Founded by Bruce D. Henderson in Boston, Massachusetts in 1963 to be the Management Consulting Division serving the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company; The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is now a global management consulting firm which is the world’s leading advisor on business strategy (BGG, 2014). With at least two offices at each continent, BCG is a private company that serves those in public, private as well as not-for-profit sectors. Some of the areas in which BCG provides it’s services to are, but not limited to, postmerger integration, transformation, strategy information technology and management in a two-speed economy (Bloomsberg, 2014). This year, The Boston Consulting Group earned the honor of being placed 3rd on the list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For”, falling just behind Google and SAS.
MOTIVATIONAL TOOLS & STRATEGIES
As human beings it is difficult for us to efficiently conduct a task that is not of our interest. Although most, if not all, of us want to succeed in our endeavors, such is often difficult when the task is one we seldom care about. This is where the concept of motivation comes into play. As per the class textbook, motivation is defined as “The processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.”(Robbins & Judge, 2013, p. 202). Motivation plays a huge factor in how intensely and efficiently an employee goes about performing a task.
Boston Consulting Group improved from fourth in 2013, to third this year, in the “100 Best Companies to Work For” list provided by the CNN Money website. A vital contribution to the success that BCG has had can be attributed to employee’s motivation.
Most successful ...
... middle of paper ...
... on the other hand involves things such as, experimentation and learning. To gain sustainable advantage through recursion, one has to use a four-component process which involves; Variation, Selection, Amplification and Modulation. This is like a cycle and each one of the components only works once the other has been fulfilled. For an adaptive strategy to be disciplined and successfully work, companies have to make the right choices in each of the components of the VSAM loop (Reeves & Deimler & Morieux & Nicol, 2010).
For any company that has an unstable environment, the adaptive advantage is what will best assist in the processes of improvement. One of the reasons for this is that in a an adaptive advantage there are both different forms of operation, as well as different forms of thinking about useful strategies (Reeves & Deimler & Morieux & Nicol, 2010).
Intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation have been widely studied and the understanding of each has led to great changes in how organizations run their businesses. It is clear that hourly employees have many great extrinsic motivators but lack intrinsic motivation in their job assignments which is a characteristic of our work culture. Changing the culture is one of the keys to improving motivation at that level of the organization because the best motivation occurs when employees perform because they want to and not because they are being made to do so.
In his analysis, Charles Fine goes on to note that as the speed of an industry accelerates, the advantage one company may gain shortens – advantages are temporary. This conclusion is somewhat intuitive since the research and development to production cycle gets s...
• Strategic management is fluid and complex. Change creates original combinations of conditions requiring shapeless non-repetitive responses.
The BCG matrix is also a matrix that is used for the purpose of strategy formulation of a firm, but it is a four cell matrix. It is used to measure the position of a firm in relation to its relative market share as well as its market growth. In case of these two being high a firm is classified as a star. In case of these being low they are classified as dogs. In case of only a high market growth it is rated as a cash cow and in case of only a high market share it is rated as a question mark. Based on this t...
Contemporary management of the business. 7 ed. of the book. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. McComb, S., Schroeder, A., Kennedy, D., & Vozdolska, R. (2012).
Employee motivation has always been a central problem in the workplace, and, as an individual in a supervisory position, it becomes one’s duty to understand and institute systems that ensure the proper motivation of your subordinates. Proper motivation of employees can ensure high productivity and successful workflow, while low worker motivation can result in absenteeism, decreased productivity rates, and turnover. A large body of research has been produced regarding motivation, and much of this research is applicable to the workplace. Due to the nature of man, motivation varies from individual to individual, and, because of this, there is no one system that is the best for ensuring worker motivation in every organizational situation, and, as a product, many theories have been created to outline what drives people to satisfactorily complete their work tasks. Throughout the course of this document, the three main types of these motivational theories will be outlined and examples of each, as well as how these theories can be used to further strengthen and sustain worker motivation....
Robbins and Judge define motivation by means of three elements. The first element is defined as being the process that account for an individual’s intensity which is concerned with how hard a person tries. The second element is direction that benefits the organization and the third element is persistence which is a measure of how long a person can maintain effort. Motivation is also driven by certain situations that vary between individuals and within individuals, at different times. (Robbins & Judge, 2007, p.186) These elements should not only be expected from employees but from managers as well.
For instance, Harley Davidson may be forced to change their marketing strategy due to the entrance of a new competitor into the market. Second, Harley Davidson has to learn new skills and technologies quickly. For example, technologies are changing rapidly, so it is crucial for Harley Davidson’s business plan to change or alter in order to keep up with innovation. Third, this organization has to effectively leverage its core competencies while competing with its competitors. This is, Flexibility is required for Harley Davidson to learn how to use primary value-chain activities and support functions in the way that allow the organization to produce their products at a lower cost with differentiated features compare to their competitors in the market
of a firm to attain new forms of competitive advantage (Müller, 2011). It is due to these
Motivation is key in the workplace. It is developed from the collaboration of both conscious and unconscious principles such as the strength of desire or need, motivating force or reward estimation of the objective, and desires of the person and of his or her peers/co-workers. These elements are the reasons one has for carrying on a specific way. An illustration is an understudy that invests additional energy contemplating for a test since he or she needs a superior review in the class. The Inside and outside principles that animate want and vitality in individuals to be constantly intrigued and centered around their work, part or subject, or to try to achieve an objective.
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix is used by organisations to analyse whether their performance is either high or low, and indicate their market growth or position on the market, which is similar to the product life cycle, of the introductory, growth, maturity and decline stages.
December 2009). Researchers from various organizations unequivocally agree that managers can use an employee’s intrinsic motivation to gain the maximum output from that employee as well as support the employee in achieving his personal career goals as stated by (George N. Root III 2016). According to (Thomas, K) managers should help their employees understand self-management process that involves four steps to increase intrinsic motivation. Those steps may perhaps be nominated as a sense of meaninglessness, of choice, of competence and as a sense of progress. One of the successful strategies that managers can take into consideration is to clearly define strategic visions and goals set by an organisation. Moreover, by providing a broad vision of a company, managers demonstrate a warm sense of meaningless for an employee that makes him feel like there is an opportunity for him to accomplish something of real value, something that matters in the big picture as said by (Thomas, K 2009). In addition, Managers should make employees feel like their job is a choice, not a requirement in order to encourage employees to demonstrate intrinsic willingness to perform better. Nevertheless, some organisations emphasize that managers can experience numerous issues in increasing intrinsic motivation. For instance, an intrinsically motivated employee will only be able to do the particular task depending on “interesting, challenging, and has personal meaning based on the satisfaction they receive from performing the activity itself” (Giancola, 2014, p. 25). Essentially managers would face issues with increasing an employee’s performance when an extremely vital task has been assigned to the employee that has no interest in undertaking the given task. Although In my mind,
Organizations should scan the environment in order to recognize any external factors that could affect their position on the market, and therefore build up successful responses to protected or improve their position in the future. They scan in order to evade surprises, spot pressure and opportunities, increase competitive advantage, and improve long-term and immediate planning. An organization's capability to adapt to its external environment is strongly dependent on the interpretation of external factors.
Motivation is the force that transforms and uplifts people to be productive and perform in their jobs. Maximizing employee’s motivation is a necessary and vital to successfully accomplish the organization’s targets and objectives. However, this is a considerable challenge to any organizations managers, due to the complexity of motivation and the fact that, there is no ready made solution or an answer to what motivates people to work well (Mullins,2002).
Motivation, as defined in class, is the energy and commitment a person is prepared to dedicate to a task. In most of organisations, motivation is one of the most troublesome problems. Motivation is about the intensity, direction and persistence of reaching a goal. During the class, we have learned a substantial theories of motivation and many theories of motivations are used in real business. Each theory seems to have different basic values. But, they all have been analysed for one reason, recognising what motivates and increases the performance of employees. Ident...