The objectives need to follow the SMART criteria:
-
Specific - the objective should state exactly what is to be achieved.
-
Measurable - an objective should be capable of measurement
-
Achievable - the objective should be realistic given the circumstances in which it is set and the resources available to the business.
-
Relevant - objectives should be relevant to the people responsible for achieving them
-
Time Bound - objectives should be set with a time-frame in mind.
- Types of objectives
It is widely believed that the most important objective in organization is to make profit. But it cannot be the only objective in an organization. While pursuing the objective of earning profit, business units do keep the interest of their owners in view. However the organization goals should also aim to maximize benefit to society as well as maximize benefit to their members. Therefore, the objectives in an organization could be classified as:
- Economic Objectives
- Social Objectives
- Human Objectives
- National Objectives
- Global Objectives
An example of objective could be:
“Sell 1000 units of product A and 500 of product B by December 31, 2011”
- Warwickshire College
Warwickshire College is one of the largest general further and higher education colleges in the country, with more than 30,000 students. It has six main centres as well as two learning centres and the use of more than 60 community centres across Warwickshire.
-
Warwickshire College Mission
The mission of the College is to provide high-quality, relevant, and varied opportunities for the intellectual, cultural, and personal growth of all members of its community and supporting human right. In addition, the College want to provide leadership in workforce training and help the economic growth of the community. Therefore, it offers a wide range of courses in different areas which are accessible for every kind of society occupation such as, adults, young people and employers.
- Warwickshire College Values
The main values in Warwickshire College are to put the leaner first, deliver the high quality in all that College does and to promote fair open and respectful culture
Warwickshire College believe in giving the student the best education and training from their staff with an excellent teaching, therefore, their information is always accurate, useful and accessible for everyone.
Also, they believe that the student should enjoy throughout their educational development
- Deliver the highest quality in all that the College does
They believe that all staff should focus on providing and improving the education of the student. Also they have to encourage them to carry out their studies and support them to choose the best way for their education.
In addition, the staff should have ample knowledge in the development opportunities to help the students as best as possible in their development at school.
- Promote a fair, open and respectful culture
The College believe that everybody should be treated with respect and in the same way, regardless of differences in their beliefs, their origins, race, age or sexual orientation.
Also they think that a responsive ethos helps the college to success.
- Warwickshire College Objectives
The objectives of Warwickshire College are oriented to maximize benefit to society and their members rather than making profit.
The main objectives of the College are:
-
To increase local and national employer engagement activities
-
To remain a nationally influential college
-
To continue to be a major participant locally, regionally and nationally in economic development
-
To demonstrate leadership in partnership with local authorities and in collaboration with other providers
-
To respond to the economic downturn and economic change thereafter
-
To continue to deliver measurable good value for money in our community
-
To continually improve quality though rigorous self assessment
-
To create opportunities for income generation and increase income from international and higher education
-
To continue to develop the college state
3. Stakeholders
Stakeholders are individuals, groups or organizations that have a direct or indirect involvement in an organization, which may affect or be affected by organization of actions, objectives and policies. “The most important stakeholders can be seen as those with most to lose from the organisation’s actions, but this does not always reflect their relative power.” (Hannagan, T.2002:142)Management: Concepts and Practices’ P142.) The aim of management with regard to stakeholders is to prioritise objectives so as to satisfy the majority of them for most of the time.
The main stakeholders in a business organization include creditors, customers, directors, employees, government, owners (shareholders), suppliers, unions and the community in which the company obtains its resources.
Stakeholders can be of very different and varied pretences and also have conflicting interests. They can be classified into three groups: Internal, Connected and External Stakeholders
-
Internal Stakeholders: Include those that are situated within the company and affect the ‘day-to-day’ running of the organisation. They are interested in the organisation continuation and grown. (E.g. employees, managers).
-
External Stakeholders: Include those not directly linked to the organisation but who can be affected or affect activities of the organization through various means. (e.g. government, the community, pressure groups).
-
Connected stakeholders: Include those that invest or have dealings with the organisation. (E.g. shareholders, customers, suppliers, financiers).
- Stakeholder mapping
It is the process of creating some pictures to define the position of the stakeholder in the organisation.
The Power/Interest Matrix map classifies stakeholders in relation to the power that they hold and the extent to which they are likely to show interest in the strategies to the organisation.
- Power/Interest Matrix (Gardner et al. (1986)
*www.12manage.com
-
Key players: the acceptability of strategy by them should be important for the organisation.
-
Keep satisfied: must be treated with care, they are generally passively but they can be key players.
-
Keep informed: they can be important to influence the more powerful stakeholders.
-
Minimal effort: these stakeholders require only minimal monitoring.
- Warwickshire College Stakeholders
Managers are internal stakeholders. They are employees of the organization and their main functions are to coordinate the resources of the organization and ensure that the objectives of the organization are achieved
They must accept the strategy of the organization so we can define them as key players. They contribute to the College with their skills and expertise but they look for salaries, holidays, status and power as inducement to contribute
In Warwickshire college, for the manager, the focus is on continuous improvement through reflection and self evaluation. The college want the manager to continue to demonstrate their entrepreneurial spirit, constantly developing new curricula to meet the needs of the local economy. Utilising a lean philosophy the manager shall never become complacent and will continually question, review and develop our standards to ensure the college remain responsive to learner, employer and economy needs
Government is an external stakeholder that has to agree and give his approval to the school strategies. Therefore, we can also define him as key player
They contribute to the college with the rules governing good business practice and they look for compliance with laws and regulation, efficient use of resources, employment contribution to the national economy and payment of taxes.
The Warwickshire college meet the objectives of the government by providing statistics where it must be represented the achievements in the college such us getting success rates, award on national and international level...etc. Also the government must be informed about the progression and retention of student yin a different level. In addiction the statistics show the breakdown of sex, age, nationality, disability, ethnic back grown and postcode and if the college meet the need of the student with learning difficulties.
The college make sure to provide this statistics in a right order as the funding depend on it.
Students are connected stakeholders. They are at the centre of the educational process where they belong
As students are important but they are not directly related to the College strategy, we can define them as keep informed.
Students contribute to make a friendly and warm atmosphere and they look for a good quality in learning and teaching.
Through students satisfaction surveys the college could find out if they meet the objectives with the students. In the last students’ surveys and in the OFSTED survey the students speak very highly of how the college has helped them to develop good skill as well as progressing in a different level. Also the learners consider Warwickshire College a very safe and enjoyable place to study. Moreover, these surveys provide, valuable information about how tutor managers and staff share information effectively to identify how students can be supported.
Good use of students surveys, at each stage of learner journey, help review evaluated and improve provision in response to student feedback.
- Responsibilities of organisation
Organisations are part of human society and are obliged to obey some rules that govern their conduct toward others.
We can define these responsibilities in social responsibilities, consumer responsibilities, and employment responsibilities.
- Social responsibilities
An organisation has the obligation to take actions that protect and improve the welfare of society as a whole as well as organizational interest .Besides, it has social responsibilities to their various stakeholders and they should establish code of conduct to ensure that such responsibilities are properly achieved.
Social responsibilities include environmental responsibilities and ethical responsibilities
-
Environmental responsibilities.
Organisation have been criticized for their negative effect on the natural environment in terms of wasting natural resources and contributing to pollution and global warming
It has resulted in government actions included in several legislations such as:
- Environment protection Act .1997 (EPA)
- Water resources Act. 2007
- Clean air Act .1993
- Waste management and licensing regulation (1994).
Exist several environmental issues relevant to the organization such as acid rain, waste, climatic change ...etc.
- Ethical responsibilities
Ethical principles are not necessarily enforced by law although the law can incorporate moral judgments.
The organisation has ethical responsibilities towards:
-
Finance: extortion, grease money.
-
Employees: pay and conditions.
-
Customers: dealing honestly.
-
Suppliers: treat fairly
-
Competitor: fair trading.
-
Local community: responding to complain.
- Consumer responsibilities
There are different ways in which the law protects individual citizens and consumers from unfair trading practice. Some of them are:
- Fair trading (OFT)
- The banking code
- Consumer safety
- Employment responsibilities
The organization has responsibilities with employees in:
-
Employment: contract.
-
Health and safety: equipment.
-
Discrimination: race, sex.
-
Termination of employment: dismissal.
- Warwickshire College Responsibilities
The college take an account of the impact its work has on society the economy and the environment, and aim to demonstrating its responsibilities through actions and corporate polices.
- Ethical responsibilities:
-
Students: the college continues to improve its responsiveness to learners providing a good quality of teaching in every subject, extending the ways in which they have opportunities to influence the college community, building upon citizenship activity to engage them as citizens.
- Environmental responsibilities:
The college is working to improve environmental responsibilities and working with the community in this matter with the next actions:
-
Installation of biomass boilers and solar thermal water systems
-
A new recycling strategy as part of a waste management review
-
Development of renewable energy systems, which will provide teaching tools and case studies for demonstration.
-
Reduced paper consumption through web-based course information and duplex printing
-
A “Power Academy” is being built at the new Rugby campus to focus on renewable energy
-
Further developing the curriculum offer to meet the need for training in green technology.
- Employment responsibilities:
-
Discrimination: the college works to ensure that neither students, staff nor organisation partner are discriminated against because of age, race, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
The college carry out its responsibilities according to several Acts:
- The race relation Act (1976)
- Health and safety at work Act (1974)
- The sex discrimination Act (1995)
Conclusion
The success of an organization depends on good management and operation of this organisation so it must be built on a solid foundation by establishing a strategic plan and setting objectives. In addition the organisation has to identify all its stakeholders and the importance of them as well as to meet the responsibilities to which is obliged as organization.
To sum up, the compliance of every of these stages will ensure the good development and growth in the organisation.
Bibliography
-
“Definition of the mission, vision and values of our organization”, ,
September 20, 2010.
-
Posner, Roy. “The Power Of Business Values”, Growth Online, ,
September 20, 2010
-
McNamara, Carter. “Basic Definition of Organization” Free Management Library, ,
September 21, 2010
-
Fryer, Lashor. “Definition of Business objectives”, eHow Contributor, .
September 23, 2010
-
“Introduction to Business Objectives”, Biz/ed, , September 23, 2010
-
Argos.” The bases of good business”, Our Focus, ,
September 25, 2010
-
Badami, Knoj. “How to form business objectives?” Indiahowto.com,
,
September 26, 2010
-
“Stake holders”, tutor2u, , September 30, 2010
-
“Stakeholder mapping”, 12manage the executive fast track,
,
October 2, 2010
-
“Annual report- Financial statements for the year ended 31 July, 2009”, Facts and figures,,
October 5, 2010
-
“Values, Aspirations and Directions”, Warwickshire college about us, ,
October 5, 2010
-
Palmer, Adrian and Hartley, Bob. (2006) The business environment, 5th edn. New York, McGraw-Hill education
-
Riley, Pippa. (2010), Business essentials supporting HND/HNC and foundation degrees / Business environment,2nd edn, London, BBP Learning Media Ltd