BRAND MANAGEMENT

Since classical Greek times branding in one or the other form has been used at least to differentiate products of the same kind having little difference between the brand and the company; typically the brand and the name of the company were the one and the same. 

TRIARCHIC MODEL OF HRM

There are several perspectives in existence to explain the nature, purpose and underlying assumptions of HRM. These perspectives include

(i)   Performance based HRM driven by American practices,

(ii)   Relationship based HRM supported by new generation practitioners,

(iii) Learning oriented HRM promoted by academicians,

(iv)  Strategic HRM driven by economic models,

(v)   Reactive and proactive HRM models originated from industrial relations school etc.

TOYOTA MODEL OF HRM

Toyota is famous for several world-class products. It is known for a variety of quality initiatives including famous JIT (Just-in-time inventory) production system. Toyota is also famous for its HRM policies and practices too and its human resource practices can serve as a model, particularly for manufacturing and production oriented companies. Toyota's HRM framework broadly consists of four kind of goals. 

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (MBA)

Master of Business Administration is now not restricted only to marketing, HR and Finance.

The course has now various extensions from rural management, hospital management, hospitality management to media management. Most of the youth are now crazy about making their future bright by taking the course of Business Administration.

MARKETING

Marking can be viewed from two perspectives:

1. Social and 
2. Managerial. 

The managerial definition of marketing describes marketing as ‘the art of selling products’. However, the most important part of marketing is not selling. Selling is just the tip of the marketing iceberg. In view of American Marketing Association,’ Marketing is an organizational function and as a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering values to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stake holders’. Philip Kotler defined marketing ,’as the art and science of choosing target markets and obtaining, retaining, and growing customers through creating, conveying, and communicating superior customer value’

According to social definition of marketing, the marketing’s role is to ‘deliver a higher standard of living’. Kotler remarks, ‘Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through generating, offering, and exchanging products and services valuable to others.’ Marketing is thus the art of selling products. Drucker observes,’ there will always be need for a sort of selling. However, the purpose of marketing is to make selling needless. The purpose of marketing is to know and comprehend the customer so well that the product or service suits him. In an ideal manner, marketing should result in a customer who is prepared to buy. All that should be desired is to make the product or service available’.  Pride and Farrell defined marketing,’ as the process of creating, advancing in position, and pricing goods, services and ideas to facilitate satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment.

On the basis of analysis of these definitions, the following features may be stated:

Marketing deals with Products, Services and Ideas and their Distribution, Promoting, and Pricing. Marketing consists of developing and managing a product capable of satisfying customer needs. It is more than simply advertising or selling a product. Marketing concentrates on making the product available in the right place and at a price agreeable to customers. It also requires communicating information that helps customers determine whether the product will satisfy their needs.

 A product can be a good, a service, or an idea. A good is a tangible entity. A refrigerator, a television, a care are examples of good. A service is an application of human and mechanical efforts to people or objects to provide intangible benefits to customers. Banking, insurance, medical care, air travel, legal aid, day care are examples of service. Concepts, philosophies, issues, images include ideas. A marriage counselor, for a fee, gives spouses ideas to help improve their relationships and a job consultant etc.

Marketing facilitates Satisfying Exchange Relationships. Individuals and firms engage in marketing to facilitate exchanges. Business and non-profit organizations perform marketing activities. Four conditions must be fulfilled for an exchange to take place. First, two or more individuals, groups, or firms must take part in. Second, each party must be in the ownership of something of value that the other party wishes. Third, each party must be willing to give up its’ something of value’ to get some of value, the other holds.  If you want to acquire a book on marketing, you must be willing to give up $20. The objective of a marketing exchange is obtain something desired more valuable than what is given up to obtain it. Fourth, the parties to the exchange must be in a position to communicate with each other and to make available they value.

Marketing activities should try to create and maintain satisfying exchange relationships. To keep continuing an exchange relationship, buyers must be satisfied with the good, services or idea, and seller must be satisfied with the financial reward they receive. An unsatisfied customer often searches for the other sellers and new exchange relationships. To maintain positive relationships with buyers is an important objective for a seller. Through buyer-seller interaction, a buyer creates expectation about a seller’s future behaviour. To fulfil these expectations, the seller must fulfil promises made. Over a period of time, a healthy buyer-seller relation creates interdependencies between the two parties. Several of the firms indicate that the success of their businesses depend on repeat purchases. Their customers expectation consist good product, reasonable prices, polite people.

Marketing environment is dynamic in nature. The components of marketing environment are constantly changing. These forces, events and factors include competition, laws, regulations, socio-cultural factors, political pressures, economic conditions etc. These forces exert dramatic and difficult to predict effects on customers and marketers. They also create threats to marketers and also generate opportunities for new products and new ways to approaching customers. For example, traditional forms of books have changed into e-books to take advantage of technological advances.

BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF MANAGEMENT

BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF MANAGEMENT

Organizational behaviour (OB) has made a significant contribution to behavioural views of management

Early Proponents:

Four behavioural scientists figure out as early proponents of the OB approach. Robert Owen (a British factory owner), Mary Parker Follett (a Social Worker), Hugo Munsterberg ( father of industrial psychology) and Chester Barnard are countable among them.

1. Robert Owen proposed a utopian workplace.

2. Hugo Munsterberg focused on the scientific study of individuals at work in order to maximize their productivity and adjustment.

3. Chester Barnard, viewed organizations as social systems requiring human cooperation where managers' major roles were to communicate and motivate subordinates to high levels of performance. He also proposed that managers had to examine and monitor the environment.

4. Mary Parker Follett, a social philosopher stressed that the manager's responsibility was to harmonize and coordinate group efforts.

Hugo Munsterbeg (1863-1916) is regarded as the "father of industrial psychology" Munsterberg tried to develop practical applications of psychology. He believed that psychologists could assist industry in three major areas:

a. He stressed hiring workers with mental abilities best suited for certain jobs.

b. Identifying the psychological conditions for optimum efficiency.

c. Identifying ways to influence individual behaviour congruent with management's objectives

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) applied the perspectives of political science and social work to management. Her contribution towards management is described below:
1. Mary Parker Follett was interested in studying the psychology factors behind individual and group action.
1. She made applicable the principle of individual and group psychology to a business undertaking.
2. She argued that the chief executive of an enterprise is more of a co-ordinator and organizer of the skills of other people than an autocrat.
3. To Follett the people engaged in production are more important than the institutions in which they are engaged.

4. Conflict resolution through integration.

5. The functional unity has to be achieved so that the organization operates as an integrated whole.

MANAGERIAL FUNCTIONS

J.F. Stoner has given an elaborate definition of management on the basis of managerial functions when he says,’ Managing is the process of planning, coordinating resources and activities, leading and controlling the efforts of organizational members and the use of other organizational resources in order to achieve stated organizational goals. 

MANAGERIAL LEVELS, ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Business organizations, irrespective of size, have many managerial levels in its structure created through the process of delegation of authority from top to lower levels. Authority, responsibility, functions, roles and relationships characterize each level. Depending on the level at which the position lies the nature and contents differ. With the upward movement in the organizational hierarchy, the managerial position accomplishes a central role. As the contribution of the manager amplifies authority enlarges and higher the responsibility. Different managerial positions lying in the chain of command may be classified into various groups or levels of management.

DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT

Henry Ford is known for managing a factory making car efficiently, and made a space in the history of American business and culture due to his concern for efficient, calculated management known as Model T Henry Ford. He performed as the head of an organization, developed the ideas according to which that organization developed and functioned, and served as a management theorist.  Ford was willing to accept the advice of other theorists. 

SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE

Napoleon Hill in his book, Think and Grow Rich, talked of two kinds of knowledge- general and specialized. General knowledge in whatever quantity or variety is of little use in the accumulation of money. The faculties of the universities of the world possess, in the aggregate, practically every form of general knowledge. Most of the professors have little money. Professors specialize on teaching knowledge, but not on the organization, or the use of knowledge. Knowledge can-not attract money, unless organized, and intelligently directed, with practical plans of action, to the specific purpose of accumulation of money. Lack of understanding of this fact confused a large number of people who ignorantly believed that ‘knowledge is power’. However knowledge is not power. Knowledge is only potential power and becomes power only when it is organized into specific plans of action directed to a definite end.

MANAGEMENT

Every social human being has a variety of needs which they cannot fulfill individually. Man is a social being as he loves to live together with people. It is by living and work together in organized groups and institutions that people satisfy their economic and social needs. Consequently, there are several types of groups. Such formal groups can achieve their goals effectively only when their efforts are properly coordinated and controlled. Management is the task of getting results through others by coordinating their efforts.  The most significance factor in determining the performance and process of any organization is the quality of its management. The task of management is likely to be more and more challenging in the time to come.

LISTEN TO INNER VOICE

If you begin to listen to your inner voice, you can get success in many of the things you do and success can become the way of living. Well, it all begins with listening. Listen to the voice coming to you straight from your inner self. It has all the answers, if you would just listen to it.

BALRIDGE MODEL OF HRM

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was conceptualized as a standard of excellence in order to help U.S. organizations achieve world-class quality. The Criteria for Performance Excellence has done a commendable job in achieving the goals established for the Baldrige Award. They now are accepted in the whole world, as the yardstick for performance excellence. The award is given annually to an organization in recognition of its quality standards. HRM practices occupy a pivotal place in quality movement of organizations. 

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

The understanding of foreign exchange is a must for Multi- national Enterprises and small export and import companies if they want to be effective. The exchange rate can exercise an influence on a wholesaler or a retailer where they buy or sell products. It also can influence a manufacturer who buys raw materials or components and produces products or can affect the location of capital that a company needs in order to expand.

HARVARD MODEL OF HRM

Management experts as Michael Beer, Quinn Mills et.al of HarvardBusiness School propounded Harvard model of HRM. It is one of the most influential models of HRM. The Harvard interpretation visualizes employees as resources fundamentally different from other resources cannot be managed in a single stereotype way. The stress is on people as human resources. The Harvard approach identifies an element of mutuality in all businesses.   Employees are crucial stakeholders in an organization who have their own needs and concerns as shareholders and customers

HUMAN CAPITAL

THE CONCEPT : The origin of human capital can be traced to the emergence of classical economics in 1776, and thereafter developed as scientific theory. The concept of human capital has been explained from different perspectives. From the individual perspective the human capital was recognized as one of important factors for a national economic growth and could contribute to socio-political development and freedom.