Essay On Governance And Accountability In Maldives

 

This is an individual assignment, which is designed to test core real life business learning outcomes of the module, monitoring and board level operations. Please see module specification on Blackboard. 

 

 

You are a Graduate Business Analyst working for Styl4U plc (Styl4U). An organogram and business description of Styl4U is provided in Appendix B (pages 9-10). The President - Finance, Prerana Singh, has been asked by the Board of Directors to give a letter of advice as per the attached memo, Appendix A, on page 8 of this brief. 

 

 

Prerana has tasked you to draft a reply that she can send, under her own name, with no amendment by her. She has told you that she will use the level of amendment she feels is needed, to determine your annual bonus (In practical terms your ‘bonus’ is your mark with ‘Prerana’ the marker). Your response should draw on reputable and reliable sources only (to be clear that means no unattributed internet sources quickly googled, so no ‘Anon’ references please). Academic articles, company or institutional sources, and professional sources are required following academic referencing conventions for this work. No marks will be given for sourcing your work from lecture slides or lecturer or tutor opinions or material, so please don’t do that. This is meant to be based on your independent research. The flip side is that credit will be given for genuine insight and communication skill, as would be required in a real exercise of this nature. A Director or Executive Manager would reject unreliable sources. All sources must be properly referenced using the UWE Harvard method including in-text referencing. 

 

• Answering the direct questions asked by Styl4U’s Board of Directors in their memo, replying interms that an ‘informed non expert’ might understand. It should not be written using any technical or academic ‘jargon’ type language copied from your sources that is not phrased in the way you would normally speak to this type of forum. Rather you should use your sources to help you put things into your own words that communicate well to a busy executive and superior. The markers’ subjective informed judgements on the quality of the work in meeting client needs, using their extensive business experience of such projects, will form a key part of the marking 
process. 

 

 

• Academic rigour and scholarship. Using your sources to synthesise, evaluate and analyse your business content. This will be very important to you next year in your dissertation and we are trying to help you by ‘priming’ you in these processes now.

 

 

Note: Some degree of wider thinking can be used to consider any points you think relevant outside the direct questions asked in the letter. Clearly, they need to be pertinent to the Board of Directors request (that is, it must be demonstrably relevant to the Board of Directors, if in doubt you may wish to explicitly justify why you have included something). Only things we believe to be relevant to the specific client need will gain marks, but this wider thinking and research will be essential to gain very high marks (75+). As with a real life business project like this, we absolutely will not guide you on this part of the requirement.

 

 

Prerana Singh – President - Finance, 

 

 

Styl4U

 

 

5th February 2022

 

 

Dear Mr. Singh:

 

I hope you are doing well. Recently you wrote to me that the impacts of the Covid 19 pandemic have tremendously affected business activities at Styl4U. I believe that some of the reasons you wrote this memo to me were to seek advice on whether our suppliers breached any contract and whether they could be held liable for terminating the contract despite being on a force majeure notice. Then you seek advice on the actions that could be carried out and favorable to the company to curb in case suppliers decided to terminate their contract without any notice (Gussmann & Hinkel ., 2020. Pg 930). 

 

Further, I believe you are looking forward to identifying whether they can be sued over such allegation and some of the actions that could be employed, and in any circumstance, is it possible for the court of law to hold them liable for any breach of the contract then in case any is identified can justification be achieved from the court of law. As you have described in the memo, it is clearly stated that the impacts of a pandemic on Styl4U Company have been significant, especially the most affected areas been on orders from our best selling products (UKeef) which has been the best-selling laptops bags in the UK and EU. Further, you describe how the decline in demand for these best-selling products has been partially attributed (Gussmann & Hinkel ., 2020. Pg 930).

 

On a key description that outlines the complete information the Board requires of directors, you require me to advice on the two actions that the Board of Directors can impose to moderate the impacts of the pandemic on Styl4U business activities. Through analyzing the actions taken by the suppliers, according to my observation, I would think that they could not be liable under a court of law since the pandemic came as a natural calamity that was so extreme to have affected the entire universe. In the pandemic, disruption was experienced even to the human factor since the movement was not exercised as usual, and all the patterns in the general public which used to be practiced were curtailed. I believe the court would likely conclude that despite the suppliers getting into a contract with the Styl4U, they were not liable to withdraw that contract of supplying and enforcing force majeure out of the effects of the pandemic. I will give a conclusion on what must be done better and more deeply after analyzing the facts that involve cases like these according to how I understand those (Naher et al., 2020. pg i80).

 

Styl4U best-selling company for laptop bags, which specializes in unisex products, depended on their suppliers, where they used to place their purchase orders with the company and impact the company positively in terms of meeting their targets and capacities of production. Since the break of the covid-19, many things have changed, especially in the job sector and day-to-day patterns of the public sector on how they carry out their daily activities. On 2nd March 2020, a global pandemic was declared. Briefs started across the universe on how the pandemic could ruin and cause many changes in job sectors and how many changes will be experienced across the planet.

 

There was the introduction of lockdowns; working places were disrupted, thus causing operation models to be approached differently. Following all these happenings, Styl4U operations were widely affected in that there was either a shutdown or severe restrictions within the Manchester factory in most circumstances due to the requirements that were required by the government to be put into place to curb the pandemic (Naher et al., 2020. pg i80). The major impact was on the Styl4U, which was affected by the pandemic, thus causing low selling capacities hence affecting the final reporting of the company's output on their businesses. Further, There Was An Emerging Declination In Demand For The Laptop Bags, Which Was Their Product, Thus Causing Slow Supply And Other Immediate Termination Of The Contract.

 

All these accruing factors contributed by the pandemic issues caused much impact on Styl4U that end of the year financial reporting required some observation on what must be imposed down to ensure some improvements on weak areas. Through the desire to come up with a strategy of increasing business despite the pandemic, the Board of directors has to devise a plan to implement it to ensure that the impacts of the pandemic on Styl4U business activities are moderated. Through my research and observation, the first action required in this case should be exploring ways of achieving sustainable and inclusive growth. The Board of Directors should enforce mechanisms through their leadership and discuss more ways of ensuring they have the best interaction with customers and consumers, bearing in mind that they always desire to be associated with the companies that make a positive difference (Naher et al., 2020. pg i80). Thus Board of directors should ensure that a platform is laid down for the people in the marketing department to be empowered fully to influence their customers and the consumers to be friendly to them through a new platform which they impose on how they conduct their businesses. Styl4U can accelerate the sustainability of their operation by having a real awareness, ensuring that they commit to changes, and then providing coaching and development that make a difference in the business.

 

Referring to these actions that the Board of directors needs to moderate the impacts of the pandemic, Styl4U needs to come up with a strategy of leadership in which planning is done from the top management to the bottom. The strategy needs to be imposed by the top management after a committee is held up by all the heads of the departments giving their solutions on how they will cater to the improvement and moderation of their business (Ratter & Hennig., 2019. pg 180). Through such action of exploring ways of achieving sustainable and inclusive growth, I believe the Board of directors will be on the right platform to make a difference in the Styl4U business. The other action that directors can employ is, accelerating online purchases and package deliveries at unpredictable rates. Pandemic opened a platform for empowering technology in the business sector. As stated in the memo, shifting jobs done in the offices to home-based work, different mechanisms have been discovered for reaching out to the convenience of the customers. Technology has advanced tremendously, that e-commerce has become the deal for the day. Through e-commerce, access to the final consumers becomes easy since they enquire all the information they require about the products they prefer online. A better product preview is displayed with the description (Shareef & hougee., 2020. pg 15). This lets customers understand what they will acquire from their supplier's poor manufacturers. By imposing this action of new technology and improving the existing one, I believe a better platform for the consumers will be retrieved, thus increasing production. Styl4U will require the Board of directors to impress new technology in the organization so that they come up with websites that their customers can review, both the existing and the upcoming ones.

 

Directors should ensure that this technology is advanced and efficient for all of their customers and should further come up with a platform in which they pack these products and maybe deliver them to their consumer's premises at an affordable fee or for free, depending on the locality of their consumers (Muneeza, 2018. pg 10). Software systems of payment that are secure and reliable also could play a better role in this case that whenever consumers and the customers find that there is a secure mode of transaction that will take care of their resources when transacting their funds, they keep the trust which will bore more customers through referrals thus uplifting the business. This action of impressing new technology and packaging the product could be one of the best ways of interacting with the customers and ensuring that the right picture of the company is represented. Whenever this advanced technology is imposed, a better analysis will be achieved that level of customers demand for the products will be identified out of the statistics of day to day flow of the company. Through this, a better measure of the company's level will be met, thus getting a clear idea of the places that require some advancements and improvement for better production (Sharma, 2022. Pg 20).

 

I believe, according to the description you did in the memo, those two above actions can be applied effectively by the directors and could bear better results towards the moderation of the business. The views things you wanted me to have a look at are the assessment of the Board and the supporting structures in Styl4U. Every company requires a hierarchy of leadership or management that can efficiently facilitate flow leadership from top seat to bottom stuff. Everyone in the company is responsible for playing actively on the tasks they are allocated to take care of, depending on their level of expertise. Styl4U, as long is in the business of manufacturing, stylist, and design in thing the system of management is best that Board of directors is at the top then employed the executive director and non-executive directors who split their leadership to the other department which is in level 2 and level 3. All the departments that are required in such kind of a company are fully represented. You mentioned this to me on the assessment of the Board of directors at Styl4U. In this case, I think the management system is excellent and can take the company if everyone involved in a certain department takes a right and full commitment to performing their allocated tasks (Allen & Rahim, 2022. pg 195). You are concerned that the pandemic caused suppliers to be slow in making purchase orders, thus affecting the laptop bag selling business. This can be achieved whenever the right actions are offered at Styl4U, and the Board of directors runs the company with the facts identified and laid down under the two raised actions. Without them, it could be a difficult moment that could be challenging for the advancement of the businesses (Blessing & Oghenetega., 2022. Pg 250).

 

Under these facts, the business was disrupted by the pandemic, which happened to be a worldwide catastrophe. Under the law, one cannot be liable for any loss caused by the act of calamities. No one could hold the other liable no matter what contract Styl4U had with their suppliers (Shadiya, 2021. Pg 145). The court would likely apply rules that constitute the force majeure notice that the agreement was still active and bearing that it needed to be honored, but it did not happen. Under the court of the law, I think both Styl4U and the suppliers must state all their terms of the agreement to lay their business on the right platform for expansion and within the right discipline. Raising some of the considerations that may be contained in the memo, you find that when the two parties impose the force majeure notice, they will be tied to the rules and regulations of the agreement (Elaoudl & Jarboui., 2022. pg 77).

 

To sum up, based on the facts as I have recited them in this letter, I believe that when the court applies these legal rules to the case of Styl4U and the suppliers, no one will be liable to the other since force majeure notice is always exempted by cases involving unavoidable events. Thus, no contract came into existence from events outside the control of the two parties. In this way, both the suppliers and Styl4U could only get into an open discussion that is not strictly bounded by the law to put it into the right order. In this way, I think all the parties will benefit from the same.

 

I hope this is helpful and would be more than happy to discuss this matter with you if the need arises. Please feel open and free to reach out to me if any question arises and would like to set a time to meet (Elaoudl & Jarboui., 2022. pg 77).

 

 

Very truly yours,

References List