Strategic Planning. Jarrod K. Murray. PADM Dr. Bryd. Human Resource Management. Valdosta State University 2/9/13

Transcription

1 Running Head: Strategic Planning Strategic Planning Jarrod K. Murray PADM Dr. Bryd Human Resource Management Valdosta State University 2/9/13

2 Strategic Planning 2 Strategic Planning Strategic plans are plans that apply to entire organization, establishing the organizations goals, and also look for a position in the organizations environment (Robbins & Coulter, 2007, p. 189). Robbins and Coulter describe different forms of plans, long term (beyond 3 years), short term (less 1 year), and operational plans (specify the details of how an overall goal is to be achieved) (2007, p. 189). They also explain further that this involves training and real goal planning. Planning is vital for any company to survive, both public and private. The United States demographics are changing. By 2050 the majority of the workforce will be entering retirement age. This poses a problem with staffing as the generations have been decreasing in comparison of the baby boomer age of the workforce. This decline in able workers it to be projected as a decline from 63 percent able works to 57 percent able workers (Census Bureau, 2008). The amount of minorities will also increase as 2050 approaches. Understanding these changes and how to plan for them to gain a position in an ever changing environment is vital. The percentage of able age workers may seem like a small decrease, but let s take into account the public sector of work as an example. In the public sector there is a negative outlook because of the job declination it has been forced to go through. When searching the internet you will come across multiple negative articles that express how many jobs are cut in the government. Brookings.com states that government employment has decreased by 580,000 jobs since 2009 (Greenstone & Looney, 2012). Greenstone and Looney give further explanation, A notable aspect of the July employment report is the decline in public-sector employment. In fact, public-sector employment (i.e. federal, state, and local government jobs) declined in 10 of the past 12 months, in sharp contrast to 29 consecutive months of private-sector job growth. Indeed, falling public employment has been among the largest contributors to unemployment in the

3 Strategic Planning 3 United States since the end of the Great Recession (2012). For example, Brookings shows the following table: Occupation Employment Employment Change in Percent Change (2009) (2011) Employment in Employment Teachers 3,942,700 3,721, , % Policemen 666, ,427-56, % Fire fighters 233, ,158 44, % Emergency 69,370 39,170-30, % responders Air-traffic 23,959 17,128-6, % controllers Figure 1: Brookings.com Declining Government Employment ( This View of declining employment creates a form of doubt in our public administration. What is failed to be mentioned is the amount of public administrators there are in the United State. According to Free Republic there are 2,518,101 Part-Time - 250,785 Full-Time State - 3,818,577 Part-Time - 1,451,002 Full-Time Local - 11,039,250 Part-Time - 3,383,976 (2010). This shows how many are employed because of the public sector. The total number is a

4 Strategic Planning 4 staggering 19,077,715 employees. This gives us a 17% loss of employees for 3 years. When you look at this number alone, yes, it is difficult to take in. The high rate of job loss looks huge. But we need to take into account how many were employed by the public sector. A private company may only lose 20 to 50 people, but if you take into consideration the size of the companies, the ratios change. A small business may lose 50% of their staff when loosing 20 people, but the public sector lost only 17%. This is not to mention the many that lost jobs when companies closed. Some of these companies lost hundreds of employees and were forced to shut down. The public sector on the other hand survived a large number of cut backs, in the realm of raw numbers, because they are able to run efficiently and also do so with a monstrous amount of employees. Now, looking at the percent s, there is to be a 6% drop of working age individuals. To some organizations this may seem like a small decrease in workers, but the matter that needs to be taken into account is the number people this percent actually accounts for. The public sector that is talked about earlier is not the entire United States workforce. There were a total of 144,592,000 workers in the United States in 2010 (Census Bureau, 2010). Six percent of 144,592,000 is a staggering 8,675,520. This means that the workforce will have 8,675,520 less able workers. This number dwarfs the public sectors loss, showing the public sector as a small percent of this equation. These numbers show the importance of strategic planning for future organizational goals. A best case scenario in this issue would having the retiring employees assist in choosing there replacement and if possible training them to perform the job. An acceptable case would be to begin recruiting before the employees leave and cross training the new employee with 2-3 employees that are leaving. Of course, the worst case would be if the human resource manager did nothing and allowed the positions to go dark. So, that brings up another way to help an organizations survive with a substantial amount of lost employees. Are

5 Strategic Planning 5 as mentioned, training is one option, but another is if an organization takes the public sectors model of efficiency. Public administration is often overlooked by the public as a whole. The level of efficiency is that the public sector achieves is the case of many business. This is done by modeling businesses after the public sector. Efficiency is vital in any organization and there are many ways to become efficient. There is departmentalization and span of control, just to name a few from Jonathon Tomkins (2004). Span of control is a principle explains that a there is a limited amount of subordinate that any supervisor can handle. Unfortunately, the number varies from supervisor to supervisor, showing that there is no one correct span of control for all situations (Tompkins, 2004), but if an organization were to over step that span of control the organization would suffer from inefficiency. Tompkins (2004) also mentions that there is a need of departmentalization. Departmentalization is carried out by creating work subdivisions. In each subdivision there would be specific tasks assigned to that department and that department would report to a supervisor, who would act as a liaison to the other departments. A liaison is vital to departmentalization because, when organizations are structured to maximize strengths within departments, the result can disrupt the overall optimization of the organization (Michaelson & Michaelson, 2010). This hierarchal order would help in appeasing the homogeneity principle. The homogeneity principle states that work should be divided (departmentalization) so that work of a single organizational unit is homogeneous in character (Tompkins, 2004). If any department is not homogeneous in any way then they will be inefficient. Tompkins (2004) continues to state that, Each department should be organized around a distinct function or task for which government is responsible. To do otherwise invites

6 Strategic Planning 6 confusion, duplication of effort, and inefficiency It is easy to describe inefficiency and efficiency, but how does organization measure efficiency? That would depend on the model that the organization follows. If the organization follows the human relations model then efficiency would be judged by employee development, cohesion and moral of the employees. The manager would work to remove tension from employees and work to maintain the employees. On the other hand there is the rational goal model; which states that efficiency can be measured by goal attainment. This may be one of the better ways to measure efficiency in many organizations. When an organization sets a goal, it is easily measured by asking if the goal was met. Rational goal method is also more controlled, and when an environment is more controlled then it is easier to measure. This method seems to be the view of public efficiency. Many people measure whether the public sector is an efficient entity if it completes the goals they have set. This may be because of the size of the public sector, but either way many times the rational goal method seems to be the preferred method of measuring efficiency. A minor note to add is that in my experience in the private sector, the human relation model has been tried many times and is sometimes successful, but in many cases the rational goal method is more successful. There are hybrids of the varying methods applied to many large and successful companies, but the rational method is more dominate in the hybrid theories. Creating an efficient plan is a task within itself, but how to carry out the plans are even more difficult at times. One of the better ways to do so is to follow a hierarchal model of leadership. This is because of a few business and psychological aspect of organizational behavior. Max Weber studied the most efficient organizations in the late 1800 s, early 1900 s. He discovered that the bureaucracy approach with a hierarchy was to be viewed as an efficient and effective organizational structure. He stated that an organization needed 4 elements to

7 Strategic Planning 7 achieve this; division of labor, delegation of authority, micro-managers, and span of control (Levy, 2010). One of the more key elements is that of delegation of authority. This is important because, instead of having supervisors try to accomplish everything they delegate tasks to be completed by other. If a hierarchy/authoritative environment was not put in place then this would not be possible. People respond to direction, people have a psychological need for control. This control does not just span the control of their life alone. As stated by Shapario et al. the need for control is fundamental to all humans (Shapiro, Shwartz, & Astin, 1996). They further explain that an individual is able to pursue a level of mastery only when they are free from anxiety, when they have a level of predictability. This is not to say that all aspects of an individual s life, is to be controlled and predictable, but there is a need for some form of a mundane routine in an individual s life. This would lead into the peak performance issues that are irrelevant at this current time. What needs to be known is that many organizations have found that some form of authoritative leadership is needed to keep many people driven and even creative. All psychological behaviors aside, organizations are structured to maximize strengths within departments, the result can disrupt the overall optimization of the organization (Michaelson & Michaelson, p. 48). If an organization is not brought together with a form of hierarchy then the organization would fail to achieve its end goal, productivity. Without having a line of authority that holds each department accountable and also acts a liaison to each department, the organization as a whole would fail. Although, there is a constant balance of power, as Long describes in the article, Power and Administration, it is also mentioned that there is a need for a planned government (Long,

8 Strategic Planning ). In order to have a planned government we need a hierarchy to tie all of the differing ideas and planning of the separate departments, legislative, judicial, and executive. This concept is no different in private corporations. In order to achieve departmental cohesion, many corporations model their structure after the structure of the government. Each department will have a superior that acts a liaison to other superior figure heads from other departments to achieve a similar cohesive goal as a whole organization. Geno Prussakov displayed a model showing the differences and similarities between management, leadership and transformational leadership. The diagram is below: Figure 1: Diagram of Management, Leadership and Transformational Leadership Geno Prussakov describes the diagram in the following words, This model is a viable model, but an organization must have the proper leader(s) to be able to carry it out. This means that the human resource manager must carefully select the leader that is to assume this responsibility.

9 Strategic Planning 9 Management is about the mind. It is the manager s job to stay focused on the task and goals, to set action plans, thereby helping followers deal with complexity. Leadership, on the other hand, is more about the heart, or staying focused on the people and their individual characteristics, creating a shared vision that helps followers to participate in a change process. Finally, transformational leadership is about breaking down resistance to change. This is done both through assigning meaning to change and through the change within the leader (him)/(her)self (2013). There are many different types of leadership, but in these changing times the leadership needs to be to have a priority of human capital. Numerous perspectives have been used in research on leadership. Some I/O psychologists have taken a trait-based approach to leadership. This approach states that leaders have certain personality attributes that their followers do not. For instance, leaders may be described as assertive, confident, tactful, or persuasive. Another approach addresses the behaviors of leaders. The two most prominent behavior categories are initiating structure and consideration. Initiating structure refers to the taskoriented behaviors such as organizing and structuring work for followers. Consideration refers to the ways leaders show concern for followers. An alternative approach sees leadership as situation-specific. Situational leadership theory states that the balance of initiating structure vs. consideration behaviors in which a leader must engage depends on the emotional maturity and expertise of the followers. The general model of leadership perceptions proposes that leader behavior is interpreted and labeled by followers; if the behavior matches the follower's leadership prototype, the label of leader is applied to this person. For instance, an employee may view a leader as someone who

10 Strategic Planning 10 takes charge of a situation and defines for the group how work should be done. Someone from the group who takes charge and structures the task at hand is likely to be perceived by this employee as a leader. Subsequent behavior by this emergent leader is likely to reinforce perceptions of leadership. Being seen as a leader is important; influence is granted by followers who perceive another as a leader. This influence should enhance attainment of outcomes. Attainment of outcomes, in a reciprocal fashion, also affects follower perceptions. Being associated with positive (or negative) outcomes affects how strongly a person is seen as a leader. The best choice of a leader would be the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory asserts that leaders develop relationships with each member of their work group. A high quality relationship is characterized by the member having high levels of responsibility, decision influence, and access to resources. Members who enjoy a high quality LMX relationship are said to be in the IN-GROUP. A low quality LMX relationship is characterized by the leader offering low levels of support to the member, and the member having low levels of responsibility and decision influence. Members who have a low quality LMX relationship are said to be in the out-group (Levy, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2010). The quality of the leader-member exchange relationship is theorized to be related to work and attitudinal outcomes. For example, exchange quality has been demonstrated to predict such outcomes as employee withdrawal or resignation, salary and promotion, productivity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. In conclusion there are many choices that can be made by an individual that is in the position of human resource manager to prepare for the oncoming changes. The worst choice is to not do anything. In my personal belief I feel that selected good leaders and preparing for the

11 Strategic Planning 11 change trough cross training and filling the positions before the workers retire would be the smoothest and least confrontational method.

12 Strategic Planning 12 References Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2007). Social Pshychology. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.. Bureau, C. (2007, 3 8). Free Republic. Retrieved from Data, C. B. (2010, 3 8). Free Republic. Retrieved from Greenstone, M., & Looney, A. (2012, August 3). Brookings on Job Numbers. Retrieved from Brookings: Levy, P. E. (2010). Industrial and Organizational Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers. Levy, P. E. (2010). Industrial Organizational Psychology (3 ed.). New York: Worth Publishers Michaelson, G. A., & Michaelson, S. (2010). Sun Tzu: The Art of War for Managers. Avon: Adams Media. Long, N. E. (1949, Autumn). Power and Administration. Public Administration Review, pp Prussakov, G. (2013, 2 11). Where Management, Leadership and Transformational Leadership Overlap. Retrieved from Affiliate Marketing Blog by Geno Prussakov: Robbins, S. P., & Coulter, M. (2007). Management. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.

13 Strategic Planning 13 Shapiro, D., Shwartz, C., & Astin, J. (1996). Controlling ourselves, controlling our world: Psychology's role in understanding positive and negative consequences of seeking and gaining control. In American Psychologists (Vol. 51, pp ). Tompkins, J. R. (2004). Organization Theory and Public Management. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing.