Mod005248 Understanding Business : Business Assessment Answers

Research: 

Answer:

Economic Impact of UK withdrawing from EU

As per an article published in The Independent, the decision of Britain to exit the European Union has had several impacts on the country. The Independent’s Oliver Wright on Saturday 18 June 2016, states that the decision of Britain to use their right of withdrawal from the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union has had major implications on the economy of Britain (Uddin and Boateng, 2011, p.547). It has restricted the free trade of the country with the other member nations of the European Union which would restrict their revenue from the export and import trade; business analysts predict that Britain might not be able to enter with a replacement policy of free trade with the other 27 nations of the European Union. The exit limit the extent and volume of economic trade that Britain had with other nations and this restriction has lead the business analysts to predict a growth rate of only 1.1 per cent in 2017 of UK compared to the growth rate of 1.8 per cent in 2016. European Union was a good source of attracting investment from the foreign nations for UK. However, after the decision of exiting the European Union, the flow of investment will be restricted which will in turn restrict the growth of the country and also cause the foreign firms to return to the boundaries of the nations who are still a part of the European Union (Callan et al. 2011). Owing to the loss of foreign investment, the International Monetary Fund has predicted a growth rate of only 1.9 per cent for the year 2016 for the country (Ottaviano et al. 2014). The gross domestic product will also decline since the growth rate will decrease and the amount of investment will also reduce. Brendan Sharp also suggested in the newspaper article that these drastic turns in the economic scenario of the country would sharply affect the standard of living o the citizens as the people would start losing their jobs as the foreign organizations start taking the decisions of pulling out their funds from United Kingdom. For example, BMW, the car manufacturing company has warned their employees and staff of the loss of job scenario. Due to the limitations in free trade and constant flow of investment in the country, the cost of living would increase which would decrease the standard of living of the citizens of the country (Theodoropoulou and Watt, 2011). With the progress of time, Britain’s decision of leaving the European Union only seems to have a negative impact on their economy. The decision of Brexit will increase the labor wages as the free movement of trade will be restricted earlier, individuals from the EU member nations travelled to UK in search of jobs which ensured that UK had a good labor force to be employed at factories and organizations. But due to the restrictions on the free movement of individuals, the number of laborers to be employed will decrease which will in turn increase the wages of the laborers and the labor cost incurred by the company. The value of the British currency has also declined and is expected to fall to a rate of $1.32 (independent.co.uk, 2017).

Working Environment affecting the organization’s performance 

The working environment of an organization is one of the major factors affecting the organization’s performance in the market place. As indicated by Margareta Pagano of The Independent on Wednesday 8 July 2015, in her article, the performance of the employees is largely governed by the environment they are provided with in their workplace. It is a known fact that the organizations performance depends on the performance of the employees who strive hard to ensure that the organizational goals and objectives are fulfilled. If the employees are provided with a friendly and a good working environment then there productivity will also increase and the extra output generated by them will help the organization to achieve their goals and aims more efficiently. A good and healthy working environment is one where the employees feel motivated and their morale is high (Chiang and Hsieh, 2012, p.180). It is the responsibility of the managers and the supervisors to create an environment where the employees feel motivated and comfortable sand are also free to share their thoughts and views regarding the business operations and management. If the employees are able to provide feedbacks to their employers regarding the business operations, then they would feel that they are also an important part of the organization and would hence, strive harder to accomplish the goals and aims of the company (Rich et al. 2010, p.618). This feeling in them would reduce the error rate in the employees which would hence, increase their productivity and output. It also encourages the employees to become innovative and provide ideas that help the organization to employ technologies and innovate their manufacturing process or their marketing plan which would help the organization to earn financial benefits and profit. If the good working environment is provided to the employees, the rate of absenteeism and labor turnover also decreases which again increases the output of the organization. If the employees are motivated, then they will also want to collaborate with the other employees and find out ways to increase the efficiency in their performance level; it would induce the feeling of co-operation and enhance the team work in the organization. This collaboration of employees will help them in providing each other with constructive feedback and improve their performance in the company (Li et al. 2010, p.4). As per the article published in The Independent, a favorable working environment for the employees would help them in identifying a unique identity with the culture of the organization. The culture of the organization implies the mission and vision statements of the organization, the objectives of the organization, the core values of the organization, organizational symbol, belief, system, processes, assumptions and languages. The identification of an employee with the core values and process of the organization would instill a feeling of oneness in the employees and he would in turn work harder to improve and increase his output towards the company which in turn would lead to increase in the output and efficiency of the organization (Mowda et al. 2013). The employees are also capable of finding the learning circumstances if their working environment provides them with an opportunity to develop healthy competition among them (independent.co.uk, 2017).

Impact of self-service machine on UK business

As the article published in The Telegraph newspaper of United Kingdom on Sunday 9 April indicates, United Kingdom has become a country where the self-service kiosks have started replacing the employees in the stores. The customers’ needs and preferences are dynamic in nature as they keep on changing with the changing trends in the market and around the globe. Nowadays, the customers; prefer one stop shopping or bulk shopping and do not like to waste time by standing the long queues of the supermarket to pay their bills. Hence, the kiosks systems have been a very convenient option for the customers (Hilton et al. 2013, p.5). Tesco PLC, an organization engaged in the retail industry was the first company to identify this need of the customer and introduce self-service kiosks in their supermarket. These kiosks were introduced so that the customers could be provided with a greater shopping experience at the supermarkets of Tesco PLC. Taking the queue from Tesco PLC other organizations like Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer’s also installed similar self-service helps in their stores. As per the article written by Szu Ping Chan for The Telegraph, UK, it can be understood that the self-service kiosks has started replacing the human labor force at work. These kiosks are installed so that the customers can locate their goods and products easily at the stores and even check out without waiting in long queue for paying their bills. The work done by the kiosks now were initially done by human employees; they were appointed to provide assistance to the customers while they were shopping and also helping them by making a bill of all the items bought by them. Therefore, it can be stated that the self-help services have replaced the human employees by performing all their tasks (Mani et al. 2013, p.52). This replacement of labor force has helped the companies in the market to reduce their costs in consideration to the employee wages provided to them. The companies started replacing their employees with the self-help kiosk machines which helped them to save their labor cost as the number of employees appointed by them decreased which in turn decreased their amount of money which was earlier spend on paying the wages and salaries of the employees. These kiosks have also helped the company to provide enhanced customer satisfaction as their problems were being solved by the installation of these self-help kiosks and machines (Lee et al. 2011, p.510). However, this even created a certain amount of dissatisfaction and frustration among the customers when they were unable to use the kiosks. They still needed the help of the employees to understand how the machine operates. In the initial stage of installation of the self-help kiosks, these machines were not that advanced and had major issues in them. The problems in the kiosks would hamper the operations and activities of the customer which would lead to a delay in their activities (Chen et al. 2012, p.1165). These delays lead to a great amount of dissatisfaction among the customers who became frustrated and even started yelling at the store owners. Hence, this self-service machine is both a boon and a bane for the business organizations of United Kingdom (telegraph.co.uk, 2017).

Reference:

Books:

Mowday, R.T., Porter, L.W. and Steers, R.M., 2013. Employee—organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. Academic press.

Journals:

Callan, T., Leventi, C., Levy, H., Matsaganis, M., Paulus, A. and Sutherland, H., 2011. The distributional effects of austerity measures: a comparison of six EU countries (No. EM6/11). EUROMOD Working Paper.

Chen, H., Chiang, R.H. and Storey, V.C., 2012. Business intelligence and analytics: From big data to big impact. MIS quarterly, 36(4), pp.1165-1188.

Chiang, C.F. and Hsieh, T.S., 2012. The impacts of perceived organizational support and psychological empowerment on job performance: The mediating effects of organizational citizenship behavior. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(1), pp.180-190.

Hilton, T., Hughes, T., Little, E. and Marandi, E., 2013. Adopting self-service technology to do more with less. Journal of Services Marketing, 27(1), pp.3-12.

Lee, W.I., Chiu, Y.T., Liu, C.C. and Chen, C.Y., 2011. Assessing the effects of consumer involvement and service quality in a self?service setting. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries, 21(5), pp.504-515.

Li, W., Nan, X. and Mo, Z., 2010, August. Effects of budgetary goal characteristics on managerial attitudes and performance. In Management and Service Science (MASS), 2010 International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Mani, D., Barua, A. and Whinston, A., 2010. An empirical analysis of the impact of information capabilities design on business process outsourcing performance. Mis Quarterly, pp.39-62.

Ottaviano, G.I., Pessoa, J.P., Sampson, T. and Van Reenen, J., 2014. The costs and benefits of leaving the EU.

Rich, B.L., Lepine, J.A. and Crawford, E.R., 2010. Job engagement: Antecedents and effects on job performance. Academy of management journal, 53(3), pp.617-635.

Theodoropoulou, S. and Watt, A., 2011. Withdrawal symptoms: an assessment of the austerity packages in Europe.

Uddin, M. and Boateng, A., 2011. Explaining the trends in the UK cross-border mergers & acquisitions: An analysis of macro-economic factors. International Business Review, 20(5), pp.547-556.

Websites

Chan, S. (2017). British workers for British jobs is a 'fallacy', industry leaders warn. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/09/british-workers-british-jobs-fallacy-industry-leaders-warn/ [Accessed 13 May 2017].

Pagano, M. (2017). Budget 2015: Small businesses bear brunt of living wage. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/budget-2015-small-businesses-bear-brunt-of-living-wage-10376207.html [Accessed 13 May 2017].

Wright, O. (2017). What happens if Britain does vote for Brexit?. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-what-happens-if-britain-does-vote-for-brexit-a7089336.html [Accessed 10 May 2017].