Virgin is made up of over 200 companies and employs approximately 50,000 people worldwide. It was originally set up as a mail-order record business by Sir Richard Branson. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow in business sectors ranging from mobile communications, to transportation, travel, financial services, leisure, music, holidays, publishing and retailing. In 2006 Virgin’s revenues from around the world exceeded £10 billion.
Virgin has a unique management structure which does not specifically adhere to one specific model of management, however it does employ aspects of different concepts which comes together to form its own distinctive style.
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Richard Branson uses this dominant culture as a marketing tool as well in order to entice customers to new products or to increase the reputation of the brand name by launching bold and striking promotions that tie into the organisations beliefs. He has utilised this by partaking publicity stunts including a world record flight attempt in a hot air balloon fashioning the Virgin logo and driving a tank down 5th Avenue New York to promote Virgin Cola, which has gained him a reputation for keeping the organisation in the public eye through exciting and unusual methods that involve humour and …show more content…
Virgin Media is currently in direct competition with BSkyB for market share over the UK digital television market (which it holds 30% share) and is in direct competition with BT Broadband over the broadband internet market, which it has the second highest market share (35%) behind BT broadband (40%). If undertaken correctly Virgin media could create a package that would offer value for money deals on broadband, digital television as well as its telephone services to create potentially a better value package (the quad play package) to increase its sales and take increased market share in both of these
Richardson, Chapman, 2011, Key Concepts in VCE Business Management 2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, Queensland.
The major change came through the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor and his theory of scientific management system. It was not that Taylor was unique or completely new; only time and motion study could be put in that category. The trend was already moving towards systematic management such as formal management methods or by cost ...
Resources are being classified into tangible and intangibles assets as the followings: *Resources of *Virgin Group Tangible Resources Intangible Resources Capabilities of Virgin Group are established by the integrated resources that assisted it to stay competitive and to outdo its competitors. Valuable capabilities will aid Virgin Group to effectively tap and explore spotted opportunities as well as to minimize threats in the external environment. Should capabilities are consistently and effectively utilized, they will turn significant and be difficult to be imitated or substituted. With the resources discussed above, 3 capabilities of Virgin Group are identified as follows: - *Capabilities 1: Unique C*ulture of *"Making difference and creating uniqueness"* (*Contributed Resources: *Financial, Organizational, Human, Innovation*, Technological*) Creativity, Innovation are the foundations to Virgin and Richard Branson’s success! Technology push is the spine for innovation and likely to simulate process innovation in how service is provided when looking into Virgin. Technology is more likely to simulate process innovation. Every turn and businesses Branson venture has been with some kind of innovation or creativity element if not something unique, something that has not been seen or heard of before in the relevant market. Virgin Group has achieved a competitive advantage among its competitors by uniformly followed its culture in all business in serving good value and service to the customers in different ways. The basic and the core competence of all Virgin Group's business ventures are to do things just a little bit differently from the rest. And also they always tried to add value by adding a little fun to the business. By differentiating in strategy itself to fit of the activities and the ways of doing business have also differentiated itself from the rivals and make it difficult to imitate Virgin’s strategy. Hence, they have established their business to an untouchable position. How would you characterize the corporate strategy of Branson's Virgin Group? The answer to that question will not be so different from the ones above. However to better understanding we can characterize the corporate strategy of Virgin Group as "Making difference and creating uniqueness" in any kind of customers' service. They are not stuck to any business field so that makes them flexible of thinking and creating new ideas for their customers and the whole consumers around the world who need (or will need) Virgin's service.
Scientific management is a way that an organisation regulates their staff within a workplace. The theory behind this is accomplished by selecting the ‘best person for the best role’, who will undertake the training to train each worker to do a ‘specific role the right way’ (Frederick Taylor). This extracts the responsibility from the employee whilst handing over executive decisions to the employer to make strategic directions. Frederick Taylor required the managers to set the tasks for the employees in advanced and that each task was to be detailed to each employee, to be done in a certain way and completed by an exact time no less.
Sir Richard Branson is the founder and chairman of Virgin Group. Sir Branson owns a variety of businesses, totaling over four hundred (Martin, 2012). He net worth as of 2012 stood at $4.2 billion dollars. Sir Branson’s business endeavors range from airlines, telecommunications, cosmetics, space exploration, and other ventures (Martin, 2012). Sir Branson success is based on several unique qualities such as his concept about customer service; in which he states “Saying Yes is Fun” (Martin, 2012). Sir Branson believed that success cannot be achieved by saying “no” to new endeavors, he believe that you have to be bold when embarking on new projects, and achieving the desires of customers (Martin, 2012).
Virgin Atlantic is UK's second largest major airline; it had its first take-off in 1984 and nowadays has routes leading to the world's major cities, having carried more than 38 million people to this date.
By the constantly changing dynamics of the 21st century business world, it is clear that it would be highly unproductive for managers to employ what is in actual fact a restrictive, controlling theory of management. As a results of globalisation of the economy, intensification of international competition, pervasive influence of the social market economy, increasing participation of women in the labour force and ecological consciousness, scientific management is no longer suitable in modern workplaces, as this theory tends not to allow for the constant innovation that is necessary to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
... the key weakness that I see in the Virgin Organization. I think that the leaders at Virgin really need to think about how they will survive as an organization without Branson's leadership. His autobiography is titled " Losing my virginity. How I've survived, had fun, and made a fortune doing business my way". How can this be translated into doing business the "Virgin Way" so they can continue to be successful? Only time will tell how Virgin survives without him at the helm.
In the past, managers considered workers as machinery that could be bought and sold easily. To increase production, workers were subjected to long hours, miserable wages and undesirable working conditions. The welfare of the workers and their need were disregarded. The early twentieth century brought about a change in management and scientific management was introduced. This sort of management, started by Frederick Winslow Taylor, emphasised that the best way to increase the volume of output was to have workers specializing in specific tasks just like how a certain machine would perform a particular function. His implementation of this theory brought about tremendous criticism by the masses arguing that the fundamentals of Scientific Management were to exploit employees rather than to benefit them (Mullins, 2005)
Today’s era of business world adapts to everything new but these modern concepts are an indirect tribute to the theories produced by Taylor, Fayol, Mayo and Weber. Taylor’s Scientific management theory is one such example which has become such an important aspects of modern management that it feels unbelievable that his concepts were a part of the history. It is falsely assumed that as the society progresses, the older theories tend to lose their importance. The thing to be noted here is that these theories are based on basic human needs which do not change with time; the thing that changes is the method to fulfil those needs. Investigating earlier management theories is important because these theories are less complex and provide immediate solution to the problems. These theories basically help us to go to the root of the problem and understand its complexity. The better understanding we have about the problem, the easier it is to accomplish the objectives of the company. The following essay states the importance of the Taylor’s Scientific management theory and how it is implemented even today in the business world.
Scientific Management theory arose from the need to increase productivity in the U.S.A. especially, where skilled labor was in short supply at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only way to expand productivity was to raise the efficiency of workers.
Taylor’s scientific approach is based on the planning of work to achieve efficiency, standardization, specialization and simplification. Factories are managed through scientific methods and productivity is increase through a mutual trust between management and workers. Weber's bureaucratic approach embellishes the scientific management theory and focuses on dividing organizations into hierarchies, establishing strong lines of authority and control. Weber believed that organizations are accountable to and part of a broader the social order.
the study of time and action; b) the management on assignment; c) the theory of organization. (8)Taylor’s theory created a revolution in the subject of management because it was the first scientific method in field of management science. (1)After that, management became a truly scientific knowledge and it expanded and modified by later generations. Therefore, Taylor is “known as the father of scientific management”. (2) Taylor put forward a perspective which was “study the character, the nature and the performance of each workman” and moreover, to “train and help and teach this workman”. (3) In the following paragraphs, will exploring the relevant and irrelevant hypotaxis between Scientific Management and organizations.
Frederick Taylor thought that changes in the work process and/or rules would advance efficiency and productivity. He originated the scientific management approach in public administration. It was based on the idea that work processes should be observed via experiments which would greatly improve productivity. It would do so by doing away with the rule of thumb work methods and replacing them with the results of actual timed observations (14). The application of the scientific approach to management methods would lead to optimizing task time by simplifying the job. It would mean observing work processes to find the one best way to perform each job (15). Once the best way was discovered, all employees were to use it. The simplification of the job would improve task time. This method would lead to increased productivity, higher wag...
This paper describes on one of the famous management theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor, who introduced to society about the scientific management theories. This method was established a hundred years ago in 1911 early stage by Taylor in his work place. This article critically discusses about Taylor’s early stage, background, education, and his contribution to management theory, practice and society.