Mintzberg’s Model of Organizational Structure

Management expert Henry Mintzberg  proposed that traditionally organizations (profit making or not for profit) can be divided into five components. In practice organizational structure may differ from proposed model. Factors influencing organizational structure are industry norms,   size, experience, culture, external forces (competition, inflation, minimum wage legislation etc). Components identified by Mintzberg is useful for understanding the workflow of organizations. The structure of an organization can be defined simply as the sum total of the ways in which it divides its labor into distinct tasks and then achieves coordination among them” –  The Structuring of Organizations,  Henry Mintzberg. 1. Strategic Apex Strategic   apex is the most senior level in the organization. Management working at this level is referred as board of Directors (chairman, CEO, executes and non executive directors). They set the objectives (increase sales by 10% in one year) and strategic direction (new product and markets developments) of Continue reading

Data Mining Functionalities

Data mining has an important place in today’s world. It becomes an important research area as there is a huge amount of data available in most of the applications. This huge amount of data must be processed in order to extract useful information and knowledge, since they are not explicit. Data Mining is the process of discovering interesting knowledge from large amount of data. The kinds of patterns that can be discovered depend upon the data mining tasks employed. By and large, there are two types of data mining tasks: descriptive data mining tasks that describe the general properties of the existing data, and predictive data mining tasks that attempt to do predictions based on inference on available data. The data mining functionalities and the variety of knowledge they discover are briefly presented in the following list: Characterization: It is the summarization of general features of objects in a target Continue reading

Case Study on Corporate Governance: WorldCom Scandal

Established in 1988, WorldCom was formed so that the strongest, most capable public relations firms could serve national and international clients, while retaining flexibility and client- service focus inherent in independent agencies. Through WorldCom, clients have on demand access to in-depth communication expertise from professionals who understand the language, culture and customs in the geographic areas of operation. WorldCom has 105 offices in 90 cities and 40 countries on five continents, more than 2000 employees and recorded revenue of US $ 243.5 million in 2008. In the 90’s WorldCom was involved in acquisitions and purchased over 60 firms. The complete financial integration of the acquired company must be accomplished, including an accounting of assets, debts, and a host of other financially important factors. WorldCom moved into Internet Traffic, controlling 50% of US Internet Traffic and 50% of the e-mails worldwide. In 1997, WorldCom and MCI completed a US $37 billion Continue reading

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) – Definition, Benefits and Risks

Definition of  Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is the process where an employer outsources or transfers all or part of its recruitment activities to expert services of a third party (generally professional consultants). The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association defines RPO as follows: “when a provider acts as a company’s internal recruitment function for a portion or all of its jobs, RPO providers manage the entire recruitment/hiring process from job profiling through the  on-boarding  of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting.” RPO and other types of occasional recruitment support, contingency and executive search services differ majorly in the  “Process”. The service provider assumes ownership of the process in RPO, while in other types of staffing services the service provider is only a part of the process controlled by the organization buying their services. History of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Temporary, contingency and executive search firms Continue reading

Organizational Success through Creativity and Innovation

Creativity and innovation are generally understood as routine drivers of successful organizational growth. Organizations are facing enormous pressure to innovate in order to attain competitive advantage from the global environment that is increasingly becoming intricate and competitive. Due to this, organizational management has to inculcate or reinforce culture of creativity and innovation within organization; however, much of the focus in this endeavor is on the individual level but team work is also essentially encouraged. Individuals are of vital importance in creativity and the innovation process requires a supportive well-managed atmosphere that can translate novel ideas into innovative product effectively. Generally the two concepts are diverse as creativity can be production of new ideas and concepts, which are applied through a process, which then becomes innovation. This states that any innovation is a process that is based on the creativity of mind(s) and creativity is reliant on innovation to become tangible. Continue reading

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning – STP Model

The STP process is a very important process in a marketing strategy as it helps the organisation in creating personalized marketing mix packages which target specific group of the market segment with similar characteristics and needs. The STP process consists of three main activities: market segmentation, market targeting and market positioning. The level and category of segmentation process employed varies significantly depending factors like Dimension of the organisation. Point at which it is carried in the marketing planning process. Financial position of the organisation. Current market position. STP Model – Different Stages STP Model often used before marketing programs is planned. STP Model is related with market research and marketing research. STP Model uses information about current market size, market shares, concentration of customer base for particular products, potential customers, customer’s purchase decision process that gathered from market and marketing research to find out kinds of consumers with different needs, Continue reading