Organisational Behaviour Resit Assignment Essay

Organisational Behaviour Resit Assignment - Essay Example Managers as planners would be charged with the duty of establishing the organisation’s objectives and determining what needs to be achieved and setting the timelines. This calls for sensitivity to the environment of operation and appropriate decision making skills. While this function would be handled by top management in large corporate organisations, owners handle it in smaller firms. Discussion To explain this managerial function, Xerox Corporation provides an appropriate example. The history of this copier and printing equipment firm dates back to the 1930s with the first xerographic image being made in the US. The firm grew over years by merging with other similar firms with the 1960s marking the climax of its growth. Between 1960 and 1965, the corporation’s revenues grew from $37 million to $268 million (Dragolea & Cotirlea 2009). In the 1980s, the firm faced intense competition from its competitors from Japan and the US with its market share dropping from 86% to 17% between 1974 and 1984. This was largely attributed to the lack of strategic direction from the management. In order to return to profitability, the management sought to understand the operations of its rivals so as to adopt some of the best practices. The firm sought to implement competitive benchmarking after the study which was found to be ineffective because most of the copier companies in the market did not use most of those recommended operations. As such, through studying a supplier of outdoor clothing and sporting products, L. L. Bean, the firm implemented functional benchmarking. This saw the company spring back with customer satisfaction for Xerox’s printing copier systems rising by 39% and 38% respectively. Customer complaints were cut by over 60% with sales process recording 40% improvement. This success was a result of effectively planned turn-around strategy. Indeed, Xerox identified its weaknesses which made it uncompetitive in the market shared with its US and Japanese rivals. Its market share had greatly dropped and it therefore sought to recapture its status as a market leader in copier business. With this vision in mind, the next task for the chief executive, David Kearns was to determine how to get to that position as suggested by scholars defining planning (DuBrin 2009; Sims 2002). The chief executive crafted a program referred to as Leadership Through Quality that would see the firm mine information on what makes its rivals more effective and how they would adopt some of the identified best practices. Data on the operations of Xerox’s rivals was collected through mining information from relevant databases, trade journals and magazines, use of questionnaires and engagement of consultants (Dragolea & Cotirlea 2009). This was followed by a well planned strategy to see the firm regain its quality leadership in the market. Analysis According to DuBrin (2009), planning could be said to be either strategic or operational. The au thor differentiates strategic planning as top level management engagement with the input of other members of an organisation from operational planning as one that relates to everyday operations of a unit or the whole organisation. The planning that saw