A crisis is an abnormal situation, or even perception, which is beyond the scope of everyday business and which threatens the operation, safety and reputation of an organisation. Crises do not discriminate based on a company’s size or notoriety, and they can hit when a company least expects them. They come in many forms — strikes, layoffs, product recalls or allegations of misconduct, but while some of these may seem small, every crisis has the potential to damage the reputation of a company. Regardless of the severity of the situation, crises pose a serious threat to companies — not only to their reputation but their fiscal health as well. When Odwalla’s apple juice was thought to be the cause of an outbreak of E. coli bacteria, the company lost a third of its market value. The same allegation against Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993 caused the hamburger chain’s Continue reading
Modern Management Concepts
Knowledge Management (KM)
Knowledge Management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices. The term is used loosely to refer to a broad collection of organizational practices and approaches related to generating, capturing and disseminating know-how and other content relevant to the organization’s business. Knowledge management can be explained as an effort by organizations to manage some or all of the knowledge within them as a resource, much as they manage real estate, inventory, and human resources. It involves the following: Capturing it; that is, explicitly recording the tacit knowledge within an organization. Cataloguing and storing it; that is, placing the information into a central area where all members of an organization who have a need to know have access to it Continue reading
Role of the Change Agent In Organizational Development and Change
Change agents are the persons who initiate change and manage change in the organizations. They are specialized in theory and practice of managing changes. The change agent may be a member of organization or an outsider such as a consultant. An internal agent very well knows the organization and have ability, knowledge and experience of directing people for changes. But, internal agent is removed from regular duties to concentrate on the transition. However, external agents view the organization from the system point of view and is much affected by the organization norms. Top managers also prefer hiring specialized consultant change agents as they can offer more objective prospective than insiders. External experts are, however, not well aware of the desires and attributes of the employees, therefore, the changes suggested by them are generally resisted by the employees. Change agents have five set of powers as support of managers is Continue reading
Case Study of Global Knowledge: Technology as an Effective Ingredient of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Case Summary: Global Knowledge, a worldwide leader in IT education and enterprise training solutions, needed a solid and scalable platform for delivering its virtual classroom e-Learning training programs. The company currently offers over 700 courses in 21 countries and in 13 languages every day for such leading companies as Cisco, Microsoft, Nortel, Oracle, Legato, Enterasys and Compaq in addition to a broad array of industry curriculum and certifications. Over the last 2 years, Global Knowledge has begun offering a broad menu of these classes as instructor-led, virtual e-Learning courses but needed a technology platform to effectively address their customers’ virtual training needs around the world. Global Knowledge customers, located throughout the world, attend virtual classes through various connections — dial up modem, DSL, cable modem and corporate LANs behind firewalls. The courses are equivalent to traditional instructor-led classroom courses — complete with subject matter experts as instructors; live Continue reading
Factors Influencing Organizational Change
Organization Change is a response of the organization to the various forces within and external to it. Organizations exist within a society and therefore respond to various factors like the economic, the political and legal framework as well as various socio cultural factors. An organization is like a system and is constituted of various sub systems. However what determines an organizations sustainable competitive advantage is its ability to accept change and plan for it. The two major factors, which can influence an organizations strategy and its ability to survive and grow, are: Business Cycles and Industry Life Cycle. Business Cycles Just as a biological organism grows and dies, organizations too experience life and death based on the overall economic activity. Growth in the economy means a growth for the organization and slump in the economy may reflect in a slump in the business. However all organizations do not respond the Continue reading
The Knowledge Management Life Cycle
Nowadays, most of organizations realize that the important of managing knowledge effectively. For doing so, they need to be always able to identify, generate, acquire, diffuse and capture the most valuable benefits of knowledge that sets up a strategic advantage to themselves. It also needs to have the ability to differentiate the information, which is digitizable, and true knowledge assets, which can only exist with in the context of an intelligent system. To be able to clearly understand the requirements for effectively implement knowledge management processes in the workplace, we may discuss the knowledge life cycle and strategies in each stages of the cycle. Knowledge Management Life Cycle Knowledge has a life cycle. New knowledge is born as uncertainty thing, and it form into shape as it is tested, matures through implementation in reality, is diffused to a growing user, and finally becomes broadly understood and recognize as common practice. Continue reading