Handling the Job Upgradation (From Supervisor to Manager, ) in the same Company,Motivating Subordinates and Sparking more to Perform Better from Talent Pool of Employee, Theory of Equity, Motivation Theory (Performance for Management Strategy)

As a manager, my first priority will be to understand the circumstance for declining performance of the team which could be aligned with the motivational dimension; here the situation could be easily reconciled with the equity theory of motivation, since it is vivid that due to low-performance appraisal mechanism employee with higher skills often perform below their standard, helping the passive one to get the rewards which they should not be entitled of.  As the human nature, this discrepancy of input to output relative to other could be detrimental which I feel is the contemporary issue in the company(hypothetical company with low employee morale). Similarly, even if we review the scenario under Job Characteristic Mode (JCM), we can infer the job may be lacking a motivational dimension like skill variety, task identity, task significance et cetera.

Each individual is unique in their own way and as defined by (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013), the performance of an individual is equivalent to multiplication of Motivation, Ability, and Opportunity (M*A*O)...EQ. (i) and as governed by equity theory of motivation, the motivating force for any individual is the factor if Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valence (E*I*V)...EQ.(ii).Having known with this, my first step will be analyzing each employee individually, it will help to understand the "Equity Sensitivity” of individuals so that I can customize the benefit as extrinsic or intrinsic. For those who score high, financial benefits, status, perks, and incentives will be lauded whereas those who score low will be valued higher in the organization with distinctive recognition.

Let's analyze the current scenario of sales representative through the above-mentioned equation (i), the employees performing below the expected level has the lower level of motivation and these could be due to their lack of ability on one hand whereas they might be missing the opportunity to thrive due to the passiveness of the previous manager(management) also. Similarly, those qualified may have motivation and ability but may also lack the opportunity to thrive. So, as well said, the success and the failure of the employee and organization is in the hand of manager, it is unequivocally imperative that manager should be smart and intelligent with higher level of emotional intelligence.

It is equally important that the motive or inducement has to be created in the employee so that they can experience; explicitly or impliedly the valence or the value of their deeds. So, I as a manager will be playing a critical role in linking the two states of Eq. (i) and eq. (ii), aligning the value of the work to the employee as per their expectation so that win-win situation will be crafted in the organization as well as for employees. Instrumentalization should be done as per the ability of the workers.  For instance, some employees, as per Theory "X” are more shy and passive and needs constant guidance whereas as per Theory "Y” they are self- managed, has higher need for advancement and power (The Eonomist , 2008), for "X” category, the manager or I will be performing coaching and navigating role while for "Y”, I will incorporate interpreting role as aligned with the leader roles models stated by (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2010).

Now, being specific to the strategies after completing the above scrutiny, I believe I have to revise, perform and learn from various implementations. After appraising the performance, their individual motives, their strength, commitments we could infer their inclination for affiliation, power or advancement, I will review the contemporary work and reward relationship; my focusing will be in creating a link between productivity and rewards through inclusion incentives, perks, recognition. Human resources are most effective and efficient resources capable to handle so its knowledge-based should be updated along with the recent trends in the market; I will be capitalizing on training and developments of staffs and managers. Similarly, a free and open communication is also a lifeline for positive motivation, periodical official meeting will be scheduled to know each employee state of wellbeing at the work. A manager can't conclude all work on his own, he has to trust and believe his employees so delegation and often is required decentralization of the work. Here benefits will be linked to the achievement of SMART goals which are constantly monitored and appropriate feedback mechanism will be in place so that they learn from their mistakes.

Definitely, I believe there could be some decision traps also, it could be from the managerial side or also from the employee dimensions. Sometimes managers often forget the importance of evidence-based decision making and go into the hasty generalization. He may negatively infer the actual problem and work on the periphery. Similarly, some time management sets a low level of goals to be achieved by the employee, these create the habit in employee to satiate in less which is against the "goal setting theory”.  And often due to the attraction towards incentives, inter-employee competition starts making employee myopic for own performance rather than focusing on organization goal.

A very precise caution has to be maintained will understanding the dynamic of organization since it's heterogeneous combination has its own uniqueness, each employee is different in their own way and it could be a challenge to change the aged run legacy. It has to be handled with care and caution because ethics and corporate governance also play unequivocally an important role in managerial decision making. And without any purpose, the manager may find himself in trouble due to his unethical approach of doing business as did my president Trump in his speech mentioning poor countries as "Shithole”.

Bibliography

Baldwin, T. T., Bommer, W. H., & Rubin, S. R. (2013). Managing Organizational Behavior: What Great Managers Know and Do. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Hawkins, D. I., & Mothersbaugh, D. L. (2010). Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy. Irwin: McGraw-Hill.

The Eonomist. (2008, October 6). Theories X and Y. Retrieved January 23, 2018, from www.economist.com: http://www.economist.com/node/12370445

Crowd-sourcing, Crowd-funding : A case of the “Threadless” and “ChallengePost” , System Theory, Brainstorming (Management Strategy for Performance)

In a simple layman view as said by Goodrich (2013) crowdsourcing is a management tactic to distribute the problem-solving mechanism since it is well verse that “the best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas.” In the process, the stakeholder outside the company also contributes to the success of the project, most of the time, creating a win-win situation for both, company as well as all the stakeholders. And the process actively operates in the online setting vide internet and social sites. Crowd-funding, Crowd-contests, and Micro-tasking are some examples of crowdsourcing.

Interestingly, “Threadless” and “ChallengePost” have also leveraged themselves via crowdsourcing.  “Threadless” which was initiated with $1000 seed money now worth’s multimillion-dollar, and all its success goes to the paradigm shift that it has incorporated in its product design. Rather than limiting itself in knowing its customers through the group of researchers and workaholic working in its company, it decentralized and delegated product design ultimately empowering its customers leading to “innovation” and “co-creation.”

Moreover, in the present scenario of cut-throat competition, the price-war among enterprises does not ensure its market stability, i.e., is a company X reduces its price by a unit of a dollar, company Y will also imitate the same or will come with even more tarnished marketing campaign availing second mover advantage. So, in the contemporary situation, the resilience of the company is also dependent on its internal environment, i.e., operational management. Hence, I feel that the success of “Threadless” was due to its divergent product design campaign and its ability to surrogate operational cost in aggressive researching by the economical process of community involvement thru the use of the internet. Its success came from valuing its customers, reviewing their product expectation and manufacturing the products which were already tested and proven in the market.

Both the companies have obtained competitive advantage in-compare to other traditional firms in the industry.  Let’s analyze the “Threadless,” and “ChallengePost” through Input-Process-Output mechanism vide below process flow diagram.

 Figure: Process Flow Diagram

Though all the firms and industry operates in the fundamental modality of using the resources from the environment, processing it and giving back to the community(as shown in above diagram in an open environment), the competitiveness lies in how they use the resources, process them and produce the final products. Here, both the companies, except their internal resources have also used the ideas of the consumer through crowdsourcing. They have created an open domain; consumer can come up with their expected T-Shirt design and in “ChallegePost,” an open solution is requested to the communities. Once the company obtains the ideas, they are tested(i.e., processed). “Threadless” reviews the rating of the design and finalize to manufacture only with the highest votes, similarly, “ChallengePost” reviews the participant’s ability to solve the problem. Ultimately, producing community desired and accepted products, services and even in at a low development cost. In both of the sampled companies, their outcome is not limited to the products and services but unequivocally generates immense satisfied customers, agile company, and foremost the reduced operations cost which in itself is a competitive advantage.

Hence both the companies have competitive as well as comparative advantage in the product redesign through i) high product success rate, since they are tested prior to the commercial launch and ii) lower research and product development cost, since they should not invest resources in new empirical researches iii) valued by their consumers and other stakeholders, since they also equally contribute to the product manufacturing process. But in contrast, the same kind of the firms in the industry, so-called traditional or orthodox either due to their higher resistance to change or lower receptivity to amalgamate are not able to re-engineer their process leading to their higher dependency on limited numbers of inter-organization staffs making the organization susceptible to closure. Nokia Inc., if had understood the expected trend of the market towards the Android platform would not have suffered the historical loss (Sull, 1999). Had they use any measures of crowdsourcing and incorporate market dimension, they would not have lost.

As mentioned above crowdsourcing is capitalizing on the knowledge, skills, and wisdom of the people those are beyond the boundaries of an organization. A perfect apotheosis could be Wikipedia.org, where the contents are contributed by the authors who are motivated to do so. As per (Kearns, 2015), multinational companies like McDonald's, Samsung, Lays and Airbnb has also incorporated crowdsourcing. In 2014, McDonalds Burger conducted the project where the customers could design the burger of their choice, latter burgers were voted by the country and designs with higher votes were on the stores to serve consumer taste buds along with the picture and short bio of the creator. So, the rudimentary logic is to reduce the chance of product failure by leveraging the resources effectively and efficiently the way market desires. Since the failure of the product is not only limited to the loss of the financial resources the company has but it’s unequivocally about the big question mark in the “brand image” leading to jeopardize its “brand equity.”

Equally, the crowdsourcing has limitations as well as drawbacks, if the participant happens to be ill-intent than the overall e-brainstorming process could be havoc. Some people may not be a good “netizen” and may not practice “netiquette”; online ethics. The feeders are not the employee of the company, so it is hard to control them. Moreover, as we know, the bad news transmit faster than the good ones, the vulnerabilities are higher in open platform. For example, if somebody with bad intent comment disturbing and distracting issues in “Threadless” or if a group deceptively ranks a design better than the actuality, the consequences could be detrimental.

Crowdsourcing has become a major source of startup, not only for its ability to develop ideas, raise debt or equity but unequivocally its capacity to diversify the risk and generate an enormous pool of ideas. As mentioned ahead, outsourcing could be for ideas or also for capital. For example, the project, “The Pebbe E-Paper Watch” raised $10,266K through Crowd-funding.

I fell that, Los-Angeles has the worst nightmare with public transportation, the public transportation is a real mess and takes hours even to complete some couples of miles, so I think now it is a time to come up with an idea of flying cars principally build on the modality of drones. Here, the promising ideas could be funded by the Angel Investors also. Similarly, the food sharing could be another burning example; most elites group in the society are throwing their food, fruits, and vegetables, in their home, office, restaurants et cetera. Whereas,  underprivileged and marginalized groups are starving for that food. If a common platform, i.e., a mobile application, notifying the excess hygienic food if is shared than it could be helpful to those who are in needs. Actually, it not only satiates others hunger but also save our precious environment through the effective use of raw materials. Just for a while think that you just shared the fries, excess milk that you were to dispose of in drain due to your travel abroad, uncooked fresh vegetables that were in your refrigerator since you were busy in meetings,  in the sharing application that could be useful for others rather than throwing them. In both of the cases, the general public could be appealed to come up which some promising concepts in an open portal. From the very beginning, these concepts of crowdsourcing or crowd-funding will help to generate ideas as well as a fund for the project and equally the aggressive promotion and word of mouth from the initiation.

An analogy could be clearly drawn between the crowdsourcing and business success through differentiation, cost reduction leading to innovation and co-creation. Similarly, the inevitable importance of the crowd participation for the success could not be denied. As done by “Threadless” and “ChallengePost”, the methodology could be practiced by every business entities as its benefits significantly outweigh the cost.

Bibliography

Goodrich, R. (2013, February 26). What is Crowdsourcing? Retrieved January 19, 2018, from www.businessnewsdaily.com: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4025-what-is-crowdsourcing.html

Kearns, K. (2015, October 07). 9 Great Examples of Crowdsourcing in the Age of Empowered Consumers. Retrieved January 19, 2018, from www.tweakyourbiz.com: http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2015/07/10/9-great-examples-crowdsourcing-age-empowered-consumers/

Sull, D. N. (1999). Why do companies go bad. Harvard Business Review, 42-52.

US Based Manufacturer of Natural, Health Food Products Considering Growing Business in Chinese Market, Problem Solving, Case Study(Management Strategy for Performance)

Have you ever imagine the exchange rate between the USA dollar and Chines Yuan, do you know the process of registering international companies and way how you are to repatriate your profit back to the USA from China. The dimensional change in business proliferation from western to eastern hemisphere of the globe not only comes will an opportunity but the waves of risk are also unequivocally lingering. Beyond these economic variables other factors to name, like socio-cultural identifications, political philosophies, level of competition, and consumption pattern of households et cetera also impacts.

Hence cross-border business should not be limited to the expected size of the prospective market. As of 2016, China has a population of 1.379 billion and it does not guarantee that the natural health food product of USA wins Chines market. I personally believe it has to be an in-depth evidence-based procedure carried on the basis of research.

Hence firstly for me, it begins with understanding my own products. It involves rigorous analysis of ingredient, its usage, and consumption mechanism, I believe, it will help me to create the best fit between product varieties and target market as the usage patterns differs drastically between China and USA.

After being known with my own product, I intend to invest some time in stakeholder analysis.  These involve the group of people, communities who have direct or indirect influence on the products. These as mentioned above are the factors than arises from the external and internal environment. As stated by (Baldwin, Bommer, & Rubin, 2013) through Vroom and Yetton's stakeholder analysis, the scope of the impact of stakeholder could be incorporated in our product. It helps us to predict the reaction of related groups towards the product. A better approach here could be incorporating their views by leveraging them to provide their views on the products. I believe it helps our US manufactured product to get localized Chines inclination through product packaging, leveling, promotion, pricing et cetera.

Simultaneously, numerous researches will be executed, it supports evidence-based decision making, and these quantification helps to make our inferences precise.  As per (Wedellsborg, 2017) most of the managers switch to the solution mode rather than understanding the problem, these leads to create a condition of equifinality where the decision makers get stuck and are often ultimately bewildered by their own biases. The secondary research on the Chinese market could be extracted from the official websites like worldbank.com, imf.org, and Chines government website et cetera. It gives us birds eyes view on demographics, economic, social, cultural dimension of the economy and their affinity towards US products. Similarly, the annual report entitled "Doing Business 2017” published by Worldbank will help us to get the overall ease of doing business in China.

Similarly, the questionnaire could be designed to get expected feedback from the customers and analyze competitor's reaction towards the product. These help us to grab the real field scenario and possible competitiveness of our product or repulsiveness from the Chinese market. These questionnaires will be administered along with secondary analysis. The combination of primary and secondary analysis helps us to generate holistic views. 

Let's assume the scenario where we concluded from our evidences that Chines youth aged 20-30 years were found to be using natural and herbal food products mostly, similarly Chinese government advocacy for the green environment is also supporting the health of its citizen and environmentalism, these factors support us. Now we begin to customize our marketing mix and design them as according to the view to penetrate the Chinese market. We can glamorize our product through appealing promotion, competitive pricing et cetera. But on the other hand, if the findings were not supportive, which also could be, it would be in our best interest to invest our resources in other countries.

To conclude, the decision of investing in China shall not be a decision based of homogeneous factors, it includes, as mentioned above, various heterogeneous variables that have to be taken care off, and with all logical, scientific and evidence-based practices the happening of the odd could definitely be reduced. 

Figure: Flowchart based on PADIL on making investment decision by US firm in China

Bibliography

Baldwin, T. T., Bommer, W. H., & Rubin, S. R. (2013). Managing Organizational Behavior: What Great Managers Know and Do. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Wedellsborg, T. (2017, February ). Are You Solving the Right Problems? Retrieved January 15, 2018, from www.hbr.org: https://hbr.org/2017/01/are-you-solving-the-right-problems