...Chapter 1, Activity 4 – What HR Managers and Departments Do Today The assignment was to read several business publications, review their contents, and from that compile a list of what HR managers and departments do today. It’s easy to understands that HR managers and departments have a mired of completely different tasks they need to effectively perform. I had several takeaways from both the text and publications I read. The first was how extraordinary each HR representative must be in order to maintain efficiency and must have excellent multi-tasking skills; especially in smaller departments. Even to manage the outsourcing of some of their responsibilities still requires the knowledge and know-how to ensure it’s done correctly. The numerous articles I read support the varying topics HR managers need to track and many of them are constantly changing and/or evolving with new insights to consider. Here is the list I put together. “What HR Managers and Departments Do Today” 1. Defend its HR department business practices. 2. Advise senior leadership and managers. 3. Counsel and/or mediate with/for managers and employees. 4. Diligently keep up on new labor relations and compliance laws. 5. Employee training: new hire, diversity, EEO, etc. 6. Employee personal development, to include wellness programs. 7. Personnel and production analytics review. 8. Manage performance employee reviews, to include promotions and firing. 9. Execute and/or...
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...INITIATIVES FAIL. THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME. MANAGING CHANGE IS TOUGH, BUT PART OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT THERE IS LITTLE AGREEMENT ON WHAT FACTORS MOST INFLUENCE TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVES. ASK FIVE EXECUTIVES TO NAME THE ONE FACTOR CRITICAL FOR THE SUCCESS OF THESE PROGRAMS, AND YOU’LL PROBABLY GET FIVE DIFFERENT ANSWERS. THAT’S BECAUSE EACH MANAGER LOOKS AT AN INITIATIVE FROM HIS OR HER VIEWPOINT AND, BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, FOCUSES ON DIFFERENT SUCCESS FACTORS. THE EXPERTS, TOO, OFFER DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES. A RECENT SEARCH ON AMAZON.COM FOR BOOKS ON “CHANGE AND MANAGEMENT” TURNED UP 6,153 TITLES, EACH WITH A DISTINCT TAKE ON THE TOPIC. THOSE IDEAS HAVE A LOT TO OFFER, BUT TAKEN TOGETHER, https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-hard-side-of-change-management#[7/12/2016 12:32:10 AM] The Hard Side of Change...
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...of a business should have a profound effect on the kinds of decisions made. In this article the requirements of designing effective management control systems are examined in both simple and complex organizations. Pointing to realities with which businessmen are familiar, the author seeks to guide executives in weighing the advantages and disadvantages of functional forms of organization, product division forms, and the socalled matrix concept of organization. He points out that profit centers are by no means a universal answer, however appealing they may be in principle to business leaders. P rofit centers are a major tool for management control in large industrial corporations. They possess important advantages: https://hbr.org/1973/03/what-kind-of-management-control-do-you-need# Page 1 of 26 What Kind of Management Control Do You Need? 05/04/16 18:48 1. Profitability is a simple way to analyze and monitor the effectiveness of a segment of a complex business. For example, a product division competes in the marketplace against several other companies in its industry, and also competes among other divisions in its company for an allocation of corporate resources for its future growth. Relative profitability in both types of...
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...Contents Introduction - 5 - Leadership - 6 - Transformation - 8 - Innovation - 9 - 3-Bias Theory - 10 - Conclusion - 13 - References - 14 - Introduction ❖ Book (Non-Fiction) – Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game ❖ Author - Michael Lewis ❖ Publication Year - 2003 ❖ Key Learnings – Leadership, Innovation, Change Management, Organizational Culture, Risk-taking, Transformation, Strategising ❖ Synopsis – The book is about a US baseball team, Oakland Athletics and its performance in the year 2002. It is a real-life account of how despite financial constraints, the protagonist, Billy Beane assembles a strong baseball team using innovative techniques and strategies. It is the story of how Billy Beane changed the organizational culture of his organization, and influenced that of his competitors’. He re-invented a system that was working for years. Beane and his assistant concluded that by hiring under-valued players, it was possible to win with less than 40% of the budget of their competitors. They applied analytical, evidence-based, sabermetric approach and thus selected a competitive team. As a result, in the 2001-02 season, the team struck an all-time record with a 20 game-winning streak. Exposing himself and his team to ridicule, how he ignored his detractors and went ahead with his unorthodox strategies to ultimately achieve the winning combination...
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...that each would be displaced by a competitor with far fewer resources—but far greater aspirations. Driven by the need to understand the dynamics of battles like these, we have turned competitiveness into a growth industry. Companies and industries have been analyzed in mind-numbing detail, autopsies performed, and verdicts rendered. Yet when it comes to understanding where competitiveness comes from and where it goes, we are like doctors who have diagnosed a problem—and have even found ways to treat some of its symptoms —but who still don’t know how to keep people from getting sick in the first place. We can analyze companies in mindnumbing detail, perform autopsies, and render verdicts, but we are still addressing https://hbr.org/1993/03/strategy-as-stretch-and-leverage Page 1 of 24 Strategy as Stretch and Leverage 06/05/2016 14:29 the what of competitiveness, not the why. Consider the analogy. The first step in understanding competitiveness is to observe competitive outcomes: some companies gaining market share, others losing it, some companies in the black, others bleeding red ink. Like doctors taking a patient’s blood pressure or temperature, we can say whether the patient is well...
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...13/06/2011 Four Rules for Effective Negotiations … Harvard Business Publishing | For Educators | For Corporate Buyers | Visit Harvard Business School FOLLOW HBR: Register today and save 20%* off your first order! Details Subscribe Sign in / Register My Account Anthony Tjan On: Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Managing yourself Anthony Tjan Anthony Tjan is CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball. An entrepreneur, investor, and senior advisor, Tjan has become a recognized business builder. Four Rules for Effective Negotiations 8:30 AM Tuesday July 28, 2009 | Comments (19) I've been involved in many negotiations in my career. They've all been different in some ways, and alike in others. But through them all, I've identified four "golden rules" to be the most helpful towards productive negotiation outcomes. The rules parallel different stages of a negotiation: 1. The background homework: Before any negotiation begins, understand the interests and positions of the other side relative to your own interests and positions. Put these points down and spend time in advance seeing things from the other side. 2. During the process: Don't negotiate against yourself. This is especially true if you don't fully know the position of the other side. Much is learned about what the other side really wants during the actual negotiation process. Stay firm on your initial set of positions and explain your rationale but don't give in too early...
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...The Quality Improvement Customers Didn’t Want 25/6/16 22:02 SUPPLY CHAIN The Quality Improvement Customers Didn’t Want by Dawn Iacobucci FROM THE JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1996 ISSUE J ack Zadow, the consultant, was persuasive. Wrapping up the hour-long presentation, he still seemed as energized as he had in the first five minutes. “Your biggest competitor, HealthCare One, has already begun using a computerized reception system in 14 of its 22 facilities,” he said, pointing to the overhead projection illuminating the darkened conference room. The image was a regional map with red stars on every Health-Care One facility and yellow circles around the ones using the new system. “When their members come in the door, they go right to a computer and slide their identification card through. Then the computer leads them through a set of questions about their current medical condition, the reason for the visit, and so on. Everything is done electronically: The computer pulls the member’s record, processes the new information, and then routes the member to the appropriate staff person for consultation.” He slipped the next image over the map. It showed Quality Care’s own facilities in dull brown. “HealthCare One will have all its facilities up and running on the new system by June. The number two player, MediCenters, is planning to install a similar system by January 1997. I think you should consider it seriously—it’s really the wave of the future.” The last...
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...One of the most important things to understand about a brand is that its value is highly individualized. A customer might grow tired of a brand, or more enamored [sic], independent of how other customers are responding to it. (Rust R.T et all, 2004).In this essay, there will be an analysis of how the consumer affects a brand and how the brands try their best in order to get consumers to buy their products and how that defines the consumers themselves. However, firstly what is a brand? It appears that ‘each expert comes up with his or her own definition of brand or nuances of definition’ (Mishra P, 2012). One view is that ‘a brand name is nothing more or less than sum of all the mental connections people have around it’ (Jacoby J et all, 1997) but the general definition is a unique design, sign, symbol, word or a combination of these, employed in creating an image that identifies a product that differentiates it from its competitors (Business Dictionary). Consumers define brands but brands also define consumers. When people see certain brands, they associate it with specific statuses or lifestyles. A study showed that when shown a video of a person and asked for their first impressions. Their judgements of qualities such as friendliness and assertiveness differed depending on whether the video depicted the person with expensive material possessions or not. People use materials/ brands to express who they are and construct a sense of who they would like to be (Dittmar H, 2004)...
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...at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/unemployment-drops-below-7. (Accessed at: 24th June 2014). LSBFACCA. (2011). Lecture on Industry Life-Cycle. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGSiKlyQRII.(Accessed at: 2nd July 2014). McGregor.J, (2014). 2% of Google Employees Are Black And Just 30% Are Wome. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/05/29/2-of-google-employees-are-black-and-just-30-are-women/. (Accessed at: 1st July 2014). Office for National Statistics. (2014). “Consumer Price Index”. Available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ppi2/producer-price-index/may-2014/stb-producer-price-inflation--may-2014.html. (Accessed at: 26th June 2014( Porter. E,M. (1996). “What is Strategy?” Available at: http://hbr.org/product/what-is-strategy/an/96608-PDF-ENG. (Accessed at 2nd July 2014). Revenue: Irish Tax and customs. (2014). “Corporate Tax Rate”. Available at: http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/ct/basis-charge.html. (Accessed at: 26th June 2014). Thompson, J. (2013). “Google fails to measure up on tax, and it's the UK public who has to pay”.Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/04/google-tax-avoidance-uk-public-pays. (Accessed at: 25th June 2014). Bibliography Eurpoean Commision (n.d.) “Factsheet on the right to be forgotten...
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...operating on the premise that people – customers, employees, managers – make logical decisions. It’s time to abandon that assumption. | by Dan Ariely IN 2008, a massive earthquake reduced the financial world to rubble. Standing in the smoke and ash, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve once hailed as “the greatest banker who ever lived,” confessed to Congress that he was “shocked” that the markets did not operate according to his lifelong expectations. He had “made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.” Jacob Thomas 78 Harvard Business Review | July–August 2009 | hbr.org hbr.org | July–August 2009 | Harvard Business Review 79 THE NEW ECONOMICS in the NEW WORLD. We are now paying a terrible price for our unblinking faith in the power of the invisible hand. We’re painfully blinking awake to the falsity of standard economic theory – that human beings are capable of always making rational decisions and that markets and institutions, in the aggregate, are healthily self-regulating. If assumptions about the way things are supposed to work have failed us in the hyperrational world of IN BRIEF Wall Street, what damage have they done in other institutions » The global economic crisis has and organizations that are also shattered two articles of faith in standard economic theory: made up of...
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...OF US, DANIEL GOLEMAN, published in these pages his first article on emotional intelligence and leadership. The response to “What Makes a Leader?” was enthusiastic. People throughout and beyond the business community started talking about the vital role that empathy and self-knowledge play in effective leadership. The concept of emotional intelligence continues to occupy a prominent space in the leadership literature and in everyday coaching practices. But in the past five years, research in the emerging field of social neuroscience – the study of what happens in the brain while people interact – is beginning to reveal subtle new truths about what makes a good leader. Jean-François Podevin | 74 Harvard Business Review September 2008 | hbr.org Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership but their inability to get along socially on the job was profesThe salient discovery is that certain things leaders do – spesionally self-defeating. cifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ What’s new about our definition of social intelligence is moods – literally affect both their own brain chemistry and its biological underpinning, which we will explore in the folthat of their followers. Indeed, researchers have found that the lowing pages. Drawing on the work of neuroscientists, our leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) indeown research and consulting endeavors, and the findings of pendent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each researchers...
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...Individual Assignment: Is it Time to Split Up HR? Mind the Talent Management Gap: HR-A and HR-LO Abstract Human Resources has gone through ever-evolving changes over the years. They have been transitioning from transactional to becoming a strategic business partner with the high level executives of businesses. They are moving towards becoming the corporate centers of excellence by developing the right metric and analytics, the right talent and understanding how much human capital impacts successful business results. This paper analyzes the trends, contributions, skills and challenges that HR professionals have been and are going through to become the effective Strategic Partner. Mind the Talent Management Gap: HR-A versus HR-LO Ram Charan, a worldwide business adviser and speaker, suggests to eliminate the position of Chief Human Resources Officer and split human resources into 2 strands for the sake of practicality in helping HR build business intelligence to help organizations perform best. One strand would be called something like HR-A for administration, would manage compensation and benefits, and report to the CFO. This strand would view compensation to attract talent and not just a large cost. The other strand would be called something like HR-LO for leadership and organization, would focus on talent development and performance and report to the CEO. High potential line managers from operations or finance with business expertise and people skills would lead...
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...EXPERIENCE hbr.org Case Study Suraj Srinivasan is an associate professor at Harvard Business School. Terranola was everyone’s favorite company until an investor went on the attack. by Suraj Srinivasan The Experts A Short-Seller Crashes the Party Guy Gresham, managing director, BNY Mellon Illustration: Maria Raymondsdotter Dan Mahoney, director of research, CFRA HBR’s fictionalized case studies present dilemmas faced by leaders in real companies and offer solutions from experts. This one draws on the HBS Case Study “Trouble Brewing for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters” (case no. 113035), by Suraj Srinivasan and Michael Norris, which is available at hbr.org. W hen the well-known hedge fund manager and short-seller Jeremiah Hughes first put Terranola in the spotlight, issuing ominous warnings about unsold products, a looming patent expiration, and flawed growth projections, the considered judgment of the company’s executive team was to do nothing. “I refuse to dignify this attack with a response,” said Henry Guillart, the CEO, after Hughes gave his negative presentation at an investor conference in New York. That decision turned out to have serious consequences. Terranola’s stock began tanking that afternoon, precipitating a slide that took the Seattle-based company’s reputation, employee morale, and ability to raise capital along with it. A month later, when Hughes spoke again about the company, everyone expected Terranola...
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...Vasiliki Kontanis, Mary Kate Manganiello, Kelsey Swierczek, and Maria Tropiano Monday, November 11, 2013 Anheuser-Busch International, Inc.: Making Inroads into Brazil and Mexico 1. What were the major challenges facing Anheuser-Busch in entering the Brazilian market? In entering the Mexican Market? The export.gov website describes several market challenges that a company encounters when doing business in Brazil. These challenges include: 1) an intimate knowledge of the local environment, including the explicit as well as the implicit costs of doing business (the “Custo Brazil”); 2) Logistics, given infrastructure limitations posed by a decade of economic expansion; and 3) Tariffs and a complex customs and legal system (www.export.gov 1). The vscgrowth.com website lists the following market challenges for Brazil: 1) The language – Most professionals in Brazil will need an interpreter because English is not widely spoken in Brazil; 2) Time zones and distance – Being on the other side of the world there is no overlap in business hours meaning holding phone or video conferences will have one party up very early or late; 3) Business culture tends to be “laisse a faire” or “introspective” and the different cultural background means priorities don’t always coincide with the US business psyche; and 4) Brazilian infrastructure needs improvement so as to support and capitalize on growth opportunities (www.vscgrowth.com 1). The startupoverseas.co.uk website discusses the...
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...also see signs of new forces emerging, which we will be exploring in more detail in the months ahead. The overall picture is of an altered business landscape. It does seem there will be no going back to the precrisis world. hbr.org Are these the right trends to watch? Share your thoughts with the authors at landscape.hbr.org. business executives are looking again to the future. As they reengage in strategic thinking, many are struck by a sense that the world has changed: The turmoil was not merely another turn of the business cycle but a restructuring of the economic order. Is that impression accurate? To answer this question, it is necessary to examine the underlying forces that shape the business environment and to look for discontinuities. McKinsey & Company tracks the most important of these forces, from the growth of emerging markets Lorenzo Petrantoni Eric Beinhocker is a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey & Company’s economics research arm, where he leads research on economic, management, and public policy issues; he is based in London. Ian Davis, also based in London, is McKinsey’s th managing director. Lenny Mendonca is the chair of the McKinsey Global Institute and a director in the firm’s San Francisco o ce. hbr.org | July–August 2009 | Harvard Business Review 55 STRATEGY in the NEW WORLD. Resources feeling the strain Just prior to the financial crisis, rising demand for...
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