Evaluate the performance of the main activity of your selected company

Evaluate the performance of the main activity of your selected company

EST Companies though being a small business it specializes in the sale, service, and maintenance of large scale technologies.  The company excels in the sales of wash racks and maintenance of technologies, particularly unscheduled services. Employees are trained to perform functions and conduct the necessary maintenance, which gives satisfaction to the clients. The service technicians arrive on sites with trucks outfitted with inventory if needed for the project. The high level of preparedness has enabled excellent performance, particularly meeting unscheduled demand. The measurement criteria for the performance of the critical services in the increased number of sales (Cui & Wu, 2016). When sales are high, it means that the product’s popularity is growing and more customers are making more sales. The increased sales can be traced through unscheduled demand that the firm ensures they are ready to take orders and deliver.

Type of control of employees and production processes used

In fulfilling the goals of the  EST, uses quality control in employees and the production process. They ensure that they have a team of workers who can deliver on quality and able to attend to patients. Most of the competitors use distributors to sell wash racks. Still, they fail to integrate the system to include filtration and remedial systems, which improves the quality of services provided by EST. The connection of quality consistent from the selection of service provider and the production process, it has resulted in better performance of the services in the market (Guo et al., 2019).

How does the corporation manage environmental risks?

It is essential that firms prepare for environmental risk as well as uphold the standards set in place to save the environment. The firm ensures that they observe all the rules of the countries and state they operate regarding environmental safety. Therefore that reduces extra costs that the company may incur as legal expenses resulting from polluting the environment.

Competitive Advantage and recommendation to the management

The company’s competitive advantage is achieved through people and processes and practices. Focusing on people, people can add more value to the services and improvements in innovation that can help the firm to be reliable among competitors. That is evident in the company since, as their competitors use distributors in some of their services, the EST Company ensures that its technologies are integrated to include other necessary services. Further, the process and practices give customers experience with the firm.  The firm should invest in more innovation to ensure that they offer better services at favorable costs. When costs are convenient, and the services are quality, the sales will increase.

Section Two

Is the evaluation and control process appropriate for a corporation that emphasizes creativity? Are control and creativity compatible? Explain.

In an organization, evaluation and control are necessary since they help in comparing performance with the desired results and giving feedback where necessary. More importantly, the use of assessment and control is to align the activities with the intended outcome as well as detecting any deviations from the course (Wang et al., 2018). Creativity in the workplace includes innovations that are either team developing, marketing, or creating products. To improve creativity, it requires the organization to be open, encourages diversity, motivates people, and provides the necessary tools. Therefore, for a firm to foster creativity, they need to reduce controls on employees. Such that they can be able to accomplish the goals of the firm. Despite the reduction controls, it does not mean that the firm will leave employees to perform their duties in their desired way. There must be control and evaluation to ensure that creativity is moving to the expected direction (Hon & Lui, 2016). Sometimes when employees are left to do work on their own, they may not take time and resource constraints into perspective. When employees’ are provided with the required resources, the firm must ensure that they control and evaluate the use and the work being done. But they loosen the standards of monitoring employee work performance when they want to enhance creativity.

Therefore control is not ignored, but it is limited. Also, during creativity, the result is what matters most but not the means. If the result created helps the firm to be competitive and improve the operations, there is less control in the way work was done. From that, it can be deduced that control and creativity are compatible where control is meant to focus on the result. Further, when employees are given a platform to showcase their creative ideas, they need to be disciplined and talented and focus on achieving what aligns with the company operations and values. Failure to enhance control can destroy the creativity being nurtured as well as the organization’s brand.

How can corporate culture be changed? Give examples

Organizational culture directs the attitudes, behaviors, and values in a firm. When people are used to the beliefs, values, and behaviors, they become a habit. When the management wants to change the culture, but faces resistance since it interferes with the employees’ habits. Therefore the best strategy must be employed in organizational change to ensure that the change achieves the desired outcome. Employees’ behavior and productivity determine the result of the change in culture. The task of changing culture is one of the leadership challenges. Culture compromises interlocking goals, processes, roles, values, attitudes, and assumptions.

Different companies have different ways to enforce change. The best strategy begins with leadership tools, where a vision of the future is written.  Then management roles like defining roles, control of systems, and the use of power to coerce employees into the change (Denning, 2011). Sometimes the excess use of force may lead to more problems, and therefore the power needs to be used wisely. For instance, if there is a need the o change the behavior, the leaders will be engaged to give the desired outcome of the change. Then the management will define new roles that are in line with the new change, and therefore the power of the administration will be used to force employees to observe the change. Other companies first reassess the current culture then draft a new one. Then involve the leadership team so that they can buy in the idea (Schein & Schein, 2019). It becomes easy when the leaders champion the change and communicate the same to the team members. Through that, leaders are likely to create influence in changing the culture other than when initiated by the management.

How is the cellular/modular structure different from the network structure? Give at least three differences

There is a vast difference between cellular structure and network structure. First, a cellular organization is composed of cells that operate separately by interacting with each other to produce a competent business mechanism. The independence and interdependence allow generation and sharing of knowledge to create innovations. The network structure is decentralized, and managers coordinate all the activities internally and externally. Second, cellular structure is a form of internal joint ventures where there is a temporary combination of specialized expertise to help in accomplishing tasks that individual units cannot manage. On the other side, network structure ensures long term contracts where the other strategic alliances replace the services that the firm could have performed by itself. So, cellular, they work together in achieving the work of a firm while for network structure it the alliance firm performs the duty itself. Lastly, under the cellular structure, the component, and joint ventures that come together to complete the task are not in the control of the firm management. But they allow the exchange of knowledge and skills in ensuring that they improve on competency. Network structure forms alliances with other parties to ensure that they also improve performance, but the management has control over the structure.

Denning, S. (2011).How Do You Change An Organizational Culture? https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/07/23/how-do-you-change-an-organizational-culture/#47f27f5b39dc

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2019). The corporate culture survival guide. John Wiley & Sons.

Wang, E., Ouyang, M., Zhang, F., & Zhao, C. (2018). Performance Evaluation and Control Strategy Comparison of Supercapacitors for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle. In Science, Technology, and Advanced Application of Supercapacitors. IntechOpen.

Hon, A. H., & Lui, S. S. (2016). Employee creativity and innovation in organizations. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Cui, A. S., & Wu, F. (2016). Utilizing customer knowledge in innovation: antecedents and impact of customer involvement on new product performance. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 44(4), 516-538.

Guo, H., Zhang, R., Chen, X., Zou, Z., Qu, T., Huang, G., … & Li, J. (2019). Quality Control in Production Process of Product-Service System: a Method Based on Turtle Diagram and Evaluation Model. Procedia CIRP, 83, 389-393.