Case Study on Entrepreneurship: Larry Page

Business Analysis

The Boundaryless Career: Modern Contemperory Perspective on Career

Human Resource Management

Concepts of Throughput Accounting and Theory of Constraints

Financial Management

Kaizen – Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

Operations Management

Role of Leaders in Shaping Organizational Culture

Management Principles

In-Depth Interviewing Techniques

In-depth interview  is an intensive and searching interview aiming at studying the respondent’s opinion, emotions or convictions on the basis of an interview guide. Conducting an in-depth interview requires much more training on inter-personal skills than structured interview. This deliberately aims to elicit unconscious as well as extremely personal feelings and emotions. In-depth interview  is generally a lengthy procedure designed to encourage free expression of affectively charged information. It requires probing. The interviewer should totally avoid advising or showing disagreement. Of course, he should use encouraging expressions like “uh-huh” or “I see” to motivate the respondent to continue narration. Some times the interviewer has to face the problem of affections, i.e. the respondent may hide expressing affective feelings. The interviewer should handle such situation with great care. Many researchers don’t know how to conduct an in-depth interview well. Here are some tips for conducting more effective in-depth interviews. Start the Continue reading

Abey Francis

Elements of Retail Store Interior Design

The retail store’s exterior is responsible for attracting the passers by both actual and potential customers to induce them to enter the store. The store’s interior is much more important than the exterior as it welcomes the actual consumer. The layout and design of a retail store communicate a significant amount of  information about the retailer to the consumer. The retail store’s interior must contribute to the retailer’s fundamental objectives of  minimizing  operational expenses and  maximize  sales and consumer satisfaction, therefore,  profits.  To attain these goals, the store’s interior not only must be inviting, comfortable and convenient for the consumer. It must also permit the retailer to use the interior space efficiency and effectively.  Let us try to touch up on the basic elements of the retail store interior design. 1. Fixtures A major consideration in developing an appropriate store design involves  the use of fixtures. They are used to Continue reading

Abey Francis

Advantages and Disadvantages of having a Mission Statement

Mission statement is a summary statement of a company’s or organization’s purpose about what it wants to accomplish in the larger environment. Mission statement is playing an important role with the overall strategic planning of an organization. All of the strategic planning of an organization should base on the mission of an organization that had been set. Strategic planning include all the long-range plans, strategic plans and also annual plans which include decision making about the human resource management, production and operation, finance and it is also concerned about the marketing planning. A well-defined mission statement is very important to guide people in the organization, clearly defines who the customer is and what services and products the businesses are intended to provide. A good mission statement should contain some criteria. First, a good mission statement should be market-oriented. A market-oriented mission statement focuses on satisfying customer’s needs. A mission statement Continue reading

Abey Francis

Retrenchment Strategies Followed by Organizations

A retrenchment grand strategy is followed when an organization aims at a contraction of its activities through substantial reduction or the elimination of the scope of one or more of its businesses in terms of their respective customer groups, customer functions, or alternative technologies either singly or jointly in order to improve its overall performance. Eg: A corporate hospital decides to focus only on special treatment and realize higher revenues by reducing its commitment to general case which is less profitable. The growth of industries and markets are threatened by various external and internal developments (External developments – government policies, demand saturation, emergence of substitute products, or changing customer needs. Internal Developments — poor management, wrong strategies, poor quality of functional management and so on.) In these situations the industries and markets and consequently the companies face the danger of decline and will go for adopting retrenchment strategies. Eg: fountain Continue reading

Abey Francis

Porter’s Five Forces and Three Generic Strategies

The long development of Porter’s Five Forces Analysis has brought to the fact that those forces become the determinants of the industry’s competition. These five forces are treat of new entry, rivalry among existing firms, treat from substitute products, bargaining power of buyers, and bargaining power of suppliers. Furthermore, five forces analysis is treated by the organization to measure the level of competition, besides that, it is used as a strong first step in understanding how one industry compares to another and also to determine industry profitability because they influence the prices, costs, and required investment of firm in an industry. In order to be competitive enough, a normal company that seeks profitability would have to understand how they work in its industry and how they affect the company in its particular situation. Therefore, Three Generic Strategies were implemented to establish a strategic agenda for dealing with these five forces. Continue reading

Abey Francis

Competitiveness for Globalization – Country and Company Competitiveness

Strategic management of a global company requires an understanding and analysis of international business environment in order to assess opportunities and threats. The management has to formulate alternative strategies to exploit the opportunities provided by the environment by using company strengths. Many MNCs having the strength of technology and the environment of developing countries provide the opportunities of high quality and low priced products. Therefore, it is necessary to study the competitiveness of global business. The comparative cost theory concludes that the countries can specialize in producing certain products in which they have the competitive advantage of producing goods at low cost. It means that the customers in all the countries can have the goods at low price. Comparative cost theory also indicates that the countries which have the advantage of raw materials, labor, natural resources in producing particular goods can produce the goods at low cost with good quality. Continue reading

Abey Francis