Porter’s Generic Strategies

This blogpost by the team of assignmenthelpexperts.com would explain about the Porter’s Generic Strategies. Companies follow a particular strategy to gain sustainable competitive advantage. According to Porter, companies can get a competitive position by following only a certain generic strategies that he termed as cost leadership, differentiation and focus. Cost leadership and differentiation strategies target a large share of market while focus strategy targets a narrow segment of the market. All these strategies require unique kind of organization structures, procedures, control systems, and incentive systems for companies and what particular strategy is to be followed should be decided with a detailed and through internal and external analysis. Porter strongly argued that a company should follow only one of these three strategies.

Cost leadership strategies are followed by companies in such a way that every part of the organization is geared towards keeping the cost minimum, achieving the highest efficiency and meeting the quality standards as per the consumer expectations. Wal-Mart is one company that has executed this strategy quite successfully. McDonald is another company that pursues cost leadership strategy by having standardized processes and tighter management control with minimum management staff. Toyota is another example of a company that follows cost leadership strategy. However it is important to understand that it is not just about offering the products or services at the minimum prices to customers but it is about reducing costs at all aspects of the value chain of the organization, eliminating wastes, innovating at every step and effective leadership and management orientation for this kind of strategy.

Differentiation is another generic strategy in which companies differentiate their offerings on certain aspects of the products’ features that customers give not only product preference to differentiated product but also are willing to pay more. Companies structure the whole organization and its actions in such a way that its products’ perceived value is higher for its consumers with respect to competitor’s products. Companies can strategies to create product differentiation. Companies focus on higher margins than high market share through this kind of strategy. Companies need to have innovative product development and effective marketing strategies for pursuing differentiation strategy.

Another generic strategy is focus strategy that focuses on a niche or narrow segment of the market and offer its products/services to that narrow segment. These offerings could be either following cost leadership or differentiation strategy. Basically by the following this strategy, companies attempt to fulfill the need of a particular segment better that the companies targeting a large market share. Companies try to build strong loyalty of its consumers with its brand.

Michel Porter argues that for the companies to create sustainable competitive advantage in the long run, they need to follow either one of the generic strategy and cannot follow stuck in the middle approach. However, practically there has been some companies who have successfully executed more than one generic strategies. To take this model further, Bowman introduced strategy clock to introduce more options for viable generic strategies for the companies.

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ERG Theory of Motivation

This blog would explain about Alderfer’s ERG Theory of motivation for our students. This blog is written by the experts of assignmenthelpexperts.com. ERG theory is based on the Maslow hierarchy of needs however there are some propositions that differ from Maslow’s theory in ERG theory.

According to Alderfer, needs of employees are divided into three parts such as existence need, relatedness need and growth need. Existence needs are related with basic needs of an employee such as physiological and physical safety needs (Xiao, Qi and Xiao 2009). Relatedness needs are related with wants of employee in which they are interested to develop strong interpersonal relationship with people and also want to attain fame and recognition from public. Growth needs are related with those needs in which they want self-development and personal growth. It is related with Maslow’s self-actualization needs of employees. Level of significance varies from employee to employee for each need (Xiao, Qi and Xiao 2009).

Jiang, Xiao, Qi and Xiao (2009) described that thought of Alderfer’s ERG theory is followed by many organizations while creating a reward strategy. It is because different components of this theory are helpful for creation of reward strategy as it relate the reward strategy with different organizations’ goals and strategies.

Figure 4: Alderfer’s ERG Theory (Source: Michael, Hitt, Miller and Colella 2006)

According to Maslow’s need hierarchy, it is necessary that first a lower need is satisfied and then a higher level need is satisfied but Alderfer’s ERG theory is against this view as Figure 4 reflects that any need can be satisfied in any order as it is possible that an employee is satisfied first with growth need and then relatedness need (Michael, Hitt, Miller and Colella 2006).

ERG theory differs with Maslow theory that it states that at any given point of time, more than one need may be in picture for a particular individual. In ERG theory, there is no focus of level of needs rather an individual may focus of multiple levels of needs. Individuals change from one level of need to another with satisfaction-progression and frustration-regression model i.e. if a need is satisfied, individual progresses to next level of needs. In case, when one level of need is not fulfilled, an individual regresses to below level.

We hope that this post would be useful to you for understanding about ERG Theory. If you have any query regarding this, or you need assignment help, please do send us your queries to info@assignmenthelpexperts.com We would be happy to hear from your side.

References:
Jiang, Z., Xiao, Q., Qi, H. and Xiao, L. (2009) Total Reward Strategy: A Human Resources Management Strategy Going with the Trend of the Times. International Journal of Business and Management, 4 (11), p. 177-183.
Michael, H., Hitt, A., Miller, C.C. and Colella, A. (2006) Organizational Behavior A Strategic Approach, 6th Edition. Canada: John Wiley & Sons.

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Leadership and Motivation

This blog post would highlight different aspects of leadership and its role in motivating employees in the organization. This discussion on leadership and motivation is provided by the team of the experts of assignment help experts.

Leadership is one of the most important aspects for an organization to excel in the competitive market in the long run. Leadership is a process by which a leader motivates, develops, guides, and influences the behavior of others to accomplish the organizational goal. Prime job of a leader is to give direction to people and motivate them to see one uniform goal for the whole group. Every leader has leadership quality that helps to achieve the organizational goal and objective. Good leadership helps in creating confidence and builds the morale of an employee and helps people to see purpose in their work and hence motivating employees to work effectively and efficiently.

There are three main techniques by which an employee may be motivated; those are Validation, Information and Participation (Blue 2010). Leadership has a great role in exchange of information throughout the company, encouraging participation among the employees and validating actions of all the staff in the organization. So leadership has a direct role in affecting employee motivation in a company. A leader improves the quality and skills of an employee and guide to work in an effective manner, so that production increases of the organization. A leader may have autocratic and democratic style. No one style is effective to motivate employees and get the work done. Different circumstances require different kind of leadership styles to motivate employees. A good leader adjusts his leadership style to suit the needs of his follower to motivate them effectively.

A leader is expected to have through knowledge about the organization so that he provides his knowledge to his employees. Excellent knowledge and experience makes good leader. To motivate employees effectively, a leader needs to have very good communication skills. Leadership improves abilities of the employee. Leadership also improves the performance level of an employee. Every employee should be trained in the field of their own, so that he gives their best performance. If a person has quality of a good leader, he can manage easily employees of the organization such that they all give best output to the organization.

Every leader should listen to his employees’ concern to understand their needs and requirements in an effective way i.e. employee involvement should be there in the organization. So leaders should develop such a culture in the company that all parts of the organization are working to motivate each other. From this discussion, it can be concluded that motivating employees is an important part of the job of leaders in a company.

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Resolving and Assessing Emerging Issues of Human Resource Management

This post is in continuation to our last post related emerging HR issues. This post would discuss about how to assess and resolve Emerging issues related to human resource management in an organization.

Open Communication:

In order to assess these issues open communication with employees is helpful to HR manager. By an effective communication process, HR manager can identify basic problems and issues of employees and try to solve in right time with effective rules and policies (Buchanan & Bryman, 2009).

Internal Assessment:

HR manager needs to communicate with management team of the organization to become aware of what issues they have and how to address them. Manager can use objectives and mission as guidelines to identify problems. HR manager can create effective communication with colleagues to communicate problems and issues with the management team. This helps the manager to identify problems and issues within the organization (Griffin & Moorhead, 2009).

External Assessment:

Federal and state government, partnerships, marketing teams; organizations are also helpful to HR manager to assess problems and issues. Personal relationship with other organizational members and employees can also helpful to manager to assess the critical issues in domestic and international market. Newsletters and records of government and private organization are also helpful to HR manager to assess the critical issues (Schweyer, Newman & DeVries, 2009).

Projections:

Economic development, demographic and trends of biological and physical resources are also helpful to HR manager to identify problems and issues within the organization. By economic development and change in demographic environment helps HR manager to think about organization policies and emerging issues (Buchanan & Bryman, 2009).

Performance Parameters:

Performance parameters also support the HR manager to assess these issues. By using performance parameters and establishing performance indicators in an organization, HR manager can assess the issues and problems and manage diversified workforce (Schweyer, Newman & DeVries, 2009).

Resolve Emerging Issues

Training and Development Program:

In order to resolve emerging issues, HR manager should provide training and development programs to the employees. These programs would help the manager to polish the hidden skills and talent of employees and improve their abilities to cope with change (Griffin & Moorhead, 2009).

Compensation and Benefits Practices:

HR manager should also offer compensation and benefits to all employees specially aging employees of organization. It is helpful to motivate employees towards work or some specific assignment in the organization. These practices assist the HR manager to retain key employees and reduce employee turnover in organization (Brown, 2006).

Communication and feedback System:

To resolve critical issues at domestic and international level, HR manager should develop the open communication and feedback system in the organization. By an effective communication channel, employees and management can share these problems and experiences with other employees and executives. In order to know about the resolution success, HR manager should collect the feedback from his colleagues, employees and workers of an organization. Feedback system would allow manager to review employee perception that can help manager to manage diverse workforce at global level (Goldsmith, 2007).

Involvement:

To assess the critical issues in effective manner, HR manager should involve at every steps such as selection, performance management and measurement, training and development, setting up of clear and specific set of goals, designing teams, designing new HR policies etc. Involvement in these steps helps the HR manager to assess organizational issues at domestic as well as global level (Brown, 2006).

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References
Brown, D. R. (2006). An Experiential Approach to Organization Development. Pearson Education.
Buchanan, D. A. & Bryman, A. (2009). The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Research Methods. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Goldsmith, M. (2007). Leading Organizational Learning. John Wiley & Sons.
Griffin, R. W. & Moorhead, G. (2009). Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Cengage Learning.
Schweyer, A., Newman, E. & DeVries, P. (2009). Talent Management Technologies: A Buyer's Guide to New, Innovative Solutions. AuthorHouse.
Vernez, G. (2007). Workforce Planning and Development Processes: A Practical Guide. Rand Corporation.

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Emerging Issues in HRM (Human Resource Management)

This blogpost by the experts of assignmenthelpexperts.com would inform our readers about the emerging issues in human resource management (HR). Below list highlights and describes some of the main emerging issues related to HR that are very important for organizations to manage effectively.

Workforce planning and development:

Recruitment of right person on right job is a critical issue in domestic as well as international market for the organization. In an organization, HR manager is fully responsible for recruitment of right person. Because of different culture and religion, it is difficult to provide the required training and development programs to the employees at global level (Vernez, 2007).

Managing Talent:

Managing talent is also a critical issue to address at international level due to high competition. Cultural change at global level create complication to manage skills and talent of diversify workforce to implement the strategies and plans in order to achieve organizational goals and objectives. It also affects the training and development programs of organization (Schweyer, Newman & DeVries, 2009).

Managing Globalization:

Presently, managing globalization is also a critical issue for HR manager. Due to globalization and regular changes in technological and social environment, liberalization of trade policies and regulations, etc. it has become critical for HR managers to cope with the competitive environment that affects the performance of organization at domestic as well as global platform (Griffin & Moorhead, 2009).

Managing Demographic Workforce:

Managing demographic workforce is also an emerging issue for the organization and HR department. At domestic and global level, there are many policies and regulation that affects the recruitment policy of an organization to manage people specially, aging workforce. Company’s pension plan, retirement benefits for aging people are affected by the governmental policies (Vernez, 2007). This is a very important and difficult challenge for HR managers in recent times.

Managing Changes and Cultural Transformation:

Managing organizational changes and culture at global level also creates the issues for organization and HR department. In most of the time, organizational changes create conflicts between employees and management team that affects the culture of the organization (Schweyer, Newman & DeVries, 2009). So change management is an important emerging issues for the HR managers.

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References

Griffin, R. W. & Moorhead, G. (2009). Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Cengage Learning.
Schweyer, A., Newman, E. & DeVries, P. (2009). Talent Management Technologies: A Buyer's Guide to New, Innovative Solutions. AuthorHouse.
Vernez, G. (2007). Workforce Planning and Development Processes: A Practical Guide. Rand Corporation.

Read more »