New Trends In E-Business

E-business changed the way business was being done over the years. It created more and more avenues and opportunities. E-business changed the competitive platform. While the old competitive barriers are diminishing it created new entry and competitive barriers. The hard competitive barriers are becoming weak while the soft competitive barriers became more and more prominent. It is believed that not even 50% of the potential of e-business is to be unleashed yet. This definitely indicates that e-business has lot more to offer. E-business has appealed the businesses and customers from all segments. E-business increased the connectivity among different businesses. The integration among departments, different businesses, and different sectors through e-business made it possible to offer variety of services to customers. The new technologies, high speed internet made the transactions possible. Improved integration and interoperability needs of next generation e-business systems are met by new e-business solution architectures. New technologies of Continue reading

Boundaryless Organization – Definition and Types

Organizations, by definition, are entities with  boundaries. External boundaries separate a company from its suppliers and customers and define  its geographic reach. Internal boundaries separate  the departments between each other, management from employees. Such lines of  differentiation have been necessary.  Different departments in the organization work towards the common goal the overall success of the business. However, companies that thrive within the new environment  of global competition, rapidly changing technologies, and shifting markets are characterized by  not having many boundaries.  The new model of success is defined as “boundaryless organization”,  a term created by Jack Welch during his term as CEO of GE. A boundaryless organization is a contemporary approach in organizational design.  In a boundaryless organization, the boundaries that divide employees such as hierarchy, job function, and geography as well as those that distance companies from suppliers and customers are broken down. A boundaryless organization seeks to remove vertical, Continue reading

Altman Z-Score Formula – Corporate Bankruptcy Prediction Model

The financial failure of a company can have a devastating effect on the all seven users of financial statements e.g. present and potential investors, customers, creditors, employees, lenders, general public etc. As a result, users of financial statements as indicated previously are interested in predicting not only whether a company will fail, but also when it will fail e.g. to avoid high profile corporate failures at Enron, Arthur Anderson, and WorldCom etc. Business failure is defined as the unfortunate circumstance of a firm’s inability to stay in the business. Business failure occurs when the total liabilities exceeds the total assets of a company, as total assets is consider a measure of productivity of a company assets.  The main reasons for business failure are high interest rates, recession squeezed profits, heavy debt burdens, government regulations and the nature of operations can contribute to a firm’s financial distress. The traditional analysis of Continue reading

Case Study: The Body Shop’s Ruby Ad Campaign

In 1976, when the cosmetics industry was making exaggerated claims about scientific advancements in skin care, Anita Roddick opened a store, The Body Shop, in a seaside town on the southern coast of England. Her product line, based on natural ingredients and age-old beauty secrets from Polynesia and the Amazon rain-forest, was a vast departure from the patented laboratory-created, animal-tested products that promised to stop the aging process, eradicate dark circles under the eyes, and otherwise correct a woman’s flaws. The products were plainly packaged, and they were not tested on animals and not promoted through extravagant advertising campaigns. Her company’s refusal to test products on animals, along with an insistence on non-exploitative labor practices among suppliers around the world, appealed especially to upscale, mainly middle-class women, who were and have continued to be the company’s primary market. Part of the secret of The Body Shop’s early success was that Continue reading

The Objective of Financial Reporting

The main objective of financial reporting is to provide financial information to current capital provides to make decisions. This information might also be useful to users who are not capital providers. The general purpose financial reporting develops superior reporting standards to help in the efficient functioning of economies and the efficient allocation of resources in capital markets. General purpose financial reporting focuses on an extensive range of users’ needs that lack the ability to obtain financial information needed from the entity. It should be broad enough to comprehend information for the various users. Therefore, the financial report is where they depend on to acquire information. Diverse users may require different information which might go beyond the scope of general purpose financial reporting. The financial reports are prepared from the entity’s perspective (deemed to have substance on its own, spate from that of its owners), instead of the entity’s capital providers. Continue reading

Recruitment Process

It is very important for an employer to design a recruitment process for hiring the best professionals within a given time frame. Though the process of recruitment may differ from organization to organization, it has more or less similar steps. Recruitment refers to the process of identifying and attracting job seekers so as to build a pool of qualified job applicants. The recruitment process comprises five interrelated stages, viz, Planning. Strategy development. Searching. Screening. Evaluation and control. The ideal recruitment programme is the one that attracts a relatively larger number of qualified applicants who will survive the screening process and accept positions with the organisation, when offered. Recruitment programmes can miss the ideal in many ways i.e. by failing to attract an adequate applicant pool, by under/over selling the organisation or by inadequate screening applicants before they enter the selection process. Thus, to approach the ideal, individuals responsible for the Continue reading