Activity 1
The paper will present an overview of how Clark’s Manufacturing Company sought to carry on a competitive run on its business against Japanese competitors. The company becomes progressive by using the systems thinking method. According to Gabor (2010), Clark Manufacturing Company engaged Ackoff’s Idealized plan in 1988 (Gabor, 2010). When its market for earthmoving merchandise came under attack from superior quality and cost effectiveness of competitor Japan, Clark Manufacturing Company realized that it does not have the managerial capabilities to compete with the Japanese. Clark’s Corporation to start a successful joint venture with two other companies: Euclid and Volvo. It helped the company in increasing the productivity.
According to Mugadza (2015), one of the concepts of systems thinking is to consider it as an art and science of making a dependable assumption about the performance by developing a progressively and more profound understanding of fundamental arrangements (Mugadza, 2015). Another concept of system thinking is survival behavior as Clark’s corporation behaved in a way that permitted them to maintain the value of the company in one or more unconventional workable states. The third concept of the system is goal seeking behavior. Clark’s corporation’s goal was to compete with the Japanese companies. Goal seeking behavior helped Clark’s corporation in providing predestined result within an agreed period. The concepts of system thinking may have some freedom to choose how to achieve the goal. If it has the memory, it may develop processes describing the behaviors needed for defined goals. Most machines or software systems are purposive.
Systems thinking is an approach to deal with different problems in a complicated business environment. Systems thinking revealed the root causes of the main issue. Systems thinking also give an idea to Clark’s corporation about an unconventional way to merge with two other companies which helped the organization in competing with Japanese companies.
Activity 2
In the 21st century, the great downturn, industrial revolution, and other features have transformed the business into a more dynamic setting exemplified by a quicker velocity of change. To compete with the contenders, managers at the time believe in following agile management. Business agility is the aptitude of a company to become quickly accustomed to the marketplace and environmental transformation in dynamic and lucrative ways (Guide, 2016). It is manager’s responsibility to implement changes that are going to be beneficial for the organization (Denning, 2012).
On the other hand, most of the managers prefer to use tradition Fall functions which are based on skills of administration; development, authoritative, arrangement, and scheming. In recent years, managers have started to imply the aspects of business agility in the business, but the question is that is it the right way of making an organization more productive and competitive? The answer is surely no, as business agility lacks in project organizational procedures. It is one of the most prominent reasons that many managers find agility in business less industrious and prolific. According to Denning (2015), in actuality organization and agility are two disparate worlds. The world of the organization is vertical and the world of agility is considered as horizontal (Denning, 2015). It means that management and business agility are not comparable to each other and will not help the company in increasing the productivity of the company. The agile business occupies self-management teams that perform activities in an iterative manner and deliver an uninterrupted supplementary assessment to the consumers (Denning, 2012). It means that managers will have to work more hard to make a self-organizing team as business agility works in a non-collaborative approach which is not useful in making a company more dynamic and challenging to compete with adversary organizations.
References
Denning, S. (2012, April 12). The Best-Kept Management Secret On The Planet: Agile. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/09/the-best-kept-management-secret-on-the-planet-agile/#1d7bd3f52f47
Denning, S. (2012, April 11). Why Can't The C-Suite Grasp Agile Management? Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/11/why-cant-the-c-suite-grasp-agile-management/#754c6e1e2781
Denning, S. (2015, January 26). Why Do Managers Hate Agile? Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/01/26/why-do-managers-hate-agile/#1fe261366018
Gabor, A. (2010, May 25). Seeing Your Company as a System. Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10210?gko=20cca
Guide, M. S. (2016, January 15). An Introduction to Agile Business. Retrieved from http://www.managementstudyguide.com/introduction-to-agile-business.htm
Mugadza, G. (2015). Systems Thinking and Design Thinking: Complimentary Approaches? Systems Thinking World Journal, 4 (1), 31-34.
