Case Study: Southwest Airlines Competitive Advantages

For most of the last fifteen years, the U.S. airline industry has been one of the least attractive to be in. Following the 1978 deregulation of the industry, twenty-nine new airlines entered the industry between 1978 and 1993- This rapid increase in air ­line carrying capacity led to a situation of overcapacity. As more and more airlines chased passengers, fares were driven down to levels barely sufficient to maintain the prof ­itability of U.S. airlines. Indeed, twice since 1978 the indus ­try has been engulfed in an intense price war–first in the1981-1983 period and then again in the 1990-1993 period. So intense did the com ­petition become during these two periods that in 1982 the whole industry lost $700 million, while in the 1990-1992 period the industry lost a staggering $7.1 billion, more than had been made during the previous fifty-year history of the industry. Despite the obviously hostile nature Continue reading

Scope of Grid Computing

EXPLOITING UNDERUTILIZED RESOURCES The easiest use of grid computing is to run an existing application on a different machine. The machine on which the application is normally run might be unusually busy due to an unusual peak in activity. The job in question could be run on an idle machine elsewhere on the grid. There are at least two prerequisites for this scenario. First, the application must be executable remotely and without undue overhead. Second, the remote machine must meet any special hardware, software, or resource requirements imposed by the application. In most organizations, there are large amounts of underutilized computing resources. Most desktop machines are busy less than 5 percent of the time. In some organizations, even the server machines can often be relatively idle. Grid computing provides a framework for exploiting these underutilized resources and thus has the possibility of substantially increasing the efficiency of resource usage. Another Continue reading

The Effect of Organizational Structure on Innovation

Organizational structure is the skeleton system based on which an organization functions.  Organizational structure deals with the framework which defines the relation between people and positions in the organization. Organization structure is defined as the formal system of task and reporting relationships that controls, coordinates and motivates employees so that they cooperate and work together to achieve an organization’s goals. Several tasks are to be implemented in an organization, for these organizational tasks to be successful, they should be coordinated. Organizational structure supports division of work, categorizing the tasks and supervision in an organization. An effective organizational structure aids the efficient running of an organization. The factors that govern the formulation of an organizational structure are benefits of channelizing the tasks, hurdles due to communication and obstacles due to formatting the authority levels. Organizational structure helps the managers in a firm to describe, distribute and get job done. Organizational structure Continue reading

Factors Affecting / Limiting Consumption

As the demand for a good depends upon its price, similarly consumption of a community depends upon the level of income. In other words, consumption is a function of income. The consumption function relates the amount of consumption to the level of income. When the income of a community rises, consumption also rises. How much consumption rises in response to a given increase in income depends upon the propensity to consume or consumption function. It should be borne in mind that the consumption function or the propensity to consume is the whole schedule which describes the amounts of consumption at various levels of income. Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. What restricts consumption? The factors which limit consumption are: The product and its limitations: This is a part of market research which is of great importance to product development and design.   Solution may be obtained Continue reading

Importance of Aligning Human Resource Processes with Business strategy

Strategic alignment these terms are some of the phrases which are being used to explain the latest, evolving function of human resources process. The aligning human resource processes with business strategy about the growth of the business, increasing the performance of the employees and keeping the costs under a control. Which means the employee satisfaction and benefits provide to the population as they are not the strategic goals, but they are tools to reach the goals important for the whole organization. The importance of the alignment of the human resource process with business strategy is about going deeper and finding the real root components of the successful human capital management in the organization. The HR Managers have to identify the real goals of the business, the business way how to reach the goals and the real needs of the business from Human Resources. The HR tends to take care of Continue reading

Asset and Liability Management (ALM)

In banking, asset and liability management (ALM) is used to manage the risks that arise due to mismatches between the assets and liabilities (debts and assets) of the bank. Banks face several risks like liquidity risk, market risk, interest rate risk, credit risk, and operational risk. Asset Liability Management (ALM) is a strategic management tool to manage interest rate risk and liquidity risk faced by banks, other financial services companies, and corporations. Banks manage the risks of Asset liability mismatch by matching the assets and liabilities according to the maturity pattern or matching the duration, by hedging and by securitization. Asset and liability management remain high-priority areas for bank regulators, with an emphasis on the management of market risk, liquidity risk, and credit risk. Asset/liability managers face the challenge of keeping pace with industry changes as new areas of risk are identified and new tools and models are developed to Continue reading