December 23, 2012

Management Theory Review - December



I am preparing Knowledge History Review sheet one for each calendar day. Collecting events in science, engineering, and management in it. Collecting also some interesting recent videos. I am also including two blog posts from this blog. Such inclusion should help revision of management knowledge by prompting some topics every day.



Knowledge History of The Day


December
December
December
December
December


December
December
December
December
December 10


December
December
December
December
December 15


December
December
Dember
Deceecmber
December 20


December
December
December
December
December


December 21
December 22
Science, Engineering and Management - History - 23 December
December 24
December 25

December 26

December 27
December 28
December 29
December 30

December 31


This Knowledge Management History series helps me also to do revision reading.






August 23, 2012

Management Theory and Practice - Bulletin Board - August 2012



24.8.2012

Usain Bolt explaining his mission success in London 2012 Olympics to IMD B-School people.
http://mgmtvideo.blogspot.com/2012/08/usain-bolt-sharing-secrets-of-his.html


The editors of MIT Sloan Management Review are pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize: Rob Cross, Peter Gray, Shirley Cunningham, Mark Showers and Robert J. Thomas for their Fall 2010 article “The Collaborative Organization: How to Make Employee Networks Really Work.” In the article, the authors discussed how the most effective organizations make smart use of employee networks to reduce costs, improve efficiency and spur innovation.
Article available for free access for some days.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-fall/52121/the-collaborative-organization-how-to-make-employee-networks-really-work/


23.8.2012

Social Media's Productivity Payoff
Your employees are active on Social media. Don't worry. The collaboration and communication facilitated by social media technologies help your knowledge workers to innovate and help your organization to grow
HBR Blog post by James Maryika, Michael Chui and Hugo Sarrazin, McKinsey & Co.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/social_medias_productivity_pay.html

June 19, 2012

Management Theory and Practice - Bulletin Board - June 2012




Engineering and Management News  -  Knowledge@Wharton  - HBR Blogs
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19.6.2012

Value Stream Mapping enhanced with Industrial Engineering Tools

Sadono C. Djumin, Yuri Wibowo and Shahrukh A. Irani
Department of Industrial, Welding and Systems Engineering
The Ohio State University
Columbus Ohio 43210
http://iwse.eng.ohio-state.edu/ISEFaculty/irani/Industrial%20Engineering%20Studies/Value%20Stream%20Mapping%20from%20an%20Industrial%20Engineering%20Viewpoint.htm



4.6.2012

Three pitfalls startup founders must avoid - HBR Video
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http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2012/05/three-pitfalls-startup-founder.html
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The core tenets of social web - Free, Open, Participatory
http://blogs.hbr.org/samuel/2011/04/the-core-tenets-of-the-social-1.html
HBR blog post, April 2011

3.6.2012
Innovation Ambition Matrix - HBR Blog post
Core innovations and transformational innovations

2008 Meltdown and where the blame falls - Robert Lenzner 2.6.2012 in Forbes
Greenspan

Nonfinancial rewards are important to A-grade talent - HBR Blog post 24 May 2012

Updates to Management Theory Review Articles

The Legal Environment of HRM - Review Notes




Videos


Personal Productivity Secrets
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IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2012
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May 31, 2012

Management Theory and Practice - Bulletin Board - May 2012


Engineering and Management News  -  Knowledge@Wharton  - HBR Blogs
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31.5.2012
Cost Accounting Introduction - Updated

Risk Manager's job is to quantify the risk and when the project is approved by management with the quantified risk, the project managers is allowed to fail and the failure is well tolerated by the organized.
Permission to fail - HBR blog post by Aaron Brown 30 May 2012

30.5.2012
Innovation Projects need to be supported by Executives who can say Yes without Permission
Vijay Govind Rajan and Mark Sebell in HBR blogs
29 May 202

Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything
Tony Schwartz
HBR Blogs August 2010

29.5.2012

Marketing Management - Online Book
updated with more entries

Managing Risky Behavior
HBR Insight Center
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/managing_risky_behavior.html

15.5.2012
Leaders Make or Break Employee Engagement
http://stephenjgill.typepad.com/performance_improvement_b/2012/05/leaders-make-or-break-employee-engagement.html

13.5.2012

Lecture Transcripts of Financial Accounting Course

Professor Larry Tomassini
http://fisher.osu.edu/~tomassini_1/521/

Professor provides transcripts for all his courses and additionally video lectures and audio lectures.

Management Videos

What are strategies?
_____________________________ _____________________________
Integrity - What  is it?

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Electronic Records Management
UC Berkeley Even April 2012
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Five Employee Management Strategies To Start Using ASAP
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Management Theory - Literature Review Papers


Strategic Issue Management Theory
Peter Kunnas
https://wiki.aalto.fi/download/attachments/7176236/Strategic_Issue_Management_Theory_review_Kunnas.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1226694674000

May 30, 2012

Decision Making

Introduction

Decision making is the actual selection from among alternatives of a course of action.
Decision making is involved in various functions of management. Hence, it is a step in planning. Planning occurs in managing organizations or in personal life whenever choices are made in order to gain a goal in the face of such limitations as time, money, and the desires of other people. The steps involved in planning are:
1. Being aware of opportunity
2. Establishing objectives
3. Premising
4. Determining alternative courses of action
5. Evaluating alternative courses
6. Selecting a course
7. Formulating derivative plans

Developing Alternatives

Planning comes into picture whenever a goal is to be attained. Choice of goal itself is a planning problem. If we assume that there is a goal to be achieved, the next step in the planning is to develop planning premises. Premises are planning assumptions, the future setting in which planning takes place. We can term them as the environment of plans in operation. Premises include forecast data of a factual nature, applicable basic policies, and existing company plans.
Developing alternative courses of action is taken as the first step in decision making. Managers have to develop alternative courses for any decision to be made. A sound adage for the manager is that, if there seems to be only one way of doing a thing, that way is probably wrong. More rationally, a planning priniciple called principle of alternatives can be specified. In every course of action, alternatives exist, nd effective planning involves a search for the alternative representing the best path to a desired goal.
The ability to develop alternatives is often as important as making a right decision among alternatives. Ingenuity, research, and perspicacity are required to make sure that the best alternatives are considered before a course of action is selected.

Principle of Limiting Factor

Chester Barnard has written, "the analysis required for decision is in effect a search for the "strategic factors."

Stategic factors and limiting factors are synonyms but Barnard suggests that we use the term limiting factor for physical things and when personal or organizational action is the element, we should use the term strategic factor. When we want to achieve some goals of system, we examine its parts or factors. Strategic factors or limiting factors are those parts or factors which if changed would accomplish the desired purpose if other factors or parts remain unchanged. The principle of limiting factor says, if in developing alternatives, the more an individual can recognize and solve for those factors that are limiting or critical to the attainment of a desired goal, the more effectively and efficiently he can select the most favorable alternative.
Discovery of limiting factor lies at the basis of selection from alternatives and hence of planning.
Process of Evaluation
After a reasonable number of alternatives have been developed, the next step in decision making is evaluating these alternatives. In most decisions, there are certain tangible factors to be assessed in terms of dollars, man-hours, machines hours, units of output, rates of return on investment, or some other quantitative unit. There are other factors that can be hardly quantified. However, both the tangible and intangible factors must be weighed in deciding upon a course of action.

Basis for Selection Among Alternatives

Experience
Business Research and Analysis
Operations Research
Experimentation

Evaluating the Decision's Importance

Size or length of commitment: If a decision commits the enterprise to heavy expenditure of funds it should be subjected to suitable attention at top management level.
Flexibility:Decisions involving inflexible courses of action need attention.
Certainty of goals and premises: Production decisions based on order backlog are more routine in comparision to made to stock decisions.
Quantifiability of variables: If variable can be quantified decision making is more routine.
Human impact: Where the human impact of a decision if great, its importance is high.
 Rationality in Decision Making

Economics is a subject that is developed under the assumption that people take rational decisions. When is a person thinking or deciding rationally? A rational decision making implies that the decision maker has a clear understanding of all alternative courses of action by which the goal sought can be reached under existing circumstances and limitations. The decision maker also must have the knowledge to analyze the alternatives in light of the goal sought with a desire to find out the best solution that effectively and efficiently satisfies the goal achievement.

Herbert Simon proposed that managers may not achieve complete rationality in many decisions. It is difficult to recognize all alternatives to reach a goal and also it may not be possible to analyze all alternatives. Hence managers resort to satisficing and find solutions that appear satisfactory to them and their associates in the circumstances.

Creativity and Innovation

Developing alternatives and finding novel ways that are profitable alternatives requires creative thinking. Weihrich and Koontz explain creative thinking as four step process.

1. Unconscious scanning
Allowing the mind to think over the problem and do its process without a conscious effort.

2. Intuition
Intuition is an answer to the problem that is thrown up by the mind. This is the output of the unconscious scanning effort.

3. Insight
Insight also an idea that comes up during investigations to solve a problem. They are to be captured immediately on paper to make us of them later.

4. Logical formulation or verification
Intuition as well as insight is to be tested through logic or experiment. The logical verification is done first by the person himself and then by inviting critiques from others.

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Video Lecture - Presentation - Making Great Decision

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA0ZGe-OLK4
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Updated 29.5.2012
Original knol - http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/decision-making/ 2utb2lsm2k7a/ 188

Financial Management - An Overview

Financial Management - An Overview

Financial Management - An Overview

Financial management revision article series

Authors

Financial Management - The Scope

Financial management is concerned with monitoring financial markets, approving financial investment projects in the organization, procuring the finance from the market to finance the project, and conforming to the contracts signed with the providers of finance.
Thus the important activities are
1. Monitoring financial markets to understand the desires of the providers of finance
2. Investment decisions within the company
3. Financing decisions - From whom to procure funds?
4. Dividend decisions - Conforming to the contracts.

Evolution of Corporate Finance Area or Subject

The early phase of corporate finance subject had  focus on episodic events in the life cycle of a corporation. The typical and popular book of this phase is the book, The Financial Policy of Corporations by Arthur S. Dewing, Professor of Finance at Harvard University (published in 1918). The book had a descriptive and institutional material regarding formation of company, issuance of capital, major expansion, merger, reorganisation, and liquidation.
In the early 40s a transition occurred and along with the external focus related to major events, greater emphasis was placed on the day-to-day internal activities of financial management in the area of funds requirement analysis, planning, and control. A representative work of this phase is Essays on Business Finance by Wilford J . Eiteman et al. (published in 1953).
The modern phase began in mid-fifties with application of economic theory and quantitative methods of analysis. Financial decision making has become analytical and quantitative and financial decision making activity has become dominant.

Goals of Financial Management

Financial theory, rests on the premise that the objective of the firm should be to maximize the value of the firm to its equity shareholders.
This value is could be equal to the market price of shares in stock market with good liquidity. But financial managers may have to calculate the discounted value of expected future cash flows and compare with the market price. In case of discrepancies they may have to communicate to the financial markets their point of view.

Basic Considerations of Financial management: Risk and Return

In the context of evaluating an investment proposal, from the point of view of finance function, risk and return are the relevant dimensions. Higher return from a proposed project increases market value and higher risk decreases market value.

Financial Decisions in a Firm

While a formally specified person performs the financial market monitoring and procurement of finance functions, the investment decisions and performance of investments are in the hands of operating executives. Finance sense has to be there in each and every employee of an organization to make an organization financially viable and successful.
The marketing persons who do market research provide estimates of market size, revenue generation which form the basis of project proposals.
The engineers, who select location for the plant, equipment shape the investment decision of the firm by providing various alternatives.
The purchase managers actions influence the level of inventories.
The sales managers' assessments determine the receivables policy.
Department managers actually plan and control expenditures.
Thus many activities that are a part of financial function are performed by operating executives. But there are many tasks of finance function that can be done by specialist financial officers. Traditionally, the financial officers are grouped into controller's office and treasurer's office.
The treasurer's office is responsible for
Obtaining finance
Banking relationship
Cash management
Credit administration
Controller's office is responsible for
Financial accounting
Internal auditing
Taxation
Management accounting and control

 

References

Prasanna Chandra, Financial Management, 5th Ed.,  Tata McGraw Hill, 2001
Brealey and Myers, Corporate Finance, Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall India, 2001
 

 

 Video Lecture on Introduction to  Financial Management

__________ __________

May 8, 2012

Management Theory and Practice - Bulletin Board - April 2012

May 2012
How to engage your customers and employees?
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/how_to_engage_your_customers_a.html

April 2012

Leadership Issues


How to become better leader by improving Big Five Personality Traits
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-spring/53312/how-to-become-a-better-leader/

Relational intelligence for managers
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/improvisations/2012/04/18/the-value-of-leadership-marked-by-humility-and-intuition/#.T5txprMthak

Supply Chain Themes

1980s - JIT
90s Outsourcing
2001 to 10 Internet
2010s - What is the theme? Sustainability or Supplier Innovation?

Increasing Supplier Driven Innovation
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-winter/51209/increasing-supplier-driven-innovation/

Sustainability Ideas for Supply Chain Managers
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-summer/51401/the-four-point-supply-chain-checklist-how-sustainability-creates-opportunity/

What the current supply chain strategic issues?
Supply chain issues become value chain issues.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-winter/51205/your-next-supply-chain/

Supply Chain Cost Reduction Potential - How to identify it?
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-winter/51207/minding-the-supply-savings-gaps/

Supply Chain Key outputs are now Six
Cost, Responsiveness, Security, Sustainability, Resilience and Innovation
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-winter/51221/outcome-driven-supply-chains/

Greeting Transportation in the supply chain
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2010-winter/51210/greening-transportation-in-the-supply-chain/


April 20, 2012

Selection of Motor - A Design Engineer's Problem - Engineering Economic Analysis

A design engineer has to select a 100 hp motor for a plant that operates 2000 hours in year. Model A-90 costs Rs.2,00,000 and has a full load efficiency of 89.5%. Model A-91 costs Rs.2,40,000 and has a full load efficiency of 91%.
 
Energy costs Rs. 2 per KWH. (0.746 KW = 1 hp).
 
The life of the motors are expected to be 12 years and the salvage value will be 5%. Which motor is to be specified by the design engineer?
Original Knol - http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/selection-of-motor-a-design-engineer-s/2utb2lsm2k7a/ 598

April 18, 2012

Analysing Financial Performance using Financial Statements

Financial management revision article series

Analytical Methods or Components


Ratio analysis


Ratios are calculated using line items from financial statements. For certain ratios there are ideal values indicated in the financial literature. Certain ratios need to have specific values based on company's declared policies. Like debtor turnover ratio must have a range of values based on the credit period specified or offered by the company to its credit customers.

Dupont analysis

It breaks down the return on equity into component parts.

Comparative analysis

Comparing similar ratios of other companies, one can assess the relative strength of the company under consideration.

Applications


Assessment of Financial Health of the Company

Statistical models using financial information or ratios

Two statistical models designed to predict the likelihood of severe financial distress for a corporation. One of these models is the Altman Z-Score [Altman, 2002]. This model is applicable to any type of firm. The other model is a scoring approach developed by Pilarski and Dinh that is applicable specifically to air carriers [Pilarski and Dinh, 1999].

Altman's 1968 Model
The following calculation is used to arrive at the total Z-Score:
Z = 1.20(X1) + 1.40 (X2) +3.30(X3) +.60(X4) + .99(X5)

X1 = Working Capital / Total Assets
X2 = Retained Earnings / Total Assets
X3 = Earnings before Interest and Taxes / Total Assets
X4 = Market Value Equity / Book Value of Total Debt
X5 = Sales / Total Assets
Z = Overall Score

Credit granting decisions

Equity investment decisions



Problems

Different company may use accounting policies with some differences. Hence comparison may sometimes create problems.

Guidelines
Inflation
Concept of Balanced Scorecard
 
Prasanna Chandra, Financial Management, 5th Ed.,  Tata McGraw Hill, 2001
Brealey and Myers, Corporate Finance, Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall India, 2001
 


Original Knol - http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/analysing-financial-performance-using/2utb2lsm2k7a/ 338

March 30, 2012

January 27, 2012

Value Chain Analysis - IMA Guideline


A summary of IMA guideline

I. Need

     Value chain analysis is a strategic tool to measure the customer's perceived value. The analysis enables companies to determine the strategic advantages and disadvantages of their value creating processes and activities.

II. Value Chain - Definition

Customer value accumulates along the  chain of activities that a firm performs and delivers an end product or service to customers.
Activities and processes are performed by the firm to understand market, design, produce, sell (market), deliver and support its product.
A firm's value chain structure and the way the individual activities in the  value chain are  performed are a reflection of the firm's history, its current strategy, its approach to implementing its strategy and the underlying economics of the activities.
The activities in a value chain are categorised as primary and support activities.

III. Competing in the Market, Customer Value and Competitive Advantage

In order to compete in a market as a supplier of a product or service a firm must supply what customers want to buy. It has to create customer value so that customer pays a price for the offering. In any market there are competitors. The firm has to be provide some unique benefits to a certain section of persons in the target market to survive the competition.
The competitive advantage of a firm derives from the difference between the value it offers to customers and its cost of creating that customer value.
Thus the competitive advantage is obtained from two sources:
1. Differentiation advantage. Customer perceives more value from the firm's products.
2. Low cost advantage. The firm is able to provide the service or product at a cost lower than the market average.

IV. The Role of Management Accountant

Champion the use of value chain analysis.

V. Value Chain Analysis - Procedure

Internal cost analysis
Internal differentiation analysis
Vertical linkage analysis

VI. Strategic Frameworks for Value Chain Analysis

From the strategy theory the following concepts or frameworks are relevant for value chain analysis
Industry structure analysis
Core competencies
Segmentation analysisi

VII. Limitations of Value Chain Analysis

It is not an exact science. It is not easy. Finding costs, revenues and assets for each activity sometimes presents serious difficulties.
Despite such difficulties, experience indicates that value chain analysis yields firm swith invaluable information on their competitive situation, cost structure, and linkages with suppliers and customers.

VIII. Organizational and Managerial Accounting Challenges

Value chain analysis offers an opportunity to integrate strategic planning and management accounting. Management accounting department has to champion this to maintain its critical role as the information profession.


Index of articles on Cost Accounting, Costing and Cost Management

Cost Accounting, Costing and Cost Management - Article Directory

Originally posted in Knol
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/value-chain-analysis-ima-guideline/2utb2lsm2k7a/508

Post updated 24.9.2012