Category: critical thinking

Gender Role Stereotypes in Magazines Essay

Men are supposed to lead and women are supposed to be submissive and follow orders. Women are supposed to be pretty, sexually appealing, and to be looked at. Men do not cook, sew, or do any arts or crafts. Being a secretary, nurse, or teacher is a woman’s job and is too feminine for a man to do. Women are responsible for cooking, housework, and raising kids. Men are supposed to be physically strong and shouldn’t show any emotional vulnerability. These are just some of the many gender stereotypes that have globally evolved since time and have sunk deeply into the way our society functions. Gender stereotypes are not something that we are born with; they are something that we develop based on what society teaches us. Growing up in communities flooded with stereotypes, we have become accustomed to them and have reached a point where the majority of us don’t even see anything wrong with them. Even those who are negatively impacted by these absurd gender stereotypes find ways to change themselves according to these social classifications, and those who don’t change are seen as outsiders. A huge promoter of these stereotypes especially in children and teenagers are magazines and advertisements. The sexual aspects, beauty standards, and dreamy body images that they display of both men and women to promote their products turn into role models for young minds which eventually leads them to think that this is what they should look like and this is what they should aspire to be. In the day and age of photo editing, pretty much all photos of models, male or female, go through editing. For example, male models are made to look more muscular, are heightened, are given even and flawless skin tones, and are often made to look as if they are in charge.

On the other hand, for female models, the thighs and waists are made thinner, their sexual aspects are enhanced, they are made to look more sexually vulnerable, and they are overall made to be the perfect ‘eye candy’ for the audience to look at. This in turn makes it unhealthy for the teens and youth that see these ads and magazine covers, as the body images and intense beauty that they crave and work to achieve may be unrealistic and may be even unachievable. This can leave them in a state of depression and self-hatred. According to statistics, 43% of girls in just grades 1-3, an age group at which no child should be self-conscious about their body, said that they want to be thinner. To achieve the body image they desire, 30% of high-school girls and 16% of high-school boys have an eating disorder as they are afraid of gaining weight and straying away from the body image they want. Not only do many of these magazines and ads display these stereotypical pictures, but many of them also send gender stereotypical messages such as in Dolce and Gabbana’s ad for their jeans.

The image is of a muscular, half-naked man with jeans on, who is on top of and holding down a sexualized and vulnerable woman in a black dress who is surrounded by similar-looking men. This image in my view does a poor job of selling the jeans but does a great job of sending out the gender stereotype that men are superior and stronger than women. Although many children and teens may not see this stereotype in the ad, that message that the man is stronger than the woman will remain in their heads, and with other ads constantly bombarding them with these other stereotypical messages and influences, these thoughts will evolve in their brains and will eventually become the way they think daily. Gender stereotypes not only affect the way that youth and teens think and behave but also play a huge hand in determining their career paths. According to our traditional classifications of male and female jobs, careers in medicine, nursing, and teaching were seen as feminine, and jobs in science, engineering, and construction were seen as masculine. Though people have changed their thinking and now we see more men in careers such as doctors and teachers, but there are still very few women and girls in areas such as computer science, engineering, and mathematics.

It is statistically proven that there is a huge gender gap in careers in the Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) field which at the time is male-dominated. To empower girls to break the gender stereotype barrier and pursue careers in the STEM fields, there are communities such as the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) (www.scwist.ca.). To provoke change in our gender-stereotypical society, we must educate each other and our children and act against any open display of gender stereotypes. The question here is not why or how these stereotypes were made, but how can we cleanse our society from them. If you come across any advertisement, poster, or any sort of media that reeks of gender stereotypical messages, be sure to communicate with that company and let them know about what you feel in regards to it and how they can improve their mode of media to be more acceptable. We as consumers have the power to choose what succeeds and what doesn’t, so if you see a specific company that is sending out gender stereotypical messages even after complaints, you can and should boycott their products and encourage others to do so as well to get your message across. The time has come to leave behind these old-fashioned gender stereotypes and to rise above them. To let everyone be free from gender barriers, for being a male or female defines our gender, but our gender doesn’t define who we are as people, so it shouldn’t limit us from reaching our full potential as individuals.

Essay on Communication and Decision Making

The movie, the blind side started when a homeless African American boy named Micheal Oher who is known as Big Mike got accepted to an exclusive private school called Wingate Christian School with the help of coach Burt Cotton as he saw potential in Micheal’s athletics abilities. The story takes place when Leigh Anne Tuohy sees Micheal walking alone in the freezing streets and decides to bring the homeless teenager home for the night. Leigh Anne soon realizes that Micheal is a sweet boy who is a victim of circumstances of a mother who is a drug addict and a father whom he has no idea of since he left when Micheal was a week old. The story continues as Leigh Anne starts to get curious about Micheal Oher’s life and knows she wants to give him a good and better life. Throughout the movie, Leigh Anne, her husband, and children bond with Micheal, and not long after they start to feel like he is a part of the family which makes Leigh Anne and her husband, Sean Tuohy want to be Micheal Oher’s legal guardian for good. Although they knew that Micheal was not from a good background and had been drifting in and out of the school system for years, they never cared about it and believed that Micheal was a good genuine boy. The Tuohy family did their best to help out Micheal as they all treated him as their own family and never bothered what people around them had to say. Thus, many communication theories can be found in the movie that can be related to the scenes which is why I chose this movie, The Blind Side as my case study.

Explanation of theory

The first communication theory that can be seen is the Functional Perspective on group decision-making theory. According to Google, the theory is about how the interaction of a group may have a positive effect on final decisions. The term “functional perspective” is used to describe and predict performances when certain criteria for communication functions are fulfilled. In other words, the Functional Perspective on group decision-making theory is a communication theory that deals with the decisions made by groups. As for this theory, it involves four functions for effective decision-making. The first function for effective decision-making is Analysis of the problem, which is a realistic analysis of the current situation that includes assessment of current threats and the nature, extent, and probable cause of the problems. The second function is the Goal setting. This function of effective decision-making highlights the group’s needs such as clarifying to purpose and as well as criteria for judging proposed solutions. The third function is the Identification of alternatives that are better as much as possible to increase the chance of identifying acceptable solutions. Lastly, is the evaluation of positive and negative features of each alternative. This is because some group tasks may have a positive bias that believes spotting the favorable characteristics of choices is more important than identifying negative qualities. However, as long as you prioritize the four characters, the order does not matter once all four functions are covered.

Scene

A functional Perspective on group decision-making theory can be seen is when the beginning of the movie when Tony Hamilton asks the coach, Burt Cotton about taking his son, Steven into a private school for his good athletic skills. He then asked if he could get Big Mike into the school too as the boy has no one else and it would be good to get him into the school too. The coach, Mr. Burt Cotton then saw how Micheal Oher played basketball with Steven and he immediately was impressed with Micheal’s skills in it and believed that the teenager had some good athletic abilities. Mr. Burt Cotton proceeded and had a meeting with the school administrators to ask for their approval for Michael to be accepted into the school. All of them did not agree to accept Micheal into the exclusive private school as based on his records, they believed that Micheal would not be able to be successful in the school. This is due to his lack of records, a bad average of grade points as well as a sixth percentile of measured IQ. Mr.Cotton on the other hand still fought to get the school administrators to get Micheal in the school. Although at first the reason he agreed to help Micheal get into the school was because of his potential athletic abilities, he put it aside and reminded the school administrators that the school’s name “Christian” has a deeper meaning than just a word. He convinced them by saying that admitting Micheal into the school is not just about sports, they should admit him because it is the right thing to do. Thus, that has convinced them to accept the homeless teenager, Micheal Oher into the exclusive private school called Wingate Christian School.

Connection

The theory of Functional Perspective on group decision-making can be seen in the scene when they had the meeting to admit Micheal Oher. The theory is about the decisions made by groups of people and analyzes four effective decision-making. In the scene you can see how they analyze the problem which is the first function of effective decision-making, they took a look at Micheal’s reports and saw that the reports stated were not anywhere close to ideal. Mr. Cotton then proceeds with the goal-setting function by explaining to the school administrators which is clarity as to the purpose and criteria for judging proposed solutions. He also put in the identification of alternatives by saying that Micheal is a brave kid who is willing to even try to get into the exclusive private school even though he knows his records are bad. Although at first, the school administrators were not convinced, the last function which is the evaluation of positive and negative features of each alternative was able to be seen as Mr. Burt Cotton convinced them that the Wingate Christian School should always hold on to their meaning of the school’s name and not just accept the ideal types of students which is why Micheal was accepted to the school. Thus, this proves that the theory relates and can be seen in the movie scene.

Explanation of Theory

The theory of social judgment theory also can be seen in the movie, Social judgment theory is defined as the perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes. It is the attitude change by judgemental processes and effects. In different explanations, persuasion occurs at the end when a person can understand a message and then compares the position it advocates to the person’s position on that issue. Carolyn Sherif stated that attitude consists of three different zones of attitude. The first one is the Latitude of acceptance which is the range of ideas that a person may see as reasonable or worthy of consideration. They tend to remain in that area due to the assimilation effect. Put differently, this first zone of attitude can be known as comprising the range of positions one is ready to agree to or accept. Next is the Latitude of rejection, which is the reasonable or objectionable ideas in a specific person’s mind. In this zone, all ideas and opinions of a person will be found unacceptable. The higher the rejection latitude, the more involved a person will be in the issue which will soon be a lot harder to persuade. This is caused by the contrast effect idea present in this zone tends to be seen as more hostile than it originally is. Thus, the attitude is highly unlikely to occur. The third zone of attitude is the Latitude of Non-commitment which contains the range of opinions and ideas that are indifferent to one’s mindset. The title of Latitude of Non-communication implies that the idea as a person does not accept as well as reject and is essentially irrelevant to them. In much simpler words, Opinions or ideas that fall into this zone are most likely to achieve the desired attitude change. Ego-involvement is also an important aspect in the social judgment theory as the importance or centrality of an issue to a person’s life oftentimes is demonstrated by membership in a group with a known stand. This is because, when judging the message there are three different definitions to be kept in mind. Firstly is the anchor point which is an individual’s favorite position within the latitude of acceptance as it secures all other thoughts of the certain topic. Secondly, the assimilation effect that defined as a perceptual error where people will judge messages that fall in the zone of latitude of acceptance that is less discrepant from their anchor than they are, and lastly, the contrast effect. The contrast effect is the perceptual zone where people judge messages that fall in the latitude of rejection.

Scene

In the movie that I chose for my case study, the blind side. A scene from 1:43:30 where Micheal and Leigh Anne met Jocelyn Granger who is the assistant director of enforcement of NCAA is where the theory can be found. The scene starts with Micheal being interviewed by Jocelyn who keeps on asking him questions if he knew his adopted parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tuohy all went to Ole Miss University. Both of them were active in sports where Mr. Tuohy played basketball at Ole Miss and Mrs. Tuohy was a cheerleader at the university. She also asked Micheal if he knew that his tutor was also a graduate of Ole Miss University. Jocelyn proceeded by asking if his tutor, Ms Sue, had ever influenced Micheal to attend Ole Miss University and he agreed. Micheal was then informed that his new adopted family made generous donations to his parent’s former university of Ole Miss where Micheal was convinced to continue his studies there too. She also told him that his family owns a condo in Oxford for their convenience to attend as many athletic events as possible which led her to say that his new parents, Mr and Mrs Tuohy are her definition of boosters. Jocelyn highlighted that her point of interviewing Micheal is to find out his odd predicament as she believes that the Tuohy family brainwashed Micheal to get into Miss Ole University. She continued by saying that many fear that Mr. and Mrs. Tuohy took Micheal into their lives and adopted him to make sure that he would play football for the University of Ole Miss Mississippi. This made Micheal mad and confused which led him to walk out of the interview and have a fight with his new mother, Leigh Anne Tuohy as he asked if everything that was said by Jocelyn was true.

Connection

So in this social judgment theory, some categories determine the influence of how others evaluate persuasive information. From the scene, you can see the persuasive attempt by Jocelyn to influence Micheal, we can see some of these factors Micheal has as he evaluates the persuasive information as well as the categories the information given falls into. The first zone of attitude that can be seen from Micheal is Latitude of Noncommitment as he would not be opposed to except being persuaded to believe that they support the old mess and that they want Micheal to do well which is why he believes that they support their son to attend Ole Miss University because of his own choice not because they graduated from the University. Jocelyn tried to convince and give hits to Micheal that the only reason why the family adopted him was to get a scholarship to their favorite football team in their favorite university to continue their legacy of sports achievements in the University.

Decision Making in Management Essay

Abstract

This paper discusses topics in managerial decision-making. Some of the topics that are discussed in the paper are bounded awareness and rationality, overconfidence in business, effects of emotion in decision-making, handling emotional team members, escalation of commitment, and revamping the failed process and tools for value creation. The paper provides real-life examples for the different topics.

Topics of Managerial Decision-making

Decision-making is a process by which everyone considers the various opportunities and risks by evaluating alternatives and pursuing the priorities and the necessary actions. Everyone in their daily life performs decision-making either consciously or subconsciously. The decisions that are made by the people are affected by various factors. According to (Kahneman and Tversky, 1983), Decisions are like speaking or writing, people always do it, intentionally or unconsciously. The decision made is influenced by different factors such as bounded awareness, level of confidence, emotional state, and many more. According to (Polic, 2009), with the knowledge of the decision-making process, one can help in avoiding a bad decision and choosing good ones.

Bounded awareness

According to (Chugh et. al, 2007), people usually fail to perceive the process stimuli which are easily available. Human psychology usually fails to see and use the information available to them. This phenomenon is described as bounded awareness. The bounded awareness phenomenon can be experienced within the people with some of the tests which shows inattentional blindness and change blindness process. People tend to decide the level of knowledge that they have which can lead to loss of the obvious facts.

An example of bounded awareness that I experienced in my career was the obvious business process that a CEO should have known. In that startup, we were into the development of a product that targeted small-scale firms in case of credit transaction record keeping and reminder for the collection. Before the development phase of the product, the idea should have been validated but since everyone at the office was from an Engineering background, nobody knew the idea of product validation and product market fit. So following the lead we developed a mobile application that helped people store their transactions which were done in credit with features to remind them about the payment date. After the development and release of the mobile application (Munsi), when we visited the small stores and shops, most of them had a problem that we guessed but nobody wanted to use the mobile application platform to solve that problem because they were used to the paper system. Very few young people adopted our solution but the data clearly showed that the solution that we developed was not required for the major percentage of the target market so we had to shut down the project.

After studying some of the books such as Lean Startup, Zero to One, and personal MBA books, the team realized the product development stages and idea validation. The decision taken by the CEO was a bounded awareness which we failed to see. We could have saved around four months if we had a BBA or MBA graduate on the team.

Bounded rationality

Bounded rationality is a behavioral model in which human rationality is very limited, and very closely linked with the situation and the cognitive power of the human being. Bounded rationality can lead us to the distinction between the normative and descriptive nature of human behavior. This human behavior theory considers the assumption that mental process is either constrained or not constrained. The bounded awareness prevents people from focusing on easily observable and relevant data. From the available options, people make a decision that can lead to bounded rationality. Inattentional blindness and change blindness are some of the phenomena that are experienced by the decision-maker.

(Neisser, 1979) presented a videotape of two visually superimposed teams passing basketballs, one wearing light-colored shirts and the other wearing dark-colored shirts, and asked participants to count the number of passes made between the two teams. Because the players were superimposed on top of each other, the task was moderately difficult. To score accurately, participants had to pay close attention to the task. Yet only 21 percent of participants reported seeing a woman abruptly walking through the group of players carrying an open umbrella. Repeated viewing of the videotape, without the counting task, reveals that the woman is unambiguously visible in the middle of the screen for a significant part of the video.

Change detection researchers have shown that the data they receive visually does not change (Simons, 2000). Interestingly, sometimes people can not explain the change that occurred, but they display traces of their pre-change memories.

An example of bounded rationality can be experienced in day-to-day business decisions. Most of the business decisions taken by individuals can be considered bounded rationality. This is because most people don’t have an idea of the decision process and make the decision from the available parameters. The decisions that are not the optimal ones are later realized when other parameters are realized. An example can be considered in a decision that I took to repair my school van for repairing. There was an odd sound produced by the vehicle tire while running. Listening to the sound we changed the back shaft but still sound was there. Later on, performing a full inspection, a tire had a broken bearing which produced the sound. The decision that I took didn’t solve the problem as I was not an expert in the field of automobiles and this led to a bounded rational decision that did not solve the problem.

Effect of emotion on decision making

The emotional state of the decision maker influences the decision. Usually, the emotional state of the decision maker can either speed up the decision or speed down the decision. An emotional state involves a certain set of feelings that arise from a certain activity or under certain circumstances (Duque et. al, 2013). Usually, the person without the knowledge of the influence of emotion on decision-making suffers a lot from this phenomenon. In the case of the organization, the effect of emotion in certain decisions can cause a bias. In the case of the HR department, the hiring and firing can go wrong leading to disruption of the team. That is why fairness-related decision-making is an important decision during the decision-making process. Traditional theories underline the role of inequity and aversion, although recent research shows increasingly that emotion plays a critical role in such decision-making (Zheng el. al, 2017). Positive emotion can speed up the while negative emotion can speed down the decision-making process. Generally, difficult decisions are made with a very low amount of analysis during the influence of positive or negative emotions.

An example of the effect of emotion on decision-making that I experienced was when I got the message that our pet died. I was in the middle of decision-making when I received the message via call. After hearing the news, I couldn’t focus on the meeting and got out by handing over the work to the CEO. I couldn’t work properly that day. I tried to stay away from the decision-making process in the organization that day as I knew that if I made any decisions, it might be suboptimal.

Approaching an emotional employee

The business workplace consists of a variety of different people. With no doubt, there can be emotional team members. A manager who doesn’t have an idea of emotional team members might hurt the feelings of employees unintentionally. That is why managers should learn about handling the emotional team members.

The managers should always read the emotional signals and cues. Such kind of information and data can be an asset for the organization as it can be used to train the managers as well as handle different situations. The manager can read body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and other cues to find out the emotional state of the person. The manager can also empathize with the team members who are hurt which can lead to a good relationship that can be productive for the team. Managers can study the different triggers of the team members to utilize them for various opportunities in the future. Managers can help people when they get stuck in some of the work as people tend to get emotional. In such conditions, managers can assist the team member but the manager should carefully handle such situations as people need some space in such time. While consulting the team members, managers should be aware of the selection of the word.

As a product manager/COO of Dabali Mart in my professional career, I have to look after the team and their works and guide them. We perform monthly review of each team member to understand them, their problems, and their learnings. Consulting is done in such a meeting. In the last meeting, one of the leads used the word complaint for a team member who was a good performer. That word was offensive to her and triggered her emotional state. However, I convinced her that she was doing great and there was no complaint. After the review, I shared the knowledge of approaching emotional team members with the lead engineer.

Escalation of commitment

People tend to make a potential commitment and then step up the decision to invest time, resources, and money into something to stop. It happens to all and results in a mistaken judgment for private and organizational purposes. Some of the interviews with successfully manufactured entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg indicate that ‘Don’t give up’ (Bort, 2015) is an easy piece of advice to succeed. However, managers must understand when to quit as it leads to escalation of commitment. Increased commitment is an activity that involves a sustained devotion of resources to the project despite negative feedback from decision-makers on the performance of the project (Brockner, 1992). Escalation has been linked to significant losses due to project failures and delays in the area of management information systems (Desai & Chulkov, 2019). There is little evidence that substitution theories provide a better explanation than self-justification. However, self-justification theories are likely to lead to a more complete explanation for the escalation of commitment (Mark, 2019).

The escalation of commitment that I faced in a larger company was an IT company that had a huge product used by many health analytics firms in the US. The engineering team required a new way of delivering the product as the old one had lots of unmaintainable code. This caused some serious loss in the development of the new features and fixing bugs in the code. This was the result of the escalation of commitment of the engineers who didn’t write the code following an appropriate design pattern and always pushed that task for later.

Currently, that team has implemented correcting the codebase with a new codebase following the design patterns, with proper code review and intense testing of the application. The older process had led the team to chaotic codes. The older style had affected some of the software engineers(stakeholders) who were good and left the organization as they didn’t like the product’s architectural design.

Tools of value creation and a way to use it.

Sustainable value creation for a business can help the business achieve a significant opportunity. With the help of the tools for value creation, one can use it for having a significant value creation in the decision-making process. Various fields are to be considered in managerial decision-making for the value creation. With the help of value chain analysis, one can analyze the internal firm’s activity. This method helps to know which activities are the most valuable ones. The Porter’s value chain model consists of primary activities and support activities. Primary activities consist of inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing, and sales and service. The support activities consist of firm infrastructure, human resource management, procurement, and technology. Although primary activities explicitly add value to the production process, they do not necessarily matter more than supporting activities. Competitive advantages nowadays arise primarily from technological improvements and developments in business models or processes. Activities such as IT, research and development, and general management are therefore typically the most important source of distinct advantage.

In the case of Dabali Mart, we are trying to create a competitive advantage tool by using a cost advantage and differentiation strategy. We are trying to provide the products at lower cost and differentiate ourselves from others with better customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

The managerial decision-making topic is an important field that managers should know. With the knowledge of bounded awareness, bounded rationality, overconfidence in business, effect of the emotions in decision-making, handling emotional team members, escalation of commitment, and value creation. With this knowledge, one can make a wise and proper decision. However, with experience of the wrong decisions and knowledge, one can make an optimal decision in their business and organization.

References

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4. Desai, M., & Chulkov, D. (2019). Escalation Of Commitment In MIS Projects: A Meta-Analysis. International Journal Of Management & Information Systems, 13(2), 29-38.
5. Duque, Mary & Turla, Caroline & Evangelista, Lucille. (2013). Effects of Emotional State on Decision-Making Time. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences. 97. 137-146. 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.214.
6. Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1984) Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39 (4), pp.341-35
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11. Zheng, Y., Yang, Z., Jin, C., Qi, Y., & Liu, X. (2017). The Influence of Emotion on Fairness-Related Decision Making: A Critical Review of Theories and Evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1592. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01592Murphy, Alan & Ledwith, Ann. (2007). Project management tools and techniques in high-technology SMEs. Management Research News. 30. 153-166. 10.1108/01409170710722973.

Decision Making in Family: Essay

This section examines the impact of international migration on left-behind children from the perspectives of children, unlike adults. The literature cited in this section used children as informants. The studies provide an alternative perspective concerning how left-behind children experience and deal with parents’ migration, with particular emphasis being placed on the children’s constructions and narratives in the processes of being left behind. As mentioned earlier, the experiences, feelings, and reactions of children affected by migration are often hidden within predominantly adult-centric literature on migration. However, few studies are aiming at exploring the lived experience of children left behind using children as primary informants.

In exploring the experiences of left-behind children, Olwig (1999) examined the life stories of left-behind children living with grandparents in Caribbean families. He revealed that from children’s perspectives, remittances represent the strong economic and social presence of the migrant parents. Remittance supports them as valued family members and affords them respect from the extended family and the community. Moreover, from the remittances they can feel emotional support from their parents, feel they are loved and cared for, and believe that their parents are working away from home for their benefit. The author further contends that it is the personal loyalty and family obligations entailed in such parent-child connectedness that enables these children to construct their homes despite the physical separation across national borders.

Another interesting ethnographic study was conducted in Mexico by Dreby (2010). She demonstrated that left-behind children were not powerless in their families, even though they suffered from parental migration. By presenting negative emotional and behavioral reactions towards migrant parents, these children could exert pressure on their parents to adjust the family’s migration trajectories, such as returning home more frequently, putting more resources into their children’s education, or sponsoring their migration. Consequently, the researcher concluded that separation from parents could magnify children’s power towards their migrant parents and enable them to wield more influence on the family’s decision-making. Huang and Yeoh (2011) studied the experiences of Indonesian and Filipino children left by migrant parents. It questions how left-behind children from these two countries understand, engage, and react to the various disruptions in their everyday lives, particularly care arrangements, brought about by their parents’ migration. Pivotal to these explorations is the attempt to highlight and understand children’s agency, resilience, and creativity in navigating parental migration.

Parreñas (2005) who carried out extensive research in the Philippines revealed how left-behind children experience their lives in transnational families and were deeply influenced by the conventional gender division of labor between the father and mother. Children from father-migrating families were more likely to accept their fathers migrating to fulfill the role of breadwinner, and the problems they reported were mostly about social discomfort and emotional gaps. In contrast, children from mother-away families usually struggled to recognize the economic contribution of their mothers and tended to blame them for the insufficient care they provided, claiming that they had been abandoned.

Another study conducted in the Philippines by Asis (2006) reported that left-behind children have their perceptions about their parents’ migration, for example, they could see it as providing an escape from parental control and that they could grow from such experiences. That is, they could seek social support, take responsibility, and resolve their problems in their ways to make sense of the challenges and opportunities brought about by parental migration.

Moreover, there is a qualitative study conducted in Vietnam that has examined the left-behind children’s agentic engagement in the process of migration decision-making and transnational communication in terms of how they imagine and construct parental migration (Hoang & Yeoh, 2014). The authors contend that children are constantly making meaning of and negotiating with both the macro and local socioeconomic contexts. In so doing, although they have avoided overemphasizing agency by shedding light on the constraints of structure, their approach has resulted in a dualism that regards the contexts as contradictions of the agency.

All in all, the existing academic researches provide a mixed and inconclusive picture concerning the costs and benefits that parental migration brings to left-behind children. Although differences in methodological approaches, research sites, sampling strategies, and instruments may partly explain the apparent contradictions in study outcomes, the multifaceted impact that parents’ migration can incur on left-behind children should be recognized. Although left-behind children may obtain material and financial resources from their migrant parents, they may experience challenges from parental absence such as emotional distance from migrant parents, lack of supervision and care, and increased levels of household responsibilities.

6 Changes in Gender Roles, Identities, and Relations

As the basic objective of my future study plan will deliberate on the change of gender roles in the family left behind, it is important to highlight the empirical studies on changes in gender roles, identities, and relations. Recently, the gender-neutral approach in migration research has been challenged. Moreover, there is an increasing feminization of children and a tremendous number of women are migrating to several countries. Especially, in Ethiopia, a considerable number of mothers are migrating to Gulf countries leaving their children and husbands behind.

Often, sending family members abroad is seen by sending family as hope for the family’s economy. IOM’s (2006) study confirms that male migration contributes to improving the situation of women because non-migrating female spouses undertake new roles and responsibilities that result in increased household power vis-à-vis their husbands.

Gender-differentiated migration results in the changed gendered division of labor within the household remaining behind (Chant, 1998). When male migrants predominate emigration flows, women, children, and the elderly were believed to be the most susceptible. Several studies show that the migration of male-headed households leads to women and children executing tasks conventionally done by men, including agricultural work (Xiang, 2007). Apart from assuming greater responsibilities and additional workloads, male migration led to more financial hardships and difficulties in disciplining children for women (Battistells & Conaco, 1998; Hugo, 2000) and lower access to food (Smith-Estlle & Gruskin, 2003). According to studies conducted by Gamburd (2000) and Sampang (2005), the situation is worrisome for left-behind daughters. Despite their mother’s best efforts, they are forced to leave school early and form families through early marriages.

Nevertheless, not all studies on male migration exhibited deleterious consequences for women. Women who remain in the source area from which men migrate also takeover multidimensional roles and responsibilities. They may become more independent, self-directed, and involved in decision-making within the family and the community. As Donnan & Werbner (1991) illustrate, long-term absences of males in Punjab due to migration offered wives better autonomy and decision-making power over land issues, children’s education, and household finances. Such women also possibly continue holding on to their increased power even after their husbands’ return. Thus, it was found that women generally enhanced better self-confidence by being vigorously involved in decision-making and also experienced an improvement in socioeconomic status. Ullah (2017) examines the impact of husbands’ migration on the lives of ‘left-behind’ women. The purpose of his research is to investigate how the ‘left-behind’ women turned around in the absence of their husbands and ultimately how they end up being empowered financially, socially, and politically

With the more recent feminization of labor migration, studies on the gender impact of female migration have also appeared. A vital issue related to whether the migration of women necessarily leads men to undertake the roles formerly assumed by women (Asis, 2000). Studies show that as women migrate, men do take on more caregiving roles. This is evident in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, the change is not always sustained after women’s return as was evident in the Philippines (Afsar, 2005). As Afsar (2005) notes, in Bangladesh, husbands who take on household tasks in the absence of their migrant wives often do so with the help of older children. Although men in Sri Lanka do not openly confess overtaking household and child-rearing tasks that are seen to threaten their sense of masculinity, Gamburd (2000) observed that there was more male participation than reported.

Migration changes family structures by changing the role women have in family decision-making. As women become financial providers, their decision roles within the household inevitably expand and their status and social privileges increase and grant them access to social roles otherwise not available to them. This change may also make women role models for other women in the community and upcoming generations. The remaining-behind wives are left to handle the remittances husbands send. However, the effect of handling responsibilities comes in varied ways. When there is consistency in remittances the experiences could be encouraging but when remittance flows inconsistently, wives may be placed in a burdensome condition while Rashid (2013) and Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo (2006) found that this situation causes women to become economically active and join employment. One should no doubt appreciate the increasing role of women in decision making and the resultant women empowerment in migrant households but at the same time, the mounting demand for such responsibilities and the forced work they have to do in agriculture and elsewhere should not be lost sight of (Agasty & Patra, 2014).

In most cases, as Gamburd (2005) reported, more left-behind children’s fathers appear to be experiencing greater stress in this reversed situation as more of them pick up drinking and drug-taking habits as a form of escape and this finally increases risks among children. It hurts children’s emotions and affects their academic performance. Children may also be averse to returning home and roaming on the streets if their fathers are usually drunk. Interestingly, migration also resulted in changes in social status and roles. In their studies, Rigg (2007) & Hugo (2002), reveal that after migration women’s status and role in the household economy and community improves. Such changes put pressure on spousal relations and threaten the masculinity of husbands.

Essay on Political Model of Decision Making

Introduction

McDonald’s has a rich history that began in 1954. The company was put in the spotlight by Ray Kroc. Over time, marketing thoughts have poured through and assisted the company with becoming one of the most prestigious fast-food brands all around the world. The brand name plan for the fast food was painstakingly contemplated and it was accompanied by a cheerful jokester character known as Ronald MacDonald (McDonald, 2007). The Big Mac and the Egg Muffin have been a portion of McDonald’s most inventive items. As far as marketing, the cheerful supper approach was additionally innovative as it captivates youngsters to eat at MacDonald’s a direct result of the toys they can get. Today, McDonald’s is additionally on the Internet fad, giving information to individuals all around the world with a tick of a mouse (McDonald’s Corporation, 2007).

McDonald’s is among the most famous fast-food brands on the planet. Begun in the 50s, McDonald’s currently brags of working, diversifying, and serving an overall chain of around 30,000 fast food eateries and more than 200,000 employees around the globe that plan, package, and offer a menu of prepared-to-eat foods. In particular, it has branches in Australia which is viewed as one of the most well-known food chains in the nation However, despite the laid-out brand of McDonald’s Corporation and opposition to its past accomplishments; it appears that there is a requirement for the management to rethink its picture.

The developing and clamoring populace of today is unique in the number of inhabitants in the earlier very long time with regards to well-being and wholesome perspectives and ways of behaving. Individuals today are more worried about their well-being and figures than at any other time in recent memory. The justification behind this expanded mindfulness is a direct result of the way that information is all over the place and each report and exploration about sustenance appear to connect fast foods with the developing number of heftiness. Besides, there are likewise various rising diet programs that advance and urge the general population to be figure cognizant.

This is an issue for McDonald’s because it has as of now gained the standing of a fast food that persistently gives oily undesirable food; though contenders have proactively made measures to diminish fats in their items. The company needs to take care of and shift its positive picture back. Thus, the issue or issue that ought to be settled by the management of Mcdonald’s is to settle on a decision as far as having another marketing approach that will cause the company to be more interesting to the current clients. This approach should make the McDonald’s image as something overwhelming, then, at that point, followed with the information that its items are as of now well-being cordial. In this approach, certain progressions will be made.

Comparison Between Decision-making in Certain and Uncertain Conditions

In McDonald’s, the management of the company is bound to a shared objective of executing strategic management which will empower the company to enjoy the competitive benefits. Strategic management can be characterized as the craftsmanship and study of planning, executing, and assessing cross-useful decisions that empower any organization to accomplish its targets. As referenced, quite possibly the main component to having a fruitful and practical strategic management framework is to settle on decisions strategically no matter what certainties. Decision-making is a vital piece of the bunch of factors that can influence the result of a shared objective.

Generally, scholars have seen decision-making as the multiuse interaction by which an issue is distinguished, solution goals are characterized, a preadmission is made (that is, a decision about how to settle on a certain condition and uncertain condition), choices are produced and assessed, and an option is chosen, carried out, and afterward followed up. This kind of judicious model of decision-making expects that the decision creator knows about the issue, knows that the decision should be made, has a bunch of choices, and possesses a measure for making the decision, however, these are huge suppositions. Such an ideal model of decision-making likewise accepts that the decision creator knows about every conceivable other option and that the individual chooses in the wake of analyzing them all. A contemporary methodology perceives those decisions are made in a programmed, instinctive design. In particular, the picture hypothesis asserts that individuals will take on a game plan that best accommodates their singular standards, current objectives, and plans for the future (Sims, 1994).

Decision-making interaction might incorporate social event information, laying out shared objectives, uncovering management choices to pick a specific game plan, and executing the arrangement. With this cycle, the management of the organization will want to recognize the most proper methodology to be utilized to cause the company to be more competitive. Moreover, the decision-making process is likewise noted as a focal component in having fruitful strategic management since it empowers the company to have an effective solution for a specific issue or issue.

The company should have the option to have strategic decision-making for the future to consistently support the strength of the company. Great decision-making can be credited as one of the fundamental factors that will assist the business in accomplishing its central mission and goal. This option is useful such that it can make the company more competitive and get by in the marketing climate (Campbell, Evans, and Storehouse, 2002).

Be that as it may, regardless of whether decision-making is supposed to be the focal element of strategic management, the most common way of making decisions is additionally considered a troublesome undertaking to deal with. More often than not, decision creators of a company are experiencing issues in choosing the solutions to a specific issue due to anxiety toward not coming by the normal outcomes. The trouble likewise lies in the way that there are decision producers who settle on decisions effectively without strategically dissecting what is truly required in going on. Henceforth, regardless of whether the goals of the decision producers are great, the outcome might go against them.

Analysis of Whether Decision-Making in Risky Conditions Takes Place in McDonald’s

The decision-making approaches (administrative, political, and incremental) are supposed to be a useful approach to the risks and issues of McDonald’s. Notwithstanding, these approaches have their impediments during risky conditions. For the administrative decision-making approach, one might say that its key restrictions incorporate judiciousness and the decision-making style. In the administrative model of decision-making, the supervisor has sole liability in the decision-making process. In such a manner, the objective sense is limited by the discernment of the director who will settle on the decisions. Henceforth, different conclusions and ideas may not be allowed an opportunity and this might influence the decision interaction in general.

Besides limited judiciousness, an administrative decision is likewise confined to a particular decision-making style. Since the chief or in this case, the marketing administrator is the one in particular who will settle on the decision, the decision-making style will be restricted to the supervisor’s information. This restriction might bring about ineffective and improper decisions which might demolish the issue or issue of the company.

Then again, the political decision-making approach might be impacted by the accompanying key limits: oblivious conformity, bunch shift, decision-making style, and social contrasts. This approach is made out of people groups or decision creators with alternate points of view and decision-making styles and thinking. In such a manner, the decision-making cycle will be impacted due to the conflicting contentions and thoughts of the different political gatherings. Also, the gathering shift for making decisions may influence the entire action or cycle of the decision-making. Rather than having strong decisions, different thoughts will seem which makes it hard for the group to choose thoroughly.

By bunch thinks, it is said that in fruitful gatherings, people figure out how to cooperate. They become a firm gathering as they work on explicit errands or ventures. Notwithstanding, firm gatherings might create and carry out techniques that are unseemly. This conduct is ascribed to changes in the gathering’s response to new or clashing information. Durable gatherings will generally cut off themselves to disrupt information, whether from inside or outside the gathering. This conduct was named mindless conformity by Janis (1982).

Three Types of Decision-Making Methods

Generally, most organizational management systems are supposed to be set up to allow decision-making at the least conceivable level. The management should settle on certain that decisions are conveyed equally to various offices and levels of organization to stay away from clashes. To do this, the management should have the option to pick the most suitable decision-making approach. In such a manner, different decision-making approaches can be utilized in business organizations. These decision-making approaches incorporate the administration approach, political approach, classical approach, or incremental approach.

The administrative decision-making approach is an approach where the decision producers incorporate chiefs, leaders, and different partners who stand firm on higher footings in the company. In this decision-making approach, the director or the head of the company has the option to do the decision-making without requesting the assessment from the workers. In this, all activities are being made by the supervisor or the corporate pioneers (Huffman and Piggery, 2003). The decision-making approach can be utilized in the issue and issue of McDonald’s by offering the chance for marketing directors to choose another approach that can be utilized to settle the issue.

The next decision-making approach is the political decision-making approach. Dissimilar to the administrative decision-making approach, the political decision-making approach has decision creators who are politically disposed and have profound information on various regulations. The political decision-making approach is supposed to be stubborn and steady. World-class political gatherings have the chance to settle on decisions by strongly contending on both the positive and negative sides of the decision to be made. In political decision-making, it is said that a few government officials may not be worried about the considerable results of the decisions; they are intrigued simply by their singular power and maybe by the support of their organizations.

The last decision-making approach is the incremental or classical decision-making approach. The incremental or classical sort of decision-making approach will in general glance at a particular decision as a little advance inside the interaction and thus sustain a progression of other comparable decisions. This implies that the management settles on the decision in a bit-by-bit process (Borden, 1995). The classical decision-making approach is by all accounts more logical and objective. The interaction engaged with a classical decision-making approach is profoundly taken into contemplation and the management is attempting to settle on the decision as fitting as conceivable to stay away from additional struggles.

Suggestion to Increase the Effectiveness in Decision-Making at McDonald’s

Making decisions can be difficult for several reasons such as the organizational structure, human behavior, organizational culture, uncertainties, incomplete information, multiple objectives, complexity of the problem, and anxiety, which directly influence the decision-making process. Regardless of the constraints, managers have to make decisions. Under any circumstances, decisions made cannot and should not be wrong because decisions are the mechanisms by which decision-makers attempt to accomplish the objectives of the organization; they are the means to an end.

In this particular unit, the decision-making approach that can be used is the decision-making model which is concerned with the development and application of standard decision rules based on formal logic derived from data, which is called the programmed decision. The greatest amount of concern of the manager in the decision-making process is to ensure that the decision yields optimal results and the same is expected for every one of the decisions made. In addition, the multiple objectives model can likewise be used using Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM).

The multiple objectives model tends to underline a normative view of decision-making. According to Robbins (2002, p.74), multiple criteria decision making (MECUM). involves (a) defining the problem; (b) identifying the decision criteria; (c) weighing the criteria; (d) generating alternatives; (e) rating each alternative on each criterion; and (f) computing the optimal decision. Based on the steps, the decision-maker identifies the problems or organizational objectives and then defines alternatives in terms of the potential outcomes for each of the alternatives.

As mentioned, the problem is about having a new marketing approach that will make the company more appealing to the target market. In this regard, the three criteria that can be considered include nutritional quality, service quality, and customer satisfaction. For this decision-making process, the significant stakeholders are marketing managers and the customers. After the survey process, it has been decided that the company should adhere to the criteria of having nutritional quality.

Summary

The primary objective of McDonald’s is to make people aware of each product on offer, feel positive about it, and remember it. The right message must be communicated to the right audience through the right media. Because of this, McDonald’s needs to give importance to and understand the value of both employees and customers. Blissful employees serve well and result in satisfied customers. This serves as a mutually advantageous arrangement for both the organization and the employee. McDonald’s has continuously done internal marketing and this is significant as it precedes external marketing. It goes in line with the ultimate point of creating service leadership as well as management service. This delivery process is the key to achieving the point of the company.

Decision-making is guiding an organization relative to challenges and opportunities appearing in the contingent environment. This environment is composed of those external elements that most directly affect organizational goal achievement and new goal development. Hence, organization system design and management should complement strategic actions taken for productive subsystems, as well as those providing yield delivery and other help functions for the organization. To the extent possible, the organization bases its actions on strategic decision-making that, rather than a one-time effort, is an ongoing process of adaptation of unique conceptions of mission, goals, structure, roles, and so forth relative to environmental dynamics.

Accordingly, the decision-making process is a knowledge-intensive process that can be considered a significant piece of successful strategic management. It’s undeniably true that McDonald’s should make decisions in its everyday operations; hence, to make sure that the decisions are made successfully, the decision-making process is significant. In addition, it is considered a central factor for having successful strategic management because it provides the company the assurance that each and all operations and activities made by the organizations adhere to a common goal that is set in the decision-making plans.

In strategic decision-making, some barriers and enablers are attributed as the principal factors for the success of the decisions made. Barriers might include different factors that may negatively affect the decision-making team as well as the decision-making process. Decision-making is a difficult process because of different factors. Such factors might include, environmental, cultural, and the cognitive reasoning of the one who will make the decision.

With everything taken into account, it very well may be concluded that even if decisions might come from different propositions, the result is as yet objective because of the decision-making process and approaches that have been developed to make decision-making objective rather than subjective. The decision-makers might use a specific decision-making model to make sure that the decisions made are neutral.

Steve Jobs Research Essay

Leadership as a concept has been universally accepted to play a great role in the success of the most high-ranking organizations in the world. Ideally, every business needs to have an organizational structure from bottom to top to succeed. This is done by prioritizing the hierarchy, identifying the guidelines, and identifying certain policies and procedures needed for a company to achieve goals and objectives. The organizational structure also depicts levels of management from the top-down model. According to Principles of Management (2015), Achievement-oriented leadership refers to a certain style of leadership in which the leader sets goals that are challenging for the staff. The person who sets these standards most likely has high expectations for his/her staff. Moreover, the leaders exhibit a high level of confidence that the subordinates will assume total responsibility for the assignments and work to complete these assignments. As a result, the staff will put forward extraordinary effort to get the job done. Steve Jobs was well known for exhibiting various leadership elements. Steve Jobs was also largely recognized as a visionary leader who had a brilliant mindset. His entrepreneurial mindset allowed him to create one of the most successful businesses known to mankind. Apple is one of the leading technological producers and billions of consumers possess Apple products. Jobs was able to understand how to apply certain leadership techniques and understand all the aspects of the business while working towards understanding how to be an achievement-oriented leader who is self-reflective and can make the necessary adaptations.

Steve Jobs was considered a visionary leader because he empowered his employees and inspired them to achieve greatness. Steve Jobs was considered to be a designer, thinker, and evolutionist by many. According to “Decoding Leadership: How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple to Spearhead a Technological Informal Economy,” Steve Jobs “created an ecosystem that allowed other entrepreneurs to thrive. By seizing the intersection between art, technology, and business, and channeling Apple to reflect that, Jobs reconceptualized how the consumer electronics industry should be organized and brought on board numerous start-ups to develop applications.” By doing this, Steve Jobs accelerated innovation which has gone above his original vision. Steve helped to establish Apple Inc. with his great companion Steve Wozniak in 1976. They started small and were working out of Jobs’ parent’s garage. Just four years later, Apple Inc. became a publicly-traded company and in 1984 they released their first Macintosh computer. During this time, the board of director’s focus became profits rather than quality (Steve Jobs Biography, 2015). Unfortunately, Steve Jobs was fired in 1985 because he had a very high objective voice and opinion toward management and elements of leadership within the company (Transformational Leadership, 2002). They were able to release products and keep their heads above water; but just barely. It wasn’t until his return in 1997 that a vision was restored to the company (Steve Jobs Biography, 2015). Job’s strategy was simple. The company was designing several different products, but none of them were any good. They needed to focus their efforts and create something great. So, Steve Jobs decided to build machines and frameworks that were not well suited to other systems (Yu, 2013). Throughout time, Jobs demonstrated his leadership ability by fighting through many obstacles imposed by his lower subordinates by going against traditions and presenting new innovative policies. What made Steve Jobs special in terms of his leadership capability was that instead of following certain company traditions, he pushed the company towards experiential learning which went against most of his subordinates. Steve Jobs was known to be one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators. Even though Steve Jobs had his setbacks, he fought until his vision became a reality.

In the early stages of Apple, Apple designed its products from scratch using unique chips, disk drives, monitors, and so on. During these times, Apple exported the Macintosh to other firms which resulted in them producing clones. Jobs did not like this and started his initiative to end this practice. According to the article “Decoding Leadership: How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple to Spearhead a Technological Informal Economy,” Jobs stated that “It was the dumbest thing in the world to let companies making crappier hardware using our operating system and cut into our sales.” Jobs was once fired for reasons like this because he had a very high objective voice towards management but Jobs came back stronger later and started to create products that were not compatible with competitors such as Microsoft. His long-term goal was to remodel Apple’s infrastructure to cater to his needs. One of the things that Jobs did which went against his organization was avoiding the judgments, and opinions of low-level managers when it came down to resource competition, and protecting Jobs’s original strategic vision that went against the mission statement of the firm. Jobs also implemented a forced problem-solving routine regimen among his lower-end managers which proved to not work and the organization disagreed with much of what Steve Jobs wanted to do. Other than this, Steve Jobs was overall considered a corporate leader, innovator, idealist, and one of the most successful entrepreneurs known to man. Because of his stubbornness and progressive way of thinking, Apple became what it was destined to become; A Fortune 500 Company.

If Steve Jobs left the organization, it would dramatically affect Apple for many reasons. One of the reasons is that Steve Jobs was the first one to fight against cloning Macintosh systems. He was right in doing that because he didn’t want other companies to steal and reproduce the same type of hardware. Moreover, Apple is only compatible with Apple products which makes the company unique in its way and it was a result of the initiative that Steve took. This is why Apple makes billions. Some consider Steve Jobs to be a narcissistic CEO but sometimes a strict achievement CEO is needed for a traditional company to progress. One of the initiatives that Jobs undertook was creating an easy-to-use music-playing marketplace which turned out to be a success. Another initiative that Jobs undertook was a great number of radical changes that positively changed the company. Under Jobs, Apple has become a “platform architect” according to the article “Decoding Leadership: How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple to Spearhead a Technological Informal Economy.” Under the change that occurred under Jobs During these radical changes, apple became ahead of the game by introducing the app store which eventually became the largest mobile app marketplace. Under Steve Jobs, he refused to allow old practices to define Apple, and his innovative mindset has brought the company great success overall. On the other hand, Tim Cook was known to be Jobs’s successor and he took Jobs’s advice by implementing a secondary market to better serve the consumers and enhance business. If Jobs would have left, the company would have operated traditionally and conservatively. The reason why Apple became what it is now is because Jobs took a radical and innovative approach to make Apple stand out and manifest billions of dollars in revenue from his strategic implementations. Overall, Jobs was a great leader from the start.

One of the steps that Apple can take to ensure that quality leadership practices are developed and executed in the future is implementing a board of directors. Instead of having managers argue amongst each other in regards to pursuing innovation or keeping the traditional way, a board of directors of all levels can all think together and decide which leadership practice is best to implement. This idea would serve the company best. It would not be fair for one individual to give all the answers because a lot of people have an objective voice to give as well. Although Steve Jobs was not a perfect man and many considered him to be too radical, overall he was a great leader who left a legacy under his name. Another Step the organization can take to ensure quality leadership tactics are properly developed is by implementing a bottom-to-top-level organizational structure review process. This means that many levels of the company can review certain policies implemented by the other levels and can decide if the policy is of quality or not. I found it wrong to have Jobs fired from his own company because he had an objective voice. Instead of taking radical action, the levels of management should take into consideration what everyone says and collectively decide whether a certain policy should be implemented or not. Apple started in the backyard of someone’s home and then eventually became a Fortune 500 company. Apple was a conservative company that did not change many internal or external elements. Once Jobs took full leadership, he made Apple into what it is now; a dominant technological marketplace that will always be the go-to product for phones, laptops, watches, iPads, speakers, headphones, drones, TVs, desktops, cases, and more.

Importance of Decision Making Essay

Planning might seem like an easy task for normal employees, however, the decision-making process is single-handedly the first ground-breaking kickoff for a company to work because, without planning, the managers wouldn’t be able to assign and control the employees to their best potential. As Mr. Dawn manages the sports club, planning is very critical, the firm’s long-term objective is to make sure that as a manager, he is capable of increasing or stabilizing the number of clients because, within 3 years, there’s a possibility of the gym being closed down. Its long-term objective is to make sure that IYSC can control its revenue by trying to spend a vast amount of money through advertisement or upgrading gym equipment to its latest model. If Mr. Dawn, can withstand this for the next upcoming 3 years then it is considered a success for the firm. The importance of making plans ahead is to prevent making rational decisions which is an error made by the decision-maker due to less research, and not listening to other people’s opinions. It is also known that the type of intuition that Mr. Dawn makes is through experience-based decisions because he has at least 10 years of experience working as a sports club manager.

Organizing refers to building up an organizational structure and dispensing human resources (HR) to guarantee the achievement of objectives. In this case, Mr. Dawn has to assign different employees to do work of their specialty and he has to make sure that each person has been assigned clearly because what’s most important is how well the employee understands your guidelines not how well the manager explains. For example, there have to be 4 cleaners ready to clean up toilets every hour, and a minimum of 3 lifeguards have to be on standby at the swimming pool, especially in the kids’ section. Aside from assigning, organizing includes managing human resources such as recruiting new employees through passive candidates like talented workers who already have a job and one of the best methods that Mr. Dawn prefers is through recommendation by the employees themselves.

Leading focuses more on the action taken by the manager itself for example how to handle employees who appear to be unmotivated, the solution that Mr. Dawn uses is quite simple, he said, ‘Whenever you see no happiness within your employees, how do you expect to have your clients be joyful, first you are going to ask that specific person into the room and start asking about his well-being, what is bothering them and in some cases, let them have some time off, I’ve done this several times and it works because not only the employee feels happier after letting off their feelings and has been given some time off, you make them feel like as a manager you care about them’. Communication is the key. To work with people to accomplish a goal requires a manager to gather up all employees, explain to them clearly the objectives, and how it should be done, and set a goal and try to achieve it within a period. This includes motivating employees, building trust, and working as a team. Motivators can come in many different ways, by using equity theory, it is all about fairness, and employees won’t be happy to find out the fact that some employees earn more than they do despite working longer. With this, Mr. Dawn has made it clear to all the staff that, it is forbidden to talk about someone’s salary to avoid conflicts between each other.

Controlling is all about how to manage activities within the sports club for example, the usage of table tennis and badminton courts has a time limit, depending on how long the clients have booked the court. Controlling finance is also one of the most important tasks. Misplacing it or allowing several people to have access to it can cause a huge mess. Mr. Dawn has had several problems regarding the loss of the firm’s money. The lesson has been learned, so Mr. Dawn has assigned one receptionist to hold all that money and by the evening, he wants her to add up all the revenues.

Problem Solving and Decision Making Skills Essay

“Decision-making is usually defined as a process of identifying the problems and the possibilities for their solution which includes the efforts before and after the decision is made”. Of poor quality of decision-making, every particular feature of the institution may be affected (Muhammad, Isa, Othman, & Rahim, 2009).

Decision-making can be regarded as problem problem-solving process. It involves choosing between possible solutions to a problem. Whether on an institutional or personal level, the decisions need to be apt to be executed. The decisions could be made through either intuitive or reasoned processes or with a combination of the two. The intuitive process involves your ‘gut feeling’ about

Reviews of related research suggested that there are some steps for the decision-making process. By using this step-by-step approach, a person can make reflective and enlightened decisions that can have a great and constructive effect on the institution’s short and long-term objectives.

• Identify the decision.
• Gather information.
• Identify alternatives.
• Weigh the evidence.
• Choose among alternatives.
• Take action.
• Review your decision (Craven, 1975).

To meet the divine educational needs and requirements of students, society, and scholarship within comparatively fixed resource limitations, the challenge faced by higher education is to perpetuate and sustain the quality of its programs and faculty. Productive information decision systems are increasingly of great importance in allowing higher educational institutions to meet this challenge successfully. The purpose of this paper was to provide a theoretical basis for understanding and describing the nature and role of information systems in higher educational decision-making (Craven, 1975).

The representation of right-giving theory and administration theory has been found in current years, concerning the importance of participation in deliberated decision-making. In both the public and private sectors, the aim of increasing participation has been an attempt to find a means to (1) ‘give greater value to the wise thoughts and good effects of decision-makers in working out expertly agreement’, and (2) ‘secure the support of executives in an institutions environment’. Changing the structure of the institution, and rectifying attempts, often have the aim of increasing participation. Studies of the deliberated decision-making process recommended that structural alterations were not a specifically effective way to increase participation (Kingsley, 1997).

Decision makers in public and private sectors as their support needs differ, worked for discrete decision-making factors and also employed discrete decision actions. Within the public and private sectors in New Zealand, this mixed-methodology experiential study seemed to segregate perspectives as well as key decision processes regarding the information quality of senior administrators. In these sectors, the results indicate differences; specifically in terms of how decisions were constructed and how decision-makers viewed the readiness and aptness of the information they received. In these two sectors, this had implications for the provision of assistance for decision-makers (Dillon, Buchanan & Corner, 2010).

According to a study proposed by Armstrong (2004), in contrast, public sector administration had refrained from much of the disputations while flourishing along side by side, if divergent ways of heightened recognition of the need for administration levels in the public sector. Examples of likeness that were distinctly divergent in factors were the role of representatives, public sector administrators managed to subsidize in the name of the public versus the role played by administrators in institutions, and the participation (or expected participation) of divergent contributors in both the public and the private sectors.

In general collaborative administration was concorded with the structures and procedures for decision-making, liability, authority, and performance at the top of institutions (Spiller, 2004). The issues were inscribed which were emerging from the association between boards of directors, such as contact with senior administration and association with the keepers and others focused on the matters of the institution, including regulators, auditors, creditors, debt financiers, and analysts (Standards Australia, 2003). The purpose of good administration was to upgrade the institution, minimize investment, business, and functional threats, enhance the owner’s confidence in the institution, and help the hindrance of forged, deceptive, and crooked behavior.

Public and private sector decision-making was studied with an experiment. The study compared decision-making in governmental agencies that were tax-supported with that of business organizations selling to a market, using a counterfeit to abduct divergent in the choices and processes of mid-level administrators working in the two sectors. The counterfeit calls for engaging administrators to determine the threat and forecast to approve finances made to measure each sector. An intellectual idea that emphasized evaluation, deliberation, negotiating, or communication was applied to fashion finances suitable for a public and a private sector institution, each with a contentious and apparent financial proportion. The study found that private sector administrators were more inclined to reinforce the finance decisions made with evaluation and less likely to assist them when negotiation was applicable. Public sector administrators were less likely to assist finance decisions backed by evaluation and more likely to assist those that were obtained from negotiation with organization persons (Nutt, 2005).

In the private sector, the planned actions and ideas were first developed, so they induced much dissension when they drifted to the public sector in the late 1970s onwards. This was partially their aptness to the distinguish factors of government institutions, their center was basically on private and public value, their situation in administration rather than a business environment, they aim to attain legal authority, and the limit to which they often need to share force over organizations and assets with other public sector.

In the public sector, much of the research plans are based on the process roles. A lesser ratio gave heed to the subject matter (e.g., (Vining 2016)), but was prone to structure it in economic rather than wider terms. With the emergence of public management interest in democratic consideration, public involvement, discussion, data-sharing, and identical works of art of democratic policies, over the recent decades, the content role has become more important. Increasingly, public administrators found themselves as originators or solicitees, coordinators, founders, data suppliers, supporters, or devil’s supporters in public consideration procedures. This raised standardized questions as to the roles of public administrators in right-giving decision-making (Alford et al. 2016), but more important for our objectives were its consequences for policy and policy-making.

The potency of the association between Public and Private Sector had increased. Its nature had also become more intense and complex rather than linear relations, but also more renewable form, where Private Sector assistance became an amalgamated element of research policy decision-making. This was favorable for both sides: The Private Sector’s insight and apprehension, its expressed needs, and suggestions added to the integrity and the eminent prosecution of research strategies. However, advanced association in research strategy issues helped to increase acknowledgment of Private Sector ventures and to encourage their R&D expenditure, thus creating influence for the attainment of the Lisbon and Barcelona goals.

The systematic and productive association did not ‘happen naturally’. It must be encouraged, streamlined, and sustained in an apprehensive effort on both sides. Private Sector actors must be conscious of the advantages of being involved in research and research policy and undertake devoted efforts to prompt their notions, needs, and suggestions in research policy decision procedures. Public Sector policymakers must understand the Private Sector’s notions and needs amalgamate its beliefs and suggestions and must be open to criticism. (Braun, Filiatreau, Inzelt, Kunova, Cadiou, Csonka, Meisner, & Siman, 2006).

Decision-making used to be the most common type of problem-solving. It can also be an integral element of potency in another more ill-formed and complicated type of problem-solving, involving strategy issues and design issues. The different kinds of decisions, included varieties, approvals, assessments, and structures. After specification of the supremacy and significance of decision-making to problem-solving and everyday acknowledgment, this study found the contrast between conventional and realistic approaches to decision-making. Conventional approaches, such as decision formats, SWOT, and force field analyses, scaffold rational decision-making approaches. Realistic approaches such as establishing narratives, mental simulations, scripts, and disagreements, stress decision preferences and the role of unconscious feelings in decision-making (Jonassen, 2012).

According to a study proposed by Koch (2005), the contrast between the public and private sectors was that the public sector was not interest-oriented in the business term. However, the determination for creativity and advancement found in the public sector was likely also found in the private sector, and certainly in third-sector institutions. The fact that public institutions were not interest-oriented, had not given us a thought that the public sector employees were not bothered about the financial matters. As was the case within private institutions, public sector institutions fight for capital and authority.

The public administration hypothesis usually supposed that public and private institutions’ decisions and decision procedures vary. However, unexpectedly little investigation has determined certain, observed differences and similarities. Between research and theory this gap seemed to be filled, this study analyzed the impact of the state of being public on the types of planned decisions identified by managers. Two different notions of the state of being public were analyzed, one based on an institution’s legal authority or possession, the other a structural concept by which depending on the degree of external political control of their assets and actions, institutions can be more or less public. (Coursey, & Bozeman, 1990).

Private administration was different from public administration as it had been a primary consideration of public management since it was founded. (Rainey 2009; Rainey and Bozeman 2000). The hypothetical evaluation of how the effect of administration contrasts in private versus public institutions (Meier & O’Toole Jr, 2011).

Decision-making can be remarked as an outcome of intellectual procedures (cognitive process) that led to the option of a method among many substitutes. Every decision-making procedure produced an absolute option. The result can be an action or a belief. This descriptive study was proposed to identify the Decision-making practices in managerial and educational concerns in the universities of Pakistan. The study outcomes investigate that whole decision-making practices in the universities were found insufficient and displeasing and, most of the judgments were made without implementation of administrative decision-making approaches (Nadeem, Imran, & Sarwar, 2008).

The assimilation of industry and education led to the decline of the private sector with the least expenditure in this discipline in the early 1970s. This extended into the late 90s with Pakistan recorded relatively low civil expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP. Thus the government of Pakistan founded the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in an attempt to improve cognitive assets and registrations, delegated to analyze, enhance and upgrade the higher education and research norms in both private and public sectors in Pakistan. Since its foundation in 2002, the HEC has “undertaken a systematic process of operationalization of the five-year agenda for reform outlined in the HEC Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF)”. (Qazi, Simon, Rawat, & Hamid, 2010)

The decision-making process is used to be the everyday managerial operation that occurs at all levels in organizations. Decisions have to be customized to attain objectives and execute activities. Decision-making procedures are considered to be the most cognitive process, as different elements are included in it. Orasanu and Connolly (1993) termed it as a course of intellectual activities performed fully, Narayan and Corcoran-Perry (1997) considered decision-making as the association between a problem that needs to be sorted and a person who desires to sort it out within a certain situation.

In a study proposed by Naz, Zaman, Ghaffar, Ameen, Ali & Iqbal (2013), the main objective of this study was to contrast the persuaded decision-making applications in the universities of Pakistan. The decision-making applications were contrasted on the following perspectives: a. Decision determined by the chair, b. Decisions made by a majority of votes c. Decisions taken on administrative accounts in private and public sector universities. Both public and private sectors were founded to have the same processes of decision-making and were assembled by a majority of votes. There were found differences between private and public sector universities in that decisions were determined by the chair and were taken in corresponding to inward and outward force. This thing was seen usually in public sector universities of Pakistan.

Relating to managerial strains in higher education, Akhtar and Kalsoom (2012) proposed a study that was primarily based on depicting the body of the colleges and their connections with different companions. This study was undertaken to contrast the administrative operations in private and public universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The contrast was grounded on the accessibility of written paperwork, division of work, accessibility of administrators, approach to officers, time allocation, assigned work and workload, employee elevation processes, and evaluation system. Adding to this, the contrast was also planted on clarity, administrative arbitrations, use of power, nepotism, and favoritism, human resource accessibility and operations, decisions related to education, the essence of distinctive decision-making bodies, committees, and their part in policy making and applications and administrative styles (Khan, Aijaz, & Ali, 2018).

Statement of the Problem

Decision-making is one of the most important strategies in both the public and private sectors of Higher Education. The different decision-making strategies are used in both the public and private sectors. The present study is planned to compare the decision-making strategies in the public and private sectors, to find out which sector holds more authority and which sector is free to make decisions on its own.

In this context, the statement of the problem is ‘The comparative study of public and private sectors decision making strategies at Higher Education in Lahore’.

Objectives of the Study

There are the following objectives of the study:

1. To identify decision-making strategies of public and private sector leaders at Higher Education.
2. To compare public and private sector decision-making strategies at Higher Education Institutes.

Research questions

1. What are the decision-making strategies of public and private sector leaders in Higher Education?
2. How public and private sector decision-making strategies are different in Higher Education?

Significance of the Study

The present study would have an important impact on the public and private sectors. The existing study will help find the authorities and their liberty to make decisions. The results of the findings are important for both the public and private sectors as well as for the persons who are operating these sectors.

Methodology

A quantitative research approach and a Causal-Comparative research design are used for this research. The data will be collected through questionnaires.

Population of the study

The population of the study consisted of the Heads of Departments (HODs) of Public and Private Universities in Lahore.

Sample of the study

A total of 100 male and female HODs from public and private universities will be selected conveniently. Approximately 50 HODs will be approached from public and 50 HODs from private universities.

Data Collection

The data is collected from the Head of Departments (HODs) of Public and Private Universities in Lahore.

Data Analysis

The data is analyzed, interpreted, and tabulated in the form of a table. It is analyzed with the help of the computer program SPSS (statistical package for social science). Data analysis is carried out by using causal-comparative statistics. Descriptive or inferential statistics is used for further analysis.

Steve Jobs Movie Summary Essay

The Big Five personality model

Conscientiousness: A personality dimension that describes someone responsible, persistent, organized, and dependable. As we know Americans are very active, organized, and take responsibility on their own. In the movie, Steve Jobs was also an American and followed his culture. he was always persistent in his goal. He wanted to achieve something big in his life. He was a very responsible person and organized in his work life. But he was not dependent on others. He was an independent person and always liked to do his work in his own way. He took all the responsibility on his own for the invention of Apple company. So we can give him a high score on conscientiousness personality because most of the personalities are similar to him.

Emotional stability: In this type of personality people are calm, self-confident, and secure versus nervous, depressed, and insecure. As we have seen from the movie Jobs was not a calm person, he was very aggressive with his work-life pressure. But He was very self-confident and secure about the invention of his Apple company. In his life, he has faced many ups and downs but he didn’t become nervous and handled his difficult situations. So we can give him a high score on emotional stability personality.

Extraversion: Extraversion personality people are sociable, outgoing, and assertive. He also has a high score on this personality model. Because He was an extrovert, social, and always used to share his feelings with others. In the movie when he wanted to create a computer without a keyboard and mouse and wanted to make it a touch-based product. He was very confident that his idea would work in the market but other team members were not confident about it. But his self-confidence and motivation make it possible. He was very friendly and in sociable nature when he used to motivate his employees, that’s why we know him as a great leader.

Openness to experience: A personality that describes someone’s character in terms of imagination, sensitivity, and curiosity. Jobs was open-minded in experiencing new things to become more creative. He was always curious about things from his childhood. In the movie when his friend Steve Wozniak created the circuit board jobs has imagined creating his first Apple computer with that circuit board, which was his first step toward gaining success because of his big imagination. So we can give him a high score on this personality model.

Agreeableness: A personality that describes someone as good-natured, cooperative, and trusting. Steve Jobs was very aggressive in his work when the projects were not done according to his expectations he used to yell at his employees and didn’t feel hesitate to fire employees from the company. But he was a cooperative and trusting person. As we saw in the movie when Jobs wanted to bring changes to his list computer, at first he cooperated with his team members. So we can say that he has a high score on this personality model.

Personality Attributes

Narcissism: Narcissist people are arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of entitlement. Steve Jobs was seen as a narcissist which shows that he was a great leader and decision maker. We all know that he was aggressive, arrogant, and always focused on his goal. He always had a great admiration for bringing change in the world. As we saw in the movie he was a very tough boss and his one employee’s work was not as perfect as he expected so he fired his employee which shows his arrogant nature.

Core Self-Evaluation: People who have positive CSR like themselves, see themselves as effective, capable, and in control of their environment. From the movie we have seen that Steve Jobs has a positive CSE. He had a strong belief that he had control of his fate. In the movie when he was going to invent his first Apple computer he had not enough money for his invention without having believed in himself. For his strong belief and capability, we have the iPhone, iPod, and iPad in our hands.

Risk Taking: Steve Jobs is well known as a risk taker. Jobs like to do complex and challenging jobs include risk. Because of his great risk-taking personality, he had become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in human history. As we saw in the movie jobs dropped out of college to trek around India for his religion. He also came up with the idea of the iPhone which was revolutionary even though that idea could have been rejected. He had experienced a great risk and challenges in his life to make the Apple most valuable company in the world.

Type A Personality: People who are active, excessively competitive, and always seem to struggle to achieve more and more are A personality type people. We all know that Steve Jobs was a very hard-working person, who never gave up in any situation, and struggled a lot. He always desired to achieve his goal of being the success in his life. From the movie we have seen that when he was kicked out from the apple he never gave up and started working on Next and Pixar which proved that failure couldn’t stop his goal.

Proactive personality: People who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs. Steve Jobs achieved great success in his career because of his extremely unique innovative ideas. He was very passionate, and fearless, and always found opportunities to achieve his goal. He was never satisfied with his creations and always tried to invent better products than before. In the movie, Pixar achieved great success because of Jobs’ contribution, when he produced its first animated movie with Disney’s partnership The Toy Story in 1995. He has always used his opportunities and instantly took action for success.

Decision Making at Workplace Essay

Introduction

In today’s world, firms are facing many challenges and are looking for ways to improve organizational performance by using human capital (Nguwi, 2012). Then employers are now turning to employee engagement to obtain committed and productive employees. Consequently, this has been done because it is difficult for top management to carry out successful decisions in the organization without involving employees in decision-making (Kersley, 2005; Dundon, Curran & Maloney 2006; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). Hence, this has inspired me as the researcher to examine the relationship between employee involvement and work engagement in the retail industry, particularly narrowing it to Masvingo TM Pick n Pay. Therefore, this chapter addresses the background of the study, the statement of the problem, the aims of the study, the research objectives, and the research questions. The scope of the study stating the delimitations, limitations, and assumptions of the study have been introduced before the chapter sums up with a conclusion.

Background of the study

Armstrong (2006) affirms that today’s business world is ever-changing with increasing volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity which drive firms to be flexible and comprehend new ideas that enable them to be competitive in this environment. Moving on, a more open and collaborative strategy that exploits the decisions of employees through their involvement and engagement needs to be adopted (Hewitt, 2002). As such, it is important to investigate employee involvement and work engagement in the retail industry narrowing at Masvingo TM Pick n Pay.

Employee involvement can be defined as the industrial relations systems in which the rights of employees are recognized, empowerment in the working environment is enhanced and management and workers are seen as partners. Workers are allowed to directly or indirectly participate and get involved in the decision-making process of the organization. Also, employee engagement can be characterized as the harnessing of organization members themselves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during their role performances (Ncube & Jerie (2012:381). Schaufeli, Bakker, and Salanova (2006) acknowledge that employee engagement is a positive fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Therefore, employee involvement and employee engagement bring benefits to the firm and the employees. Likewise, consistent focus on employee involvement and employee engagement empowered a committed and engaged workforce that is willing to stay and work on their best to enhance the business performance. Hence, autonomy and a strong workforce voice imply that employee involvement at Masvingo Pick n Pay can result in workforce engagement yielding a buffet of benefits to the business.

The contribution of employee involvement and employee engagement as a way to improve business profits can be illustrated by the study findings of Renwick et al (2012) in their study on Green HRM which proved that employee involvement and engagement are of more importance as it promotes employee attraction and retention. They further moved on saying that employee involvement in the working environment is critical to the success of the organization. Along the same lines, Gollan (2005) suggested that a high level of employee involvement acts as a means of achieving greater effectiveness through enhancing employee commitment, loyalty, and engagement in the organization. This is so because affording employees to participate in decision-making increases work satisfaction and employee retention. Indeed, employee engagement can be attained through participation management and involvement practices (Macey & Schneider 2009). This view is also supported by Cantor, Morrow, and Montabon (2012) who acknowledge that when employees are involved and participate more strongly in the decision they will feel more motivated which consequently leads to higher levels of engagement.

Furthermore, a study that was conducted in China by Tsau and Tsau (2015) revealed that employee involvement and engagement are rapidly becoming central in the management of many organizations with the need to improve superior business performance in this ever more demanding financial, volatile environment and market environment. Adding on, the researchers unveiled that competitive advantage derives not only from cost leadership but also from the ability of the firm to exploit a higher degree of willing employees committed to business objectives. In the same manner, employee engagement levels are of more importance to managerial strategies that focus on increasing workforce discretion as well as aligning their interest closer to managerial goals (Rees, Alfes & Gatenby, 2013). Accordingly, Batt, Coliv, and Keefe (2002) emphasize that employees have a perception that their voice mechanisms are more likely to advance their perspectives. Then, when employees are afforded the chance to raise their voices they would go the extra mile in their work. Therefore, it was reported that there is a correlation between employee involvement, engagement, and business performance.

Moreover, Little (2010) conducted a study in Ghana’s Ministry of Education on the impact of employee involvement on the performance of educational sectors. The researcher evaluated the A-level and O-level teachers’ perception of the reforms proving that the teachers felt that they were insufficiently consulted in the implementation of new structural reforms. This can be seen through the workload burden imposed on teachers through pre-lesson preparation, lesson delivery, and evaluation of learning outcomes. Little (2010) further noted that teachers were trained for to implement reforms in most curriculum areas but the lack of teachers’ involvement delayed the process and made it hard to implement them. This study concluded employee involvement in decision-making is of significant importance in the education sector not only for the implementation of reforms but also as a way to obtain an engaged staff that is immersed in their work as well as having a feeling of belonging to the organization. Hence, this study proves that there is a relationship between employee involvement and engagement in enhancing employee commitment as well as adding value to the organization.

Locally, a study was conducted by Maketo (2018) on the impact of employee involvement in decision-making and its impact on service delivery: a case study of Chegutu Municipality. The researcher observed that Chegutu Municipality witnessed an increase in disciplinary hearings arising from poor service delivery. Consequently, the non-involvement of employees in the decision-making process led to the low morale of employees which has impacted service delivery. Therefore, the researcher concluded that top management must share decision-making power with all employees of the organization regardless of their hierarchical levels and there is a need for them to accept employees as valuable assets to enhance flexibility in the workplace. This is also in line with the study findings of Mugonderwa (2017) who investigated the impact of decision-making on organizational productivity at the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing. The researcher observed firms should implement decision-making styles that are not bureaucratic hence these styles will facilitate changes faster and this increases organizational productivity.

However, by observing the findings of various researches TM Pick n Pay cannot be spared from the challenges that have been caused by non-involvement of non-managerial employees. At TM Pick n Pay there is also evidence of poor service delivery, absenteeism, turnover, and low morale due to the failure to involve all employees in decision-making at the workplace (HR report, 2019). Therefore, instead of using rewards as a strategy to enhance business performance, TM Pick n Pay is in dire need of strategies to enhance organizational performance through human resources. As a result, the firm has turned to human resources involvement to leverage and reinforce productivity, competitiveness, and sustainable service delivery mainly through engaged employees. Therefore, this inspired the researcher to investigate the impact of employee involvement and work engagement in the retail industry, particularly narrowing at Masvingo TM Pick n Pay.

Problem statement

Masvingo TM Pick n Pay like any other retail industry in Zimbabwe is struggling to use salary as a strategy to engage its workforce in this complex and ambiguous environment which has led to a decrease in employee morale and commitment subsequently impacting service delivery. Employees’ engagement is being lowered and this has posed threats of staff turnover, absenteeism, and decrease in organizational performance. Therefore, when employees are involved they become committed and loyal to the organization’s goals and become more productive and efficient (Zoghi and Mohr, 2011). However, in Zimbabwe, there is evidence that shows that employee involvement is receiving minimal attention due to the prevalent industrial actions and poor performance of the Zimbabwe industries. According to Nguwi (2012), firms would be left vulnerable if they do not retain their workforce through various HR strategies to enhance employee engagement. Therefore, one way of achieving an engaged workforce is through employee involvement. Employees can be involved in decision-making because employees are the backbone of the organizational existence and its operations. Therefore, against this backdrop, it becomes imperative to examine the relationship between employee involvement and work engagement in the retail industry paying close attention to Masvingo TM Pick n Pay.

Purpose of the study

This study aims to examine the relationship between employee involvement and employee engagement in the retail industry paying close attention to Masvingo TM Pick n Pay.

Research Objectives

• To identify employee involvement practices adopted at TM Pick n Pay.
• To examine the relationship between employee involvement and employee engagement in enhancing organizational productivity.
• To gather the perceptions of employees towards employee involvement practices at TM Pick n Pay.
• To assess the challenges that have impacted management in implementing employee involvement practices TM Pick n Pay.
• To offer alternatives that can be used by TM Pick n Pay to leverage employee involvement to gain employee engagement.

Research questions

• What are the employee involvement practices that are used at TM Pick n Pay?
• What is the impact of employee involvement and employee engagement in enhancing organizational productivity?
• What are the perceptions of employees towards employee involvement practices at TM Pick n Pay?
• What are the challenges that have impacted management in implementing employee involvement practices at TM Pick n Pay?
• What are the alternatives that can be used to leverage employee involvement to gain work engagement at TM Pick n Pay?

Significance of the study

This investigation is of critical importance to various stakeholders such as TM Pick n Pay, Great Zimbabwe University, HR practitioners, and the researcher.

TM Pick n Pay

The investigation will increase knowledge on the topic, employee involvement, and work engagement as well as improve service delivery and business performance in the industry. Furthermore, management would be able to implement effective involvement practices as well as accept employees’ voices to effectively achieve organizational goals.

To Great Zimbabwe University

Data gathered on employee involvement and work engagement will be used for future purposes by GZU and its affiliates including students and other academics. The recommendations can be used by the University to develop and improve employee policies and practices.

To HR practitioners

This investigation will help HR specialists in developing policies and practices that can attract and retain staff and make improvements to working conditions.

To the researcher

The researcher will increase the research skills and the research is done in partial fulfillment of BSC Honors in Human Resource Management.

Assumptions

The assumptions are that:

• The researcher assumes that employee involvement practices are being employed at TM Pick n Pay.
• The representatives are equipped with full knowledge to answer all questionnaires.
• The targeted sample would be open and honest in giving correct information.

Limitations

Financial resources may limit the researcher to effectively carry out this research. The costs related to carrying out this research are very high. However, the researcher will limit costs by using his printer to print all relevant documents. Further, traveling will be limited so that transport costs are reduced.

Also, the company policy which is in line with Covid regulations will hinder the process of doing interviews as well as distributing questionnaires. Some of the regulations include maintaining as well as providing a COVID certificate hence the research used online interviews and questionnaires.

Another challenge faced by the researcher was to find the relevant information he was looking for. The respondents were a bit hesitant to provide information because of the company’s policy of secrecy and confidentiality. Nevertheless, the researcher assured the participants that the information will be treated with strict confidentiality.

Delimitations

Geographical delimitation

The central objective in carrying out the study was to examine the impact of employee involvement and work engagement at TM Pick n Pay. The research was carried out at TM Pick n Pay in Masvingo focusing on managerial employees and non-managerial employees to collect a lot of data on employee involvement and work engagement.

Study delimitation

The research will specifically concentrate on the impact of employee involvement and work engagement at TM Pick n Pay mainly on managerial and non-managerial employees.

Definition of key terms

Work engagement

Ncube and Jerie (2012:381) referred to it as the harnessing of organization employees to their work roles; so that people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during their roles.

Employee participation

It can be defined as the arrangements that give employees some influence over organizational and workplace decisions (Williams and Adam Smith, 2009).

Employee Involvement

Employee involvement can be defined as the joint consultation in decision-making, goal-setting, teamwork, and other measures through which an enterprise attempts to achieve business performance (Bach, 2006).

Employee voice

According to Boxall and Purcell (2011), employee voice can be defined as a whole variety of processes and structures that enable and empower the workforce to directly and indirectly contribute to organizational decision-making.

Summary

This chapter has introduced the research topic, the research objectives, and questions. The background of the study and problem statement, significance of the study, and limitations were also addressed. The last section of the chapter covered the definition of key terms. The next chapter will focus on the literature review to understand the views of other researchers regarding employee involvement and work engagement.