...on in recent times on the issue of competency mapping. A lot of resource is spent and consultants are invited to do competency mapping. Competency mapping is gaining much more importance and organizations are aware of having good human resources or putting the right people on right job. Competency mapping is important and is an essential exercise. Every well managed firm should have well defined roles and list of competencies required to perform each role effectively. Such list should be used for recruitment, performance management, promotions, placements and training needs identification. In performing or carrying out work, it is essential that the required job skills first be articulated. This information not only helps to identify individuals who have the matching skills for doing the work but also the skills that will enhance the successful performance of the work. Yet often to perform well, it is not enough just to have these skills. It is also critical to complement the skills with the necessary knowledge and attitudes. For e.g. the necessary knowledge will enable an individual to apply the right skills for any work situation that will arise while having the right attitude will motivate him to give his best efforts. These skills, knowledge and attitudes required for the work are usually collectively referred as competencies. How Is “Competency” Defined in the Context of This Article? Many definitions of the term “competencies” have arisen over the past decade...
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...continue to do so. The business strategy for the company is cost leadership. They want to have success and ensure the competitiveness. C company has a competitive edge with products and prices. They also care about the business – level strategy by success, cost efficiency, and sustainability make this company part of who they are. Differentiation is another business-level strategy. They try and provide different characterizations and features for their products. They would make it low cost while still having high quality products. This all can be done with teho features, image, products reviews and features of the products etc, Theses business-level strategies would help have service, quality of control with production, cost of sales, develop and research, and a place where they could advance the arts that go into the products if you know what I mean. You need business level as well as corporate-level strategy for a company to help with it running smoothly. Every little bit to help is a great thing if you want success. Corporate-level strategy covers the strategic scope of an organization as a whole. Most of the time this is the only one needed. Corporate-level through management is helpful to gain a completive advantage. It was implemented and developed for multi-business strategy of the...
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...Strategy………………………………………………………..p. 7 Porter Airlines Business Level Strategy………………………………………………..p. 9 Core Competencies …………………………………………………………….p. 9 Competitive Advantage………………………………………...………………p.12 Low Cost Business Level Strategy………………………………………...…..p. 13 Low Cost Business- Level Structure………………………………………………….p. 15 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….p. 17 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………...p. 18 References…………………………………………………………………………….p. 20 Executive Summary Porter asserts that their secret to success relies in combining a low-cost business-level strategy with a focus on higher yield passengers who value premium service (Preville, 2014). The company has been profitable for the last two years, and as a result has been focusing efforts on expanding their domain and customer base. After conducting an interview with an operations manager at the company, Ashley Hammill, I was able to acquire information about the company’s expansion plans, business strategy and structure (See Appendix A). I will be using the information provided by her primarily, with some secondary sources allowing me to go into further detail about the company. This paper will analyze through their expansion plan, how Porter Airlines will effectively utilize their low-cost business level strategy to increase their customer base. Furthermore I will conduct an in-depth analysis on Porters’ core competencies and coordination abilities used to establish a competitive advantage; expanding into how Porter matched...
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...CORE COMPETENCIES AND DISTINTIVE CAPABILITIES A core competency is a skill or expertise the organization has or anything that a firm can do well and use to gain a competitive advantage over it competitors. Hamel and Prahalad (1990) suggested that a core competency should meet the following three criteria. 1. Customers should benefit. 2. Competitors should find it difficult to imitate 3. The core competence can be transferred to many products and markets. One of Tesco’s core competencies is its customer focused strategy. The clubcard reward scheme allows Tesco to collect, analyze and understand their customers very well. Tesco uses the information and adapt their services to the local market, thus adding value to the customer experience. Tesco’s club card gave them a distinctive capability of observing customers preferences thus, enabling them to predict customers buying behaviour and arranging their stocks accordingly in stores giving them an edge over competitors. Tesco has also designed and implemented supply systems that effectively link existing shops with Tesco.com. While online shopping is a feature of its competitors, Tesco was able to design a good user interface which personalizes online shopping resulting in its customers valuing the Tesco.com experience highly. This has helped to improve the performance of the company in different markets. Further, the strong Tesco brand has led to an increase in the number of customers, sales and profits and has helped the...
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...Q1. What are the different approaches to Globalization? Comment on relevance of Swadeshi movement in today’s Globalized environment. Ans. Globalization has become a ‘magic’ word used to express a change in all areas of life from economy to politics or from social politics to culture. Globalization is the growing role of external factors (economic, social and cultural) in the reproduction of all member of a country to form of a single world market(s) without barriers. 'A global shift'; that is, a world being molded, by economic and technological forces, into a shared economic and political arena. Major phase in international relations, which has been established several decades ago, but its formation was not completed by the beginning of the third millennium. However, the public attention it attracted only in 1990. Approaches towards Globalization The Indian companies are adopting the following approaches to globalization- The First Approach is the Reliance approach. Here the Indian company attains global parameters of production but its market focus is mainly domestic. E.g. Bajaj Auto, Hero Cycles, Maruti Udoy, BHEL, Mahindra & Mahindra. The Second Approach is the Sundaram Fasteners route where an Indian Company emerges as a global sub-contractor. The Chennai based Sundaram Fasteners is now a major supplier of radiator to GM. The Third Approach is the one personified by the Tata Tetley deal itself. Taking over foreign companies or investing in the foreign ventures....
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...Exam in Corporate Strategy and Organization Design, Exam number: 300872 Question 1 During Roger Paffard’s time as chief executive, Thorntons’ vertical scope on the entire organization was in general to improve efficiency and to cut down costs. These two focus areas was mainly to be promoted through a structural change of the board of directors, a caretaking process with regards to franchised shops and outlets due to the believe that it was essential to maintain an experience of fresh products, and this was best achieved if Thornton chose and controlled their franchisers with care. Moreover the delivery fleet served the company’s outlets through a 48 hour order delivery cycle. Thornton had taken into review whether it was better to outsource physical distribution but due to considerations that included the fragility of some of the product ranges, difficulties of access to city centers and night delivery and shop security the physical distribution network was kept retained. The general network expansion of outlets through closure of 126 shops and opening of 216 which took the total number of shops from 269 to 359 helped this decision, because this was also a factor to reduced distribution costs. According to the statistics Roger Paffard succeeded in this, during his time as chief executive the number of own shops has increased and the number of franchisees has declined in addition both the profit after tax and the operating profit has been increased in his time as chief executive ...
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...Kodak Case Analysis 1879: George Eastman invented the dry-plate process and filed patent for a machine that coated dry photographic plates 1880: George Eastman established the Eastman Dry Plate Company, at Rochester N.Y. 1884: Introduced paper roll film 1889: Invented perforated celluloid film 1900: The Brownie box camera went on the market with a price of $1 1935: Introduced color film 1960: Brought the Instamatic camera to the market 1970: Major sales growth for Kodak. Concentrates on film and basic cameras 1980: Fuji emerges as a serious competitor 1994: Kodak abandoned its non-imaging health-related businesses began to invest in digital imaging products for medical practice 1997: Kodak was a high-cost manufacturer with a growing portfolio of digital products which was losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually 1997: Restructuring that eliminated 19,000 jobs and cut more than $1 billion from annual costs 1999: Kodak entered the digital radiography market 2001: Kodak is pushing aggressively into China, an important growth market 2003: Carp unveiled the plan to invest $3 billion in the next three years in digital products by cutting dividends by 72% - to 50 cents per share 2004: Kodak announced that it would stop selling traditional film cameras in Europe and North America, and cut up to 15,000 jobs 2005: The Kodak EasyShare-One Digital Camera, the world’s first Wi-Fi consumer digital camera capable of sending pictures by email, was unveiled 2012: Kodak filed for Chapter...
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...Answer 1. Companies outsource production of their products for the following reasons: Lack of technical expertise, or expert labor in certain operations; reduce manufacturing costs due to the availability of cheap labor; make less investments in expensive equipment, staff and IT systems; optimize resource utilization and free up management time from outsourced routine supporting activities to focus on its core competencies; and when domestic manufacturing capacity is reached. Outsourcing is a good strategy for the following situations: Tasks that require specific manufacturing equipment and technical expertise can be outsourced to vendors who specialize in these fields to produce goods faster and of better quality. Outsourcing the supporting processes enables the firm to concentrate on its core business processes. Outsourcing also helps in risk sharing since the outsourced vendor is a specialist who can mitigate risks better. Outsourcing also helps a firm to decrease its operating risk by not completely relying on domestic suppliers; and reduces lead times in case of domestic supply shortage. Sometimes government in the foreign country provides incentives for foreign investment. Companies can sometimes access restricted market to sell their goods only if they purchase certain goods or services from the foreign country. Outsourcing helps a firm to increase its ability to operate 24 hours per day. A firm that sources from abroad may be able to exploit local competitive advantages...
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...[pic] Managing Strategically Case No.47: “The Apollo Group” TABLE OF CONTENTS Sections 2 Section a 2 1 Introduction 2 2 Core Competencies 3 2.1 Developing core competencies 4 2.2 Uses of core competencies 4 3 Core Competencies of the Apollo Group Inc 4 3.1 Skilled Workforce 4 3.2 Good Market Share 4 4 Key Success Factors 4 4.1 Product 4 4.2 Customer service 4 5 Strategy Implementation 4 6 Conclusion 4 7 references 4 8 Table Of Figures 4 Sections This report is divided into three sections Section A – Introduction, core competencies Section B – Key Success Factors and alternative strategies Section C – Strategy implementation and conclusion Section a Introduction According to Apollo Group Inc, Corporate Information, “Apollo Group, Inc. was founded in 1973 in response to a gradual shift in higher education demographics from a student population dominated by youth to one in which approximately half the students are adults and over 80 percent of whom work full-time. Apollo's founder, John Sperling, believed and events proved him right that lifelong employment with a single employer would be replaced by lifelong learning and employment with a variety of employers. Lifelong learning requires an institution dedicated solely to the education of working adults. Today, Apollo Group, Inc. through its subsidiaries, the University of Phoenix (including University of Phoenix Online), the Institute...
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...Natanael Moreno Operations Management Professor: Richard Young September 12th, 2012 Eldora According to this case study, Eldora was considered a U.S. leading bicycle maker. One of the strategies that helped to this success was the fact that Eldora was a “home made” manufacturing. What this mean is that Eldora kept its productions centers in the same campus as its corporate offices; which were located in Boulder, Colorado. This “home made” strategy helped to the ultimately goal and of course growth of the company. Moreover, this caused improvements among the different sections of the company as well. This success was so efficient that Eldora’s sales and earnings had wonderful record levels, which made its operations vice president Sean Andrews believed that the strengths of the company was tied with their “reverse engineering” as well as its logistical and production capabilities. In other words Eldora’s products were of high quality. What so ever, the problem began when other companies started making great money by being able to produce bike products, and bikes in a very cheap cost. The products were about the same quality, but the cost of making the bicycles were in a greatly low cost in contrast to Eldora’s. This is why I totally believe that the strategic objective that Eldora should serve is to move their productions departments to where the labor and production is greatly low. There are some great opportunities on taking this strategic objective, such as: ...
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...3 Introduction 4 Business Environment Analysis 5 Macro Environment 5 Economic Factors 6 Environmental Factors 7 Legal factors 7 Technology Factors 8 Societal values and lifestyles 8 Micro Environment 9 Bargaining Power of Suppliers 9 Bargaining Power of Customer 10 Threat New entrants 10 Rivalry firms 11 Substitute Products 11 Internal environment analysis 12 Core Competencies 12 Strategies and Implementation 14 E-commerce Strategy 14 Pricing strategy 15 Differentiating strategy 16 Location strategy 16 Challenges facing Business environment 17 Uncertainty 17 Unemployment 17 Recommendation 18 Conclusion 19 Executive Summary The purpose of this report is to identify and explain the core concepts of strategic management of a retail industry, David Jones. In conducting this research, academic journals, textbooks, David Jones’ company reports and online news are used as the sources of information. This report analyses the external environments such as macro-environment and industry environment as well as examine the internal core competencies, using PESTEL model and Porter’s Five Factors. Moreover, core strategies and their application will also be addressed in the article. Several key challenges faced by the current business climate and some suggested recommendations for the firm’s future strategy to overcome the challenges will also be taken into consideration. Introduction David Jones Limited (DJs) is a high end Australian...
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...SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1 9 9 4 ness o by Peter F. Drucker ot in a very long time-not, perhaps, since the late 1940s or early 1950s-have there been as many new major management techniques as there are today: downsizing, outsourcing, total quality management, economic value analysis, benchmarking, reengineering. Each is a powerful tool. But, with the exceptions of outsourcing and reengineering, these tools are designed primarily to do differently what is already being done. They are "how to do" tools. Yet "what to do" is increasingly becoming the central challenge facing managements, especially those of big companies that have enjoyed long-term success. The story is a familiar one: a company that was a superstar only yesterday finds itself stagnating and frustrated, in trouble and, often, in a seemingly unmanageable crisis. This phenomenon is by no means confined to the United States. It has become common in Japan and Germany, the Netherlands and France, Italy and Sweden. And it occurs just as often outside business-in labor unions, government agencies, hospitals, museums, and churches. In fact, it seems even less tractable in those areas. The root cause of nearly every one of these crises is not that things are being done poorly. It is not even that the wrong things are being done. Indeed, in most cases, the tight things are being done - but fruitlessly. What accounts for this apparent paradox? The assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run no longer fit...
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...SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1 9 9 4 ness o by Peter F. Drucker ot in a very long time-not, perhaps, since the late 1940s or early 1950s-have there been as many new major management techniques as there are today: downsizing, outsourcing, total quality management, economic value analysis, benchmarking, reengineering. Each is a powerful tool. But, with the exceptions of outsourcing and reengineering, these tools are designed primarily to do differently what is already being done. They are "how to do" tools. Yet "what to do" is increasingly becoming the central challenge facing managements, especially those of big companies that have enjoyed long-term success. The story is a familiar one: a company that was a superstar only yesterday finds itself stagnating and frustrated, in trouble and, often, in a seemingly unmanageable crisis. This phenomenon is by no means confined to the United States. It has become common in Japan and Germany, the Netherlands and France, Italy and Sweden. And it occurs just as often outside business-in labor unions, government agencies, hospitals, museums, and churches. In fact, it seems even less tractable in those areas. The root cause of nearly every one of these crises is not that things are being done poorly. It is not even that the wrong things are being done. Indeed, in most cases, the tight things are being done - but fruitlessly. What accounts for this apparent paradox? The assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run no longer fit...
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...Stick to the Core—or Go for More? “Cut!” Spike Sanchez stomped toward the stage, his arms waving the music to a stop. Wearing black from head to toe, sporting dark glasses, and sweating under the heat of the lights, he was losing his patience. A highly respected music video director, Sanchez was starting to wonder if taking on this advertising gig was such a great idea. “How many times do I have to tell you to point the logo on the can toward the camera during that move?” On stage was Maygan M, a pop singer whose star had risen in the months since she’d agreed to do this ad. She was a sweet-faced, 18-year-old beauty, dressed in a sequined, midriff-baring halter top, a skintight leopard microskirt, and platform shoes that had already tripped her up twice. She sheltered her eyes from the lights and glared at Sanchez. “Like I can even see the stupid logo,” she whined. “Maybe you could fix it on a computer or something?” “Or maybe you should just do what I say,” Sanchez shot back. “Then we might have some hope of airing this 30-second spot before your 15 minutes of fame are up!” He turned abruptly, strode off the stage, and dropped back into his director’s chair. “Let’s try it again from the top.” Maygan pouted at him for a moment and then flipped her long hair, spun around, and went back to her starting position. Sitting next to Sanchez was Ian Rafferty, cofounder and head of creative services for Advaark, a New York–based advertising agency. “Pretty tough to work with, isn’t...
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...Diversification Strategies Diversification strategies are used to expand firms' operations by adding markets, products, services, or stages of production to the existing business. The purpose of diversification is to allow the company to enter lines of business that are different from current operations. When the new venture is strategically related to the existing lines of business, it is called concentric diversification. Conglomerate diversification occurs when there is no common thread of strategic fit or relationship between the new and old lines of business; the new and old businesses are unrelated. Diversification is a market strategy, which is about expanding the business of the company in some way. It stretches from adding new products or services, which in some way are related to the corporation’s previous products or services on the market, too establish oneself with new, on a from the corporation’s point of view, completely unknown market (Grant). Although the idea of diversification as a strategy for growth and risk reduction is rather old, it was only after 1950 it became popular to let the corporation expand over different markets and product lines. This growth strategy continued to attract more and more companies, until it culminated in the 1970s when it became popular to build conglomerates, that is, companies expanding by adding more and more unrelated business to the corporation, often via acquisitions. In the following decades, the...
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