Category: MBA Dissertations

This article reviews the definition of strategy in the opinion of various authors. Different organizational strategies and the corresponding types of the strategies are also reviewed with reference to various research papers done and the actual review is as given in the later sections. 

Definition of strategy 

The word strategy comes from the Greek word ‘stratos’ which is a that is generally used by army as a sort of future planning process to attain success by the top level. This word is natively concerned with military forces as the process of planning, coordinating and directing military operations at the time of war. The word strategy has largely come into existence when the organizations began to use this word.

This happened post the second world war when the army heads of both the sides of Atlantic were called to assess the business process with their knowledge of the successful tactical fundamentals that were used in the wars. The concept of  strategy as it was understood in early days in the 1960s is: “The establishment of set goals and objectives of an organization and the implementation of certain courses of action along with the allocation of required resources for attaining these goals”.

 “Business strategies guide people in the organization by setting up certain frame work of informal rules to follow in order to perform the work. They are said to be a set of actions that the group of people in the enterprise exhibit. They are effective because they give a distinctive form and structure to the organization even they employ the same procedures, rules, technologies and guidelines”.

The disposal of strategic terms to the team in the organization and implementing it is a part of the formalized strategic planning system making use of the resources and the environment. Strategic communication is a term that is defined in different dimensions by various researchers but the prime focus of the process is to establish an enterprise to hold a strong market position and to make the organization capable of withstanding the consequences of unprecedented events, internal problems and strong competition.

Aims and Objectives

Aim: To investigate the role of organizational strategies in improving the performance and job satisfaction of employees within AMT COFFEE LTD. 

Objectives

Following are the research objectives

1. To critically review the organizational strategies and the corresponding theories
2. To evaluate the importance of organizational strategies against the employee performance and job satisfaction
3. To investigate the role of managers in communicating strategies to their employees and enhance their performance. 

Dissertation outline

Introduction to the research and the problem definition with the research questions, aims and objective are given in the chapter below. 

Literature Review

A detailed review of strategic management and organizational strategies is presented in this chapter with reference to the employee performance and job satisfaction 

Research methodology

The actual methodology followed to gather the required primary information and secondary information along with the case study details and sampling methods is explained in this chapter 

Research findings

Once the required primary information is gathered in the form of semi structured interviews from different respondents involved across the research, the actual findings are given in this chapter. 

Research Analysis

Required research analysis is done based on the research findings and the analysis is given the form of answers to the research questions identified in the introduction chapter. 

Conclusion and Future work

Overall analysis and observations done at the research is given in the conclusion and the future scope to improve the research quality is also given in this chapter.

Below are the approaches to the strategic management process:

Process 1:

                   This approach of the strategic management process is generally carried out in five steps and the management can make the employee understand the strategy by following these five steps and they are: firstly, employees need to think strategically and they also need to have conceptual tools. Secondly, the strategies must be understood by the employees. The third step is to build the strategic alignment across the organizational structure as a major requirement. Fourth, reflection of the strategy implemented should be done on the structure of every employee work particularly on the employees of critical regions. The fifth one is that the organization must be buy- in to the strategy.

Process 2:

                        This process includes five tasks and they are: as a first task, Business Mission and Strategic Vision should be developed and then the objectives should be set up as the second task. The third task is to achieve the objectives by crafting the strategies and then these strategies should be implemented and then executed as the fourth task. The fifth task will be completed by performing various activities like reviewing the fresh developments, estimating and determining the performances and originating the counteractive adjustments.

                               This indicates that various activities like identification of internal weakness and strengths, problems of the environment and its opportunities are involved in the strategic management. This step is called “Analysis or Diagnosis” or simply called as “SWOT analysis”. And the further steps are carried based on the selection, implementation and estimation. Creating a solution as an alternative one for the problem is the aim of these steps, and the other aim is establishing an organizational structure to make the strategy work for giving support for the strategy, to develop the required policies and plans, determining the working status of the strategy by gathering the feedbacks and then implementing steps to start the working of the strategy.

                                The strategic management has another significant stage and that is analysing the environment, this stage focuses on making the employees understand about the situation faced by the organization in the current condition. The organization activities are influence by various factors that are caused internally and externally and this impact can be estimated by analysing the environment. The analysis of environment can discover the strong problems and chances for the organizations and further this can also support in the strategy development in an organization. Significantly two environments are analysed in this stage of strategic management process and they are external environment and internal environment.

The external environment is included with two environments that are general environment and immediate environment. The general environment covers the outside area of the organization like Political, Economic, Social and Technological. The immediate environments are the area where there will be a lot of competition for the organization that may damages the company growth. The internal environment includes the internal analysis and Vision and Mission statements.

The internal analysis deals with the analysis of internal area of the organization and Vision and Mission Statements will analyse the actual purpose of the organization. By monitoring these tasks the management can generate clear strategies for the organization and can communicate these strategies for the employees to make them perfectly work for the organization with experiencing a good job satisfaction.

Generally the attitudes of the employees vary from person to person.  The common attitude of an employee is never to bother too much about the business strategy. Employees commonly focus on their work. But the performance of the employee will be developed a lot when he is aware of the strategy that is implemented in the organization. The employee can perfectly understand the strategy when it is properly communicated to them.  

So organizations must focus on the process of communicating strategies to the employees.  The management initially analyses the drawbacks that are to be avoided and then they will focus on the communication process of these strategies for the employees of various divisions in the organization. The main aim of this research is to identify the role of managers in communicating the organizational strategies to the employees and in doing so improving employee performance.  The  following questions are identified in order to research this issue.

The process of using human, financial and technical resources for achieving organizational goals while considering a variety of environmental variables is called Strategic Management. In addition to this, the process of sharing the strategy, staff, styles, structure, skills, succession, systems, goals and values is another facet of  Strategic Management. According to research it is evident that the top level of a firm focuses more on the strategic management. Renovating the organizational goals into real life contexts is the significant issue faced by many organizations in planning the strategic management. The organization cannot be maintained if it does not have proper strategy, as a result the position of the organization and its future statues is not known to the management.

So a strategy is necessary for all organizations irrespective of their size, small or large. A strategy can build a path for the success of the organization by using the known motives and directions. The organization gets developed using a structure in order to estimate its position in the business market. The manager of the organization should be responsible for the development of the organization and so he should be assure that the organizational roots or origins are reached by all the strategies of the organization especially for satisfying the goals of an organization. The process of developing a strategy involves few individuals commonly managers and this process is called “Strategic Alignment”.  

Understanding these strategies is necessary for employees because if the better the strategies are known, the better the performance. The organization must be careful in developing a clear strategy because if the strategy is clear for the employees then they can understand it clearly and as a result the aim of the organization will be clear for them and then they can work for the organization in such a way that they can satisfy the desired aims and goals of the organizations. If in case the organization fails to have a clear strategy then they will also fail in satisfying their required aims and goals.

That means the success of an organization is purely based on the strategy it is having. The implementation of the strategy also plays a major role in achieving the desired goals. Hence it is proved that a clear strategy can be created clearly by the top level management of the organization or middle order managers. It is also evident that understanding of the strategy by the employees is essential for the development of the organization and without such an understanding the organization cannot even move a single step towards achieving its goals.

                                        According to various researchers there are different approaches to strategic management. An organization uses a strategic management process in any of the approach but with a common aim to achieve success for the organization by handling situations like internal problems in the organizations, heavy competition and also when unexpected situations threaten the company’s position in the competitive business market.

Questioner to Area managers

1. What are your recent distribution strategies implemented across your area?

2. Do you set any targets to your employees in terms of distribution and sales?

3. How do you communicate the distribution strategies to your employees?

4. How do you observe that the strategies are well communicated to the employees?

5. Do you involve your employees in a typical strategy development process?

6. What level of interest is shown by the employees if they are involved in strategy development process?

7. Do you think involving the employees across the strategy development process really enhance their job performance and satisfaction?

8. How do measure the level of understanding of the employees towards the distribution strategies?

9. Do you conduct any review meetings with the employees towards the strategy implementation?

10. Do you think communicating the strategies to the employees really improve their performance and job satisfaction?

11. Have you observed any improvement of the employee performance after introducing and implementation of a distribution strategy?

12. How do you measure the performance of the employees against the strategy implementation?

13. Do your employees come up with any issues regarding their job satisfaction if they are not really aware of the strategies?

14. What steps you generally take to make sure all of your employees aware of the recent strategies developed?

15. What future steps can be taken to make this process more effective?

Questioner to Operational manager

1. What is your recent production strategy implemented across the operational unit?

2. How many units are produced per month across the production unit?

3. Do you set targets to the employees towards the number of units to be produced?

4. Do your employees understand the operational strategies implemented across the company?

5. How do you communicate the operational strategies to your employees?

6. Do you think conveying the operational strategies really improve the employee performance across your unit?

7. Do you involve the employees in the strategy development process?

8. Do the employees show their interest towards understanding the operational strategies of the company?

9. How do you develop the interest of the employees towards understanding the operational strategies?

10. Do you think employee job satisfaction depends on the level of understanding towards the operational strategies?

11. How the employees react towards the frequent changes in the operational strategies if any?

12. Do you observe any improvement in the employee performance if the strategies are communicated well in any case?

13. How do you measure the performance and job satisfaction of the employees against the operational strategies implemented?

14. Do you seek the advice’s and concerns of the employees regarding their job satisfaction against the strategies?

15. Are there any future steps to be taken to improve the performance and job satisfaction of your employees against strategy communication process?

Questionnaire for Employees: 

1) To what extent do you understand company strategies? (For example: the number of shops we are going to open and the changes in the operations team etc)? Please circle the answer that applies to you. 

a) Very Good       b) Good      c) Average      d) Poor

Comments:

2)  Employees play an important role in making strategy successful. To what extent you agree? Please circle the answer that applies to you.

 a) Strongly Agree       b) Agree      c) Disagree      d) Strongly Disagree

Comments:

3) Is Descriptive Strategic planning (such as providing information on Amt is the first national coffee company to go 100% fair trade and expanding the brand by introduction of AMT naturally) important in converting organizational goals into reality? Please circle the answer that applies to you. 

a) Strongly Agree       b) Agree      c) Disagree      d) Strongly Disagree

Comments: 

4) How good is the Management of your company in explaining strategies related to company’s aim and objectives? (For ex: what does fair trade mean? What difference does it make to AMT by going 100% fair-trade.)  Please circle the answer that applies to you. 

a) Very good      b) Good      c) Average      d) Poor

Comments:

5) Do you feel you are doing something meaningful when you know the company’s long term goals? Please circle the answer that applies to you.

 a) Yes       b) No

Comments: 

6) Do you get recognition/appreciation from your manager when you follow your company strategies effectively? Please circle the answer that applies to you. 

a) Yes       b) No        c) Sometimes    d) Never

Comments: 

7) “The success of any strategy begins with effective communication and good training.” Do you agree? (For example: Do the new staff receive proper training and do you have a special member in team who trains the new staff and retrains the present staff?).

 a) Strongly Agree       b) Agree      c) Disagree      d) Strongly Disagree

Comments: 

8)  How satisfied are you with the communication and transparency of the strategies? (For example your manager having regular meetings and briefing the team about changes or improvements in daily duties.) Please circle the answer that applies to you. 

a) Very Satisfied       b) Satisfied      c) Dissatisfied      d) Very Dissatisfied

Comments: 

9) Do you get a chance to voice your opinion or concerns in strategic planning? (For example: Do you recommend your management in delisting a product, adding a new product or changing a product lay out, etc)? Please circle the answer that applies to you. 

a) Yes           b) No      c) Sometimes       d) Never

Comments: 

10) Do you get frequent feedback from your management about the success of the strategy (For example: how does it increase the sales, speeding up the service or customer satisfaction rate)? Please circle the answer that applies to you.

a) Yes   b) No      c) Sometimes         d) Never 

Comments:

11) How many years you been working in AMT Coffee? Please circle the answer.

a) 0-1    b) 1-2      c) 2-3       d) 3-4    e) 4-5    f) 5 or more 

One of the most important problems for the organizations in strategic planning is converting their goals into reality. Without a strategy organizations don’t know where they are going. Every organization in the world, small or big, has some sort of strategy.  Strategy develops an organization with a structure for evaluating where it stands in different markets, a path to progress in terms of recognized directions and motives. To develop an organization and to reach its goals a manager must ensure that every strategy reaches the roots of the organization.

This is generally called “strategic alignment”  Strategy is developed by limited number of individuals, normally the managers. While a certain degree of concealment may be necessary for competitive motives, the basics need to be demonstrated to the employees so they can perform better. Having a clear strategy is very important so that the employees can understand the organizations aim and the part they have to play for the organization to reach its desired goal. If the strategy is not implemented effectively the goals of the organization will not be reached. The Phrase “a strategy is only as good as its implementation” is suitable in this respect. A strategy brings outcomes when it is clearly and carefully implemented.

By this we can understand the strategy is always seen as a two ways process, creating a strategy carried out by top management or a group of middle managers in the organization.  Without aligning employees with strategy even a small step will be difficult. The research is based on aligning the employees with strategy and how the company performance and job satisfaction is related to understanding of company strategies by the AMT COFFEE employees.

PROPOSED RESEARCH DESIGN

Initially the access was denied when the author contacted the Area manager of AMT COFFEE LTD as the area manager mentioned it’s the busiest season of the year when the author want to do the research. Later the author contacted the Human resources manager, Permission was then granted when author satisfied to the management that their will be no interruption in the daily jobs of the employees and the managers.

The research design used in this study is both exploratory and descriptive. This is done with the primary objective of aligning the employees with company’s strategies. The study will involve managers and the employees of AMT COFFEE LTD. The data collected will be both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative researchers depend mostly on using of documents and literature, detailed interviews, direct observations and involvement.

Quantitative research involves the planned questionnaires and large numbers of respondents. Quantitative research deals with the interpretation of numerical data. All the aspects of the research are carefully formulated before the information is gathered. Some of the social science researchers believe both the qualitative and quantitative approaches as mismatched. But the other says that the talented researchers can combine both the approaches successfully.

The most common methodologies used by the researchers are questionnaires, interviews, panels including focus groups, behavioural and observations. In this research the author has chosen questionnaires and interviews.  The advantage of interviews is the ability of the author to explain the question by repeating, to change the question according to the situation, to clear the doubts at the same time. Interviews are more likely to allow the researcher to identify quicker the respondent’s attitudes and behaviour.

In the particular case of AMT Coffee interviews help the author to save time in data collection as most of the interviewees are easily accessible, they can be found in the Coffee bar and their cooperation is ensured due to the position of the researcher in the company. In the same way, questionnaires are cheaper, quicker to analyse. Questionnaires will be tested to check for clarity of meaning and corrected if necessary.

PROPOSED METHODOLOGY: 

The study is based on primary and secondary data collected at AMT COFFEE LTD. Interviews and questionnaires prepared will later clarify results. This paper brings collective argument from operational, sociological and idealistic investigation to the subject assumptions about the importance of employees understanding company’s strategies. The research helps to analyse why management should align the employees to its strategies, how it improves the employees job performance and satisfaction and the methods AMT COFFEE LTD is using to explain its strategies to employees. 

The research will be as follows:-

1. Interviews will be conducted with one of the operational manager, two area managers and three general managers to analyse the vital information expected to be encountered in the research.
2. Later on interviews with three assistant managers and two supervisors will be conducted from different departments.
3. A questionnaire will be given to 40 of the front line employees who are customer care representatives, cleaners, cash handler, stockers etc. The purpose is to illustrate the similarity between attitudes of the different staff by age, gender, experience, career and position.
4. The questionnaires will be clear and uncomplicated. They will be tested before being administered, initially on a group of students who are friends, then improved and finally given to the respondents.
5. A sample will be selected from the front line employees for the questionnaires from different department such as customer service representatives, cleaners, cash handler, stockers etc. 
6. The sampling method used is random sampling method. Total sample size is 50, covering all the departments in the company. Simple random sampling is a procedure of selecting a sample in which every item in a population has an equal chance of being included in a sample.

Importance and key outcomes expected 

The main purpose of the research is to analyse why the employees AMT COFFEE LTD should understand the company strategies, the best and easiest way to explain the strategies to the employees and the consequences on employee’s job satisfaction and company performance. Other expected outcomes involve the company’s growth and performance, what are the measures taken to check whether the strategy is understood by the front line employees or not and how the feedback is collected by the management from the employees on the newly implemented strategies and how should they handle the feedback. To make employees know what they are doing, why they are doing and how can they do extremely well. The role of top management in implementing strategy successfully.

Time plan 

Doings	Beginning date	No of days	Finishing date
Proposal		36
Dissertation literature Review		32
Supervisor Meeting		9
Questionnaire Preparation		7
Data Gathering		15
Data Interpretation		5
Results and Conclusions		5
Supervisor Meeting		5
Formation		26
Assessment and Criticism		3
Final Report Submission		3

 

The term Strategy is derived from Greek word ‘stratos’ which was used by army as sort of future planning for success by the higher level. The strategy is originally related to military campaigns as an art of planning, operating and directing military operations during war. The organisations started using the word strategy after the second world war when the army chiefs from both the sides of Atlantic came together to analyse some of the successful fundamentals of the war which can be applied in business.

Traditionally a strategy is be developed by senior management and it is passed on to all the levels. Like successful sports coaches, top directors of the business should have the right capability at the right time to implement strategies. Like rely race where there are four legs, there are four different levels in most of the organizations: senior level, middle level, low level and non management level. Just like a victorious rely team where they pass their baton carefully and successfully the strategy has to be passed like baton from senior level to non management level.

The senior level and the middle level management should be very clear in defining and implementing the strategy. When there is too little involvement from the senior level or when communicating the strategy takes too long, the result can be confusion which can lead to miscommunication of the strategy, and ultimately a failure of the strategy to be implemented. 

Strategy is developed by any organization to achieve its long term or short term goals. “The success of any strategy begins with skilful recruitment and human resources policies and work through internal debate and effective communication.”  We analyse strategy as the organizations plan to improve competencies and abilities, through which the organization achieve its goals. Sharing the organizations strategies to employees in a convincing and attracting way is a key to success. At the end of the day employees who know about the strategies will work towards a common goal.  This will have a progressive effect on the front line employees and will improve the efficiency of a company. 

 As in the Lewis Carol’s poem, if employees are not clear about the company strategies or the reasons behind those strategies they don’t conjugate their efforts to make the strategy successful. The employees should understand the strategy and internalise it. When the employees know where they are exactly heading to they feel more confident and satisfied. Strategy is defined as “plans, programmes and intentions to develop the human capability of an organization to meet its future needs of its external and internal environment” . Effective strategy communication to the employees is vital to any successful organization. Earlier research suggests that organizations with clear and formalized strategies explained and made available to the employees are more successful than those where strategic goals are not known by the employees. . Strategy should be aligned with all the departments like financial, operational, marketing and human resources.

The strategy is created and implemented in different ways and that there should be clear role in achieving organizations goal. When it comes to business terms the strategy shows the future of the organizations, showing us   products and the services we will take to the particular markets. There is little research suggests on implementing and measuring company strategy. The concern of how the different departments in an organisation understand and communicate its strategies shows the strength and success of the organisation.

Many studies relating to the importance of strategy implementation and communicating strategy to the employees in effective way is based on real time experiences. Study of successful and failed organisations and their way of approaching developing and implementing strategies have been used by the other researchers such as Bird Approach and Squirrel Approach. Fewer studies have been conducted through interview and questionnaires.

Rather they were conducted through scenarios and observations. Arguments show that the earlier studies have importance on how to develop strategy and not in the way of implementing the strategy. The Bird Approach means the company acts like a bird and tries to find a branch on the tree suitable for it to land because the decision is one cannot stand in the air forever. Such a decision is random, and because it’s random it’s risky. It’s like trying to find the best from what you have. The other approach is The Squirrel Approach. The Squirrel Approach is where the company has particular skills and strengths and that it builds on ignoring other aspects that might prove crucial for its survival.  These approaches to strategy although rare are still happening in practice with disastrous results for the company.

 Most of the authors have mentioned that employees understanding the company strategy are important for an organization but few authors have created some measures to implement and measure its performance. These differences have been created because of different backgrounds and the literature which lead to different definitions and the importance of implementing the strategy.

Within the literature review definitions related to effective strategy communication to the employees and the importance of employees understanding strategy have been considered, compared and contrasted as a means of informing this research and identifying different paths to follow. In gathering the definitions and articles various books and business database related to strategy alignment and strategy communication to the employees have been used. In carrying out this literature review, guidelines received in lectures and tutorials as well as in research textbooks have been followed. By analysing the above literature the author research stand on “How does understanding of company strategy improve company performance and job satisfaction?“