Report on Organizational Alignment: Measuring for Business Success

This report delves into the concept of organizational alignment within the context of modern business organizations, emphasizing its crucial role in long-term success. It defines organizational alignment as the process of ensuring all aspects of a firm are aligned with its strategy, both operationally and strategically. The report highlights the importance of effective leadership in fostering alignment, identifying key areas such as social systems, external environments, employees, and formal structures. It discusses strategies like the Kotter's 8-step model and the use of measurements, including performance measures, to achieve alignment. The report emphasizes the significance of goal-oriented measurement, reliability, and reproducibility in assessing alignment. Examples of successful companies like Google, Zappos, and 3M are provided to illustrate the practical application and benefits of organizational alignment, concluding that managers and leaders play a vital role in ensuring alignment for business growth and success.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT
0
Quality appraisal and evaluation
6/17/2019

MANAGEMENT
1
The assignment brings about the discussion on the concept of alignment in context to
the modern business organisations. The key aspects of measurements for the organisational
alignments act to be the major factors of success in longer period.
The concept of organisational alignment can be defined as the process that ensures all
the aspects of the firm are aligned with their strategy. The alignment is observed in both the
way and manner, i.e. operationally and strategically. On the achievement of effective
alignment, in an organisation, the employees and other managers act in the direction of
achieving their predetermined goals. Alignment in organisations is vital for attaining goals,
and improving the performance of the firm in the long-term. It has been found through
research that creating an organisational alignment is a crucial responsibility of the leader.
Leaders assume their responsibility in integrating the efforts of all individuals or employees
towards a common goal (Lawrie, Abdullah, Bragg & Varlet, 2016).
There are certain areas, which the leaders need to emphasize to consider effectiveness
of the alignment in their organisation. These areas or aspects may include social system,
external environment, employees and other valuable assets, and formal structures or
processes. The misalignment of these aspects may create conflicts or issues in the attainment
of goals. Therefore, it acts to be a great challenge for the leaders to create better alignment
in the organisation (Vunk, Mayer & Matulevičius, 2017).
For an instance, organisations works by implementing certain internal changes in their
firm attain effectiveness in respect to the inefficiencies. Leaders or managers understand that
firms operate in a dynamic business environment, and this requires them to ensure proper
alignment of their duties or activities.
They apply or implement effective leadership strategies as per the work of the
organisation. Furthermore, they use their skills and abilities to attain high performance and
success in the future years. In the process of maintaining organisational alignment, effective
leaders combine or use diverse ideas of people in the organisation, and implement the best
ones for their organisation (Fernandez & Rainey, 2017). Thus, it can be stated that
organisations need strong leaders to ensure employee’s high commitment to attainment of
vision and objectives.
Another method or strategy to establish effective alignment in the organisation
includes the Kotter’s 8-step model. The model includes eight different steps to identify

MANAGEMENT
2
issues, communicating the vision and achieving the goals. The use of measurements or
implementing the analysis of metrics in the organisational processes may help the firm attain
effectiveness of operations. The two aspects i.e. reliability and reproductivity constitute an
important standard of measurement of alignment of the organisation (Calegari, Sibley &
Turner, 2015).
The success or effectiveness of any measurement system in the organisation is
dependent on the ability of the users or people to use the system. Establishing ownership and
accountability are essential for every measurement system. Thus, it can be stated that the use
of measurements facilitate the deployment of effective alignment in the organisation.
Measuring the communication, setting up the goal, and other aspects is essential to ensure
attainment of growth and success. Goal oriented measurement is an important aspect of
measurement of the processes aligned in the organisation (Porcu et al., 2017).
Here, in this context the use of measurements or measures includes the performance
measures, which is important for the organisation. The use of measures help the managers
uses different strategies and methods of alignment. Effective use of the measures help
employees understands different processes and practices of the organisation. In the process of
achieving alignment, measurement is the key factor to reach business goals.
Measurements allow the firm and managers to attain integration of work efforts of the
employees with the goals. Alignment and accountability acts to be the major phenomenon of
attaining the team effectiveness in the organisation. For an example, to discuss about one of
the most successful organisation, i.e. Google the company has proper and effective
alignment. The organisations with the aligned workforce are able to create a happy and
healthy work environment. On this account, it has been found that alignment in the
organisation is exercised through effective planning and communication amongst the
members.
Another example of the company, which prioritises their culture at the top, of other
values to attain effective alignment, includes ‘Zappos’. The company is an online shoe
retailer and worked to attain efficiency in their operations and activities. Similarly, 3M has
been another corporation, which has gained alignment in their work processes and one of the
world’s most admired company. Therefore, it can be stated that the alignment is important to
be measured against the set objectives or standards of performance (Hung et al., 2015).

MANAGEMENT
3
To conclude the above discussion it has been analysed that the managers or leaders
play a vital role ensuring alignment in the organisation. This has been described above with
the help of suitable sources and information.

MANAGEMENT
4
References
Lawrie, G., Abdullah, N. A., Bragg, C. & Varlet, G. (2016). Multi-level strategic alignment
within a complex organisation. Journal of Modelling in Management, 11(4), 889-910
Calegari, M. F., Sibley, R. E. & Turner, M. E. (2015). A roadmap for using Kotter's
organizational change model to build faculty engagement in accreditation. Academy of
Educational Leadership Journal, 19(3), 31.
Hung, W. H., McQueen, R. J., Yen, D. C. & Chau, P. Y. (2015). Measuring the alignment of
websites and organisational critical activities. Technology Analysis & Strategic
Management, 27(5), 550-568.
Porcu, L., Del Barrio-Garcia, S. & Kitchen, P. J. (2017). Measuring integrated marketing
communication by taking a broad organisational approach: The firm-wide IMC
scale. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), 692-718.
Fernandez, S. & Rainey, H. G. (2017). Managing successful organizational change in the
public sector. In Debating Public Administration (pp. 7-26). United Kingdom: Routledge.
Vunk, M., Mayer, N. & Matulevičius, R. (2017, October). A framework for assessing
organisational IT governance, risk and compliance. In International Conference on Software
Process Improvement and Capability Determination (pp. 337-350). Cham: Springer.