Contemporary management Issues
The never ending crises in the world business scene makes it mandatory for companies to ceaselessly change their approaches to issues at the marketplace. Worldwide neo-liberalism has created various crises. Social, ecological, and political crises, which just like the past, have the potency to give rise to altering effects (Goodman & Marshall, 2013). Various international media outlets have been awash with various crises that have had a global impact and continue to influence in one way or the other the way business is conducted within nations and internationally. The world has witnessed a lot of large-scale economic disturbances owing to the crisis in regions all over the world. This range from the threat of terrorism whose face has shifted from Al Qaeda to Islamic State (ISIS) in the Middle East, to the ongoing civil crisis between Russia and Ukraine, roping in the European Union and other world powers which have reacted with proceedings to institute sanctions. Also the sudden drop in international oil prices has had significant effects on the global operations of companies and finally, the financial crisis in Greece with its own serious ramifications for the Euro Zone.
All these change creating scenarios have created disturbances in the creation and supply of products in various industries and many companies have been forced to shift their operations. The most important thing has been to ensure businesses continue being in operations. Companies have recently reacted to this with mergers and acquisitions creating larger organizations, some of which continue to maintain their autonomy even after the mergers and acquisitions. The running of these new units has created the management issues for the contemporary company that has to navigate through various issues that occur within their areas of operations. The pertinent issue has been what happens to the management in these ‘large’ and sometimes complex organizations; in which direction do they lean towards, whether it is towards centralization or decentralization of management (Sobotkiewicz, 2014).
Mostly, the aspect of centralization has been to ensure that the centre has control of the businesses and where there have been concerns to the failure of leadership (Lakshmi, 2014), whereas decentralization has been to tap into benefits that are derived from the parts that are independent and atht tap into their being in their environments – especially innovations (Perry, 2014).
Management in Large Economic Organizations
With the reorganization of businesses arising out of mergers and acquisitions, there arises the organization that is operational in various regions with their legal and economic status being different from their parent company (Sobotkiewicz, 2014). At stake are various business units and the function that they perform. With the never ending changes and transformations, specific areas have been identified in the business units that make up the large economic organizations; efficiency, quality and flexibility, coupled with innovations are the basis upon which the modern organization has to create its competitive edge (Sobotkiewicz, 2014). The issues on management now becomes how these units working independently in various locations are able to transfer their individual competitive edge into the overall competitive edge of the firm and ensure that it remain agile to changes to it (Perry, 2014).
The choice of this management issue has been found to be something that will be found relevant to managers in the dynamic global business scene. As it is, it is a subject matter that finds relevance both at the business unit level as well as become applicable to be dealt with through various management initiatives throughout the organization. These are within the framework of what the researcher feels resonate with what has been encountered within the learning process
Organizational Response
For the most part in today’s global, vibrant business environment, organizations are often strained to promptly vary their strategic direction to remain competitive. In every industry, rapid technological developments, fluctuating consumer demands, and unpredictable market forces are digging at the foundations of even the most successful organizations (Eisenberg, Johnson & Pieterson, 2015). This unpredictability puts additional pressure on managers not only to carefully determine the kind of strategy that wool prove to be most successful but also to promptly and efficiently put into practice the chosen strategy at all levels of their organizations (Eisenberg, Johnson & Pieterson, 2015).
To understand how organizations/managers have responded to this issue, it is imperative that it be understood that the centralization or decentralization of management within an organization has its own dynamics. Organizations have actually have come up with ways to ensure that their management remain cognizant of the benefits that each individual business unit has to overall organizational success. Realizing the significance of this, then the management on the processes of efficiency, quality flexibility, and innovations within the business organization are very important.
Businesses have responded in having additional units that are well adapted to environments and can respond easily and appropriately due to their understanding of the conditions they operate in. success thus is ensured by having units that can respond to the dynamic business environments. As a strategy, mergers and acquisitions have their upside of adding a unit to the organization, whose competitiveness and if available, sustainability can be transferred throughout the organization. Management by seeking better ways of operations is a tried and tested way of ensuring that organizations respond to changes well.
Key among the aspects of management scenarios, whether from the top directly or decentralized, knowledge management is very significant to ensuring response to change.
The meaning of the notion of knowledge management is that it makes clear several of the things that are known intuitively about the way an organization operates. That is, the mutual working together that allows organization stakeholder, especially employees to know what makes the organization come up with response to change in the form of innovative new processes and products, which resolve difficult problems, to bring about efficiency, and in mature organizations, to facilitate the identification and immediate answers to risk (Bălan Sergiu & Lile, 2014).
Management Skills
The setting in which organizations function in the present day is fast becoming more difficult than it has ever. Significant modifications in technology and business and economic environment have brought about numerous opportunities, but also many test to organizations seeking to manage and prosper in the midst of this enormous change (Zdanyte & Neverauskas, 2014). Organizations have to come up with more areas for sustainable competitive advantage. Understanding the importance and key part that sustainable development plays in the wellbeing and ongoing operations of an organization in the contemporary business environment is of note especially when it comes to changes in organizations management. This requires finding of what management can do well and make efforts to ensure the same can be carried out over a long period of time with sufficient success.
Effective communication
Communication is a key component through which organizations ensure the flow of knowledge, strategy and goals and without a doubt get feedback on the same. For the variance that has been brought out with organizational management in large organizations, communication is important. More and more erratic and aggressive organizational environments have placed demands on management across all sectors to improve the handling of change (Eisenberg, Johnson & Pieterson, 2015). Most important to successful change management is the capacity to equally communicate the preferred change in forms that make line of sight, and build up standard basis of feedback that evaluate the scope to which the change has happened all over the organization (Eisenberg, Johnson & Pieterson, 2015).
Temporal focus of management to change
Closely related to communication is management which has at its higher levels aware of the temporal effects of changes.
The impact of the various crises on organizations is now recognized and organizations need to reorganize in order to be better adapted to this situation and to integrate new dimensions in their development and that is where temporal focus comes in (Dossou & Mitchell, 2015). Temporal focus, that is, the extent towards which management has typically given consideration to awareness of the past, present, and future give an indication on the rate of new product introduction since it is determined by the management’s spotlight on any of the three separate time scales in relation with environmental vigor (Sucheta & Jianhong, 2014).)
Knowledge Management
Also on communication and the transfer of knowledge is the very aspect of knowledge management. Knowledge management illustrates the procedure by which a organization systematizes, gathers, distributes and learns jointly from workers, stakeholders and the external environment (Bălan Sergiu & Lile, 2014). It is an expansive structure for keenly managing the information and knowledge that is available to the organization (Bălan Sergiu & Lile, 2014).
Ethical leadership
On whether leadership should be centralized or decentralized owing to the quality of the leadership being offered at various levels, within an organization, management has been called to rise up and make sure that have in place programs that aid in developing ways to guarantee ethical leadership. This will help in improving confidence in decentralized management. There is also the inclusion of quality managers, with their importance required to go beyond the narrow quality manager’s operational responsibility and embrace and drive the development of quality overall management that can be adopted throughout the organization (Elg et al., 2011).
Discussion and Conclusion
Changes in the business world are quite unavoidable and the forward looking organization has to anticipate and respond to them. With various issue occurring all over the world with major ramification that impact on businesses, mergers and acquisitions have been used to shield organizations from negative side effects from these issues. The management however of these new business units has remained a challenge since the lack of success of some parent organizations necessitated the mergers and acquisitions. However, management issue of concern has been largely towards ensuring success within the business units that make up the large economic organizations with emphasis on efficiency, quality and flexibility and innovations. Communication, ethical leadership and knowledge management remain at the core of the management practices that will bring success.
References
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