1ST SEMESTER 2012/2013 FINAL EXAM MARKING SCHEME-PR2

ST. AUGUSTINE UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA

Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication

 

Department of Public Relations and Advertising

1^st Semester Final Examination

BAPRM 2

MARKING SCHEME

FEBRUARY, 2013

1. Fastjet Tanzania Ltd sells discounted air tickets via the Internet to business travellers. Due to the rapid growth in sales, the company is considering whether to establish an Administration Department which would support other functional areas within the organisation. Mary Marandu has been employed to write a report for the Board of Directors of Fastjet Tanzania Ltd which will assist the company in formulating its views on this matter.

Required: Prepare a report for the Board of Directors of Fastjet Tanzania Ltd identifying:

(a)   Why it is important to engage in business planning when considering major changes to business operations (25 marks)

(b)   The range of activities undertaken by the Administration Department with specific reference to:

                                         (i)            Communication systems and procedures within the company (5 marks)

                                       (ii)            Management information (5 marks)

                                     (iii)            Secretarial support.(5 marks)

Answer

REPORT PREPARED FOR THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF FASTJECT TZ LTD

1. Outline

·                  To explain the importance of business planning.

·                  To identify the activities undertaken by the administration function.

2. The importance of business planning

·                    Business planning involves a systematic analysis of business operations, activities and structure in order to identify the long-term development plans of the business organisation.

·                  A well-structured planning process will incorporate 3 inter-related plans:

­   a business plan will identify the long-term goals and objectives of the organisation.

­   an operational plan details how these long-term plans will be implemented during the period of the plan.

­   an administrative plan details the business support needs which will need to be developed in order to ensure the successful implementation of the overall strategic plan.

·                  If a business organisation does not engage in planning activities there is likely to be an adverse impact upon business performance for the following reasons:

­   no control of business operations

­   no understanding of market needs

­   no targets established to monitor performance

­   no quality standards established

­   no financial performance indicators identified.

·                A business organisation planning to implement major changes to its business operations will require the following:

­   up-to-date, accurate and reliable management information that will inform management decisions

­   targets will need to be established which are based upon accurate research and information, presented in a format that promotes understanding

­   effective communications between the functional areas within the business in order to co-ordinate the planning process

­   monitoring systems will need to be established in order to assess business performance against the set targets

­    consultation with key stakeholders such as individual employees, their managers/supervisors and staff teams will enable them to understand their contribution to the overall success of the business.

3. Activities undertaken by the Administration function

·                The administration function ensures that the business establishes systems and procedures that allow its activities to operate as smoothly as possible.

·                The administration function also has an important role to play in ensuring that systems are in place which promotes effective and efficient communications throughout the business. Towards this end, the administration function can take the lead in establishing a communications strategy and monitoring its implementation. This will allow the administration function to ensure that systems are in place which support the needs of the other functional areas including:

­   secretarial and administrative support

­   production of management reports and other business communications

­   arranging meetings including the distribution of agenda and minutes

­   producing staff newsletters and other methods of communications which provide general information for staff.

·                  The administration function should also ensure that systems and procedures are controlled and monitored in order to meet the changing needs of the organisation. As such, the function will be responsible for such areas as telecommunications, information technology, security and transport.

·                       The administration function has an important role to play in ensuring that management information systems generate up-to-date and reliable information for managers. It will therefore be involved in drawing-up plans for the introduction, development and replacement of computer hardware and associated software packages.

·                  The administration function will also ensure that the business has systems in place to meet its statutory duties and responsibilities including Health and Safety, the production of the Annual Report and any information that may be required by the government including the tax authorities.

4     Recommendations

·                Fastjet Tz Ltd should establish a planning process that clearly identifies its long-term business goals and objectives.

·                The planning process should clearly identify the administrative support needs of the business and draw-up an administrative plan that will assist the implementation of the strategic plan.

·                The establishment of an Administrative Support Department would be an effective way of ensuring that the administrative plan was implemented.

Examiner’s Report on Question 1

Answers to this question tended to be too general. In part (a) many candidates described in detail the components of a Business Plan when, in fact, the question required them to identify the importance of business planning. As a result their responses did not relate specifically to the scenario.

Part (b) required candidates to describe the various activities undertaken by the Administration function. The majority of candidates produced acceptable responses but some answers were rather vague and generalised.

2. You are a business support services consultant who advises small entrepreneurial firms in your local area. However, you have just been approached by one of the local government departments to work with them to help introduce a more creative culture into the department. You are used to working with entrepreneurs who tend to have an abundance of creativity and as your perception of local government is one of great size, inflexibility and bureaucracy, you feel you may have to rethink your approach. Assuming your perception about local government is correct, what are some of the issues that you will need to address in the process of introducing a more creative culture? (40 marks)

Answer

·      Support idea development: real commitment of resources, time, funding

·      Encourage flexibility: latitude to define own resource requirements

·      Reward contributors (intrapreneurs): freedom, monetary

·      Provide leadership: personal commitment to support innovation

·      Pursue new opportunities that create value

·      Constant orientation towards growth & renewal

·      Continuous search for opportunity

·                Performance orientation

·                Creating a pervasive challenging pressure to create new products and commitment to new business development.

·                Senior management to provide significant and visible personal commitment Sustaining the commitment for a long time

·                Assigning resources to new business-need for nurturing to make them stand alone

·                Assigning good people to new business

·                Building confidence in subordinates to make them realize their potential in new business development

·                Building momentum

3. The various definitions of entrepreneurship points to the fact that entrepreneurship involves creativity, innovation, development, seizing opportunity, and converting opportunities to marketable ideas, while bearing the risk of competition. Discuss (25 marks)

Answer

The various definitions of entrepreneurship will not be complete without some important words or their synonyms which differentiates an entrepreneur from others. These words include creativity, innovation, development, seizing opportunities, and converting opportunities to marketable ideas, and bearing the risk of competition. These words simplify the traits which qualifies an entrepreneur which is the person in the centre of Entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur is distinguished from others by his or her ability to apply these traits which are inherent in most, if not all human, but is dormant in many people because they do not deep down within themselves to utilize these traits.

An entrepreneur is someone who can use his creative mind to make out something out of nothing or transform something that is already in existence into something better. He is able to study his external societal environment, immediate environment, and internal environment and recognize the opportunities available and those he can seize, develop, and convert into goods and services which others can buy. An entrepreneur must have the spirit of innovation to enable him bring such ideas to light and at same time he bears the risk involved in the decisions he took and the risk of competition by other entrepreneur. It is because of this trait that these words are included in the various definitions of Entrepreneurship.

4. Write short notes on the following

a)    Business Opportunity (5 marks)

b)    Corporate Entrepreneurship (5 marks)

c)    General Enterprising Tendencies (GETs) (5 marks)

d)    Small Business (5 marks)

a)     Business Opportunity

A business opportunity is an idea that can be turned into business and it comes about after a thorough study or survey of a certain environment. Business opportunity can be identified through understanding a consumer market and what needs to be done to products or services to satisfy consumers. Specific methods are interviews, observations, asking for suggestions newspapers, magazines, soliciting complaints, etc.

A good business opportunity is one that has the potential of generating enough returns to recover costs incurred and earn some profit for the business owner

b)    Corporate Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial behaviour exhibited by managers or employees in existing organisation

c)    General Enterprising Tendencies (GETs)

General Enterprising Tendency’ is a broader concept than ‘entrepreneurship’ and can be applied to people in many different situations, including those working in business support agencies, social and community enterprises, business organizations as well as those intending to start a business enterprise. These include: Strong need for achievement; Independence/autonomy; Innovation/creativity; Calculated risk-taking; and Drive and determination.

d)   Small Business

Small business as the one employing less than 50 employees and those firms employing less than 10 employees/workers are micro enterprises. Also small business is defined as the business which is independently owned and managed by one or few persons and employing  few workers.

5. Briefly discuss the factors affecting women’s choice of business activity and implications for their choices (25 marks

FACTOR	IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN’S CHOICE OF ACTIVITY
Reproductive role	·               They choose activities that make it easy to combine work with their household responsibilities ·               They choose activities that complement household needs
Limited knowledge/skills	·               They choose activities which utilise the skills they have mastered as part of their socialization process, such as food processing, food vending and personal care
Limited initial capital	·               They choose activities which require minimum initial investment
Limited access to credit for working capital	·               They choose activities for which they can easily get credit from suppliers (e.g. shops will provide food items on credit to food vendors) or where customers pay in advance (such as tailoring)
Limited capacity to absorb consequences of failure	·               They choose activities for which there is a ready, tested and large market.

6. “One way to relieve the loneliness of running a business is to share experiences by networking with other businesses.” Discuss the perceived benefits and pitfalls from an entrepreneur’s perspective. (20 marks)

Importances of Networking

·                  Serendipity - making your own luck!

·                  Being in the right place at the right time!

·                  Helps to get the person who already needs your knowledge, skills, company, resources, etc.

·                  Encourages who knows you not who you know!

·                  Making your interests and needs widely known and listening to the interests and needs of others!

·                  Engaging in a process not a goal

·                  Increasing customer base,

·                  Encourage business -to -business activities

·                  Sharing of technology

·                  etc

Pitfalls

·                  Multiplication of ideas (no innovation),

·                  Costly,

·                  Encourage sabotage

·                  etc

The best of luck!!!