Time coherence for the activation of the budgets and the restructuring of organizations

Similar authors to follow

---

Please try your request again later. Nafoura square 21 st villa Mokattam - Cairo - Egypt P.

O 46 Mokattam He creates an international theory theory of units. He chaired 23 twenty three international, Arab, and scientific conferences in accounting - management - engineering - environment Third: Appreciation certificates from Arab presidents and kings, Arab association of accountants - Arab and Egyptian universities-international institutions - central institutions of accounting in Arab countries - Audit bureau.

He carried out some studies and researches: Scientific and specialized works for example, not limited to: Are you an author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography. Learn more at Author Central. All Formats Kindle Edition Sort by: Popularity Popularity Featured Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg. Companies usually learn the shortcomings of phase-one planning as their treasurers struggle to estimate capital needs and make trade-offs among various financing plans, based on no more than a one-year budget.

Ultimately, the burden becomes unbearable, and the company evolves toward phase two. At first, phase-two planning differs little from annual budgeting except that it covers a longer period of time. Very soon, however, planners become frustrated because the real world does not behave as their extrapolations predict. Their first response is usually to develop more sophisticated forecasting tools: This initial response brings some improvement, but sooner or later all extrapolative models fail.

At this point, a creative spark stirs the imaginations of the planners. They suddenly realize that their responsibility is not to chart the future—which is, in fact, impossible—but, rather, to lay out for managers the key issues facing the company. We call this spark "issue orientation. The tough strategic issue that most often triggers the move to issue orientation is the problem of resource allocation: Units below the diagonal of the matrix are sold, liquidated, or run purely for cash, and they are allowed to consume little in the way of new capital.

Those on the diagonal—marked "Selectivity, earnings"—can be candidates for selective investment. And business units above the diagonal, as the label suggests, should pursue strategies of either selective or aggressive investment and growth. This outward focus is the chief characteristic of phase three: The process can be time-consuming and rigorous—scrutinizing the outside world is a much larger undertaking than studying the operations of a single company—but it can also pay off dramatically. Phase-three plans can sometimes achieve this kind of dramatic impact because they are very different from the kind of static, deterministic, sterile plans that result from phase-two efforts.

In particular, they share the following features:. Phase-three resource allocation is dynamic rather than static. The planner looks for opportunities to "shift the dot" of a business into a more attractive region of the portfolio matrix. Phase-three plans are adaptive rather than deterministic.

They do not work from a standard strategy, such as "invest for growth. Phase-three strategies are often surprise strategies. The competition often does not even recognize them as a threat until after they have taken effect. Phase-three plans often recommend not one course of action but several, acknowledging the trade-offs among them. This multitude of possibilities is precisely what makes phase three very uncomfortable for top managers. As in-depth dynamic planning spreads through the organization, top managers realize that they cannot control every important decision. Of course, lower-level staff members often make key decisions under phase-one and phase-two regimes, but because phase three makes this process explicit, it is more unsettling for top managers and spurs them to invest even more in the strategic-planning process.

When this investment is successful, the result is strategic management: In phase four, it is not that planning techniques have become more sophisticated than they were in phase three but that they have become inseparable from the process of management itself. No longer is planning a yearly, or even quarterly, activity.

Work tree in the teory of units

Instead, it is woven into the fabric of operational decision making. Perhaps the need to plan for hundreds of fast-evolving businesses serving thousands of product markets in dozens of nations has accelerated evolution at these companies.

Observing them can teach executives much about strategic management. The key factor that distinguishes strategically managed companies from their counterparts in phase three is not the sophistication of their planning techniques but rather the care and thoroughness with which they link strategic planning to operational decision making. This often boils down to the following five attributes:. A well-understood conceptual framework that sorts out the many interrelated types of strategic issues.

Strategic issues are hung on the framework like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Top management supervises the process and decides which issues it must address and which should be assigned to operating managers. Strategic thinking capabilities that are widespread throughout the company, not limited to the top echelons. A process for negotiating trade-offs among competing objectives that involves a series of feedback loops rather than a sequence of planning submissions. A well-conceived strategy plans for the resources required and, where resources are constrained, seeks alternatives.

A motivational system and management values that reward and promote the exercise of strategic thinking. Although it is not possible to make everyone at a company into a brilliant strategic thinker, it is possible to achieve widespread recognition of what strategic thinking is. This understanding is based on some relatively simple rules. Strategic thinking seeks hard, fact-based, logical information. Strategists are acutely uncomfortable with vague concepts like "synergy. It also investigates the prevalence of teamwork according to various factors including sex, sector and occupation.

The national contributions from the following 16 countries are available as PDF files: High performance workplace organisation. Impact of teamwork on learning environment. Negative consequences of teamwork. Introduction This study maps the issue of teamwork, as covered by research into working conditions in European countries.

First, the report briefly outlines how teamwork has developed and tries to take into account both the national context of individual countries and the context at company level in these countries.

Are You an Author?

The study then focuses on certain specific aspects of teamwork. Besides looking at the overall incidence of this type of work organisation in different European countries, the study examines the prevalence of specific forms of teamwork. It considers whether teamwork helps to give workers greater autonomy and higher job satisfaction. Moreover, it ascertains whether the presence of teamwork influences the learning environment in an enterprise.

Attention is also paid to the possible negative impacts of teamwork, such as higher work intensity and work overload. The national reports are also available: It is difficult to arrive at a single definition of teamwork. Several concepts exist and researchers in the field of working conditions differ in their view of what teamwork actually means.

Work organisation using teamwork can refer to a wide range of possibilities, such as quality circles, cross-functional teams, self-managing teams or virtual teams.

Many employers provide teamwork with varying degrees of autonomy. The form of teamwork depends on task specificity.

The evolution of strategic management

According to the definition proposed by Hacker see below , a distinctive feature of teamwork at the assembly line is successive work actions to assemble different parts of a product. For the purposes of this study, teamwork is understood in a broader context without drawing a distinction between teams and work groups; it thus encompasses the following definitions:.

When analysing quantitative surveys in particular, it is not possible to be certain what respondents understand teamwork to mean, especially if the question does not offer a precise definition. Qualitative surveys may then complement this information. Primarily, different historical experiences emerge in countries of the former western and eastern European country groups.

In western European countries, and in particular northern European countries like Sweden, Denmark and also the Netherlands, the concept of teamwork has been in place for decades, experiencing a surge in the s and s. Conversely, in eastern European countries, new forms of work organisation and their influence on company efficiency have only been considered since the start of the s, so their development has thus far been brief.

In view of the transformation in key areas of the economy that these countries had to undergo, the implementation of new forms of work organisation was not a central topic for debate: Employees may regard teamwork as any kind of cooperation with colleagues or have a clearer idea of a team that works on a common goal, makes joint decisions on what action to take and takes responsibility for the task.

For example, if people are grouped in departments or just work in the same premises, it is reported as teamwork. In this sense, the ability to work in a team is mostly understood as the ability to cooperate and to be friendly and polite, which is an important but insufficient precondition for teamworking. Romania is another example of a country where teamwork has a relatively brief history. The interest of specialists and of well-established companies in these issues started to increase only in recent years, as the economy became more stable and developed.

Such companies have carried out case studies on teamwork but have not published this information. Conversely, in countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland, teamwork has a relatively long tradition and, at the height of its expansion, numerous studies were conducted. The development of new forms of work organisation, including teamwork, was even supported by government initiatives. This raises the question of whether teamwork has already found its place in the majority of existing companies, at least in part, and whether the trend of organisational restructuring in the form of teamwork is stable.

In Denmark, the evidence of trend data supports this hypothesis, showing a decreasing number of companies in which teamwork has been implemented in the last three years. Similarly, in Sweden the subject of teamwork is much less current and relevant than in the last two decades of the twentieth century, and few new studies focus on teamwork in companies. At least two reasons for this declining interest are possible, according to the national correspondent. Another report by Wallace confirms that workplaces that earlier were pointed out as good examples are now moving away from this way of working.

The second reason proposed by the Swedish national correspondent seems more likely: Another methodological question arises as to whether teamwork even exists in small companies. The question of whether teamwork exists in small organisations remains open for possible further research. The challenge for companies nowadays is to deliver quickly and flexibly new quality products and services, in order to be able to respond to greater and changing demands from clients.

Standardisation and specialisation characterise traditional work organisation; the work is divided into different segments, from preparation to support roles, in which workers specialise in order to maximise productivity. Specialisation, control and routine are suitable when a constant demand for standardised products applies.

However, for a fast changing demand, this method does not seem to work as well, and may lead to coordination problems and rigidities. Thus, companies started to look for new forms of work organisation Delarue and De Prins, HPWO also implements a so-called holistic organisational approach which means featuring flat hierarchical structures, job rotation, self-responsible teams, multi-tasking and a greater involvement of lower-level employees in decision-making. A high performance workplace invests in its human resources and supports both their technical and innovation skills and their social skills; this promotes good interpersonal relationships in the workplace from which the company can also benefit.

This type of organisation is different from the Taylorist work organisation, which is characterised by task specialisation, a pyramid hierarchical structure and a centralisation of responsibilities. The need for new forms of work organisation as a good base for a high performance workplace is considered to be a key element and integral part of the Lisbon Strategy, which set its goal to make the EU economy the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion by Since then, this objective has been underlined in several European Council meetings.

While teamwork is considered to be one of the core elements of this new work organisation, different forms can be distinguished, and not all with the same consequences. In fact, wide differences emerge between the forms of new work organisation developed in different countries Lorenz and Valeyre, A good overview of these can be found in the report Partners at work? Under the traditional system - the Taylorist model - the work was divided into narrow functions with short, repetitive work cycles and the work method is prescribed in detail.

However, as noted, this system does not offer sufficient scope for a process of upgrading and innovation, which is essential for quick change and adaptation. Thus, it was felt important to involve the workers themselves and, in order to be involved, they must have the possibility of exercising judgement, developing social contacts and learning Green Paper on Partnership for a new organisation of work , European Commission, - see below under Policy documents.

A paper of the European Work Organisation Network EWON , also considers that enterprises should use the principles of HPWO - such as self-development and higher commitment of employees - as a competitive advantage. From the point of view of the dynamics of company organisation, teamwork can be regarded as just one of many elements of organisational change. From the perspective of this study, however, teamwork is a very important HPWO factor, as it directly affects employees and the quality of their working life. It is perhaps for that very reason that it is regarded as one of the most progressive instruments of current company organisational practice.

The work performance of the team is higher than individual performance when the work requires a broader scope of knowledge, judgement and opinion. The advantage of teamwork is significant productivity growth in the spheres that require creative solving of different tasks, a high degree of adaptability and operational management.

Teamwork also creates an environment that facilitates knowledge and information exchange and so-called knowledge sharing. Other advantages are the ability of new forms of work organisation to increase the potential for innovation that may add value to products or services, moving them into less price-sensitive markets. Moreover, the ability of new forms of work organisation to increase the employability of workers through multi-skilling and the acquisition of higher competencies in problem solving, communication and teamworking will help labour market adaptation, and also support new forms of local and regional economic growth and regeneration Totterdill, Dhondt and Milsome, ; OECD , Teamwork could lead to more job autonomy, greater responsibility and higher job satisfaction.

Most of the latest studies refer to the positive impact of teamwork on work productivity and company efficiency Cohen and Ledford, ; Employee direct participation in organisational change [ EPOC ] survey, New forms of work organisation are used by companies to implement strategic decisions that are taken in response to a range of business challenges and pressures EWON, Teamwork is not an answer to all company problems and organisational changes usually require interventions at all levels within an enterprise Guest, If a company decides to introduce teamwork, this needs to be integrated into the entire organisational structure of the enterprise and this structure needs to be adapted to the new model; otherwise the effectiveness of teamwork is lost.

If certain conditions are upheld, making organisational changes can be expected to have positive impacts, namely improved innovative capacity and operating efficiency, higher quality of output, better mutual relations at the workplace and higher productivity in general.

The principal conditions are sufficient autonomy for teams and direct participation by team members. As Ingrid Dackert comments, a team must have the right team climate to be innovative and beneficial in its work. Participation in accountability among individual team members and multi-skilling are important preconditions of team effectiveness. In multi-skilled teams, the borders between different job categories are broken down, thereby encouraging employees to broaden their skills and knowledge.

There is also a considerable slimming down of the structure and a reduction of functions, which may make it hard for managers to accept some loss of power. Reorganising management functions in a way that creates room for autonomous teams is also an important precondition of increasing productivity. Pay and performance determination and different aspects of reorganisation promote a process optimisation that is actively supported by the employees. Therefore, it will try to give an overall picture of the aforementioned trends on the basis of both theoretical and empirical surveys, by means of relevant experiences and studies cited in the contributions by the EWCO national correspondents.

In Plant A, which did not register any increase in work efficiency, the organisation of work around a production line made the establishment of informal contacts in the workplace impossible. Secondly, teamwork training was only given to senior managers and did not take into consideration the specific needs of each production plant, failing therefore to customise the teamwork structures to the specific characteristics of each plant. Finally, hierarchical organisation within the company tended to weaken the information flow among the different business process levels, and thus diminish performance.

Conversely, Plant B had developed a teamwork structure that showed a high work performance. This result was possible due to use of a combination of Japanese and Swedish production models.

Thinking strategically

Japanese production models are characterised by developing economic and technological aspects based on a flat, flexible and decentralised organisation that enhances a quicker adaptation to market changes. In the case of Swedish models, informal and open communication among workers is used to improve the communication flow within and between the different levels of the company. A Portuguese study investigating the efficiency of teams in services sector companies emphasises the need for what is known as participation security so that the team functions well and proposes innovative ideas.

The study examined 26 teams accounting for 70 individuals in total, who work for seven publicity agencies in the Lisbon region Curral and Chambel, According to the national correspondent, the results show that:. When using the quality and quantity of products and ideas produced by groups as measures of innovation, one may see that the groups which produce innovations of higher quality define their objectives clearly and try to achieve common agreement among all members of the group; they also have means of innovative performance control, processes of evaluation and reformulation of ideas and critical appreciation of opinions and suggestions from the team members.

Moreover, these groups also have a climate of high participation security, which allows them to introduce more information necessary to the development of good ideas. As a further example, it is worth considering the difference in productivity between workplaces where employees are organised in teams and workplaces where employees do not work in teams. In a national Dutch representative survey of labour relations, conducted by TNO Work and Employment, part of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research Nederlandse Organisatie voor toegepast-natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek, TNO in , managers appraised the performance of the work organisation using several parameters, including the ability to keep costs low, achieve identified goals within budget, customer satisfaction and product quality.

It was found that overall productivity, based on an aggregate productivity scale, did not depend on whether the manager organised the work according to teams. Nevertheless, an assessment of selected performance characteristics does demonstrate certain aspects of teamwork:.

Supervisors of teams with a minimum of four and a maximum of 20 persons who work on a product or service together, report more positively about the degree of flexibility of their employees than other supervisors. Flexibility was measured by the extent to which workers can be deployed in different tasks. The supervisors of teams also report somewhat more positively about the extent to which the team develops new products or services, although the association is very weak.

Search form

The Green Paper on Partnership for a new organisation of work , issued by the European Commission in , emphasises the need for implementing new work organisation with the aim of increasing work flexibility and the social responsibility of organisations towards employees by enhancing their professional and personal development. New forms of work organisation are also regarded as an essential part of the Lisbon Strategy.

In the European countries under study, teamwork is not currently a topic of wide debate in government documents, as the Dutch contribution mentions. The topic of implementing new forms of work organisation is hardly a policy issue in the Netherlands today. The standpoint of the government, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment are that this is the responsibility of the social partners, companies and workers … The last governmental initiative in this field of new forms of work organisation and teamwork dates from the mid s.

Since then, work organisation and teamwork have had a decentralised, indirect policy interest, mainly through policy on working conditions. Enterprise-level collective agreements and higher-level collective agreements do not usually address new forms of work organisation or teamwork, nor are new forms of work organisation a priority interest for the vast majority of social partners.

The Finnish contribution cites one of the few statements of the social partners on the issue of teamwork. In Finland, it is possible to conclude agreements enabling local workplaces to regulate ways in which teamwork can be established in the enterprise. The concept can be described as a strategy for securing the work environment standards and opportunities for skills and personal development in times of change. Team-based working arrangements were central in the discussion of developmental work. Recently, however, the concept was altered to focus on environmental sustainability and teamwork, in itself, seems to have receded into the background.

Overall, the national contributions cite few references to governmental documents, policies, programmes or social partner agreements discussing the implementation of new forms of work organisation and, in particular, teamwork. This absence of attention to teamwork in official government literature and other documents is most likely because the issue has been sidelined in countries where it was a topical concept in the s and early s. The key to increased company productivity should be increased employee satisfaction Moldaschl and Weber, According to Nicky Hayes , teamwork reduces fluctuations in performance and improves work morale.

Leading researchers in the field of work organisation, Katzenbach and Smith , are convinced that people working in a team function more efficiently, are less prone to stress and make a greater effort in their work. Furthermore, they spend less time incapacitated for work, come up with new ideas and try to improve their work. This comparative analytical report intends to contribute to both specialist and public debate by looking at how teamwork, as one instrument of the modern form of work organisation, could contribute to quality of work and employment, how it is associated with the learning environment in enterprises and how it increases empowerment of workers.

In addition, the report considers a subjective appraisal of the effectiveness of teamwork and its impact on the quality of working life of the employees themselves. Employees do not always welcome the introduction of teamwork, as was shown by the following case study of a UK company in the steel industry. A UK paper, Worker responses to teamworking: Exploring employee attributions of managerial motives Bacon and Blyton, , revealed, after two years of investigation, that managers benefited disproportionately from teamworking in comparison with other employees.

Employees perceived the introduction of teamwork merely as a means for furthering the careers of managers who were successful in its implementation. Many employees also adopted an even more negative view, complaining that teamwork was only introduced for effect, as a result of the company prioritising the claims of shareholders over the interests of employees or as a way of reducing the number of workers in the enterprise.

On the other hand, data from the Quality of Work Life survey in Finland show the opposite trend, whereby the employees themselves believe that productivity improves when work is completed in groups. This belief is stronger in the private sector and in the public sector at local government level than in the public sector at central government level. For the purposes of this study, internal group dynamics are not examined. The interest is rather focused on the overall impact of teamwork on organisational performance and quality of individual working life. Therefore, issues such as leadership style, leader elections and work organisation within the team and task distribution will not be considered.

The study also examines teamwork as a subject of research in working conditions in EU Member States. The contributions of the EWCO national correspondents, compiled on the basis of available national research, covered the various topics relating to teamwork in very different ways. Table 1 indicates the aspects of teamwork on which the different national studies focused. A plus sign was allocated where the topic was at least partly investigated in quantitative or qualitative research, or more fully within a purely qualitative study.

The absence of a topic or only a passing mention that the problem was registered in a study is denoted by a minus - sign. The individual aspects of teamwork were often outlined on the basis of both quantitative and qualitative research and case studies. A large volume of information about individual surveys came from secondary sources, as the authors often had no access to primary data and were thus unable to prepare the required data.

Annex 1 outlines numerous sample questions from national surveys, recommending useful questions to gather information about teamwork and its relation to autonomy, work intensity, job satisfaction, the learning environment and work productivity. However, it should be emphasised that, due to a hazily defined and understood concept of teamwork, the data do not give precise information on the extent of this kind of work organisation in each country in question. The analysis of the incidence of teamwork derives from questions Q. Doing all or part of your work in a team.

The data are broken down by sex, size of enterprise, occupational activity and sector. The results reveal that the incidence and scope of teamwork cannot be differentiated according to the traditional scheme of old and new EU Member States. Pronounced regional differences emerge between countries; however, unifying criteria such as geographical location or similar political and socioeconomic conditions cannot be determined. The scale of teamwork thus depends more on other characteristics; it may be assumed that the internal company environment is key. While among the NMS, the lowest incidence of teamwork is found in northern regions, i.

Although it might seem that teamwork should not be gender specific, Figure 4 shows that more men work in teams in most of the countries under study.

bahana-line.com: bahana-line.comd Taha: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle

One major exception in this respect is Romania, where the gender gap in terms of more women being involved in teamwork reached Women also more commonly worked in teams in countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and Denmark, although the difference between men and women was not statistically significant. Fundamental differences between the sexes and their work organisation were found in Poland a difference of 15 percentage points , Portugal, Greece and Austria, with more men than women working in teams.

It is likely that these countries have more traditional work organisational parameters, particularly in sectors employing mainly women. The results and indications provided by the national studies make it possible to state that teamwork is equally divided between men and women in countries where there is generally greater gender equality in employment, such as in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Conversely, southern European Member States, such as Spain and Portugal, have more pronounced differences in terms of teamwork. The main explanation for the gender differeces in teamwork most likely pertains to sectoral aspects, where women are more concentrated in certain sectors of the economy.

Another less likely explanation might consist of the actual composition of teams, where women may be disadvantaged in this regard. Nevertheless, according to a Swedish study Sandberg, , a mixed gender team composition is considered to only contribute positively to the overall working climate. Analysis of teamwork by company size reveals some differentiation according to the ACC12 and EU15 country clusters.

While in the majority of the EU15 countries, a statistical correlation was found between company size and teamwork, in the ACC12 the situation was the exact opposite. Among the EU15, the incidence of teamwork did not depend on company size in Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the UK, and Sweden, while in the other nine countries, a correlating effect was found. In the majority of cases, large enterprises with employees or more have a relatively higher proportion of employees working in teams than small companies have Table 2.

Luxembourg and Italy are exceptions: Conversely, significant statistical differences in teamwork by company size were not found in the majority of the ACC Where a statistical correlation was registered, the tendency was similar to that in the EU Teamwork is directly related to the type and nature of professions. The following analysis clarifies which professions have a high or low incidence of teamwork, according to the International Standard Classification of Occupations ISCO.

The EU15 countries are typified by a predominance of teamwork among the three highest-level occupation categories, namely legislators and senior officials and managers A higher incidence of teamwork is also found among craft and related trades workers The results thus indicate that teamwork predominates among highly-skilled jobs with a higher than average degree of autonomy. The conclusions from the national studies support this finding; in France, for example, according to the survey of organisational change and computerisation, teamwork is generally characteristic of managerial and planning or design positions with hierarchical or technical responsibilities.

In the UK, the nationally representative survey of establishments, WERS , shows that teamworking was least common in workplaces mainly comprising craft and related workers, and operative and assembly workers. Conversely, teamwork was most common among professionals. The Portuguese correspondent also states that teamwork is most frequently found among professionals, technicians and associate professionals, and managers. Legislators and senior officials and managers; 2. Technicians and associate professionals; 4. Services workers and sales workers; 6.

Skilled agricultural and fishery workers; 7. Craft and related-trades workers; 8. Plant and machine operators and assemblers; 9. Elementary occupations; 10 Armed forces. The low representation of armed forces, legislators in Luxembourg and Portugal and skilled agricultural workers means that there may be some bias. Armed forces and skilled agricultural workers are not taken into account when interpreting the data. A similar model is also seen in the ACC The only distinct exception is the much lower proportion of employees whose work is organised in team form among services workers, at It may be concluded that, in the ACC12, teamwork is more widespread among blue-collar workers than it is in the EU By contrast, teamwork is less frequent in the services sector.

According to the EWCO data, the Netherlands was the only country with a marked predominance of teamwork in the services sector, at However, the national report, based on data from the TNO survey of labour relations, shows that teamwork is relatively evenly balanced between the services sector and industrial sectors. Data from the TNO survey draw attention to the predominance of teamwork in the agricultural sector, where The survey only finds substantial differences when using a more detailed classification of economic activity.

The highest proportion of employees working in teams of a minimum of four and a maximum of 20 persons, who work on a product or service together in companies with 30 employees or more, can be found in the hotels and restaurants sector, at

• Three pieces Souvenir de Hapsal. No. 3. Song Without Words
• Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics—A Collection of Written
• MBA in a Book: Mastering Business with Attitude
• Pig-Heart Boy
• All in Her Head
• Baby Secrets: How to Know Your Babys Needs