Case Study on Business Ethics: The Napster Case

Napster is an online service that allows computer users to share high-quality digital copies (MP3s) of music recordings through the Internet. The San Mateo-based company does not actually store the songs but instead provides an access to every user’s hard drive if he is currently logged on to the service. Napster therefore functions as a sort of clearinghouse, which collects stores and disseminates music recordings. Members can log onto this service, search for the song of their choice, by artist or song title, identify where MP3s of interest are and then download them from another user’s computer hard drive. Napster claiming to have around 15 million users in just a years’ time, has become one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Indeed, students were using Napster so much that many universities had to block the website in order to regain bandwidth. Right from its launch, the Napster case Continue reading

What is a Proxy Server? Meaning, Functions and Goals

Proxy severs have been around for quite a while now. Most likely, the history of proxy servers dates back to the beginnings of networking and the internet itself. Proxy servers were originally developed as a tool for caching frequently accessed Web pages. A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server evaluates the request according to its filtering rules. It may filter traffic by Internet Protocol (IP) address or protocol. If the request is validated by the filter, the proxy provides the resource by connecting to the relevant server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client’s request or the server’s response, Continue reading

Role of Human Resource Management in Organizations Difficult Times

Today, Human Resource Management (HRM) is emphasizing on adding value in the organization as a key player. The most significant challenge for organization in difficult time (recession) is transforming of the human resource to recognize, sustain, enlarge and exploit talents in the whole organization to their fullest capacities than organization can claim that it has the best of the systems to identify talents across the organization. The management professionals and employees might undergo through the anxiety and other issues during recession and economic downturn, so organization must make plan for economic crisis. Roles and functions of HR in the Organizational change HR can and ought to play a key role in creating and executing organizational change and transition. HR can give help and direction in investigation and determination, highlighting the employee’s problems that will essentially influence the success of the organization. HR might recommend on resourcing programs and planning and Continue reading

Theories of Motivation: Vroom’s Valence-Expectancy Theory

Vroom’s expectancy theory was originally developed by Victor H. Vroom, a Canadian psychologist, in 1964. Attacking Herzberg’s two-factor theory, Vroom offered an expectancy approach to the understanding of motivation. According to him, a person’s motivation towards an action at any time would be determined by an individual’s perception that a certain type of action would lead to a specific outcome and his personal preference for this outcome. Vroom’s expectancy theory consisted of two related models – the valence model and the force model. The valence model attempts to capture the perceived attractiveness, or valence, of an outcome by aggregating the attractiveness of all associated resultant outcomes. The force model of expectancy theory attempts to capture motivational force to act by associating the expectancy of resultant outcomes and their individual valences. These two models gave Vroom the opening to build his expectancy theory to the level that it is today most Continue reading

Globalization of an Existing Business – Need, Process and Impacts

Interdependence and integration of individual countries of the world is called globalization. The globalization integrates not only economies but also societies. The globalization process includes globalization of markets, production, technology and investment. However globalization has two important components, one is globalization of market and other is globalization of production. Today, a company can view the entire world as one country for its business operation. In fact the businessmen were doing their operations even in the past. History indicates that business operations were existing across the countries even in the old days. Therefore the concept of global business is as old as civilization. Crossing national and political boundaries for the purpose of business may be called as globalization. Globalization has the following features: Planning and operating to expand business throughout the world. Removing the differences between domestic and foreign markets. Buying and selling goods and services from one country to another Continue reading

Business Ethics in Human Resource Management

Business ethics are the moral doctrines that direct the way to business behave. Business ethics determines the actions of every individual that distinguish the right or wrong. Every business organization must develop the codes of conduct and ethics that should be followed by all the members. Ethics can be taken as the crucial way to self-presentation and public perception of the organization. Business ethics in human resource management is related to the employee’s issues. Human resource management plays an important role in setting up and implementing ethics in the workplace. Implementation of ethics in the workplace has been one of the challenging tasks for the organization. Various human resources issues can be handled properly by the application of ethics and code of practices by the managers in the workplace. Ethics generally determine what is right and what is wrong. With the help of business ethics, proper allocation and maintenance of Continue reading