Leadership Research Paper

...

2.2.1 Advantages of restructuring:

- Operational costs decreases – if downsized – this would mean that there will be fewer employees and the organisation can focus on producing more products.

- To improve communication and decision making within the organisation

- May enjoy increased operational efficiency

- Outsourcing of various operations – if the organisation outsources some of their operations, this will allow the company to focus on its core operations in order to achieve its goals.

2.2.2 Disadvantages of restructuring:

- May lose highly skilled workers – if downsized – there is a possibility that the organisation may lose their most valuable employees in the time or restructuring or downsizing. This would mean organisation would have a shortage of skills.

- Costly financial process as it results in a reduction in the recorded value of assets. In most cases, large compensation payments are made out to employees who are forcefully dismissed.

- Added training expenses – if employees are reassigned or there has been an alteration of tasks then this would be that they would need to go on training in order to acquire the skills needed for the new role.

- May lead to low employee morale, poor customer service and an insecure feeling – this may lead employees being in distress and feeling uneasy.

______________________________________________________________________

Question 3.1

“Efficiency refers to the amount of inputs required to produce a given output. Inputs may include labor, component parts, skills, knowledge, or time. Outputs can be any goods and services that the customer wants. These may be products or they may be intangible things, like customer service.” (Jones & George, 2008)

When hiring people, it is important to look for teamwork skills and the ability to work in a cross functional team environment. Production should be designed to incorporate flexible manufacturing technologies and use a Just-in-time inventory system in order to adapt to the dynamic market conditions and customer demands to have a competitive advantage.

Managers can increase efficiency in various way. This can happen by improving quality. When quality increases, less mistakes occurs and productivity increases. Designing products with fewer parts can increase efficiency since fewer parts to assemble reduces the total assemble time and makes products easier to assemble (e.g. less effort.) Managers can also change the setup of facilities, or the way in which machines, robots, and people are grouped together. One layout may be more effective than another, depending on the product. Flexible manufacturing can also increase efficiency by reducing the time required to set up production equipment. Yet another tactic is just-in-time inventory, which reduces inventory holding costs and frees capital that would otherwise be tied up in inventory. Another way is to implement self-managed teams.

- Although JIT systems, such as Toyota’s Kanban system, were originally developed to improve product quality, they also have implications for efficiency. JIT systems are a major cost saving and can result from increasing inventory turnover and reducing inventory holding costs. Service companies and manufacturing companies can benefit from the JIT concept. One setback of JIT systems is that they leave an organization to not have buffer stock of inventory. Although buffer stocks of inventory can be costly to store, they can help an organization when it is affected by shortages of inputs or when it needs to respond quickly to increases in customer demand. (Jones & George, 2008)

- Self-Managed Work Teams and Efficiency

Another efficiency-boosting innovation is the use of self-managed work teams. The typical team consists of about five to fifteen employees who produce an entire product instead of just parts of it. Team members learn all team tasks and move from job to job. The result is a flexible workforce. Team members also assume responsibility for work and vacation scheduling, ordering materials, and hiring new members. Traditionally, this is the first line manager’s responsibility. The use of empowered, self-managed teams can increase productivity and efficiency. Cost effectiveness also arises from eliminating supervisors and creating a flatter organizational hierarchy, which increases efficiency. (Jones & George, 2008)

Question 3.2

The attempt to improve quality requires finding ways to measure quality, setting quality improvement goals, and soliciting input from employees concerning potential improvements in product design and the manufacturing process. It is very common that a company starts out to be very informal. Innovation is broadly defined in business research literature. In general it is defined as new applications of knowledge, ideas, or methods which generate new capabilities and leverage competitive sustainability (Kim et al, 2012). Quality management like innovation is also a broadly defined topic. Most research, however, agree that the main goal of quality management is to improve and meet stakeholder needs by removing deficiencies including error and rework. While a vast majority of studies view quality management practices as a single variable other more recent studies delineate the various practices into multiple dimensions. Quality management and innovation have shown a positive association between certain quality management practices and innovation (Martinez-Costa & Martinez-Lorente, 2008).

Other research has suggested that not all quality management practices relate to performance or innovation (Ravichandran & Rai, 2000). Understandably, researchers need to specify the type of quality management practice and how it impacts innovation. Social quality management has the potential to improve product innovation in a myriad of ways. Quality training enhances the skills of an employee to efficiently and effectively improve teamwork, thus reducing errors and enhancing job satisfaction which can impact product innovation (Kim et al, 2012). Cross-functional cooperation enables open communication supporting creative idea suggestions which are essential to product innovation (Zeng et al, 2015). Further, promoting greater relationships within a supply chain network can result in greater information sharing about innovative products which enables a buying company to decrease product development time and put more effort toward