...The article Why We Hate HR by Keith Hammonds, deputy editor for Fast Company, discusses the ineffectiveness human resources have on a company. He very boldly argues that HRM’s striving to become involved in strategic business planning and to have “a seat at the table” are inhibited by the routine functions of HR and administrative expectations (Hammonds, 2005, p. 1). Hammonds’ article develops claims that lead up to his conclusion that HR is a wasted talent for a company to utilize to gain differentiation, competiveness, and value. The critiques Hammonds used to define human resources can be used to explore the potential value and capabilities HR has to offer a business and possibilities of a company gaining in the HR area of the work force. Hammonds argues that the focus on performance impedes on an organization’s ability to deliver value to employees and customers. “You’re only effective if you add value,” he quotes Dave Ulrich, “… you’re not measured by what you do but by what you deliver,” (Hammonds, p. 3). In order to achieve added value, organizations can consider adopting new HR practices. In R. Wayne Mondy’s Human Resource Management text book, the evolution of HR is discussed with a simple conclusion that there is no pattern for how human resource tasks are now achieved. The only certainty is that the previously identified HR functions must still be accomplished. Each company must choose the appropriate vehicle for doing these tasks based on specific needs...
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...Japanese Management Style 505 Fundamentals of Business Enterprise Japanese Management Style: Still Relevant Today? Cultural norms and business practices vary throughout the world. It would be foolish for an American businessman to travel to Africa or Asia and believe that the manner in which they conduct business in the States will translate effectively to interactions with their foreign counterparts. Peter Smith’s 1984 article titled, “The effectiveness of Japanese styles of management: A review and critique,” details the similarities and differences between the accepted management styles in America and Japan. The impetus behind the article concerned the growing number of American subsidiaries in Japan. Smith attempts to analyze the distinctive qualities of Japanese work organizations, whether there are consistent or universal themes across all Japanese organizations, and what tends to happen when the distinctive qualities in Japanese business come into contact with Western business practices. As a result, there are several interesting lessons provided within this article that managers from all corners of the world can learn from. Japanese work organizations are structured In terms of exhibit rigid hierarchical organizational structure. Nonetheless, while organizations in Japan are less functionally specialized, the Japanese stress the collective unit rather than individual responsibility, as reported by Yoshino in 1975 when he discusses the ringi method that...
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...In Press, Business Ethics Quarterly Getting to the Bottom of “Triple Bottom Line”* by Wayne Norman and Chris MacDonald March 2003 Abstract: In this paper, we examine critically the notion of “Triple Bottom Line” accounting. We begin by asking just what it is that supporters of the Triple Bottom line idea advocate, and attempt to distil specific, assessable claims from the vague, diverse, and sometimes contradictory uses of the Triple Bottom Line rhetoric. We then use these claims as a basis upon which to argue (a) that what is sound about the idea of a Triple Bottom Line is not novel, and (b) that what is novel about the idea is not sound. We argue on both conceptual and practical grounds that the Triple Bottom Line is an unhelpful addition to current discussions of corporate social responsibility. Finally, we argue that the Triple Bottom Line paradigm cannot be rescued simply by attenuating its claims: the rhetoric is badly misleading, and may in fact provide a smokescreen behind which firms can avoid truly effective social and environmental reporting and performance. Introduction The notion of “Triple Bottom Line” (3BL) accounting has become increasingly fashionable in management, consulting, investing, and NGO circles over the last few years. The idea behind the 3BL paradigm is that a corporation’s ultimate success or health can and should be measured not just by the traditional financial bottom line, but also by its social/ethical and environmental performance...
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...relationships: formal and informal. Informal relationships develop on their own between partners. Formal mentoring, on the other hand, refers to a structured process supported by the organization and addressed to target populations. Traditionally, mentoring was a formal one-on-one face-to-face relationship between an older more experienced person and a young person with no experience. At one time, the term 'apprentice' was commonplace in various trades, most commonly in blue collar industries; however, apprenticeships have stepped aside for the now more commonly recognized term of mentoring and the concept has moved strictly from trade industries to more white collar and 'professional' setting. Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. This is usually in the form of a person being assigned to an experienced employee for training. Although career paths...
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...Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business From Reason (October 2005) Making Philanthropy Out of Obscenity -Milton Friedman By pursuing his own interest [an individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. -Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations The differences between John Mackey and me regarding the social responsibility of business are for the most part rhetorical. Strip off the camouflage, and it turns out we are in essential agreement. Moreover, his company, Whole Foods Market, behaves in accordance with the principles I spelled out in my 1970 New York Times Magazine article. With respect to his company, it could hardly be otherwise. It has done well in a highly competitive industry. Had it devoted any significant fraction of its resources to exercising a social responsibility unrelated to the bottom line, it would be out of business by now or would have been taken over. Here is how Mackey himself describes his firm's activities: 1. "The most successful businesses put the customer first, instead of the investors" (which clearly means that this is the way to put the investors first). 2. "There can be little doubt that a certain amount of corporate philanthropy is simply good business and works for the long-term benefit of the investors." Compare this to what I wrote in 1970: "Of course, in practice the doctrine of social...
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...top of the food chain when it comes to financial wealth and goals. To increase company wealth a firm must balance their scorecard which consists of four key perspectives: financial, internal, customers, and future. I chose this article for my paper because one of my goals in life is to be at the top of the pyramid at a for-profit company. Some of the tools that are mentioned in this article will help me build my foundation on to achieve my goals of reaching top management at a for-profit company. Brief Overview The article discusses how for-profit companies can build and increase their wealth from an internal and external standpoint. The article also addresses how resources are accessed, developed, combined and/or deployed which leads to wealth creation. Taking a balance scorecard approach is one way a company can determine how capabilities can lead to wealth creation. The balance scorecard approach consists of the following perspectives: financial, internal, customers, and the future. The article also proposed a modified balance scorecard which consists of shareholders, customers, employee, and future positioning perspective. The financial perspective is concerned with risk and profit from a shareholder point of view. Public firms are in business to create and increase shareholders wealth. If a firm is not profitable, shareholders will invest in other firms. Since increasing shareholders’ wealth is very important to firms, they began to compensate senior management...
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...Budgeting, and Controlling Costs Kittrin Smith Ashford University Managerial Accounting – BUS 630 Dana Leland September 3, 2012 Budgeting and Controlling Cost Budgeting is an essential tool for the successful management of any company. It’s a way for upper management to communicate its plans and intentions to the entire company. The budget is their plan for success. According to Noreen, Brewer, and Garrison (2011) it is a quantitative plan for acquiring and using resources over a specified time period. The budget process can seem like a tedious exercise for some, as it involves and affects all areas of the company, but in the end it enables a company to plan how it will achieve revenue goals and control costs. In the simplest of terms the budget explains how much the company should be spending to produce a predetermined about amount of product which will yield a desired profit. Through the budgeting process and the controlling of costs many company’s like American Airlines, are able to keep their costs at a minimum and profits as high as possible. A company’s master budget is actually made up of a collection of smaller budgets that detail the company’s sales, production and financial goals. These smaller budgets consist of a sales budget, a production budget or an inventory of merchandise purchases budget, a direct materials budget, a direct labor budget, a manufacturing overhead budget, an ending finished goods inventory...
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...The performance consulting approach to training takes on a different nature and tactic than an instructional designer. By consulting for companies whose (most of the time) aim are for profit, the design of the instructional model needs to be tied in with performance goals of the company, and not necessarily prescribe an instructional systems design (ISD) that focuses on just the design, delivery and evaluation of the instruction itself, if any. By thorough analysis, identification of lackluster processes, and linking to company goals, the performance consulting can greatly enhance the overall performance of an organization. This also involves consulting with management, selling the management on the solutions, and garnering support from several key players within the organization while keeping in mind the need to maintain efficiency and profitability for the organization itself. Human Performance Technology (HPT) can be defined as an approach using a set of methods and procedures to generate solutions geared towards improving productivity and competence. HPT uses a “systematic” combination of three processes: performance analysis, cause analysis, and intervention selection (ISPI, 2007). In contrast, Training and Development may take up a very similar approach, usually that of analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate (ADDIE) training efforts as a one-size-fits-all approach to systemic remediation (Pearlstein, 2011). Like Instructional Design, HPT is more grounded...
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...Law Volume 26 | Issue 2 Article 5 2008 Corporate Governance as Social Responsibility: A Research Agenda Amiram Gill Recommended Citation Amiram Gill, Corporate Governance as Social Responsibility: A Research Agenda, 26 Berkeley J. Int'l Law. 452 (2008). Available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjil/vol26/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals and Related Materials at Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Berkeley Journal of International Law by an authorized administrator of Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact jcera@law.berkeley.edu. Gill: Corporate Governance as Social Responsibility: A Research Agenda Corporate Governance as Social Responsibility: A Research Agenda By Amiram Gill* In the post-Enron years, corporate governance has shifted from its traditional focus on agency conflicts to address issues of ethics, accountability, transparency,and disclosure. Moreover, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has increasinglyfocused on corporate governance as a vehicle for incorporating social and environmental concerns into the business decision-making process, benefiting not only financial investors but also employees, consumers, and communities. Currently, corporate governance is being linked more and more with business practices and public policies that are stakeholder-friendly. This Article examines these developments...
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...a retailer who managed to get a bargain from a wholesaler would leave his store prices unchanged and pocket the extra money. Walton, by contrast, realized he could do better by passing on the savings to his customers and earning his profits through volume. This insight would form a cornerstone of Walton’s business strategy when he launched Wal-Mart in 1962. Walton understood that a major requirement for keeping costs down was controlling the payroll. He said, “Payroll is one of the most important parts of overhead, and overhead is one of the most crucial things you have to fight to maintain your profit margin.” Not only did Walton prefer to hire as few people as possible, but he also feared paying them more than he had to. Unions were particularly feared, and Walton did everything he could to fight them, almost always successfully. The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 31, 1969. In 1970, it opened its home office and first distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas. It had 38 stores operating with 1,500 employees and sales of $44.2 million. It began trading stock as a publicly held company on October 1, 1970, and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The first stock split occurred in May 1971 at a market price of $47 (equivalent to $274.00 in 2014). By this time, Walmart was operating in five states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma; it entered Tennessee in 1973 and Kentucky and Mississippi in 1974. As it moved into...
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...Comparing and Contrasting Management in the Public and Private Sectors in Nigeria Introduction The term ‘management’ is very ambiguous; it is difficult to give a statement that describes the exact meaning of the word. The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast management in the public and private sectors in Nigeria. Instead of discussing only the differences between public and private organizations, this paper discusses the differences in managerial roles in both sectors. We begin by looking at some assorted opinions, after which we discuss the general description of the public and private sectors and the state of these sectors in Nigeria today. We will then discuss similarities between public and private management in Nigeria and three possible arguments that can be used to support the differences between public sector and private sector management. This paper explains the difference in the mangers’ job context; purposes and goals, accountability and autonomy. Finally, we will give a brief summary of the paper in the conclusion. Some Opinions Since the 1800’s, different scholars have given different interpretations of management from their points of view. Mary Parker Follett, an American social worker and management consultant gave a popular definition. She says, “management is the art of getting things done through people” (Tripathi, 2008). George R. Terry, the 16th President of the Academy of Management gave a somewhat more elaborate definition. He defined...
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...------------------------------------------------- Business process reengineering From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Business Process Reengineering Cycle Business process re-engineering is a business management strategy, originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows andbusiness processes within an organization. BPR aimed to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors.[1] In the mid-1990s, as many as 60% of the Fortune 500 companies claimed to either have initiated reengineering efforts, or to have plans to do so.[2] BPR seeks to help companies radically restructure their organizations by focusing on the ground-up design of their business processes. According to Davenport (1990) a business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome. Re-engineering emphasized a holistic focus on business objectives and how processes related to them, encouraging full-scale recreation of processes rather than iterative optimization of subprocesses.[1] Business process re-engineering is also known as business process redesign, business transformation, or business process change management. Contents [hide] * 1 Overview * 2 History * 2.1 Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate, 1990 * 2.2 Development after 1995 * 3 Business process reengineering topics ...
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... | | | |2.2 Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply | | | |2.3 Fiscal Policy | | | |2.4 Monetary Policy | | | |2.5 The Impact of Unemployment | | |3. |Related Policy Issues | | |4. |Critique of the Article | | |5. |Conclusion | | | |References | |...
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...This article was downloaded by: [Aberystwyth University] On: 12 October 2013, At: 02:24 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Marketing Management Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjmm20 The Sociology of Consumption: The Hidden Facet of Marketing Hélène Cherrier & Jeff B. Murray Published online: 01 Feb 2010. To cite this article: Hélène Cherrier & Jeff B. Murray (2004) The Sociology of Consumption: The Hidden Facet of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, 20:5-6, 509-525, DOI: 10.1362/0267257041323954 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1362/0267257041323954 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable...
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...Welcome to Strategic Human Resource Management Course Number: MBA 786 School of Business & Technology University of Wisconsin - Parkside 6:00 - 9:15 p.m. Wednesdays, Molinaro 167 October 29 – December 17 Fall Semester 2008 “…if we are to have citizens who can live constructively in this kaleidoscopically changing world, we can only have them if we are willing for them to become self-starting, self-initiating learners.” Carl Rogers Contacting the Instructor Professor: Dr. Karen Crooker Phone/Voice Mail: 595-2348 (worst way to contact) Office: Molinaro 349 Fax: 595-2680 (label to my attention) E-mail: crooker@uwp.edu (best way to contact) Address: UWP, Department of Business, PO Box 2000, Kenosha, WI 53141-2000 Web page: http://uwp.edu/~crooker/ Office hours: 3:15 – 4:30 p.m., Mondays & Wednesday. Other times by appointment. Course Description Using human resource management systems to create and sustain competitive advantage. Emphasis on an integrative framework that requires linkage between, as well as consistency among, functional HR activities and their alignment with and reinforcement of the organization’s competitive strategy. Course Objectives The goal of this course is to help students develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities in the following areas. At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to ✓ Name competitive...
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