Audit Committee – Meaning, History, Roles, and Responsibilities

Corporate governance plays an important role in disciplining the management of the company like transparency in financial reporting and having robust internal controls. Enormous responsibilities like audit committee, duty of the auditors and induction of non-executive directors to act independently have been inflicted on the management of the company and any deviations will be viewed seriously and action against directors can be initiated by the compliance authorities. Audit committee, which is a group of directors who are not concerned with day-today management of the company but supervising how business is administered, conducted and reported. A committee of directors which is entrusted with the precise duty to evaluate the yearly financial reports of the business is known as the audit committee. An audit committee acts as a link between the board of directors and the auditor which includes the evaluation of the statutory audit report, the suggestion of the auditors, the Continue reading

Mental Modes in Organizational Change

An important aspect of organizational culture is the mindset, influenced by the basic assumptions and core values underlying it. It is the same as in the case of individuals whose thinking and behavior is governed by certain values imbibed through their own life experiences. An organization, at any given point of time, tends to be in a particular psychological state or mental mode, which, in turn, influences its functions, activities, and processes. An organization’s psychological state arises out of its experiences in the business environment in which it operates, the basic assumptions it holds about the environment (markets, customers, technology, community) and itself (mission, strategy, capabilities/competencies), and its operative culture. “A mental mode is the peak of a particular existential/experiential state that an organization gets into over time (as do individuals, who live in their own mental modes and most often see what they want to see) and that remains Continue reading

The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

Outsourcing involves assigning some of the business tasks or a department to another business. This is done when a business cannot handle all of its activities internally. They can also do so in search for expertise of a specific task. The businesses that are mostly involved in outsourcing include manufacturing, logistics, customer services, recruitment, web designing, information, content development and technology maintenance among others. The factors that influence decision making on outsourcing includes staff, finances, information characteristics, agreement issues, and vendor issues. Out sourcing involves two businesses which come in to a contractual agreement to exchange services for payment. A business contacts another business to carry out a particular task and in return they pay for the services provided with. Business people do outsource in order to get time to do other significant roles. This saves time and can allow a business person to do other businesses thus increasing his profits. Continue reading

Green Marketing: Importance and Challenges

Environmental issues have gained importance in business as well as in public life through out the world. It is not like that a few leaders of different countries or few big renowned business houses are concerned about the day to day deterioration of oxygen level in our atmosphere but every common citizen of our country and the world is concerned about this common threat of global warming. So in this scenario of global concern, corporate houses has taken green-marketing as a part of their strategy to promote products by employing environmental claims either about their attributes or about the systems, policies and processes of the firms that manufacture or sell them. Clearly green marketing is part and parcel of over all corporate strategy; along with manipulating the traditional marketing mix (product, price, promotion and place), it require an understanding of public policy process. So we can say green marketing covers Continue reading

What is Crisis Management?

An individual, an organization, a government, or the global economy at any point of time may face debacles. This may come in any form and can devastate the present circumstances and can lead to difficult situations. Such occurrences are often termed as crisis. It is therefore defined as a major, unpredictable and upsetting event that intimidates to harm. Even though crisis is an unpredictable form of event, but it is not unanticipated. Crisis is a threat to organizations, an unexpected element and short periods of risk. For an organization, crisis can be illustrated as an anomalous and uncharacteristic situation or perception, which is beyond the control of an organization and also threatens to impact their operation. A company has to deal with different forms of crisis. Some of the major forms of crisis are detailed below: Natural Disaster:   It is about the physical demolition of the organizations assets due Continue reading

Concept Mapping – A Tool For Organizing And Representing Knowledge

About Concept Mapping “If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.” – David Ausubel (1968) Concept mapping emerges directly from David P. Ausubel’s Assimilation Theory of meaningful  verbal learning. The underlying basis of the theory is that  meaningful (as opposed to rote) human learning occurs when new knowledge is consciously and  purposively linked to an existing framework of prior knowledge in a non-arbitrary, substantive  fashion. In rote (or memorized) learning, new concepts are added to the learner’s framework in an  arbitrary and verbatim way, producing a weak and unstable structure that quickly degenerates.  Joseph Novak is widely credited as the creator of concept maps, and has been writing  and researching them since the 1970s. “Concept maps are intended to represent meaningful  relationship Continue reading