World Vision Essay Example

of conflict diamonds fueling civil wars in Africa, deterring sex tourists who prey on innocent children abroad and calling for an end to the use of child soldiers in wars. Analysis World Vision, founded in the United States in 1951, is an international Christian relief and development organization whose stated goal is "working for the well being of all people, especially children. Working on six continents, World Vision is one of the largest Christian relief and development organizations in the world.

World Vision was founded in by Dr. Bob Pierce, a young pastor and missionary, who had first been sent to China and South Korea in 1947 by the Youth for Christ missionary organization. Pierce remained at the head of World Vision for nearly two decades, but resigned from the organization in 1967. Pierce also founded the evangelical organization Samaritan's Purse.World Vision began caring for orphans and other children in need first in South Korea, then expanding throughout Asia and, eventually, in more than 90 countries, embracing larger issues of community development and advocacy for the poor as part of its basic mission to help children and their families build a sustainable future.

World Vision International operates as a federation of interdependent national offices, each overseen by their own boards or advisory councils. A common mission statement and shared core values bind the partnership offices and members together.Each national partner abides by common policies and standards and holds each other accountable through an ongoing system of peer review. The partnership offices – located in Geneva, Bangkok, Nairobi, Cyprus, Los Angeles, and San Jose, Costa Rica – coordinate strategic operations of the organization and represent World Vision in

the international arena.

Each national office, whether in the developed or developing world, enjoys an equal voice in the organization's governance of world vision. An international board of directors oversees the World Vision partnership. The full board meets twice a year to appoint senior officers, approve strategic plans and budgets, and determine international policy. According to World Vision's Exhibit 1 50% of their revenue comes from private sources mostly through child sponsorship, while the last 50% comes from government and multilateral agencies. Aside from cash contributions, World Vision accepts gifts in kind, typically food commodities, medicine, and clothing donated through corporations and government agencies.

Approximately half of World Vision's programs are funded through child sponsorship. Individuals, families, churches, schools, and other groups sponsor specific children or specific community projects in their own country or abroad. Sponsors send funds each month to provide support for the sponsored children or projects. World Vision aims to contribute to people’s needs in five major areas; emergency relief, education, health care, economic development, and promotion of justice. World Vision activities include transformational development, emergency relief, strategic initiatives, public awareness campaigns and promoting Christianity. Though, WV has consultative status with UNESCO and partnerships with UN agencies like UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR and ILO, the fact is that it has funded evangelical activities all over the world, including India.

Transformational development occurs through focusing on improvement of children's lives. This process first helps people and their communities recognize the resources that lie within themselves to make change possible. With support from World Vision, communities transform themselves by carrying out their own development projects in health care, agriculture production, water projects, education, micro-enterprise development, advocacy and other

community programs. World Vision provides emergency relief to people whose lives are endangered by disasters or conflict and who need immediate assistance. World Vision attempts to respond to all major emergencies around the world themselves or in cooperation with their partner agencies.

For example, World Vision has responded to famine in Ethiopia and North Korea, hurricanes in Central America, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean nations, earthquakes in El Salvador, India, Taiwan, Turkey and the Sichuan earthquake in China, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and war refugees in Kosovo, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Angola, and East Timor. World Vision also addresses factors that perpetuate poverty by promoting justice. World Vision supports community awareness of the collective ability to address unjust practices and begin working for change. World Vision speaks out on issues such as child labor, debt relief for poor nations, and the use of children as combatants in armed conflict. World Vision International has endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as fundamental expressions of the freedoms and responsibilities that should exist in every country.

World Vision fosters opportunities to help reduce conflict levels and to contribute to the peaceful resolution of hostilities and reconciliation of disputes.World Vision encourages public awareness about the needs of others, the causes of poverty, and the nature of compassionate response. These efforts include collaboration with media and community participation in fundraising. In all its communications, World Vision upholds the dignity of suffering children and families in presenting explanations of the causes and consequences of poverty, war, neglect, and abuse.

As a Christian organization, World Vision participates in strategic initiatives with Christian leaders

and lay people of all denominations through conferences, consultations, training programmes and various educational opportunities.World Vision is an ecumenical organization willing to partner with all Christian churches. Yet, World Vision is respectful of other faiths. World Vision believes witnessing from Christ is a fundamental part of their relief work. The organization believes that God, in the person of Jesus, offers hope of renewal, restoration, and reconciliation.

World Vision seeks to express this message through "life, deed, word, and sign". World Vision's programs and services are provided without regard to race, ethnic origin, gender, or religion.

Assigned Questions

What are the sources of world vision’s rapid growth and program effectiveness? How and why these changes over the past 50 yrs? As it entered the twenty first century, what were world vision greatest asset and strength? It biggest limitation and liability. Mainly the sources of their rapid growth are based on the rate at which AIDS is spreading round the world and others such as the use of child in war in some countries, and also in country where there is no economic justice.

The entire mentioned scenario contributed to the rapid growth of world vision. The reason for those change is to bring relieve and put an end to suffering of people in need.Also, to promote and transform the condition of life. For a Christian organization like world vision, their number one strength is God.

Other strength includes their partnership, workforce. Readings Reading 1 - Building Ambidexterity into an Organization (Reading 4-2) For a firm to succeed over the long term it needs to master both adaptability and alignment — an attribute sometimes referred to as ambidexterity. The concept is alluring,

but the evidence suggests that most companies have struggled to apply it. The standard approach has been to create separate structures for different types of activities.But separation can also lead to isolation, and many R&D and business development groups have failed because of their lack of linkages to the core businesses. A research was conducted, By means of their survey- and interview-based research — which took place over a three-year period and involved 4,195 respondents across 41 business units in 10 multinational firms — the authors identify the four behaviors displayed by ambidextrous individuals, each of which involves taking independent, adaptive action in the service of overall company goals.

They then present a framework for describing and analyzing which organizational contexts encourage or discourage such behaviors. They link organizational context to ambidexterity and, in turn, ambidexterity to high performance. There is two test of hypothesis; the first argued that a supportive organizational context is characterized by a combination of performance management and social support which is associated with higher level of ambidexterity. The second hypothesis argued that ambidexterity would meditate the relationship between organization context and performance.The reading furthers explain two forms of Ambidexterity 1.

Structural Ambidexterity: that is the creation of separate structures and systems for different types of activities. 2. Contextual Ambidexterity: This calls for individual employees to make choices between alignment-oriented and adaptation-oriented activities in the context of their day-to-day work.Structural ambidexterity differs from contextual ambidexterity in terms of how ambidexterity is achieved, where decisions are made, role of top management, nature of roles and skill of employees. This reading also explains how to go about building contextual ambidexterity by combining two dimensions of

organizational context: performance management (stretch + discipline) which is concerned with simulating people to deliver high quality results and making them accountable for their actions and social support (support + trust). This is concerned with providing people with security and latitude they need to perform.

Companies that have low levels of both of these will fall into the “low performance context”.Those with high levels of the first but low levels of the second are vulnerable to “burnout contexts”, while those with high levels of the second but low levels of the first will find themselves in the “country club context”. Only companies with high levels of both will be located in “high performance contexts. Both performance and social are equally important and mutually reinforcing.

The presence of each will create high performance organization context that gives rise to a truly ambidextrous organization.Performance and social support factors, both do not directly create high performance, but they do shape the individual and collective behaviors that over will enable ambidexterity. There are four types of organizational context

1. Country club context: here, there is a strong sense of support and trust, no one works is too hard and mediocre performance is tolerated.
2. Low performance context: here, ambidexterity is impossible
3. High performance context:
4. Burnout context: here, there is so much emphasis on performance management that social support system are either neglected or never put in place

The reading concluded that there are fives lesson to be learned

1.  Organizations should focus on few lever and employ them consistently
2.  Building an understanding at all levels of the company
3. Viewing of contextual ambidexterity and structural Ambidexterity as complements
4. Viewing contextual ambidexterity initiatives as driving leadership not
   

as leadership driven

Reading 2

Global Strategy

The issues bothering manager around the world is whether to globalize and how to globalize. There are many forces driving companies around the world to globalize by expanding their participation in foreign markets. Companies are also seeking to globalize by integrating their worldwide strategy. Companies need to know how to globalize . there are three steps in developing a total worldwide strategy;

1. Developing the core strategy
2. Internationalizing the core strategy through international expansion of activities and through adaption
3. Globalizing the international strategy by integrating the strategy across countries.

The reading further explains Market participation: countries need to be selected for their potential contribution to globalization benefits. Meaning that entering a market that is unattractive in its own right.

Product offering: the product offered in each country is tailored to local needs. In a global strategy, the ideal is a standardized core product that requires minimal local adaptation.Location of Value Added activities: in a multidomestic strategy, most of the value chain is reproduced in every country. Marketing approach: marketing is fully tailored for each country, being developed locally.

In a global strategy, a uniform marketing approach is applied around the world. Benefits of a global strategy include the following

1. a. Cost reduction
2. Improved quality of product and program
3. Enhanced customer preference
4. Increased competitive leverage.

To achieve the above benefits, organization needs to recognize when industry globalization drivers provide the opportunity to use global strategy levers.These drivers is grouped into 4 categories:

1. Market drivers b. Cost drivers
2. Governmental drivers
3. Competitive drivers

Conclusion

In the year 2000, World Vision launched the Hope Initiative to call people to respond to what had become the

greatest humanitarian crisis of our time — HIV and AIDS. World Vision has continued to be a voice for the poor by helping to stop the flow of conflict diamonds fueling civil wars in Africa, deterring sex tourists who prey on innocent children abroad and calling for an end to the use of child soldiers.