Strategic Management- A New Perspective!!!

"Most Indian companies have a confused approach to CSR, dubbing it as philanthropy and veiling the underlying strategic motive" ITS SOMETHING companies can’t do without anymore. It isn’t surprising why Indian companies have begun relying on the one aspect that could bail them out: Being socially responsible. Defining the term (corporate social responsibility or CSR) has perhaps been the trickiest part of this solution. The key word in the phrase corporate social responsibility is corporate because the aim is to benefit the standing and success of the corporate sponsor. If a cola major is working on conservation of water, it’s because they have been found using up our water resources. If a cigarette maker is worried about the poor man’s health, he simply wants to be allowed to continue selling more cigarettes. Most Indian companies,have a confused approach to CSR, interpreting it as philanthropy and veiling the underlying motives under the blanket of social good. Combined wi...

The role of HR has been evolving over the years. There was a radical move from Personnel Administration to HRD function . Today there is a need of paradigm shift to viewing the HR manager as a business partner or business guru. HR has been perceived till now by top line executives as “Advocates” and shop floor workers as “Management Stooges”. It is prerogative of the HR Professionals to remove these misconceptions by acting as vital link between strategic and operational function in an organization. Ultimately the trend for HR manager today seems to be changing to being a business manager rather than a simple advisor. What is the role of HR? Does it end with selection and placement or there are various crucial responsibilities either overlooked or disregarded? Reasons for Transformational role of HR ~Globalization. ~Changing Organizational Structures. HR’s creation of true competitive advantage comes from continuously improving the organization to fit changing business environment. S...

I joined the Management Institute with a very confused mind. Confusion of the degree itself and later the confusion of specialization. But things got clear as I entered the journey of MBA. So, what were the things I learnt during my MBA? 1. I learnt a few fundamentals (or at least the jargon) in areas such as Human Resources, Marketing, Finance, strategy etc. 2.I learnt that I was in a large crowd of huge peers. My best efforts saw me on top. 3.To my relief, I did learn that I do have a skill or two that were valuable in my world view and that I had it in fair measure...Thankfully, I believed in my own insight. To cut the long story short my B- School experience provided me with knowledge that was relevant to appreciate management and business. Above all, it did give me the "thappa" (stamp) of being an “MBA”. The management knowledge and skills that a B-school provides are necessary, for sure. However, it does not meet the criteria of sufficiency. There are a million or zill...

“From business point of view, research is the route to competitive advantage. From an academic point of view research is the route to credibility” Research is the central tool to one of the main objectives of business school: the creation of management theory. The creation of management theory is based on the foundation of research. Research is the central to the purpose and being of business school. The polarity of learning should be reversible and B-schools should strive for partnership relations with industry. Although many business schools spend millions of dollars on research, many business practitioners question the usefulness of the result finding. Much of what is researched is highly esoteric and of limited use.Business school research is superficial and lacking merit and rigor. Nigel Nicholson research dean at London Business School said--- “The class is raw material. You can’t be in an ivory tower. We have to be at the cutting edge of our disciplines. There is a virtuous circ...

Universities exist for learning and research. Business schools are geared to applicable knowledge. There has to be some responsibility for business schools to put what they say into practice, to stand on their own two feet. It is embarrassing to call yourself a business school and then go around fund raising . “While charities are trying to behave more like business, business schools are acting more like charities” When it comes to business schools’ fund raising has taken on new dimension. Compared with other providers of education and even their own universities, most business schools are wealthy institutions. Most of the money comes from donations from private citizens, or is income generated by selling services to corporate clients through executive education programs. To date, business schools have benefited from this additional source of revenue (compromising their integrity). In next few years the water is likely to get muddier as more and more business schools become invo...

"Business School have managed to create an aura of respectability to cover up what is otherwise a bloody brawl" The split personality of business schools is demonstrated by the way they have developed the MBA. With the MBA, business school almost accidentally, stumbled upon a mass product. They are behaving like mass producers, MBA factories , churning out managers like so many products on a conveyor belt. Many business schools have embraced the idea of brand extensions by creating hybrid variations on the MBA theme and in-company MBA programs designed for specific corporate clients. Business schools are extremely busy reinventing their product to extract the maximum commercial benefit. Aware of the restraints imposed by the academic affiliations, business schools have preferred to expand their activities in other ways promoting programs to markets. It is hard to see what it has to do with maintaining academic standards. Rather it shows,business schools more behaving like bus...

Strategic assets are “the set of difficult to trade and imitate, scarce, appropriable, and specialized resources and capabilities that bestow the firm’s competitive advantage”. It is easy to understand why organizations talk about people as an asset, but tend to manage them largely as a cost to be minimized. Aside from accounting principles that encourage this perspective, HR costs are easy to observe, while HR value creation is not. Largely because of the traditional perspective on HR, organizations have no way to measure HR’s strategic performance. Nevertheless, we know that intangibles in the aggregate are an increasingly important source of firm value, and that human capital ought to be a part of that asset value. HR is a strategic asset as it can play a critical role in both strategy implementation and management systems. Namely, the ability to execute strategy well is a source of competitive advantage, and “people” are the lynchpin of effective strategy execution. We think i...