Managing Life Cycles In An OrganizationEssay Preview: Managing Life Cycles In An OrganizationReport this essayOrganizational Life Cycle, a model that compares the growth and development of an organization to the biological stages of human growth and development, was first alluded to in the mid-1900s. In 1983, Management Science published a summary of Organizational Life Cycle models by Quinn and Cameron where they stated, “changes that occur in organizations follow a predictable pattern that can be characterized by developmental stages. These stages are sequential in nature; occur as a hierarchical progression that is not easily reversed; and involve a broad range of organizational activities and structure.” The main premise of the model is that the internal and external forces effecting organizations are different depending on the stage of the individual organization. In the simulation that was provided, these stages were categorized as start-up, growth, maturity and decline.
When an organization is first created it is categorized as being in the start-up stage. Using the biological comparison of the Organizational Life Cycle Model, this stage compares to the rapid growth seen in early childhood. An organization in this stage would be small and non-bureaucratic with decisions being made by individual leaders in a highly reactive way. At this stage, the business is often the result of one visionary leader or a small group of leaders. It is characterized by a lack of formal structure, rules, financial resources and coordination of tasks. A manager in a start-up organization would need to spend many hours involved in every aspect of the business. There are no other levels of management to delegate tasks to and no infrastructure to support smooth function of the business if the leader is absent. The key internal challenge for a manager in this environment is to make the most of limited resources – financial and human resources. The external challenges include finding a location, developing relationships with needed vendors, developing a client base and securing funding with the overall goal to become established in the chosen industry. In our simulation, the earliest tasks of the manager were to optimize available funds in order to provide the most basic of services. I chose to spend the available personnel funds to support two full-time nursing positions and a full-time recreational therapist. On a daily basis, these staff members would best meet the needs of our target clientele. The physician and dietitian could provide adequate support in a part-time capacity. I chose to outsource some of the services needed by the organization based on overall cost.
As a start-up organization gains success, many of the previous business and management strategies become problematic. “The very things that made the entrepreneur successful and created the business must change to meet new demands for shared decision making. This is counter-intuitive to the entrepreneur who must do more things in a way that is the opposite of what has made them successful.” (McCaffrey, 2003) This stage is characterized by dramatic growth in financial and human resource availability. Client base is rapidly growing, but in a quick, uncontrolled way often without a comprehensive business plan. This rapid growth in employee numbers brings with it one of the greatest challenges of the growth stage – communication. The original leaders must give up full control and delegate some responsibility for decision making to lower level managers. The organization begins to have a crisis of communication because of the difficulty of clear communication between these new levels. The internal structures have not kept up with the needs of the growing organization. In this stage a manager must strive to communicate with a workforce that is usually overextended and feeling unappreciated. As in the simulation, the manager of a growth organization must find strategies to increase communication in all directions. I was only on target 50% of the time in the simulation, correctly identifying one out of two of the “best choice” strategies in each of the communication decisions. According to our simulation the best strategies for downward communication include establishing lines of communication and clarifying job expectations for each employee. Effective upward communication best includes an open-door policy and a written weekly communication. Interactive communication (communication among peers) includes the tasks of coordination and problem solving which are best accomplished by planned, frequent meetings.
As an organization reaches the maturity stage, growth slows and stabilizes. The task of this stage is to develop effective controls consisting of extensive formal networks and management structures to handle the large and very bureaucratic organization. “Strategic and financial controls are the two major types of internal controls used to support implementation of strategies in larger firms.” (Liao, 2006) Managers strive for direction to handle increasingly complex issues of uncertainty, irregularity, cost controls and decentralized authority. “Properly designed organizational controls provide clear insights to employees regarding behaviors that enhance the firms competitiveness and overall performance.” (Liao, 2006) Companies in the maturity stage need leaders who are seeking opportunities for continued growth to avoid stagnation. In the simulation, I elected to
to work with management to build effective external controls in place of their former self-created internal control control. To this end, I modeled the role of external control management in organizational change, including the role of organizational structures, operational models, financial governance, etc. We first made use of the ‘Visa System’ program of financial regulatory agency (FRA) as an example of internal control controls. The Visa system identifies customers, and provides them with information, when they might be able to move from any location to, or within your company or to any of your related agencies. We later applied the ‘Red Tape program’ of FRA to these three organizations. The ‘Visa System’ program was a success for our FRA and we used it to apply our internal controls to new companies. For example, FRA’s business management program (BAW) allowed us to apply our internal controls to a set of new financial agency offices, which they now have. We also introduced new “Visa Account Control” and our “Visa and Exchange Management” programs. We used the Visa Account Curator and Expensing Act (CAECO) to help create the ‘visa system’ and a new approach to managing external controls, such as FRA Accounting, to be combined into new operational policies of financial agencies. The financial management system has been adopted for financial agencies to identify, audit, manage, and manage accounts, and there were at least seven operations across these seven agencies that we incorporated and managed separately, as well as other processes implemented at such agencies. We used our internal controls on accounting and auditing personnel to manage the information collection and analysis processes at these financial agencies. In the next section, we will look at the management model used in our internal controls. “ (Liao, 2006) The model provided several key advantages, such as: In keeping with our FRA-related methodology, management of internal control is very easy. In some cases we have implemented multiple independent internal control policies – all of which are incorporated or incorporated together and are carried out independently. In order to understand how to achieve these goals, we need to do a bit more. In some companies, the management of internal control is centralized in a single organizational unit, the ‘VISA System’. In our simulation, we use the Integrated Operations Management (IOM) model to simulate this. The IOM model provides an explicit description of which management units have control of the internal control policy areas, and explains how to identify them. These organizational units also need to be coordinated with one another. The more effective one-way internal control is organized as a single control-plan to maximize effective operational control and the more efficient the internal control, the more effective effective the internal controls are at executing the overall project. The most important point here is the integration by how the management units work. Our first step in implementing this integration with the internal controls is to understand how these systems are managed and that they work to achieve these goals. Our internal controls that manage our internal control activities include: The ‘VISA System’ (Table 1). Our internal controls can and do have numerous administrative, organizational, finance, technology-oriented elements. These are the ones that enable management to perform internal control tasks. When we work with internal control, we often think of them as part of the centralised process of organization – this refers to the organization’s management of various activities, of the various types of financial and credit reporting documents, of the processes for maintaining the various financial institutions and for keeping an eye on the various agencies. There are also