout organization's function field, computer use as plagued because of crisis


Stage Three: Control The reaction against uncontrolled expenditure on computer systems

No turning back in computer use > centralized controls on systems > applications incompatible and inadequate > using the database and communication as change response > frustration of end user


Stage Four: Integration

Use of technology in integrating systems > increase control by users > data process budget development > demand for web database facility > formal plan and control of data process

Stage Five: Data Administration

Emphasis on managing IT > identifying data usage and meaning in the organisation > application of portfolio

Stage Six: Maturity

Systems reflecting real change needs > using information resource in developing competitive change approaches > needed function of change resources > emphasis on change planning



CULTURAL WEB

Dell Company usually encounters organizational pressures in lieu of maintaining better business position and focus within such evolving and demanding markets in the computer industry. The senior management and Dell employees should be able to address and implement process as well as change strategies if Dell will stay on top in the market and that leaders that imply such change of culture within the company are to be found in every area in the organization and Dell's effective change execution will become prepared as well as purposeful process. The Dell vision is to be required in keeping stable to the demands of customer and the possible innovations in the market. Dell has the ability to acquire real change that depends within the change implementation in its organization and the cultural web and Dell management must communicate a useful plan for change in supporting timeline for completion and that Dell should listen to certain employee concern and issues and will buy the master plan in order to accept change for the good sake of Dell organization. There can be indication that if change management will be a failure then, it can due to lack of obligation as well as the malfunction to uphold assurance in increasing success of change in Dell's culture and current situation in maximizing change value.

Moreover, organization changes occur in circumstance of the kind of change as phenomenon of time - as an outcome" (Ford and Ford 1994, p. 759). For Dell, image of Dell was created upon sets of interdependence that meet in outlay of sustained version to ecological changes and the variation lag the success decrease and pressures for changes will augment and can result in basic change in action patterns and personnel of Dell as the company had illustrated sequence of irregular changes in approach, arrangement and culture as moved up through good leadership of Michael Dell (Tushman and O'Reilly 1996; McDaniel 1997, Stacey 1995)


The idiosyncratic quality of organization culture and change have ample ideas that certain business adjustments across Dell units will be able to cumulate and generate considerable changes as the scenario presume strongly attached interdependencies being pockets of Dell innovation proving suitable in change milieu. The symbol of Dell implicit of culture change of interactions as the power joined to errands rather than position and shift (Wheatley, 1992 p. 90) and the receiving of change as steady mechanisms (Klein, 1998). Thus, the culture of Dell jointly in nonconforming measures that improve version and flexibility (Kotter and Heskett 1992) their culture as ample knowledge and codified in pattern of recipes for conducting situations. Aside, in changing Dell culture means, changing Dell climate (Schneider et al., 1996) in uncovering knowledge through experimentation surfacing particulars (Colville et al., 1993) as well as not building organization idiom paradigms. Although Dell culture can be practical vocabulary in understanding steadiness and change, there can be suggestion as Dell tends to moves in other way from delighting as collective organization scheme but, the notion may turn into less significant (Jordan, 1995). Resistance of change as the situation of model as means of organizational change of internal as well as external restrictions as there address chance of organization change of Dell as the internal function and recognized structures are systematically established for external linkage to build up and pattern of change process.



Organization Culture - Change Process In the episode on organization culture, there discussion of cultural analysis as strategy to Dell's organization change in the procedure of culture change. Dell's culture change is not easy and occasion consuming since, culture is entrenched in combined history of Dell organization and a great deal of it are beneath the facade of awareness and that, the method of culture change in Dell must comprise of the following:
> discover core principles and attitude > recognize, respect and argue differences among hub standards and beliefs of diverse subcultures inside Dell > Look for incongruence amid cognizant and insensible attitude and values and determine by deciding those as Dell desires to entrust > set up innovative behaviour norms that obviously reveal preferred values > do again the steps over a epoch of occasion as novel members enter Dell, guarantee that members were bounded with understandable messages about culture to enter and strengthen attractive behaviour. It's obvious that culture transformation is continuing process, so it's tough to recognize organization that have complete successful change in culture as Dell did employ a purposeful culture alteration process and change was not completely constructive in buck tier of pecking order and have demanded adjustments in customer's expectations that led to augmented conflicts and faced with internal and external confrontations, Dell have created ground-breaking solutions and in have formed encouraging change in aspects of the organization culture (Cohen and Brand, 1993 p. 122). There is useful system to thoroughly recognize areas of resistance (Brager and Holloway, 1992) the method was an evaluation tool for organization change.



There involves the creating of strength in lashing forces and assist the change and preventing forces as point of Dell's change development involve poignant from current culture state Dell successfully uses quality in management as there listing of forces such as key groups and conditions in terms of ecological pressure leading to abridged finances and make the change execution difficult as there was scepticism base on Dell's better record concerning change. (Brager and Holloway, 1992) The arrows from mutually in the sides poignant to that need great awareness. In scheming inclusive change process, Dell must recognize the accessible organizational culture to make certain of high-quality robust as the management need to be aligned with extra organization process. Thus, Dell change implementation involves organization transformation as there begin to function in fresh ways and in developing novel culture for redesigning business systems as organization change is possible in other sectors (Packard and Reid, 1990). The assessment of precondition in current state of Dell in making certain of the need for culture change is clear upon precise strategies in acquiring change value. The leadership style as well as organization culture of the company should be matching with the change process until positive conditions exist and Dell must focus in lieu of better service. (Packard and Reid, 1990)


THE SCENARIO

No Change Scenario


The risks associated in focusing much on Dell's direct selling process as a means of steady product distribution can be applied as a no change scenario. As always as it is a routinely cycle, DELL comprises a report about a new development in the unfolding current business situations within the competitive aspect. There were confrontations involving the partners of DELL: computer industry representatives fighting to retain control of business matters, computer buyers arguing to protect sharing of products and services strategies as struggling to avoid legal liability for computer business organizations which are seeking to safeguard the rights of computer providers as well as customers respectively.


A Change Scenario

It is crucial that in every scenario, DELL will have to encourage the proper adaptation of possible solutions that involves certain stagnation of the strategic development of the overall business transaction as well as the consideration of ways in deciding for such changes in the external and internal environment as it serves as the main structure in maintaining business growth and stability encompassing issues and concerns brought about by the reality of organization competition involving the centre for business implementation and that DELL as a matter of change scenario, should engage more on strategic principles for growth and expansion in terms of providing standards of business quality among its computers that will aim in increasing morale in the faces of satisfied customers trusting the services offered to them by DELL company amicably. CONCLUSION DELL decided to change in many aspects regarding its business status in the society as DELL need have to ensure the appropriate amount of management resources to obtain such purpose as the company relies on their reputation in the US market in terms of giving high quality products to uplift customer values. Therefore, DELL needs to have a certain change of agenda as necessarily needed in relevant assumptions for DELL organization to overcome future changes that could possibly affect negatively on the business industry DELL belongs.

1. What are the problems associated with top-down or bottom-up views of change management?

In a top-down approach to change management, which is implied or inferred in schemas of imposed change, the initiative comes from the top of the organization, therefore decision-making activities centre only at the higher echelon of the firm, basically excluding lower-level employees in the process of change, although the latter are directly affected by such changes. With top-down change, the emphasis is on making the changes quickly and dealing with the problems only if necessary. The primary problem, hence, is that a top down approach to the management of change increases the probability of resistance, which is the most problematic aspect of change in any organization. Regardless of how well or how systematically these top level-centred-decisions are made, the management of change will be insufficient because they ignore so much of the organization. The path-goal theory of Robert House, stating that one of the styles of leadership is the directive leadership in where the leader makes all the decisions and expect subordinates to follow can be applied to this problem of resistance to change. Naturally, people who are forced to adapt to change have the initial reaction to resist it.

This step-by-step, unidirectional, rational and traditional approach to change has very definite limitations Problems to this approach include: (1) decision-making is limited to the top of the organization, therefore a lack of information, suggestions and ideas coming from the bottom; (2) people at the top not willing to listen to lower level employees ideas, suggestions or feedback, resulting to poor employee motivation and performance; (3) very little task delegation involved in the change process, thus fear among lower level employees that they are somehow incompetent and under qualified for such tasks; (4) the change process, being mostly kept to the upper level of the organisation, breeds scepticism from amongst the lower level people; (5) misunderstanding because of communication problems and inadequate information of both parties; and (6) people naturally have different assessments to a given situation. The lower level employees, not being given the chance to participate, does not know for sure the exact circumstances revolving around the change, thus resist it. These reasons to the top-down approach problem in change management are connected to the Core Group theory of Art Kleiner, clinging to the belief that power, privilege and success lie in the core group, normally composed of the upper levels of the organization.

Catalogue retailer Lillian Vernon's administration wanted a sweeping transformation of the company's entire technical architecture. To do this, management decided to completely overhaul the archaic systems on which the company grew up. In sharp contrast to the conservative approach taken by most midsize enterprises, the management team decided, fatefully, that speed was crucial. They have, however, failed to plan for the effects of so much change so fast. Employees resisted mightily, avoiding training and blaming new applications for their frustration. The company almost missed its ambitious time frame for rolling out all of its new applications and nearly had to wait until next year's holiday season to capitalise on new efficiencies wrought by IT. Realizing that the source of the problem came from the employees' resistance, the management immediately took measures to change their approach to change management, thereby saving the organisation from probable failure.

Bottom-up approaches to change management seek to involve those affected in the process of change. This approach to change seeks to ameliorate the impact of imposed change by allowing individuals within their working groups to come to terms with change. Bottom-up is often associated with the emergent change process. This approach typically runs into several problems, the principal to which is that it is too slow to respond effectively to short-term business demands. Given that the lower level members of the organization initiate the change, it takes a considerable amount of time to diffuse the change information throughout the organisation, particularly to the higher-ups. The theory closely associated with bottom-up is William Ouchi's Theory Z, a variation of Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Y. In essence, this theory is about collective decision-making, characteristic of a bottom-up approach to change management.

Reasons for the problem of time-consumption in this approach are varied. First, there is an inevitable mismatch at the point where the bottom-up change process meets the top levels of the organization, where a different process has been at work. Secondly, they lack strategic perspective, thus running the risk of simply making people more effective at performing the wrong work in the course of change. It also lies in the active encouragement, which facilitates frankness about suspicions, attitudes and expectancies - not all of them positive. Being a lengthy approach, it requires substantial energy from outside the organisation to get it started. There is also the difficulty of incorporating all the perspectives and knowledge into a new system for institutionalisation. Moreover, a bottom-up approach raises questions about the motivation and skill of employees to develop an ambitious solution that will force them to change their ways. Even worse, participative approaches to change can be derailed by resistant managers, unions, and workers, further lengthening the process of change. Ouchi's theory Z also applies in these reasons in that the collective decision-making is by nature a lengthy process as compared to those decisions made by only a few select people within the organisation.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a leading securities market in the United States, merged with Archipelago Holdings and the management's decision to inform the NYSE members about the merger agreement at the time of its announcement was deemed appropriate by the top management. The reason, according to them, is that the change at NYSE is first and foremost institutional, and bottom-up institutional changes are unseemly. Typically, those at the bottom who attempt to amend or alter the status quo are regarded as deviators and punished as such by their own group members. Institutional changes are usually motivated by some sort of landmark event(s) which put the higher management in motion. Put another way, the sources of such changes are primarily the opportunities perceived by high level management, not by all agents involved in the change. The second reason for a prompt, top-down approach is practical: the gradual, bottom-up approach was a worn-out path that had steadily failed in the past. Talks to take the NYSE public and transform it into a for-profit entity—in order to give it a more effective management and governance structure—started long ago, but yielded no results.

2. If you were a senior executive, which approach would you take and in what circumstances?

Under critical situations, a top-down approach is relatively appropriate in change management. Crisis calls for immediate and fast solutions, which is exactly what a top-down approach offers. In these situations, once the plan is defined by the top management, there is no turning back, as there is only one bullet in the gun, meaning only one chance to implement it. If there exists a great pressure to produce quick and visible results on hand, the organization could then adopt a certain paternalistic approach towards its employees who would more likely be reduced to helpless recipients of a crisis situation. The theory that applies is the path-goal theory of Robert House, where the employees are given a certain set of directions and specific paths to follow, and the employees are expected to follow exactly as told, without so much as a disagreement. This would make use of valuable time for vital activities rather than spending time gathering the various ideas from the lower level of the organization and consolidating them into one functioning whole.

When objectives are high, time is short and only few elements are currently available, top down is the suitable approach to change management. If the company does not want to be overrun by irrelevant details brought about by a participative decision-making advocated by the bottom-up approach, and especially in situations where timing is crucial to the success of implementing change, it is best that the organisation adapt a top-down approach to change management. With the quick nature of decision-making required of a crisis situation which is characteristic of the top-down approach, it is only appropriate to adopt the said approach in order for the organisation to carry on with whatever is most needed for the implementation of the change. The Core Group theory of Art Kleiner, with the stand that power, privilege and success lie in the core group, and is normally composed of the upper levels of the organization, applies to reason for concentrating the decision-making activities to the upper echelon of management in management of change.

In the case of the NYSE, a top-down approach was called for, as they are involved in a crisis situation where the initial plan of consolidating with Archipelago Holdings caused much stir in the securities market. In adoption of the top-down approach, they decided to announce to the organisation's members about the actual merger only during the exact same day that it was about to take place. At this juncture, the facts speak for themselves: so long as the NYSE's institutional background and track record of opposing change do not allow for a gradual and participatory approach, a quick and bold top-down approach is practically the only way to reposition the institution. Indeed, it is from the very risk of organizational failure where the necessary energy to make the change happen stems.

However, under innovative circumstances, bottom-up is relatively appropriate in change management. Innovation requires an essentially participative organisational nature, and innovation roots from the variety of idea which can be gathered only through a bottom-up approach that involves all the people within the organisation, including those at the lower level of the firm. William Ouchi's Theory Z fits the description of this situation. When such wealth of information is necessitated by a situation, matching the ideas thought up by those at the lower level and those suggestions and recommendations from the higher level of the organisation, making for collective decision-making, breeds an atmosphere of innovation within the company, making it easier to pave way for change inside it.

In allowing everyone in the firm to participate in the change process, there is naturally various sources of information at hand that the top level managers can gather for consolidation into one useful and innovative whole. In theory Z, where collective decision-making is supported, each individual in the organisation is tasked with the responsibility of contributing anything he or she can for the betterment of the company as whole, thereby carrying everyone on the crest of success and not merely focusing the spotlight on the select few.

The Philippine Airlines used to have a very top-down management approach. The management then thought that to breed an innovative culture within the company that the carrier needs during these times, it needs changing and everyone must pull together and get involved. While they have maintained a disciplined approach to the way they run the company, they have been receptive to feedback and trying very hard to bring about an internal culture of service. Furthermore, they have also made it a point to make sure that everyone realizes their importance and that their input is valuable and they have a role in the change process.

3. Are these two views irreconcilable?

A top-down direction setting to create focus throughout an organization and develop the conditions for performance improvement should be reconciled with a broad-based, bottom-up performance improvement to get people at all levels to take a fresh approach to solving problems and improving performance in the process of change within the organisation. These two approaches are ineffective by themselves, and in fact have limits to what can be achieved individually through the top-down and bottom-up efforts that fundamentally operate within existing organizational boundaries. Some opportunities for breakthrough improvements in performance can be addressed only through a reconciliation of these two. The theory of the learning process supports this stand in that the concept of the learning organisation refers to participative management and the interconnectedness of people within the organisation while at the same time needing support form the upper echelon of the organisation. Knowledge and skills are seen as important resources to determine organizational success, and the organisation can be improved by focusing on the learning process. It is determined through trial and error through goal setting and feedback. . If learning organisation theory is to be believed, then the more involvement of those affected in the elements of change, the more fruitful the experience may be to all concerned.

There is no 'one best way' for all organisations. Structure, and therefore performance, is dependent upon the particular circumstances, situational variables, faced by each organisation, thereby connecting to an existing management theory, which is the Contingency Theory. There is a balance between top-down and bottom-up, which will require careful thought by managers. Although top-down efforts create the focus and the necessary preconditions for transformational change, they alone are not sufficient to achieve it. It would be more accurate to say that change should be initiated bottom-up and sustained top-down.

Fred Smagorinsky, the manager in charge of world-class manufacturing at Sealed Air, which makes plastic bubble packaging wrap, employed a simple five-step problem-solving process to help plant managers remove bottlenecks to a change they were implementing within the firm. After expanding this approach to encompass inter-plant issues, he modified it again to include customers. He also employed joint customer work sessions, process redesign, and self-directed teams. To him, the only difference between reengineering and total quality efforts lies in their scope; no matter what, you always have to tailor your approach to fit the needs of the people whose performance you are trying to improve.


Leadership is the commonest concept applied to Modern Management Techniques today.

Introduction:

Leaders are born not made; one of the famous statements with regards to leadership supported with the 'no guts no glory' theme, everything now falls into place. A leader is commonly defined as a person who guides or inspires others. It is a known that there is a fine line between leaders and managers that not all leaders are managers but all managers are leaders. What then makes the contrasting comparison? The reason mainly lies on the appointment of office. Leadership are led by informal leaders who are not appointed basing in influence and shared meanings thereby it is an independent management wherein it is part of every nurses responsibility. On the other hand, manager is a formal designated role based on authority and influence who is mainly responsible for budget, hiring, and firing people. Managerial skills can be improved by the use of effective leadership skills.

There are various leadership theories, of all the leadership theories Transformational leadership caught my interest. In my own viewpoint, transformational leaders are able to imagine alternatives for the future of their organization which can be seen in the organization vision – mission statement. Transformational leadership are able to adapt to the tension between what is and what is not controllable and initiate processes for coping and change in a prospective and proactive manner. In addition Bernard Bass (1985) stated that transformational leadership occurs when a leader transforms, or changes, his or her followers in three important ways that together result in followers trusting the leader, performing behaviors that contribute to the achievement of organizational goals, and being motivated to perform at a high level. Transformational leaders: (1) increase subordinates' awareness of the importance of their tasks and the importance of performing well; (2) make subordinates aware of their needs for personal growth, development, and accomplishment. (3) Motivate their subordinates to work for the good of the organization rather than exclusively for their own personal gain or benefit.

In particular, this paper will thoroughly assess transformational leadership theory as how it can be applied in everyday politics in any given scenario especially in a health care system where in, one has to make a critical decision every now and then. This paper will also explain the importance of leadership particularly applying the chosen leadership theory in the health care agency as to how it will affect or bring about necessary changes, as to how it will influence individuals to act efficiently and lastly, as to what essential opportunities can be made when everything that is needed seems to fall into place. It will also focus on important points wherein leadership can nurture relationships between people, enhances teamwork and coordination amongst them. The paper will mention of conflict management on how it is different from conflict resolution for the reason that conflict management is essential in managing varied individuals with different personalities whose opinions may or may not merge. Through this paper it will prove that leadership may well serve significant role in every setting particularly in the hospital since, time is of the essence and people must be managed to provide a safe, effective and efficient care to the patients.



In order to understand the concept on leadership, first we must define it through the words of Peter Drucker (1990 – 2005), he says, "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." The adage simply indicates that a successful leader has qualities of awareness, assertiveness, accountability and advocacy. What's the connection with the attributes of a leader to the quotation? I would say in the quotation it simply states an efficient and effective output which is due to the qualities that a leader have. To dig further, each attributes of a successful leader will be explained on the next few lines starting with (1) awareness in the means of maturity being able to develop sense of commitment to the goals and the people around him or her; in the means of ability to succeed a post given by higher authority; in the means of knowing thyself before others; and in the means of endurance - to endure on problems, situations and fellow members with the right therapeutic communication skills verbally, non – verbal and written. (2) Assertiveness by which being able to express ones feelings, ideas, beliefs and standing up for one's right while considering the rights of others. (3) Accountability on the actions done, given the responsibility of his or her actions so do with the actions under ones management. (4) Advocacy is being able to speak for and in behalf of others, supports, defends and maintains the cause of someone or something. All these qualities shall keep a leader grounded ad well – respected by its members. Though it may seem ideal at first, however, ideal does not mean impossible for these qualities can be inherent, developed and be nurtured through constant interactions with the rest of the team that is the reason why leadership nurtures and build relationships. This relationship can either be seen in the essence of teamwork.

Teamwork is the key for effective and efficient delivery of safe care in any health care agency. In the chosen leadership theory which is the transformational leadership, in this theory it has recognized the role of the transformational leaders in creating an end that benefits all. Although, it is commonly known that transformational leaders are associated as charismatic leaders or heroes that would try to change old unsatisfying ways seen in the environment to give way to the new for the betterment of the society' they can still be well regarded in small settings such as the health care agency that can change ineffective management tone that is desired by all. Let me cite the difference between the charismatic leaders and the transformational leaders; according to Max Weber (1947) charismatically qualified leader is obeyed by virtue of personal trust in him and his revelation, their heroism or exemplary qualities so far as they fall within the cope of the individual's belief in his charisma, they are endowed with supernatural and superhuman powers and abilities that sets apart them from people that brings about hero worship – heroism begins with proof of charismatic qualification that's is why acts of misfortune can be signs that the "gift" has been withdraw by the gods. How can a transformational leader facilitate teamwork in a given health care agency? Simply, by initiating series of actions that will interest the rest of the team to work hand in hand this can be seen especially in emergency cases. A transformational leader always has a vision for the whole organization, in this case – a vision for the health care agency that will invite members of the team to share in that vision, the vision is to increase the quality of care to be rendered to all patients equally through safe, efficient and effective care. In attaining this vision, the leader would emphasize the impact of teamwork in every setting particularly during emergency scenarios. It can be effective if it guided by a passionate leader who motivates the group to do what must be done avoiding any medication errors and accidents in the hospital by helping out each other. Modalities of patient care is a perfect example of leadership and teamwork, a type of patient care modality is the primary nursing as what Clifford, J.C. (1980); Primary Nursing – in this modality, the head nurse or the team leader makes a 24 – hour nursing care plan for the entire patient in total care from the day of admission to the day of discharge. At the end of duty, he associate nurse will take over the role of the head nurse and is guided by the nursing care plan prepared by the previous head nurse on duty. She in turn, would give total care throughout the duty but makes adjustments to the care, in case there are necessary changes but must report to the head nurse so that she can make the necessary changes to the nursing care plan. In regards to this type of patient care, teamwork works at its zenith. Why? Because there won't be any pressure since, they already have a 24-hour nursing care plan. What they need is be flexible in meeting with the changes and be the best one can be, if that happens. Teamwork is not just about cooperation, coordination but it is about people who yearn for the betterment of the group, in any circumstances they are in. If this is the case, ethos is maintained among them, achieving a quiet and harmonious working environment with competent staff and efficacy of the delivery of actual patient care.

Transformational leader is effective once it has found its way in seeking ways to move forward affecting others. Generally, in effect the whole organization itself would try to make change happen. However, the path may not be obvious it will only be seen on the changes that occur but it will never be perfect as planned, for sure there are failures along the way. What to do is learn from the mistakes and continue making progress. An organization will remain in bloom if a transformational leader has manage the group since, that type of leader is always ready to listen on whatever issues is bothering the group especially if there are conflicts that could possibly hinder whatever progress the team has built. Leaders that motivates and continue to enthuse his or her members are persons who would always try to settle or set conflicting parties to compromise because conflicts will only wards them away to the vision of the group and commitment to that vision is very important as being part of the group. There are assorted reasons why people are in conflict, the most common of all is miscommunication, a product of ineffective teamwork due to mismanage of good resources – resources may mean people, tangible things or the fleeting time.

Good communication is also vital in maintaining working ethos that involves staff development by avoiding risk and resolving conflicts within. When a team works they communicate by various reasons. It may be they want to chill from a stressful task, or one wants to know how well the person is coping or most probably, they want to clarify regarding a specific task; either IV computation, feedings, procedures to be done like bone marrow aspiration or simply with regards to medication. Medication error (Berns et al. 2002) is the most common reported cases in the ward; this is a result of lack of communication and teamwork. Thus, delaying the care and at the same time, endangers the safety of the patient and a question to the competency of the nurse. A transformational leader knows how to initiate good interaction amongst them and this is a very good start in gaining everyone's trust. It must be noted that trust is the basic foundation in all working relationships it can build or destroy an organization and to keep it intact and in good working condition is one of the main responsibility of a leader. To maintain that trust and harmonious working environment, it must be realized that respect regardless of what position a person is in – that is a must that should be emphasize by the leader. This decision could create a good ripple effect in years to come. In communicating, remember to incorporate the value of listening and understanding – it shows respect and adherence to the values in a working ethos. The process goes same way if a person would want to be heard regarding with his or her views. In order to be heard, one must learn the art of effective communication. How? Foremost, we must understand the intricate details of communication; it comprises of the sender (encoder) – message – channel (means) – receiver (decoder, noting the tone of voice, facial expression, and body language of the receiver). Behind the façade of listening is; understanding that is to go beyond what eyes can see but what the heart (feelings to be grasp) dictates the mind (comprehending) in knowing the details of the message perceived. What does this imply? That is according to (Lawrence Birkner, 2001) effective communication is a chain of events in which the message serves as the basic link. Successful communication must be received, get the receiver's attention, be interpreted correctly and be acted upon appropriately. Means to say, that it is a two – way process that overcomes the barriers of communication which are the 1) lack of common foundation of experience between the speaker and the listener, (2) failure of the speaker to clearly distinguish between symbols and things they represent, and (3) the speaker may not use concrete words (sends an abstract message). Mainly, communication can give a direct impact on the team it can either build or destroy; so, communication offers a wide area for growth and deep understanding between individuals. It can help the leader to know the input and output of every member; much more it can be very a useful tool to know the weakness and strengths so as to enhance each strengths and provide better learning or skills to eradicate the weak points.

To comprehend is not only useful in communicating with fellow team member; this can also be applied in dealing with patients and if there is ineffective flow of communication that is when conflicts set in. a transformational leader if possible would try to influence others to maintain a harmonious working environment but if conflict not avoided, the leader must be capable of handling such situations. Handling situations effectively could set an example to his or her members that they can too effectively handle situations that it does not need to involve other people. Conflict management, is the way person handles grievances, how they stand for their right or on what they believe in, it may be either positive or negative response, but this utterly depends on the person experiencing the conflict, this is an on going process that may or may present a solution to a problem. These are the conflict management styles that are practiced in every situation: cooperative problem-solving style enables people to work together so everyone can win. Using this style, people try to find a solution that will help everyone meet their interests and help everyone maintain a good relationship. Competitive style means that a person is putting his/her interest before anyone else's interests. In fact, sometimes people who use the competitive style try so hard to get what they want that they ruin friendships. The moment people choose the compromising style when it is important for them to satisfy some of their interests, but not all of them. People who compromise are likely to say "let's split the difference" or "something is better than nothing." The avoiding style does not get involved in a conflict. A person choosing the avoiding style might say "you decide and leave me out of it." Lastly, an accommodating style put their interests last and let others have what they want. Many times these people believe that keeping a good friendship is more important than anything else. However, conflict management is entirely different from conflict resolution. The latter, refers various solution to the present problem. In here, discernment and appropriate decision – making must be done for its goal is to solve disputes before it gets bigger and likely, more people might get involve. This can be very much be applied in every leader particularly, the transformational leaders since, they care most of their team members not wanting any disputes to go unnoticed for it will not only cause trouble but it hinders the success of the team. The team leader would act justly as possible not undermining negative impact of the said dispute making sure that if possible solution must be given, it must be offered directly without hesitation, the goal is to succeed and success mainly depends on his people.

However, this type of leadership can't escape flaws that need further development by the individual itself. I am referring to the part wherein transformational leader's energy that gets people going can also cause them to give up. Transformational Leaders often have large amounts of enthusiasm which, if relentlessly applied, can wear out their followers (ChangingMinds.org, 2006). The reason for the given statement is that enthusiasm of a leader could at first fuel the passion of every member but not at all times, enthusiasm is needed to keep things going as planned; every now and then roads can be bumpy and too much enthusiasm can force to them to be a real go getter though that would be a nice idea for the completion of the required task but it could strain them too much that their passion would just die eventually. If motivation would die down, the intention of a transformational leader to transform his members to what he has in mind would go down with it since the main idea of transformational leaders is to create change but when, members itself are contented with current position then frustration sets in. In addition, the ChangingMinds.Org (2006) stated that transformational leaders also tend to see the big picture, but not the details this is due to the fact that they expect too much from their members that they tend to forget to see that it could be very exhausting when too much expectation must be met, it could frustrate both parties and possibly it would take time for the members to adjust if their previous leader is totally the opposite of the recent one.

Conclusion:

Over all, the transformational leader theory has its ups and downs but what it can do best compare to other leadership theories is that it creates a sure path to success. The processes such as teamwork, good communication and conflict management are important in handling everyday happening in a health care agency they not only emphasizes the strengths of a leader it also symbolizes how important members can be in alliance with the leader's vision – mission of the organization towards the future. They become the strength of every organization, an investment for the future and a loss if not maintained well. Adequacy of a leader is very much important for they serve to inspire and motivate each one to get what they want as they inject the goal of the organization. The absence of a leader is definitely, a loss of the organization ot can possibly destroy the health care system since, no one is around to facilitate that may cause each members to not to take additional risk for no one is there to inspire them. Harmonious environment is very important to secure all is in place, much better is taking extra precaution especially in delivering a safe and effective care.


Scientific management theories in Workforce Diversity

Scientific management did result in greater professionalism on the part of both managers and workers. The benefits of precise measurement, research and planning were widely acknowledged. At the same time, the introduction of scientific management was not without its problems.


Scientific management is a method of management theory which defines changes to improve labor productivity. It had its origins in a movement to better the lot of the worker. It was developed at a time when working conditions had reached an all-time low and industrial unrest was becoming a major issue, especially in the US. A group of American engineers led by Frederick Winslow Taylor argued that the answer was to pay workers according to productivity while at the same time improving working conditions so as to make maximum productivity possible. In an efficient workplace, it was argued that each worker could work to his or her full potential, and be rewarded accordingly.



However, with the development scientific management theory, diversity has been compromised. Workforce diversity is not a passing fad but an important issue to be addressed. Palmer (1994) posits three paradigms for defining diversity: 1. the Golden Rule, 2. Right the Wrongs, and 3. Value all differences. In the golden rule paradigm diversity is a matter of individual responsibility and morality. Diversity means do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In the "right the wrong" paradigm specific groups in the organization is viewed as having been systematically disadvantaged, with the aim of a diversity effort to correct injustices to groups who were selectively disadvantaged in the past. Diversity means establishing equality and justice for the target groups. In the "Value the Differences" paradigm individuals work toward understanding and interacting effectively with other organizational members. All three paradigms aim to create high performing organizations through valuing and using all the talents of the different groups in the organization.

Scientific management does not support workforce diversity. The application of the theory has been criticized as ignoring the individual differences. The most efficient way of working for one person may be inefficient for another. It has also ignores the fact that economic interests of every individual worker and management differ from one another and they are motivated in working for different reasons.

Proponents of workforce diversity assert that diversity offers organizations a number of benefits (Benibo, 1997). For example, it has been suggested that increasing the diversity of an organization's workforce expands the breadth of perspectives and ideas available to the organization in making decisions. This resource, if properly used, has the potential to improve the quality of decisions made in that organization (Cox, 1991).

Another potential benefit is that recruiting employees from a wider range of age and ethnicity gives the firm a larger talent pool in which to search, increasing the probability of acquiring higher skilled employees. Demographers have predicted that during the 1990s, people of color, white women, and immigrants will account for 85 percent of new growth in the U.S. labor force (Fraser, 1991) and that an older workforce is expected as the baby-boom generation ages (Geber, 1990). These trends will make it increasingly difficult for organizations of all sizes to acquire a traditionally homogeneous workforce with the most advantageous skills.



Further, it is pointed out that more and more companies have been expanding their business operations internationally, and that businesses with a diverse workforce will have "greater success in marketing to foreign and ethnic minority communities" (Cox, 1991, p. 34). A diverse workforce may enhance the adaptive capacity of a firm to compete in the global marketplace (Benibo, 1997).



In the private sector, employers increasingly recognize that in the global marketplace, a diverse workforce can provide a competitive edge. The U.S. workforce, with all its heterogeneity, provides many potential employees who know the language, culture and values of a country in which an employer might want to do business. Furthermore, diversity provides a richness of ideas and variety of views a fertile growing medium for creativity. In short, diversity is essential to corporate growth, the health of the bottom line and, ultimately survival. Diversity means major changes in organizational values and methods



However, Taylor and his colleagues, especially Henry Gantt and the husband-and-wife team of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, believed that they were acting in the best interests of the workers when they have insisted on their scientific theory. Taylor (1947) himself was firmly convinced that "Scientifically managed workplaces would be more attractive to workers, not only for their higher wages but for the security they offered". And Henry Gantt argued: "Poor management usually means poor wages. Good management means good wages, for the high efficiency demanded by good management can only be maintained by such wages as will attract good men and induce them to work at their highest efficiency." (Morgen, 2005)



For Taylor and his colleagues, the key to more efficient management and worker prosperity both lay in science. This was happening in the midst of the scientific revolution, at a time when Lord Kelvin's statement that "science begins with measurement" was regarded as almost a holy truth (Morgen, 2005). Properly applied, science could show the best and most efficient way of getting work done. And, once the 'one best way' had been discovered, it would be impossible for either side to argue or object in the face of scientific proof. Labor unrest would wither away. Companies would profit, and workers would see their wages and prosperity increase.

However, instead of withering away labor unrest, scientific management led to an increase in labor unrest. Indeed, many union leaders had no objection to practices that gave their workers more security and higher wages.



In some ways, scientific management made an enormous impact on American industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. While a group of notorious engineers active at the turn of the century provided a set of methods and metaphors to make organizational practices more "systematic" and " scientific," an equally prominent group of social and political reformers known as the Progressives extended the same set of principles to education, the government, and culture (Callahan, 1962; Haber, 1964; DiMaggio, 1991). Organizational studies has come to accept that our main theories -- including scientific management -- contain ideological as well as technical considerations (Bendix, 1974; Barley and Kunda, 1992; Kilduff, 1993; Guillen, 1994; Shenhav, 1995),



Scientific management argued that organizations and people in organizations worked, or were supposed to work, like machines (Morgan, 1986; Perrow, 1986; Schein, 1988; Scott, 1995b), European modernism insisted on the aesthetic potential of efficiency, precision, simplicity, regularity, and functionality. Scientific management stressed the careful selection of the most adequate worker for each task. Scientific management has been portrayed as a paradigm of reckless deskilling, impersonal production, and mediocre quality (Braverman, 1974; Edwards, 1979; Piore and Sabel, 1984; Perrow, 1986; MacDuffie, 1991; Scott, 1995b).



According to literatures, the cornerstone of scientific management is the prosperity of the employer and employee. The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee (Taylor, 1947, p. 9). Taylor wants management to take on new responsibilities. The principles of scientific management, as developed by Taylor, had included some changes. First, a science for each element of a man's work has been developed which replaces the old role of thumb method. In addition, staffing has also been changed in which people are scientifically selected and then train, teach, and develop the workman instead of having people choose his own work and trained himself as best as he could as been practiced traditionally. Moreover, management should heartily cooperate with the men so as to insure all of the work being done in accordance with the principles of the science which has been developed. Furthermore, there is an almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen. The management take over all work for which they are better fitted than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men (Taylor, 1947, pp. 36-37).



The most prominent single element in modern scientific management is the task idea. The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work. And the work planned in advance in this way constitutes a task which is to be solved, as explained above, not by the workman alone, but in almost all cases by the joint effort of the workman and the management. This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it. And whenever the workman succeeds in doing his task right, and within the time limit specified, he receives an addition of from 30 to 100 percent to his ordinary wages. These tasks are carefully planned, so that both good and careful work are called for in their performance, but it should be distinctly understood that in no case is the workman called upon to work at a pace which would be injurious to his health. The task is always so regulated that the man who is well suited to his job will thrive while working at this rate during a long term of years and grow happier and more prosperous, instead of being overworked. Scientific management consists very largely in preparing for and carrying out these tasks. (Taylor, 1947, p. 39)

Critics of scientific management accuse Taylor of engineering the humanity out of work. Taylor's glowing descriptions of the humanity of scientific management often did not match the reality of what management actually practiced. Many managers were quick to implement the rigid procedures and standards that were the basis for scientific management, but somehow never got around to implementing the raises and bonuses when the workers increased production. Taylor can take some of the blame for this, because in the bulk of his works he explains the science behind scientific management very eloquently, but gives the human relations side short shrift.

Taylor was also somewhat disingenuous when he talked about "the joint effort of the workers and the management," since all his descriptions of the implementation of scientific management involve managers and engineers watching, timing, and overseeing the workers. Although Taylor pays lip service to worker input, under Taylor's version there is never any real consultation between workers and management. Fortunately, The Taylor Society recognized the need for change.

There was a strong criticism of the theory that treats human beings like machines and assumes that workers are satisfied by money alone.

Scientific management describes the use of such tools as time study, standardization of tools and tasks, and bonuses for performance in industry to improve the efficiency of business. Although scientific management and its tools had a turbulent history, it is indisputable that the application of many of its tenets was indispensable in industry as a starting point for business improvements



Managers should take full responsibility for the planning of work and should use scientific methods to specify precisely how the job should be done to achieve the maximum efficiency. Managers should select the most appropriate person for the job, train them to do the job efficiently, and monitor their performance to ensure conformity to the specification. Scientific management is credited with increasing productivity enormously, but only at the cost of deskilling many areas of work. The boring, repetitive, and alienating nature of the jobs created using scientific management methods causes demotivation in staff and can lead to an extreme emphasis on pay rates as the primary form of motivation.



In connection with this, workplace diversity will be least beneficial in organizations that employ routine technology. Indeed, diversity may sometimes be detrimental to efficiency: decision-making will be more difficult because of differences in perspectives, employees may become dissatisfied and frustrated because of limited involvement in the labor process, miscommunication may occur more frequently, and administrative cost would increase because of the need to meet diverse needs (Adler, 1991).

Routine Technology is typically employed by organizations that operate in relatively stable environments, where the factors of production are in abundant supply, consumer needs and preferences are stable, and public policies are predictable. Such organizations usually adopt functional designs, with centralized decision-making, high degree of dependence on written rules, technical specialists, and repetition of established procedure.

Organizations in this cell have low variability in terms of the exceptions or unexpected tasks that they face. And, the tasks they have can be accomplished through an established procedure or program. Typically, standardized solutions exist for the tasks at hand, and personnel are simply trained and expected to follow the procedure. Even in the case of product or process improvement the path to follow is logically deducible.



Valuing diversity means viewing people as having equal rights while being different" ("Are Diversity," 1993, p. 50). Therefore, diversity in the workplace "is about recognizing, valuing, and managing people's differences" (Ingram & Steffey, 1993, p. 21) and about sharing power and communicating. Workplace diversity focuses on "empowering people of all kinds to develop and contribute their own unique talents to solving our business problems" rather than having employees "give up their own ethnic, gender, or individual identities to be successful in corporate America" (Ingram & Steffey, 1993, p. 21).



The last decade has seen increased globalization of businesses. At the same time the national workforce in many countries has diversified (Adler, 1997). As a result of dealing with people from many different backgrounds both internationally and domestically on a daily basis, companies have to develop policies and processes that can minimize misunderstanding and harness the potential benefits of diversity.

The research suggests that diversity can improve performance (Early and Mosakowski, 2000). Particularly, diverse teams can be more productive than homogeneous teams (DiStefano and Maznevski, 2000). Team members bring their own backgrounds and personalities to the task at hand. Their views are also influenced by their individual personalities, their professional backgrounds, and their cultural backgrounds. Dahlin et al (2005) found that educational diversity on a team influences the range and depth of information use positively; whereas it may influence the integration of information negatively. Research shows that successful teams do not merely draw on the individual contributions of their members but are able to create a new synergy (Varner and Palmer, 2002; Bolton, 1999) which Bell (1992) calls "transactional culture". Out of the diversity, teams form a new common culture (Varner, 2000).

However, scientific management is not concern with people. It sets standards that people should be done in a specific time and having the thought that people are only motivated with money. However, there other reasons which people are considering in having their jobs. Thus scientific management does not conform to the workforce diversity in which aims to empower workers and respect humanity and equality especially with the growing globalization.


Managing Multinational Operations Paper: Business and Multinational Enterprises in China

China is currently the focus of investment and market penetration strategies of multinational firms worldwide. The assignment then focuses in gathering information on some of the factors that a company and MNE's consider when doing business in China. It was said that long-term investment projects require a thorough understanding of attributes of doing business in that country. Upon doing research investigation, there was a realization that such companies would make a significant profit from doing business in China and discovered that policies on employee welfare, labor relations and other underlying factors are the antithesis of what the CEO firmly believes. The researcher believes that it is just appropriate to include this information as in managing multinational operations those involved factors gives clear emphasis and positive justification of stability and growth of having business in China along with the providing of strategic information being asked to gather as it is important to look on all possible sides of any issues unrevealed like for instance, the types of operational issues that American firms in China face, how managers approach issues and impact on organizational success.


Furthermore, successful operations and resolution of firm-specific problems depended on forging good relations with the Chinese government, using joint ventures and large sized investments and on long-term presence in the country. The plant location and patent rights violations were not significant areas of operational concern but despite economic liberalization in China, business conditions for foreign firms have remained difficult. (Caves, 1996) Multinational enterprises play a dominant role in the success of international business in China as the process deal with issues of the individual MNE's doing business in China within the impact of MNE behavior through foreign direct investment on the country's international trade into the effect of MNE behavior on the macroeconomic performance of countries as a whole in developing and emerging economies of business cycles where some rhetoric ways emphasizes some consequences of the increased dominance of MNE's particular in China. (Caves, 1996) Furthermore, the government dominated the economy through its ownership of state-owned enterprises and through its control over infrastructure, utilities, sources of input, distribution networks, and pricing. Thus, foreign firms had to conduct normal business operations in a politicized and bureaucratic environment. The absence of an independent, quick and efficient judicial system compounded the difficulties. The influence of the Communist Party was ensured in business organizations through employees who were its members (Dunning, 1998).



Thus, foreign-owned firms were required to have a Chinese citizen, a nominee of the Party, as chair of the subsidiary's board of directors. The central government in Beijing had denoted certain regions on the southern and eastern coastal areas to be Special Economic Zones where considerable autonomy was permitted with respect to business activities as investment in China had taken place in zones and examines the issues faced by American owned firms in China with regard to managing business operations in the country. (Dunning, 1999) Thus, foreign managers can run operations in China successfullyin recognizing and developing positive relationships with the country with ability to adapt to MNE's business environment. There was a need to operate facilities in any location as an important task for business management. (Dunning, 1999) As China continues to liberalize its economic and political regime, such MNE's have to work within the constraints and requirements of that environment while leveraging the advantages they may possess in terms of size and resources and their experience in the Chinese setting. (Dunning, 1993) Moreover, multinational corporations in China have tried to solve problems involving managerial cooperation, inner company cultural conflicts and harmonization with governments and market entry, while trying to adjust to Chinese consumer behavior through the process of internationalized management, with process of localization thought to be the correct prescription for curing cultural and business maladjustments. (Dunning, 1998)





Henceforth, multinational corporations can make full use of operating resources, reduce production costs, achieve more market penetration opportunities and control the market in comprehensive way (Studwell, 2002) like, McDonald's which is an enterprise managed by the international standards of operation and international standard which includes the global standardization of quality, service and environment, while localization includes high local participation in production, purchasing, personnel, marketing, research and development. (Studwell, 2002) Henceforth, among the many multinational corporations in China, Motorola was one of the first to carry out and benefit from anticipated strategies of localization. Motorola has been pushing its localization process by cooperating with important local suppliers and by providing technical and management training. (Dunning, 1999) It has also promoted local suppliers to corporate positions or participating roles in joint ventures with reputable professional foreign factories and helps the corporation achieve cost advantages in competition because the market status of China has improved to such an extent that the multinational corporations doing business here must adjust their product strategies to include local factors. This is necessary because China is regarded as a market destination for new products such as in the automobile industry; the joint ventures of multinational corporations in China now introduce new car types into the domestic and foreign markets respectively. (Reid and Walsh, 2003).





Thus, it noticed that most multinational family appliance corporations in China have staggered from one problem to the next. The reasons for this may include wrong or insufficient localization strategies and a reluctance to take a larger share of responsibility. As a statement of fact, with China integrating with the globalization process and playing a more important and substantial role in it, many more multinational corporations in China have substantially triggered and stepped up their processes of active localization. (Reid and Walsh, 2003) MNE's having entered China, faced an unforeseen level of competition since most of them significantly overestimated the demand for their products and perhaps intensified by persuasion that led to significant over-capacity as local manufacturers learned from the MNE's how to compete in a variety of markets but some MNE's failed to realize the stimulation that their presence would give to local manufacturers of competing products and the speed would acquire not only manufacturing competence but also marketing expertise and other competencies enabling them to become a major competitive force in consumer and technical markets. (Reid and Walsh, 2003) In addition, there were enterprises have been privatized and started to compete effectively in the market, by substituting their advantage of being able to sustain losses by a new source of advantage through cultural familiarity and proximity to the customer to interpret needs and react speedily to demand shifts in China in order to have a critical source of potential advantage over other MNE's. (World Bank, 1997)





Although overestimation of demand for products is a major problem that most multinational corporations faced in China and the sheer size of the Chinese population led many consumer companies to overstate the potential demand for their products in a manner very similar to that of western multinational behavior. (World Bank, 1997) MNE's often overlooked the fact that China's population is often farmers who don't have the purchasing power required and are distributed widely and hard to reach. (Zhan and Shunqi, 2002) In addition, China's regulatory framework, despite the liberalization policies that have been championed by the government has a long way to go before it approaches deregulation in other market economies as highly regulated environment from a multitude of national state and local agencies that creates MNE's business in China for a useful business advantage. (Zhan and Shunqi, 2002)



Human Resource Management Essay Sample : Application of Ideas and Concepts to a Specific Organization


Introduction

Every business organization or company has different internal organizations, having a variety of functions, and these internal organizations that comprise the whole business or company are interrelated and are working together to ensure the company's success in profiting from the market. The more functions each of the organization perform, the better is the performance of the company as a whole. This gives each of the companies their corresponding advantages and benefits from the market and their consumers.

One of the company's basic internal organizations is the Human Resource Management team, which is highly responsible with the maintenance of the company's employees. The Human Resource Management team does a variety of tasks and functions, and is crucial in its objective concerning the work and interests of the employees in the company. Oftentimes, they are being encountered during job interviews or job openings, and the people behind this team are performing various activities, including recruitment, training, rewards, performance appraisal, and other concerns, such as the health and safety of the employees of a certain business firm or company. In addition, the team is also responsible for the training and development of its staffs, and promoting effective interrelationships within the company. Being a crucial team in the company, it is essential that they promote the development of their employees, not only in relation to job performance, but in relation to effective communication and interrelations as well.

This report intends to create an opportunity to apply the ideas and concepts regarding Human Resource Management in the analysis of a real organizational situation. In this report, the case of PricewaterhouseCoopers will be discussed. The paper will be stating the profile of the organization in reference with, and will be discussing its current problems in the company. From the discussion of the problems, the concepts and ideas regarding Human Resource Management will be demonstrated. Form this, the analysis will be attained.


Company Profile of PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers or PwC is the world's largest professional services firm that was formed in 1998 from a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. Its earning aggregated worldwide revenues of $22 billion for 2006, employing over 140,000 people in 149 countries ('PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2006).


History and Services

An accountant named Samuel Price started his practice in London in 1849, and went into partnership with William Holyland and Edwin Waterhouse in 1865 in Southwark Towers in London. In 1874, the company was known as Price, Waterhouse & Co, soon after Holyland left from the partnership. By the late nineteenth century, Price Waterhouse had gained significant recognition as an accounting firm, even in the Americas. As a result of this, the firm opened an office in New York in 1890, being a consequence of the trade between the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The original British firm also opened more offices in the main countries in the British Empire, each time establishing a separate partnership in each country that gave each partner a strong incentive to expand their local practices ('PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2006).

Similarly, Coopers & Lybrand had also originated in the nineteenth century, for in 1854, William Cooper established his own practice in London, which became Cooper Brothers seven years later when his three brothers joined him. In the United States, Robert Montgomery, William Lybrand, Adam Ross Jr. and Edward Ross formed Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery in 1898. Coopers and Lybrand is the result of a merger in 1957 between Cooper Brothers & Co; Lybrand, Ross Bros & Montgomery and a Canadian firm McDonald, Currie and Co., and in 1990 Coopers and Lybrand merged with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in the United Kingdom ('PricewaterhouseCoopers' 2006).

On July 1, 1998, Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand merged to form PricewaterhouseCoopers or PwC, creating one of the world's largest full-service professional organizations, and this move was an attempt to meet the increasing client needs for scale and global presence (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). As a result, PwC engage in six lines of business across 24 industries in over 152 countries worldwide, with over 150,000 representatives (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). According to Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson (2003), the merger announcement was spurred by this growing need for global scale and presence. The larger size of the new company gave both the firm and its clients the advantage of scope and economies of scale, and in the light of increasing competition, achieving global presence in terms of scale and scope was one way to gain an advantage over competitors. Achieving organizational economies of scale became important, especially as business became more technology-oriented, because in a business environment where speed was one of the important elements for success, companies required new technologies that would enable them to provide better ways to conduct business. Keeping the firm updated in terms of technology required vast capital investments, and consolidation was a solution to boost capital as well as utilizing it efficiently (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). Moreover, scale also enabled the firm to respond to requests from certain market segments that were not fully covered prior to consolidation, and expanding its scope was important as it enabled clients to be provided with more comprehensive services and solutions. It also differentiated the company from its competitors (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). The use of technology such as Intranets, and the ability to share information fundamentally improved communication between PwC clients, and its workforce and business clients, organizationally and globally. In addition, the focus of PwC on the knowledge management system would bring value to its clients, by ensuring success to greater resources, with faster deployment of specialists and of new products and services through more efficient management of a larger investment pool (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003).

It has been reported that PwC provided unprecedented service to global, national and local companies in markets worldwide; offering a comprehensive range of business assurance, business advisory, tax, management, information technology, and human resource consulting services and a commitment to helping clients formulate and implement strategic solutions that drive growth and improve business performance (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). The Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand companies were similar in terms of business lines and geographical coverage; however, they were not similar in terms of industry coverage, and the uniting of the various practices offered by the two firms was expected to bring significant benefits to clients, particularly to industries that were rapidly converging and in which sector distinctions were becoming less pronounced and competition more intense (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). Furthermore, PricewaterhouseCoopers provides a wide variety of industry-focused services for public and private clients in order to build public trust and enhance value through the application of the company's concept and approach of "connected thinking" ('PricewaterhouseCoopers Website' 2006). Services include Audit and Assurance, Crisis Management, Performance Improvement, Tax, and Transactions. From these services, the company is committed to serving as a force of integrity, good sense and wise solutions to the problems facing businesses and the capital markets today. Transparency and good standards of corporate governance in both clients and employees are central to the company's ability to achieve their objectives. In addition, the company also aims to continue to achieve their objectives from a position of strength as the undisputed leader in the industry ('PricewaterhouseCoopers Website' 2006).



Current Organization and Problems

It has been reported that knowledge management plays an important role in the merger process of PwC, as the ability to share knowledge and intellectual capital across the firms was to become the key for successfully achieving rapid integration with continued client service (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). Technical evolution has enabled cost-effective methods of capturing, updating and distributing knowledge throughout by company through the Intranet, and this becomes the entry-point to capture and distribute firm-wide knowledge. It serves to be the foundation for stored knowledge, the core asset of a knowledge-intensive organization (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003).

The Intranet of PwC is named Knowledge Curve or KC, where the knowledge management system of the company is incorporated, including the company's assets, such as its knowledge and people skills to be utilized by the entire firm. Its use enabled the company its profiling from three dimensions, namely its geography, industry and line of business. Furthermore, PwC also has a global database named 'The Bridge', which is a merger product and the first internal communications product. In line with developing the knowledge economy of the firm is the company's Knowledge Team, a group of consultants, information professionals, and technical experts, who are responsible for conducting research, harvesting knowledge, managing contents, and ensuring an open communication channel between knowledge headquarters. In line with the company's focus on making the firm a global entity, and since the merger the Knowledge Curve team had been moving towards global repositories rather than small databases, the industry group knowledge workers managed the content that belonged to their industry group within the global repositories (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003).

Although the strength of the function was the involvement of all the different industry and service groups, it was still difficult to coordinate the entire system. Difficulty in coordinating the system lies on the fact that due to its large scale, it is hard to inform and educate every employee on the use of the database and on the available information in the KC, to understand its capabilities and applications. The limitations of the function were mainly related to the team's ability to create awareness about KC, having a big challenge of going after thousands of staffs, communicate with each one of them, and change over to using the global KC. Moreover, problems also include the limited access of staffs to the knowledge base within the entire system, the difference in IT systems and organizational structure, and integration of databases and servers. Pragmatism was driving the essential forward planning and business culture, the coordination process was streamlined, and there were fewer bureaucratic procedures. In addition, senior people or employees in age and experience, propelled the business, whereas people in support functions would do what they are told to do. Senior people are less involved in decision-making in the day-to-day business, being less in touched with the processes in the company, while younger partners and directors make most of the decisions. With this, a lot of conflicts happen between the two groups (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003).



Application of Theories and Concepts of HRM

It has been reported that the idea of a knowledge-based economy, which advances the notion that knowledge creation is the most important source of economic growth, has been around since the 1980s, and the core of this theory was that sustained economic wealth was most effectively created by focusing on knowledge and knowledge-based products ('The Knowledge Context and Managing People' 2005, Module 7). Moreover, knowledge could be applied an infinite number of times with no decline in value, was relatively durable through time and space, and could be stored at very little cost using digital media ('The Knowledge Context and Managing People' 2005, Module 7). This is why, PricewaterhouseCoopers has been using a knowledge-based economy to improve and develop their services. An important point to recognize is that enormous emphasis has been placed on the emergence of knowledge networks that facilitate the kinds of interactions between people and ideas, and the diffusion of tacit knowledge is thought to be facilitated in such networks, access to such networks becoming critical for knowledge workers and knowledge transfer ('The Knowledge Context and Managing People' 2005, Module 7). From this, it is evident that PricewaterhouseCoopers has been implementing a knowledge-based economy for utilizing knowledge in the company's advantage. However, problems have been presented, in relation to the management of the company. The first problem or challenged being experienced by PricewaterhouseCoopers is the fact that because of large scale or size, they are not able to effectively communicate with one another. Team leaders are having difficulties in coordinating their subordinates due to their size, in the company's aim to implement and educate its employees regarding their database. With this problem, the Human Resource Management team has a role of coming up with ways in terms of implementing an effective communication and coordination by building the company's hierarchy. Being a large company, the issue of control is essential. Because of this, the company must be able to implement and apply effective leadership strategies. The complexities generated by the larger size often lead managers to implement more bureaucratic controls to manage the combined firm's operations, and bureaucratic controls are formalized supervisory and behavioral rules and policies designed to ensure consistency of decisions and actions across different units of the firm (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). Bureaucratic leadership style has several characteristics, including imposing a strict and systematic discipline on the followers and demand business-like conduct in the workplace, empowering the workplace via and office or position power that they hold, promoting based on their ability to conform to the rules of the office, and obliging employees to obey because authority is bestowed upon the leader as part of their position in the company ('Bureaucratic Leadership Style' 2006). This type of leadership will be suitable for a large firm because it entails the immediate compliance from its employees. This is also appropriate when it comes to implementing change, especially when it comes to implementing new technologies. However, it must be taken note of that as time passes; bureaucratic leadership style must not be used for long, as it entails a rigid and standardized managerial behavior. With this, the company must be able to adopt different leadership styles and use them in their advantage for the internal success of the company. In relation to this is the problem of the company regarding its difficulty in creating awareness and educating its employees. This problem is also related to implementing effective communication among the company's employees. Due to this problem, the company implemented an open database, so anybody will be able to access the data of the company. Moreover, to effectively coordinate with the company's employees, it would be essential if the company will be able to develop its leadership style appropriate for its team. In this way, team leaders will be able to easily coordinate and educate their teams regarding the new knowledge system of the company.

The third problem presented was the company's difference in IT structure and organizational structure. It has been reported that the company's organizational structure depends on the products to be developed, with functional and project organizations are its types ('Organizational Structure' 2006). Functional organizations are organized according to technological disciplines, where coordination occurs through rules and procedures, detailed specifications, and shared traditions ('Organizational Structure' 2006). In addition, the structure of an organization is concerned with the distribution of power and authority in organizations, having dimensions, such as specialization, or the number of jobs and job specialists found in an organization; the span of control, or the number of people reporting to any specialist manager; its distribution of power, which can be both vertical, or the levels of hierarchy and horizontal, referring to how close a particular department or manager is to the core, mission-critical decisions; and its departmentalization, or the basis on which departments are developed ('Managing in the Organizational Context' 2005, Module 4). Theoretically speaking, PricewaterhouseCoopers must be regarded as a functional organization, however, due to its difference in organizational structure and IT structure, it attains difficulty in functioning properly. Due to this, the company will be implementing the development of its different teams to develop the technical infrastructure of the company. The focus of this individual team's development is to develop its internal policies and procedures, and to communicate better with their clients (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2003). Given the fact that PwC is a service-oriented organization, which serves a variety of clients and offers different services, it can be taken note of that this difference may be the cause of difficulty in strengthening its internal organizations. However, through the development of the teams, its members can have the chance to coordinate with one another with the use of the company's new IT systems. In response to this, what the Human Resource Management team can do is to promote employee and organization awareness, through activities such as team-building and employee development. In addition, the resource management team can sponsor leadership-training seminars that will tackle ways on motivating their employees on working effectively. Moreover, the company must be able to enhance the motivation of its employees through job or work redesign. This can be done occasionally to somehow divert the attention of employees to its current work, and give them a chance to entertain change and accumulate new knowledge, information and work experience. Work redesign include a set of principles and practices designed to increase the performance of individual workers by stressing job simplification and job specialization, where job simplification is the breaking up of the work needs to be performed in an organization into the smallest identifiable tasks, while job specialization is the assignment of workers to perform small, simple tasks ('Scientific Management' ppt presentation). Moreover, the concept of Job Redesign entails ways on enriching the job of employees.

* Enriching an employee's job is by combining tasks, which increases their skill variety and task identity, reduces alienation and increases satisfaction.
* Creating natural work units or teams, which increase employee ownership of the work, making it more meaningful and increase skill variety
* Establishing client relationships, which increase skill variety, task significance and feedback for the employee
* Increasing responsibility and reward for good performance within a specific responsibility
* Aggressive socialization and the creation of a strong corporate culture, which improves task identity and job significance
* Open feedback channels, which include self-set goals negotiated with employees

('Scientific Management' ppt presentation).

Another problem to be addressed is the problem with pragmatism, or the collection of many different ways of thinking ('Pragmatism' 2006). Having different ways of thinking in an organization can affect its production and communication entirely because their thoughts and views are not towards a specific goal only. If pragmatism were being observed then, it would be difficult for the organization to adopt with organizational change. An organization must create a shared vision or values framework to direct the culture change effort ('Lessons for Successful Organizational Change' Module 9 attachment). Having several ways of thinking would hinder the company or the organization to arrive at a specific goal, and hinders effective communication due to conflicts. However, it could also invite healthy conversations and debates among employees. This could also be used to brainstorm on certain ideas in coming up with providing solutions to company problems. With this problem, PwC can utilize some of the images of knowledge in their company, namely, embrained knowledge, embodied knowledge, encultured knowledge, and embedded knowledge. Embrained knowledge is knowledge that relies on conceptual and cognitive skills, and is usually abstract and involves higher levels of reasoning and understanding to make connections, and this can be used in relation to embodied knowledge, which is usually acquired in action, and depends on face-to-face interaction and discussion, emotional and sensory information, and many others. By applying this knowledge, the company will be able to develop encultured knowledge, or the process by which a company arrives at shared understandings of the group, organization, or even national, cultures. This involves the concept of socialization, which involves conversation conducted by individuals, and involves learning from experience and from experienced people by sharing such knowledge. These concepts build up embedded knowledge, a knowledge located in organizational routines or capabilities or, in the social and institutional arrangements, and it is found in systems in relations between technologies, the roles of people perform, the formal procedures of the organization, and the emergent routines ('The Knowledge Context and Managing People' 2005, Module 7). This knowledge can be utilized and maximized to lessen pragmatism and promote the unity and harmony of the internal organizations in the company. In relation to this is the problem between the young and the old employees of the company, which triggers conflicts, for the senior employees in PwC are not informed or asked regarding the decisions of young directors and staffs. This presents discrimination among the employees, as each belongs to specific groups, and creates gaps among them. This must not be so, for in relation to the concepts of Human Resource Management, a workplace must be promoting equality and justice among its employees. With this problem, the company must be able to implement a Talent Management Strategy, for with disciplined talent management, through rigorous and continuous assessment, the company can develop the skills of their managers and match them with their jobs. Moreover, the company can retain creative recruitment and retention through refined and meaningful employee value propositions, and attain thoughtful executive development, through coaching, mentoring, and on-the-job experiences at key points in managers' development ('Managing Individual-Organizational Linkages' Module 3). In addition, the company must be able to promote effective communication among its employees, including allowing its employees to participate it the decision-making of the company. In this way, every member of the company will be able to have a chance to state his or her opinion regarding problems, and even raise suggestions for solving the problems in the company.



Conclusion

PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the largest international organizations, which offers a variety of services such as in Audit and Assurance, Crisis Management, Performance Improvement, Tax, and Transactions. Like many organizations, Human Resource Management is also important for this company for this concept encompasses a wide range of ideas that are applicable in assessing the performance and policies of an existing organization.

This paper has presented a variety of problems being experienced by PricewaterhouseCoopers in their organization, and several concepts and ideas regarding Human Resource Management have been used to evaluate the problems and present possible solutions. The main problem of the company is on implementing effective communication among its internal organizations, which was given solution through implementation and development of an effective and efficient information system. Another major problem is in terms of knowledge, which was given solution through providing training and employee development. In addition, through work or job redesign, employees will be given the chance to improve, increase work identification and increase productivity. With the problems presented, it is essential that a company must not only be aware of it and its effects, but its solutions and the concepts that can be used to solve them.


Corporate Social Responsibility Thesis Statements

THESIS STATEMENTS

1. While corporate social responsibility has become an obligation of any organization, the effect of having an intense open communication with the employee will give them the basis to intensify their employee engagement.
2. The effect of role-sets in a company defines the amount of the interaction of the employees, hence giving more advantageous effect to the engagement of the employee.
3. The apparent illustration on how corporate social responsibility will affect the business conduct of the organization benefits the employee engagement.
4. Employee engagement in the corporate social responsibility has an effect of making the business conduct more conducive to the performance of the employees.
5. The impact of setting a comprehensive open communication within an organization benefits the understanding of the employee to what they can contribute to the company.


Strategic Marketing Management Example

A strategy; in general; means a long term plan of actions that is designed to help achieve a particular goal. A strategy is a basis or guidelines that will be a firms standard to achieve a certain goal in either in short-term or for long-term. It is an idea that distinguishes a certain set or course of action. In other words, a strategy is course of actions that is designed to achieve a particular goal; in either short-term or long-term; that is "to win".

Marketing management is a business discipline that focuses on practical marketing techniques application and how to manage a firm's marketing activities and its resources.

In the widely used text Marketing Management (2006), Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller define marketing management as "the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value." 1

Marketing management has a wide variety of different functions and activities. Mostly it's the firms marketing department that is responsible managing them. Marketing functions and activities includes the following:


Marketing Research and Analysis

In order to make fact-based decisions regarding marketing strategy and design effective, cost-efficient implementation programs, and firms must possess a detailed, objective understanding of their own business and the market in which they operate.2

A marketing analysis involves evaluation of situation and market trends. It is divided into three factors that are called the "3Cs" or the Strategic Triangle; Corporation analysis, Cost analysis, and Competition Analysis. The 3C's Model was develop by Kenichi Ohmae3; a business strategist; and is a strategy that looks at the factors that are needed for a firm to succeed. In recent marketing trends, marketing analysis is now divided further in to five "Cs". Sometimes, "Collaboration", Company", and Competitive advantage" are also added to the "3Cs" that makes it up to "6Cs".

Company analysis focuses on understanding the firm's cost structure and the competitor's relative cost position. The firm's core competencies, and also the firms other distinct company resources.

Customer analysis focuses in developing a plan for market segmentation, or breaking down the market into groups of constituent customers which are called market segments or customer segments.

Competitor analysis focuses on building detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, which focuses especially on the competitor's strengths and weaknesses using the SWOT Analysis (evaluates the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats that are involved in a business)

Firms find it necessary to invest in research in order to collect data required to formulate an accurate marketing analysis. Marketing research or market research is conduct in order to obtain information required in marketing analysis. Common technique in market research includes:

o Focus Groups or Qualitative marketing research

o Statistical Survey or Quantitative marketing research

o Test Markets or Experimental techniques

o Ethnographic/On-site Observational techniques



Marketing Strategy

Once a firm has obtained a thorough understanding of the customer and their competitiveness in the industry, a key strategic decision can now be develop and a marketing strategy that is designed in maximizing the firm's profits and revenue will also be formulated. A marketing strategy may aim to a variety of objectives, including breaking down short-term goals to specific margins, long-term profitability, market share, revenue growth, or other objectives.

To achieve a certain objective, customer segments are often selected by firms as targets because of these two dimensions: 1) it is not price sensitive, or because the selected segment is attractive to serve because it is large, growing, and males frequent purchases, and 2) the firm has the necessary resources and is capable to compete for the segments business, meet the customers needs better than the competition, and profitably can do so. In fact, a common definition of the word "marketing" is simply "meeting needs profitably'.

The reason why firms select target segments is because by doing so a business can subsequently allocate and acquire more resources and to retain those customers in the target segments, that it will for other non-targeted customers. In other words, a firm may decline or turn away a customer that is considered not to be in their target segments. In targeting segments the firm can then identify the desired positioning they want for the company and the products or brand they want to occupy in the targeted customers mind.



Implementation Planning

After the firm have identified their objectives, selected their target market, and their desired positioning of the company, products or brand, the firm can now focus on how to implement their chosen strategy. Implementation planning involves the "4Ps" of marketing which are: Product management, Pricing, Place, and Promotion.

In popular usage, "marketing" is the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning which recognizes that marketing is customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. E. Jerome McCarthy2 divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His typology has become so universally recognized that his four activity sets, the Four Ps, have passed into the language.


o Product:

The Product management and Product marketing aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.

o Pricing:

This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or service, e.g. time, or attention.

o Promotion:

This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

o Placement or distribution

Refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.

Marketing management will develop a specific marketing plan on how to execute and achieve the firms chosen strategy and objectives. A marketing plan is different from firm to firm, but a marketing plan is commonly consist of the following:

o An executive summary

o Analysis of situations that summarizes the different facts and insights that are gained from market research and analysis.

o The firms long-term strategic vision

o The firm's key objectives, that are subdivided into marketing objectives and financial objectives

o The firm's chosen marketing strategy that specifies the target segments and the competitive positioning to be achieved

o Implementation each element of the 4Ps

o Summary of required investments in regards to people, programs, IT systems, etc.

o Projections and forecasted results of financial analysis.

o Project plan

o Control processes, metrics, and measurements.

o A list of key risks and the strategies to take in managing these risks

Project, process, and vendor management

Once all of the key implementation initiatives are identified, the execution of the formulated marketing plan can take place. Firm's can therefore manage various numbers of specific projects such as managing sales initiative, product development, formulating marketing programs and product promotions as well

Marketing managers can then work in designing and improving the effectiveness of the marketing process such as developing new product, brand management, communication, and also pricing.

Effective execution of a marketing strategy may require the management of both the firm's internal resources and a variety of service providers and vendors, such as the advertising agency of the firm.

Organizational management and leadership

Marketing management in requires leadership. The marketing manager will provide a cross-functional leadership in all the various marketing activities, the marketing manager will also be responsible in extensive interaction with the human resources department of the firm in handling issues such as recruitment, training, leadership development, appraisal of employee performance, compensations and other topics relevant in the business.

Marketing management may also require a fair amount of time in building and eventually maintaining a marketing orientation for the business. A market orientation is also known as "customer focus" or the firm's "marketing concept", this requires building a senior management level of consensus and then focuses on how to drive the customers focus down into the firm.
Reporting, measurement and control systems

Marketing management has a variety of metrics that are use to measure how a firm has progress in terms of achieving its objectives. Marketing management often uses various control systems, such as sales forecast, reseller incentive programs, sales force management system and customer relationship management tools (CRM).



Strategy Hierarchy
There are several levels of strategy and strategic management is the highest level in terms that it is the broadest and it applies to all parts of the firm. Strategic management gives direction to he firm's values, culture, goal, and missions. Under strategic management are functional or business unit strategies.

o Functional strategy
The emphasis of this strategy focuses on short and medium term plans of the firm. It is limited in each of the firm's departmental function and responsibilities. Each department then does its part in order to meet the firm's over all objectives, but to some extent their strategies are just derived from broader marketing strategy.


o Operational Strategy

This is the lowest level of strategy because it is very narrow in its scope, and deals only with the firm's day-to-day activities or schedule.

o Corporate strategy

Corporate strategy is referred to as the overarching strategy. This type of strategy answers the question "In which business should we compete?" and the question "How does being in a business add to the firm's competitive advantage?"

o Dynamic Strategy

Is a strategy that is use to understand how a certain strategic action occurs. This strategy involves a complex pattern of actions and reactions. This strategy is partially planned and partially unplanned.
General approaches
There are two main approaches in strategic management. Both these approaches are opposite but both compliment each other in a way.



The Industrial Organization Approach

o Is an approach the is based on economic theory that deals with issues like competitive rivalry, resource allocation, and economies of scale
o Assumptions - rationality, self discipline behavior, and profit maximization

The Sociological Approach

o primarily deals with human interactions
o Assumptions - bounded rationality, satisfying behavior, and profit sub-optimality.

Strategic management techniques can either be viewed as bottom-up, top-up, and Collaborative processes. The first approach; bottom-up approach; for example: employees of a firm submit a proposal to the manager, who then forwards the proposal to those with a higher position in the firm. The top-down approach; whish is commonly use nowadays; in it; the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a firm, in his approach all the decision are coming from the person with the highest rank in a firm. The Collaborative process approach recognizes the emergent nature of strategic decisions.



Marketing Management and Marketing strategy

Marketing management is a business discipline which focuses on practical application of a certain marketing technique and of the management of a firm that handles marketing resources and activities. The marketing manager are the one responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of the customers demand in a manner that will help the firm achieve it's objectives.

On the other hand, a Marketing strategy is a process which allows a firm to focus its (always limited) resources on greater opportunities to increase a firm's sales and to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage among their competitors. A marketing strategy also serves as a marketing plan's foundation. Marketing plan; on the other hand; are set of specific actions required in order to successfully implement a certain marketing strategy. Marketing strategy serves as a guideline of a marketing plan that is designed to reach the firm's marketing objectives. It is very important that these set of objectives have a measurable result.

In general, the difference between a marketing management and a marketing strategy is that; marketing management is a broader than marketing strategy. We can say that marketing strategy is under marketing management. Marketing strategy is a more specific approach when it comes to marketing because it focuses on the aspects and functions of a firm, rather the firm as a whole. A marketing strategy focuses on a firm's marketing goals, the firm's policies, and the sequence of action (tactics) in to whole. Its main objective is to provide a foundation and basis from which a tactical plan is developed. On the other hand, marketing management focuses on how to manage the specific marketing strategy that has been formulated.


Explain the potential adverse impacts on strategy implementation when the CEOs of companies receive extremely high compensation


CEO Compensation

Many readers have probably had a conversation in which a friend or coworkers expressed amazement at the extremely high compensation of some chief executive officers (CEOs). Inevitably, there is a question of how such huge amounts of compensation can be justified. A notable example includes the Walt Disney Corporation's CEO who received $203 million in one year. Another includes $58.5 million to the CEO of US Surgical corporation. Still another includes a signing bonus of $10 million and $180 million in stock options for the incoming CEO of Global Crossings who resigned after one year. Even severance packages for some CEOs are huge. The former CEO of Mattel resigned after substantial financial losses in the previous quarter and was given a #37 million package and over $708,989 per year for the remainder of her life.

Graef Crystal, a noted critic of CEO compensation, has spent a great amount of time studying the subject. For examples, in his study of CEO compensation in health care organization, in which there is great variance in compensation, he found no rationale according to organizational performance or size. Further, he discredited supply and demand explanations and attributed CEO high compensation to other sources of power. Some of Crystal's conclusions are as follows:

So is there any rhyme or reason to explain the huge variation of CEO pay levels? Short answer. Forget it…There's no justifiable theory on a shortage of CEO talent to drive up CEO pay. But there is a creditable theory at work, the theory of CEO power. Pack the board with your friends, hire consultants who are good at blowing smoke, float a lot of statistics about how other companies offer their CEOs a ton of money, and, viola, you, too, can make a lucrative sum no matter how you perform, and see your pay rise at a rate faster than people who fill other important jobs in the organization.

On the other hand, there are defenders of current levels of CEO compensation. Consultants Ira Kay and Rodney Robinson have argued that they pay of CEOs is justified by the performance of their companies. Further, they have pointed out that academic research studies using time series methodologies provide the basis for such conclusions. Even Crystal has found a small positive relationship between performance, in the form of shareholder returns, and CEO compensation. He has found that such performance explains only 19.8 percent of the variance in their compensation, however, which leaves approximately 80 percent to other factors. Further, other critics have pointed out the vast differences between the United States and other countries in ratios of CEO compensation to the average worker's compensation. Reports indicate that CEO compensation in some US companies is now 200 times higher than that of rank and file employees whereas others indicate that the ratio has risen as high as 475 to one. When compared to other industrialized countries, the ratios are much higher in the United States.

Because of the problem of excessive compensation, several recommendations have been proposed. Some are very high-level policy recommendations, which would require legislation. One such recommendation is that the US Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which prohibits bankers from sitting on their customers boards of directors, should be amended to permit such practices. Presumably, such bankers would be more cost conscious. A radical policy recommendation is that the United States should move to a German style of code-termination system in which worker representatives sit on boards of directors. In contrast, another recommendation is to avoid solutions that are based on legislation because they are likely to introduce even more problems. Still another is that tax deductions should be disallowed for companies in which the CEO's compensation is 25 times greater than the average for blue-collar workers.

Several other recommendations are directed toward implementation at the organizational level. One is to link CEO pay to long-term profitability. A second is to put more stockholders and workers on boards of directors. A related recommendation is directed toward members of company boards of directors. That recommendation maintains that board members should ignore self-serving surveys that portray CEOs as underpaid in comparison to other CEOs. They also should be very skeptical of assessments concluding that CEOs are mobile. Still another recommendation is to use succession planning to develop an internal pool of qualified CEO candidates and thereby avoid seeking expensive replacements from the external labor market. A final recommendation would attack the problem in a more indirect manner, In response to the problems of excessive CEO compensation, as well as other factors, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has proposed that stock option grants be reflected on financial statements as a charge to earnings. Without such a requirement, stock option grants to executives, which may eventually take on millions of dollars in value, are never reflected in financial statements.



Questions:

Explain the potential adverse impacts on strategy implementation when the CEOs of companies receive extremely high compensation.

Discuss the merits of the various recommendations for solutions to the problem of extremely high CEO compensation.

What non-regulatory pressures are most likely to bring excessively high CEO salaries more in line with realistic levels?

Evaluate the argument that pay for performance justifies the level of compensation paid to the CEOs noted in the examples.

Evaluate the argument that the problem of excessive CEO compensation should not be addressed through legislation.


Evaluate the need to identify a range of performance measures for management – include both manufacturing and non-manufacturing examples

Guidelines

Students could consider this essays follows:

• Students could consider what performance measurements are for and why companies use them. From this they could then analyse why it is important to provide a range of performance measurements that cover all aspect of a manager's job within the framework of the organisation's goals.



Students can of course create their own perspective in answering this essay.



Students should NOT: forget that the questions ask for examples from both manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors.




Specific Marking Criteria for all essays:

Your answer should take the form of a well-structured essay of around 2,500 words in length.

Typically, a good answer would include the following:



- A clear explanation of the issues raised by the question you must either answer the question set or discuss the topic raised – you cannot create your own essay title.



- Considerable evidence of research into the topics from both recent textbooks and journal articles (this is very important). Students who just use text books will not have sufficient information to pass this assessment.



- A conclusion which draws on your findings and comes to a judgement on the specific question asked



- In summary, your answers should be relevant to the question, well-written and structured and reflect research into the subject



Important points

The essay should be properly referenced throughout using the Harvard style and have the list of references cited in the essay presented at the end of the assignment in the form of a bibliography. Failing to reference your work will result in a plagiarism enquiry.

1. This is an individual coursework - any collaboration beyond, perhaps, sharing information on relevant material is entirely unacceptable. This will also result in a plagiarism enquiry.

2. Work exceeding 2,750 words excluding bibliography will be penalised by 10%.

(Submit word count)

3. Sources such as Wikipedia are not acceptable as valid research sit


ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT: A FOCUS ON THE ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF NHS TRUST

I. Introduction

Organisations, with their dynamic nature, will inevitably seek development in the natural order of things. Be it public or private in nature, organisations will find a way to improve themselves and acquire a greater part of their market share or provide a wider range of services to the public. This is manifested in the case of NHS Trust hospital as they took certain initiatives to improve their organisation and to provide better services to citizens of UK. These initiatives constitute "multiskilling" and improvement of the human resources of the organisation. Hence, the overall objective of the development proposal is to maximise the productivity of the personnel of the institution. However, as intimated in the case study, despite these great intentions of the management of NHS Trust the development initiatives did not push through. The organisation encountered massive resistance from the majority of the personnel. In this study, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding the events that took place will be made. Specifically, a look on the change management initiatives, or the lack of it, will be taken into consideration in the study. To do this, an introduction of the organisational development models that relates directly to the case of NHS Trust will be given. Consequently, a discussion of change management and the specific elements that the NHS Trust will be provided. Specifically, the lack of proper communication between the management and personnel; regard on the existing culture in the organisation; and the disregard on gender roles of the company will be discussed specifically.


II. Organizational Development

The model of organisational development has become part and parcel of the operations of a modern organisation. Companies infuse it in their operations not only to keep them at par with the existing business environment, but also with the intent to rise up in the hierarchy of companies in their respective industries. (Bailey and Palmer 2005, 11) Needless to say that the development and the dynamics required for a common business is severe and unforgiving. This has been manifested in the case of NHS Trust. Despite being a public medical institution, the organisation has to deal with the demands of the external environment. With the intention of improving the services that they render to the public, certain projects are taken. To do this, the company have to initiate development initiatives. Organisational development has been attributed to numerous other models of growth. However, it must be emphasised that a constant companion of this model is the initiation of change. The following discussions will focus on the manner on which this element of development is managed.

III. Change Management

Attached to the hip of development is the inevitability of change in the organisation. It is in this context that change management emerged as a scientific method of dealing with the consequences of development and the ensuing change. A common denominator among those dealing with the issue of change management and resistance to change consider the cultural component of the organisation, regardless on its nature as private or public companies. For the model of change management, the basic presumption is that resistance will always be present. (Brewer, Juras, and Brownlee 2003, 49) The intensity may vary but the imperative element is the ability of the management to deal with this level of resistance. The overall objective is the reduction, if not the total annihilation, of this resistance level from the workforce.

In the case of the NHS Trust, they failed to consider the participation of the personnel in the decision making process. The management failed to recognise the potential of involving the personnel in the initial stages of the development initiatives of the company. Doing so would have empowered the workforce and essentially gained the favour of the personnel. (Carroll and Arneson 2003, 35) Looking at this element, it is a win-win situation as the resistance level is significantly lessened and the cooperation of the employees would have been ensured. Further consequences of this endeavour are uncovering the proper management approach on which the plan would fit with the behaviour and culture of the personnel. (Huy 2002) In the case of NHS Trust, the decision making was one-sided and the only time when the employees were consulted is when the pilot was being implemented. The following discussions will specifically discuss the shortcomings of NHS Trust in dealing with the organisational development initiatives in the company
A. Communication of the Change

The major shortcoming of the NHS Trust in their change management initiative is they failed to properly convey the intention for development and the ensuing changes to the workforce. In this regard, the said organisation should have maximised the potential of their middle managers. These managers are the ones that could convey the potentials of the project and the possible adjustments on which the company will require the workers to do in order to achieve the highest level of success in the implementation of the project. (Huy 2002) In plain terms, the middle managers have the most strategic role in the organisation in times when change management is taking place.

Looking at this line of reasoning, it appears that the authors cited above are extremely accurate on their hypothesis. In instances where change management in imposed and organisational development initiatives are in play, the organisation is in a very vulnerable position. Hence, it is only reasonable that the company trust those that know the culture of the organisation and those that deal with the rank-and-file and the top management at any given period. As pointed out in the earlier part of the study, the issue of change management is highly regarded with the cultural aspect of the company.
B. Consideration of Culture

Another flaw in the plan of the NHS Trust is the consideration of the existing socio-environmental elements that tend to sway the inner workings of the company. More specifically, the organisational culture has been taken for granted in the planning of the said developmental project. In its simplest sense, the culture of the company is the amalgamation of the intangible and concrete standards that the organisation adheres. (Markoczy 1994, 5) In the case of NHS Trust, the neglect of the organisational culture made them miss the inherent social dynamics driven by the overall behaviour of the people within the company. Neglect is the most important word in this analysis as towards the end of the case study, the top level management admits the existence of tribes in their organisation. This is an expressed manifestation of disregard on the human resources of the company. To a certain extent, the leaders of the human resource management department of NHS Trust should be responsible for not realising the importance of this element in the developmental initiatives of the organisation. (Ates 2004, 33) Organisational culture is probably one of the most basic elements in this field, and they fail to use it to their advantage.
C. Gender Roles

There are certain roles in the organisation that within the organisational culture is classified as a masculine or feminine role. Hence, male employees may have some reservations if they are tasked to carry out roles normally employed by their female counterparts (i.e. cleaning). Last on the short list of the inadequacies of NHS Trust is the consideration of the gender gaps in the respective roles in the organisation. It is very implausible that the authorities in the said organisation are not aware of the existence of this gap in the roles. Scholarly journals have been brimful of analyses that deal with the gender as an element of the organisational dynamics of the modern company. (Long 2005) The company should have realised that there are existing roles between male and female employees that overlap with each other. For instance, the creation of the generic worker tends to clash with the other employees like the nurses and other medical staff. This not only triggered animosity between the employees as they tend to mind that another person is doing a job which they have been doing for several years already. Again, this springs back to the element of proper communication of the intention of change to the personnel. The management of NHS Trust would have addressed the matter with more favourable results if they have initially briefed the employees that will be directly affected by the "multiskilling" project of the organisation.

IV. Analysis

Looking at the case study, it showed that NHS Trust failed to employ any proper change management techniques in their development method. This is manifested by the overwhelming rejection of the personnel on the proposed development project. As discussed above, they failed to communicate well with the personnel. They should have taken the workers' union as their allies at the get go to help them realise the goals of the project. The least that they could expect if they took on the said initiative would be to expect minimal resistance from the workforce. In the same manner, they should have empowered the workers by including them in the planning process. In doing so, they would have foreseen the clash between the existing culture as well as the gender roles in the organisation with the proposed development initiative.

Seeing the case study, it appears that NHS Trust sought a one-sided process in the planning process. Basically, they formulated a plan that would benefit only the management as it would reduce the costs and operational expenses of the institution. And during the process, they made the biggest mistake that the workforce shall willingly accept these changes. This is regrettable as it has been stated in the case study that the management realised that the demands of the development project calls much from the employees. In the same manner, the management has already been aware of the existence of "tribes" in the organisation which points to strong cultural lines that could make or break the proposed project. The least the management would have done is to conduct a preliminary study determining whether the proposed changes would fit the existing cultures in the organisation.

V. Conclusion

The dynamic nature of the environment demands organisation, be it public or private, to seek self-development. However, it must be highlighted that constantly appended with the concept of development is the all important concept of change. As the old maxim claims, it is sole permanent thing on earth. Change, as seen in the case of NHS Trust, is a very influential element in the dynamics of the organisation. It could be embraced wholeheartedly or it could be rejected in the onset. The discussions above highlighted the fact that these changes would be unequivocally accepted by the workforce, provided that proper change management initiatives are taken. As explained above, the implementation of change management initiatives is to basically lessen the resistance level of the personnel who may well oppose the changes in the organisation.

As seen in the discussions above, resistance will always be encountered in any proposals for change. The issue now rests on how well the company manages that resistance. At least long enough to establish the foundation of the development initiatives. All in all, the case study presents the importance of the human element in the organisation. Unless the management is able to gain their cooperation, the level of development in the organisation will stagnate, limiting any further growth. Thus, the onus of knowing the culture as well as the existing norms in the organisation is laid on the shoulders of the management. Nowadays, this is an indispensable element as the need for development in organisation comes at high-speed.


Providing examples evaluate the important developments in Management accounting over the last ten years.

Introduction

Transformation has always been a part of our society. With this rapid changes occurring every now and then, providing such developments would be very essential to be able to adapt within the environment that we're in to right now. Over the past decades, the Management Accounting has encountered a lot of radical changes within the industry. And it is no doubt that the changes are continuing to take hold in the entire Management Accounting. The developments regarding Management Accounting are results of different transformation within our environment. These various transformations include changes in competition, technology and organizational structure.

The second management accounting revolution took place during 1980 to 1999. The development of management accounting that was influenced by the mathematical remodelling became the cause of the separation between the accounting researchers and accounting educators. Both recognized that the practice will no longer appropriate to solve problems being faced by the managers. Even leading management accounting researchers like Kaplan and Johnson called for an advance teaching methods.



Developments in Management Accounting

The "new wave" of management accounting took place during this period which is also called the post-modern period of management accounting. During this time, a lot organizational interdependency was acknowledged.

The boom in the field of technology blasts its way during the early 90's. This is also the reason why the rise in the height of competition took place at that time also. The competition becomes fiercer than the usual because of the widely range of opportunity that the technology can provide. In fact, the competition grew globally as the market is not only limited to one area only. With the help of the new technology, the communication also becomes wider that's why it becomes possible for most people to allocate services in a wider variety of customers.

The development of computers has become extensive by that time. More and more people were engage in the efficiency that computers bring to their lives. As a result, companies adapted the use of computers and made it as a part of their daily essentials in the business. Everything becomes possible due to the evolution of technology.

As stated, part of the massive transformation within the Management Accounting is the widespread evolution of technology. The birth of digital economy is also the birth of the "new economy" (Bhimani, 2003). With modern databases, information can be analyzed in many different ways. The upgrading of technology is very efficient to their job as it avails all access not only within the organization but as well as related industry outside. The change was highly recognized due to its new implemented system, from the traditional form to a more systematic and organized. All information is being inputted within the system, the interpretation of this information system as well as the maintenance and design becomes a considerable factor of an effective management.

The evolution of technology creates the biggest impact on the developments occur in management accounting. Actually, almost all of us in the society we're affected by these developments regarding technology. The breakthrough within the advancement of science was inevitably appealing to the many individuals.

Technology provides various new tools for management accounting. And these things are considered "the developments" in this industry. Apparently, this new tools would be greatly appreciated if management accountants know how to use it. Again with the use of computers and internet, data are transmitted instantly worldwide. The Microsoft's Fin Web for example, allows employee to track detailed information of their company as well as submitting reports and ordering goods and services. With this system, it cuts the paper works and transaction time. This system or the Financial Information Network (FinWeb) was launched in 1995 to make each task easier. This Microsoft system made it possible for employees to access financial information that is needed in their decision making for updating reports. However, implementing such kind of system within the organization is not as simple as installing up a computer device. Both the industry and the employees are faced to a new challenge on how they will adapt the new system.

With this continuous application of technology in the field of management accounting, a new form of database program was introduced to the public last 2003. It was named Second Life, a 3D virtual world which may be catalyst to the new range of public accounting business opportunities. It already caught the attention of the mainstream business media. This virtual world can led the next generations of young professionals to take a career in public accounting ( Johnson & Middleton, 2008).

Even now, the continuing progression of the technology leaves a tremendous change within the Management Accounting. The development of the World Wide Web led to the appearance of the E-commerce which shifted the focus of the most management accountants to create value through the effective use of resources. The changes within the entire systems follow the changes in the role of the management accountant. Before the scope of their duty is only limited to what their resources are and the particular people they would render their service with. With such developments regarding the technology, their responsibilities would also be wide in range.

The changing roles of Management Accountants may be a source of threat or opportunity to them. From early 90's up to the late 90's, the upgrading of databases and the use of modern databases within every company took place. This event made it difficult for them to adapt new procedures regarding their job. However, still during that time, there are also a number of accountants who excel in their performance. The so-called hybrid accountants started to merge within the industry. Moreover they should be able to adapt all the changes regarding their work to facilitate the needs of the people asking for their services. They should operate finance operation more effectively than usual and develop aids in performance evaluation, career counselling, recruiting and training.

Moreover, some of the concerns regarding this matter also contain the relevance within the management accountants itself as a profession, obviously because they are the one responsible in performing the task regarding management. They are like soldiers who have to be fully equipped all the time in case a battle appeared in an indefinite circumstance. Every management accountants needs to be gear up in order to comply with their job. Hence, prior to these changes, they should be well-rounded about their profession. The changes within the concept of Management Accounting are also a change in their nature of work (Siegel & Kulesza, 1997). Therefore they must consider that those changes are just part of the challenges that they need to get through with their profession. As long as they enjoy their job, there would be a large possibility that they will have a chance for better survival (Anom,n.d.).

Another part of the developments regarding to the management accounting is the change in organizational structure. Usually organizations tend to allocate the responsibilities that need to be performed and operate and with the prevalent changes in the whole system it would also cause a change in the structure of the organization of the business. Some sort of adaptations within the environment that they are dealing with is very necessary. They must link the previous structure to the new ones. Such expansions will develop and define new measurements and theories regarding the performance of their organization. However, the transformation within the structure of organization should also be relevant with the existing trend.

Mostly the changes that one organization may exhibit are because of further improvements that need to be utilized within its premises. Changes are not done not just for the sake of it. A critical analysis and logical thinking about the situation is usually done so that the right changes regarding the structure of the organization are the one being imposed. The structure of the organization should be relevant and coherent, in a way that it will lead the industry to a more progress. The structure should have a proper allocation of the departments as well as the people. Each division must competent regarding the duties that being assigned into them. A well divided organizational structure also means progression.

The increase in competition was accompanied by the rapid technological developments which also follow the structural change in organization. The drastic change in banking brought new challenges for them to acquire more profit despite the intense competition. These circumstances boost their potential to come up with strategy that will anticipate the changes within the environment.

In relation to the changes occur in the management accountancy, there are many developed techniques which utilize the followings developments since the traditional management accounting doesn't provide the accurate profit information (Cokins, 2004). According to many critics, the traditional method only produces long variance reports but short business drives (Niedenthal, 2001)

Such techniques are the strategic management accounting and the activity-based costing. The strategic management accounting, examines the decision making linked with the business operation and the strategic work of financial administration. It focuses on the innovation, competitiveness and especially the role of the manage control systems project. Meanwhile the activity-based costing or the ABC methodology is more accurate method in the management accounting because it tends to calculate the indirect expenses rather than direct expenses. Basically this method is used during the times wherein the competition is stiff and it contributed more in the decision making of the management. It is designed to be dynamic in order to suit the continuous changes in the industry.


Conclusion

Since management accounting is the broader version of cost accounting, it also emphasizes the other dimensions not only in accounting but as well as the organization, behaviour, strategy and decision making which is vital to the role of the management accountants.

Within the past ten years, it was observed that management accounting have also change prior to the changes occur within the nature of environment. As the new economy make its way visible throughout the industry, the developments in the management accounting also take place because of the need to cope up with the changes. The new economy was greatly influences by the expansion of the technology or the so-called "digital era" that occurs during the early 90's. The use of computers becomes prevalent by that time which enhances the duties of the management accounts. In relation to that, the role of these individuals also receives such transformation due to the new technology that was imposed in their system by that time. Although a lot of advancements within the field of management accounting were being implemented by that time, a great number of accountants find it hard to manipulate the system at first. Apparently, there are also instances wherein the adaptation of the new system was easily handled by skilled management accountants. These types of accountants were acknowledged by their capabilities to manoeuvre things despite of the drastic changes occur and even called the "hybrid" accountants.

Moreover, the organizational structure was also part of the development in accounting management in the last decade. It only shows the symbiotic relationship that is perceptible within it. An organizational structure permits the allocation of duties and responsibilities of different functions and processes. Each division or branch of the organization must be capable of the tasks assign to them. It is also considered that these entities will be cooperative with each other to create a good environment in the workplace. Facilitating such working relationship will help utilize efficiency at work within each unit. However, it not easy to create such functional structure within the organization imagine if the industry expands, the chain of commands will be lengthen as well as the widening of the control. If this happens, there should be a proper handling of the people involve in each unit so that even the expansion take place, still the people were kept on their respective tracks. Organizational structure should be subjected to changes from time to time to prevent decrease in flexibility and fatigue in creativity. Therefore, it is suggested to imply some re-organizing or total alteration.

Meanwhile, changes within management accounting are still prevalent and quite unstoppable due to the rapid changes also in terms of the technology. It was 10 years ago and the changes are severe. How much more would it be in the next ten years? At this point, some preliminary propositions were established by a professor in accounting about the future trend of management accounting. He visualizes some possibilities that may happen in the near future regarding the business firms, planning strategies and the management accountants' role. He conducted some surveys on how faith will be in management accounting and come up with the following discourse.

Uncertainty in the environment of the company will increase and rapid changes will emerge all the time. Products and technologies will go rapidly out of date. Competition will continuously increase. Flexibility and rapidity will become primary objects for accounting measurement. The time span for strategic planning will significantly shorten. Systematic investment on research and development activities will significantly increase in all industries. Need for accounting methods associated with research and development activities will remarkably increase. Employees will become the most important production factor. Need for employment development and education will remarkably increase. Requirements of versatility know-how set for employees will increase. The role of team work will become larger all the time. Need for new accounting methods to measure and improve wide-ranging business performance will significantly increase. Wide-ranging activity and process cost management will become significantly more important as a management tool. Supplier performance and customer satisfaction regarding the quality becomes more important in performance measurement. Networking of companies will become more and more popular (Laitinen,E.K.,n.d.).

Based on his perception, changes would be a permanent factor that will always affect the nature of management accounting and therefore to survive these changes, the people within the organization must always be distinctive about their duties and responsibilities. They must also be adaptive to whatever circumstances that they might be engage with from time to time. Versatility accompanied by proper knowledge will be the key to stay in track regarding the developments that may come.


GENERIC WORKER CONCEPT: IMPACT OF THE CHANGES AT THE NHS TRUST HOSPITAL

Introduction

Organisational changes occur almost inevitably as part of further development. Undergoing significant changes at various points of organization life is always for a purpose. For instance, when organisation changes its overall strategy perhaps through adding or removing major section or practice and changing the very nature by which it operates are embraced all for the sake of competitive advantage. The latter is very true for the NHS Trust hospital. The organisation considers changing the internal process by means of introducing generic worker concept. The change was perceived to be an important tool in translating flexibility, teamworking and responsiveness into competitiveness of both the people and the organisation.



What the NHS Trust Hospital Did – The Onset of Generic Worker Concept


At NHS, the initiative to implement a generic worker concept drives shared services between the hotel services and nursing departments with the ongoing commitment to maintain the top-to-bottom focus on organisation's objective which is to provide value for money through quality services. The main purpose of the generic worker strategy is the continuous improvement. The continuous improvement placed its focus on improving customer satisfaction by means of continuous and incremental improvements to processes (Dettmer, 1997, p. 10).



According to the Two Factor Theory by Frederick Herzberg, there are hygiene and motivation factors to organisational changes. Hygiene factors are working conditions, quality of supervision, salary, status, security, company, job, company policies and administration and interpersonal relations while for motivational factors include achievement, recognition, responsibility for task, interest in the job, advancement to higher levels and growth (Ellis, 2004, p. 82). Some of these elements are embedded on the generic worker concept change strategy at NHS hospital. In discussing the strategies the NHS had implemented, this paper will use the eight-stage process by Kotter (1996).



1) Establishing a sense of urgency – to overcome complacency, create a strong reason why change is needed.

Philips and Holton (1997) made mention that for positive organisational change to occur specific factors such as people's readiness and top management's commitment are of critical importance (p. 10). The generic worker concept conforms to two basic requirements for a better performing workforce. First is on managerial implications such as simplifying complex compensations scheme and formalisation of control as well as cost savings idea. On the operational part, this change strategy is chosen so as to respond to the burden overworking, reducing redundancy at work and the so-called 'waiting for action time'.

2) Creating the guiding coalition – build a team with right composition of power, level of trust and shared objective to lead the change.

The importance of building a team is on carrying out effective administration and making informed decisions (Brody, 2004, p. 384). Within the Site Services Directorate, specialised units of implementers are formed. The three service providers group as caterers, porters and domestics are divided into teams and are provided with team leaders and supervisors/managers in addition to ward managers.

3) Developing a vision and strategy – which clarifies direction, motivates people and helps coordination.

Kotter (1996) maintains that gives direction and provides the focus for all activities within the organisation, inspires people throughout the organisation and binds them together. As part of the organisation's business plan, the proposed concept is one of the seven key changes to enhance efficiency and improve healthcare services for the patients. The generic worker concept aimed at improving efficiency and effectiveness of service provision at ward level. The combined role of porters, domestic and catering staff is an effort to upgrade the skills of these support workers.

4) Communicating the change vision – to make sure everybody understands it.

Communication is an incremental instrument in getting all the employees on board as it can deliver collaborative efforts towards the achievement of common goals (Sisaye, 2001, p. 129). The flow of information regarding the generic worker change follows a top-down, trickle down effect. The concept was born from the Hotel Services Director's unit down to porter managers, domestics supervisors and ward managers and then transferred to the people involved.

5) Empowering employees for broad based action – to eliminate barriers, time constraints.

Provided that hotel services staff were to be based at ward level, the requirement of supplemental training and education to perform new roles is evident. NHS provided their people with such, in addition to basic pay raise. This figures that the empowerment of employees serve as a powerful tool in overcoming the challenges and risks of organisational changes (Harigopal, 2006, p. 300).

6) Generating short term wins – to stay the on the course as major change will take long time.

Philips and Holton (1997) also assert that creating a win-win environment is essential to the change process (p. 244). As evident, the change process embraces customized action plans with the flexibility to accommodate corrective actions whenever necessary. The concept, as well, was initially administered by proficient small management team with a well-organised reporting schema.

7) Consolidate gains & produce more change – using 'short term wins'.

The consolidation of gains suggests that resistance to change only happens when people does not realise the overall positive impact of the changes to them (Kotter, 1996, p. 81). The reallocation of duties is one of the major changes that NHS implemented. Such endeavor points on the greater emphasis on the making sense of rotas that delineates line of duties and eventually the ownership of tasks.

8) Anchor the new culture – to innovate & change continuously and to firmly ground the operating style.

As such, what embodies the change to be successful are organisational imperatives that benefits all the organisational members through new values as stated in the objectives (Cameron and Green, 2004, p. 187).Based on the pilot implementation, the generic worker strategy proves to be insufficient and facing a lot of resistance from the operational level. This brings us to discuss the limitations and loopholes of the proposed change.



The theory of mechanistic and organic systems as developed by Burns and Stalker (1994) suggest that the changing conditions of the generic worker concept is an endeavor that falls short of the contributive nature of knowledge and experience. True enough, the Hotel Services staffs are provided with 'unrealistic' nature of tasks through the consolidation of cleaning, portering and catering responsibilities. The task scope in addition has a basic shedding of responsibility that is embedded on limited field of rights, obligations and methods that will genuinely empower them despite the provision of training programs.



Limitations and Deficiencies of Generic Worker Concept – What Went Wrong



From its inception, the generic worker concept is inherently problematic and conflict-laden. The specialist nature of the change strategy branched into several quandaries including issues on performance assessment, sense of ownership, lack of consensus, employee resistance, demarcation issues and communication process as well as gender issues and work patterns. Put simply, the chosen strategy is a challenge to status quo and brings about powerlessness on employees' part.



Goldratt, through his theory of constraints (TOC), explains that the concept of every organisational change is central to cause and effect. Though NHS had already divided the organisation into more controllable, manageable units, there still remains the difficulty in managing the actual, potential and emerging constraints due to the proposition of the change strategy. What the NHS has done otherwise than what is acceptable is the lack of acknowledgement of the degree of inertia regarding the change. Necessarily, NHS would not be able to exploit the constraints to their advantage and then elevate the constraint to maximise the change strategy's advantages (Dettmer, 1997).



The challenge is basically on the intertwining functions of Hotel Services and the nurses as there are blurring responsibility on a specific task specifically between female and male staff, and also the interface between Hotel Services and ward managers. Given that there are already the concerns of low employee motivation and absenteeism, the proposed concept also contribute to the emergence of more uncertainties at the ward level especially on complying with the duties given on rotas. Realising the matter, the generic worker strategy has no clear performance measures to which pay was to be based. To wit, there are no service-level agreements of performance measure acceptable for all stakeholders involve.



Informal communication processes was the main source of information, which in return affects lower rate of employee buy-in. The managers of change were not able to gather the workforce as a 'cohesive social unit' that it should be. Team briefings and staff notice board were understated. Further, the terms of employment and the structure of remuneration are other administrative issues; a condition that calls the attention of the trade union.



According to Kotter and Schlesinger, there are six change approaches that outline the four reasons that certain people are resisting change. These are parochial self-interest, misunderstanding, low tolerance to change and different assessments of the situation. Poignantly, these characterises the change strategy that the Hotel Services Deputy Director proposed. The generic worker concept imposes practical concerns from the people such as enforcement of collaborative working and scheduling dilemmas. There are also communication problems, some people are very keen on organisational support of role changes and the greater disadvantages of the change (Banhegyi and Banhegyi, 2007, p. 103).



The UNISON intervention


The union did not, at not cost, agree with the Trust's 'improvement exercise' of implementing the generic worker concept. The debate led to the voting process of who are in favor and not for the proposed change; a process that voiced out the collective opinion of the NHS hospital's staff. The extent of resistance to generic worker strategy could be explained by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Developed by Ajzen in 1988, this theory asserts that within NHS hospital are behavioural, normative and control behaviours. These are the consequences, expectations and attitude towards any organisational change (Ajzen, 2005). However, for NHS, increasing the knowledge along does not necessarily deliver the right attitude regarding the change. Instead, the change strategy generated 'unfavorable' behaviours. But, for their employees, these unfavorable behaviours that are proven by the resistance to generic worker concept means protection of individual interest and elevating the labor bargaining power and consensus-building. The results echoed the desire of the employees – 12 are in favor while 150 are against the change with the rest abstained.


Conclusion

The case of NHS Trust Hospital's change strategy known as the generic worker concept was promising. Nonetheless, there are so many ambiguities that only resulted in the resistance of the majority of the Hotels Services staff. From its onset, though the strategy was perceived to be a vital tool in promoting competitive advantage, the generic worker concept is rather complex in nature. This paper presents the actions that the hospital undertook and the insufficiency of the proposed concept. Several models and theories such as continuous improvement, six change approaches and organisational visioning as well as two factor theory, theory of mechanistic and organic systems, theory of constraints and theory of planned behaviour are integrated within the text.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN HOTEL COMPANIES

Hospitality is a major force in the UK economy, creating growth and jobs. It employs 1.8 million people in nearly 300,000 establishments and has a total turnover exceeding £64 billion (BHA, 2002). Hospitality and tourism has become one of the UK and other countries' most fiercely competitive businesses. The hotel industry is the linchpin of the United Kingdom's leisure-related service sector: a big business with enormous growth potential. It also contributes to the country's attractiveness as an international business destination (Lovegrove et al, 1994). However, the other side of this picture is the reality that it is not effectively coping up with the changes posed by the need to enhance the skills of workers. The hotel industry remains a low skill area of employment where skills are increasingly required to adapt to changes in technology, product range and the social, legal and commercial environment (Rowley et al, 2003, 9). Moreover, the sector has a record of suffering from a chronic shortage of recruits with food preparation skills, wastage from the sector of those with vocational skills and qualifications. Likewise there is a widespread evidence of vacancies, which are hard to fill. Britain receives some 25 million overseas visitors a year, spending nearly £13 billion, but these numbers have been broadly static for several years, revealing problems of competitiveness which government and the industry need to address (BHA, 2002).


PROBLEM STATEMENT

As skills in workplace are significant to any industries, the British Hospitality Association (BHA) identifies business-related variables that drive changes in skills requirements (Rowley et al, 2003, 10). It falls into four main categories--changes in the customer base, increased competition, concern with sustainability, and change in production processes. It can be assumed that this is the strategic management that the association hopes all hotel and hospitality companies would abide to. Strategic management, on the other hand, is defined as the "art and science of formulating, implementing, and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objectives" (David, 2001, p.5). It is the formal process, or set of processes, used to determine the strategies (actions) for the organization (Hill et al, 2003). It focuses on many areas, including the integration of: management; marketing; finance/accounting; production/operations; research and development; and computer information systems (David, 2001). Its main objective is to help the organization achieve success through the formulation of different strategies, their implementation, and evaluation (David, 2001). It is also synonymous with the term "Strategic Planning" (David, 2001). BHA's call to reform represents all of those elements. This study will explore customer service to be specific and to provide sufficient focus on a particular element of the strategic management practices that the BHA suggested. The study will investigate UK 2 to 3 stars hotels to identify if they are indeed abiding to the suggestions of BHA and are practicing effective customer service.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following research questions will be explored in the study:

Ø Do the respondents implement a customer service improvement program to ensure that their employees provide quality customer service to customers?

Ø What strategies do the hotels use to provide quality customer service to customers?

Ø Do the hotels hire employees that have sufficient skills?

Ø Do the hotels provide sufficient training to their employees to improve their customer service?

Ø Do the hotels use the latest technologies to provide the customers the comfort and the service quality they expect?



RESEARCH METHODS

The research method will be descriptive and the study will utilize the survey approach to collect data from the respondents. The samples will be 50 employees from one 2 stars and one 3 stars hotel in the UK. This survey-questionnaire will have two sections. The first part will intend to acquire the demographic profile of the respondents, while the other section will contain a set of attitude statements. The purpose of the set of attitude statements is to determine the level of agreement or disagreement using a five-point Likert scale. In the Likert technique, the degree of agreement or disagreement) is given a numerical value ranging from one to five, thus a total numerical value can be calculated from all the responses (Underwood, 2004). Data will be analyzed with the use of the latest SPSS.

Appraisal of the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Introduction

According to Kessler and associates (1994), anxiety disorders are one of the common psychiatric problems in the United States. This poses a major health matter as untreated anxiety problems can greatly affect the quality of life of the affected individuals. Physiologically speaking, people with anxiety disorders undergo an increased reaction of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) when threatened. This on the other hand results to their typical feeling of wanting to escape from the source of their anxiety.



The symptoms of anxiety disorders are usually divided into somatic and emotional symptoms. The somatic signs are manifested by abnormal bodily reactions such as rapid heart rate, numbness, muscle tension and excessive sweating. The emotional signs on the other hand are often represented by various negative feelings such as fear, nervousness, agitation and irritability. In most cases, people with anxiety disorder usually over-predict the outcomes of certain events. Moreover, the symptoms of this disorder are often misinterpreted by more serious ailments (Shear, 2003).



Leaving anxiety disorders untreated can result to other psychological and health problems. Moreover, as these involve the people's life, the affected individual usually has trouble handling normal life activities. It is also a common reaction that people with anxiety disorders to limit themselves to routines where less or no risks can be encountered. Opportunities for these individuals become limited as well. It is then necessary that individuals with anxiety disorders are given the right treatment or therapy in order to overcome their fears or hesitations.



For this purpose, several therapeutic approaches without the use of pharmacological treatment had been developed and applied for anxiety management. Among these treatment approaches include the cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and the psychodynamic psychotherapy. Thus, in this research, the roles of these approaches for anxiety management will be defined. In particular, focus will be on the goals of psychodynamic psychotherapy and its relation to the CBT theory. The efficacy of this treatment approach will also be highlighted through clinical trials and various researches.



Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Cognitive behavior theory (CBT) is a therapeutic approach that involves talks and conferences. In this therapy, the patients will have to discuss and express their feelings, behaviors and thoughts to a mental health professional. The focus of CBT is to determine these feelings and identify how these are affecting the patients, in terms of their actions. This focus of the CBT makes it a problem-solving therapeutic approach. The main aim of this therapy is to teach individuals how to properly think and react to certain stressful situations. CBT can actually be used for a number of reasons. These include anxiety disorders, phobias, depression, eating disorders, schizophrenia and relationship difficulties (Kassel, 2005).



This psychosocial therapy is based on a non-medication approach, which believes that maladaptive thinking patterns are the ones causing negative emotions. Maladaptive thinking patterns basically pertain to the behavior that leads to an individual's unproductiveness; thus, this behavior is often used to explain how anxiety problems can interfere with the individual's normal life activities (Ford-Martin, n.d). Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is a general term used to describe the different therapies that combine both behavioral and cognitive interventions in handling psychological disorders.



The aim of the behavioral intervention is to lessen the individuals' problematic behavior and emotions by means of behavioral modification. The cognitive intervention on the other hand also aims to reduce the persons dysfunctional behavioral and emotional; however, in this case, the process is through the alteration of the individual's thinking pattern. These two approaches were used based on the theory behind CBT theory. The theory states that people who have psychological troubles like anxiety disorders undergo problems on these two aspects as maladaptive consequences of previous learning. It is then the aim of CBT to reduce the person's unwanted behavior or distress; this can be done by means of providing a new and more adaptive learning experience (Brewin, 1996).

CBT was developed by two psychologists Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck during the 1960s. The psychologists believed that disturbed emotions and maladaptive behaviors are caused by inappropriate automatic thoughts or irrational thinking pattern. An example of a distorted viewpoint is when the person feels useless when scolded by a superior or when he or she does not please a particular person. A therapist applying CBT will then attempt to make the patient realize this distorted view and change it through cognitive restructuring. Behavioral therapy is also part of the CBT. In this case, the therapist tries to train the person to remove all undesirable behaviors and replace them with good ones. This approach is not after the identification of why the patients behave in certain ways; rather, it is more after teaching the affected individuals how to modify their behaviors (Ford-Martin, n.d).



Basically, CBT is given to the affected patient in order to identify the causes of the negative behavior as well as show the patient how he or she can bring about changes to these behaviors. From other case observations, patients who undergo CBT often have schemas or core beliefs about their self or their surroundings; these schemas are then the ones that must be identified and changed. This can perhaps be explained further through an actual situation. For example, a patient with anxiety disorder has this fear about being with people. Thus, in order to avoid this fear, the person tries to isolate himself or herself from others.



Upon questioning, the patient will state that it is best to avoid people than face rejection. Eventually, the therapist will find out that it is the patient's inferiority complex that is drawing him or her from others. The lack of love and belief for oneself is the main schema of this case; this then will be the focus of the CBT. The therapist helps the individual the level of reality behind this schema and convinces him or her to realize the truth and what is possible.



The aim of CBT is then to make the patient feel important and loved. This can be done by asking the patient to name his or her family members, relatives and close friends. The purpose of this approach is to make the patient realize that there are people who appreciate hi or her for who he or she is. This in turn will make the patient realize the irrationality of his or her distorted schema. As CBT is applied, the patient will start to think that he or she is an interesting person and fun to be with. By teaching the patient to become more appreciative of himself or herself, the maladaptive behavior and thinking pattern is replaced with a more positive schema.



There had been a number of empirical supports that confirm the efficacy of CBT in reducing both short and long term anxiety disorders (Chambless et al., 1996). Similar to how CBT is applied to other psychological conditions, CBT is given to patients with anxiety disorders in order to make the patients aware of the sources of their anxiety. The therapy is also after the learning of the different skills that will help the patients restructure their cognitive and behavioral aspects. This will help the patients to reduce the level of their anxiety or fear.



The treatment approach for patients with anxiety disorders usually take about ten to fifteen individual or group sessions, utilizing different activities such as psychoeducation, relation training, systematic exposure to causes of anxiety, cognitive restructuring and self-monitoring. The duration of the treatment however, depends significantly on the severity of the patient's condition. In addition, the outcome and length of the treatment period is based on how the patient can master the concepts of the CBT approach as well as his or her willingness to get better. The skill of the health provider is also an important determinant of the treatment outcome (Demertzis & Craske, 2005).



Treatment Modalities of CBT

There are a number of specific approaches on how CBT can be administered to an individual. One way is through psychoeducation. As the name implies, this approach aims to educate the patients about different feeling related to anxiety as well as various behavioral symptoms. This modality also objects to relay the rationale of the treatment plan to the patient and explain how the process will be able to address his or her psychological condition. Among patients with anxiety disorder, psychoeduation is a useful CBT approach that helps patients to understand physical sensations with the different possible sources of harm. In other words, this approach is helpful in teaching the affected individuals the right feeling or emotion as the situation requires it.



Another CBT technique used for handling psychological disorders is through the self-monitoring strategy. In this case, the aim is to pinpoint the exact cause of anxiety or fear in the individual and identify how the person reacts to this stimulus. This strategy is not only helpful for patients in recognizing their fears, but it also serves as a useful gauge for individuals to recognize their psychological progress. Though this CBT tool may initially show the level of distress the patient is currently in, it is a very helpful approach in motivating the patient to work on their disorder especially if therapeutic success is gradually becoming evident.



In other cases, exposing the individuals to their sources of anxiety repetitively can also help in cognitive and behavioral modification. This is also known as exposure therapy, wherein the resulting effect of this approach is the significant emotional reaction to a certain stimulus. One more specific approach with this type of strategy is called the imagery exposure. In this case, the patients are encouraged to increase their tolerance over an imagined situation.



The deliberate initiation of the physical sensation that patient fear is also used in reducing heightened negative reactions to a particular situation. Examples of these deliberate physical sensations are panic, nausea and increased heart rate. Patients for example will be spun around to initiate a feeling of panic or hyperventilation; the patient will then be taught how to handle these sensations. Redundant exposure will help affected individuals to get accustomed to these used to be overly negative sensations. Eventually, they will be able to handle different stress factors by responding to them appropriately.


Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

A related approach for handling anxiety disorders and related health problems is through psychodynamic psychotherapy. At times, this non-pharmacological approach is also referred to as psychoanalytic psychotherapy. According to Scholten (2005), this treatment approach is a general term for therapies that help patients to bring out their hidden feelings out. Similar to the theory of CBT, psychodynamic psychotherapy believes that by realizing the sources of their fears, patients will be able to understand how these unconscious feelings are affecting them as well as how these can be managed more effectively.



Without the proper attention and help, people tend to leave unconscious feelings unrecognized; psychodynamic psychotherapy believes that such feeling are often left unacknowledged due to the pain or negative things associated with them. People put up certain defenses to protect from recalling such negative feelings. Some of the common ways on how one defends himself from negative thought include denial, made up explanations and venting bottled up feelings through anger or other extreme negative reactions. This therapeutic approach presumes that these defenses are not actually protecting the person (Scholten, 2005).



Psychoanalysis is a subsidiary of the psychodynamic therapy; this derivative actually makes this therapy quite different from the concepts of the CBT theory and anxiety management. The main objective of psychoanalysis is to track down the possible causes of the person's psychological disorder based on his or her background. Typically, this background analysis includes an individual's childhood or adult experiences; by analyzing the person's upbringing, possible conflicts encountered by the individual that could have resulted to his or her mental state, can be identified.



The process of administering the psychodynamic psychotherapy is largely dependent on the good relations between the patient and the therapist. The procedure is commonly divided into three stages. These include transference, counter transference and interpretation. The first step, transference, commonly involves the transfer of an important relationship to the health therapist. During the discussion of the patient's relationship to the therapist, the patient tries to relay related thoughts, emotions and defenses. In this initial stage of psychodynamic therapy, the patient sorts through issues and become more aware of the causes of his or her anxiety.



It is essential that the therapist fully understands the feelings of the patient. Thus, in counter transference, the therapist tries to use his or her feelings in order to understand the patient's situation. This is an important step as this will allow the therapist to develop an intervention suitable for the patient's case. After this, the therapist will gain the relevant insights about the patient's problem.



In the interpretation stage, the patient tries to assess how much the patient is attached to these feelings as well as what feelings are left unrecognized. At this final phase of the therapeutic procedure, the therapist also tries to identify the ability of the patient to tolerate the negative things associated with those feelings. These interpretations will then be used by the therapist to explain the patient's situation. Eventually, this realization will allow unconscious feelings to surface and be addressed.


Theoretical Comparison: CBT and Psychotherapy

As initially discussed, CBT theory states that the recognition of ones source of anxiety is caused by dual factors: cognitive and behavioral. Thus, it is important that these causes of stress should be addressed by cognitive and behavioral medication. Similarly, psychodynamic psychotherapy is based on the concept that a stress factor, referred to as unconscious or hidden feelings, is the primary cause for an individual's psychological problem. This therapy is patterned after the CBT theory as it also stands by the belief that these causative factors must be realized for proper treatment.

Despite the similarity of the treatment approaches, psychodynamic therapy also has some features different from CBT. For instance, it was mentioned that the aim of CBT is to address the patient's psychological disorder through the administration of cognitive and behavioral modification. The psychodynamic approach on the other hand, is more focused on identifying the roots of the patient's condition based on his or her background. Childhood experiences or adult encounters that could have brought about the patient's anxiety disorder are recognized by both the patient and the therapist. Through this, the therapist is able to design a treatment approach that will help the patient face the identified unconscious feeling. In other words, psychodynamic psychotherapy is not after the patient's maladaptive behavior but on exact personal experiences.



There appears to be a distinction between a CBT and psychodynamic therapist as well. Although the relation between the patient and the therapist are important in both treatment approaches, psychodynamic therapeutic procedures suggest a stronger relationship treatment relationship. In CBT, the therapist's role is to help the patient change cognitively and behaviorally through different CBT approaches. In psychodynamic however, the aim is for the therapist to feel what the patient is feeling; this helps the therapist to understand the patient's situation and develop individual treatment approaches. As psychodynamic psychotherapy requires a deeper sharing and understanding of the patient's feelings, it can be said that patient-therapist relation in this treatment approach is stronger and more established.



Clinical Trials and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

From the description of this treatment approach, psychodynamic psychotherapy primarily aims in allowing the patient to recall significant experiences, events or relationships. This in turn helps the patient to identify unconscious feelings, while the therapist can develop appropriate interventions that will help the affected individual to address his or her sources of anxiety. It is then the purpose of psychodynamic psychotherapy to reduce the anxiety levels of the patients and help them live a life with improved quality. The treatment approach was able to fulfill this purpose as confirmed by a number of clinical trials and researches.



One example of clinical trial done using psychodynamic psychotherapy was conducted by Franke, Hoffmann & Frommer (2005). In this research, the aim was to identify whether psychodynamic inpatient psychotherapy can lead to significant mental health outcomes after a year of administration. For the participants, a total of sixty-four patients were selected from a single hospital. In order to determine the impact of the treatment approach, the researchers used two checklist tools called SCL-90-R and IIP-D. These assessment tools were utilized for four times during the duration of the research process. The observations were conducted at the start of the treatment, after four weeks, at the end of the treatment and a year after the treatment was given. The results of the assessment tools showed that giving psychodynamic psychotherapy to patients after four weeks resulted to significant progress of reduced psychological distress as compared to the assessment result during the start of the treatment.



However, the researchers also concluded that as the treatment approach is continuously used, the impact of treatment decreases. Still, the findings of the assessment tools used by the researchers indicated that problems such as depression, obsessive/compulsive behavior, dominance and anxiety were addressed significantly through the treatment approach. The researchers concluded that although significant signs of improvement were detected on the first four week of treatment, this is still not enough to achieve optimum reduction of psychological distress or change in behavior. During the course of treatment, changes are still observed during the different period of assessment, indicating that long-term outcomes can be achieved through long treatment plans (Franke, Hoffmann & Frommer, 2005).



Other researches verified the fulfillment of the treatment's purpose to mental health patients by concentrating on specific disorders. Kronmuller and associates (2005) for example focused on identifying the efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy among children and adolescents suffering from various anxiety disorders. Aside from the observed prevalence of this psychological condition among children, the researchers opted to focus on this disorder considering that limited researches had been done to correlate the treatment's efficacy to anxiety disorders. The major objective of the study was to assess whether PSTP or short-term psychotherapy can result to significant progress in addressing anxiety disorders among children and adolescents.



In order to determine the efficacy of the treatment approach, two participant groups were formed: the treatment group and the control group. The treatment group was composed of patients with anxiety disorders who were subjected to twenty five therapy sessions. The outcomes of the treatment will then be compared to the children and adolescents found on the waiting list who then served as the control group; this group did not receive any treatment yet. For data-gathering, the researchers made use of the IS-CA or the Impairment-Score for Children and Adolescents, the CBCL or Child Behavior Checklist as well as the PSCFS-CA or the Psychic and Social Communicative Findings Sheet for Children and Adolescents. Both the CBCL and PSCFS-CA assessment tools were also used by the researchers during the start of the treatment. Significant clinical changes and statistical findings were then evaluated through these measures (Kronmuller et al., 2005).



Based from the gathered findings of the IS-CA, the group who were subjected to psychodynamic psychotherapy was able to obtain significant advantages as compared to the participants in the control group. Majority of the participants in the treatment group, or sixty-two percent, exhibited significant improvements after the twenty-five treatment sessions. This finding also applied to the data gathered using the CBCL and PSCFS-CA. From these results, the researchers concluded that PSTP is an efficient treatment approach for addressing anxiety disorder among children and adolescents. However, considering that not all patients were able to show significant treatment outcomes, the researchers suggested that the impact of psychodynamic psychotherapy is also related to the severity of the patients' disorder (Kronmuller et al., 2005).



Panic disorder, a form of anxiety disorder, is also among the psychological conditions used to test the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy for anxiety management. Originally, this disorder is termed as anxiety neurosis wherein patients typically have a hard time in upholding themselves. This disorder is also characterized by the anxious expectation of the individual for frightening things to occur either to him or to the people he cares about. This is also observed when affected individuals feel great anxiety when separated from people or things that are closest to them.



There had been a multitude of previous researches confirming that psychodynamic psychotherapy is efficient in addressing panic disorders. One example is the research of Mildrod and Shear (1991) where the researchers were able to collate thirty-five case studies of panic disorders, which had been treated successfully through psychodynamic psychotherapy. From this research finding, other researches had also been introduced, confirming the efficacy of the treatment approach for panic disorders (Mildrod et al., 1996; Busch et al., 1996). In general, these subsequent studies concluded that psychodynamic psychotherapy is an efficient treatment approach for psychological disorders. It was also considered to be as fast-effecting as pharmacological and cognitive-behavioral interventions. In a randomized controlled trial done by Wiborg and Dahl (1996), the researchers tried to compare the outcome of clomipramine treatment with psychodynamic psychotherapy with an approach using clomipramine alone. The researchers found out that significant reduction of relapse rate was observed among patients using the integrated treatment approach.



A more recent research also confirmed that psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective in treating panic disorders (Mildrod et al., 2001). In this open trial, the researchers utilized the Panic-focused psychodynamic psychotherapy (PFPP) to twenty-one patients with panic disorder. The selected patients underwent a total of twenty-four treatment sessions. The selected treatment modality is administered to the patients twice every week. Each session lasts for about forty-five minutes. The PFPP is actually a modified version of the psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is still based on the same principles particularly on the significance of unconscious mental emotions and imaginations. The process is still centered on transference where the patient relays his or her experiences of panic to the therapist.



The PFPP is a treatment approach that is also divided into three stages. The first stage of the approach is centered on the treatment of the patient's acute panic. Here, the main objective is to reduce panic symptoms as well as reveal the unconscious meanings behind these symptoms. Under this stage, the therapist conducts three procedures. Initially, the therapist and the patient will try to explore what triggers panic as well as the symptoms and feelings related to it. After which, the unconscious reasons of panic such as anger or separation will be determined. From this recognition phase, it is expected that the patient will have reduced panic symptoms (Mildrod et al., 2001).



On the second stage, the main objective is to resolve the unconscious cause or reason behind the patients' feelings of panic. The purpose of this stage is to lessen the patient's vulnerability to these unconscious causes. For instance, if the patient feels panic when separated from an important person or object, the therapist works on helping the patient handle separation. This can be done by citing the rationale of separation. This is also applies when anger is the factor that causes panic. Here, the aim to help patient handle anger or similar strong emotions. Thus, in the second stage, the expected outcome is the development of the ability to handle unconscious dynamisms among affected individuals (Mildrod et al., 2001).

As the patient is now able to recognize and handle his or her unconscious dynamism, it is then the goal of the third stage of PFPP to totally terminate the patient's difficulty in overcoming these causes of panic. In this stage, the patient is allowed to experience this conflict like separation or anger repeatedly. Through this procedure, the patient is able to understand his or her condition as well as the factors that cause it. This does not only improve the patient's psychological response to these unconscious dynamisms, but it also helps in maintaining the expression of more appropriate reactions. In this final treatment stage, the expected outcome is likely to be the total termination of the panic symptoms or the development of a new ability for the patient to handle his or her unconscious dynamisms of panic (Mildrod et al., 2001).



As this treatment approach is administered to the patients, the researchers also made use several assessment tools to evaluate the outcome of the PFPP. One of these assessment tools is called ADIS or Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule-IV-L. A tool that measures anticipatory anxiety known as ASI or Anxiety Sensitivity Inventory as well as the Marks and Matthews Fear Questionnaire that roughly measures phobic severity and avoidance were also used in the trial. Other measures like the Social Adjustment Scales (SAS), which measures the patients' functional impairments; Panic Disorder Severity Scale (PDSS), which measures panic severity; the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (Ham-A) that measures anxiety factors that are not related to panic; and the Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS), which was found to be a sensitive tool for assessing panic patients and measures impairments in family, social and vocational aspects (Mildrod et al., 2001).



After the clinical trial, the researchers found out that sixteen of the participants had experienced significant reduction of agoraphobia and panic. Participants who had depression problems also encountered remissions of the disorder. The measures used in this clinical trial also showed substantial improvements in the patients' symptoms and quality of life. From this finding, the researchers concluded that psychodynamic psychotherapy can be a useful treatment approach for patients with panic disorder.



Other researches had also verified the usefulness of psychodynamic psychotherapy in addressing cases of panic disorders. Ablon and associates ( n.d.) stated that the focus of most clinical trials on various psychological conditions was centered on the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy or pharmacologic interventions. However, follow up researches revealed that the discontinuation of these treatment approaches result to relapse or recurrence of the disorder. Thus, the researchers attempted to identify whether psychodynamic treatment may be used as a more effective alternative for handling patients with psychological problems, particularly those with panic disorders. In order to carry out this research objective, the researchers opted to assess the effect of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy to sixteen patients with panic disorder. The treatment involved twenty-four sessions administered once every week. The sessions were all audiotaped for data gathering purposes. The responses of the therapists, patients and observers to the treatment process were all evaluated every month through various assessment measures.



The summary of the findings revealed that significant reduction in the patients' total anxiety symptoms was observed. In addition, the overall functioning improvement of the patients was also evident after the treatment procedure. Specifically, sixty-eight to seventy-five percent of the total participants showed significant clinical changes after the treatment was administered. Based from these research outcomes, the researchers concluded that psychodynamic psychotherapy is indeed an effective alternative for treating patients with panic disorders. Aside from its efficacy, using psychodynamic psychotherapy is also a good treatment approach for patients who are resistant to pharmacological or CBT interventions (Ablon, et al., n.d.).



Other clinical trials and researches had also been conducted to determine the ability of psychodynamic psychotherapy to treat anxiety disorders. Most of the researches concluded that this treatment is effective as it was able to reduce psychological symptoms, which is the main purpose of psychodynamic psychotherapy. An example is the research of Doige and associates (2002). In this study, the researchers conducted a survey of five hundred and ten psychoanalysts from Canada, US and Australia. The respondents were to describe the development of their patients after undergoing psychoanalysis.

From the responses given by the participants, it was revealed that majority (82%) of the patients had been subjected to other medications or treatment approaches before going through psychoanalysis. The responses also showed that most of the patients (72%) cited in the study had been diagnosed with significant psychopathology, indicating that past treatment strategies may not have resulted to considerable clinical developments. The responding psychoanalysts noted in the survey that patients had greatly progressed after going through psychoanalysis, which on the average, lasted for five to six years (Doige et al., 2002).



Sandell and colleagues (2000) reported reduction of symptoms in a longitudinal study where hundreds of patients from Stockholm were selected. In order to determine the efficacy of the treatment approach, an assessment tool, Symptom Check List-90, was used to assess the effects of psychotherapy before, during and after the treatment procedure. In another research, Beutel and associates (2004) found out that long term psychodynamic psychotherapy is not only effective in reducing symptoms, but it is also significant in reducing work absenteeism as well as health care expenses.



German studies had also been published, confirming the efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy in reducing symptoms of anxiety and other related disorders. For instance, a total of 401 patients were used by Leuzinger-Bohleber (2002) in order to test the effectiveness of psychoanalysis. This was done through an effectiveness follow up for six years using either a questionnaire or interview method. The study concluded that patients were more satisfied with the outcome of the treatment approach than the psychoanalysts themselves. This is perhaps attributable to their cautiousness in measuring the outcomes of the therapy. A total of 111 patients were used in another similar research (Keller et al., 2002). The selected participants were subjected to a 100 treatment session of psychotherapy. Using SCL-90, the researchers also concluded that psychiatric symptoms were significantly reduced after psychoanalysis.



Factors Affecting Treatment Efficacy

From these clinical trials and researches, it has been indicated that although psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective in reducing psychiatric symptoms, certain factors appear to affect its efficacy. For instance, some patients with severe cases of anxiety disorders were not able to respond positively to this treatment approach as they require more extensive treatments. Treatment duration and continuity were also some identified factors that enhances psychotherapy's efficacy. Although brief psychotherapy was found to be effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety, other researchers suggest that continuity of treatment is important in maintaining gained benefits and preventing recurrence.



There are some factors however which has been considered as determinants of psychotherapy effectiveness. For instance, therapy outcomes based on the gender factor had been raised. Researchers were able to provide multiple inconclusive findings in this aspect; hence, the relation of the gender factor to psychotherapy remains inadequately understood. Most of the researches were focused on determining whether the gender of the patient or the therapist has any effect on treatment outcome. The study of Jones and Zoppell (1982) for example, indicated that female patient gain more benefits from psychiatric therapy as compared to male patients. In the same study, the researchers also found out that both female and male patients gain more psychiatric benefits from therapy when a female therapist is involved in the treatment process. Most studies however, claim that the relation between patient/therapist genders to the outcome of treatment is weak (Zlotnick et al., 1996; Beutler, Machado & Neufeldt, 1994).



Ogrodniczuk and associates (2001) on the other hand, attempted to determine the relation of the patients' gender to two different types of short term individual psychotherapy. Through random sampling, a total of 89 male and female patients were assigned in random either in the interpretative approach or supportive approach. Psychiatric aspects including anxiety, depression as well as symptomatic distress were measured in order to determine the effects of the treatments to the patients. The results showed that significant relations between gender and treatment type can be observed with the depression and distress measures. The findings indicated that female patients respond more positively in supportive psychotherapy that in the interpretative type. On the contrary, interpretative therapy appears to result to better treatment outcomes among male patients. The results then imply that gender factors may have a stronger correlation to the type of treatment approach given to the patients.



The researchers explained these findings based on the explanations of other researches. These previous literatures had suggested that female patients tend to prefer the establishment of more personal and collaborative relations with their therapists. As supportive psychotherapy is mainly characterized by these features, female patients tend to respond well to this treatment. In addition, the female patients gained better treatment outcomes from this approach than their male counterparts. On the other hand, literature suggested that male patients generally prefer the establishment of neutral relations with their therapists. The interpretive therapy fosters this feature, resulting to better treatment outcomes among male patients (Ogrodniczuk et al., 2001).



Usefulness in Psychology and Mental Health

Psychodynamic psychotherapy may be supported by a different theoretical framework as compared to a more popular CBT approach. Nonetheless, the studies and clinical trials cited in this discussion emphasize that psychotherapy can also serve as an effective treatment approach not only for anxiety disorders but in other psychiatric problems as well. One of the most important factors that make psychotherapy useful for both psychology and mental health is its ability to reduce psychiatric symptoms among affected individuals.



It was mentioned that anxiety disorders tend to affect the quality of the person's life. Through psychodynamic psychotherapy, patients are able to realize the roots of their fear or anxiety. The therapists on the other hand, are able to develop suitable treatment plans that will help patient behave and think more appropriately. This ability of psychotherapy helps psychologists and mental health professionals in achieving their goal of treating affected individuals and giving them better quality lives.



Among patients, the use of psychodynamic therapy is also useful not only in reducing the symptoms of their disorders but also in helping them enjoy life more. As they are gradually treated by psychotherapy, they are able to access greater opportunities, perform more activities and produce better work output. In addition, this treatment approach is useful for them in dealing with people and in other actual life situations. Overall, the administration of this treatment approach is useful for patients, especially in giving them the chance to experience and enjoy things that life has to offer.



Patients tend to have different responses to psychiatric treatment approaches. Although pharmacologic treatment may be a tried and tested strategy for anxiety problems and other similar disorders, some patients are hesitant to take in medications. The compliance of patients to pharmacologic treatments is also difficult to ensure; for some, this intervention can also be costly that non-pharmacologic interventions. Hence, another usefulness of psychotherapy to mental health and psychology is the provision of treatment options based on the patients' individual cases. Therapists are also given more treatment alternatives depending on the needs of their patients. In other words, the addition of psychotherapy improves flexibility in addressing various mental health concerns.



Conclusion

Managing anxiety disorders and other psychiatric disorders is essential as this will allow patients to gain a life with better quality. Addressing these disorders will also help them in performing various activities. This then led to the introduction of various treatment approaches like CBT and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Both of these approaches have certain differences; however, the principle of both approaches has a single objective, and that is to help patients recover from their ailments. From this research, the efficacy of psychotherapy has been stressed through a number of clinical trials and relevant researches. In addition, the usefulness of this approach to the patients as well as to the mental health field had also been stressed though these studies. In conclusion, both CBT and psychodynamic therapy had been confirmed as effective by a number of authors. Therapists and mental health professionals should then consider the distinct features of these treatment approaches and apply them according to the preferences and needs of individual patients.