MNG2602_Questions_And_Answers
THE MARKET ENVIRONMENT CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING KEY VARIABLES:
Consumers
You need to explain here that the market consists of people with specific needs that
have to be satisfied and who have the financial ability to satisfy their needs.
Consumers are the chief component of the market environment. The organisation’s
marketing offering is targeted at the consumer.
There are five groups of consumers or markets, namely; consumer markets, industrial
markets, government markets, resale markets and international markets.
A practical application example can be that Standard Bank indicates in the case study
that they have 475 million consumers in 33 countries. They need to make sure that their
marketing offer satisfies all of these group’s needs.
We assume that Standard Bank has different products and that each of these products
are marketed to a specific segment and that the marketing and the product satisfies this
group’s needs.
Competitors
You needed to define competition as a situation in the market environment in which
several organisations with more or less the same products or services compete for the
support of the same consumers.
Competition often determine how much of a given product can be marketed and at what
price. Competition keeps excessive profits in check, acts as an incentive to higher
productivity and encourages technological innovation.
You could also have discussed that the intensity of competition in the environment is
determined by five factors, namely; possibility of new entrants or departures, bargaining
power of clients and consumers, bargaining power of suppliers, availability or lack of
substitute products or services and the number of existing competitors.
You could have also discussed the competitive market structures. For the practical
example, you can assume in South Africa that Standard Bank is in competition with
other South African Banks and you can provide some of these as examples.
Thus Standard Bank needs to always keep the competitor offerings in mind as well
locally as well as globally in the different markets that they compete.
Suppliers
Suppliers are entities who provide or do not wish to provide products, raw materials,
services and even financing to the business. The enterprise requires inputs from the
market environment.
, You needed to explain that inputs are primarily material including raw materials,
equipment, energy, capital and labour, which are provided by suppliers.
If a business cannot obtain the necessary inputs of the required quality in the right
quantity and at the right price for the achievement of its objectives it cannot hope to
achieve success in a competitive market environment.
A supplier for Standard Bank can be the company that supplies them with the plastic
magnetic strip cards that they give to customers or the deposit slips customers use in
the bank or the computer systems that are used in the bank.
All of these elements are needed for Standard Bank to compete in the market.
FEATURES OF THE NEW ORGANISATION AND THE CHALLENGES MANAGERS OF NEW
ORGANISATIONS HAVE TO FACE
FEATURES MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
Global Develop and use global strategic skills manage change
and transition
Manage cultural diversity
Design and function in flexible organisation structures,
Work with others and in teams,
Communicate effectively
Learn and transfer knowledge in an organisation
Networked, internally Individual managers must develop their skills as team
and externally members and team leaders
Team structures and processes must be developed for
each kind of team in the organization
Networks with outside organisations involve forming
alliances with customers, suppliers, and competitors
and an organization must develop systems to manage
information flows with the organisations with which it
forms alliances
Flat and lean Managers must develop negotiating skills, to enable
them to negotiate win-win situations for all involved in
flat structures
, The organisation must provide alternative incentive
systems and new concepts of career planning that
involve more horizontal than vertical movement
More frequent and effective communication between
senior and junior managers
Flexible • Multitasking
• Flexible labour practices
Diverse • Managers will need to shift their philosophy from
treating everyone alike to recognising differences and
responding to those differences in ways that will ensure
employee retention and greater productivity
• Training in diversity
• Developing listening skills
ORGANISATIONS
• Organisations are open systems, which imply that organisations influence their
environments and vice versa.
• During the previous century, the environment was much more stable and the traditional
form of organisation, the bureaucracy worked well.
• Contemporary organisations function in an environment characterised by major, ongoing
chance, hence the emergence of “new” organisation forms.
FORCES THAT CAUSE ORGANISATIONS TO CHANGE
• Organisations worldwide are changing because the environments in which they operate
have changed drastically over the past decade or two and the pace of change is
accelerating.
The Forces That Stimulate Change Are:
• Globalisation and the global economy
• Advances in technology
• Radical transformation of the world of work
• Increased power and demands of the customer
• Growing importance of intellectual capital and learning
• The learning organization
• New roles and expectations of workers
, WEBER’S MODEL PROVIDED A BLUEPRINT OF HOW AN ENTIRE ORGANISATION
COULD OPERATE BY SUBSCRIBING TO SEVEN DESIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS:
• Division of labour.
All duties are divided into simpler, more specialised tasks so that organisations
can use human and other resources more efficiently.
• Hierarchy of authority.
The organisation has a hierarchical structure that ranks job position according to
the amount of power and authority each possesses.
• Power and authority
It increases at each higher level and each lower-level position is under direct
control of one higher level.
• Rules and procedures.
A comprehensive set of rules and procedures that provide the guidelines for
performing all organisational duties is clearly stated and employees must adhere
strictly to them.
• Impersonality.
The rules and procedures apply to all employees impersonally and uniformly.
• Employee selection and promotion.
All employees are selected based on technical competence and promoted
according to their job performance.
• In addition, according to this traditional model, the organisation’s environment is
analysed in terms of one country, even in multinational organisations.
THE MARKET ENVIRONMENT CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING KEY VARIABLES:
Consumers
You need to explain here that the market consists of people with specific needs that
have to be satisfied and who have the financial ability to satisfy their needs.
Consumers are the chief component of the market environment. The organisation’s
marketing offering is targeted at the consumer.
There are five groups of consumers or markets, namely; consumer markets, industrial
markets, government markets, resale markets and international markets.
A practical application example can be that Standard Bank indicates in the case study
that they have 475 million consumers in 33 countries. They need to make sure that their
marketing offer satisfies all of these group’s needs.
We assume that Standard Bank has different products and that each of these products
are marketed to a specific segment and that the marketing and the product satisfies this
group’s needs.
Competitors
You needed to define competition as a situation in the market environment in which
several organisations with more or less the same products or services compete for the
support of the same consumers.
Competition often determine how much of a given product can be marketed and at what
price. Competition keeps excessive profits in check, acts as an incentive to higher
productivity and encourages technological innovation.
You could also have discussed that the intensity of competition in the environment is
determined by five factors, namely; possibility of new entrants or departures, bargaining
power of clients and consumers, bargaining power of suppliers, availability or lack of
substitute products or services and the number of existing competitors.
You could have also discussed the competitive market structures. For the practical
example, you can assume in South Africa that Standard Bank is in competition with
other South African Banks and you can provide some of these as examples.
Thus Standard Bank needs to always keep the competitor offerings in mind as well
locally as well as globally in the different markets that they compete.
Suppliers
Suppliers are entities who provide or do not wish to provide products, raw materials,
services and even financing to the business. The enterprise requires inputs from the
market environment.
, You needed to explain that inputs are primarily material including raw materials,
equipment, energy, capital and labour, which are provided by suppliers.
If a business cannot obtain the necessary inputs of the required quality in the right
quantity and at the right price for the achievement of its objectives it cannot hope to
achieve success in a competitive market environment.
A supplier for Standard Bank can be the company that supplies them with the plastic
magnetic strip cards that they give to customers or the deposit slips customers use in
the bank or the computer systems that are used in the bank.
All of these elements are needed for Standard Bank to compete in the market.
FEATURES OF THE NEW ORGANISATION AND THE CHALLENGES MANAGERS OF NEW
ORGANISATIONS HAVE TO FACE
FEATURES MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
Global Develop and use global strategic skills manage change
and transition
Manage cultural diversity
Design and function in flexible organisation structures,
Work with others and in teams,
Communicate effectively
Learn and transfer knowledge in an organisation
Networked, internally Individual managers must develop their skills as team
and externally members and team leaders
Team structures and processes must be developed for
each kind of team in the organization
Networks with outside organisations involve forming
alliances with customers, suppliers, and competitors
and an organization must develop systems to manage
information flows with the organisations with which it
forms alliances
Flat and lean Managers must develop negotiating skills, to enable
them to negotiate win-win situations for all involved in
flat structures
, The organisation must provide alternative incentive
systems and new concepts of career planning that
involve more horizontal than vertical movement
More frequent and effective communication between
senior and junior managers
Flexible • Multitasking
• Flexible labour practices
Diverse • Managers will need to shift their philosophy from
treating everyone alike to recognising differences and
responding to those differences in ways that will ensure
employee retention and greater productivity
• Training in diversity
• Developing listening skills
ORGANISATIONS
• Organisations are open systems, which imply that organisations influence their
environments and vice versa.
• During the previous century, the environment was much more stable and the traditional
form of organisation, the bureaucracy worked well.
• Contemporary organisations function in an environment characterised by major, ongoing
chance, hence the emergence of “new” organisation forms.
FORCES THAT CAUSE ORGANISATIONS TO CHANGE
• Organisations worldwide are changing because the environments in which they operate
have changed drastically over the past decade or two and the pace of change is
accelerating.
The Forces That Stimulate Change Are:
• Globalisation and the global economy
• Advances in technology
• Radical transformation of the world of work
• Increased power and demands of the customer
• Growing importance of intellectual capital and learning
• The learning organization
• New roles and expectations of workers
, WEBER’S MODEL PROVIDED A BLUEPRINT OF HOW AN ENTIRE ORGANISATION
COULD OPERATE BY SUBSCRIBING TO SEVEN DESIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS:
• Division of labour.
All duties are divided into simpler, more specialised tasks so that organisations
can use human and other resources more efficiently.
• Hierarchy of authority.
The organisation has a hierarchical structure that ranks job position according to
the amount of power and authority each possesses.
• Power and authority
It increases at each higher level and each lower-level position is under direct
control of one higher level.
• Rules and procedures.
A comprehensive set of rules and procedures that provide the guidelines for
performing all organisational duties is clearly stated and employees must adhere
strictly to them.
• Impersonality.
The rules and procedures apply to all employees impersonally and uniformly.
• Employee selection and promotion.
All employees are selected based on technical competence and promoted
according to their job performance.
• In addition, according to this traditional model, the organisation’s environment is
analysed in terms of one country, even in multinational organisations.
