Sinopec Corp. - company overview

GCSE Business Studies

Page

1. Introduction of Sinopec Corp. 3

2. Management Concept and its Basic Characteristic 3

3. The functions of management 4

3.1. The role of manager

3.2. Role of Managers under Different Styles of Management

4. The Structure of Organization 8

4.1. Leadership

4.2. What is motivation to work

5. SUMMARY 10

6. REFERENCES 10

7.APPENDIX 11

1. Introduction of Sinopec Corp.

Focusing on its core business of petroleum and petrochemicals, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Corp.) is a publicly listed company with integrated upstream and downstream operations and a complete marketing network. The company was set up on February 28, 2000, pursuant to the [Company Law of the People's Republic of China] and in line with the principle of 'separation of core business from the ancillary, good assets from the bad, and enterprise functions from the social', by China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) as the sole sponsor, after the restructuring of its businesses, assets, debts and creditor's rights, organization and personnel. Following international models, the company has set up a new, standardized structure of corporate governance, with centralized decision-making, delegated authorities in management, and business operations handled by specialized business units. Sinopec Corp. has more than 70 subsidiaries, either wholly owned, or with equity participation, including majority controlled, in exploration and production, refining, chemicals, marketing, research and foreign trade. Most of the Company's assets and principal market is situated along China's most developed eastern, southern and central areas. Sinopec Corp. sticks to the philosophy of open and competition, the business strategy of expanding resources and market, cutting cost and improving profitability, as well as exercising prudent investment. To maximize profits and deliver superior shareholder return is the Company's guiding objective and the operating mechanism is market-oriented externally, achieving synergy internally and the operating principle is standardization, discipline and integrity. The company’s target is to build Sinopec Corp. into an internationally competitive, world-class, integrated Energy Company with prominent core business, quality assets, innovative technologies, advanced management and sound financial practice

2. Management Concept and its Basic Characteristic

Management had it since old times. Since long ago, the people realize in the unceasing practice to the management importance. Since this century management movement and the management upsurge have yielded the amazing result, one of them has formed the more complete management theory system. But to the management meaning, from the different angle and the background, may have the different understanding. One kind the viewpoint which generally accepts was believed that, the management is a process, is lets the others the goal which realizes together with own decides, is all organized collective activity essential essential factors.

Management basic characteristic

manages is one kind of cultural phenomenon and the social phenomenon. This kind of phenomenon existence, must have two essential conditions: One is above two people's collective activities; another is the consistent approval goal. Management exists to the organization moves, namely the management carrier is the organization. Organization's type, form and scale respectively different, but its interior all includes five basic essential factors: The person (management main body and object), the thing (management object, method and condition), the information (management object, medium and basis), the organization (had reflected management about divides the work relates and manages way), the goal (indicated why must have this organization). The organization interior essential factor is may control. The organization should be an open system, organization's external environment has the very tremendous influence to organization's effect and the efficiency. Generally, organization's external environment includes nine essential factors: Profession, raw material supply, financial resources, produce market, technology, economical situation, political condition, national law and rules and regulations and rule, social culture. In organization's exterior essential factor, partial is controllable, are partial is not controllable.
manages the main body is a superintendent. The superintendent thus will undertake the significant responsibility to the management effect to organization's effect. Superintendent's responsibility has three levels: One, manages a organization; Two, manages the superintendent; Three, supervisory work and worker.
manages has its specific duty, the function and the level. Management duty, also is superintendent's duty, is designs and maintains one kind of environment, causes the people which work in this environment can exhaust the possible few disbursements, the goal which the realization decides. The management basic function is the plan, the organization, the personnel provides, the instruction and the leadership, the control. Any organization, all has the certain level, usually divides into three levels: Upper formation, intermediate deck and basic unit.
manages the core deals with the good interpersonal relationship. The management is lets the others the goal which realizes together with own decides, superintendent's work or the responsibility very major part is has the social dealings with the person, this displays especially in the instruction and in the leadership function fully.

----Source:www.hongen.com

3. The functions of management

An organization can be defined as ‘a social arrangement for controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals’ (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2001). This suggested that the functions of management as follow:

Fayol (1916) first identified the functions of management as forecasting, planning organizing, commanding, co-ordinating and controlling. This was later developed and the emphasis was placed less on commanding and more on directing and leading (including motivation).

Management is an operational process, initially best dissected by analyzing the managerial functions. The five ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

----Source:www.hongen.com

3. The functions of management

Management is an operational process, initially best dissected by analyzing the managerial functions. The five essential managerial functions (are): planning, organizing, directing and leading, and controlling. (Koontz & O’Donnell:1976)

Planning. Deciding where the organization should be going and how it should get there. Planning is setting goals and deciding on courses of action, developing rules and procedures, developing plans (both for the organization and for those who work in it),

Organizing. Deciding who does what jobs and employing people to do them. This requires grouping activities and setting up departments, defining responsibilities, delegating authority to subordinates, and establishing means of communication, co-ordination and control.

Directing/Leading. Ensuring that people know what to do and when to do it, and exercising leadership to get individuals to work to the best of their ability as part of a team. Leading means influencing other people to get the job done, maintaining morale and managing conflicts.

Controlling. Setting standard e.g. sales quotas, measuring and monitoring results, comparing results with plans and taking corrective action when required.

3.1. The role of manager

According to Mintzberg (1975) the functions outlined by Fayol tell us little about what managers actually do. He studied exactly what managers did with their time and discovered a wide gap between actuality and managers’ own perception of their work. Most managers carry out an array of roles. This can result in role overload and stress or it may be a motivating an invigorating experience. Mintzberg identified ten roles for the manager:

----source: Mintzbery

3.2. Role of Managers under Different Styles of Management

A short summary of the role of managers under authoritarian and participative styles of management. Also covers decision taking and the basic characteristics of each style.

----Source: Davidmann, M

The decision-making will be chooses a plan from each choice plan to take the future behavior the guide. But before decision-making, only was has conducted the research and the analysis to the plan work, did not have the decision-making on not to conform with the rational motion, thus the decision-making plans the work for the core. But plans one of work characteristics plans the work the leadership, it is carries on the organization work, the personnel provides, the instruction and the leadership, the control work and so on the foundation. Therefore, said from this kind of significance, the decision-making is the management foundation.

The decision-making is the behavior choice, the behavior is the policy-making execution, the correct behavior originates from the correct decision-making. As for each responsible staff that, whether there is not essential makes policy-making the question, how but is makes well, is more reasonable, the more effective policy-making question. In the different management level decision-making, its influence is different. Thus, the improvement management decision-making, raises the level of decision, must become one of important questions which all levels of responsible staff frequently pays attention. Forecasting (that is predicting or projecting what the future holds for the organization and setting objectives. This requires the appraisal of external and internal changes and constraints.

4. The Structure of Organization

Organization structure is a means for attaining the goals and objectives of an organization. And the structure of Sinopec Corp is the kind of decentralized structure that called divisional structure. The company's structure composition is an extremely closely system. The different subsidiary company is managing the different product, but between each market is not completely independent, they can take orders from to Shareholders General meeting and committee's decision-making. The graph shows the structure of Sinopec Corp. (Appendix 1) This type of structure is more responsive to the markets and more flexible, but the disadvantage is less bureaucratic and less consistent. It based on individual products, or product range, where each grouping carries its own functional specialisms.

The structure of Sinopec Crop.

Appendix 1

----Source: www.sinopec.com

4.1. Leadership

The team or group within the organization is very important. Leadership is a relationship through which one person influences the behaviour or actions of other people. There are five types of leadership, including charismatic, traditional, situational, appointed, and functional leadership. The functional model of leadership has three aspect, we can see that graph from Adair (1975) as follow:

Task Needs

The function of task needs is to setting objectives, planning tasks, allocating responsibilities and setting appropriate standards of performance. Then team needs means team building, motivating, communicating, and disciplining. The individual needs include coaching, counseling, motivating, and developing.

Chen Tonghai, chairman of the Second Session of the Board of Sinopec. He understands that they need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. Successful corporations don’t wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential. They also realized that while improving their ability of lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse. The most important reason cause the success is that they can combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.

4.2. What is motivation to work

If asked to identify a major concern or problem at work, a manager is very likely to cite a “motivational” need to do something that will encourage people to work harder to do “what I want”. Formally defined, motivation refers to the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person’s effort expended at work. Direction refers to an individual’s choice when presented with a number of possible alternatives (e.g., whether to exert effort toward product quality or toward product quantity). Level refers to the amount of effort a person puts forth (e.g., a lot or a little). Persistence refers to the length of time a person sticks with a given action (e.g., to try to achieve product quality and give up when it is found difficult to attain).

Content(needs) theories of motivation

Maslow’s work (1954) dates from the late 1940s and is based on the assumption that human needs are inexhaustible: as one set of needs is satisfied another arises in its place, which means that needs are arranged in a hierarchy. The usual way of portraying Maslow’s theory is as a pyramid of five levels, as shown in figure 2, where the bottom three consist of more basic needs and the top two are the so-called higher order needs.

---Source: Maslow

Physiological needs are the most basic of all and arise from internal physical imbalances such as hunger, thirst, warmth and shelter; they need to be satisfied at fairly frequent intervals. The employees want to get wages to satisfy their physical need, then they will concentrate on work.

Security needs, which are at the next level, consist of security, freedom from pain or harm, emotional security and well-being, fairness, predictability and order.

Affiliation needs are prompted by the strongly social nature of humans. Most people enjoy feelings of belonging, friendship or being loved, which can only be satisfied through social interaction. Needs of this type provide the motivation to be part of a group, an experience that gives us the opportunity to form meaningful relationships and gain support from others. It is to be seen, in the cooperation of this company, people are all working in groups, and they are also working in the comfortable and safety condition. It causes employees much more like their job then to work hard in those positions what they should be.

Esteem needs, which are sometimes called “ego” needs, are located at the next level upwards and are often split down into two subtypes. Needs for self-esteem concern an individual’s view of him or herself, for instance having a sense of self-respect, self-confident or of doing something that is meaningful and worthwhile in a competent way.

The topmost level consists of the so-called self-actualisation needs. These are virtually inexhaustible and are concerned with a person’s need to realise his or her full potential, and it is these that are said it drive humans to do things that have never done before.

5. SUMMARY

In conclusion, Sinopec Corp therefore has the today such achievement, completely relies on the management mechanism which consummates to them, From this definitely may manifest to a system management and the good administrative personnel to company's development is the how unimportance.

Sinopec Corp will continue to give full play of the independent directors and the three Specialized Committees under the Board, and promote the level of scientific decision-making. Meanwhile, they are to strengthen internal control and internal management, mitigate operational and financial risks; andl set up a highly efficient, unified and well-coordinated management mechanism and a vigorous incentive mechanism with an aim to improve production and asset efficiency.

Facing the sweeping tide of economic globalization and reshuffling in the petroleum world, Sinopec Corp is fully aware of the opportunities and challenges ahead. With regard to the opportunities, the most inspiring one stems from the continuous, fast-growing and wholesome Chinese economy, which is expected to drive the domestic demands for petroleum and petrochemical products, thus providing enormous potentials for a faster development of the Company. As to challenges, the most rigorous one is a more open Chinese market after the entry of China into WTO. Facing these emerging opportunities and challenges, Sinopec Corp shall adhere to the Company’s operating objectives of “maximizing the Company’s profit and return to shareholders”. Sinopec Corp shall also stick to the existing strategy, and as breakthrough, improve corporate governance, carry out in-depth reform on its management system and operational mechanism, speed up rational procedures to the business portfolio and industrial layout, thus improving the quality and speed up the pace of the Company’s business expansion, to realize effective growth.

6. REFERENCES

Cooper, C. L. (1998) Theories of Organizational Stress, New York

Schermerhorn, Jr. J.R., Hunt, J.G., Osborn, R.N. (2002) Core concepts of Organizational Behavior, London: Routledge

Spears,L.C.,(1998) Insight on leadership: service, stewardship, spirit, and servant-leadership, Canada

Iiris Aaltio and Mills, A.J. (2002) Gender, Identity and The Culture of Organizations, London: Routledge

The class materials from Derek