The impact of Information communication Technology (ICT) on manager’s work patterns in their
Posted: December 11th, 2013
1- Research Proposal
2- Select Research Method
3- Design Research Program
In this order, you have to do only the research proposal and there are some files are uploaded to help you, Report Template, initial research proposal and an example of a previous report. Use any websites but you have to put all access dates in the references. Plagiarism is No accepted in this report. If you have any question, just send me. Thank you.
Bachelor of Engineering Management
Assignment One
Research Investigation and Analysis
Name: Xiaofeng Tang
Proposal Outline
Table of content
1. Title. 2
2. Background. 2
3. Description of the Problem or Opportunity. 3
3.1 Problems in Functional Strategy. 3
3.2 Problems in Business-Level Strategy and Corporate-Level Strategy 3
3.2.1 Business-level strategy: 3
3.2.2 Corporate-level strategy: 5
3.3 Problems in Horizontal Integration Strategy and Vertical Integration Strategy: 5
3.4 Problems in Dynamic Competitive Strategy. 6
3.5 Problems in Acquisition and Restructuring Strategies. 7
4. Research Objectives. 7
5. Variables to be addressed. 8
5.1 External environment 8
5.2 Internal environment 8
6. Scope of the Investigation. 9
7. Problem Anticipation. 9
References: 11
- Title
The strategic management in manufacturing corporations and its competitiveness
- Background
As the development of manufacturing corporations, the importance of its management has become more and more urgent and critical. There is a great difference between a manufacturing corporation with strategic management and a manufacturing corporation without strategic management. Although these two kinds of corporation may have the same beginning, their performance in the future development would have great differentiation. The key point is that strategic management decides the manufacturing corporation’s competitiveness and its future development. A great number of strategic management methodologies have been detected and both of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Hence, manufacturing corporations should choose those suitable management strategy to secure and acclerate its development.
Manufacturing corporation management have two kinds of models, one is strategic management, the other one is tactics management. The following parts mainly analyse several strategic management methodologies such as functional strategy, horizontal strategy, vertical integration, dynaminc competitive strategy and so on. The research based on experiments which shows the different development tendency with the usage of strategic management and without using it. The purpose of this research is to show the importance and competitiveness of strategic management in manufacturing corporations and let more and more corporations realize its importance and convenience. As a result, those who aim to pursuit higher goals or make greater profits would like to use these strategic management methodologies and get great benefits from it.
The data is mainly collected through the experiments carried out. Moreover, the data also gathered from the subjects, published books, authoried websites and journals. All data is up to date, hence it represents the newest strategic management methodologies. The data will be analysed in the strategic management’s respective section by comparing the difference strategies of manufacturing corporations.
- Description of the Problem or Opportunity
By using strategic management in manufacturing corporations, its comtetitiveness can be seen apparently. However, nothing is really give us benefits without risks or problems. In this section, problems have been listed in each manufacturing mangement strategy.
3.1 Problems in Functional Strategy
Functional strategy is the approach a functional area takes to achieve corporate and business unit objectives and strategies by maximizing resource productivity. It totally have five types, they are marketing strategy, human resource management strategy, financial strategy, research & development strategy and informational management strategy
In this section, there are mainly two problems of the functional strategy which have been listed below:
1. marketing: failure of effective marketing strategy would cause deadly attack to the corporation
2. human resource management: Although HR could attract elites, if the elites change their job especially work for your business competitior, which could bring deadly attack to the corporation.
3. financial: Could take too much financial burden to the corporation.
3.2 Problems in Business-Level Strategy and Corporate-Level Strategy
3.2.1 Business-level strategy:
1. The cost leadership strategy, Problems: 1). The low-cost leaders manufacturing equipment could become obsolete through technological observations by competitors. 2). The competitors sometimes could learn how to successfully imitate the low cost leaders strategy which could lead to an out of control situation. 3). The corporation is easily influenced by the external environment such as economical crisis, the competitors. 4). The change of technology could waste the utility of corporation’s resource. 5). Lose the foresight capacity of the marketing changement.
2. The differentiation strategy, Problems: 1). The customer might decide that the price difference between the low cost producers product and the differentiated corporation’s product is too significant. 2). Customer awareness can narrow perceptions of the value of the corporation’s differentiated features. 3). The great amount of clones of products by outstanding manufacturers can offer customers features similar with low price, which reduces the attractiveness of the corporation’s differentiation.
3. The focus strategies, Problems: 1). To adopt the foucus strategy, the maunfacturing corporations must put the whole power and resources into a kind of product or a certain market. However, the corporation would endure a great impact by the change of customer’s preference, such as innovation of products or new substitute of the old product. 2). The competitor take the place of owning our objective market and adopt a much more focused strategy. This could leave a deadly impact on the manufacturing corporation. 3). There is a possibility of the decrease in product sales, simultaneously, products’ demand increased without a break which increased the cost of manufacturing. As a result, the cost advantage is weakened in those manufacturing corporation adopting the focus strategies.
4. Integrated low-cost / differentiation strategy, Problems: 1). The difficulty of the integration. The manufacturing corporations could hardly find a balance between the low-cost strategy and the differentiation strategy. 2). If the manufacturing corporations fail to create valuable products for customers not only in cost reduction but also in differentiation, they would turn into a disadvantageously competitive situation, just like “middle-of-the-road” type competitor.
3.2.2 Corporate-level strategy:
1. Diversification strategy, Problems: 1). Financial crisis would happen in manufacturing corporations by adopting diversification strategy too excessively. A great number of corporations’ invest capital is a loan because of the lack of fund. Why would this kind of circumstance appear? Is the corporation’s managers lack of knowledgement or lack of experience? Those managers are only interested in the benefits and blueprint of the diversification strategy while they forget the background and capital of their corporation. These kind of management behaviour is not to disperse corporation’s investment risk but to add up its investment risk. 2). Seeking too much on diversified management tends to make fault in decision-making. If the corporation diversify its operation by mergering a different industry which has no relationship with the original corporation. Definitely, the corpotation’s owner and senior managers are not familiar with the new industry which could let them make mistakes in decision-making on both management and corporation development. 3). Seeking too much on diversified management could cause decrease in management quality. Acquisition would ask the corporation to set up more administrative machinery which add the difficulty for managers to tackle the management affairs successfully. Under such circumstance, managers in the corporation headquarter could not only have no sufficient time to get familiar with products’ technical knowledge but also could not use their knowledge to judge the company’s management achievements. Finally, the overload of management in corporation’s headquarter result in the drop of management quality which make the corporation fail to reach economies of scale.
3.3 Problems in Horizontal Integration Strategy and Vertical Integration Strategy:
Horizontal Integration Strategy is the merger of companies at the same stage of production in the same or different industries. When the products of both companies are similar, it is a merger of competitors. When all producers of a good or service in a market merge, it is the creation of a monopoly. If only a few competitors remain, it is termed an oligopoly. Also called lateral integration.
It has several problems: 1). The excessive expansion of production capacity could put forward higher requirement to produce huge market demand scale and corporation’s sales ability. 2). At the same time, in some horizontal integration strategies such as strategic cooperation, there are risks of technology diffusion. 3). In addition, horizontal integration strategy also faces the risks that the corporation’s organization may meet with the problems such as the “big enterprise disease” and multiple corporation culture exists without compatible integration, etc.
Vertical Integration Strategy is the process in which several steps in the production and/or distribution of a product or service are controlled by a single company or entity, in order to increase that company’s or entity’s power in the marketplace.
It also has several problems: 1). Cost: Cost represented by increased overhead and capital investment requirements, and the inability to reach operational breakeven. 2). Flexibility loss: Flexibility loss resulting from the difficulties to respond quickly to changes in the external environment because of being locked into a more rigid position than competitors when vertical integration is higher. 3). Balance penalties: Balance penalties resulting from under_utilized capacities or unfulfilled demands originated from drastic changes in demand patterns. 4). Administrative penalties : Administrative penalties derived from the burden of managing a more complex and diverse in character set of activities.
3.4 Problems in Dynamic Competitive Strategy
Problems: 1). It is hard for a manufacturing to keep this kind of competitiveness. Any of the competitive edge is temporary and can not be kept for a long time. 2).Any of the Market-share-first Strategy could be defeated by the competitors’ counterattack. 3).The superiority of dynamic competitive does not depends on who first establish the strategy but depends on who establishs new advantages in time. 4) Those advantages established in static competition such as cost and quality, time and special technology and corporation scale are no longer advantages under dynamic competitive strategy.
3.5 Problems in Acquisition and Restructuring Strategies
Acquisition Problems: 1). Over paying for the target corporation, 2). paing the high cost of financing and arranging the acquisition, 3). Over-estimating the synergy and the capabilities of the target corporation, and 4). successfully integrating and melding the acquired corporation into the acquiring corporation after the acquisition has been completed. Integration of the two corporations, after acquisition has occurred is always a significant problem and rarely is done smoothly.
Restructuring Problems: 1). Debat is the most serious problem for the corporation restructuring. 2). There is a conflict of corporate culture, such as difference of corporation leader’s working style, difference of corporation stuff’s working manner. Actually, these conflicts are an organization’s values, beliefs and problem solving criteria. These cultural differentiation are formed by a long term development. Moreover, it is a concentrated expression of the corporation’s system, mechanism, organization and psychological conflict.
- Research Objectives
During the process of manufacturing corporations’ management, the strategic management is especially good for corporation’s future development. The result may not be seen in a short time, but could be seen in a long time just like 5 years or more. Using strategic management could not only help the manufacturing corporation to improve its future planning but also improve its integrated competitiveness. By finding out the problems in the strategic management process, the corporation may find best solutions to fix these problems. As a result, they can get the chance to reach the best management competitiveness.
The research is based on two different kinds of management corporations, one is equipped with strategic management, the other has not such management. By comparing these two, conclusions can be made to illustrate the competitiveness of using strategic management in manufacturing corporations, such as the differentiation strategy, the cost leadership strategy and the focus strategies. Meanwhile, there are many problems existing in each strategy, the research is used to find out these problems and then try to work out the most efficient way to fix these problems.
- Variables to be addressed
5.1 External environment
a). Market: When the market situation changes, the strategic management should be changed or adjusted if it is possible and necessary.
b). Buyers: The taste of buyers may change with the development of market and they may require you to develop new products to meet with their tastes.
c). Suppliers: The change of the suppliers and the quality and price of material that the suppliers give may be changing.
d). New Competitors: A threat of new entrants would share of the market. On the contrary, some competitors quit the market and it gives chance for the other corporations.
e). Product Substitution: With the development of technology and the change of market needs, new product should be designed and innovation of old products is necessary.
5.2 Internal environment
a). Human resource: There is a great flowability of employee. The corporation’s human resource department should develop employee’s loyalty to keep stability.
b). Product technology: Technology needs innovation ceaselessly to meet the need of market and customers. It is an intangible property and should be highly secured by corporation in case of release.
c). Corporation’s reputation: This reputation has three meanings, first one is reputation with customers, the second one is brand name and the third one is reputation with suppliers. These factors changes frequently by their products’ quality, durability,and reliability.
d). Capabilities: The capability of corporation changes with the development of its manufacturing scale. If the corporation invest its profits into strengthening its scale ceaselessly, the capability of the manufacturing corporation would develop continuously.
- Scope of the Investigation
The research mainly focused on the strategic management in manufacturing corporations. There are several useful strategic management methodologies such as functional strategy, horizontal strategy, vertical integration, dynaminc competitive strategy and so on. The research based on a comparison of two kinds of manufacturing corporations, the first one uses strategic management. On the contrary, the second one uses ordinary management without strategic management. In this research, only strategic management is introduced without tactics management and that one is also very useful in the corporation management.
- Problem Anticipation
Several problems may happen during the process of research.
- Different countries have different market system, in some countries, they adopt antimonopoy law which could make an restriction on this strategic management.
- With the development of the world, the actual situation may change into a different way. Therefore, the result will be greatly influenced by the previous material.
- Some data collected from previous materials, so it maybe not correct or accurate now.
- There is an restriction about the strategic management because of the existence of tactics management. Hence, the researcher could not get an overall result for the whole management methodologies.
- About the bias, the researcher may have subjective opinion on the process of the judgement.
References:
Danny, S 1991, Manufacturing and Operations Strategy, Prentice Hall of Australia Pty Ltd, Melbourne.
John, G, & Amrik, S 1998, Assessing manufacturing plant competitiveness : an empirical field study, Monash University, Australia.
Mark, MD & Janelle, H 2005, Operations Management: Integrating Manufacturing and Services, 5th edn, The McGraw-Hill Companies, New York.
Rodney, O 2008, Competitive manufacturing: implementing a competitive manufacturing system, Sydney Business Centre, Sydney.
Tomas,JS 2006, Strategic Manufacturing Management: strateges to achieve managerial competitiveness, 1st edn, United States of America, USA.
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