Virgin is made up of over 200 companies and employs approximately 50,000 people worldwide. It was originally set up as a mail-order record business by Sir Richard Branson. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow in business sectors ranging from mobile communications, to transportation, travel, financial services, leisure, music, holidays, publishing and retailing. In 2006 Virgin’s revenues from around the world exceeded £10 billion. Virgin has a unique management structure which does not specifically adhere to one specific model of management, however it does employ aspects of different concepts which comes together to form its own distinctive style. …show more content…
Richard Branson uses this dominant culture as a marketing tool as well in order to entice customers to new products or to increase the reputation of the brand name by launching bold and striking promotions that tie into the organisations beliefs. He has utilised this by partaking publicity stunts including a world record flight attempt in a hot air balloon fashioning the Virgin logo and driving a tank down 5th Avenue New York to promote Virgin Cola, which has gained him a reputation for keeping the organisation in the public eye through exciting and unusual methods that involve humour and …show more content…
Virgin Media is currently in direct competition with BSkyB for market share over the UK digital television market (which it holds 30% share) and is in direct competition with BT Broadband over the broadband internet market, which it has the second highest market share (35%) behind BT broadband (40%). If undertaken correctly Virgin media could create a package that would offer value for money deals on broadband, digital television as well as its telephone services to create potentially a better value package (the quad play package) to increase its sales and take increased market share in both of these
The scientific management theory deals with dividing work into certain task that a person does. Target’s floor members are given specific task such as cashier, are there to scan products, and handled cash, cart attendant team member who are there to handle the cart arrangements and distributions, protection specialist who prevent and report theft issues. When you move up from Target retail departments you have the main offices, where human resource team members have their own responsibilities which are to be strategic advisors, manage and support talent in the department stores and introduce any new changes in the organization. The areas they cover are with Employee Relations, Talent Acquisition and Compensation of Employees. The higher ups, such as the CEO, CFO, and Chair Members, make major decisions on how the company is operated and what direction it
Marketing at the Vanguard Group. In light of an evolving market, faced with new competitors, and after a careful analysis of their current customers, the Vanguard Group (hereinafter referred to as “Vanguard”) realizes it must rethink its entire marketing strategy. However, in order to protect and leverage their competitive advantage, which is their low management fees, and to optimize the loyalty that their customers continuously demonstrate toward their organization, they must now target the most profitable segment for them, and develop the best way to serve and delight these customers. SITUATION ANALYSIS Highlighted SWOT Strengths Low fees strategy - a good idea.
Resources are being classified into tangible and intangibles assets as the followings: *Resources of *Virgin Group Tangible Resources Intangible Resources Capabilities of Virgin Group are established by the integrated resources that assisted it to stay competitive and to outdo its competitors. Valuable capabilities will aid Virgin Group to effectively tap and explore spotted opportunities as well as to minimize threats in the external environment. Should capabilities are consistently and effectively utilized, they will turn significant and be difficult to be imitated or substituted. With the resources discussed above, 3 capabilities of Virgin Group are identified as follows: - *Capabilities 1: Unique C*ulture of *"Making difference and creating uniqueness"* (*Contributed Resources: *Financial, Organizational, Human, Innovation*, Technological*) Creativity, Innovation are the foundations to Virgin and Richard Branson’s success! Technology push is the spine for innovation and likely to simulate process innovation in how service is provided when looking into Virgin. Technology is more likely to simulate process innovation. Every turn and businesses Branson venture has been with some kind of innovation or creativity element if not something unique, something that has not been seen or heard of before in the relevant market. Virgin Group has achieved a competitive advantage among its competitors by uniformly followed its culture in all business in serving good value and service to the customers in different ways. The basic and the core competence of all Virgin Group's business ventures are to do things just a little bit differently from the rest. And also they always tried to add value by adding a little fun to the business. By differentiating in strategy itself to fit of the activities and the ways of doing business have also differentiated itself from the rivals and make it difficult to imitate Virgin’s strategy. Hence, they have established their business to an untouchable position. How would you characterize the corporate strategy of Branson's Virgin Group? The answer to that question will not be so different from the ones above. However to better understanding we can characterize the corporate strategy of Virgin Group as "Making difference and creating uniqueness" in any kind of customers' service. They are not stuck to any business field so that makes them flexible of thinking and creating new ideas for their customers and the whole consumers around the world who need (or will need) Virgin's service.
Fordism and Scientific Management are terms used to describe management that had application to practical situations with extremely dramatic effects. Fordism takes its name from the mass production units of Henry Ford, and is identified by an involved technical division of labour within companies and their production units. Other characteristics of Fordism include strong hierarchical control, with workers in a production line often restricted to the one single task, usually specialised and unskilled. Scientific management, on the other hand, "originated" through Fredrick Winslow Taylor in 1911, and in very basic terms described the one best way work could be done and that the best way to improve output was to improve the techniques or methods used by the workers. (Robbins p.38)
Branson eventually sold the Virgin Label for $1 billion so he could keep his airline company alive, this was a disheartening moment in his career because he had to let the foundation of his now empire slip away, but he says sometimes you need to “consider getting smaller in order to get bigger (Dearlove, 2007).” He says this was his business strategy all along, instead of growing one company he prefers to set up individual companies allowing lower level employees to run smaller entities. This has brought him great success and he claims is less risky, his original record label wasn’t just one chain, instead it was 32 smaller record companies each ran by a different person. After the sale of his record label he focused on his airline company Virgin Atlantic, which battled head to head with British Airways. The rise of Virgin Atlantic was rapid and British Airways saw them as a big threat so British Airways conducted a series of foul play acts to decrease the reputation of Virgin Atlantic. This was all settled in court in which Branson successfully sued British airways for roughly $8 million (Branson, 2008). Traveling is the target market for Virgins more recent endeavors as Branson has invested in a train company, more fuel-efficient travel and his most recent project Virgin Galactic. One thing that the Virgin group does to differentiate
Today’s era of business world adapts to everything new but these modern concepts are an indirect tribute to the theories produced by Taylor, Fayol, Mayo and Weber. Taylor’s Scientific management theory is one such example which has become such an important aspects of modern management that it feels unbelievable that his concepts were a part of the history. It is falsely assumed that as the society progresses, the older theories tend to lose their importance. The thing to be noted here is that these theories are based on basic human needs which do not change with time; the thing that changes is the method to fulfil those needs. Investigating earlier management theories is important because these theories are less complex and provide immediate solution to the problems. These theories basically help us to go to the root of the problem and understand its complexity. The better understanding we have about the problem, the easier it is to accomplish the objectives of the company. The following essay states the importance of the Taylor’s Scientific management theory and how it is implemented even today in the business world.
Sir Richard Branson is the founder and chairman of Virgin Group. Sir Branson owns a variety of businesses, totaling over four hundred (Martin, 2012). He net worth as of 2012 stood at $4.2 billion dollars. Sir Branson’s business endeavors range from airlines, telecommunications, cosmetics, space exploration, and other ventures (Martin, 2012). Sir Branson success is based on several unique qualities such as his concept about customer service; in which he states “Saying Yes is Fun” (Martin, 2012). Sir Branson believed that success cannot be achieved by saying “no” to new endeavors, he believe that you have to be bold when embarking on new projects, and achieving the desires of customers (Martin, 2012).
In the article entitled “The Human Side of Enterprise” by Douglas Murray McGregor , McGregor stated that industry has fundamental know how to utilize physical and technology science. The conventional view of management consisted of three propositions which are called Theory X (Shafritz & Hyde,2012).
Richard Branson prides Virgin on the positive environment he sets for employees. Delegation, listening and the value of employees are key to being a good leader. These three assets to being a great leader have proven to assist Richard Branson in success. Mr. Branson approaches negotiation the same way he approaches her personal life, adventurous and boisterous. His negotiation approach is untraditional and unconventional in business. Perhaps Branson may be
There are several theories that examine an organization and it’s approach to managing work in an effort to develop efficiency and increase production. Two classical approaches to management are Taylor’s scientific management theory and Weber's bureaucratic management theory. Both men are considered pioneers of in the study of management.
In the past, managers considered workers as machinery that could be bought and sold easily. To increase production, workers were subjected to long hours, miserable wages and undesirable working conditions. The welfare of the workers and their need were disregarded. The early twentieth century brought about a change in management and scientific management was introduced. This sort of management, started by Frederick Winslow Taylor, emphasised that the best way to increase the volume of output was to have workers specializing in specific tasks just like how a certain machine would perform a particular function. His implementation of this theory brought about tremendous criticism by the masses arguing that the fundamentals of Scientific Management were to exploit employees rather than to benefit them (Mullins, 2005)
Scientific Management theory arose from the need to increase productivity in the U.S.A. especially, where skilled labor was in short supply at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only way to expand productivity was to raise the efficiency of workers.
the study of time and action; b) the management on assignment; c) the theory of organization. (8)Taylor’s theory created a revolution in the subject of management because it was the first scientific method in field of management science. (1)After that, management became a truly scientific knowledge and it expanded and modified by later generations. Therefore, Taylor is “known as the father of scientific management”. (2) Taylor put forward a perspective which was “study the character, the nature and the performance of each workman” and moreover, to “train and help and teach this workman”. (3) In the following paragraphs, will exploring the relevant and irrelevant hypotaxis between Scientific Management and organizations.
Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol are both considered classical contributors to management theory. Both were developing and expression their viewpoints at similar time period with the aim of “raising standard of management in industry” (Brodie,1967, p7) in a period were very few publications and theories on management. While both theories were developed with the same influencing factors such as war, social struggles and industrial revolution (Urwick. 1951, p7) each developed quite different management theories. Frederick Taylor is considered the Father of Scientific management and he developed scientific principles of management, focusing on the individual,...
Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s within the manufacturing industries. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s; by the 1920s, it was still influential but had begun an era of competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas. Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today.