Importance Of Formal Policies In Organizational Development: A Case Study Of Toyota Motors

Organizational policies and their significance

Question:

Write an essay about the Development of the Organisational Policy.
 

Each of the organisations set their mission and structures the business activities to accomplish such goals. The policies are thus formulated to achieve these organisational goals and usually written as statements. Fowler (2013) explained that the policies have been developing the documentation of the plans, instructions, processes, and intents of an organisation. More specifically, the formulation of the policies helps in guiding the volunteers, management, and staffs for clarifying the influences and values of the organisational culture. As stated by Morel, Palier and Palme (2012), the policies are needed to be documented in a formal written form, which is required for clarifying the limitation and the expectation of an organisation. The governance process is much relied on the clearly written policies that help in understanding the organisational rules. Hence, breaching of these policies can affect the organisational scenario and the activities of the employees as well. The maintenance of the flexibility and the responsibility towards the external factors is also needed to be concerned in such cases.

The study will be presenting the exploration of the key concept based on organisational development of Toyota Motors. The formulation of the structured policies related to the organisational development will be discussed. The identification of such structured method will be reflecting the importance of such development procedure, which will be leading towards the cost benefit analysis procedure. Depending on such benefit analysis, the outcomes of the process will be analysed.

Toyota has become one of the leading brands of the automotive industry in Australia in last 50 years. It is reported that Toyota has captured the top position in selling brand by ensuring the market share of 18.2% in the year of 2014 (Toyota.com.au 2016). The company has the string believe in maintaining the quality parameter of the product features and automobile parts. Therefore, the company has been focusing on the selected people to avail the sketched materials for the automotive cars. However, in developing the organisational practices, Toyota ensures the extension of the safety standards, which will result the formidable package of world-class safety features on boarding of the cars. The company is even concentrating on such central thinking to improve the employees’ performance. Toyota Australia is the subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporations, which is considered as one of the largest vehicle manufacturer company worldwide. The company has been dealing with almost 50 overseas companies and 26 regional companies. Approximately 317,716 employees worldwide have been engaged with Toyota. 

Toyota has been planning for implementing their CSR policies by ensuring the sustainable management process. The company is much focused on establishing the sustainable policy through facilitating the CSR development. The major focus of the company is to undertake the structured policy for developing the innovative automobile parts with higher quality. It has been seen that the effective features and the superior quality of the automobile parts minimises the risks and sets the higher safety standard. Toyota Motor Corporation undertook the sustainable program for facilitating the strengthened competitive position in the business market.

Structured policies and organizational development

However, major issue found out while implementing the CSR policy is the risks associated with the advanced information and communication technologies. The advanced information and communication technology is the main reason of the security breaches and cyber attacks along with other significant threats. The risk is growing since, the information related to the implementation of the CSR policy is an important concern (Hansen 2013). Even the impact of such issues can cause the greater risks for the policy development process. Hence, along with the risk assessment plans, several other organisational procedures are needed to be undertaken.  

The associates or the employees are the key drivers for the organisational sustainability. More specifically, they employees are the main people to execute the plan after it is being prepared by the management. Therefore, it is required to structure educational plan to educate the people who are going to be associated with this policy development procedure. The list of the people and the segments that are required to be included in the training and education process is presented in a tabular form:

Who	Necessary field	Time	Process	Location	Authorised person
Employees	Communication	1st week	Verbal training would be undertaken	Office premises	PR Executives
IT people	Information technology and communication	1st to 3rd Week	Technical training system	Official technology lab	Senior system engineers
Labours	Need training o  manufacturing the automobile parts	1st week	Training would be provided regarding the manufacturing process	Automobile manufacturing factory	Higher authority of manufacturing department would be responsible for monitoring and ensuring the process.

Table 1: Education Plan

The education system undertaken by the authority of Toyota includes the participation of employees, IT people, and labours. It is noted that since the company has been concentrating on upgrading the quality parameter of the automobile parts, it is required to keep the concentration on the manufacturing processes. Apart from this, the company is even concentrating on the CSR policies to maintain the sustainability. This initiative requires the supports of more customers along with the implementation of the advanced information and communication technologies. Firstly, the employees are needed to be trained, as they are the people to communicate with the customers directly or via different means of communication. The recognition of the customers’ needs is much important for the company. In the first week of the month, the PR executives and experts would provide the verbal communication training to the employees. The training process will be undertaken in the office premises, one hour before the office hours.

Another most important area is concerning the engagement of the IT engineers. The development of the policy requires the secure storage and information system to record the details associated with the project. These IT engineers are needed to be much skilled and efficient to tackle each of the information technology and preventing the security breaches. Hence, it is required to keep the concentration on their training process. In the 1^st to 3^rd week, the senior system engineer would undertake training session in the official technical laboratory. The continuous monitoring and progressive process is also needed to be ensured in this training and development process. The IT engineers need to get the proper education of the advanced technicalities related to the information and communication system. The successful educational approach would determine the prevention of the data lost and the security breaches.

The final training and education process would be orienting the manufacturing process of the automobile parts. Due to the establishment the successive sustainability management, Toyota has been developing the CSR policy through improvising the quality parameter of the automobile parts. Hence, the labours that are associated with the manufacturing process in the manufacturing factory also need proper education and training session. In the first week of the month, the higher authority of the manufacturing department would be providing the proper training process to the labours regarding the manufacturing process. The manufacturing factory would be used for the training purposes and the automobile engineers would also be associated in providing the proper training to the labours. The successive approaches related to these segments would be beneficial for implementing a developed policy of CSR management.

Toyota Motors: Overview and sustainable policies

As per the above table, it is seen that the cost benefit analysis includes the expenses spent for 6months in diversified segments. These segments include cost reduction, revenue enhancements, labour reduction, and decreased overhead. The addition of the total expenses provides the total amount of the total benefit per month. However, the calculations are done (refer to the excel file) by applying the formula of increasing benefits. The formula has been presented to the attached file. 

Identification of the Risks: Toyota has been concentrating on developing the CSR policies to maintain the sustainable approaches for the business in the competitive market. The sequential process used for the policy development process has been ensuring the recognition of the probable risks during the implementation of the plan. The major risk that has been recognised in this aspect is the security breaches of the advanced information and communication technology system. It is to be noted that the implementation or development any policies required the structured planning process, which is needed to be recorded for the further monitoring processes (Norton, Zacher and Ashkanasy 2014). The advanced technologies are sometimes much difficult to handle of the proper skills are not there. Moreover, there are high chances of security breaches and revelation of the information, which determine higher risk in this policy development process. Another risk has been identified that the inattentiveness of the associates and the rate of the absenteeism.

Analysis and Evaluation of the Risks: The recorded documents and information need continuous monitoring process. In this present genre of the digital technologies, the advanced system utilization is much in trends. However, while using such technicalities, the people are needed to be much skilled and trained. Therefore, due to improper use of such technologies, the information sometimes is revealed and the occurrence of the security breaches is found (Green and Adekanmbi 2015). On the other hand, while providing the proper training and education session to the associates, the company needs to invest the proper amount of the capital that is necessary for the development process. However, it has been seen that many of the associates are not much attentive towards the training classes. More specifically, they are not attending the classes on the proper time and most of the days they are absent. Hence, the interruption in the process is much prominent. In fact, since they are not attending the classes, the resources and the capitals have been wasted. Hence, the risks with such losses are much higher in such aspect.

Identification of the Mitigation Strategy: The identified risks are determining the security breaches, data losses, and the wastages of the resource and capitals. Recognising such potential risks, the company need to focus on the mitigation strategies to decrease such risk factors. The first step that the company needs to undertake is to train the IT people in a much skilled process. The advice of the experts would be also much favourable in mitigating such risks (Lowry and Moody 2015). Once the IT people can get the expertise skills and become aware of using such technicalities, it would be easier to protect the confidential data related to the development of the policies. On the other hand, the resource planning is needed to be structured. Firstly, there should be a list of people who need training and the human resource management needs to inform those associates accordingly. The investments of the resources should be based on the confirmation received from these associates. If any of the associate is not interested, the management would take the further decision. In fact, if any of the associates would fail to participate or being inattentive during the training sessions, the authority would not hesitate to penalize them. Following these aspects would be much beneficial for the successive approaches of this development process by mitigating the possible risks. 

Risk assessment plans and advanced information and communication technologies

The communication strategy is one of the most vital aspects for a company to ensure the sustainability management process. More specifically, in case of developing the CSR policies, the welfare of the stakeholders is the major required field for each of the organisation. The communicational transparency is the key driver to establish the skilful relationship with the stakeholders. It is to be noted that the major responsibility of the manager of the company is to promote the policy specifications to the key stakeholders. Roper (2012) mentioned that the communication strategy is the most significant approach in determining the proper relationship with the stakeholders during the implementation of any organisational policy. The objectives and the purpose of establishing the communication strategy has been focusing on several factors, such as the audiences, media, and messages. Cummings and Worley (2014) opined that the communicating with the customers or any other stakeholders is the effective way to understand the basic needs. The identification of the needs will be confirming the relevant process to be undertaken to fulfil them and the customization of the message system is also necessary to be evaluated. Hence, the PR team needs to communicate with the internal and the external stakeholders to understand their requirements and accordingly undertake the proper process. The selection of the media is also much required for Toyota to achieve the objectives of the communication process (Wilensky 2015). In determining the implementation of these processes, the proper budget and the resource investments are needed to be structured.

Objectives: To produce the higher quality automobile parts for implementing CSR plans for sustainability development.

Responsible person for planning: Project Manager

Action Required	Responsibilities	Timeline	Strategies/Tactics	Resource/Budget
Education Plan	Head of the department of the manufacturing field, the human resource management, PR executives	1st week to 3rd week	Training and Development session	$30,000
Improvising the information technology	Senior System engineer	1st to 2nd week	Undertaking the bio-metric process, and advanced technological equipment related to information technology	$1,00,000
Communication Strategy	Company Executives	3rd week	Media broadcasting, messaging, mobile technology, advertisement	$2,00,000

Table 3: Action Plan

Work System: According to Jänicke and Weidner (2012) work system is the skilled system, which is required for the humans or machineries to perform any task by suing the information technology or other resources. In case of the implementation of the CSR policy by Toyota requires the association of several information technologies. The policy development practices require the record of each of the activities and to keep the documents safe, these information technologies are needed. Moreover, the enhancements of the quality parameter are also one of the major concerns for the CSR policy development. The development in the manufacturing process also requires the assimilations of the higher quality-based automobile parts.

Environmental Analysis: While developing the sustainable CSR policies in the business market, the major focus of Toyota is to make the strategic decisions. The changes in the climate can provide some of the opportunities to introduce the ecological products related to the manufacturing of the automobile parts (Weimer and Vining 2015). The declination of the oil reserves is also much considerable in presenting environmental analysis. The increasing rate of the business emphasis can sometimes be threatening to Toyota.

Technical Analysis: Toyota is depended on the technological business. Therefore, the different technological aspects have been determined to develop the policies of the organisation. The increasing demands of the e-commerce business have been considering the opportunities for the business growth. In fact, the emergence of the mobile technologies is also much significant for considering the development opportunities for the business (Dunn 2015). However, the major threat related to the technological factor is the increasing number of cyber crime. Due to such cybercrime, the security breaches are takeing place. While documenting the activity records, the information are sometimes revealed due to such cyber rime. Therefore, it has been signifying the potential threat for Toyota.

Educational plan and employee engagement

Social Analysis: The sociological influences on Toyota are much significant. It is to be indicated that the increasing rate of human interest in purchasing the hybrid cars is ensuring the opportunities for Toyota. In addition to this, the increasing demands of the electric cars are also considering the upcoming opportunities for Toyota. However, one of the most recognised threats is the widening structure of the wealth gap. The middle class people are the major sources for purchasing the cars of Toyota. If the cost will increase, the people may avoid purchasing the cars, which may cause the decreasing level of the profitability.

Pre audit: Pre-audit is the very first phase of an audit process. During such phase, it is the major responsibilities of the management to be much committed towards the sustainability approaches and development of the policies (Downs and Adrian 2012). Toyota needs to be much focused on the pre-determined goals and objectives that are highlighting the implementation of the CSR approaches to maintain sustainability purposes. More specifically, the company needs to appoint people for assigning the roles and undertaking the audit process.

Onsite audit: The second phase of the auditing process includes the teams with external and internal audits. The association of the KPI, checklists, necessary tools, and other documentations is required in this particular phase (Zadek, Evans and Pruzan 2013). The documentation of the useful records and the information is the most required criteria in this case. The records of the training process, survey, or management reports are also needed to be considered in this phase. The on-site audit process is linked with the interviews with employees and site inspections.

Post audit: The third and final audit phase is named as post audit, which is associated with the evaluation of the findings and the recommendations. The last phase is even ensuring the formulation of a structured action plan to follow up the entire process. 

Conclusion

The study has been considering the CSR policy development of Toyota for managing sustainability. The assimilations of the technological approaches, training and development session, and educational purposes are the major requirements for ensuring the development of the CSR policies. The structured planning of the training process has been presented in this study. The establishment of the communicational process has also been specifying the needs of the stakeholders. The environmental, technological, and social influences are also analyzed in this study. The formulation of the action plan is also required to be monitored for accomplishing the objectives.  

References

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