Thursday, June 5, 2008

Journal

Management Concepts Compendium topic

Journal

Accounting is the language of business. A business concern has to earn profits when its revenues and expenses are expressed as per the accounting priniciples to remain in business.

Accounting is based on documents that indicate that an asset is transferred to another party for cash or credit, or that a liability is incurred by the business, or that cash is paid for goods or services, or that goods or services are acquired on credit by the business. These accounting documents are called technically as vouchers. These vouchers are given serial numbers in the accounting department so that each and every documents is accounted for in the books of accounts.

Journal is a register kept by accountd department or accounting system. This register is called book of original entry. Every accounting document or voucher is first posted in this register. The posting is done chronologically, i.e., date wise.

In the journal posting, for each accounting transaction documented in the voucher, one account is specified for debit entry and one account is specified for credit entry.

What is the meaning of debit entry and credit entry.

Accounts for various liabilities assets, revenues and expenses are kept in ledger. Another register used in accounting system. All these accounts are classified into three categories.

1. Real accounts
2. Personal accounts
3. Nominal accounts

The meaning of debit and credit is better explained in terms of these different accounts.

For real accounts:

Debiting an account means there is an increase under the asset head.
The firm has acquired more of an asset category.

Crediting an account means there is a decrease under the asset head.
The firm has disposed off some portion of the asset in that category.

Popular rule for real accounts

Debit what comes in
Credit what goes out


Debit-Credit Meaning – Personal Accounts

Debiting a personal account means that person has received a benefit from the firm.
He has to pay the firm in future.
Crediting a personal account means that the person has given some benefit to the firm.
The firm has to pay him in the future.

Popular rule for personal accounts

Debit the receiver
Credit the giver


Debit-credit meaning for nominal accounts

Crediting a nominal account means that revenue is earned by the firm under that account head.
Debiting a nominal account means that an expenditure is incurred by the firm under that account head.
Normally revenue accounts receive credit.
Expenditure accounts receive debit


Popular rule for nominal accounts

Debit expenses and losses
Credit incomes and profits

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Attitude

Management Concept Compendium Topic

Attitude

An attitude can be defined as a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way toward some object.

Attidues have three characteristics. They tend to persist unless something is done to change them. Second, attitudes can fall anywhere along a continuum from very favorable to very unfavorable toward specific objects. Third, attitudes are directed toward some object about which a person has feelings and beliefs.

Attitudes can be thought of as having three components - Informational, emotional and behavioral. The informational component consists of the beliefs and information the individual has about the object. The emotional component involves the person’s feelings – positive, negative, or neutral. The behavioral component consists of a person’s tendencies to behave in a particular way toward an object.

Out of the three components, the behavioral component can be directly observed. The other two components can either be inferred from observed behavior or brought out through specially designed questionnaires.

Changing attitudes

Attitudes of people can be changed. There are two basic barriers that can prevent people from changing their attitude. The first one is prior commitment. People feel commitment to a particular course of action and are unwilling to change their attitudes toward objects that are coming in the way of success of their committed course of action. The second barrier is a result of insufficient information.

Approaches to changing attitudes

Providing new information

Sometimes new information will change a person’s belief and in the process change his or her attitude.

Use of fear

A moderate degree of arousing fear may be of help in changing attitudes towards life threatening objects like cigarettes etc.

Influence of friends or peers

Persuasion by friends or peers can change attitudes.

The co-opting approach

In this method, persons with negative attitudes about an object are co-opted in efforts to improve the objects. The process of improvement may change the attitude of person.

Reference

Fred Luthans, Organizational Behavior, 10th edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2005
Chapter 7, “Personality and Attitudes”

Personality

Management Concepts Compendium

Personality


Personality is interpreted by Fred Luthans in his textbook as sum of ‘how people affect others’, ‘how they understand and view themselves’ ‘their patterns of inner outer measurable traits’ and ‘their person-situation interaction’.

People’s attempts to understand themselves are called the self-concept in personality theory. The self is a product of many interacting parts. Some of them are self-esteem, multiple intelligences, emotion, optimism and efficacy.

Five-factor model of personality traits

In an article “Personality structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model,” published in Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 41, 1990, Digman identified five personality traits as having significance for performance in the workplace.

They are:

1. Conscientiousness
2. Emotional stability
3. Agreeableness
4. Extraversion
5. Openness to experience

If groups rather than individuals are more important in organizational performance, do these traits have any relevance? It is interesting to note that a recent study found that the higher the average scores of team members on these traits, the better their teams performed.

Myers-Briggs Type Personality Indicator (MBTI)

MBTI is widely used in real world career counseling, team building, conflict management and analyzing management styles. The theory underlying this indicator was originated by Carl Jung. Katharin Briggs and Isable Briggs-Myers developed a 100-item personality test to categorise people into four pairs of traits yielding 16 distinctive types.
They are

Extraversion (E) ---- Introversion (I)
Judging (J) ------ Perceiving (P)
Sensing (S) ------ Intuiting (I)
Thinking (T) ------ Feeling (F)

Different careers are identified as suitable for different personalities.

For example ESTJ personality type extraverted, sensing, thinking and judging.
This type likes to interact with others, sees the world realistically, makes decisions objectively and like structure, schedules, and order, this would be a manager type.




Some more reference papers on Five factor model

M. Zucckerman, D.M.Kuhlman, J.Joireman, P.Teta and M. Kraft, “A Comparison of Three Structural Models for Personality: The Big three, The Big Five, and the Alternative Five,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, October 1993, pp. 757-768.

Gregory M. Hurtz and John J. Donovan, “Personality and Job Performance: The Big Five Revisited,” Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85, No. 6, 2000, pp. 869-879.

M.R. Barrick, G.L. Stewart, M.J. Neubert and M.K. Mount, “Relating Member Ability and Personality to Work-Team Processes and Team Effectiveness,” Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 83, 1998, pp. 377-391.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Knowledge Management

Management concepts compendium initiative

Knowledge management as an idea or practice in the business context must have been there ever since the first business man appeared in the universe.

But in the recent days, a subject of management by the name 'Knowledgement Management' appeared. Knowledge management (KM) is still a relatively young field, with new concepts emerging constantly.

KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Knowledge based assets are to be identified. Most often, generating value from such assets involves codifying what employees, partners and customers know, and sharing that information among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices. Knowledge management process naturally includes creating knowledge based assets in the first place also. It is important to note that the definition says nothing about technology.


What constitutes intellectual or knowledge-based assets?

Not all information is valuable. Individual companies have to determine what information qualifies as intellectual and knowledge-based assets. In general, however, intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into one of two categories: explicit or tacit.

Included among the former are books, reports, journals and magazines that are generated by outside agencies. Companies themselves generate explicit knowledge assets such as patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research and customer lists. As a general rule of thumb, explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented and archived.

Tacit knowledge is the know-how contained in people's heads. The challenge inherent in managing tacit knowledge (to make it useful to the organization on a larger scale) is figuring out how to recognize, share and manage it.

At this point of time two distinct categories of tools are available in KM. (i) knowledge management techniques and (ii) knowledge management technologies.

Some of the KM techniques are:
(i) Mentorship programs
(ii) Post mortem meetings
(iii) Regular intra-office or intra-division meetings
(iv) Story telling sessions
(v) Communities of practice
(vi) Centers of excellence

Some of the KM technologies are:

(i) Knowledge storage tools
(ii) Search and retrieval tools
(iii) Collarboration tools
(iv) Communication tools


Reseachers at Accenture find that many companies are not getting bottom line results after implementing knowledge management projects.

Researchers at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change came out with a framework on knowledge management that aims to deliver results to the organization on implemention. This Knowledge Management Framework is based on the premise that the focus should be placed on the way knowledge is used to build the critical capabilities a company needs in order to succeed—on the core processes and activities that enable it to compete. Enhancing a bank's know-how in evaluating credit risk, for example, should result in reduced loan losses; improving a consumer products company's understanding of customer preferences should increase its percentage of successful new products.


References

http://www.cio.com/article/40343/ABC_An_Introduction_to_Knowledge_Management_KM_/1



http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Outlook/By_Alphabet/Knowledgevalue.htm

Sukhpreet Singh of PGDIM program of NITIE (13th batch) did a project on supporting knowledge management initiative of an automobile company and his report was also used in identifying references and in developing this article.

Team Building and Management

Management concepts compendium initiative


A team must be lead by an individual who has the right talent for the role.

Team work is a matter of belief, value or policy. Certain individuals have this knack, or talent, to put people together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Truly successful teams have a successful team leader at the top.

When each individual of the team believes that team members expect the best from me and the best for me, he responds in a successful manner.

Teams have to utilize members for what they are best at. They should not expose them to areas where their weaknesses are exposed and the probability of failure for the individual member and the team increase.

A good example is given by Luthans in his book. Some people love to get things started. They get bored with things long before they are completed and finished. These people are fire starters. They can be moved from project to project timing their arrival at the point where the analytical types have completed their positive feasibility analysis of a project. There are certain persons who are high-focus detail people. They are good at cleaning the messed up operations. Team leaders or mangers require the talent to spot the special inclinations or talents of team members and have to utilize them rather than seeking to thwart such inclinations.

In a great team, individuals are set up for success according to their strengths.


Reference

Fred Luthans, Organizational Behavior, Ninth Edition, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York, 2002, page 327

Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineering is a management discipline that focuses on human effort and efficiency. It emerged out of the management effort put in by engineers in manufacturing and construction fields. Frederick Taylor and Harrington Emerson are the pioneers in the field. Frederick Taylor concentrated on improving the output from human operators in various activities undertaken by him. In the process he developed the philosophy of scientific management. Management has to study the working processes employed by various operators and develop scientific theories about processes. These theories are then empirically verified and methods are designed by managers/engineers that incorporate these scientific theories. The scientific theories used in methods design include theories developed in various human sciences like anatomy, physiology, psychology and sociology. Concepts like fatigue, stress, occupational diseases are a part of industrial engineering theory. In this particular dimension industrial engineering can be referred to as human effort engineering.

Harrington Emerson focused on efficiency of business concerns as a whole as well as that of various functions.

Industrial engineering professional society as it exists today is developed by a merger between a society started by Taylor and a society started by Emerson.

Subjects like statistical quality control, value engineering and operations research became part of industrial engineering due to its efficiency focus.

www.nrao-ie-handbook.blogspot.com

Marketing

Kotler defines marketing as, “Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and exchanging products and services of value with others.”

The definition is understood better by having clarity on various terms use din the definition.

A human need is a state of deprivation of some basic necessity for existence. People require food, clothing, shelter, safety, belonging, and esteem. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a useful concept to think of in this content. The hierarchy is given as

1. Physiological needs
2. Security needs
3. Social needs
4. Need for power and esteem
5. Self actualization

Wants are desires for specific satisfiers of needs. People of different countries want different things for their lunch. While people’s needs are few, their wants are many. Human wants are continually shaped and reshaped by social forces and institutions that include family, religious organizations, educational institutions, and business firms.

A product is anything that can be offered to people to satisfy a need or want. A product includes in its meaning a tangible good, service or an idea.

People obtain what they want in many ways.

The first way is self production.
The second way is coercion
The third way is begging.
The fourth way is transfer by somebody
The fifth way is exchange.

In exchange two things of value are exchanged between two parties.

Marketing includes actions undertaken to grasp what each party expects to give and get from the transaction or exchange. Then, the business entity has to create products that the other party (consumer) is willing exchange or transact and then complete the exchange at the terms and location desired by the consumer.

Reference
Philip Kotler, Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, Ninth Edition, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1997

Friday, May 30, 2008

Activity based costing (ABC)

In traditional costing, direct material, direct labour and direct expenses are identified with the jobs and all other expenses are accumulated under the head “overheads” and are charged to the jobs on the basis of one or two measurements such as direct labour cost or direct material cost of the jobs.

Proponents of activity based costing first brought out the fact that product costs derived by using traditional costing techniques are giving wrong information. The actual product cost of certain jobs is high but traditional costing system is reporting a low cost for them. If the selling price is determined on the basis of such wrong low cost, at the end of the year, companies find that they have not earned the anticipated profits.

In activity based costing, all the costs which are classified as overheads in traditional costing system are accumulated under various activities which are carried out in the organization. From the activity cost for a period, and the number of times the activity is carried out in the period, cost for doing the activity once is ascertained. Then an account is maintained each time the activity is carried and the job responsible for performing the activity is recorded. Therefore the activity cost can be charged to the job.

Thus the job cost, now comprises of direct material cost, direct labour costs, direct expenses and costs of each of the activities consumed by the job.

Activity based costing provides a more realistic estimate of costs of products.

Normally compared to traditional costing system, ABC system provides lower cost figures for standard products and higher cost figures for nonstandard orders.

Management Concepts List - A

Accounting
Accounting controls

Activity based costing
http://kvssnrao-smis.blogspot.com/2008/05/activity-based-costing-abc.html

Activity based management
Attitude measurement
Administration
Activity sampling
Audit

Management Concepts List

Balance sheet
Brand
Branding
Brand name
Brand equity
Brand ambassador
Board
Budget
Budgeting

Management Concepts List - C

Capital
Case study
Client
Competitive advantage
Costing
Cost control
Cost accounting
Cost of capital
Corporate governance
CPM (Critical path method)
Credit and collections
Cross selling
Customer
Customer account profitability analysis
Customer delight
Customer loyalty
Customer service

Management Concepts List - D

Debt capital
Delegation
Democratic leadership

Management Concepts List - E

Effectiveness
Efficiency
Engineering economics
Enterprise resource planning
Enterprise risk management
Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship
Empathy
Equity
Equity share capital

Management Concepts List - F

Fiscal policy
Forecasting

Management Concepts List - G

Game theory
Goals

Management Concepts List - H

House of quality
Human effort engineering
Human resource development
Human resource management

Management Concepts List - I

Image

Industrial engineering
http://kvssnrao-smis.blogspot.com/2008/06/industrial-engineering.html

Industry analysis
Integrity
Internal rate of return
Intrapreneur
Interest
Inventory control

Management Concepts List - J

Journal

Management Concepts List - K

Knowledge management

Management Concepts List - K

Management Concepts List - L

Leader
Leadership
Leading
Ledger
Learning
Learning curve
Linear programming
Liquidity

Management Concepts List - M

Maintenance management
Management

Management of change
Management accouting
Management control
Manufacturing

Marketing
http://kvssnrao-smis.blogspot.com/2008/06/marketing.html

Mission
Monetary policy
Motivation

Management Concepts List - N

Net present value

Management Concepts List - O

Objectives of the organization
Operations research
Option
Overhead
Organization structure

Management Concepts List - P

Perception
Performance appraisal
PERT
Planning
Policy
Process control
Process map
Process mapping
Procedure
Program
Production management
Production planning and control
Productivity
Project management
Profit
Purchase management
Purpose of business

Management Concepts List - Q

Quality
Quality assurance
Quality control

Management Concepts List - R

Recruitment
Responsibility

Management Concepts List

Salesmanship
Sales management
Selection
Staffing
Statistical quality control
Strategy
Stores management

Management Concepts List - T

Team building and management
http://kvssnrao-smis.blogspot.com/2008/06/team-building-and-management.html

Technology management
Theory of constraints
Theory X
Theory Y
Theory Z
Time standard
Time study
Training
Trust

Total productive maintenance
Total quality management

Management Concepts List - U

Utility

Management Concepts List - V

Vision

Management Concepts List - W

Warehouse management
Working capital
Work study

Management Concepts List - Z

Zero defects
Zero based budgeting

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Blog on Brands

This is blog on brands by a marketing professor

http://marketingpractice.blogspot.com/

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Stan Oneal career at ML

In 1986, at the age of 35, he joined Merrill’s high-yield, or “junk bond,” department. Within three years he was running the department, competing with Michael Milken’s Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. When Milken pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 1990, it enabled O’Neal’s unit at Merrill to become the biggest junk bond operator for five consecutive years.

In 1997, O’Neal became co-head of Merrill’s corporate and institutional client group, which includes investment banking and securities trading. A year later, he was promoted to chief financial officer. In 2000, O’Neal was promoted once again to head the brokerage division, Merrill’s more prominent department.

He quickly redirected Merrill’s army of 15,000 brokers to focus on winning more millionaires as clients, and after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center he eliminated more than 20,000 employees and closed 266 offices around the world. This ruthless cost-cutting gave him an inside track to the top position, which he was awarded in 2002.

Soon after becoming chairman and CEO he set the tone for his tenure by purging the firm of dozens of its longtime senior employees and firing those who had been considered his rivals for the CEO post. Later he forced out some of his former allies, including Executive Vice President Thomas Patrick, who had campaigned for his elevation to head the company.

As the Wall Street Journal put it on Monday: “With his restructuring, Mr. O’Neal was seen as rejecting the longtime culture of a company known internally as “Mother Merrill.” For years, the brokerage giant was willing to accept lower profit margins in order to keep longtime loyal employees on the payroll, much like International Business Machines Corp. had a no-layoff policy during its 1980s heyday...

“Merrill’s board gave him leeway because he more than doubled the firm’s profit level to an average topping $5 billion annually from 2003 to 2006. Those at the company said he was proud of cutting through the cozy corporate culture.”

According to various press reports, O’Neal’s management style was little short of despotic. “Merrill Chief Executive Stan O’Neal would grill his executives about why, for instance, Goldman Sachs was showing faster growth in bond-trading profits,” wrote the Journal. “Subordinates would scurry to analyze the Goldman earnings to get answers to Mr. O’Neal. ‘It got to the point where you didn’t want to be in the office’ on Goldman earnings days, one former Merrill executive recalls.”

In July of 2006, O’Neal ousted three senior bond executives. They were, according to the Journal, “summoned upstairs, one after another, for 5- to 15-minute meetings” and told “there was no role for them.”

Winthrop Smith, who left as head of Merrill’s international brokerage after O’Neal became president, told Bloomberg.com, “He got rid of people with hundreds of years of [combined] experience.”

Earlier this month, after the end of the third quarter, O’Neal fired two top bond executives and, the New York Times reports, he was looking to fire his chief financial officer and replace him with a longtime friend.

Little wonder than a large number of former executives have been involved in discussions to launch a proxy fight if O’Neal was not removed.


http://wsws.org/articles/2007/oct2007/merr-30o_prn.shtml

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Humour in Financial Advertising

Master's abstracts for 2003

DIFFERENT SUBCULTURE PERSPECTIVES OF MONEY AND HUMOROUS ADVERTISING APPEAL

Aarambh Shah, MA
University of Florida, 2003
Email:


ADVISOR: Jorge Viellegas

Hispanics. Money. Humor.

Money is an object that is based on trust; it has served as a medium of exchange for centuries, which have derived from the pre-capitalistic formations of barter. Thus economically, money has been seen as objective and utilitarian, a commodity that is ordinary, mundane, impersonal, neutral, and is comprised of quantitative meaning. However, many social scientists see money as a subjective unit, an object where different individuals attach an affective and emotional meaning to it. This research taped into the subjective components of money from a Hispanic intra-subculture perspective due to the high demand from marketers to target financial products toward them, and the vast complexities that lie between these groups in terms of attitudes and behaviors. Unfortunately, a major consensus from empirical evidence has been conducted involving how Hispanics are less likely to plan and prepare for their future (i.e. they are present oriented) than their counterparts: Anglo-Americans. Yet, the majority of research has only focused on Mexican Americans as opposed to other Hispanic subcultures. As a result, this exploratory research investigated differences in attitudinal and cognitive abilities for both planning and preparing for their future and humorous advertising appeals. Even though a convenience student sample was used, a major finding from this research has shown that Cuban American (both high and low acculturated) are more likely to prefer a non-humorous financial advisement while Mexican Americans (both high and low acculturated) are more likely to prefer a humorous financial advertisement. Therefore, marketers can utilize these techniques to further tap into these Hispanic niche markets by creating and customizing ads towards their preferences, while indirectly helping them gain financial independence. [#487]

http://www.aejmc.org/abstracts/masters.php?syear=2003
Association for Education in Journalism and mass communication

Friday, January 18, 2008

TV Commercial for 2 Lakhs

Brand equity of 31st October 2007 carried an article with the title " Playing it Cheap."

It says while people in the mainstream cannot deliver it, there are people who can give an TV ad film starting at close to Rs. 1.5 lakh. It gives some names

Chennai based Branded Filmz works on Rs. 1.5 lakh to Rs. 3lakh projects. It did for a nationalised bank and a detergent brand.

Rajan Anekar of Tungsten films works prinicipally in the Rs.4 to Rs 6 lakh range.

Producer Rekha Achutan is another person quoted in the articel as a person who works in the low budget area.

Vivek Kamat of Vivek Kamat Films is another lower budget Tv Ad film maker

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Best Performances of Advertisements in 2007

Best performing Advertisements in 2007

1. Eye of the beholder, for Unilver's Dove by WPP Groups Ogilvy nd Mather

Online video cost less than $150,000

Ad was posted on youtube last year.

viewed 24 million times

2. D'OH for The Simpsons Movie by Omnicom Group's Freshworks

Cross promotion by 7-eleven. It converted 12 of its stores into fictional store selling items referred to in the movie.

7-Eleven says the promotion garnered about $7 million in free publicity.

7-Eleven site got 10,420,730 hits on July 11 2007 compared to an average of 400,000 hits daily.

3. Drummer in a hair band for cadbury milk chocolate bar by Publicis Groupe's Fallen

It is a TV featuring gorilla playing drums. When put on internet, seven million downloads were done. More than 200 people put reworked versions on various sites.

4. The Human stain for P&G's tide by Publicis groupe's Saathci and Saatchi

This ad won a silver lion at the Cannes

5. K-Fed Insurance Salesman, for Nationwide Mutual Insurance by Interpublic Group;s TM Advertising

The ad shown for week on varius segments generated 3,584 news stories. The company estimates it to be worht $23.3 million in free publicity.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Meaning of Branding

A discussion in orkut branding community motivated me to look into the dictionary for the meaning of word brand.

I had a look at the oxford dictionary. It gives the meaning for brand as:

n. burning or charred log or stick,permanent mark deliberately made by hot iron, stigma, trade mark, goods of particular mark or trade mark, iron stamp for burning-in a mark

v.t. burn with hot iron, label with trade mark, impress on memory, stigmatize

I think using the meaning "impress on memory" is more appropriate when we are talking of branding now in marketing.

Branding related posts in handbook

consultants-for-branding-india

http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2008/01/consultants-for-branding-india.html

brand-equity-websites

http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2007/12/brand-equity-websites.html

meaning-of-brand-and-branding

http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2007/12/meaning-of-brand-and-branding.html

brand-building-brand-equity-and-brand

http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2007/12/brand-building-brand-equity-and-brand.html

Summer internships - Investment Banks

Citibank

http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2008/01/citibank-internships.html

Merrill Lynch
http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2008/01/merrill-lynch-summer-interns.html

Goldman Sachs

http://nrao-mgmt-smi-handbook.blogspot.com/2008/01/summer-internships-at-goldman-sachs.html