Topic Area Management And Marketing In Small And Medium

Topic Area Management And Marketing In Small And Medium Topic Area: Management And Marketing In Small And Medium Enterprise{see Details Below â€" Essay Example > Management and Marketing in Small and medium Enterprise: A Case Study of WB Engineering limited(2006)INTRODUCTIONThe flexible nature of management of small and medium scale firm has made the management style in this structure of organization to be difficult. The structure and the size of resources available to small and medium scale organizations these have jointly constituted a factor that makes the management styles in small firms to be at variance with what is obtainable in large-scale organizations. In the view of Slatter (1992:159) cited Collins Ram, 2003, “managing fast growth in entrepreneurial firms is one of the most difficult challenges that exists”. Owners often struggle to balance the flexibility required to keep pace with customers demands, with the stability needed to provide employees with a sense of continuity and security. Hence management essentially comprises a careful balancing act between strong leadership and decentralized task-oriented management; and p rocesses involving organizational cohesion and those promoting individual responsibility (Collins Ram, 2003). As a small and medium scaled firm expands and begin to transform into a large sized organization there is the need for such transformation to be commensurate to changes in management style that hitherto had being practiced; this need be done so that a lacuna would not be created and a lost of touch and proper control of the expanding resources. There is also the need to be awoken to current trend in our everyday dynamic business environment. The non-adherence to these little but significant facts has rendered many well to do but poorly managed organizations to die a premature death. This write up would be looking at those factors that had imposed the difficulty our case study (WB Engineering Limited) is passing through. And solutions on how to curtail these would be proffered. CONCEPTUALIZATION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ORGANIZATIONThe term ‘small’ is a relative one it is not absolute. The line separating small from large is in a continuum and an issue that is inevitably arbitrary. According to Odaka Sawai (1999), “small business is a generic concept. Being the antonym of big business, its social significance becomes clearer when placed in the historical context where the latter first appeared in the world economy”. Bolton 1971, cited in Bannock (2005), he identified three characteristics in its economic definitions of a small firm: A small market share, that is not large enough to influence national price or qualities (even though a village shop may be the only one, its prices cannot get too far out of line from those of major national retailers in the nearest town, even though people will pay something for local convenience) Managed in a personalized way: the owner actively participates in all aspects of the business unlike in a large firm where the shareholders and management are usually almost entirely separate. Independ ence or the exercise of ultimate management responsibility. A small subsidiary of a large firm, which has a head office to report to, does not share these characteristics. The above characteristics are usually identified with vast majority of business, which are inherently small in size.