Project 2: Organizing Human Capital Business Strategy Analysis
JMVCT
Introduction.docx
Introduction
This phase of the paper offers guidance to Great Start Nutrition Health and Life Products Company regarding plans by its new division to execute operations in Malaysia in the next year. It is important that the management succeeds with the organization structure, the organizational culture, the breakdown of the products and services, and the communication plan, before venturing into Malaysia. Essentially, this memo is outlined in four critical sections that elaborately address the course of action for the management of the organization (Great Start Nutrition Company Profile, p. 5 para, 2, 2019). The first section is dedicated to the organization structure and covers the organizational chart, including a discussion on new roles in charge of local testing for intended product lines. The second section is dedicated to organizational culture and discusses the cultural complexities that the great start nutrition management must be aware ahead of operations in Malaysia. The third section presents a breakdown of the products and services due in Malaysia, including an explanation of how the production of these products is aligned with the company’s mission on sustainability. The fourth and final section discusses the communication plan, which is defined as the key audiences and the media channels (Great Start Nutrition Company Profile, p. 5 para, 2, 2019).
Organization Structure
Great Start Nutrition currently utilize geographical for its divisions. In this structure, there are four divisions in charge of regional markets where the company operates, including South America, North America, Europe, and New Asian Division for infant formula production. In each of the divisions, there exists a functional structure anchored on production and sales operations. Besides, each division incorporates a research and development (R&D), human resources (HR), information technology (IT), and finance departments, all of which work in association with the headquarters in terms of decision implementation. At the headquarters level, there exist executive directors in charge of R&D, HR, IT, and finance divisions, all of who are answerable to the CEO. Figure 1 below illustrates the company’s organization chart with connection to the new division (Great Start Nutrition Company Profile, p. 5 para, 2, 2019).
Figure 1: Biotech’s new division organizational chart
From figure 1 above, the new division will be headed by an executive director who will answer directly to the president/CEO of the company. The new division will have six departments directly below the executive director’s position, each of which will be headed by an assistant division director (ADD). The ADD R&D will be responsible for blending nutrients such as green/sustainable ingredients into the infant formula, which comes up with a unique product in the market. Through constant research, the ADD R&D will be expected to formulate products yet to have been introduced in the market. The ADD work with a local tester specialist in the department whose role is to ensure the new infant formula has the local tests to guarantee total consumer satisfaction. Therefore, it will be critical given that Great Start Nutrition is still new on the Malaysian market, and professional service needs it to guarantee that its child formula always has the same flavor as the market (Great Start Nutrition Company Profile, p. 5 para, 2, 2019).
The ADD HR will plan for the recruitment, compensation and training needs of the new division, and will organize them. Specifically, in order to assess whether the business can transfer its workers from its headquarters to a fresher division, ADD HR has to be involved in local variables such as culture, procedures, convictions, and regulations or local talents. In addition, the ADD HR conducts periodic work evaluations to establish wage rates corresponding to each employer's production (Great Start Nutrition Company Profile, p. 5 para, 2, 2019). The ADD HR will work with the training manager who is under him in the department to prepare the required training curriculum in order to guarantee that there is a workforce with the required skills.
The ADD IT will manage the IT facilities in the new division. The marketing team will be equipped with hand-held equipment that will be able to transfer market demand concentrations for the new infant formula to the company database in real time, together with client views and preferences. The ADD IT will also guarantee, in order to guarantee seamless transfer of data, that the division is wired to the Headquarter and interconnected internally between all departments.
ADD funding will supervise the division's financial administration, which involves developing long-term economic objectives and plans for the division, generating economic reporting of the division, and direct investments. ADD funding will supervise the general budgeting process and determine how well the remainder of the department should be reserved in order to guarantee equilibrium and market success for a newer formula.
The ADD manufacturing shall plan the manufacturing timetable to guarantee that the new baby formula is adequately available on the market. ADD's production liaises with other ADD, sales and finance, to ensure that only the volumes required of the new infant formulas can be exchanged and produced according to market demand.
ADD sales will monitor market consciousness to improve the market utilization of the new infant formula. The ADD supervises the sales team, who physically travel the market and engage clients one-on-one to try and get them to purchase the baby formula. The ADD also intends to transfer data, particularly to R&D, finance and manufacturing, in such a way that it can work with current market wishes and trends.
Organizational Culture
The current organizational culture at Great Start Nutrition is premised on the strong family cultural the link that the company is a family-owned company, which is extended upon by the collaborative decision-making decision promoted by the company, which has been identified by the staff. Moreover, Great Start Nutrition ‘s culture considers the owners and their family members, including even the employees, as part of the company’s customers. Moreover, Great Start Nutrition seeks to enhance a customer's centric culture which helps staff to see everything from the view of clients, while making decisions is necessary to consider the customer’s view and further it.
Great Start Nutrition will face cultural complexities soon, which it must endeavor to deal with effectively. First, Great Start Nutrition is a corporation which, because of the business originating in the USA, shares many American values and practices. Some of these US principles include equality, directness, reliability, and time value, among others (UMSL 2013, para. 5). However, creating a fresher division in a foreign country like Malaysia can mean that the local population will face difficulties by upholding certain of these principles. For example, the level of equality between men and women in Malaysia is significantly lower than in the United States (Kaur, Jauhar & Mohaidin 2017, pp. 361)., This means that the local community in Malaysia may find it a little irrational for Great Start Nutrition to appear to offer a 50-50 chance of employment to both male and female workers. Secondly, the USA is a country with very high individualism in terms of how people have been socialized to work on their own and fend for themselves or their close family members. A typical American does not consider himself in terms of being a member of a specific society, tribe, or any other collective entity. On the contrary, Malaysia is a highly collectivistic country where people strongly value their belongingness to the extended family, tribe, religion, team, etc. This clash in cultural disposition is likely to cause complexities, especially where Malaysian staffs working at Great Start Nutrition under an American manager will expect that they are organized in teams while the manager sees no sense in such an alignment.
Local nationals should be considered for management roles at Great Start Nutrition as opposed to transferring Great Start Nutrition employees from America to Malaysia. Culturally, Malaysia is a country that scores highly on a power distance dimension (Hofstede, 2019, para 1). The implication is that Malaysians are very comfortable working in an organizational context with very distinct hierarchical order. This, however, is the direct opposite of the American culture, where the power distance score is low (Hofstede, 2019, para 1). The implication is that Americans are very comfortable working in an organizational context with undefined hierarchical order. For this reason, if at all Great Start Nutrition will transfer American managers to the new division in Malaysia it will be very tough for them to be expected to work effectively with Malaysian subordinates. While the American managers are always used to their subordinates taking the initiative, their Malaysian subordinates will be sitting and waiting for direction from their managers on virtually everything they are expected to do.
Breakdown of Products and Services
Great Start Nutrition the first launch of the new division in Malaysia will publish milk formula for babies. This product is in line with the mission of Biotech to be a sustainable business which monitors green and refined actions because milk comes from cows and goats in the whole of Malaysia as the primary raw material for this product. The cows and the goats are fed on natural herbs with no use of chemicals and grass fertilizers. Grass is collected by humans manually and not by fossil fuel-fueled engines resulting in emissions of carbon dioxide.
Communication Plan
The communication goals of Great Start Nutrition are to accomplish cross-functional working communication that works towards the different departments working in coordinates towards fulfilling company goals. Furthermore, the communication plan seeks to achieve effective communication in the market to give consumers accurate messages that they need to know about the firm’s products. The purpose of Great Start Nutrition communication plan is to enhance the quality and effectiveness of its internal and external communication.
The key audiences will include Great Start Nutrition's customers in the marketplace. This will include both gender parents and guardians living in Malaysia, who have babies or are intending to have babies in the future. The main media channels for communication purpose will consist of television, mass radio, and print sources like newspapers and book magazines; all of which have an immense flow and is global across Malaysia. Moreover, Great Start Nutrition will also target the use of the internet such as; social media, emails, video conferences, etc., as a media for conveying its communication to its aim audiences. Web communication will primarily focus on the organization's official website along with the other highly popular sites in Malaysia, such as Google.com and social media websites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and Instagram, which have very high traffic in the country daily (Teng, 2016, pp. 76).
References:
Hofstede (2019). Country comparison: Malaysia vs United States. Retrieved 20 February 2019 from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/malaysia,the-usa/
Kaur, M., Jauhar, J., & Mohaidin, Z. (2017). Factors causing female inequality in malaysian organizations: A conceptual model. Global Business and Management Research, 9(4), 361-373.
Teng, S., Khong, K. W., Chong, A. L., & Lin, B. (2016). Persuasive electronic word-of-mouth messages in social media. The Journal of Computer Information Systems, 57(1), 76-88.
UMUC (2019). Great Start Nutrition Company Profile, p. 5 para, 2.
UMSL (2013). Key American Values. Retrieved 21 February 2019 from http://www.umsl.edu/~intelstu/Admitted%20Students/Visitor%20Handbook/keyvalues.html
