What Is the Key to Success?

What is The Key to Success?

In the article Plantations Practiced Modern Management (2013), author Caitlin Rosenthal researched about the origin of management. According to her findings, owners of plantations managed their assets using accounting system and management techniques. If management techniques were used on slavery, then these techniques should be considered “cold and dehumanizing”. To support the author’s claim, characteristics of slave ownership is similar to that of a modern management to a certain extent. The owners designed the “the prime field hand” to measure the effectiveness of their inventory –slaves, who were considered part of the books. Also, these slaves were valued at market price. Nowadays, workers are still part of indirect measurement in productivity. For instance, a sales representative has to make targeted number of sales in a period. In other words, an employee’s performance is measured. Contrary to Rosenthal’s claim, corporations use CSR practices to value their employees. Management invests in employee training, promotes a diverse culture, ensures workers have flexible work schedules, and adopt health and safety policy.  The use of slavery in operations could damage the organization’s reputation. Sales may decrease significantly due to consumers’ boycott.  Moreover, evidence found is represents the plantation industry only. Arguing that “management tools can separate us from our humanity”, other industries must be included in the research to faithfully represent the evidence (2013). In the above findings, Rosenthal’s claim is persuasive in some measure.

On the other hand, Joan Magretta interviewed Li & Fung’s chairman Victor Fung in her article Fast, Global, and Entrepreneurial: Supply Chain Management, Hong Kong style. The author’s claim that a company must focus on its ability to be fast, flexible, and innovate in order to succeed in global competition (Magretta, 1998, pg.2) seems to be plausible. Li & Fung success lies in its dispersed production, autonomous division leaders, financial controls and operating procedures. The dispersed manufacturing technique is used to manage each step of the value chain at optimal level. To effectively run each division, the company provides pay-for-performance incentives to the lead entrepreneurs, who have autonomy to manage their own division. Lastly, they use the conservative approach of financial management. Contrary to the argument above, Magretta’s argument can also be viewed as unconvincing. Operating globally can bring major impact in the company. For example, since the company does not have its own workers and factories, “compliance and ethical sourcing” is in question (Magretta, 1998, pg.12). Since the company deals with different suppliers and customers all the time, they cannot build solid relationship. Although innovation and flexibility can be considered as a competitive advantage, it may cause business failure. Li & Fung relies on information technology to disperse manufacturing. What if the technology is unfeasible? What should the company use as a substitute for it? Overall, the proposed alternative causes demonstrate that Magretta’s claim unreasonable.