Week 1 - Organisations & Strategy

ORGANISATION:

A group of people brought together for the purpose of achieving certain objectives. As the basic unit of an organisation is the ‘’ROLE’’ rather than the person in it, the organisation is maintained in existence, some times over along period of time, despite many changes of members.(David .A 1991)

The organisation is that which has: a)a clearly defined hierarchy with top-down authoritarian management. b)highly specialised responsibilities, roles and tasks for its members and c)a heavy emphasis on rules and procedures. ( Max Weber )

The action of organising something in a systematic arrangement or approach. An organised group of people with a particular purpose.Example:Business (oxford dictionary)

As we go further extent to know about an organisation, environment becomes a key concept. An organisation’s environment is every thing that lies outside the organizational boundary. That is ,other organisations, the society in which it operates ,governmental agencies and institutions ,the economic system, the labour marketing ,financial systems and so on. These factors make up what is known as the ‘’the general environment’’.Organizations generally do not have to deal with the whole environment in its totality, particular parts of the environment will have special importance. These make up the ‘’task environment’’ and include the organizations own customers,suppliers,shareholders,bankers, and so on. With in the organization, individual subunits will develop relations with particular parts of this task environment.so,for example, the finance department will deal with external financial institutions and specific governmental agencies such as the Inland Revenue, while the purchasing department will deal with suppliers and their agents .Each department will therefore manage the interface between themselves and a segment of the total task environment, acting on behalf of the organization as a whole.(Aldrich 1979 )

STRATEGY:

Meaning of strategy: A plan designed to achieve a particular task. (Oxford dic)

In broad strategy can be defined as the match an organization makes between its own resources and the threats or risks and opportunities created by the external environment in which it operates. So strategy can be seen as a key link between what the organization wants to achieve-its objectives-and the policies adopted to guide its activities. We need to recognise that an organization can have a single strategy or many strategies and that strategies are likely to exist at a number of levels in an organization. To explain this we explore the different levels of strategy: 1.corporate strategy 2.Business strategy 3.Operational strategy ( Hofer and Schendel 1978)

1. Corporate strategy: It is concerned with the type of business the firm, as a whole is in or should be in. It addresses such issues as the balance in the organization’s portfolio by directing attention to questions like the attractiveness of entire business, with reference to important strategic criteria, such as markets, contribution to corporate profits and growth in a particular industry.

2. Business strategy: The key strategic issue at business level is determining competitive strategy. This involves addressing the following questions:
· What markets should we be trying to compete in?
· What competences or capabilities do we need to compete successfully?
· How can we move forward? (Cliff and David Ash 1996)

3. Operational strategy: At this level the focus is likely to be on the maximisation of resource
productivity. It is concerned with how the various functions- finance, marketing, operations, research and development etc.., contribute to both business and corporate strategy.
I think that these variables and their influences may vary from organization to organization.

My Perspective:

I think an organisation should have a perfect structure, functioning and its relationships to the people who comprise . The work of business is divided into a series of tasks or operations by the people in an organization.

Let me give an example to support the above topics. Here I am going to establish a power plant. I am considering the power plant as an organisation. In my organization I have1.Chairman ,2.board of directors,3.Engineer and Manager (C.E.O) ,4.ITI workers. The role of my organization is to produce electricity at least 300 days per year. who ever in this organisation changes , the role should not be changed. So that only I can earn more profits. In my organization the hierarchy is given from 1->2->3->4.Each and every level of members have their roles and responsibilities in the organization to generate electricity with out creating any problem to organizations role. Coming to the environment ,the chairman and board of directors have the relations with governmental agencies and the economic system to get license for the plant and to sell generated electricity in the market. Here the engineer and the ITI workers do not have relations with the task environment.

My organizations strategy is to produce more kilo watts of power, high profits and to become the top power generating power plant in India. Coming to the different levels of strategy chairman and board of directors comes under corporate strategy. The administration wing completely belongs to this team. They involves in investing the profits coming out of the industry into the same field to extend the power plant. The C.E.O and manager comes under business level who involves in competing with other power generating units so that at what price can the organization can sell its power at a makeable rate . Actually they deals with finance and marketing department . The ITI workers comes under the operational level who plays a key role to produce maximum electricity. Here these workers are not concerned with the functions-finance, marketing, research and development .They only deals with the operation sector(as they operate the electricity generating machines).As I discussed earlier that these variables can vary from one organization to the other.

REFERENCES:

1. Aldrich, H.(1979).organizations and environments. Englewood cliffs, NJ: prentice hall
2. David , A.(2004).The routledge dictionary of business management
3. Hofer, C.W and Schendel, D. (1978) strategy formulation: Analytical concepts(st Paul, Minnesota: west)
4. Ansoff, H.I.(1965) corporate strategy(New York: MC Hill)
5. Cliff, B and David, A.(1996)''the contents of strategy'', Management Strategy
6. Maxweber.(20th centaury ) sociology
7. Oxford dictionary
8. Cary ,C and Argyris,C.(1998).''Organisation and environment'',Encyclopedia of management



community of purpose

me n deepak

our presentation


discussin abt our presentation

our goals,objectives...

SWOT analysis

its abt stratagy

rough work on 'organisation'

our team wid out man chi

our opponents
hamza

this thursday i have discussed with my team members about stratagy and organisation... we have shared our views ..... we presented our work in the seminar