Tesco in the industry

  When a company wants to open a new business, it needs to consider about the porters 5 forces: rivalry, threat of substitute products, threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers and bargaining power of customers. 

  Tesco is one the largest supermarket company in the UK.

  The intensity of competitive rivalry of Tesco is extremely high. There are big supermarkets compete with Tesco such as Asda, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. They are competing over the products and prices.

  There are threats of substitute in the market. In order to minimize the problem, Tesco tries to produce the best quality of products with the best prices for people to maintain the brand image.

  The barrier for new entrants in the grocery market is high. As Tesco is a big company, it has the loyalty of customers; new companies need to have huge capital to invest into their companies. It is hard for new companies to enter the market. In order to compete with Tesco or other big supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s, Asda… new companies should differentiate them with lower prices or high quality of products. This is the reason why Tesco has low threat of new entrants in the industry.

  The bargaining power of buyers is high. Customers can switch to other substitute such as Sainsbury’s if the products and prices do not satisfy them.

  Finally, the bargaining power of suppliers is low. Tesco can dictate the price of suppliers. The suppliers will lose their chance with a large supermarket if they disagree with the price as Tesco set out.

  

Specific Management

•      Taylorism or Scientific Management is a theory management that written by Frederick Winslow Taylor. He defined it as the best way to do the task for the workers by select the best person to do the job and give them motivation. Financial incentives give employees motivation to produce efficient productivity.  I am interested on this theory because it is fair for who produce more productivity, they will receive more money than those produce less. In Taylorism, managers the driving force, they have accountability for what their workers do. I think this type of theory is decentralization because everyone in an organization is equaled; they need to cooperate and share ideas to solve problems and issues. An example of a company that bases on this theory is Google. Last week, my friends and me did a presentation on Google and I have found that Google is a decentralize company. It empowers and motivates workers by provide the best environment, give them freedom and also, teamwork and creativity are encouraged.

One of the problems at work at the moment is social interaction. As a result of development in technology, more and more people and companies are using electronic devices. The reason people prefer to use technology because it is quicker and people don’t have to travel long ways to do businesses. Even though technical advancement helps business to succeed, but it damages the social interaction at work. In my opinion, social interaction makes it clearer for people in communication. For example, face-to-face meeting will help to solve the problems easily as you can gain better understanding of other’s opinion and feeling than using video conferencing. The best solution for this is just balance between the use of technology and social interaction so that social interaction will not be damaged. For instance, do not rely too much on email, employees should go and find managers to express their opinions.

Centralisation and decentralisation

  Centralization is an organization which decisions are made by senior managers. In my opinion, it will be easier to make decisions because every subordinate must to follow the orders from managers. The managers can pass orders down to staff and make them implement immediately without hesitation. That’s the reason why my Business teacher said that it does not take time to make decisions and the manager will have full power in an organization.

  However, in order to make efficient productivity in an organization or company, the managers need to have accountability, good leadership and management skills so that the staff will follow the orders. Personally, I think this type of organization will give no freedom to employees. As the hierarchy has more layers, the managers might not understand the customer’s wants and needs so they might fail to target the market.

  Decentralization is an organization or a company which decision-making is not made by the managers, everyone in there will have chances to show their opinion. This type of organization is more democratic; everyone will be respected and listened. The hierarchy will be flatter so decisions in the organization are made closer to the customers. As there is no controlling from managers, people can have more freedom and less stress on work.

  In contrast, there will be the times that need leadership. For example, I’m working in financial part of the organization, I’m having dispute with the advertising department because they wanted to use endorsement to advertise. I disagreed with them because it’s costly to do so. It took us 6 months to come into an agreement because there is no one as a leader to solve the problem. This is the reason why decentralize can be time consuming and bring disagreement between staff.

  Both type of organization have pros and cons. In my opinion, I prefer the decentralization because I don’t want to have too much pressure from managers. If I work in an organization/ company in the future, I want to help the company to be closer to the customers because customers are the most important part in a business.

 

Introduction to organisations and management

On last Monday, I have learnt lots of interesting fact about organisations and managements.

 Organisations are groups of people work together in order to achieve certain goals. Organisations have existed for thousands of years. For example, the Roman Army movie that I have watched shows me an effective organistion. There are lots of soldiers but they still work effectively, they all stand in line and everyone knows what their jobs are.

Nowadays, we can see organisations everywhere. There are some famous organisations such as Google, Samsung, Apple… those are the successful companies in the world. In order to succeed, those companies need to have an effective organisation. There are five basic parts of an organisation that they may follow: top management, operational support, operational core, organisational support and middle management. Each part has different jobs. I think the top management is the most important part in an organisation because people who are doing this job are usually referred to as the board of directors. Their job is to focus on long-term development of an organisation; they organise and control the entire task of the employee.

Managements are the act of controlling and coordinating things or people.  After learning about Henry Mintzberg_ a Canadian academic of business and management and Henri Farol_ a French mining engineer and director of mines who developed a general theory of business administration, I have learnt that there are ten management roles and six managerial activities. They identify the role and the job’s activities that people should do. For example, according to Henri Fayol, the job of forecasting is to predict what might happen in the future.

After this lesson, I can distinguish between organisations and managements. The lesson helps me to understand the parts of organisation and the most interesting things are the roles and activities of people in management from Henry Mintzberg and Henri Fayol.