What’s All This Talk About Being Authentic?
-- Dan Coughlin
© 2013 Dan Coughlin. All Rights Reserved.
Culture Is the Brand:
Making Your Company’s Culture
the Essence of Your Brand
-- Bob Murray
The purchase decision is based on whether the two sides to the transaction have enough real or potential commonality for their brains to decide to strengthen or make real that relationship by means of a purchase/sale of goods or services. Many studies have shown that salespeople who emphasize what they have in common with a client or customer are more successful than those who concentrate on waxing lyrical about what they are selling. Studies have also shown that one of the primary motivators of salespeople is the need to create relationships with their customers.
© 2013 Bob Murray. All Rights Reserved.
Transformational Leadership:
Getting Future-Ready
-- Rekha Attri
The future is uncertain, which makes us look at it with a lot of excitement and anticipation. But can we still predict with certainty that a particular phenomenon would occur in the future? There is a trend which is followed in the present and there is always scope for something better to replace the present trend. This scope can be considered as a lacuna or void, which gets identified/noticed by a select few who feel that the present is incomplete and some correction is imperative. Out of these select few, only one or two individuals would take an initiative to fill that void by criticizing the convention that is shaping the present. The initiatives of these individuals to bring about a change strikes a chord with many more who feel the same way and their collective support gives rise to a changed way of visualizing the situation which drives an action plan for better preparedness for the future. Businesses today need to build an effective ‘radar’. This involves developing systematic, organization-wide approaches to scan the future external environment for opportunities and challenges. This paper endeavors to find answers to questions like how to handle uncertainties and be prepared for the future.
© 2013 Rekha Attri. All Rights Reserved.
Small Trying to Be Big and Better:
The Role of Branding
-- Stephanie Jones
When starting up a new business, branding is the key to success—especially in terms of the company’s name—to start with. What is the nature of the business and which words produce associations which can help develop this? In many cases, you will be trying to look like your embryonic business already has critical mass—credibility, size—so adding ‘international’ or ‘global’ can help. Can a small business, with the clever use of branding, scale up or, due to the nature of the business, stay just one? Sometimes, a business can become more than this—but sometimes it is hard to grow.
© 2013 Stephanie Jones. All Rights Reserved.
Smart CEO of the Business Samrajya: Management Views from Kautilya’s Arthasastra
-- K Latha
Kautilya, well-known as Chanakya, was the backbone of Mauryan dynasty. He has contributed various principles for effective administration in his book Arthasastra. Arthasastra deals, in detail, with the qualities and disciplines required for a Rajarshi—a wise and virtuous king. “In the happiness of his subjects lies the king’s happiness, in their welfare his welfare. He shall not consider as good only that which pleases him but treat as beneficial to him whatever pleases his subjects,” wrote Kautilya. The views of Kautilya are more applicable to today’s competitive business environment. The business organization is the kingdom and the CEO is the Rajarshi. The success or failure of any corporate is vested in the hands of the CEO or Chairperson who is running the organization. A disciplined and self-controlled leader is ever active in promoting the growth of an organization by satisfying the desire of the customers and enriching the employee fraternity, as the king ensures a quality life for his subjects.
© 2013 K Latha. All Rights Reserved.
Female Breadwinners:
Resultant Feelings of Guilt and Shame
-- Kurt April and Zaheera Soomar
This paper explores the constructs of shame and guilt, the role of these constructs in women fulfilling the role of breadwinners within their marital or family units, and the impact it had on the unit. The paper also explores the challenges that these women faced within the society, the workplace, their family unit and in their marriages. A phenomenological approach was adopted for this paper and was based on semi-structured interviews (n = 20) with South African women who were the main/sole breadwinners within their marital family unit. Two key findings emerged from this study, the first being the existence of ongoing guilt and shame in the lives of women fulfilling breadwinning roles, and the second being the direct link between the areas of a respondent’s upbringing, respondent’s personal beliefs, the acceptance of roles within a marriage, the joint collaboration of responsibilities between spouses, the level of open communication within the unit, and the resulting emotions such as guilt, shame, resentment, anger, frustration, stress and regret.
© 2013 Kurt April and Zaheera Soomar. All Rights Reserved.
Marketing McDonald’s in India
-- Rik Paul and Debapratim Purkayastha
McDonald’s entered India in the year 1996 when the fast food retail market in India was at a nascent stage. Overcoming several challenges in the beginning in terms of adapting to the tastes, preferences and culture of the local customers, changing the perception of Indian consumers towards American food habits, obstruction from political parties, issues with distribution, designing a proper supply chain to training the employees on McDonald’s standards, the fast food giant emerged as the market leader by 2011. Though McDonald’s commands the leadership position in the Indian fast food market, there exists stiff competition from the local traditional fast food retailers as well as other multinational firms which entered the fast growing Indian fast food market. In the face of intensified competition, can McDonald’s retain its dominant position?
© 2011 IBS Center for Management Research. All Rights Reserved. For accessing and procuring the case study, log on to www.thecasecentre.org or www.icmrindia.org
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