KMGT609 Total Quality Management: Importance of Stakeholders

Meaning of stakeholders- Stakeholder is a party who can be a shareholder, debtor, creditor, an investor, customers, and employees, one who does business with interest. Whole business or company’s performance depends on the activity of stakeholders (Dwyer and Tanner 2002). The decision of business is largely depends on the activities of stakeholders. Stockholders are important because they create profit to the business or organization.

For instances, shareholders are the ones who put money into the business thereby creating more capital leading to more profit , due to which they share the amount of company’s profit afterwards. They play a very dominating role both positively as well as negatively. If the stakeholder gets success and satisfaction from the work then it is a positive stakeholder.

Negative stakeholder means if an individual is unsatisfied, does not get enough success then it is negative stakeholder (Brundrett and Rhodes 2013).  The organization is unable to fulfill the requirements of stakeholders therefore creates negative impacts on stakeholders.  Due to negative impacts, stakeholders might not help in the work of the organization, will not follow lean manufacturing practices.  

Importance of stakeholders in terms of lean manufacturing practice

Lean manufacturing is a type of business practice that involves systematic way of using economic resources, without any wastage in order to increase productivity.

Positive stakeholder performs lean manufacturing practices (Musa et al. 2016). Therefore, when there is a practice of lean and systematic business or any economic functions then it results in more production, in business unit more encouragement to customers and investors, leading to increase in the income of the business people and there is more profit in terms of organization. When organization earns strong profits automatically, it creates more value and competition globally.

2. Example to understand the relation of stakeholders influence on products and services

Stakeholders when acts as investors, then they deal with decision making, policies and plans of an organization to run smoothly. They also check the financial stability of the organization if the stakeholders are the committed investors. These stakeholders largely generate pool of profit for the organization by being efficient employees (Varley and Rafiq 2014). By deliberating their work with efficiency, employees generate maximum output to the organization.

Stakeholders can be internal as well as external. Internal stakeholders are the customers, employees. For instance, if the employees do not get proper facilities or good salaries in return of their efficient and hard work, they are bound to act as negative stakeholder for those organizations and they will not be motivated anymore to help that organization in generating profit.

  Other way round, if the employees get good facilities and salaries, they are motivated to work more with utmost dedication and efficiency finishes their targets before time that in turn helps the organization to generate more output and profit.  One who functions inside the organizational structure or in the business sphere is the internal stakeholders.

  External stakeholders are the ones who perform their functions outside the organization. Examples of external stakeholders are the consumers, shareholders, suppliers. For instance, consumers, if not satisfied with the products they use then become the negative stakeholders and they will not invest their money in that business anymore from where they do not get satisfaction.

On the other side if they are satisfied consumers then it is good for that business , because when consumer gets satisfaction, then there is more demand for that product leading to more production , as a result business earns more income.

2.

A. Meaning and types of benchmarking in an organization

Meaning of benchmarking

Benchmarking is a measuring tool, acts as an instrument to an organization. It measures the overall performance of an organization both internally and externally. This helps to identify the behavior of the organization, understand the problems and issues of an organization, therefore provides with the best solution in order to achieve the set target (Buhali and Mamalakis 2015). It compares the performances with other top organizations, provides solutions and best resources in order to hold at the top position.

Types of benchmarking

There are various types of benchmarking used as a tool to identify the overall position in addition, performance of the organization.

Internal benchmarking involves identification of individual employees’ performances, to provide various methods and resources to the organization in order to complete the work with less span of time (Reddick and Roy 2013).  The motive of the organization is to be at the top level in terms of position. Therefore, it gives the best solution to finish the work using limited resources within less time. Benchmarking, thus provides internal solution to achieve the organization target in the best and simple way, this is internal benchmarking.

On the other side, external benchmark involves the comparing analysis of the organization performances with the rest of the organization externally (Veselovsky et al. 2015). It provides with the resources and method to be use in order to achieve the best position among the other organizations. If the organization wants to know the quantitative data about the organizational performance structure then external benchmark will use the statistical methods and research techniques to understand the output of the organization compared to others. This is external benchmarking.

2. Impact of benchmarking on products and services

The second part of the answer deals with the impact of benchmark on the products and services provided by the organization. As benchmark is a measuring instrument of an organization, therefore has a positive impact on the resources and products provided by the organization (Wu and Guo 2015). A benchmark and strong competition with other organization in quality of products and services, an individual can obtain a statement of analysis on the organizational performance and the nature of the organization.

Benchmark analysis the performances both internally and externally. In terms of product, quality whether the available products are new and latest, or else in terms of resources, that is  proper availability of resources needed to finish the given work. Benchmark provides a detailed explanation of the performances, if the organization is not performing well then there is a need to provide various solutions in terms of services and better products to improve the performance structure. Whereas while comparing with other top organization in respect with products and services, an individual organization gets various new ideas and information regarding to improve the product and services for better performances.  

For example, information technology firm in relation to services sector, if the benchmark shows that the organization is not performing well then there is a need to provide latest software and modern technology for the increase in the quality of efficiency and the increment of organization standards.

In case of a business, impact of a good benchmark lead to more competition, more production, more output.  If the benchmark shows poor performance report of the business, then the business should compare with other business units in terms of quality of the goods, price list, and updated information regarding the new launched products in the market. Role of benchmark is to provide the best solutions to the organization using the best resources that can finally create best positions in the market compared to others. 

References

Buhalis, D. and Mamalakis, E., 2015. Social media return on investment and performance evaluation in the hotel industry context. In Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2015 (pp. 241-253). Springer, Cham.

Brundrett, M. and Rhodes, C., 2013. Researching educational leadership and management: Methods and approaches. Sage.

Dwyer, F.R. and Tanner, J.F., 2002. Business marketing: Connecting strategy, relationships, and learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Musa, R., Saidon, J., Harun, M.H.M., Adam, A.A., Dzahar, D.F., Haussain, S.S. and Lokman, W.M.W., 2016. The predictors and consequences of consumers’ attitude towards mobile shopping application. Procedia economics and finance, 37, pp.447-452.

Reddick, C.G. and Roy, J., 2013Business perceptions and satisfaction with e-government: Findings from a Canadian survey. Government Information Quarterly, 30(1), pp.1-9.

Varley, R. and Rafiq, M., 2014. Principles of retailing. Palgrave macmillan.

Veselovsky, M.Y., Nuraliev, S.U., Fedotov, A.V., Sandu, I.S. and Avarskiy, N.D., 2015. Role of Wholesale Market in Ensuring Russian Food Safety under Conditions of Innovative Economy. Editorial Board.

Wu, J. and Guo, D., 2015. Measuring E-government performance of provincial government website in China with slacks-based efficiency measurement. Technological forecasting and social change, 96, pp.25-31.