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

Case Study: iTunes Strategic Innovation

iTunes is a media player computer program used for playing, downloading, saving, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop or laptop personal computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store to purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks, podcasts, movies and movie rentals , and ringtones. It is also used to download application software from the App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. iTunes has been criticized for not being able to transfer music from one portable device to another. iTunes was introduced by Apple Inc. on January 9, 2001. The Strategic Innovation Behind iTunes Over the past decade, Apple Inc. has been extremely successful in formulating and implementing a coherent and focused strategic vision. Its success is evident not just in the company’s bottom line results but also Continue reading

Abey Francis

Use of Personality Tests in Employee Selection

Personality or temperament tests are designed to measure basic aspects of an applicant’s personality, such as degree of introversion/extroversion, emotional stability and motivation. Personality tests are the most difficult tests to evaluate and use in employee selection. This is because the concept of personality itself is hazy and the relationship between performance on the job and personality is often vague or nonexistent.   In addition, the applicant can easily fabricate answers. Consequently, personality tests tend to have very limited value in employee selection and their use may be extremely difficult to justify if challenged by EEO authorities.   Finally, some tests may include questions that could be regarded by applicants as an invasion of privacy.   Questions about religious beliefs and sexual orientation, for example in the USA have been construed as both invasive and discriminatory and have resulted in heavy financial penalties. However, this has not stopped their use Continue reading

Abey Francis

Indian Banking Sector Reforms: Disclosure Norms

Banks should disclose in balance sheets maturity pattern of advances, deposits, investments and borrowings. Apart from this, banks are also required to give details of their exposure to foreign currency assets and liabilities and movement of bad loans. These disclosures were to be made for the year ending March 2000. In fact, the banks must be forced to make public the nature of NPAs being written off.   This should be done to ensure that the taxpayer’s money given to the banks as capital is not used to write off private loans without adequate efforts and punishment of defaulters. A Close look: For the future, the banks will have to tighten their credit evaluation process to prevent this scale of sub-standard and loss assets.   The present evaluation process in several banks is burdened with a bureaucratic exercise, sometimes involving up to 18 different officials, most of whom do not Continue reading

Abey Francis

Meaning of End Product Advertising

There are many products that are rarely purchased direct by consumers. They are usually bought as part or ingredient in other products. For example, there is Teflon (DuPont product), Pentium (Intel Corporation’s computer processor chip), Athelon (Advanced Micro Devices computer processor chip) and many others. Advertising of such products is called end product advertising  (also called branded ingredient advertising). This type of advertising is often undertaken by manufacturers whose branded parts or ingredients are used in producing usually other branded or unbranded consumer products. Successful end product advertising helps create demand for the ingredient that helps in the sale of another product, such as Intel promotes its Pentium processors. The sustained existence of consumer demand for such ingredients encourages companies to use them in their consumer products. It is not easy to build end-product demand. The manufacturer must have an ingredient that is widely recognized by manufacturers and consumers and Continue reading

Abey Francis

Conflicts with Firms Profit Maximization Objective

Profit  maximization  is the most popular hypothesis in economic analysis, but there are many other important objectives, which are not to be avoided by any firm. Modem business firms pursue multiple objectives. An important aspect of profit is its use in measuring and controlling  performances  of the individuals of the large business firms. Researches have concluded that the business  individuals  of middle and top management often deviate from profit objective and try to  maximize  their own utility functions. They give importance to job security, personal ambitions for promotion, larger perks, etc. But this often conflicts with firms profit-making objective. The reasons for conflicts are as follows: More energy is spent in expanding sales volume and product lines than in raising profitability. Subordinates spend too much time and money doing jobs perfectly regardless of its cost and usefulness. Individuals depend more to the needs of job security in the absence of Continue reading

Abey Francis

Scope of Strategic Marketing

Strategic Marketing has been defined as the management function responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. Strategic Marketing is, therefore, both a philosophy and a set of techniques which address such matters as research, product design and development, pricing, packaging, sales and sales promotion, advertising, public relations, distribution and after-sales service. These activities define the broad scope of marketing and their balanced integration within a marketing plan is known as the marketing mix. A modification of a definition of  strategic marketing suggests that marketing is the management process that seeks to maximize returns to shareholders by creating a competitive advantage in providing, communicating and delivering value to customers thereby developing a long-term relationship with them. This definition clearly defines the objectives of marketing and how its performance should be evaluated. The specific contribution of marketing in the organization lies in the formulation of strategies to choose the right Continue reading

Abey Francis