Reflection paper.

Reflection paper.

Introduction

Let’s talk business; A business has been termed to be an organization or enterprising entity engaged in commercial, industrial, or professional activities. They can be for-profit entities or non-profit organizations that operate to fulfill a charitable mission or further a social cause, (Hayes, 2019). Individuals or startup companies set their best foot forward with a vision of achievements and producing quality over quantity by satisfying consumer needs. Individuals focus on so many aspects of business or organizational success, some leading to achieving their goals while others were failing to get to their highest potential.

The knowledge of the Baldrige principle and Introduction to Quality Standards unit boils down to learning the history of quality management in the American industry during 20th and 21st centuries and presenting the principles of the Baldrige quality assessment process. It generally includes the study of concepts and principles for analyzing contemporary quality assurance systems, measurements, and tools to learn business situations and different others. The principle was derived from Malcolm’s Mac’ Baldridge’s understanding of the need for companies nationwide to focus on quality and innovation if America were to maintain a leadership position in an expanding global marketplace. He focused his argument on how businesses could maximize their effectiveness by focusing on consumers. The principles he supported included: managing for innovation, entrepreneurship,

customer-driven excellence, integrity, visionary leadership, creating value, agility, societal responsibility, and a focus on the future, which were later identified as the Baldrige principles.

The notion of Baldrige himself believing in his words of success being that of finding something you like to do and caring enough to do it well symbolizes what is termed as being involved in your business fully. The principles raised and trusted by Baldrige led to his rise from being a simple cowboy to being one of the most respected commerce secretaries in U.S. history. It is well known that when he spoke, all the Washingtonians tended to listen. The principles of innovation, forward-thinking, visionary, agility, entrepreneurial, customer-focused, socially responsible, appear on almost every list. These principles advocated by Baldrige decades ago, were written into the “Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987,” which was enacted shortly after Baldrige’s death. The principles have since brought a revolution to the commerce industry as well as that of the art and theatre, health care, and engineering sector.

My analysis of the Baldrige principle and criteria of leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management, and that of final results maps out a clear blueprint of successful businesses, organizations, and companies. The key indicators in each aspect promote the value of taking each step-in achieving quality over quantity. The leadership follows a chain of how power is used by the superiors to their subordinates and how it is widely distributed as well as how they do relate with their consumers, strategic planning is all about how individuals are involved in putting in place key action points to enable the business or organization to run smoothly with less or no hiccups, customer focus Is the main agenda of the day where the organization focuses most of its energy in understanding the consumer needs and how to effectively support or rather work towards accomplishing what the consumer wants and needs.

Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management focus on the management, effective use, analysis, and improvement of data and information to support key organization processes and the organization’s performance management system. Focusing on the workforce is also of great importance where individuals are allowed to reach their full potential through creative ideas, innovation, and critical thinking in synchrony with the organization’s main objectives and ultimate goal. The process management stage ensures that all the pre-set action plans are in check and looking for some cracks to fill in, change some of the actions, and improve on some strong points. The final results will be drawing its achievements from customer satisfaction, financial and marketplace performance, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operational performance, and governance and social responsibility, as well as from the competitors’ range.

The Baldrige process has been identified worldwide and used by many businesses to achieve their ultimate goal. I believe that this is a wake-up call to most organizations and individuals to go back to the drawing books and analyze their set principle, link it with the Baldrige process and achieve successful results. My thinking of just waking up with a vision of starting a new business due to a thoughtful idea has been counteracted by the fact that there is a lot to put in place before and during establishing a perfectly thought idea: understanding the market niche, consumer needs, the leadership process, workforce, key performance indicators through assessment all play an integral part and ensuring a business reaches its potential growth. The concept of ‘quality’ is clearly defined by how we satisfy our customers, feedback generated from sales, as well as the growth of the company, business, or organization.

Organizational issues

An organization is defined as a group of people with a particular purpose. Therefore, for an organization to reach its higher limits and achieve the set objectives and final goal, there are a lot of issues that need to be kept in check to realize that. The Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Program’s mission is to improve the competitiveness and performance of U.S. organizations through organizational assessment and development for the benefit of all U.S. residents. The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is a customer-focused federal change agent that develops and disseminates evaluation criteria, manages the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, promotes performance excellence, and provides global leadership in the learning and sharing of successful strategies and performance practices, principles, and methodologies. (Baldrige assessment,2020).

Many organizations experience turbulences throughout their evolvement to maturity; they experience higher risk by getting involved in crisis after crisis. Quoted by one business person, “We lacked defined systematic processes to manage operational work effectively to meet our customers’ or stakeholders’ requirements, or we had a defined process but no means to evaluate it to determine ways to improve,” he said.

“In these instances,” He added, “the organization was inadvertently accepting higher amounts of unnecessary risk or contributing to rework and waste. I found myself questioning processes and wondering how or why we seemed to jump from crisis to crisis.” (Bailey, 2017). And in as much as going back to the drawing board with the Baldrige principle in mind, he managed to actively raise to a successful and adventurers’ business.

Organizational issues I believe are brought about by lack of understanding of the consumer needs, uncoordinated work structure, higher set personal goals as compared to the ultimate organizational goal, poor performance assessment, and appraisal and lack of rather good leadership. The Baldrige principle has been identified as a powerful tool to be used in the action planning, good leadership, and market research and final results assessment. Understanding where the organization falls in the competitive market would lead to one focusing on what to improve and finally be on the topmost and well-identified companies due to its quality of products and services.

In my understanding employee involvement is crucial in business success, the employees must be involved in the decision-making matters of the organization, they should be led to understand that they are important assets in the organization and by doing so would lead to them being productive by putting in more efforts in ensuring that the organization has achieved its ultimate goal. Teamwork is another aspect that has brought most companies to their greatest heights where both the leaders and the employees merge their force and power in ensuring that every action set is achieved.  It is mostly said that the customer is always right; hence the organization should thrive in ensuring that the consumers are kept in mind when producing products or rendering services. Quality, in this case, boils down to understanding what affects and runs the organization termed as system thinking, a set of functions working together to achieve the final goal. (Braun, 2004)

Personal and organizational learning

For an organization to achieve the highest level of performance, a well-planned and executed approach to organizational and personal learning is important. It requires a systematic sharing of knowledge. Organizational learning has been well known to be the continuous improvement in the already existing approaches as well as on the innovative ideas leading to a successful final result. Learning, in this case, is in line with how the organization operates, understanding the core functions, the people, the culture, and the operating systems. Learning being both organizational and personal is a regular part of work, practiced at personal, work unit, and organizational levels leading to accomplished and solved problems. Through learning and interacting with each other within and without the organization, individuals are encouraged to share knowledge and be innovative. Learning here is through fellow employees, benchmarks, research and developments, customer inputs, as well as generated ideas. Through organizational learning, I believe it enhances customer value through products and services, developing business opportunities, and identifying new opportunities while increasing productivity and minimizing risks.

Being an effective and productive member of a team, one needs to improve or rather focus on personal learning, understanding their weaknesses, thriving in their strengths, getting to know what the company expects from you and how you can deliver as an individual. Acquiring new skills every day through mentorship programs, shared knowledge, education, training, and other opportunities for continuing growth and development is integral for every individual. Opportunities like this exist in job rotation and performance appraisals, for instance, through increased pay for demonstrated knowledge and skills. Individual or personal training, I believe, is the more satisfying, engaging, and versatile workforce that stays in the organization. This is more motivational to individuals to work effectively. (Steel, 2012).

My understanding of the organizational and personal learning in the Baldrige process is that internalizing what an individual is made of and how he or she can be important in ensuring that the organization reaches the ultimate goal is through in-depth learning—getting to the point where individuals understand the core values of the organization, matching their acquired skills and strength to improve and work towards the final output of the organization—learning the culture and the expectation of the consumers hence understanding the market better and working towards satisfying the consumer needs, bridging the gap. Learning to work as a team betters the way the organization is meant to thrive with the organizational culture in place.

Corporate responsibility

Corporate responsibility (CR) has been termed to be concerned with the sustainability of an organization over the long term. Its most important value seeks to add value to an organization’s activities by ensuring they have a positive impact on society, the environment, and the economy. Corporate social responsibility has been an element of the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence since its inception in 1988. (Brown,2013). The Criteria provides a system for the design and improvement of high-performing organizations; therefore, corporate social responsibility is an important factor for achieving performance excellence. Corporate social responsibility has drawn much attention from researchers over the past several decades, with most questions focusing on whether a socially responsible company is more likely to be financially successful. (Foote, Evans &Gaffney,2010).

Corporate social responsibility has been important in most organizational change, transformation, and improvement. It is believed that giving back to the community by getting involved in the change-making and improvement of the society, in general, is essential in promoting an organization as well as adding value. The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence through corporate social responsibility has been considered the topmost and most considered form of getting recognized and getting positive feedback from the community at large. The most termed human expression is, “giving what you receive,” and by an organization focusing on giving back to the community by being involved in the societal activities, they get to be closer to the people than before.

In various countries, the CSR activity involves but is not limited to reducing carbon footprints, improving labor policies, participating in fair-trade, charitable giving, volunteering in the community, corporate policies that benefit the environment, socially and environmentally conscious investments.

The last two generations consider socially responsible companies even more important. They believe companies should be more focused on improving society and looking for solutions that will be integral in those improvements. Companies should be quick in sharing how they are trying to make a positive impact on the world, so the public can see the pro-social initiatives they are making. Showcasing efforts is important to target millennials because these efforts will sway the choices millennials make as consumers.

Millennials would also like to take part in initiatives such as being able to participate in volunteer work or making donations towards a company’s charitable efforts. As more and more companies begin to see the impact of their socially and environmentally conscious efforts have on a consumer’s perception, the more chance there is that they will begin initiatives of their own. In conclusion, even without direct, measurable empirical evidence, there is support in the literature that engaging in corporate social responsibility has a significant impact on performance.

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

Beatty, J. R. (2006). The quality journey: historical and workforce perspectives and the assessment of commitment to quality. International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 1(1-2), 139-167.

Braun, N. M. (2004). Critical thinking in the business curriculum. Journal of Education for Business, 79(4), 232.

Brown, M. G. (2013). Baldrige Award Winning Quality–: How to Interpret the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Productivity Press.

Cappa, F., Rosso, F., & Hayes, D. (2019). Monetary and social rewards for crowdsourcing. Sustainability, 11(10), 2834.

Foote, J., Gaffney, N., & Evans, J. R. (2010). Corporate social responsibility: Implications for performance excellence. Total Quality Management, 21(8), 799-812.

Vokurka, R. J. (2001). Using the Baldrige criteria for personal quality improvement. Industrial Management & Data Systems.