Efficiency versus Competition

Is big business efficiency more important than preventing competition? Many big companies claim that their large size makes possible many operating economies.  Today’s complex technology, far-flung markets, complicated financial systems, and transnational competition make bigness essential for survival and efficient operation. Placing restrictions on today’s corporate growth just to preserve a competitive ideal formed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seems to make little economic sense. On the other hand, others point out that competition stands at the heart of private enterprise ideology and that small businesses, consumers, and workers should be protected against big business expansion even though it may mean a loss of efficiency.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Affordable, Portable Presentations

From a hardware standpoint, multimedia requires that a computer have adequate capabilities in three areas:

• Sound Capability: The hardware should be able to play sound through an internal speaker or to route stereo sound through a pair of external speakers connected to the computer.
• Appropriate video capability. Most of the computers sold today have video capabilities that can accommodate multimedia.
• Adequate storage. Because audio and video require large amounts of storage, extensive multimedia requires a storage device that plays disks that are substantially identical to that CDs that you buy in a music store.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Effective Segmentation

Segmentation does not promote marketing success in all cases. Effectiveness depends on the following basic requirements:

• The market segment must present measurable purchasing power and size.
• Marketers must find a way to effectively promote to and serve the market segment.
• Marketers must identify segments that are sufficiently large enough to give them good profit potential.
• The firm must target segments that match its marketing capabilities. Targeting a large number of niche markets can produce an expensive, complex and inefficient strategy.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Organization Structure

Any group possessing common goals is an organization. But business organizations can be classified according to the nature of their internal authority relationships. Although there are five forms of organization structure, four forms are common: line, line and staff, committee, and matrix. The line structure is the oldest form and is frequently used today in smaller organizations. The functional form uses specialist managers entirely responsible for their own fields within the operation. The line and staff form uses specialists to assist line officers. This is commonly used in medium and large size firm. The fourth and fifth types, committees and the matrix organizations exist in many firms but only ready as the sole types. They are typically used as a sub-organizational form within a line and staff structure.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The New Trend

Today, everything has changed. Globalization, the internationalization of markets and corporations, has changed the way modern corporations do business. To reach the economies of scale necessary to achieve the low costs, and thus the low prices, needed to be competitive, companies are now thinking of a global (worldwide) market instead of a national market. Instead of using one international division to manage everything outside the home country, large corporations are now using matrix structures in which product units are interwoven with country or regional units. International assignments are now considered key for anyone interested in reaching top management. As more industries become global, strategic management is becoming an increasingly important way to keep track of international developments and position the company for long term competitive advantage.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Travel Stress

We travel to get to work, we travel during our work, and we travel to get to distant meetings. Travel comes in all forms: short and long timeframes and short and long distances. For most people, the commonest hurdle is the daily grind to and from work. This is most acute in large cities. The problems are truly international, but some of the ugliest and best-studied traffic jams are now everywhere.

The levels of stress that this brings are extremely significant. For those who handle it poorly, it can be damaging  to their health, and may even endanger the lives of others. Medically, we know that stress mechanisms all fire at once when the body identifies a crisis. Adrenaline pours out, the stomach shuts down, the pulse races, and the hair stands up on end. The blood pressure soars, muscles clench in spasms around the shoulder tips and jaw,  and primal aggressions rise, ready for fight or flight.

With immediate flight brings out of the question, more and more frustrated drivers are turning to the fight option—either inside their cars as they tip at the heels of slower drivers, or outside their cars, where they may stomp up and beat a dent into the roof of an offending vehicle. Even the mild and polite become aggressive when they strap themselves into their bumper cars to drive to work. This means they usually arrive late, enraged and spent before they even start to face the day’s stresses on the job.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Personal Selling: Two Approaches

Personal Selling: Two Approaches

Many American companies do not put nearly enough effort into direct, personal communication. Japanese success in displacing the US as Saudi Arabia’s leading supplier is instructive. Japanese exporters and small teams to meet with Saudi importers: Japanese exporters; they go to Saudi workshops, travel to secondary towns, and meet with sub-agents. The Americans, on the other hand, invite all their Saudi agents together for a luncheon, do not have private meetings, do not get their hands dirty, and never travel to secondary towns—they tend to stick to the three market centers. Saudis complain that US effort is misdirected: American personnel devote infinitesimal detail to making advance arrangements for visiting executives, going so far as to specify rooms overlooking a certain view from the hotel.

Japanese firms supplement their direct, personal efforts with heavy local advertising. They use gifts generously in product introductions, and warrantees on Japanese consumer electronics range up to three years. To carry out this business, Japanese trading companies have large staffs of professional international marketers who have been cultivated since graduation from a Japanese international trading university, schooled in English and Arabic, and rotated worldwide as international trading specialists.

Compared to most other cultures, particularly non-Western. Americans are extraordinarily preoccupied with the tangible aspects of a product. They round up all their sales agents and give a product presentation instead of putting their energies into the more important component of international marketing—people. In American and only a few other countries it is normal to do business from a distance, between strangers, by mail or telephone.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Meaningless Corporate Values

The desire to go through a long-winded process to develop corporate values that are meaningless to everyone except those involved in their creation is a classic symptom. Incredibly, common in large corporations, it is not only a waste of time but can actually be damaging. This type of badge engineering puts a gloss over deep-rooted problems and causes employees to become not only ineffective but also disenchanted.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Contemporary World

By the end of World War 11 in 1945, the Industrial Revolution was complete. The need for war goods required the development of new forms of production and technology, which later were used to produce consumer goods. Inventiveness was at high peak. Synthetic plastics and chemicals replaced natural substances as the basis for many products. Better machinery made it possible to manufacture products to produce precise specifications. (This type of precision is what lead eventually to the Apollo moon shot, which required components that were accurate to several one-hundred thousandths of an inch.)

In the 1970s, widespread use of computers enabled the management to process large quantities of data. Factories could be automated, with computer-controlled machinery carrying out many routine activities that could previously be completed only by time-consuming human labor.

By 1980, more than 80 percent of US 500 largest businesses were multinational, operating facilities in five or more foreign countries. And even for smaller companies and individual consumers, the world has become more like a large neighborhood than a huge, unknowable planet. High-speed computers, orbiting satellites, fluctuating exchange rates, and worldwide scarcities of natural resources bind us together with common needs, concerns, and goals.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Pressure Groups

Big businesses, big labor, and big government are giants on the economic scene. As a pressure group or interest group, each tries to achieve its own objectives. And of course the major objective of a business is to earn profits. Some are more successful than others. To become and stay successful, big businesses employ full time representatives to fight for and protect their interests with government and consumers alike.

Labor is big too. The pressuring power of unions  is evidenced by such accomplishments as minimum wage laws and 40-hour work weeks. Big government now employs large share of all workers in its agencies, departments, and programs. Pressure from government is felt through such actions as taxes, environmental protection laws, and anti-trust legislation.

There is a wide variety of other types of pressure groups such as the media, professional organizations, neighborhood organizations, and dissident stockholder groups. Large and small pressure groups work vigorously to influence business, labor, and government in directions favorable to their own interests.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.