E-commerce and Change Management Review

Flashcards for E-commerce and Change Management Lecture Review

E-commerce

Aims to identify relationships between variables.

Strategic Success in E-commerce

No guarantee of success, influenced by rapid changes; failing to adopt e-commerce is likely to be less competitive.

Benefits of E-commerce

Cheap advertisement, more sales, competitive advantage, less labor intensive, more capital intensive.

Automation

Uses technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate processes; provides reliable data for informed decisions.

Benefits of Automation

Levels playing field, saves time, improves customer experience, increases productivity, reduces errors.

Drawbacks of Automation

Job displacement/unemployment, initial implementation costs, technical challenges/limitations, reduced human interaction, dependency and loss of skills.

Big Data

Large quantity of data generated by retail e-commerce, user interactions, logistics, social media, location data, and the Internet of Things.

Key Uses of Big Data

Tracking and monitoring performance/safety, generating marketing insights, improving decision making.

Data Mining

Analysing data and summarizing it into useful information, identifying unseen relationships, predicting future trends, extracting commercial value, generating actionable strategies.

M-commerce

Commercial transactions initiated using mobile devices; the fastest-growing part of e-commerce driven by rapid smartphone adoption.

Cyber-hacking

Unauthorized and illegal access to and manipulation of computerized networks.

Product Life Cycle

Model predicting a product's revenues and cash flows over its life cycle; thought to be shortened by technological change from e-commerce.

Key Impacts of E-commerce on Marketing

Larger target audience, cheaper advertisement, shortened product life cycle, wider product range, increased need for localization, greater use of digital promotion.

Impacts of E-commerce on HR Management

Assessing employees' attitude outside work, requiring less staff, needing employees with a broader range of digital skills, potential poorer working conditions in e-commerce warehouses.

Impacts of E-commerce on Operations

Becoming capital intensive, increasing importance of economies of scale, e-commerce platforms are complex, allows smaller businesses to compete with bigger businesses.

Impacts of E-commerce on Finance

Allowing customers to pay in installments, reducing fixed costs, and impacting exchange rates.

Internal Change

Change that happens within a business.

Restructuring

Reorganizing the organizational structure of a business.

External Change

Change that happens outside of the business.

Disruptive Change

Significant game-changing developments in an industry.

Incremental Change

Change that happens step by step within a business, e.g., gradual improvements.

Mechanistic Structures

Formal structures with clear levels of hierarchy and tight control over employees.

Organic Structures

More informal structures with teams created for specific projects.

Delayering

Occurs when a business removes a level of hierarchy from the organization.

Lewin’s Force Field Analysis - Driving forces

Highlights that at any moment there are forces for and against change, needing to keep up with competitors, increasing customer complaints, new owners wanting higher returns, and poor performance

Lewin’s Force Field Analysis - Restraining forces

Highlights that at any moment there are forces for and against change, lack of finance, reluctance of existing staff to change, and resistance from certain stakeholder groups.

Value of a Flexible Organization

Allows businesses to move employees around as and when needed and switch tasks or location; depends on managers knowing what is happening and ensuring relevant information is available.

Value of managing into + knowledge

The ability to mange data effectivly so that managers can identify changes before or as they happen, develop suitable strategies to respond or prepare for, and evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies adopted

Barriers to change

Reasons for resistance of changes: Self interest, misunderstading, different assessments and prefering the status quo

Kotter and Schlesinger's six ways of overcoming resistance

Overcoming resistance to change: Education, Participation, Faciliation, Negotiation, Manipulation, and Coercion

Organisational Culture

Refers to the attitudes, values, and beliefs of employees.

Task Culture

Individuals identify with the task they are working on.

Role Culture

Clear role within the organization.

Power Culture

A few key people at the center of the organization.

Person Culture

Individuals have their own space and are given parts of the business to make decisions on and control.

The Reason For Organizational Change

Reason business might change : remain relevant & increase innovation + creativity levels

Strategy

Long-term plan to achieve a business's vision through attaining its corporate objectives.

Leadership

Includes functions of ruling, guiding, and inspiring other people within an organization in pursuit of agreed objectives.

Organisational structure

The way a business is arranged to carry out its activities.

Network analysis

Occurs when the activities involved in a project are analysed in a network diagram.

The essential critical path

Shows the activities with zero float time; these activities determine the fastest a project can be completed.

Total float time

How long an activity can overrun without holding up the whole project.

Functional & logical approach

Members of each department have the same job area.

Product Based Structure

Occurs when a business has very clear product lines that have different customer bases and different challenges and opportunities.

Regional Used

If the strategy involves competing in very distinct regions of a country or around the world.

Mahux based Structure

Individual job holders have more than one boss.

Which structure is best?

Will need to Fit with overall strategy, provide flexibility + meet local needs, be cost efficient and enable decision making to be rest

Value of network analysis in strategic implementation

Planning different elements, working out the order these can be carried out and organising activities

Critical path analysis occurs when

-analyse the activities for diferent elements, identry fastest way of completing project and shows the sequence tasks must be done.

nodes

starts and ends an activity

Activities

shown by a labelled arrow (and letter) and the duration

Earliest start time

earliest time a given activity can begin.

latest finishing time

latest time an activity can finish without debyering the project

planned strategy

the strategy the managers intend to implement.

emergent strategy

the strategy that actually develops over time.

divorce between Guinership- and control

occurs when owners of a business do not control the day to day decisions being made.

Contingency planning

occurs when a business plans for possible but unlikely events.

strategic drit

occurs when the strategy of the business no longer matches with the environment it operates in.

Strategic decisions

major decisions, involving large degrees of risk and a very high level of uncertainty.

examiners tip on assesesing stratigic peromance

many measures or success (growth, profits, employment increase) however always be clear on objectives, + what is acceptable . time frame

Strategic planning:

provide for managers a strategy that sets out what needs to be done & how it is doing.

Contingency planning

plan for events to happen which are unlikely