|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Management |
|
Management Tips Want To Manage Change? By Ashok Pande "…A management consultant supervised a group of unskilled laborers in a grocery warehouse. Higher management planned to install certain merchandized materials-handling equipment to reduce costs. Reasoning that his employees were poorly educated and had little knowledge of productivity and cost-cutting ideas. He worked hard to sell them on the change and to involve them in it. The new system was installed with full employee cooperation. As he put it, "The change went through without a hitch." Some years later he had the job of installing a quality-control system among a group of technical people. He reasoned that these employees were educated and understood the company’s problems; so they could see reasons for the new program. They would not need the special selling effort that he had applied earlier to his warehouse laborers. This mistake in judgement cost him his job, because his employees resisted the change until it was defeated and he was discharged. Though his employees had the intellectual potential to see the reasons for the change, they chose not to do so…." Change is the continual phenomenon of organizational life. Any change in part of the system, such as technology, products, communication patterns, role relationships, etc. creates a chain of changes throughout the entire system. A new technology can bring a significant change in an organisation – a technological change. When the telephone was introduced, people saw it as the extension of the telegraph. When IBM introduced the personal computer, the company predicted it would sell approximately 125,000 during the lifetime of the product, mostly to scientists & hobbyists. Even when people do see the potential in new technology, they often get it wrong. Take the Internet. Truckloads of ink have been spilled over how it will revolutionise marketing to the consumer. Big changes, indeed, are happening. James Champy wrote in Forbes magazine in 1998 - "The more business you do electronically, the fewer distribution locations you need. So you may be closing warehouses, building large, sophisticated distribution centres and reducing inventory. This may involve write-offs and heavy investments in new buildings and equipment. Unfortunately, it may also mean lots of layoffs. The Internet, in short, is a lot more than just another distribution channel. It’s going to be at the very heart of business. Don’t say you haven’t been warned." Technology and Organisational Change Technology is by far the most dynamic and significant factor forcing changes in organisational designs, goals, strategies, policies, etc. For example, computer has revolutionised the organisational ways of doing things. Computerisation has significantly affected managerial styles, communication systems, and decision making processes by increasing the accuracy and timeliness of information flows, routinizing decision making in several areas such as inventory control, and facilitating planning and problem solving process. No matter how much you stress organizational benefits, most people view impending change as a personal threat. They may feel that what they’re doing now works fine. Or maybe they recall problems from a previous change. Sometimes, they’ll resist learning new ways to do things or fear falling in a new environment. Such reactions aren’t impossible barriers. But they do imply a level of misunderstanding that you must address openly. Build Support for Change
" I have always felt you should not be able to leave the department during rest periods, and beginning tomorrow it will not be permitted." The natural responses are "It’s not the supervisor’s business where we go" and "Let’s get together and figure out a way to beat the supervisor." Surely there must be some better reasons for the change.
"What’s in this for me?" Rewards say to employees, "We care. We want you as well as us to benefit from this change."
Ten Questions to be answered before introducing a change In order to know the employees are afraid of a change or not, here are ten questions: get the answers in yes or no and see the verdict.
The Verdict: If your organisation scored
Tackling your team after a change People are creative by nature, but many times in a big corporation we are killing this creativity. Showing by example that you don’t punish people for falling is a big encouragement to be creative. You have to support them as they look for creative solutions while coaching them to be responsible. It is the difference between calculated risk-taking and gambling.
People, who are disciplined and clear about objectives, are best managed and can successfully manage change. Proliferating Perspective of Management Audit (I) By Surendra Bhusan Shrestha Auditing has become a major component of the organization that lets the organization grow and sustain as the going concern. It has the main objective of performing the essential control function within the corporate environment. We should understand the audit function first before we appreciate the values and potentials of it. The management expects the Audit to do following functions:
Management audit – a theoretical structure One of the surest marks of a maturing audit profession is the increased attention to the concept of management audit. Management is defined as the ‘art and science of purposeful action". The efficiency, ability and performance of the management can be assessed in terms of : i) economic functions; ii) corporate structure; iii) health of earnings; iv) service to the stockholders; v) research and development; vi) financial policies, vii) production efficiency; viii) sales vigor; and ix) executive evaluation. There seems to be an element of universality about this evaluation. The principles of management audit remains valid regardless of the nature of the enterprise because all human activity is confronted with the same management audit can be as broad as the management process itself. To ensure completeness of the audit, the American Institute of Management has devised an users detailed questionnaires covering management performances in each appraisal category (questionnaires have been developed for a wide range of industries and type of businesses). The information obtained through the MAQ is supplemented by interviews with members of the management and other before the data is evaluated. Clearing the cob-webs Like the six blind men describing an elephant, the term management audit has been christened variously as efficiency ad operational audit, social audit, management performance audit and program results audit. Any attempt to distinguish among the above will only be a barren enterprise. This christening process does not seem to abate and it may not, until a complete conceptual picture of the subject is agreed upon. Objectives angle The financial auditor reviews consummated transactions and recommends remedial action based on actual finding, while the management auditor anticipates problems, visualizes management audit determines the cause. Financial auditing is ‘compliance’ oriented whereas management audit is ‘performance’ oriented. While ‘compliance’ can be taken to mean adherence to stated accounting policies, standards and legal requirements, ‘performance’ has to be viewed as the quality of ‘total’ management performance, which is optimum and efficient use of the various resources. management auditing differs from other forms of compliance auditing mainly in its objective. The ‘exposures’ to which management auditing is directed are primarily those that deal with; i) excessive; ii) deficient revenues; iii) competitive disadvantages; and iv) erroneous management decisions. Management audit emphasizes any or all of these exposures, which do not directly affect fairness of financial reporting. In other words, it is an impartial evaluation of the management’s performance, beyond the implicitly provided by historical results. This is mainly required because significant management opportunities are possible even where compliance with directives has been extremely good. In a management audit, as is generally understood, the auditor is forced to look into the indications of a deficient management such as frequent plan changes, lack of arrangement for successions, late decisions, inadequate information and the like. In fact, in the hands of a good auditor, the regular comprehensive compliance examination should naturally include appropriate operation concerns. Methodology Angle Auditors with a sense of adventure can audit many unconventional areas as part of their management audit program. When auditors today claim of ‘auditing anything under the sun; there does not seem to be any area of study which can be called ‘unconventional’. It is only that some areas do not lend themselves to the "conventional style" of auditing and stand to differ from the regular count of auditing. Conduct As stated earlier, it may be difficult to
bring the methodology of management audit within the framework of a
regular and conventional audit style of vouching, verifying and reporting.
However, the conduct of management audit can well be brought under the
following scheme of reason Chart 1 the V-E-D analysis has been used only to emphasize the fact that the management auditor has to maintain an open attitude and should not be bogged down by details of a set audit pattern. A total view While attempting at giving a theoretical structure to the idea of management audit, one is faced with "conceptual concerns" about what management audit is all about. There seems to be a multiplicity of views on the subject but two of them are prominent. One view defines management audit as an audit of individual functions or operations of an organization with a view to improving the efficiency of that particular operation. This view is based on the fact that the effect of any managerial decision can be studied only by a study of the specific operation on which the decision has a bearing. The other view describes it as a review of total management performance. The advocates of this view subscribe to the idea that strategic decisions have to be audited at the point of origin and not at the point of effect. A comprehensive definition of management audit must, inter alia, include the appraisal of:
The above description, prima facie, looks like a definition of a systems audit. In a way it is, because any function can be viewed as a system when it has an input-process-output scheme. On this basis, the function of management by itself can be viewed as a system. In the context of our sub-continent, management audit has been confined to the appraisal of sub-systems within the organization. However, the performance of the organization as a whole synergy. So an appraisal of the organizational performance is necessary apart from the regular appraisal of the sub-systems. The audit can also be a system external to the organization. (See part II in next issue) Conduct of management audit In-depth study Analysis of data Evaluation of the system Conclusion based on the above Recommendation for remedial action Workable suggestions for future action Financial & non-financial data for backing up the recommendations Should be comprehensive and systematic Should be timely & should suit the needs of the user Makes management audit an audit of details |
|
| Cover
Feature | Editorial
| Business News | Opinion
Poll | Launches
| Inner-View | |
|
Send your feedback to the editor: bizage@ecomail.com.np |
