Saturday, October 19, 2013

Organizing - Henri Fayol's Concept

To organize a business is to provide it with everything useful to its functioning: raw materials, tools, capital, personnel. All this may be categorized into two main groups: the material organization and the human organization. The body corporate would be capable of fulfilling the six essential functions only when these resources are provided to it.  Fayol mentioned that only human organization is dealt with in his paper. It is because he presented only a discussion paper highlighting what can be taught in management course or subject.

The latter day management scholars must have developed on the material organization development in their voluminous books. But they also neglected the essential portion of the organization.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Customer Satisfaction Focus - Resource Efficiency Focus



Managers have to simultaneously take care of customer satisfaction and resource efficiency.

Industrial engineers specialize in resource efficiency of engineering activities.

Eleven Customer-Focused Practices of Baldrige Award Winners



1. Multiple listening posts for understanding customer requirements
2. Highly refined recovery systems and complaint management processes
3. Comprehensive, creative, and continuous interface with the customer
4. Clarity about customer segments and their requirements
5. Customer focus is demonstrated at all levels and cascades from the top
6. Customer requirements and marketplace needs drive new product
development
7. Organization structures that support a customer-focused orientation
8. Information about customers is frequently and widely communicated
9. Missions that extend beyond customers and the boundaries of the business
10. Technology and operational processes mapped to customer service
11. Key results measures reflect high levels of customer service and satisfaction
http://www.pomsmeetings.org/ConfProceedings/001/Papers/QM-07.1.pdf


4Cs of Customer Focused Solutions
http://hbr.org/web/special-collections/insight/customers/silo-busting-how-to-execute-on-the-promise-of-customer-focus



Resource Efficiency Focus Initiatives


Deloitte Consultants are promoting resource efficiency now
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Insights/Browse-by-Content-Type/deloitte-debates/fa4e135d9aadf210VgnVCM1000001a56f00aRCRD.htm


A resource-focused approach to running your supply chain can enhance margins and help  win market share. If  suppliers are using too much energy, materials or water,  then they are spending too much money. And the extra expense is being born by  the supply chain. Help them become more efficient and then use the savings to increase the supply chain profit margins and market share.

Resource efficiency is a new and untapped opportunity, says Deloitte


Why? Efficiency initiatives of the past focused on systems and processes, rather than resources. A resource-focused approach – reducing energy, carbon, water, materials and waste – can offer an alternative and new way to achieve significant savings with rapid payback.

High Profit Supply Chain - Deloitte 2013 paper
http://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/files/2013/07/High_Profit_Supply_Chain.pdf

Resource Efficiency - European Commission Netherlands 2013 Policy papers
http://www.ecn.nl/docs/library/report/2013/o13004.pdf

Shop Floor Human Resource Management



It is production who do shop floor human resource management. They are in touch with every employee eight hours or more every day. What is the theory that supports them in their managerial activity.

F.W. Taylor advocated that managers take the responsibility for developing methods of accomplishing the required tasks and for training recruit in those methods. He wanted a foreman in charge of discipline apart from other foremen who look after specific aspects of methods.

Juan López-Cotarelo, Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick Business School  points out that line managers play a central role in human resource management. In many organisations, they are charged with myriad HR-related tasks, such as filling out performance appraisal forms, interviewing candidates for employment, making salary increase recommendations and breaking employment-related news –good and bad- to employees.


He also points out that treatment of line managers in the human resource management literature has been at best patchy. The ‘functional’ or ‘micro’ HRM subfield (Wright and Boswell, 2002) has produced knowledge about the role of line managers in the separate HR processes, such as personnel selection and performance appraisals. Most of the work in this subfield however has focused on describing the various ways in which managers can be subject to biases in their decision making. For instance, the personnel selection literature has shown that the behaviour of interviewers influences the performance of applicants (Liden et al., 1993), and that interviewer similarity and affect towards the interviewee is linked to perceived job suitability of the applicant (Howard and Ferris, 1996). Likewise, the performance appraisal literature has devoted much effort to determining the effects of rater affect and rater similarity on performance evaluations (Levy and Williams, 2004) On the ‘macro’ or ‘strategic’ side of the literature (Wright and Boswell, 2002), research has almost universally espoused a research design which has limited attention to line manager actions.

BREWSTER, C. & SODERSTROM, M. 1994. Human resources and line management.
In: BREWSTER, C. & HEGEWISCH, A. (eds.) Policy and practice in European
human resource management : the Price Waterhouse Cranfield survey. London; New York: Routledge.

HOWARD, J. L. & FERRIS, G. R. 1996. The Employment Interview Context: Social and
Situational Influences on Interviewer Decisions. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 26, 112-36.


Juan López-Cotarelo, HR discretion: understanding line managers’ role in  Human Resource Management 
Juan López-Cotarelo, Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick Business School 


LEVY, P. E. & WILLIAMS, J. R. 2004. The Social Context of Performance Appraisal: A 
Review and Framework for the Future. Journal of Management, 30, 881-905. 


LIDEN, R. C., MARTIN, C. L. & PARSONS, C. K. 1993. Interviewer and applicant 
behaviors in employment interviews. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 372-
86.


WRIGHT, P. M. & BOSWELL, W. R. 2002. Desegregating HRM: a review and
synthesis of micro and macro human resource management research. Journal of
Management, 28, 247-76. 

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Management Scholars and Thinkers



Business and Management Thinkers - Brief Biographies and Their Publications

Harrington Emerson

DOB  2 August


Peter F. Drucker

Obituary, New York Times, November 2005
He wanted to write "Managing Ignorance." Interesting as I argue that the cost of ignorance is much higher than cost of quality in the society.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Eiji Toyoda - Former Chairman Toyota Motors



Eiji Toyoda, was  a member of Toyota Motor’s founding family and an architect of its “lean manufacturing” method. He helped to turn the automaker into a global powerhouse and changed the face of modern manufacturing.

Mr. Toyoda was born on Sept. 12, 1913, near Nagoya in central Japan, the second son of Heikichi and Nao Toyoda. He spent much of his youth at his family’s textile mill.  He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1936 with a mechanical engineering degree and joined his family’s loom business.

The next year, Kiichiro Toyoda, son of the founder, created Toyota Motor, taking the young Eiji Toyoda with him.

Assigned to a division devoted to resolving quality problems, Mr. Toyoda is said to have developed an uncanny ability to spot waste and eliminate it. He used to say,  “Whether you pick a up a problem and solve it or not is a matter of habit. If you have the habit, then you can do whatever you have a mind to.”

In 1950, he set out on what would turn out to be a pivotal three-month tour to survey Ford’s Rouge plant in Detroit, then the largest and most efficient factory in the world. By 1950, Toyota had produced just 2,685 automobiles, compared with the 7,000 vehicles the Rouge plant was rolling out in a single day

Mr. Toyoda wrote back to headquarters that he “thought there were some possibilities to improve the production system.” He brought back a thick booklet that outlined some of Ford’s quality-control methods; the company translated it into Japanese. Mr. Toyoda went on to oversee Toyota’s Motomachi plant, a huge undertaking that gave the automaker the capacity to produce 5,000 passenger vehicles a month at a time when all of Japan produced about 7,000 vehicles a month. The plant, completed in 1959, was soon running at full capacity and gave Toyota a decisive lead over its domestic rival Nissan and the confidence to turn its eyes overseas.

He died on 17 September 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/business/global/eiji-toyoda-promoter-of-toyota-way-dies-at-100.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323981304579080842742449138.html

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Big Data - Successful Management Applications




Locating Promising Gold Mines  - 2000

Goldcorp was once a struggling mining business.  With the business in jeopardy and frustrated by the lack of progress, CEO Rob McEwan decided to do something truly revolutionary.

In  the Goldcorp Challenge, he took 400 MB of proprietary data, put it online and offered $575,000 in prizes for anybody who could locate promising seams.  More than 1,400 contestants identified 110 new targets, 80% of which resulted in substantial new discoveries of gold.

More about the Goldcorp Challenge
http://www.fastcompany.com/44917/he-struck-gold-net-really

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/09/13/confused-about-big-data-here-are-5-things-you-need-to-do/2/


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

10 September - Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management



1898 - Waldo Semon - invented vinyl

Arthur Holly Compton born 1892: cosmic rays and X-rays; Compton scattering; Nobel prize in Physics, 1927
John Kidd born 1775: codiscoverer of naphthalene in coal tar; author of 1833 treatise "On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man", intended to show how God was manifest in creation.

Carl Mosander born 1797: discovery of erbium (Er, element 68), lanthanum (La, 57), terbium (Tb, 65); discovered "didymium" (later resolved into neodymium and praseodymium)

http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/september.html


Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Supply Chain Performance - Effectiveness and Efficiency



Supply Chain Design and Analysis: Models and Methods
Benita M. Beamon
University of Washington
Industrial Engineering
International Journal of Production Economics (1998)
Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 281-294

Exploring efficiency and effectiveness in the supply chain: A conceptual analysis
Benedikte Borgström
Jönköping International Business School

A framework for supply chain performance measurement
A. Gunasekarana,, C. Patelb, Ronald E. McGaugheyc
Int. J. Production Economics 87 (2004) 333–347

A SCOR Reference Model of the Supply Chain
Management System in an Enterprise
Danish Irfan,  Xu Xiaofei, and Deng Sheng Chun1
The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 5, No. 3, July 2008

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Leaders must foster accountability, but they also have to forgive errors, mistakes and wrongs of followers and opponents



Rosabeth Moss Kanter expressed the important idea in a HBR blog post.

Instead of settling scores,  leaders have to make gestures of reconciliation that heal wounds and involve all to get on with business. This is essential for turnarounds or to prevent mergers from turning into rebellions against acquirers who act like conquering armies. Forgiveness can sometimes mean investing in groups that have done something negative — a counterintuitive but often very effective strategy.

"Revenge is not justice," says General Douglas MacArthur, as played by Tommy Lee Jones in Emperor, an engrossing new feature film about the surrender of the Japanese to American troops at the end of World War II.

Emperor - Trailer
__________

__________
 The question requiring leadership judgment is whether to hang Japan's Emperor Hirohito for war crimes. Despite pressure from Washington and his fellow officers  General MacArthur senses that Japan reveres its emperor and refuses to give in. He instead uses his power for reconciliation and the emperor remains in place, though stripped of his divinity.  As we know from history, the rebuilding of war-torn Japan was an economic and social triumph.

If revenge is not justice, it is not strategy either.

Anger and blame are unproductive emotions that tie up energy in destroying rather than creating. People who want to save a marriage, for example, must let go of the desire to hurt a partner the way they think the partner has hurt them and instead make a gesture of reconciliation.

Those whose main motivation is to settle scores and get payback — to obstruct rather than construct — are on the wrong side of history. Their legacy is not  magnificent building, but rubble. Taking revenge can destroy countries, companies, and relationships. Forgiveness can rebuild them.

Source:
http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2013/02/great-leaders-know-when-to.html

Prof Kanter explain this point also in a video presentation - Six Key to Leading Positive Change

______________

______________

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Evolution of Management Thought - Books and Research Papers





The Science and Practice of Management
A. Hamilton Church
1914
http://archive.org/stream/sciencepracticeo00chur#page/n9/mode/2up

The Regulating Principles or Laws of Effort
Practical Organization of The Organic Functions

Organizing Design
Organizing Equipment
Organizing Operation
Organizing Comparison
Organizing Control


Principles of Industrial Organization
Kimball Dexter S.
1919
http://archive.org/details/principlesofindu00kimbrich



The Principles of Industrial Management
John Duncan
1920
http://archive.org/details/principlesofindu00dunc


The Philosophy of Management
Oliver Sheldon
http://archive.org/details/philosophyofmana00sheluoft

Fayol's 14 Principles Then and Now
Carl A. Rodrigues
Management Decision, 2001, 39,10, Page 880

Management Mathematics



IMA Journal of Management Mathematics (IMA J Manag Math)
http://www.researchgate.net/journal/1471-6798_IMA_Journal_of_Management_Mathematics

Journal of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research
http://www.globalstf.org/common/journal-jmsor.html


Mathematics in Management
Course material
http://sgbau.ac.in/Quantitative-Methods.pdf


Thursday, August 29, 2013

Product Cost Management Software and Tools



An engineering team decides on a specific design, but there are multiple alternatives that meet the same form, fit, and functional requirements with different cost implications.

Manufacturing costs are often variable and depend on plant cost structure, capabilities, and process control.

A manufacturing team selects one way to produce a specific design and estimates a ballpark cost, but there may be several more cost-effective ways to manufacture the same design.

Traditionally, Product Cost Management (PCM) has been performed by industrial engineers,  cost engineering experts, or by Value Analysis/Value Engineering (VAVE) team members who specialize in cost reduction.  These resources typically have strong manufacturing backgrounds.  Their expertise is unique and their domain knowledge builds over time, but it is extremely difficult to duplicate and scale across products in a large organization.

Effective PCM requires a set of systematic activities, processes, and tools for use throughout the enterprise to guide the above decisions to the lowest possible costs. This enables manufacturing organizations to attack cost at the point of origin and yield the greatest impact on product cost reduction.

Core Cost Management Activities

There are a number of core activities involved in PCM. Some of the most effective include:

Studying the cost tradeoffs of different concept designs in the R&D stage
Evaluating multiple design alternatives for lowest cost during NPI
Evaluating the cost of proposed solutions to an engineering change order
Evaluating multiple manufacturing and tooling alternatives for lowest cost, including make vs. buy analysis
Generating a detailed "should cost" to validate supplier quotes and ensure lowest pricing
Batch analyzing current prices of entire commodity groups to find over-cost outliers
Evaluating multiple cost-down ideas on current products in real-time to identify the highest potential reduction in the shortest amount of time

Cost Management Processes

The core activities above fit into various functions and processes over a product's life cycle and include key cost control points during the overall development process. These are measurable, managed checkpoints that dictate where and when people should perform the activities outlined above. The output and results of these activities build on each other throughout the product development life cycle. For example, during the introduction of a new product, there are typically design review meetings at regular intervals to ensure the new product is meeting form, fit, and functional requirements. However, rarely is there a conversation about the financial implications of the design alternatives being evaluated. An effective PCM effort should include mandatory cost evaluation as part of key design review milestones.

Another example would be as a design reaches the release to manufacturing (RTM) milestone. At this point in the process, there is often a decision to make or buy that product, or key components within it. A company with a cost control point at that RTM milestone would quickly calculate the financial impact of both options, and make an economically-wise decision in a fraction of the time that it would take to create and manage an RFP response from a supplier.

Cost Management Tools

Effective PCM is also enabled by putting the proper tools in the hands of anyone that impacts product cost. These tools help assess true product costs at a detailed level at any stage and enable people to act on the appropriate opportunities to reduce costs. For example:

Product cost estimation systems that can quickly and consistently generate and manage accurate estimates without requiring specialized manufacturing or cost knowledge

Reporting systems for documenting and tracking cost management results and KPI's over time
Analytics systems to search large volumes of data and identify cost outliers and trends
BOM cost tracking systems to roll-up costs at any point in a product's life cycle.Without these core activities, processes and tools, PCM remains a highly manual and decentralized function - of value only to manufacturing or cost engineering experts.
It can only be performed one or two times per NPI cycle, severely limiting the windows of opportunity to identify and operationalize product cost savings. It also leads to inconsistent estimation methods with static information that is difficult to update, manage and share.
To drive down COGS by entire percentage points, manufacturers must look to deploy PCM further upstream in the development process and across all departments and levels. Each group must identify its key cost control points and define the activities and processes needed to reduce costs. These groups also need the right tools to analyze cost trade-offs quickly and easily each time they make a decision. The specific recipes for effective PCM will vary for each group, but effort to meet their specific requirements will provide a very high return on investment.


Source:
http://www.manufacturing.net/articles/2011/10/key-principles-of-effective-product-cost-management

More about Apriori Cost Management Software
http://www.apriori.com/product_cost_management_overview.htm

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Monday, July 29, 2013

29 July Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management



Birthday


29 July 1841 - Henri Fayol - Started the discussion of Principles of  Management in Engineering or Industrial Organizations

29 July 1917 Harry Boot - Developer of Cavity Magnetron

Nobel Laureates

1898 Issidor Issac Rabi - Physics
1900 Eyvind Johnson - Literature

http://www.todayinsci.com/7/7_29.htm

Events

1890 - Laroy Sunderland Starrett received a U.S. patent for his micrometer screw guage (No. 433,311),


Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Organizational Behavior - Bibliography



Organizational Behavior: Linking Individuals and Groups to Organizational Contexts
Richard T. Mowday and Robert I. Sutton (Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Stanford)
Annual review of Psychology, 1993, pp. 195-229

Friday, June 28, 2013

Value Stream Walk



Jim Womack

The best lean tool a manager can have is a good pair of shoes for walking his or her value streams. The reason: Managers and executives must learn to think "horizontally" across functions in order to understand and improve the flow of value to customers. This means un-learning the traditional "vertical" thought process based on organizational charts and optimizing departments.

A good practical way to learn horizontal thinking is to take a walk -- a value-stream walk -- on a regular basis. Womack will provide practical tips and a framework, based on his years of learning by walking real-world value streams, for what managers and executives should do when they take value-stream walks.
______________

______________

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Leadership and Integrity - Research Paper by Robert Hooijberg and Nancy Lane - Information


Available at
http://m.imd.ch/research/publications/upload/Hooijberg_Lane_WP_2005_1_Level_1.pdf


Hooijberg, Hunt and Dodge (1997) called for more attention to be paid to values in leadership research, especially to the role of integrity

Hypothesis: Integrity has a positive association with effectiveness for all raters.

Direct reports will see an especially strong association between
integrity and leadership effectiveness.

Hypothesis  stated that Integrity would have a positive association with effectiveness for
all raters. Based on the literature we certainly expected this hypothesis to be true. The results,
however, show a statistically significant association for the managers themselves and their peers,
but not for the direct reports and bosses. 

Leadership through strategy, structure, and systems - Robert Hooijberg



Strategic leaders must put in place structures, systems and processes that support and encourage the development of leaders within the organization.


Strategic leaders must design and implement appropriate organizational strategy, structure, and systems in order to reach, align and gain commitment from those who cannot be touched personally – thereby allowing all members to contribute meaningfully  to their organization’s overarching goals.

Resources

http://www.imd.org/research/challenges/upload/Reflecting_your_vision.pdf

http://www.imd.org/research/publications/upload/PFM151_LR_Hoojberg_Lane.pdf

Being there even when you are not: Leadership through strategy, structure, and systems
Robert Hooijberg, James G Hunt, John Antonakis, Kimberly B Boal, Nancy Lane
Emerald Group Publishing, 01-Jan-2007 - Leadership - 334 pages
Whereas most of the leadership literature has focused on direct, interpersonal leadership, few researchers have examined indirect leadership or the leadership of organizations. Of course, direct, personal leadership plays an important role at all levels of the organization. However, we focus here on how leaders use strategy, structures, and systems to create the conditions that stimulate others to meaningfully contribute to the overarching goals of the organization. We therefore explore the role of the strategic leader as an "architect." In this role as strategic architect, we examine how top-level leaders create organizations wherein leadership is developed, knowledge is created and disseminated, meaning is shaped and shared, and where the vision cascades to all corners of the organization. We also explore the "darker" side of leader discretion to show the deleterious consequences of leader power. Finally, we examine the complex nature of organizations and the roles of leaders in adapting the organization to the environment in which it operates. The six major sections in this book coincide with these aspects of the leader's architectural focus. The first chapter in each section provides a short theoretical introduction. Following the theory chapters are application chapters, highlighting the practical implications of the theory with real-life examples. The sixth section explores the relationship between complexity theory and strategic leadership
Google Book Link with Preview facility
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=pBU2nbSjvQQC


Monday, June 3, 2013

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Elizabeth Wiseman with Greg Mckeown - Book Information



About the Author

Liz Wiseman is the president of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development center headquartered in Silicon Valley. She advises senior executives and leads strategy and leadership forums for executive teams worldwide. A former executive at Oracle Corporation, she worked as the vice president of Oracle University and for seventeen years as the global leader for human resource development. She holds a BS in business management and a master's in organizational behavior, each from Brigham Young University.



Table of Contents

 
Foreword by Stephen R. Covey ix
 
1 The Multiplier Effect 1
2 The Talent Magnet 33
3 The Liberator 65
4 The Challenger
5 The Debate Maker 133
6 The Investor 159
7 Becoming a Multiplier 195
 
Acknowledgements 225
Appendix A: The Research Process 229
Appendix B: Frequently Asked Questions 237
Appendix C: The Multipliers 245
Appendix D: Multipliers Discussion Guide 249
The Multipliers Assessment 252
Notes 253
Index 257

More on the concept of multipliers
Multipliers - Diminishers - Leadership Model by Liz Wiseman

Multipliers - Diminishers - Leadership Model by Liz Wiseman



Elizabeth Wiseman (Liz Wiseman) is president of Wiseman Group. In the research she did along with her colleagues, she came up with the model of leaders as  multipliers and diminishers. Multipliers use 95% of the capability of their followers where as diminishers use an average of 48%. Thus a multiplier leaders almost doubles the productivity of his followers by 100%.

They say, the multiplier uses five disciplines. As a talent magnet, he attracts talented people and uses them at their highest point of contribution. As a liberator, he creates an environment that allows people's best thinking and work. As a challenger he defines an opportunity that causes people to stretch. As a debate maker, he drives decision through rigorous debates.As an investor, he invests in the success of his followers and gives people the ownership for results.


Presentation by Liz Wiseman, and Greg McKeown, Coauthors at Google Talks on Multipliers
57.11 minutes
_________________


_________________

More material on the topic

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-11-09/news/35014658_1_multiplier-effect-leaders-managers (the article made me aware of the topic)

Review of the book in Drake Management Review - http://faculty.cbpa.drake.edu/dmr/0101/DMR010110B.pdf

http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/talent-management/articles/are-you-a-multiplier-or-a-diminisher/

Videos - Wiseman Group
http://thewisemangroup.com/vids/


Friday, May 31, 2013

Competitive Strategy Against a Disruptive Technology



Disruptive technologies and product from Napster, Amazon, and the Apple Store devastated Tower Records and Musicland; tiny, underpowered personal computers grew to replace minicomputers and mainframes; digital photography made film practically obsolete.


Present leading companies have to respond by developing  a disruption of their  own before it's too late to reap the rewards of participation in new, high-growth markets, as Procter & Gamble did with Swiffer, Dow Corning with Xiameter, and Apple with the iPod, iTunes, the iPad, and the iPhone.



.
Disruption is not a a single event but a process that plays out over time, sometimes quickly and completely, but other times slowly and incompletely. There are many companies and businesses that survived disruptive technologies and making profits even today after many years of the appearance of successful disruptive technology. Therefore managers must not only disrupt themselves but also consider the fate of their legacy operations, for which decades or more of profitability may lie ahead.


Maxwell Wessell and Clayton Christensen proposed  a systematic way to help managers  fashion a more complete strategic response.

Disruptive innovations are like missiles launched at your business. You need to determine whether a missile will hit you dead-on, graze you, or pass you altogether. For that,  you need to:
• Identify the strengths of your disrupter's business model;
• Identify your own relative advantages;
• Evaluate the conditions that would help or hinder the disrupter from co-opting your current advantages in the future.


They introduced the concept of the extendable core--the aspect of its business model that allows the disrupter to maintain its performance advantage as it creeps upmarket in search of more and more customers. Then managers have to figure out what jobs people want still want their company to do for them--and what jobs the disrupter could do better with its extendable core. This  give a clearer picture of the  relative advantage of a company against a disrupter.  Then the barriers a disrupter would need to overcome to undermine the existing companies in the future are to be identified. This approach will enable a manager  to see which parts of the current business are most vulnerable to disruption and which parts  can be defended for signicant period of time.


Related Articles


Surviving Disruption
Wessel, Maxwell1 and Christensen, Clayton
Harvard Business Review; Dec2012, Vol. 90 Issue 12, p56-64, 9p



Stop Reinventing Disruption
by Maxwell Wessel,   March 7, 2013
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/stop_reinventing_disruption.html

Leveraging Disruptive Theory to Develop Up-Market Strategy
http://maxwellwessel.com/leveraging-disruptive-theory-to-develop-up-market-strategy/

Maxwell Wessel is with the Forum for Growth and Innovation at Harvard Business School


Sunday, May 26, 2013

26 May Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management



Birthdays


Laurance Spellman Rockefeller, American industrialist (Chase Manhattan Bank), conservationist and philanthropist and founder of the American Conservation Association, was born on May 26, 1910.


Jack ("Doctor Death") Kevorkian, American physician, was born on May 26, 1928.

Sally Kristen Ride, the first American astronaut in space, was born on May 26, 1951.

Washington Augustus Roebling, American engineer and architect, who built the Allegheny Suspension Bridge (in Pennsylvania) with his father, John Augustus Roebling and directed construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (New York), was born on May 26, 1837.

Nobel Prize Winners

Patents

1857 Robert Mushet received a patent for methods of manufacturing steel.

Acoustic Wave Devices Using Plate Modes With Surface-Parallel Displacement, S. J. Martin and A. J. Ricco; Pat. No. 5,117,146; Issued: 5/26/92.

Electrically-Programmable Diffraction Grating, A. J. Ricco, M. A. Butler, M. B. Sinclair, S. D. Senturia; U.S. Patent No. 5,757,536; Issued 5/26/98.

"System and method for generating cyclic codes for error control in digital communications", US Patent 7,539,918, Issued May 26, 2009


Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, Harold Kerzner, 11th Edition - Book Information

The book described as the best selling bible of project management

Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, 11th Edition
February 2013

Wiley

Table of Contents

Preface xxi
1 OVERVIEW 1

2 PROJECT MANAGEMENT GROWTH: CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS 37

3 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES 91

4 ORGANIZING AND STAFFING THE PROJECT OFFICE AND TEAM 141

5 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS 191

6 MANAGEMENT OF 'YOUR' TIME AND STRESS 285

7 CONFLICTS 295

8 SPECIAL TOPICS 319

9 THE VARIABLES FOR SUCCESS 365

10 WORKING WITH EXECUTIVES 383

11 PLANNING 411

12 NETWORK SCHEDULING TECHNIQUES 493

13 PROJECT GRAPHICS 555

14 PRICING AND ESTIMATING 571

15 COST CONTROL 629

16 TRADE-OFF ANALYSIS IN A PROJECT ENVIRONMENT 715

17 RISK MANAGEMENT 741

18 LEARNING CURVES 817

19 CONTRACT MANAGEMENT 839

20 QUALITY MANAGEMENT 873

21 MODERN DEVELOPMENTS PROJECT MANAGEMENT 927

22 THE BUSINESS OF SCOPE CHANGES 949

23 THE 'PROJECT' OFFICE 955

24 MANAGING CRISIS PROJECTS 971

25 THE RISE, FALL, AND RESURRECTION OF IRIDIUM: A PROJECT MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE 987

Appendix A. Solutions to the Project Management Conflict Exercise 1025

Appendix B. Solution to Leadership Exercise 1031

Appendix C. Dorale Products Case Studies 1037

Appendix D. Solution to the Dorale Products Case Studies Answers 1049

Appendix E. Crosslisting of PMBOK to the Text 1055

Author Index 1061

Subject Index



Related blog by Kerzner

http://drharoldkerzner.wordpress.com/page/5/

11th Edition Google Book Link with preview facility
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QgQQC5qRtzgC

10th Edition Google Book Link with preview facility
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ka9K-61xXssC

Download Chapter 1 from Wiley
http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/70/11180222/1118022270-41.pdf


Friday, May 24, 2013

Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management





Resources

Science


Chronology of History of Science  http://www.thesciencebookstore.com/chron.asp?pg=1
Calendar of science for for the month http://www.pacificsciencecenter.org/calendar-of-science.html

Computation Knowledge - Historical timeline - http://www.wolframalpha.com/docs/timeline/
Lasers - History  http://www.worldoflasers.com/laserhistory.htm
Mechanical Engineering - ASME History of Mechanical Engineering Page
http://www.asme.org/kb/topics/history-of-mechanical-engineering

Engineering

Patents Information Datewise
http://www.datamp.org/displayIndex.php?start=0


Great Achievements in Engineering  http://www.greatachievements.org/default.aspx?id=2984
History of Engineering - Bibliography http://www.creatingtechnology.org/history.htm
International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/het
A Biographical Dictionary of People in Engineering - From Earliest Records until 2000.
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=l2492-xSSNoC
Inventions - Timeline


Automobile Engineering

Automobile engineering timeline - http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3880
Electric Car - Timeline  - http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html
Timeline of Motoring History - http://www.auto-history.tv/Timeline_of_motoring_history.html

Civil Engineering - History and Heritage - http://live.asce.org/hh/index.mxml?versionChecked=true

Concrete - Historical Timeline - http://www.auburn.edu/academic/architecture/bsc/classes/bsc314/timeline/timeline.htm

IEEE Technology History - http://theinstitute.ieee.org/technology-focus/technology-history?offset=40

Mechanical Engineering - ASME History of Mechanical Engineering Page
http://www.asme.org/kb/topics/history-of-mechanical-engineering


Robotics History - Timeline http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/technology/historyofrobotics.html

Structural Engineering - History Resources - http://www.thestructuralengineer.info/?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=32

Weapons Technology  History - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17423-timeline-weapons-technology.html

A Timeline of Database History  http://quickbase.intuit.com/articles/timeline-of-database-history/


History of Genetic Engineering
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Management


Industrial Engineering Timeline: http://mailab.snu.ac.kr/erp/ver3/erp/ie_timeline.html
Industrial Engineering is Human Effort Engineering and System Efficiency Engineering.

Management History Timeline:  http://demos.projectphoenix.com/mcgraw-hill/ManagementHistoryTimeline/#


Month-wise and Date-Wise Events

January    -   February    -      March      -   April     -    May      -      June

July               August              September    October     November    December


A History of Knowledge - Long Essay
http://www.scaruffi.com/know/history.html




Saturday, May 18, 2013

Edward de Bono - Creativity and Lateral Thinking




Edward de Bono made many contributions to the topic of creative thinking.

Presentation by de Bono on Thinking
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_____________


http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/05/if-you-are-not.html

If you are not aware of the psychologist and physician Dr. Edward de Bono, then you owe it to yourself to at least explore his contributions.


Friday, May 17, 2013

Confucius on Leadership by John Adair - Book Review and Summary



John Adair's book Confucius on Leadership was published in 2013.

While Confucius is known to many as a philosopher and Confucianism is even treated as a religion, Adair, a scholar on leadership identified that Confucius tried to develop leadership among the Chinese and made efforts in that direction.

Confucius on Leadership - Google Book with preview facility

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=507aEoXuxg8C

Part 1 The Generic Role of Leader

1. What is leadership?
2. Leading from in front
3. Achieving the task
4. Building the team
5. Developing the individual

Part 2 Some Qualities Necessary in Leaders

6. Enthusiasm
7. Integrity
8. Tough and demanding but fair
9. Warmth
10. Humility

Conclusion: The path to leadership

 A Biographical Sketch of Confucius



More reading on Confucius on Leadership

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/confucius-theories-on-leadership-as-relevant-today-as-they-were-2500-years-ago-john-adair/articleshow/20088112.cms

The Relevance of Confucian Philosophy to Modern Concepts of Leadership and Followership
http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=ojii_volumes

There are more articles on Confucius on Leadership. More will be added.


Monday, May 13, 2013

"Outside-in" Thinking - Prof. Ranjay Gulati


Ranjay Gulati is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.


Companies with an outside-in perspective aim to provide solutions for customers. Those with an inside-out orientation, on the other hand, just focus on products, sales, and the organization.

Customer-centric companies tracked by Gulati between 2001 and 2007 delivered shareholder returns of 150 percent while the S&P 500 delivered 14 percent.

To develop an outside-in orientation, it is essential to translate awareness of a customer issue or problem into action toward solving it and provide the solution to the customer.

Ranjay Gulati:  "I naively assumed that all firms must indeed have an outside-in orientation whereby they put their customers first in all their decisions and actions." After all, that is what business is about and marketing texts and courses promoted it .  But Gulati says "Much to my surprise, I found that this was the exception rather than the rule for most businesses."

More Reading on the Concept and Ranjay Gulati

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6201.html

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-03-02/news/31116805_1_new-guru-customer-gulati

http://www.h-ym.com/articles/Inside%20Outside-In%20WP.pdf

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/04/inside-best-buys-customer-cent.html

Silobusting - Ranjay Gulati
http://hbr.org/2007/05/silo-busting-how-to-execute-on-the-promise-of-customer-focus/ar/1

"From Inside-out to Outside in thinking" by Ranjay Gulati, HBS professor in Economic Times Corporate Dossier of 10 May 2013

Video
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/video-high-growth-requires-customer-first-thinking/article549998/

Transcript of the video
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/transcript-high-growth-requires-customer-first-thinking/article4171789/

Monday, April 15, 2013

15 April Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management


Birthdays

1452 Leonardo da Vinci of Italy the legendary painter, sculptor, inventor, scientist and visionary was born.
         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

1707 Leonhard Euler - Swiss Mathematician and Phycist
         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler
         Eulerian form of a complex number

Nobel Prize winners

1874 Johannes Stark  - Physics
         Nobel Lecture: Structural and Spectral Changes of Chemical Atoms
         http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1919/stark-lecture.html

1907 Nikolaas Tinbergen  - Medicine
1961 Carol W. Greider  - Medicine

Patents

1997 Bertram Burke received a patent for an automatic philanthropic contribution system called the MILLIONAIRE'S CLUB.



Management Knowledge Revision Articles



What is Strategy in Simple Terms?

Who is a Knowledge Worker?

Science, Engineering and Management Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

9 April Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management

A to Z Blogging Challenge Schedule

This year, 2013 also I am participating

2012 Schedule



What Blogging A to Z
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/what-is-blogging-from-to-z.html

Register in the signup Sheet

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/2012-to-z-challenge-sign-up-list.html

Entries

1019 -13.3.2012

My Entries

April
1 A Advertising Research
2 B Behavioral Decision Making Theory  Luthans 368-374
3 C Creativity in Decision Making Luthan 377-381
4. D  Decision-Making Styles - Luthans 374-376
5. E  Ethical and Socially Responsible Marketing - Kotler 782-784
6. F Functional and Consumer Testing of Prototypes - Kotler 326-27
7. G. Guerrilla Attack in Marketing - Kotler 390-91

9. H  Horizontal Marketing or Marketing Channel System Kotler, 551
10. I Image Analysis - Kotler, 607-610
11. Job Design - Snell - HR book 16th edition already posted
12.
13. Leadership - Self Development and Training
14.

16. Nokia Comes Up From Behind in India in Multi-Sim Card Mobile Phone Category
17. Optimization Research
18. People Behavior Characteristics
19. Quality Positioning - Communicating and Sustaining It
20. Relationship Marketing Using Social Media and Web


Completed the challenge successfully within the schedule. But do not find time to update the list.
Social media tag  #atozchallenge

Interesting Blogs in the Challenge related to education and management

http://circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.in/2012/04/to-z-challenge-justify.html

A to Z Challenge participating blogs
____________________________________
____________________________________

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

3 April Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management



Birthdays


Nobel Prize Winners

1896 - Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov  - Chemistry
           Nobel Lecture - Some Problems Relating to Chain Reactions and to the Theory of Combustion
           http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1956/semenov-lecture.html

Patents



1973 Francis W. Dorion was granted patent #3,724,070 for a "dual razor blade assembly".


News

Chinese scientists have developed the world's lightest substance - carbon aerogel. Its density is only 0.16 mg/cubic centimetre. The previous record was held by graphite aerogel with a density of 0.18 mg/cubic centimetre.

Management Knowledge Revision Articles


Sales Closing Techniques

Service to Customer: Follow Up After The Sale






4 April Knowledge History

Science, Engineering and Management Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center






Friday, March 29, 2013

Supply Chain Management, 5/E - Chopra and Meindl - Book Information



Sunil Chopra and Peter Meindl

5 Edition, 2013

Prentice Hall

Contents


Part I: Building a Strategic Framework to Analyze Supply Chains

Chapter 1: Understanding the Supply Chain
Chapter 2: Supply Chain Performance: Achieving Strategic Fit and Scope
Chapter 3: Supply Chain Drivers and Metrics

Part II: Designing the Supply Chain Network

Chapter 4: Designing Distribution Networks and Applications to e-Business
Chapter 5: Network Design in the Supply Chain
Chapter 6: Designing Global Supply Chain Networks

Part III: Planning and Coordinating Demand and Supply in a Supply Chain

Chapter 7: Demand Forecasting in a Supply Chain
Chapter 8: Aggregate Planning in a Supply Chain
Chapter 9: Sales and Operations Planning: Planning Supply and Demand in a Supply Chain
Chapter 10: Coordination in a Supply Chain

Part IV: Planning and Managing Inventories in a Supply Chain

Chapter 11: Managing Economies of Scale in a Supply Chain: Cycle Inventory
Chapter 12: Managing Uncertainty in a Supply Chain: Safety Inventory
Chapter 13: Determining the Optimal Level of Product Availability

Part V: Designing and Planning Transportation Networks

Chapter 14: Transportation in a Supply Chain

Part VI: Managing Cross-Functional Drivers in a Supply Chain

Chapter 15: Sourcing Decisions in a Supply Chain
Chapter 16: Pricing and Revenue Management in a Supply Chain
Chapter 17: Information Technology in a Supply Chain
Chapter 18: Sustainability and the Supply Chain

29 March Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Sam Walton - Founder Wal-Mart - Biography - Videos



Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton (March 29, 1918 – April 5, 1992) was  born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He graduatrd in 1940 with a Bachelor's of Economics.

Walton joined JC Penney as a management trainee in Des Moines, Iowa three days after graduating from college. This position paid him $75 a month. He joined into the military for service in World War II. Walton joined the military in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps, supervising security at aircraft plants and prisoner of war camps. In this position he served at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, Utah. He eventually reached the rank of captain.


In 1945, after leaving the military, Walton took over management of his first variety store at the age of 26. With the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus $5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. It was here that Walton pioneered many concepts that became crucial to his success later on. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods. His second store, the tiny "Eagle" department store, was down the street from his first Ben Franklin and next door to its main (Newport) competitor. Walton leased the space
mainly to preempt his competitor from expanding.

The success of Walton drew the attention of the landlord, P.K. Holmes, whose family had a history in retail.  He wanted  to reclaim the store (and franchise rights) for his son and  refused to renew the lease. The lack of a renewal option, together with the prohibitively high rent of 5% of sales, were early business lessons to
Walton. Holmes bought the store's inventory and fixtures for $50,000.

Walton negotiated  the purchase of a new location on the downtown square of Bentonville, Arkansas. Walton negotiated the purchase of a small store, and the title to the building, on the condition that he get a 99-year lease to expand into the shop next door. The owner of the shop next door refused 6 times, and  his father-in-law, without Sam's knowledge, paid the shop owner a final visit and $20,000 to secure the lease. He had just enough left from the sale of the first store to close the deal, and reimburse his father-in-law. They opened for business with a one-day remodeling sale on May 9, 1950.  Before he bought the Bentonville store, it was doing $72,000 in sales and it increased to $105,000 in the first year and then 140,000 and $175,000.


The new Bentonville "Five and Dime" opened  for business. But 220 miles away, there was still a year left on the lease in Newport which Walton has to manage. Young Walton had to learn to delegate responsibility. After succeeding with two stores at such a distance, Sam became enthusiastic about scouting more locations and opening more Ben Franklin franchises.

In 1954, he opened a store with his brother Bud in a shopping center in Ruskin Heights, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. With the help of his brother, father-in-law, and brother-in-law, Sam went on to open many new variety stores. He encouraged his managers to invest and take an equity stake in the business, often as much as $1000 in their store, or the next outlet to open. (This motivated the managers to sharpen their managerial skills and take ownership over their  role in the enterprise.) By 1962, along with his brother Bud, he owned 16 stores in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas (fifteen Ben Franklins and one independent, in Fayetteville).


The first true Wal-Mart opened on July 2, 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. It was called the Wal-Mart Discount City store and located at 719 West Walnut Street. Soon after, the Walton brothers teamed up with the Stefan Dasbach, leading to the first of many stores to come. He launched a determined effort to market American-made products. Included in the effort was a willingness to find American manufacturers who could supply merchandise for the entire Wal-Mart chain at a price low enough to meet the foreign competition.

Contrary to the prevailing practice of American discount store chains, Walton located stores in smaller towns, not larger cities. To make his model work, he emphasized logistics, particularly locating stores within a day's drive proximity to Wal-Mart's regional warehouses, and distributed through its own trucking service. Buying in volume and efficient delivery permitted sale of discounted name brand merchandise. Thus, sustained growth— from 1977's 190 stores to 1985's 800— was achieved. At the time of death of Sam Walton in 1992, Walmart ad 1,960 stores.


Walton died on Sunday, April 5, 1992, of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in Little Rock, Arkansas. At the time, his company employed 380,000 people. Annual sales was nearly $50 billion.

Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest man in the United States from 1982 to 1988. He ceded the top spot to John Kluge in 1989 when the editors began to credit Walton's fortune jointly to him and his four children. Bill Gates first headed the list in 1992, the year Walton died.

Walmart operates in the U.S. and in 15 international markets, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. At the University of Arkansas, the Business College (Sam M. Walton College of Business) is named in his honor. Walton was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992.

History of Walmart - 1950 - 1990 - Video
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History of Walmart - 1990 - 2003 - Video

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The Story of Walton Family

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http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/heritage/sam-walton

28 March Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management