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A few of the Essay and Assignment tackled on Human Resource Management (HRM)
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| | Case study analysis Siemens Nixdorf & M&DDiv PolyProd | | | – “To exist is to change” goes a famous adage. And this would be the simplest and shortest explanation to describe how important the change factor is. Change affects different situations and different individuals differently. With changing patterns of technology and advancement, organisational change has come into the motion of big question to solve at organisational and corporate levels. Gone are the days when individuals could expect to work in the same business, under the same ownership, with the same people, and the same customer base for the whole of their life and career (Cook, et al, 2004)
Question now arises what this change is and why change has become so important? In laymen terms, Organisations are not same all time. This process of becoming different in order to transform to a new system can be defined as organisational change. In plain words, Change is a transformation where its source is past and can be forecast into the future.
Though change is often seen as good but it is often very difficult to change. As organisation (profit and non-profit) tends to change they often ignore impact of change on people and individuals working towards the organisation goals. Cameron & Green (2004) suggests that individual change is at the heart of everything that is achieved in organisation. Once individual has motivation to do something different; the whole world can begin to change. However, this story is not as simple. Individuals, teams and organisational responsibility all plays a part in the process to change, and leaders, particularly have onerous responsibility and that can be termed as “making it happen”
Roping in these complex phenomena of change and its impact on human resource; this report focus on theories and leadership change required to enforce the change process in organisations. To delve more into the practicality of the concept two case studies viz. Siemens and PolyProd, has been incorporated to explain in depth the problem and how and what organisation could do to bring upon the change to instil success towards the company growth. Finally, recommendations along with conclusion has been given following with a brief section of implementation plan.
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| | Essay on Performance Appraisal | | | Performance appraisal is an essential component of organizational management. The philosophy behind performance appraisal and proportionate rewarding is that the employees need to progress in life, career and earnings proportionate to the success of the organization. The employees know that a loss making company does not increase the remuneration or salary. Performance appraisal is a process carried out all through the year and not a one-off annual meeting, although the appraisal culminates in the personal meeting, where employees achievements or otherwise are reviewed. There are many factors that affect the performance of an employee apart from his or her own initiatives and motivation levels. Some of these factors are availability of organizational resources, strategies and external environmental influence such as industry and economy. Performance appraisal of an employee on an overseas assignment poses even greater difficulties as continuous monitoring of the performance of the employee is not always possible. In such cases, the appraisal needs to be done on the achievement of deliverables and in line with the living conditions of home and host counties. | | |
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| | Essay on the topic of Expatriate Management | | | Business is no longer limited by national boundaries. The majority of the world's large corporations perform a significant portion of their activities now outside their home countries. As many firms continue to establish and strengthen their presence overseas, they are also experiencing high failure rates among their international managers. According to a number of studies, the rate of failure among American expatriates for example ranges from 25 percent to 40 percent depending on the location of assignment (Maali H. Ashamalla, 1998). This high rate of failure is caused by the numerous challenges faced in expatriate management. | | |
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| | Self reflection assignment using the theories of Change Management | | | ABC Constructions Pte Limited, a Singapore based construction company is experiencing diminished business and revenues for the past few years due to global meltdown. The company is into infrastructure building operations such as constructions of roads, bridges, flyovers, underpasses etc. The company operates in several developed and developing countries. The company has a huge reputation of quality construction and reliability. The company is currently experiencing a drop in its business volume as most of the countries where is operates have However, it has not taken any steps to counter the adverse effects of economical recession in terms of structural and functional changes to the organization. The company had huge capital reserves, which were being used to meet high overheads and operational expenses of its offices located in different nations. However, management is of late realizing the fact that the company does not have a sound strategy to deal with recession. The structural and functional changes to the organization now seem imminent. The management has identified the problem areas of the organization as a result of global economic meltdown. However, the management is yet to come out with a strategy to ensure sustenance of the business. The first step the management is contemplating is downsizing the business operations. But it is not sure as to how to go about it and also is not sure of the impacts of downsizing on the functioning of the organization. The organization so far has been running with hierarchical structure and many managers are insecure of their positions as a result of impending change. There is also a power battle on some quarters of the management to resist change and to continue operations without downsizing even at the cost of using up capital reserves. This section is portraying the image that recession is temporary and that downsizing would adversely influence the image of the organization as a financially sound and prosperous. There is also a section of managers in the senior management level who are continuing to work with the organization despite the fact that their roles in the organization are not crucial to the functioning and success of the organization. The board of directors has replaced the aged CEO with a new younger CEO to formulate a strategy and implement it survive through the recession period. The CEO has realized all these organizational politics, power play and a tendency among some of the senior managers to shirk responsibilities and resistance to contribute to the functioning of the organization by doing multiple tasks etc. The CEO has identified the current requirement of the company to sail through the recession period as downsizing operations and even staff, organizational restructuring and cultural change that expects mangers to involve in multiple tasks to make up for downsizing of the staff. The change processes have been identified and the change management team has been set up headed by the CEO himself. | | |
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| | A comparison of two whole-school approaches to behavior management | | | There have been a lot of healthy and positive changes in the whole scenario of schools across regions from the last decade. The background of the traditional school setup has been substituted by a new educational environment. The scenario in the traditional setup was quite an authoritarian way, where the cane ruled the students through control and fear. However, the setup has now been replaced by a restorative way, where the value of self-esteem is more welcomed by both teachers and students alike. Schools have now been featured as the ‘centre for social change that could provide all the social support that our youth was increasingly lacking’ (Harrison). At the same time, positive behavior support models are created and developed in order to review students behavior problems and conflicts. Such models are efficient and effective in teaching students how to demonstrate appropriate behavior and thus enhance their learning skills. This paper addresses the aspects of this restorative approach along with its comparison with SWPBS approach (School-wide Positive Behavior Support) adopted by schools in an attempt to find out the constructive changes it has brought to the school setup and environment. Before going into details of the two whole-school approaches mentioned above, lets first have a brief look on the entire scenario of the school environment and learning situations.
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| | A Critical Review of Kothari et al, 2000, Performance matched discretionary accrual measures, Sloan School of Management MIT, USA | | | Kothari et al (2000) compares in this research paper specification and power of tests based on performance matched discretionary accruals with that from traditional discretionary accrual measures such as Jones and modified Jones models. The objective of the research is to test whether performance matched discretionary accruals approach is powerful enough at estimating discretionary accruals. Their contention that the reason to conduct the research stems from the simple accrual, cash flow and earnings model which shows that working capital accruals increase in sales growth and earnings. This means that if performance exhibits momentum then accruals would be non-zero. Although, a detailed simulation of evidence on alternative measures of discretionary accruals is done, the attempt to use performance matched discretionary accruals as a measure of discretionary accruals needs exhaustive research taking into account other industrial factors. It fails to take into account the inherent errors present in estimated total accruals using the balance sheet approach. The research paper at best is a pointer to further research and study with a guided approach taking into account other factors like cash flows, size, year, industry and not just returns on investments. | | |
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| | Analysis of the Anglo French Concorde project to design and build a supersonic airliner | | | When the last flight of the iconic Anglo Frech Concorde flew in 2003, it signaled the end of the most adventurous and colorful era in the Civil Aviation history. The Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde aircraft was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport (SST). It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (Kenneth Owen, 2001). First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued for 27 years. The Concorde SST project was a joint collaboration between the UK and the French governments. The project was executed by a consortium with members such as the British Aircraft Corp. and Aerospatiale. These were the companies that had designed the conceptualized the aircraft. But the respective governments had to intervene since they ran short of funds to execute the project. Although, Concorde SST was the most successful and colorful chapter of Aviation, which ended in 2003, the project days were not satisfactory as far as the performance of the project consortium was concerned. The project was marred by delays and spiraling costs. The budget escalated many times the initial estimate. The project duration was extended to fourteen year from the initially planned four years. Although, there were a couple of external influences that caused the delay or spiraling budget, most of the reasons to the delay and increased costs could be attributed to inefficient management practices. The paper analyses as to what went wrong the caused enormous delay and huge increase in costs and finds out reasons that caused them. The paper also does a stakeholder analysis to find out the extent of influence of each of the stakeholder involved in the project. The paper makes recommendations as to how the problems could have been fixed and the delays and spiraling budget could have been avoided.
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| | Analysis of the famous case study ‘Motivating staff with kind words’ | | | The paper answer 3 questions given at the end of the case study –
1. Identify & Explain what theories of motivation Roger appeared to be relying on to motivate his staff?
2. What Motivation theory demonstrate the inadequacy of his approach?
3. Do you think Roger’s Motivation plan worked? Why or Why not?
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| | Analysis of the famous case study –“Making Employees mobile – An exercise in strategic approaches to Expatriate Management” | | | Globalization has had many influences on the ways businesses are managed and run. Businesses are opening up their offices in far off lands. Borders have melted and cross border investments have become order of the day. The new mantra in the global business is to take the operations where resource and skills are readily available. The influence of multinational corporations on the global economy is increasing by the day and expatriates are becoming crucial to the success of these multinational corporations (Wang, 2008). While hitherto local companies are operating in many nations due to globalization, human resource is increasingly finding it easier to move and work anywhere in the world. Cross border investments have also resulted in transportation of human resource across borders. Certain talents are restricted to particular parts of world such as electronic engineers in South East Asia, automobile engineers in Europe, information technology experts in India and China. Companies that are involved in particular operations require expatriates who are skilled and experienced enough in carrying out the work. Organizations wish to have competitive advantage in the long run even in the face of additional costs. Cost saving approach in human resource management is slowly giving way to securing strategic advantage in the business. According to Harvey (1996), the key to competing successfully in the global market place is staffing important expatriate posts with skilled and experienced leaders (Lin & Wei, 2005). In order to do so, companies are willing to hire skilled manpower from abroad. This puts up many challenges to organizations such as relocation of employees, ensuring their comfort factor in the new location else the new recruits return to their home country. Related businesses such as relocation consultants are making the best out of the situation and helping employees to relocate in an alien nation. Although, it all looks easy, human resource management needs to take several steps in order to ensure willingness from the expatriate recruits to relocate and also adjust to the new surroundings. This paper analyses some of the issues of expatriate management such as attracting the right work force, dealing with cultural diversity, catering to family needs of the relocating expatriate employee etc.. The paper also discusses the role of the organization in ensuring smooth transition of expatriate employees from home country to the work place. The paper finally makes recommendations to the human resource departments of organizations on how best to offset the challenges of expatriate employee recruitment, relocation and loyalty.
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| | Analysis of the famous The Catastrophe Concepts contract Case study | | | This essay answers the below 2 questions on the case study –
1. If you were George Chapel, how would you respond to Lilly Zheng's questions?
2. Draft a suggested restraint oftrade clause (which ought to have been included in Karen's original written
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| | Analysis of the Problem ‘High turnover among Generation Y employees’ and Suggested remedies | | | Today’s organizations are facing high turnover among employees like never before. The boom in information technology and opening up of markets that were hitherto conservative are opening up job markets even to the semi-skilled workers. Let us take an example of call center employees. The primary skills prospective employees need to possess to land up a job in a good call center are good language and communication skills. The skill sets required to get an employment are becoming generic these days and not task specific as in the past. For example, a person with good communicating skills could land up a job as a sales person in as insurance company, as a front desk executive in hospitality industry or as a call center agent. Such jobs require college level education and not even graduation as a pre-requisite. So the temptations to start earning even before acquiring a specialized knowledge are too high for generation Y to resist. So they jump into the work force of an organization even before they complete graduation or just after the completion. Barring the current recession such has been the requirement of work force of the corporate world since the past decade or so. Even the organizations are inadvertently adding to the high turnover by wooing the employees of some other companies to join their work force. With such tempting offers all over the place, the generation Y employees are pampered with higher perks, designations etc. Such being the scenario, it is impossible for the corporate entities to cut down their efforts to woo employees of competitor organizations. In the cut throat atmosphere of deadlines, deliverance parameters of the 21st century corporate atmosphere, the corporate entities do not mind paying more to get their work done. This calls for a complete different approach as a solution towards retaining generation Y employees that are prone to change jobs at the drop of the hat.
It is the task of the HRD in an organization to come up with ideas and practices that help retaining generation Y employees. HRD must approach the problem in a holistic manner and not just with a view that ‘my gains could be your losses and I am not accountable for your losses’. This view would shift the approach from wooing the prospective employees to no end to absorb them in the work force to thinking of ways to retain the existing employees. If HRD in organizations just concentrate on getting new employees to fill the short fall in manpower, they would enter the ‘dog eat dog’ atmosphere. The HRD policy has been to meet the needs of the day than to have a long term vision of the organization and the well being and efficiency of the manpower. Such short sighted recruitment processes to meet the needs encourage prospective employees to make the best of the situation i.e. to cash in on attractive salary packages offered by different companies without long term career goals in mind. The irony of such fast paced recruitment is that in the recent times of recession, the employees are laid off at the same pace as they were recruited.
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| | Analytical essay on the Role of Wine Labels | | | Wine consumption dates back to the times human civilization was first known. Wine preparation has evolved since then and currently wine manufacturing industry is growing at a rapid phase. Between 1998 and 2003 the global wine market has grown by 12 percent (Synergyst, 2006). Global wine industry is becoming sophisticated by the day and the consumers are becoming more choosy about what they drink (Synergyst, 2006). There are varieties of wines apart from the main variety i.e. red and white wine. The wine taste varies depending upon the time it is left to ferment (George, 1989). Some of the costliest wines are matured for over a century. Wines are made of variety of agricultural produces such as grapes, apple, rice, barley, rice and many other fruits and grains (MacNeal, 2001). However, the most popular wine type is the one made from grapes. Varieties of grapes are used to make wines. The common broad category of grapes used to make wines is white grapes and red grapes (MacNeal, 2001). The wines are also accordingly named as red wine and white wine or champagne. Wine labels are important source of information for customer as they convey the information on source and origin of wine. Some wine labels display types of grapes used in making the wine and some do not. When customers at hotels wish to know what the particular wine brand they are ordering is made of, the managers would find themselves in difficulty if the type of grapes is not mentioned on the label. Generic wine labels of wines made in France do not have grape varieties printed and varietal wine labels in Australia have the grape variety printed on the label. This report analyses the how the presence or absence of grape varieties printed on wine labels affect the hotel staff, managers and the guests. The report also recommends measure to deal with the issue when grape varieties are not printed on labels and customers insist on knowing it. | | |
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| | Article on Organizational culture using the example of pharmaceutical industry | | | Organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that are difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different from that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear, etc. -- similar to what you can use to get a feeling about someone's personality. The present article reveals the things, views and approaches how one can have the change in organizational culture in a more positive way. An example of pharmaceutical industry has been used to get a better understanding of the organizational culture and the ways of managing it. | | |
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| | Assignment on Cross cultural management | | | Cultural sensitivity is awareness and an honest caring about another individual’s culture. Such sensitivity requires the ability to understand the perspective of those living in other societies and the willingness to put oneself in another’s shoes.
International managers can benefit greatly from understanding the nature, dimensions and variables of a specific culture and how these affect work and organizational processes. This culture awareness enables them to develop appropriate policies and determine how to plan, organize, lead and control in specific international setting. Such a process of adaptation to the environment is necessary to implement strategy successfully. It also leads to effective interaction in a workforce of increasing cultural diversity, in both the United States and other countries (Black & Mendenhall, 1990).
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| | Assignment on cross-cultural frameworks proposed by Hofstede & Trompenaars | | | The exercise is an attempt to examine aspects of cross-cultural framework as proposed by Hofstede and Trompenaars. Both the framework attempt to offer an understanding of culture across nations based on their proposed models. We would examine their work and would look at elements of similarity as well as aspects which are different. We will conclude with the section on why it is important for managers in global world to have a better understanding on managing cultural differences and the risk or reward for doing so | | |
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| | Assignment on different leadership approaches | | | Leadership indeed is something which leads people where they ought to go. Here in this assignment assuming I am newly appointed CEO of ‘Easy limited’- cycle manufacturing company, I will present how a leader should perform in order to ripe successful results to favour people as well as the company. Being a newly appointed CEO of Easy Limited is not an easy job. More to say not because it’s a critical position but company is in unimaginable low’s and seemingly has become beyond any control to save its future. | | |
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| | Assignment on HRM challenges that Aussie Best may face which opening its retail operations in China Market | | | Tian (1996) mentions that since 1978, China has embarked on an “Open Door” trade policy with the outside world. This has resulted in china becoming a crucial business partner for Australia with increasing bilateral trade. Kirk (2004) mentions that high Chinese economic growth has fueled the need for minerals and hence it has become one of Australia`s major minerals buyer. Australian companies have realized the huge untapped potential in the Chinese market and have started operations there. The opportunity however, doesn’t come without the challenges, largely related to human resource management.
Management of human resources is a multidimensional process with multiple effects. Treven and Mulej (2005) have mentioned that companies will face global competitive challenges regarding quality, society, technology and structure which will increase the importance of HRM. The choice of HR policies requires a study of various aspects keeping in mind the underlying objectives and the cost aspects. Any complexity which is introduced can cause information overload and may divert the focus of the organization which is incompatible with the company goals.
To open retail operations of Aussie Best, we will evaluate the Chinese retail industry to understand it better.
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| | Assignment on Impacts of Workplace Relations Act 1996 on HRM functions | | | November 2005 marked an era of significant change within work places Australia wide with the introduction of the Workplace Relations Act 1996. The Workchoice legislation has affected the human resource management (HRM) functions in several aspects including staffing, performance evaluation, training and industrial relations. The legislation covers three key changes of work place agreements, unfair dismissal laws and the union power. In relation to the human resource functions seek to improve and sustain the employee motivation to assist in achieving the organisation’s goals and objectives. | | |
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| | Assignment on Leadership qualifications | | | In this research paper a deep and profound study has been incorporated into the concept to understand what makes a good leaders and what all are the innate quality of a successful leader. The report is divided into sixth parts. First part is ‘Introduction’ which introduces the phenomenon and reveals the layout of whole plan of the report. The second part is about defining and understanding the topic to which the further study is based upon. The third part describes scheme of the ‘research methodology’ used to study the topic. The main objective of the chapter is to justify and explain the research methods, research philosophy, research approach, applied theories, data collection methods and data analyses methods used in this project. This study has been conducted with the comprehensive review of the existing literature (fourth part) which has helped in understanding the theoretical concepts and certain other researches and theories that exists in this field. Further interview method (fifth part) has also been used to evaluate the practical results by assessing what people in general feels about leaders and leadership attributes. The discussion has been made based on ‘research findings’ through interviews and literature review. The objective of this chapter is to analyse the results and seek answers for the research questions set in the first chapter. Finally, the last part brings the study to a close with balanced and coherent ‘Conclusion’ | | |
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| | Assignment on Organizational behaviour using the example of Woolworths limited | | | This essay outlines the major environmental influences that are impacting Woolworth and how these issues impacted on a range of relevant Organisational behaviour issues. | | |
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| | Assignment on Staff turnover in Hospitality Industry | | | Hospitality industry is full of great career opportunities, which signals substantial fluctuations of staff turnover in various sectors within the industry. There are a number of factors playing significant role in the turnover issue including, low salary rates in the market, poor recruitment and selection methods, lack of proper induction and training processes, and so on. The seasonal nature of the industry also contributes to the high turnover rates in different sectors, and more particularly, in the Pubs and Hotels sectors. Replacing staff is an expensive affair, but company management authorities can work out effectively on staff stability by improving work environment, conducting better training skills and programs, and building stronger relationships between employees and their supervisors. | | |
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| | Assignment on Steven Lukes’ Three Dimensional Power as applied to Insurance Company | | | The use of power to get compliance from others of one’s ideology, beliefs and intentions is age old. This is seen in politics, social life, religion and currently in corporate entities. Efforts have been done over centuries by sociologists, political scientists to bring this nature of empirical power within the frame work of theories. One of the most popular and widely accepted and practiced frame works of power in organizations of contemporary times is that of Steven Lukes’s theory of three dimensional powers (Maximiliano Lorenzi, 2006). First dimension is controlling behavior and actions of others are decision making power. Second dimension is warding off grievances by using non-decision power i.e. not to bring the grievance issue into the main political or organizational process. Third and the most important dimension is to extract willing compliance from others by implementing ideologies that run as undercurrent and bring about the desired behaviors and actions of others without even them knowing it. Simply put, the theory states that governments and now corporate bodies control others’ or their employees’ actions by using their decision making power, non-decision making power and ideological power. Let us analyze below the use of these three dimensions in a fictitious corporate entity. | | |
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| | Assignment on Theoretical models of motivation & their implications on workforce | | | Motivation is a psychological concept, surrounding which a number of theories have developed. What charges a human being towards an action, what determines his behaviour, what is the reason behind his work- all these are studied within the ambit of motivation. Motivation has become a very important factor in the business field, the realm of corporate and the sphere of the workplace. Managing and motivating workforce to perform a given task and achieve the best in it can be a difficult task and managers look for ways to motivate people at work to give their best to the organisation. Team effort and cooperative environment with a healthy competition can be hard to maintain. It is in this context that we have studied two classical theories of motivation- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Atkinson’s Achievement Motivation. Both the models give their versions of human behaviour motivation. The two theories combined together, and studied in the perspective of the workplace bring out the inference that the need for achievement, the desire to be applauded is the single most intense incentive or motivation for delivering the best | | |
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| | Aussie assembly case study | | | The object of this assignment is to examine the ways by which Human Resource (HR) systems and practices contribute to creating a sustainable competitive advantage into the future. Further, an analysis of the potential impacts of the HR systems in Aussie Assembly, in particular the tensions associated with the training issue, will be conducted. Recommendations will also be made regarding the ways by which these tensions can be overcome and which could contribute to creating a sustainable competitive advantage into the future | | |
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| | Business report on organization recruitment practices | | | Organizations can range from single-person businesses to multinational corporations employing hundreds of thousands of people. As organizations grow larger and technology becomes more complex, it also becomes increasingly difficult to coordinate the people involved in an enterprise. That is where the need of human resource management (HRM) is very much significant. With regard to the understanding of organizational management processes, a few things are taken into serious account such as benchmarking and ‘best practice’ | | |
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| | Case arguing for and against the point ‘Employees behave/ react the same if you decided to enrich their jobs’ | | | Increasing expansion and development in global economy and every country getting open to global development is building up base for many global challenges and amongst all the biggest challenge is Human Resource Management. “The key to business success lies in the effective management of human resources.” – Eun Jung Lee, Global HR Group, HR Operations Manager, LG Electronics. Yesteryears larger objectives of firms were exposed through the products it produced and hence, the workmen were the only people to work towards fulfillment of a company’s mission and vision statement by production unit only. Gradually the macro economic outlook has changed and not only what we produce is important but how we present it is equally essential. Therefore, a service where-in a lot of human and that too intellectual human intervention is required becomes the first choice for an employer. A product could be put in a caste and molded the way we want, easily. However, the question is big that is it possible that different individuals behave or react in a static or same format year-on-year to multiple cause and one particular objective? It is a debatable issue but is the statement or the question itself stands full validity and justification has been discussed in this piece of writing. | | |
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| | Construction of Synthetic leadership Intervention using several leadership theories | | | It is a known fact that organizations are run through their leaders. A successful organization owes its success to its leader just as a failed organization puts its failure on its leader. Organizations are no doubt made up of numerous members and it is their work, support and coordination that yield results. But an organization is like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces do not come together to form a picture; it requires an intelligent person- a leader- to bring the pieces together to give meaning to them by forming a picture. Thus, for the successful running of any organization, the most important component is the leader.
Then arises the question of what sort of a leader makes a successful leader. There are certain qualities which are commonly expressed as necessary for leaders of all types of organization. A leader is expected to be motivated to work for the organization. Motivation may occur through several means, but it should be self sustaining not short lived. Motivation develops commitment and loyalty in leaders which are important for a healthy organization. A motivated leader is capable of motivating his/her team as well, thus sustaining the organization. It has been observed that a lax leader always leads to indifferent workers. Also, leaders require certain organization specific knowledge and training.
The importance of a competent leadership has been recognized by theorists since a long time. Also, methods of leadership intervention are being developed because of the same reason. The concept of developing transformational leadership is always preceded by the question of whether leadership can be developed, taught and learned; however, it is now widely answered in the affirmative (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Therefore, the concept of leadership intervention is now quite popular. In fact, agencies and companies have been started for providing the service of leadership intervention. Leadership intervention is the involvement of a third party in developing competent leadership in an organization. It entails identification of defects in the organization’s leadership and system and evolving of methods to repair those defects. Usually leadership intervention has long lasting effects. It is undertaken with the expectation of improving the overall performance of the organization in various dimensions. An evaluation method can follow a leadership intervention.
Various theories used in this paper are Structuration Theory, Kant’s Theory of Enlightnement ,Peirce’s Semiotics, Barnard’s Motivation Theory, Sergiovanni’s Leadership Construct, Bailey’s Normative Bounds and Turn Based Theory, Sternberg’s Perspective, De Vries Position
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| | Critical discussion of Conflict and Coordination strategies used to facilitate an effective working relationship between two groups | | | Academicians and administrators are involved in conflict in the social sciences department of a university because of the hierarchal power structure existing there. Hierarchal power structures are vertical in nature and can be damaging in case of conflicts. Equity power structure is the answer to these conflicts. However, equity structures require a number of strategies in order to become effective. Further, it should be noted that conflicts are common, sometimes even healthy, in working environments.
While devising strategies to overpower conflicts there are a few essential questions that must be answered first. These include- What are some key sources of conflict in our workplace? When do they tend to occur? How do people respond to these conflicts as they arise? When we solve problems, do we do so for the moment, or do we put in place systems for addressing these types of concerns in the future?
Working around these questions we can summarise about the administrators and academicians conflict as follows-
Key sources of conflict are goal orientation, self image and stereotype, overlapping authority and task interdependencies. They tend to occur during peak time, but are present perpetually throughout the year in the university. The response to these conflicts is obviously detrimental for the working environment as it furthers hostility and hampers the efficiency of work. Therefore, collaboration and compromise are seen as two most viable principles for co-ordinating and eliminating conflicts between the two above mentioned groups.
Engaging in dialogue and negotiation around conflict is something we tend to approach with fear and hesitation, afraid that the conversation will go worse than the conflict has gone thus far. However, confronting conflicts is an important task in any organisation to weed out unnecessary redundant work hampering elements. It is the duty of the managers to ensure a conflict free, healthy working environment.
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| | Critical Discussion of the statement ‘Wages policies in Australia stands at something of the cross roads. What should be the priorities of a National wage policy in Australia’ | | | Wages at Australia have been growing at a fast rate for the last decade, leading to inflation and problems in policy re-drafting. It is a challenge for the Government of Australia to impinge on the process that generates changes in wage, which can control the inflation in the country as well. Until now, the wage policy operated on basic indexation point of view and past price scenario. Post the increase in inflation the policy has influence otherwise and this needs to be corrected as basis this, the wages are increasing many folds to become un-controllable. We would study below, how could a corrective measure be taken and what could control this scenario. | | |
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| | Critical discussion on how important leadership is to an organization, particularly in time of change. Outline the factors that differentiate a successful leader and an unsuccessful leader | | | – Leadership is a complex term to understand and has multidimensional definitions to it. A true leader inspires and directs his fellow men and women to achieve the objective. A leader needs to possess the desired personality and skills in order to make others to follow him. A leader not only guides and motivates others towards achieving common goals of the organization but also keeps the organization and its employees cohesive. Leadership is one of the most important factors that influences the functionality and success of an organization. The positions give a person authority and power but not leadership. Leadership is inherent to an individual’s personality and leadership can be honed by consciously working at it and attending to leadership workshops etc. Leadership is not about giving orders and also not about making others follow just by the strength of their position or power in the organization. Leadership is about making others voluntarily follow the leader by enlightening them as to why the common goal has to be achieved and in what way the achievement enriches their lives and career. According to Locke et. al (1991) leadership involves traits like situational interaction, function, vision, power, charisma, behavior, values, endurance and intelligence (Kouzes and Posner, 2007). Leadership and management are essentially distinct components of organization. However, they are interdependent to a large extent. The paper examines leadership in theory and in practices. The paper discusses organizational leadership and tries to understand the difference and correlation between leadership and management. The paper also discusses some real life examples of good business leaders. | | |
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| | Critical discussion on the subject of expansion of HRD coverage | | | There has been increased interest by the academia towards assessing employee intellectual capital that they provide to an organization. This phenomenon has been more prominent in the knowledge intensive industry where employees have high level of education and provide thought leadership. However, in general companies have at times ignored how workers can be a positive influence and help achieve the objectives of the company. The human resources (HR) department in organization has yet to capitalize on the unique value workers whether permanent or non standard (Casual workers, Temporary employment and Fixed-term) bring through their skill sets, attitude and knowledge developed on the job. We will explore this issue here and see how attempts can be made to rectify it. | | |
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| | Critical evaluation assignment on the notion of flexicurity | | | Concept of Flexicurity has been quite a rage these days. Its speedy success in Danish economy has created the ripples in the other European and Nordic countries. In layman term the notion of Flexicurity can be explained as fast hire and fire phenomenon. The phrase may sound negative but it’s another way to combat unemployment and bring stability in economy. The term Flexicurity revolves around two elements- Flexibility and Security.
While many economists have hailed flexicurity as being the ideal way to generate an active job market, others remain unconvinced, saying it is costly, keeps people from looking for work and kills ambition.
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| | Critical evaluation essay on the relationship between organizational culture, teams and decision making | | | The present business climate is marred with corporate failures due to unethical behaviour on part of the individuals, teams within organization. Organizations have failed to protect the stakeholder interest as by not providing an ethical corporate culture. Here, we will see how culture plays an integral role within an organization. We will look at various types of cultures which exist within organization and how organization can build and sustain a particular type of culture. We further move on to understand how ethics is important for building a sustainable organization and protecting the stakeholders. We look at how organizations which promote ethical conduct amongst its employee can achieve ethical decision making by individuals and teams. Finally, we see how important a role team decision making plays in the organization. We will study the impact of ethical conduct being promoted by an organization on the team decision making process and different ways of managing the team culture. This will be followed by conclusion from the study. | | |
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| | Cultural profiles for effective workplace communication - Belgium | | | This paper provides a detailed cultural profile of Belgium country | | |
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| | Dancom case study - ‘Dancom Case- Russian Voices from a Danish Company’ by Snejina Michailova and Alla Anisimova. | | | Corporate entities have distinct management cultures depending upon the nation of origin. The American, British, Russian, Japanese approaches to corporate management differ from smaller to larger extents in decision making, prioritizing different management aspects etc.. Some of the management cultures like the American management culture are task oriented and some other such as the Asian management culture with colonial influence are hierarchy oriented (Woldu, Budhwar & Parkes, 2006). When a multinational corporation sets up its operation unit in an alien nation with an alien management culture, chances are that problems with differences in perception of responsibilities and goals might occur if the parent company does not adequately adapt to the host nation’s management culture. It is not just the management culture of the host nation that influences the functionality of the multinational corporation but it is the socio economical background and culture of the middle management and lower management that influences perception of employees about themselves as well as the perception of the organization. The paper discusses the case presented in ‘Dancom Case- Russian Voices from a Danish Company’ by Snejina Michailova and Alla Anisimova. The paper then discusses Russians’ and Danes’ approaches to planning and decision making. The paper tries to identify areas of conflict and suggests middle path for the Danish management in order to survive and flourish in their operations in Russia. | | |
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| | Description and Critical analysis of a methodological framework for the assessment of an organization’s CSR activities | | | Corporate Social Responsibility is the keyword in the contemporary business world today. It has become a buzzword in the corporate board rooms, amongst the management level discussions and knowingly as well as unknowingly taken a significant part of today’s business decisions. It happens largely in countries, where the government and the economy, both are driven by the socialistic status, where culture is very basic and driven by factors like agriculture, small scale industries, rural society etc. Increasing global interest on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the push factor felt by corporate from across sectors in order to demonstrate a commitment towards the society and it has led to large amount of demands for concrete guidelines or operating standards to be developed. Such set frameworks are developed because they could help organizations organize their social responsibilities towards the society in a much more measurable as well as consistent format. In the recent past many models as well as guidelines have been written or framed to help companies abide by some particular system to meet its social responsibilities, however still there are unclear means for firms to work more on and get systems in place. CSR initiatives have also been linked with quality implementation or total quality management deployment in organizations by which they want to improve their production or delivery system, make it more cost effective and efficient. There are various frameworks curved out for various formats of corporate social responsibility initiatives and their implementation or adherence also differs largely. Development of such frameworks helps better integration of organizations and its responsibility towards society it operates on. Framework defined by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer would be the discussion point in this write up and we would critically assess their implementation strategy. | | |
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| | Discussion on the topic ‘Current global economy deterioration presents challenges and opportunities for the Strategic Human Resource Management’ | | | In the present scenario of the downturn of the economy, or in other words, the ‘bullish economy’ has posed a host of questions encompassing almost all fields of personal lives as well as business managements. When President Obama made a promise of ‘change’, all eyes were set on the job opportunities he could create in these slow times. Global economy deterioration (it may yet not be suitable to call it ‘recession’) has spanned the world into its grip of financial crisis, unemployment and bankruptcy. It is significant to examine, in the light of this economic slowdown, the effect it has on business organisations/setups.
Human Resource has been worst affected by this phenomenon; therefore, a study of ‘Strategic Human Resource Management’ is not only important, but also quite interesting. Challenges to Human Resource Management are appearing in terms of employment reduction, employee retention and employee wellbeing. However, it should be noted that all is not lost; in the current economic crisis, opportunities for Human Resource Management can also be traced as cost management and elimination of redundancies.
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| | Dissertation / Thesis on the topic - Employee stress management strategies for supermarkets in Auckland | | | This study follows a line of investigation about the existing knowledge of stress management strategies among Auckland supermarket employees. The author reviewed number of different issues related to occupational stress and extended the range of discussion about factors causing stress to supermarket employees. To understand the stress factors effectively, an in-depth study has been conducted to investigate the issues faced by the supermarket employees and importance of managing stress levels in the organisation.
The primary data has been collected from the respondents specifically selected from four different supermarkets in Auckland city. Majority of respondents working in supermarkets experienced greater impact on physical reactions which contributes to stress and work related injury among employees working in the different departments of supermarkets. Recognising the implications of stress in an organisation will increase employee satisfaction and performance. The outcome of this study identifies the problems causing stress to the workers.
This study concluded with a number of recommendations in the supermarket industry to increase productivity and reduce absenteeism among the Auckland supermarket employees. Stress can be managed effectively and inexpensively, if the employees learn what stress is, what are the consequences of stressors, and how to control it effectively.
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| | Dissertation on commitment theories and its application to both part time workers and full time workers within the retail industry | | | The concept of commitment is a traditional area of HRM concern and “indeed, the whole rationale for introducing HRM policies is to increase levels of commitment so that other positive outcomes can ensue” (Guest, 1998, p. 42). It is this assumption which underlies the common employer declaration that “people are our most valuable resource.”
Employees in modern “learning” organizations are increasingly expected to display effort, motivation and initiative. The success of an organization depends not only on how the organization makes the most of human competences, but also how it stimulates commitment to an organization. Employee commitment, together with a competent workforce, seems to be of decisive importance for an organization to be able to compete in quality and to go along with changes (Cited by Wim et al, 1998).
This dissertation is focusing on the subject concerning to commitment theories and its application to both part time workers and full time workers within the retail industry. The research hypothesis addressed in this study -“Part time workers are less committed than Full time workers towards their work place.”
The following research questions have been made in order to move on further into this subject:
Are part time workers less committed than full time workers towards their workplace?
Does the amount of time spent working in the same organization affect the level of commitment?
What would be the main factors that would affect the level of commitment of a worker?
The research methodology applied in this dissertation includes research philosophy, research approach, and research strategy, sampling design and data collection methods. Primary data was collected with the help of research methodology includes questionnaires designed with quantitative questions. This helped the researcher to collect sufficient data to come out a conclusion.
In order to make the research more specific this research is carried out amongst workers at convenience retail store in Dublin City Centre. The questions used in questionnaire were based on likert scale and findings were made by cross-tabulate the results from questions and calculate the mean, median, mode and standard deviation.
The concluding results from this research were more or less defending the literature review stated by various authors except for the second research question i.e. ‘affect of time spent in the same organization on employee’s commitment where the findings completely contradicted with the statements of various authors.
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| | Dissertation on Customer satisfaction and retention in Standard and Budget hotels in United Kingdom | | | The dissertation titled ‘Customer Satisfaction and Retention in Standard and Budget Hotels in the United Kingdom’ is a comparative study of budget and standard hotels with main focus on customer satisfaction and retention. Over the last few years, budget hotels have been gaining popularity (especially in the United Kingdom) because of the low prices that they offer for provision of comfortable services. Customers are waning away from standard hotels to budget hotels because a greater value for money is achieved at budget hotels.
For the purpose of the study, qualitative research approach has been adopted. Two hotels were chosen for the purpose of this study- Marriott and Travelodge (of United Kingdom). Marriott is a standard or luxury hotel while Travelodge is a budget or limited services hotel. Various aspects of customer satisfaction and retention in these hotels have been researched. Employee training and employee-customer relationship emerged as a major factor and was amply studied for the said purpose.
Chapter 1 of the dissertation introduces the concepts of customer satisfaction and retention, their importance and their measurement. Customer satisfaction entails meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customers while customer retention is a much longer drawn measurement of customer satisfaction. Chapter 2 discussed the research design for the study. Questionnaires and interviews were used to elicit information and gather data from customers and employees of the hotels. After a comprehensive Literature review in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 has tabulated the findings of the research. These have then been discussed and concluded meaningfully and logically in the last chapter of the dissertation.
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| | Dissertation on Measuring Marketing and its impact on Return-on-Investment in a business | | | Marketing activities today are being measured for the return on investments they generate and not only the brand visibility have they created. Marketing of the products and services produced or generated by a firm is the most essential thing, but at the same time, it is becoming increasingly important that each step of marketing are measured and checked. Any marketing activity of a firm is invested with a lot of capital expenditure and hence, in a tough market like today, where saving is imperative for each function within the organization, it is important that a measured return on such capital investments are identified.
Marketing is one of the core functions for a firm, therefore, if other functions can showcase a tangible benefit and quantify it also, marketing department cannot stay aloof from this concept. However, the process of such quantification becomes thousand times difficult and complex for marketing department than any other function. A marketing activity is always a combination of many sub-activities such as advertising, sales promotion, sales and distribution, and pricing. When it comes to sales or retail sales, it is also more or less quantifiable immediately however, corporate sales could hardly be forecasted and budgeted for.
In this report our key area of research has been how to measure marketing activities and show a tangible impact on the profitability of a firm. How could we measure return on investments made on marketing activities within a firm. This is primarily because, without the visibility of substantial return on capital invested, no management would want to go on making investments, and therefore, it is essential to quantify the efforts put in. We assessed the technical know-how of measuring marketing in this report.
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| | Dissertation Proposal on IBM Diverse Workforce: Success strategies | | | The onset of globalization has witnessed a wide shift in demographic profile of workforce within the organizations. And, perhaps, in this purview organizations are also coming on terms with cultural diversity at their workplace. Thus, nowadays, organizations are quite vigilant to rope in culturally diverse management for their workforce as cornerstone of their policies to attract and retain the best talent from all around the globe.
In this framework of rigid competition between multinational companies to acquire best talent, it is highly significant that how company deals with their employees/workforce coming from different backgrounds and cultures. Henceforth a key that question arises is, “How do companies manage cultural diversity in the workplace?’ At more fundamental one can question, “How do managers manage cultural diversity in workplace?” Early, 2006 pg 103)
IBM is one such multinational organization that has to effectively deal with cultural diversity to maintain its global existence. IBM demarcates itself very strongly in enduring successful cultural diverse environment in its policy statement. Ted Child (vice president of workforce diversity at IBM) proudly identifies cultural diversity management at IBM with issues concerning to cultural awareness and acceptance, ethnic minorities and multilingualism as key components in IBM’s global workforce diversity challenges.
This research will incorporate an exploratory study on IBM way to manage culture diversity at workplace. For this first a critical literature review will be conducted to understand the concept. Global Policies of IBM will be taken to know about IBM vision. Once having a detailed perspective IBM Pune will be encircled as case study to narrow down the research towards the research aims and objectives
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| | Earnings management helps in portraying false financial health of the companies (David Katz, 2006). The study aims at providing evidence that firms manage reported earnings in order not to show decreases and losses, else the market value of firm’s holding | | | Earnings management helps in portraying false financial health of the companies (David Katz, 2006). The study aims at providing evidence that firms manage reported earnings in order not to show decreases and losses, else the market value of firm’s holdings comes down. The study tries to prove that the two components of earnings, cash flow from operations and changes in working capital are used to achieve this objective. It makes use of two theories viz., stakeholder use of information heuristics and prospect theory as motivation for avoidance of earnings decreases and losses. The study provides sound evidence with anecdotes and examples on how cash flow management and working capital computations are tampered with to show increases in place of decreases and losses in earnings management. The study provides a sound and simplistic argument with examples. The sources of data are well documented making the study an authentic one, instead of appearing to be based on factious data. The study systematically approaches the problem by first providing evidence that discretion is used earnings management to avoid decreases and losses and then by providing evidence on the methods of earning management to avoid losses. The study is a systematic and conclusive one. However, the study needs to be extended to cover broader areas. | | |
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| | Essay discussing the concept of paternity leave and its implications on Human Resource Management | | | The concept of giving employees of an organization time off to care for the family pet known as peternity leave is relatively new. This is being showcased as companies readiness to heed to an employee`s wellbeing. Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA) recently used this concept for its employees. Google USA has also implemented pet friendly policies at work where people can bring pets to work. Critics argue that this might be going a bit too far in the name of pro active employee centric policy. We would look at how this step might be a right way in Australian scenario and for multinational companies elsewhere who are looking forward to radical employee retention policies. We would also explore this issue in connection with larger organizational challenge of employee retainment. What are the pressures organization faces and how can they remedy the situation.
Pets today are considered by many as part of the family and they provide emotional strength.
With many people either living alone or with the partner today owns a pet. Pets are a relief after a hard day`s work, stressful situations, emotionally charged times etc. They provide one with unconditional love and joy, and people get attached to their pet.
According to Euromonitor (2004b) today owners are projecting their own wishes and ideals on the pets. It provides the owner a sense of wellbeing and provides delight in nurturing and taking care of the pet. Hence, it is important to consider the role pets play in normal day to day life of an employee in an organization. Petnet (2004) mentioned that 64 per cent of Australian households owned one or more pet. Euromonitor (2004a) report also mentioned that estimated figure for pets in home in Australia are 3.6 million dogs, 2.3 million cats, and 7.5 million birds. Thus, with such huge numbers of families with pets, it becomes important for companies grappling with employee retention issues to make the organization` working condition more conducive to an employee owning a pet. Organizations providing policies conducive to take care of the dependents in the family has had positive impact. Jaumotte (2004) has seen that maternal and parental leave has had positive effects on women’s participation in the labor market.
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| | Essay discussing the Telstra’s recently released policy regarding staff use of social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube reference to human resource management and the legal context | | | Emergence of internet and its usage brought about many changes in our society as well as life and one amongst them are the way we socialize today. The contemporary world is fast and complex. People thrive on success in life from both status as well as financial point of view. Twenty-four hours of the day flies to make the statement truer “time flies”. At the same time, people need to be connected with each other as these relationships get utilized someway or the other, socialistic or professional form. As a part of this change from the traditional format of socializing, the social networking sites were discovered one day and today, we do not live without them. It began with just one or two and in the current stage, every large companies have ventured into making these social networking sites interesting and interactive in their best way. As a part of the modernization techniques, we have adopted yet another format of change in the form of social networking sites however, many parts of the world and especially the corporate world, could still not change completely to this contemporary method of socializing. Mr. Ricardo Semler’s Seven Day Weekend was published mid year 2000 and social networking sites other than normal chat machines like Yahoo.com etc., started gaining popularity much later than that. However, adequate application of Semler’s strategy has still not happened. These cannot be a system failure always; rather these are human failure many a times. Therefore, whether use of social networking sites should be unrestricted or not really, have many factors to decide and most important of such are self sense of responsibility on the part of employees themselves. We have evaluated the same idea and concluded that some policy is always better to implement to put some restrictions in place but at the same time, the facility should not be stopped completely or restricted by time, rather let technology play it safe.
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| | Essay focussing on Communication issues at Work | | | Increasing expansion and development in global economy and every country getting open to global development is building up base for many global challenges or tasks to take care of. Amongst various aspects one of the most critical is cross-boarder interactions or transactions and cross-cultural communications. Globalization and economic liberalization has shortened physical boarders of nations. Cross boarder transactions happens at all facets of life, starting from culture, education, work etc. These interactions carry long and short term effects as well. They go out to effect one-on-one interaction, group interactions, big association, inter-state, national as well as cross boarder interactions from larger prospects. There are no restrictions which cannot be overlapped or broken barring which cross-boarder wide transactions are affecting nations both at a macro as well as micro level. When we are doing such cross-boarder transactions the most important aspect that one must respect is the way the communication happens or flows cross-boarder. Cross-boarder interactions especially in on business communication terms becomes most wanted criteria. In an international business transaction, two entities from very different cultures, ethics and moral values come close and interact almost on a regular interval. It is thus imperative to keep the respect factor in mind and help the other party feel comfortable and vice-versa. Each caste, culture and community would have their own stereotypes and international transactions ought to revolve around them. Cultural stereotypes are perceptions and pre-conceived ideas held about other cultures and people in international markets Similarly, effective communication, respecting cultural nuances is equally imperative for a international interaction to be successful. There are specific details that needs careful watch, study, understanding and respect as each place’s communication style and concept are completely different from the other (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998) (Shore, 1996).
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| | Essay on - Wages should be tied to performance | | | In companies, pay for performance encompasses several concepts, ranging from traditional merit pay to stock options. It has been confirmed in researches that pay for performance is effective in corporations. Humans have not always had the central role within companies that they posses today.
According to the Classical Organizational Theories, workers were looked upon as a factor of production that could be controlled and manipulated in the same way as machines. The consequence was that humans had to work with monotonous job assignments and with high performance pressure, which led to a great number of occupational accidents and strain injuries. Another aftermath was that the employee suffered psychical problems caused by isolation from his or her co-workers and inanimate assignments. Today, it is the people in the organization who make up the company, regardless of whether it is a commodity or service producing business. For the enterprise to be efficient and gain high profitability, it requires the employees to be confirmative and work efficiently with the company aims. One way of steering the workers in the desired direction is to design an incentive system. The workers receive clear directives on objectives and visions, which, if they are achieved, will lead to a reward. Therefore, it is of great significance that the company’s objectives are attainable and that these goals are desirable for the individual worker. If the incentive system meets these conditions it will lead to the workers being directed towards realizing what the company wants, as rewards control our behavior. A worker who strives to attain an objective has to be motivated by something. Today, there are many theories about incentives that deal with which factors that motivate a human being. These Motivational Theories make up the foundation of the company’s incentive system.
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| | Essay on ‘Should HRD management include non-standard workers too?’ | | | This paper deals with the issue as to whether HRD needs to expand to encompass the non-standard workers and their contributions however insignificant to the optimal functioning of the organization. Traditionally organizations have focused on improving productivity and efficiency of their full time or standard workers and ignored non-standard workers like part time workers or casual workers. Although, full time workers contribute to an organization’s success in a bigger way, non-standard workers do contribute to an organization’s productivity albeit to a lesser extent. The current trend in HRD in bigger organizations is to outsource peripheral activities to smaller companies that hire manpower to carry out the operations of the client. The argument of the organizations to support this view point is that full time staff would be able to concentrate on core activities better. They seem to have a valid point here, since the organizations wish to concentrate on activities that have major influence on the functioning of the organization than on activities that support the cause but not of critical importance. We see this trend of outsourcing or subcontracting certain operations to the vendors and even working with contracted staff that are not on direct payroll of the company but on the payroll of the contractor. A major outcome of this trend has been the emergence of mobile workforce catering not just to one employer but to a number of employers causing erosion of employee and employer demarcation (Dorothy Cobble & Leah Vosco, 2000). According to John Buchanan, Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training Sydney University, the fulltime or normal workforce can no longer be considered as the majority form of employment as it is down to almost 50% and still declining (Eleanor Hall, 2001). So it becomes important from the organizational view point that even the non-standard workers like contracted employees, employees of retailers, part time workers are also taken in the scope of the HRD management so that their skills, efficiency and commitment to the goals of the organization can be harnessed. | | |
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| | Essay on ‘What is Human Resource Management and How does it differ from traditional Personnel Management’ | | | Personnel management has existed since the time enterprises have existed. Personnel management in its simplistic form takes care of the needs of employees such as wages, working hours, working conditions and any disputes of workers. A couple of decades ago personnel management was no more than the management of employees or workers without any strategic attributes attached to the work. It was seen more as an administrative task than as an important strategic activity of the organization. However, perceptions of the importance of personnel in the organization and their management started changing in the past of couple of decades or so. Organizations increasing started viewing manpower as an important organizational resource. Companies even started realizing the fact that they can have an edge in the market against competitors, if they had efficient and skilled manpower. Thus the focus from mere management of the personnel started shifting to managing the resource that is the workforce. When the perception becomes the management of a resource, then organizations start honing the skills, nourishing, acquiring, strengthening and retaining the resource. Thus there has been a paradigm shift in the way organizations view workforce in the recent past. This essay tries to define personnel management and human resource management. The essay also discusses the differences between the two and as to how human resource management differs from traditional personnel management. | | |
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| | Essay on “Having high quality human resource system and effective career development systems is an essential building block for transforming workplace learning. It is therefore important to reconsider the concepts of careers and career management in order | | | Various researchers have examined the broader scope of human resources and have noted that the management of human resources is a multidimensional process with multiple effects. Dessler and Noe (2005, Pg 48) have mentioned that companies will face four competitive challenges in the first decade of 21st century which will increase the importance of HRM. These challenges are related to the global challenge, the quality challenge, the social challenge and challenges related to technology and structure. The choice of any HR management system requires a study of various aspects keeping in mind the underlying objectives and the cost aspects. Any complexity which is introduced can cause information overload and may divert the focus of the organization which is incompatible with the company goals. This can cause insecurity amongst employees for job, and such HR directives can make the firm less competitive over time. It is essential that the human resources management is in line with the strategic focus of an organization. This is beneficial since complex organizational problems can be handled much easier if both of them are aligned. Also, human, financial, and technological resources need to be given consideration in setting goals and assessing implementation capabilities. This ensures that there is optimal resource utilization. This is done by explicitly allocating resources to individuals for implementation. This has advantages for the firm, Dyer et al (1999, Pg 388) mentioned that human resources value creation process is difficult for a firm to imitate as they are path dependent and complex in creation because of the social and historical value creation process . Human resources strategies develop a match between certain strategic or organizational conditions and certain specified aspects of human resource processes or skills. One way is to involve managerial skills with characteristics of the product or the market conditions based on the product life cycle. Using role descriptions such as executive function, technical and managerial responsibilities, list of skill requirements etc, an organization can chose personnel for the executive position. | | |
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| | Essay on “Human Resource Management is an essential ingredient to the overall success of an organisation. Discuss why detailed human resource planning of staff and organisational requirements is vital particularly in difficult economic times” | | | Management of human resources is a multidimensional process with multiple effects which is highlighted in recessionary times. Recession in an economy segregates firms which are unhealthy and have business practices that are not generating enough value. This might be because of several factors such as lack of a coherent strategy, inefficient processes, lack of talented manpower, lack of a vision and mission of the organization. During period of high growth, organizations can chose to ignore these challenges as existing market demand still keeps the bottom-line in the green. But in recession, these deficiencies heighten the pressure on the balance sheet, because the setup is unable to cope with new changed realities. This requires that HRM team takes some tough and rational decision on the top and is sensitive of the employee needs. The role of HRM team is a very important one for survival and sustenance in tough times. The HRM team needs to reinvent old processes with a clear vision. A study by HR solutions (2009) has shown that recession heightens employee sense of job security and pushes people to show more commitment and effort. This is evident in decrease of workers who showed slack from 16 to 14% and increase and corresponding increase in motivated workforce from 25 to 27%. | | |
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| | Essay on Challenges of managing change & innovation in multi-nationals | | | This essay discusses the challenges that multinationals face in managing change and innovation. The key challenge that is identified during the discussion is that of incorporating the appropriate culture within the organization where every employee thinks like an entrepreneur. Many other challenges are identified that arise from this key challenge of having the appropriate culture. These include overcoming the resistance from employees, managing diversity, sharing of mission and vision of the organization, managing conflicts and many more. Apart from discussing the challenges, an attempt has been made to analyse what can be done to overcome these challenges. The key issue that emerged from the discussion is whether there is such a thing like appropriate culture or every organization possesses a unique culture? The conclusion drawn is that every leader and organization is different, thus a leader need to carefully assess the circumstances in which he operates and then take proactive measures to overcome the challenges. | | |
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| | Essay on Cultural Issues in Neonatal Nursing | | | Nursing involves human emotions apart from professional discharge of work more than any other field of activity. Nurses are vulnerable to emotions that arise out of survival or the death of the patient. If the patient is a baby the nurses go through varies emotions sometimes unable to provide proper care for grieving mothers due to differing cultural backgrounds of the nurse and the mother. Cultural differences can also act as barriers to nurses administering proper care. Nurses seem to care from their cultural backgrounds than that of mothers. Chatting of nurses with mothers could open doors for meaningful sharing of information. Effective chatting can be a crucial clinical tool for nurses in dealing with mothers in neonatal care. Health Care Organizaions these days are increasingly looking to cut costs and hence community nursing care is required to nurse pre-term baby and mother. The research findings of the three articles have limited sample size and the scope of the research in each of the article is also too small. The researches are required to cover larger geographical context by the use of similar samples and researches in other locations with differing cultural backgrounds and practices | | |
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| | Essay on different cultures in an organization | | | The report comprises of organizational culture, the need and benefits of cultural categories, which evaluates organizational culture in different models. A detailed analysis of Goffee and Jones' cultural model is given, which distributes the organizational culture into the frame of sociability (social interaction) and solidarity (Dedication towards work). A detailed analysis is done on the four types of organizational culture are described which are Networked, Mercenary, fragmented and Communal which are retrieve from the double “S” Model of Goffee and Jones depending on high and low solidarity and sociability. The challenges that these types of organization face are motivation, execution, tolerance of poor behavior in some organizations, managing the rate of employee turnover etc. followed by the strategies involved in change of culture, which consists of 6 steps involved in changing the process of organizational culture. The necessary action plan to implement the change in organizational culture is also provided | | |
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| | Essay on Ethical difficulties faced by multinationals | | | This assignment provides answer to the following questions –
a. What ethical difficulties can face multi-national businesses in operating in
several countries?
b. What general values, principles, and decision procedures if any, would you
appeal to in order to resolve such ethical problems?
c. Give one example of such a problem and your resolution.
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| | Essay on Globalization and its effects on labour markets across nations | | | Globalization has created many ripple effects, into various industries, facets of human lives, various functions of economical growth both at a macro and micro level etc., and the influence has shifted or modified a lot of elements in our society. Deregulation and decentralization of the Labour Market is one of the biggest effect globalization has made upon, ever in the socio-economic history of the globe. The world is typically divided into two types of nations. One is called Developing and the other Developed or Advanced. A developed nation is described as countries with high degree of socio-economic development as per some criteria. These criteria keep on changing however, some basic demographic remains that per capita income of a nation and consumer purchasing power also, real time cost inflation depicts the definition of a developed nation. The criterion like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), industrialization, Human Development Index etc., stamps a nation towards its global status. Any nation, falling below the fifty percent mark of economic development are called Developing nation.
Developing and developed nation, together contributes towards a larger global growth and they are all inter connected. The entire market where all transactions are happening and liquidity is flowing to determine these factors consists of both tangible and intangible product lines. Although these product offerings are driving the entire market from a materialistic point of view, however, it is human development or manpower which is a significant and un-avoidable factor in market today. Without human intervention a tangible or intangible does not even make a move and hence it is human development or labour market that has significantly changed due to globalization and in this essay we have evaluated to take a little deeper view of the matter.
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| | Essay on Globalization, Deregulation and Decentralization of Labour market – International Trends in Developing and Developed nations | | | The trends of globalization, decentralization and deregulation of the labor market are emerging and growing trends in the world today. Coming into this purview, the economic integration of the labor market and industrial market across the world has helped the developed and the developing countries to make foray in the global business to achieve increased success. On one hand where these means have helped these countries to achieve success in terms of money on the other hand they have also lent support towards time and solving the problem of employment. The research shows there has been an increase in the GDP and GNP of the developed and the developing countries due to these emerging trends. Not only these countries are now more competitive in the production of the goods and services but there have also been high mobility of employees from one place to another in search of employment, making money, religion, and trade inflow and outflow. With these changes in the developed countries, unionism has been cut down, more emphasis are on the individualism of employment relation, more flexibility of the employment relations, increased competiveness and customer satisfaction.
This comprehensive essay tends to explains these trends whilst defining the terms associated with the decentralisation and deregulation in labour market across the developed/developing countries in view of shift that is being experienced as a result of Globalisation
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| | Essay on 'How do I become a better leader & follower in teams' | | | This essay analyses two of my personal experiences as a member of a group by using the Gestalt and Tavistock theories of team dynamics in order to prepare myself to be a better leader and follower. By reflecting on my experiences and understanding my emotions, feelings and senses, I was able to deconstruct events and see them how they really occurred without my inferences and judgements. I found that I could only have awareness when I stopped thinking and started feeling. This leads to having a clear set of data, which when with knowledge and skill, leads to choice and strong authority regardless of whether you are leading or following. | | |
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| | Essay on How Human Resource systems and practices contribute towards organizational flexibility | | | The object of this assignment is to examine the ways by which Human Resource (HR) systems and practices contribute towards organizational flexibility. Further, an analysis of the potential impacts of the HR systems on labour markets, in particular the tensions associated with the flexibility issue, will be conducted. Recommendations will also be made regarding the ways by which these tensions can be overcome and which could contribute to creating a sustainable competitive advantage into the future | | |
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| | Essay on 'How to become a better leader & follower in teams using Gestalt & Tavistock approach' | | | This essay intends to answer to question “how do we become better leaders and followers in teams?” We have analysed two critical incidences which took place in ‘Leading Following and Team Dynamics’ (summer school 06/07). The incidents we selected were ‘Forming the Small Learning Groups’ (week 2) and ‘Tavistock-Style Large Study Group Activity’ (week 9). We have integrated Gestalt and Tavistock theoretical perspectives and reflected on our experiences in order to learn and develop into a better leader and follower. | | |
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| | Essay on Key challenges facing leaders | | | This essay discusses the challenges that multinationals face in managing change and innovation. The key challenge that is identified during the discussion is that of incorporating the appropriate culture within the organization where every employee thinks like an entrepreneur. Many other challenges are identified that arise from this key challenge of having the appropriate culture. These include overcoming the resistance from employees, managing diversity, sharing of mission and vision of the organization, managing conflicts and many more. Apart from discussing the challenges, an attempt has been made to analyze what can be done to overcome these challenges. The key issue that emerged from the discussion is whether there is such a thing like appropriate culture or every organization possesses a unique culture? The conclusion drawn is that every leader and organization is different, thus a leader need to carefully assess the circumstances in which he operates and then take proactive measures to overcome the challenges. | | |
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| | Essay on Negotiating across cultures with special emphasis on Insurance industry in India | | | When you are going for winning a new business or trying to get a new strategic alliance with some foreign country, it does not give importance to any border or boundaries. Before going for the negotiations, you must know that culture varies in every country and these cultural differences can really hamper the outcome of the negotiations. It may go in your favor or may go against you also if you do not follow the norms of the negotiations.
If anybody wants to become successful in international business, he must adapt the negotiating skill of the local market to where he is going to do the business. That will really help him to penetrate deeper into the deal or tap the market. With the opening of the Indian insurance market to the foreign players, many American insurance companies have started coming to India over the past few years.
In such cases, negotiation style is very different across cultures. There are many differences like social, economic, working conditions which each others must understand to do business and continue with the strategic relationships.
As many American insurance companies have come to India to do business, the negotiation style practiced in both the countries can be a subject of discussion. While doing insurance or while selling the product, the American style and Indian style are totally different. The way you can sell insurance in America, is impossible in India. So, the American company must understand the Indian context and when the top executives of American insurance company will come to India, he must be aware of the Indian negotiating styles. In this discussion, we will limit ourselves to this industry alone, as American insurance companies like AIG, AXA, MetLife have all come to India to do insurance business. They have tied up with many Indian corporate to expand their business base in India.
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| | Essay on Strategic Role of HRD in an Organization | | | Organizations these days are looking at human resources as valuable asset that can provide sustained competitive advantage. If a human resource in an organization cannot provide organization with strategic advantage, the human resource management in the organization is said to be ineffective. Human resource departments these days are not just looking at managing the workforce, recruiting and training but also looking at providing a platform for increased work-life balance of the employees so that they remain committed to the organizational goals by delivering high productivity. Strategic human resource is the planned HR deployment and activities aimed at achieving organizational goals (Kramar, 2008). A human resource activity in isolation with the organizational goals no more appeals to the management today. A human resource in alignment with the organizational causes would contribute to the success of organizational intentions. For example, the occurrence of high turnover in the mid of a project is detrimental to the organizational cause. So HR must plan for the possible turnover of employees during the project. This is one of the strategic roles that HR can play, which directly influences the organizational processes and outcome. When HR in an organization starts aligning itself with management goals, it is bound to face a few hurdles. One of the hurdles could be the need for deviation from traditional HR. Traditional HR goes by laid rules irrespective of the organizational success or failure. The manufacturing plants of the yore follow such practices. Whereas, strategic HR calls for continuous adaptation to the changing needs of the organization. An example of this is the cut in remuneration during recession and providing extra allowances, incentives to the employees when the organization is financially healthy. The paper discusses the ways in which HRD can play strategic role in the organization. The paper also discusses the benefits of HRD and obstacles in achieving the strategic objectives. | | |
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| | Essay on the importance of cultural stereotypes | | | Increasing expansion and development in global economy and every country getting open to global development is building up base for many global challenges or tasks to take care of. Amongst various aspects one of the most critical is cross-boarder interactions or transactions and cross-cultural communications. A Chinese origin is staying in India for work purposes or an Indian staying at the UK for professional purposes or may be an American doing a transaction with a Japanese individual. Globalization and cross-boarder interactions clearly mean this. Today, physical boarders of nations are merely few hours’ flight to cover; political boarders are few billion dollar investments or transactions to do. Very few restrictions are there which cannot be overlapped or broken barring which cross-boarder wide transactions are affecting nations both at a macro as well as micro level. When we are doing such cross-boarder transactions the most important aspect that one must respect is the stereotype of the other culture, when we all do that international business communication becomes easy and remarkable to create history. In an international business transaction, two entities from very different cultures, ethics and moral values come close and interact almost on a regular interval. It is thus imperative to keep the respect factor in mind and help the other party feel comfortable and vice-versa. Each caste, culture and community would have their own stereotypes and international transactions ought to revolve around them. Cultural stereotypes are perceptions and pre-conceived ideas held about other cultures and people in international markets (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998) (Shore, 1996).
Today’s approach to globalization is that we have to know all around and not only about home. Organization who are multinational in nature and have global operations, consists of a lot of staff from various nations and their working culture, the organization vision and mission strategy have to adopt best of all cultures, to imbibe an ‘at home’ feeling for its people. LG propagates offsite trip for its employees, where-in local and Korean sales personnel working for LG gets an opportunity in knowing each other better than in office. Multinational FMCG companies organize dealership meet or sales force meets where in they get their multinational employees from across locations to meet in one roof. Therefore, interaction points are very high and highly formalized too (Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997).
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| | Essay on The importance of developing cultural stereotypes to enhance and make more effective cross-cultural communication | | | When an organization makes cross border investments or when the employees of certain disciplines are from cultures that are alien to that of the host nation, communication barriers arise. Unless different cultural groups interact with one another with an understanding of the beliefs, practices and priorities of the groups synergy among different cultural groups cannot arise. Learning a common language that is known to different groups helps the cause of cross cultural communication to a great degree. Even learning languages of different cultures helps too. However, more than learning language one needs to understand how a particular cultural group behaves in a particular social or organizational situation. Some of the common stereotyping about cultures are ‘Australians are laid back, Americans are aggressive, Asians are noisy, Japanese value hygiene to a great degree’ and so on. These are generalized perceptions about cultures. However, such understanding cannot really help in dealing with cultural differences in an organization or in dealing with a group of employees that are from different cultures. Organizations need to address such issues in order to create synergy among their human resource irrespective of cultural backgrounds. One of the effective tools that can be used in effecting better communication among different cultural groups in ‘cultural stereotyping’. If used properly cultural stereotyping can greatly increase the effectiveness of the communication between members of different cultural groups (Glaveanu, 2007). The paper analyses two models of stereotyping viz., social cognition and inter-group relations to analyze as to how they can improve cross cultural communications. | | |
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| | Essay on the role of HR in the recessionary period | | |
Recession in an economy segregates firms which are unhealthy and have business practices that are not generating enough value. This might be because of several factors such as lack of a coherent strategy, inefficient processes, lack of talented manpower, lack of a vision and mission of the organization. During period of high growth, organizations can chose to ignore these challenges as existing market demand still keeps the bottom-line in the green. But in recession, these deficiencies heighten the pressure on the balance sheet, because the setup is unable to cope with new changed realities. It is in such times that Human Resource Management, HRM can play a very crucial role. Put simply, the role of HRM in recession is to analyze and then implement policies which aim to use the human capital efficiently by transferring resources to value generating activities.
HRM plays an important role, as Patterson et al in their 1997 research found significant variation in company profits was explained by their human resource management practices. Similarly Storey 2002, found that companies’ culture consisting of its attitude and HR can be positively linked to its result.
All this require that HRM team takes some tough and rational decision on the top. These require that the team is sensitive of the employee needs, is aware of the depth of problem, in sync with organizational strategy and clear about future role it has to play. We will go over these issues as we go along and see how tackling these important issues make the role of HRM team a very important one for survival and sustenance in tough times. The HRM team needs to reinvent old processes with a clear vision.
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| | Essay on the roles of theory in informing leadership and reforming leadership, and also the differences between management and leadership | | | Leadership is one of the most important factors influencing the functionality and success of an organization. Leadership is a complex term and has multidimensional definitions to it. One of the definitions of leadership is that it is the art of motivating a group of people towards achieving a common objective. A leader inspires and directs his fellow men and women to achieve the objective. A leader possesses the desired personality and skills in order to make others to follow him.
A leader not only guides and motivates others towards achieving common goals of the organization but also keeps the organization cohesive. A good leader always tries to instill in his fellow workers, work ethics, values and helps them to have a clear vision of their goal. A leader also helps others to enhance their skills and knowledge. A leader has leadership qualities inherent in him and a leader does not arise just by having a position like manager or supervisor. The positions give a person authority but not leadership. Leadership is inherent to an individual’s personality and can be honed by consciously working at it and attending to leadership workshops etc. Leadership is not about giving orders and also not about making others follow just by the strength of their position in an organization. But leadership is about making others voluntarily follow the leader by enlightening them as to why the common goal has to be achieved and in what way the achievement enriches their lives and career. According to Locke et. al (1991) leadership involves traits like situational interaction, function, vision, power, charisma, behavior, values and intelligence (Kouzes, J., and Posner, B. 2007).
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| | Essay on the topic ‘What skills, qualities, knowledge, and abilities would you need to develop to become an effective business leader-manager’ | | | Leadership is one of the most important factors that influences the functionality and success of an organization. Leadership is a complex term to understand and has multidimensional definitions to it. One of the definitions of leadership is that it can be called as the art of motivating a group of people towards achieving a common objective. A true leader inspires and directs his fellow men and women to achieve the objective. A leader needs to possess the desired personality and skills in order to make others to follow him. A leader not only guides and motivates others towards achieving common goals of the organization but also keeps the organization and its employees cohesive. A good leader always tries to instill in his fellow workers, work ethics, values and helps them to have a clear vision of their respective goals. A leader also helps others to enhance their skills and knowledge levels. A leader has leadership qualities inherent in him or her and a leader does not arise just by having a position like manager or supervisor. The positions give a person authority and power but not leadership. Leadership is inherent to an individual’s personality and leadership can be honed by consciously working at it and attending to leadership workshops etc. Leadership is not about giving orders and also not about making others follow just by the strength of their position or power in the organization. Leadership is about making others voluntarily follow the leader by enlightening them as to why the common goal has to be achieved and in what way the achievement enriches their lives and career. According to Locke et. al (1991) leadership involves traits like situational interaction, function, vision, power, charisma, behavior, values, endurance and intelligence (Kouzes and Posner, 2007).
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| | Essay on the topic of A skilled & adaptable workforce in the 21st century contributes to successful organizations operating in competitive environments | | | The need for skilled labor can be traced back to the industrial revolution. With the invention of the new machines organizations needed skilled people who could understand and operate them. The conventional knowledge of employees was not sufficient. There was a sudden need to make use of the intellect or skills as well as of being flexible and adaptable. Something that was perceived as a temporary need has become a necessity in today’s competitive global market. | | |
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| | Essay on the topic of Groupwork and Teamwork with focus on Australian Organizations | | | Today we are living in a business environment wherein, each work is divided and sub-divided into various and innumerable processes. Each process consists of its own uniqueness and nuances. For each of these processes to accomplish their respective objectives, it is a must that they work in coordination with the other process. Therefore, there is inter-connectivity between all these processes. Organizations are more flat these days, with a lot of internal coordination, communication and transparency. Even if an organization structure is tall, it has various links, which inter connects departments together. But one would infer, by hearing the above that, the internal communication part within companies are great. Actually it is the opposite. Today organizations are highly performance driven and hence, however, may the structure is tall or short, people do not have time to interact with each other. They meet the other department’s colleague with a competitive viewpoint and there are many rivalries within an organization. Internal competition remains pressurizing. To break this ice, organizations, have adopted a new technique i.e. group activities. Group activities are utilized optimally for various tasks within an organization. The tasks could be a casual and lighter one as well as tough management decisions. This is happening across the world, because today, there are innumerable varieties available within an organization coming with varied amount of complexities. It is rationally not possible for the senior management, which is a handful amount of people, to take a cumulative decision for the organization, which is huge in nature and operation. One needs to take care of various aspects, be it technical or softer, in order to reach any conclusion. Our focus in this piece of study is Australian organizations. | | |
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| | Essay on the topic of Organizational Change | | | Organizational change can be defined as a transition from the current situation to a different and more efficient situation. This requires that there are forces which push these changes against the resistance of status quo. Organizational change happens because of multiple reasons such as advent of new technology for increased efficiency; new regulations, competition etc. These changes can be driven through internal driving force such as strategic product diversification or an external one such an advent of technological development. This brings challenges to an organization since with change there are accompanied issues in an organization. An organization needs to keep tab on the causes of organizational change, the types of changes, and employee reactions to change amongst many. It needs to formulate a strategy for developing support for change; techniques for structuring change; and a model for planning and managing the change process. This is all the more relevant today considering tremendous challenges organizations face due to the current business environment caused by the global financial crisis. Heads have fallen across various industries where changes have been slow e.g. the US automotive segments. The cost of bailout by the US government has seen the old top management being pushed out. Many organizations have gone ahead and towards various options such as cost cutting, outsourcing, closing of idle plants, layoffs etc. but all this sometimes lead to resentment and drop in morale of workforce.
Hence, with such change comes uncertainty which can cripple and falter an organization. As Gehmawat (1991) has described that uncertainty leads to inaccurate prediction of circumstances that are critical for future activities of an organization and leads towards wrong investments. Anderson and Tushman (2001) also collaborate that uncertainty leads to demand variability that can cause organizations to fail.
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| | Essay on Why Is The Study Of Different Theories Of Motivation Important To Managers? | | | Rensis explained motivation to be the core of management. Motivation is an effective management tool that boosts up work force towards the working capacity. It is the foremost duty of every manager to motivate his team of employees to work towards the organizational goal to the best of their efforts
Motivation is a significant function which every manager performs for triggering the people to work for accomplishment of objectives of the organization. A manager thus should essentially use motivation theories so that he can instill motivation factors accordingly to accelerate the employees to follow them.
Another important aspect that management must take care of is catering to the need of culturally diverse workforce. Something that is viable for a person from eastern culture may not necessarily boost up the employees from western culture.
To motivate staff to work for the company goals, the managers must determine the drive factors and needs of the employee and shall provide an environment in which appropriate incentives are available for their satisfaction. If the management is successful in providing motivation at its best than it will also succeed in increasing the enthusiasm of the employees to work which in turn help in increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the organization.
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| | Essay on Work Life balance using a case study on Cadbury | | | – “Work a little less and go to the gym a little more. Do not put the thumbscrews to your employees – it will do no good. Punitive measures and threats are more likely to turn off or burn out your best workers than motivate them. When you turn up the heat, your best talent – the people you trained and groomed and who, therefore, have the most options – will be most likely to defect at the first opportunity. And that will likely increase your stress, not reduce it,”
This paper discusses the above statement with reference to OH&S and Worklife Balance
Looking at the current work life, it is clear that pressure and work load is increasing day by day. It is not only deteriorating employees’ work life but personal lives too. There are end numbers of problems that are faced by the employees of different organizations. This paper will through light on some basic concepts and issues of the commercial world. It will give an insight of the work arena. It covers the principles of work-life balance which has become a major issue in modern organizations. I will also cover a case study which will discover and provide a clear picture of work ethics of an organization. Therefore, this paper will present a complete view of the working environment of the employees. It will also have a critical overview of an organization on its assistance to its employees.
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| | Essay on Workplace Diversity | | | The term ‘workplace diversity’ is broadly a people issue referring to a culturally diverse working environment of an organization. It mainly focuses on the differences as well as similarities that people bring to an organization. It is important to realize that all these differences (or similarities) can affect the workplace Sonnenschein (1999). As a concept, diversity is often interpreted as to be inclusive of everyone with equal opportunity and non-discrimination status. A culturally diverse workgroup experiences a unique group identity including race, ethnicity, age, gender and sexual orientation. Diversity in a multicultural organization is all about learning from others, enjoying benefits of learning from diverse perspectives, and creating healthy workplace environments. This paper addresses various issues of workplace diversity in social and political contexts, and how they can be considered as significant beneficial factors while challenging the current economic crisis. | | |
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| | Hofstede and Schwartz Cultural Framework - An analysis and discussion along with contrast into the two cultural dimension perspectives | | | Culture is quite a complex phenomenon to enunciate in few lines. Though culture could not be vividly described but can be well experienced. In Solomon (1996) words Culture is the collective programming of the mind that differentiates members of one society from another- the shared notion and meaning of rituals, norms and tradition among members of society. Hence Culture is something that gives identity to nations. Cultures are patterns of behaviors and traditions passed from one generation to the next for e.g. - rules, language, religion, family systems, recreation, and education system. People tend to understand each other and the life around them when they are connected together through set of common beliefs and practices.
But in present scenario when globalization has left no boundaries, culture has become more of a question. Now, it’s not just ‘Culture behavior’ but ‘Inter-cultural behavior’. When people across the geographical boundaries work together they are often baffled to react in which way. The adage one man food is another man poison is well supported here. For e.g. A General Motors auto ad with "Body by Fisher" became "Corpse by Fisher" in Flemish. Thus culture here is very vital for successful communication. An intercultural communication! On the same lines in all the business contacts in era of globalization, there is communication which needs to be as constructive as possible, without any scope of misunderstandings and breakdowns due to culture barriers.
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| | HRM case study based on Labour market conditions in Australia | | | This case analysis is based on human resource manager’s strategy over challenges faced in Australian labor market due to changes in business environment through globalization, innovation & lately recession. To start with it describes about current facts & figures regarding labor market condition in Australian economy followed by the challenges faced by us as a human resource manager of mid- sized Australian owned and operated finance company. After this certain human resource strategies will be recommended for our company to make it one of the most employee friendly companies. This will help us to compete in this competitive business environment & this is how our human resource department will contribute to benefit of our company. Roles & responsibilities of us as a human resource manager have been defined in this case. We have touched all the relevant areas of human resources & critically analyzed the existing challenges in sustaining, attracting & retaining people to our organisation with sound reasoning & logics of human resource management. All the required human resource strategies that would contribute to the benefit of the company have been given in the case like recruitment strategy, workforce planning, flexible arrangements, strategies on wages & salaries, training & development & retirement policy of the employees in the company. | | |
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| | Leadership case study discussing leadership pattern of three leaders - Richard Branson, Percy Barnevik and David Simon | | | This case study deals with understanding leadership patterns of three leaders namely Richard Branson, Percy Barnevik and David Simon. It throws light on how these leaders practiced distinct form of leadership. It gives insight of strategies followed by them. It’s an attempt to analyze and understand their unique way of leading their employees. It determines their leadership practices that lead to improved organizational performance.
This case study shows how adopting a new way of leadership can bring success to the organization. It clearly reflects the breakthrough leadership practiced by them and why is it important in today’s world.
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| | Literature review on the topic of Management Accounting Control system | | | This paper addresses the notion of control system in the context of management accounting and discusses the management control systems. Management control systems as a set of mechanisms play an effective role in achieving different objectives in an organization. This paper conducts a brief review on the topic and analyzes its importance in the management accounting area. | | |
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| | Management report analysing the reasons for the reduction in productivity of a five star hotel in India | | | The hospitality industry is a several billion dollars industry depending on the availability of leisure time and disposable income of citizens in a country. The sector covers a wide range of hospitality units including restaurants, hotels, etc. with each unit containing multiple groups and sub-groups such as management, marketing, human resources, facility maintenance, direct operations, and so on. The importance of the hospitality sector can be evidently recognized. A substantially larger portion of the economy of a nation can be significantly determined by the effectiveness and success of its hospitality sector.
This paper addresses the broad picture of the hospitality sector in India, with particular reference to the efficiency and operationality of the food and beverage sector. The current scenario in the Indian hospitality industry is a little complicated as it is going through a phase of transformation. Most of the leading players in the hotel industry are suffering considerable profit falls while others are complaining of major decline in net profit. In this context, a quality check in the food and beverage sector is also significant. Because the hotels are witnessing noticeable decline in the productivity of food, which can play a deciding role in the overall profit fall. Before going into further details, it is necessary to look into the food and beverage sector of the hospitality industry of the country.
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| | Managing change and Creativity assignment on Microsoft | | | This report provides answer to the following questions –
• Are the concepts of creativity and innovation relevant to Microsoft? Use examples to illustrate your points.
• What were the founders’ motivations in starting this creative/innovative venture? Do you see any creativity on their part? Where? How did it arise?
• What is the organizational structure of Microsoft? What about the effects on creativity, specifically?
• How do you think the organizational culture of Microsoft fosters creativity/innovation in the workplace? Have you identified any particular organizational values that achieve this?
• Does Microsoft offer additional perks to its employees to maintain an innovative approach to their business? Are these formal/informal?
• There is a popular belief that “Change is the only constant”. Has Microsoft undergone change? Has the change been triggered by internal or external triggers? Please provide examples to illustrate your point.
• What is the biggest challenge that Microsoft is facing? What should they do in order to maintain a competitive edge?
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| | Organizations have culture or Organizations are culture – Critical Discussion | | | Business enterprises and entrepreneurs are an essential part of any society today as well as the global arena. They are the basic instruments of economic activity and they aim at satisfying our demands. Objective of these organisations are definitely profit making and extraction of cost but at the same time, the society expects a larger contribution today. Such enterprises vary in their characteristics, size and definitely products or services. They are segregated into industry sector they operate in and automatically attract a varied amount of talent pool from the market. In case we want to link the concept of culture to an organisation, the task would not be difficult as culture is made of people and so as organisations. If we could differentiate states by size and shape, we could relate them with small and big companies comprising of people coming from different cast, creed and religion. Very similar to when a society and its culture effects the neighboring, an organisation culture also affects the society it operates in. We would evaluate whether the concept of culture is made or they just become one. | | |
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| | Publication reviews of 2 articles related to Knowledge Management | | | The paper reviews the 2 articles related to Knowledge Management given below –
Creating and managing a high performance knowledge-sharing network: the Toyota case - Jeffrey h. Dyer and kentaro nobeoka
Seci, Ba And Leadership: A Unified Model Of Dynamic Knowledge Creation - Ikujiro Nonaka, Ryoko Toyama And Noboru Konno
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| | Rabobank Diversity management case study | | | This report analyses the case study of Rabobank which is a financial service provider in the Dutch market. Rabobank is facing the issue of managing diversity in its workforce. The approach of the management towards the employees from ethnic minorities is under doubt and concerns have been raised regarding the ethnic minorities being segregated into lower position. The issue has been looked at closely to find out the possible reasons and consequences for the same. Strategic approach and implementation strategy has been recommended to tackle the given issue so that the productivity of the organization can be enhanced and the situation of ethnic minorities can be improved as well. | | |
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| | Reflective assignment on Leadership and Change Management | | | The following is a reflection of my stint with ABC Constructions Pte. Ltd., a Singapore based construction corporation, which has a branch office in Melbourne, Australia. It is a large sized company having operations in the Asia Pacific region. It had recently opened its operations in Australia. The nature of the work the company undertook was urban infrastructure constructions such as flyovers, underpasses, metro rail tunnels etc. I worked there as senior human resource executive. I was in charge of a small team of human resource executives. My job was to look after the well being, wages, transportation, living conditions of the low class workers that were brought from the South East Asia. He team of workers moves with the company operations to different nations where the company has bagged huge infrastructure construction projects. Although, the company hires local workers too, this core team of employees which was involved in activities such as heavy equipment operation, earth mover operation etc. My job was to interact with these low class employees and look after their needs such as food, shelter, travel arrangements, visa preparations, orienting them to the new nation’s culture and work responsibilities etc. I had a team of three executives to assist me. I would report to the Human Resource Manager, who was handling more than a thousand employees that were directly or indirectly employed by the company.
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| | Reflective assignment on Organizational behaviour using motivational theories | | | I am writing about when I worked for an SEO (search engine optimization) marketing service, writing, editing, and offering internet marketing advice and business solutions to a wide-range of ebusinesses. As a freelance employee for www.seoarticlewritingservice.net, I worked closely with the website owner to manage other writers and create an effective SEO marketing strategy. We realized quickly that the way we were organizing writers and clients, through email alone, was grossly ineffective, unsystematic, and disorganized.
My role was to provide a solution to better organize orders, writers, and clients, ideally in a way that is semi-automated. I proposed to explore how IT (information technology) and Java computer scripts can be utilized to reduce the time needed to process orders for an SEO (search engine optimization) website business. The findings ought to be relevant for a wide-range of writing and service-oriented businesses. The plan explored the time needed for the current business processes, and compared this to new, web-based, project management systems. Information technology is integral to efficiently running a business. Regardless of the business industry, each business process typically requires each business segment to communicate with each other and across segments. Timely, accurate, and up to date information is vital. By utilizing Java and its logical programming structure such as contingency-based, if-then statements, which act as triggers for automated processes, businesses can increase their efficiency dramatically.
The company has been in business for 8 years, and growing rapidly. At the time, it employed 12 full-time managers and 144, part-time, freelance writers. Each manager organized, taught, and helped edit for 12 writers each.
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| | Report investigating the operations management, marketing management and financial management of Symantec Corporation and making recommendations for improvement | | | Symantec Corporation is one of the market leaders in storage management and systems protection. Since its inception in 1982 Symantec has gained market leadership in home users, medium organizations and large organizations segments. This report investigates operations management, marketing management and financial management of Symantec Corporation. The report analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of methodologies adopted in each of these management areas. The paper tries to identify the approach of the company in those areas that brought success to the company. The paper finally tries to identify areas that need improvement and makes recommendations for change in those areas. | | |
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| | Report on Bratton Gold’s statement “Responsibilities for HRM activities rest with all managers And Should not be left to HR specialists” | | | Human resource management is a strategic way of approaching the management of the organization’s most valuable asset – the employees who are working in the organization and who both individually and collectively contribute in achieving the goals and objectives of any organization. In simple terms, HRM can be explained as employing the appropriate kind of people suitable for the organization, developing their resources, utilizing them, maintaining and compensating their services according to their job requirement and the organizational expectations... It serves the role of staff authority i.e., it just advises the management in terms of the employees by using its human resource expertise and in no way can it fall under the line authority. And its duties limits to formulating and providing the guidelines in bringing out the best in every employee. These HR activities should not be left to the HR specialists alone as they just support the managers and they play an advisory role and not executive role. | | |
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| | Report on empowerment of workforce - A proposal towards maximisation of benefits | | | This report on ‘Empowering the Workforce’ is relevant in the scenario of large scale emergence of firms and companies. Competition is growing at an unprecedented rate and thus, we need to look for ways to optimise our benefits in the face of this competition. To acquire a winning edge, it is proposed that a scheme for empowerment of the workforce be undertaken. Empowerment, talked of in business or commercial terms, is the process of assigning power to the employees by making them a part of the decision making process. It is based on the argument that it increases employee satisfaction and thus gets the maximum out of them. The role of managers becomes very significant in this process. Managerial capability is what will decide on the success of the project. Two case studies- one of a large Australia based MNC (AGI) and another of 1300 medium and small firms- have been discussed in the report. | | |
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| | Report on ethical dilemma | | | This report is attempts to understand ethical dilemma employees face in an organization and established work on the field help resolve it. We will look at the corporate culture where there has been visible failure on many fronts. We will draw from normative and other ethical theory to understand the issue at our hands. We will find out the ethical lapses given in the case and cite the reasons from the ethical theory for the same. We will move on to identify the stakeholders in this issue. These stakeholders are part and solution of the whole problem. We will then look into the work done by Bommer et al and use it to evaluate the given case. Insights from the study will be used to understand the ethical issues and lapses etc. Finally we will move on to provide solution to the problems we have encountered. After the major ethical issues have been identified earlier, we will now move on to resolve the same. Multiple options will be suggested and evaluated on the merits they provide. Finally, the best plan of action will be picked and suggested for implementation. | | |
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| | Report on identification analysis of Operational management issues at workplace and recommendations for improvement | | | The importance of the proper Operations Management in solving current problems faced by my uncle’s restaurant business is highlighted. The main problem is the inflexibility in the management of the restaurant operation system. The presence of my uncle during daily operations of the restaurant makes a huge impact on the level of staff performance as well as the profitability of the restaurant daily business. This study introduces the background of the restaurant as well as highlights the main problems issues for discussions, followed by an introduction to the methodology involved. Finally, a solution for each problem is presened. It is strongly believed that this study can enhance the restaurant’s operations management and overcome its inflexibility situation thus improved the staff performance and returns of the business.
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| | Report on Managerial Leadership in IKEA | | | The definition of leadership has been changing with time. The several mutations that the very concept of leadership has gone under are proof of the emerging needs and competition of organisations. Leadership is no more just the task of decision making; it is an all encompassing field. These changes have given rise to newer terms and concepts. One of such terms and concepts is ‘managerial leadership’. Managerial leadership is the skill of maximizing opportunities not just for oneself, but for the organisation on the whole. Topping (2005) states that enabling your associates to work at their very best is the core of managerial leadership. Managerial leadership thus, transcends the individual and works at the level of the organisation. It is argued that managerial leadership works both at the individual and the organisational level. This is true to some extent only because ultimately, it is the organisation that is the target of managerial leadership. More and more organisations are adopting managerial leadership for this very reason. Managerial leadership helps in improving the efficiency of the whole organisation. Therefore, it has become quite popular.
Managerial leadership has various levels. It moves in a sort of hierarchy. Thus, there are managers or leaders or managerial leaders at different statures. There may be an administrative officers, then a middle manager and at the top an executive. All are responsible for managerial leadership; the nature and content of tasks of course varies at these levels. Therefore, managerial leadership requires training. It is also called ‘Managerial Leadership Development’. To maximize the opportunities for success for both the individual and the organization, the timing of leadership and managerial development training should be strategically considered. The training required for an individual to be successful should not focus on skills required for the individual’s current position, but rather on skills required to be successful at the next level position (Kotter, 1990). Often, managerial leadership development draws a distinction between leadership and management. This distinction is necessary for determining the appropriate training for all levels of leaders or managers. According to their tasks, Smith (2007) has drawn out four basic levels of leaders- first line supervisors, middle manager, administrator and executive. First line supervisors and executives are supposed to be most concerned with leadership as compared to middle managers and administrators, who are more focussed on management. At the same time it is pointed out that ‘developmental training’ is different from regular training. While routine training would merely provide skills necessary for the current situation, developmental training seeks to equip leaders with managerial skills that will help the overall organisation and also produce benefits for the future. This is in fact the very premise of managerial leadership development. Effective leadership not only enhances corporate performance, but it fosters employee motivation, job satisfaction, performance, and organizational commitment, while reducing absenteeism and turnover. Current thinking about leadership emphasizes that effective leadership spans a continuum ranging from managerial to transformational leadership.
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| | Report on New evolving management structure | | | This report examines the changing management trend and the new evolving group, team based structure that is slowly catching the momentum. It discusses the nature, scope and role, functions of the group and team based structure globally and talks about the benefits emerging from such arrangement. It puts on pedestal the incorporation of teams in the decision making procedure and the varied phases of decision making tasks that it caries out. Operations and functions of the groups in the company’s frame work in the pursuit of attaining the organizational goals which are no more exclusive organization’s goals but newly defined strategic goals that defines amalgamation of objectives as one, single and focused objective. Analyses the workings of Haigh’s chocolates in Australia. It brings to light the studies supporting and recommending the group structure as the success mantra defined in 21st century. | | |
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| | Report on Samsung Electronics case study | | | Samsung Electronics has grown from a small time company in 1987 to become the second largest profit making electronics company outside of the United States in 2003 under the leadership of Kun Hee Lee, Chairman of the Samsung Group (Siegel & Chang, 2006). Samsung Electronics, which is a part of Samsung Group has turned out to be its flagship company during the last 20 years. The company is world leader in memory chip production and sales. There are various factors that contributed to the market leadership. Some of them are sustained investment in cutting edge technology even in the face of market conditions that called for selling memory chips at prices lower than the cost of manufacturing to gain market leadership when the industry demands increased. When the memory market surged in the early 90s the vast investment in research & development and production facilities paid off since Samsung stood out as the sole company to meet the increased market demands. Samsung’s policy of delivering low cost but high quality memory chips with the use of cutting edge technology and committed workforce helped them to beat the monopoly of Japanese companies (Siegel & Chang, 2006). But of late Samsung is facing a similar situation Japanese companies faced a decade ago or so from Samsung, that new Chinese entrants are threatening the leadership of Samsung by manufacturing low cost memory chips. Samsung memory division is at cross roads on deciding as to whether to cede leadership in the low cost memory market to Chinese companies and concentrate on quality products manufactured through cutting edge technology or to partner with Chinese companies so as to hold on to the leadership. | | |
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| | Report on Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme (SNI) change management – Human Resource & People | | | – Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme (SNI) is one such organisation which has gone tremendous organisational change. Question now arises what this change is and why change has become so important? In laymen terms, Organisations are not same all time. And so is SNI. It too has to adapt to the changing needs in era of globalisation.
Roping in these complex phenomena of change and its impact on human resource particularly; this report focuses on Siemens transition to lead it to a new beginning. First section deals with why and when change is required in an organisation in context to literature review and how these theories can be applied to Siemens. To delve more into the concept, a ‘diagnostic model’ has been built for SNI to explain in depth the problem and how and what organisation could do to bring upon the change to instil success towards the company growth. ‘Intervention for Change’ is third part and will deal with the identification of the aspects related change required in the Siemens. The role of leader in intervention of change has also been given emphasis in this section. Fourth part of the report will cover the ‘HR-people management for change’ in the Siemens office. ‘Recommendations’ along with ‘Conclusion’ has been given in fifth part followed by final part i.e. ‘implementation plan’.
However, certain limitations came across while compiling this report. First, is that this company has been merged with the parent company and hence data got mixed up. Secondly, reliance on company profile only with lesser data available on this particular division and then connecting it to literature. A direct link with human resource and few of change agents would have made this report more realistic.
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| | Report studying and Comparing the Cultural values of Australia and India | | | The aim of the report is to study and compare the cultural values of Australia and India. This would be done to help understand each other better in workplace, academic institutions and in socializing. The report will take help of the existing literature and research material available and study both the cultures under a framework and present its result and recommendations. It will conclude with the final analysis. | | |
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| | Review of the Journal article: Australian Trade Unions and the Politics of Scale: Reconstructing the Spatiality of Industrial Relations | | | This paper reviews the journal article – ‘Australian Trade Unions and the Politics of Scale: Reconstructing the Spatiality of Industrial Relations’ by David Sadler and Bob Fagan | | |
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| | Review of the the research paper ‘Analysis of Hoteliers' E-Commerce and Information Technology Applications - Business Travelers Perceptions and Needs by Yeh et al. (2005), from the perspective of a Front Office Manager in a hotel | | | Hospitality industry in the past few decades is increasingly adopting technology in its operations, be they front office booking, room management, inventory etc. (Connor & Murphy, 2004, p. 1). IT investment in hospitality industry is no longer seen as additional costs to operations but is seen as strategic infrastructure that gives edge with competition. Some of the benefits of IT infrastructure in the hospitality industry are ease of use, centralized database that connects to all the departments, remote management, and the speed of operations. The modern internet technology such as e-commerce has enabled customers to find out availability of rooms, room rates, book the rooms and even pay online. According to Gregory and Brieter (2001), there was 54 percent increase in customers using internet to obtain travel information, bookings and hotel arrangements between 1998 and 2001 (Yeh et al., 2005, p. 3). IT infrastructure not only enables efficient use of resources within the hospitality industry but also offers customers ease of use. This paper reviews the research paper ‘Analysis of Hoteliers' E-Commerce and Information Technology Applications: Business Travelers' Perceptions and Needs’ by Yeh et al. (2005), from the perspective of a Front Office Manager in a hotel. The paper draws experience of the Front Office Manager to fill the gaps in the research. The paper also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of IT infrastructure in the hospitality industry. The essay finally concludes as to whether IT investment in hospitality industry is a boon or bane. | | |
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| | Self-Reflective assignment on Management, Organizational Behaviour and Motivation | | | I am reflecting on a time in my working life where I offered advice and business solutions to a mid-sized legal firm regarding problems relating to people management strategies. As an independent business consultant I was recommended to the Senior Partner of PBA Solicitors, a legal firm in Toowoomba who revealed the company was experiencing problems concerning low staff morale, lack of motivation and team relationships. My role was to provide the Partners with a proposal of solutions to help with improvement strategies for the business overall. This was a medium size thirty year established firm consisting of eight partners, nine solicitors in various filed of law and fifty employees in total, including paralegal, secretarial and administration staff.
The Senior partner controlled all areas of management without any formal Human Resource (HR) structure or quality standards in place, nor any Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, yet he desired the company to be viewed as progressive, with his informal catchcry being ‘Passion, Teamwork and Fun’. His operating style was unstructured hence he informed me during our first meeting he loathed the words ‘structure’ and ‘mission’. This was an evident fact as the company was void of a mission or value statement nor had a business or strategic plan in place to cope with exit or succession strategy, yet it was the partners’ desire to retire ‘rich’.
The partners all had external investment interests as company profits were high, however it was not of concern to them to plan for the future or expand the business at that stage due to the ease of the comfort zone.
Divisional cells applied to each area of law being Commercial, Litigation, Family, and Conveyancing. Each cell had a routine way of operating with the Commercial department being the main revenue earner due to the rapid growth of the property market in Cairns. This in turn was creating work load pressure particularly for the conveyancing team and administration staff; hence they felt unappreciated and totally unrewarded for their increased work efforts.
I ascertained there were three main areas of concern for this business overall being the lack of functional structure (no HR systems in place), problems regarding soft skills in relation to improving feedback and managing poor performance, and team development with breakdowns in communication, cooperation and working toward a common goal.
If these issues were not dealt with accordingly the company would experience problems pertaining to staff retention and attraction of new talent should competition become an issue in the future. The probability of staff being poached by competition was high if attractive remuneration and reward packages were offered by opposition along with the promise of a more inclusive culture and career development prospects relating to succession via promotions and partnering opportunities.
If this company was to survive, thrive, and maintain healthy market share then strategies for improvement regarding the ‘big picture’ required implementation.
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| | Short Article on ‘A leader who influenced me’ | | | Whenever I think of the word leader, the picture that comes to my mind is of my father. He is today one of the most respected person in the business community in which he operates. He started from scratch and is now a role model for many young people. I look up to him not only as a successful businessman but also a wonderful human being. | | |
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| | Strategic analysis of a contemporary business leader – William Henry Gates, Cofounder of Microsoft | | | William Henry Gates III is the Microsoft Cofounder, a famous philanthropist and also a renowned businessman. He laid the foundation of Microsoft and is better known as the architect of this successful company. It’s because of his dynamic leadership skills and management strategies, he has been able to establish the company in more than 85 countries with a maximum reach of 55, 000 employees, all over the world. In spite of several challenges and competitions thriving in the world market, Gates remains to be one of the richest men in the world, has used his leadership skills and visions to the best possible dimensions and has proved to be the greatest entrepreneur of the world. Lowe (1998) in his book “Bill Gates Speaks: Insight from the World’s greatest Entrepreneur” writes that his pioneering work in the field of computers has altered the lives of people who use it, forever. He also calls Gates as an innovator, full time genius and also a part time salesman.
Taking into consideration the statement “Leaders create vision, the meaning within which others work and live. Managers, by contrast, act completely within a vision” by Adler Nancy from International Dimensions of Organisational Behaviour, it reflects that the vision of the leaders is different, nascent, innovative and also appealing. They take the road less travelled and have their own followers. Though, as managers, the individuals are much more into managing the entire process through which the ideas have been generated by the leaders and account to the fact that these ideas are followed through flawless execution. Gold (2006), in his book “Entrepreneurs notebook” reveals how challenging and very gratifying the entire journey of being a leader is. A leader needs to be convincing, confident and very principled, knowing the tricks in the trade.
A person who has the right sense of thought process, idea generation and can make people believe in him can actually manage to stay in this business field. There are millions of others who will take inspiration from him. On the other hand, the managers prove to be methodological and more flawless in terms of the management aspect of the entire vocation they are employed and involved into. Though, it does not, by any means, compare the mental or intellectual appeal of both of them. But the fact remains to be true, that its comparatively easier to be a manager, a profession which can be learnt with time and pace, rather than being a leader because it is in built and cannot be influenced by the external surrounding, until and unless the leadership trait is there in them, from birth For example, Bill Gates, declined the mandatory and customary trends which the mere graduates followed in Harvard but rather he gave more interest and time to polish his skills in programming and building his own empire, his own establishment, which could not be compared or defeated by any other. Geist (2000) in his book “Monopolies in America” States clearly the kind of enemies and empire building tactics which the prominent leaders from the time of Jay Gould to Bill Gates have used, for their own success and progress in the world of cut throat competition.
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| | The report analysing the implementation of components such as project communication, project management information system, project integration and project life cycle using a real life example of Infosys and ACIC project | | | Project communication, human resources planning, project management information system is all project components that contribute to the success of a project implementation. It is not sufficient if the project plan just included technicalities of execution and budgeting but it becomes important to bring together all the components of a project plan in a cohesive way. This calls for project integration. Project integration management is a group of processes that are required to effectively link various components of the project together. The various components of the projects could be developing project charter, developing initial scope of the project, developing project management plan, project execution, project control, change control etc. The report aims at understanding all these components of project by analyzing a commercial project management plan. The report tries to analyze the implementation of components such as project communication, project management information system, project integration and project life cycle of the sample project plan. The paper also tries to compare theoretical aspects of the above said project components with respect to the actual methods used in the project plan and tries to identify as to why certain components are omitted or included. Not all the project management plans require all the project components. The choice of the inclusion of project components varies depending upon the nature, duration and impact of the execution of the project on the organization. Another factor that determines as to whether or not all the components of a project plan are included or not is the complexity and hence the cost of the project. More the complexity of the project greater is the need for inclusion of all the available components of the project. The project under study is a web based application for an investment and real estate company to manage user accounts. The project was awarded to an Indian multinational company. The report finds the project plan developed by the Indian company Infosys for the development of a software application for an American company ACIC scoring well in the aspects of human resource planning, stakeholder communication plan, project integration and change plans. However, the report finds the need to ensure effective project monitoring by incorporating Project Management Information System or PMIS. The report recommends Infosys to incorporate Project Management Information System in its future projects. | | |
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