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Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson was one of if not the most influential of inorganic chemists in the post-war era. This article serves to highlight his contributions in original research and does not address his influence through his famous text books or the impact arising from the exceptionally large number of graduate students, co-workers, the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren etc. who have been inspired by working with him during the forty-five years that he held academic posts first at MIT and Harvard and subsequently, for 41 years as the Sir Edward Frankland Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Imperial College.

Wilkinson was always very proud of the fact that he was a Yorkshireman and that all his forebears were Yorkshire people. His grandfather (also Geoffrey Wilkinson) came to Todmorden from Boroughbridge; his father Harry fought in the First World War, and was lucky to survive, having been left for dead in France at the battle of Bullecourt in 1917. Harry married a weaver, Ruth Crowther in 1920; members of the Crowther family had been weavers in the local mills for several generations. Geoffrey was born on July 14, 1921, the first of three children, in the village of Springside on the outskirts of Todmorden. Sadly there is little left of Springside now. The family moved to the centre of Todmorden in 1926 to no. 4 Wellington Road (the house is now marked by a blue plaque erected in 1990). Todmorden is a small industrial town at the junction of three deep valleys in the centre of the Pennines, the hills and moors rising 1000 feet above the town. The population today is about 13 000, about half of that which existed before the decline of the cotton industry. His brother John speaks of the strong local pride and sense of community which Todmorden had and still has, and Wilkinson remained very fond of Todmorden all his life. His eyes would light up when he spoke of it or remembered the superb countryside such as Hardcastle Crags close by. He often returned there and had friends in the local community: he always enjoyed walking on the moors near Todmorden and fell- walking in the Lake District with family and friends. His interest in chemistry came early in life, before he went to secondary school. He recalled being fascinated at the age of six or seven by watching his father,a house painter and decorator. Mixing his painting materials (his uncle John Willy Wilkinson was also a painter but had died at the age of 22 from accidental arsenic poisoning caused by a green copper–arsenical pigment, Paris Green, fashionable at that time). An uncle on his mother’s side managed a factory making Epsom and Glauber’s salts in Todmorden. Wilkinson recalled how he loved to go on a Saturday morning to tinker in the small laboratory at the factory in Todmorden, indeed the family hoped that he would eventually manage the factory, but his career was to be very different. His parents, like most people at that time, had left full-time education at the age of 12, they were determined that their children should have a better education, and Wilkinson never forgot this. He went to Roomfield School and then, having won a West Riding County Minor Scholarship in 1931, went to Todmorden Secondary School, later named Todmorden Grammar School and later still Todmorden High School. He made the most of his education there. The school had several other pupils who were later to become famous, including Sir John Cockcroft, who worked with Rutherford at Cambridge and was to become the first of the school’s two Nobel Laureates-to-be in 1951. Many of the school’s pupils were groomed for entrance to Cambridge but Wilkinson made exceptional progress and was entered for a Royal Scholarship at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University, because the entry scholarships there were held at an earlier date than for other View Article Online universities. He won the scholarship and after a two day practical analytical chemistry examination in London, joined the college in 1939.

Pioneering studies on homogeneous hydrogenation catalysis demonstrated the important role of solvent-stabilized catalytic intermediates comprising coordinated solvent molecules. Wilkinson’s catalyst is another highly important catalyst with a wide range of industrial applications and the implicit role of solvents has been delineated. A generic catalytic cycle for the hydrogenation of unsaturated compounds using Wilkinson’s catalyst is shown in Figure 1. In the first step the stable 16 valence electron compound, RhCl(PPh₃)₂, is converted to a highly reactive 14 valence electron active catalyst species, RhCl(PPh₃)₂, via the dissociation of a phosphine ligand. The productive part of the catalytic cycle continues with the oxidative addition of hydrogen, which was shown to be considerably faster than that determined for other species present in the reaction, e.g. is the starting compound RhCl(PPh₃)₃ and various dimers. The formation of a solvated species, RhCl(PPh₃)­(solvent), has tentatively been proposed, undergoing oxidative addition of hydrogen with concomitant dissociation of the solvent ligand. Indeed, if the reaction is conducted in strong donor solvents, which tends not to be the case in practice, such an intermediate species is not unreasonable. NMR spectroscopy in C₆D₆ using pH2 revealed a number of previously unobserved species but none involving coordination of the solvent, as expected for this solvent. However, a kinetic analysis using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry revealed that the slowest step in the productive part of the catalytic cycle corresponds to the association of the unsaturated substrate. The slow ligand association step indirectly points to a solvent molecule needing to be displaced prior to the ligand association, which is consistent with the effect of donor solvents reducing the rate of reaction. Should the solvent be an ionic liquid then the cation and/or anion could interact with the catalyst and depending on which ions interact with the catalyst intermediate will further influence the reaction.

Figure 1 Catalytic cycle for the hydrogenation of unsaturated C-C bonds (typically alkenes and alkynes) using Wilkinson’s catalyst, RhCl(PPh₃)₃. The widely accepted intermediates in the catalytic cycle are shown in black in the main cycle and the solvated species that have been proposed are shown to the right of the main cycle. Solvent is denoted by S. The 16 valence electron solvated species RhCl(PPh₃)₂(solvent) and the 18 valence electron solvated intermediate RhCl(PPh₃)₂(H)₂(solvent) are present in donor solvents.

It should be noted that the active catalyst species/mechanism is not only influenced by the solvent, but in principle by the nature of the substrate and all reaction parameters. It has been shown, for example, that at high temperatures under the reducing hydrogen environment rhodium(0) nanoparticles can form and are excellent hydrogenation catalysts, especially for aromatic and heteroaromatic substrates. A remarkable solvent effect was observed with Wilkinson’s catalyst in the hydrogenation of alkenes containing aromatic nitro-groups (Figure 2) and other sensitive groups such as aryl iodide that cannot be rationalized by coordination of the solvent to the catalyst. In order to prevent the reduction of the nitro group or dehalogenation from taking place very mild reactions conditions are required. In benzene, under 1 atm of H₂ and at room temperature no reaction was observed, whereas in MeOH the alkene bond was reduced to afford the saturated product in 80% yield and in THF the yield increases to 91%.51 However, the highest yields were obtained in MeOH-THF and tBuOH-THF (1:1) mixtures (93 and 95%, respectively). The study also shows the importance of using mixtures of solvents rather than pure solvents, even though the latter overwhelmingly dominate the literature.

Figure 14 Selective hydrogenation of a C=C double bond in the presence of a reducible nitro-functional group using Wilkinson’s catalyst.

It is unlikely that the rate of this reaction is correlated to the solubility of hydrogen gas in the different solvents evaluated (see above). However, the rate of hydrogenation does appear to be correlated with the β values of the solvents. Benzene, THF and methanol have approximately the same π* values and there is no clear trend with respect to the α parameters of the solvents. The parameter that differs between the solvents that facilitate catalytic activity under mild conditions and the solvents where the yield of the reduction is low or does not take place is β, i.e. the basicity or hydrogen-bond accepting ability of the solvent. How this parameter enhances the reaction remains a matter of speculation, but one possibility is that the alkene protons hydrogen-bond with the solvent thereby activating the unsaturated bond. These solvents would not be able to hydrogen-bond to (and activate) the nitro-group in the same way, hence endowing the system with high selectivity towards reduction of the C=C double bond. With both of the rhodium catalysts described above, the active catalyst species is generated in situ, in the case of [Rh(cod)(R,R-DIPAMP)]⁺ via hydrogenation and elimination of the cod ligand and with RhCl(PPh₃)₃ via dissociation of a phosphine. The electronically unsaturated species generated are stabilized by the solvent, but if too stable, then activity is reduced. Hence, a balance between stability and activity must be found.

If catalyst activation involves dissociation of an anionic halide ligand then the nature of the solvent has a profound influence. For example, ruthenium(II) complexes [RuCl(diphosphine)(arene)]⁺ (the diphosphine ligand = diphenylphosphinomethane, diphenylphosphinoethane, diphenylphosphinopropane and the highly water-soluble analogue 1,2-bis(di-4-sulfonatophenylphosphino)benzene, arene = p-cymene, benzene or [2.2]paracyclophane), are efficient catalyst precursors for the hydrogenation of unsaturated bonds in an aqueous solution. In other solvents, where the enthalpy of chloride solvation is low, reaction rates are much lower and in some cases catalysis is completely suppressed as dissociation of the chloride anion from the ruthenium center is suppressed. In other words, if the halide ion is poorly solvated, it is more nucleophilic, and will coordinate to the catalyst preventing generation of the active catalyst. Solvents have also been shown to strongly influence the outcome, e.g. C=C versus C=O selectivity, of hydrogenation reactions catalyzed by heterogeneous systems.

REFERENCE

Bennett, Martin A, Andreas A Danopoulos, P Griffith, and Malcolm L H Green. 1997. “The Contributions to Original Research in Chemistry by Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson FRS 1921 – 1996 I . Early Life and Education.” : 3049–60.

Manuscript, Accepted. 2016. “Catalysis Science & Technology.”

Perea-buceta, Jesus E et al. 2015. “SI WK 270815 FINAL Diverting Hydrogenations with Wilkinson ’ s Catalyst towards Highly Reactive Rh - ( I ) Species General Procedures and Methods.” (December).

Prize, Nobel, and Winning Transition-metal Mediated. 2019. “Nobel Prize Winning Transition-Metal Mediated Processes.” 66(1): 6–10.

HRM533

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RESOURSE MANAGEMENT

GROUP ASSIGNMENT:

COMPANY: NESTLE MALAYSIA

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Nestlé Norden's aim is to meet the various needs of the consumer every day by marketing and selling food of a consistently high quality. To achieve this vision Nestle has two steps to follow, first is High quality and collaboration, which is integral part of any food business to flourish and second is Focus on e-business and websites. Nestle has started investing heavy in development of e- business and its promotion so as to capture clients in e-business sphere also.

The mission statement of Nestle is well articulated and reflects the long term objective for doing the business. It has mentioned in the mission statement that the company will provide consistently the best food product with the best quality throughout the life of their customers, which will ultimately enhance the quality of the life of its customers. The mission statement put the emphasis on the presence of the company in nearly every country. It promises in its mission statement that the company will understand the need of its customers and provide the best products to fulfill the needs. The mission also shows the high quality which is maintained in the wide range of products of Nestle. The company reassures that they provide the best range of food products to remain the first preference of its consumers.

Their purpose is to enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future. The company’s philosophy is to produce and sell world-class products of the highest consistent quality, reliability and conveniences based on business excellence principles throughout their operations and maximize the use of good quality local raw materials. Be an exemplary employer with a progressive human resource and social policy such as with a management style that is based on “Management Commitment and People Involvement” be a responsible corporate citizen and fulfilling all obligations to Government, shareholders, customers, communities and consumers. Furthermore, the company also wants to protect the environment by being committed to environmentally sound business practices and taking into account the need to preserve natural resources and save energy. The company must guarantee that all products manufactured, imported and distributed by Nestlé Malaysia are certified HALAL by authorized Islamic certification bodies and deliver shareholder value through the achievement of sustainable and profitable long-term growth.

They actively seek engagement and partnerships with outside stake holders that optimize positive impact in these areas of focus. However, Creating Shared Value is not about philanthropy. It is about leveraging core activities and partnerships for the joint benefit of the people in the countries where we operate and of their shareholders. They have joint programs with over 100 organizations around the world in these three areas which are nutrition, water and rural development. First is nutrition because food and nutrition are the basis of health and of their business and it is the reason why we exist. The second is water because the ongoing quality and availability of it is critical to life and the production of food and to their operations. Next is rural development because the overall wellbeing of the farmers, rural communities, workers, small entrepreneurs and suppliers are intrinsic to their ability to continue to do business in the future.

Creating Shared Value is open for all companies to apply. While Nestlé’s company have adopted a Creating Shared Value approach to their business which is the make no proprietary claim, and Creating Shared Value is a way of thinking which is available to any company which wants to utilize it. Creating Shared Value should also not be confused with compliance or sustainability. Creating Shared Value is built on the foundation of a strong compliance culture and commitment to sustainability. But Creating Shared Value goes beyond compliance and sustainability and aims to create new and greater value for society and their shareholders within the areas of focus. In doing so, Nestlé maintains a very long term perspective on business development and welcomes dialogue with external stakeholders who are committed to principled behavior and constructive engagement. This includes government and regulatory authorities, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, academic and professional bodies, and local communities.

CHAPTER 2

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Nestle is a dynamic and flexible organization as they recognizes that human resources (human assets) as one of the most important characteristics. In Nestle, human resources teams cultivate our culture through employee learning and foster sustained growth by ensuring employee passion which directed to help in deliver organization goals. Therefore, Human Resources Management of Nestle has to identify, recruiting and retaining top talent across company. In Nestle, there are three (3) responsibilities for Human Resources Team which are Area Human Resources Manager, Human Resources Manager and Human Resources Associates

2.1    RESPONSIBILITIES FOR HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

2.1.1 AREA HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER

Jobs for Area Human Resources Manager is that having human resources leadership responsibilities for specific geography or business units in specific area. For the assigned area, the manager create hiring plans, develop local sourcing strategies, host interview skill training, coordinate and execute selection processes, and measure process effectiveness. In addition to that assigned area also, the manager needs to coordinate and execute new employee orientation, identify retention issues, develop retention plans, administer exit interviews, and measure process effectiveness. As the Area Human Resources Manager having a big responsibilities to their assigned area, they need to ensure compliance with all relevant employment regulations, develop and monitor compensation and benefits programs, manage employee relations programs, and lead the organizational development programs.

2.1.2 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER

Human Resources Manager is co-worker to the Area Human Resources Manager. For this manager, they leads in staffing and recruitment efforts for the Nestle branches, including in identifying training needs and developing training plans suitable with business partners and leaders to ensure in successful start-up. In addition to their jobs, they need to support other managers and employees on day-to-day employee relations issues, conduct wages analyses, and monitor labor market trends to ensure competitive pay practices, and maintains legal compliance in HR related areas and also conducts audits on employment practices.

2.1.3 HUMAN RESOURCE ASSOCIATES

Human Resources Associates in Nestle was designed to develop individuals with high potential for leadership in human resources. These associates are responsible in providing human resources and project support for that business group. They also need to provide an excellent opportunity for incumbents to acquire and strengthens skills that core to human resources areas. Other than that, these positions provide support for and deliver results in:

•           Staffing

•           Employee relations

•           Compensation

•           Benefits

2.2    NESTLE HRM EFFECTIVENESS

2.2.1 STAFFING

Through Nestlé’s website and offline application, it show that Nestle recruitment process have been done in various available channels. To improve effectiveness, they recruit and develop local talents with local knowledge. In Malaysia, Nestle employ people to work in all manufacturing sites. Other than that, Nestle do provide internship programme, management trainee for fresh graduates, recruiting professionals and gender balanced. Nestle takes talent retention very seriously as they appreciate the local talent by giving many benefits and provide great working environment for their employees. A gender balanced workplace also one of the priority to Nestle. Recently, Nestle have introduced a KPIs (Key Performance Index) related to gender balance by focusing on succession planning practices and developing long-term female talent in the succession pipeline. In this introduction, they ensure that at least one woman in the key position in this company.

2.2.2 COMPENSATION

Compensation has been introduced to Nestle employees as they care for their employees and treat them fairly together with respect. They believed that good labor condition and relations ensures sustainable growth for Nestle. In developing higher work environment, Nestle provides a reference for relationship with employee representatives and also with the trade unions through Nestle Employee Relations Policy. Nestle also has its own compensation board of directors to deals with compensation matter of employee in the company.

2.2.3 BENEFITS

Nestle offered benefits through its total reward policy. Therefore, these benefits were generated to attract new hires and unsure constant engagement of the current employees. They also give attractive benefits that are based on employee’s work performance such as bonuses, incentives and awards. They established these benefits to heighten people’s trust and instill a good value for the company for the other to perceive. Below are the benefits that Nestle offered:

•           Car Schemes   

•           Flexi Loan Scheme

•           Uniforms        

•           Wellness Benefits

•           House Purchase Assistance Scheme   

•           Maternity Leave

•           Social & Recreational Facilities          

•           Nestle Scholarship Scheme

•           Emergency Loan         

•           Service & Retirement Award

REFERENCE

HRM533

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT:

SELF REFLECTION ESSAY BASED ON UNDERSTANDING IN CHAPTER 2:

STRATEGY AND HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING

Human resource planning has become the back bone of a profitable organization. In this new age all the successful organizations do understand the importance of human resource planning. To understand HR planning it is said that it is the process by which management ensures that it has the right plan or strategy for their human resources. The purpose of human resource planning is to assist an organization to meet strategic goals by attracting, and maintaining workforce and also to administer them successfully. Basically the human resource planning assists organization to attract, recruit and retain the work force by keeping the overall goal, organizational working practice or culture and the legal requirements in mind. HRM approach seeks to ensure a fit between the management of an organization's employees and the overall strategic direction of the company.

Strategic HRM can be regarded as a common approach to the strategic management of human resources in unity with the intentions of the establishment on the future path it wants to take. It is concerned with longer-term people issues and macro-concerns about organization, excellence, society, standards, dedication and harmonizing resources to future need. It has been defined as all those activities affecting the behavior of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of business and the pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable the forms to achieve its goals.

Adopting an HR strategy that is concerned with the organization's larger mission and goals has multiple advantages and benefits for the company. First is helps evaluate HR policies. The premise of strategic HRM is that the company's policies and procedures related to employees should fit into the organization's broader strategic plan. Developing these links between HR and strategy has the distinct advantage of helping the organization to evaluate its current HR policies and to replace outdated or inefficient policies with ones that promote a better workplace environment and employee relations. As the company evaluates its HR policies, it can use the strategic plan's aims and objectives to evaluate each HR process. Those that fall out of the strategic vision can be reformulated or discarded in favor of better ones. The second is improves team-building. Strategic HRM also helps to foster a sense of team spirit and camaraderie within the organization. A company's strategic vision will ideally rely on input from a broad range of stakeholders including managers, employees, customers and investors. Creating an HR strategy that aligns with this sense of open communication can have the major benefit of helping stakeholders feel like their opinions are valued and meaningful to the company's owners and executives.

Next is Helps Monitor Progress. While the strategic vision of the company can influence the creation and evaluation of HR policies, the reverse can also be true. Human resources can help the organization monitor its progress toward achieving its stated goals and objectives in the strategic plan. Much of the strategic plan is likely to rely on the cooperation and support of employees and individual departments or functions within the organization. Last but not least, keeps the Organization Legal. A final advantage of the human resource management strategy is in keeping the organization compliant with laws relating to employees, salary, insurance and the like. The laws and policies governing business are complex and can vary between jurisdictions, but HR has a key role to play in making sure that the organization's strategic plan is not only presently legal but is also amendable enough that it can adapt to changing times and changing legal circumstances. HR has a key role to play in making sure that all of these components of the strategic plan are implemented in a timely and effective way. The advantage of this marriage between strategy and HR management is that the company's executives and its HR function are consistently monitoring one another's progress and tweaking processes for the benefit of the company and its employees.

After learned this chapter, the students can get explanation how human resources planning and a firm’s mission, vision and values are integrally linked to its strategy, understand how an organization’s external environment influences its strategic planning and understanding why it is important for an organization to do an internal resource analysis. Furthermore, the students also can explain the linkages between competitive strategies and HR, understand what is required for a firm to successfully execute a strategy and assess its effectiveness and describe how firms evaluate their strategies and HR execution.

In this chapter, the students can emphasized the importance of context for the skillful practice of human resource management. The study has enabled us to gain an initial understanding of the following:

Liquidation is one type of defensive strategy which is refers to the selling of assets in return for cash. In finance and economics, liquidation refers to the process of bringing a business to an end and distributing its assets to claimants. It is an event that usually occurs when a company is insolvent, meaning that it cannot pay its obligations when they are due. As company operations end, the remaining assets are used to pay creditors and shareholders based on the priority of their claims.

It is the most crucial and the last resort to retrenchment since it involves serious consequences such as a sense of failure, loss of future opportunities, spoiled market image, loss of employment for employees and so on. The firm adopting the liquidation strategy may find it difficult to sell its assets because of the non-availability of buyers and also may not get adequate compensation for most of its assets. The indicators that necessitate a firm to follow this strategy such as failure of corporate strategy, continuous losses, obsolete technology, outdated products or processes business becoming unprofitable, poor management and lack of integration between the divisions.

Generally, small sized firms, proprietorship firms and the partnership firms follow the liquidation strategy more often than a company. The liquidation strategy is unpleasant but closing a venture that is in losses is an optimum decision rather than continuing with its operations and suffering heaps of losses. There are certain situations in which liquidation is regarded as an effective strategy to be pursued by the organization. Following are some of the guidelines in this regard. First, when the organization already pursued retrenchment & divestiture strategies and these are failed to deliver the desired results. The second is when there are clear chances of becoming bankrupt then better option is to pursue the liquidation strategy. Next is when the losses of the shareholders can be minimized by selling of the assets of the business organization.

The majority of the persons who live within this world usually are not quite conscious of whether or not the issue called liquidation is often a will have to or possibly an option. Many people will commonly contemplate it as an approach that they totally cannot stay away from at specific points in time. To most of the people, they believe they were going to must liquidate their company simply because their firm is just no longer capable of earning any profits in carrying out small business. Well, though this may be correct, this may not be completely appropriate each of the time. The issue about liquidation is that there is certainly not just one particular but two forms of it that company owners are permitted to avail. So, let’s start paying a lot more detailed consideration to these two kinds.

Company liquidation can be one thing that an enterprise owner cannot afford to prevent. When this requires location, it is mentioned that the business is facing the compulsory liquidation. Right here, the company is generally essential to right away monetize all its available assets. Why does it need to do that? The answer is the fact that the enterprise normally nonetheless has some debts in outstanding state and that it has to take the responsibility of wiping those debts out as rapidly as you possibly can. A compulsory liquidation may possibly also take place simply because there is such a thing as debenture or any other legal charge becoming filed against a particular firm. Any of the enterprise creditors that launches ‘prime facie’ can triggers this process. The Secretary of State and any corresponding contributories also possess the same degree of authority.

There is a single issue that numerous people today in how liquidation works really know about liquidation. This approach is often an alternative too. This means that there's no need to have or force at all that the owner of a particular firm has to have his enterprise liquidated. The firm isn't involved in any unpaid debts, it has no complications of rolling out the salaries of its personnel, and that it can be in a very good business enterprise situation. When a firm gets liquidated by its owner so willingly, it really is identified that the enterprise undergoes a voluntary liquidation. This can be because everything is performed voluntarily. It truly is not a strange issue to see an enterprise obtaining liquidated since its owner just does not trust any other individual he could know to take manage more than his company. An organization could also undergo a closing a limited company if the owner feels like finding retired.

MGT657

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

CASE STUDY #03:

TOP GLOVE: GAME ON

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Top Glove was established in 1991 as a small factory with three production lines, but it has since grown exponentially to become the largest rubber glove manufacturer in the world. It was listed on Bursa Saham Kuala Lumpur on 27th of March 2001 and promoted to Main Market of KLSE in 16th of May 2002. The company has shareholder funds worth RM1.28 billion with annual turnover of RM2.31 billion at financial year ended on 31st August 2012. The company’s current headquarters is located in Malaysia at Jalan Meru Klang, Selangor near with Setia Alam. Figure 1 show that the entrance was in front of Setia City Mall. The company currently has sales office in China, Thailand, USA, and Germany.

The vision of Top Glove is “to strive to be the world’s leading manufacturer with excellent quality glove products that enrich and protect human lives” while the mission statements is “to be world class glove manufacturer providing top quality product with excellent services through continuous improvement and innovation”. The company offers 13 types of rubber gloves to the public such as latex examination gloves, nitrile examination gloves, vinyl examination gloves, surgical glove, clean disposable gloves, general purpose glove and others. Top glove have the capabilities to produce total production capabilities of 40.3 billion pair of glove annually. This because the company has 24 factories and 462 manufacturing line that can produce vast amount of glove.

Indonesia is a tropical country located near Top Glove home country, Malaysia. Tropical weather in Indonesia allows for fertile growth of rubber trees that are used in production of latex. One of the agricultural industries in Indonesia is rubber industry. The large and fertile soil is one of the geographic advantages of the country from Top Glove’s view. It enables large supplies of latex to facilitate the production of gloves to processing and manufacturing plants of Top Glove. Indonesia is countries that possess one of the lowest labor cost in the world. Indonesia currently has 248.6 million residents which is the 4th most populated country in the world. Cheap labor cost coupled with large supply of raw material makes it a suitable location for Top Glove to expand into. This factor will save the cost of production thus enable the company to sell their product at cheaper price, so that they can compete better in global market.

Indonesia also experienced active reform in business regulation in recent years and is among the top 50 economies improving the most and the top 5 within the East Asia and Pacific Region. 14% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is consists of agricultural sector. The inflation rate also improved from 5.4% in 2011 to 4.5% in 2012. Doing business and investment in most parts of Indonesia is relatively safe and profitable. Thus, the stable economic and political environmental encouraged Top Glove to expand to the country.

         1.2.2 ANALYSIS OF VISION AND MISSION

There are several reasons that attract Top Gloves Corporation to explore into Indonesia market. However, entering a foreign may not only brings gains but also shortcomings. Hence by analyzing the respective country, they able to understand is it significant for Top Gloves Corporation to invest or to enter global market.

According to KM Lee as Managing Director of Top Glove Corporation, he stated that the rise in healthcare standards tied with the increase in the global population had increases the demand of medical gloves. Meanwhile, Chairman Tan Sri Lim Wee Chai indicated that the rise in the labor cost with the introduction of the minimum wage policy had forces the group to increase its glove prices by 3-5 per cent, depending on the type of product. With the rise on demand of medical gloves, thus, Top Gloves Corporation tends to expand their production line. Besides, the increase of labor cost due to minimum cost forcing the corporation to look after a lower-cost country, as the labor cost will be lower. From the literature findings, John Tanner (1996), he found that Indonesia is low cost skilled labor that benefits to Top Gloves Corporation. Furthermore, Indonesia is a country that rich with natural resources that match the Top Glove’s nature of business that is the rubber. Thus, expanding a plant into Indonesia market may lead the corporation to gain more profit, as the production line can be more effective and efficient.

Apart from that, Indonesia was a main attraction for Top Glove Corporation because the country of Indonesia able to offer a lower production cost as the labor cost resources is lower in price. According to Sari Shaviriyani (2006), a statistic shows that Indonesia’s population is the world fourth largest. The workforces over the country are huge and young enable the labor cost to be lower as the workforce supply is higher than the demand forcing the wages to be lower down. More to the point, the workforces are young and energetic allowing Top Gloves production line to produce more effectively.

CHAPTER 2

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL EVALUATION

2.1 Internal Evaluation of Top Glove

2.1.1 Internal Evaluation of Top Glove

There are several internal evaluations on the Top Glove such as lack of motivation and self-leadership, lack of delegation and non-renewable resource. For lack of motivation and training, feeling low and unmotivated can cause an employee to become distant and quiet if they know that they can talk to their manager and then the situation can be discussed and improved or overcome. A lack of motivation and self-leadership can be caused by a number of factors including lack of career progression, boredom, lack of confidence in management decisions feeling under-appreciated unmanageable workload. The employee will show signs of demotivation. For example are lacks of focus, increased absence, increased breaks or time away from their desk, increased time to start working after arriving in the office and so on. Top Glove use Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory based on Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory

For lack of delegation, the manager take longer time to plan, lack of confidence in their subordinate’s abilities, manager experience dual accountability and insecure about their value of organization. From the benefit of delegation, the employees feel more committed and empowered to do a given task. Furthermore, it will give better decision making who closest to the actual problem to be solved may be in the best position to make the most effective decision. Employees have opportunity to develop analytical and problem-solving skills.

For the non-renewable resources, the glove is produce by rubber which is not environmental friendly product. Rubber is a non-renewable resources and it cannot be reuse and recycle. Rubber is widely use in the health and medical field which is this glove cannot be reuse again due to the sanitation condition. If they do not address this glove properly, it will cause pollution indirectly. This company also does not have any long-term contracts with other companies hence the stability of the cash flow of the company is not steady even this company is a worldwide company.

2.1.2 External Evaluation of Top Glove

PESTEL Analysis is a strategic management tool that Top Glove Corporation strategy makers can use to make better decisions related to external evaluation. PESTEL stands for Political, Social, Economic, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors that impact the macro environment of the firm that it operates in.

Political factors are often related to the level of intervention and nature of intervention of the local and national government in the business and economic environment. Government policies and governance system plays a huge role in nature and objectives of the policies. For economic factors, they includes interest rate, inflation rate, consumer disposable income, labor market conditions , exchange rate, the stage of economy of country name, economic performance of country name, taxation rate etc. The next is Social Factor where each society and culture has its own way of doing business. These social factors can not only help companies like company name to better understand the way of doing business but also in understanding the customer preferences in sector name sector of country name. Social factors include health and safety attitudes, attitude towards certain products and services, acceptance of entrepreneurial spirit, societal roles and norms, demographics, gender roles, traditions, culture, and leisure interests.

Technology is fast disrupting various industries and sector name is no different. There are numerous ways technological factors are impacting the company name & industry name in country name. Some of the technological factors are population access to technology, supply chain disruption because of technology, innovation in product offerings, access to greater information, innovation in customer services, access to mobile phones driving empowerment and rate of technology driven change.  For over the last decade sustainability and environmental factors are becoming critical for businesses. Government and pressure groups are fast asking organizations to adhere to environmental standards. Some of the environmental factors are – safe disposal of hazardous material, increasing focus on sustainability, safe water treatment, limiting carbon footprints, insurance policies, climate change, safe waste disposal and laws regulating pollution. Lastly, Legal factor plays an important role in the development of Medical Equipment and Supplies sector in any economy. Top Glove Corp management has to consider following legal factors before entering international market such as time taken to deliver justice, intellectual property rights protection, biasedness toward home players, discrimination laws, system of justice, copyrights law, data protection laws etc.

2.2 Strategies Activities

The world's largest natural rubber glove maker will step up its innovation to better cope with rising competition. The rubber glove industry is highly competitive, and profit margins are thin. These tiny margins compel players to increase capacity to improve cost efficiency. Polyisoprene Surgical Glove is a disposable device intended for surgical purpose and worn on the hand of healthcare personnel during surgery to prevent contamination between healthcare personnel and the patient. A dermatologically proven product suitable for all skin types especially dry or itchy skin. The glove protects and nourishes the hand while providing long lasting hydration. Our gloves meet and surpass stringent clinical testing and international requirements.

Top Glove Corporation emphasis the value of increasing Global Customer Satisfaction, as they are doing the thing right at the first time and on every time; with integrity and total commitment to their corporate, customers, and the community around the worlds. Besides that, Top Glove desired to produces the products that are excellence in quality and competitiveness nevertheless, without ignoring the environment and keeps doing their corporate social responsibility. Addition, Honesty, Integrity and Transparency are Top Glove business Ethics.

Top Glove expanded its R&D team in 2016. In 2015, it had 50 researchers. In a single year, Top Glove recruited another 50 researchers, doubling its number of researchers in 2016. Top Glove’s R&D activities are focused on enhancing its newly launched range of products. They include Polyisoprene Surgical Gloves and Grip Gloves. As a result, Top Glove filed 11 patents for its range of new products in 2016 alone.

2.3 Strategies initiative

Customer’s satisfaction is the focus of Top Glove and it had placed a lot of emphasis in Research and Development to produce a wide and diversified range of high quality and value-added glove products in order to fulfill the expectation of their customers. The company also collaborates closely with the government agencies and Ministries to keep itself abreast of the latest development in rubber research technology. The company also uses state-of-art high technology and efficient automatic glove manufacturing machine to obtain the most products manufacturing yield and to remain as one of the most cost-effective and highest quality producer in the industry. With all these advantages and strategies, the company is able to compete with the competitors and stand out in the industry.

A company of their size will need to embark on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) in addition to organic growth to grow faster and more efficiently if they are to achieve the ambitious goals they have set. This cannot be achieved by organic growth alone. That is why they want to  continue to strategically pursue M&As and joint ventures, and establish new set-ups in related businesses which will play an essential role in enabling us to maintain our leadership position in the glove market. The increased production capacity will also allow the group to enjoy better economies of scale and compete more effectively in the global market by capturing a greater market share, particularly from multinational glove companies who are moving towards outsourcing their production capacities.

Powder-free gloves stage is a technology to prevent stickiness of gloves by avoiding powder usage completely by going through chlorination or polymer coating process. This is one of the important technology processes in manufacturing latex glove nowadays because most of the glove makers are producing the latex gloves with powder-free. Top Glove produces latex powder and powder-free gloves. Basically, the powder-free latex gloves are transformed from powdered gloves when the powder is removed. Before the latex gloves dried, the powder helps the latex gloves give uniformity as well as to prevent the latex gloves from molding together. The tackiness on the glove surface can be removed by rinsing the latex gloves in water. Then it is placed into a chlorine bath to transform the powdered latex gloves to powder-free latex gloves. The glove is turned inside out and the process is repeated. The powder-free gloves are placed back into the dryers when the bathing process is completed.

2.4 Problem Faced by the Company

High cost of replacing existing experts within the Top Glove Corporation. Few employees are responsible for the Top Glove Corp's knowledge base and replacing them will be extremely difficult in the present conditions. Declining market share of Top Glove Corp with increasing revenues will make the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry is growing faster than the company. In such a scenario Top Glove Corp has to be carefully analyzing the various trends within the healthcare sector and figure out what it needs to do to drive future growth. Low investments into Top Glove Corp's customer oriented services.  This can lead to competitors gaining advantage in near future. Top Glove Corp needs to increase investment into research and development especially in customer services oriented applications.

There are a lot of recommendation to overcome the problem that faced by the Top Glove. First and foremost, acquisition of the company in the same industry will improve the company strength in production, reaching customer and even the operation through synergy strategy such as the expertise and machinery. The advantages of acquisition brings to the Top Gloves is reduced the cost. Top Gloves are able to generate the raw material needed to process the gloves like palm kernel shell and latex from Indonesia Besides, the labor cost in Indonesia is much cheaper compared with Malaysian’s labor cost. Top Gloves should maintain their current expansion strategy which is exporting and building the manufacture in foreign country, at the same time, adopt the acquisition to take over the related company in foreign markets. Once it is confirmed that the market possesses a huge potential for gloves market, Top Gloves may set up a manufacture plant in Indonesia and implement backward integration by taking over the related company such as supplier for palm kernel shell firms.

Next is Top Glove should be aware of the policy changes. Policy changes exist due to unstable condition in term of political pressure, economic trend, social unrest and restriction of the ownership of nondomestic company. To achieve long term business profit in a dynamic changing country like Indonesia, it is important to maintain awareness between economies and political issues. A strong professional team must be developed to maintain high policy effectiveness. Hence, to managing threats of policy changes, Top Glove can gather more foreign information in Indonesia through recruit foreign proficient consultant who understands the foreign culture well.

Last point is hiring local managerial talent is the best ways in foreseen and helps in explore business opportunity, it may facilitating the procedures in getting approval and application of local operation and result in attracting more local people join to the new established company. Besides, government will make change on economic policy and legal rules in order to forcing the business to update the way they do the business. Thus, Top Glove must managing political-risk services and issues carefully which is incurring news publication, employment issues, banks association and social media network. The company can rely on lobbying to help in administration of political matter and business operation, associate with public and bringing positive impact to social. Buy this way, Top Glove can reduce the risk in global business extension and minimize the possibility of legal fault.

2.5 Ways for the Company to Achieve Competitive Advantage

First is strategy to compete which is the customers satisfaction is the focus of Top Glove and it had placed a lot of emphasis in Research and Development to produce a wide and diversified range of high quality and value-added glove products in order to fulfill the expectation of their customers. The company also collaborates closely with the government agencies and Ministries to keep itself abreast of the latest development in rubber research technology. The company also uses state-of-art high technology and efficient automatic glove manufacturing machine to obtain the most products manufacturing yield and to remain as one of the most cost-effective and highest quality producer in the industry. With all these advantages and strategies, the company is able to compete with the competitors and stand out in the industry.

The second is powder-free gloves stage. It is a technology to prevent stickiness of gloves by avoiding powder usage completely by going through chlorination or polymer coating process. This is one of the important technology processes in manufacturing latex glove nowadays because most of the glove makers are producing the latex gloves with powder-free. Top Glove produces latex powder and powder-free gloves. Basically, the powder-free latex gloves are transformed from powdered gloves when the powder is removed. Before the latex gloves dried, the powder helps the latex gloves give uniformity as well as to prevent the latex gloves from molding together. The tackiness on the glove surface can be removed by rinsing the latex gloves in water. Then it is placed into a chlorine bath to transform the powdered latex gloves to powder-free latex gloves. The glove is turned inside out and the process is repeated. The powder-free gloves are placed back into the dryers when the bathing process is completed.

Next is quality control. Top Glove carries out its quality control in total quality management system. In total quality management system, the process includes regular testing of raw materials, close monitoring the manufacturing process, continuous improvement on quality control, maintain regular quality control, complying with stringent quality standard, target for zero defects, good instructional labeling, efficient work standardization, continuous improvements in packing and loading, close monitoring of production process, tensile strength machine, innovative auto-stripping system, visual air pump test, water tight test, physical dimension test, protein test and powder test in their manufacturing process of latex gloves. The visual air pump test, water tight test and physical dimension test will be carried out in this quality control stage while the other test will be carry out during each manufacturing process of the latex gloves. The air pump test serves to check for holes and visual defects in gloves while the watertight test serves to check for pinholes rate on the latex gloves. Each country will have their own acceptable quality level (AQL) in allowing the company to export product to their country. For example, the companies that want export their gloves to United States, a 2.5 acceptable quality level (AQL) in the watertight test or better. The physical dimension test is used to measure the dimension of the gloves whether to know the measurement does meet the inspection level of 4.0 that set in acceptable quality level (AQL).

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