Reflective Essay - Management Strategy - Assessment Answer

Reflective Essay Assignment

Case Scenario/ Task

Braeburn Inc. is an international organization that runs groups of schools globally and therefore regarded as a real service organization that offers education to the general public. I was lucky to have been given an internship placement at Braeburn School in Sydney, Australia. During my stay at the school, I reflected a lot about the operation of this prestigious group of schools and decided to develop a schematic diagram that illustrated my thinking. Therefore, this paper will discuss the flow chart and give an in-depth analysis of significance service encounter as well as the analysis of managerial implication.

The significance of service encounter and managerial implication

In my engagement as an intern with Braeburn School in Sydney, I was able to explore the significance of service encounter as it happens at the institution. This service encounter as I have pointed out have been illustrated in the flow chart that I have drawn above. Service encounter starts with the potential students read the adverts in blogs and websites about the school. In Braeburn School, on the front stage of the student’s side, there are the admission and orientation of the students during their first years. During this process, parents are given the opportunity to talk to the entire students’ fraternity so as to motivate them. The potential impact of such motivational talk is to ensure quality grades at the end of the study period at the school. The parents also form an association or committee that will work in collaboration with the teachers. This is to ensure that any grievance by the students is properly addressed. The initial social interactions that enables the consumer to make judgement on the quality of service being offered is what is termed as service encounter. It is a significant determinant of the behavior of the consumer. Based on this, Braeburn School’s management values the importance of service encounter so as to maintain a business or sustainability. I understand the Braeburn have developed key marketing strategies by using blogs and websites indicating various subjects being taught at the school. Any person accessing the website has access to the information about the school.

At the back stage, there is the development of marketing strategy and updating the school website this is to ensure that the school is in the public limelight. Moreover, there is putting up of customer care desk and employing skilled receptionists at the backstage for improving customer services and ensuring customer satisfaction. The management of the school is tasked with employing qualified teachers. They also develop policies for the school. Teachers would also be taken for further training to refresh their knowledge. The school Board of Management (BOM) made policies. The items that the BOM would consider in details included the impact of the policy on all the stakeholders in Braeburn School. The main stakeholder were basically the teachers, students and parents. My interpretation in relation to this was that certain stringent policy like the re-introduction of corporal punishment in the school would have serious repercussion on the entire student fraternity. My observation was that the Director was responsible for collecting and collating policy before passing it forward to the Administrator's office. This is what I later come to learn as being described as “open system of management”. The responsibility of the administrator would be to execute the policy. In other words, the administrator would ensure that the school’s head teacher understood the content of the policy and actually act on it appropriately as stipulated in the policy document (Toni De, 2012).

In terms of managerial implication, the school’s Bursar or the accounts clerk falls on the back stage of institution’s side. I came to learn despite the Bursar or the accounts clerk is not the chief executive officer of the school, he is the one who determines project and activities to be funded based on the amount of money that is in the accounts of the school (Neugeboren, 1991). For me it was rather weird because I felt that the accounts clerk was usurping the roles of the administrator and the Director of the school. This was not the reality behind the scenes because I later came to realize that the school accountant could only approve the usage of funds from the school accounts after authorization by the Director and the Administrator of the school. This kind of management as I have already stated, is an open system. It allows for all the players within the level of management and decision-making to voice their opinion which would be considered based on the weight of the matter.

My perception of teacher training is that it was very effective because the teachers would go for refresher courses in their area of specialization during the holidays (Toni De, 2012). These trainings are facilitated by the management of the school. The school management would award partial sponsorship and the rest of the costs would be met with the teachers themselves. Of great interest was the existence of an information technology center at the school. This center actually eases the operation at the school since it acted as a database where all the policy information would be stored for quick retrieval. Therefore, coordination and management of the school became easier for all the structures that were created based on certain policies would be retrieved from the database regardless of the year that the policy was implemented. This ensured quality results as well as sustainability and long-term management of Braeburn School. I really liked the set-up the management structure of this school. The management ensured that quality service or quality grades were the core thing at the school. Moreover, I realized that the operations at the school was based on the premises of customer satisfaction (Seo, Lee, & Kim, 2012).