3. Major Organizational Stakeholders
Stakeholders are defied as “the groups or individuals who have an interest in the performance of the enterprise and how it uses its resources, including employees, customers, and shareholders.”(Luis, David&Robert, 2002) Since the location of the league is near the university, it is clear that the major organizational stakeholders are the university students.
4. Organizational Analysis
4.1 Structures
There are many forms of organizational structure such as Functional, Divisional, Matrix, Teams, Networks and others. Furthermore, these forms are formal which are suitable for big firms. However, according to the observation of the league, as a small firm, it has a flat structure, which means “ few different levels or ranks within the total, and the jobs tend to be concentrated at low levels”(Richard, 2002) Although the organizational structure usually consists hierarchy, division of labour, vertical and horizontal coordination four elements, hierarchy which “refers to the number of levels of authority to be found in an organization”(Andrezej&David, 2001) is useful to distinguish between big firms which have many levels in their hierarchy, such as the police, and the small companies which have flat organizational structure, such as the league. Moreover, the low-level jobs take the responsibilities for the organization, which also plays an important role in gaining the organization targets. Although promotion is limited, the advantage of this structure is that it is convenient to pass through messages from managers to staffs.
Culture
Hand.C (1993) has found that the organizational culture consists four varieties of culture, which are power culture, role culture, task culture and person culture. Power culture is usually found in small organizations, family businesses and entrepreneurial. Therefore it is reasonable to suggest that Super-leagues 6-a-side Football has a power culture. It is like a spider’s web, which means that “the main relationship between the subordinates is with the centre (Richard 2002). The relationship may terminate because of people who are at the power of the centre lose confidence”. For instance, if James lost his confidence in running the league, the relationship between him and Tony would not exist any more. On the other hand, the power culture is very flexible. The relationship between managers and staffs can change reactively.
Power
Power is that “the capacity of individuals to overcome resistance on the part of others, to exert their will and to produce results consistent with their (own) interests and objectives”(Boddy, 2002) There are six sources of power, which are “legitimate power, reward power, coercive power, expert power, referent power and information power”{French and Raven (1959) via Boddy (2002)} It seems reasonable to suggest that the league has referent power as James is liked by his staffs.
4.2 Evaluation of Managerial Performance
According to the feedback we received from the members in the league, 8 out of 10 of them said that they enjoyed playing in the league. Also, it is located near the university so there are huge amount of customers who of whatever abilities want to play football at the end of day. By collecting 8 of £18 every hour and paying some for the pitch and referees, James is making a lot of profit. Therefore, it is clear that the league is currently a very successful organization.
4.3 Ethical issues and scope for CSR
Business ethics are defied as “standards or guidelines for the conduct and decision making of employees and managers” (Luis, David&Robbert 2002) They help to decide whether the actions of the organisation are right or wrong in certain circumstance. For example, the staffs make sure that it is fair and put safety on the first place during the match.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is “the duty a company has to conduct its affairs ethically to benefit both employees and the larger society” (Luis, David&Robbert 2002). There are some scopes for CSR such as the usefulness for the social societies as well as the satisfaction of the stakeholders. For instance, if the league did not care about the fairness of the match, nobody would be interested in joining it.
4.4 Potential Organizational Failure
According to the observation, there are four weaknesses in the league. Firstly, the massive pitch Jams hires could be better used. Secondly, the league could lose money as a result in making teams to pay at the end of the match, which would be easy for teams to walk off without paying, as well as members don’t turn up without giving any notice. In addition, there are no fixture lists and Tony sends a text to every team every week, which does not seem to be efficient and professional. The last weakness is that James only targets students. These are the four weaknesses which would be potential organizational failure of the league in the future.
5. Conclusions and recommendations
As can be seen, the league is already a successful organisation with enthusiastic staffs and both of Jams and Tony have similar agendas to it. Moreover, James and the staffs work in a fun, social, relaxed environment that result in a very low staff turnover throughout the year.
However, if James would like to take some opportunities, such as splitting the pitch into 6 instead of 2 and this effective change would be likely to create more teams.
If James makes teams to pay before the start of the match and could give them a disc or something else as a receipt of their payment. The game will not begin until both teams hand in their disc to the referees. Also it is a good idea to suggest him to ask teams to put a deposit down at the beginning of the contract such as £30 or £50. They could get their money back as long as they don’t miss a game with giving a day notice.
In addition, to make the league more professional and informative, a fixture list is the obvious solution and would inform the teams on who they were playing with and at what time.
James could target a wider customer base to get variety of teams, which would make the league more interesting. He could keep advertising using different methods such as poster, broadcast, internet and so on, and not just in the university but also other places.
6.0 References
Andrezej, H. & David.B. (2001) Organizational Behaviour: An introductory text, 4th edition, Prentice Hall Europe, Italy
Boddy, D. (2002), Management: an introduction, 2nd edition, Prectice-Hall/ Financial Times, Harlow
Handy,C.(1993).University Organizations.4th edition, Penguin Harmondsworth
Luis,R, David,B. & Robert,L(2002) Management: People, Performance, Change, second edition, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New York
Richard, P. (2002).Introduction to Management, 3rd edition, Palgrave New York
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