Business activities

Company Structure

Normally an organisation has a hierarchical structure or a pyramidal structure, one person or a group on the top and the others below them at different levels, for this reason we can also call this structure "line structure". All the people know who are their managers and who are their subordinates, and also know which type of decisions they are able to take.

The activities of most organisations become too complicated to be represented only in one hierarchy for this reason they have a functional structure that include specialised production, finance, marketing... This division has some defects, one of these is that people only think on the success of its department instead of the success of the entire company creating conflict between the department over what the objectives are.

In addition, a problem of every hierarchical organisation is that people at lower levels can't take important decisions and all the responsibilities are owned by their boss.

The purpose of modern tendency is to reduce the chain of command so as to be much flatter, the IT systems have reduced the need for administrative staff and the companies were able to remove layers of workers. We have to divide small business and large business because in small business the manager wants to keep much control over their employees while in large business it is possible that the manager delegates decisions and responsibilities to others. There's a way to get round hierarchies that use the matrix management where people have more than one superior. The disadvantage of this matrix is that some departments become more complex so it's necessary to give priority in decisions only to one. There's a last way to organise a company structure and it's the possibility to create autonomous and temporary groups or team which one have to complete an entire project and at the moment it is finished split up; even this method has defect because a team maybe isn't.

Good to take decision and for doing a good work is need a strong leader that coordinate the project.

MANAGING ACROSS CULTURE. Unit 4

When you are dealing with a global multinational company you have to consider that local differences like cultural habits, beliefs and principles specific to each market can set up different policies, goals and objectives.

So the companies that want to be successful in foreign markets have to consider that the local culture characteristics will affect the business, for this reason is born a conflict between globalisation and localisation that led to the invention of "glocalisation".

Richard Lewis has classified all the cultures in 3 poles:

1. LINEAR ACTIVE: in this pole we can regroup Britain, USA, Germany and their cultures try to act logically rather than emotionally in fact they try to respect rules regulations and contract and they do one thing at a time; they are a time of individualist culture
2. MULTI ACTIVES CULTURE: here we found Southern Europe,

Latin America and Africa; they give more importance to feelings, emotions, intuitions and relationships. Other characteristics are doing many things at one time, they are flexible cultures, good at changing plans and many times they are happy to improvise. They respect social and company hierarchies; they believe that personal relationships and friendship have precedence over rules.

REACTIVE CULTURE: this is the example of Asia where people prefer to react to other positions and decisions; they avoid confrontation, they don't want to lose face. When they formulate approaches they try to suit them to both parties.

RECRUITMENT. Unit 5

An employee can give notice to the company where he works to inform them that he will leave the job position at the end of his contract. The company has to replace him but first has to discover the reason why he took the decision to leave; first the company establishes if there's an internal candidate or if it has to look to recruit an external person.

If there's none in the company that can replace the ex worker it can hire an employment agency or advertise the vacancy. When the company receives CV or resumes, make a preliminary selection creating a short list of the possible candidates; next it invites the people on this list for interviewing them and make a final selection writing to the others informing them that they have been unsuccessful. We have to distinguish the CV between the résumé, the first one is more common in Europe and Asia while the second one in the US, the CVs include photos while the resumes don't, more over the CV contains a lot of personal details such as the date of birth marital status… and include outside work interest. In general CV should be honest without lying on your work experience, has to emphasise your strength and contain only relevant information. Additional we have a covering letter, it's characteristics are firstly it has to explain why you want the job and

WOMEN IN BUSINESS .Unit 6

YOU ARE FIRED

In Norway, the government has published a list of 12 companies accused of breaking the law. The reason is because there's a law that forces companies to have at least 40% of their directors female. This law can have advantages for women, but some directors have found problems with it. They sustain that in some sectors like oil, technology, gas industries, and all the sectors where it is difficult to find women with experience, it is also difficult to respect this law. Some directors are forced to replace board members who have worked in their company for 20 years or more with someone without the experience and that they don't know.

However, Norway, with this law, has set a new record. It has, at 40%, the highest proportion of female non-executive directors. Since 2002, where the

Tax of women non-executive directors were 7.1% over 463 companies. They have to change their board composition or risk the dissolution of the company.

The different sectors of the economy are described by considering 3 sectors: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

The primary sector is made up of agriculture and the extraction of raw materials. The secondary sector is composed of manufacturing industries with which raw materials are turned into finished products. The tertiary sector includes commercial services that distribute goods to the final consumer, education, healthcare, leisure, tourism, and so on.

Lots of jobs depend on the manufacturing industry. In fact, manufacturing companies provide work for lots of people such as accountants, lawyers, designers, advertisers, and others. For this reason, advanced countries understand that it is better to have expertise concentrating on these strengths rather than make things more cheaply. The world's major economies

are major manufacturers of exported goods, after the crisis in 2008 manufacturing declines and be replaced by the services because labour cost are too high and they start to delocalise their manufacturing to low-cost countries. PRODUCTION Unit 8 THE DELL THEORY OF CONFLICT PREVENTION An American author Thomas Friedman talks about outsourcing and its international consequences. According to his theory, two countries that are both part of a global supply chain will never fight a war against each other. This is because they care about just in time deliveries of goods and services and the consequently rising standard of living. They don't look for a war because they know the risk and want to protect the equity that has built up. A war would mean disrupting industries and economies around the world and the loss of the supply chain position for a long time. In conclusion, we can say that the supply chain promotes prosperity and stability. LOGISTIC Unit 9 PULL AND PUSH STRATEGIES A manufacturing

company can produce according to two different strategies: pull strategies and push strategies. If a company produces with a pull strategy it follows the current demand that is satisfied from inventory. The replacement of the pieces, from the stock, is automatically and it is rapidly ordered by the supplier. An example of this strategy is the just-in-time strategy developed by Toyota in 1950, the most common system is called Kanban that means "visual card". Other strategies include lean production, stockless production where the philosophy is buy and produce something only if it is needed. Summarising this is a replenishment strategy where production and supplier are constantly reacting to the consumption of components.

On the other hand, if a company chooses to produce following a push strategy, the production is based on the estimate of the future demand according to the production lead time; these types of strategies include safety stocks and lead times because demand

forecasts aren’t always accurate

QUALITY .Unit 10

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

The management approach of total quality ( TQM ) was developed by an American in 1940 but the first to use this approach were the Japanese for their post-war industry; after its success in 1980 American began to use it. This type of management involves a corporate culture dedicated to providing customers with products with “zero defect” and service as close to perfection, in this way products and services can satisfy all the needs of customers.

The company has to do the right things every time and should eliminate waste from its operations; not only but if we consider that the processes always change everything can be improved all the time.

Not only the manager but also the staff have to research continuously to improve the quality in all the activities, identify and correct possible mistakes in the system or in the processes.

The fundamental rule is that quality is more important than maximizing output.

or reduce costPRODUCT .Unit 11PRODUCTS AND BRANDSWe consider a thing as a product if it can be offered to a market satisfying a want or a need. It’s very commonfor most manufacturing companies to divide their products into product lines , groups of products withsimilar characteristics like sold to the same target market or marketed through the same outlets… Acompany has to look to the future because the needs of the people change constantly and because a producthas a life cycle that ends with a decline this means that the company will replace or re-evaluating theirproducts.The majority of products sold are branded, a brand is a name or sometimes a symbol that identifies andpermits the customer to recognize a specific product or service . To reinforce their brand name companiescreate distinctive design or packaging .The objective of a brand is to create a relationship of trust, this is a key factor some brands represent acustomers’ attitudes or feelings . Thanks to

By running an extensive advertising campaign, companies can achieve agene.