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

Case Study: Balancing Culture and Growth at Starbucks

Howard Schultz built Starbucks into one of the most successful companies in the United States. Indeed, Starbucks has joined such other iconic American corporations as Disney and McDonald’s in spreading its brand across the globe. Indeed, Schultz has come to symbolize a new breed of high successful entrepreneurs. His 2000 memoir, Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, became an instant best-seller. People can be forgiven if they believe Schultz was the company’s founder, but this is not the case. Starbucks, in fact, was founded in 1971. It was already a thriving, albeit small, coffee bean market in Seattle’s Pike Place Market when Schultz first dropped in. At the time, he was selling kitchenware for a Swedish manufacturer. It was, he claims, love at first smell. In 1982, he moved to Seattle and joined the company as director of retail operations. A visit Continue reading

Abey Francis

Case Study: Analyzing Kodak’s Business Failure

Eastman Kodak is in most certainty the story of an organization that has failed to correctly manage and implement change. The company which was enjoying sales of around US$10 billion in 1981 has a net income of only US$139 million in 2005. Kodak’s brand value also slipped down dramatically. An estimated US$2.6 billion was lost owing to the decrease in organization’s brand value. A number of factors played an important role in Eastman Kodak’s tragic decline. The most important factor that contributed to Kodak’s demise was the rigid thinking on part of its management that stopped them from taking timely initiative towards adoption of digital technology in digital communications segment of the company. Another important letdown related to change implementation occurred when Kodak’s management failed to realize that it needs to continuously monitor the changes occurring in the environment and then take small continuous steps towards complete adoption of a Continue reading

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What is Transformational Leadership?

In any organization, the focus is based on yielding high profits. The key to this lies in the leader, who in turn inspires the staff. Leadership in an organization is usually classified into different categories based on the style the leader uses. Different leadership styles are used to attain desired goals, but the secret to an organization that is effective in achieving its goals lies in the use of transformational leadership. A leader usually uses power and influence to exercise authority. In transformational leadership, however, the idea is to emphasize influence to manage the teams and bring them aboard to understand the leader’s vision. Transformational leadership can be defined as implementing new ideas through adopting a more flexible and universal method of influencing and continually ameliorating those around them. This type of leadership calls for the leader and the staff to improve one another’s motivation levels. Motivational leaders bravely work towards making Continue reading

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The Significance of Price Elasticity of Demand

Price elasticity of demand (PED) is a measure of the responsiveness of change in quantity demanded of a good/service to a change in price, ceteris paribus. As the law of demand indicates, when the price of a good/service increases, the demand of it will decrease. Conversely, when the price of a product decreases, the demand of the product will increase. However, the extent to which a price change impacts the demand differs widely from produce to product. PED=(change in quantity demanded)/(change in price). If this value is bigger than one, the product is said to be price elastic (price sensitive), whereby a change in price will lead to a greater than proportionate change in quantity demanded. If the PED is smaller than one, the product will be price inelastic (price insensitive), where a percentage change in price will lead to a smaller percentage change in quantity demanded. And when PED=1, Continue reading

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Risk Matrix Approach to Risk Analysis

A risk matrix is defined as a table that is divided into several categories of probability, likelihood, or frequency for its rows, and multiple categories of severity, impact, or consequences for its columns. The constituents of risk ordinarily attest themselves as a hazard; which refers to the likely origin of a harmful outcome and harms; which are the ensuing damages to the environment. It incorporates generally accepted ratings of risk, urgency and priority, with every row-column pair. This is represented by distinct cells which are separately colored, using red, green and yellow colors. Each distinct cell has a different risk rating, for instance, cells colored in red will indicate risks that require an urgent attention, whereas those that are colored in green will indicate those risks that do not require to be dealt with urgently. The yellow colored cells indicate those risks that fall in between the ratings of very urgent and Continue reading

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Benefits and Drawbacks of Scientific Management Theory

Management has changed from traditional methods to more modern forms of leadership. The change has been brought by the need to change and to try to make the organizations work better. Different approaches to organizational design can affect the company’s work differently, so the management style should be chosen individually for each case, depending on the organization’s goals. One of the options is scientific management, based on applying scientific theories and principles to design work in organizations. Since the early 20th century, scientific management has been at the forefront of organizational design. The design development was spearheaded by Frederick W. Taylor, who aimed to boost workplace productivity using scientific techniques. Scientific management has substantially influenced work design in contemporary companies, with its virtues and flaws under everyday discussion. The prediction of scientific management is based on the notion that efficiency in the workplace may be increased via scientific methodologies and Continue reading

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