Kaizen – Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

Operations Management

Role of Leaders in Shaping Organizational Culture

Management Principles

Organizational Culture – Development and Importance

Management Principles

Five Important Organizational Cultural Models

Management Principles

The Customer Satisfaction Model – Based on American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)

Marketing Management

Methods of Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal are considered to be the vital tool, to measure the performance of an employee and use the information collected, to optimize the resource of individuals in an organization.   It is systematic evaluation of individuals with respect to their task performance and their potential for development individually and collectively. It refers to the assessments of an employee’s actual performance, behavior on jobs and his/her potential for further performance.   The main purposes of appraisal are to assess training need to effect promotion and to give high pay. We may say that appraising the performance of an individual has been known as merit rating, but in recent years, we may closure different terminologies have been used to denote this process such as performance appraisal, performance review, performance evaluation, employee appraisal, progress appraisal report, personal preview and so on. Following methods are widely used in Performance Appraisal. 1. Forced-Choice Rating Continue reading

Abey Francis

Concept of Decisions and Decision Making Process in Crisis Management

External and Internal business environment have effects on business operations and various strategic decisions taken by organizations. If organizations are not aware about the change in business environment or if they fail to predict the change, it may create crisis for the organization. Decisions and decision-making process has important role in crisis management approach. According to Ducker “A decision is a judgment and choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between what is right or wrong, at best it is a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”- but more often choice between two courses of actions neither of which is probably more nearly right than the other” Decision-making is a dynamic process, a complex search of information, alternatives and choices. There are two approaches to modeling human decision-making; The Outcome Oriented Approach and the Process Oriented Approach. The Outcome Oriented Approach, based on the view that if one Continue reading

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Liquid Mutual Fund Schemes

The objective of liquid mutual fund schemes  is to invest in short-term money market instruments of good credit quality. The fund predominantly invests in money market instruments and provides investors the returns that are available on these instruments. The investment portfolio is very liquid, and enables investors to hold their investments for very short horizons of a day or more. The liquid funds are normally open-ended. It provides with the following options/schemes, which are sub-products within the liquid fund. Overnight Option (Growth): This option is meant to be used by investors with very short-term investment horizon and is fully invested in the call money market. Overnight Option (Dividend): This option is meant for investors who have short-term funds to deploy but would like to earn some income on such deployment. The portfolio in this option is invested in short-term floating rate instruments, call markets and in repos. The average maturity Continue reading

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Role Efficacy: Meaning, Aspects and Measurement

What is Role Efficacy? The performance of a person working in an organization depends on his own potential effectiveness, technical competence, managerial experience as well as the design of the role that he performs in the organization. It is the integration of the two that ensures a person’s effectiveness in the organization. Unless a person has the requisite knowledge, technical competence and the skills required for the role, he cannot be effective.   If the role does not allow the person to use his competence, and if he constantly feels frustrated in the role, his effectiveness is likely to be low. The integration of a person and the role comes about when the role is able to fulfill the needs of the individual, and when the individual in turn is able to contribute to the evolution of the role. The more we move from role taking to role making, the Continue reading

Abey Francis

Integrating Material and Financial Flows in a Supply Chain

Firms in the past have mainly focused on improving the material flow in a supply chain using various innovative methods like cross docking, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) etc. Firms have also used IT solutions to automate the material flow. Today, they have also begun to focus on improving the financial flow in the supply chain. Many firms have adopted best practices of cash flow management to improve the financial flow. One of the key elements which helps in efficient financial flow in a supply chain is the use of IT solutions in the purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes. By automating these processes firms can minimize inefficiencies and improve the effectiveness of the supply chain.Many firms have automated the same or all of the elements of the financial flow in a supply chain through implementing ERP systems and cash flow management solutions. However, most firms have Continue reading

Abey Francis

History of Derivatives Market in India

Interestingly, derivatives have been existed in India since long time in one form or the other. But, they were not liberalised nor efforts were put to enlighten the public. The area of existence of derivatives was in commodities, it was association by traders in Bombay which was named as Bombay Cotton Trade Association (BCTA) in 1875 and started dealing with the futures contracts. By the starting of 19th century derivatives in India crawled to top making India one of the worlds largest in futures industry. But, in the early 1952 Government banned trade in cash-settlements and option contracts. As a result derivatives’ trading was shifted to informal forward contracts which were a normal practice. Trading at that time was restricted to only few brokers, and their trading practice was typical located under the banyan tree in front of the town hall in Bombay. This practise was followed for long time Continue reading

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