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

Business Organizations in a Global Context

In the recent past, businesses have seen a change in the economic setting. The domestic market is no longer able to meet the demands of the globalized people. Businesses have developed to ensure it thrives in the age of globalization. This development has made many domestic businesses become a household name worldwide. Besides globalization, an improved communication technology has also been a key factor in the success of these globally operating organizations. This allows efficient communication and swift access to global markets. However, in order to operate globally, an organization faces many challenges which include HR issues, financial problems, cultural differences and legal issues. In order to succeed, a multinational firm is expected to comply with the host country’s laws, regulations, policies, customer preferences and business practices. Management of operations globally across different cultures and varying market requirements is both challenging and full of opportunities. In the wake of increasing Continue reading

Abey Francis

Operational Decisions – Meaning and Characteristics

Operational decisions are what make your business strategy real and ensure that your organization runs effectively, right down to the front-lines interacting with your associates. To ensure that operational decisions are effective, you need to manage operational decision making.  Operational decisions helps the organization to understand some fundamental cost-volume relationship relate to the operation in the company. In operational decision making, the decision makers have to consider about volume, latency, variability, managing risk, self service and personalized. Volume is the number of decisions of a specific type that decision makers made must be high. The volume can cause problems or exacerbate another decision problem, such as compliance and risk assessment. Besides that, latency means when you could foresee problem is coming but still couldn’t change how you are going to make decision in time. So you might have an operational problem. The change in mind-set required is akin to the Continue reading

Abey Francis

Different Challenges Faced by the Multinational Companies (MNC’s)

A multinational company  (MNC) is an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. There are some challenges faced by MNC’s that transact business in international markets which can hinder its competitiveness hence its controversies and these are as follows; Market Imperfections It may seem strange that a corporation has decided to do business in a different country, where it doesn’t know the laws, local customs or business practices of such a country is likely to face some challenges that can reduce the manager’s ability to forecast business conditions. The additional costs caused by the entrance in foreign markets are of less interest for the local enterprise. Firms can also in their own market be isolated from competition by transportation costs and other tariff and non-tariff barriers which can force them to competition and will reduce their profits. The firms can maximize their joint income by Continue reading

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Management by Objectives (MBO) – Definition, Advantages and Disadvantages

Many approaches have been utilized to integrate individual and group goals with overall goals of the organization of an enterprise. Management by Objectives (MBO) is basically a process whereby the superior and subordinate managers of an enterprise jointly (i) identify its common goals, (ii) define each individuals major areas of responsibility in terms of results expected of him, and (iii) use these measures as guides for operating the unit (or enterprise) and assessing the contribution of each of its members. The goals are jointly established by the manager and his subordinates and agreed upon in advance. These goals emphasize either output variables or intervening variables, or some combination of both. At the end of the pre-decided time period, the subordinate’s performance is reviewed in relation to preset goals. Both superior and the subordinate participate in this review/evaluation. If, after evaluation it is found that there is some discrepancy between the Continue reading

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Pre-Testing Research Data Collection Instruments

The tool or instrument of data collection namely the schedule or the questionnaire should be pre-tested before adopted for data collection on the study. Pre-testing simply means, testing the validity, reliability, practicability and sensitivity of the tool before it is used for actual data collection. The only way to gain assurance that questions are unambiguous is to try them on a selected small group of prospective respondents. Process of Pre-testing Pre-testing can be done in parts. Different sub-parts in the main part of the questionnaire/schedule can be differently pre-tested. So a series of small pre-test on different units of the tool can be done. A full scale pre-test of the whole tool can be done if needed finally or in lieu of the series of pre-tests is small bits. Pre-testing must be done on a sample that is representatives of the population. May be 10 to 12 respondents for pre-testing Continue reading

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What is Stock’s Beta?

An investor is concerned with the risk of his entire investment portfolio, and that the relevant risk of a particular security is the effect that the security has on the entire portfolio.  By “diversified  portfolio” we  mean  that  each  investor’s  portfolio  is representative if the market as a  whole  and that the portfolio Beta is 1.0.  Stock’s Beta indicate how closely the security’s returns move with from a diversified portfolio. A beta of 1.0 for a given security means that, if the total value of securities in the market moves up by 10 percent, the stock’s price will also move up, on the average  by 10 percent. If security has a beta of 2.0, its price will, on the whole, rises or falls by 20 percent when the market rises or falls by 10 percent. A share with —0.5 percent beta will rises by 10 percent, when the market falls Continue reading

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