What is Sustainability?

The interest in sustainability has grown over recent years and is shared among a variety of national and international organizations, special interest groups and corporations around the world. Sustainable business practices are becoming a worldwide business requirement. Some of the main sustainability requirements have been stated explicitly by many different organizations. A widely cited definition of sustainability is attributed to the United Nations Brundtland Commission and reads as follows: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). Another set of requirements describes the broader and more specific application of sustainability and can be seen in the ten principles of the UN Global Compact which was enacted in 1999. The ten principles establish a set of core values for organizations to follow and encourage those organizations adopting the principles to influence their partner organizations to subscribe to the principles Continue reading

Performance Budgeting

Performance Budget may be defined as a budget based on functions, activities and projects. Performance Budgeting may be described as a budgeting system, where under input costs are related to the end results, are related to the performance. Performance Budgeting is defined as the process of analyzing, identifying, simplifying and crystallizing specific performance objectives of a job to be completed over a period, in the framework of the organizational objectives, the purpose and objectives of the job. It involves evaluation of the performance of the organization in the context of both specific as well as overall objectives of the organization. An overview of Performance Budgeting The performance management concepts for budget management practices produced a performance budgeting. Performance budgeting is a goal-oriented budget, it is based on achievement of the government’s public sector objectives and it is in budget preparation, control and evaluation of a budget management model. In contrast Continue reading

Creative and Innovative Culture in Modern Organizations

Organizational Culture is an outcome of cultural processes at work in a particular setting and focuses on people and the shared meaning within them. An organization with a strong culture may find it difficult to adapt with changes. If they want to bring a culture of creativity then the organization may find it hard to cope with it. A strong culture will have people with commonalities and may lack diversity which is essential in generating new and different ideas. However, subcultures can exist in such organization with strong culture which may bring creativity as a result of diversity. Such divisions are responsible for giving a different option or a direction to the organization which can result to new frontiers. Diversity is an integral element of an organization’s culture. A manager has to be aware of the differences that exist among various employees working in the organization. People in an organization Continue reading

Blue Ocean Strategy: Discovering the Untapped Market

Blue ocean strategy makes companies to come out of ocean of bloody competition by creating market space which is uncontested and that makes the completion irrelevant. Since, dividing up existing demand and benchmarking the competitors, Blue Ocean strategy is regarding grow demand and break away from the competition. The business universe can be thought as a composition of two kinds of oceans the first is the red ocean and second one is the blue ocean. Red ocean includes all the industries which exist today and it is about the known market space. But on the other side Blue Ocean can be considered as industries which are not in existing today and it is called unknown market space. The industries boundaries are defined and well accepted in the red oceans. In the red oceans the rules of competitive games are well defined. The companies try to take away the greater share Continue reading

Open Innovation – A New Innovation Paradigm

An innovation is a product or service with a bundle of features that is new in the market, or that is commercialized in some new way that opens up new uses and consumer groups for it. Innovation is invention implemented and taken to market. Invention however is the creation of something that was previously unknown. In summary, INNOVATION= INVENTION+COMMERCIALIZATION. Today companies who, want to deliver consistent organic growth to their shareholders, customers, and their employees can do that only through innovation. Concept of Open Innovation According to American organizational theorist Henry Chesbrough, Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. Open innovation assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology. As mentioned Continue reading

What is Social Accounting?

Any business accountant of an enterprise or any organisation can describe the conditions of that organisation. Social accounting is that kind of movement by which everyone can analyze the same thing as like a business accountant. The main aim of social accounting is to produce data, indices and other information to help everyone about an organisation. Social accounting is also known in various names. These are social and environmental accounting, corporate social reporting, corporate social responsibility reporting, non-financial reporting or sustainability accounting. This is actually a procedure of communicating in which the social and environmental belongings of organisations (NGO, Charities, may be Government agencies etc.) are included. This is a way by which an organisation can express the level to which it meets its societal or ethical goals. Social accounting is distinct from evaluation in that it is an internally generated process whereby the organisation itself shapes the social accounting Continue reading