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Rabu, 20 Juli 2011

SPIRITUAL VALUES AS DETERMINANT FACTOR OF SMALL BUSINESS FIRMS CORE COMPETENCY

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background
The environment turbulences are the characteristic of globalization that force organization to survive and grow with extra strong effort in very tight competition among organizations. The turbulences in the environment always faced by the organization from both internal and external organization, In order to survive in this complex working environment, companies need to be flexible and responsive to change, the turbulences challenge organization to change as the “solution” to the turbulences that faced. Change in other hand, is one of life signal even in the organization, where change always gives hopes because future are uncertain and unknowable (Kasali, 2007) and there are many reasons to companies change today. Companies are experiencing significant pressures from increased levels of competition, rapidly changing market requirements, higher rates of technical obsolescence, shorter product life-cycles and the heightened importance of meeting the needs of increasingly sophisticated customers (Grath, 1992). It is not only among the same industries but also different industries which are struggling, defending and protecting their position from either direct competitors or indirect competitors.
The ways companies meet these challenges depends largely on the nature of the business they are in, the dynamic forces of the market in which they operate, and the resources and skills that can be applied to ensure their business objectives are met (Shepherd and Ahmed, 2000) where many companies are realizing that in order to provide value and win customers they now need to quickly and accurately identify changing customer needs, develop more complex products to satisfy those needs, provide higher levels of customer support and service, and utilize the power of information technology to provide greater functionality and performance.
There is growing evidence that human resources are crucial to organizational success, and may offer the best return on investment for sustainable competitive advantage (Luthans and Youssef, 2004). For some, competencies refer to behaviors or actions, for others to underlying abilities or characteristics, and for still others to the outcomes of actions (Iles, 2001) so competency is a combination of tacit and explicit knowledge, behavior and skills, that gives someone the potential for effectiveness in task performance (Draganidis and Mentzas, 2006). Economists have since loaded on much baggage to the concept but most agree that human capital comprises skills, experience, and knowledge. Some like Gary Becker add personality, appearance, reputation, and credentials to the mix. These changes have made clear the need to view people as the creators of knowledge and thus as a valuable organizational resource (Pfeffer, 1994) and the values include the spiritual needs (Cunha, Rego and D’Olievera, 2003).
Hendrick and Ludeman (2002) in the “Corporate mystic” argue that big corporate in the world have been move into spiritual aspect in the human resources development. And Thomas Friedman in his book “The world is flat: A brief history of the Globalize world in the 21st century,” said world now move from The Agriculture Age to The Industrial Age, than Information Age and now ended in Conceptual Age that move into “ultimate meaning and purpose.”
For this time the paradigm of management is changing into the “new management paradigm.” The “new management paradigm” incorporates a broad range of techniques and strategies associated with managing contemporary organizations, which are characterized by flatter, less hierarchical, and more flexible structures and work arrangements. Among the many concepts receiving increased attention is the notion of spirituality. Somewhat surprisingly in light of its recent popularity, spirituality in the context of organizations has enjoyed a rich, albeit sporadic, heritage in the management literature over the past decade (Dehler and Welsh, 1994). Supported by Covey (2007) that said “Spiritual intelligence is the central and the most fundamental of all the intelligence, because it becomes the source of guidance of  the other three intelligence”.
Ideas concerning the human spirit are intriguing and intuitively appealing because “spiritual quests go beyond rational concrete experiences or phenomena to the abstract, emotional search for meaning – the how and why of existence”. In organizations, spirituality represents a specific form of work feeling that energizes action, so “hearts are every bit as important as minds”, with ultimately recognizing “how profoundly motions can influence human thought and behavior – and entire organizations. And a critical point in spiritual journey in the work place for employees is to identify theirs important value, because can bring out differences between their individuals values and organization values. A focus on such transcendent needs and values is an important way to bring about the ethical decisions and outcomes that are desired in organizations today. Effects spiritual values have on the extent to which workers have a meaningful, good life at work. Worker values influence wide-spread organizational phenomena, and the critical role that values play in affecting work-related attitudes is difficult to overstate
Specifically this theory apply to the field of human resource management and state that it is people that encompass the properties assumptions of value, rareness, inimitability, and non-substitution are the necessary conditions for organizational success, spiritual values that implement by human capital can be a source of competitive advantage or core competencies for the company. Hamel and Prahalad (1994) describe core competences as "... a bundle of skills and technologies  ...”. Markides and Williamson (1994) define core competences as a pool of experience, knowledge, and systems that together can act as catalysts that create and accumulate new strategic assets. Following Nelson (1991) core capabilities can be linked to a set of skills and search routines developed within firms. Based the literature above, there is relationship between the spirituality values with the company competitive advantages, where competitive advantages source come from core competencies.
The implementation of spirituality values in the organizations have been interesting topic to be investigated, now many companies in Indonesia implement the spirituality values in their companies the impact companies can survive in the competition environment, more developing and grow than before, means the implementation of spirituality values can bring the companies to competitive advantages and bring the company to sustainability (SWA, march 2007). The companies that have been implemented the spirituality values such as: PT. Astra Internasional Tbk., PT. Bintang Toedjoe, PT. General Electric Indonesia, PT. Inter Nusa Hasta Buana, PT. Medco Energi Internasional Tbk., PT. EL Nusa, PT. Garudafood, PT. Unilever Indonesia, Grup Takaful Indonesia, and PT. Ecelcomindo Pratama.
In other hand, this research is intended to investigate the role of spirituality values implementation on small business firms in West Sumatra, especially Padang city. Where West Sumatra knows with the implementation of religion aspect in entire culture or “Adat basandi sayarak, syarak basandi Kitabbullah”, mean in West Sumatra the spirituality values is implement is entire work life. The objective of this research is to measures the spirituality values on the small business firms in Padang city as capital city of West Sumatra and the relationship with the company core competencies.
Based on our exploration on research literature the spirituality values in the company can be describes as competitive advantages because it contents of values, motive, knowledge and skill that implement by human resources which one competitive advantage always linked with core competencies. So this research meant to pursue the spirituality values that can impact to the company core competencies.
Based on that problem Therefore, the researcher is interested to conduct a research titled:
“SPIRITUAL VALUES AS DETERMINANT FACTOR OF SMALL BUSINESS FIRMS CORE COMPETENCY”

1.2. Problem Statement
Spirituality represents a specific form of work feeling that energizes action, and the implementation of spirituality values at small business firms would be impact to core competencies. So the research attempts to answer the problem: is the spirituality values implemented by small business firms related to or even contribute to core competencies.

1.3. Research Objectives
Based on the problem statement stated above, the objective of this research is to investigate the spirituality values relation to core competencies at small business firms.

1.4. Significance of The Research
The following is the significance of the research that will be conducted by the researcher:
1.      The result of this research is expected to help the small business firms to know are the spirituality values can improve the core competencies.
2.      The result of this research can answer the question that implementation of spirituality values also can apply at small business firms.  
3.      The result from this research will be useful for other companies that are willing to implement the spirituality values in their company.
4.      The result of this research could be a reference for future researcher who is interested in this subject.

1.5. Organization of Remaining Chapter
The following are the order of the research, which will be divided into five sections:
Chapter I                     :           Introduction
This chapter describes the background of the problem, problem statement, research objective, significance of the research.
Chapter II                   :           Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
This chapter will describe the related theories and opinions of the experts gathered from different sources, such as text-books, reading materials, journals, and internet based content and information.

Chapter III                  :           Research Methods
This chapter describes the methods and techniques used to analyze the data and information needed for this thesis.
Chapter IV                  :           Data Analysis and Result
This chapter will describe the implication and result of the research based on the data and information gathered by relating the theories and the implementation in this company.
Chapter V                   :           Conclusion, Limitation and Suggestion
This chapter will describe the conclusion, research limitation, and the suggestion for the future research.

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