In all business and organizational activities is the act of coordinating the efforts of people to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. (Press, 2013) Therefore a manager Is responsible for ensuring that all of this happens accordingly. Michael Dell the founder and Manager of Dell computers perfectly shows all of these skills. Dell computers are a multinational computer trading company that was first established back in 1984.Dell develops, sells, repairs and supports computers and their related products and services (Dell, 2013).
Michael S. Dell the creator of this business used his impressive entrepreneurial skills along with his fascination with computers to establish and uphold this Internationally acclaimed business. In 1991 Dell was making sales of $546 million, although come late 1993 it proved to be a challenge for Dell as there was a recorded loss of $36 million (Dell, N. D). The company was in need of serious changes to rebuild its successes.It was time for Michael Dell to step in as a manger and take control.
Through the the use of the management theories Organizational behavior, strategic management, Decision making and Human Resources Michael dell was able o turn Dell Into a money making market leading success once again. Organizational Behavior The first thing Michael needed to do to get dell back on track was take leadership over his teams. Michael has always been a strong believer of getting involved with all of his employees and having strong management and leadership attributes showing throughout his whole company.Positive outcomes of building an effective team at Dell was that It allowed staff to take leadership with their own tasks and decisions and for all the different branches of Dell to come together and work towards the same goals that Michael envisioned. For such a big company this was very important as there are so many different things going on in different branches it was going to be hard to monitor everyone 24/7. By applying Leadership techniques such as empowerment and Referent Power Michael was able to achieve this success.
With empowerment Michael gave his employees the Information and knowledge to succeed and do well.When an employee feels empowered they usually will follow through with commitment and high quality work ethic to the task at hand. Lastly Referent Power was a great help in the success of getting Dell back on track. By being ouch a charismatic leader, but also one with a clear head and willing to listen, it made Michaels staff more than happy to work for Dell and also created a sense of admiration and wanting to associate themselves with Michael himself.
(Dell, N. D) Secondly Michael needed to sort out the communication in his company and with his customers before he could go anywhere further.The most beneficial form of communication due to Dells situation would be Effective communication, credible communication and Feedback. In communication processes there will always be two things, a sender and a receiver.
Through this there are many variables, the primary ones for Dell being Sender/receiver, Message, Channel, Encoder/Decoder, Feedback, Noise, Context and perception. Due to these variables the first communication Consideration Effective communication Is very Important as It Is all about making and customers.By getting a clear message across there won't be much room for perception barriers to be formed between Dells staff and customers as perception is a communication difficulty that has been a problem for dell in the past. (Dell, N.
D)Credible communication is another important style of communication Dell added to put in place to use with its customers as it earns the trust and respect of customers and gave Dell integrity in the eyes of others. Lastly Dell needed to take advantage of feedback a very important communication consideration to be taken in all companies.If Michael were to ignore customer feedback he could be faced with a whole new array of problems due to not fixing up negative feedback when it was first communicated. Through this organizational behavior Michael was able to clearly plan the next steps for the company. Strategic Management In order for Michael to establish and sustain a competitive advantage for Dell in the PC industry having a good strategic management process was vital.
Dell needed this competitive advantage to gain the upper edge of the vastly growing competition.The strategic management process is shown in the diagram below. (Riley, 2012) With the strategic analysis Michael used this to motivate groups in his company and to focus them on strategies he believed were going to create success for Dell. These were things such as focusing his company primarily on the new Latitude XP device, which Michael believed would bring a competitive advantage to dell to take market control.
(Dell, N. D) Strategic choice crafts strategies to guide the allocation of resources in order to be more efficient so that profits could increase again.Michael told his customers that strategy was about what was being done and not about what was being said. Michael made great effort to understand his customer's in order to satisfy their needs and wants (Dell, N. D). The last part of the strategic management process is strategy implementation, which is the process of putting strategies into action.
Michael believed that Dell's competitive advantage would be successful only if the strategy was backed by the right people and organization. He strongly believed that finding the right people with the right abilities was crucial for Dell's ongoing success.Employees needed to understand Dell's strategy, so that the strategy could be implemented further. Michael also needed to stick to his three golden rules of business, 'disdain inventory, 'always listen to the customer' and 'never sell indirect' (Dell, N.
D). All of this giving Dell a competitive edge in the PC industry that they were financially. Decision Making As the manager of Dell, Michael had to use systematic and intuitive thinking when making complex decisions surrounding his company. Due to the cash crunch Dell as not able to cope with the increased complexity that was expanding with its products range.Michael realized one main reason for the huge loss the company had been due to the lack of senior managers.
Dell also abandoned their retail business to focus on a mail-order business (Dell, N. D). Michael through using the decision making process was able to see where the change needed to be made. (Hayes, 2011) Teams will sometimes go through rough patches where they become De motivated and it is vital to continue to keep teams motivated in order for them to want to continue to work and achieve success.
One motivation theory that Michael Dell put onto effect was Miscellany's Acquired Needs Theory.This theory identifies 3 needs relative to the workplace: (Redmond, 2013) When dell was in the process of creating several notebook style products but Michael told them that only one of the products would be successful and to scrap the rest. This vastly De- motivated the engineers who had spent a lot of time and energy developing these products. To re motivates them Michael used Miscellany's Acquired needs theory by reinforcing the strategy to make them feel affiliated and still part of an overall goal and encouraged them to pull together and to achieve success.This was some very important decision making for the future and success of the company.
"Michael made it a point to make sure that everyone at DELL felt that they were part of something great - something special - perhaps something even greater than themselves. " (Dell, N. D) Human Resources Michael believed 'If you hire people with the potential to grow far beyond their current position, you build depth and additional capacity into your organization. ' (Dell, N.
D) Michael strongly believed that the ability to find and hire the right people was crucial for Dell's success. Recruitment was also important toMichael; he was always getting involved in the recruitment process. As Dell was growing quickly, Michael realized that his employees could not keep up with this additional responsibility. Michael then found a solution to this problem, by segmenting Jobs and bringing in new talent to fill the positions.
However the segmentation confused Michaels employees. Michael informed his employees of the change by explaining the tangible impact of the change on their Jobs and their careers. Michael also believed in creating the same incentive system across the whole company to motivate employees, so all staff would look towards one common team.This would encourage Dell's staff to work in a few different specialized teams to help get Dell financially back on track. Dell Computers were going through a difficult period during their cash crunch but through the skills of the manager Michael, Dell was able to once again get back on track financially and go onto excel far further than it had previously been performing.
This was due to the great leadership of Michael but also how Michael implemented the four management theories explained in this report. By utilizing his knowledge of management styles and what makes people and business work together Dell was able to progress as a whole.
