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Discussing the Benefits of Production Control

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Manufacturing companies use quality assurance programs to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace and reduce defect rates on the production line. Production control is a critical part of such programs, because it aims to remove waste from manufacturing processes through planning and organizing. Its many ...

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Production and Operations Management - Meaning and Important Concepts

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Production and operations management talks about applying business organization and management concepts in creation of goods and services.

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Data vs. Information - Differences in Meaning

Data are simply facts or figures - bits of information, but not information itself. When data are processed, interpreted, organized, structured or presented so as to make them meaningful or useful, they are called information. Information provides context for data.

For example, a list of dates - data - is meaningless without the information that makes the dates relevant (dates of holiday).

"Data" and "information" are intricately tied together, whether one is recognizing them as two separate words or using them interchangeably, as is common today. Whether they are used interchangeably depends somewhat on the usage of "data" - its context and grammar.

Examples of Data and Information

The history of temperature readings all over the world for the past 100 years is data. If this data is organized and analyzed to find that global temperature is rising, then that is information.

The number of visitors to a website by country is an example of data. Finding out that traffic from the U.S. is increasing while that from Australia is decreasing is meaningful information.

Often data is required to back up a claim or conclusion (information) derived or deduced from it. For example, before a drug is approved by the FDA, the manufacturer must conduct clinical trials and present a lot of data to demonstrate that the drug is safe.

"Misleading" Data

Because data needs to be interpreted and analyzed, it is quite possible - indeed, very probable - that it will be interpreted incorrectly. When this leads to erroneous conclusions, it is said that the data are misleading. Often this is the result of incomplete data or a lack of context. For example, your investment in a mutual fund may be up by 5% and you may conclude that the fund managers are doing a great job. However, this could be misleading if the major stock market indices are up by 12%. In this case, the fund has underperformed the market significantly.

Video Explaining the Differences

Etymology

"Data" comes from a singular Latin word, datum, which originally meant "something given." Its early usage dates back to the 1600s. Over time "data" has become the plural of datum.

"Information" is an older word that dates back to the 1300s and has Old French and Middle English origins. It has always referred to "the act of informing," usually in regard to education, instruction, or other knowledge communication.

Grammar and Usage

While "information" is a mass or uncountable noun that takes a singular verb, "data" is technically a plural noun that deserves a plural verb (e.g., The data are ready.). The singular form of "data" is datum - meaning "one fact" - a word which has mostly fallen out of common use but is still widely recognized by many style guides (e.g., The datum proves her point.).

In common usage that is less likely to recognize datum, "data" has become a mass noun in many cases and takes on a singular verb (e.g., The data is ready.). When this happens, it is very easy for "data" and "information" to be used interchangeably (e.g., The information is ready.).

References

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What's the difference between Data and Information? There is a subtle difference between data and information. Data are the facts or details from which information is derived. Individual pieces of data are rarely useful alone. For data to become information, data needs to be put into context....

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What's the difference between power and control? Can they exist independent of each other?

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Answer (1 of 5): defined by L. Ron Hubbard taken from his works. Power the amount of work which can be accomplished in a unit of time, or the amount of force which can be applied in a unit of time. Power has the connotation of being potential.

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Power and authority are separate but related concepts. A manager in an organization has authority if he or she has the right to direct the activities of others and expect them to respond with appropriate actions to attain organizational purposes. A uthority most often comes from the duties and responsibilities delegated to a position holder in a bureaucratic structure. A company president can order a product design change, for instance, or a police officer has the authority to arrest an offender of the law.

Power is the possession of authority, control, or influence by which a person influences the actions of others, either by direct authority or by some other, more intangible means. A prime source of power is the possession of knowledge. A person with knowledge is oftentimes able to use that knowledge to directly or indirectly influence the actions of others. The authority of knowledge is often independent of levels or positions. Power can reinforce authority, and authority is one of the primary sources of power.

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What is the difference between power and authority in an organization? - eXtension

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Power and authority are separate but related concepts. A manager in an organization has authority if he or she has the right to direct the activities of others and expect them to respond with appropriate actions to attain organizational purposes. A uthority most often comes from the duties and responsibilities delegated to a position holder in a bureaucratic structure.

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Is it worth your company's time to invest in employee incentive programs? As it turns out, motivating employees to perform their duties is a simple way to help maximize the business's profits.

A study sponsored by the International Society for Performance Improvement determined that an incentive program can "boost performance by anywhere from 25 to 44%, but only if conducted in ways that address all issues related to performance and human motivation." Employee incentives are generally broken into three types:

1. Cash and non-cash incentives

2. Prizes

3. Rewards and recognition

However, giving out incentive prizes isn't always as simple as writing a check. Below, we dive deeper on the types of employee incentives and how those affect payroll and tax withholdings for employees and employers.
Want to learn more about how, exactly, to build an employee incentive program? Read our free guide here.
1. Bonuses

One of the most popular incentives, business owners often use performance bonuses to increase production by either individual employees or teams. Sales bonuses may be awarded when a salesperson or a sales team surpasses certain goals.

Incentive programs can boost performance by anywhere from 25 to 44%

Take note that all cash bonuses are added to an employee's wages. That's because the IRS defines cash bonuses as "non-discretionary bonuses." As such, they must be included in an employee's wages when calculating overtime.

For instance, if an employee earns a $500 bonus for exceeding his production goals over a four-week period, then that $500 bonus must be divided by four, and $125 allocated to each of the weeks during that four-week period.

If the employee worked overtime during any of those weeks, the employee's overtime pay must be recalculated for each of those weeks and the additional pay added to the employee's wages. Bonuses are supplemental wages, so they must be added to the employee's paycheck, and they are subject to tax withholding according to the supplemental wage withholding rules.

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2. Prizes and Awards

Prizes are a great way to reward employees for their performance. Employers may reward individuals or teams that meet certain goals, or use awards to show employee appreciation. Such awards or prizes are always taxable income to the employee unless they are specifically excluded by law.

For instance, the following awards and prizes must be included in an employee's wages:

1. Cash awards or prizes: cash equivalent awards, such as savings bonds or gift certificates.

2. Non-cash recognition awards for job performance, unless the award qualifies as a de minimus fringe benefit.

3. Non-cash prizes won by employees from random drawings at employer-sponsored events.

4. Awards for performance, such as outstanding customer service, employee of the month, or highest productivity. Since the purpose of most awards or prizes is to motivate employees, many employers may feel that requiring an employee to pay taxes on an award or prize is counterproductive. In such cases, the employer may choose to pay the employee's share of the taxes. However, any taxes paid on behalf of the employee become taxable income as well.

3. Non-Cash Prizes

Some retailers pay their salespeople solely on a commission basis for products sold. They may offer incentives for salespeople who exceed quotas or for selling the most goods during a specific period of time.

Such prizes receive special treatment. Although the fair market value of the prize must be included on Form W-2 as taxable income, employers are not required to withhold federal income taxes from such prizes. However, social security and Medicare taxes must be withheld, and the prize is still subject to the federal unemployment tax.

How Justworks Can Help

Giving rewards and recognition is a great way to boost employee motivation. But when it comes to understanding payroll taxes for those awards, things can start to get confusing.

Justworks helps with administering payroll and related taxes, along with giving your team access to quality benefits like medical, dental, and vision. You can also award an unlimited number of bonuses on Justworks platform - we won't charge extra for those types of payments. You can learn more about us here.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, legal or tax advice. If you have any legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, then you should consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

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Try These 3 Effective Employee Incentives | Justworks

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Is it worth your company's time to invest in employee incentive programs? As it turns out, motivating employees to perform their duties is a simple way to help maximize the business's profits.

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The difference between inspiration and motivation is that inspiration gives you the idea and motivation causes you to put the idea into action. In business, inspiration is important in offering new ideas for running expanding your company and motivation insures that employees will work hard enough to see your ideas ...

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Groups vs. Teams Concepts & Examples | Difference Between Groups & Teams - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Review group vs. team. Learn the definitions, discover the difference between a group and a team, find examples, and examine how a work group...

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Personnel Management vs. Human Resources management. 

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Personnel Management vs. Human Resources management. 

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The main difference between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management lies in their scope and orientation. While the scope of personnel management is limited and has an inverted approach, wherein workers are viewed as tool. Here the behavior of the worker can be manipulated as per the core competencies of the organization and are replaced when they are worn-out.

On the other hand, human resource management has a wider scope and considers employees as the asset to the organization. It promotes mutuality in terms of goals, responsibility, reward etc. that will help in enhancing the economic performance and high level of human resource development.

In early centuries, when Human Resource Management (HRM) was not prevalent, then the staffing and payroll of the employees were taken care of, by the Personnel Management (PM). It is popularly known as Traditional Personnel Management. Human Resource Management have emerged as an extension over the Traditional Personnel Management. So, in this article, we are going to throw light on the meaning and differences between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management.

Content: Personnel Management Vs Human Resource Management

Comparison Chart

Basis for Comparison

Personnel Management

Human Resource Management

Definition of Personnel Management

Personnel Management is a part of management that deals with the recruitment, hiring, staffing, development, and compensation of the workforce and their relation with the organization to achieve the organizational objectives. The primary functions of the personnel management are divided into two categories:

Operative Functions: The activities that are concerned with procurement, development, compensation, job evaluation, employee welfare, utilization, maintenance and collective bargaining.

Managerial Function: Planning, Organizing, Directing, Motivation, Control, and Coordination are the basic managerial activities performed by Personnel Management.

From the last two decades, as the development of technology has taken place and the humans are replaced by machines. Similarly, this branch of management has also been superseded by Human Resource Management.

Definition of Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management is that specialized and organized branch of management which is concerned with the acquisition, maintenance, development, utilization and coordination of people at work, in such a manner that they will give their best to the enterprise. It refers to a systematic function of planning for the human resource needs and demands, selection, training, compensation, and performance appraisal, to meet those requirements.

Human Resource Management is a continuous process of ensuring the availability of eligible and willing workforce i.e. putting the right man at the right job. In a nutshell, it is an art of utilizing the human resources of an organization, in the most efficient and effective way. HRM covers a broad spectrum of activities which includes:

Employment

Recruitment and Selection

Training and Development

Employee Services

Salary and Wages

Industrial Relations

Health and safety

Education

Working conditions

Appraisal and Assessment

Key Differences Between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management

The following are the major differences between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management:

1. The part of management that deals with the workforce within the enterprise is known as Personnel Management. The branch of management, which focuses on the best possible use of the enterprise's manpower is known as Human Resource Management.

2. Personnel Management treats workers as tools or machines whereas Human Resource Management treats it as an important asset of the organization.

3. Human Resource Management is the advanced version of Personnel Management.

4. Decision Making is slow in Personnel Management, but the same is comparatively fast in Human Resource Management.

5. In Personnel Management there is a piecemeal distribution of initiatives. However, integrated distribution of initiatives is there in Human Resource Management.

6. In Personnel Management, the basis of job design is the division of work while, in the case of Human Resource Management, employees are divided into groups or teams for performing any task.

7. In PM, the negotiations are based on collective bargaining with the union leader. Conversely, in HRM, there is no need for collective bargaining as individual contracts exist with each employee.

8. In PM, the pay is based on job evaluation. Unlike HRM, where the basis of pay is performance evaluation.

9. Personnel management primarily focuses on ordinary activities, such as employee hiring, remunerating, training, and harmony. On the contrary, human resource management focuses on treating employees as valued assets, which are to be valued, used and preserved.

Conclusion

Human Resource Management has come up with an extension over Personnel Management, which eradicated the shortcomings of the Personnel Management. It is quite essential in this era of intense competition where every organization have to put their manpower and their needs first.

Nowadays, it is very challenging to retain and maintain good employees for a long time as they are fully aware of their rights and any organization cannot treat them like machines. So, HRM has been evolved to unite the organization with their employees for the attainment of a common goal.

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Difference Between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management (with Comparison Chart) - Key Differences

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The main difference between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management lies in their scope and orientation. While the scope of personnel management is limited and has an inverted approach, wherein workers are viewed as tool. Here the behavior of the worker can be manipulated as per the core competencies of the organization and are replaced when they are worn-out.

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Keeping employees engaged and healthy is particularly difficult during the holiday season. The weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year offer a lot of challenges when it comes to productivity, illness and work performance. Healthy, engaged employees are vital to a company. When employees are over-stressed or dealing with hectic schedules, they tend to drop healthy habits and become disengaged with their work.

While the winter holiday season can be filled with joy and anticipation, it can also be filled with extra food and stress - leading to unhealthy habits. It may feel counterintuitive, but the holiday season could be the best time for employers to double down on employee well-being. By recognizing the holiday season and all the joy - and stress - it can bring to employees, employers can help reduce any extra pressures around the office and keep employees motivated to finish the year strong.

Try out the following tips to help keep employees engaged and healthy over the holidays:
Express Gratitude
Workers who feel appreciated are less likely to be disengaged and unmotivated. In a University of Pennsylvania study observing employees tasked with making fundraising calls, researchers found that grateful leaders motivate their employees to be more productive. Employees who were thanked and felt a sense of appreciation from their leaders made 50% more fundraising calls than their unappreciated counterparts.

Since employees are likely to feel more stressed this time of year, showing them that they are appreciated might be the gentle push they need to prevent them from becoming disengaged and unmotivated. Employers should genuinely thank employees for a job well done. Consider writing personal holiday cards to each employee to remind them that they are appreciated for all that they do.
Reduce The Chance Of Spreading Illnesses
While the holidays bring plenty of joy and cheer, they also tend to bring a flock of germs and viruses. Hopefully, your employees have already received their company flu shot by now - which is the number one way to help prevent a flu outbreak at the office. Besides the flu shot, the best way to keep employees healthy over cold and flu season is to maintain a clean office and educate employees on the risk of spreading illnesses.

Be sure shared office spaces - such as meeting rooms, break rooms and kitchens - are thoroughly cleaned on a regular basis. Encourage employees to stay home when they are sick to avoid spreading any illnesses. Employers can also help educate employees about the cold and flu season by posting tips about promoting a healthy immune system along with reminders to clean their desks and any shared spaces as often as possible.
Encourage PTO
While it may seem illogical to encourage employees to take time off during the holiday season, it's incredibly important. Employees who utilize their PTO during an especially busy time of the year will have lower levels of stress and be able to prioritize their well-being. Employees won't be productive or able to focus on work when they are thinking about all the last-minute errands they need to run after work. Communicate to employees that it is perfectly acceptable to take the time off that they need during the holiday season. This time off will help keep them mentally healthy and more productive while at work.
Provide Some Stress Relief
It's no secret that stressed employees aren't engaged, nor do they perform their best. Stress also comes with many negative physical and mental health consequences. To keep employees healthy and engaged, employers should strive to provide some stress relief at the office. This could include bringing in a professional massage therapist to give massages to employees, practicing deep breathing or meditation before a big meeting or bringing in a healthcare professional to educate employees on managing stress. Employers can also help reduce stress in the workplace during the holiday season by allowing flexible hours, communicating about deadlines and promoting positivity.
Host A Healthy Potluck
A holiday potluck doesn't have to be synonymous with unhealthy eating. In fact, hosting a healthier version of a holiday potluck is a great way to encourage healthy eating at the office. While normal office potlucks tend to leave employees over-stuffed and sluggish, a potluck full of fresh, nutritious foods will give employees an energy boost, promote productivity and boost concentration. A healthy, holiday-themed potluck will also bring employees together and keep office morale high during the holiday season.
Encourage Indoor Exercise
Busy and stressed employees are less likely to keep up with their exercise routine. Not mention, the weather isn't optimal for outdoor activity. However, exercise is extremely important over the holiday season to help reduce stress, stay energized and stay healthy. Employers can help employees be more physically active by promoting indoor exercise throughout the workday. Consider starting an indoor walking club and walk with employees around the building for 10 minutes, three times a day. Incorporate daily afternoon deskercise and stretching. Or try bringing in a yoga instructor once a week to help employees move more.
Provide Healthy Snacks
The holidays mean an overload of baked goods, desserts and other unhealthy dishes. Too much sugar and not enough nutrients will leave employees mentally drained, unable to focus and sluggish. To help balance out the holiday treats, provide employees with healthy snacks in the office kitchen and break rooms. Snacks like fresh fruit, raw veggies, hummus, nuts, rice cakes, and dried fruit are all great options. When it comes to holiday office parties, be sure to include healthy dishes and encourage employees to bring in their favorite healthy options as well.
Start A Wellness Challenge
Starting a wellness challenge over the holiday season is an excellent way to help employees feel healthier and engaged at the same time. A 30-Day Gratitude Challenge, for example, will help employees learn the value of gratitude both in the workplace and in their personal lives - which is especially important this time of year. Offer fun incentives to encourage employees to participate.
Focus On Communication
With more employees using PTO, an effective communication plan is essential in keeping employees in the loop. Consider having a weekly or monthly meeting during the holiday season to make sure everyone knows who is in charge of certain responsibilities, and discuss which days teammates are taking time off. Effective, consistent and informative communication is one of the key drivers of employee engagement.

Employers shouldn't ignore the holidays in an attempt to keep employees focused on their work. A good leader will recognize the holidays in order to keep employees productive, engaged and healthy. While it may be a cause of some distraction around the office, the holiday season is actually a great time to celebrate employees and initiate new wellness goals to end the year strong.

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Keeping Employees Engaged And Healthy Over The Holidays

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Keeping employees engaged and healthy is particularly difficult during the holiday season. The weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year offer a lot of challenges when it comes to productivity, illness and work performance. Healthy, engaged employees are vital to a company.

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What is the value of accountability to an organization?

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What is the value of accountability to an organization?

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Don't you love that employee who goes above and beyond? She takes responsibility, shows initiative and really owns her projects, processes and problems.

Somewhere along the line, she learned that good things happen when you are accountable. But it's largely up to you, her boss, to be sure she doesn't have a change of heart.

But, you say, accountability is intrinsic! You can't force people to be accountable! True, but we learn from the people around us. When the work environment is designed for accountability, it will flourish. When it's not, you'll get stellar work from a few people - until they stop making the effort or leave for another job.

An accountable workplace won't appear overnight, but the right elements must be in place. Where do you need to invest your time and attention to build an environment of accountability?

1. Clear roles, team leadership and individual ownership. People struggle to be accountable when roles and processes are ambiguous. Removing as much confusion as possible about who is doing what and how they will proceed is an important step. If a team is truly accountable, members will identify gaps, learn new roles and processes, and ultimately build a more capable team.

2. A sense of ownership for team results. How does team accountability work? Focus on team processes. How is the team working toward goals and outcome? Are team members effective? Do they feel 100 percent accountable to improving the process? Each member should have the obligation to seek information, give and receive feedback and point out the need for corrective action at any time.

3. Freedom, support and control to navigate competing priorities. Most problems have multiple right answers, so give people the freedom and control they need to make decisions. The first solutions your teams and direct reports come up with will probably be pretty good. Improve upon them instead of inserting your own. Support is the key - be sure people have the resources, knowledge and assistance they need. With this approach, team members increase their skills, confidence and ownership.

4. It's not about punishment. If your goal in fostering accountability is to know who to punish when revenue targets are not met or budgets are missed, you will only succeed in creating fear. No one will be willing to step up, speak out or try something new. Innovation and risk taking will be lost. Once the rumor mill of an organization circulates a story of someone stepping out and being punished, hundreds, even thousands, of other employees will be skittish about taking initiative to find solutions.

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7 Ways to Build Accountable Organizations

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By Henry Browning Don't you love that employee who goes above and beyond? She takes responsibility, shows initiative and really owns her projects, processes and problems. Somewhere along the line, she learned that good things happen when you are accountable. But it's largely up to you, her boss, to be sure she [...]

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How often have you heard somebody - a new CEO, a journalist, a management consultant, a leadership guru, a fellow employee - talk about the urgent need to change the culture? They want to make it world-class. To dispense with all the nonsense and negativity that annoys employees and stops good intentions from growing into progress. To bring about an entirely different approach, starting immediately.

These culture critiques are as common as complaints about the weather - and about as effective. How frequently have you seen high-minded aspirations to "change the culture" actually manage to modify the way that people behave and the way in which they work? And how often have you seen noticeable long-term improvements?

What Is Corporate Culture?

At its worst, culture can be a drag on productivity. At its best, it is an emotional energizer. Here's how companies can use it to gain a competitive advantage.

If the answer to these last two questions is "rarely," it wouldn't surprise us. We don't believe that swift, wholesale culture change is possible - or even desirable. After all, a company's culture is its basic personality, the essence of how its people interact and work. However, it is an elusively complex entity that survives and evolves mostly through gradual shifts in leadership, strategy, and other circumstances. We find the most useful definition is also the simplest: Culture is the self-sustaining pattern of behavior that determines how things are done.

Made of instinctive, repetitive habits and emotional responses, culture can't be copied or easily pinned down. Corporate cultures are constantly self-renewing and slowly evolving: What people feel, think, and believe is reflected and shaped by the way they go about their business. Formal efforts to change a culture (to replace it with something entirely new and different) seldom manage to get to the heart of what motivates people, what makes them tick. Strongly worded memos from on high are deleted within hours. You can plaster the walls with large banners proclaiming new values, but people will go about their days, right beneath those signs, continuing with the habits that are familiar and comfortable.

But this inherent complexity shouldn't deter leaders from trying to use culture as a lever. If you cannot simply replace the entire machine, work on realigning some of the more useful cogs. The name of the game is making use of what you cannot change by using some of the emotional forces within your current culture differently.

Three dimensions of corporate culture affect its alignment: symbolic reminders (artifacts that are entirely visible), keystone behaviors (recurring acts that trigger other behaviors and that are both visible and invisible), and mind-sets (attitudes and beliefs that are widely shared but exclusively invisible). Of these, behaviors are the most powerful determinant of real change. What people actually do matters more than what they say or believe. And so to obtain more positive influences from your cultural situation, you should start working on changing the most critical behaviors - the mind-sets will follow. Over time, altered behavior patterns and habits can produce better results.

You may be asking: If it is so hard to change culture, why should we even bother to try? Because an organization's current culture contains several reservoirs of emotional energy and influence. Executives who work with them can greatly accelerate strategic and operating imperatives. When positive culture forces and strategic priorities are in sync, companies can draw energy from the way people feel. This accelerates a company's movement to gain competitive advantage, or regain advantages that have been lost.

Research shows that companies that use a few specific cultural catalysts - that is to say, those that use informal emotional approaches to influencing behavior - are significantly more likely to experience change that lasts. Of the companies that reported consciously using elements of their culture in Strategy&'s 2013 Global Culture & Change Management Survey, 70 percent said their firms achieved sustainable improvement in organizational pride and emotional commitment. That compares with 35 percent for firms that didn't use culture as a lever. Although there is no magic formula, no brilliant algorithm, no numerical equation that will guarantee results, we have gleaned some valuable insights through decades of research and observation at dozens of enterprises, including some of the most successful companies in the world. By adopting the following principles, your organization can learn to deploy and improve its culture in a manner that will increase the odds of financial and operational success.

1. Work with and within your current cultural situations. Deeply embedded cultures cannot be replaced with simple upgrades, or even with major overhaul efforts. Nor can your culture be swapped out for a new one as though it were an operating system or a CPU. To a degree, your current cultural situation just is what it is - and it contains components that provide natural advantages to companies as well as components that may act as brakes. We've never seen a culture that is all bad, or one that is all good. To work with your culture effectively, therefore, you must understand it, recognize which traits are preeminent and consistent, and discern under what types of conditions these traits are likely to be a help or a hindrance. Put another way, there's both a yin and a yang to cultural traits.

For example, a European pharmaceutical company with a solid product development pipeline had a tendency to be inward-looking. It had great execution capabilities and an excellent record of compliance with regulators around the world. However, when new products were ready to be launched, the company had a hard time marketing them to physicians and healthcare providers. Rather than bemoaning the company's ingrained insularity - for example, its collective tendency to value the opinions of internal colleagues more than those of outside experts - the leaders decided to use this feature of its culture to its advantage. They set up a program through which employees were acknowledged and rewarded by colleagues for "going the extra mile" to support customers. By recognizing a new kind of internal authoritativeness, the company tapped a powerful emotional trigger already in place, and engendered a new (and strategically important) behavior in its sales force.

2. Change behaviors, and mind-sets will follow. It is a commonly held view that behavioral change follows mental shifts, as surely as night follows day. This is why organizations often try to change mind-sets (and ultimately behavior) by communicating values and putting them in glossy brochures. This technique didn't work well for Enron, where accounting fraud and scandal were part of everyday practice, even as the company's espoused values of excellence, respect, integrity, and communication were carved into the marble floor of the atrium of its global headquarters in Houston. In reality, culture is much more a matter of doing than of saying. Trying to change a culture purely through top-down messaging, training and development programs, and identifiable cues seldom changes people's beliefs or behaviors. In fact, neuroscience research suggests that people act their way into believing rather than thinking their way into acting. Changes to key behaviors - changes that are tangible, actionable, repeatable, observable, and measurable - are thus a good place to start. Some good examples of behavior change, which we've observed at a number of companies, relate to empowerment (reducing the number of approvals needed for decisions), collaboration (setting up easy ways to convene joint projects), and interpersonal relations (devising mutually respectful practices for raising contentious issues or grievances).

Neuroscience research suggests that people act their way into believing rather than thinking their way into acting.

A telecommunications company was seeking to improve its customer service. Rather than trying to influence mind-sets by, for example, posting signs urging employees to be polite to disgruntled customers, or having employees undergo empathy training, the company focused on what psychologists call a "precursor behavior" - a seemingly innocuous behavior that reliably precedes the occurrence of problem behavior. Leaders had noticed that poor teaming led to poor customer service, so the company rolled out a plan to encourage better and more effective teaming within call centers. To accomplish this, they set up regular design sessions for improving practices. When employees felt they were part of a happy team, and sensed a greater level of support from colleagues, they began treating their customers better.

In another example, a resources company in the Middle East was seeking to make its workplace safer. Rather than erect placards threatening workers with consequences, the company focused on a relatively basic precursor behavior: housekeeping. It organized a litter drive. Picking up trash as a team helped employees take greater pride in the workplace, which engendered a greater sense of care for fellow employees and made them more likely to speak up when they noticed an unsafe situation. Changed behavior, changed mind-set.

3. Focus on a critical few behaviors. Conventional wisdom advocates a comprehensive approach - everybody should change everything that's not perfect! But companies must be rigorously selective when it comes to picking behaviors. The key is to focus on what we call "the critical few," a small number of important behaviors that would have great impact if put into practice by a significant number of people. Discern a few things people do throughout the company that positively affect business performance - for example, ways of starting meetings or talking with customers. Make sure those are aligned with the company's overall strategy. Also check that people feel good about doing these things, so that you tap into emotional commitment. Then codify them: Translate those critical behaviors into simple, practical steps that people can take every day. Next, select groups of employees who are primed for these few behaviors, those who will respond strongly to the new behaviors and who are likely to implement and spread them.

At an Asian banking company, rapid inorganic growth had led to diverse ways of working across different units and geographies. To focus on improving teaming, customer outcomes, and the ability to realize synergies, the CEO and leadership embarked on a culture-led evolution program. They targeted just three critical behaviors: taking extra steps to delight customers, valuing performance over seniority, and backing up and supporting one another. They then converted these three general behaviors into specifics for each part of the company. Delighting customers, for instance, was translated into frontline staff collaborating with other colleagues to solve client problems and prioritizing the implementation of process improvements that affected customer outcomes. For all three behaviors, leadership recognized and celebrated examples in which people made an extraordinary effort. Senior leaders acted as role models, explicitly modeling these three new behaviors. The company also identified influential frontline, client-facing employees who could demonstrate these new behaviors in action.

4. Deploy your authentic informal leaders. Authority, which is conferred by a formal position, should not be confused with leadership. Leadership is a natural attribute, exercised and displayed informally without regard to title or position in the organizational chart. Because authentic informal leaders, who are found in every organization, are often not recognized as such, they are frequently overlooked and underused when it comes to driving culture. It is possible to identify such leaders through interviews, surveys, and tools such as organizational network analysis, which allow companies to construct maps of complex internal social relations by analyzing email statistics and meeting records. Once identified, these leaders can become powerful allies who can influence behavior through "showing by doing." In fact, when companies map out their organizations, they can identify leaders who exhibit different core leadership strengths (see "Four Types of Authentic Informal Leaders").

Four Types of Authentic Informal Leaders

Every organization has people who influence and energize others without relying on their title or formal position in the hierarchy to do so. We call them "authentic informal leaders." They are a powerful resource in spreading a critical few behaviors from the bottom up. Among the many types of informal leaders present in organizations, the following are seen most frequently.

Pride builders are master motivators of other people, and catalysts for improvement around them. Often found in the role of line manager, they understand the motivations of those with whom they work. They know how to foster a sense of excellence among others. They can be found at every level of a hierarchy; some of the most effective pride builders are close to the front line, where they can interact directly with customers as well as employees. Pride builders often have powerful insights about the culture and about what behaviors are likely to lead to improvement.

Exemplars are role models. They bring vital behaviors or skills to life, and others pay attention to them. They are well respected and are effective peer influencers in the middle and senior management cohorts.

Networkers are hubs of personal communication within the organization. They know many people, and communicate freely and openly with them. They serve as links among people who might not otherwise share information or ideas. If you want to see an idea travel virally through an enterprise, enlist your networkers.

Early adopters enthusiastically latch onto and experiment with new technologies, processes, and ways of working. Involve them in your performance pilots, or whenever you are trying to demonstrate impact quickly.

At one major oil company, an informal leader named Osama became known as the "turbo-collaborator." His role gave him very little formal influence. But when he began working at the refinery, he walked the plant with the engineers, maintenance technicians, and operators, and took copious notes. As a result, he knew everyone and developed relationships across disciplines. Whenever somebody wanted to know how the place really worked, they would speak to Osama - who would either have the answer in his notebook or know precisely the right person to ask. When the company formed a buddy program between operations and maintenance aimed at using greater collaboration to improve plant reliability, it knew it needed Osama at the heart of it. He connected people, defined templates to encourage collaboration, and captured success stories. Identifying, engaging, and nurturing such informal leaders allows companies to harness their talents and further the company's transformation efforts.

5. Don't let your formal leaders off the hook. Most organizations tend to shunt culture into the silo of human resources professionals. But leaders in all parts of the company are critical in safeguarding and championing desired behaviors, energizing personal feelings, and reinforcing cultural alignment. The signaling of emotional commitment sets the tone for others to follow. If staff members see a disconnect between the culture an organization promulgates and the one its formal leadership follows, they'll disengage quickly from the advertised culture and simply mimic their seniors' behavior. The people at the top have to demonstrate the change they want to see. Here, too, the critical few come into play. A handful of the right kind of leaders have to be on board to start the process.

When Jim Rogers was CEO of GE Motors in Fort Wayne, Ind., he became frustrated because his senior leadership group of more than 15 leaders seldom functioned together as a "real team." As described by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith in The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization (Harvard Business School Press, 1993), a real team is one with a high level of emotional commitment; the leadership role shifts easily among the members depending on their skills and experience and the challenges of the moment, rather than on any hierarchical positions. Team members hold one another accountable for the quality of their collective work. Interestingly, at GE Motors the senior leadership group members often demonstrated real team capabilities in running their individual business units and functions. So Rogers decided to find ways to break them into subteams of three or four members to address specific cross-organizational issues facing the larger group. Over time, he mixed the subgroupings to match emerging issues. By working in different subgroup settings, the executives developed camaraderie, which in turn improved the effectiveness of the group as a whole.

6. Link behaviors to business objectives. When people talk about feelings, motivations, and values - all of which are vital elements of strong cultures - the conversation can often veer into abstractions. It may then range far afield of what it takes to succeed in the market. Too many employees walk away from culture-focused town halls or values discussions wondering how the advice on how to be a better person actually translates into the work they do. To avoid this disconnect, offer tangible, well-defined examples of how cultural interventions lead to improved performance and financial outcomes. Select behaviors that are aimed specifically at improving business performance and can be measured over time.

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An oil company's drive to reduce maintenance costs at an industrial installation highlights the importance of such an approach. The critical few behaviors included empowerment and good decision making. One of the company's exemplars (employees who lead by example) decided it would be a smart move to make costs visible to workers. So he placed price tags on various pieces of machinery. These cues inspired behavioral changes related to decisions about whether to repair or replace equipment. Workers and managers began to recommend fixing expensive equipment rather than replacing it. The company celebrated and publicized cost savings identified by employees. The behaviors led to a change in focus and mind-set. When an employee noticed that fans were cooling the machinery during the winter, he felt empowered to call it out, and ask whether it was necessary to do so. It turned out that it wasn't - and the company saved US$750,000 annually in power costs as a result.

7. Demonstrate impact quickly. We live in an age of notoriously short attention spans. That applies as much to organizational culture as it does to people's media consumption habits. When people hear about new high-profile initiatives and efforts, and then don't see any activity related to them for several months, they'll disengage and grow cynical. That's why it is extremely important to showcase the impact of cultural efforts on business results as quickly as possible. One effective method of doing so is to stage performance pilots - that is, high-profile demonstration projects. Pilots are relatively low-risk efforts that introduce specific behaviors that can then be evaluated and assessed. They often rely on a dashboard that defines desired impacts, the tactics used, and the specific metrics to be employed.

When Bell Canada first explored using new behaviors at the front line to improve its customer service and profitability, there were many more skeptics than believers within the leadership ranks. There simply wasn't any numerical proof that the tactics would work. So CEO Michael Sabia decided to set up a pilot test in a sales unit near Toronto. The sponsors of the test blocked out a tight time frame of eight months, and developed realistic ways of measuring behavior change, customer reactions, and actual sales and margin performance. Armed with positive results in these areas - a 29 percent increase in customer satisfaction in retail stores, a 31 percent increase in revenue per call at call centers - the company went on to accelerate the expansion of these efforts across the front line in different geographies, functions, and businesses.

8. Use cross-organizational methods to go viral. Ideas can spread virally across organizational departments and functions, as well as from the top down and from the bottom up. One powerful way to spread ideas is through social media: blogs, Facebook or LinkedIn posts, and tweets - not from senior management, but from some of the authentic informal leaders mentioned in Principle 4.

By now it is well established that social media can be more effective at spreading information, news, and music than traditional modes of distribution. The same holds with critical behaviors. People are often more receptive to changes in "the way we do things around here" when those changes are recommended or shared by friends, colleagues, and other associates. This kind of credible social proof is more compelling than similar testimonials from someone whose job it is to sell something.

Just as there is an art to making content go viral, there's a craft to making behavior go viral. For example, in a model that we have tested successfully in several situations, a company starts with a few carefully chosen groups of 12 to 15 informal leaders in three or four different parts of the business. After several weeks, an additional 10 to 15 groups of informal leaders are set up in every business unit. After about three months, the existing groups are encouraged to expand and bring in new people. After another three to six months have passed, the groups become more autonomous, allowed to control their own expansion. Meanwhile, the company facilitates connections among groups to share learning and insights. As behavior spreads, company leaders see increased performance as well as peer and leadership recognition.

9. Align programmatic efforts with behaviors. We've emphasized the role that informal leaders can play in helping ideas go viral. But it's also important to match the new cultural direction with existing ways of doing business. Informal mechanisms and cultural interventions must complement and integrate with the more common formal organization components, not work at cross-purposes. By providing the structure in which people work - through disciplines such as organization design, analytics, human resources, and lean process improvement - the formal organization provides a rational motivation for employee actions, while the informal organization enables the emotional commitment that characterizes peak performance.

The U.S. Marine Corps provides a classic example of integrating formal and informal leadership efforts. The "rule of three" dictates how the Marines design their organizations and projects and how they execute in a hierarchy. (Three squads form into one of three divisions, which form one of three battalions.) The formal leaders of those units are expected to know the intent of the officer two levels above them - and to call out any order or situation they perceive to be incoherent or in conflict with that intent. But there are also informal leaders: Each of the four members of a frontline rifle team is prepared (and expected) to take the lead whenever the formal leader is disabled or loses the high-ground position. This means that the informal leaders also need to know the intent of that officer two levels above. Integrating informal norms with the formal structures helps enable the timely battlefield adjustments that have served the Marine Corps well for more than 200 years.

10. Actively manage your cultural situation over time. Companies that have had great success working with culture - we call them "culture superstars" - actively monitor, manage, care for, and update their cultural forces. Why? As we noted at the outset, when aligned with strategic and operating priorities, culture can provide hidden sources of energy and motivation that can accelerate changes faster than formal processes and programs. Even if you have a highly effective culture today, it may not be good enough for tomorrow.

Southwest Airlines stands as an example of a battle-tested company in which culture has been managed over time. Famous for its long-term success in an industry where even the largest players routinely fail, Southwest for 40 years has been energized by a deep sense of pride among all employees. Southwest has found that constructing an environment that puts its employees first - above customers and owners - fosters a sense of emotional commitment and pride that delivers excellent customer service. But at Southwest, the work on culture is never completed. Just as the airline's strategy, tactics, and technologies have evolved to cope with a changing external environment, specific HR practices, including informal behaviors, have shifted over time.

Living in Your Culture

Although challenging, multidimensional, and often difficult to deal with, a company's cultural situation constitutes a powerful set of emotional resources. As is the case with other resources - human, technological, financial - it is incumbent upon leaders to strive to get the most value out of it.

To a degree, culture can be compared to natural forces such as winds and tides. These elements are there in the background, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes obvious. Endowed with immense power, they can waylay plans and inhibit progress. They can't really be tamed or fundamentally altered. But if you respect them and understand how to make the most of them, if you work with them and tap into their hidden power, they can become a source of energy and provide powerful assistance.

The best way to start is to ask yourself a series of questions. What are the most important emotional forces that determine what your people do? What few behavior changes would matter most in meeting strategic and operational imperatives? Who are the authentic informal leaders you can enlist? And what can you and your fellow senior leaders do differently to signal and reinforce those critical behaviors?

Of course, you shouldn't plan for dramatic results overnight. Expect an evolution, not a revolution. One of the challenges of working with culture is that, as we've noted, it changes gradually - often too slowly for leaders facing fast-moving competitors. That's the bad news. The good news? If you approach culture with respect and intelligence, as a milieu in which you and your enterprise live, you can use it to accelerate your competitive momentum. There's no better time than the present to start.

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Author Profiles:

Jon Katzenbach is an acclaimed advisor to executives for Strategy&, PwC's strategy consulting group. He is a managing director with PwC US, based in New York, and founder of the Katzenbach Center, Strategy&'s global institute on organizational culture and leadership. He is a best-selling author on organizational culture, leadership, and teaming; his books include The Wisdom of Teams (with Douglas K. Smith; Harvard Business School Press, 1993) and Leading Outside the Lines (with Zia Khan; Jossey-Bass, 2010).

Carolin Oelschlegel is a director of the Katzenbach Center for Strategy&. She leads the global operations of the center and advises clients around the world on culture and leadership topics. Based in San Francisco, she is a director with PwC US.

James Thomas is a thought leader in organizational culture with Strategy&. He is the Middle East lead of the Katzenbach Center and an expert in culture and organizational topics. Based in Dubai, he is a partner with PwC Middle East.

Also contributing to this article were Strategy& specialists Varya Davidson (partner with PwC Australia), Kenji Mitsui (partner with PwC Japan), Henning Hagen and Rutger von Post (principals with PwC US), and Shona Especkerman (senior manager with PwC Malaysia).

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Jon Katzenbach, Carolin Oelschlegel, and James Thomas

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How often have you heard somebody - a new CEO, a journalist, a management consultant, a leadership guru, a fellow employee - talk about the urgent need to change the culture? They want to make it world-class. To dispense with all the nonsense and negativity that annoys employees and stops good intentions from growing into progress.

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This article explains Vertical Structure Vs. Horizontal Structure very well. 

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This article explains Vertical Structure Vs. Horizontal Structure very well. 

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Small businesses usually implement horizontal structure.

organizer image by Anton Gvozdikov from Fotolia.com

How you organize the management of your small business has a tremendous effect on future growth, how you interact with your customers and the overall culture of your small business. Most small businesses start off with a horizontal structure, but they should consider implementing vertical structure if they hope to compete on the global market, according to LearnManagement2.com.

Identification

Vertically structured, or "tall" companies have a chain of management, usually with a CEO at the top making decisions and then delegating authority to lower-level managers, according to AllBusiness.com. Horizontal, also called flat, companies have almost no middle managers--meaning that high-level managers handle day-to-day tasks and usually interact with customers and front-line employees personally.

Significance

Most new companies and small businesses opt for a horizontally arranged company because they have a limited amount of employees, according to Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics. Small businesses tend to be more intimate, and the lack of a large workforce means management styles are more informal than formal. In addition, small businesses may not even have the resources to hire any middle management.

Benefits

Companies with a tall organizational structure are better at designating tasks to employees or departments within the company, have well-defined responsibilities for employees, and are generally easier to manage, according to Practical Management. Horizontally structured businesses tend to have the best employee morale because there is less red tape when dealing with problems. Also, it costs less to run a horizontal company because managers cost more than rank-and-file employees.

Disadvantages

Vertical companies are dependent on a strong leader at the top. Weak upper management means that each successive hierarchical structure will get frustrated by poor decision making by the superior. In addition, tall companies lack the transparency of a horizontal company because each layer muddles information more and more. Horizontal companies are much harder to implement than vertical companies, especially as the business grows, because the business must foster a culture of teamwork. Employees may be less sure about their roles and responsibilities within the company, and project managers can be frustrated by their lack of authority.

Potential

Frank Ostroff, author of "The Horizontal Organization," believes that companies will become more horizontal than vertical as the world globalizes, because customers will demand fast response times and better service--two things at which horizontal companies excel. No business, however, should have a strictly horizontal or vertical structure, but rather should implement the best of both worlds.

About the Author

Russell Huebsch has written freelance articles covering a range of topics from basketball to politics in print and online publications. He graduated from Baylor University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

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The Vertical Structure Vs. the Horizontal Structure in an Organization

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How you organize the management of your small business has a tremendous effect on future growth, how you interact with your customers and the overall culture of your small business. Most small businesses start off with a horizontal structure, but they should consider implementing vertical structure if they hope to ...

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How to determine Work Place Priorities .

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How to determine Work Place Priorities .

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In order to do your job effectively and to the best of your ability it helps to prioritize your tasks. Planning your day ensures you meet company goals and deadlines, and it helps keep you in line ...

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Decision making is crucial for running a business enterprise which faces a large number of problems requiring decisions.

Which product to be produced, what price to be charged, what quantity of the product to be produced, what and how much advertisement expenditure to be made to promote the sales, how much investment expenditure to be incurred are some of the problems which require decisions to be made by managers.
The five steps involved in managerial decision making process are explained below:
1. Establishing the Objective:

The first step in the decision making process is to establish the objective of the business enterprise. The important objective of a private business enterprise is to maximise profits. However, a business firm may have some other objectives such as maximisation of sales or growth of the firm.

But the objective of a public enterprise is normally not of maximisation of profits but to follow benefit-cost criterion. According to this criterion, a public enterprise should evaluate all social costs and benefits when making a decision whether to build an airport, a power plant, a steel plant, etc.

2. Defining the Problem:

The second step in decision making process is one of defining or identifying the problem. Defining the nature of the problem is important because decision making is after all meant for solution of the problem. For instance, a cotton textile firm may find that its profits are declining.

It needs to be investigated what are the causes of the problem of decreasing profits. Whether it is the wrong pricing policy, bad labour-management relations or the use of outdated technology which is causing the problem of declining profits. Once the source or reason for falling profits has been found, the problem has been identified and defined.

3. Identifying Possible Alternative Solutions (i.e. Alternative Courses of Action):

Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to find out alternative solutions to the problem. This will require considering the variables that have an impact on the problem. In this way, relationship among the variables and with the problems has to be established.

In regard to this, various hypotheses can be developed which will become alternative courses for the solution of the problem. For example, in case of the problem mentioned above, if it is identified that the problem of declining profits is due to be use of technologically inefficient and outdated machinery in production.
The two possible solutions of the problem are:
(1) Updating and replacing only the old machinery.

(2) Building entirely a new plant equipped with latest machinery.

The choice between these alternative courses of action depends on which will bring about larger increase in profits.

4. Evaluating Alternative Courses of Action:

The next step in business decision making is to evaluate the alternative courses of action. This requires, the collection and analysis of the relevant data. Some data will be available within the various departments of the firm itself, the other may be obtained from the industry and government.

The data and information so obtained can be used to evaluate the outcome or results expected from each possible course of action. Methods such as regression analysis, differential calculus, linear programming, cost- benefit analysis are used to arrive at the optimal course. The optimum solution will be one that helps to achieve the established objective of the firm. The course of action which is optimum will be actually chosen. It may be further noted that for the choice of an optimal solution to the problem, a manager works under certain constraints.

The constraints may be legal such as laws regarding pollution and disposal of harmful wastes; they way be financial (i.e. limited financial resources); they may relate to the availability of physical infrastructure and raw materials, and they may be technological in nature which set limits to the possible output to be produced per unit of time. The crucial role of a business manager is to determine optimal course of action and he has to make a decision under these constraints.

5. Implementing the Decision:

After the alternative courses of action have been evaluated and optimal course of action selected, the final step is to implement the decision. The implementation of the decision requires constant monitoring so that expected results from the optimal course of action are obtained. Thus, if it is found that expected results are not forthcoming due to the wrong implementation of the decision, then corrective measures should be taken.

However, it should be noted that once a course of action is implemented to achieve the established objective, changes in it may become necessary from time to time in response in changes in conditions or firm's operating environment on the basis of which decisions were taken.

The five steps in the decision making process are shown in Fig. 1.2
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Managerial Decision Making Process (5 Steps)

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ADVERTISEMENTS: Decision making is crucial for running a business enterprise which faces a large number of problems requiring decisions. Which product to be produced, what price to be charged, what quantity of the product to be produced, what and how much advertisement expenditure to be made to promote the sales, how much investment expenditure to ...

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Electric utilities and other power developers are re-configuring their formulas for measuring the host of dynamic risks associated with making large investments outside of their home countries. Even if there is a cyclical predictability to some of these risks-like the prices of basic commodities-other risks are largely unforeseen: that the United States would suffer a massive terrorist attack, that a company the size of Enron would fail, or that California regulators could get deregulation so wrong.

Foreign investments likely will be considered risky business as long as there are still projects to be done in a utility's home market that are considered to be economically viable. But as markets like the United States or the United Kingdom mature, and as regions like North America and the European Union exhibit slower electricity demand growth rates, higher growth-if more volatile-foreign markets seem appealing. In a good year, while gross domestic product is up 2 percent or 3 percent in the U.S., it may be up 7 percent or more in a fast-growing country in Asia or Latin America.

Still, for some companies, many of the risks abroad are no less challenging than some of the risks faced at home. "Political risk is everywhere, as opposed to the assumption by most investors who think it's safe to invest in the United States and not safe to invest outside the country," points out Ken Woodcock, a senior vice president and the head of investor relations for AES Corp., in Arlington, Va. With projects in more than 40 countries, AES has seen a number of the twists of risk in developing a project at home. For example, the company lost its environmental permit for its Cedar Bay, Fla., project due to "local opponents" after a year's work, he says. Other U.S. utilities that invested in the United Kingdom-a relatively mature market-were hit with an unexpected profit tax, which unilaterally changed the terms of deals done years earlier.

For some utilities, risk management is so natural that enumerating the variables may be a simplistic exercise. For others, new risks are emerging every day.

The Top 10 Risks of Foreign Investment
1) Diversification Risk
Part of the risk of investing overseas is determining what percentage of a utility's portfolio should be diversified geographically, outside of the country. Multilateral banks establish value ceilings for country lending based in part on the growth in those countries and the likelihood of repayment. But there is no hard and fast rule for such diversification for investor-owned utilities. Indeed, shareholders and other equity stakeholders may push a company overseas for higher returns, despite higher risk.

Regardless of the mandate to diversify, the quality of the country or regional risk has to be determined on a case-by-case basis. "If a utility has 20 percent of its investments in the United Kingdom, that's a lot different from 20 percent in Pakistan," says Susan Abbott, the managing director of project and infrastructure finance, at Moody's Investors Service, in New York. "We haircut utilities' foreign investments, because when they say, 'We are getting so much from Argentina,' we say, 'No, you are not,'" she explains.

The strategy of geographic diversification may be a function of the perceived term of investment with the associated long-term growth in demand rates. With power generation concessions carrying 20-year to 30-year terms, there are ample opportunities to amortize investments. "In looking at possible investments, we take a long view and look at a whole range of variables in a very disciplined approach before deciding to enter a market or pick up an asset. That provides the best risk management," says Stephen Morrisseu, a spokesman for Duke Energy.

Just how much money is being risked in overseas electric generation, distribution and transmission plants? A bundle, reckons Bill Reinhardt, the editor of the 2001 International Projects Survey, which has tracked public-private partnership investments in infrastructure since 1985, including concessions and privatizations. Combining all forms of energy projects for the past 15 years, he calculates that there are 724 projects in various stages of planning, development, or operation globally, worth an estimated $314.2 billion. Of these, only 282 had been financed by October, tapping an estimated $145.3 billion. The trend of late is for governments to contribute little-if anything-to such development, placing the burden on the private sector.

Of course, the 724 projects are only a fraction of the investments made by the private sector globally. But experts believe 724 projects are probably a close number for those private sector investments in lesser-developed countries-which are usually done in partnership with a government or multilateral development institution. Also, private-sector investment banks are more comfortable with making loans for energy projects when the development institutions are involved, say analysts.

Regionally, the spread of the funded projects tracked by Reinhardt creates some surprising shapes in the bulge brackets. Asia accounts for 135, worth $80 billion; Latin America accounts for 83, worth $30.9 billion; Europe accounts for 39, worth $23.9 billion; Africa and the Middle East account for 12, worth $5.9 billion; and North America accounts for only 13 projects, worth $4.6 billion, says the Harrison, New Jersey-based publisher. The as-yet-unfunded project tally is far higher for all the regions, suggesting that competition for funding is a race that constantly is accelerating.

With the United States and the European Union perceived to be the most stable markets in the world, it is not surprising that a high volume of investment flows between the two regions, albeit in different economic seasons. "Five or six years ago, everybody in the United States was looking for diversification in foreign projects, but a lot of them didn't achieve the earnings they expected, and in many cases, they got burned. So, assets traded hands with a blurring speed," says Phil Kassin, a partner in the Energy Utility Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, in New York. "Now we are seeing a reverse where some of the major global European utilities like E.ON, Centrica, National Grid and PowerGen have run out of running room in their own back yard and the United States is the land of expansion," he says.
2) Political Risk
The variations of political risk are many, given the levels of federal, state or local power that can come into play to affect a project. Federal or sovereign risk is perhaps the most compelling of political risks, especially in countries where there is a weak or divided congress. While Colombia's fiscal and monetary policies are such that the country deserves an investment-grade rating from international risk assessors-like Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's-such a high rating has eluded other countries-like Mexico-for years. If a government will not back the political risk in a project-from problems as basic as nationalization-then others will have to pay for the risk. In general, sovereign governments don't assume country risk these days: "Why should they if they don't have to?" asks Abbott, playing devil's advocate.

Still, some countries recognize that assuming country risk helps attract badly needed foreign investment, so governments take this extra step to assure inbound cash flows. "The government may accept political risk, as in Colombia, which permits commercial banks to come in for loans," observes Woodcock. But there are few countries in the world like Colombia, where a pipeline may suffer hundreds of bomb attacks per year.

Although the issue of the personal security of expatriate workers apparently has not yet been raised markedly in most countries, some multinational utilities are taking additional precautions against factors like sabotage, terrorism and kidnapping. "We've increased vigilance on security steps we already were taking, even with routine measures," says Robert Stibolt, the senior vice president of risk management and energy trading at Tractebel North America, in Houston.
3) Regulatory Risk
A large subfunction of general political risk, regulatory risk, can be a function of a fickle government, or a function of a nascent regulatory regime, where concession and privatization implementation practices are evolving with virtually every deal. "We often coach governments for five years before they get their rules right," says AES' Woodcock. "They get the idea that they want to privatize, but the rules are unattractive to foreign investors. So, we may work with heads of state, with energy ministers, or with privatization ministers for as long as it takes to get a set of rules that allow us to put a good business together in a country," he says.

In situations where governments set a rate of profit return for a project, those utilities that find conditions do not match concession contract terms can be left out in the cold for years. But foreign currency guarantee clauses, guaranteed floors and ceilings for business volumes, and other mechanisms are making the rate anticipation game more tolerable.
4) Economic Risk
Even the longest bull market in the world has to slow down at times. When Argentina adopted parity for the peso with the U.S. dollar years ago, the move was heralded as a milestone of economic progress. But today, the country is on the fiscal ropes, Argentina has defaulted on its debts, its currency has been de-coupled from the U.S. dollar, and is sapping the economic strength of the entire Common Market of the South, or Mercosur trade bloc, including neighboring Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Still, outside of the United States, the regions that have grown the fastest over the past few decades tend to continue to grow the fastest. "We have three main regional targets overseas-Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific-where we see liberalizing gas and power markets, and where we think the market economies and political conditions are conducive to the kinds of businesses we want to build," says Morrisseu.

Apart from economic threats to the ability to operate an asset in a given country, the physical operation of the unit can sometimes be a challenge. Securing expensive imported spare parts can at times require a special understanding with local customs officials. And gas supplies suddenly can be diverted to domestically owned customers rather than a utility, for example.
5) Credit Risk
Customer and supplier risk can be crucial, even when a seemingly secure fuel or power purchase agreement is in hand, stamped and approved. When a supplier or customer-particularly a government-is unable to supply or to pay, the legal recourse may provide little comfort to a utility with tough lender covenants. "If I lock in a price on natural gas, but it goes up, whether I benefit or not depends on the credit quality of the supplier. Enron had a lot of these contracts, but now if they go into Chapter 11, the value of those contracts is brought into question," says Stibolt.

Similar to credit risk, collections risk is an issue for companies involved in distribution, particularly in countries where theft of service is a standard deviation, one executive says. In the slums of Rio de Janeiro, for example, gangs that control some of the poorest neighborhoods have in the recent past threatened the lives of linesmen who make calls to correct illegal connections.
6) Interest Rate Risk
When a utility seeks to develop a project, it normally borrows a hefty portion of the price from private lenders, banks, insurers or other financial service entities. Depending on the perceived risk of the developing company, the cost of borrowing may go up or down hundreds of basis points-or thousandths of one percent, regardless of country risk. "If you look at what are classified as utilities, an average rating might be A3, but if you look at developers, it might be Baa3," estimates Abbott. "They want to leverage as much money as possible to do as many projects as they can," she explains. Thus while a company might be able to use balance sheet financing for a project, liquidity positions may necessitate increased borrowing. Apart from cash needed to move a project through construction completion, ongoing operating expenses may also necessitate interest rate hedges. "We hedge against interest rates over a longer term, so we're not taking advantage of some of the lower rates now; but 15 years rates haven't come down that much," one utility executive says.
7) Commodity Pricing Risk
Energy trading companies are as important to a utility as their generation facilities. The pricing of fuel sources, electricity rates, and other factors affecting these prices, like weather, must be hedged carefully to avoid peak expenditures. "If it takes a typical 6.8 million BTUs to make a kilowatt-hour of power and the market ratio is 7 million, you're not making any margin; but if there's a ratio of 15, you're making lots of money," says Stibolt.

For regions dependent on hydroelectric generation-like the Northeastern or Northwestern United States, or Brazil-rainfall can mean anything from cheap power to 20 percent rationing. "Weather can influence demand, be it a function of heat, cold, or rainfall," says Woodcock. "We've done a lot of thinking about these factors since our revenues were affected this year," he notes.
8) Foreign Exchange Risk
Trillions of dollars in foreign exchange are traded around the world daily, and the volatility in the variations can impact both utility suppliers as well as its customers. Derivative hedges against fluctuations are a standard part of any foreign business, and these exposures frequently are reported on a real-time basis up to regional if not global centers, where the costs of protecting against relative geographic risks can be measured with the same financial stick. If protection against currency devaluation is acquired in the country where the risk arises, placing the risk there limits the exposure of a parent company elsewhere in the world.
9) Repatriation Risk
Hedging against a currency shift is one thing, but managing to repatriate the protected profits is another matter, points out Abbott. "You can push currency risk into a country by way of derivatives, but the answer to the question of whether that means the risk of repayment is adequately dealt with is no. A third party may guarantee a contract and (dollar-based) payments, but not necessarily the debt service to the (offshore) lenders," she says. In early December, for example, Argentina placed controls on bank withdrawals and foreign remittances in an effort to stop capital flight. Such moves keep profits captive in a country, forcing a company to reinvest or to convert profits from local currency to physical products that can be exported. Under a prior government in Brazil, when currency repatriation was heavily taxed, international companies routinely purchased gold or food products to ship value back to a parent company.

10) Containment of Risk
Some utilities operate each individual project like an island, with risk management handled locally, to shield the parent from any false moves-as well as shielding the subsidiary from a capsizing mother ship, as has been a danger with Enron. Other country risk managers compare similar country risks on at least a regional basis, to take advantage of higher volumes when it comes to costs and exposures. Some managers also will report risks to a global center, where a corporate-wide prioritization of the risks can be undertaken and protected. "In North America, we have played a role in the risk methodology used more widely," says Stibolt. The sophistication of risk models employed today are both a function of the evolution of the art of risk management and of the evolution of the software tools now available to develop models, he says.

Sharing Risks and Risk Management

The collection of investment risk takers in foreign projects can include a host of types of businesses and financial entities. Multilateral banks and commercial banks both make loans and take equity positions. Insurers, exporting suppliers, other public and private investors, and finally the developing utilities themselves take on a variety of risk elements. Breaking overall risk into bite-sized components and types is what may make a successful deal work; premiums are paid for those who take the greater risks, and limits to exposure can come from corporate bylaws, from outside risk analysts, or from the good business sense within the utility's development team.

Should utilities hire top consulting guides when venturing overseas? Should they form joint ventures with local partners or specialized financial entities? Or should they just build expertise in house? It all depends on the complexity and size of the project, says Kassin. "A lot of project developers have amassed in-house capabilities, while others have outsourced risk management expertise with a variety of bankers like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. There is a high cost of setting up a trading system, so out-sourcing or forming an alliance may work best."

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Electric utilities and other power developers are re-configuring their formulas for measuring the host of dynamic risks associated with making large investments outside of their home countries.

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I focus on the intersection of government, Wall Street & main street. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Laura Birk is the Vice President of Human Resources for Barilla America where she has been for over 11 years. Birk is responsible for all the talent management and people processes supporting the Americas business which includes the Canada, U.S., Mexico and Brazil. She is a Board Member for the company, and has the pleasure to serve over 500 employees in the Americas.

Christopher P. Skroupa: What do you do at Barilla America that influences gender diversity to generate value?

Laura Birk: As you may know, we have appointed our second female Chief Diversity Officer on our Global Diversity and Inclusion board. We've put a governance model in action, globally, to help move our diversity and inclusion initiatives forward. Also, during the last couple of years, 100% of our Corporate employees completed diversity and inclusion training.

Recently, the Human Rights Campaign published their Corporate Equality Index, and we're really proud to announce that we've received this honor for four years in a row, receiving a perfect score. As stated by The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, criteria is measured on "non-discrimination policies across business entities; equitable benefits for LGBTQ workers and their families; internal education and accountability metrics to promote LGBTQ inclusion competency; and public commitment to LGBTQ equality." There were more than 600 companies included in the index, and we're really honored to be amongst all of the companies.

We've also launched three employee resource groups (ERGs) here in the U.S., and recently our CEO Claudio Colzani signed the CEO Action and D&I pledge, which aims to advance diversity and inclusion within the workplace. He was amongst the several hundred executives that signed the pledge.

Skroupa: Among all of these accomplishments, what are some of the challenges that either you or Barilla America has faced in order to accomplish these goals?

Comment on this story Page 1 / 2 Continue

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Diversity In The Workplace -- The Cultural Shift For Creating Value

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You have to really push. You have to push in making sure that you're giving opportunities and making gender specific examples. You have to make sure that you're giving opportunities to leaders, and in particular women leaders, to do the job.

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Half of technology entrepreneurs have either been harassed in the workplace or know somebody who has, according to a study published Wednesday by First Round Capital, a venture firm.

The findings come as Silicon Valley and other industries fix their gaze on issues of gender inequality and sexual misconduct by powerful men. Harassment allegations have pushed investors, chief executives and other powerful men in technology out of their jobs this year.

A crisis surrounding the treatment of women at Uber Technologies Inc. early this year helped kick off a broader debate in the industry that has persisted. On Tuesday, Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor, said he was taking a leave of absence from his companies after a Bloomberg report detailed six alleged incidents of harassment or assault. First Round Capital is also an early backer of Uber.

Despite the talk, just 17 percent of startups have put in place a formal strategy to promote diversity and inclusion, up slightly from 14 percent in 2016 and in 2015, the study found. Most diversity plans are informal, but more companies intend to develop a strategy compared with those in past surveys.

The number of all-male or mostly male startup teams had declined to 58 percent, from 67 percent two years ago, but the gender gap in tech remains stark. About half of male founders blamed the underrepresentation of women and minorities on a lack of those groups going into tech, a common refrain known as the " pipeline problem." But most female entrepreneurs pointed to unconscious bias.

For its annual State of Startups report, First Round Capital surveyed more than 800 entrepreneurs in August and September. This was the first time that First Round asked about harassment.

Two-thirds of women startup founders said they believed their gender had hurt their ability to fundraise. A third of men said they had an easier time fundraising because of their gender. Men also had a more optimistic view of how long it would take to correct the discrepancies in their industry.

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Harassment Is Rampant at Startups, and Few Have Diversity Plans, Study Finds

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Half of technology entrepreneurs have either been harassed in the workplace or know somebody who has, according to a study published Wednesday by First Round Capital, a venture firm. The findings come as Silicon Valley and other industries fix their gaze on issues of gender inequality and sexual misconduct by powerful men.

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What does Corporate Social Responsibility look like?

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What does Corporate Social Responsibility look like?

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What makes a company a Multinational Corporation?

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What makes a company a Multinational Corporation?

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Multinational corporations have a wide global reach.

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images

Multinational corporations are typically large companies headquartered in one country but with operations in several countries. The defining trait of a multinational corporation is being incorporated -- usually in its home country -- and doing business in several countries. While these are the only criteria a company must meet to properly be considered a multinational corporation, there are other characteristics that these corporations tend to share in common. Small businesses hoping to become multinational corporations generally need clear business plans as well as the capacity to expand operations, staff and business reach.

Size

While a business can technically be considered a multinational corporation if it has offices in two countries, most multinational corporations have relatively large operations. They might, for example, have business headquarters in each country or operate large warehouses, factories or offices in several countries. These operations typically require a large staff of workers and managers, as well as contracts with service providers such as attorneys and accountants.

The Internet has opened the world of multinational operations to all businesses. Some small businesses can compete in a global marketplace by selling on websites or connecting remotely to foreign locations. Internet businesses often have lower overhead, particularly if they don't have brick-and-mortar stores.

Imports and Exports

Because multinational corporations typically run large operations, they may need lots of supplies, products and materials. Consequently, these businesses tend to import products to serve their businesses as well as export products to other businesses. Multinational corporations also may import products from their own factories stationed in other countries or export products from a factory to a retailer in another country. While even an individual can import or export a product or two, a common characteristic of multinational corporations is the large volume of importing or exporting done by the company. Some small businesses become multinational corporations by expanding their businesses to include imports and exports.

Public Corporations

Companies don't have to be traded publicly to become multinational corporations, but many of these corporations do go public. Publicly traded corporations make shares in their businesses available to investors. The investment money helps fund the company, and if the value of shares goes up, investors can share in the profits. This role in the stock exchange gives multinational corporations the ability to affect the economy of an entire nation. Some multinational corporations are traded in several nation's stock markets. Small businesses interested in becoming public corporations don't necessarily need to become huge. Public trading only requires that the company open its shares to a public audience, and many startups greatly expand when they choose to go public.

Partnerships and Affiliates

The textbook "Managerial Economics" points out that many multinational corporations develop partnerships and affiliations with other businesses, non-governmental organizations and governments. Such affiliations might include the licensing of products or chains to individuals or businesses, partnerships with governments to fulfill local initiatives and affiliations with non-governmental organizations to help raise money for charitable causes.

About the Author

Van Thompson is an attorney and writer. A former martial arts instructor, he holds bachelor's degrees in music and computer science from Westchester University, and a juris doctor from Georgia State University. He is the recipient of numerous writing awards, including a 2009 CALI Legal Writing Award.

Photo Credits

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images

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What Makes a Company a Multinational Corporation?

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Multinational corporations are typically large companies headquartered in one country but with operations in several countries. The defining trait of a multinational corporation is being incorporated -- usually in its home country -- and doing business in several countries. While these are the only criteria a company ...

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This article explains the difference between multinational organizations and transnational organizations.

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This article explains the difference between multinational organizations and transnational organizations.

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Main Difference - Multinational vs. Transnational

Both multinational and transnational are more or less similar in meaning, and some scholars use these two terms interchangeably. However, there is a small difference between multinational and transnational. Multinational, as the term suggests, operates in many countries. The main difference between multinational and transnational enterprises is that multinational enterprises have a centralized management system which cannot be seen in transnational enterprise. However, both multinational and transnational companies have foreign affiliates and operate around the world. Let us look at the difference between multinational and transnational, in detail here.

What is Multinational

Multi means many and national means the state. Many states mean that these types of companies operate in more than one country at the same time. Multinational enterprise is strongly supported by the emergence of free liberalism and free market concepts. A company may start in one country, and may spread to other foreign countries, expanding their investments. Thus, a national industry becomes a multinational company. The significance of this type of companies is that though it spreads to many other countries, there will be a centralized management system, and the main decisions will always be taken by the home company. The other foreign corporations will be subsidiaries of the home company. When we think of the business environment of a multinational company, it may engage in exporting and importing goods and services, buying and selling license in foreign markets, contract manufacturing, etc.

What is Transnational

Transnational corporations are something similar to multinational companies, but there is a small difference. Transnational corporations also operate in many countries, and there isn't a centralized management system. These companies might start in one country, and later on they might expand to other nations as well. However, they do not have a home company to manage them and will start as a new company. So, a transnational company does not have subsidiaries. Since there isn't a centralized management system, a transnational company may take decisions suitable to the operating context. They also may not be loyal to the operating country's value system but only will look into their expansion of businesses, since they may have no connection with the particular country. Transnational companies are there all around the world, and they operate truly at the global level.

Difference between Multinational and Transnational

Definition

Multinational companies operate in more than one country and have a centralized management system.

Transnational companies have many companies around the world but do not have a centralized management system.

Operations

Multinational companies own a home company and its subsidiaries.

Transnational companies do not have subsidiaries but just many companies.

Local Response

Since multinational companies have a centralized management system, there will be some barriers in decision making.

Transnational companies are able to gain more interest in the local markets where they maintain their own systems.
Image Courtesy: "Microsoft CES 2009″ by Ben Franske - Own work. (GFDL) via Commons "Kopenhagen Mai 2009 PD 486″ by Dornum72 - Own work. (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons

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Both multinational and transnational are more or less similar in meaning, and some scholars use these two terms interchangeably. However, there is a small difference between multinational and transnational. Multinational, as the term suggests, operates in many countries. The main difference between multinational and transnational enterprises is that multinational enterprises have a centralized management system which cannot be seen in transnational enterprise.

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The Most Sustainable Companies in the World.

I found it interesting The United States made it on this list of 100, 16 times.

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With 2016 being the second-warmest year on record, and with issues like high executive pay and diversity gaining more awareness, you may be curious to know what companies care most about sustainability. Since 2005, Toronto-based magazine and research firm Corporate Knights has put together the Global 100, an annual list of the world's most sustainable companies. Using publicly available data, Corporate Knights rates large firms on 14 key measures, evaluating their management of resources, finances and employees.

For the ranking, Corporate Knights considers about 4,000 companies with market values of at least $2 billion (methodology details ). It's an intensive research undertaking, taking about 1,000 hours each year to produce. Corporate Knights just released the 2017 edition and will present the results today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

For the top 20 on the Global 100, open the gallery below. For the full list, see the end of this post.

Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate whose businesses range from power plants to medical imaging machines, took the top spot. It was the most energy-efficient firm in its sector, producing more revenue per kilowatt used than any other industrial corporation. Siemens scored highly on nearly every metric in Corporate Knights' ranking, such as having a low carbon footprint and low employee turnover. The conglomerate is also dedicating a growing portion of its business to creating environmentally friendly infrastructure, with products like green heating and air conditioning systems.

Norwegian insurance company Storebrand ASA came in second. Across all measures, it performed strongest on executive pay. Storebrand's CEO gets paid just 12 times more than the average Storebrand employee. That may sound like a huge gap, but among firms in the MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI), a basket of stocks designed to represent a wide range of companies across the globe, CEOs make 115 times more than their firms' workers.

"Scandinavians tend to be more rational about many business practices," says Corporate Knights founder Toby Heaps, who's critical of firms with sky-high CEO salaries. "I have yet to see compelling academic evidence that you generate additional shareholder returns by paying CEOs excessive salaries."

American networking technology company Cisco ranked third on the Global 100 and fared particularly well on Corporate Knights' diversity measure: 38% of Cisco's senior executives are women, compared with 21% for ACWI companies, according to Heaps. Corporate Knights doesn't currently track racial diversity. Heaps says the available data isn't as reliable, but thinks it's just a matter of time before it becomes standard.

Heaps points out several ways in which Global 100 companies differ from the ACWI basket. At 80% of Global 100 firms, top executives receive higher bonuses if the company meets sustainability targets. Across the ACWI, only 23% of companies offer such bonuses. Global 100 CEOs make eighty times the salary of average employees, while ACWI company CEOs make 115 times the rank and file.

For pension payments, Global 100 firms contribute almost twice as much per employee compared to all ACWI companies. 28% of board seats at Global 100 firms are held by women compared with 21% for the broader ACWI. And Global 100 organizations are 25% more energy efficient.

You might think companies that invest heavily in sustainability might incur higher costs and become less profitable. But the Global 100's stock returns suggest otherwise. If you had invested $100 in Global 100 companies in 2005, it would have been worth $232 at the of 2016. If you did the same for the ACWI, you'd have $208. In other words, the Global 100's cumulative return is 24 percentage points higher than the ACWI benchmark.

The countries with the biggest share of Global 100 companies were the U.S. (19), France (12), the U.K. (11), Canada (6), Germany (6) and the Netherlands (5).
The World's Most Sustainable Companies 2017 - Full List (Company Name | Country | Industry)
1. Siemens AG | Germany | Industrials

2. Storebrand ASA | Norway | Financials

3. Cisco Systems Inc | United States | Information Technology

4. Danske Bank A/S | Denmark | Financials

5. Ing Group | Netherlands | Financials

6. Commonwealth Bank of Australia | Australia | Financials

7. Koninklijke Philips NV | Netherlands | Industrials

8. Johnson & Johnson | United States | Health Care

9. Koninklijke DSM NV | Netherlands | Materials

10. Enagas SA | Spain | Utilities

11. Dassault Systemes | France | Information Technology

12. Derwent London PLC | United Kingdom | Real Estate

13. Centrica PLC | United Kingdom | Utilities

14. McCormick & Co Inc/MD | United States | Consumer Staples

15. Henkel AG & Co KGaA | Germany | Consumer Staples

16. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG | Germany | Consumer Discretionary

17. Credit Agricole SA | France | Financials

18. Nokia OYJ | Finland | Information Technology

19. Natura Cosmeticos SA | Brazil | Consumer Staples

20. Intesa Sanpaolo SpA | Italy | Financials

21. Holmen AB | Sweden | Materials

22. Syngenta AG | Switzerland | Materials

23. Neste Oyj | Finland | Energy

24. Allergan plc | United States | Health Care

25. Kesko OYJ | Finland | Consumer Staples

26. Iberdrola SA | Spain | Utilities

27. Schneider Electric SE | France | Industrials

28. Vivendi SA | France | Consumer Discretionary

29. Television Francaise 1 | France | Consumer Discretionary

30. City Developments Ltd | Singapore | Real Estate

31. TOTAL SA | France | Energy

32. Marks & Spencer Group PLC | United Kingdom | Consumer Discretionary

33. Pearson PLC | United Kingdom | Consumer Discretionary

34. DNB ASA | Norway | Financials

35. POSCO | South Korea | Materials

36. Novozymes A/S | Denmark | Materials

37. Royal Bank of Canada | Canada | Financials

38. L'Oreal SA | France | Consumer Staples

39. Enbridge Inc | Canada | Energy

40. Shinhan Financial Group Co Ltd | South Korea | Financials

41. BT Group PLC | United Kingdom | Telecommunication Services

42. BNP Paribas SA | France | Financials

43. Peugeot SA | France | Consumer Discretionary

44. Prologis Inc | United States | Real Estate

45. Sun Life Financial Inc | Canada | Financials

46. Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB | Sweden | Financials

47. Statoil ASA | Norway | Energy

48. Coca-Cola European Partners PLC | United Kingdom | Consumer Staples

49. adidas AG | Germany | Consumer Discretionary

50. National Australia Bank Ltd | Australia | Financials

51. Sky PLC | United Kingdom | Consumer Discretionary

52. Singapore Telecommunications Ltd | Singapore | Telecommunication Services

53. Colgate-Palmolive Co | United States | Consumer Staples

54. Hennes & Mauritz AB | Sweden | Consumer Discretionary

55. Hang Seng Bank Ltd | Hong Kong, SAR China | Financials

56. Assicurazioni Generali SpA | Italy | Financials

57. Accenture PLC | Ireland | Information Technology

58. Toronto-Dominion Bank/The | Canada | Financials

59. Legrand SA | France | Industrials

60. Banco Santander Brasil SA | Brazil | Financials

61. Bank of Montreal | Canada | Financials

62. Eni SpA | Italy | Energy

63. Intel Corp | United States | Information Technology

64. Diageo PLC | United Kingdom | Consumer Staples

65. LG Electronics Inc | South Korea | Consumer Discretionary

66. UCB SA | Belgium | Health Care

67. Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd | Japan | Health Care

68. Novartis AG | Switzerland | Health Care

69. StarHub Ltd | Singapore | Telecommunication Services

70. Sysmex Corp | Japan | Health Care

71. Cameco Corp | Canada | Energy

72. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | Sweden | Information Technology

73. Hess Corp | United States | Energy

74. Daimler AG | Germany | Consumer Discretionary

75. Microsoft Corp | United States | Information Technology

76. Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC | United Kingdom | Consumer Staples

77. Wolters Kluwer NV | Netherlands | Industrials

78. Analog Devices Inc | United States | Information Technology

79. Rexel SA | France | Industrials

80. Kering | France | Consumer Discretionary

81. Edwards Lifesciences Corp | United States | Health Care

82. HP Inc | United States | Information Technology

83. Telenor ASA | Norway | Telecommunication Services

84. Apple Inc | United States | Information Technology

85. Astellas Pharma Inc | Japan | Health Care

86. NEC Corp | Japan | Information Technology

87. Amadeus IT Group SA | Spain | Information Technology

88. Varian Medical Systems Inc | United States | Health Care

89. Sonova Holding AG | Switzerland | Health Care

90. Outotec OYJ | Finland | Industrials

91. Merck & Co Inc | United States | Health Care

92. General Mills Inc | United States | Consumer Staples

93. Smiths Group PLC | United Kingdom | Industrials

94. Applied Materials Inc | United States | Information Technology

95. ASML Holding NV | Netherlands | Information Technology

96. Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide | Germany | Industrials

97. RELX PLC | United Kingdom | Industrials

98. Lenovo Group Ltd | China | Information Technology

99. General Electric Co | United States | Industrials

100. Autodesk Inc | United States | Information Technology

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The World's Most Sustainable Companies 2017

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With 2016 being the second-warmest year on record, and with issues like high executive pay and diversity gaining more awareness, you may be curious to know what companies care most about sustainability. Since 2005, Toronto-based magazine and research firm Corporate Knights has put together the Global 100, an annual list of the world's most sustainable companies.

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Hello everyone,

My name is Mesha Ward and I’m on a journey to complete my Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.  I’ve worked for the past 10 years helping customers all over the world.  I hope to use the skills I’ve gained in-flight to successfully complete this course.  I also hope to learn a few things that will help me succeed in my future expeditions.

Good luck to everyone this semester.

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Career Stages. I picked this topic because I am in the midst of changing careers. I feel like I am starting all over with these stages and at times it can be scary. I've included a link to a website about the different career stages.

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Career Stages. I picked this topic because I am in the midst of changing careers. I feel like I am starting all over with these stages and at times it can be scary. I've included a link to a website about the different career stages.

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The proper way to analyze and discuss careers is to look at them as made up of stages. We can identify five career stages that most people will go through during their adult years, regardless of the type of work they do. These stages are exploration, establishment, mid-career, late career and decline.

Many of the critical choices individuals make about their careers are made prior to entering the workforce on a paid basis. Very early in our lives, our parents and teachers begin to narrow our alternatives and lead us in certain directions.

The careers of our parents, their aspirations for their children and their financial sources are crucial factors in determining our perception of what careers are open to us.

The exploration period ends for most of us in our mid-twenties as we make the transition from college to work. From an organisational standpoint this stage has little relevance since it occurs prior to employment.

However, this period is not irrelevant because it is a time when a number of expectations about one's career are developed, many of which are unrealistic. Such expectations may lie dormant for years and then pop up later to frustrate both the employee and the employer.

The establishment period begins with the search for work and includes our First job, being accepted by our peers, learning the job and gaining the first tangible evidence of success or failure in the real world. It is a time which begins with uncertainties, anxieties and risks.

It is also marked by making mistakes and learning from these mistakes and the gradual assumption of increased responsibilities. However, the individual in this stage has yet to reach his peak productivity and rarely gets the job that carries great power or high status.

Most people do not face their first severe dilemmas until they reach their mid-career stage. This is a time when individuals may continue their prior improvements in performance or begin to deteriorate. At this point in a career, one is expected to have moved beyond apprenticeship to worker-status.

Those who make a successful transition assume greater responsibilities and get rewards. For others, it may be a time for reassessment, job changes, adjustment of priorities or the pursuit of alternative lifestyles.

For those who continue to grow through the mid- career stage, the late career usually is a pleasant time when one is allowed the luxury to relax a bit. It is the time when one can enjoy the respect given to him by younger employees. During the late career, individuals are no longer learning, they teach others on the basis of the knowledge they have gained.

To those who have stagnated during the previous stage, the late career brings the reality that they cannot change the world as they had once thought.

It is a time when individuals have decreased work mobility and may be locked into their current job. One starts looking forward to retirement and the opportunities of doing something different.
5. Decline
The final stage in one's career is difficult for everyone but it is hardest for those who have had continued successes in the earlier stages. After several decades of continuous achievements and high levels of performance, the time has come for retirement.

Managers should be more concerned with the match for new employees and those just beginning their employment careers. Successful placement at this stage should provide significant advantages to both the organisation and the individual.

Many employees lack proper information about career options. As managers identify career-paths that successful employees follow within the organisation, they should publish this information. To provide information to all employees about job openings, managers can use job posting.

Job posting provides a channel by which the organisation lets employees know what jobs are available and what requirements they will have to fulfill to achieve the promotions to which they may aspire.

One of the most logical parts of a career development programme is career counseling. This can be made part of an individual's annual performance review. The career counseling process should contain the following elements:

(a) The employee's goals, aspirations and expectations with regard to his own career for the next five or six years;

(b) The manager's view of the opportunities available and the degree to which the employee's aspirations are realistic and match with the opportunities available;

(c) Identification of what the employee would have to do in the way of further self-development to qualify for new opportunities;

(d) New job assignments that would prepare the employee for further career growth.

Training and educational development activities reduce the possibilities that employees will find themselves with obsolete skills. When these development activities are properly aligned with an individual's aspirations and organisational needs, they become an essential element in an employee's career growth.

In addition to encouraging employees to continue their education and training so as to prevent obsolescence and stimulate career growth, managers should be aware that periodic job changes can achieve similar ends.

Job changes can take the form of vertical promotions, lateral transfers or assignments organised around new tasks.

Available evidence suggests that employees who receive challenging job assignments early in their careers do better on their jobs. The degree of stimulation and challenge in a person's initial job assignment tends to be significantly related to later career success and retention in the organisation.

Initial challenges, if they are successfully met, stimulate a person to perform well in later years. There are definite benefits for managers who correctly fill positions with individuals who have the ability and interest to satisfy the job's demands.

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5 Different Career Stages for an Employee

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ADVERTISEMENTS: The proper way to analyze and discuss careers is to look at them as made up of stages. We can identify five career stages that most people will go through during their adult years, regardless of the type of work they do. These stages are exploration, establishment, mid-career, late career and decline.

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As a manager I feel it's important to be actively involved in promoting those you are responsible for.