Research Paper On Ford And Assessment Answer

 Each week, based on the hour of e-learning activity that has been prescribed, you are required actively to engage with the material by writing a short discussion of how the material that was prescribed relates to the topic(s) of this unit and how it relates to your own personal experience.

 You create a blog each week where you provide evidence that you have engaged in this way with the prescribed e-learning activity. In the blog, you mention any extra material relevant to the activity that you have researched on the net. These blogs are assessed in the following way: 1. Blogs are spot checked by your lecturer. 2. By the end of Week 5, students choose their best two blogs and submit them as an assignment (due Friday Week 5). Each blog should be in two sections: Section 1 lists the key ideas you have extracted from the prescribed e-learning activity. 

In Section 2 you apply those ideas to your own experience, to an organisation you know and to the topic(s) of this unit.

The written report of your two best blogs has a 1,000 word limit and must be in the form of a research report (with table of contents, executive summary, main body, conclusion and references). TOTAL 20%
 

Assessment 1: Research Paper

Activity 1: Ford and Taylorism

Key Ideas:

Taylorism that has been proposed by F. W. Taylor voices in favor of scientific management. He believed that the organization lack effective management and hence productivity suffered. Hence, he developed and propagated his Scientific Management Theory that considers the act of management as science and he supported harmony among the workers and management instead of discord. Taylor believed that cooperation and not individualism is the key to an organization’s success. He also believed that an organization must look for maximum production instead of production that is restricted. He said that each personnel should be developed to his maximum potentiality and recommended equal delegation of responsibility between the management personnel and the workers. He also believed that a mental revolution was necessary in respect of the management personnel and the workers to ensure maximum organizational productivity.Taylor when hired by Henry Ford as an adviser recommended strategies such as engaging in mass production of cars at low cost and offer high wages to the workers. High paid work and non- acceptance of union was some of the management strategies as proposed by Taylor and accepted by Ford.  However, Taylorism and its application by Ford led to no job security and working for long tenures with the company made them powerless and with no authority (Sandrone, 2018).

The modern workers in Australia, America or Europe might not accept Taylorism in its actual form because it becomes too harsh for the workers to work such hard for long hours just in the hope of high wages, as they did not have job security.
The scripts those are read in the call centers are designed in a way that the employees mug them up and every time they speak with the clients they just pitch the scripts like machines. Thus, there is form of Taylorism observed as in order to achieve higher efficiency, the management tries to establish a fixed technique that will have to be followed without any scope of improvisation.

Though, in the modern context, Taylorism might not be preferred by most of the workers, yet there are certain situations where Taylorism might still hold well. As for example, in case there is need to enhance organizational productivity that is suffering due to lack of employee output due to negligence. In those situations Taylorism can be applied by the management to force the workers work hard by implementing rigid rules which they must follow or else might be fired.

Application of idea to own experience:

In my personal context, I have come across the application of Taylorism in some of the organizations where assembly line is still observed in traditional terms. There are some packaged drinking water companies which implement Taylorism to make the production of the bottles effective through use of assembly line and making workers work hard in allurement of incentives for hard work. There are many small and medium-scale organizations in some of the other sectors also those follow Taylorism to ensure that the workers are controlled and managed by the management with string hands and they are often made to work overtime and under harsh conditions (Talathi, 2018).

Activity 1: Corporate culture and strategy

Key Ideas:
The main idea contained in the article discusses about the importance of corporate culture and its alignment with corporate strategy. Many organizations might have effective corporate cultures but yet they fail to achieve the desired business objectives owing to the lack of synchronization with the corporate strategies. The quote referred to in the article that says “Culture clash: When corporate culture fights strategy, it can cost you” is attributed to Lou Gerstner, the famous CEO that pulled IBM from the verge of ruins in the 1990s. He is considered to be instrumental in building the Big Blue Culture in IBM. 

The culture change brought in by Gerstner in IBM enhanced the corporate effectiveness of the company as it was possible for the management to develop a work culture that believed in equitable policies and an ambience of harmony among people belonging to multiple cultures. Culture can be termed as the shared beliefs and values about the workplace that is borne by each and every employee in an organization. When Gerstner assumed the office of the CEO of IBM in 1993, the organization was on the verge of being stalled up from one division to another. The step that he took was to stop the then business strategies and focused more on the transformation of the existing corporate culture within the organization. Thus, the changed cultural strategy that was undertaken by Gerstner to bring a holistic cultural policy that transformed IBM completely is an example of effective alignment of organizational cultural and strategic decision-making of a business that ensures success in the long run and achieves sustainability (W. P. Carey Research, 2011).

Application of idea to own experience:

As an intern in a financial organization I have come across the Hierarchical culture that has well-established corporate levels and job structures. In this type of corporate culture all the job responsibilities are arranged in the form of ranks in terms of the importance level. Here, I have observed that the instructions mainly flow in a top-down approach. The management tends to control and coordinate the activities of the subordinates and there is an element of observance of best practices. The strategic decisions in a hierarchical organizational culture are controlled mainly by the superiors and there is continuous monitoring and evaluation of the activities of the subordinates that helped the organization to be successful and productive in its domain. 

There has been an effective alignment of the hierarchical corporate culture with the business strategies in the organization, but I have observed that on many occasions, some of the employees felt that they were not able to demonstrate their creative or innovative skills. In several cases they were also not able to undertake initiatives as their superiors have clearly offered them instructions that they should observe under all circumstances. I have also observed that many of the employees felt demotivated because they were not given effective employee empowerment and employee engagement that often caused them feel depressed and this led to a fall in the productivity of the organization (Rouse, 2018).

References