Chapter 4: How do you think planning in today’s organizations compares to planning in an organization 25 years ago? Do you think planning becomes more important or less important in a world where everything quickly changes and crises are a regular part of organizational life? Why? Twenty-five years ago, firms conducted global trade; however, it was not as complex or as interrelated in comparison to today because there was less outside influence and the world was less connected. Firms then were able to use known rule sets, or past business knowledge, to adjust operations to respond to change (Vecchiato, 2015). As time passed and organizations grew more complex and diverse, so did market conditions and external influences on an organization. With a growing reliance on global competition, cross border outsourcing, and an interconnected world, there are many external influences and forces in today’s market environment. Although international trade enabled firms to lower prices to gain competitiveness, it also increased environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, a reliance on external sourcing, or outsourcing, allows today’s firms to cut costs but also increases external influences on an organization. In today’s interrelated markets, a crisis in one country that produces outsourced goods will influence a prime organization in another country. As an example of growing external influence, the explosion of technology and use of social media has created an overabundance of
“Organizational Management and Leadership” defines planning as “the development of goals, which leads to the development of an overall strategy for achieving those goals. Planning can be performed at all levels of an organization. Supervisors are planning when a weekly work schedule is put together for hourly staff. Top executives are planning when they define the mission statement of the company and determine how the organization can maintain its competitive advantage.”
The challenge in planning is that planning is essentially forecasting future actions and events. Most
It also forms part of good business ethics and is good practice to keep people up to date at all times when things change or need to be changed. Failing to do so can result in other peoples work plans being out of sync.
The structure and design of organizations have drastically changed over the last twenty-five years. Organizations develop new goals at the beginning of the year or after the completion of previous goals, and heavily depend on planning to help achieve these goals. Planning is an integral part of organizational success, as upper management receives substantial information on various needs such as risk uncertainty, available resources, employee development, and unforeseen changes in technology (Daft, 2013). Most importantly, successful planning allows management to make effective decisions when unforeseen events arise within the organization. Not participating in planning is equivalent to taking a road trip across the country without a
At the time of development of globalization there were many concerns about its benefits. However, it has brought significant changes in all segments of human life and International business is one area in which it contributed heavily (Reich, 1998). Companies all over the world are currently formulating their business strategies mainly after considering the trends in global market instead of domestic market. Outsourcing and offshoring are some of the new business principles emerged in this world after the implementation of globalization (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014). The core of these new business concepts is to exploit the business opportunities in overseas countries as much as possible (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014).
The dawn of the outsourcing era. Many large U.S. corporations cultivates outsourcing faster than we can imagine. The trend that began in the late 1970 and picked up speed in the 1900s with the opening trade with China, India, and Eastern Europe (“Outsourcing: What’s the true Impact”). In its broadest sense, outsourcing is simply contracting out functions that had been done in-house—a longtime U.S. practice (“Globalization: Threat or Opportunity”). Subsequently, outsourcing is an essential part of globalization; and it is the combination of markets through the cooperation of internalization, federal, and state governments with corporate companies to produce products on a reduce production cost, and offer services on lower labor cost. When a U.S. manufacture product, and buys material from an intermediate supplier from out of the country rather than producing them in-house, that is what is called outsourcing. Also, when U.S. corporation hires outside contractor out-of-the-country to do U.S. call center services for less labor cost that is outsourcing. When a company deals out its operational task, such as payroll, accounting, and software operations that is outsourcing. Obviously, all of these examples seem to benefit and in favor of the corporations. To get the clear understanding of outsourcing for major corporation perspective, I have interviewed IKEA’s U.S. Deputy Retail Country Manager Rob Olson about outsourcing—Swedish
The first of the nine influences is Globalisation. This is the increased economic integration of the world’s nations. Many businesses now have established a global web strategy where different elements of the key business functions are conducted. This form of outsourcing not only minimizes costs but also increases efficiency. An
The process of globalization has numerous significant effects on countries, organizations, and individuals. These effects can be observed in the quality of products, in their prices, but also in their availability. Because of globalization, numerous companies prefer to expand their business on international level. Some of them outsource some of their processes and activities to cheaper destinations that allow them to reduce their investments.
Since I’m in the healthcare sector, my particular organization has limited mobility in any global scale. A former colleague of mine works for a well known company called Apple. After further discussion and research, I will demostrate in this paper how Apple uses its resources to be a leading powerhouse in the elecontric equipment industry. To begin the global market for companies through the perspective of both economic and political liberalization have offered the firms to operate on a global scale (Berman, 2012). Various firms have increasingly engaged in activities globally that constitutes of exports, imports, outsourcing and the creation of production and sales abroad. The floating exchange rates after the collapse of the
Planning is considered to be a primary function of management. All organisations operate in a complex, dynamic and competitive business environment, and therefore, have to plan their actions without which they may not be able to survive.
Planning is a process of establishing a mission with clear goals as a means to achieve them. Good planning requires special skills and perspectives allowing decision-makers to understand the challenges they are facing and apply the most effective solution to a problem. In order to achieve success, one must plan accordingly. Planning can be short term or long term. Short term plans are done on daily basis and are easier to achieve than long term plans. Long term plans are also known as strategic plans and are used to achieve a long range vision or mission of a company. In both methods of planning, short term and long term, is necessary to achieve top notch results. Like in any other process, there are both benefits and pitfalls to a
The advent of social networking and other media has transformed the way citizens interact and how businesses market, promote, and distribute their products globally. The same can be said for mass collaboration efforts occurring through digital, online technology for the development of new and innovative systems, products, and ideas. Both social networking and mass collaboration bring new power and influence to individuals across borders and transform the nature of their relationships with global organizations. As in the past, these developments underscore and reinforce the importance of understanding different cultures, national systems, and corporate management practices around the world. Students and managers now recognize that all business is global and that the world is now interconnected not only geographically but also electronically and psychologically; it is hard to imagine any business or nonbusiness organization that is not directly affected by globalization. Yet, as cultural, political, and economic differences persist, savvy international managers must be able to develop a global mindset in order to effectively adjust, adapt, and navigate the changing landscape they face on a day-to-day basis. In this new eighth edition of International Management, we have taken care to retain the
36). Today, the increased attention for strategic planning is a response to rapid and extensive changes in society such as the introduction of market economies and privatization, increasing environmental awareness, more attention for sustainable development, decentralisation issues and structural adjustments in public spending (Davidson, 1996).
Competition, typically the most powerful external force, is increased by the advent of globalization. The number of companies and the number of countries where these companies operate and the way governments are dealing with the impacts of globalization is accelerating. The interaction of changes in government policy and business innovation has actually made globalization even faster. If a company does not become a global, it would simply be shut out of new markets. The reasons for the turmoil are numerous: a sputtering economy, increased global competition, the implementation of new technologies that displace jobs, the deregulation of certain industries, and the general
As trade increases hyper-competition grows forcing organizations to go global. By a company going global it requires them to rethink strategy and reform (Ananthram and Pearson, 2008). Global organizational structure is the way a company aims to merge local preferences with global strategy. The definition of global strategy is “strategic choices that have the characteristics of being globally uniform or integrated,” (Yip et al., 1997) such as standardization of products, uniform marketing, and competitive moves, but all globally (Townsend et al., 2004; Zou and Cavusgil, 2002; Bayraktar and Ndubisi, 2014). Global strategic strategy is a way to adjust to globalization. Globalization is “the economic and social process by which economies and communities grow inextricably interdependent “(Jhirad et al., 2009). The recent financial crisis (Das, 2010), large amount of poverty, and climate change are all problems that show how the world is globally connected because all countries impact each other (Jhirad et al., 2009).