Organisational goals

Each organisation has its own main aims. Often, the aims of an organisation can define its identity and differentiate it from other similar organisations. Take two chain stores. One might aim for low cost, limited choice, reasonable quality. Another might aim for wide choice and excellent quality. A shoe store in Fitzroy may have quite different aims to one in Toorak.

The aims of an organisation - the things it strives for and prides itself on - are its organisation goals.

These goals are often written down in a mission statement: a brief philosophical statement that defines what is important to the organisation. Customers often select one organisation over another based on what it works hard to achieve. You can tell an organisation's genuine organisational goals when they have to make a decision: if, for example, a store had to choose between raising prices or sacking staff its decision can reflect its organisational goals. If store 'A' raised prices, it implies that it values the provision of good customer service and is not willing to cut staff if it can help it. If store 'B' cut staff, you might be able to assume that the store is more concerned with keeping prices down, even if service suffers. Organisational goals are important to know when tough decisions need to be made.

Some organisations goals are pretty easy to work out. Hospitals would, you'd hope, have excellent medical outcomes as their main organisational goals. Schools would aim primarily for providing quality education. A shop might aim for personalised and courteous service. Another shop might aim to provide the best prices.

Conflicts can occur when goals collide: what if a private school that valued the quality of its education had to cut costs? Would a private hospital start using second-hand scalpels to save money in tough times? It's pretty common to hear of company directors or staff resigning because they believe their company has started ignoring its primary organisation goals.

When you are given a case study in ITA, you are often told what the organisation goals are. It might say, "Fred's Moving Company" prides itself on..." or "ABC Printing aims to..." or "Giraffe Restumping Co. is concerned that..." These are clues to what the organisations consider important. The fact the the Giraffe Restumping Co. is "concerned" suggests that one of their organisational goals is being threatened.

Apart from the organisational goals given to you in a case study, there are some standard ones you can assume for any organisation:

FOR COMMERCIAL ORGANISATIONS: profit. Whatever they do, in the end, should eventually lead to increased profit. Some actions may not be immediately obvious as profitable. Sponsoring charities, as mentioned above, may seem like throwing money away, but if it gets them publicity and "warm fuzzies" from the community, they will increase their number of customers and their competitiveness against rivals. Spending big money on new technology may seem foolish until you realise that the expense will be recouped after a while from better productivity (producing more stuff in a given time), reduced costs or better quality products (which will attract customers away from rivals.)

FOR SERVICE ORGANISATIONS: service. Whatever they do, in the end, should eventually lead to providing a better service to their clients. Any profits are re-invested in the organisation.

FOR ANY ORGANISATION:

efficiency: Every organisation wants to be efficient: they don't want to waste time, money or effort.

good decision making: Every organisation wants to make informed and wise decisions to help them achieve their organisation goals.

effectiveness. Every organisation wants to do their work well. How well they are prepared to do it, of course, will be affected by organisational goals. The manager of a company making the dinky little toys in K-Mart Christmas Crackers is probably not going to lie awake at night worrying that his plastic jewellery does not look realistic enough (he certainly doesn't seem to lose sleep about the quality of the jokes and riddles in those horrid things. And don't get me started on the pathetic quality of the paper hats in them.) He is more likely to value cost over quality. On the other hand, the designer of an antimissile system is not likely to try to get much business by offering countries a cut-price missile defence shield that only intercepts 50% of incoming nuclear missiles.

good reputation: no organisation aims to look stupid or incompetent (well, it seems some must but I don't think they really aim to do it). Every organisation wants to be regarded as competent in whatever they do, whether it is quality, price, speed or any other factor. Companies will often go to extreme lengths to build or hold on to a reputation because their reputation is their biggest asset. If, in a store that prided itself on customer service, a sales assistant insulted a customer you could expect the management to be horrified and bend over backwards to make amends. If "Pronto Printing" was renowned for its accuracy and quick results and its production suddenly got late and sloppy, you'd expect the management to very quickly find the causes of the problems and eliminate them.

good customer service: one hopes most organisations would value this!

Read up on types of organisations here.

Read about tactical, strategic and operational decision making here.