Services Management and Public Administration - Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Services Management and Public Administration. Answer: Introduction The report is prepared to discuss about the various management perspectives considering the business organization Woolworths in Australia. The topic will discuss about the various roles and functions performed by the managers along with the challenges and risks faced by the changing organizations nowadays. The impact of values, ethics and diversity on the organizational culture will also be demonstrated here considering the roles, behaviors and performances of the managers from the organizational context. Woolworths is an Australian supermarket store chain that offers good quality products and services for meeting the needs and preferences of the customers. It has a revenue of more than 4500 crores AUD and has more than 1,11,000 employees with nearly 1000 stores present worldwide (woolworths.com.au, 2018). Rationale of research methodology Based on the case study, it could be understood that the organizational theories include both organizational ethics and ethical practices managed at Woolworths. These are principles and standards that should be maintained for acting with fairness, compassion, honesty, integrity and fulfilling the roles and responsibilities properly too. The manager of the organization must make sure that the employees of the organization should abide by those and understand the ethics by training the employees on the company standards. It could be seen that various management and ethical issues could arise within the organization such as lack of clear focus for the organization and inability to make decisions, shortage of funds, lack of communication and coordination along with conflicts and misunderstandings between the employees and other team members (Drori, Hllerer Walgenbach, 2013). Lack of direction and incomplete or inaccurate information and data could also be other issues or constraints tha t the managers find difficulty to manage. The research rationale also shows the problems that are faced by the managers such as lack of proper selection practices and inability to set clear performance expectations. Once the problem is identified, it would be easy to engage in constructive feedbacks and facilitate the changes in behavior to deal with the issues resulting from changes within the organization. The progressive discipline process is managed as well for handling the issues properly and at the same time, confronts the performance related issues within the workplace with ease and effectiveness. The managers of Woolworths often faced issues to make the right hiring decision and make sure that no such unethical practices are managed, which could hamper the organizations reputation and image (Hull, Su Vaculin, 2013). This would create a safe and productive environment as well as resolve the team related conflicts, furthermore manage conflicts within team. The research strategies were implemented to select a proper design, approach and even ensured proper collection of data, both primary and secondary. The primary data was collected by conducting surveys from where quantitative data was gathered and the qualitative data was gathered by conducting interviews with the managers. The secondary data was mainly collected from authenticated sources like journals, articles and internet websites (Salikin, Ab Wahab Muhammad, 2014). Roles and functions performed by the managers There are other issues as well such as lower performance due to lack of skills, coordination and communication among the workers along with low morale resulting from conflicts and misunderstandings among the team members. The high turnover of staffs could be the result of lack of motivation, encouragement, and low skilled workforce, which might even result in lower performances among the team members and degrade the business performance. With the changes in structure and culture of the organization, the managers could face difficulties in managing the various aspects of the organization properly, which could even degrade the organizational performance (Michielsens, Bingham Clarke, 2013). Due to this, the employees would not be able to understand the organizational standards properly as well as make the organization fail to mange proper planning, leading and administration of resources. The lack of guidance and direction to the employees could also be the result of lack of management and even the leadership and motivating skills of the managers might be questioned. This would automatically raise the management approaches undertaken by Woolworths; furthermore result in frequent complaints, conflicts and poor performances of the workers (Birkinshaw Gupta, 2013). The managers must encourage and motivate the team members to participate in training and developmental sessions, furthermore allow them to learn new things and become more skilled, knowledge and obtain expertise to perform to their potential. It is important not only to maintain proper health and safety of the workers, but also to keep them motivated and encouraged through providing them with rewards and incentives for the betterment of their performances and skills. According to Mintzbergs set of ten roles, the various rules and functions of the managers are demonstrated here. There are various functions of the managers at different levels like human resource management functions, financial operations management, staffing, directing and controlling the business operations. The human resources manager has the role of planning and managing the staffing process, i.e., to recruit and select the most suitable candidates within the organization. It is often seen that due to changes within the organization such as due to replacement of manager or due to structural and culture changes, the organization faces issues and the employees have been misguided too during certain situations. The managerial functions to deal with these kinds of issues could be to enable proper planning and then direct or lead the employees in the right direction for the successful accomplishment of goals and objectives with convenience (Doh Quigley, 2014). The planning phase involves creating a detailed plan towards the achievement of specific organizational goal or objective. During the planning, the tasks are identified and the tasks that should be performed would be outlined along with the individuals who would be responsible for performing the tasks. The focus of planning would require proper knowledge of the vision and objectives of the organization. At Woolworths, the managers could select the processes that could be the most appropriate and then organize those in a logical pattern with proper timelines set. Planning would allow Woolworths to gain a better sense of what should be achieved along with the gaining of ability to respond to various situations quickly (Osborne Strokosch , 2013). The HR managers of Woolworths are responsible for the staffing functions and ensure that the resources are directed to the appropriate processes and tasks. This would allow for focusing on the labor or workforce and relate those to the organizational goals and objectives. The functions of the HR managers are to select the right people for the right positions and make sure that the structure of the organization is not hindered due to lack of skilled individuals within the workplace (Razman, 2015). Impact of values, ethics and diversity on the culture The values, ethics and diversity can play a vital role in ensuring ethical decision making and at the same time, ensure successful management of business operations and processes by maintaining the ethical standards. The maintenance of values and ethics is an integral part of the workplace and the ethics must be put into practices within the business setting. The managers are responsible to make people know about the ethical standards that should be managed along with the successful implementation of the ethical policies and procedures to ensure ethical decision-making. Woolworths has ensured ethical compliance by becoming socially responsible through successful management of sustainable approaches (Delmas, Etzion Nairn-Birch, 2013). The company even adopted environment friendly approaches for contributing to the maintenance of organizational values and ethics and even mastered the excellence in terms of benefiting the society as a whole. Discrimination is prevented within the workf orce and the employees are treated equally regardless of being a male or female. Unethical behaviors and attitudes can often be embedded into the minds of subordinates, which could prevent managing proper values and ethics and could even deteriorate the brand image and reputation. In case an employee of the organization is a victim of harassment, the management should handle the situation properly by making sure that the working conditions are safe and the health and safety of the employees are maintained. The work schedules should be considerate and fair, which could not only prevent unethical practices within the workplace but would also allow Woolworths to achieve the ethical standards (Christensen, Mackey Whetten, 2014). This would also increase the level of morale of the employees, furthermore encourage and motivate them to perform to their potential. Other than the citizens, employees and the community, the companies should respect the company and the same happened for Woolworths. The company had set good stewards of the earth to become socially responsible and even laid out commitment for the social responsibilities within the community. The company developed policies and procedures to maintain environmental sustainability for ensuring that the resources could be used wisely and new departments should be created for adopting more reasonable policies. The company also provided education for the poor children and even maintained policies to recycle wastes and used energy efficient lightings at the stores to create lesser impact on the environment (Reamer, 2013). The company had maintained ethical practices to set fair prices for the products and services and even delivered the best quality products, which created positive mindsets among the customers. Woolworths even marketed the products through proper advertisements and promotio nal strategies so that the customers were not neglected, rather they could gain proper information about the products and services along with its prices. The involvement of social media platforms and social networking websites have further enhanced the ability to address the concerns of customers and made sure that those ate fulfilled properly too (Boulouta, 2013). Role of management functions Management is an important business aspect that ensures clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities along with clear understanding of the vision, mission, goals and objectives of the organization. The managers must possess good leadership skills, knowledge and expertise to make sure that the employees follow the goals properly and achieve the organizational standards. The management like all other major aspects of the business have certain functions to guide the operations and processes with ease and effectiveness. At Woolworths, management is a kind of dynamic process that represents the difference between the management functions and operational functions. The operational functions could be referred to as the marketing, finance and purchases that are made along with the management of functions based on the level of dependence on the organizational levels. The functions of the organizations though remain the same based on the hierarchy of the organization. The manager at t he senior level must possess enough skills and knowledge to get involved in various activities than the manager at the junior level (Guiso, Sapienza Zingales, 2015). The major concepts of business management though would likely remain the same; still the operational function of the marketing would change according to the organizational functions and according to the person in charge of the functions and operational goals and objectives to be achieved. Though the objectives at various management functional levels would likely remain same, still the manifestation could differ based on the different types of situations (Parrott, 2014). Being one of the most renowned and famous retail organizations, Woolworth consists of a committed Human Resource department, which focuses on the management of employees and even ensures the implementation of proper recruitment policies and procedures for ensuring successful attraction and retention of the candidates within the workforce (woolworths.com.au, 2018). Conclusion The report was prepared to understand the various aspects of management within the organization Woolworths in Australia. The rationale of the research methodology demonstrated the problems of the research, i.e., the problems and issues faced within the changing organization such as lack of direction or inaccurate information or data exchanged, lack of communication and coordination between the team members, lack of ability and skills of the managers to set clear goals and expectations. Due to this, the team members were not even guided in the right direction, which might have deteriorated the business performance too. The managerial functions include HR functions, staffing process management, directing and controlling along with financial operations management. The maintenance of values and ethics further helped in ethical decision making and even contributed large numbers of benefits to the community and people. References Birkinshaw, J., Gupta, K. (2013). Clarifying the distinctive contribution of ambidexterity to the field of organization studies.The Academy of Management Perspectives,27(4), 287-298. 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