Human Resource Management & Communication Techniques 100 marks

       How Organization Culture influence employee commitment towards the organization?

Organisational commitment refers to the commitment displayed by the employees. The more committed employees are, the better their performance and association with the companies will be. It has been a long-standing debate that employee commitment yields higher results and organisational success. Although, it is essential to understand the influences within the organisation that promotes intrinsic cultivation. The organisational culture becomes the most critical aspect that promotes organisational commitment in the long run. Tsai (2011) opines that organisational citizenship behaviour includes factors like satisfaction, performance and employee engagement activities that help influence employee commitment.

Although Dwivedi, Kaushik and Luxmi (2014) argued that organisational culture directs how people are likely to behave within professional domains. Organisational culture impacts managerial functions like planning, organisation, operations, and staffing. Thus, commitment is a psychological trait that influences employees to work hard and perform well even in all conditions. Thus, organisational culture will reflect shared values, which helps in improving employee identification and belongingness. Inanlou and Ahn (2017) conducted a cross-sectional study on more than 300 nurses working in Taiwan.

The study analysed finding with co-relation analysis, which indicated that organisational culture was positively linked with leaders’ behaviours and satisfaction with the job. It was concluded that toxic work culture and autocratic type of leadership approach. The leader will include aspects like the autonomy of the job, formation and implication of different types of justice, support, and open communication that promotes employee commitment.

In addition, clear internal communication helps keep the employees informed, supporting them with directions and resources for developing correct attitudes while influencing active participation. It was identified that accurate and transparent communication helps develop belongingness, leading to employee commitment. Besides, if leaders are fair, reliable and risk-taking, they are likely to build trust and be loyal towards the organisation.

Sharma and Singh (2017) argued that workforce commitment towards the work and the organisation relies on two facets that are situational and personal, out of which situation plays a significant role in influencing employee loyalty. Maslow describes that organisational culture should be embedded with personal motivation factors identified in different layers. The Maslow hierarchy of needs has identified five layers of needs that reflect employee performance and commitment in the long run.

The pyramid's first layer is basic needs (food, clothes, house, and medical, which are met through salaries); the second layer is safety, which is portrayed through security and safety, while the third and fourth layers are psychological ones which are belongingness and esteem. The last and topmost layer is self-fulfilment, which is reflected in supporting the employee in achieving their full potential. Thus, organisations that have embedded these aspects in their culture can influence organisational commitment. 

Various factors within the organisational culture impact employee commitment, which could be influenced by job design, the leader's approach, external factors, and overall organisational citizenship behaviour. 

Project Management & Entrepreneurial Project Management 100 marks

Assume you are a Business Development Officer of the Company and propose a development strategy for your company and describe how to analyze the opportunities of the Company growth ex- Event Management                      Co.

The business developmental strategy holds an important place for the success of any business. Thus, business development strategy depends on factors like market conditions, customer needs and preferences, changing state-of-the-art technology, operational costs, etc. Hence, the most crucial part for an event management company will be services and customer satisfaction. Every event such companies organise is done to give intangible rewards to the customer in exchange for money. Thus, the core business development strategy will be customer oriented. 

The primary business development strategy will be increasing the number of events the company manages at affordable rates and the highest customisation. This would include on-site or off-site management, small and big parties, and customisation with different cuisines and street food. The company will offer clean-up services that will help customers to be accessible after the party is finished if it is organised in-house. Also, it will be done if any customer wants a specific service like home-cooked food or customised decoration, including personal memories and photos.

For home-cooked food in family gatherings, the company will provide cooks and chefs who can cook at customer locations (Putro et al., 2021). The clientele where business development will occur is strengthening networks and services offered to residential and corporates. For developing a business, the first and foremost activity is the identification of customer segments and existing trends (Petrova et al., 2022). Hence, for event management companies, the rising population will be millennials and the Gen Z population primarily active in digital modes.

Hence, customer touch points will be improved by expanding functional aspects through digital modes. This would include easy navigation through the websites, honest reviews, and pictures of the events, along with the provision of customer support (Zhao et al., 2021). The customer will receive a free demo by inviting them to evaluate the quality of service (like sending them samples of food served). In addition, digital marketing has become crucial for raising awareness and credibility. Thus, the websites be linked with social media handles, while influencers will be endorsed to improve public reach. 

 There are many techniques to understand the growth opportunity. This could include conducting market analysis through various theoretical tools like PESTLE, Porters, SWOT, and others that help to understand determinants of external forces like competition, change in the regulatory environment and other aspects of the business environment. In addition, various metrics could be used to identify growth strategy, although this depends on business value and belief (Sheth, 2020).

This will include market growth, product and market expansion, customer growth, and revenue growth. Since event management operates in a highly competitive market, revenue, customer and marketing growth metrics will be developed. To understand opportunities in revenue generation, financial performance from previous years will be compared and measured (Zhao et al., 2021). The costs will be detected along with customer acquisition costs. In evaluating customer growth, the number of repeat orders and new ones to detect the gaps and identify opportunities.

Social metrics and digital tools that help understand website performance will be understood for understanding the marketing growth. This will be understanding which posts and content are mostly liked and have generated revenues. 

Business Creation Project  &  Financial Aspects of the business model  100 marks

What are the methods to reduce the cost of the Company relating to staff & marketing campaigns?

Human resources are the highest costs for all companies. Hence, in every negative business cycle, the company lays off employees, although there are many techniques to reduce costs related to human resources. One factor that impacts the costs is a composition of an unproductive workforce. Providing on-time training and developmental activity is essential to allow the workforce to perform to their fullest potential.

This will help employees perform effectively by changing the firm's objectives and goals. Also, supporting the employee in achieving personal goals will help improve productivity, which will reduce costs directly but will lead to optimising the value of monetary resources spent (Stone, Cox and Gavin, 2020). Companies' other costs are recruitment and hiring due to highly unproductive employees and higher turnover rates. Strategies like active employee engagement, achieving job satisfaction through changing job design and roles, internal promotions, and appraisals promote commitment, impacting turnover intentions and performance. 

The other costs will be reducing in-housing hiring and replacing it with outsourcing. The business experiences a cost hike if wrong or inappropriate employees are hired. Hence, using specialist services in hiring, recruiting, and training employees will reduce talent management costs. 

 Marketing and promotions hold a crucial and significant role in raising awareness of products and services along with connecting with the client base. However, there are various types of marketing tools that companies use for developing and broadcasting campaigns, which have an ultimate impact on the costs (Snell and Morris, 2022). Traditional marketing methods, like print media, broadcasting media, billboards, and others, are costly and require specialists’ skill sets.

The return to marketing spending is also lower in this digital era. Thus, the best way to cut costs on marketing campaigns will be to adopt digital methods of organising and publishing campaigns. In addition, not all social media and digital methods will be cost-effective. Hence, choosing the right marketing tool is also crucial, which ensures high reach to the customers in an organic way (Rangaswamy et al., 2020). For example, Facebook and Instagram have become popular tools owing to their features and in-app tools that help marketers to reach audiences more quickly while assuring higher returns on spending.

The tools help understand content reactions, active time of the followers and performance of the content, which also assist in developing new and effective campaigns. Content development is another expensive area which determines the success of marketing campaigns. Thus, hiring services from content development companies will help in optimising costs. 

In conclusion, planning and organisation are essential in cutting down expenses. Companies must conduct internal and external research to identify needs and develop strategies accordingly. If the budget constraints are higher, outsourcing services from specialists will help reap higher returns from the costs spent (Gillespie and Swan, 2021). Also, alternatives could be used and implemented to reduce the costs about human resources and marketing campaigns. 

Development & Management of Innovation & Geopolitics & International Economics 100 marks

              How to enhance customer satisfaction in a Company for an overall view of qualitative and quantitative results and deliver key messages useful for decision making?

Customer satisfaction helps in retaining customers and improving business in the long run.  Thus, there are varied sources from data can be collected to develop strategy that assists in improving customer satisfaction index. Customer satisfaction index is also done through phone calls that helps in communicating with customer and understanding their issues and brand experience. Although many millennials’ customers do not prefer giving feedback through phone calls, but they can be pursued to give reviews and tag the page on their social media handles. 

The qualitative way of improving customer satisfaction is making use of customer satisfaction index like CSAT (customer satisfaction survey scores) NPS, (net promoter scores) and other types of metrics that helps in understanding the experiences, feeling, connection of the customer while shopping with the brand, understanding the touchpoints and others. These questions can be asked as one question of completed as short surveys consisting of 3-4 question on different aspects of shopping. This helps to improve instore experience or customer interaction with brand by equipping the suggestion and working on negative feedback. 

Quantitative way of understanding and analysing customer satisfaction will be reviewing basket size, repeated customers, customer acquisition costs for new clients, comparing revenue cycles and others. This will help in understanding seasonal changes, cyclic issues and role of external forces which could be improved through innovation of product portfolios and services.

“Geopolitical research is frequently portrayed as a dead end. To some scholars it appears that in the 21st century geography is largely scenery, all but irrelevant to the most important issues of grand strategy.” Discuss the impact of geopolitics on the economy in present day citing relevant examples from global context.

Geopolitics tension has increased on international context which could have impact on domestic and multi- national brands. One of current events that has impacted geopolitics tension is pandemic and Russia-Ukraine crisis.  This has impacted trade and economic development of many countries located not only in Europe but other regions owing to international trade (Gourinchas, 2022). This geopolitics tension has increased inflation in US, increased costs of living in Europe, impacted China’s growth, hence, it is being considered that Ukraine and Russia crisis will slower economic growth which will impose higher financial issues. 

The other geo politics factors that will impact economic growth and development of nations will include digital technology, increasing importance of sustainability (climate changes issues and policies), structural transformation and changing demographic (rise of millennial and Gen Z will change production and consumption)

References

Dwivedi, S., Kaushik, S. and Luxmi (2014), ‘Impact of organizational culture on commitment of employees: An empirical study of BPO sector in India’, Vikalpa, 39(3), pp.77-92.

Gillespie, K. and Swan, K.S. (2021). Global marketing. Routledge.

Gourinchas, P.O. (2022). Global Economic Growth Slows Amid Gloomy and More Uncertain Outlook. [online]  [Accessed 10 June 2023] 

Inanlou, Z. and Ahn, J.Y. (2017), ‘The effect of organizational culture on employee commitment: A mediating role of human resource development in Korean firms’, Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR), 33(1), pp.87-94.

Petrova, L.A., Niyazbekova, S.U., Kuznetsova, T.E., Sarbassova, S.B. and Baymukhametova, K.I. (2022), ‘Digital transformation as a strategic direction business development in modern conditions’, In Сooperation and Sustainable Development (pp. 183-192). Springer International Publishing.

Putro, H.P.N., Rusmaniah, R., Jumriani, J., Handy, M.R.N. and Mutiani, M. (2021), ‘Business Development Strategies for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (UMKM) in Kampung Purun’, The Innovation of Social Studies Journal, 3(1), pp.23-32. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20527/iis A

Rangaswamy, A., Moch, N., Felten, C., Van Bruggen, G., Wieringa, J.E. and Wirtz, J. (2020), ‘The role of marketing in digital business platforms’, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 51(1), pp.72-90. 

Sharma, N. and Singh, R.K. (2017), ‘Impact of Organisational Culture on Employee Commitment: A Review’, Ramanujan international journal of business and research, 2, pp.85-103.

Sheth, J. (2020), ‘Business of business is more than business: Managing during the Covid crisis’, Industrial Marketing Management, 88, pp.261-264.

Snell, S. and Morris, S. (2022). Managing human resources. Cengage Learning.

Stone, R.J., Cox, A. and Gavin, M. (2020). Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.

Tsai, Y. (2011), ‘Relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction’, BMC health services research, 11(1), pp.1-9. 

Zhao, J., Xue, F., Khan, S. and Khatib, S.F (2021), ‘Consumer behaviour analysis for business development’, Aggression and Violent Behavior, p.101591.