Aligning corporate and individual goals with sustainable quality management
https://ilokabenneth.blogspot.com/2014/10/aligning-corporate-and-individual-goals.html
Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 15-October-2014
Introduction
Increase
in globalization and internationalization of firms now means that
sustainability in the business process can only be made effective through
quality management that understand as well as aligns corporate objectives with
their individual goals. This will be explored and explained below.
Question 1
In
essence, by saying that the future of strategy is dependent on leadership, what
is meant is that just like business strategies, leadership strategies are
derived from careful analysis of present position of the company and its
desired future. Thus, leadership strategy is meant to fill up open gaps between
what is presently obtainable and future desires of the company (Pasmore, 2010). Thus, the “future” of the company
depends on its ability to employ competent “leaders” that have the right
skills, experience and commitment to push the company forward to its desired
future position.
Existing
literatures on leadership have pointed out that effective leadership is
critical for survival of modern firms (Kaplan and
Norton 1996; Lawson 2001). The reason behind such view is that the world
is now globalized and firms don’t need to focus only on their local markets,
instead they should seek ways to expand into foreign markets in order to
increase and maintain their performance. Even when they decide to compete in
their local markets, they should aware of potential new entrants and effects of
FDIs on their competitiveness. Thus, modern firms need leaders that can
effectively and strategically transform their market position in order to
ensure sustainable business performance. Without such, they will join the long
list of firms that “did try to survive but failed due to poor leadership.”
Thus, such statement is in line with modern firms because the sustainability of
a firm in the future depends on the quality of its present leadership system.
Question 2
Pasmore (2010) develop a framework for defining
the kind of leadership required in modern firm to include: quantity, quality,
skills, behavior, collective capabilities and leadership culture. These skills
align with modern business settings as companies need to look beyond producing
goods and services that meets customers’ needs, and focus on meeting the entire
needs of the stakeholders (Agrawal and Knoeber 1996; Keasey and Wright 1993).
For instance, Coca-Cola needs to meet consumers’ need for low sugar products,
but they must also meet other requirements such as returns on investment (high
sales), CSR (good corporate culture), demands of government and legal
requirements (good corporate behavior) and so on. Since Coca-Cola is just a
brand its ability to meet such needs are dependent on the people actually
undertaking the business process, it becomes clear that they must employees the
right volume of staffs (quantity), with necessary competence level (quality),
experience (skills), attitude (behavior), creativity and approach (collective
capabilities), and high commitment toward organizational citizenship
(leadership culture). Thus, it is clear that these frameworks fits well within
demands for a more reliable system in the modern business setting.
Question 3
In
accordance with Pasmore (2009), in order to
talent to be made sustainable a number of factors need to be aligned and they
are:
1. Executive
commitment and engagement;
2. Learning
and development;
3. Career
planning;
4. Reward
and recognition;
5. Knowledge
management;
6. Performance
management;
7. Competency
development and deployment;
8. Sourcing
and recruiting; and
9. Leadership
practice.
In
order to ensure effective talent management, literatures (such as Boudreau and Ramstad, 2007; Huselid, Beatty and Becker,
2005; Axelrod et al., 2002; Frank et al., 2004; Michaels et al., 2001)
have pointed out that the corporate environment should be such that allows
employees to learn from every given activity, share ideas, explore new trends,
and have full support of the management. Thus, the above framework can be said
to fit in within that ideology because it calls for commitment and engagement
of the management towards ensuring that employees are put through new learning
and development programs that will perfect their career plan. Additionally,
employees need to be rewarded for positive inputs in the productivity of the
company, and such positive input can be enhanced through effective knowledge
management and performance management that will help these employees to develop
and improve on their competence level. Finally, the company need to source for
reliable and competent new staffs that will share ideas with the existing and
talented one, and also adopt effective leadership that will expand talent flow
in the workforce in order to ensure that need talents are sustainable
irrespective of employee’s turnover.
Conclusions
From
the above analysis, it is now clear that leadership is no “a question of
whether we should,” instead it is a question of “how should we.” This is
because companies need to monitor their business environment at all time and
this is made possible through effective management system. Thus, it can be
concluded that the ideas and frameworks developed by Pasmore (2010) as
discussed in this paper are in line with demands in modern business
environment.
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