As economies continue to integrate due to globalization and formally closed economies like India and China march toward total liberalization, entrepreneurship is on the increase. A close analysis of developed and industrialized economies indicates a common denominator that stands out amongst all of them. This is the most important role played by entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in such economies. This phenomenon has proved to us that if an economy is to develop fully, entrepreneurship should be allowed to flourish. Innovation Individuals often resort to entrepreneurship for one of the following reasons; they find a market niche and have the solution to profit from such niche; they have been unable to find suitable employment or a suitable means of income and therefore have resorted to using their creativity to generate an income for themselves; or they have the technological know-how and the financial resources (or able to source all of the above) Continue reading
Modern Management Concepts
Social Network Analysis
Billions of people create trillions of connections through social media each day, but few of us consider how each click and key press builds relationships that, in aggregate, form a vast social network. Passionate users of social media tools such as email, blogs, microblogs, and wikis eagerly send personal or public messages, post strongly felt opinions, or contribute to community knowledge to develop partnerships, promote cultural heritage, and advance development. Devoted social networkers create and share digital media and rate or recommend resources to pool their experiences, provide help for neighbors and colleagues, and express their creativity. The results are vast, complex networks of connections that link people to other people, documents, locations, concepts, and other objects. New tools are now available to collect, analyze, visualize, and generate insights from the collections of connections formed from billions of messages, links, posts, edits, uploaded photos and videos, reviews, and recommendations. As Continue reading
Whittington’s Classical and Processual Schools of Thought
Strategic management is becoming more important for business construction. Especially, the changing in business environment could threat to organization’s stability. Whittington (2000) introduced four approaches to strategy which are classical approach, systemic approach, evolutionary approach and processual approach. Whilst planning are made through market changes adaptability in classical school, strategies must be updated daily to survive in unpredictable market in evolutionary school. Different from the two approaches, Whittington, 2000 mentioned: “ Processualist emphasis the sticky imperfect nature of all human life, pragmatically accommodating strategy to the fallible processes of both organizations and markets. Systemic approach is relativistic, regarding the ends and means of strategy as inescapably linked to the cultures and powers of the local social systems in which it takes place” Whittington noted that the main principle of “processual” is to accept unattainable ideal of rational fluid action and work with it. The Approach was laid by American Carnegie Continue reading
Time Management
One of the most frequently mentioned problems of businessmen is encapsulated in the phrase, “If I only had more time…” This concern is a common problem among all busy people. It seems that no one has enough time. Time is the most precious yet most limited resource of the businessmen. It is a unique quantity-the businessmen cannot store it, rent it, hire it, or buy it. With its supply being inelastic, it is totally perishable and irreplaceable. Everything requires it and it passes at the same rate for everyone. While important throughout the life of the venture, time is particularly critical at start-up and during growth and expansion of the venture. No matter what the businessman does, today’s ration of time is 24 hours, and yesterday’s time is already history. What is Time Management? Managing time means investing time to get what you decide you want out of life, including Continue reading
Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Challenges
Emotional intelligence skills provide developing leaders with an increased understanding of the impacts of emotions within a team or organization. Caruso and Salovey (2004) demonstrated the advantages EI has with respect to six common challenges in leadership: (a) building effective teams, (b) planning and deciding effectively, (c) motivating people, (d) communicating a vision, (e) promoting change, and (f) creating effective interpersonal relationships. Throughout Caruso and Salovey’s descriptions of the six challenges, they cited a connection with Kouzes and Posner’s Effective Leadership Practices Model. 1. Building effective teams The first challenge was building an effective team. Caruso and Salovey discussed the need for clarifying personal values before attempting to formulate team values. Like Kouzes and Posner’s model, Caruso and Salovey explained that leaders must identify their own values before clarifying team values. A significant level of trust is important for leading teams, and a leader must generate positive opportunities for meaningful Continue reading
Technological Discontinuity and Corporate Alliances
A technological discontinuity might be defined as a breakthrough innovations that advances by an order of magnitude the technological state-of-art, which characterize an industry. Technological discontinuities are based on new technologies whose technical limits are inherently greater than those of the previous dominant technology along economically relevant dimensions of merit. Organizations are now being managed through a period of discontinuity because of revolutionary technological changes causing what they called “creative destruction”: where existing methods are changed in favor of new and better methods. Each technological discontinuity brings about a technological cycle. Some discontinuous innovations are competence destroying, while others are competence enhancing. Competence enhancing is when a breakthrough pushes forward a new state by building on an existing knowledge, while competence destroying totally obsoletes the old technology and knowledge and replaces them with new products and brings about new learning curve. Usually competency-destroying discontinuities require new skills, abilities, and knowledge Continue reading