1,720,974 research outputs found
Individual at work: Physical Characteristics, skills and Personality
No full textPre-Print Journal Article,Organisations in their collective sense are composed of individual human beings.
These individuals act out their working lives within the framework of an organizational
structure and in the context of particular organisational culture. Kreitner (1995) states that
researchers and practising managers have focused much effort on studying people in
small groups and as individuals. In so doing they have discovered that differences
between indiyiduals, are as important as their common features. An individual at work
is perceived by others in three principal ways:
• As a physical person having gender, age, race, size and
characteristics,
• As a person with a range of abilities (i.e. intellectual, physical and
social);
• As a personality (i.e. some one having a particular kind of
temperament).
Accepting that each person, ultimately, is a unique blend of all three dimensions,
it is nevertheless important, from an organizational behaviour perspective, to ask whether
it is possible to categorise individuals in some way. Much of the work on measurement of
human performance is devoted to developing standards of comparison between
individuals. This enables us to describe individuals in terms of broad types, such as
similar ability groups and personality types
Marketing Role in Society
No full textPre-print Journal ArticleOne reason for studying marketing is that, as consumers, a large share of purchasing dollar goes for marketing activities. Professor Reavis Cox (1995) estimated that 41.7 of this dollar is consumed by distribution activities. Other analysts, using other methods, have calculated figures up to 58.9; so a reasonable estimate is that the cost of marketing is about 50% of the consumer’s dollar.
Another important reason for learning about marketing is that marketing is all around us and affects almost every aspect of our daily life. The products we buy, the stores where we shop, that constant barrage of advertising we are exposed to, are all part of marketing. Further, the newspapers and magazines we read, as well as the radio programmes we listen to and the television shows we watch are largely paid for by advertisers – again, part of marketing. Even our job resume are part of a marketing campaign to sell ourselves to some employer.
An additional reason for studying marketing is that there are many exciting and rewarding career opportunities available to us in marketing. Particularly in consumer goods companies, marketing is often the route to the top executive’s position. At several points we will find information describing career opportunities in various areas of marketing, such as sales, advertising, product management, marketing research, physical distribution and so forth
Collective bargaining
No full textThis is a pre-print of an article published in PeCOP Journal of Social and Management Sciences,Collective bargaining is concerned with the relations between employers acting through their management representatives and organized labour. It is concerned not only with the negotiation of a formal labour agreement but also with the day- to- day dealings between management and the union. Because the management of the people in so many organizations is closely intertwined with union- employer relationships, it is essential that the student and the practitioner of management develop a sound knowledge of collective bargaining. Furthermore, the effect of collective bargaining extends beyond these establishments that are unionized. It impacts upon the economy as a whole, upon the practices of non-union organisations and upon the society at large
Foreign Trade
No full textPre-Print Journal Article,The importance of foreign trade in general and exporting in particular to a country’s economy cannot be over emphasised. It is through exporting that a country earns foreign exchange to buy essential products it does not produce. Developing countries, Zimbabwe included, have in the past relied heavily on the export of primary products from the agricultural and mining sectors. However, falling prices and depletion of natural resources has seen many developing countries turning to the manufacturing sector for export earnings. Zimbabwe is no exception. Today, our manufacturers, small and large, are being called upon to look beyond our borders and play a key role in the development of the country by engaging in sustainable export market activities
Marketing Role within the Firm
No full textPre-Print Journal Article,Consumer behaviour is determined by economic, psychological and sociological considerations. It is important to study non-economic buying motivations as these are present in the buying of industrial goods and services as well as in consumer purchases.
The process of decision making may be long in duration, as is in the decision- making to buy a computer, or short as in the decision- making to buy a packet of sweets, but similar stages may be observed:
a general or a specific need is felt;
a period of pre-buying activity follows, i.e. an investigation of sources of supply which might satisfy the need;
a decision is taken (what to purchase, or even to make no purchase) based on the results of the pre-buying activity and the strength of the need.
The basic need may be either general, e.g. need of a change of environment. The more specific need may arise spontaneously or it may be stimulated by creative marketing. The basic need is for a collection of utilities / providing a psychological or social satisfaction and not for a product. Consequently, it is important that marketing programmes should be designed to identify goods or services giving satisfaction of a need
Spurring workers' perfomance at work-place through job designing.
No full textThis is a pre-print to an article published in PeCOP,Overtime, some jobs become routine and less challenging, resulting in the demotivation of the job-holders. Effort should be made to make work more reading or satisfying by adding more meaningful tasks to a worker’s job. Such an act aims to spur employee self esteem and feeling of self fulfilment, hence long-term satisfaction’ and performance are upheld. This calls for the constant reviewing of the jobs’ content
Gathering information for Marketing Decision-Making
No full textMarketing research is concerned with developing and analyzing the “facts†that help marketing managers do a better job of planning, executing and controlling. Marketing research is much more than a bundle of techniques or a group of specialists in survey design or statistical techniques. Good marketing researchers must be both marketing and management orientated to assure that their research focuses on real problems on which action can be taken.
Today, many marketing planners are isolated in company or offices far from their potential customers. For this reason, they must rely on research to be sure they know what is going on. This point cannot be over-emphasized because it is all too easy for management to lose touch with its markets. One of the critical tasks of the marketing researcher is to help management get the “facts†and understand them. The many potential markets in the United States and abroad are not necessarily like the markets lived in by the typical middle-class suburban managers.
Marketing research details may be handled by staff or outside specialists but marketing managers must know how to plan and evaluate research projects. That is, they should be able to communicate with specialists in their language. They may only be “consumers†of research, but they should be knowledgeable consumer, perhaps regularly specifying what they want to buy.
For this reason, our treatment of marketing research will not focus on mechanics, but rather on how to plan and evaluate research. The marketing researcher must excel in these areas also, so in the following discussion, we will take the marketing researcher’s view, realizing that both of them should participate in the research process if the results are going to lead to action
Strategic human resource management
No full textThis book is intended both to be descriptive of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) and its key constituent ideas and to be analytical of the approach and its ideas. It is intended that the reader leaves the volume not only better informed about what SHRM is, but better able to evaluate SHRM and to understand it. This approach requires us to consider the concept or approach of SHRM carefully and critically; not to tear it apart for the sake of it, but to assess how robust and impressive it is in terms of its constituent ideas and assumptions. This activity, however, which starts in this chapter, may not be all that easy. This is partly because SHRM is an elusive target, characterized by a diversity of meanings and ambiguous conceptual status (Hales 1994:54). Therefore, we must spend some time looking at how SHRM has been defined and how it has been employed. But this is also difficult because SHRM may be not only diverse and ambiguous, it may also be contradictory – it may contain elements, or depend on assumptions, which are themselves inconsistent, pulling in different directions.
Furthermore, SHRM as an approach has much in common with other approaches to organizational restructuring, such as a focus on internal marketing (Hales 1994). Because of the variety and complexity of approaches to SHRM, it is important to have some understanding of how SHRM is defined and used. It might seem that a discussion of the nature and merits and provenance of the ideas and assumptions inherent in approaches to organizational restructuring such as SHRM is simply academic.,Dr. Isaac Chanet
Organisations' social responsibility
No full textFor a long time organisations have acknowledged their responsibility towards the community
and the environment in which they operate. Responsibility does not end with the production
of goods or the rendering of service of a high quality as required by the community, but
extend into the social field. In the Middle Ages, Popes gave generously of their personal
fortunes. Social responsibility is a social norm. This norm holds that any social institution,
including the smallest family unit and the largest corporation responsible for the behaviour
of its members, may be held accountable for their misdeeds. It is implicitly stated that an
organisation's responsibility extends far beyond the internal maintenance of its human
resources to the external work environment as well. An organization fulfills its social
responsibility when it meets economic and legal obligations. A socially responsive
organisation acts the way it does because of its desire to satisfy some expressed social need.
Social responsiveness is guided by social norms
Groups and Group Behaviour
No full textPre-Print Journal Article,Groups and teams are a major feature of organisational life. The work organisation and its sub-units are made of, are groups of people. Most activities of the organisation require at least some degree of co-ordination through the operation of groups and teamwork. An understanding of the nature of groups is vital if the manager is to influence the behaviour of people in the work situation. Groups are an essential feature of the work pattern of any organisation. Members of a group co-operate in order for work to be carried out and managers themselves work within the groups. People in groups influence each other in many ways and may develop their own hierarchy and leaders. Group pressures can have a major influence over the behaviour of individual members and their work performance. The activities of the group are associated with the process of leadership. The style of leadership adopted by the manager has an important influence on the behaviour of members of the group
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