OPERATION MANAGEMENT

AYESHA SIDDIKA ARSHI

LECTURER
SOUTHEAST BUSINESS SCHOOL

Lecture 6
Chapter 9 (Slack) [part 1 & 2]
People, Jobs and Organization
PEOPLE IN OPERATIONS
HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGY
▪ Human resource strategy is the overall long-term approach to ensuring that an

organization’s human resources provide a strategic advantage

▪ Involves two interrelated activities:

1. First, identifying the number and type of people that are needed to manage, run and develop the
organization so that it meets its strategic business objectives.

2. Second, putting in place the programs and initiatives that attract, develop and retain appropriate
staff.

▪ Human resources aspects are especially important in the operations function,

where most ‘human resources’ are to be found.

 HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGY
Human
resources What it involves Relevance to operations management (OM)
(HR) role
Aligning HR and business strategy: OM integrates Operations and HR strategy. OM specifies skills
Strategic partner ‘organizational diagnosis’, manpower planning, requirements and relies on HR to develop them informed by
environmental monitoring, etc. labour market forecasts, succession planning, etc.
Running the organization’s HR processes and OM is largely an ‘internal customer’ for HR’s processes. OM
Administrative ‘shared services’: payroll, appraisal, selection must be clear in its requirements with agreed service levels
expert and recruitment, communication, etc. mutually negotiated.

Listening and responding to employees: OM and HR must develop a good working relationship and
Employee ‘providing resources to employees’, conciliation, clear procedures to deal with any ‘emergency’ issues that arise.
champion career advice, grievance procedures, etc. Also OM must be sensitive to feedback from HR on how it
manages day-to-day operations.
Managing transformation and change: OM and HR are jointly responsible for operations improvement
‘ensuring capacity for change’, management activities. HR has a vital role in all the cultural, developmental,
Change agent development, performance appraisal, and evaluation activities associated with improvement.
organization development, etc.
HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGY
IS IT ‘GOOGLEY’? (SHORT CASE)
WORK-RELATED STRESS
▪ The idea that there is a link between human resource strategy and the incidence of
stress at work is not new.
▪ Now it is generally accepted that stress can seriously undermine the quality of
people’s working lives and, in turn, their effectiveness in the workplace.
▪ Here stress is defined as ‘the adverse reaction people have to excessive
pressures or other types of demand placed on them’.
▪ Business-related benefits includes:
1. Staff feel happier at work, their quality of working life is improved and they perform better.
2. Introducing improvements is easier when ‘stress’ is managed effectively.
3. Employment relations – problems can be resolved more easily.
4. Attendance levels increase and sickness absence reduces.
WORK-RELATED STRESS
PERSPECTIVES ON ORGANIZATIONS
Organizations are machines

~ Relations within the organization are clearly defined and orderly, processes and procedures that should
occur usually do occur, and the flow of information through the organization is predictable.

Organizations are organisms

~ Their behavior is dictated by the behavior of the individual humans within them. The survival of the
organization depends on its ability to exhibit enough flexibility to respond to its environment.

Organizations are brains

~Like brains, organizations process information and make decisions. They balance conflicting criteria,
weigh up risks and decide when an outcome is acceptable. They are also capable of learning and
changing their model of the world in the light of experience.
PERSPECTIVES ON ORGANIZATIONS (CONT’D)
Organizations are cultures
~ organization’s culture is usually taken to mean its shared values, ideology, pattern of thinking and day-to-
day ritual. Different organizations will have different cultures stemming from their circumstances and their
history.

Organizations are political systems

~ They form alliances, accommodate power relationships and manage conflict.

FORMS OF ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
▪ There are three basic approaches to this:

1. Group resources together according to their functional purpose - for example,

sales, marketing, operations, research and development, finance, etc.

2. Group resources together by the characteristics of the resources themselves

- for example, clustering similar skills together (audit, mergers and acquisitions, tax,
etc.), products or services (chilled food, frozen food, canned food, etc.).

3. Group resources together by the markets which the resources are intended to
serve – for example, with distinct geographical boundaries (North America, South
America), by the type of customer (small firms, large national firms, large multinational
firms, etc.).
FORMS OF ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE:
U-FORM ORGANIZATION
Group
headquarters

Marketing Operations Finance

Dept.A Dept.C
Dept.B

Dept.A Dept.C Dept.A Dept.C

Dept.B Dept.B
FORMS OF ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE:
M-FORM ORGANIZATION
Group
headquarters

Division A Division B Division C

Marketing Finance
Operations
Marketing Finance Marketing Finance
Operations Operations
FORMS OF ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE:
MATRIX-FORM ORGANIZATION
Group
headquarters

Division Division Division

A B C
Marketing

Operations

Human resources

Finance
FORMS OF ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE:
N-FORM ORGANIZATION

Organization
A
headquarters

Org D Org B
Group A Group F

Org E Org C
Group B Group E

Group D
Group C
JOB DESIGN
▪ Job design is about how we structure each individual’s job, the team to which

they belong (if any), their workplace and their interface with the technology
they use. It involves a number of separate yet related elements:

1. What tasks are to be allocated to each person in the operation?

2. What is the best method of performing each job?

3. How long will it take and how many people will be needed?

4. How do we maintain commitment?

5. What technology is available and how will it be used?

6. What are the environmental conditions of the workplace?

THE OBJECTIVES OF JOB DESIGN
quality

speed

dependability

Job flexibility
impacts on
design

cost

health and safety

quality of working life

TASK ALLOCATION –
THE DIVISION OF LABOUR
▪ Dividing the total task down into smaller parts, each of which is accomplished by a
single person or team.

Promotes faster learning.

Advantages Makes automation easier.

Ensures that non-productive work is reduced.

Leads to monotony.

Can result in physical injury.

Disadvantages
Is not particularly robust.
Can reduce flexibility.
DESIGNING JOB METHODS –

▪ Fredrick Taylor established ‘scientific management’ in 1911 in his book, that

discussed about the scientific way of job designing.

▪ This whole approach to job design is sometimes referred to, pejoratively, as

Taylorism
DESIGNING JOB METHODS –

▪ In his work he identified what he saw as the basic tenets of scientific

management:
1. All aspects of work should be investigated on a scientific basis to establish the laws, rules
and formulae governing the best methods of working.
2. Such an investigative approach to the study of work is necessary to establish what
constitutes a ‘fair day’s work’.
3. Workers should be selected, trained and developed methodically to perform their tasks.
4. Managers should act as the planners of the work (analyzing jobs and standardizing the
best method of doing the job), while workers should be responsible for carrying out the
jobs to the standards laid down.
5. Co-operation should be achieved between management and workers based on the
‘maximum prosperity’ of both.
DESIGNING JOB METHODS –

▪ However scientific management it is not particularly ‘scientific’ in nature.

▪ Perhaps a better term for it would be ‘systematic management’.
▪ It gave birth to two separate, but related, fields of study:

Method study Work measurement

which is concerned with

which determines the methods and measuring the time that should be
activities to be included in jobs taken for performing jobs.

Work Study