The key difference between Japanese and Western management style is not one of method but of attitude and philosophy. The Japanese have studied the Western style of management, concentrating mainly on American management styles for the past 30 years and have adapted what they believed to be useful methods to their own work environment. It now appears that Western companies are studying some of the Japanese management styles, attitudes, and philosophy and have adopted areas of work ethic, which they believe to be valuable to their companies. It is necessary that Western companies study and deploy various Japanese management styles because the most important reason behind successful Japanese outcome in productivity and quality is the quality of their work force. Western companies aren’t often able to compete with Japanese companies. They must simply adjust their human relations and ways of management in order to become more competitive with not only Continue reading
Business Articles
International Asset Protection
Company’s investments and other assets in foreign countries may face the risk of expropriation. Governments are therefore concerned about the protection of the interests of their national companies in the foreign countries. The potential risk was more before the worldwide liberalization set in the 1980s. Important protective measures in this respect include the following: Coercion and Pressure Until the Second World War, home countries used military force and coercion to ensure that host governments would give foreign investors prompt, adequate, and effective compensation in cases of expropriation, under a concept known as the international standard of fair dealing. It may be noted that the home countries of the companies involved were developed ones and the host countries were developing nations and these host countries had little to say about this standard. In a two conference held at The Hague in 1930 and at Montevideo in 1933, participating developing countries got Continue reading
Challenges Faced by the Indian Outsourcing Industry
Though Indian outsourcing industry boast of a large pool of talent, low labor costs, excellent telecommunication infrastructure, a relatively mature domestic IT industry, an active industry association, quality certifications unmatched in the world and more, but it faces massive challenges which need to be overcome. The major challenges being faced by the outsourcing industry in India can be classified into internal and external challenges. The internal challenges include shortage of competent managers for the middle and senior management and the high attrition rates. The external challenge is in the form of opposition from the US politicians and the UK labor unions against shifting of the operations by local companies to India. The threat of real competition from other players like Philippines also exists, but doesn’t seem to need our immediate attention. There is an importance and value attached to the ‘people’ aspect in this service industry. The fact that this Continue reading
Ethical Behavior in Business
Ethics in business is not a new trend. In fact, it is already present for over four thousand years now. With the changing trends in the business world, the society is getting more concerned about the corporate responsibility of businesses. Debates have also been conducted focusing on the social issue of poverty among the workers and the corresponding responsibility of the employers about the issue. Even in the ancient times, issues on ethics in business can be observed just like in the teachings of Aristotle about the harmful effects of the gaps that exist between the economical utilization of goods and the profit making objective of many merchants. At present, the rise of the concept of corporate social responsibility among the business sector constitutes corporate initiatives of integrating several ethical aspects such as establishment of codes of conduct, environment management system measures, health and safety in the workplace, compliance to Continue reading
Changing Face of Outsourcing Industry in India
Starting in the mid 1980’s, the ways of doing business changed forever. The business world was for the first time introduced to the concept of ‘outsourcing’ whatever it thought was not core to profit making. Slowly, through the subsequent decades, we have learnt how to make a sharp demarcation between what makes profits for the business and what is simply undifferentiated cost. As time passed, most businesses came to understand that non-core activities i.e. those things that were not important to the money making machinery in a business could be given to someone else to do. It was a smart thing to do. One could get more time and investment to spend on ‘profit centers’ rather than diluting efforts with the time and management effort needed to manage ‘cost centers’. Moreover, simultaneously moving work to the low cost production locations helped to cut down costs further. This phenomenon gave us Continue reading
Major Challenges Faced by Today’s Managers
Business environment is changing drastically in today’s corporate world. In early years of current management era manager were suppose to work exclusively with equipment’s, data and systems; performing traditional tasks. But scenario of management responsibilities has been changed significantly and today’s manger faces issues like cross training, personnel management, interdepartmental communication and widening job scope. Globalization is shaping and re-shaping business environment, resulting in increase of competitors, demand of new sourcing strategies and facing new markets with new demands. Irregular flow of information often subject to quantitatively strong fluctuations, controlling the flow of information is necessary otherwise these fluctuations can become detrimental. Information controlling is the analysis, evaluation and importance attached to the data that collected and provided with the data under various criteria. Because day by day managerial job is becoming more and more hectic manager needs to continuously look for new ways to improve speed and quality along Continue reading