Objectives of Sound Compensation Planning

The most important objective of any pay system is fairness or equity. The team equity has three dimensions: Internal equity: This ensures that more difficult jobs are paid more. External equity: This ensures that jobs are fairly compensated in comparison to similar jobs in the labour market. Individual equity: It ensures equal pay for equal work, i.e. each individual’s pay is fair in comparison to others doing the same jobs. In addition, there are other objectives as well. The ultimate goal of compensation administration (the process of managing a company’s compensation program) is to reward desired behaviours and encourage people to do well in there jobs. Some of the important objectives that are sought to be achieved through effective compensation management are listed below: Attract Talent: compensation needs to be high enough to attract talented people. Since many firms compete to hire the services of competent people, the salaries offered Continue reading

Management by Objectives (MBO) Derivatives

One of the pre-requisites for effective implementation of  Management by Objectives (MBO) is a clear thinking at the corporate level translated into long-term plans. Many organizations have over the years, implemented MBO and improved their operations and performance. Effective implementation of MBO requires a good reporting system. This is necessary for taking timely remedial action in case of deficiency is noticed in any area. As organization grows in size, this reporting system becomes complex and time consuming. It may not be possible for top management to directly supervise each and every activity at lower interested in critical activities rather than every activity. Thus, as a bye product of MBO, large organizations introduced what is called Management By Exception (MBE). In this management technique, higher levels of management will concentrate only on exceptional situations, i.e., critical areas. Both MBO and MBE are scientific forms of management. However, they can be successful Continue reading

What is Agile Methodology?

Engineering methodologies required a lot of documentation thereby causing the pace of development to slow down considerably. Agile Methodologies evolved in the 1990s to significantly eliminate this bureaucratic nature of engineering methodology. It was part of developer’s reaction against “heavyweight” methods, who desired to drift away from traditional structured, bureaucratic approaches to software development and move towards more flexible development styles. They were called the ‘Agile’ or ‘Light Weight’ methods and were defined in 1974 by Edmonds in a research paper. Agile methodology is an approach to project management, typically used in software development. It refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development. Requirements and solutions evolve through cooperation between self-organizing cross-functional teams, without concern for any hierarchy or team member roles. It promotes teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the project life-cycle with increased face-to-face communication and reduced amount of written documentation. Agile methods break Continue reading

Management Planning and Control

The essence of the management process is decision-making. Decision making is an unavoidable and continuous management activity. It may be directed towards some specific objectives, or it may result as a reaction of environmental factors as they occur. The decision-making process should be both efficient and effective. It would be effective when management’s objectives are achieved. It is said to be efficient when objectives are realized with the minimum use of resources. The process of decision-making involves two basic management functions of planning and control. Planning Function of  Management   The decision-making process starts with planning.   Planning is a statement of what should be done, how it should be done and when it should be done. It is the design of a desired future state of an entity and of the effective ways of bringing it about.   Its basic purpose is to provide guidelines for making decisions.   Continue reading

Methods of Corporate Restructuring

The important methods of Corporate Restructuring are: Joint ventures Sell off and spin off Divestitures Equity carve out (ECO) Leveraged buy outs (LBO) Management buy outs Master limited partnerships Employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) 1. Joint Ventures Joint ventures are new enterprises owned by two or more participants. They are typically formed for special purposes for a limited duration. It is a combination of subsets of assets contributed by two (or more) business entities for a specific business purpose and a limited duration. Each of the venture partners continues to exist as a separate firm, and the joint venture represents a new business enterprise. It is a contract to work together for a period of time each participant expects to gain from the activity but also must make a contribution. For Example: GM-Toyota JV: GM hoped to gain new experience in the management techniques of the Japanese in building high-quality, Continue reading

Emerging Markets for International Capital Investments

Of late emerging markets have become a buzzword among the  international investors for reaping greatest potential rewards which would be  impossible if they stayed put in their affluent hinterlands. The term emerging  markets (EMs) is a collective reference to the stock markets of the developing  nations.  A question, which overpowers a discerning mind, is why the  international investors are looking towards emerging markets for investing  their funds instead of established markets like US? Three reasons can be  given to answer this question. First, the average total return of emerging  markets  has outstripped those of  developed markets. Investments total return index computed by the IFC (International Finance Corporation)  which  measures the total return for each country based on those stock available to  foreign investors shows that return on investment in IFC composite of EMs is  61.64 per cent higher than the return on investment in US market over the  years. The Continue reading