Corporate Restructuring, a wrong concept by companies?

In many cases of re-arrangement of resources which involve human repositioning in companies or the arrangement of new organizational chart has been literally addresses as company restructuring. The key management usually at early of the year shall look at the position of the employees and rearrange their positions. Especially after a critical loss in the previous financial statements or a new CEO being appointed or even the changes of board directors especially involving the Chairman.

The terminology of restructuring above has actually being interpreted wrongly. Restructuring can actually take two form; renovative restructuring and redistributive restructuring.

Renovative restructuring mainly contributes to equitable economic growth of the firm, while redistributive restructuring benefits certain groups of people that is those who remains in the company and not being expel during the redistributive exercise.

Redistributive restructuring involves six forms mainly;
1. Divesture
2. Buy Outs
3. Outsourcing
4. Relocation
5. Downsizing
6. Bankruptcy

Despite the objectives of restructuring is to strengthen the company and working out to the best position in making the company back to acquire good cash for a new move, the norm of the practice always started with redistributive and followed by renovative. For such reason, restructuring has being debated and its found to be inclined towards a negative impact and non economic equitability.

Case Study ( assignment question):

You are required to select a small entity company, sole proprietor or even unregistered business. Analyse its current strategy. If the entity is not exercising any strategy, propose the right strategy for them.

(Bahasa Malaysia)
Anda dikehendaki memilih sebuah entiti kecil perniagaan, milik persendirian atau juga perniagaan yang belum didaftarkan. Buat analisa apakah strategi yang diguna pakai. Jika tiada cuba cadangkan, apakah strategy yang betul untuk mereka.

Note: You must insert the:

1. Documents of company registration (or)

2. Picture of you with the owner (or)

3. The entity (company's) Financial Statements (or)

4. Any documents or pictures that could be a proof of your work.

Font: Arial or Century Gothic or Calibry

Size: 12

Spacing between lines: 1.5
Word counts: 2,500 - 3,000 words.

Submission date: Week 5

Please be reminded that any CUT AND PASTE WORK from Internet or PLAGIARISM shall BE REJECTED.

For additional understanding to do the assignment above, you could also read the article in this blog: Analysing Company's strategy - Sunday, December 16, 2012.

Emotional Labor, why its important?

  Emotional labor is described as “the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions”. Hochschild points out those service providers often undertake acting strategies, surface or deep acting, to manage their emotions and to display their emotional labor (Hochschild 1979). For that reason those business entities which provides services and interacts with customers must understand their employee’s emotional labor status. This will assist them in ensuring their first line employees will always in a good mood and emotions while facing the customers. How? Training, knowledge exposure to Emotional Intelligence would be a great mark for the emotions stability.

Surface acting requires individuals to hide and repress their true feelings to conform to organizationally required emotion display rules. Deep acting refers to cases where employees fully identify with organizationally desired emotions and are willing to adjust their inner feelings to comply with them. Surface acting is the main cause of emotional labor. This is what Robbins addressed as the difference between felt emotions and displayed emotions (Robbins 2005).

It is suggested that dissonant emotions emerge and result in increased emotional labor when employees have to maintain appropriate behavior when facing impolite or unfriendly customers, and when they are involved in unfair interactions (Hennig-Thurau et al 2006), demonstrate that service employees who appear to be smiling, happy, and friendly are not genuinely feeling these emotions when interacting with angry or unhappy customers. Such surface acting increases the level of employees’ emotional labor.

Affective event theory (AET) suggests that events in the workplace have a significant impact on employees’ emotional reactions; and in turn, on their work attitudes and behavior. Applying this theory, Rupp and Spencer found that people who were unfairly treated experienced strong levels of anger relative to those were fairly treated (Rupp and Spencer 2006). Recently, employees’ mood states have been found to be associated with some important organizational outcomes, such as service performance. Research reveals that positive mood states enhance employee work performance, whereas negative mood states diminish work performance (Hochschild 1979).


Assignment Question for OB:

In change management, resistance to change would be one of the main challenge. Explain how could an organization overcome this challenges and explain the process of change according to Kotters and Lewin.

( Dalam mengurus perubahan dalam organisasi, antara cabaran yang utama ialah penolakan kepada perubahan dan terangkan bagaimana untuk mengatasinya. Terangkan proses perubahan mengikut Kotters dan juga Lewin).

Note:
a. Font: Arial
b. Size: 12
c. Word counts: 2,000 - 2,500 words
d. Cross referencing is a required - at least 5 journals.
e. Cut and paste from Internet or plagiarism work shall not be attended.


Case study for presentation - choose either one of the questions below:

 

Leaderships styles is a critical components in managing an organizations. Select one of the style  which is relevant to your organization and propose for leaderships improvements.

(Ciri-ciri kepimpinan adalah komponen kritikal dalam mengurus organisasi. Pilih salah satu ciri      kepimpinan yang mungkin digunapakai di dalam organisasi anda dan beri cadangan untuk  menambah baik kepimpinan tersebut)

   
OR

 
Emotions is an important knowledge in organizational behaviour. How could you capitalize on  emotions for organizational improvements? Explain.

(Emosi adalah ilmu pengetahuan yang penting di dalam tingkah laku organizasi. Bagaimana anda boleh menggunakan emosi untuk pembangunan organisasi? Terangkan. 

   

Ethics, Morality and Legality; the confusion

The Malaysian public has always been tampered with understanding of ethics, morality and legality. News from newspapers, TV and even the social media contributing to certain extent the contributing factors which induce the misunderstanding on the real meaning of ethics, morality.

There are many issues of politics, business, corruptions practice and even consumer issues demonstrating the wrong doing or unethical practices by individuals or a group of people and yet it has been excessively discuss as an ethical practice. Some clear examples such as improper jungle clearance for the developments, distributing gift to certain community to invest on popularity, distributing aids money to the church, mosque or any House of God with a corruption money, and many more others which would only create a long list. Scholars, academicians, journalist and even fellow citizens have been curious where the ethics of Malaysian gone? Some issues blew by the wind which is not being discussed or finalized even though it is unethical and immoral. Some managed to escape with his or her offence especially involving huge amount of money transactions. No law has hooked them to court or if it does, free they are without any conclusions.

I still remember that what is said by an ethic scholar, Kant; “law has to be taken as complete.” Here it should not be any immoral act behind the decision made and the purity of intentions is an ultimatum, not only the impact of an action. We could witness that some promises given by some leaders that they are the doctrine of honesty, sincerity and moral yet the other side of the day is actually a miserable of guilt. This contributed to an almost confusion state of thinking to the public which accepting the promises as a whole with good intentions.

 According to an Ethic Philosopher also; Kant,

“Something that wishes to be made a rule must be accepted completely by the community and not the hypothesis.” Kant then continues that “To form universalism, a law must be fixed as complete and not hypothesis.”

For that reason, it is important that for all citizen need to be ruled by law neglecting their positions and power they attained. In some cases, we could witness some immoral act by certain group of people as not guilty and to certain group of people as an offence and guilty of an act. 

 According to Quran;

 n   And do not mix up the truth with the falsehood, nor hide the truth while you know (it) {2:42}

n   And, for what your tongues describe, do not utter the lie, (saying) This is lawful and this is unlawful, in order to forge a lie against Allah; surely those who forge the lie against Allah shall not prosper {16:116}

Kant also says that; in our action, purity of the heart and purity of intentions is the main of a moral act and according to Utilitarian; selfish is an immoral act. The question is; would it be moral if someone distributing a gift to his local fellow friend just to be praised or popular of himself?

A wrong doing, illegal practice and immoral act which are continuously being exercised will later become a norm to a person (Oslon & Zanna 1993), and according to Solomon, “when a values being develop and becoming norms to a group of society, it will later be the culture to the society,” (Solomon 1984).

Hence it is important NOT to practice an immoral and unethical act since a continuous practice will only be a norm to a person and later be a culture to the society. My question is how about gambling such as 4-digits, TOTO, and how about some percentage of commission for certain business transactions? Does it follow Oslo and also Solomon? Is “belilah loteri untuk kebajikan,” as what has been advertised in Malaysia during my early age? Is it moral?

Task/Assignment Question:

You are required to select a situation or a case which involve business and public interest. Explain from the perspectives on its ethical, morality and legality.

The topic must be approved by lecturer (the writer) before you proceed.

Word counts: 2,000 - 2,500 word

Fonts: Arial, Calibri

Size: 12

Note Pliagarism is TOTALLY NOT accepted and work shall not being marked.

ANAYLYSING COMPANY’S STRATEGY

One of the important activities in analyzing a rival company is its strategy. However this is not a simple methodology unless someone understands strategic management or crafting and executing strategy. We need to study completely on a company such as its organizational charts, its financial statement, its performance, its activities and company structure in understanding their strategy.

In analyzing a company strategy we first must know the competitive level strategy or business level strategy and the corporate level strategy. What are the strategies in the business level? The strategies are: Overall low cost provider strategy, Broad differentiation strategy, Focus Low Cost Strategy, Focus Differentiation Strategy and Best Cost Provider Strategy.

The next level strategy that we need to know is the Corporate Level strategy or the Beyond competitive level strategy of which the strategic components are Collaboration, Outsourcing, Merger and Acquisition, Internet, Offensive Strategy, Defensive Strategy, Forward Integration, Backward integration and Diversification.

 

By having a complete knowledge on the strategy, later we could undertake to evaluate the company’s strategy. This analysis could be supported with the action taken by the company, its performance, company structure or its organizational chart. The company’s performance will always be translated in its financial statements. Besides that, it is important to look at the company organization chart since the company structure determines the support to the strategy taken. A wrong organizational chart that do not support the strategy chosen will only induce unprofitable condition to the company or unable to effectively execute the strategy. For that reason in executing the strategy; PEOPLE-OPERATION-STRATEGY need a serious attention by the key management in ensuring the company economic equitability for all its business activities.

TASK:

 

1. You are being required to select an outfit or company. Analyse its strategy and provide   justifications for your statements.

2. You must enclose any documents of the company to show your work is not a plagiarism and as a support evidence such company registration etc. 

 

Important Note:

 

a. 3000 - 3500 words counts

b. Font : Arial

c. Size of font: 12

d. Insert your reference and cross referencing

e. Plagiarism work shall not be attended.

VALUE CHAIN

A business outfit in Mooloolaba - good ROI for 2010

Value chain is the sequential of primary and support activities of an enterprise performs where it turn into a value added outputs for its external customers. According to Michael E. Porter, it is a connected series of organizations, resources, and knowledge streams involved in the creation and delivery of value to end customers.

Value Chain in definition is different from ‘flow process’ which is more being defined as a method in visualizing and documenting the stages involved in performing a certain business procedure. It might take the form of flow charts showing the process steps by steps where the inputs to create a deliverable output. It might be product or services.

From the definition, we could see clearly the differences between Value Chain and Flow process. Analysis could be done on both of the said activities in improving a company business. However to induce profit maximization, value chain is more crucial to be evaluated and later action to be take in ensuring the corrective actions are taken.

Normally in the process of profit maximization or turning around company from losses to profit, value chain is being analyses right to the level of efficiency which involves cost such as man-hours.

For those students who have studied strategy would be much easier to understand the difference between these two. Hence they would the first mover in the organization to lead the company turnaround for profit maximization.

A few Malaysian Students at USC, Queensland

 If we learn strategy, value chain analysis would be in the section of internal analysis. Despite of short hours of learning value chain analysis in the subject of strategic or crafting and executing strategy, the importance of value chain has been known as one of the most important activities to be made for organization highest ROI (Return of Investment).

In my experience of undertaking the company turnaround activities, I have personally used the value chain activities as the core for profit maximization. I have even done research that proves the restructuring is a wrong and non-economic equitablity process to be taken by companies. There is no sure return and reduce even the ROI of the organization despite they might have profits after the restructuring. However the impacts of restructuring are more economic disastrous result to the people involved and even to the government locally and national level.

Assignment:

Select a small or medium size business outfit, analyse the business challenges faced by the organization and propose solution for its business challenges in ensuring its sustainability.

 

Important note:

You must insert in the appendix:

1. Copy or scanned business registration of the business

2. relevant picture of the business outfit

3. Some supporting documents used for your analysis e.g. financial statements.

4. Charts or table to be inserted

 

 

Note:

Word Counts:                3,000 -3,500 words

Font:                            Arial

Size of font:                  12

Spacing between lines:  1.5

Plagiarism work shall not be marked.

 

 

ETHICS AND US

 

In many of our days, we could see many human doctrines are just unethical or immoral. There are people walking along the streets, taking some sweets and the sweets cover are being drop intentionally on the road or floor. The smokers, smokes their cigarettes at the restaurant, later drop their cigarettes remains on the floor while stepping on it. All we know these actions are immoral since it is contributing to the place dirty for other peoples. They are being immoral because they do not care other people’s happiness and welfare as mentioned in Utilitarian.

Among the six points of Utilitarian; “when deciding for an action, consider the happiness and the unhappiness of others,” and even “action effect people to different degrees.”

There are many other actions that we thought we have practice a norm practice but actually immoral. Another example, two students, or three student just keep on talking while the lecturer is explaining infront, or having telling a lie for just being late to a meeting; is it moral? It is easily define by understanding the definition of Morality, “the social rule that govern and limit our conduct, what is wrong and what is right,” while ethics is defined as “the philosophical study of moral or morality or the theories of morality.” We need to remember that morality focuses on human welfare at the highest values and it might supersede the law.

Oslan use to say that; “a continuous practice may develop an attitude,” (Oslon and Zanna 1993). According to Solomon, “When a values being developed and becoming norms to a group of society it will become a culture,” (Solomon 1984).  The voice of the heart could intercept to determine whether the action of the students above is moral or immoral.

These are all small example. Despite of these there are many more practices that we have missed the morality value of it such as, a shopkeeper, keeping the weigh machine at faulty measurement, cooking or frying using the same cooking oil in a fast food restaurant which can cause cancer to customers or obesity, driving recklessly on the road which in return disturbing or violating other people’s happiness; actually we are just being immoral.

 

Assignment Question:

The Goverment introduces human capital, practices of morality values in business, ethics in societal relationships, consumerism and even focuses more on enviromental issues. Describe your understanding on thses issues and how does the interelations of those efforts shall work for the benefit of Malaysia toward 2020.

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTES:

Font Helvetica (size 12)

Spacing: 1.5

Words: 3000 excluding charts

Journal references: 5 in numbers (compulsary)

Book: 1 in number (compulsary)

Pliagarism work shall NOT be marked

ETHICS AND GLOBAL WARMING

In many area of the world, either in a small portion of a country, a portion of a continent, faces the impact of global warming. Despite of many NGO’s or some world leaders calling the other leaders to manage the factors which are contributing to global warming, yet many are still dimmed in saving the world from global temperature rising.

                                 Impact when the world has increased by 6 degrees

                                                (Source: National Geographic)

The global climate change is very much related to economic of nature and not political economic of nature. For that reason, many country leaders or politician deems to be talking with no real spirit in saving nature. It is strange when one day they might talk on saving the world from going to a higher degrees but on the other hand contributing to global warming in the nature of their development decisions or by ignorance. Today he or she provides speech on saving the world and the next day he or she shall officiate the next industrial area where clearing the remaining jungles or filling up lakes and rivers. There are times they will destroy or shift the natural rivers to a man-made rivers and lakes. They will shift the original clean water fall into an electrical small waterfall for a housing industry. These are all unethical deed not only by the optician but also the greed business man who are capitalist in nature, the profit and free market believer.

Most people do not understand the impact of climate change. They have no knowledge on what happen when the world rise with 3 degrees, 4 degrees and with 6 degrees.

Climate change has 3 main concerned:

a. Climate change contributed other important concerned such as 1 billion people living to unacceptable poverty due to unexpected drought, drying lakes and rivers or even desertification.

b. A fixation on global CO2 levels which contributed too many negative impact in the ecosystem.

c. A horror state of inducing meltdown of icecaps or glaciers which result in increased sea levels, global climate change, desalination of sea water which would contribute to haywire of the earth climate.

According to Stephen Gardiner, it is a ‘perfect moral storm’ to moralize the human mind and our political institution to reinstate in their mind the importance of caring the global climate from becoming to an increase global warming which contributed to major disaster to human kind (Stephen Gardiner, 2011)

Laws have to be amended and enforce to make them feel guilty or guilty as state, having an offence for destroying the earth climate. It is our duty of all to persuade 7 billion world populations to adapt the new morality of carbon rationing i.e. preventing from carbon free-riding.

We have to realize that, global warming is ‘human greatest threat.’ Humanity is about to face the most devastating catastrophe that mankind has encountered since the Bubonic Plague during the Middle Ages.

Either our world leaders are going to recognize global warming as a real threat to humanity and address it properly or the entire human population may become extinct. The effects of global warming are both frightening and overwhelming.

Not all what we read in the news or see on the television is true, example the thought of global warming in reaction to hurricanes. Public are not made known to a real scientific experiments. Scientists are being prohibited by politician not to publish all their data and findings on the current impact of global warming. It is only made known to the public that human are clearly contributing to the emission of CO2 in the air from burning of fossils fuels. No detail data were provided as the exact impact, because it is stops by politicians. It is just for political economic reasons and not for human well fare reasons. It is unethical and immoral to prohibit the scientist in providing a true data. However that is what being practice by politician all over the world including Malaysia. According to Utilitarian Ethical Philosophy, “we must provide the maximum benefit and happiness to the maximum number of people,” while according to Kant, “whatever we want to do our intentions must be pure in the intentions.” The question is, are our leaders pure in their intention to the people?

Questions for assignments:

Choose either one.

1. Global warming has a tremendous impact on human kind. Discuss in detail on this statement and how does it relates to unethical practice of human contributing to global warming. Why Alaska, North America and Australia has been said as the most minimal country contributing to global warming? How ethical knowledge could assist in reducing to global warming?

2. Social Capital is an important issue and has been forgotten. How a good social capital knowledge and practice able to contribute to an ethical business practice in a country?

 

Note:

a. Words count: 2500 - 3000 word

b. Font: Trebuchet

c. Size: 12

d. Spacing: 1.5

e. Plagiarism work shall not be accepted.