W2D1 Respond to Two Grantham

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Week 2 Discussion 1:

Strategic Management

W2

This week, we will be focusing on strategic management and its impact on the workforce. We will also cover outsourcing and employee engagement. When you think of employee engagement, think of what you do on a daily basis and how it impacts the organization. The objective for the week is to evaluate the need for outsourcing in today’s workplace.

Review this week’s Learning Resources, especially:

· The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy - YouTube

· Strategic Human Resources – See attachment pdf

Assignment:

Respond  to at least (2) two of your peers' postings in one or more of the following ways:

· Share an insight about what you learned from having read your peers’ postings and discuss how and why your peer’s posting resonated with you professionally and personally.

· Offer an example from your experience or observation that validates what your peer discussed.

· Offer specific suggestions that will help your peer build upon his or her own virtual communication.

· Offer further assessment or insight that could impact your peer’s future communications.

· 3 – 4 paragraph responses per each colleague

· No plagiarism

· APA citing

· 24 hours

1st Colleague – Stephen Jarman

Stephen Jarman 

Leadership and Outsourcing 

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Hello everyone!

This week's discussion has, what I consider to be, two different topical questions: 

1. What are the benefits of including leadership into daily operational realities they are charged with guiding?

2. How does global economics and cultural differences impact outsourcing?

Therefore, I've split these into the following two separate sections. 

Benefits of Including Leadership into Daily Operational Realities

            As a subject-matter expert in the matter of Daily Performance Management, I am confident to write this thread post from my own experience and frame of reference.

            First I will define what is meant by Daily Performance Management. Daily Performance Management defines an organization’s pattern of operating activities for planning, organizing, coordinating, monitoring, and responding to achieve known objectives as measured by cascading key performance indicators and targets. There are three workstreams that interact within the Daily Performance Management and are bounded by Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy Alignment, Development & Deployment. Mature Daily Performance Management propels and sustains Strategy Deployment by engaging the entire organization in the stabilization, sustainment, and improvement of the organization’s performance and works to create alignment and accountability throughout an organization. An illustration of this explanation of Daily Performance Management as a system is attached to this post (Jarman, 2020).

            In summary, direct involvement of an organization’s leadership into daily operational realities they are charged with guiding is a driving force of how well the organization performs and has been shown in every chapter of my 20+ years of operations management and consulting and further evidenced in the referenced whitepaper (Jarman).

Global Economics and Culture’s Impact on Outsourcing – A Case Example

            Today globalism is ubiquitous in business and outsourcing, even offshoring, are a necessary for maintaining competitive advantage. It’s not just a matter of establishing competitive parity but to not outsource non-core functions is now a disadvantage for organizations in terms of overhead and strategic focus. Outsourcing workflows that are considered as back-office are now commonplace. Doing business in today’s global economy, even while serving at a local level, allows large and small organizations who leverage technologies and service providers that connect workflows across geographic boundaries to manage costs. These outsourced and off-shored back-office providers, who are either from emerging countries or who use highly automated technologies, provide almost all types of standard functions – payroll, time & attendance, tax accounting, as just a few examples – and are able to serve customers spontaneously and accurately at price points that are far below those of first world businesses. Especially in locations that considered as emerging – India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia – it has become acceptable to work with someone directly who speaks English as a second language (Mello, 2015).

Just today, a situation occurred as I chaired a MS-Teams call with my local peers (in Maine) and an IT applications specialist who is located in India. Having worked with many persons from Asia, especially India, I took for granted that the others from Maine where keeping up with the conversation until the gentleman from India was asked more than once to repeat his questions. This is only one example that can be considered for how the world is becoming smaller. Most people that I know and work with here have lived their whole life in or near Maine and are not accustomed to hearing dialects that are considered foreign. My impression after this meeting is, the IT specialist was very skilled and is providing a superior level of support. I’m more than happy for his time on my IT ticket that was submitted to my employer’s global help desk and welcome having the ability to leverage human capital from anywhere in the world.

References

Jarman, S., (2020, May). Leveraging the Daily Performance Management System to Optimize Equipment Uptime, Retrieved Oct 22, 2021, from  https://dichotomysolutions.com/knowledge-transfer.com .

Mello, J., (2015). Strategic Human Resource Management 4th edition ebook. Cengage

   Daily Performance Management Model.png  (128.799 KB) 

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2nd Colleague – Susan Christmas

Susan Christmas 

Week 2 Discussion

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The discussion thread this week tasks us with explaining benefits of including leadership into daily operational realities that leaders are charged with guiding. We are also tasked with explaining how global economics and cultural difference impact outsourcing.

Including Leadership into Daily Operational Realities

In our eBook, Mello believes this disconnect with senior management is caused by leaders not keeping up with the inevitable changes and assuming things have stayed the same from when they performed frontline functions. Mello also believes this disconnect happens when outside leaders are hired and fail to understand and appreciate the current daily operations (Mello, 2015). An article from the Iranian Journal of Management Studies (IJMS) states employees gain creativity when their leaders incorporate knowledge sharing throughout the organization. This creativity leads to innovation and improvements in the quality of the products and/or services offered. When leaders are involved in the day-to-day operations, the employees tend to be more motivated to becoming committed to the goals of the organization. Leader involvement is also known to make the employees have more feelings of trust towards the leaders, which also results in greater value to the organization (Farzaneh Hassanzadeh, 2014). In my experience, leaders who hide in their office and have minimal involvement with daily operations are perceived as being “too important to be bothered” or as someone who has no interest in the frontline employees or what they must deal with. This perception leads employees to feel less motivated and more likely to search for different employment.

Global Economics and Cultural Differences

Global economics impact outsourcing by providing significant contributions to underdeveloped countries. Economic growth and income, as well as decreased numbers of the unemployed, are examples of the contributions that can be seen in these underdeveloped countries (Stojanov, 2017). Cultural differences can have a huge impact on outsourcing, especially if the company doing the outsourcing does not prioritize cultural compatibility with the organization/country it is outsourcing to (Kvedaraviciene, G. & Bogalusa, 2010). Organizations typically outsource for purposes of cost reduction but can end up failing if they do not take the time to learn and understand about the different cultures involved in the outsourced project.

References

Farzaneh Hassanzadeh, J. (2014). Leader-member Exchange and Creative Work Involvement: The Importance of Knowledge Sharing. Iranian Journal of Management Sciences: A Quaterly, 7(2), 391-412.

Kvedaraviciene, G., & Bogalusa, V. (2010). Underestimated Importance of Cultural Differences in Outsourcing Arrangements. Engineering Economics, 21(2), 187-196.

Mello, J. A. (2015). Strategic Human Resource Management. (4th ed.) Stramford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Stojanov, M. (2017). The Challenges of Offshoring and Outsourcing. Trakia Journal of Sciences, 15(Supp1), 87-92. https://doi.org/10.15547/tjs.2017.s.01.016

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