The secret of success

During the past few years, the economic recession has enormous effect on businesses. Many big and strongly-financed corporations were suffered severe losses and had to declare bankrupt.

Automakers have also been affected badly by the spreading financial crisis which caused the sharp decrease in demand, and led to the industry’s big losses. While other big corporations like GM or Ford laid off their workers to cut costs, Toyota went the opposite way as what Toyota plans for is long-term development, it does not lay off workers when things go down, and tries to give long-term security jobs for their staff. The estimated costs of keeping their workers when sales is really significant to the company at that time, however, according to Toyota, human resources is their most valuable asset which takes times and money to build up. Instead, in order to survive through this hard time, the company chose to downsize its scale and halt all of the expanding plans. On the other hand, the company also asked their employees to share the difficulty with the company by accepting lower benefits, reduced bonus, and lower other kinds of their current interests at least until the condition get better.
In fact, the negative effect of the financial crisis is just a short-term issue whereas the investment in human resources is a long-term investment which will bring back unimaginable long-term benefits. By keeping the current well trained workforce, Toyota is always ready to return to its full production with all the well trained workers when the crisis is over. Moreover, Toyota’s move also makes its workers feel grateful and be more loyal to the company which did not turn the back on them in their most difficult time. And in return, they will devote more of their time, their skills, and knowledge to the company. With such highly trained and motivated workforce, Toyota can develop more and more.

The key to success of small businesses

Every business has its own problems, and small businesses are not an exception. The issues of small businesses normally come from two main reasons: the lack of capital and credit, as well as the weaknesses in management skills. However, it does not mean that small businesses cannot compete with larger firms. The key point is that small businesses should identify which are their strengths and weaknesses, and then use the strengths to make up for the weaknesses. One golden rule for small businesses is that never try to compete with large firms in their markets because the big corporations often have stronger financial status, have more experiences, and more human resources, moreover, they are often the market dominators in their own market. Instead, small business should focus its limited resources on the niche markets in which it has comparative advantages over large firms.
One other important advantage of small businesses is the close relationship between the firm and the customers whereas the bureaucratic of a large company tends to eliminate the link between management and customers. This kind of relationship helps small businesses have a better awareness of the customers’ needs as well as a more exact prediction of the trends in the market. By having an accurate forecast about the changes in the market, the firm will be more proactive in setting appropriate plans to deal with these fluctuations. Furthermore, the company can take advantage of this connection as an effective way to advertise for their products as mouth-to-mouth advertising is always the best advertising.

Problems that Target is facing...

The first issue is the top-down management style at Target, in which top-level management plays a vital role in the company’s operation, the company’s top 600 positions are now directly chosen by its CEO. As a result, the retirement of its CEO – Ulrich, who has led the corporation very well during his term of business, will leave Target and its new CEO with a lot of issues especially in the current gloomy economic situation.

Secondly, the fierce price competition from Wal-mart left Target no choice but find its own style to survive and to keep its market shares. While Wal-mart was and is now very successful with its everyday low-price strategy, Target finds that it cannot operate that way nor run a “bifurcated strategy” (one focus on low-price and one is its traditional strategy). Instead, Target decided to pay more attention to innovation, design, and quality, which was then Target’s motto “Expect more, pay less”, and it is exactly what customers expect when they come to Target.

Unique–designed products has become an advantage and has created Target’s brand, however, the company decided to open its SuperTarget which offers more consumable items such like food, and toilet paper in order to attract customers do their basic shopping at the stores. It would be a wrong choice of Target as it cannot compete with Wal – mart in term of food; however, Target persevered, hoping that this would even out economic cycles.

Target invests a large amount of money in marketing (from public relation like donation and sponsor activities, to advertising), and R&D activities. However, it is said to have had inconsistent merchandising, which even does not match the marketing. And despite all of Target’s efforts to offer its customers the lowest prices possible, buyers still think that Wal-mart is the cheapest. Furthermore, many of the firm’s unique products, which are considered Target’s advantages, are becoming familiar. All of these contribute to the lost of its market share to Wal-mart. In response, Target is making changes to focus more on prices, mainly in food and commodities. It also lowered the expected growth for 2008 to 2% to 3% per month. It goes against the emphasis’s of Target on design and quality, however, in the current weak economy, when people consider every dollar pay out and look for bargains, it is a reasonable decision.

Another problem of Target is its credit card business, especially in this hard time when people fail to pay for their loans. To reduce its exposure to credit, Target has negotiated to sell half of its credit card receivables which were about $4 billion.

How to learn vocabulary effectively?

Language is one of the biggest barriers of international students in integrating to the new environment. And vocabulary is one of the most important things in learning a new foreign language beside grammar, listening, and speaking as you cannot communicate with foreigners if you don’t know the words. In fact, there are a lot of ways to learn vocabulary.
Many people learn new words by writing them on pieces of paper and sticking them everywhere in the house. By doing it, the words appear many times in front of them, and they remember the words unconsciously.
Some other people improve their vocabulary by reading news, novels, and fictions. On one hand, they can update information as well as know more about history, economics or about other countries’ cultures depending on the kind of book they read. On the other hand, they can learn new words and the way words are put in specific context. It is more effective than just learn the words separately.
Another very interesting way to learn vocabulary is through listening to the music or watching movies. When you love the song, you can sing it and remember its words more easily and effectively than holding a notebook and studying word by word. Moreover, by listening music or watching movies, you can also improve your listening skill.
Actually, every person may have different learning methods that best suit him. Depending on your strengths, your hobbies you can choose the most effective method for you.

Internal vs External Recruiting

As we all know, human resources is one of the most important resources of an organization. In fact, the success of any businesses depends largely on the quality of the staff employed. Therefore, recruitment is a vital process that can decide the success or failure of a business. Recruiting employees with suitable skills can add value to the company.There are actually 2 main methods of recruiting: internal recruiting and external recruiting.

Internal recruiting occurs when the company looks for the new vacancy from its existing workforce, whereas External recruiting is when the company fills the vacancy from applicants outside the company.

From one point, internal recruiting is cheaper and quicker than external recruiting. Moreover, the employee is also familiar with the organization, and will be more quickly adapt to the new environment. From another point, it will limit the opportunity to find a new talent outside. Besides, it also creates another vacancy to fill in.

The advantages of internal recruiting are also disadvantages of external recruiting. If internal recruiting is known by its low cost, external recruiting requires a large amount of money for job advertisement, selection process, as well as job interview. However, it provides management with more choices; moreover, an outside person often brings in more new ideas than an internal staff who gets used to everything in the corporation.

Every method has its own strengths and weaknesses. Depends on the types of businesses, and the characteristics of the position, the management team can decide which is the best method that can maximize its strengths as well as minimize its shortages.

How can mentoring activities affect job performance?

Of many factors that affect the performance of a company, human resources is one of the most important ones. Unlike other assets which can be imitated or replicated, human power is singled out by its uniqueness, and irreplaceability. When other resources are the same, the company who possesses highly-qualified, highly-motivated staff is the winner. As a result, mentoring is an activity which equipped employees with suitable skills and knowledge in order to perform their jobs well, and to reach the organizational goals.
Mentoring will contribute to the job satisfaction as it increases the day-to-day interactions; along with improving the relationship between employees, as a result, leads to stronger social working environment. Job satisfaction, in return, will positively improve performance. Besides, mentoring activities can develop social skill, and encourage employees participate in citizenship behaviors. When an employee gets helps from another, he, in return, will be more willing to help others; it in general can strengthen the staff’s solidarity, enhance the staff’s moral, and of course, will improve job performance. In addition, the mentoring is the process of communicating and exchanging information, sharing experiences between employees; it can generally enhance the organizational learning, and increase the firm’s competitiveness.
Generally, staff is a “live” resource of an organization, so in order to keep them motivated, besides the physical factors like salary, compensation, or fringe benefits to satisfy their most basic needs, the firm also needs to focus on unphysical factors through job-related mentoring, individual recognition, performance awards, or power sharing to meet their higher needs and keep them motivated. The more a person feels he is respected and satisfied with the job, the more likely he devotes to it, and the more efficient the job performance will be.

How to improve the quality of human resources ?

There are many factors that affect the success of a company, among these are the external factors which the company cannot control like the economic condition, inflation, or rivals’ competition, and the internal factors which are under the management of the company like production process, technology, or personnel. One of the latter, human resources is the most valuable factor of the company. A successful company is the one, which has highly - qualified and highly - motivated staff. As a result, improving the staff quality is considered one of the most important missions of each company.
People are the most valuable asset, which can create the core value of an organization. Unlike other lifeless assets which can be imitated or replicated, human power is singled out by its creativeness, uniqueness and irreplaceability. The great industrial leader of General Motors has once said, “Take my assets, leave my people, and in five years I’ll have it all back.” Two companies can have the same scope of business with the same material and technology; however, they cannot have the same workforce with the exact skills and quality. With a large degree of assurance, we can say that the people make the business.
Research shows that 46% of business failures were due to wrong assignment and low spirit employees. As a result, every business has its own policy to recruit as well as to retain and promote the top – level talents. Basically, increasing the quality of personnel resources bases on hiring the right person for the right position, keeping them highly motivated, as well as getting the best from them. In order to reach these targets, on one hand, the recruiting process goes through many steps from short listing, quality testing, interviewing to professional training; on the other hand, a clear policy of benefits as well as promotion is drafted to satisfy the employees’ needs and desires.
In fact, there are many departments, with different kind of positions in an organization, which require people with specific skills, education as well as personality. The quality of workers 50% depends on the qualification of the people recruited, thus the selecting process has to go through very strict steps. First of all, it is the CV screening to drop out unqualified candidates. Secondly, a competence test should be carried out to check the real ability of the remaining applicants. A short-listed is then interviewed by the department heads to ensure that they are the most suitable person for the position. This is to minimize the probability of wrong hiring which is the main reason of dissatisfaction and layoff in the future.
Once hiring the best people, the issue moves to how to understand employees’ needs and desire as well as how to match their needs with the goal of the company. We all agree that company operates for profit, so the less money is paid out for compensation, the more profit it may earn. However, in the long-term view, the staff’s loyalty as well as the real value they create also contribute much to the company’s return. The most effective way is to reward workers based on the result of work. The company can design a performance appraisal for their staff that is the process of evaluating the work result, the behavior of the employee as well as setting up a plan for improvement after that. Besides, organizations can also encourage the competition between staff by giving special prizes for the most productive or the most creative people of the month. It is one good method to improve the working moral as well as to push everybody work harder as once the basic needs are satisfied; people can totally concentrate on working.
Besides the physical needs, unphysical needs, such as the working environment, the relationship between the supervisors and subordinates, also have big impact on the working spirit. Most people in an unofficial survey think that their managers are unfriendly, unwilling to neither share their power, nor give their supporters the right to make decisions as they are afraid of the risk of losing their positions. Actually, nobody can handle everything by himself but work should be shared and so is the power. Giving rights to employees not just reduces the burden of management team but also make people at lower levels involved in the decision making process. That is the reason why decentralization is now a growing tendency in almost every big organization.
With today increasing trend of globalization, companies have to compete in the more challenging business environment in which things change and new technologies are introduced every single minute. As a result, to survive and to succeed in this fierce international market, companies must have world-class employees who are highly qualified and who can adapt quickly to the changes. Thus, continuous training is an essential part of a good human resources policy to help the workers acquire new skills, new attitude as well as the latest concepts in the industry. There are two main methods of training - on the job training and professional education. The first one is a kind of informal training in which the worker learns and gets experience through the process of work; it does not cost much as the employees learn when they are working, there is no need to hire a trainer or to organize a class. The second type is a more expensive one that requires a teacher and a number of people to form a classroom, the knowledge given is then more theoretical. These two methods should be carried on at the same time to substitute for each other, and to give people both theoretical knowledge as well as hands-on experiences.
Another reason that leads to the low effective work result is the boring routine work that repeats again and again every day, it will kill the creativity as well as the enthusiasm. Rotation is one of the good ways to solve this problem. After a specific time working at one department, a person has a chance to move to try other different positions in the company. It is a good opportunity to test people in different kinds of work, and a good way to refresh their feeling after a long time doing the same tedious work. The changes not only help worker realize which department is the best appropriate one for them but also make employees get used to the work of different departments, so that they can support to each other when needed. Some experiments carried out at many organizations shows that after the test, productivity increases by more than 30%; the number of innovations also grows sharply.
In conclusion, as human capital is one of the most important factors that creates the competitive advantage of a company, setting up and promoting a strong, skillful, and enthusiastic staff are vital goals of every firm. Depending on its scope of business, the typical characteristics, as well as the causes that lead to the low quality of personnel resources, each company should design a specific strategy that best suits its situation. Once the company can control this valuable asset well, it can easily succeed and get profit on the international market.

Why is MBA a good choice?

The master of Business Administration (MBA) degree is one of the most valuable postgraduate degrees in the world, specialized in business and management principles. MBA degree is now a target for many people after several years of working as it can benefit them in many different ways. The program includes variety of subjects like business management, corporate finance, marketing which give students a general overview and a strategic vision about the development of businesses.
At first, MBA degree is the key for you to increase your salary as well as advance in your career. According to some researches, salaries of MBA graduates are often halves as much as others; moreover, top positions in big corporations normally belong to MBA holders.
Secondly, MBA courses are designed to train students about management skills and give them a full picture of the operation of a business, so after the program, students can even set up their own business and can run it by themselves.
Besides, during the course, students also have a lot of opportunities to visit and work with companies that can help them gain more working experience as well as a good relationship with companies, classmates who may become their partners in the future.
Business administration is the core of every company; so that MBA holders can work for any companies in different industries. It gives students a wide range of work choices. That’s why MBA programs are becoming much attractive to graduated students.

Studying - A life-time process

Education is one of the important keys to one’s success. Normally, everybody has to experience twelve years at elementary and high schools before entering to another four years at university. Graduation from colleges, universities, however, is not an end to your study but it is just the beginning of a new and more challenge stage.
After-university trainings are often under two forms, through formal courses or informal training outside classes. Some careers like teaching, doctoring, and engineering require people to enroll in classes every several years as these areas change everyday with a lot of new inventories, so that in order to not to be left behind, people have to study hard to update new information about their areas. Moreover, formal courses also help people to improve and complete their understanding to advance in jobs.
However, most of the knowledge you get from teachers is just in theory, and it may be far different from what it is in the real world. That’s why besides academic training, people also have to improve their working skills and get more hands-on experiences. Furthermore, enrolling classes takes a lot of time and money, and it will become a problem when you have family and need more time for your family.
On the other hand, when you reach advanced level, self-study will be more efficient as it is not just issue about inputting information any more but you have to research and think over new things from what you have learned. At that time, you can learn from other sources such as from professional journals, from conferences or from a net work with other professors.
Education is a life-time process. If you don’t want to go backward, you have to study; however, the way and the form of studying may vary flexibly during every stage of your life. It’s not necessary to take a course but you can study by yourself, study from other people around you like your colleagues, your friends and so on.

Is employee's actions outside the workplace the concern of the organization?

Everybody has to be responsible for his own behavior. However, the way one is punished for his mistakes depends on what his fault is and how serious it is.
Working life and normal life are two important aspects of one’s life. To some extent, these two factors are separate to each other. If one is an employee of a company, everything he does in the working hours is judged and graded by the company or by his boss to be specific, regardless of his action occurs outside or inside the workplace as the company has to take responsibility for its employees’ mistakes. However, after working time, the employee is not an employee any more, but only be himself, so that he, not the company, will be liable for all of his acts.
Moreover, if a person can fulfill well his duties at work and do not let his personal issues affect the quality of work, there’s no reason for the company to intervene deeply to his own life. In the company’s point of view they also don’t want to lose a good staff due to something that is not related to its business.
Furthermore, it will be nightmare for people if their company can fire them for what they do after work. It will become a 24-hour working time, not 8-hour any more, as a result, it will put more pressure on staff, and reduce their productivity.
However, on the other hand, every employee is a representative of a company, so that the bad behavior in public places to others may ruin the firm’s prestige. In this case, he should be penalized for what he has caused.
In conclusion, it should be a clear distinction between a person’s working and normal life. A company has the right to discharge its own employees, but only for their mistakes in work or for something they make after work that damages the company’s reputation, income…not for every of their behavior outside the workplace.

Rely on yourself or ask for help?

There’s a lot of factors that effect people’s personal and professional life, some factors can be controlled but others may not be able to control by the people themselves so that one should rely on oneself, not on others, but in some situations they have to ask for help from other people
Personal life of a person includes many things like their health, their family, their friends, and making choices about traveling, buying car, houses…People can take care of their health by keeping away from smoking, drinking, by exercising…but cannot avoid unexpected accidents like car accident, murder nor affected by hereditary diseases like cancer…
The situation is similar in the relationship between one and their friends, their family which play a very important role in one’s life. You’ll be a very happy person if your friends, your family always stand by your side and support you. However, it is not a trouble-free relation as no one can guarantee that your beloved ones will never betray on you. You can choose your friends but not your family, and even with a friend you choose, there’s nothing guarantee that the connection will last forever. It’s not just from your side but also need the other side’s sincerity to form a strong relationship.
Professional life is other side of one’s life. In your professional life, you can choose the job, the career you like but not the teachers. Your grade at school not just reflects only your effort, but sometimes it also counts on the teacher’s point of view which may be very different from yours. It’s the same in your working life. You can choose your desire job and company, but your success does not just rely on how hard you work but partly depends on your boss.
In general, it is very good to be independent and just rely on yourself; however, you may have to ask for other people’s support sometimes. Your success comes largely from yourself as well as your own effort and partly from external’s factors like people, unexpected events which are not under your control.

Self-interest or fear?

Motivation is the reasons for people to get involved in some specific activities. When people are motivated, they can work better and achieve higher results. The incentives to work of different people are also not the same, and even for one person, the drive for their work changes during times.
People go to work for the job they chose as they like it, and they feel happy doing it. However, others may do things for the benefits it brings back to them, for example, workers go to work everyday just for living, for money, not because their love for it. Moreover, even with your dream job, after a long time working you may get tired and bored with it, at that time, you go to work just because you have to do it or you will lose your monthly salary, lose your high position in the company and even lose your house.
Self-interest is not the only incentive for people to work, fear is also a very good force that motivate people; for example, students come to class and do homework everyday not only because they love studying but also because the scare of failing the class or getting bad grades which is not good for their future career.
Besides, there are also some feelings other than self-interests or fears like angry, respect or sympathy that lead people to work. When a person gets angry, they are full of energy and can use that energy to fight, to do housework, or to shout at others. Another example is the volunteers, they join the work because they like it, they want to do it rather than they benefit from it.
There are many drives push people to work, some are positive like the love and desire to work; others are negative like their self-interest, fear or angriness. However, no matter what the reasons are, if a person can lead it to good and meaningful work, it is fine.

Highly-skilled employees - good or bad?

Human resource plays a very important role in the success of businesses, especially highly-skilled employees who are ambitious, self-motivated, and self-sufficient.
High-qualified people, who have been well trained in both theory and practice can adapt very quickly to the work as they have experience in how to operate the work in the most efficient way. These people can make the work runs smoothly with high productivity. Moreover, ambitious workers may push a competition among staff that can make everybody tries their best to get promotion or they will be left behind.
Besides, all the bosses wish to have self-motivated and self-sufficient employees who can work independently without needing anybody push them. Their well-educated and hard-working will help to improve the quality of work as well as to save the time of supervisor keeping an eye on them.
However, these people also bring a lot of headache to employers as they are too outstanding, it will be very costly to keep them for your company and they are even not loyal to any boss because every company needs them. On the other hand, their knowledge is so grounded; they may not listen to others’ opinion even their supervisor’s advices. These people are able to work by themselves and don’t need support from anyone else which is very good, but in some cases, team working is required, for example, in a surgery or in some big projects that one person cannot handle all.
In general, although there are still some shortcomings remained, these employees are valuable resources for the company. To some extent, their talent and their motivation to work can make up for what are seemed to be shortcomings.

Crisis management

Issues and crisis management are two different kinds of management methods; however, people often cannot distinguish these two methods. So what is issues management and what is crisis management, and how they are different from each other? Well, issues are the public disputes that affect the operation; they are any trends, conditions either internal or external with continuous and significant effect on operation. And issues management is the management of these changes as well as discontinuous things. The difference between issues management and crisis management is that issues management tries to manage the issues and get them go your own way before they spread out and become crisis; whereas crisis management tries to deal with the issues after they have already expanded. The job of issues managers is to collect, and evaluate information in order to anticipate any implicit issues and response to them in a quick and proper manner before they get out of hand. In other words, we can say that issue management is proactive management while crisis management is reactive management. Once issue management fails to handle the issues, the issues will go out of control and become crisis. At that time, the job of crisis management is to cope with the crisis and solve all the problems arising due to the crisis. These problems are totally avoidable with a successful issues management. That’s why it is said that crisis management is failed issues management or crisis management is the consequence of a failed issues management.

First impression

The first impression about the MBA class is that it's a "multi-national" class :D, we all come from many places all over the world. As we come from different cultures, we have different styles of living, and also different thinking about one same thing. It would be great as we can know and understand more about other countries (it also leads to a lot of disagreement and conflict when we work as a group :) ) But after all, we are classmates, conflict, disputes just make we know more about each other, and become better and better... Hope that after this course, we will become good friends, and all of us can get what we want when we want it :)) One more thing to say, I will devote my blog to discuss and share information on topics about management, especially human resources development.