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UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA
AUSTRALIAN MARITIME
COLLEGE
JNB 517. MANAGEMENT
ASSIGNMENT 2
ONYENEKWE ONYEKA ROMEO
443692
MBA (SHIPPING & MARITIME
MANANGEMENT).
APRIL 2018.
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ABSTRACT.
Ceva logistics is a multinational logistics company with varied specialised
services including contract logistics and freight management. The company has
experienced some humbling growth and expansion into newer international
markets from its current presence in 170 countries. In studying Cevac, we try to
assess the culture and its impact on the business environment.
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Table of contents
Abstract 1
Introduction 4
Ceva Logistics 4
Ceva’s Culture 5
Ceva’s Corporate Social Responsibility Drive 5
Impact of Organisational culture on Ceva 6
Culture and Strategic management at Ceva 8
Business Process Excellence in Ceva 9
Conclusion 10
Reference 10
Organizational chart 11
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Introduction
Organizational culture has long been a key to successful management, like the
culture of a society shapes the way people behave including their language so
can the organisational culture go a long way to influence the attitude and
performance in the modern day organisations. Ceva logistics, a multi –national
logistics company has a culture that continues to give it a competitive advantage
in the market it operates in. organisational culture is related with other
management tools in this review to assert the effect.
CEVA LOGISTICS
Ceva Logistics is a young company with a distinguished parentage that includes a founding
father of the modern freight and logistics industry. In Autumn of 2007, venture capitalists
APOLLO(New York) bought Australia owned Thomas Nationwide Transport, TNT and a
few months later, acquired a US based Eagle Gate Logistics (a freight management firm), the
both companies were renamed CEVA Logistics.
Ceva has combined storage of more than 8million Sqm.
7th largest air Freight Company in the world.
Ranked in the top 10 largest ocean freight forwarders.
Handling customs clearance in 600+ ports.
Today Ceva is a full service transport and logistics company (cevalogistics.com,2016). Its
head office is in Hoofdoorp, Netherlands.
Ceva Logistics services are divided into
Contract Logistics
Transport management
Freight management
Supply chain solutions
Ground
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Ceva Logistics ‘makes business flow’, as one of the world’s leading non-asset based supply
chain management companies,Ceva applies its international prowess in providing best world-
class service across its integrated worldwide network where focus is on general business and
special needs of Automotive, consumer& retail, Energy, Healthcare, Industrial, Aerospace
and Technology sectors.
Ceva’s integrated global network has facilities in 170 countries and around 44,000
employees; all dedicated to delivering consistently, excellent operations and supply chain
solutions (cevalogistics.com,2011).
CEVA’S CULTURE.
Organisational culture are set of values and assumptions about how things are done within an
organisation (Daft.R & Sampson.D, 2015). Organisational culture concept revolves around
patterns of assumptions & shared values which are imbibed into the members of that
organisation as they strive to cope with the external and internal problems of the org, they
have to understand the culture as the right way to think, perceive and feel in the organisation.,
Ceva has a major diversity and inclusion policy where it states that: our diversity and
inclusion will allow us to be better equipped to go understand the demographics and thus to
thrive in a global market. Our diversity goes beyond race and gender, celebrating and valuing
differences in age, culture, lifestyle and physical ability. (magnet.me, 2016).
You can’t put a business culture into words, you have to experience it for yourself
(cevalogistics, 2016). Four (4) core values drive the business culture in Ceva
Drive for perfection: continuous improvement is key here, ranging from a whole new
business process to making small changes on the work floor. ‘Operational excellence
means more to us than just a nice marketing team; everyone in the company is
looking every day for ways to do things better’ (cevalogistics,2016).
Trust and Respect for people: respect goes beyond the customers and their products,
to the employees, ensuring a safe working environment, investing a great deal in
employees. Everyone in the company is seen as part of its success.
Passionate Team players: Ceva believes you can’t go far alone in logistics, the
logistics chain being as strong as the weakest link. Ceva encourages cooperation
between co-workers actively sharing knowledge and experience within, part of this is
exhibited by regular get-togethers.
Power to Deliver: The customer is never let down at Ceva.’we will live up to
reputation and are willing to go the extra mile when necessary’ (cevalogistics, 2016).
Ceva offers space to create opportunities both at work and on career basis. Showing
initiative is encouraged within the company.
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Part of Ceva logistics culture is captured in the vision statement thus;
‘Our Vision is to be the most professional third party logistics provider’.
CEVA’s Corporate Social Responsibilty (CSR) Drive
As a responsible global citizen, Ceva takes its responsibility very seriously with a
number of policies, guidelines & trainings in place. Ceva aims to create higher
standards of quality of life in the communities in which it
operates(cevalogistics,2016). Ceva has ethical employment practice globally
committed to the ILO conventions protecting children and vulnerable adults from
explotation in the labour market.(cevalogistics.com,2016).
‘As a company with a presence in over 170 countries, we are aglobal citizen who
recognizes that working in partnership with local stakeholders is just as important,
focusing on economic and social development at local level by supporting local
businesses, communities and organisations’.(cevalogistics.com,2011).
As a result of this ethical attitude, Ceva Logistics has all-year-round CSR programs in
there numerous operational areas, i.e in Turkey, October 2015,Ceva invested in the
leaders of the future in a 6-month internship program,’Young Logisticians’ its aim is
to identify & recruit talented students from local universities that specialize in
Logistics and Engineering(cevalogistics.com,2015).
As organisations have cultures which are unique to them, most providing their
members with boundaries which can shape behaviour, so do most large orgs so do
most large orgs tend to have Sub-culture, which consists of core values unique to a
section of the org. Subcultures form when a group of people in an org share a
situation, problem or experience unique to them.(study.com2016).
Ceva Logistics has no documented subculture whether in consonance or slightly anti
it’s main group culture in any of its service areas or subsidiaries because they strive to
maintain a group-wide organisational culture, but 2 online blog and job seeking site-
indeed.co.uk and glassdoor.com regularly seek reviews from current and former
employees about the way of life( culture) were they work. The reports from this sites
glaringly shows that the Indian subsidiary have management pursuing agendas that
though in line with the group’s culture yet create Acrimony hence business gains are
pursued/ treasured more than employee capacity development. This can be regarded
as a negative subculture.
IMPACT OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE ON CEVA LOGISTICS
Organisational culture being the values and belief systems shared by members of the
organisation, culture helps you pursue the organisations goal, the culture is mainly influenced
by management, and is part of management.
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Types of organisational culture include
(a) Strong vs weak culture:looks at the level of sharing of the core values and the
degree of commitment of organisation members to these core values.
(b) Soft or hard culture: culture is soft here where the organisations pursues multiple
and conflicting goals, employees here choose to pursue a few objectives.(uk
essay.com,2015).
A strong culture influences the organisation more deeply than the weak culture.
Whether culture is strong or weak will relate to the size of the organisation. The
culture within a firm always impacts it’s decision making process. 2 basic types of
companies and cultures are
(a)Top down and (b) Bottom up.
Top Down: Allows the hierarchy of the company to make decisions and roll them
out for the others to follow, no major decisions are made until it comes from
above. This comes with a lot of delays and accountability and responsibility
problems are rife.
Bottom UP: when people across all cadre are empowered and allowed to make
decisions, these goes a long way to invigorate the workforce creating new ideas
and enthroning progressiveness in the org thereby creating greater
performance.(ukessay.com,2015).
Creating and influencing organisational culture is one of the most important things
leaders do because it has a major impact on performance. In the book built to last
talks about some successful companies have adapted to a changing world without
loosing sight of core values in the organisation. (Daft.R & Sampson.D,2015).
Decision processes in CEVA are guided by the culture, decisions concerning the
People-Employees and Customers are made based on the 4 main values described
earlier, Drive 4 perfection, Trust and respect 4 people, Passionate team players
and Power to deliver. Decisions on the environment and social responsibility are
made are made alongside the company’s sustainability structure.
For driving for perfection, the company is seen updatind and modernising its
processes and operations, making more investments in research and development.
Example of this in Brazil,31 august2015-CEVA Logistics launched ORION
MOBILITY,an application part of the transport management system(TMS) which
will enhance the quality of the Brazilian ground transport market by improving
TMS visibility of Road trips & providing real-time data to it’s customers, partners
and monitoring team. The application is an innovation by Ceva to expedite
decision making process and is a differentiating factor in the Brazilian Logistics
market, said Marcio Vieira, Ceva Ground Director-‘Orion mobility is more than a
cargo tracking tool which will provide our customers and partners a new way to
manage their cargo’(cevalogistics,2015).
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Ceva sustainability strategic focus aims to deliver long-term value for all there
stakeholders;customers,employees, suppliers, investors and the communities of
operation. Since people, environment and performance are the key drivers , Ceva
takes broad steps in meeting its economic, social responsibilities etc., these
ensures services and solutions are provided customers in a manner respectful to
people, in an economically smart way.(cevalogistics,2017).
Some of the Financial & operations review show a mixed but generally positive
performance of the organisation. ‘ The forwarder recorded a 5.5% year on year
decline in revenues for 2016 to $6.6 Bn while losses came to $159m in 2015
compared to $195m in 2015’. Adjusted earnings before interest & tax for 2016
camein at $254m in 2016 against $ 273 m in 2015.Ceva logistics saw Airfreight
volumes grow ahead of the market in 2016 but revenues decreased and it recorded
the above loss, margins came under pressure in the year when a demand surge
pushed up price.
CEO, Xavier Urbain told the Loadstar ‘we are pleased with the improvement in
top-line growth,contract logistics beenfited from very important wins will show in
2018, due to time lag occurring after signing the agreements(loadstar,2018).
Alongside the performance recorded above Ceva subsidiaries are pretty sealing up
great deals around their countries, these could be all possible looking at Ceva’s
commitment to it’s values and sustainability goals.
On 5
th
September,2017, Paris Ceva has won a major delivery contract with
CARREFOUR( French leading multinational retailer), in addition Ceva has
recently opened a specialist warehouse for healthcare and beauty products, to
support Carrefour’s new para Pharmacy concept.(loadstar,2017).
CULTURE AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AT CEVA LOGISTICS
According to the management study guide, an online blog, strategic management
is all about identifying and describing strategies managers use in achieving better
performance and competitive advantage for their organisation (management study
guide.com). In other words it is managing an organisations resources to achieve
it’s goals and objectives, here we set objectives/ goals and implement best ways to
achieve the goals with right use of available resources while assessing the internal
and external environments in which the organisation competes because
organisations are steadily competing. (Investopedia.com)
Organisational structure on the other hand typically describes the hierarchical
arrangement of lines of authority, duties, rights and communication in any
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organisation (business dictionary.com), it describes how roles and responsibilities
are allotted and the way they flow across different levels of the organisation.
Corporate culture like personal character, is an amorphous quality that exerts a
powerful influence, they could spell doom or a direct opposite to organisations as
they ponder strategic and human resource issues clearly. Companies need to
analyse leadership profiles of their staff and assess the organizations tolerance for
divergent styles or were the cultures tolerated different ones.
According to Joshi.S(2014), ‘competitive business environments bring about
changes in organisations and forces firms to seek better strategies to help them
gain competitive advantage in the market place, in doing that they manage their
employees to consistently act in reacting to that change, thus corporate strategies
should balance environmental realities with internal capabilities to maximise
corporate value.(Joshi.S,2014).
Some theories have supported the interlinkage between organisational culture and
strategy. Culture symbolizing the set of guiding principles affects the process of
operationalization. Culture indirectly influences strategy, organisational structure
and operations.(Joshi.S,2014).
A section of Ceva logistics already highlighted earlier and summarised below in
there’ ’What We Stand For’’ statement says;
We create value for customers by consistently providing exceptional
service.
Integrity and respect are fundamental principles.
We are performance driven, agile and responsive.
We value people.
Ceva Logistics made a major strategic move in response to the changing and evolving
needs of large global customers in creating a new organisation;CEVA SUPPLY CHAIN
SOLUTIONS. As their customers had shifted to sourcing, manufacturing and
distributing products on a global scale, the complexity of managing customers supply
chain had increased, with high performance and total cost remaining key criteria. The
new supply chain solutions team of around 185 employees will use the experience and
expertise already in existence within Ceva to build different strucures, organisations
and resources to further strengthen and upgrade its end-to-end solutions, this is a key
part of Ceva’s story—To drive strategic advantage for it’s cistomers throughout their
supply chains(ceva logistics,2011).
BUSINESS PROCESS EXCELLENCE IN CEVA (BPE)
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LEAN is a key strategy adopted and applied across all Ceva logistics functions and
departments. Ceva’s standard governance structure ensures common approach to
business across the globe while retaining flexibility to opportunities and needs of the
local markets.
Components of Ceva’s BPE is
(a) Quality assurance.
(b) Continuous improvement; were lean is the structured continuous improvement
program for eliminating waste.
(c) Project implementation; the aim here is zero defect start-up (ZDS).
Ceva’s performance management team defines and governs companies’ standards for all
continuous improvement processes, supporting process revisions and improving compliance
mechanism.
CONCLUSION
A strong organizational culture like the type found in Ceva Logistics reviewed above can go
enormous lengths to impact the operations and decisions taken by management in an
organisation. When the organisational structure is balanced allowing decisions to be made at
various levels but strategically from the top can allow members of the organisation to give
their best for the success of the organisation. Ceva Logistics has an effective culture across its
organisation that is well understood by staff and this has caused strengthening within the org
within in-roads been made in the logistics sector.
REFERENCES.
Daft.R & Sampson.D(2015), management. 5
th
edition. Cengage. Victoria
Joshi.S(2014), strategic management. MHRD project. Government of India.
Study.com/academy/lesson/organisation-subculture.html.
theloadstar.co.uk/ceva-logistics-well-positioned-to-deliver-2018 -targets-says-CEO
www.businessdictionary.com/organisational structure.
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www.cevalogistics.com/release/9-may-2011
www.cevalogistics.com/sustainability-governance.
www.cevalogistics.com/operational-excellence/BPE.
www.cevalogistics.com/about-us/our-history.
www.cevalogistics.com/about-us/sustainability/corporate-citizenship.
www.cevalogistics.com/our-story/30-october-2015.
www.investopedia.com/terms/strategicmanagement.asp (viewed18-04-2108, 2:30pm).
www.managementstudyguide.com/strategicmanagement.html.
www.mdbc.com/wp.content/uploads/2014/ceva-presentation-for-MDBC.
Magnet.me/en-GB/company/ceva-logistics/story
Ukessays.com/essays/business/organization-culture-and-decision-making-busines-essay.php.
