Majority of retailers use a form that summarizes the basic budgetary information for a given merchandise grouping during a specified period normally for a period of six months. The retailer must select the control unit for which projections will be made, before making sales estimates. The “control unit” is the merchandising grouping that serves as the basic reporting unit for various types of information namely, past, present and future. The retailer has the choice to estimate future sales for an entire store, for a merchandise division or department, or for an individual product-line or item. The most three acceptable control units can be merchandise groups, merchandise classes and merchandise categories of all these three, experts recommend merchandise categories as the basic control unit as it is generally much easier to aggregate the information than it is to disaggregate information, i.e., breaking down merchandise groups into classes and categories. This attempt Continue reading
Management Concepts
Theories of Motivation: Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Model (Two Factor Theory of Motivation)
A significant development in motivation was distinction between motivational and maintenance factors in job situation. A research was conducted by Frederick Herzberg and his associates based on the interview of 200 engineers and accountants who worked for eleven different firms in Pittsburgh area. These men were asked to recall specific incidents in their experience, which made them, feel either particularly good or particularly bad about jobs. The findings of the research were that good feelings in the group under test were keyed to the specific tasks that the men performed rather than to background factors such as money, security or working conditions and when they felt bad, it was because of some disturbance on these background factors which had caused them to believe that they were being treated unfairly. This led to draw a distinction between what are called as ‘motivators’ and ‘hygiene factors’. To this group of engineers and Continue reading
Employee Empowerment – Meaning and Its Effectiveness
In such a competitive environment, the organizations have to continuously provide quality products, better services and need to bring innovation to stay in the business and generate profits. To conduct such activities, efficient and empowered employees are essential. In the past, the authority was not delegated to the employees and it centered on the managers who were responsible for making all the decisions in the interest of the organizations. This had limited the creativity to show up since the employees were not able to express or share their ideas. Empowerment in the recent years has been considered as the most important factor that contributes to the success of the organization. The creative energy and potentials of employees benefits the shareholders, suppliers and customers as well. Empowerment means delegation of decision making authority when there is a need to take action which is important for both the managers and employees. Following Continue reading
The Impact of Demographic Characteristics and Cultural Diversity on Behaviour within a Group
Groups can become a high performance team by following organizational goals and strategic planning, while demographic characteristics and cultural diversity can influence a team in many ways. Cultural diversity and demographic characteristics can help achieve goals and people should be aware how they can contribute to reaching goals in an organization. This article will discuss the impact of demographic characteristics and cultural diversity on behavior within a group, and how individuality will sometimes contribute to detract from high-performance in teams. Numerous attempts have been made by several organizations in order to gain competitive edge over their competitors through management concepts and practices. In order to respond to globalization, majority of organizations are turning to modern, more productive ways of conducting business, such as effective organizational structures, greater support from technology, and more team orientated environments. Indeed, a team is where combined employees apply their skills and abilities together in order Continue reading
Outsourcing – Concept, Reasons and Importance
In recent decades, outsourcing has emerged as a major trend in human resources all over the world. It has become the practice in where certain job functions are sent outside of a company instead of performing them in house. Day by day, more and more companies are focusing on outsourcing as an easy way to grow as well as reducing overhead and payroll costs. In the simplest terms outsourcing can be described as farming out of different services to third parties. For example in case of information technology, outsourcing includes any task such as outsourcing all kinds of management of IT to HP or IBM, or even outsourcing a very easy and small task, such as data storage, data editing, disaster recovery or, and any task in between. No precise definition of outsourcing can be found. The term is often used in an inconsistent way. Outsourcing is often involved Continue reading
Financing of Mergers and Acquisitions
Mergers are generally differentiated from acquisitions partly by the way in which they are financed and partly by the relative size of the companies. Various methods of financing an Mergers & Acquisitions deal exist: a) Payment by cash Such transactions are usually termed acquisitions rather than mergers because the shareholders of the target company are removed from the picture and the target comes under the (indirect) control of the bidder’s shareholders alone. A cash deal would make more sense during a downward trend in the interest rates. Another advantage of using cash for an acquisition is that there tends to lesser chances of EPS dilution for the acquiring company. But a caveat in using cash is that it places constraints on the cash flow of the company. b) Equity share Financing or exchange of shares It is one of the most commonly used methods of financing mergers. Under this method Continue reading