1) Introduction

Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. is engaged in the management of its subsidiaries and
also the business activities of food and pharmaceutical production. It operates through
the Food and Pharmaceutical segments. The food sector manufactures produce and
sells confectionery, milk, beverage, ice cream, dairy, cheese, and health food products.
The Pharmaceutical sector manufactures produce and sells ethical pharmaceuticals,
agricultural chemicals, and veterinary drugs. The company is headquartered in Tokyo,
Japan and was established on April 1, 2019.

The Meiji Group's philosophy is to serve as a corporate group in the food and health
sector to enhance the daily lives of its customers. Its mission is to broaden the world
of “Tastiness and Enjoyment” and meet all the expectations of “Health and and
Reassurance”. Its goal is to constantly find innovative ways to meet the needs of their
customers today and tomorrow (Anon, 2019).

The operation scope of Meiji Holdings Co, Ltd. is to promote the group-wide
management strategy, create the best operational structure, and supervise the business
management of the operating company. The responsibility for operational execution is
appropriately delegated to the operating company. Within the group, the supervision
and execution of business management are separate (Anon, 2019).

Meiji Holdings Company, Ltd competitive strategies are cost leadership; it targets
a broad market which fit all age group from infants to seniors. Product prices are low
and affordable due to the Meiji has high quality, stable supply and low-cost operations
by optimizing the use of domestic and overseas production sites ( Zigu, 2011).

The pharmaceutical business in China is gaining momentum, and Japanese dairy

manufacturers are expected to make a profit for the first time this fiscal year. In
Shanghai, a bottle of 950 ml of the company's local brand milk costs about 20 yuan
($2.90), which is more than 50% higher than its flagship brand in Japan. Premium
pricing reflects the strong position of Meiji Holdings in the country (Masuda, 2018).

The products of Meiji Holdings Company, Ltd is yogurt, dairy products, candy,
milk powder, butter, cheese, ice cream, beverage, generic products and more
( Rueters, 2019). Meiji Holdings Company’s three main competitors are Takeda
Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Morinaga & Co., Ltd. and Morinaga Milk Industry
Co., Ltd ( Zigu, 2011).

2) Contents

Planning

Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. has been practicing the planning function in its operation.
Planning refers to set goals or mission and define the actions that are necessary to
achieve the goals of the organization. Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. , since it has been
established in year 2004, has set the mission to widen the world of “Tastiness and
Enjoyment” as well as meet all of the expectations regarding to “Health and
Reassurance”. The Meiji Group's System of Principles expresses the Group's
approach toward achieving ongoing growth in corporate value through the "Food and
Health" business. In April 2018, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. has launched their 2020
Medium-Term Business Plan as the first step to achieve the Meiji Group 2026 Vision,
which is their long-term strategy. Also, for the overseas operations, Meiji Holdings
Co., Ltd. is planned to expand the business by increasing the production capacity and
strengthening sales capabilities aggressively. Therefore, in order to achieve the goals
and missions that has been set, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. is practicing five main
management principles when they are running the operation. They commit themselves
to customer-based ideas and behaviors, provide safe and ensure high-quality products,
strive to always produce new value, foster the development of the capabilities of the
organization and each individual, as well as become a transparent, wholesome
company that trusted by society (‘Mission and vision,’n.d.).

Moreover, to be an essential part of the customers, partners, and colleagues’ daily

lives, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. always listen to and learn from their customers, find
out the ways to identify tomorrow’s trends and will be prepared to lead the way, make
their work exciting, as well as create exciting work. Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. also
have to ensure that they have the strength to confront any issues, rather than just
avoiding them and lastly believe in the potential of their team, and make the most of
its abilities. Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. to involve in the “Food and Health” business has
to be aware of their responsibilities, and try hard to maintain their obligations to the
society. For instances, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. has try to win the trust and
satisfaction from the customers by providing safe, high-quality products and services
and appropriate information. Besides, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. will respect the
diversity of their employees, build relationships of mutual trust in the market, and
engage in constructive dialogue with shareholders and investors and disclose the
information in a timely and appropriate manner (‘Mission and vision,’ n.d.).

Organizing

Organizing is the process of determining the tasks to be done, who will do them,
and how those tasks will be managed and coordinated. During the process of
organizing, manager arranges the tasks, coordinates their employees and allocates the
resources to achieve the goals of organization.

Meiji is the decentralized organizational structure. This decentralized

organization structure refers to the most daily operations and decisions are made by
middle and lower-level managers. The top management can focus more on major
decisions. It is the opposite of a centralized organization, which is all decisions are
made by the top management.

In addition, Meiji has utilized individuals with a variety of professional

knowledge, ability and skills to run a variety of business operations. Meiji is helped
by an extensive management team to ensure that they have knowledgeable directors
or managers to settle various types of business situations (Sophia, 2015). Meiji also
manages their organization and human resources according to their employees’
abilities and responsibilities. Meiji also encourages their employees to undertake more
challenging responsibilities. In this way, they can grow and achieve more in their
works for making organization better (Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd., n.d.).

Moreover, Meiji has narrow span of control because their tasks are very complex.
So, there are many different departments under a president and board of directors. For
example, financial division, production management division, purchasing division and
others (refer to appendices 1).

Delegation is the process of transferring the authority for a specific activity or

tasks to another member of the organization and empowering that individual to
accomplish the task effectively. The board of directors of Meiji delegated to
management teams according to the Group Company Management Regulations and
Work Regulations. The board of directors will receive reports and review them on a
regular basis (Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd., n.d.).

The common forms of organizational structure that Meiji used are functional
structure, which members of the organization are grouped according to the particular
function that they perform within the organization. There are different departments
under the president of Meiji, such as financial division, business promotion division,
purchasing division and others. The managers should be specialized to in charge of
their own department. For example, the manager should have the finance knowledge
to lead the financial department.

Leading

According to Norman (2019), leading requires managers to influence employees

to achieve organisation goals and objectives. The ability to communicate effectively
as well as the use of authority are required by manager for achieving organization
objectives. Besides, human personalities, inspiration and communication are the
characteristic of effective leaders. They can influence their employees to view
situations from their perspectives. Leading also includes supervision of employees
and their work. Leading involves the social and informal sources of influence that use
to inspire action taken by others. If managers are effective leaders, their workers will
be enthusiastic about putting more effort to accomplish organizational goals. To
become effective leaders, managers first must understand their workers’ personalities,
value, attitudes, and emotions (Principle of Management, n.d.).

Meiji Holdings created the Meiji Group 2026 Vision, and we were totally
involved with formulating that 2026 Vision. The Meiji Group holds a management
attitude to “foster the development of cooperation and competencies of the
organization and each individual. The development of each workers are vital in
achieving sustainable growth in the company and thus focus on personnel training
(Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd., n.d.). According to Yang (2017), personnel training also
known as workers training, which means training employees for performing higher
quality of performance. As the result, it increases workers’ productivity and efficiency.
Iwashita, which is outside director, said that in order for the Meiji Group to going
forward, all employees must commit and dedicated to carrying out the 2026 Vision.
Besides, Meiji Group hopes that each of the employees embrace the idea that this
vision cannot be attained without the contribution that the employee contribute to the
company. Therefore, this is where the Meiji Group set up the position of leaders to
guild and direct the employees in performing their tasks. According to Graybill
(2018), a good leader can communicate effectively and influence them to forward the
mission. The concept of a good leader is can interact with subordinates as well as they
are being persuaded and not be forced or controlled by leader. Leaders must act as
“sponsor”, “team leader” or “interpreter”, where they understand the condition of
work then provide guideline and action for the employees. After that, Meiji Group
created “leadership values” which have stated the requirement of its management
personnel (Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd., n.d.). There are three categories which are
strategic planning and action, organizational leadership skills and character. Strategic
planning and action is the ability to channel creative energies. Organizational
leadership skills are the ability to motivate employee in performing their task.
Character is the ability to build diverse talent and upstanding character. The
employees should keep these values in their mind and attempt to accomplish it. If the
leaders provide good managerial qualities, the organization will keep growing and
going in the right direction.

Controlling

Havlíček, Thalassinos, and Berezkinova (2013) found that responsibility of

controlling is to ensure the innovative actions are continuously evaluated and
measured. In other words, controlling also ensures that an organisation’s resources are
being used in an effective and efficient way to achieve the goals. According to
Reichmann (2012), controlling system can be depicted in three dimensional ways.
The first dimension is divided into production, procurement and sales. Next, the
second dimension refers to categories of information such as payments, cost,
revenues, expenditures, assets, capital, and performance figures. Lastly, the third
dimension is covering time that divided into a short, medium and long term level.

A control process needs the listing of steps including of specific goals and
objectives Hence, Meiji Holdings Company has created a new “Meiji Group 2026
Vision” to motivate them to strive for by 2026 (Meiji Holding Co., Ltd., 2018).
Besides that, Meiji Holding Company will carry out three Medium-Term Business
Plans to achieve the 2026 vision. Controlling in management can also be defined as
the process by which managers motivate their members of the organization to
implement the organization’s strategies (Kanthi Herath, 2007). Thus, Meiji Holding
Company has created innovative ways to meet their customers’ need around the world
sustainably. The key strategies for 2020 Medium-Term Business Plan are expand
share and achieve high revenues in core businesses, propose new value in health care
domain, continue structural reforms and resolve specific business issues in each
business, enhance Meiji Group management platform and promote corporate social
responsibility (CSR), expand aggressively in overseas markets and establish growth
platform (Meiji Holding Co., Ltd., 2018). According to Merchant (1982, p. 43),
management’s first task is to ensure that the plans are carried out after the strategies
are set. Last but not least, control also means a comparison between planned and
actual results as well as taking corrective action (Kanthi Herath, 2007). After the
survey on the effectiveness of the Board of Directors, Meiji Holding Company has
taken corrective action and will be improved in the problems that the Board faces. The
areas that need to be improved such as running of the board, establishing a standard
on what to submit, should be more systematic in how to process and adopting the plan
(Meiji Holding Co., Ltd., 2018). Meiji Holdings Company’s risk management systems
are place to help identify risk factors in their businesses; they conduct regular
information in order to detect the risk early. In addition, their risk management
systems are also help them control and mitigate risk based on the measures.

3) Findings
 In the planning function of Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd., there has been found out that
the management theory use by them is the Theory Y. They also practices open system
in the operation of their company. However, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. is not
considered as fully satisfy the characteristics of Theory Y as they will always listen to
and learn from their customers instead of their employees. This shows that the
employees have not been given the power or authority to make some of the decisions.
This situation may cause the employees fell unsatisfied in their work and will
eventually lower the performances of Meiji. On the other hand, although Meiji
Holdings Co., Ltd. is practicing open system that will listen to or learn from their
customers, but there is no any effective channel for the customers to provide their
feedbacks. Thus, this may bring difficulty to the customers who want to give their
opinion or feedbacks to Meiji’s management teams.

Meiji uses the functional structure can make them to facilitate specialization and
to improve operational efficiency, but there are still some disadvantages are brought to
Meiji. Meiji focuses on departmental versus organizational issues. They lack to
communicate between departments. This will make employees feel discordant and
cannot be as close with their colleagues. In addition, the top-level management of
Meiji also lacks the diversification of skills, abilities and knowledge. It is because
they just use their specialization to manage their own department. For example, the
manager in charge of business promotion department specializes in promoting.

In the leading function of Meiji, the critique of the company may be pay too
much of attention on a particular task. As the result, it may lead to the employee feel
stressfulness in their working environment. When they start getting stress, employee
tends to dislike work and will try to avoid responsibility on their works. The
management theory which practises by Douglas McGregor, theory X will be applied
by the employee who suffers a lot of stress in work. Besides, the employees must be
directed, coerced, controlled, or threatened to get them to put forth adequate effort.
They will become very passive compared to theory Y’ employees who very
aggressive, enjoy work and will perform good performance in order to achieve the
goals of the organisation. Due to paying too much attention on work, the employees
have to work late in order to obey the command from top management. This issue
causes the employees haven’t enough time to sleep or rest as well as spend time with
their family. Therefore, the performance of the employees may give disappointed to
the top management as they are stress in their working life.

Meiji Holdings Company is subjected to change in customer trends and focused

on certain product only. There will be a loss if the company fails to respond to such
changes. For example, Meiji Holdings Company are focusing on yogurt, chocolate
and nutritional products (Meiji Holding Co., Ltd., 2018). Although Meiji Holdings
Company has monitored the change in consumer preference by collecting feedback
from consumers but there can be no assurance that these surveys can meet the taste
preference of consumers. On the contrary, Morinaga & Co., Ltd., which is the
competitor of Meiji Holdings Company, has a balanced line up of their products in
foodstuff, confectionery, and dessert categories. For instance, they offer a wide range
of products like chocolates, biscuits, candies, caramel, snack foods, cocoa powder, hot
cake mix, ice cream. In addition to that, Morinaga Company also provides nutritional
supplements and jelly drinks ("Morinaga & Co., Ltd.", 2019). Hence, a balanced
product line up enables and provides Morinaga a wide range of customer segments.
Meiji Holdings Company could cause loss of customers if they are failing to capture
the latest consumer preferences and trends.

4) Recommendations
 In order to solve the problems encountered by Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd. in the
planning function, the management team has to provide the appropriate authority or
control for their lower level employees. The employees can be given more chances to
give their personal ideas or opinion to the higher level management in order to
develop growth of the company as more innovative and creative ideas can be created
from different people. In addition, to fully practicing open system, Meiji Holdings
Co., Ltd. has to prepare more different channel to the customers in order to make
them easier in giving feedbacks to the management teams. Meiji also has to make sure
that they take the customers’ feedbacks in consideration. For example, they have to
build a team to handle all the feedbacks of different customers, arrange them and
analyze the problems faced by the customers carefully. This team may also collect the
ideas given by the customers and discuss with the top level management teams.

In order to solve the departmental problem that Meiji faced, Meiji should hold
some gatherings from time to time. For instance, Meiji can organize a dinner party for
all employees. During the weekend, Meiji can organize a camping and a barbecue at
beach. So that, employees can enhances the relationships with their colleagues.
Besides that, Meiji can implement a sponsorship program to encourage employees to
pursue training. Meiji can also set a plan that is change the position in same level for
top-management each few years. This will encourage the employees or top-
management to go for training themselves for changing position. Then, lack of
diversification of skills, abilities and knowledge problem in top-level management
will be solved.

In order to solve the issues encountered by Meiji in the leading function, the top
management have to ensure that their employees satisfy with their job rather than
getting stress in their working environment. The top management should provide
suitable environment that make them satisfy with their working environment and it
will lead to them performing good quality of tasks. Apart from that, the top
management should provide appropriate number of task to the employees so that they
enjoy work instead of dislike or hate work. The employees will seek the
responsibility, and they wish to use their creativity, imagination and ingenuity in
performing their job (theory Y). Besides, the top management should promote a
leader that can direct or motivate the employee to perform their task effectively and
efficiently. A leader are no longer “the boss” rather they act as sponsor or team leaders
that guild the employees in the right ways. The team leader should guild them in
manage their time management in order to success in their life. When someone have
managed their time management properly, it usually help them to done the particular
work in effective and efficient way. Therefore, it is important that the employees
should manage their time properly so that they can easily complete their task then
spend the rest of time with their family.

Controlling is to ensure the organization is moving toward the achievement of the

goals. Hence, Meiji Holdings Company need anticipate, respond to such changes and
offer products that appeal as per the changing preference of consumers. Management
team must understand which customer segments are most attractive in terms of
growth, profitability and size. They must utilize their company’s capabilities to fulfil
and meet each segment’s needs. Therefore, Meiji Holdings Company should balance
line up of products in confectionery, desserts, and foodstuffs categories. They should
provide a wide range of confectionery products such as biscuits, candies, chocolates,
caramel and snack foods. Besides, Meiji Holdings Company can also offer the frozen
desserts category such as ice cream and other frozen desserts. In addition to desserts,
Meiji Holdings Company can also offer hot cake mix and cocoa powder under the
foodstuffs category. All of these categories can attract more consumers like teenagers,
kid and youths. Therefore, a balanced product line up enables a company to make
more profit. This is because a balanced product line up can enables Meiji Holdings
Company to address a wide range of customer segments.

5) Conclusion
 Meiji Holdings Company is the fourth largest confectionery company in the
world after Meiji Seika Kaisha Ltd. And Meiji Diaries Corporation transfers the stock
to it. The competitive strategies use by Meiji Holdings Company is cost leadership
which focus in broad market and provide a low price for their product. Furthermore,
this company have fully using 4 management function which are planning,
organizing, leading and controlling to manage the company business. By using this 4
management function, Meiji Holdings Company can be achieve their company goals
and successful in the market. For example, by using planning process can help
company set their goals and defining how to achieve it. Organization process helps
company arrange the task to suitable people. Leading process can motivate people to
do more and help company achieve their job such as company give a lot of benefit
and high salary to the employee. By using controlling, company can compare the
actual company performance with the expectation performance and take the right
action.

The most important success factors of Meiji Holdings Company are it always
serve as a corporate group in the food and health sector to enhance the daily lives of
its customers. Furthermore, company also provide training to their employees to
increase their skills and performance. Other than that, Meiji Holdings Company also
treats their employees well. For example, give them high esteem and pay them high
salary them other company. By increase employees satisfaction will help company
increase their profit because when employees are happy to their job they will
contribute more of their effort in doing their job.

The main challenges that the company will be facing in the next five years is the
threat of competitors and technology. The competitors in the market are increasing
every year. The new competitors will purchase in machine when they start their
business. The machine that they purchase in is more advance compare to Meiji
Holdings Company since the machine of Meiji Holdings Company had been used for
so many years. This will lead Meiji Holdings Company in decreasing their profit due
to the increasing number of competitors and also the old technology of the company.

After this project, we know that the importance of using the four management
function which are planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Moreover, we also
learned the way in using the resources wisely in order to run the business effectively.
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Appendix 1