Key Strategic Implementation Issues at BP Essay

Key Strategic Implementation Issues at BP - Essay Example Leadership perspective: Despite its immense growth and achievement, issues from leadership perspective are haunting this oil giant. In her article, Corkindale (2010) highlights that the major weakness of BP is its top leadership and points to mistakes made by BP. According to her, CEO, Tony Hayward, was solely responsible for the major oil spill that happened couple of years back. The attitudes and behaviors of senior most management team are believed to have caused this massacre. Organizations function based on strategic goals and objectives by following certain strategic values in the form of mission, vision and values (Ledlow & Coppola, 2011). While every organization sets its strategic objectives, makes strategic choices and directions, and links all tactical and operational strategies to the corporate strategies, leaders in critical positions must adhere to this principle. At BP, inappropriate governance and safety practices, and lack of ownership of its employees’ safety and hygiene emerged as a result of the major catastrophe. Moreover, Hayward is also accused of risky actions and investments; is accused of ignoring expert advice and overlooking warnings about safety issues and other facts (Corkindale, 2010). 6.1.2 Inappropriate business level strategic plans: Browne’s operating model comprised of six broad culture guidelines around people, openness, teamwork, simplicity, trust and empowerment. This model was introduced to make BP less bureaucratic and shift the command and control management to facilitated management through empowerment of middle management (Morrison, 2003). However, the catastrophes reported at BP could be the result of lack of knowledge and experience for middle management. Extreme empowerment to govern their individual units could have resulted in gaps or inappropriate safety and security management. Much before the recent BP Oil Spill, there have been other reported undesirable incidents that have caused loss to the community and environment, like the Texas City incident, few leakage incidents, blasts etc. The strategic drift in safety and operations were ignored by management. BP officials have been accused on many occasions of downplaying small erroneous operations and equipment, which had later caused larger blasts (Maresh & Williams, 2011). Moreover, BP’s cost cutting measures did not take into consideration its workers’ and environment’s safety, which is evident from BP’s corrosion-related history. Report from BP’s Congressional hearing (2006) indicates that these issues were repeatedly escalated to BP’s top management before the major catastrophe. This is an indication of lack of ownership and also lack of aligning business performance with broader organizational objectives. 6.1.3 Cultural issues: The top executives at BP acknowledge their responsibility to protect and preserve the environment. However, lack of ownership by the top management of governance measures have hi tched BP’s growth because of inappropriate practices and the consequential catastrophes, thereby questioning trust of their stakeholders in BP’

Marketing of services (service bundling) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Marketing of services (service bundling) - Essay Example I also identified that the research methodology of the article involved a wide range of services associated with prices for equipments or parts, labour along with full services relating to the manufacturing operations of the firms. When ascertaining the ultimate findings of the research, I observed that the article explored the service needs of the Chinese manufacturing organisations dividing their operations into five major clusters, viz. â€Å"highly price-sensitive on basic service needs†, â€Å"highly sensitive on logistic performance of basic service needs†, â€Å"preventing product breakdowns for very reasonable prices†, â€Å"knowledge seeking† and â€Å"seeking for cost-efficient outsourcing partners.† In this context, I also identified that the findings ascertained by the research article had major management implications, associating the service needs of the Chinese manufacturing firms with the service-based organisations of the nation. My experience in this assignment have been quite helpful, not only in developing my understanding of organisational operational processes, but also related to the various ways of conducting a research along with its rationality. My experience through this assignment further helped me understand that developing a framework of research prior to implementing it is very crucial that provides a structure to the entire process along with defining its base in an objective-oriented manner. Reviewing the research findings, I observed that ‘price sensitivity of Chinese manufacturing companies’, I have recognised that the low priced service items including spare parts, wear parts, repair along with inspection and basic services to maintain contracts achieved the highest mean. In this context, I understood that the services associated with low price are highly required by the Chinese manufacturing companies. Correspondingly, I observed that factors including the availability of