Question One.
A product growth strategy in the orderly manner in which the seller of a product aims at winning a larger market share either when boosting profits or at the expense of short term earnings. Generally, a product growth strategy involves product diversification, product development, market penetration and market development.
For the specific product introduced by Robert Kilbey , the corporate growth strategy was used where the business made aggressive attention o increase its size through increased sales. According to the author (40-45), Robert’s business achieves this by using: the concentration growth strategy where the business grows aggressively in its existing line. Kilbey presses the point that the business in concentrating in one product and that they make their own elastic as they have the rubber and the thread, market development strategy where Bryan Kilbey talks of expanding the company by building a new 100,000 square foot building and opening new sales office for the European market and finally using the technological diversification strategy where Kilbey says’ “from order to shipping we can fill an order in four and half hours due to the existing technology. Kilbey goes ahead to say that the new technology would be used to streamline production, (Bohlander, George, and Scott Snell).
Question two.
Layoffs, unlike downsizing which is a permanent separation of employees, are a temporary reduction in force with the intention to rehire the workers when business picks back up.
According to the Author (43), the Florida company commits to no layoffs because of the negative effects it would have on their otherwise qualified employees and also the technicalities involved. According to Stanton, on the basic reason for no layoff is the skills required to perform the jobs and that the company cannot go hiring just anyone to perform the specific tasks. The move of no layoffs is positive to the performance of the company in two main ways : it ensures the employees are motivated and therefore self driven to the organizational goals and also the company’s reputation remains protected as a number of investors would easily relate it to success .
Question three.
Management-employee relationship is key to performance of any organization. The company can employ several strategies to keep this close tie, some of which are: ensuring proper compensation and benefits to employees, ensuring the working environment is safe for employees, continuing with their retention policy-no layoffs to assure the employees of job security, championing change in the organization by being able to lead by example towards the attainment of goals of the company for example being punctual to work, introduce and maintain grievance process, conducting regular opinion surveys as emotions and feelings of employees are fully and finally protecting and acting in the name of employees ,(Bohlander, George, and Scott Snell, 42).
Work cited
Bohlander, George, and Scott Snell. Managing human resources. Cengage Learning, 2006.
