Case Study on Entrepreneurship: Larry Page

Business Analysis

The Boundaryless Career: Modern Contemperory Perspective on Career

Human Resource Management

Concepts of Throughput Accounting and Theory of Constraints

Financial Management

Gantt Charts – Tool for Project Planning and Scheduling

Project Management

Kaizen – Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

Operations Management

Culture as a Normative Control Tool in Organizations

Proponents of corporate culture as an informal control mechanism regard culture as a management tool that can be manipulated though the actions of top management. Culture is a management tool; however, there is a counter-view that corporate culture is a rather complex construct. People argue that culture should be regarded as something that an organization ‘is’, not as something that an organization ‘has’; it is not an independent variable, nor can it be created, discovered, or destroyed by the whims of management. Despite the academic debate surrounding corporate culture as a construct, for practicing managers, caught up with the need to control and recognizing the flaws in the more formal and bureaucratic mechanisms, the lure of cultural control as a management tool is highly seductive. Significance of Cultural and Normative Forms of Control From the last few years, organisations have become interested in organisational control and employees’ self-hood. This control Continue reading

Abey Francis

Advantages and Limitations of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

Before Balanced Scorecard (BSC) emerged, organizations usually use traditional methods of performance evaluation focused mainly on financial measures such as ROCE, sales and profits. Balanced Scorecard translates an organization’s mission and strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures that provides the framework for a strategic measurement and management system. The scorecard measures organizational performance across four linked perspectives: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. In recent years, a number of multi-national organizations have introduced BSC as part of their management control systems. Advantages of the Balanced Scorecard Balanced Scorecard has been widely used in many  organizations in the past 15 years. It obviously has some benefits to these organizations. Here are some of the advantages of Balanced Scorecard  and they are also reasons that make so many organizations adopt BSC. Firstly, each perspective of Balanced Scorecard  requires the identification of a number of goals, and suitable Continue reading

Abey Francis

Case Study: Seinfeld Ad Campaign by Amex

American Express is a global, diversified financial services company headquartered in New York. The company is over 150 years old, founded in 1850. It is best known for its credit card, charge card, and travelers check business, but has numerous ancillary operations that are profit centers. On of the key factors in the improvement of American Express in the market is the continual thrust of its brand. Beginning in the 1960s American Express distinguished itself for two decades with several highly acclaimed campaigns. Advertising Age included two 1970s American Express campaigns (‘‘Do You Know Me?’’ and ‘‘Don’t Leave Home without It’’ featuring Karl Malden) on its list of the ‘‘50 Best Commercials.’’ The 1988 print campaign featuring photos of famous card members by Annie Leibovitz was a finalist for the book Advertising’s Ten Best of the Decade 1980—1990. But in 1990 AT&T Corp. disrupted the general purpose credit card market Continue reading

Abey Francis

Concept of Organizational Effectiveness

Organizational effectiveness is defined as an extent to which an organization achieves its predetermined objectives with the given amount of resources and means without placing undue strain on its members. Sometimes efficiency and effectiveness are used as synonyms. However, there exists a difference between the two concepts. Therefore, it is important to explain the difference between the concepts of effectiveness and efficiency to understand why organizations may be effective but not efficient, or efficient but not effective. Effectiveness is a broad concept and takes into account a collection of factors both inside and outside an organization. It is commonly referred to as the degree to which predetermined goals are achieved. On the other hand, efficiency is a limited concept that pertains to the internal working of an organization. It refers to an amount of resources used to produce a particular unit of output. It is generally measured as the ratio Continue reading

Abey Francis

Wage Differentials – Definition, Causes and Types

Wage differentials have a great economic and social significance; they are directly related to the allocation of the economic resources of a country, including manpower growth of the national income, and the pace of economic development. Social welfare activity depends, in a large measure, on such wage differentials as will: Cause labor to be allocated among different occupations, industries and, geographical areas in the economy in such a manner as to maximize the national product. Enable full employment of the resources of the economy to be attained; and Facilitate the most desirable rate of economic progress. Wage differentials reflect difference in the physical and mental abilities of workers, differences in productivity, in the efficiency of management and in consumer preferences, and act as sign posts for labor mobility. By providing an important incentive for labour mobility, they bring about a re-allocation of the labor force under changing circumstances. Under competitive Continue reading

Abey Francis

Case Study: The Collaboration Between Sony and Ericsson

Nowadays, it’s very common for companies from different countries and sector to work together. In 2001, a joint venture company – Sony Ericsson Mobile communication has been established by a Japanese electronics company Sony Corporation and Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson. The aim of this cooperation is to produce the mobile phone with multimedia communication solution to customers all over the world. The initial for this collaboration is to associate the Sony’s multimedia consumer electronics expertise and Ericsson’s technical knowledge in telecommunications. Once Sony Ericsson established, both of the companies stopped their individual mobile business. The Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications is a London-based 50:50 joint venture business. Before the collaboration, Ericsson ran its mobile business in the market for years and obtained 10.7% in the handset market in 2000. It has a great loss when faced the cheaper mobile phone producer as Nokia. Mobile phone is one of the core businesses Continue reading

Abey Francis