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

Difference Between a Team and a Group

The terms team and group are often used interchangeably in management subjects, but there are some differences between these two concepts.  A group is a collection of individuals who coordinate their individual efforts. On the other hand, at team is a group of people who share a common team purpose and a number of challenging goals. The notable  difference between a team and a group is that: A group may be formal or informal where as a team is necessarily formal. A group may or may not have a common goal to work towards but a team efforts are clustered towards the attainment of organizational objectives. A group can be organizational or social. A team is mostly organizational. A group is an aggregate of persons with close inter relationships. A group is a cluster of two or more individuals who interact with each other on a relatively enduring basis, identify Continue reading

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Alignment – A Strategic Management Concept By Kaplan & Norton

Alignment is a  key factor in effective implementation of strategy. Most large organizations are divided into business units which are out of sync and work at cross purposes.  The challenge is to coordinate the activities of these units and leverage their skills for the benefit of the organization as a whole. Kaplan & Norton  call this alignment on their book “Alignment:  Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies.” “Most organizations attempt to create synergy, but in a fragmented, uncoordinated way,”  Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. By aligning the activities of its various business and support units, an organization can create additional sources of value in various ways. Financial synergies can be generated through centralized resource allocation and financial management. Value can also be created if corporate headquarters can operate internal capital markets better than external market mechanisms and share knowledge across business units, in a manner that Continue reading

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Catastrophe Bonds or CAT Bonds

Catastrophe Bonds (or CAT Bonds) are high-yield, risk-linked securities used to transfer explicitly to the capital markets major catastrophe exposures such as low  probability disastrous losses due to hurricanes and earthquakes.  It has a special condition that states that if the issuer (Insurance or Reinsurance Company) suffers a particular predefined catastrophe loss, then payment of interest and/or repayment of principal is either deferred or completely waived.  These bonds were first introduced as a solution to problems resulting from traditional  insurance market capacity constraints, excessive insurance premia, and insolvency risk  due to catastrophic losses. Catastrophe Bonds or CAT Bonds are complex financial tools which transfer peril specific risks  to the capital markets instead of an insurance company. The peril risk is transferred through a complex system of events which include creation of a special purpose vehicle by a sponsor, modeling event  scenarios by qualified risk management firms, drafting of a bond Continue reading

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What is 4G?

Fourth generation (4G) wireless was originally conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same organization that developed the wired Internet. It is not surprising, then, that DARPA chose the same distributed architecture for the wireless Internet that had proven so successful in the wired Internet. Although experts and policymakers have yet to agree on all the aspects of 4G wireless, two characteristics have emerged as all but certain components of 4G: end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP), and peer-to-peer networking. An all IP network makes sense because consumers will want to use the same data applications they are used to in wired networks. A peer-to-peer network, where every device is both a transceiver and a router/repeater for other devices in the network, eliminates this spoke-and-hub weakness of cellular architectures, because the elimination of a single node does not disable the network. The final definition of “4G” will have to Continue reading

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Organizational Development through Team Building

There are a variety of situations where new teams are formed. The project based, cross-functional work team has become the basis of industry in the 1990’s. Virtual team organization is rapidly becoming the model for flexibility and agility in organizing quickly and effectively to get jobs done. New teams usually have a clear task focus in the early going and there is usually a clear understanding of the short term goals. The new team members are also generally technically competent and there usually is a challenge in the project that will draw on their technical capabilities. While the early activities of a team are clearly focused on task and work issues, relationship problems tend do develop as they do in any human system. By the time these interpersonal issues surface the team may be well along in its activities. The issues may become very difficult and very costly to work Continue reading

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Difference Between Human Relations and Industrial Relations

The term human relations lays stress upon the processes of inter-personal relationships among individuals as well as the behavior of individuals as members of groups. The term industrial relations is used widely in industrial organizations and refers to the relations between the employers and workers in an organization, at any specified time. Thus, while problem of human relations are personal in character and are related to the behavior of individuals where moral and social element predominate, the term industrial relation is comprehensive covering human relations and the relations between the employers and workers in an organization as well as matters regulated by law or by specific collective agreement arrived at between trade unions and the management. However, the concept of industrial relations has undergone a considerable change since the objective of evolving sound and healthy industrial relations today is not only to find out ways and means to solve conflicts Continue reading

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