Management Theories of Myer free essay sample

As the largest department store chain in Australia, Myer runs its business in Australia more than 100 years, it has 60 stores all over Australia, and Myer is trying to maintain a leading position in the retail trade; a number of management strategies are applied. In order to know how Myer’s managers maintain the performance of Myer, this essay will focus on analyst the important characters of management theories that Myer will use in their management system in the future, including the area of motivation, managing in a global environment and managing information. Motivation Motivation can be defined as psychological forces that determine the direction of a person’s behaviour in an organisation, a person’s level of effort, and a person’s level of persistence in the face of obstacles (Waddell 2007, p227). T motivation of employees has a huge impact on the performance of the organisation, so to keep the employees in a high level of motivation will be a good strategy for an organisation to be more effective. We will write a custom essay sample on Management Theories of Myer or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In the annual report of Myer, it pointed out the wage and other benefits for store team members were increased, the contribution and commitment of Myer team members were recognised. This agreement can be identified as the extrinsically motivated behaviour, which is performed to acquire material and social rewards (Waddell 2007, p228). The more contribution team members make the more benefits they will get: wage hike, promotion and other rewards. Needs theories: A good manager should know what team members’ needs are. The Maslow’s five basic needs will help managers understand the needs of their members. Waddel et al. (p. 230) argues that the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is from lowest level to the highest level. As mentioned before, Myer increased the wage in the past years, so the physiological needs for its members should be satisfied with that. Furthermore, the report also mentioned they were continued to improve the safety performance for their employees (Myer 2011, p11). To make the members know that they are in a safe job position will makes the members in a good working condition. Mayer also focused on its members’ belongingness need and esteem needs, in the past  year, there was a program called Store Management Development Program which helped build competency among high-potential team members who aspire to leadership position at Myer (Myer 2011, p22). Social interaction, communication skills and leadership training were included. At last, the members also can satisfy their self-actualisation at Myer by achieving the opportunities that Myer offered to them. On the other hand, in the annual report, Myer did not point out how they build the healthy competition among the membe rs. Equity theory: The definition of this theory is concentrates on people’s perceptions of the fairness of their work outcome relative to, or in proportion to, their work inputs (Waddell 2007, p239). The more you pay, the more you gain; this proverb also works on Myer. The increase in wage and other benefits is not for all members, only for those members who made contributions to the organisation or had a performance improvement, the money the earned should be equate to value they created. To keep the member in high motivation, Myer has a series of reward and punishment policies to make their members in an equate system. Learning theories: Managers also need to focus on increasing employee motivation and performance by linking the outcomes that employees receive to the performance of desired behaviours and the attainment of goals (Waddell 2007, p227). There are two main theories under the learning theories, which are reinforcement theory and social learning theory. According to Waddell (2007, p245), reinforcement means ‘people learn to perform behaviours that lead to desired consequences and learn not to perform behaviours that lead undesired consequences. The most common way that Myer used under the reinforcement theory was positive theory, increase in wage and other benefits. The desired outcomes that Myer’s managers used was raised the salary for the members who had more contribution for the company. On the other hand, the social learning theory works on Myer’s management system also. Myer encourage their members to learn some good behaviour or skills from other members, the managers will monitor the performance and correct the mistakes they made. In 2011, Myer received many positive feedbacks from team members and customers (Myer 2011, p11), which means the members were satisfied with this management theory and they were kept a good motivation, then they would try their best to provide services to fulfil customers’ needs. Managing in a global environment It is a more complex job for managers to operate a company based on the global business environment, but it can be also treat as a challenging for them, because it is a more open environment – organisations are free to buy goods and services from all over the world easily and convenient. The following paragraph will discuss how Myer managers operate the company in the global environment in 3 specific area, supplier, customer and competitor. Supplier: Myer has more than 800 suppliers all over the world currently, to achieve the goal of world-class supply chain,, Myer established two global sourcing offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 2011 to enable them to further develop their direct sourcing capabilities (Myer 2011, p11). In the global market environment, although managers have more choices on selecting the goods source from all over the world, how to identify the most suitable suppliers is a big problem for managers for years. Managers should consider about the prices, qualities and other aspects, so Myer open many offices distributed over the world to collect suppliers’ information. It is well-known that the goods produced in China have a price-advantage rather than the goods produced by other countries, for this reason, Myer will nearly double its direct outsourcing of fashion, homewares and merchandise from China to $ 200 million (Eli, G 2011). Myer may achieve price advantage compare to other competitors by increasing import goods from China. Customers: For different customers from different backgrounds, ages and groups, their requirements are different, managers should not only focus on only one group of them, but also need to identify the needs from all customers, and satisfy their needs. On the other hand, there are a huge number of foreigners live or travel in Australia, and the number of them is increasing sharply in recent years, so they are the potential customers for Myer, it is a challenging and opportunity for Myer to sell products to new customers from different cultures and backgrounds, a number of research should be arrange in the future to identify their needs and their shopping habits. Another significant problem existing is the language problems, a huge percentage of tourists from overseas may cannot speed English, it is a barrier to communicate between the sellers and customers, so the managers should find some possible solutions for this problem in order to increase the sales on the tourists. Competitor: It is not enough for a success organisation only provides inexpensive and high quality products, the managers of the organisation should know what happens on their competitors.