WELCOME TO JEROME ETIM BLOG.

This blog tackles economic related issues on finance, commerce, people, culture and politics.
Enjoy reading............

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Before management makes effort to promote the image of the organisation outside, it is expected to strength the internal environment of the organisation.

      Before I begin to draw my discussion logically in order to embrace the question above I will like to define management as this would dissect the managerial role in the organisation and show us the pivotal responsibility of management both internal and external of the organisation. According to Koontz and O’Donnell (1978:321) argued that “managing is an operational process initially best dissected by analyzing the managerial functions and these essential managerial functions are: planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. The importance of management to the successful running of man’s affairs dates back to the primitive and medieval periods, and today the place of management, as an essential ingredient to the success of an enterprise are even more evident.
        While, Etuk (1985:1), views business environment as “both the internal and external factors that surround and potentially affect the activities and behaviour of a particular business organisation”. Although these factors or forces necessarily control the actions of businesses they are more or less accepted as givens by organisations in the sense that they are beyond the immediate and direct control of these organisations through the action of their managers. Therefore, the internal environment which is making up of the employees, policies, machines and memorandum can be x-ray daily by the management in order to sanitise its internal values.
Bacal (2010), identified strategic communication as an effective tool used by organisations in strengthening its internal environment. Management primary task is planning. Many organizations understand the importance of developing strategic plans to guide both their short/longer term decision-making. The thinking is that without knowing where we want to be and how we are going to get there, we can't coordinate organizational resources so that we get to where we want to go. Frequently, communication methodologies for communicating with customers and the public are included in strategic planning. 
However, few organizations address INTERNAL communication in the same way. Determining what should be communicated to staff, when it should be communicated, and how it should be communicated is often left up to the decisions of individuals made when there seems to be a need. In other words internal communication strategies are developed, reactively, when there is a crisis or major event that clearly requires addressing communication issues. Where communication is planned out, it is often around upheavals like major corporate or organization change, layoffs and downsizing, and technological change. However, once the initiating focus has been eliminated communication tends to go back to an unorganized incoherent process. 
It's a bit of a mystery why this occurs, but there is no question that strategic internal communication planning can be a proactive approach to building a better, more directed and efficient workforce.
But Dr. Kenneth D. Mackenzie in his article titled “The Practitioner's Guide to Organizing Organizations” argued that organisational problem solving goes beyond merely making a decision. It also includes finding and formulating the problem, implementing the decision, and an audit and review of the results produced. Deciding what to do when improving an organization is like the offense players reaching the line of scrimmage in football. To make any progress and to score one must go farther.
The process of organizational problem solving can take a long time. Given that each stage depends upon the prior stages, it should be obvious that by spending relatively more effort on the earlier stages, time and money should be saved on the later stages. Unfortunately, busy executives often spend too little effort on the problem finding and formulation stages in their generally commendable but often misguided belief in the benefits of acting quickly and decisively. For example, the response to a drop in sales might yield the decision to develop an elaborate incentive system for the sales force. The real problem might be caused by the poor pricing strategy or by administrative problems which create excessive delays in fulfilling an order.
Therefore, organisation must ensure that they constantly run it’s internal environment through these five main stages in the organizational problem solving process:
1.   Finding the Problem
2.   Formulating the Problem
3.   Making the Choice of the Solution
4.   Implementation of the Solution
5.   Audit & Review of Results of the Implementation.
Conclusively, one of the primary functions of management and leadership is to solve organizational problems. An organizational problem occurs whenever the work practices and processes of those tasked with producing specific results do not actually produce those results. How can a management solve such problems in an efficient and effective manner so that your organization remains on track for profitability and success?
1.   Identify the core source of internal conflict and constantly address them through effective communication.
2.   Formal organisational chart must be drawn to show level and privileges of every employee in the organisation’s organogram.
3.   Motivation and training of employees constantly is advised on a regular basis as this helps the organization move toward the most appropriate solution in the least amount of time.
4.   One of the proper sources for optimal organizational growth is continual management/ownership encouragement of collective problem sharing and solving behaviours throughout the workforce. This is an essential ingredient for success. If you're having difficulties dealing with problems in your business, ask yourself: "Am I regularly encouraging my employees to play in problem solving?
With the harnessing of integrated collective environment of both employer and employees decision/problem solving mechanism, management can now reach out and take the outside environment.

REFERENCES

Ø Etuk, E.J (1985). The Nigerian Business Environment. London: Macmillan.

Ø Jaja, S.A and Obipi, I (2005), “Management: Elements and Theories”. Port-Harcourt: Pearl publishers.

Ø Koontz and O’Donnell, C. (1978), Essential of Management. Second edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Ø Mackenzie, K.D. in his article titled “The Practitioner's Guide to Organizing Organizations”. (2010). Organisational Management Journal, Vol. 1, no.3 (2010). Pp. 33-34.

Ø Robert B. In article titled “Internal Communication Strategies”. www.robertbacal.org

Ø Wells William et al (1989) “Advertising: principles and practice.” fifth edition. New Jersey: Prentice hall.


No comments:

Post a Comment