Management ( Final ) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Management ( Final ) - Essay Example It is not just those who work in the industry who must adhere to the process, but all stakeholders partake in at least a portion of it (Farmer and Richman, 1966). For instance, if a ship repair yard wishes to reduce its costs, it would start with Step 1 of the process: Data Collection. This data would include items such as inventory, scraps, salvageable materials, as well as a wide array of data on costs and profits associated with those items. Even though the management team is the entity responsible for implementing this step and those that follow, stakeholders play a role as well. For instance, company employees can share valuable data for management to collect during the process of Step 1. Once the data has been collected, then the ship repair yard could move on to Step 2: Assessment. This is the part where the management team would take a good look at the data and analyze it. In this example, the management team would find out why the repair yard's costs were so high. Feedback from a variety of stakeholders could be analyzed during this step. For example, feedback from customers would be particularly valuable to the management team during this phase of the process. Perhaps customers think the prices are already too high, so management would know to avoid raising prices if at all possible. After this step has been completed, it would be time for Step 3: Planning. This is where the management team at the repair yard would take the knowledge they obtained in Step 2 and plan how to fix the problem. For instance, if they found out that they were spending too much on certain types of repair jobs, but not pulling in enough profit to justify those expenses, they could plan to turn those types of repair jobs away in the future or raise the prices for those types of repair jobs for the customer. Once again, customer feedback would be invaluable at this point. Investors should also have a say in this part of the process. Next is Step 4: Implementation. This is the most important step of all, because no plan is any good at all if it is not set into motion. In this particular example, this would be the step where the management team would change the prices for the repair jobs they had found to be too expensive. This step affects all stakeholders, as they are being introduced to a completely new process that will take some form of adjustment on their part. The final step is Step 5: Evaluation. This is where management takes a look to see how well the management process is working. In this step, the aforementioned repair yard would see how well customers reacted to the price change and make adjustments if necessary. Once again, all stakeholders are involved in this particular phase of the management process (Oakes, Townley and Cooper, 1998). QUESTION 2 Given is that Ricardo Semler considers the challenge of management is to create an