Performance of different business organisations depends on so many factors. The success depends on the type of strategy that a business or an organisation selects to use, the culture of the business and some other important factors that will be mentioned in this paper.
For a manager to be sure of success, the market competition has to be something that he/she knows how to deal with. This requires the knowledge of the business culture, identification of the organisational structure and matching all these with the right management strategy and good management of organisational resources.Management is how a company's resources are planned, controlled and organised to produce an output of organisational target (Armstrong 2006: 3). A company's resources are divided into three, the human resource, physical and information resources and financial resources. In a knowledge based organisation, the most important among these resources is the human resource.
This is where the skills needed in a company are, it is the employees to undergo training, they are the ones that know the routine procedures of work in the company and are the ones that can learn (Nonaka 2005: 12).A manager is therefore required to know how to plan on how to work with the employees, lead and control the employees. Features of a Knowledge Based Organisation In management strategies, a chief executive officer or a human resource manager can decide to make an organisation a knowledge based organisation to maintain competitive advantage or improve performance. Knowledge based organisations are those organisations that use knowledge as a competitive parameter in their software and the company's systems (Whiddett and Hollyforde 2003: 65).
A knowledge based company is therefore characterised by more of knowledge flows than the financial flows as compared to other business strategies. The people (employees) are not at all regarded as costs, but as revenue. In this strategy of business management, customers share knowledge and not as other strategies that the customer relations are just one way oriented, which is market driven. Knowledge based organisational strategy changes the normal hierarchy of an organisation with the managers having the same level as those of the workers (Chaston 2004: 40).It is not really a same level but there is no superiority expressed by the manager after adopting this kind of strategy when it comes to sharing of information. This is because the employees know even more than the top leaders after training, learning and the experience from the normal duties.
In knowledge based organisation, the employees are trained on the organisation's or company's internal system and the external system (Chaston 2004: 42). The internal system of knowledge are therefore the knowledge the employees have gained and express in their normal duties and behaviours.This is so had for another company to copy and therefore is a good parameter for competition. The external sources are information obtained from the outside sources of the company for the benefit of the company maintaining a competitive advantage by having knowledge about the market competition and about more information that can keep it above the others (Chaston 2004: 42).
Another feature in a knowledge based organisation is the culture which develops, or is a sharing culture. Every employee shares the information obtained with the others including the manager.The flow of information is the primary power in management. Knowledge strategy of a company as has been described above, is that strategy that uses the knowledge capabilities of the company and the knowledge resources to accomplish the targets of the company.
The main reason for a manger's decision to use this kind of strategy is for maintenance of a competitive advantage, improvement of performance and being above the competitors in terms of knowledge and technology (Cavaleri et al 2005: 1).When a company adapts this strategy, it has high chances of being rated among the high performing organisations since it obtains knowledge about knew technologies due to its strategy for gaining more information apart from the basics, and learn on improvement procedures before the competitors know of the new strategy. There is no copying as it is in other strategies where the hardware can be copied. The software and company system knowledge cannot be copied giving advantage to any company that practises or uses this strategy in management of competition (Chaston 2004: 45).How to maintain a competitive advantage There is one important factor that has to be considered regardless of the type of model that a company uses.
Competitive intelligence. An organisation's people resourcing executive should have the ability, based on this strategy of knowledge, to know the threats from the external environment or from the competitors that could have negative effects on the organisations in the future (Chijo et al, 2006:75). Organisations do not operate on short term basis so that after some short period of operation, it closes down.The organisations would always want to maintain customers, improve their performances and be competitive so that they are not left behind in the market.
This requires long term plans or consideration of the future in the plans. It is from this that the threats have to be known and necessary steps have to be made (Teece 2006: 49). A people resourcing executive needs intelligence in order to make correct decisions for the future of the company in order to be globally competitive or remain competitive in the global market (Chijo et al, 2006: 75).Competitive intelligence also enables the people resourcing executive to identify the new opportunities for the benefit of the company due to innovations leading to a competitive position of the company. Intelligence is also needed for decision making in other areas of management apart from future decisions. The people resourcing executive officer need to have the intelligence on how to deal with or make decisions on the other management processes such as on marketing, management of costs and how to obtain technological information that can be used for the development of the company and knowledge of competitor intelligence (Teece 2006: 49).
People Resourcing What does people resourcing involve? There are so many resources of an organisation. The main one is the people resource which plays a major role in ensuring that the organisation accomplishes the missions and that it maintains a competitive advantage (Box all and Purcell 2008: 50). Maintaining competitive advantage as have been noted earlier needs a parameter that cannot be copied by other business which is knowledge. A knowledge strategy can only be implemented by use of people working in the organisation.
It therefore requires people management. People resourcing requires a people resourcing executive to have; the relevant strategies for management of employed staff, future plans on what resources the organisation will need, knowledge on the existing organisational structure, knowledge on how to design outsourcing plans for the organisation, work processes, and the plans for internal and external recruitment (Johns and Leatherbarrow 2004: 98).The executive is also required to; assess the job designs and employ the right people, find out the ethical issues that may affect the business, how they may affect the business and ways of dealing with it, to devise the deployment strategies, determine the appropriate personnel approaches for example if an organisation can use the e-personnel approaches and be successful, and developing comparative processes.The people resourcing executive has to make sure in developing a plan or a strategy for all the people resources, that all the above mentioned are done including integrating the people issues into the strategy.
He has to identify the resources, the success factors and how to implement the resources. This role depends on the structure, strategy that the executive develops and the culture of the organisation which the people resourcing executive has to know or develop an appropriate one, if in any case the present one does not function to the required level.When an executive knows all the areas to handle in people resourcing and knows how to manage a knowledge based organisation, then the organisation will be successful (Johns and Leatherbarrow 2004: 98). For an organisation to maintain the competitive advantage or remain competitive in the global market, information has to flow so that appropriate decisions are made in the various levels of management (Chijo et al, 2006: 75). A business has to use an appropriate model or framework even if it uses a knowledge strategy.There are so many models that can be used in a knowledge based organisation to ensure success.
Models of People Resourcing Maintaining competitive advantage does not only mean having the intelligence. Competitive intelligence is a key issue but a people executive has to determine the success factors, priorities and implementation strategies to be able to accomplish the mission of the organisation. There are several models which can be used for the success of a company (Johnson et al 2006: 124).Balance of Performance Model In management, the main aim is to accomplish the missions of the organisation by performing all the management duties.
The performance require a balance between the factors that lead to the success of the organisation. These success factors are the management, technology and leadership. According to Purcell (2003), there has to be a balance between these factors to ensure organisational success. Balancing these factors is normally challenging for the managers who lack the appropriate processes and systems or are just poor managers.
The balance model has three success factors, leadership, management and the technology. All of these are important but the balancing framework has leadership at the base which means it controls the rest two. This is when the organisation is said to be balanced. When leadership takes the base it means that the technology and the managers serve the organisation and not enslave the servers, customers and the producers (Nonaka 2005: 163). The system of balancing does not have a formula though but ensuring that there is a balance according to this model, leads to success.Balance model leadership requires a people resourcing executive to use his/her skills of management to balance between leadership, management and technology (Nonaka 2005: 164).
Due to the changing world, new technologies arise, the people resourcing executive is suppose to know the technologies appropriate for the organisation and how to make use of them for the benefit of the company. In a knowledge based organisation, the important resource is the people working there (Hendry 1995: 2).A people resourcing executive should be able to identify the appropriate technology to use in knowledge management and how to recruit the employees using the same technologies. An example is using the present Internet technology to make information available to the employees and for their training. His/her role is to recruit the employees.
This means that he/she has to train them on how to obtain the relevant information for example about market competition, competitor intelligence, and additional information to keep the organisation at the top rankings (Mathis and Jackson 2006: 7).Using this balance model of success, the resourcing executive can use competitive intelligence to influence the kind of leadership, which in a knowledge based organisation can be a laisez fairre, to determine the appropriate technologies in various areas of people management and for general planning, organising and control of the organisation. People resource management as have been noted earlier, depends on the culture that the executive develops, the structure of the organisation that he/she finds appropriate, and other important activities of people resourcing like developing a strategy for management (Mathis and Jackson 2006: 12).The culture of a knowledge based organisation is that of information flow which means that every employee shares ideas on what knowledge he/she has, with the others for the benefit of the company.
According to Marchington et al, success will depend on the knowledge management and leading of the employees when a people resourcing executive decides to use the balance model (2002). Good management of these two factors result in good performance and maintainance of a competitive advantage.In knowledge management, information about the global competitors should be available to the organisation, additional information on how to improve should also be available and more trainings on how to develop unique products according to the organisation's own processes and systems, based on their own knowledge, should also be done to beat the competitors in the market (Teece 2006: 49). A People Practises Deployment Framework This is a 'customer is the king' model that uses the employee attitude to gain customers (Balaji and Ramya 2008).
The model refers to the employees as the success factor in the performance of an organisation.This model values the effort and the attitude that the employees and the other people of the organisation, put in the organisation for the organisation's output. Taking care of the employees therefore crowns it all. Good management and leadership results in good performance. People practises deployment framework is a framework with four phases that enable the organisation to lay down people's practices foundation in relation to the business objectives and implementation process, which will in the end lead to innovation and improvement of the practises.
The fame work known as VAIM, values the customers voice in the first phase, how the practises are aligned to the business objectives in the second phase, implementation of the process in the third phase and evaluation and management in the fourth phase (Balaji and Ramya 2008). The people resourcing executive should identify the voice of customers as a first measure, from the employees view since it is the employees who relate to the customers. Getting this kind of information will enable the organisation to know what the customers require and formulate strategies on how to meet the needs.Acquiring information about customer needs requires the use of a model. VAIM uses Kano model to acquire and understand the customer requirements.
This model has the principle that the customer needs are classified into three. The type of requirement, what the requirement means and what satisfies the customer. This helps the organisation to determine the basic needs, determine the critical areas, where there are differentiations and how they can be created and the value adds (Balaji and Ramya 2008).After acquisition of information, the next step in aligning the practices to the objectives of the business or the organisation. The second phase of the framework involves establishment of the procedures and the policies while considering the needs of the customer.
In this phase, other models of management could be used apart from the Kano model. A measurement system has then to be developed for management purposes. Measurement gives the manager a preview of the extent of effectiveness and success of the deployment of the people practises (Balaji and Ramya 2008).
