Introduction
Outback Inc was established with the sole aim of reaping from the booming tourism sector in Australia. Noting that tourism has a lot of contribution to the economy of Australia, a strategic company would make use of the status quo to reap from the benefits of tourism. Basically, the population growth in the country has risen in the past to unprecedented level, and the tourism sector employs more than 500,000 people.
In addition, the sector spends over $85 billion annually. This sector is thriving very well in the country because of the beautiful sceneries such as beautiful landscape, unique and variety of cultures, aboriginal art, outback, and coastal lifestyles, which serve as the major attraction for a number of visitors from within and out of the country.
Therefore, the research is about the study of Outback Inc in terms of its organisational structure and design, Team working and teams, management and leadership approaches, and organisational culture. It then gives a summary of the findings and recommendations.
Organisational Structure and Design
Structurally, the organisation is designed to respond to the needs of consumers demands. Tasks are divided to make sure that the organisation runs efficiently. Therefore, the divisions make up the organisation structure and have been applied in the company as a way of increasing the workers’ morale during their work so that the company could realise high output in terms of quantity and quality.
Notably, task division is a structural method to motivate the worker, who then would feel encouraged to put more effort in the particular line of duty he/she is performing. As a result, the company would improve the quality of the product and increase the number of unit productions.
Different companies have various ways of designing the organisation tasks and making sure that the workers are motivated. In this regard, some of the ways in which the companies carry out restructuring include division of labour and coordinating them.
Here, division of labour is a way of respecting diversity and opinions, ensuring that the workers are assigned duties in departments, where they qualify. This structuring should be done without any form of prejudice so that it could promote the workers based on their qualification and experience. This enhances specialisation and development of expertise in the workers’ area of interest and profession.
On the other hand, the worker’s activities have to be coordinated so that efficiency could be achieved. In addition, the efficiency helps in goal accomplishment. For this situation, the company used the three work coordination, including informal communication, standardisation and formal hierarchy. When these forms of coordination are applied effectively at work, the company might minimise cases of workers unruliness.
Under informal communication, Outback Inc has applied a number of means, in making sure that the workers are informed appropriately. For instance, sharing information, encouraging teamwork and media-richness enhance information sharing among the workers.
Under standardisation, the company has used a number of ways in coordinating the workforce. For example, the use of formal instructions, training and outline clear goals, which would help in achieving uniformity. Moreover, standardisation also leads to the manufacturing of quality goods acceptable globally.
The company also uses formal hierarchy as a form of work coordination. In this case, it applies direct supervision where the where the workers’ performance is closely monitored by the supervisor who is his/her immediate boss.
Notably, the hierarchy ensures that the leader is directly responsible for the activities to the people below him/her, but answerable to the immediate boss. This practice is commonly used in formal organisations. However, the formal hierarchical system of work coordination is slow, costly and generally not acceptable to the young people.
Therefore, the organisational structure and design that Outback Inc applies intend to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Often, the company uses comparative e approach in picking the best alternative.
Besides, the comparison is also through analysis of data from other regions. In this approach that the company used, it has managed to create workable structures and proper employee coordination efforts in the management of the company affairs.
Team Working and Teams
Outback Inc encourages the application of teamwork in most of its department on matters of technicality. The input of different people is very important if meaningful success has to be achieved by the company. For technical cases affecting the industry, teams and team working forms the best strategy for making conclusive and reliable decisions on the best course of action the company might take to avert a looming problem.
As the organisation grows larger in size, it increasingly needs decentralisation of labour force. This necessitates the use of teams as a way of achieving accountability of the workers. When different duties are assigned to various groups of people, each team would be accountable to the output. This creates competition among the teams in order to achieve quality.
In addition, teamwork improves efficiency at work. This is because, once the team has been assigned a specific duty, it would be upon each and all member(s) to make sure that every person does the required work with minimal supervision. Sometimes, complex duties necessitate the use of professionals who can also organise as a team and carry out the specific and technical activities.
Teamwork in the company is very essential because sometimes, majority of the people in the team might be motivated by generation factors, such as the self-fulfillments of the duties. Such people should be allowed to fulfill their dreams and inculcate such skills in running their affairs.
In the company, the technology related duties that some of the employees do, such as maintaining the company website are conducted in close consideration with other teams. Notably, the work characterizes the modern generation and it is a full-filling to the team of general workforce mandated to perform such task.
In fact, they are proud of the duties they perform and able to innovate. From this information, not only had the aged workers pronounced such team spirits, but also a younger generation who are flexible to, and identify with the use of technology to promote tour facilities.
Despite the generation’s arguments, financial incentives are still justified for its short-term and immediate impact of teamwork actions. Therefore, teamwork is more effective than the other ways of individual motivation, which are intended to achieve a long-term impact on the organization.
Here, the uniformity of motivating the workers does not apply, because they are motivated differently depending on age and the personal preferences. For example, scholars asserted that the older workers are motivated by the comfort of their duties, which they would like to keep other than operating as a team.
On the contrary, the younger workforce is mostly interested in learning and growing their skills on the duties, which they perform, thus finds it easier to work as a team than, as individuals. Therefore, they much flexible to the organizational and team changes, and they are agents of management changes.
Such changes aimed at increasing the management’s responsiveness to the workers’ development and creativity actually motivates the young workers. As a result, it is most important for the company to create an enabling environment that would motivate each team, to increase the production both quantitatively and qualitatively.
In exploring the determinants of reward impacts on the various teams, the management realized that there were considerable increments in the performance culture of the company as opposed to situations where the workers performed their duties individually.
This is a proof that teamwork has significant impacts on the employees’ output both in the unit production and the quality. In studying the descriptive statistics of the company, the research noted that there was a systematic trend considering the team operations in the company.
The other significant inference about teamwork was that there are various factors explaining the employees’ preference for operating as a team or single entities and subsequent impacts on their performance. This consideration does not forget the distinctive approaches, their significance, and the particular roles they play in increasing the workers morale, either as a team or as individuals.
Management and Leadership Approach
As a company operating in the hospitality industry, the company majorly used the traditional leadership style, the so called hierarchical type of leadership. Here, the decisions are made at the top then trickled down to the management and finally to the workers.
Since most of the workers in the company are young, they are highly enthusiastic to learn from the available opportunities, but always struggle with the leadership because they do not want unnecessary control over their scope of duties. Therefore, the company leadership struggles to retain them as they always look for alternative employment opportunities.
A critical review of the management and leadership style adopted in the company outlines the fundamental principles, which defines the company objectives. The research findings indicated that the leadership methodology in the company was more of pragmatic than theoretical approaches.
Under the company management approach, the research outlined in an explicit way, that the management had adopted the latest and more practical leadership strategies.
The Leadership approaches that the company used in organising its workers, aimed at achieving a given purpose and helped the organisation in making key decisions and recommendations about the improvements, which should be done to make advancement on the working condition.
The main aim of issue based management strategies in the company was to discover the various methods of motivation that the company could use to promote quality production, and the affects that the guidelines have on the employees’ performance.
The other objective of issue based management approach used in the company, is to determine the workability of various motivational approaches and structural differentiation in achieving the organizational goals.
According to the research, it established that the objective leadership contributed to its successful operations. Here, it could be deduced that the leadership style enhanced interpersonal relationships among the employees, and acted as a motivation factor in the company operations. The leadership style also improved the workplace environment that was perceived as conducive and favoring the company employees.
Indeed, this was a result of the coordinated effort and ensuring that the workers optimized their skills in building this relationship since it is an essential part the tourism industry. The tour operation works was also perceived by many as interesting, thus increasing the workers’ motivation and the extent they cooperated with the management, in making the leadership approaches successful.
Noting that education was core in boosting the workers skills, the management used an approach that prioritized further training as a requisite for all employees. In this sense, the company also offered career advancement and recognized the workers.
One could also deduce that the leaders also practiced equality in treating the workers, thus the company employees were respected and given equal treatment and development, in terms of career personal skills.
The other management skill that the company used was the enhancement internal communication. In this regard, internal communication was seen as effective and a better management approach in making the information available to all the concerned parties; leave alone the benefits and the monetary rewards, which the company offered to their employees.
In addition, the leaders also encouraged autonomy of work and the employees were given appraisal. In this case, the company made it an obligation that each worker was given enough responsibility to keep them busy and accountable throughout their duties.
Other than only enhancing autonomy, the company formulated policies, which guaranteed the employees job security, thus making them become interested in working more for the organisation.
Organisational Culture
Outback Inc developed a very unique culture that rested on its objectives and goals. Indeed, the organisation culture is the entire attributes, which assist in developing the organisations’s culture.
This research indicated that the company culture resulted from the efforts, which the people had in their duties, while aiming at the organisational goals and objectives. In essence, the determination with which the staff exhibited for many years during their work in the company resulted to a culture of success. Nevertheless, some cultural influences originated outside the company.
The organisational culture embraced principles such as span of control, formalisation, centralisation, departmentalisation, innovation, creativity and open-mindedness, in order to pursue the company goals, growth and knowledge. Apparently, the company developed passion and hard work, encouraging straightforward coordination, and specialisation are part of the company culture.
The workers and other stakeholders in the organisation should contribute to the improvement of the culture that the company practices. For example, the company culture over emphasises on specialisation and the desire to succeed in advancing the quality of service offered in the company. In addition, the company used its culture as an identity that and work performance that has driven to an advanced level.
The culture of specialisation encouraged the workforce to enhance their performance at work to increase the amount of production and quality. In encouraging specialisation, the company effectively used the human resources and enhanced professionalism. As a result, the company made sure that the employees are qualified and recruited in the appropriate department.
Besides, each department had its members distinctively placed in various teams with people of similar qualification and interest. In this regard, the employee would carry out the duties with due diligence so that they would enhance quality individually and as a team. This measure aims at reducing the probable low performance among the workers.
Furthermore, the company culture was developed as a result of decentralizing its operation and encouraging the formation of teams and teamwork. Under this practice, the company was able to meet the clients’ desire about the quality and efficiency of the services. For instance, the customers in the tour and travel sector demanded services, which fulfill their desires.
The workers from each team were expected to uphold the organisational culture and act responsibly to improve the organisation image so that it may have an influx of foreigners and locals to enjoy the services. However, a number of workers in the company became more anxious about the job security, thus increased their efforts in performing the duties. This enhanced the workers performance and developed of the overall company culture.
Similarities between Outback Inc and OUTBACK INC
The two companies had a lot of things in common. First, they were tour-based companies in Australia. Realising that the country had great tour potential for local and international visitors, the companies used the infrastructure such as beautiful environment, luxurious coastal lifestyle, aboriginal arts, outback, and other cultures.
The two countries depended on New Zealand, Japan, UK, China, and the USA. The countries are the niche market for foreign visitors despite the rise and fall of tour preferences. Therefore, the situation demanded increased caution when marketing the country tour destination and profiles.
The two companies restructured their operations and encouraged teamwork in executing the duties. During decline in the number of visitors, the responsible teams were to take the initiative to market the company’s services and potential tour destinations so that it could see improvement in the demands of such services.
Differences between Outback Inc and OUTBACK INC
Some of the major differences include the following. OUTBACK INC was affected by the Iraq War that led to economic outfalls, the 1989 pilots’ strike, SARS outbreak among other disputes common to the tour sector. This interfered with the company operations during that period.
Second, the company experience staff shortage that has affected the operations in the tour industry, in the country. As the industry got troubled, so did the company faced increasing challenges in promoting the operations and satisfying the needs of the visitors who defied the odds to have sometimes in the luxurious environment.
Implications
Some of the implications include finding amicable solution to the disputes, which rocked the tour industry in the country. This would serve as an incentive to the players in the industry.
It would also increase the number of visitors because non-disputable environment is attractive to foreigners and the local tourists. Through this practice, the company would see increased number of tourists booking accommodation and the ones seeking tour assistance.
The other implication is the need to enhance marketing. Here, the company should make sure that it does adequate promotion of the available and conspicuous tour destinations so as to stands of benefiting from tourism. Through proper targeted promotion, the company is capable of being successful in the industry.
The company also needs to improve the accommodation facilities to realise the full potential of he industry during the peak periods. Besides, the accommodation should target a particular class to prevent the company from being irrelevant for the high class guests.
Conclusion
In summary, the company has made a lot of changes in terms of its organisational structure and design. Here, the organisation structures respond to the needs of consumers’ demands. Besides, the tasks are divided to make sure that the organisation runs efficiently. Team working has also been used in the company to nature expertise in various departments of the company.
Notably, the input of different people is very important if meaningful success has to be achieved by the company. On matters relating to management and leadership approaches, the decisions are made at the top then trickled down to the management and finally to the workers.
Literally, the aim of issue based management strategy that the company used was to discover the various methods of motivation that the company could use to promote quality production, and the affects that the guidelines have on the employees’ performance.
Finally, the organisational culture of Outback Inc include the principles such as span of control, formalisation, centralisation, departmentalisation, innovation, creativity and open-mindedness
Recommendations
For success of the organisation, it is recommended that the organisation should consider creating management structures, which are viable for its operations. Secondly, the company should encourage the formation of teams and team working so that people with specific talents are allowed to share and innovate useful ways of running the affairs of various departments.
Third, the company needs to adopt pragmatic, conventional and result-oriented leadership approaches so that they could succeed in managing diversity in the organisation. Finally, the organisation should promote its culture so that it could stand out during competition.