The External Influence On Organisation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

1. TERMS OF REFERENCE 1

2. METHOD OF PROCEDURE 2

3. FINDINGS 2

4. CONCLUSION 11

5. RECOMMENDATIONS 12

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY 12

TERMS OF REFERENCE

The purpose of this report is to describe Ballsbridge College, analyse internal and external influences on the College and make some recommendations. PEST, 5 Forces and SWOT analysis were the main tools used.

METHOD OF PROCEDURE

In order to obtain relevant information for the completion of this report the following procedures were adopted:

Primary sources were used: the website of the college.

Secondary sources were used: class notes, books and research on the internet.

FINDINGS

A -DESCRIPTION OF ORGANISATION

Ballsbridge College of Further Education is a Post Leaving Certificate College which belong to the public sector. It operates under the City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee. The College is located at Shelbourne Road in Ballsbridge and was set up as a business and domestic economy school in 1903.

The College provide a great range of courses. It provides both day course and evening courses. All the Post Leaving Certificate courses are certified by FETAC. The College provides only FETAC level 5 and FETAC level 6 courses.

Students are the main "customers" of the College. Ballsbridge College is a service provider as it proposes a range of courses. By choosing a course and registering, students are granted access to that service once they register for a course.

Ballsbridge College Organigramm

Administration Staff

Principal

IT Support Staff

Maintenance

Staff

Director Night

School

Deputy Principal

Teaching Staff

Special Duties Teachers x 8

Assistant Principals

x 4

Assistant Principal

Night School

The teachers in Ballsbridge College have a wide division of labour. They are responsible for a complete process of a subject. They have to distribute materials – hand-outs - to students. They have to photocopy the materials themselves according to the number of students in the class. They also have to deliver classes, set up deadlines for assignments; correct them and communicate the grades to the students.

At the end of the final exam they have to put the results of each student into a system.

The organisation structure is quite flat with the Principal at the top. A large number of employees report to the Principal hence the quasi inexistence of supervision.

The Principal is at the top of the organigram. He manages the College and gets orders from the CDVEC.

The Deputy Principal assists the Principal. She organises the rooms in the college and notifies each teacher whenever there has been a change of room. She organises work in a classroom when a teacher is absent or find a n assistant teacher who will takeover the class.

The Assistant Principals are in charge of students’ welfare; they all report to the Principal. The Special Duties Teachers who are responsible for sport activities can either report to the Principal or to the Deputy Principal.

The Administration Staff is in charge of the paper work, invoices and enrolment.

The Maintenance Staff consist of the porters and the cleaning staffs.

The IT Support installs new software on the computers and makes sure that the College network work properly. He only works part-time.

The Administration Staff, the Maintenance Staff and the IT Support report directly to the Principal.

As work experience, I teach English to EFL classes – English as a Foreign Language. I am also a member of the Green School Committee, being the Canteen Officer, I have to do a short presentation on the College green policy in different classes and come up with ideas for the Action Day.

B -EXTERNAL INFLUENCE ON ORGANISATION

The macro environment is the sum of external factors that affect a company. The macro environment is quasi impossible to be controlled. It is composed of international, economic, political, social and technological elements.

Pest Analysis

International

The international crisis context is affecting the politico-economic landscape of the country.

If it was to be introduced into the Irish Law, the Fiscal Treaty would affect the Irish economy in particular education.

Political

Ireland is politically stable; the students can be sure their education would not be compromised by a civil war or a political conflict.

The recent bailout has deeply affected the education. The IMF is well known for tasking government to cut the budgets allocated to Health and Education in return of the money lent. Unfortunately, that is what happened but probable introduction of the Fiscal Treaty would make things worse.

Due to the economic environment, the Irish government cut its spending. These cuts affected the Education Department as the Ballsbridge College saw its fundings cut.

The current government is about to held a referendum on the Fiscal Treaty.

The suppression of the "300 € Back to Education Allowance" and the reduction of the weekly payment to 160 € is going to affect the College next year. There will not be as many students as the precedent years.

Economic

The government has less control over its budget since the IMF’s bail out. The Irish State is forced to reduce its expenses and when it comes to reduction of expenses, education is severely hit.

The admission fees have gone up last year but the introduction of the Fiscal Treaty would make things worst. This would be treaty is to maintain financial stability of the Euro zone members by validating each member state budget and sanctioning the bad students of the Euro zone.

The current economic environment is affecting seriously the college. Due to a high unemployment rate in the country, going back to education seems to be the only alternative to unemployed. During the boom, colleges were deserted but now the demand is so high the admission’s offices have to deal with a long waiting list. Even though there might be few places available, the college cannot fill these places as the number of student is capped by the CDVEC.

Social

The change in the society in particular the last 10 years has affected Ballsbridge College. The immigration rate has changed the students’ profile and created a high demand for English classes.

The College used to teach young students but in the recent years but due to the high employment rate, the typical student’s profile does not exist anymore. The College has to teach mature students who in most of the cases have hadcexperience in the work market.

Due to the reduction of Fundings from the government the College has decided not to fully replace one teacher who retired last year. It chose to offer only part-time positions to candidates as a full time contract would be costly.

Technological

The College has a part-time IT Support Staff who install new software on computers.

Ballsbridge College has recently launched its virtual learning environment – Moodle-. This will enable the students to interact with one another and work at distance. They will be able to share informations, discuss topics and avail of contents of materials put online by teachers. eLearning might be the direct consequence of the introduction of the virtual learning environment within few years.

The students have their personal log in and can save file on their personal drive. Ballsbridge College has a website but unfortunately it is not used at its full potential. It is impossible to fill in an application online.

Few pages of the College website are out of date: Pictures of the 2009-2010 year are still on the website and the review

The classrooms in the College avail of overhead projectors which ease the delivery of a class especially when the teacher wants to support his/her materials with video files. Teachers and students could use them during a presentation.

5 Forces analysis

Porter Five Forces is a tool that analyses the competitive environment of a company. The tool was developed by Michael Porter. Porter Five Forces enable the company to identify different forces in the competitive environment and to adapt its strategies so as to gain more market shares.

Bargaining power of suppliers

The CDVEC, FETAC and career guidance counsellors are the main suppliers of Ballsbridge College. Each of them has a high bargaining power.

The CDVEC deals directly with paper suppliers. In result, the latters’ powers are considerably reduced. The CDVEC which is under the control of the Department of Education & Skills can reduce its funding at anytime. The CDVEC works in collaboration with Ballsbridge College but it always has the last say.

FETAC has also power as it is the awarding body that certifies courses in the College. In order to be recognised by FETAC all new courses have to fit with its requirement.

The career guidance counsellors are also suppliers of Ballsbridge College as they promote the College to secondary school pupils. Therefore it is important for the College to maintain a good relationship with guidance counsellors

Bargaining power of customers

The students who are the customers have more choices in terms of VEC Colleges. They could decide to go to any other VEC colleges in the area like Rathmines College, or choose a private institute to learn English. The switching cost involved is high as the student cannot attend another VEC College in the middle of the year. He/she will definitely loose a year and money.

Rivalry within an industry

There is a real competition among the educational institutions as students can have access to few of Ballsbridge’s courses in other VEC Colleges.

The differentiation is medium. The College has the merit of being a sole provider of certain courses: Criminology and International Aid and Development.

The rivalry is quite high not only among VEC Colleges but also with private institutions. IBAT College Dublin is a relatively new college which provides few FETAC courses including English classes.

The exit barriers are relatively high as the costs involved to get in the industry are very high.

Threat of new entrants

It is very difficult to get in the educational sector as would-be new entrants will have to go through lot stages and they will have to be approved. They will have to get authorisations from the Public Administration before setting up a College and the modules will have to be recognised by an awarding body. On that ground, Ballsbridge College has a significant advantage as it is a State-owned college and did not have to go through any red tapes.

The capital requirements for new entrants are very high: they would have to buy or rent a building; install electricity, water pipes; hire staff. The list is very long.

The fact that the barriers are high makes the number of new entrants low.

Threat of substitute product

eLearning and distance learning are definitely a threat to the traditional delivery of classes. There is a huge variety of courses which are available on the net. The College of Management and IT (CMIT) proposes distance learning classes in Ireland in different areas such as Business& Finance, Project & Event Management, Psychology & Health, Computers & IT, Web Design and Travel &Tourism.

C -INTERNAL INFLUENCE ON ORGANISATION

Resource Based View

As tangible assets Ballsbridge College has furniture, computers; they cannot give sustainable competitive advantage as can easily be duplicated.

As intangible assets the College has an excellent reputation which gives a sustainable competitive advantage. The College has a good track record of successful students. It also has a very good atmosphere which would be quite difficult to find somewhere else.

Value chain analysis

There is no product involved as Ballsbridge College is an educational institution. The College is a service provider. The production and the consumption of the service is done simultaneously. The production in this case is the delivery itself whereas the consumption is the attention the students are paying to the delivery and the handouts produced in order to support it.

The College has a support service . It enables the students who lost their certificate to get it duplicated. It also provides reference for the students.

The development of Moodle would definitely enable the College to obtain a competitive advantage.

D - INTERNAL & EXTERNAL INFLUENCE ON ORGANISATION

Swot analysis

SWOT stands for the Strengths and Weaknesses of the company as well as the Opportunities and the Threats that endanger the company’s performance.

Strengths

The location of Ballsbridge College is a plus. It is not far from the City Centre and it has very good bus services.

The College has good higher education links: students will be able to progress by getting access to institutes of technologies and universities. It also has overseas links.

Few courses are only provided by the College: International Aid & Development, criminology and for a long time Auctioneering, but also Criminology.

The College has a very good reputation. It has developed a link with the ROC Van Amsterdam which is specialised in Management and Event Support. This link has lead to an exchange programme, funded by the EU Commission. The College sends to Amsterdam few students in order to undertake a work placement in a totally different environment.

The College is the largest provider of English classes in Dublin and that is an extremely important strength.

Weaknesses

The College website is not used at its full potential. It is impossible to apply online. The website needs to be updated.

The library is too small and it not possible to take a book home.

The green policy of the College is still not totally applied by students. Even if every beginning of the year the members of the Green Campus committee go in each class to provide awareness recycling (green bin, black bin and brown bin).

Opportunities

The virtual learning environment is obviously an opportunity. It is still at its early days but could be a channel through as distance learning would evolve.

The fact that VEC and FAS will merge together could be an opportunity but also a threat. An opportunity because the link between the educational system and the work force would be stronger; students would have more chance to get a job after getting a qualification provided by FAS. It will be a threat as this fusion would divert the VEC Colleges from education. They would become training centres.

Threats

There is competition with other VEC which offer more or less the same courses. There are other private college that provide English classes like Rathmines College.

The economic crisis made the government reduce significantly its funding and the end of the Back to Education allowance is definitively a threat added to the reduction of the weekly payment to a maximum of 160 € per week. People won t be able to afford to go to College anymore to get a better education.

The private institutes college that provide English classes are definitely a threat.

CONCLUSION

Ballsbridge College has definitely strong links with the third level colleges, for example D.I.T.. It has the merit of innovating but it is under the constant threat of other private colleges and the development of eLearning. The immigration and the recession have totally changed the students profile and the teachers have had to adapt to their origin, their age and their experience in the work market.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Even though the computers in the College have been updated, a lot of work needs to be done when it comes to the College’s website. It is too old so are the reviews of the ex students.

The College should have a facebook page and link it to their website. By doing so, more awareness would be raised. It will be an efficient way to communicate in particular with the young students.

The College will save paper and time if application forms were available online.

The heating system has to be reset as it does not work evenly in each room. It might be too warm in a room – especially those with computers - whereas the others might be too cold.

The suppression of hand paper in the bathrooms is definitively a positive thing for the college. There is actually one electric hand dryer but it is not enough. In the next future another two should be installed.

The tap system in the toilets should be changed as the current system tends to waste lots of water.