Organisational and leadership management Case Study - 1

Organisational and leadership management - Case Study Example Their major aim is to highlight themselves in the middle and lower strata of the population to gain maximum market penetration and market share. Going into the history of the organization, it was founded in 1965 in West Yorkshire England, and it is there only that their headquarters are present. The major products that they are offering their vast customer base are grocery, general merchandize and financial services; a domain that is different from their focal business. Associated Dairies and Farms Stores Limited was formed in 1949; the company ASDA was formed after a merger agreement with three supermarket chains in 1965. After a lot of changes in the product base, coupled with mergers, acquisitions and diversifications, they started their focused approach towards extending their food retailers vision forward. This was done in 1989, by buying huge stores of Rivals, Gateway Superstores for a whopping some of 750 million pounds. Problem of selling too many products arose, which are encountered by raising capital from shareholders twice. The journey of then coupling themselves with the American giant Wal-Mart started where the CEO of the company even sent people to the organization in order to access the marketing and technology base that their international rivals were using. The takeover of this British organization by the US giant Wal-Mart, took place on 26th July, 1999; this was when the organization was planning to take over Kingfisher plc. (ASD A, 2009) The organization is basically boasting to provide product and service both to its values customers. It is more of less in the middle of the product-service continuum, sliding more towards to product end. This is because the organization has built a brand name in providing quality service in terms of retail housing to its customers. This requires high quality of product. On the other hand, due to their sound brand name, they have this aspect of after sales service that is being associated with the organization, the customers are satisfied that their queries would be met with. The element we will be focusing on in the assignment is the product orientation of the organization. It is a publically owned organization where shares are being traded on different stock exchanges. The company boasts of an income of 638 million pounds and is currently employing over 143 thousand in its organization, serving the whole of the United Kingdom. They have been known for their marketing campaigns based of fair/low price products that have kept the competition alive in the retailer market. ANALYSIS OF THE ORGANIZATION The organization provides retail to its customers. Apart from the basic grocery products and retail chains that it is providing its customers, the company has also diversified and moved into the financial sector market. They also provide financial services to the customers with the help of the subsidiary organizations. However, the focus of the analysis is the retailer section of the organization's product line. There are several factors for choosing the General Merchandize and grocery sector, in short the retailer business, of the company. One of the most prominent and important one is that this sector has been developed over a large period of time. The

International HRM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

International HRM - Essay Example It is a given fact that different forms of expatriate assignments are very important to any corporation that has presence in different nations for functional success (Adler, 1983). Incorporating any expatriate to the functional as well as the developmental environment of an organization is also necessary to ensure that expatriate has a healthy working atmosphere around him or her. Many researchers and HR professionals are interested in understanding how to facilitate expatriate adjustment in order to make sure that the global projects that invariably involved a considerable amount of investment prove to be successful. Many different factors are involved in expatriate adjustment and it is the responsibility of the human resources management to facilitate this process. This study aims to explore the various actions that the HR can take to facilitate expatriate adjustment in a smooth manner. Many researches from consultancies (GMAC, 2006) have shown a consistent and substantial growth i n the number of people who have been sent abroad by their employee. In light of this, it is necessary to understand the different ways in which an organization can ease the process and make it comfortable for the employees to adjust to a different country and organizational set up. According to the model of international adjustment developed by Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991), expatriate adjustment has three inherent domains; one is adjustment to an overseas workplace, adjustment to interacting with the host nationals and adjustment to the overseas work atmosphere. As per the research done by Navas et al (2007), there are six domains that are crucial in expatriate adjustment, and they are politics and government, work, economics, social relations, family relations and ideology. According to Navas, the domains are listed based on the increasing resistance to change. For example, employees would easily adjust to the government rules, work, economics and so on, but they would not ea sily adjust the belief, value systems and ideology of the host country. The Human Resources department can decide on working on each of these aspects based on the tenure as well as the previous experience of the employees. Expatriate adjustment has a good influence on the performance of the employees and if there are, some issues related to adjustment there are high chances that the performance may get affected in various degrees. In this study, the various factors that need to be addressed by the HR in order to ensure a smooth a transition. Choice of the Right Person Before the decision related to selecting an employee for an expatriate assignment is made, it is necessary to explore different aspects. One such aspect is flexibility. It is necessary to understand the level of flexibility that an employee brings in to the organization (Feldman and Thompson, 1993). If an employee finds it difficult to work in different groups or teams within the same organization in the same location, there are chances that he or she may find it even more difficult to adjust in a foreign location. Hence, the HR personnel should ensure that the person has displayed a good amount of flexibility in their current roles before sending them for an overseas assignment. It is also important to understand the manner in which employee responds to change in the organization. In addition, it is also necessary to test the aptitude of the person to live abroad. The employee should be open to the idea of living in another country for the fixed tenure. In