Role of Entrepreneurship in Economic Development

The entrepreneur who is a business leader looks for ideas and puts them into effect in fostering economic growth and development. Entrepreneurship is one of the most important inputs in the economic development of a country. The entrepreneur acts as a trigger head to give spark to economic activities by his entrepreneurial decisions. He plays a pivotal role not only in the development of industrial sector of a country but also in the development of farm and service sector. The major roles played by an entrepreneur in the economic development of an economy are discussed in a systematic and orderly manner as follows. Promotes Capital Formation:  Entrepreneurs promote capital formation by mobilizing the idle savings of public. They employ their own as well as borrowed resources for setting up their enterprises. Such type of entrepreneurial activities leads to value addition and creation of wealth, which is very essential for the Continue reading

Cross Cultural Decision Making – Programmed and Non-Programmed Decision Making

It is becoming quite apparent that businesses, big and small, need to understand how decision making affects their entire operations. When making decisions, managers in organizations apply either a programmed or a non programmed decision  making process. Both processes are affected by the culture of the society in which the decision is being made. For example, mangers in countries with relatively low tolerance for ambiguity, such as Japan and Germany, avoid non programmed decisions as making. Operating manuals in organizations in these cultures tend to be relatively thick. In contrast, mangers in countries with relatively high tolerance for ambiguity, such as the United States and Norway, seek responsibility for non-programmed decision making. The secrets of effective decision making lie in the balance between rational and intuitive thought. The following strategies provide a useful framework for making effective decision. Determine the problem and identify the goals to be accomplished by your Continue reading

8 Important Leadership Styles in Management

Leadership Styles in Management A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal while leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Different leadership styles will result in different impact to organization. The leader has to choose the most effective approach of leadership style depending on situation because leadership style is crucial for a team success. By understanding these leadership styles and their impact, everyone can become a more flexible and better leader. 1. Transactional Leadership Transactional leadership is a term used to classify a group of leadership theories that inquire the interactions between leaders and followers. This style of leadership starts with the premise that team members agree to obey their leader totally when they take a job on. The “transaction” is usually that the organization pays the team members, in return Continue reading

How Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship are Related?

There is an important relationship between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact, creativity is the ability to develop new ideas and to discover new ways of looking at problems and opportunities; innovation is the ability to apply creative solutions to those problems and opportunities in order to enhance people’s lives or to enrich society. Entrepreneurship is a result of a disciplined and systematic process of applying creativity and innovations to needs and opportunities in the marketplace. Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. All products or services are the combination of three factors: nature raw materials, labor (physical and mental) and capital. Entrepreneurs, as innovators, are people who create new combinations of these factors and then present to the market for assessment by consumers. Porter (1985) argues that, while successful businesses will Continue reading

Forecasting for Strategic Planning

Forecasting is a collection of mostly statistical and/or judgmental procedures   which aim at predicting the future based on the available information and/or data (These processes may include activities such as data collection, data pre-processing and preliminary data analysis, forecasting method selection, which also involves model selection, model fitting, and diagnostic checking, and control in a forecasting system in use). In such processes, forecasting has lots of potentials for strategic level managers including revealing system dynamics, problem determination, predicting, monitoring, and control. Forecasting techniques are used by managers to plan future capacity to meet market demand and to procure the needed inputs to produce this demand at optimum costs. Forecasting models are used to predict future aspects of business operation. They include averages, moving averages, weighted moving averages, exponential smoothing, linear trend models, and simple and multiple regression models. Forecasting as a Strategic Decision-Making Tool Surviving in highly competitive markets Continue reading