Case Study: Analysis of Performance Management at British Petroleum

British Petroleum (BP plc) is a multinational oil company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. They’re the third largest oil company in the world, and the fourth largest company worldwide measured by revenues. Employing over 78,000 workers around the world, BP’s Human Resources play a very important role in the company achieving success.  BP recognized this and in 2010, BP’s executive team agreed a high-level philosophy covering their required practices of performance management as well as a set of guiding principles for rewards, in order to monitor performance and best motivate employees to reach objectives. In hope of achieving individual success as well as team success. Performance Management is a process which enhances the effective management of individuals and teams to achieve high level of organizational performance.  When not used effectively, there can be many issues with performance management practices and this is why BP executives have chosen to publish this Continue reading

Case Study Method in Management

Management education is mainly aimed at developing managerial skills in students. Amongst the various methods adopted in teaching management and management functions, the case study method developed in 1910 in U.S.A. and is now being propagated during the last decade or so, providing opportunities to both the teacher and the taught to promote managerial I understanding and competence, since it helps in contemplation and discussion of an actual situation. It is a wrong notion that the case studies are confined to management students. Cases may pertain lo any discipline, where skills for solving complex unstructured problems or preparing plans are required. The origin of case study methods itself can be traced to Harward Lawyers. Cases may describe problems facing individuals, groups, institutions or even Nations. Through a case study one learns a broad range of skills and has many alternatives. Case studies encourage the practice and attainment of analytical and Continue reading

Relationship between Organization Climate and Organizational Behavior Models

Autocratic Model: The autocratic model of organizational behavior creates a climate in which the feelings of the workers are suppressed and they have to just be obedient and tolerative with the autocratic behavior of the employer. The personal relationship between the employer and the employee is not up to the mark. The labor turnover will be considerable when there is high dissatisfaction of the employees with their boss since they have no other alternative except to leave the job. In case of bottleneck in production or marketing, the employees simply keep mum and they never come out with suggestions for solving the problem. When the worker leaves his Job, he will burst out with his boss with thick words coming from his soul and he will never have an idea to re-enter the service. As far as autocratic model is concerned the workers sustain a tight organizational climate and they Continue reading

Important Features of Database Systems

A major feature of a database system is to provide users with an abstract view of data i.e. the system hides certain details of how data is stored and maintained. 1) Data Abstraction Data abstraction is the property of showing only the necessary details to a user and hides the rest of the details from that user. Since many database system users are not computer trained, developers hide the complexity from users through several levels of abstraction, to simplify user’s interactions with the system. Physical level – This level describes how data is actually stored in the database. Logical level — This level what data are stored in the database and what relationship exist among those data. The entire database is described to a community of users. The logical level of abstraction is used by Database Administrators (DBA) who must decide what information is to be stored in the database. Continue reading

Asset Valuation Methods

There are various methods adopted across the globe, however we discuss some of the common and widely accepted  asset valuation methods. 1. Discounted Cash Flow Method This valuation method based on free cash flow is considered a strong tool because it concentrates on cash generation potential of a business. This valuation method uses the future free cash flow of the company (after providing for changes in working capital and capital expenditures) and discounts it by the firm’s weighted average cost of capital (the average cost of all the capital used in the business, including debt and equity) to arrive at the value of the enterprise as a whole. According to the discounted cash flow valuation model, the intrinsic value of a company is the present value of all future free cash flows, plus the cash proceeds from its eventual sale. The presumption is that the cash flows are used to Continue reading

Literature Review – Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social Media Coming to Age in Business Social media has a long history when compared to what people know nowadays. Facebook and other social media platforms exist as a natural outcome of the evolution of the social media development that has occurred for several centuries. It is evident that letters served as the earliest communication methods. They were delivered by hand from the sender to the recipient. When it comes to analyzing the history of social media, one may see that the earliest postal services existed as early as 550 B.C (Hakansson, 2015). Despite the development, the messages became short (Parveen, Jaafar, & Ainin, 2015). The business industry also continued to grow due to friendly economic policies and various incentives that existed in the market. The development of supercomputers after the 1940s saw the creation of networks between computers and consumers. The situation influenced the development of the internet. The Continue reading