Case study on Management Functions PDF

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Adidas is a Germany shoe, clothing and apparel company that also own Reebok, Taylor Made and Rockport. Adidas is the largest sportswear company in Europe and is the second only to Nike as the largest sportswear company in the world. The company sports the recognizable logo of three slanted parallel bars of ascending height. Adidas was founded in 1924 by Adolf Dassler, but it did not become a fully registered company until 1940. Its headquarters are located in Herzogenaurach, Germany, the hometown of its founder. Although many believe that Adidas stands for “All day I dream about soccer” the true origin of the name comes from the amalgamation of Adolf’s nickname, Adi, and the first three letter of his last name. Adidas specializes in the design and manufacturing of footwear, sportswear, sports equipment and, yes, even toiletries, most notably, deodorant. However, the company first gained international recognition in 1936 at the Summer Olympic in Berlin, where it outfitted U.S. track star Jesse Owens with its track shoes. Owens won four gold medals in the games. With a specifically stated Corporate Strategy, the company needs to ensure that their organizational structure will allow for and be flexible to this strategy being sought after. Their objectives outlined in the corporate strategy ensure the mission statement will translate into action, while also guiding and coordinating decisions. There is no purpose in having well thought out strategic objectives, but no structure and cohesion to attain these objectives. The Adidas Group comprises of a four person executive board, including one Chief Executive Officer and three board members representing the shareholders and six members representing the staff. The Supervisory Board advices and supervises the executive board in matter concerning the management of the company. It is the role of the supervisory board to ensure that the pathway and vision determine by the executive board is forthrightly followed by the rest of the organization from the top, all the way down to those entrusted with manufacturing their products. The strengths of ADIDAS are strong management team and good corporate strategy in North American and overseas markets, brand recognition and reputation, diversity and variety in productions offered on the web (footwear, apparel, sporting, equipment, etc.), strong control over its own distribution channel, strong customer base, and strong financial position with minimal long term debts. Weakness of

ADIDAS is negative image portrayed by poor working condition in its overseas factories, and E-commerce is limited to USA. 2.0 Management Organisation and the management activities necessary for the functioning of the organisation, management can be defined as the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling the resources of the organisation to predetermined stated organizational goals as productively as possible. A concise description of each of the fundamental

management

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management and the nature of the management process. Planning Controlling Leading Organising Resources Human Financial Physical Information Performance Achieve goals Products Services Productivity Profit 2.1 Planning Planning is the first step of the function of management. Planning involves deciding in advance what has to be done, when, how and whom it has to be done and how the results are to be evaluated. The function of “what has to be done” involves identification of alternatives and selection of one of them. According to Henri Fayol, “it is the plan of action to be followed, the stages to go through and methods to use. It is kinds of future picture wherein proximate events are outlined with some distinctness whist remote events appear progressively less distinct.” The term

planning has been defined by different management thinkers who laid emphasis on the various features of planning. According to George R. Terry, “planning is the selecting and relating of facts and the making and using of assumptions regarding the future in the visualization and formulation of proposed activities believed necessary to achieve the desired results.” A plan is like a map, when you following a plan, you can always see how much you have progressed towards your project goal and how far you are from your destination. Knowing where you are is essential for making good decisions on where to go or what to do next. The most important is to ensure that everyone is clear of what to accomplish. Planning meaning is how setting goals and defining the actions necessary to achieve the goals, in light of the situation. That is situation must be analyses or understood and the appropriate goals and actions must be determined in order to take advantage of opportunities and how to solve problems. Basic management function involving formulation more than one detailed plans to achieve optimum balance of needs or demands with available resources. First, the planning process is identifies the goals or objectives to be achieved and formulates strategies to achieve them. The Managers throughout the organization must develop goals, strategy, and operational plans for their work groups that contribute to the success of the organizations as a whole. Planning is also crucial for meeting your needs during each action with your time, money, or other resources. With careful planning you often can see if at some point you are likely to face a problem. It is much easier to adjust your plan to avoid overcome crisis, rather than to deal with the crisis when it comes unexpected time. Example Adidas plans to expand their operations in Europe, so they need consultation to the Government of Germany. They have been granted landing rights in Paris and are awaiting further details from authorities. In addition, planning has a different meaning depending on the political or economic context in which it is used. Two attitudes to planning need to be held in tension on the one hand we need to be prepare for what may lie ahead, which may mean contingencies and flexible processes. There is one thing on which every manager can expect to be appraised, the extent to which he or she archives his or her unit’s goals or objectives. Whether it’s a work team or a giant enterprise, the manager in charge is expected to move the unit ahead, and this means visualizing where the unit must go and helping het there.

Organization exits to achieve some purpose, and if they fail to move forward and achieve their aims, to that extent they have failed. On the other hand, our future is shaped by consequences of our own planning and actions. Planning in organization and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a program. In the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to set a desired target or goal on some scale. Business planning is like water to a thirsty plant. It keeps our business vital and thriving. Without business planning, business will never improve as it could may even lose or bankrupt. Many small business or stall owners don’t have the business planning so they can’t earn so much profit when their doing business. Their business unable further progress and stagnant it is, eventually as to close to close shop or behind other competitors. The rapid of change in today’s business world and globalization is making it increasingly

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Strategic

management is the application of the basic planning process at the highest levels of the organization. Through the strategic management process, top management determines the long-run direction and performance of the organization by ensuring careful formulation and strategies. For example, top management may ask middle and lower-level managers for inputs when formulation top-level plans. Once toplevel plans have been finalized, different organizational units may be asked to formulate plans for their respective areas. A proper strategic management process helps ensure that plans throughout the different levels of the organization are coordinated and mutually supportive. The slogan of Adidas is “Impossible is Nothing”. The mission of Adidas is to be Best Sport Brand in the world. They had achieved the mission but in this strong competitive era, too many company like Nike and Reebok also want to be globally recognized brand, but they will work hard to achieve their goals. Adidas is passionate about all sports. So Adidas Company will try their best for planning new product or equipment for athletes. As part of their End-to-End Planning initiative they have been focusing on implementing an optimized demand planning process and system more than 20 countries in Europe. They standardized or partially automated certain planning functions to increase forecast accuracy. Following the first wave of implementations in 2008, they continued the roll-out to the remaining

European countries throughout 2009. Hereafter, they expect to continue the roll-out to other key Adidas Group markets such as Japan. They set up a dedicated Profitability Management department to monitor macroeconomics trends, forecast the impact on product and supplier cost and devises their supply chain profitability strategy. In addition, their development teams also contribute significantly to this initiative by engineering their products with a stronger focus on price. Throughout 2009, they also engaged their supplier with the aim to increase transparency and predictability in costing. Such as, they closely tracked raw material costs and leveraged this information to consolidate volumes. This allowed them to negotiate more effectively and offset cost increase. In addition, their sourcing teams improved their products allocation process to better utilize supplier’s capabilities and take into account of total supply chain cost. Moreover, by leveraging consolidated volumes, their Transport and Customs team success negotiated reduced transportation cost and optimized shipment routes with their service providers. In conclusion, planning is very important for the organization to achieve their goals and objectives. Especially, current globalization every organization is using latest technology to do the market analyses and compressive planning. In order for them to survive and growth, for example, in year 2008, financial crisis, many banks in US will decline bankrupt. This is because of their poor planning. 2.2 Organising According to Haimann, “Organisation is the process of defining and grouping the activities of the enterprise and establishing the authority relationship among them.” The study of Haimann mentioned definitions makes it clear that on the one hand organization is a process to define and classify the functions to be performed for the attainment of the objectives of the organization, and on the other hand, it is an art to establish sweet relationship among different persons. There are two concept are prevalent about organisation. In the other word, there are two meaning of organization: Organising as process: According to the first concept of organising, it has been considered as a process. In the other word, organising is not function that can be performed at a single stroke, but it is a chain of various functions. It includes getting information about objectives, deciding various activities and grouping them,

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Organising is related to human being and human conduct is deeply affected by the condition of work, their competency and capability, changes in the internal and external environment of the organisation. The process of organising has also to be changed according these changes. Hence, organising as a process can also be described as dynamic element. Organising s a structure of relationship: according to this concept, organising is treated as a structure of relationship. Under this various posts are created or established and the mutual relationship of employees working on various posts, their authorities and responsibilities are defined. Relationship lays down as to who is the superior and who is the subordinate. Various posts in different department of the organization are mostly permanent. Therefore, organisation as a structure of relationship is called static element. So far as the similarity between both the concepts is concerned, business organisation is looked upon as a group of different parts under both the concepts. These parts are both tangible (like human, material, machine and money) and intangible (like authority, responsibility, function and objective). Both the concepts lay stress upon the establishment of relationship between these two parts. On the contrary, there are certain different between both the concepts. According to the concept of “organizing as a process” organizing is that function which continues throughout the existence of the enterprise and changes go on taking place in it. Herein man is the central point. In the other words, many factors affect them and changes have to be introduced accordingly. On the other hand, according to the concept of “organizing as a structure of relationship”, posts are established in the organisation and authorities and responsibilities of each post are determined. Therefore, here under this concept more attention is paid to post which are stable than to men. In order to complete the organisation function of management, there are eight steps had to be taken. First step in the process is to know about the objectives of the enterprise. Although the determination of the objectives of an enterprise is done under the first function of management, i.e., planning but before commencing the process of organizing clear and detailed information about these objectives has to be obtained. On the basis of the information about objectives various function designed to achieve these objectives are determined. For example, it can be the

objectives of the enterprise to produce sport shoes. In this respect information about how many types of sport shoes will be manufactured, whether the necessary parts required for manufacturing sport shoes will be manufactured or purchased, how extensive the sales area will be or will it be state, the whole country or international? After having learnt about the objectives of the enterprise, necessary functions to achieve the objectives are determined. For example, a sport shoes manufacturing company can have different activities like purchase of raw material, purchase of manufactured parts production, advertisement, sales, arrangement of finance, research, accounts, correspondence, keeping stock of material, recruitment of employees, etc.. In order to achieve the objectives of the enterprise grouping of various activities is done. Under the grouping of activities all the similar type of activities are given to one particular department. For example, the activities like the purchase of raw material, purchase of ready-made parts, production, stocking the material, research, etc., are assigned to the production department. Similarly, advertisement and sales activities are given to the marketing department and department of finance take care of finance account and correspondence. Taking into consideration the importance and quantity of the work a department can be further divided into many branches or sub-departments. For example, under the department of production, purchase department, stock department, and research department, etc., can be established to get the benefit of specialization. It makes the optimum utilisation of human and material resources possible. The forth step is to key activities signifies the importance of this activities in the achievement of the objectives of the enterprise. Such an activities needs special attention. It depends on the objectives on the organisation to determine the key activity. Thus, in all the organisations key activity can be different. In the given example of a sport shoes producing company the main problem can be of advertisement because only an effective and large scale advertisement can attract the attention of the consumers toward a new product. Thus, in this case the function of advertisement is the key activity which requires the utmost attention. For this purpose the advertisement activities should be taken from the purview of the marketing department and be handed over to the newly created advertisement department so that the superior officers are in direct touch with this department and they are in a position to pay full attention to it. After dividing the various activities into different departments and sub-departments and having determined the activity that each individual is expected to perform, his

responsibility is fixed. In other words, what they are to do for the attainment of the objectives of the organisation. For example, the purchase manager will be given the responsibility for the purchase of goods; the sales manager will be responsible for sales; the advertising manager will be responsible for advertisement and the finance manager will take care of the responsibility of finance. A person who is saddled with a responsibility must be given some authority too. Authority means the freedom of taking decision, guiding the subordinates and the freedom of supervising and controlling. Authority should be in proportion to the work or responsibility. If the responsibility is greater than the authority given and is insufficient to cope with the responsibility, the responsibility cannot be discharged successfully. For example, if a marketing manager is assigned the responsibility of increasing sales but has not been given the authority to appoint sales representatives needed for the job, the increase in sales cannot be expected. So long as the authority to discharge the responsibility is not given, the person concerned has not accountability. It is only after granting authority to an individual that he can be made accountable. When two or more than two persons work for the attainment o common goals their interrelationship must be defined very clearly. Everybody should know who is his superior and who is his subordinate? For example, the purchase manager will be the superior for all the employees of the purchase department. They will receive order from him and will also be responsible to him. On the other hand, the purchase manager will get orders from the General Manager and will be responsible to him. Defining clearly the inter-relationship helps in establishing coordination. Organising it is not only such an activity which includes determination of activities; and the defining of the inter-relationship but it also ensure the optimum utilisation of human resources by providing physical resources and the right environment. For example, the factory and the office should be located at a proper place so that the employees can perform better. 2.3 Leading Leading is influencing people so that they will contribute to the organisation and group goals; it has to do predominantly with the personal aspect of managing. All managers would agree that their most important problems arise from people-their desires and attitudes, their behavior as individuals and in groups-and those effective managers also need to be effective leaders. Since leadership implies followership and people tend to follow those who offer a means of satisfying their

own needs, wishes, and desires, it is understandable that leading involves motivation, leadership styles and approaches, and communication. The leading and motivation function is concerned with the human resources within an organisation. Specifically, leading is the process of influencing people to work toward a common goal. Motivation is the process of providing reasons for people to work in the best interest of an organisation. Together, leading and motivation are often referred to as directing. We have alread...