Managerial Finance assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Managerial Finance assignment - Essay Example For the current, the company has a total market share of 21.2% in the UK market for timber, second to London Counties. The company has grown significantly over the years because of the marriage of the managing director, who was a sawmill owner to a wealthy forestry owner in the north of England. Being second in the total UK market, the company is poised for a position of growth as its prospects for the future. Wooden Posts Ltd is poised for growth in the future. However, because of changes in the UK timber market the company is presented with three alternatives by an international business consultancy firm. According to the firm, because the market for the companys products may face a slow down in terms of growth, the company has two options to expand, and one option to withdraw or contract. As the timber market in the UK is forecast to face a slow down in terms of growth, the rivalry in the current competition is expected to become more intense. In order to address this, the first option Wooden Posts Ltd has is to acquire a competitor, London Counties, the player with the largest market share in the UK market. This will increase the companys total market share. This is also significant to the company, as Wooden Posts Ltd has faced challenges in terms of increasing costs in the companys production and distribution systems. The logistical problems that give rise to increasing costs can be addressed by expanding the companys facilities in the form of facilities that are owned by one of its competitors. Although this option presents some potential gains to the company in the form of industry consolidation and economies of scale, this option is considered very risk--one, because of the potential failure of mergers, and two, even the merger proves to be successful, it does n ot guarantee that gains from acquisition are huge enough to contribute to the increase in shareholders wealth. The second option to Wooden Posts Ltd is to improve the

To what extent is the HR function essential in achieving successful Essay

To what extent is the HR function essential in achieving successful organization change - Essay Example Human Resource as a change agent has the following role in operatiopnal effectiveness: managing culture change processes; facilitating teams and groups to implement change; and identifying change agents within the organization (Wapshott & Spicer, 2005). The Human Resource functional competencies are perhaps more widely known to include Human Resource Planning and Staffing; Performance management and development; employee and labour relations; compensation and benefits; health, safety, welfare and security; systems information and management; and organizational design and development (Brewster, Farndale, & Ommeren, 2000). Man as a social animal finds it hard to exist in relative peace without any form of organization. Without an organization chaos normally ensues, formal or informal, organizations exist in one form or another to provide order in society. In Britain and the rest of the industrial world today, it is almost impossible to imagine life without the plethora of organizations that comprise and make possible our everyday life (Burnes, 2004). Organizations being composed of different individuals and personality is in constant flux thus are prone to influences that can bring an enormous amount of change in every minute of its existence (Alfes, Truss, & Gill, 2010). Impermanence and transience are increasingly becoming important features of modern life brought about by major expansion in the scale and scope of change and the accelerating pace of change (Hayes, 2002). Individual change is at the heart of everything that is achieved in organizations. Once individuals have the motivation to do something different, the whole world can begin to change (Cameron & Green, 2009). By any objective measure, the amount of significant, often traumatic, change in organizations has grown tremendously over the past two decades. Although some people predict that most of the reengineering, outsourcing, restrategizing, mergers, downsizing, quality efforts, and cultural renewa l projects will soon disappear, I think that is highly unlikely (Hadley, 2009). Powerful macroeconomic forces are at work here, and these forces may grow even stronger over the next few decades. As a result, more and more organizations will be pushed to reduce costs, improve the quality of products and services, locate new opportunities for growth, and increase productivity (Kotter, 1996). In the book â€Å"The Heart of Change† an overview of an eight-step model for change was divided into three major groups: 1. Creating the climate for change; 2. Engaging and enabling the whole organization; and 3. Implementing and sustaining the change. The eight-step are: 1. Increase urgency; 2. Build guiding teams; 3. Get the vision right; 4. Communicate for buy-in; 5. Enable action; 6. Create short-term wine; 7. Don’t let up; 8. Make it stick (Cohen, 2005). In the same book, two approaches to change were proposed: analysis-think-change and see-feel-change (Cohen, 2005). Practicall y the Human Resource is at the start and end of the process (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008). In the Eight-step model the core and enabler for each step is the Human Resource organization. Life is in a state of constant flux, the same can be said about organization. Some changes are major and some changes are insignificant, no matter how large or inconsequential the volume of change is, change transforms the organization forever. And, at the centre