The article, provided for analysis, is dedicated to analyzing the links, which exists between employee satisfaction and quality management, aiming at researching into particular human resource management practices, which involve employees’ direct participation. The reason to consider particularly this kind of interrelation lies in the fact that creating quality management requires empowering employees, so that they become themselves interested in customers’ satisfaction and reaching other organization-related goals. In order to explore the links between quality management and employees’ participation, let us, first of all, refer to the core meaning of quality management. Quality management is a philosophy, which is based on aiming at not only achieving, but even exceeding customers’ expectations in order to reach competitive advantage.
The way employees approach their job is considered to be of significant importance for management in case the organization adheres to basics of quality management philosophy due to the fact that quality management philosophy sees highly challenging work as a prerequisite for success and advocated for the need of creating such a working environment, which will motivate an employee to exceed needs and wants of customers. Employee’s being able and willing to work in terms of highly motivating (and sometimes even pressuring environment) can be theoretically closely related to employee’s wellbeing and, therefore, his job satisfaction. In other words, an employee, who is provided with high salary and various employee benefits, will be both able and willing to provide extra benefits for customers due to the fact that he is highly satisfied with his job position and is not willing to lose it. So, positive association between the level of job satisfaction and employees’ commitment is proved to exist. On other hand, the association between the level of job satisfaction and absenteeism is negative. It means that an employee, who evidently lacks motivation to work and commitment to particular organization due to organization’s failure to ensure his wellbeing and develop his motivation and commitment, cannot be considered as the one, who can potentially contribute to organization’s quality management systems’ development.
As for other dimensions of quality management, not associated with providing extra benefits for employees, it is worth mentioning that ensuring employees’ job satisfaction is important for effective leadership and planning due to the fact that employees, satisfied with their job, are more likely to share the goals, set by top management, than the ones, who lack motivation and commitment. Another crucial aspect to mention is that word combination “job satisfaction” refers not only to salaries and employees’ benefits, but employees’ being given discretion and responsibility. Employees, who feel able to set work-related goals and objectives, and feel responsible for their own decisions, are likely to be able to contribute to organization’s quality management as opposed to the ones, who are prevented from expressing initiative, and, therefore, deal with nothing but everyday tasks. In other words, job enrichment and high level of employees’ involvement can be considered top job satisfaction-related elements, capable of influencing quality management of the enterprise. Nonetheless, regardless of whether we consider job satisfaction separately or with respect to quality management, it is necessary to perceive it as a complex, consisting of discretion, involvement, salary and benefits, tightly interconnected with organizational commitment.
Concluding we would like to state that job satisfaction is positively linked to desired organizational outcomes and should not be underestimated in terms of managerial activities.
Manufacturing processes
Business education involves studying diverse multidimensional subjects, namely economic and leadership theories, marketing, financial management and operations theory. If the one seeks to be a successful organization’s top manager, it is crucial to have a profound understanding of all the aspects of organization’s operations within the market, starting from building reliable supply chains, based on long-term contractual relationships, finishing with the way the brand image is created. In other case manager will not get enough knowledge to make informed decisions even in particular sphere of organizations’ management. Apart from being acquainted with basics of all spheres, included in organization’s operation, manager should also know everything (or almost everything) about products organization manufactures or sells. Such a need becomes particularly topical due to leadership’s currently being under pressure of making critical decisions under uncertain circumstances. Importance and topicality of the issue call forth the need to research into features healthy operations have and the way action steps, taken by leadership, are capable of contributing into creating healthy operations.
Healthiness of manufacturing operations is quite a complex term, nonetheless, its meaning can be often narrowed to adhering to most wide-spread and environment-friendly practices in the field of manufacturing particular products. Different indicators have been worked out with respect of manufacturing different kinds of products, so that healthiness of manufacturing process can be assessed, and changes can be introduced in case challenges exist with respect to ensuring process’ compliance with respected guidelines and practices. The number and scale of indicators can significantly vary, dependently on the sphere of manufacturing, nonetheless, it is always worth elaborating on as more detailed criteria as possible, so that organization’s leadership is enabled to effectively apply these criteria to perform diagnosis of each particular manufacturing process. Among most wide-spread indicators we cannot help mentioning automatizing, streamlining and synchronizing inventories between warehouse-related processes and shop floor; having the way of creating automatic processes, which enterprise resource planning is unable to support without introducing meaningful modifications and customizations; creating access for real-time Web visibility reports, alerts and alarms and, finally, designing such kind of supply chain technologies, which will be adaptable to rapid changes, inherent for today’s business environment. Other universally adopted indicators may relate to complying with safety requirements and environment-friendliness. Introducing healthy practices and techniques, as offered above, can help organizations’ leaders ensure real-time visibility of organization’s inventories at the levels of warehouse, shop and high executive, increasing inventory turns, real-time view in what is going on in the shop and/or warehouse, creating adaptable manufacturing operations with respect to changes in the environment, making manufacturing environment-friendly, ensuring quality errors-free data entry on manufacturing issues, providing for real-time (alarm/event) management of manufacturing processes and, finally cutting costs, associated with involving employees in performing tasks, which can be performed automatically, once necessary technological solutions are elaborated on and introduced in daily practices of the manufacturing plant.
Summarizing our ideas, we would like to once more emphasize importance of management’s understanding the nature and peculiarities of manufacturing processes within particular enterprise, developing event management systems and creating adaptable processes in terms of modern environment of uncertainty and ever changing business environment.
Operations strategy
When manufacturing goods and creating services, companies work out various processes, which accompany transformation of a product (service) from being a raw material, warehoused at suppliers’ plant to it being introduced to the customer online or with the help of traditional distribution channels. Working out a set of operations, allowing for product’s (service’s) effective undergoing transformation process is essential for effective functioning of the enterprise in terms of modern rates of market competition. Sometimes the word combination “operations strategy” can seem to be an oxymoron due to the fact that the term “operations” refers to the set of particular activities, which are being performed at the enterprise on daily basis, whereas we use the word “strategy” to describe long-term goals and objectives. Nonetheless, operations strategy really makes sense due to the fact that its content is concerned with goals- and objectives-setting, as well as making specific decisions, which are capable of shaping and developing long-term operations’ direction. The most important goals of introducing operations strategy lies in meeting the need to effectively align existing operations resources to market environment, subjected to continuous changes. The process of introducing the strategy encompasses such basic steps as enterprise analysis (which is mostly concerned with identifying gaps in existing operations), formulation of the strategy, implementation and evaluation of the implementation process. High quality strategic production management can be achieved with the help of effective planning and introducing maturity models, which are helpful in terms of evaluating different alternatives, which are being under consideration in terms of operations’ strategic planning. Constructing maturity models can be especially useful with respect to the turbulent nature of modern business environment. Furthermore, considering operations for small and mediums-size enterprises is today especially topical due to the fact that turbulent business environment calls forth the need to include capabilities for dynamics and adaptation into long-term operations’ strategies. Such an approach can help SMEs to ensure continuous implementation the strategy, as well as upgrading it according to the changes and demands of business environment. Maturity models are likely to serve as effective guides to lead through this process.
Despite the fact that the root of dynamic capability lies in resource-based theory of competitive advantage, today the tem “dynamic capabilities” is widely used with respect to various spheres of managerial activities, but mostly with respect to so-called alarm or event management, which becomes ever more topical sphere due to the lack of stability, which can be perceived as one of basic characteristics of modern business and leadership environment, For the purposes of operations strategy dynamic capabilities mean the extent to which the strategy may be subjected to changes with regard to environmental changes. In other words, dynamic capabilities of the strategy characterize its flexibility potential. The only important issue lies in vagueness of the concept of dynamic capabilities, which manifests itself in the lack of methods, enabling the effective assessment of organization’s dynamic capabilities in general and the ones, characterizing particular operations in particular. Applicability of existing scales in this regard is usually quite questionable and limited to product development. Nonetheless, concluding, we cannot help mentioning conceptual applicability of dynamic capabilities theory to operations strategy. Further research is still necessary to develop practically applicable model, meeting the requirements, set in theories. Moreover, particular attention should be paid to researching into the interrelations, which exist between making strategic decisions and developing capabilities.
