Executive MBA

Assignments Semester I

Principles and Practices of Management

1. How will you influence people to strive willingly for group objectives in your organization
(target based industry)? Apply your interpersonal influence through communication
process towards attaining your specialized goals?
Answer 1. Several organizational factors must be in place in order for a team to succeed:
* Common and consistent goals that are accepted by all team members. Organizational
commitment to the team concept, including support from top management.
* Clear roles and well-defined responsibilities for members and leaders.
* Both real and perceived power delegated to the teams.
* Mutual accountability for team performance.
* Recognition and reward systems that support team performance.
Teams sometimes fail because they don't adequately define leadership roles and task
clarity. These may be clarified by using a shared leadership model. For example, team
members may agree to take leadership responsibility for specific aspects of the team's
mission. In some cases, leadership may shift to different team members on a rotating
basis.
The following elements are necessary when building a cross-functional team:
* It must contain the right members.
* The team must have a clear direction.
* Members must have access to the "movers and shakers" of the organization.
* Members must agree on the standards by which they will gauge success or failure.
* Everyone must agree on the ground rules from the start.
* Members must have the proper training in teamwork.

Teams are not always the best way to structure work. Managers should ask themselves if
requiring employees to make decisions as a group enhances or impairs work efficiency.
Effective Pay Programs
More and more companies are trying to develop effective team-based pay programs. A
Hewitt Associates study found that successful team pay programs have the following
common characteristics:
* They link teams to their performance management systems with the use of shared
responsibilities, goals and training.
* They provide variable pay plans, especially team incentive plans, business incentive
plans or project outcome plans.
* They use peer reviews, subordinate reviews and internal client-customer reviews.
* When making pay increase decisions, they involve a number of different people in the
process.
Communication Anxiety
Good employee communication is essential to good teamwork, but studies indicate that
some team members suffer from "communication anxiety." To address the problem,
Whirlpool Corp. tested employees for such anxiety and then provided them with training to
alleviate the problem.

Human Resources Management

2. The present state of recession in the IT Industry - as a Human Resource Manager how are
you going to undertake Human Resource Planning at Macro Level to tide over this crisis?
Answer 2.

Human capital formation is acknowledged as one of the most potent sources in

Contribution directly and significantly to economic growth. As a result even the

objectives of economic planning and priorities thereof, began to be shifted away from
purely growth oriented development strategies to those that recognize and partly remedy
the past neglect of such social sectors like population, planning, health, education,
housing, social security and other social services.
The objectives of HRP at macro level are to ensure that the organization:
(a) Obtains and retains the equality and quality of human resources it needs at the right
time and space; and
(b) Makes optimal utilization of these resources.
Today, the world is going through, a global economic turmoil. This recession affects
almost all the fields especially IT field. To overcome the adverse effect of the economic
slowdown, we should plan an effective human resource policy at macro level. Human
resource plan is designed to pay attention to shaping the priorities of the H R function
than on supporting activities relating to the organization's functioning as a whole
The economic crisis of 2008/2009 has touched every industry and profession, radically
altering the hiring landscape. Major layoffs, rising unemployment, and lowered profits
have reshaped the way workers are hired and fired, and dramatically highlighted the
need to rethink workforce planning.
Now, the question lingering over the heads of business leaders everywhere is: What will
the successful post-recession business look like?
Here, we wanted to find out how what steps they are taking in response to the crisis,
how their priorities and practices have changed, and what they predict the HR landscape
will look like as the economy recovers. It may be rightly regarded as a multi-step process
including various issues, such as:
(1) Deciding objectives and goals: Human resources planning fulfill individual,
organizational and national gals. It implies the ultimate mission or the purposes is to

relate future human resources to future enterprise need so as to maximize the future
return on investment in human resources. In effect, the main purposes is one of
matching or fitting employee abilities to enterprise requirements, with an emphasis
on future instead of present arrangements. The long term objectives may be to start
a new industry, to expand the market, to produce a new product, to develop its own
sales force rather than depend on distributors or to have minority group members
eventually in position of middle and upper management cadres.
(2) Estimating the future organizational structure of forecasting the man power
requirements: the management must estimate structure of the organization at given
point of time. For this estimate the number and types of employees needed have to
be determined. Many environmental factors affect this determination. They include
forecasts, expansion and growth, design and structural changes, management
philosophy, government policy, product and human skills mix and competition.
(3) Auditing Human Resources: Once the future human resources needs are estimated,
the next step is to determine the present supply of manpower resources. This is
done through, what is called, Skilled Inventory. A skill inventory contains data about
each employees skill, abilities, work preference and other items of information which
indicate his overall value to the company.
(4) Job Analysis: After having decided how many persons would be needed it is
necessary to prepare a job analysis which records details of training, skills,
qualifications, experience, etc. which are needed for a job. Job analysis includes the
preparation of job descriptions and job specifications.
(5) Developing a human resource plan: This step refers to the development and
implementation of the human resource plan which consists in finding out the sources
of labour supply with a view to making an effective use of these sources. The first
thing, therefore, is to decide on the policy should the personnel be hired from within
through promotional channels or should it be obtained from an outside source. The
best policy, which is followed by most organizations,

Thus, the three key elements of the process are

Forecasting the demand for labor,
Performing a supply analysis, and
Balancing supply and demand considerations.
A careful attention given to each step is beneficial to top managers and supervisors to
meet their staffing requirements.
Once the corporate strategy and objectives are clear, estimates of demand and
supply can be made with the help of certain approaches and methods. When each
projection is formulated, the difference between them is determined. This difference
is termed as known as Manpower gap. The whole purpose behind human resources
planning is to close this gap!! There are different strategies which we will discuss
later in this lesson only which result in filling the manpower gap. One thing, which
you should consider before beginning the process of forecasting always decide on:
a. The approach of how the estimation are to be based- qualitative or qualitative,
b. Basic factors to be considered, whether we are projecting wastage or redundancy or
labor costs or absenteeism or labor turnover,
c. Frequency of the forecasting exercise (that is, dealing with: rate of changes and
matching estimations), and finally,
d. Specific techniques to be adopted (this depends upon the approach adopted) such
as time series analysis, Markov analysis, probability techniques, work load
analysis, work study analysis, job analysis etc.
(6)Forecasting demand: A key component of HRP is forecasting the number and type of
people needed to meet organizational objectives. Since its an open system that we
exist in, a variety of organizational factors, including competitive strategy, technology,
structure, and productivity can influence the demand for labor. For example, utilization
of advanced technology is generally accompanied by less demand for low-skilled
workers and more demand for knowledge workers.

Thus, Human resource planning is the formal process of linking organizational strategy
with human resource practices. It is about perceiving organizational practices as a whole
and not piecemeal. In a competitive climate, organizations need to use models and
approaches that secure 'uniqueness' of operations along with enhancing 'organizational
capability'.
Today, the world is going through, a global economic turmoil. This recession affects
almost all the fields especially IT field. To overcome the adverse effect of the economic
slowdown, we should plan an effective human resource policy at macro level. Human
resource plan is designed to pay attention to shaping the priorities of the H R function
than on supporting activities relating to the organization's functioning as a whole.........
The economic crisis of 2008/2009 has touched every industry and profession, radically
altering the hiring landscape. Major layoffs, rising unemployment, and lowered profits
have reshaped the way workers are hired and fired, and dramatically highlighted the
need to rethink workforce planning..
We conducted primary research among HR and procurement professionals to emerge
with a snapshot of how companies have acted and reacted, as well as
recommendations on how leaders can take a proactive approach to staffing for the
future.
Financial Management

3. What will your outlook towards maintenance of liquid assets to ensure that the firm has
adequate cash in hand to meet its obligations at all times?

Answer 3: First we need to project the cash flow statement and employee the companies
fund in short term investment. Along with that we have to check expenses. And maintain
the liquid assets. Projected cash flow statement is the guided stick. Our sales,
realizations, and fixed and variable expenses need to be kept in mind while judging the
balanced need of liquid assets. We may consider the short term investments with
reference to interest rate and surplus funds. Generally it is indispensable that we must

limit expenses and ensure that some of the assets are in the form of short term assets.
The higher short term assets and the less your short Term debt, the better your ability to
pay the debt (short Term liquidity ratio / liquidity ratio help you determine this). The ratio
analysis will be the guide stick for the Liquidity ratio. The short term creditors of a
company like supplies of good of credit and Commercial banks providing short-term
loans, are primarily interested in knowing the companys ability to meet its current or
short term obligations of a firm can be met only when there are sufficient liquid assets.
Therefore, a firm must ensure that it does not suffer from lack of liquidity or the capacity
to pay its current obligations due to lack of good liquidity position, its goodwill in the
market is likely to be effected beyond repair. Liquidity refers to the ability of a concern to
meet its current obligations as and when there become due. The short-term obligations
are met by realizing amounts from current, floating or circulating assets. The current
assets should either be liquid or near liquidity. These should be convertible into cash for
paying obligations of short-term nature. The sufficiently or insufficiency of current assets
should be assessed by comparing them with short term liabilities. If current assets can
pay off current liabilities, then liquidity position will be satisfactory. The standard current
ratio is 1: 1.33 means any firm / company is having adequate funds to meet its obligation
in time. The firm has to maintain core current assets which is easily realizable at all
times. The laid down bench mark ratio to maintain the ratio of core current assets to
current

liabilities

is

1:1

Marketing Management

4. If you are working in a super market, what techniques/ tools you will use in data collection.
How are you going to analysis the data and make inferences? How will you finally apply
your market research to improve sales and win over customers?

Answer 4. In fact, we should have a proper system for collecting the data and it is also a
very critical factor to improve the business in the constant way. When we examine about
the collection of data from the customers, initially, we can commence the system of
disseminating order sheet or product docket to the customers for home delivery purpose.
Gradually, it will improve and get the details from the customers for the future contact of

business. It will also help us to sustain the relationship with customers.

Moreover, we

can disseminate the feedback form to the customers for their purchase session and the
quality of products for getting the details of customers as well as the quality of products.
Such kind of practice should maintain in the outlet and this may help to improve the
relationship with customers. Thus we can sort out the issues about the products,
customer services, ambience of the outlet or super market, cost effectiveness etc.

It

would also be very effective if we could circulate monthly notice or information about the
products and services to the customers those who visited earlier in a low cost basis, so
that we can maintain the relationship with customers and control our business promotion
expenditure through other advertisement releases. Such kind of productive services and
evaluations

would

be

helpful

to

improve

our

quality

of

services.

Organizational Behavior

5. If you are made the campaign leader for a particular political party. How will you use your
leadership skills to motivate your party men to ensure success of the party nominee in the
elections? (Focus on the individual, motivate and apply leadership style).

Answer: 5

Leadership skill and generate the same is the most significant matter to be

sustained by us. In leadership, there are few important factors, which will always help us to
become a good leader. When we are in front of the crowd and going to discuss about
something, speak loud, brave, and take up issue that last long after due research. There
are several issues, like drinking water, food prices, corruption, urban planning, traffic,
against division of states, secularism, foreign policy, etc. So we should have exact
awareness about the related matters and give stress on each matter to be resolved by the
concerned officials. Lets try and encourage young educated people to join politics using
leadership skills, through the right and genuine talk. We would also persuade them to
convince people to vote the people not based on their caste or creed but the development
work they have done in a particular area which they represent. They are forever, so have
specific and thorough ideas about them, and stand for it. Even if you fail one time, they will
make you succeed next time. Such kinds of activities have to be scrutinized and examined
and finally it should be carried out for the present circumstances.

Principles of Economics

Answer 6. Suppose the price elasticity of demand for text books is two and the price of the text
book is increased by 10%. By how much does the quantity demand fall? Inter the result
and discuss reasons for the fall in quantity demand?
The reason demand falls is that people find textbooks less useful relative to other goods
and services at the higher price. An example might be a builder needing to figure out some
complex geometry for a special roof. At one price for the book, he may feel buying a
textbook and studying it for a couple of evenings is the best way to get the information he
needs. But at a higher price for the book, he may opt to have subcontractor do the work
and spend his time doing something else.