Serenahan's Blog

Week 12

serenahan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:20:24 +0000

Symposis

Measuring Your Know-how deals with the issue of how to measure the intangible asset such as intellecual property and know-how. Companies like Oracle and Ford have their shareholder value several times higher than bookvalue which is an indicator the great value of their know-how. Since it is difficult to link financial performance with knowhow, the measurement of intellectual asset is a long debated issue. The reporting and forecasting for knowhow will become a trend for the development of accounting. Customer capital, human capital, intellectual capital, relationship capital and system performance are five areas commonly explored in the reports for intangible assets. Since no one method can suit all cases, choosing the correct method become fundamentally important. Correctly measure intangible value can be of great value to a company.

Critiques

This journal presents an innovative view on the role of traditional accounting method and the develpment of new accounting report,especially the new element which needs to be added in to the new accounting report—value of intangible value. The future direction of the development of financial report has been made clear, and it has been made clear that the reporting of intangible value play an increasingly imperative role in modern economic world. The structure of the journal is clear but not formal enough. Actually it is not very like an academic thesis, but just like an essay. It could be much better if the author added is more experimental support to illustrate the points he made.

Reflection

The thinking of finding a new way to improve financial report to give a more comprehensive view of the financial position and competitive advantages of a company is a very thoughtful and innovative idea. Innovation face the problem of the difficulty for measurement, but has the advantage of being supported by advanced technology. I believe the innovation of financial report can recieve a much better effect than traditional accoutning method.

Week 7

serenahan — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:19:59 +0000

Synopsis

According to the journal Overcoming the Barriers to Effective Innovation, management usually don’t know how to conquer difficulties rose on the way of innovation and don’t know how to build an infrastructure within the organization which facilitate innovation in the long run. Three suggestions were given to the management. Firstly, solving deeper innovation issue rather than superficial ones. Secondly, focusing on all areas instead of the chosen one. Thirdly, building a tailored action plan rather than copy best practices of other companies. A survey conducted by Stratego for 550 large companies indicated that innovation, though highly profiled, didn’t turned out to be effective since factors like near sighted, resource in lack, insufficient reward etc. Actions taken to address the issue tend to be piecemeal instead of systemic. To promote innovation thoroughly, four areas need to be addressed, namely leadership and organization, processes and tools, people and skills, and culture and values. Innovation is not a simple one time action but involves a series of factors in the business model.

Critique

The journal presents a detailed strategy on how to overcome common problems to implement systematic innovation strategy in the long term. The idea that innovation involves much more than the creation of a new product and service inspired management to make long run and overall plan for the whole process of innovation including marketing and customer service.

Reflection

Innovation needs detailed plan and overall focusing. Any innovation not supported by well plan and strategic view may suffer failure because of short run focus and lack of resources. Even though a new product or service is developed, many elements in the following process also need to be included as a necessary pass way to reach success of innovation. In a nutshell, innovation is a series of process and need overall consideration.

Week 11

serenahan — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:27:14 +0000

Synopsis

The Journal Coping with Chaos in Change Processes discussed in detail one of the two approaches management may take when they are faced by the challenge of chaos and uncontrollability in the process of change implementation. Although some managers and consultants may try to reduce chaos by enhancing control, this journal tends to focus on another approach which relies on embracement and acceptance of chaos. Agency theory is regarded as a myth and Battle of Borodino in War and Peace is used as an illustration. Just as the battle evolved unstructured, unpredictable and uncontrollable, and the influence of individuals with strategic and tactical plans was very small, there is no ground for agency to exist in chaotic, attributable and contextual business world. While change agent tend to develop order and consistency, enlightened modernist, ironist and post modernist emphasize to different extant the uncontrollability of change agent and the chaotic and unpredictable nature of event. Interviews were made to seven experienced consultant to complete the research. Enlightened modernists separate the problems uncontrollable from controllable, and only work on the latter to increase the change to success. Ironists do not try to achieve an end goal as enlightened modernists in changing process but focus on avoiding undesirable situations by creating occasional stimulations. Post modernists are reflectors who do not engage themselves in change agents but show the management problems they can not see by themselves. Each of the three theories has its advantages and they may all help the company to add value.

Critiques

This is a very inspiring journal and introduced a new way of dealing with chaos brought about in changing process. The journal focused on the consultants’ view of the three methods namely enlightened modernist, ironist and post modernists, and gives a summery of the application to management which can be proved to be very helpful.

Reflection

I’m very impressed by the idea brought about by this journal, especially the way an interpretation of the battle of Borodino is made. It is normal for people to view the true world and events by logic as in a story telling model, and it is very new and creative for the journal to argue that there is no such thing in the real world and in practice management seldom knows what’s going on and individuals have little effect on the whole process. The journal impressed me in a smart and practical way.

Week 10

serenahan — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:16:06 +0000

Synopsis
Increasing competition has made innovation an unavoidable issue for SMEs according to the article Transitioning Towards Creativity and Innovation Measurement in SMEs. Since SMEs are suffering many problems such as lack of direct relaitonship between cost and effect of innovation, scarce resources, labor shortage and sceptism toward formal training, innovation hindered the development of many SMEs. Competitiveness can be increased by clearly defining and measuring innovation in SMEs. A multiple based case research is used to to explore the transitioning effect from tradional to innovative based measurement. Historical reason leads to a lack of measurement collection system in SMEs, since individual cases may vary significantly, a measurement framework could be necessary. The advantages and disadvantages of Neely’s framework is analyzed by multiple case study. The way to include innovation measurement into tranditional performance measurement is discussed in detail. Making to purpose of creativily clear can promote better understanding of innovation and improve competitiveness. An emphasis on the data collection needs to be done in case study companies. An important factor is senior management’s attidute towards employees generating new knowlege. The research found that Neely’s framework could improve employees and management’s understanding of innovation but this process should be a continuous one.
Critique
The article can be very helpful for managmentment of SMEs to understand how to measure innovation which is fundamentally critical to the properous of SMEs nowadays. The importance of innovation measurement and its procedures such as data collection is highlighted. Management also got the precious suggestion to try to adopt more measurement. The cases used in the article are all very typical and well selected, giving readers an intuitive knowledge of how the analysis process of the research is going.
Reflection
I learnt from this article that innovation is very important for SMEs, and what’s more important is that management should be supportive for employees to get access to and create new knowledge, and establish a long run framework to measure those creations to ensure they are comply with the overall strategy of the company.

Week 8

serenahan — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:57:26 +0000

Synopsis
How to impletement change in an organisation has been a long debated topic in the research field. The article Implementing Change: Matching Implemention Method and Changes Type tries to address this particular problem. According to this article, two approaches have been widely used namely participative approaches and unilateral approaches. The former emphasizing generating support before change takes place while the latter advocates changing attitude by behavoral reform. The reseach suggest that each method can be suitable for different circumstances. For example, some technical or structural changes can be implemented using top-down method, but if the change involves changes in behaviour and culture, participative appoach is more appropriate. Since workfore does not tend to support most kinds of structural change such as downsizing, the implemetation of structural technical change requires more directive and less participative method. On the other hand, without significant work in team building, it is unlikely for a company to achieve great changes in culture and attitude. A large sample of 300 companies were anaylzed in this research and data were got from senior management. Three major changes within each organization were analyzed and comparision were made.

Critique
The article addresses advocates of both approaches and explained the advantages each approach has. It also analyzed different types of changes may occur. One step further from this, the matching of change and approach was raised for the first time in the article. This is a very smart and necessary approach in analyzing this issue. The result of this research become very helpful for management to understand the techniques needed in implementing change.

Reflection

I really like this article and finds it very helpful. Every company will experiencing changes and innovation on the way of improvement. However it is human nature is prevent some changes which are not beneficial to them. So it becomes a challanging job for every management member to implement potential change. It is also a dangerous job since if the implemetation couldn’t be proved to be successful it may cause further trouble and may delay further improvement. So it is really necessary for management of understand which approach to use under particular circumstances.

Week 9

serenahan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:02:28 +0000

Synopsis
How Managers Gain Commitment to Change: Using a Simple Cultural Questionaire to Involve People introduces the benefits of introducing a set of questionare to understand the culture and attitude of employees and to promote the morale of them in a company. The questionare covering four issues, namely recource, systems, relationship, and purpose, can help managers to estimate the change they may face and promote communication between the top and bottom. All the questions are arranged in a simple but not direct way, and using degree to measure the score to make everyone feel easy and not let negative emotion involved. Having gone through field tial, this qustionare was proved to be helpful especially in facilitation change. Several practical examples were presented in the article illustrating how management using the questionare to better understand the attitude of people in the organisation towards change and the problems existing. Questionare is also proved to be more effective than a survay to gaining an understanding of the strength an weakness of the team.
Critique
The article is well organized and carefully planed. The aurthor is very good at making his point simple and easy to understand. One the other hand, his point is also so persuasive that everyone reads the article may be interested in trying to use this questionare in the work place. A disadvantage of this article is that it didn’t explore the reason why questionare is better than other kinds of survays in getting information about the levels of satisfaction of employees deep enough. For example, it did address the psychological effect in this process.
Reflection
I’m convinced the power of using questionare as a method of information gathering, and I’m informed of the benefits of this simple way. I also got a rough idea about the essential elements which should be included in a questionare and I’d love to try to design or use one to use when I need to make a survey in the company.

Week 6

serenahan — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:56:44 +0000

Increasingly complex and unpredictable economic conditions pushed the organizations and business to innovate their organiztion from traditional bureaucratic structure to modern forms. Although modern forms of organization have merits of being responsive and flexible, dualies approach was proved to have better effect. Composition of the two structures are explored in full. Scientific management, classical organization theory, classical economics, and bureaucratic theory provide foundation for classical management perspective. Company growth and maturity necesitate the emerge of more flexible and humanist dimension of management. Division was first adopted to relax the rigid of bureaucratic structure,and matrix configuration, TQM were later adopted. Organizations have moved from an emphasis of order, stability, and control to changebility, variability, instability and agility. Organizational flexibility was defined as four parts: agility, versatility, robustness, and resilience. Dualities-sensitive approach adopted the concept of ambiguity to capture a more flexible and mutilayered mode of thinking.

Week 5

serenahan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:29:46 +0000

A problem facing companies is that learning is fell behind because professionals don’t know how to learn and companies tend to make mistakes in their efforts to become a learning organisation. First they tend to define learning narrowly at external problem solving, because professionals are used to single loop learning instead of double loop learning. Second motivation is incorrectly linked with learning. Actually, double loop learning is more about feeling. Education and traning can reduce the dilema of learning in organization and foster people to to reason and break down defenses that block the way of learning.

Week 4

serenahan — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:48:09 +0000

The article” Does strategic human resource management matter in high tech sector?” explored the adoption of strategic HR in small and medium sized companies where the power to allocate scarce resourses are concentrated in the hands of a small group of persons. Recognision of the importance of SHRM in SME heatened recently and HR is viewed as a competitve advantage of a firm. HRM in small firms tend to be influenced more by managers’ value and goals. Strategic HRM refers to matching HR policies and activities to explicit business strategies, which also marks its difference with traditional HR. Strategic HR has become a valuable invisible asset of SMEs and critical investment in the firm’s performance and thus implies the need to build SHRM. CEO’s perception about the firm’s HR capacity and H R‘s relation to the success of the business is explored and private high-tech knowledge based SMEs in UK are used in research. The result show that where management view HR as a competitive advantage, HR would be more involved in strategic management process, and a strong and positive relationship exist between HR capacity and a firm’s performance. Study also finds that HR contributes more in the strategy forming processes in high performance companies. The article concludes that investment in HR could contribute to the successful achievement of the goals of companies.

Week 3

serenahan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:06:55 +0000

The article “Managing Innovation and Change” starts by explaining all kinds of definitions of creativity and goes on the do comparison between creativity and personal initiate.Person based measurement is discussed in detials in three aspects. Personality measures involove expert judges of levels of creativity and sumerizes words of description. Biographical inventories focus on life events and experience that shaped individual development. Test of creative ability involves answering questions.The least used method is the measure of creative process.Four strategies in improve creativity of an organization are explored namely brainstorming, training, recruitment and reform. Modern techniques can be adopted to help improve, implement and test creativity strategies.