Type of Organisation I Would Like to Work for - Coursework Example

Industry Profile Student’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: INDUSTRY PROFILE Type of organisation I would like to work for As an individual, I aspire to work in an organisation that creates a necessitating environment in various aspects. The first is an organisation with a leadership and organisational culture that appreciates the employees’ input and thus giving them opportunity to be innovative. In this respect, the organisation should be learning organisation that is able to develop knowledge into action (Marsick & Watkins, 1994, p.354). Moreover, it should have appropriate knowledge management in place so to hasten innovation and employee input for guaranteed success (Hovland, 2003). Closely related is that I would aspire to work in organisations with strict adherence to organisational excellence. In this regard, I admire an organisation that has regard for total quality management (Foley, 2000, p.17). Secondly, I would like to work in an organisation that has put in place various strategic aspects of human resource management. One critical aspect under this concern is the organisation that has family friendly policies such flexible working hours, employee assistance programmes, maternity leave, child-care referral & home-based work (Bird, 2006, p.22). Moreover, I would like organisation with a total reward payment scheme that matches employee contribution with the output (Alliance for work-life progress, 2006). The final aspiration is related to the competitive strategy that a company displays. There is realisation that firms can no longer rely on simple competitive strategy of undercutting or outdoing other competitors through the Porter’s model (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004, p.3). I would like to work in a company that not only relies of ‘Red Ocean Strategy’, but on a company who relies on ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’. ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ allow firms to create new market space out of reach of other competitors and value innovation (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004, p.7). The organisation In this regard, one of the organisations is Google Inc. Google is an information communication and technology premised firm with the ultimate aim of making access to information easy with a 50% market share. Google concept was incubated by Larry Page and Sergey Brin after meeting in Stanford 1995 and in 1996 they established the search engine which was initially hosted in the university servers called BackRub. It is in 1997 that they renamed the firm Google. Currently, the firm has headquarters in Mountain View, California with 30, 000 employees spread over 70 offices globally (Google, 2014a). The company engages in computer systems design, online information services and web applications. Their business operations have different scopes with over 100 products and services (Google, 2014b). The critical aspect is the human resource goals and the opportunity they present to undergraduate students. The present human resource approach by Google Inc is rooted acquiring employees who are smart, determined & skilled and having the ability and not premised on experience. Additionally, the focus of the firm is on hands-on approach where employees are encouraged to be proactive as opposed to being micro managed. This affirms the fact that Google has embraced value based and not cost based approach. In this case, the firm will employ an employee and pay him/her according to his/ her value and the contribution in creating value to the end consumer (Google, 2014a). Reflection on compatibility, fit and suitability I feel that I am endowed with various technical and people’s skills such interpersonal skills and leadership attributes that I have learnt over a period of time. Technically, I am fit to apply my accounting skills in areas such as strategic management accounting, budgeting and cost control by applying logical reasons that make sense. Additionally, I possess intelligence traits such as decisiveness & judgement. Moreover, I consider myself as adaptable, creative & self-confident. Apart from these, I value personal integrity, honesty, ethics and morality. I feel that Google’s mission, vision, objectives, leadership, organisational culture, organisational behaviour practices, organisational excellence and human resource practices in the firm resonate with my skills, attributes and values. In the first instance, Google is one of the organisations with organisational culture that is innovative. Apart from this, under the leadership of Page, the firm has been put on the world map and it would be interesting to work under such leadership. For specific purposes, I would focus on human resource issues which are exhibited in the human resource goals and practices in the organisation. For instance, the ultimate focus is skills and ability as opposed to experience. This suits my interest as a fresh graduate. The second is the employee’s voice and employment relations that the firm has adopted. In this regard, an employee from the 70 branches can directly communicate with the CEO to express opinion. Additionally, diversity management is at the forefront of the organisation as their aspiration is to hire any qualified individual irrespective of one’s cultural background, gender, race and religion. LEADER PROFILE Carly Fiorina is an American business executive cum Republican politician, born in 1954 who pursued her undergraduate degree in Stanford University; MBA from University of Maryland, College Park and MS in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at one time was named one of the most powerful women in business. She has glittering career profile, but I choose to focus on four career profile and highlight more during her tenure at HP which brought her to the limelight more than the other four positions identified. Starting with the earliest, in 1980s, she was enlisted as management trainee in AT & T where she eventually rose to a senior vice president in 1996. Later she transitioned to be lucent consumer products business rising in Lucent to be chairman of consumer communication in 1997 then to president of Lucent (Carlyfiorina, 2014). Before turning to be a politician, Fiorina was the Chief Executive Officer at Hewlett Packard from 1999-2005. It is in HP that controversies and success surrounded her tenure. In one way she was able to drive change in the organisation. However, $ 25 billion in a stock acquisition starred controversy that saw the company stock trade down by 30%. This equally saw opposition from the sons of founding members (Larker & Tayan, 2011, 1-3). In 2008, she was the advisor of John McCain who was the Republican Presidential Candidate (Jacoby, 2008) and in 2010; she vied on the Republican ticket for California Senate (Sharp, 2009). It is appreciated that there is a universal description of a successful leader. However, there are critical attributes and ingredients that define a successful leader (George et al. 2007, p.129). Leadership is all about driving change by creating a path that can steer organisation to unrivalled success (Lucey, 2008, p.12). Apart from these and under the theme of human relations, leaders utilise soft skills and or interpersonal skills so as to gain followership and influence the decisions they deem appropriate (Bolden et al, 2003, p.12-13). Moreover, successful leaders stand out in respect to how they can create an organisational culture that is innovative and sustainable (Bertocci, 2009, p.33-34). Subsequently this allows the firm to gain competitive advantage as they can leverage on most strategic decision, key success factors created by the leadership to ascend towards the path of market dominance and financial success. As already hinted at, the low and high of Fiorina career came during her tenure at HP. The high in her tenure at HP is mostly related to the reform she initiated after being hired to inculcate change in the organisation owing to the outsider perspective she had. This made her the first female CEO at HP. The reform initiated by her saw the company’s record double-digit growth and this made her be listed in Fortune Magazine top 50 most powerful women I business. Irrespective of these successes, Fiorina has lows in her career. The first relates to the $ 25 billion of stock acquisition that turnout to be controversial and a flop in the long run. First, it led to drop in HP stock traded by 30%; drew opposition from Walter Hewlett and David Packard who were the sons of founding members and squabbles among stockholders and among the board. Indeed, the projected operating of 3% in 2003 after acquisition of Compaq did not materialise as the operating margins realised in 2003 and 2004 was 0.1% and 0.9% respectively (Larker & Tayan, 2011, 1-3). I feel that learning more about this leader have integral bearing on future career and I can rely on her experiences to develop my career. The first realisation is that in decision making so as to drive change it is significant to have a powerful team to back up the decision one aims at implementing. Indeed, Kotter (1995, 1) indicates that driving change requires a powerful team to ensure implementation of change. This is one of the aspects that was lacking from Fiorina’s leadership during her tenure at HP where she was disowned by critical stakeholders such as the sons of the founding members of HP leading to her subsequent sacking (Larker & Tayan, 2011, 3). However, I equally learnt that it is good to stand with your decision, but change the course if the initial intended results are not being attained. Indeed, Beudan (2006, p.5-6) notes that to sustain change and avoid fatigues, it is important to re-evaluate the change cause mid way to limit stall warming. To further my career, I will utilise the lessons learnt especially team building and consultation. The two are critical in that in the first instance, it will allow me to be able to build powerful teams that can influence and aid me in accomplishing my vision. Secondly, consultation and effective commutation will be integral in reducing any possible conflicts. References Alliance for work-life progress (2006). Work and life: what is total rewards? Retrieved on 13 May, 2014 from: http://www.awlp.org/awlp/about/html/aboutus-whatis.html. Beaudan, E 2006, Making change last: how to get beyond change fatigue, Ivey Business Journal,22(7), 23-89. Bertocci, I. D. 2009. Leadership in organisations: there is a difference between leaders and managers. Lanham: University Press of America. Bird, J. (2006). Work‐life balance: Doing it right and avoiding the pitfalls. Employment Relations Today, 33(3), 21-30. Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Marturano, A. and Dennison, P. (2003). A review of leadership theory and competency frameworks. Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter. Carlyfiorina (2014). About Carly. Available at: http://carlyfiorina.com/education/. Foley, K. (2000). From quality management to organization excellence: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. In Proceedings of the 1st International MAAOE Conference on Organizational Excellence (pp. 12-17). EFQM. George, B., Sims, P., McLean, N. A., and Mayer, D. 2007. Discovering your authentic leadership. Harvard Business Review, Google (2014a). Company overview. Retrieved on May 13, 2014 from: http://www.google.com/about/company/. Google (2014b). Our products and services. Retrieved on May 13, 2014 from: http://www.google.com/about/company/products/. Hovland, I. (2003). Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning: An International Development Perspective: an Anotated Bibliography. London: Overseas Development Institute. Jacoby, M. (22 April, 2008). Carly Fiorina gets a plug for VP job. The Wall Street Journal. Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/04/22/carly-fiorina-gets-endorsement- of-sorts-for-vp-job/. Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2004). Blue ocean strategy: How to create uncontested market space and make competition irrelevant. Harvard Business Press. Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67. Larker, D. F. & Tayan, B. (2011). Leadership Challenges at Hewlett-Packard: Through the Looking Glass. Stanford University: Palo Alto. Lucey, J. 2008. Why is the Failure Rate for Organizational Change so high? Management Services, Winter 2008, 10-18. Marsick, V. J., & Watkins, K. E. (1994). The learning organization: An integrative vision for HRD. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 5(4), 353-360. Sharp, J. (21 February, 2009). Carly Fiorina "Considering" Bid to Oust Barbara Boxer in 2010. Politics Daily. Available at: http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/02/21/carly-fiorina- considering-bid-to-oust-barbara-boxer-in-2010/. Read More