General Description of the Company (Matsushita)
Matsushita is a great company based in Japan and known there as National and in the USA and other countries as Panasonic but Matsushita isn’t a commercial name for the company anywhere. The company is specialized in electronics and was established in the year 1920 and its growth was parallel to that economic growth of Japan which was rapid and distinguished and it witnessed its great economic success in the 1970s and the 1980s. The company was established on the traditional values of old Japan that the Confucius rules were forming them such as respect, loyalty, self denying and hard work. Panasonic corporation was the name that the company was referred to as in 2008 as a consequence of the company’s unity of all international brands. The company was first established by efforts of Konosuke Matsushita who set the company’s management framework and divided it for parts ruled by a headquarter and the parts were given rights of decision making. The company was a leading in its field competing with others such as Sony in producing electronics. (Panasonic.aero, 2015)
The Central Issue of the Case
Before the war, Japanese companies used to employ workers who were considered a part of the business and workers at that time before 1960s considered the companies where they worked as a place they belong to and that work is a duty they have to do with love and respect. Workers in Matsushita did the best of efforts to provide the company with the best they could do through hard work and loyalty in spite of any other advantages that could be found in other companies as they felt the company as being their home. The company in return provided them with good salaries, rewards and other merits. Japanese values and tradition affected the way people worked then but within time and postwar workers were not following the same attitudes in work. The new generations followed different attitudes in work as they didn’t consider themselves parts of the business or so loyal but they only thought in money being given and they used to compare business chances in different companies which was a thing that affected Matsushita largely as employees turnover became a problem that bothered the company. The Western culture had a role to play within the thoughts of the new generation of workers and employees at Matsushita as in the 90s, young employees were more eager for being promoted fast to get higher salaries and were seeking better opportunities in other places as loyalty and belonging to the business disappeared with the modern life needs. As tradition and values stopped being the main rule employees followed, Japanese companies tried to react to this by changing their strategies and study human resources trends in order to be able to deal with employees professionally and on evidence based practice. Companies were affected by the employees’ behavior as, for example, Matsushita encountered a problem of low business performance on the individuals’ level and on the organizational level as well. Old techniques used with human resources should have been replaced with new ones so the company assigned new managers with creative ideas in human resources management as they set plans to manage human resources according to the changes in the cultural image as this affected all practices in human resource management.
The Goals of the Company
The company is working to achieve major goals on the business level and on the administrative level as these goals can enable the company to preserve its position n the Japanese market of electronics and internationally, the company has the following goals:
-Ensuring a revolutionary attitude within the workplace by assigning innovative and creative workforce.
-Coping with the new changes in culture and Japanese and world society in order not to be retarded.
-Restructuring the human resources of the company and restructuring management strategies in the company.
-Training the company’s employees on new business trends and new technologies and software engineering.
-Reaching a reality vision of all the company’s ambitions.
-Following more rational models of management in the company as these management models can raise the company’s chances to succeed.
-Reach high performance levels by having high performance employees.
-Being aware of growth drivers in order to keep competitive advantage levels.
-Encouraging creativity as a major principle that the business adopt with talented employees.
The constraints of the problem
There are major constraints of the problem such as the following constraints
1. Cultural change is a constraint of the problem that Matsushita encountering as cultural changes were reflected on the workers’ attitudes, desires and needs that became difficult for the company to realize and respond to so these cultural changes resulted in a perplexed view of the company to its human resources who should be an asset for investment.
2. Employees turnover is another constraint as the company faces it because it occurs when other rivals in the market plan to raise their salaries in order to attract the young creative employees so they quit or leave to these companies.
3. Old management systems of the company that are considered a burden on the company’s budget such as old payment systems, old lifetime employing systems, old retiring rewards and the lack of modern human resources practices that work against change achievement.
All the relevant alternatives
- Setting a long term HRM plan
A long term plan is a good alternative for the current problem; it is based on making deep analysis and study for the company today and in the past and then choose new human resource management practices including new recruitment, reward and motivation practices that tend to change the company’s view for its human resources for an enough period of time such as five years or ten years for example. This plan should be comprehensive and covers all areas of human resources management especially ways of retaining the best employees and ways of decreasing the expenses of human resources to reduce their burden o the company.
- Setting a short term HRM plan
A short term human resources management plan is a good alternative for the company because this plan is performed in short time period and it includes the basic needs of the company and matching them with employees’ needs and studies the current capabilities of the companies and the best solutions which can currently be applied to solve human resources problems. (Laursen and Foss, 2000).
The best alternative for the problem (Short term plans)
This problem can be solved by the best alternative which is following short term plans that are continuously changed as this plan depend on making modifications in the current HRM practices to make them coping with the new business and human resources needs and to be matched with new technologies that are changed daily and also changes which are not known but may happen to employee’s behaviors. This plan should focus on employees’ behaviors as a major motive for the company to apply the plan which is soon showing its effectiveness and whether they are useful for the business or not. Matsushita can find some managers who are well trained and are able to make quick decisions correctly and to attract new genius employees to the business and focus on those employees’ retention and not others as those genius can bring more profits for the company and achieve its organizational goals. The plans should be changed after being applied on their terms and changing should be radically and completely in order to cope with cultural and social changes and changes in the business market as well. According to Ma, (2014), human resources management can be best applied by short term plans that tend to make quick changes to save the business from loss and disasters as these plans has genius solutions for problems of HRM in the current time as low performance employees shouldn’t stay in the work as they should be retired and new employees who are recruited on new conditions and new intelligent contracts can provide better suggestions for the company. A company such as Matsushita can depend on multiple short term plans that are changed from time to time according to the needs of the job and according to the employees behaviors in business as they can be motivated to change their passive business behaviors and follow new creative business behaviors.(Garg, 2015).
An implementation plan
Matsushita can implement a plan for solving the human resources problems that may lead to poor performance of the whole organizations as this implementing plan depends on the most appropriate alternative suggested. The plan should be based on setting main goals to be achieved such as making a general view of the company, its HRM practices and its position in the market, making good manager employee relationships that enable managers to understand employees’ behaviors and needs, use the best fastest ways to reach competitive advantage and following new HRM practices that are evidence based to be effective with companies that have similar activity as Matsushita.
Stakeholders
All stakeholders should be identified in the plan such as employees, managers, owners and customers as roles of all of them should be clear and they should all be studied according to the benefits they can get from the implementation plan.
Assessment and Evaluation
Assessment and evaluation are two main elements that an implementation plan should focus on as they are important to know if the plan was well applied and if it is effective and what future actions should be done in the next short term plans. Assessment and evaluation should also identify the future areas that will be addressed by business managers to raise the effectiveness of employees.
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