Mgmt11109 Intro To Business: Challenges Assessment Answers

Recommendations: 

It is essential for Rock Paper and Scissors to produce an articulate, meaningful, concise and coherent mission statement that should outline the following points:

• Focusing on constituents need
• Objectives, Trust and goals
• Essentials of sustainable requirements
• Quality service delivery
• Innovation and education

Strategy, goals and objectives:

Rock Paper Scissors does not have defined gaols and objective that makes it very difficult for the stakeholders to recognize the reason behind the establishment of salon. An organization is capable of experiencing growth and profits generation of it has appropriate goals and has vigorous business strategies. However, it is said that setting of goals should bit be done on prompt basis as this might lead to ineffective, inappropriate formulation of goals. Hair dressing industry is regarded as highly fragmented that mainly caters diversified market segments. Rock Paper Scissors service is catered to women, men and children but it has not specified any customer centric service where the needs of customers are considered priority. It does not include any professional quality services that are provided customers that will help in attracting and retaining customers (Elliot et al., 2017).

Recommendations: 

Hair dressing salon should evaluate their formulated mission statements by setting appropriate goals. Setting of proper goals would serve as the foundation of Rock Paper Scissors assisting them in measuring their performance that they are unable to do in current scenario. Aim of organization should be to set measurable, specific, attainable, time bound and relevant goals.

Salon should have defined goals and it is recommended to incorporate listed elements in their goal settings:

• Developing indicators for gauging performance
• Setting target plan and accordingly taking actions
• Policy establishment
• Identifying strengths and weakness
• Budget development

Leadership:

Management and leadership skills are considered essential for handling any changes in growth of cultural diversity of employee and Australian society.

Rock Paper Scissors are lead by its owner Fadi and Fatimah khan and has 10 full hair time dressers as their staffs. Staffs of salon are not performing effectively. Owners are not actively engaged in managing daily operations of business and therefore, leadership as regarded as critically important for the success and sustainability of salon. Leadership is an articulation of mission of organization and helps in bringing major change in organization (Korschun et al., 2017). If an organization is dealing with some trouble aspects resulting from external environment, employment of appropriate style of leadership helps in dealing with such situations and providing aspirations. Employees of salon are demotivated and they are not punctual in their job. Leadership helps in inspiring and motivating employees and objective accomplishment in innovative and creative ways. Contingency theory of leadership is developed by Warren Schmidt and Robert Tannenbaum that make the identification of seven major styles of leadership that leaders can choose from for managing the performance of organization (Antonakis & House, 2013). There are different style of leadership that leader can chose according to particular situation. Seven continuum styles have been developed along with development of two leadership style that is participative and autocratic leadership style. Behavioural leadership theories and team leadership styles helps in increasing profits by managing performance of employees and their productivity. Team leadership helps organization in improving employee performance, lowering turnover, low absenteeism and generating employee satisfaction (Huppatz & Goodwin, 2013).

Recommendation:

• Rock Paper should employ team leadership for motivating their employees for increasing productivity and serving maximum number of clients for enhancing performance.
• Employing contingency leadership styles and other seven style of leadership according to particular situation of salon
• Encouraging participation and collaborative decision making

Motivation:

Staffs of salon are not motivated and are not actively involved in manage g and handling their responsibilities. Furthermore, they don’t arrive at their work on timely basis and hence they are underperforming. Rock Paper does not have any written policies that make their staffs to provide services to their friends free of cost and by using salon chemicals. It is of utmost importance for salon to motivate their employees. McCelland’s, theory of needs depicts that there are there motives that drives the employee’s performance and these includes achievement, affiliation and influence. Affiliation is concern about interrelationship at work and desire to belong to some team. Influencing is about persuading other staffs to get engaged in work and achievement is about setting goals, mastering tasks and finding solutions. Manager of salon should recognize the needs that are of utmost importance to organization and motivation. Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory assumes that there are five needs that motivate employees within organization. Such needs are physiological needs, social needs, safety needs, needs of self actualization and ego and esteem needs. Another theory of motivational need is Alderfer’s hierarchy that incorporated three needs level that is growth, relatedness and existence. Goal setting theory helps in specifying gaols and fixing objectives along with providing feedback for improving their performance. Under this theory, performance is influenced by self efficiency and goal commitment (Northouse, 2015).

Recommendations: 

• Some of the main motivational contributions to employee are the need suggested by Maslow’s hierarchy and therefore, it is recommended to rock paper to employ such theory of motivating employees and staffs.
• Employment of goal setting theory helps in aligning vision and mission of salon along with attaining objectives.
• Salon can conduct any survey by framing questionnaires seeking them what are the factors that motivates them most.

Performance management:

Rock Paper Scissors does not have any indicators for measuring performance of their employees and they do not have kept any track of customer visit and number of clients served by staffs per day. Furthermore, there is not any proper accounting system that makes difficulty for gauging financial performance. Performance management is critical for any organization as employees are indispensable part of any organization such as hair dressing salon (Parmenter, 2015). Performance management will assist salon in ensuring whether employees are fulfilling their responsibilities and living up to expectation of salon objectives. Managing performance initiates with monitoring and development of required traits for measuring their performance and rewarding them accordingly. Performance appraisal is the method that can be employed by organization for motivating staffs for better productivity (Shields et al., 2015).

Recommendation:

• Employee involvement in the planning stage helps in developing appropriate way to get the business done. This would prevent any type of communication  gap along with boosting confidence and morale of employees
• Evaluating performance of employees individually and issuing performance review3s should be then policy of salon
• Monitoring employees productivity and progress should be done on regular basis
• Rewarding employees should also be the part of performance management program that would helps in ensuring maximum profitability and optimum performance and productivity.

Incorporation of goal setting:

Specification of gaols helps in fixing some of the issues faced by salon. It can be observed from case study that there is no proper management of salon in all the aspects such as customer, financial management and does not have any written policies that would prevent employees from indulging in theft of property. Goals should be specified for each staffs and monitoring helps in addressing the ongoing issues faced by salon (Wang et al., 2017).

Recommendation:

• Establishment of decisions making and inculcating the behaviours of achieving gaols by each individual
• Generating internal focus of control

Strategic and Financial planning:

Financial reporting of Rock Paper is done on monthly basis and reporting is done for bank statements, credit card statements and receipts. Accountant of salon is responsible for preparing balance sheet and profit and loss statement. It can be seen that there are no proper financial planning. Financial planning is the back bone of any organization for carrying out its operation profitably (Laing, 2014). Furthermore, all the competing values of organization are incorporated in strategic planning. Importances of planning are needed to be realised by hair dressing salon.

Recommendations:

• Developing financial indicators for gauging financial performance and reviewing financial reporting on annual basis as well.
• Written policies establishment for protecting property of salon
• Determining the strength and weakness of salon
• Conducting evaluation of current scenario of salon
• Identifying link between financial decisions, investment and business performance

Managerial environment in which hairdressing salon operates:

Management of hair dressing salon is to be done in a very creative way for generating high level of customer satisfaction. It intends should be to create a working climate that is conducive to employee’s satisfaction and high degree of personal development. Working practices of salon incorporates safe disposal of chemicals and not contributing to property theft by employees and management training should be commended for employees to effectively handle the business. Business management training is the emerging skill gap for salon along with talent retention. Process of retention is to harness the potential to completely engage employee within the salon (Tourish, 2014).

Priorities and process of managers of Rock Paper and Scissors:

Managers of Rock Paper Scissors are required to have the proper understanding and greater knowledge of technology, financial matters, business planning and management of human resources. It is of utmost importance for mangers to understand and have the skills of financial management that relates to their business process and thereby helps in generating profitability and maintaining it. Workforce of salon can be managed by inculcating human resource management skills and working toward improving their morale and productivity and contribution to their social well being. For operating profitably, there is need to have some requisite business skills. Proper documentation and formulation of policies would guide and direct the employees to carry out their activities for preventing them for property theft and unauthorized use of salon’s belongings. Therefore, it is recommended to managers to develop management skills for addressing several management issues faced by Rock Paper Scissors.

External environmental factors affecting hairdressing salon:

In Australia, there are no hair dressing salon in the industry having a dominant market share and this industry has expanded over the past five years. Hairdressing industry in this country is particular made of small and medium sized business (Schaltegger & Wagner, 2017). There are many external that affects the operation of hair dressing salon and they are as follows:

• Technological advancement- There is increasing employment of information and communication technology by the salon in their process of doing business. It involves text messages confirmation and appointment of management software. All this impacts the operations of hair dressing salon.
• Government policies- formulation of policies by government relating to operations of business does have a considerable impact on salon business.
• Economic drivers- Structural shift in Australian economy has benefitted the hair dresser industry. Sales of service and add on products of salon can be enhanced by adopting the strategy of providing unparallel customer services. Increasing competition is faced by hair dressing salon.
• Growing population, high discretionary income and high demand of beauty services in Australia.
• Trends- hairdressing business are significantly influenced by ongoing trend and ultimately impacting the strategic planning of business (Lyons et al., 2013).
• Customer base- Sudden change in target customers would also impact the operations of hair dressing salon.

Contemporary management challenges presented by issues faced by Rock Paper Scissors:

Owners of salon might face many challenges due to several issues prevailing including poor management skills. Some of the challenges are listed below:

• Challenge in maintaining competitive edge without having a proper strategic approach
• Challenge is gaining successful clientele and running successfully in event of economic downturn.
• Rock Paper Scissors ability to adapt to requirements of clients and constant changes in techniques and fashion.
• Challenge in terms of generating sufficient profits to become sustainable in growing environment of hair dressing industry.

Conclusion:

From the above analysis of various aspects of management, it can be said that there are several issues faced by Rock Paper Scissors. They have issues in several fronts such as customer satisfaction, demotivated employees, not generating profitability and do not have any strategic goals. Salon would be facing many challenges if they are not addressing such prevailing issues by incorporating various management theories to use it at their advantage. Moreover, various external environmental factors of Australia would have an impact on salon performance. However, such challenges can be addressed by formulation of strategic approach for solving issues. This would help in maintaining their position in growing environment of hair dressing industry in Australia.  

Recommendations:

Recommendations to Rock Paper Scissors can be wrapped by suggesting them to adopt various theories such as leadership theories, motivational theories and developing mission statements and setting goal. Salon should have proper financial planning that would assist them in gauging and measuring their financial reporting. Performance management such as appraising employees and rewarding them by reviewing their performance would help in motivating them to work more and improve their productivity. Therefore, adoption of the above recommended strategies would help Rock Paper Scissors in managing their overall performance and improving sustainability.

References

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Combe, C. (2014). Introduction to management. Oxford University Press.

Elliot, A. J., Dweck, C. S., & Yeager, D. S. (Eds.). (2017). Handbook of Competence and Motivation: Theory and Application. Guilford Publications.

Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford University Press.

Huppatz, K., & Goodwin, S. (2013). Masculinised jobs, feminised jobs and men’s ‘gender capital’experiences: Understanding occupational segregation in Australia. Journal of Sociology, 49(2-3), 291-308.

Kinicki, A., Williams, B. K., Scott-Ladd, B., & Perry, M. (2014). Management: A practical introduction. McGraw-Hill Education Australia.

Korschun, D., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Swain, S. D. (2014). Corporate social responsibility, customer orientation, and the job performance of frontline employees. Journal of Marketing, 78(3), 20-37.

Laing, W. A. (2014). Small business environmental sustainability: Student-applied practices. Journal of Sustainability and Green Business, 2, 1.

Lyons, G., Roberts, H., Palmer, A., Matheson, M., & Nixon, R. (2013). Hairdressers presenting to an occupational dermatology clinic in Melbourne, Australia. Contact Dermatitis, 68(5), 300-306.

Maag, J. W. (2016). Behavior management: From theoretical implications to practical applications. Cengage Learning.

Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Parmenter, D. (2015). Key performance indicators: developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs. John Wiley & Sons.

Schaltegger, S., & Wagner, M. (Eds.). (2017). Managing the business case for sustainability: The integration of social, environmental and economic performance. Routledge.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., ... & Plimmer, G. (2015). Managing Employee Performance & Reward: Concepts, Practices, Strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Tourish, D. (2014). Leadership, more or less? A processual, communication perspective on the role of agency in leadership theory. Leadership, 10(1), 79-98.

Wang, S., Noe, R. A., & Wang, Z. M. (2014). Motivating knowledge sharing in knowledge management systems: A quasi–field experiment. Journal of Management, 40(4), 978-1009.