Management and Leadership Models Essay

As Regional Director for Happy Face Frozen Foods (HFFF), I hold a great responsibility to meet sales projection levels at each of my sales districts. Hitting goal is not just a numbers game- it’s a task of managing people within the culture of the organization. My ultimate goal for District IV and district manager Tony’s performance deficiency is to diagnosis issues and problem areas. Multiple management/leadership models and concepts are needed in order to shift this district to become profitable and successful. PERFORMANCE MODEL Skills, Abilities, Traits Tony appears to have a lack of effort, despite being young, aggressive, talkative, appears to be intelligent, and was a top sales representative. I questioned his work ethic capabilities, but the Myer Briggs Type Indicator says we are polar personality opposites as he is an ISTJ and I am an ENFP. In general, his type explains why his apparent lack of effort is actually  his â€Å"introverted† and â€Å"sensing† personality; Tony self-reflects, works alone, thinks before acting, keeps energy inside, is hard to read, and verbalizes well though out ideas, concern for present and practical matters, likes things to be precise and clear, and wants step-by-step approaches. I had promoted him despite of his tendencies towards coercion and party reputation, which seemed to be a lack of cooperation skills and professionalism. Again, his type explains these traits of Tony’s â€Å"thinking† and â€Å"judging† personality; he finds it easy to be firm-minded and give criticism, brief, concise and impersonal, uses pros and cons lists, doesn’t like surprises, resist or does not notice change, and wants advanced warning. As a top manager his thinking process is great for following rules and procedures, but as a leader of his district he needs to improve all traits involving interaction with people. In order to compliment Tony’s personality traits with my own, I must reduce perceptual errors with a self-understanding of how our opposing traits interact. Tony’s sensing type needs intuitive types at work to see possibilities, deal with complex issues, explain other intuitives, and spark innovation. His thinking type needs intuitive types at work to persuade, smooth feathers, teach and coach, and anticipate reactions. Tony has several of the Kirkpatrick and Locke Leadership Traits to facilitate success, which include drive, self-confidence, cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business, but Tony’s sales team is hesitant to discuss his performance as a manager. A person does not become a leader by virtue of the possession of some combination of traits; therefore, with proper action Tony can transform those traits toward becoming a successful leader. Tony has three factor categories of leadership to accomplish, which include managing skills, vision, and implementation. I can provide Tony with specific guidelines for goals, objectives, and situations so he will have the managing skills for decision-making and problem solving. To improve his vision of the company, I can train him in the importance of the Big Five personality traits to become extraverted, conscientious, open, less neurotic, and agreeable. I can teach Tony how to apply the MBTI types among  his subordinates and myself, so he can properly implement his vision to the team through team building, motivation, and training. His efforts will increase their trust in his abilities and be more likely to give proper feedback in the future. Role Perceptions Inappropriate behavior concerns in Tony’s district arise from sexual harassment complaints, unwanted nicknames, mixture of work and personal relationships, and name calling shows that action for ethical conduct is lacking. Because Tony is involved in some of the unethical action, a quick response is needed at the management and subordinate level. Nielson’s guidelines for changing unethical organizational behaviors are not easy, but start with an intervention strategy implemented by corporate guidelines and myself. Caution should be used as I could be misled on details, and do not want to damage relationships and hurt the organization unnecessarily. The advantage of leading an ethical change increases incremental performance, but must include Tony in the process of establishing ethical rules and procedures in order to implement long-term. Rallying others to agree for the good of the organization takes consensus building through patience and relationship building, and can happen with ability and courage. Tony perceives his abilities for his own â€Å"book of business† as a successful sales person to be a major part of his job requirement. As a superior, my perception of his skills and traits lack the ability to manage his people, and his personal success makes me doubt his capabilities even more as he ignores his job requirements to train and coach his sales team, especially the two brand new employees. Tony needs to understand the importance of socialization practices, and appreciate the problem of transitioning a new employee. To prepare Tony in the training of his team, helpful mechanisms to utilize change are found in the elements of Schein’s organization socialization, which include basic goals, preferred means the goals are to be attained, basic responsibilities of the members, behavior patterns required for effective performance, and a set of rules to maintaining identity and integrity. New entrant should have multiple sources, whether official literature,  examples set by Tony and other employees, direct instruction, rewards and punishment system, and experimenting with new values and behavior. Success of socializing techniques depends on the initial entry of the organization and what Tony does to keep them. He must build commitment and loyalty early in the socialization process by investing time and effort into the new members, and since the two new hires have already been introduced to a laissez-faire style of management, Tony’s efforts need to be well prepared. Establishing socialization is included through training opportunities to Tony to train his sales team, giving Tony a formal role definition and the guidelines to defining his subordinates roles (which he will appreciate as an ISTJ), giving Tony a performance appraisal and future personal goals to improve, and to coach Tony the norms of a successful manager. The Determinant of Person Perception describes Tony’s situation as an ineffective leader based on the perception of his subordinates, which is influenced from the mixture of Tony’s and the subordinate’s characteristics. His ineffective leadership mixed with the subordinates lack of direction has created an Organizational Citizenship Behavior that allows discretionary behaviors based on personal choice within the workforce; several of the current norms that are being utilized and promoted under Tony’s supervision include tardiness, teasing, competitiveness, ignorance of complaints and concerns, inclusion of personal life and work, and individuality. These structureless norms and values are dangerous to the well being of Tony’s district as he does not understand his role as a leader to structure right and wrong norms, pivotal norms and values should be made clear in order to survive. The norms and values that should be implemented include trust, honesty, integrity, empathy, respect, teamwork, separation of life from professional work, and the total changes should keep 60-70% of operations stable in order to keep the organization running smoothly. The Simple Change Process has three phases to implement desired norms and values; the Unfreezing Phase includes immediate action between myself and Tony to establish how he wants the team to operate, create rules and procedures to follow, and to reprimand actions that are breaking current rules. The Moving Phase includes actions  for Tony to model new norms, train and educate the rest of the team, and provide incentives for following the new behaviors. The final process in the Refreezing Phase involves more rewards systems, standardization, and implementation of the new structures. Even if the perception of Tony’s lack of effort is a symptom of his set characteristic traits, I also need to understand as his supervisor the Self-Concept Theory of Motivation. The idea that humans are self-expressive, motivated to maintain and enhance self-esteem and self-worth, self-concepts are composed in part of identities, and this behavior isn’t always related to clear expectations or to immediate or specific goals. Tony is no different and also holds inner motivations that are not easily seen, I need to get to know him better before the districts sales meeting next month to understand his motives and actions. His current performance has demonstrated low results for the higher expectations I demand; if Tony does not have some expectation to work for, meeting my expectations is difficult and is a lose-lose situation. To give Tony direction, we can practice the Goal Theory to link Tony to specific and challenging goals with appropriate feedback for Tony to know ho w much effort to contribute in order to achieve increased task performance, and to understand what expectations to meet. Any theory or concept Tony learns can be applied to relationships with his subordinates, but will be difficult to implement with the current presence of Learned Helplessness. Tony has set such high expectations for performance and punished employees both by disregarding and berating employees publicly; his employees have become passive from repeat failures and will most likely remain passive even after changes are made. Organizationally Induced Helplessness is evident as the attribution to failure leads to behavioral influences, and Tony’s subordinate, Britni, is clearly suffering from substance abuse and practices it in the workplace openly. Because the negative environment has forced employees to shut down mentally, the operation of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is not in effect here as Tony places high expectations, and they are not performing better because of these expectations. The factor missing in order to for the prophecy to work in Tony’s environment is more input from Tony to teach his subordinates to  reach the expectations he sets. To stop influencing negative behavior and start influencing positive attributions, organizational goals need to be easier to obtain and set clearly by Tony, because subordinates who stopped trying have already decided goals are impossible to reach such as the case with Melanie who was forced to structure her sales route by herself. Minimizing OIH can be done through multiple strategies: immunization that sets specific levels of success can begin with the new norms and values that will be set through the Simple Change Process, rewarding those who follow quickly. Attribution Training will direct failure away from internal fault and toward external conditions, and Ego Defense will develop attributes so if Tony continues to berate his employees, they will learn to not let it threaten their self-esteem. Performance Goals Tony punishes Big Ron’s performance for not getting the product out ahead of schedule is an example of Tony’s need for the Goal-Setting Concept, which assigns employees a specific task, quota, performance standard, or deadline. The use of punishment to affect behavior has negative consequences of modifying an employees behavior, such as a short-term effect, resentment of the punisher, negative aftereffects, doesn’t reinforce desired heavier, and creates an atmosphere of fear. Tony may punish too soon because of lack of training on my part, not aware of alternatives, looking for quick solutions, personal gratification, out of frustration, or believe it is the best way to change behavior. The misunderstanding of the product schedule time between Big Ron and Tony is directly attributed to miscommunication and a lack of goals. Big Ron perceives his goals to be only within the processing plant, Tony communicates his goals to be overseeing Big Ron’s operations and delivering the product. A helpful mechanism would for both to work together as a team and manage by objectives from each side. Tony and Big Ron need to use Participative Goal Setting and set specific and difficult goals together to lead to higher performance and relationship building. Merely telling Big Ron to â€Å"do his best† and to be supportive would be sufficient, but the best gain  comes from a set standard. They can also hold Management By Objectives â€Å"assignment† sessions to discuss what each side’s efforts will include. If Big Ron knows why Tony wants the products early, he can then communicate that status knowing Tony really needs that information. If Tony knows why Big Ron can’t get the products out sooner, he can then exert efforts to help Big Ron. When the task is done, a final performance appraisal feedback session will give each side a chance to voice actions that worked, need changing for future projects, and to give constructive feedback for the other person. This will build a climate of trust, and shows an acceptance of goal failure. Based on head quality control engineer Daniella’s visit with the sales force informal leader Bill Gates, is uninvolved with his job at HFFF with multiple side interests. Bill needs to get involved, and since he is in a leadership position can be given roles to support the sales force and himself by taking their performance under his accountability. If workers have a chance to participate in setting goals, they will be more committed to attaining those goals. If larger goals are broken down into short-term goals, workers will receive more frequent feedback about goal accomplishment and, thus, strive harder to meet those goals. A list of good goals similar to what Bill can make could include setting specific short and long term sales goal quotas, to create friendly competitions within the sales team, for individuals to talk to a certain number of clients or make a certain number of presentations, to meet with each sales rep individually to hear progress reports, and many more. The SMARTFIC model is a good checklist to prepare Bill to present Tony a plan of action within the sales force team. To start, Bill rates himself on scale of 1-5 on each goal setting area: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic/rewarded, timely, feedback, integrated/intermediate, and challenging/clear. He can keep or change the specificity or attainability of each goal based on the scale results, and once the goals are presented and approved by Tony, Bill can implement among the team. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards Along with Bill’s goal setting for the sales team, rewarding Bill and team members based on bonuses and commission compensation will motivate the implementation to be successful. Tony could also be motivated to perform better if he was given a bonus for getting positive evaluations, as a demonstrator at a recent training program recently evaluated him negatively. To pinpoint the best reward system for Tony, I can use the Modifying On-The-Job Behavior concept to first identify target behavior, such as his need for procedure. The second step is to perform an Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence (ABC) functional analysis to identify Tony’s trigger for needing procedure and when he uses this behavior. The third step arranges antecedents by removing obstacles, providing opportunities, appropriately scheduled consequences, such as unexpected events that cannot be controlled or sporadic behavior from others. The fourth and final step evaluates the results to find how to imple ment more procedure-based structure within Tony’s environment and utilize his best behaviors. This analysis also needs to be implemented by Tony onto his employees so they see that he appreciates their well being and can develop trust with him on other issues. Hertzberg’s Motivation Theory says if there is job dissatisfaction, the hygiene factors must be addressed before motivating employees. Tony’s team holds many hygiene factors in their workforce situation, including inappropriate subordinate work and personal relationships initiated by Tony, personal life issues addressed at work with Britni and Bill, poor supervisor relations among everyone, laissez-faire work conditions, and a lack of organization policy. Once they work through the hygiene factors, Tony can then motivate his team by setting goals for achievement, recognizing their achievements and efforts, giving them responsibilities, and chances for growth to contribute to their job satisfaction. The better the team is satisfied, the better job they can all provide. Tony created tension in his district when he hired his college buddies based on their personal relationship, and will have to overcome judgment and the tension by making his sale rep friends work hard to e arn their keep. In order to do so, Tony needs a standardized set of job dimensions and outcomes to give them, as outlined in the Job Characteristics Model. This concept gives core job  dimensions that can include skill variety, task identity, and significance to specify the sales reps various duties ranked by importance, levels of autonomy to make informed and unforced decisions on their own, and proper feedback in the form of evaluations from other subordinates or myself, instead of Tony because of their personal relationship. These dimensions lead to critical psychological states that provide experienced meaningfulness of the sales reps work, responsibility for their own works outcomes, and knowledge of their actual results. The process finally leads to personal and work outcomes that result in high internal work motivation that produces quality work performance and satisfaction, and proves their worth of working with the other subordinates while holding respect for Tony despite his initial favo ritism. Melanie complains that nobody, especially Tony, listens to her concerns, and is frustrated with the competitive and inefficient environment. While she may just be a complainer, Tony can quickly implement One Minute Praising to praise Melanie immediately when she should be appreciated, be specific about her finding an inefficiency in the training programs, share feelings of how her ideas could impact the team, and encourage her to find ways to make training programs more productive. This could help Melanie to not feel so ignored, especially if she is praised for something that is obviously a concern for her. When she begins to be more positive, her negativity will change in front of other employees and they wont ignore her as much. Tony can easily use this on all employees and voice his support for positivity to encourage the concepts use amongst the subordinates. If Melanie continues her complaining and negativity, Tony can use the One Minute Reprimanding to reprimand the complaining immediately, be specific about what she has said, share feelings of how the complaining affects the team, and remind her how good of a person she still is. The concept assists Melanie to realize how her complaining affects her coworkers, and will end the behavior. Tony needs to fix his working relationship with Big Ron quickly in order to address the possible ecoli breakout issue that Big Ron had on the health inspector visit. Not only is the health risk an ethical issue concerning consumers, Big Ron’s action plan to blackmail the inspector is an alarming  example of a lack of internal procedures. To address both of these issues and to prepare for future situations, Tony needs a Contingency Plan to manage risk that could have catastrophic consequences. Contingency Strategies are a result of the contingency plan and are devised for a specific situation where things could go wrong, although they cannot predict future outcomes. Tony’s strategies need to include procedures for situations that can happen within the management office, at the warehouses, and other facilities and need to include the managers at each location for input of specific internal details. These strategies prepare the organization or the person for anything that could happen in future and are back up plans that support the organization when the actual plan fails. For positive reinforcement for the behavior to increase, Tony must apply the strategy AND reward for something desirable or pleasant. The reward need to be individual-based in order to encourage employees to act ethically and receive personal recognition for their actions. Tony’s intricate involvement in Britni’s personal dating life and his friends looking for a good time is an example of negative reinforcement within the workplace. This involvement and his personal relationship with human resource manager, Margaret, are behaviors that need to be eliminated. I need to use the Coaching and Reinforcement Concept to tell Tony what to do to cease his involvement, show him how to change through role-play practice, then let him try to implement within the situations. I’ll observe his performance, and either praise his progress or redirect if it fails. A weakness in Tony’s relationship with his subordinates is a major issue in the balance of work performance. If the subordinates do not respond to Tony and he makes no initiative to manage his people, the district is at risk of failing and ruining sales figures. To create a trusting and open work environment, the PRICE System from Putting the One Minute Manager to Work says to pinpoint the performance area of interest, such as the subordinate/management relationship, then record and measure the current performance level on a graph. We must involve everyone to agree on  performance goals and strategies for coaching and evaluation, with extravert personalities on the team in charge of coaching, observing performance, and reporting to Tony to manage consequences. Tony and the team must then evaluate, track performance progress, and determine future strategies. The results of successful implementation of this system will strengthen the relationships between Tony and his subordin ates and eliminate the â€Å"fear† that is prevalent throughout the organization. Human resource specialist, Mary Ann, is enthusiastic about work-family balance and schedules of reinforcement concepts, but Daniella tuned her out during a recent visit. If employees and reporting superiors dismiss constructive ideas, the company may miss out on great progress opportunities and the employees who value change. The Reinforcement Appropriate Behaviors concept encourages hard working employees; if workers receive immediate reinforcement for their hard work, they will work harder than if their reinforcement is delayed. Frequent reinforcement of positive behavior and infrequent reinforcement of negative behavior results in higher performance. Workers will work harder if their reinforcements for work are somewhat random in either a variable interval or ratio. Mary Ann’s interest in Performance Model theories can be rewarded in the future based on this concept through praise and the responsibility to help host internal training sessions if we specifically provide her the proper way to relate them to her workforce. Her success could lead to creating reward programs and working with Tony to think of reward opportunities. Kerr’s Common Management Reward Follies says we hope for long-term growth, teamwork, challenging objectives, restructuring, and commitment to total quality, but we often reward quarterly earnings, individual effort, making the numbers, adding staff, and less than quality. Relatedly, Tony is reluctant to take charge of the sales team, but from afar demands higher levels of productivity. Tony is seeking simple quantifiable standards to measure but some aspects are highly visible and most aren’t, so a lacking view of performance factors and results doesn’t help break out of old ways of thinking. Since current rewards systems hardly exist, Tony must explore what types of behavior are currently being rewarded to positively reinforce  desired behavior. Equity Model The disturbing story of a possible kickback program involving sales manager, Jeff Daniels, and his stress related behavior is symptoms of the Equity Theory and Justice: The Concept of Fairness says Jeff must believe his is being treated fairly or his motivation will wane. Employees must evaluate their inputs in relation to their outcomes as compared to the inputs and outcomes of others to determine fairness, and inputs of employees on the job include enthusiasm, knowledge, innovation, and skills, while outputs include salary, satisfaction, recognition, and training opportunities. If the outputs of Jeff’s efforts are not equal to his inputs, he will find a way to make that mental equation balanced. If balancing to him means receiving under-the-table funds and lashing out on others as a consequence of a work-stress overload, then his promotion to International Protocol Specialist will only reward his unethical behavior and actions. Although the action of Mary Ann and Nelson arriving late to meeting with Danielle seems minor, this action sends the message that other business etiquettes are not important and will not represent the company at its best. The Reinforcement and Rewards concept says part of Tony’s job is to direct the behaviors of employees by providing appropriate rewards to reinforce the desired behaviors that lead to organizational effectiveness and success. Reinforcement stimuli Tony could incorporate for not only tardiness, but other common courtesies, include attendance awards and office-wide recognition, employee of the month awards with reasons attached to the award, and spontaneous cash awards for sighted acts of kindness. Effort-Reward Probability Although the ultimate Performance goals are nowhere near to be reached, there are good opportunities to reward good effort. The Effort-Reward Probability concept produces effort and follows Vroom in that abilities and traits can also multiply to determine performance. Examples have been provided with other models, but Steve Stricker aka â€Å"Mr. Insensitivity† deserves credit for his enthusiasm and attempt to correct a bad situation in the most efficient way possible. While his handling of the situation was not  the most desired, he still holds my respect enough to want him to supervise Tony’s district. The more good efforts we can multiply with good rewards, the better the performance the organization will gain. Satisfaction and V = Valence The majority of Tony’s workforce chooses to remain silent about most incidents that happen at work because the consequences of speaking up are higher. The Valence outcome of the Expectancy Theory model needs to be changed the most for this team as their value of rewards based on their needs and goals are low. The current valence level that I provide Tony, and Tony provides his subordinates can be rated a â€Å"0† as indifferent to the outcome of rewards, which is very much my fault for not encouraging a reward system to my own subordinate and setting the right example. I can start from my own practices to implement a rewards system specifically for Tony, and various programs for him to relay down to his team. COMMUNICATIONS Tony needs to improve his communication with subordinates in order to convey and receive information, gain acceptance for his ideas, maintain relationships with coworkers, establish trust, keep people involved in a project, to produce action or change. The change should include the climate of the workplace, as it is defensive, in the sense of the amount of control and superiority that is exerted from Tony’s competitive nature. In order to create a supportive climate, while allowing a friendlier competitive environment, Tony needs to encourage equality among the team and to practice empathy. He will also appear more reasonable if he learns to admit when he doesn’t know an answer, admits when he is wrong, and asks for help. When Tony ignores his employee’s requests for help and suggestions, his unrelated and tangential responses levels of listening serve as punishment to his employees for speaking. To display listening in the workplace, Tony must stop talking, show he wants to listen, empathize, go easy with arguments and criticisms, and again stop talking. He will encourage future interactions when he develops their trust. To practice the three elements of trust, Tony needs to show an inclination towards charity through  benevolence, practice integrity through a consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty of one’s actions and the ability to lead his team. To develop trust, he must demonstrate concern for others well-being and needs, be willing to see other peoples point of view, correspond between his words and deeds, and not be afraid to show emotion. When Tony received negative feedback from the recent training program, he most likely felt embarrassed and defensive. Tony needs effective feedback, he will not listen to the training program if we assume he should know what to do, evaluative, late, negative only, and punishing in the face of others at the program. In order for him to learn, it needs to be descriptive, specific, timely, and positive with the negative, and he needs to listen, check, clarify, and ask the feedback of others. There will be situations in the future similar to the miscommunication with Big Ron that will frustrate Tony, but he needs to make himself clear even if he is upset by managing from the HEART to convey his message to others: to be heard and understood, if disagreed with to not be made wrong, to be acknowledged for good, to look for right intentions, and to be told the truth with compassion. If he can correctly convey this message throughout a disagreement, relationships will be saved and solutions can be found. Tony should also remember to listen; two ears, one tongue, DM’s who don’t listen have less information for making sound decisions. Gibbs describes communication as a people process. The more supportive a climate is, the less defensive a person has read into distortion and can respond productively. A supportive climates in Tony’s relation with Big Ron can include descriptions of updates at the facility, problem orientation to seek mutual solutions to get products out early, with no hidden agenda from fear of reprimand, empathy for each other’s position, equality in interaction, and provisionalism of always seeking new information outside of personal knowledge. LEADERSHIP Traits Approach My perceptual distortion of Tony’s capabilities can be further discussed through Leadership Traits, which can describe Tony’s drive, personalized leadership motivation to be in charge, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business. These are great leadership traits to have, but he needs to apply them in order to be an effective manager. The fatal flaws of leaders who derail, which also apply to Tony’s traits, include insensitivity of others, aloof and arrogant, overly ambitious and managing, and inability to adapt to situations. Fortunately Tony’s fatal flaws can be improved with the Emotional Intelligence at Work concept, which highlights Tony finding self-awareness through assessing his current position, self-regulation to determine whether he seems trustworthy, holds integrity, and is openness to change). Tony does hold motivation for a strong drive to achieve, but can improve on optimism organizational commitment in management. Empathy is his biggest weakness and can improve on expertise in building and retaining talent and being sensitive to others, and his efforts to build social skills in his effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness, and expertise in building and leading teams will ultimately change his workforce to trust his judgment and commit to the organization. Another trait-based approach for improving skills is the Three-Skill Approach, which suggests Tony’s effective administration to depend on three basic personal skills: technical knowledge about work and specialization, human ability to work with people, and conceptual ability to work with ideas and concepts. Tony’s knowledge of the company is very strong as he was a top sales rep and can work with set concepts that use step-by-step approaches. When Tony improves his ability to work with ideas and people, he will increase the effectiveness of his leadership. Power Approach Tony has an element of fear within his relationship with subordinates, and Big Ron was treated so meanly because of a miscommunication. The Power Approach explains good sources of power are legitimate and reward, but bad sources of power that Tony is guilty of include coercive and charismatic. According to Yukl and Taber, Tony identifies as an authority power and  effective leaders are expert and referent. Subordinates will comply with his orders, but do not accept his goals, although he is in position to get possible commitment, and just as easily to get possible resistance. Tony can enhance his authority power by making polite requests, not demands, requests made in clear and simple language, checking to make sure subordinate understand and giving reason for the request if necessary, and following up to verify they have complied. Overall to appear more personable and less powerful, Tony needs compassion. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, top power tools that Tony’s subordinates will respond to are patience, gentleness, teachableness, acceptance, kindness, openness, consistency, and integrity, which all are in line with compassion. Situational Leadership Model Situational Leadership says it’s not so much what you are, as what you do. I find many things to change of Tony’s relations with his subordinates, when my own leading of his development is lacking, and my leadership style should combine directive and supportive behaviors. I can institute directive behavior by clearly telling Tony what, how, where, and when to do something, then closely supervising their performance. I can increase supportive behavior by engaging in two-way communication on a more frequent basis, listening to his concerns, providing support and encouragement, facilitating the interaction, and involving him strongly in decision-making. I need to give Tony more Directing as a manager and leader, even through he only needed Delegating as a salesman. Tony, in turn, needs to apply the same concept of Directing to many of his new salesman and Coaching for the rest of the employees. Understanding the effectiveness of situational leadership and communicating thi s understanding with Tony will enhance our relationships at all levels, and reduce the perception of Tony lacking training duties. Effective leaders are those who can recognize what employees need and then adapt their own style to meet those needs. Path Goal Theory Tony is lacking in leadership behaviors according to the Path Goal Theory in  helping subordinates to shape their tasks. The idea is to define goals, clarify path, remove obstacles, and provide support, and Tony is achievement oriented based on the leadership behaviors as he challenges subordinates to perform work at the highest level possible, a high standard of excellence. To help subordinates meet Tony’s standards, he needs to provide guidance of how to obtain excellence. Leaders Member Exchange Theory Tony should form an individualized working relationship with each of his subordinates, and the exchanges in content and process should be dyadic with unique characteristics. High quality leader-member exchanges produced less employee turnover, and exchanges can be in-group or out-group. Tony has created a tight in-group from hiring his college friends as salesmen, but still doesn’t hold the qualities of a true in-group that has mutual trust, respect, liking, and reciprocal influence. Out-groups are based on job a description, which is the relationship Tony holds with his team, and even I hold with him as a superior. Tony is in Phase 1 Stranger, the phase in leadership making that is directed toward self-interest rather than toward the good of the group; roles with the team are scripted, influences are one way from Tony to subordinates, exchanges are low quality, and interests are for self. Transformational Leadership and The Leadership Challenge Tony’s aggressive leadership style is unwanted by many of his subordinates, the Leadership Challenge can help him implement carry out significant changes, which include to challenge the process, inspire a shared vision and enlisting others, enable others to act to foster collaboration and strengthen others, model the way and set the example and encourage the heart by recognizing individual contribution and celebrate accomplishments. Tony is currently a Laissez-Faire Leadership style, hands-off, let-things-ride approach that gives little effort to help followers satisfy their needs. Out of the four I’s he is most lacking â€Å"individualized consideration† to provide a supportive climate, listen carefully, and act as coaches. If Tony adopts any of the transactional leadership factors to perform a better job, the Contingent Reward to obtain agreements from followers on what must be done and what the payoffs will be. Servant Leadership One of the biggest struggles Tony will have is in following Servant Leadership by putting followers first, supporting personal development, honesty, treating fairly, share power, and enabling others. The antecedent conditions are strong as the culture, leader attributes, and follower receptivity to wanting a leader. The core of the process is weakest in conceptualizing the organization, emotional healing in sensitivity to others, putting followers first, helping followers grow, behaving ethically, empowering, and creating community value. The outcomes cannot happen until the core of the process is successful, but include follower growth and performance, organizational performance, and societal impact. Tony can improve with training in empathy, compassion, and listening. Once his team sees his efforts to be a better person, they will respect his position better. CONFLICT Conflict will always be part of an organization, whether to be avoided as described by the traditional view or necessary for a group to perform effectively as described by the interactionist view. Because Tony and I will be making many changes to the organization and our personalities differ so much, we should practice integrative bargaining through goals by expanding the pie so both parties are satisfied, motivation with win-win solutions, focus by showing interest, interests being congruent, information sharing being high, and the duration of the relationship being long term. Tony has been a Shark in terms of conflict: he is forceful towards his subordinates to achieve his goals at all costs, and overpowers others to win conflicts. He needs to become more of a Fox, and be more concerned with goals and the relationship, willing to give up something for the common good, and resolve conflict by finding middle ground. To use the Problem Solving Approach to Conflict Resolution between Tony and I’s interactions, we must identify the problem, set a goal or objective, generate and evaluate solutions, and create an action plan. Because Tony most likely does not want to deal with the personal relationship issues within the organization, especially since he is directly  involved, the Hill’s Model for Team Leadership is an easy tool to aid leadership problem solving and to clarify its complex nature. My leadership decision is to take action for the task needs of the group and intervene for the internal task force. My next action will managing the conflicts of interest, external alliances of corporate human resources, and to receive the desired outcome of team satisfactory for future development. PERCEPTION In my expectations from hiring I did not take into account the function of Tony’s personality and the management environment he would work in, especially since his MBTI traits are ISTJ and I am ENFP. The Halo Effect is in full swing on my part as I held a cognitive bias in the judgment of Tony’s character, which influenced my overall impression of him. Tony’s perception is also flawed in using projection as a defensive mechanism to place his own actions on other people, such as the late shipment of product onto Big Ron, and the failing sales numbers onto his salesmen. He has used projection to improve his own self-image and have a reason for failures. When Tony teases Chris, he sends a very strong message to his subordinates, as it is in verbal form, a face-to-face channel, toward immediate subordinates, it’s a high channel richness that is allowing multiple cues from Tony’s words, and tone of voice which strengthens the message of his unintended te asing. When Melanie complains about the long training classes, she is dealing with Primacy Effects, as the listener is more likely to start off paying attention then drift off when the subject gets boring or the listener is internally processing data. Our company does not want ineffective training sessions, therefore if we want information to stand out in a person’s mind we must use it at the beginning of a conversation or a written list and not let it get lost in the middle. Repeating messages consecutively several times through messages after the training sessions will embed it in their minds. When Tony ignores Melanie’s complaints, he believes in Theory Y but leaves her be. He lacks empathy for this situation, a perceptual error that can be reduced with conscious empathizing for her feelings. When Tony is given backhanded compliments for helping Britni get dates, she has received an area of self-consciousness of her ability to date. To reduce perceptual errors in this situation, self-acceptance involves self-understanding, a realistic, albeit subjective, awareness of her strengths and weaknesses, she can then feel about herself that she is of â€Å"unique worth†. When Tony misunderstood Big Ron, he became defensive from constructive criticism, and sometimes when actions or motives for the action are questioned, it is best to just explain. Interpersonal attributions happen when the causes of the events involve two or more individuals, and it is likely that one will always want to present oneself in the most positive light in interpersonal attributions, which is what Tony did. Tony creates perceptual defense in being angry instead of remaining neutral. Tony should communicate his needs and practice better listening skills so the miscommunication doesn’t happen again. TEAM PERFORMANCE: Meeting in Orlando Before the team meeting, I want to spend quality time with Tony and let him know what my concerns are and the pros and cons to the issues. I want to hear his side and be able to work together on some misconceptions since we are in direct rank and contact with each other. I need to keep him on my team if he is going to follow any changes I want to make. At the team meeting I plan to merely observe the group in their natural state, then as I am included, congratulate the team on aspects of the meeting that went well and motivate them based on those positives. Topics of improving performance, ethics, and setting goals, and making plans for future collaboration. Nothing can be completely fixed within this one meeting, but is a start for positive change. The golf game is where I will begin to gather more details of the group’s dysfunctions and look for contradictions in what Tony and other members have relayed to me. The biggest aspect of team functioning I want to discuss with the golfing group a and improve are relational of the ethical concerns and team dynamics. Any process I decide will involve teams of people, so I will be able to rally subordinates to work with Tony and I through this  rapport-building game. Already, I see the reasons for team failures to occur from degrading employees, inequities in reward system, an aggressive leadership style, a weak team leadership, and a fear of the leader. I expect particular behaviors from the Role Nomination Form to be lacking which include task-oriented behavior like initiating activity, seeking/giving information and opinions, elaborating, testing workability, and group-oriented behavior such as encouraging, expressing group feelings, harmonizing, gate-keeping, and setting standards, and what may occur from these lacking behaviors which include anti-group behavior such as resistance, recognition seekers, dominators, and avoiders. Janis says groupthink happens when members of decision-making groups become motivated to avoid being too harsh in their judgments of the leaders or their colleagues ideas. Some Groupthink symptoms are present in this situation, including members who have doubts or differing points of view seek to avoid deviating from what appears to be group consensus by keeping silent about misgivings and even minimizing to themselves the importance of their doubts, and there’s an illusion of unanimity- if someone doesn’t speak, it’s assumed they are in full accord. Tony could be leading his subordinates in groupthink by constantly voicing his beliefs and reprimanding anyone who opposes or wants to report higher than him. Victims avoid deviating, and keep silent about their misgivings and even minimize to themselves the importance of their doubts. To fix this issue, the leader should assign he role of critical evaluator to each member to air objections and doubt, adopt impartial stances in the beginning, monitoring group size by splitting up into smaller teams, then coming back together with results, and appointing a devil’s advocate to always look at the other side of things. Effective teams have adequate resources, effective leadership, climate of trust, a performance evaluation, and reward system that reflect team contributions. The team effectiveness model for this group needs leadership structure and a climate of trust, a composition of allocating roles and finding abilities of members, and a process that has specific goals and  common purposes. Overall, every model and concept discussed for this situation has a solution that can be used to address problems when I attend the monthly directors meeting with Tony. The most important aspect of all these concepts is being able to apply them within myself in my relationship with Tony, as he is my partner to making his district profitable. Open communication, trust, and mutual problem solving with his team should help me land the international assignment and leave Tony skilled and ready to continue great performance after I am gone.

Economic constraints Essay

As part of my applied business GCSE, I have been asked to compare two different companies. The two companies I am going to compare are Nike and McDonald’s. Nike is an LTD, while McDonald’s is a franchise. At the end of this course I aim to get a better understanding of how businesses run.  The business location (McDonalds)  Most of McDonald’s earliest restaurants were opened in the UK during the 1970s, many customers were willing to travel miles to visit them. This specific McDoands is located in archway (N19) McDonald’s believe that their customer convience & research are the things that drive force behind McDonald’s restaurants and locations. Such development has led to new McDonald’s in sites as varied as cross-channel ferries, a bowling alley and London’s former County Hall. The Company is committed to responsible growth, and works closely with local planning officers and community groups when developing a new restaurant. When McDonalds decide to open a new restaurant, it is considered as a long-term proposition. For McDonalds, local knowledge is a key factor to choosing new locations. McDonald’s relies on discussions with local managers who are involved at the grass roots level with their local communities.  Key customers & competitors. (McDonalds)  McDonald’s are one of the leading providers of quick service food globally. In the UK, the company has 1,250 restaurants – around 500 of which are franchised operations. Seen as how McDonalds are a very big and successful franchise, they are bound to have competitors such as:McDonald’s are one of the only franchises to have a goal of no more than two complaints per restaurant per month. Using Business Objects to spot problems early, such as staffing levels, some 500 stores have achieved zero complaints for more than two months. In McDonalds, customer service is improved by information from the three â€Å"Mystery Shopper† visits to each restaurant monthly. This information includes, amongst other criteria, whether or not there was a friendly greeting, whether the server was wearing a name badge, as well as the overall cleanliness of the restaurant.  Some of McDonald’s external influences may affect the way that the business is managed and run. For example, if there were complaints being made about the level of pay for its workers then McDonald’s might have to respond to this. Even though it could be argued that the workers demands are not an external influence the company would still face pressure to make judgments about the nature of its decision-making.  The business location (Nike) Nike are known worldwide and have many stores throughout different countries, these include of:  Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russian federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and Ireland.  In Nike’s case, it is very important that all of their locations suit to their liking because Nike aims to get out of their store locations including, profit and popularity. Before building a new store, Nike may need to take into account the following factor.

Recruitment and Selection Process

Referencing should be provided in Harvard Style referencing. The word count limit for this assignment is 2500 words excluding references. (Index is not required for this assignment). The assignments shou-ld be completed in Font Tlpe: Time New Roman with Size 12 and double spacing between lines. For Office Use Ouly Result Deliverer Internal Verifier Name & Signature Date -J#E+ E‚ ¬EgEl :ffis3 rysi! l tr ri : , † l,lorrorl. r'r†r,r Course: HNC/HND Diploma in Business Unit 14 Working with and Leading People Assessment Decision Form To be tilled in by the Assessors & Verifier Assessors CommentInternal VerifierJModerator Comment: Any Action to be taken By Assessor: Exam Board Committee (EBC) Review: fflE ir-:;-:;: i, r' Managerrre:nt large national you have recently been appointed io the Human Resource Department of a staff of non managerial retailer, with specific responsluility for recruitment assistant for its Bradford branch and you The company is wanting to recrui t a full,time sales advise the senior management team of have been asked to prepare all relevant-oocumentation, they must observe and take part in the any legal, regulatory'and ethical considerations ecruitment Process.TASK that you comprete and encrose the following: rn order to full meet this brief you shourd ensure 1 ‘Abriefstaiementfortheseniormanagementteamoutliningthediffere- ncesandmerits your recommendations for the processes with between internal and external recruitment most suitable method' 2. A Job description correct format and person specification for the Job using the They could include some or all of the following: Job description . Job title o Department and location of Post . Broad terms of Job o Responsible to whom .Scope of Post Education and qualifications r Name of compiler and approver . Date of issue Person specification . Job title and reference number . Essential and desirable attributes r Physical characteristics required r Attainments and qualificat ion . Previous experience . Generalintelligence . Special aptitudes r Temperament and Personality . Hobbies and interests . Personalcircumstances ffln Miuragern-ient TASK 2 You must produce a briefing sheet for the senior management team to guide them on aspects of law relating to recruitment and selection of candidates. This should include:Sex Discrimination Act 1995197 Race Relations Act 1992 Equal payAct 1970 Disability Discrimination Act 1997 and 2005 Employment Act 2002 National Minimum Wage (current levels) Data Protection Act 1998 Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) ‘Religion or Belief) (Amendment) Regulations 2007 Any other relevant Acts (if any) There should also be a section on ethical issues such as: asking candidates the same questions guidelines for interviewers who are related to candidates gender and ethnic balance on interview panels TASK 3In pairs you will be interviewing a prospective candidate who has submitt ed a completed application form. For this task you wili need to complete and enclose the following: 1. Prepare a list of questions 2. to ask the interviewee based on their completed application form. Conduct the interview and write a brief statement afterwards to analyse how you contributed to the selection process. What went well and what could have been improved? fflG In order to achieve Pass Grade Evidence on page Tasks staff To include Job description, person specification, interview questionsAssess the impact of legal, regulatory and ethical considerations tn the reernifment and seleetion orocess 5 Take part in the selection Process 4. Evaluate own contribution to the selection process All Tasks 1 – 4 should be completed In order to achieve Merit Grade Effective Judgements have been shown in tasks 1 -4 In order to achieve Distinction Grade A critical reflection is evicient on tasks 1-4 Assessor's Feedback on Outcome Criteria LO 1. t. z Assessment Criteria )repare documen tation to select and recruit a new member of staff assess the impact of legal, egulatory and ethical considerations to the recruitment Assessor's Comments take part in the selection process evaluate own contribution to tfre selection process lvlanzrgement Learning outcomes LOI recru itment, selection and retention Be able procedures Assessment criteria for pass The learner has to: 1. prepare documentation to select and recruit a new member of staff I-. 2 assess the impact of legal, regulatory and ethical considerations to the recruitment and selection process 1. 3 take part in the selection process 1. 4 evaluate own contribution to the selection process .

Media Freedom in Pakistan Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Media Freedom in Pakistan - Term Paper Example The focus of the study is given to how the media helped to restore the judiciary besides other benefits of the media freedom. The downside of this freedom and its limitations are also discussed in order to give a balanced picture of the impact and relate how free the media really is at this stage. Finally, an examination is made of how the media can help to make democratisation succeed. Officially, democracy began in Pakistan with the 1973 constitution after General Yahya Khan allowed the conduction of a free and fair election in Pakistan for the first time in 1970. It was a parliamentary democracy that allowed for democratically elected representatives to rule. Prior to that, his predecessor General Ayub Khan did allow the country to experience a ‘basic democracy’ under the 1962 constitution after usurping power, but it was rightly called a ‘constitutional autocracy’. Democratic institutions were still suppressed and a mass movement arose to guarantee the p rinciple of one-man-one-vote would be applied. However, the quality of the democracy in Pakistan during the last quarter of the 20th century has been questionable, and arguably it still is. It was again largely absent during Zia-ul-Haqq’s military rule from 1977 to 1988. Political parties were then allowed to participate in proper elections this time in 1988 but the transition to democracy has been a continuous struggle between the military and civilian organisations. In short, where some democratic practices have been permitted, they have usually been partial, controlled and incomplete under the rule of the military or else manipulated under the occasional civilian rule. The pattern that emerges from this brief historical overview is that the degree of democracy has been generally (though not steadily) increasing in Pakistan over the past few decades.

A Critical Evaluation of a Screening Event (The Kurdish Winter) Essay

A Critical Evaluation of a Screening Event (The Kurdish Winter) - Essay Example Nonetheless, this paper presents a critical evaluation of a screening event involving the documentary â€Å"The Kurdish Winter.† The documentary â€Å"The Kurdish Winter,† bears the story of the Kurdish people. These are considered to be the largest nation in the world, but without a state of their own (Gendercide n.d). Documentaries are one of the major ways of revisiting genocide and its effects, in an effort to prevent such future occurrences (Wilson & Crowder-Taraborrelli 2012). In the 1980’s, and years before, the Kurdish people suffered continuous genocides in Iraq. This therefore, had a negative impact on their life and heritage (Ibrahim & Gurbey 2000). Nonetheless, this documentary aims at collecting evidence from the Kurds that are alive today, and lived in the 1970’s. This will eventually help in shaping the truth about the Kurdish genocide, as witnesses testify in the documentary. Although the Kurdish people during that period suffered a lot of atrocities, the media publicised the events that unfolded, but the world closed its eyes and ears to the situation and cries of the Kur dish people. Being the director of the documentary, I had the responsibility of ensuring that the filming process was successful, and making sure that the content of the documentary was on point and convincing. For filming, I travelled to various parts of the world, identifying the key people that I would include in the documentary. The conditions for these people was that they had to be Kurdish, and must have been alive when the genocides occurred, as well as been affected in one way or another by the detrimental events that made up the genocide. I gained diverse insights into the situation of the Kurdish people from different parties, including political prisoners, politicians, leaders of different calibre, as well as the common Kurdish people that were victims of the genocide. As the director of the documentary, I shared the pains of these people, since I was

Commercialized Sport Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Commercialized Sport - Essay Example In the current developing world, commercialization of sports is a prevalent activity that has employed a large number of people. This is a considerable employment opportunity just like any other employment opportunity in to the sectors of the economy. There are some ethical issues that are involved in the commercialization of sports in the Midwest state university. First of all, commercialization of sports in the institution will jeopardize the educational activities that are in the school. With the commercialization of sports in the institution, some of the educational activities like lecturers, educational debates and exhibitions. Commercialization of the sports will only dwell on the physical activities that are involved in commercial sports. Therefore, the students will have lesser time scheduled for their educational activities. They will only be compelled to participate in the ball games and other commercial activities. In the end, the students will reflect a redundant performance in their education. Secondly, there are some students in learning institutions that do not have an interest in commercialized sports (French, 27). They are inclined to their education and have an interest in ensuring they have a better performance through their education. In actual sense, some students have low regards for sports. Therefore, increasing the participation time for commercialized sports is likely to reflect a disadvantage to such students. Lastly, there is a social issue that involves attaining cash in early stages of life. Some students may emerge to have talents in the stated sports (Morgan, 51-55). The stake holders and controllers of such sports may jeopardize the learning of such student s and introduce them to more professional and commercialized sports. In the end, the students will drop out of school. Before getting on this particular project, there are a number of people that should certify the event.

International Relations Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

International Relations - Assignment Example etwork groups, organizations, movements or individuals who has sufficient powers to influence international relations, though they are not part of any recognized institution of a state1. 2. Defining terrorism is difficult as the motives, methods, and targets of terrorism differ greatly from group to group and case to case. However, in common terms, terrorism is the systematic use of powerful terrorization mostly for achieving political, religious, linguistic, racial, ethnical or ideological motives. Also, it involves lot of complexity since understanding the commonness in each category is also almost impossible. The most of the disparity in defining terrorism lies in describing terrorist motivations. As an attempt to solve this, several definitions are tried by specifically addressing the motives of terrorist groups2. 3. Uncivil networks are the result of governmental failure with regard to political equality or equality of influence in the political process; social equality or equality in wealth, education, and social status; equality of opportunity or equality in chances for success; and equality of outcome. Power of uncivil networks was proved in 1996, where such uncivil networks attained several successes in every endeavor involved by them like human rights, terror, transnational crime and insurgency3. 4. Human trafficking is a serious crime in which people are deceived, sold and exploited for forced labor, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, street crime, organ sale or human sacrifice. Several men, women or children are exploited by the traffickers from their own country or abroad. Human trafficking is a serious violation of human rights. Most of the countries have begun their fight against human trafficking. Recently, USA’s secretary of state John Kerry has stated from annual trafficking in persons (TIP) report that around 46000 victims of human trafficking are exposed to the world. Though, it is expected that around 27 million people are enslaved

Human Resources Management. Basic knowledge Essay

Human Resources Management. Basic knowledge - Essay Example The process of globalization influences both public and private sectors of economy. It does not influence business under the conditions of competition produced by adding new participants to the market; this process promotes benchmarking as the best mean of developing business. For instance, the experts in UK are worried with the fact that specialists from the USA and the rest of Europe occupy leading positions in various companies or institutions of public sector. (Hunter et al.) These changes that affect competitive environment and working background forced human resource management reconsider its significance and roles, and adopt its functions to the demands of the present day. The process of reconsidering and revaluation of the HR role shows that the changes have already started, and this process slowly goes on. There are no investigations, reflecting the stages of the process, but the specialists speak about some significant points that indicate progressive nature of the process. In the middle of 90s HR professionals defined the process of changes that in the sphere of HR. Dave Ulrich is one of them. Some of his writings are devoted to this question and the nature of evolution that occurred in the sphere of HR during last fifteen years. He draws new roles in the sphere of HR. ... This function also includes watching relations among employees and establishing a new role to keep performance on high level - the role of employee champion. One more significant role is given to change agent, who should be occupied with the obstacles that may disturb successful business development and with the ways of keeping the business course on right direction. (Ulrich, 2005) In the article "Role Call" Ulrich provides a comparison of the roles in the process of changes, examining how the nature and purpose of each role changed within recent years. He enumerates the following roles that were relevant to the sphere of HR at the beginning of the 90s: "coach, enabler, advocate, change agent, initiative leader, employee champion, business partner, HR leader, strategist, rapid deployment specialist, internal consultant, operational supporter, knowledge facilitator, thought leader, competency professional, client relationship manager and even human capital steward and manager of firm infrastructure." (Ulrich, 2005) At first, he suggested changing the terms defining the specialists, as the essence of their work and functions changed. Employee champion - employee advocate and human capital developer As it has been said above, he provided a framework showing the changes that occurred within these roles. The first of them is shift from the role of employee champion to employee advocate and human capital developer. To say more precisely, this role divided into two separate roles. Here is the definition of "employee champion" provided by Ulrich in one of his previous works: "Employee champions listen and respond to employees and find the right balance between demands on employees and resources available

SOCIAL CONTEXT OF HEALTH Outline Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

SOCIAL CONTEXT OF HEALTH - Outline Example Once every individual takes care of his/her health in a community, it will lead to a healthy community. Most minor cases of illnesses are treated and can be managed at home. The traditional approach of health has become common in the day to day world (Helman, 1978). In the past, illnesses were believed to be a result of satanic possessions or witches. Good health was brought about by balance in people, which included a balanced diet, exercises and sleep. If you got sick, it meant there was some imbalance (Heaman and Hardy, 2002). The theory of Miasma, developed in mid-17th century, leads to the interest of improving hygiene and sanitation. It resulted from poisonous gases that came from decayed matters in the soil and stagnant water and unhealthy jobs (Hardy, 1999). It made people be careful of their environment and make it clean and clear stagnant water. Helman’s work was based on the concept of ‘feed a cold, starve a fever’. Changes in temperature for example a fever is seen as ones carelessness (Helman, 1978). If a person exposes him or herself to cold, rainy weather he is bound to get sick so if people keep warm when needed it can prevent infection and for those who already get a cold can manage the sickness at home by resting in bed and eating and drinking hot food and drinks(Hardy, 1999). Helmans work tried to explain treatment in a lay-man’s language instead of scientific ways that are complicated to understand especially for ordinary people (Helman, 1978). Although sickness at times is beyond our control, the best way of preventing sickness and promoting health is by people to take responsibility of their own health. Hardy, A. (1999). Edwin Chadwick Revisited Christopher Hamlin, Public health and social justice in the age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854, Cambridge History of Medicine series, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Medical History, 43(2),

Leader Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Leader - Essay Example (Cunningham 5-6) stated that talent leaders apart from managing talent they also realign individuals goals with the corporate strategy. Secondly, they share organisation’s information and collaborate with the employees to increase performance. Thirdly, they focus on creating a highly skilled internal talent pool to enable easy future succession and replacements. Lastly, talent leaders reward employees based on their performance to boost their morale. The additional elements of talent leadership makes the model unique since it enables an organisation to build and fully utilise its talent pipeline in a way that it can boost an organisation’s performance. Moreover, the additional elements, which reinforce talent management practices differentiates the model above from other talent leadership models, which only focus on improving the core functions of talent management that include, attracting, engaging, retaining, and developing talent. This model is highly recommendable to organisations because it can increase the competency level of the employees, lower the recruitment cost due to high retention level, increase motivation among the employees because of the reward system and prospects of rising up the career ladder. Equally an organisation will have a competitive human capital that can further strength its position within the market thereby giving it a return on the investment made on talent leadership. Lastly, this model can be justified to the chief executive officer stating that it will create high effective and efficient employees who will enable the organisation to attain its strategic

Media and Communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Media and Communication - Essay Example 210-212). Blog is also a kind of social networking site. According to Enzer (1994), Blog can be defined as a website or webpage manage by an individual or organization or group of people in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in a reverse chronological order. According to him the word blog is a short form of weblog. Maintaining a blog or adding any article or comments in any existing blog is knows as blogging. Articles or comments post in a blog known as blog posts, posts or entries. A person who is making these posts is the blogger. Generally a blog is consisting of text, hypertext, images, and links. According to Enzer, it is a more conventional way of documentation (Enzer, 1994). According to Rowse (2005), there are some features associated with any blog. These are archives and comments. Archives of any blog consist of old massages or post made by any individual on any blog. As the comments posted in blogs are arranged reverse chronological orders, so the older post goes to the archives. Comments are the feedback given by individuals about the particular blog or about the current topic which is under discussion (Rowse, 2005). Analysis of Blog: This work is all about analyzing a particular blog in respect of its context, style, designing, popularity and relevance to the society. The blog we are reviewing here is Golf’s Girl Diary. The blog Golf Girl’s Diary was one of the first blog associated with the sports of golf, owned by golfer Patrica Hannigan. She is from Danbury CT. It is unique in many ways. First of all it is associated with golf and owned by a women golfer. Secondly it is one of first independent golf blog managed by a lady golfer. So the curiosity about the topic of this blog is always on the higher side. In her blog, she has various comments and article associated with golf lifestyle as well as travel publication. She is also well known as she appeared on inside edition and Good Morning America. One main thing a ssociated with this blog is, after the Tiger Woods saga in Golf, she has become a go to voice in terms of female perspective in the sport of golf. The design of the blog is very attractive and eye catchy. Uses of different colors on the home page of this blog make it even more interesting. The home page consist of her info give us an overview of who is she, what she up to and also about the significance of this blog. Her blog gives us an overview of the book Little Tartan, which is written by her and dedicated to all the women who want to be a golfer but not able to be. The overview of the book also gives us a clear idea about her mindset, her ways to look forward to the life and how she takes the life. In her blog post there are links of almost all the golf player who are well known in this sport. On a way one can consider this blog as a small encyclopedia about modern day golf players. Apart from the details of the players there are few videos also which also interesting. Overall the arrangement and structure of the blog is very attractive. Now let’s discuss about her blogs. As she is a golf player it is obvious that her blogs also related to the sports itself. In her blog posts she has discussed every possible minute details, technical

Understanding Customer Relationships Essay Example for Free

Understanding Customer Relationships Essay I further confirm that I have not shared my work with other candidates. Table of Contents Cover page1 Table of Contents2 Task 1: Keeping stakeholders informed 3 6 Task 2: Collecting stakeholder information 7 9 Task 3: CSR – Gaining an Internal Perspective 10 12 Task 4 REPORT To:Marketing Manager From:Marketing Assistant Date:25th November, 2011 Subject:Keeping stakeholders informed INTRODUCTION: Communication is defined as the process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs or behavior (www. erriamwebster. com/dictionary). It is a two-way process and plays a central role for effective relationships within an organization (CIM Introductory Certificate in Marketing Study Workbook, pg 135). For communication to be effective, the receiver must understand the message in the manner the sender intended for it to be received. As with majority of organizations, stakeholders are an integral part of any organization and must be well informed of necessary decisions and activities of the said organization. With reference to the recent oil spillage crisis, it is important that BP communicates to the following stakeholder groups – a. FOUR STAKEHOLDER GROUPS THAT BP NEEDED TO COMMUNICATE WITH AND THEIR SCOPE OF INTEREST ARE: Governments and regulators: Government alongside the regulatory agencies established by the government to dominate the industry, are responsible for formulating policies which govern offshore drilling processes and also ensure that the interest of the public is protected from the activities of the oil companies. Both bodies need to be informed of the spillage to allow for monitoring of the situation and deployment of resources and assessment teams to establish shoreline protection and clean up priorities. (http://www. env. gov. bc. ca/eemp/resources/strategies/oilstrat. htm) The information would further assist the government investigate the cause of the spillage in order to take necessary legal actions and also help with legislation of regulatory laws which governs oil exploration by the oil companies. . Stakeholders and analysts: The stakeholders include shareholders and investors who have financial interests and commitments in BP. They should be informed of the spill and every progress made by BP, so that they are kept abreast of the financial implications and expenditure that would arise from the spillage, cleanup process and compensation cost which might result in a loss in revenue for BP and ultimately their financial interests. c. Local communities: Local communities are usually members of the community within which an oil project is situated and in this case, the community where the oil spill has occurred. They would also include the local media, medical organizations, nongovernmental organizations active within the area, local security forces etc. Organizations must establish themselves as reputable members of a community. (www. ou. edu/deptcomm/literature review. htm) By establishing a reservoir of goodwill in the community it is often easier to gain community support during a crisis (Sellnow, 1993). As such, affected residents of the local community around where the spillage occurred should be communicated to and assessed for physical and behavioral health effects the spillage might cause especially if the residents depend on oil, fishing or other affected industries in the locality of the spill. BP should also inform the local communities on steps it has taken or would take to combat the effect of the spillage on the environment and possible compensations to the communities. d. Customers: These vary from domestic fuel users to agricultural and aviation users of bulk LPG. All BP customers should be contacted and informed of the spillage as this might affect the supply of various products as supplied by BP. The multiplier effect of shortage of products by BP would not only mean a loss in revenue for the customer whose livelihood depend s on sale of products but also on the end user as might be in the case of retail fuel consumer and inadvertently more loss to BP. 2. ADAPTATION OF MESSAGES TO MEET THE NEEDS OF EACH OF THE STAKEHOLDER GROUP For a communication to be effective, the message passed must be well understood by the party for whom the message is intended (decoder) for and must be able to communicate back to the sender. BP must ensure that it communicates information about the spillage to the above mentioned stakeholders in respect to their functions and adaptabilities. o For the government, a series of meetings should be arranged where discussions regarding assessments, clean up exercises and monitoring policies are discussed and reported back to the government the progress of the situation. Stakeholders are to be informed via mails or financial reports the cost analysis of the clean up exercise as well as financial implications of the spill incurred by the company. o BP should seek to invite non-governmental organizations who focus on environmental policies and issues to assist with implementation of programs designed to help residents within affected communities. o Customers can be reached more effectively a nd interpersonally through in depth interviews, viral online communications, web based interactive programs and feedback channels on BP’s website. . TWO COMMUNICATION TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED TO ENHANCED THE MESSAGE The purpose of communication is to get a message across clearly using methods or tools that would effectively target the intended receiver. These tools could either be verbal or non-verbal tools of communication. To communicate its intent, BP must use the following communication tools to enhance the credibility of its message:- ? PR: Public Relations is defined as a planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics (IPR). In enhancing the credibility of its message, BP would use PR to not only ensure that its intended target receives its message, but would also help reshape and boost the consumer perception of the BP image in light of the spill crisis thereby, warding off unfavorable rumors. ? Direct Marketing: This is the most targeted method of communication as it seeks to target individual customers with personalized messages and build relationships with them as they respond to direct communications (UCR online syllabus; session 7, pg 8). Direct marketing is defined as the planned recording, analysis and tracking of customer behavior to develop relational marketing strategies (Institute of Direct Marketing, UK) Using direct marketing, a well thought out and planned message is made available by BP to target each stakeholder group and solicit positive responses from each group to help manage the spill crisis. 4. EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNICATION TOOLS OUTLINED ABOVE †¢ Direct Marketing: One of the benefits of direct marketing is that it allows for direct interaction with the consumers and hence immediate responses are obtained from the consumers. This in turns also ensures that BP’s personalized messages are well targeted and monitored such that the aim of public relations in helping to enhance consumer perception of BP’s image is also attained. BRIEFING PAPER From:Marketing Assistant To:Marketing Manager Date:17. 12. 2011 Subject:Collecting Stakeholder information Information is defined as the data formatted or structured to support decision making or define the relationship between two facts (Zikmund/Babin: Essentials of marketing research; 3rd edition). It is a marketing asset which impacts on performance of an organization (CIM Study Workbook, pg 108) 2. INFORMATION TO BE COLLECTED BY BP IN RELATION TO ITS STAKEHOLDERS o Local Communities: BP would seek to collect information about the local communities which would include population count, availability of amenities such as hospitals, roads, schools, water, electricity, income levels, gender, age etc. It would also seek to identify the general occupation of residents in the community (e. g if farming or fishing is the main stay of the residents and the effects of the spill) and income/lifestyle of residents. It would also seek to understand the culture and ethnicity of the people so as not to strain relationship with its communities. BP should also seek to collect information about its communities to help assess the social and environmental impacts of its project within such communities. o Government and regulators: As these two bodies promulgate policies which govern the exploration of oil wells, CSR and offshore activities, it is important that BP is up to date with its information on all offshore and environmental laws so as to protect itself from abjurations. It would also collect information to understand its tax liabilities and entrepreneurial activities in collaboration with both bodies. . 2USEFULNESS OF INFORMATION COLLECTED TO BP †¢ For Budgetary control:- Greater control and more informed decision making are possible when all costs of all operations are available †¢ For Planning: Information helps BP make adequate plans for its operations within its communities, or act in accordance to governing policies and also inform actions to address/prevent health effects in affected communities during a spill crisis †¢ For decision making: Adequate data collected would be used for making strategic decisions for its sector and management plans. . 3USEFUL INFORMATION TO BE COLLECTED BY SCREENPLAY MARKETING MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS LTD. To ensure our relevance and maintain our market share over the next six months, we must seek to collect the following information about our varying clients in order to effectively meet their needs and surpass their expectations: ? Clients’ activities: we must seek to collect information about each client’s various activities within the next 6 months and plan media campaigns around those activities to meet intended consumers. Customer attitudes: We would need to interview and collect information on target segments of consumers to assess how well they match our ideas and fit into clients’ marketing plan ? Competitors’ activities: Over the next 6 months, we would need to identify who our competitors are through secondar y research and collect information about their activities in order to help us plan our strategies ? Markets: it is important that we carve our niche market and gather necessary information on them. We would need information as to who are clients are, their products, existing/potential market for the product all necessary for us to have an idea on how best to position our client’s product for an increase in market share. 2. 4ONE METHOD OF COLLECTING INFORMATION In order to collect the necessary information, I would recommend the Secondary method of data collection. Secondary data is data that has not been specifically created for the purpose at hand but can be used and analysed to provide marketing information where primary data is not yet available or not sufficient(CIM Study Workbook, pg 110). This is a preferred choice of data collection because it – o Helps to make primary data collection more specific since with the help of secondary data, we are able to make out what are the gaps and deficiencies and what additional information needs to be collected. o Is less expensive and economical to conduct seeing that the information is readily available and does not require the process of collecting new data o Saves time o It provides a basis for comparison for the data that is collected by the researcher (www. managementguide. com) DISCUSSION PAPER Prepared for: Marketing Manager Prepared by: Marketing Assistant Subject:CSR – An Internal perspective Date: 17. 12. 2011 INTRODUCTION: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is about how businesses align their values and behaviour with the expectations and needs of stakeholders not just customers and investors, but also employees, suppliers, communities, regulators, special interest groups and society as a whole. CSR describes a companys commitment to be accountable to its stakeholders. CSR demands that businesses manage the economic, social and environmental impacts of their operations to maximise the benefits and minimise the downsides (www. srnetwork. com) 3. 1 PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT The purpose of this project is to seek to form a committee to propose and identify a CSR activity for ScreenPlay Marketing and Media Communications Ltd to embark on as its efforts in giving back to the society in which its business operates and increase our awareness of environmental consciousness. 3. 2BENEFITS OF CSR TO THE ORGANISATION Consumers increasin gly do not accept unethical business practices or organizations who act irresponsibly (www. simplycsr. co. uk). The benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility cannot be overemphasized and a carefully planned CSR would help our organization to †¢ Develop and enhance relationships with customers and society thereby retaining customers whilst attracting new ones †¢ Enhance brand image so customers’ perception about the brand is positive †¢ Attract, retain and motivate employees A key potential benefit from  CSR  initiatives involves establishing the conditions that can contribute to increasing the commitment and motivation of employees to become more innovative and productive. www. ic. gc. ca/site/csr-rse. nsf/eng/h_rs00100html) †¢ Sharpen decision making and help reduce risk 3. 3. IMPORTANCE OF INTERNAL COOPERATION AND PARTICIPATION It is important that a good working relationship exists between all departments of our organization on this project so as to ensure completion of tasks and fulfillment of our set objectives. It is envisaged that with team work and co ntribution of ideas from all each department involved in this project would yield productivity and also ensure the success of our CSR project. 3. IDEA ON IMPROVING OUR ORGANISTION’S ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY One idea I would like to suggest to increasing our environmental responsibility is the adoption of a child from the eye department of the children’s ward at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital. There are at present about 300 cases of children with cancer of the eye been treated at the hospital. It is my proposition that we render our CSR to the kids in this ward by sponsoring a child every quarter to the Suraksha Children’s Hospital India – a top hospital in India noted for treatment of eye tumors in children. The relative low costs of surgery and living expenditure has influenced the choice of Suraksha Children’s Hospital and the intervals at which each child would undergo a treatment would not be cumbersome for the organization to bear. We would work in conjunction with a team of doctors at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital to assist in compiling names of beneficiaries of the treatment through a series of preliminary requirements for each beneficiary. This would include age, severity of case, and income level of parents – as this would be aimed at children whose parents cannot afford the treatment cost in the state. This project would be tagged ‘The ScreenPlay Media Communications â€Å"Light a world† project. 3. 5COST IMPLICATION FOR PROPOSED CSR PROJECT The cost for this project is outlined below: †¢ Hospital fees: This would cover cost for accommodation in the hospital for the number of days from the date of admittance to the discharge date and would also cover administrative and drug fees. †¢ Surgery fees: includes surgery fees, anesthetic fees, blood transfusion (if necessary) and surgeon’s fee. Accommodation fees: this take care of accommodation and feeding costs for the accompanying ward/parent of the child †¢ Travel/logistics fees: covers flight fares for child and accompanying ward along with visa application fees. It would also cover for transportation for the beneficiaries upon arrival in India. This cost is estimated at a total of N750, 000 (? 3,000) per quarter and totaling N2, 250,000 (? 9,000) per annum for 3 kids. RESEARCH Prepared for:Mark eting Manager Prepared by:Marketing Assistant Subject:Maintaining the work/life balance Date:30. 11. 2011 EMAIL To:[emailprotected] com (marketing manager) Cc: [emailprotected] com, [emailprotected] com, [emailprotected] com Subject: Committee set up on Proposed CSR Project Dear Elliot, Trust you are fine. As per your memo dated 16th November 2011on setting up a committee for the proposed CSR activity, kindly see below the list of intended participants from the various departments:- a. Ore Odusanya (HR department): Having worked with Ore in the past few years, his analytical and interpersonal skills in relating with people would be very useful in this project . Trish Banner: (Accounts department): Trish’s skill in handling financial transactions as well as contacts within the travel agency would suffice in this project and assisting with obtaining relatively low fare prices for each beneficiary. c. Gladys Knight (Creative department): her artistic talents would help create the right messages for advertisement purposes which would position the brand as foremost in connecting with its s ociety. Her wits and acute sense of judgment would also aid in ensuring that the right candidates are chosen for the project. . Ken Rice (logistics department): an ardent and hardworking colleague, though in the HR department but with an ability to drive and ensure prompt delivery of projects would ensure that logistics such as visas, hotel booking and transportation of each beneficiary is handled promptly at designated timelines. I would also like to suggest that the committee is convened soon so as to enable us conclude the plans within the shortest time frame possible and liaise with the team of doctors in Nigeria and India for the commencement of the project. It would also afford us time to put together a media campaign to boost publicity. Best regards Lolah Adebambo Project Leader REFERENCES Book Sources Vincent. K CIM Introductory Certificate in Marketing Study Workbook, 2009/2011 (BPP Learning Media, London) Internet sources www. ic. gc. ca/site/csr-rse. nsf/eng/h_rs00100html (accessed in December 2011) (www. merriamwebster. com/dictionary). (accessed in November 2011) (www. csrnetwork. com) (accessed in December 2011) [pic]

Report On Bed Capacity Planning In Hospitals

Report On Bed Capacity Planning In Hospitals Nowadays, the number of medical treatment and medicines increases which allows a spectacular growth of the health care sector. Despite this development, the sector suffers from inefficient management and ineffective planning [15]. Managing patients, nurses and physicians is a difficult problem that needs to be solved. Hospital bed planning is a central problem that affects hospital capacity, health care quality and also management of nurses and physicians. During the last decades, hospitals are a non profit organization where the demand is not a primary concern for the manager of these hospitals. Today, many private hospitals are acting with a primary objective to satisfy the demand and to provide outstanding services to compete with other private hospitals [10]. The hospital is not just a medical care unit but also is providing hotel and transportation services. To insure competiveness of hospitals we need to improve the quality of services and to satisfy as much as we can the deman d. Therefore, hospitals need to look for their supply chain and how to manage it. In this report, we focus on the supply chain management of hospitals in Dubai. Dubais health services are internationally recognized and due to their high standard and their modern facilities equipment, are comparable to other developed countries. The location of hospitals in Dubai is strategic to ensure accessibility for patients. There are approximately 20 clinics and hospitals distributed across the Emirate. The ratio of clinics/hospitals to patients is 1:78,000. One of the more impressive practices of medical professionals in Dubai is the post-clinic, private medical call. These are considered as part of their responsibilities. Medical attention is provided, regardless of residency or nationality. In general, Dubai aims to improve the over-all wellbeing of its people. Its strategy is to provide patient-specific care. The most popular medical services provided by healthcare providers in Dubai include immunizations and vaccinations, psychiatric treatments, medical fitness examinati ons, community services (such as marriage and family counseling), adult and infant yoga therapy, rehabilitation, and education on health and nutrition. We focus on this report on Rashid private hospital in Dubai, UAE. We mainly present a multiple objective stochastic programming for the bed capacity planning taking into account the quality of the service and the stochastic demand in that hospital. In the next chapter, we present a general overview of the hospital supply chain in general before we present in chapter 3 some of the Rashid hospital operations. In chapter 4, we focus on hospital bed capacity planning in order to introduce to the multiple objective stochastic program that we are going to propose for Rashid hospital bed capacity planning. The obtained model is transformed in chapter 6 into its certainty equivalent and solved in chapter 7 using data from Rashid hospital. Chapter 2 Hospital supply chain 2.1. Introduction Health is defined as à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"a state of complete physical, mental and social well beingà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ . The health care sector is an important sector as regards to the welfare of people. Health services require the synchronization of various resources, such as Human resources, medicines and medical equipment. In any organization, a supply chain must be designed in accordance with its mission. The mission of all hospitals includes the maximization of the level of patient care. The size of a hospital, geographical location, diversification, and the various specializations all affect the nature of care provided in a hospital and, therefore, the goals of its supply chain. The hospital chain may have some of the following goals [7]: To secure the availability of product , To Reduce the storage space and to maximize the patient care, To reduce time and cost of handling the medical team (nurse, pharmacist, physician) Minimize the stocks of inventory The main functions of hospital supply chain are defined as follows [7]: To allocate the main resources (technical platforms, beds, physicians, nurses ) and their location in the hospital. To plan for extra resource needed (medical staff, medical equipment), and to schedule the care activities. To organize transportation of patients and equipment. Generally, the hospital supply chain may be split into two parts (see Figure1): the external chain and the internal chain [14]. Fig 1: Hospital supply chain [15] 2.2. The external supply chain The external chain begins with companies specialized in the creation of the raw material (patent, drug, machinery, etc). The raw material can be materialized (machine, drug, etc.) or immaterialized (know how to cure). The manufacturer may itself be the creator or a company that works in relationship with him. In this case, the company is responsible for the duplication (making molecules on a large scale and add excipients or drug) for the test and for the control. Once the product is ready to be used and receives the necessary certifications, the role of the distributor is to place the product on the market. The market is generally formed by a central purchasing (WHO, national distributors, NGOs, etc) or individual (hospital, pharmacy, etc). Each health facility may maintain direct relations with manufacturers so that products pass through certain distributors. 2.3. The internal supply chain The health establishment is the last link in a supply chain consisting of manufacturers and distributors from various industries (medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, food, laundry, maintenance, etc). The supply chain within the hospital is complex. The size of the hospital, the geographical location, the diversification, various specializations, the high cost and perishable goods, all affect its supply chain. The first characteristic of the appropriate health care supply chain is its diversity in distribution channels. Inside the hospital, the hospital product is made up of items at low prices or high-prices and durable and perishable goods that are consumed in large or small quantities. A health institution is composed of five main activities that manage different types of flows to offer many services or products to patients. These activities are defined as follows: Intralogistics activities which are the fact that the hospital acquire, receives and distribute different supplies used in the service. The demand management that is the planning and the coordination between the different necessary resources. Operations and services given to the patient within the hospital from admission to discharge. External logistic represented by the medical follow-up for the patient. Services to the patient which are all auxiliary activities that are not linked to medical activities offered to the patient (gift shop, religious programs, etc). The supply chain within the hospital can therefore be presented as follows: 2.4. Conclusion The hospital supply chain must be developed for a specific product based on its unit cost, demand variability and the physical size. We can say that integration of the supply chain in the health care sector requires the synchronization of internal and external supply chains to each individual service. A good supply chain management within a hospital is necessary and must be performed efficiently Chapter 3 Operations in Rashid hospital 3.1. Introduction Rashid Hospital is a 454-bed general medical/surgical hospital in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and is a part of the Dubai Government Dubai Health Authority. Rashid Hospital is considered in Dubai as one of the first medical facilities for trauma, emergency, ambulatory care and critical care which provide a high-quality of services to all patients within the community. The Rashid hospital provides also leadership in the training and education of health care professionals. In the emergency, Rashid Hospital is considered as one of the most reputable and prominent medical centers in the Gulf region. It receives the majority of complicated case other hospitals are destined to Rashid hospital which coordinates also closely with the Dubai Civil Defense and Police for the training of emergency medical staff inside the airports In Rashid hospital, two types of admissions are used: the outpatient admission and the admission through emergency department 3.2. Outpatient registration This type of admission or registration is present in all hospitals and it can be defined as follows: An outpatient admission is presented when a patient is admitted to the hospital, surgical center or ambulatory center for a surgical or nonsurgical operation, therapeutic procedure or diagnostic procedure, that does not require an overnight hospital stay. The preparation for outpatient admission varies with each procedure [20]. In Rashid hospital, the responsible physician, the treating physician and the admitting physician are responsible of the admission procedure of the outpatient. The registration of the outpatient is done after the patient gets a discharge from the emergency department or the inpatient unit. This must is done by the physician who gives the patient an outpatient appointment for follow up with the required specialty. After that the patient will be transferred to the required specialty. The next step is the direct admission which must be done during the same day. The admitting physician/clinic nurse informs the case manager and the admission office that the patient requires admission, and then the admission of the concerned patient is linked with the availability of a bed. Next, the account department or the admission office informs the patient about charges for treatment as per the hospital payment policy. The clinic nurse will inform the patient about the admission conditions and about provisional diagnosis. But if the hospital cant find an available bed, the treating physician will give to the patient another appointment or ask for a transfer of the patient to another healthcare unit (if the case is urgent). In Rashid hospital, urgent case admission is directed to the emergency department. The admission in this department is different from the outpatient admission. In the next section, we are going to overview admissions procedures in the emergency department. 3.3. Admission through the emergency department This type of admission is different from the outpatient admission because patient must access directly to health due to the urgency of his/her case of illness. It can be defined as housing the patient in the hospital to provide special interventional procedure(s) or definitive treatment. We can distinguish three types of patients in this admission. First, the unstable patients who will suffer irreversible damage or loss of life if not admitted immediately. Second, the stable patients who are the patients that requires urgent treatment or interventional procedures(s) that cannot be accomplished on an outpatient basis. Third, patients are not suffering loss life or serious damage if not admitted [21]. In the emergency department, the emergency physician has to observe and to investigate to know if the patient needs admission and to refer the patient to the on call physician. The emergency physician and on call physician will decide about the required screening and diagnostic tests after examining/before admitting the patient. The emergency department must inform the case management about the admission, provisional diagnosis and level of care needed and check for the availability of bed. If there is no available bed in the selected department, the case manager can admit the patient temporarily in another department where bed is available (with adequate equipment). But if there are no available beds throughout the hospital, the case manager has to refer patient to another hospital. The patient flow in Rashid hospital can be presented as the following figure [10]: Bed flow in hospital 3.4. Rashid hospital departments At Rashid Hospital it exists many specialized medical and paramedical departments all equipped to receive all kinds of patients and also patients from neighboring hospitals. The existing specialities in this hospital are: Psychiatry Cardiology Gastroenterology General surgery Hematology Infectious disease Respiratory Neurosurgery Traumatologie Geriatric 3.5. Conclusion Rashid Hospital aims to provide an outstanding service to all outpatients and patients that are admitted through the emergency department. This aim cannot be achieved if the hospital has not the adequate capacity in terms of hospital bed and human resources (physicians and nurses). At the same time the hospital must run in profit to ensure the future of its activity. In this study we will try to answer this important question of hospital capacity planning in order to determine both the level of beds and the number of resources that Rashid hospital needs to satisfy the random demand. Chapter 4 Hospital capacity planning 4.1. Introduction The capacity is defined as the quantity of service that the health care institution must provide to satisfy patients need. Capacity management is related to the control of the impact of demand variability on the management of the health care institution. It concerns the good coordination of resources through the management of medical equipments, human resources and bed occupancy. Hospital capacity has long been an indicator of the importance of the hospital structure and for budget allocation [18]. The capacity planning is a component of the internal hospital supply chain. This planning is usually used to help hospitals, to do well their objectives which are: Trying to avoid an underestimating of the number of beds, planning for the future maintain a good service quality, optimize resource use, satisfy the requirements of internal and external security. 4.2. Bed capacity management In hospitals, capacity planning usually focuses on the total capacity of beds, the capacity of the surgical system, the allocation of beds for different services, equipment capacity, the ability of auxiliary services, and the number of staff and their competence [11]. Before we plan capacity in a hospital, the following issues must be clarified [1]: The length of the planning horizon (operational, tactical and strategic) The level of the provided care (primary, secondary) The type of care (provided to inpatient and / or outpatient) The quality, cost and types of available resources (physicians, nurses, technicians, rooms, beds, medical equipments and all what constitute an input for health) The hospital capacity depends not only on the number of beds, but also how these beds are used. The hospital capacity can be influenced by several factors: The geographic distribution of patients: each locality has its own hospital. The type of resources currently in use: a patient who wants to have a particular diagnosis by the nearest hospital must visit the hospital where it exist the necessary equipment. availability of nurses, physicians, and support equipment in the hospital Hospital bed management may affect cost, quality and accessibility of care. The daily management of beds is closely related to the management of the hospital. To properly determine the capacity of beds, we need to track the activities of hospital patients (admission, assignment, stay and leave) [12]. The essential role of the hospital bed manager is to ensure balance between supply and demand for hospital beds. Bed management has a long-term component, which is the choice of the overall number of beds as well as sharing among different departments, and a short-term component for the daily bed allocation to patients. We conclude that hospital beds are important measure to determine the hospital capacity. The bed management does not only affect the overall capacity but it also impacts on cost, quality and accessibility of care [8]. 4.3. Models for hospital bed capacity management Many models were elaborated to determine the optimal number of beds inside a hospital. The simple and the most used models to evaluate the adequate capacity of a hospital department are based on the following index: N = (length of stay * number of patient)/number of days = number of patient per day / number of days The transfer between departments and the randomness of some of the index parameters are not considered in the above model. To overcome this shortness in the index model more elaborate stochastic models can be used. These models can be used for the short term (daily problem), the long term (monthly problem) or even for the case of a disaster. The Queuing models are short term models that are usually related to the operational level of the hospital capacity planning. These models characterize the relationship between the number of beds, the average occupancy levels and the number of patients transferred from one department to another based on the arrival time of patients, the nature of patients transferred from one unit to another and the period of use of each type of bed by the patients. [13]. The simulation models have the ability to consider the results of a decision on an item without carrying out the experiment on the actual item [9, 19]. They represent an artificial reproduction of what will happen when random parameters change their values. Sally C. Brailsford [16] proposed a simulation model to plan for the capacity of an intensive care in hospital using software called SIMUL8. Nowadays, the health sector, an increasingly privatized sector, seeks to find an effective planning of his resources for the long term. Taking into account the benefit t and also the quality of offered service. The medical ethics and money profit are two conflicting criteria. Multiple objective programming is a model that can deal with several criteria. Chu and Chu [6] proposed a goal programming model for hospital beds allocation in Hong Kong. The model takes into account the constraints of location, the demand constraint and constraints related to manpower. Black and Carter modeled the problem of allocating physicians to hospital department using a linear goal programming model [3]. The model focuses on the number of cases handled by a physician taking into account that the hospital must be able to generate enough revenue to cover fixed costs and variable production. 4.4. Conclusion The models developed for the hospital bed capacity planning problem are mostly categorized as stochastic models. These models are suitable for short and medium term. In this study, we are more concerned with the long term. This is way we focus on multiple objective programming models to plan for the bed capacity in Rashid hospital. Chapter 5 The model In this document, we follow Ben Abdelaziz and Masmoudi model to determine the optimal bed capacity in Rashid hospital [2]. The model was first developed for bed capacity planning in all public Tunisian hospital to evaluate of missing beds. 5.1. Notations l: specialty in a hospital department, . We have two kinds of specialties. Those called primary health specialties for which we cannot transfer the patient to another hospital and secondary healthcare specialties that in case of no hospital bed available can be transferred to another hospital. : A subset of primary healthcare specialties that can be served by the same hospital bed (for which we are using the same equipment), . : A subset of secondary healthcare specialties that can be served by the same hospital bed, . : the set of specialties that may be served by the same type of nurses , : the set of specialties that may be served by the same type of physician , 5.2. The parameters : Existing beds in specialty in the hospital, . : the number of beds that can be added in the specialty in the hospital, . : ratio of nurses per bed, i.e. the number of nurses needed to serve one patient in the specialty l, . : ratio of physicians per bed: The number of physicians needed to serve one patient in the specialty l, . : the stochastic yearly demand for the specialty in the hospital where express the random demand. 5.3. Decision variables : number of beds in the specialty in the hospital. 5.4. Constraints of the model Maximum and minimum number of beds in the hospital The demand for the set of specialties in the hospital must be satisfied The demand for the set of specialties must be satisfied otherwise transferred to another hospital (1) where express the number of vacant beds in the set of specialties and the number of missing beds in the set of specialties . 5.5. Objective functions The first objective function is to minimize the cost of adding and managing new beds where is the daily cost of creating and managing an additional bed of the specialty in the hospital during the period of investment. The stochastic constraint (1) is related to the satisfaction of the demand in secondary health care specialties. This transfer generates an additional cost (transfer cost). We have to use a recourse approach to get certainty equivalent constraint. In a recourse approach a penalty in the objective function is generated when the solution does not satisfy the random constraint. Here the penalty is the transfer cost. The expected transfer cost is where is the expected transfer cost. The third group of objective functions is to minimize the number of nurses in the groups of specialities in the hospital The fourth group of objective functions is to minimize the number of physicians in the groups of specialities in the hospital 5.6. The final model The final model is expressed as the following multiple objective stochastic program 5.7. Conclusion To solve the above multiple objective program, we need to transform it into an equivalent mathematical program. This transformation must be done following the problem hypotheses. In the next chapter, we will review these hypotheses and we will provide a suitable transformation of the program (P) into its certainty equivalent program. Chapter 6 The certainty equivalent program 6.1. Introduction The program (P) is a stochastic program as it presents two stochastic constraints (P.5) and (P.6) and a multiple objective program as it has several objective functions to minimize. To solve a multiple objective stochastic program, we need to transform it into its certainty equivalent program, under predefined approaches. In the next sections and using a chance constrained approach for the constraint (P.5), a discretization technique for the constraint (P.6) and a goal programming approach to deal with the two objective functions (P.3), and (P.4), we are going to build such a certainty equivalent program to the program (P). 6.2. Chance constrained approach The chance constrained approach transforms the random constraint into a deterministic constraint by considering as feasible solution those satisfying the uncertain constraints with a predefined level of probability [4]. Therefore, under a chance constrained approach, the following stochastic linear constraint where , and are random variables, will be transformed into the following deterministic constraint where is fixed level of probability. It means that a feasible solution must satisfy the uncertain constraints for all scenarios with a probability of occurrence higher than . The constraint (P.5) expresses the satisfaction of the demand on primary health care specialties (the demand on these specialties cannot be transferred to another hospital). It is difficult and not justified to satisfy the demand for all scenarios and especially scenarios with a small probability of occurrence. In the following, we propose a chance constrained approach to deal with the constraint (P.5). Therefore, the demand on the primary health care specialties Ar must be satisfied with a given fixed probability level as follows (3) The constraint (3) is a chance constraint. Using the model hypotheses, the random daily demands are normally distributed with a mean of and standard deviation of . Note that, Then, we can rewrite the chance constraint (3) as follows 6.3. Discretization approach We must satisfy almost surely the constraint (P.6). In stochastic programming, the normal distribution is approximated by a discrete distribution and then the constraint (P.6) can be rewritten as follows: The total recourse cost and the monthly transfer cost for secondary health care specialities are transformed using the discretization of the normal distribution of demands as follows: 6.4. Goal programming approach Charnes and Cooper [5] are the first to introduce the goal programming approach which is essentially used to transform multiple objective linear program into a linear program. This transformation consists on these steps: First, to fix a target values for some or all objectives (called also goals) Second, to transform the objective functions to constraints and third minimizing the difference between objective functions value and these goals. Using a goal programming approach, the following objective functions can be transformed to constraints as follows where and are the negative and the positive difference, respectively, between the fixed goals and the achievement , and the new objective function to optimize is expressed as follows where and are weights of the negative and the positive deviation, respectively. The objective functions (P.3) and (P.4) minimize the number of nurses and physicians in each hospital. As the actual number of nurses and physicians can not be reduced, a goal programming approach is used to deal with objectives (P.3) and (P.4) where goals must be equal to the number of nurses and physicians already working in hospitals. Let us denote by and the number of nurses and physicians, respectively, who already work on the specialty in the hospital. We denote by and the goals for the objective functions (P.3) and (P.4), respectively, and are expressed as follows where is the number of nurses in shortage in the group of specialties in the hospital, is the number of nurses in excess in the group of specialties in the hospital, is the number of physicians in shortage in the group of specialties in the hospital and is the number of physicians in excess in the group of in the hospital. From these goal constraints the additional cost that gives monthly salary of new nurses and physicians is as follows: where is the nurse salary per month in the group of specialty in the hospital and is the physician salary per month in the group of specialty in the hospital. The monthly salary of nurses and physicians who work in hospitals is fixed. Now, as all objective functions represent yearly expenses, we propose to combine all cost objectives which are the yearly transfer cost, the yearly cost of creating and managing new beds and the yearly salary of new nurses and new physicians, into a single objective function expressed as follows: 6.5. The certainty equivalent Finally, under a chance constrained approach and a goal programming approach, the certainty equivalent program to the multiple objective stochastic program (P) is expressed as follows: (CE) 6.6. Conclusion The chance constrained and the goal programming approaches are used to generate the certainty equivalent program. Their use is motivated by the problem hypotheses. In the next chapter, we are going to test the model using real data from Rashid hospital. Chapter 7 The experimental study In this chapter, we discuss the results obtained by the previously presented model for hospital bed capacity planning using data from Rashid hospital. The data was obtained from the administration of the hospital and is related to a recent period (2009-2011). The quality of results here is highly linked to the quality of the input data. We are going in the following to report some of the data given to us as well as the model output. 7.1. Model parameters From the Rashid hospital we collected data related to the following parameters: Number of patients / specialty New admissions/ day Discharges / day Stay of every patient Number of Physicians / specialty Number of physicians / team Number of teams / specialty Number of hours worked by each physician Number of patients assigned to each team / day Number of nurses / specialty Number of beds / specialty A description of the system of operation of each specialty. In this document we cannot disclose the information that was given to us. We refer the reader to the manuals that the hospital published yearly and that are related to his yearly activity. 7.2. Lingo 12.0 To solve the linear programming (CE), we used the commercial software Lingo 12.0. Recently Lingo was ranked by INFORMS (www.informs.org) as one of the most valuable package for linear and nonlinear mathematical programming problems. For the mixed integer linear program (CE), Lingo uses a modified Branch and Bound algorithm [17]. 7.3. Hospital beds The Rashid hospital must have 467 beds in the total. It means that 15 supplementary beds must be added to the hospital. The number of optimal beds in each speciality is presented in the following table: Specialty Current number of beds Optimal PSYCHIATRY 46 46 CARDIOLOGY 74 74 GASTRO 9 9 GEN.SURGERY 84 84 HEMATOLOGY 4 4 IDU 23 23 RESPIRATORY 22 22 NEUROSURGERY 39 44 TRAUMA 104 114 GERIATRIC 47 47 TOTAL 452 467 Table 1: number of optimal beds Only two specialities require additional beds. These specialities are the Neurosurgery where 5 beds must be added and the trauma speciality which requires 10 additional beds. This difference between the optimal number of beds and the current beds is also represented with the following histogram: 7.4. Nurses The Rashid hospital needs to hire 3 additional nurses to the hospital to cover the demand. The optimal number of nurses per specialty is represented in the following table: Spec. Current number of Nurses Optimal PSYCHIATRY 12 14 CAR