Divestiture Strategy

Selling a division or part of an organization is called divestiture. Divestiture strategy is often used to raise capital for further strategic acquisitions or investments. Divestiture strategy can be part of an overall retrenchment strategy to rid an organization of businesses that are unprofitable, that require too much capital, or that do not fit well with the firm’s other activities. Divestment is a difficult decision for the management of any organization. The barriers that impede an organization from following a divestment strategy have been described as follows: Structural (or Economic) Strategy. Characteristics of a business’s technology and its fixed and working capital impede exit, especially if the business is a core competence to the company. Corporate Strategy. Relationships between the various business units within an organization may deter divestment of a particular business unit. Managerial  Strategy. Aspects of company’s decision making process inhibit exit from an unprofitable business. Such aspects Continue reading

Committee Organizational Structure

A committee organization is an association of people set up to arrive at solutions to common problems. The line people are given opportunities to discuss their problems in the committee. The committee organizational structure is not like line or functional organization, but is similar to staff organization. Its decisions are implemented, whereas staff decisions are not necessarily implemented.   It is a formal part of the organizational structure wherein the members are specifically mentioned. For example, the Finance Committee will include all the functional managers, viz. Marketing Manager, Production Manager, Personnel Managers, etc. as members, and the Managing Director as the Chairman. It will decide the financial requirements of each and every department. The decisions taken by the committee are followed by the line people, as the committees are representatives of various functional departments. Committee organizational structure provides integrated ideas of various related people of the company. Participative management in Continue reading

Methods of Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal are considered to be the vital tool, to measure the performance of an employee and use the information collected, to optimize the resource of individuals in an organization.   It is systematic evaluation of individuals with respect to their task performance and their potential for development individually and collectively. It refers to the assessments of an employee’s actual performance, behavior on jobs and his/her potential for further performance.   The main purposes of appraisal are to assess training need to effect promotion and to give high pay. We may say that appraising the performance of an individual has been known as merit rating, but in recent years, we may closure different terminologies have been used to denote this process such as performance appraisal, performance review, performance evaluation, employee appraisal, progress appraisal report, personal preview and so on. Following methods are widely used in Performance Appraisal. 1. Forced-Choice Rating Continue reading

Concept of Decisions and Decision Making Process in Crisis Management

External and Internal business environment have effects on business operations and various strategic decisions taken by organizations. If organizations are not aware about the change in business environment or if they fail to predict the change, it may create crisis for the organization. Decisions and decision-making process has important role in crisis management approach. According to Ducker “A decision is a judgment and choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between what is right or wrong, at best it is a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”- but more often choice between two courses of actions neither of which is probably more nearly right than the other” Decision-making is a dynamic process, a complex search of information, alternatives and choices. There are two approaches to modeling human decision-making; The Outcome Oriented Approach and the Process Oriented Approach. The Outcome Oriented Approach, based on the view that if one Continue reading

Liquid Mutual Fund Schemes

The objective of liquid mutual fund schemes  is to invest in short-term money market instruments of good credit quality. The fund predominantly invests in money market instruments and provides investors the returns that are available on these instruments. The investment portfolio is very liquid, and enables investors to hold their investments for very short horizons of a day or more. The liquid funds are normally open-ended. It provides with the following options/schemes, which are sub-products within the liquid fund. Overnight Option (Growth): This option is meant to be used by investors with very short-term investment horizon and is fully invested in the call money market. Overnight Option (Dividend): This option is meant for investors who have short-term funds to deploy but would like to earn some income on such deployment. The portfolio in this option is invested in short-term floating rate instruments, call markets and in repos. The average maturity Continue reading

Role Efficacy: Meaning, Aspects and Measurement

What is Role Efficacy? The performance of a person working in an organization depends on his own potential effectiveness, technical competence, managerial experience as well as the design of the role that he performs in the organization. It is the integration of the two that ensures a person’s effectiveness in the organization. Unless a person has the requisite knowledge, technical competence and the skills required for the role, he cannot be effective.   If the role does not allow the person to use his competence, and if he constantly feels frustrated in the role, his effectiveness is likely to be low. The integration of a person and the role comes about when the role is able to fulfill the needs of the individual, and when the individual in turn is able to contribute to the evolution of the role. The more we move from role taking to role making, the Continue reading