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Equal rights for women in desired positions! (Module 1)

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Equal rights for women in desired positions! (Module 1)

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Module 1 stood out to me because it reflected on management skills, the process, and choosing a career in management. But mostly because it talked about the issues that women face in the business industry and the fact that they may have more skills but the morale is not there for women like it is for men. However the future is proving change towards the equality towards women with empowered positions in the workplace.

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By now I'm sure we have realized that there has to be a lot of challenges in managing a diverse workplace, but what are some of the ways that can help us with these challenges. I found this article and it not only names the challenges but it gives us some of the ways that can help us get passed these challenges as well.

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Hiring a diverse staff for your business creates a workforce that possesses a wide range of skills, talents and ideas. It is your job to make the most of the diversity present in your company. Challenges exist in guiding a population that differs in personalities and cultures, but you can overcome these difficulties so your business prospers.

Language Issues

When you have workers who hail from various regions of the world, there will likely be some difficulties in communication. Some on your staff might speak a limited amount of English, making it difficult to converse. Language issues can be overcome by time, patience and investment. For instance, if you have multiple staff members who speak Spanish as their first language, you can learn some common words and phrases to facilitate your directives. Also, offering to offset tuition for classes in English as a second language can be helpful.

Respect

Part of your duties as the leader of a diverse workforce is to ensure everyone is treated with dignity. Mandate that all workers treat their peers respectfully and announce that any rude behavior will subject the offender to disciplinary measures. Do not, for instance, allow racial epithets or jokes on the job. Monitor email communications to ensure they are free from materials that might offend others. Conduct staff meetings to address how employees should show respect for their fellow workers. Encourage the staff to express concerns so an open dialogue can begin. Promote collaboration between diverse individuals so the participants can learn to relate to one another.

Fairness

One of the key challenges you face in dealing with diversity in your company is ensuring each worker is treated fairly. This does not mean you can treat everyone the same, as different individuals have different needs. For example, if one of your workers has a visual disability, you might need to provide him with specific equipment to aid him in his work. Another employee might need a particular day off because of a religious observance. Be willing to work with all types of people so that equity is maintained in your establishment.

Inclusion

Inclusion of all employees is often a challenging part of diversity management. People often segregate themselves into groups in which they are comfortable. It is your job to help workers integrate so that the company and its individuals profit through associations. For instance, build teamwork between diverse groups by assigning individuals of different ethnicity, ages and genders to work together on projects. Engage workers in activities that promote the feeling that everyone in the workplace belongs and is valued.

About the Author

Lisa Mooney has been a professional writer for more than 18 years. She has worked with various clients including many Fortune 500 companies such as Pinkerton Inc. She has written for many publications including Woman's World, Boy's Life and Dark Horizons. Mooney holds bachelor's degrees in both English and biology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Hiring a diverse staff for your business creates a workforce that possesses a wide range of skills, talents and ideas. It is your job to make the most of the diversity present in your company. Challenges exist in guiding a population that differs in personalities and cultures, but you can overcome these difficulties ...

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Why is Diversity important to business? (Module 3)

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Why is Diversity important to business? (Module 3)

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My thoughts on diversity are that it's important to know other cultures and backgrounds for bigger going to be of different races, genders, religions, and sexual orientations and it should be celebrated.

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They say variety is the spice of life, yet some are still actively shying away from embracing their differences. Diversity is important in all aspects of life, and this is particularly true in the working world. There are a number of reasons why it's important to garner a diverse workforce and I will address this in more detail, below.

Why you should celebrate diversity

If everyone were the same, the world would be a boring place, and it's important in business to always be progressing and innovating. Put simply, diversity equals creativity. If everyone on your team was from the same background, of a similar age or gender, they would likely have similar ways of thinking. Which is perfect for autonomy, but not for creativity.

A diverse workforce will bring different ideas and new ways of thinking to the table. They'll be able to better serve your client or customer base. Members of staff that come from a range of backgrounds will have had different experiences, giving them a greater understanding of different points of views. This can be useful for empathising or problem solving in various situations, offering more tailored support to clients or customers.

What's more, supporting diversity opens you up to a bigger talent pool. If you are recruiting with a strict set of criteria in mind, you could be losing out on talented candidates. By widening the search and embracing diversity, you could find your perfect recruit.

Not only this, but a diverse workforce can add to your employer brand and company culture. Today's professionals appreciate diversification and want to work for exciting, forward thinking companies. By creating this kind of workforce, you can attract talented candidates, as well as retain existing members of staff who are glad to be part of an exciting company.
The reality is that everyone has a gender, a race, a sexuality and this year has raised profound questions for all of us as we think about our identity in the workplace.
Four steps to supporting diversity in your business

There are a number of ways to diversify your workforce. Starting from the hiring process, spanning through to your core values, check out our four tips for embracing diversity in your business.

(1) Keep an open mind when hiring

Ensure you keep an open mind when hiring. As mentioned above, you risk shutting yourself off from some great candidates if your search is too narrow. Instead, be willing to meet with people you might not have previously considered. You could even set tasks during your recruitment process to see which potential recruits are most creative. Remember to keep an open mind - you might find your perfect hire!

(2) Create an open and honest culture

Create a culture where staff are always encouraged to be themselves. It's likely that everyone has a more professional persona when they're at work, but it's important that no one feel repressed or like they have to hide. Depending on the nature of your business, you might even allow casual dress, giving staff another opportunity to express themselves and show off who they really are.

(3) Organise team-building exercises

A great way to make sure you're getting the most from your workforce is to ensure that staff are working as a team. Team building exercises can be a useful tool for employees to get to know one another, and encourage them to celebrate their differences and work better together. These can be fun social activities or perhaps even team brainstorms where everyone can bounce ideas off one another.

(4) Encourage staff to share ideas

No matter what role they play in the business, it's always great to hear when someone has a new idea. Create a culture of sharing, where employees are encouraged to come forward with any ideas they may have, and where everyone works together as a team to make these ideas a reality. As previously mentioned, diversity will lead to higher levels of creative thinking.

Overall, there are a number of benefits for embracing diversity in your business. From the get-go make it a part of your values and culture, encouraging employees to be themselves, share their ideas and support one another. This will not only help you to attract and recruit, but also retain an innovative and diverse workforce.
Diversity and inclusion is an increasingly hot topic in society at large, but also specifically in business. What's less clear, when thinking of the issue in relation to the corporate sphere, is what does it really mean?

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Why a diverse workforce is so important to business

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They say variety is the spice of life, yet some are still actively shying away from embracing their differences. Diversity is important in all aspects of life, and this is particularly true in the working world. There are a number of reasons why it's important to garner a diverse workforce and I will address this in more detail, below.

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A view of the lines of management and the need of skills (Module 1)

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A view of the lines of management and the need of skills (Module 1)

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Any line of management has to have more of one skill then the other. In this picture it shows the need of the skills and the amount of need for each one. As you can see once you move to a top level of management your skill level is more conceptual then anything else while still having a need of other skills as well.

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Sometimes its nice to see other views on how to be a successful manager through other peoples eyes. There are always new and imporved ways to be someone who is a successful leader in the work force. Susan M. Heathfield wrote an article for the balance careers site on just that and I enjoyed the way she put her points out there. It was simple yet seemed effective.

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An effective manager pays attention to many facets of management, leadership and learning within an organization. So, it's difficult to take the topic of management success and say that the following ten items are the most important for success. Legions of articles and books profess to have the answer. Many are variations on the same theme. Others profess to add a new characteristic or skill.

There are, however, seven management skills without which you won't become a successful manager. These are the key and critical skills which will help you lead your team and encourage employees to want to follow you. And, when employees want to follow you, you have accomplished a key component of managing employees.

Successful managers know what employees need to work effectively, stay productive, and contribute to a thrilled customer experience and a harmonious workplace. They know the behaviors that a manager needs to stay away from to encourage successful employees.

Managers who want to succeed also understand that they are the most significant factor in whether employees are motivated to want to show up for work. A bad manager is frequently cited as a key reason why employees quit their jobs.

Striving for greatness as a manager should top every manager's goal list. The difference that a great manager can make in the work lives of employees is inestimable. Helping employees feel rewarded, recognized, and thanked is also key to performing effectively as a manager.

The most important issue in management success, however, is being a person that others want to follow. Every action you take during your career in an organization helps determine whether people will one day want to follow you. Without followers, you cannot lead and manage. So, use these seven tips to be the successful manager that you aspire to become.

A successful manager, one whom others want to follow, performs the following actions effectively:

Builds effective and responsive interpersonal relationships. Reporting staff members, colleagues and executives respect his or her ability to demonstrate caring, collaboration, respect, trust, and attentiveness. They depend on this manager to treat colleagues with dignity and respect, to keep his word, to exude integrity, and display dependability and character under even the most challenging occurrences and challenges.

Communicates effectively in person, print, texts, and email. Listening and two-way feedback characterize interactions with others. The manager is also open to receiving feedback from colleagues and reporting staff. He avoids a defensive response and is willing to change his behavior when the feedback is on target. But, mostly, he understands and acts upon the power of interaction.

Builds the team and enables other staff to collaborate more effectively with each other. People feel as if they have become more-more effective, more creative, more productive-in the presence of a team builder. She is willing to sit down and problem solve when teamwork or team tasks are not on target and working effectively. She's able to let employees know directly and candidly when they are impeding the team's progress.

Understands the financial aspects of the business and sets goals and measures and documents staff progress and success. This allows the team to feel a sense of progress, that they are reaching goals and exceeding expectations. People want to know how they are performing against expectations at work.
Financial and other goals let them know. Painting a picture that employees can agree on is effective for noting progress when numerical goals don't exist. Good managers understand and play the appropriate role in creating this picture, feedback, and communication.

Knows how to create an environment in which people experience positive morale and recognition and employees are motivated to work hard for the success of the business. Understands that she is the most significant factor in whether employees are happy at work. Her interaction with employees sets the tone for the workplace every day.

Leads by example and sets the pace via her expectations and behavior. She provides recognition when others do the same. She walks her talk. Employees know that she is the real deal because she says and does the same thing.

Helps people grow and develop their skills and capabilities through education and on-the-job learning. Brings career pathing to employees so that they continue to grow and develop. Makes employee career and personal development a priority in the workplace. Employees feel as if their manager cares about their careers and progress. This is one of the most significant factors that employees need from work.

Know a few more characteristics of management success? These are just a start, but they're a good start. You'll want to begin with these skills and attributes when you decide to aim for management success.

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An effective manager pays attention to many facets of management, leadership and learning within an organization. So, it's difficult to take the topic of management success and say that the following ten items are the most important for success. Legions of articles and books profess to have the answer.

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The Management Process in 3-D!! (Module 1)

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The Management Process in 3-D!! (Module 1)

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One article I found that helped me in the management process was actually a 3-D diagram that came from Harvard Business. Some people learn things easier when they have a visual and for this reason I found this to be extremely helpful for module 1

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To many businessmen who are trying to keep up with management concepts, the literature must sometimes seem more confusing than enlightening. In addition to reflecting differences of opinion and semantics, it generally comes to the reader in fragments. The aim of this diagram is not to give the executive new information, but to help him put the pieces together.

The chart of "The Management Process," begins with the three basic elements with which a manager deals: ideas, things, and people. Management of these three elements is directly related to conceptual thinking (of which planning is an essential part), administration, and leadership. Not surprisingly, two scholars have identified the first three types of managers required in organizations as the planner, the administrator, and the leader. ¹

This diagram shows the different elements, functions, and activities which are part of the management process. At the center are people, ideas, and things, for these are the basic components of every organization with which the manager must work. Ideas create the need for conceptual thinking; things, for administration; people, for leadership.

Exhibit 1 The management process

Three functions-problem analysis, decision making, and communication-are important at all times and in all aspects of the manager's job; therefore, they are shown to pemeate his work process. However, other functions are likely to occur in predictable sequence; thus, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling are shown in that order on one of the bands. A manager's interest in any one of them depends on a variety of factors, including his position and the stage of completion of the projects he is most concerned with. He must at all times sense the pulse of his organization. The activities that will be most important to him as he concentrates-now on one function, then on another-are shown on the outer bands of the diagram.

Note the distinction between leader and manager. The terms should not be used interchangeably. While a good manager will often be a good leader, and vice versa, this is not necessarily the case. For example:

In World War II, General George Patton was known for his ability to lead and inspire men on the battlefield, but not for his conceptual abilities. In contrast, General Omar Bradley was known for his conceptual abilities, especially planning and managing a campaign, rather than for his leadership.

Similarly in industry, education, and government it is possible to have an outstanding manager who is not capable of leading people but who, if he recognizes this deficiency, will staff his organization to compensate for it. Alternatively, an entrepreneur may possess charismatic qualities as a leader, yet may lack the administrative capabilities required for overall effective management; and he too must staff to make up for the deficiency.

We are not dealing here with leadership in general. We are dealing with leadership as a function of management. Nor are we dealing with administration in general but, again, as a function of management.

The following definitions are suggested for clarity and simplicity:

Management-achieving objectives through others.

Administration-managing the details of executive affairs.

Leadership-influencing people to accomplish desired objectives.

Functions described

The functions noted in the diagram have been selected after careful study of the works of many leading writers and teachers. ² While the authorities use different terms and widely varying classifications of functions, I find that there is far more agreement among them than the variations suggest.

Arrows are placed on the diagram to indicate that five of the functions generally tend to be "sequential." More specifically, in an undertaking one ought first to ask what the purpose or objective is which gives rise to the function of planning; then comes the function of organizing-determining the way in which the work is to be broken down into manageable units; after that is staffing, selecting qualified people to do the work; next is directing, bringing about purposeful action toward desired objectives; finally, the function of control is the measurement of results against the plan, the rewarding of the people according to their performance, and the replanning of the work to make corrections-thus starting the cycle over again as the process repeats itself.

Three functions-analyzing problems, making decisions, and communicating-are called "general" or "continuous" functions because they occur throughout the management process rather than in any particular sequence. For example, many decisions will be made throughout the planning process as well as during the organizing, directing, and controlling processes. Equally, there must be communication for many of the functions and activities to be effective. And the active manager will be employing problem analysis throughout all of the sequential functions of management.

In actual practice, of course, the various functions and activities tend to merge. While selecting a top manager, for example, an executive may well be planning new activities which this manager's capabilities will make possible, and may even be visualizing the organizational impact of these plans and the controls which will be necessary.

Simplified definitions are added for each of the functions and activities to ensure understanding of what is meant by the basic elements described.

Prospective gains

Hopefully, this diagram of the management process will produce a variety of benefits for practitioners and students. Among these benefits are:

A unified concept of managerial functions and activities.

A way to fit together all generally accepted activities of management.

A move toward standardization of terminology.

The identifying and relating of such activities as problem analysis, management of change, and management of differences.

Help to beginning students of management in seeing the "boundaries of the ballpark" and sensing the sequential relationships of others.

Clearer distinctions between the leadership, administrative, and strategic planning functions of management.

In addition, the diagram should appeal to those who, like myself, would like to see more emphasis on the "behaviorist" functions of management, for it elevates staffing and communicating to the level of a function. Moreover, it establishes functions and activities as the two most important terms for describing the job of the manager.

1. See H. Igor Ansoff and R.G. Brandenburg, "The General Manager of the Future," California Management Review, Spring 1969, p. 61.

2. The following studies were particularly helpful: Harold Koontz, Toward a Unified Theory of Management (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964); Philip W. Shay, "The Theory and Practice of Management," Association of Consulting Management Engineers, 1967; Louis A. Allen, The Management Profession (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), a particularly useful analysis of managerial functions and activities; Ralph C. Davis, Fundamentals of Top Management (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1951); Harold F. Smiddy, "GE's Philosophy & Approach for Manager Development," General Management Series # 174, American Management Association, 1955; George R. Terry, Principles of Management (Homewood, Illinois, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1956); William H. Newman, Administrative Action (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1950); Lawrence A. Appley, Values in Management (New York, American Management Association, 1969); Ordway Tead, Administration: Its Purpose and Performance (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1959); Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York, Harper & Row, 1954).

A version of this article appeared in the November 1969 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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To many businessmen who are trying to keep up with management concepts, the literature must sometimes seem more confusing than enlightening. In addition to reflecting differences of opinion and semantics, it generally comes to the reader in fragments. The aim of this diagram is not to give the executive new information, but to help him [...]

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Who's going to be the Kolin Kaepernick of Business?! (Module 3)

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Who's going to be the Kolin Kaepernick of Business?! (Module 3)

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When going over Module 3 I found this article and thought of management and diversity. The article hits good points when it comes to diversity in the work place. Diversity has to do with all races, ethnicities, religions, social classes, abilities, and sexual orientations. The focus in the article is dealing with Kolin Kaepernicks stand and applying that to the workplace.

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"The fact that we're in this situation is a real problem and it's embarrassing for corporate America," Mr. Chenault said, speaking at the DealBook conference.

It's not just chief executives. The number of women filling Fortune 500 board seats declined by two percentage points between 2015 and 2016, according to Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor; it is the first drop for women since the study began in 2009. Asian-Americans, blacks and Hispanics saw a rise over last year, but combined they still make up just 22 percent of incoming board members.

And according to Black Enterprise magazine, 197 of the top S&P 500 companies have no black directors.

This is despite studies, including an often-cited one by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, that shows that companies with more diverse leadership teams perform better financially.

In an interview after her speech, Ms. Hobson said she thought the push for diversity was now "in limbo."

"I think the Great Recession moved us backwards," she said.

Not everyone agrees. Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of Expedia and IAC, who attended the conference, points to his company and Coca-Cola, whose board he sits on, as firms that "have invested huge amounts in diversity."

"Expedia has started a very aggressive push," he said. "It's not lip service or grandstanding. It's not perfection, but I disagree there hasn't been progress."

Most who observe the trends are less sanguine and think the problem is not finding capable candidates, but hiring them.

"Despite the depressing numbers that we see out there, the reality is that there are incredibly qualified people who can move into those positions," Mr. Chenault said. "But you've got to put them into the pipeline."

So, to use Ms. Hobson's analogy, what would "taking a knee" for diversity in corporate America look like? "Putting a stake in numbers," she said. "Establishing benchmarks and making people accountable with incentives or penalties."

Karen Kaplan, chief executive of the Hill Holliday advertising agency, who was at the conference, said she thought Ms. Hobson's speech was "really, really powerful. And it was not lost on me that there were not very many people of color in that room."

One point Ms. Hobson and others made repeatedly is that companies must be as intentional in promoting diversity as they are in promoting profits.

"We have to force behaviors," said Laurence D. Fink, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock, the global investment management company. At BlackRock, compensation can be affected, he said, if certain diversity levels are not reached. Mr. Chenault, who was speaking on the same panel as Mr. Fink, said his company was doing the same.

If leadership does not aggressively pursue change in this area - not only in recruiting, but also in developing women and minority talent - then shareholders will, Mr. Fink warned, adding, "If we are not a mirror of who our clients are, we're going to fail."

But diversity is not colorblindness, Mr. Chenault said.

"When someone says to me, 'When I look at you, Ken, I don't see color,' I say, 'Then you've got a problem because I'm very proud about who I am. So, don't deny I'm African-American. Accept me for who I am, engage with me, but don't deny my heritage. That's important because we don't have enough honest discussions about race in this country.'"

Purposeful change also means reassessing longstanding assumptions and practices, said Dale E. Jones, president and chief executive of Diversified Search, an executive recruitment firm.

For example, he said, when boards of directors look to replace or add directors, they often narrowly focus their search on sitting chief executives, chief financial officers or chief operating officers.

"When the criteria are so restrictive, there are fewer people of color or women," he added. "They need to look beyond the C-suite."

Companies also have to push back when recruiters or their own hiring people fail to find a mixture of candidates. In her presentation, Ms. Hobson told the story of a friend of hers, a chief executive, who wanted to fill a high-level position with someone different from his all-white leadership team.

"His search team came back with three candidates - none were diverse," she said. "They explained they just couldn't find anyone." So, she said, the chief executive said he simply wouldn't fill the position.

"They found someone," Ms. Hobson said.

Upacala Mapatuna, the chief investment officer with Victory Park Capital, a private equity firm, has seen the recruitment problem.

"We have attempted to ensure that our funnel of candidates include a number of women and minorities," said Ms. Mapatuna, who was attending the conference, "and I've had discussions with a number of private equity firms that appear to be focused on this."

Nonetheless, she added, too often when her company is presented with a slate of job candidates, "diverse applicants are few and far between." One reason, she said, may be that "candidates are often identified through informal networks, which often tend to be homogeneous."

Coming from the recruiting side, Mr. Jones noted that "you have to have multiple slates of females and minorities - not just one woman and one nonwhite for clients. We constantly have to re-educate the client about an expanded pool, which can include those who might not be in one of the top three positions in a company."

One systemic way to promote more diversity, specifically on boards of directors, could be through staggered term limits of eight to 12 years, he added.

"Only 4 percent of boards in the Fortune 100 have term limits, and because of this, there will be slower movement of elder statesmen," he said. "Most people get on boards in their 50s and they could have a 25-year run."

Bonnie Gwin, vice chairwoman and co-managing partner of global C.E.O. and Board Practice at Heidrick & Struggles, said that in Britain, de facto term limits "didn't add a lot of diversity." Even so, "it seems to me intuitively it would be more opportunity to bring in diversity," she said. "I think it's one tool some companies can use."

Deb Henretta, former global president of e-business at Procter & Gamble, sits on three public boards and has long followed this issue.

"It is discouraging to see the lack of progress," she said. "It's always scary to the majority that have more than their fair share of representation to give it up. But just because it's scary, doesn't mean it isn't right."

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Mellody Hobson Says the Time for Corporate Diversity Is Now

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"The fact that we're in this situation is a real problem and it's embarrassing for corporate America," Mr. Chenault said, speaking at the DealBook conference. It's not just chief executives. The number of women filling Fortune 500 board seats declined by two percentage points between 2015 and 2016, according to Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor; it is the first drop for women since the study began in 2009.

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Philanthropy and its evolution to now (Module 2)

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Philanthropy and its evolution to now (Module 2)

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Philanthropy is another way for companies to take care of their social responsibility. It's a way to give back through charities and donations to social causes. I wondered how it has changed over the years and Stanford did the research. This article helped me understand more of how this is happening now as opposed to how it was when it first started in the business world. Sometimes things evolve so rapidly that you never get to fully understand how they work but now collaborative philanthropy is a new effort and is helping make a bigger difference for the world markets.

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Today, all over the globe, we have a generation of remarkable social change leaders. They are proving it's possible to make progress against global challenges, at the individual and community-level, and are now pivoting to focus on solving these problems at scale in deeper partnership with government, other NGOs, and the private sector.

We also have more philanthropists with more resources than ever before, many of whom share a strong aspiration for massive and enduring impact. As the New York Times recently noted, "Many new philanthropists appear less interested in naming a business school after themselves than in changing the world." The number of billionaires worldwide is increasing rapidly, and a survey by Barclays Wealth Management found that 70 percent of billionaires globally report that they are active in philanthropy. The Giving Pledge has now mobilized some 170 wealthy individuals and families from 21 countries to pledge to give away at least half their estimated net worth of more than $800 billion.

These unprecedented assets are well poised to help drive systems change-to fundamentally address broken systems by bringing together the central actors associated with a social issue to produce significant and enduring improvements for millions of people.

Unfortunately, a critical market failure is getting in the way: There are few effective mechanisms to match leaders looking to solve social issues at scale with the philanthropists interested in providing the right size and kinds of capital, and the partners needed to succeed. Consequently, these two types of powerful assets remain relatively disconnected, causing both to fall short of their full potential for impact. As Andrew Youn, co-founder and CEO of One Acre Fund, said to me:

Social change leaders are often conditioned to think small. Every year, we try to fill our organization's annual budget. But on rare occasion, visionary philanthropy challenges us to think bigger-to envision changing the whole system. Humanity's greatest challenges are actually solvable, when organizations with practical and scalable solutions are linked with the transformative funding required to truly pursue such work.

In recent years, I've spoken to hundreds of philanthropists and social change leaders around the world about this market failure. My work and experience have led me to conclude that if we are to realize our potential, we must first overcome three main barriers:
1. Most giving remains relatively small and fragmented, and not aligned with what's required for large-scale and enduring impact.
Even the most proven social change leaders struggle to piece together the funding and support to pursue enduring impact at national, regional, or global scale, and have to spend extraordinary time and effort doing so. Most grants are less than $10 million, short-term (1-2 years in duration), often restricted in use, and highly fragmented (with many different funders each imposing their own requirements). This behavior directly contradicts what practitioners tell us they need. It also contradicts what we are learning is required to achieve significant and enduring results at scale-in particular, flexible and coordinated investments of a scale and duration commensurate with the challenge and ambition of the work, and focused on supporting the kind of collaborative work that can achieve lasting change.

Furthermore, social change leaders lack easy access to the kinds of nonfinancial supports that can significantly accelerate systems change work. Expertise and capacity in diverse areas such as policy, law, technology, marketing, and performance management can be essential ingredients for success. Additionally, the voice, networks and convening power of donors can be extraordinary assets to the cause. Yet, relatively few philanthropists today offer this kind of holistic support-and few change leaders have the resources to secure it on their own. As one remarkable leader shared with me, "I wish that instead of saying, 'How are you going to achieve change at scale?', donors instead would ask, 'How can we help you to achieve change at scale?'"
2. Investment-ready systems change efforts are rare; few social change leaders have built robust strategies, capabilities and partnerships to drive systems change, although many have the vision and ability to do so.
There are examples of visionary social change leaders and organizations driving systems change today and throughout history. Vicky Colbert and the transformation of Colombia's rural education system with the Escuela Nueva model, Evan Wolfson and the Marriage Equality movement in the United States, and the Marine Stewardship Council's work to make the world's seafood markets sustainable are a few such examples.

Yet these are still relatively few and far between, which isn't surprising given the challenges and lack of support for them in the funding marketplace described above. I've met with leaders from many proven organizations who are eager-and have already started-to develop compelling and deeply credible plans and partnerships for systems change efforts, but many need targeted support (and encouragement in the form of a realistic funding opportunity) to get their initiatives to a place where they are ready for substantial large-scale investment.
3. There aren't enough efficient mechanisms for philanthropists to find and support high-potential investments, and to connect and collaborate with one another in a deep and meaningful way, especially across borders.
Many philanthropists want to make substantial investments to help address the world's problems. However, without setting up one's own large foundation, it can be difficult to find, vet, structure, and support efforts to drive results at scale. As the CEO of a well-capitalized small family foundation lamented to me, "There are so many reports about the power of making big bets, but if I want to write such a check, I don't know where to write it. There's no one to source and build out the opportunity, or to support it over time."

In addition, when funders collaborate, they can better help convene others, encourage coalitions of actors across sectors, and bring additional capital and resources from government, multilateral, corporate, and institutional partners. They can also bring different assets and expertise, which can be particularly important when supporting complex systems change efforts. Furthermore, even the most experienced and thoughtful donors can sometimes pull grantees in opposite directions with different perspectives on strategy, and so aligning around one joint vision can be hugely helpful in driving towards large-scale results. However, with a few important exceptions, much philanthropy today remains remarkably siloed.

A New, Replicable Model of Collaborative Philanthropy

In response, today we are launching Co-Impact, a new effort in collaborative philanthropy that brings together donors from across the globe to drive large-scale results for millions of people across the developing world.

We believe that collaboration is critical to solving some of the world's most daunting social challenges, and that this requires new and better mechanisms to efficiently match outstanding social change leaders and committed philanthropists with one another and their peers. Our goal is to build a platform and community in which committed philanthropists from around the world give and learn alongside one another in deep and meaningful ways while driving extraordinary results. And we hope to build a strong case for more philanthropists to collaborate and drive results at scale.

Co-Impact will start by investing $500 million over the next several years in high-potential systems change efforts, conceived and driven by proven social change leaders working in the areas of health, education, and economic opportunity for underserved populations across the developing world. Our core partners will collaboratively advise on strategy and select which efforts to fund; other donors will join as co-investors on particular opportunities, and our Co-Impact Network provides the chance for a broader set of individual donors to connect, learn, and engage.

Co-Impact is explicitly designed to address the three barriers articulated above: Each of our systems change grants will be for up to $50 million and five years. Each will have a single, unified set of requirements and reporting, as well as access to a comprehensive suite of nonfinancial supports, including technical assistance for things such as strategic planning, program management, technology, policy and advocacy, government relations, measurement and evaluation, and leveraging additional funding. And each will be backed by our community of donors, bringing their voice, convening power, and expertise, and giving together in alignment around one joint vision.

We have been inspired by efforts like Blue Meridian Partners, which is a partnership of impact-driven philanthropists seeking to change the odds for America's children and youth living in poverty, and Dasra, which has been working toward building a "thriving ecosystem" that enables knowledge creation, capacity building, strategic funding, and collaboration to touch and transform the lives of 800 million Indians.

Most of all, we have been inspired by numerous impressive social change leaders from different parts of the world. We are eager to provide them the financial and nonfinancial support to drive systems change and improve the lives of millions.

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A New Model of Collaborative Philanthropy (SSIR)

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Today, all over the globe, we have a generation of remarkable social change leaders. They are proving it's possible to make progress against global challenges, at the individual and community-level, and are now pivoting to focus on solving these problems at scale in deeper partnership with government, other NGOs, and the private sector.

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How do local companies take on Social Responsibilty? (Module 2)

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How do local companies take on Social Responsibilty? (Module 2)

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Social Responsibility stood out in module 2 and made me wonder what company's in our community give back. When researching I found that a few companies that give back are Comcast, Men's Wearhouse, and McDonalds. The Ronald McDonald house gives to children and their families who need to be close to hospitals for their care. They provide a place to stay, food, and transportation back and forth. To find out more about the Ronald McDonald house you can visit their website and learn how you can also give back to the program helping ill children and their families with every day needs as they receive the treatment they need.

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Home | Keeping Families CloseKeeping Families Close

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© McDonald's Corporation The following trademarks used herein are owned by McDonald's Corporation and its affiliates; McDonald's, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Ronald McDonald House Charities Logo, RMHC, Ronald McDonald House, Ronald McDonald Family Room, and Ronald McDonald Care Mobile. RMHC is recognized as a public charity under Internal Revenue Code section 509(a) and has 501(c)(3) status.

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Does social responsibility actually exist (Module 2)

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Does social responsibility actually exist (Module 2)

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The idea of social responsibility is that a company is responsible for how they impact the health and welfare of a society. The International Organization for Standardization put out an article to help companies define what their responsibility is. The article itself is helpful and is called ISO 26000: Guidance on social responsibility.

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Social Responsibility - What Is SR? | ASQ

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Corporate social responsibility is a means of achieving sustainability for any organization or system. Find guidance on social responsibility at ASQ.org.<

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Steps for achieving sustainability (Module 2)

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Steps for achieving sustainability (Module 2)

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I think everybody knows the feeling of talking to someone from the overseas division of a company (Module 4)

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I think everybody knows the feeling of talking to someone from the overseas division of a company (Module 4)

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Have you ever considered what goes into managing a multinational company? It seems like there would be a lot of hoops to jump through when crossing the borders and dealing with different cultures and introducing something new. Module 4 showed me how this process takes place and how you would manage something that has to face so many different changes from where it started. One of the biggest issues faced is controlling the purchasing costs. When you think about going to a different market you have to consider the currency changes, the supply and demand, and the culture that the product is being introduced to. The article provided below gave some insight into the problems that are faced and how to better deal with them.

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As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks.

Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that 400 midsize emerging-market cities, many unfamiliar in the West, will generate nearly 40 percent of global growth over the next 15 years. The International Monetary Fund confirms that the ten fastest-growing economies during the years ahead will all be in emerging markets. Against this backdrop, continuing advances in information and communications technology have made possible new forms of international coordination within global companies and potential new ways for them to flourish in these fast-growing markets.

There are individual success stories. IBM expects to earn 30 percent of its revenues in emerging markets by 2015, up from 17 percent in 2009. At Unilever, emerging markets make up 56 percent of the business already. And Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in India, now has operations in 40 countries and earns more than half its revenue outside India.

But, overall, global organizations are struggling to adapt. A year ago, we uncovered a "globalization penalty": high-performing global companies consistently scored lower than more locally focused ones on several dimensions of organizational health. For example, the former were less effective at establishing a shared vision, encouraging innovation, executing "on the ground," and building relationships with governments and business partners. Equally arresting was evidence from colleagues in McKinsey's strategy practice showing that global companies headquartered in emerging markets have been growing faster than counterparts headquartered in developed ones, even when both are operating on "neutral turf": emerging markets where neither is based (see " Parsing the growth advantage of emerging-market companies ").

Over the past year, we've tried to understand more clearly the challenges facing global organizations, as well as approaches that are helping some to thrive. Our work has included surveys and structured interviews with more than 300 executives at 17 of the world's leading global organizations spanning a diverse range of sectors and geographies, a broader survey of more than 4,600 executives, and time spent working directly with the leaders of dozens of global organizations trying to address these issues.

Clearly, no single organizational model is best for all companies handling the realities of rapid growth in emerging markets and round-the-clock global communications. That's partly because the opportunities and challenges facing companies vary, depending on their business models. R&D-intensive companies, for example, are working to staff new research centers in the emerging world and to integrate them with existing operations. Firms focused on extracting natural resources are adapting to regulatory regimes that are evolving rapidly and sometimes becoming more interventionist. Consumer-oriented firms are facing sometimes-conflicting imperatives to tailor their businesses to local needs while maintaining consistent global processes.

Another reason no single model fits all global companies is that their individual histories are so different. Those that have grown organically often operate relatively consistently across countries but find it hard to adjust their products and services to local needs, given their fairly standardized business models. Companies that have mainly grown through M&A, in contrast, may find it easier to tailor operations to local markets but harder to integrate their various parts so they can achieve the potential of scale and scope and align a dispersed workforce behind a single set of strategies and values.

Although individual companies are necessarily responding differently to the new opportunities abroad, our work suggests that most face a common set of four tensions in managing strategy, people, costs, and risk on a global scale. The importance of each of these four tensions will vary from company to company, depending on its particular operating model, history, and global footprint. (For more on the implications of these uneven globalization efforts, see " Developing global leaders.") Taking stock of the status of all four tensions can be a useful starting point for a senior-management team aiming to boost an organization's global performance.

Strategic confidence and stretch

Being global brings clear strategic benefits: the ability to access new customer markets, new suppliers, and new partners. These immediate benefits can also create secondary ones. Building a customer base in a new market, for example, provides familiarity and relationships that may enable additional investments-say, in a research center.

But being global also brings strategic challenges. Many companies find it increasingly difficult to be locally flexible and adaptable as they broaden their global footprint. In particular, processes for developing strategy and allocating resources can struggle to cope with the increasing diversity of markets, customers, and channels. These issues were clear in our research: fewer than 40 percent of the 300 senior executives at global companies we interviewed and surveyed believed that their employers were better than local competitors at understanding the operating environment and customers' needs. And barely half of the respondents to our broader survey thought that their companies communicated strategy clearly to the workforce in all markets where they operate.

People as an asset and a challenge

Many of the executives we interviewed believed strongly that the vast reserves of skills, knowledge, and experience within the global workforce of their companies represented an invaluable asset. But making the most of that asset is difficult: for example, few surveyed executives felt that their companies were good at transferring lessons learned in one emerging market to another.

At the same time, many companies find deploying and developing talent in emerging markets to be a major challenge. Barely half the executives at the 17 global companies we studied in depth thought they were effective at tailoring recruiting, retention, training, and development processes for different geographies. An emerging-market leader in one global company told us that "our current process favors candidates who have been to a US school, understand the US culture, and can conduct themselves effectively on a call with head office in the middle of the night. The process is not designed to select for people who understand our market."

One of our recent surveys showed how hard it is to develop talent for emerging markets at a pace that matches their expected growth. Executives reported that just 2 percent of their top 200 employees were located in Asian emerging markets that would, in the years ahead, account for more than one-third of total sales. Complicating matters is the fact that local highfliers in some key markets increasingly prefer to work for local employers (see " How multinationals can attract the talent they need "). Global companies are conscious of this change. "Local competitors' brands are now stronger, and they can offer more senior roles in the home market," noted one multinational executive we interviewed.

Scale and scope benefits, complexity costs

Large global companies still enjoy economic leverage from being able to invest in shared infrastructure ranging from R&D centers to procurement functions. Economies of scale in shared services also are significant, though no longer uniquely available to global companies, as even very local ones can outsource business services and manufacturing and avail themselves of cloud-based computing.

But as global companies grow bigger and more diverse, complexity costs inevitably rise. Efforts to standardize the common elements of essential functions, such as sales or legal services, can clash with local needs. And emerging markets complicate matters, as operations located there sometimes chafe at the costs they must bear as part of a group centered in the developed world: their share of the expense of distant (and perhaps not visibly helpful) corporate and regional centers, the cost of complying with global standards and of coordinating managers across far-flung geographies, and the loss of market agility imposed by adhering to rigid global processes.

Risk diversification and the loss of familiarity

A global company benefits from a geographically diverse business portfolio that provides a natural hedge against the volatility of local growth, country risk, and currency risk. But pursuing so many emerging-market opportunities is taking global companies deep into areas with unfamiliar risks that many find difficult to evaluate. Less than half of the respondents to our 2011 survey thought these organizations had the right risk-management infrastructure and skills to support the global scale and diversity of their operations.

Furthermore, globally standard, exhaustive risk-management processes may not be the best way to deal with risk in markets where global organizations must move fast to lock in early opportunities. One executive in an emerging-market outpost of a global company told us "a mind-set that 'this is the way that we do things around here' is very strongly embedded in our risk process. When combined with the fact that the organization does not fully understand emerging markets, it means that our risk process might reject opportunities that [the global] CEO would approve."

Understanding these tensions is just a starting point. Capturing the benefits and mitigating the challenges associated with each will require global companies to explore new ways of organizing and operating.

About the author(s)

Martin Dewhurst is a director in McKinsey's London office, where Suzanne Heywood is a principal; Jon Harris is a director in the New York office.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Kate Aquila and Roni Katz to the development of this article.

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As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks. Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

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A lot of planning to go abroad....... (Module 4)

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A lot of planning to go abroad....... (Module 4)

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A lot of planning goes into running a multinational company and there is a lot of things in place to make sure certain measures are taken to make this happen. There are international marketing agreements that are in place for these measures, they are The European Union (EUI), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). One that has recently been going through some changes is the one that affects us the most. President Trump is trying to arrange a new deal for NAFTA. To get a little bit of insight on the new deal I turned to the New York Times!!

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President Trump with Mexico's trade negotiators on Monday. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON - President Trump said on Monday that the United States and Mexico had reached an accord to revise key portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement and would finalize it within days, suggesting he was ready to jettison Canada from the trilateral trade pact if the country did not get on board quickly.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump promoted the preliminary agreement with Mexico as a deal that could replace Nafta and threatened to hit Canada with auto tariffs if it did not "negotiate fairly."

"They used to call it Nafta," Mr. Trump said. "We're going to call it the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement," adding that the term Nafta - which he has called the "worst" trade deal in history - had "a bad connotation" for the United States.

Yet while Mr. Trump may try to change the name, the agreement reached with Mexico is simply a revised Nafta, with updates to provisions surrounding the digital economy, automobiles, agriculture and labor unions. The core of the trade pact - which allows American companies to operate in Mexico and Canada without tariffs - remains intact.

Now, the question becomes whether a trilateral pact becomes a bilateral deal - or Mr. Trump's threats pressure Canada to return to the negotiating table and accede to many of the United States' demands.

At the G-7 summit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada expressed his opposition to President Trump's trade policies and American tariffs on Canadian steel. Published On Credit Credit Image by Doug Mills/The New York Times

The president's apparent willingness to move on without Canada prompted confusion and concern among lawmakers - who said it may not be legally permissible, let alone smart - and businesses whose supply chains depend on a deal encompassing all three countries.

"Because of the massive amount of movement of goods between the three countries and the integration of operations which make manufacturing in our country more competitive, it is imperative that a trilateral agreement be inked," Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement.

Mexican officials said on Monday that they wanted to have Canada back in the process and were working toward a trilateral deal by the end of the week. President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, who joined the White House announcement via phone, said, "It is our wish, Mr. President, that now Canada will also be able to be incorporated in all this."

But later in the day, Luis Videgaray Caso, Mexico's foreign minister, signaled that Mexico might be willing to move forward without Canada.

"There are things that we don't control, particularly the political relationship between Canada and the U.S., and we definitely don't want to expose Mexico to the uncertainty of not having a deal," Mr. Videgaray said in an interview. "Not having a trade agreement with the U.S., that's a substantial risk to the Mexican economy. Literally millions of jobs in Mexico depend on access to the U.S. market."

Both the Mexicans and the Americans have been eager to reach a fully revised deal by the end of August, a date that would give the Trump administration enough time to notify Congress that a deal had been finalized and still have that deal be signed by the outgoing Mexican administration of Mr. Peña Nieto.

"Ideally we'll have the Canadians involved," said Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, adding that the administration planned to officially inform Congress by Friday of its intent to sign a new deal, a step required before Congress votes on a trade pact. "If we don't have Canada involved, we will notify that we have a bilateral agreement that Canada is welcome to join."

Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian foreign minister, will travel to Washington on Tuesday to continue negotiations, said her spokesman, Adam Austen, on Monday.

"We will only sign a new Nafta that is good for Canada and good for the middle class," Mr. Austen added. "Canada's signature is required."
[Want more Canadian coverage in your inbox? Subscribe to our weekly Canada Letter newsletter.]
The revised deal with Mexico makes significant alterations to rules governing automobile manufacturing, in an effort to bring more car production back to the United States from Mexico. Those changes are being watched carefully by the United States auto industry, which has built its global supply chain around Nafta and expressed concern that the Trump administration's efforts to rewrite it could raise prices of American-made cars and trucks. Automakers like General Motors and Ford have set up plants in Canada and Mexico, and American automakers routinely import car parts from other countries.

Under the changes agreed to by Mexico and the United States, car companies would be required to manufacture at least 75 percent of an automobile's value in North America under the new rules, up from 62.5 percent, to qualify for Nafta's zero tariffs. They will also be required to use more local steel, aluminum and auto parts, and have 40 to 45 percent of the car made by workers earning at least $16 an hour, a boon to both the United States and Canada and a win for labor unions, which have been among Nafta's biggest critics.

"Automakers urge the U.S. and Mexico to quickly re-engage with Canada to continue to build on this progress," the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, which represents most carmakers that sell vehicles in the United States, said in a statement. "The industry is hopeful that any changes to Nafta auto rules of origin continue to strike the right balance by incentivizing production and investment in North America while keeping new vehicles affordable for more Americans."

In a briefing Monday, administration officials said the United States and Mexico had also reached an agreement over a "sunset clause," proposed by the Trump administration, that would cause Nafta to automatically expire unless the three countries voted to extend it.

The two countries agreed to a review of the trade pact every six years that would extend its lifetime for 16 more years, officials said. That longer time horizon would give lawmakers a chance to review the pact's progress, while giving businesses certainty for the near future.

The countries also agreed to limit the kinds of legal challenges that investors can make against foreign governments under Nafta. The oil and gas, infrastructure, energy generation and telecom industries are exempted from these more restrictive rules, and will operate under the previous terms, Mr. Lighthizer said - a win for those industries.

One contentious issue that remains unresolved is whether the administration will exempt Mexico from its steel and aluminum tariffs. Mr. Trump hit Mexico, along with Canada, the European Union and other nations, with 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum, in part to force concessions on other trade issues. Mexican officials said they expected the tariffs to be addressed down the road.

"I don't think it was necessary to address them now," Mr. Videgaray said. "We'd like those to be addressed alongside Canada. It would be great if we could have a trilateral agreement on lifting those and our retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods."

It is unclear how eager Canada will be to sign on to the revised deal. Relations between the United States and Canada have been strained for months and Mr. Trump has personally berated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada as "very dishonest and weak" and accused him of "false statements" after a tense meeting of global leaders in June.

Any agreement that does not involve Canada is likely to face legal challenges and intense opposition from Congress, which had granted the Trump administration authority to renegotiate Nafta as a trilateral deal.

"Nafta is a trilateral agreement. It requires legislation and a change to Nafta requires legislation," said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania. "I've told them any change has to go through Congress. There is not necessarily complete agreement about that."

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said no one "is envisioning" a revised Nafta that does not include Canada.

"Modernizing it is a good thing, but I hope the president takes whatever agreement he has with Mexico and gets one properly with Canada and we get back to business," Mr. Alexander said.

Industry groups also said a final agreement must include Canada.

"Coming to terms with Mexico is an encouraging sign, but threatening to pull out of the existing agreement is not," said Matthew Shay, the chief executive of the National Retail Federation. "The administration must bring Canada, an essential trading partner, back to the bargaining table and deliver a trilateral deal."

The president, flanked by advisers including Mr. Lighthizer and Jared Kushner, hailed the preliminary agreement as "a big day for our country," adding that "many people" had thought that no one could make a deal with Mexico.

Mr. Peña Nieto, who has at times exchanged harsh words with Mr. Trump as the two countries have squabbled over Mr. Trump's proposed wall along their border, added a moment of praise on Monday.

"I recognize your political will," Mr. Peña Nieto said, "and your participation in this."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Accord on Nafta Consigns Canada To the Sidelines. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Trump Reaches Revised Trade Deal With Mexico, Threatening to Leave Out Canada

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WASHINGTON - President Trump said on Monday that the United States and Mexico had reached an accord to revise key portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement and would finalize it within days, suggesting he was ready to jettison Canada from the trilateral trade pact if the country did not get on board quickly.

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To find out a little more about promoting diversity through equal employment opportunities and affirmative action I wanted to know a little more about what this means and how it came about. Did you know that President Kennedy put the concept of affirmative action in place in 1961?

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American Association for Access Equity and Diversity - AAAED

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In its Final Report to President Eisenhower, the President's Committee on Government Contracts, headed by Vice President Richard Nixon, concluded:

Overt discrimination, in the sense that an employer actually refuses to hire solely because of race, religion, color, or national origin is not as prevalent as is generally believed. To a greater degree, the indifference of employers to establishing a positive policy of nondiscrimination hinders qualified applicants and employees from being hired and promoted on the basis of equality.

President Kennedy incorporated the concept of "affirmative action" into Executive Order 10925, which he issued in 1961. Executive Order 10925 imposed on all covered contractors a general obligation requiring positive steps designed to overcome obstacles to equal employment opportunity.

In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, which gave the Secretary of Labor responsibility for administration and enforcement of the Order mandating that contractors not discriminate against any employees or qualified applicants because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Contractors were to take affirmative action to ensure nondiscrimination in employment, upgrading, demotion or transfer, recruitment or recruitment advertising, layoff or termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation, and selection for training, including apprenticeship.

Before signing the order in September 1965, President Johnson uttered the words that continue to resonate today during his speech at Howard University's Commencement, June 4, 1965: Freedom is not enough. ... You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Freedom is not enough. ... You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

For a video excerpt of President Johnson's speech, go to:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?sid=6C6C5AB7579B4ABD84AD33FF25730226&sid=6C6C5AB7579B4ABD84AD33FF25730226&q=johnson+speaks+at+howard+commencement+1965&qft=+filterui:resolution-480p&FORM=R5VR11#view=detail&mid=6734BB34311E9DE6C1DB6734BB34311E9DE6C1DB

The quest for equality as a right and as a result has taken more than 50 years. It has faced much success, as evidenced in the marked increases of women and persons of color in private industry, in government, and in the Academy. It has also faced considerable challenges, rhetorical and legal, waxing in certain presidential administrations, waning in others.

WHAT IS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?

Affirmative action itself has been defined as "any measure, beyond simple termination of a discriminatory practice, adopted to correct or compensate for past or present discrimination or to prevent discrimination from recurring in the future." (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Statement on Affirmative Action, October 1977.)

Affirmative action has varying definitions depending upon the sector in which it is found, e.g., education, government contracting and employment. Executive Order 11246 and its regulations refer to a process that requires a government contractor to examine and evaluate the total scope of its personnel practices for the purpose of identifying and correcting any barriers to equal employment opportunity. Where problems are identified, the contractor is required to develop a program that is precisely tailored to correct the deficiencies. Where appropriate, the contractor is required to establish reasonable goals to measure success toward achieving that result. The affirmative action program incorporated in the regulations has its origins in the private sector, where contractor "Plans for Progress" were reportedly designed to take positive action and prevent discrimination lawsuits.

Affirmative action programs encompass more than outreach and recruitment, however, and include efforts to prevent discrimination by eliminating barriers to equal employment opportunity. The inverse relationship between affirmative action and discrimination is reflected in the Executive Order itself, which begins with a prohibition against discrimination. In essence, affirmative action creates an environment where equal employment opportunity can prevail. Affirmative action, especially as it is mandated in employment discrimination litigation, is also compensatory and serves to remedy the effects of past discrimination.

Affirmative action therefore means taking positive steps to end discrimination, to prevent its recurrence, and to create new opportunities that were previously denied minorities and women.

Affirmative action has been criticized as constituting reverse discrimination, preferential treatment, stigmatizing to beneficiaries and contravening principles of merit. Spearheaded by these organizations voters in the states of California, Washington, Michigan, Nebraska and Arizona have passed initiatives to prohibit affirmative action.

What Affirmative Action Isn't:

Quotas
Preferential Treatment
Guaranteed Results

Presidents Johnson and Kennedy meet with business leaders

Q's & A's ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

WHAT ARE THE PRIMARY COMPONENTS OF A WRITTEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROGRAM?
Problem identification, Self-Analysis and Action-Oriented Programs. Under Executive Order 11246, contractors ($50K in contracts/50 employees) are required to identify barriers to equal employment opportunity and eliminate them through action-oriented programs. Where there are fewer women or minorities than would be reasonably expected, the employer has to establish goals.
ARE GOALS INTENDED TO ACHIEVE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION OR EQUAL RESULTS?
Not at all. Numerical goals do not create guarantees for specific groups or preferences, nor are they designed to achieve proportional representation or equal results.
DOES AFFIRMATIVE ACTION UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER 11246 REQUIRE EMPLOYERS TO HIRE OR PROMOTE WOMEN OR MINORITIES ON THE BASIS OF RACE OR SEX?
Absolutely not. No requirement exists that any specific position be filled by a person of a particular race, gender or ethnicity. By casting a wider net and recruiting a diverse pool of qualified individuals, an affirmative action employer eliminates preferences and levels the playing field for all. The essence of affirmative action is opportunity.
DOES AFFIRMATIVE ACTION UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER 11246 CONFLICT WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF MERIT?
No. In seeking to achieve its goals, an employer is never required to hire a person who does not have the qualifications needed to perform the job successfully. Affirmative action prevents discrimination; it does not cause it.
SHOULD GOALS BE TREATED AS A CEILING OR A FLOOR?
Neither. The Executive Order does not require that contractors treat goals as either a ceiling or a floor for the employment of particular groups.
WHAT IS THE STANDARD FOR COMPLIANCE UNDER THE EXECUTIVE ORDER?
The standard is and has always been "good faith effort."
ISN'T AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ONLY A RACE ISSUE?
No. Affirmative Action Programs benefit women, persons with disabilities and veterans as well.

BACKGROUND

President Johnson's speech eloquently articulated the rationale behind the contemporary use of affirmative action programs to achieve equal opportunity, especially in the fields of employment and higher education.

The emphasis is on opportunity: affirmative action programs are meant to break down barriers, both visible and invisible, to level the playing field, and to make sure everyone is given an equal break. They are not meant to guarantee equal results -- but instead proceed on the common-sense notion that if equality of opportunity were a reality, African Americans, women, people with disabilities and other groups facing discrimination would be fairly represented in the nation's work force and educational institutions.

The debate over affirmative action demarcates a philosophical divide, separating those with sharply different views of the "American dilemma" -- how the nation should treat African Americans, other people of color and women. This division centers on a number of questions: to what extent discrimination and bias persist, especially in a systemic way; to what degree affirmative action programs have been effective in providing otherwise unavailable opportunities in education, employment, and business; and to what extent affirmative action programs appear to unduly benefit African Americans and other people of color at the expense of the white majority.

The continuing need for affirmative action is demonstrated by the data. For example, the National Asian and Pacific American Legal Consortium reported that although white men make up only 48% of the college-educated workforce, they hold over 90% of the top jobs in the news media, 96% of CEO positions, 86% of law firm partnerships, and 85% of tenured college faculty positions. In Fiscal Year 2014 there were 88,778 charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: race charges were 35.0% of the total filed; sex, 29.3%; national origin, 10.8%; religion, 4.0%; color, 3.1%; retaliation, all statutes, 42.8%; age, 23.2%; and disability, 28.6%.

According to Diversity in Higher Education.com: Minority representation in faculty, administrators, and governing boards do not match minority representation in the student body:

* Student population: 35% minority
* Institution presidents: 14% minority
* Executive and administrative staff: 19% minority
* Full-time faculty: 22% minority
* Part-time faculty: 25% minority
* Governing board of public institutions: 22% minority
* Governing board of independent institutions: 12% minority

http://diversityinhighereducation.com/about-us/did-you-know/

Affirmative action is not, as some charge, a uniquely modern concept fashioned by contemporary liberals in defiance of history or tradition. Although the techniques that we now call "affirmative action" are of fairly recent design, the conceptual recognition of the need to take affirmative, or positive legal action to redress discrimination's impact, rather than simply ending discrimination, has been around since the Civil War.

During Reconstruction (the period immediately after the Civil War), the Constitution was amended and other federal initiatives, such as the creation of the Freedman's Bureau, were undertaken to establish equal opportunity for the former slaves. These initiatives were at least modestly successful, bringing about African-American participation in elections for the first time.

Sporadic efforts to remedy the results of hundreds of years of slavery, segregation and denial of opportunity have been made since the end of the Civil War. A significant number of African Americans held public office, including two U.S. senators and 20 members of the House, between 1870 and 1900. But when the federal government withdrew its support for Reconstruction in the late 1800s, the gains made by African Americans were quickly stripped away and replaced by a patchwork system of legal segregation (including, in some instances, legal segregation of Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans as well). By 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the cornerstone segregationist doctrine of "separate but equal" - i.e., ruling that the Constitution permitted governments to require separation of the races in schools, public transportation, and elsewhere, so long as the opportunities offered the separate races were characterized as equal.

In the modern era, the concept of affirmative action was reborn on June 25, 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt -- seeking to avert a march on Washington organized by civil rights pioneer A. Philip Randolph -- issued Executive Order 8802 requiring defense contractors to pledge nondiscrimination in employment in government-funded projects. Two years later, President Roosevelt extended coverage of the executive order to all federal contractors and subcontractors. In a 1947 report, the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices found that, while African Americans comprised only three percent of the workers in defense industries in 1942, their number had increased to eight percent in 1945. But it also found "the wartime gains of Negro, Mexican-American and Jewish workers . . . began to disappear as soon as wartime controls were relaxed."

Successive presidents, under pressure from the African American community and civil rights advocates, continued the effort to increase minority employment opportunities and end job discrimination. It was not until President Kennedy issued Executive Order No. 10925, requiring not only that federal contractors pledge non-discrimination but that they "take affirmative action to ensure" equal opportunity, that the ultimately controversial phrase came into popular discourse.

Kennedy's order also included penalties -- including suspension of a contract -- for non-compliance. This was succeeded by another executive order (Executive Order 11246) issued by President Lyndon Johnson, along with the creation of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance in the Department of Labor to enforce its non-discrimination and affirmative action requirements. The Executive Order was amended in 1967 to include prohibitions on sex discrimination by federal contractors, along with a requirement that they engage in good faith efforts to expand job opportunities for women. Executive Order 11246 remains among the most effective and far-reaching federal programs for expanding equal opportunity.

Implementation of affirmative action started slowly, with the construction industry the site of one of the first tests. In 1965, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance created government-wide programs to redress the years of discrimination in the construction industry. The series of affirmative action programs was designed to boost minority employment by emphasizing hiring results in federally funded construction jobs.
In 1973 the Rehabilitation Act required federal agencies and contractors to take affirmative action in employment and promotion for people with disabilities. The Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 called for "the preferential employment of disabled veterans and veterans of the Vietnam era ... who are otherwise qualified." These changes underscored the use of affirmative action as a balancing of competitive interests. Affirmative action was understood to be the creation of opportunities to compete and not an assurance of success.

The various programs culminated in the "Philadelphia Plan," implemented under President Nixon. This plan required contractors doing business with the federal government to commit themselves to self-determined numerical goals for minorities. By withstanding challenges both in Congress and the courts, the Philadelphia Plan helped establish affirmative action as a way of life for American employers. Indeed, employers often embraced affirmative action as a good business practice, enabling them to tap into larger, more diverse, and more qualified pools of talent.

A key example of business support for affirmative action came early in Ronald Reagan's second term and from what would be considered a very unlikely source -- the conservative National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which represented 13,500 companies. At issue was a split in the administration over proposals by President Reagan's most conservative appointees, including Attorney General Edwin Meese, to revise and weaken Executive Order 11246 by eliminating the use of affirmative action goals and timetables for minorities and women in the work force.

NAM, much to the surprise of the administration's conservatives, weighed in on behalf of keeping the executive order intact. In a letter to President Reagan, the business group said it "believes the current executive order provides the framework for an affirmative action policy" and argued that "the business community is concerned that the elimination of goals and timetables could result in confusing compliance standards on federal, state and municipal levels and a proliferation of reverse discrimination suits."

President Johnson meets with women's groups

SUCCESSIVE EXECUTIVE ORDERS ON CIVIL RIGHTS

E.O. 8802: President Franklin Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, which bans racial discrimination in any defense industry receiving federal contracts and established the Fair Employment Practices Committee to investigate such complaints.
EO 9346: In 1943, President Roosevelt broadened the coverage of Executive Order 8802 by making it applicable to all government contractors.
EO 10308: Nearly a decade later, on December 3, 1951, President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 10308 advanced the achievements initiated during WWII by creating the Committee on Government Contract Compliance. The committee, as its name implies, was tasked with overseeing compliance by federal contractors with the non-discrimination provisions of Executive Order 8802.
EO 10479: President Dwight D. Eisenhower took a further step on August 13, 1953, by creating the President's Committee on Government Contracts under Executive Order 10479. This reorganization furthered the principle that "...it is the obligation of the contracting agencies of the United States Government and government contractors to insure compliance with, and successful execution of, the equal employment opportunity program of the United States Government."
This Executive Order made the head of each contracting agency of the federal government responsible for obtaining compliance by their contractors and subcontractors with the nondiscrimination provisions of the contracts into which they entered. Coordination would be provided by the President's Committee on Government Contracts, housed in the Department of Labor, and comprised of representatives of major contracting agencies, the Labor and Justice Departments, and the General Services Administration as well as eight Presidential appointees. The President designated the Committee's chair and vice chair.

President Kennedy meets with civil rights leaders.

Executive Order 10925: By the time John F. Kennedy was elected President, it was evident that to advance equal employment opportunity federal involvement needed to be broader and more proactive. On March 6, 1961, shortly after JFK took office, he signed Executive Order 10925, opening a new chapter in achieving access to good jobs by requiring government contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin."
Executive Order 10925 gave federal contracting agencies authority to institute procedures against federal contractors who violated their EEO obligations-including contract cancellation, debarment from future contracts and other sanctions.
It also created the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, which upon passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 became the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee. The President's Committee was chaired by Vice President Lyndon Johnson and later by Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The Committee's vice chair was Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz.
Executive Order 11246: President Johnson's vision of creating a "Great Society" led to a host of endeavors that sought to change the political, social and economic landscape of the U.S.
In his 1965 commencement address to graduates of Howard University, LBJ gave voice to his vision, declaring, "We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result. "
On September 24, 1965, President Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, making the Secretary of Labor responsible for administering the order's non-discrimination and affirmative action provisions. Soon thereafter, Secretary of Labor Wirtz established the Office of Federal Contract Compliance. Edward C. Sylvester, Jr. was appointed as the agency's first director.
Today, Executive Order 11246, as amended and further strengthened over the years, remains a major safeguard, protecting the rights of workers employed by federal contractors-approximately one-fifth of the entire U.S. labor force-to remain free from discrimination on the basis of their gender, race, religion, color or national origin...and opening the doors of opportunity through its affirmative action provisions.

President Kennedy addresses organizations

In 1967, President Johnson added "sex" to the list of prohibited bases. In 1969, the Nixon administration picked up a plan that the Johnson administration had put forth for the construction industry in the city of Philadelphia, referred to as the Philadelphia Plan. The Johnson administration plan was faulted for not having definite minimum standards for the required affirmative action programs. The Nixon plan did issue minimum standards-specific targets for minority employees in several trades. It did not require these minimum standards be met, simply that contractors submitting bids make a "good faith" effort to achieve these targets. This allowed the administration to argue it was not setting quotas, though critics of the plan suggested the administration was in fact doing so.

Assistant Labor Secretary Arthur Fletcher

The Philadelphia Plan, developed by Assistant Labor Secretary Arthur Fletcher during the Nixon Administration, survived several challenges, both legal and Congressional, before being accepted as legitimate. The Plan set the tone for affirmative action plans that followed. Soon, the standards put forth in the Philadelphia Plan were incorporated into Executive Order 11246 which affected all federal government contractors, who were required for the first time to put forth written affirmative action plans with numerical targets.

After the implementation of the Philadelphia Plan, legislation was passed at the federal, state, and municipal levels implementing affirmative action plans using the Philadelphia Plan as a model. Today, almost all government affirmative action plans are offshoots of the Philadelphia Plan. Its mixture of numerical targets and requirements of "good faith" effort was a milestone in the history of affirmative action. - See more at: http://civilrights.uslegal.com/affirmative-action/history-of-affirmative-action/#sthash.cdKmonbX.dpuf

TERMS IN THE DEBATE

An often-used -- and misused -- term in the lexicon of affirmative action is "quotas." President George Bush, for example, in vetoing the Civil Rights Bill of 1991, labeled it "a quota bill," and opponents of affirmative action use the word as a general pejorative to taint all race-conscious remedies for discrimination and efforts to prevent discrimination to promote equal opportunity. The courts, however, have provided a more accurate and precise definition: an absolute requirement that an employer hire a certain number of or percentage of employees from a specified group, without regard to the availability of qualified candidates or the presence of more qualified members of other groups. Such quotas are legally impermissible and are not a component of lawful affirmative action programs.

What affirmative action does sometimes involve is the establishment of a numerically expressed hiring goal, often in connection with a timetable. Indeed, as mentioned above, the Executive Order 11246 program covering federal contractors relies on the use of goals. Having established a goal, which is tied to the availability of qualified minority and women workers in the labor market, the employer pledges a "good faith" effort to achieve the goal. Failure to achieve the goal, however, does not, in and of itself, subject the employer to sanctions unless the affirmative action has been judicially ordered as a remedy to illegal discrimination. "Goals," the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights has observed, "serve as one measure of nondiscrimination and of the effectiveness of affirmation action efforts, not as a mandate for minority or female employment." - See more at: http://civilrights.uslegal.com/affirmative-action/history-of-affirmative-action/#sthash.cdKmonbX.dpuf

The word "preferences" is also used to unfairly characterize affirmative action as a form of quotas. Ironically, affirmative action is used to eliminate the effects of preferences enjoyed by some for more than three centuries.

The state initiatives propounded by right-leaning organizations including the American Civil Rights Institute, led by California businessman Ward Connerly and formed as "a national civil rights organization created to educate the public on the harms of racial and gender preferences," have peppered their ballot initiatives with the word "preferences." Proposition 209, enacted in 1996 by a ballot initiative in California is titled:

PROHIBITION AGAINST DISCRIMINATION OR PREFERENTIAL
TREATMENT BY STATE AND OTHER PUBLIC ENTITIES.
INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

In a news release of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights regarding the language used by the proponents of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in 2006, executive director Wade Henderson stated: "We oppose this deceptive initiative. We are disappointed that Connerly's word games are reflected in the ballot language, however, we are confident that Michigan voters, upon learning the intent of MCRI, will come out in droves to oppose the initiative." http://www.civilrights.org/press/2006/michigan-board-of-state-canvassers-approves-language-for-anti-affirmative-action-ballot-initiative.html

In 2000 the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) amended its regulations to make clear that affirmative action goals were not quotas or any form of preferential treatment:

§60-2.16 Placement goals.

(a) Purpose: Placement goals serve as objectives or targets reasonably attainable by means of applying every good faith effort to make all aspects of the entire affirmative action program work. Placement goals also are used to measure progress toward achieving equal employment opportunity.
(b) A contractor's determination under §60-2.15 that a placement goal is required constitutes neither a finding nor an admission of discrimination.
(c) Where, pursuant to §60-2.15, a contractor is required to establish a placement goal for a particular job group, the contractor must establish a percentage annual placement goal at least equal to the availability figure derived for women or minorities, as appropriate, for that job group.
(d) The placement goal-setting process described above contemplates that contractors will, where required, establish a single goal for all minorities. In the event of a substantial disparity in the utilization of a particular minority group or in the utilization of men or women of a particular minority group, a contractor may be required to establish separate goals for those groups.
(e) In establishing placement goals, the following principles also apply:
(1) Placement goals may not be rigid and inflexible quotas, which must be met, nor are they to be considered as either a ceiling or a floor for the employment of particular groups. Quotas are expressly forbidden.
(2) In all employment decisions, the contractor must make selections in a nondiscriminatory manner. Placement goals do not provide the contractor with a justification to extend a preference to any individual, select an individual, or adversely affect an individual's employment status, on the basis of that person's race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.
(3) Placement goals do not create set-asides for specific groups, nor are they intended to achieve proportional representation or equal results.
(4) Placement goals may not be used to supersede merit selection principles. Affirmative action programs prescribed by the regulations in this part do not require a contractor to hire a person who lacks qualifications to perform the job successfully, or hire a less qualified person in preference to a more qualified one.

See the OFCCP regulations above at: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&amp;sid=3b71cb5b215c393fe910604d33c9fed1&amp;rgn=div5&amp;view=text&amp;node=41:1.2.3.1.2&amp;idno=41#se41.1.60_62_116idx?c=ecfr&amp;sid=3b71cb5b215c393fe910604d33c9fed1&amp;rgn=div5&amp;view=text&amp;node=41:1.2.3.1.2&amp;idno=41#se41.1.60_62_116

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND THE COURTS

The Supreme Court first addressed affirmative action in three key cases in the late 1970s:
1978: In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court ruled that the University's special admission program setting aside a fixed number of seats for minorities at its medical school violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which prohibits discrimination by federally funded programs). At the same time, however, in an opinion written by Justice Powell, it ruled that race could lawfully be considered as one of several factors in making admissions decisions. In his opinion, Justice Powell noted that lawful affirmative action programs may be based on reasons other than redressing past discrimination -- in particular, a university's educational interest in attaining a diverse student body could justify appropriate affirmative action programs.

1979: United Steelworkers of America v. Weber involved a new in-plant training program for workers at a Louisiana plant that had hired few minorities in skilled positions. The employer and the union had agreed that 50 percent of the positions in the training program would go to African American employees and 50 percent to whites. Within each group, positions would be filled on the basis of seniority, meaning some junior African Americans would be admitted ahead of more senior whites.

In rejecting the claims of a white employee that the program violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Court said the law allowed affirmative action by private parties "to eliminate traditional patterns of racial segregation". One test of lawfulness was whether the program "unduly" trampled on the interests of white workers. The Court held that the plan passed the test because it did not require firing any white workers, nor did it create an "absolute bar" to white advancement. The plan was also permissible because it was "a temporary measure; it [was] not intended to maintain racial balance, but simply to eliminate a manifest racial imbalance."

1980: In Fullilove v. Klutznick, the Supreme Court upheld a congressionally- enacted 10 percent minority business set-aside of federal funds for state and local public works. In the ruling, the Court stressed the remedial nature of the set-aside, with Chief Justice Burger writing that the program "was designed to ensure that ... grantees ... would not employ procurement practices that Congress had decided might result in perpetuation of the effects of prior discrimination which had impaired or foreclosed access by minority business to public contracting opportunities."

The Supreme Court continued to wrestle with the difficult issue of balance into the 1980s. In Stotts v. Memphis Fire Department (1984) the Court took on the hard issue of whether seniority would determine the order of layoffs in the Memphis fire department even at the cost of wiping out affirmative action. It ruled that Title VII "precludes a district court from displacing a non-minority employee with seniority under the contractually established seniority system absent either a finding that the seniority system was adopted with discriminatory intent or a determination that such a remedy was necessary to make whole a proven victim of discrimination." The decision did not, however, prevent the use of affirmative action in hiring and promotion situations, as the Court apparently viewed displacing white workers from their jobs as far more serious than simply disappointing their hopes for a new opportunity.

Even before the ruling in Stotts, the Reagan Justice Department, under Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, had abandoned the department's traditionally vigorous enforcement of federal equal employment laws. In 1987 testimony before Congress, Reynolds said the department would end the use of any goals and timetables as a remedy to correct discrimination -- a stance the department carried into its court cases, relying almost exclusively on recruitment programs as remedies for employment discrimination, but refusing to look at the number of minorities or women actually hired or promoted. At the same time, Reynolds and the department sought to undo the affirmative action remedies that had been agreed to prior to the Reagan administration. Reynolds construed Stotts as holding that any form of race or gender-conscious relief were impermissible. These views were rejected by the courts.

The court in 1986 again emphasized that lawful affirmative action programs cannot require that male workers be discharged to make way for female workers. In Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, the Court held that a public employer may not lay off more senior white workers to protect the jobs of less senior black workers. Men and whites cannot be excluded from consideration for opportunities; all candidates must have the chance to compete and have their qualifications compared to others.

Two of the court's 1987 rulings -- U.S. v. Paradise and Johnson v. Santa Clara County Transportation Agency -- further dealt with Title VII and affirmative action plans. In Paradise, the Court upheld a one-for-one promotion requirement (i.e., for every white candidate promoted, a qualified African American would also be promoted) in the Alabama Department of Public Safety, finding it to be narrowly tailored and necessary to eliminate the effects of Alabama's long-term discrimination which the lower court had found "blatant and continuous." The Justice Department, which had originally intervened in the suit in the 1970s on the side of the African American plaintiff, switched sides during the Reagan administration.

In the second case, Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, the Court upheld an employer's affirmative action plan that allowed gender to be considered as a positive factor when choosing among qualified candidates for jobs in which women were severely underrepresented. The employer developed its plan after its review found that no women were employed in any of its 238 skilled craft jobs. Both Paul Johnson (the male plaintiff claiming reverse discrimination) and Diane Joyce (the woman who ultimately received the promotion to road dispatcher) had the requisite four years' experience, although Ms. Joyce's experience was more recent and arguably more relevant. Mr. Johnson received a score of 75 to Ms. Joyce's 73 in the graded oral interview, where 70 was a passing score. The Court upheld the county's use of Ms. Joyce's gender as a positive factor in choosing between these similarly-qualified candidates -- especially since no woman had ever held the position of road dispatcher.

By 1989, the composition of the Supreme Court had changed and now included a strong majority of justices suspicious, if not downright hostile, to affirmative action. That hostility was evidenced in the Court's ruling in City of Richmond v. Croson, invalidating Richmond, Virginia's local ordinance establishing a minority business set-aside program.
In Croson, for the first time, the Court adopted the strict scrutiny standard of review demanding that an affirmative action program be supported by a "compelling government interest" and narrowly tailored to ensure the program fits that interest. While not rejecting all governmental race- conscious remedies, the Court set a very high standard for their continued use by state and local governments.

The court extended this tough standard in its 1995 ruling in Adarand Constructors v. Pena, a 5-4 decision holding that strict scrutiny would also apply to federal affirmative action programs (although leaving open some issues, such as the degree of deference to be given to programs established by Congress). Again, however, the Court refused to reject properly-designed affirmative action. As Justice O'Connor emphasized: "The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination against minorities in this country is an unfortunate reality and government is not disqualified from acting in response to it."

The court's decision in Adarand emboldened affirmative action's opponents to launch a full-scale assault in Congress and in state legislatures, as well as in the courts. They saw some success on the state level, as California enacted Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibits all affirmative action programs in employment, education, and contracting. The State of Washington followed suit as well, with Initiative 200. The effect of such efforts soon became clear, as the number of African Americans and Latinos admitted to California's top public universities quickly plummeted. Such initiatives, however, have failed in other states.

At the federal level, President Clinton immediately made clear his determination to "mend, not end" affirmative action in light of the Adarand decision. In a speech at the National Archives President Clinton said: "The Job of Ending Discrimination in This Country Is Not Over."

"It is, in a way, ironic that this issue should be divisive today, because affirmative action began 25 years ago by a Republican president with bipartisan support. It began simply as a means to an end of enduring national purpose - equal opportunity for all Americans.

The purpose of affirmative action is to give our nation a way to finally address the systemic exclusion of individuals of talent on the basis of their gender or race from President Clinton at the National Archives opportunities to develop, perform, achieve and contribute. Affirmative action is an effort to develop a systematic approach to open the doors of education, employment and business development opportunities to qualified individuals who happen to be members of groups that have experienced longstanding and persistent discrimination.

It is a policy that grew out of many years of trying to navigate between two unacceptable pasts. One was to say simply that we declared discrimination illegal and that's enough. We saw that that way still relegated blacks with college degrees to jobs as railroad porters, and kept women with degrees under a glass ceiling with a lower paycheck.

The other path was simply to try to impose change by leveling draconian penalties on employers who didn't meet certain imposed, ultimately arbitrary, and sometimes unachievable quotas. That, too, was rejected out of a sense of fairness.

So a middle ground was developed that would change an inequitable status quo gradually, but firmly, by building the pool of qualified applicants for college, for contracts, for jobs, and giving more people the chance to learn, work and earn. When affirmative action is done right, it is flexible, it is fair, and it works...."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/affirm/stories/aa072095.htm
The Administration's efforts paid off. Affirmative action's opponents failed in their attempts to move legislation in the late 1990s that would have banned all federal affirmative action programs. In fact, in 1998, Congress reauthorized the disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) program run by the Department of Transportation (DOT) by an overwhelming bipartisan vote.

This DBE program directs that not less than 10% of funds appropriated for federal transportation procurement should be expended with small disadvantaged business enterprises (generally owned and controlled by women and minorities; however, socially and economically disadvantaged white males are also eligible to compete in the program). The DBE program relies on a system of aspirational goals established by states and localities based on the local availability of qualified DBEs. DOT has never penalized a state or locality for failing to achieve its goals, and the program explicitly prohibits quotas.

While consistently maintaining the constitutionality of its DBE regulations, the Department of Transportation made further changes in the DBE designed to improve the program's effectiveness and tailor it even more narrowly in response to the 1995 Adarand decision. In the fall of 2000, the 10th Circuit agreed, concluding that the regulations satisfied strict scrutiny because they were justified by the government's compelling interest in ending discrimination against minority contractors and they were appropriately and narrowly tailored. In 2001, the Supreme Court accepted this case for review.

Affirmative action in education has faced similar setbacks in the courts. In Hopwood v. Texas in 1996, the Fifth Circuit dismissed Justice Powell's opinion in Bakke, ruling that a university's interest in a diverse student body was never compelling, and that race could no longer be used as one among several factors in admissions decisions in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Earlier, in 1994, a Fourth Circuit panel ruled in Podberesky v. Kirwan that race-based scholarships were unconstitutional despite extensive evidence offered by the state of Maryland that such scholarships were an effective means of correcting the state's own past discrimination against African American students. The years 2000 and 2001 brought mixed results in the lower courts, as one district court judge, for example, upheld the affirmative action program used by the University of Michigan Law School, while another struck down the university's undergraduate admissions program. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/affirmaction.html

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its most significant decisions in the area of affirmative action/diversity in higher education admissions since Bakke. In Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger the Court addressed challenges to the University of Michigan's undergraduate and law school admissions programs respectively. In Gratz and Grutter the Court gave deference to the University's experience and expertise about its educational mission. However, once the University has established that its goal of diversity is consistent with strict scrutiny, the University must prove that the means it chose to attain that diversity are narrowly tailored to its goal.

In Gratz, the undergraduate program, which accorded one-fifth of the points needed to guarantee admission, to every single "underrepresented minority" applicant solely because of race was not narrowly tailored and did not provide the individualized consideration Justice Powell contemplated in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Grutter, a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the Law School's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. The Court reasoned that, because the Law School conducts highly individualized review of each applicant, no acceptance or rejection is based automatically on a variable such as race and that this process ensures that all factors that may contribute to diversity are meaningfully considered alongside race.

In 2013, the Supreme Court once again upheld the notion that diversity in higher education admissions was a compelling state interest. In Abigail Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin, the Court reiterated Justice Powell's opinion that the consideration of race was a compelling interest where one considers the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. However, in the Fisher case it also restated previous decisions that found that the University's admissions process, which considers race as a factor, must withstand strict judicial scrutiny. Moreover, in remanding the case to the lower court, the Court held that the University must show that such a classification is "necessary . . . to the accomplishment of its purpose."

THE OFFICE OF FEDERAL CONTRACT COMPLIANCE PROGRAMS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

The Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) enforces the Executive Order 11246, as amended; Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended and the affirmative action provisions (Section 4212) of the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act, as amended. Taken together, these laws ban discrimination and require Federal contractors and subcontractors to take affirmative action to ensure that all individuals have an equal opportunity for employment, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability or status as a Vietnam era or special disabled veteran. OFCCP's jurisdiction covers approximately 26 million or nearly 22% of the total civilian workforce (92,500 non-construction establishments and 100,000 construction establishments). The Federal Government awarded more than $400 billion tax-payer dollars in prime contracts in Fiscal Year 2015.

OFCCP requires a contractor, as a condition of having a federal contract, to engage in a self-analysis for the purpose of discovering any barriers to equal employment opportunity. No other Government agency conducts comparable systemic reviews of employers' employment practices to ferret out discrimination. OFCCP also investigates complaints of discrimination. In Fiscal Year 2013, OFCCP conducted approximately 4000 supply and service and construction contractor compliance evaluations. Moreover, OFCCP programs prevent discrimination. Further information about the OFCCP programs may be obtained from the agency's website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

OPERATION OF THE EXECUTIVE ORDER PROGRAM. THE EEO CLAUSE

Each contracting agency in the Executive Branch of government must include the equal opportunity clause in each of its nonexempt government contracts. The equal opportunity clause requires that the contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic individuals are considered minorities for purposes of the Executive Order. This clause makes equal employment opportunity and affirmative action integral elements of a contractor's agreement with the government. Failure to comply with the non-discrimination or affirmative action provisions is a violation of the contract.

A contractor in violation of E.O. 11246 may have its contracts canceled, terminated, or suspended in whole or in part, and the contractor may be debarred, i.e., declared ineligible for future government contracts. However, a contractor cannot be debarred without being afforded the opportunity for a full evidentiary hearing. Debarments may be for an indefinite term or for a fixed term. When an indefinite term debarment is imposed, the contractor may be reinstated as soon as it has demonstrated that the violations have been remedied. A fixed-term debarment establishes a trial period during which a contractor can demonstrate its commitment and ability to establish personnel practices that are in compliance with the Executive Order.

If a matter is not resolved through conciliation, OFCCP may refer the matter to the Office of the Solicitor of Labor, which is authorized to institute administrative enforcement proceedings. After a full evidentiary hearing, a Department of Labor Administrative Law Judge issues recommended findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a recommended order. On the basis of the entire record, the Secretary of Labor issues a final Administrative Order. Cases also may be referred to the Department of Justice for judicial enforcement of E.O. 11246, primarily when use of the sanctions authorized by the Order is impracticable, such as a case involving a sole source supplier.

The regulations implementing the Executive Order establish different affirmative action provision for non-construction (i.e., service and supply) contractors and for construction contractors.

EXECUTIVE ORDER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REQUIREMENTS

41 CFR §60-2.10 General purpose and contents of affirmative action programs.
(a) Purpose. (1) An affirmative action program is a management tool designed to ensure equal employment opportunity. A central premise underlying affirmative action is that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor's workforce, generally, will reflect the gender, racial and ethnic profile of the labor pools from which the contractor recruits and selects. Affirmative action programs contain a diagnostic component which includes a number of quantitative analyses designed to evaluate the composition of the workforce of the contractor and compare it to the composition of the relevant labor pools. Affirmative action programs also include action-oriented programs. If women and minorities are not being employed at a rate to be expected given their availability in the relevant labor pool, the contractor's affirmative action program includes specific practical steps designed to address this underutilization.
Effective affirmative action programs also include internal auditing and reporting systems as a means of measuring the contractor's progress toward achieving the workforce that would be expected in the absence of discrimination.
(2) An affirmative action program also ensures equal employment opportunity by institutionalizing the contractor's commitment to equality in every aspect of the employment process. Therefore, as part of its affirmative action program, a contractor monitors and examines its employment decisions and compensation systems to evaluate the impact of those systems on women and minorities.
(3) An affirmative action program is, thus, more than a paperwork exercise. An affirmative action program includes those policies, practices, and procedures that the contractor implements to ensure that all qualified applicants and employees are receiving an equal opportunity for recruitment, selection, advancement, and every other term and privilege associated with employment. Affirmative action, ideally, is a part of the way the contractor regularly conducts its business. OFCCP has found that when an affirmative action program is approached from this perspective, as a powerful management tool, there is a positive correlation between the presence of affirmative action and the absence of discrimination.
http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/aa.htm

In July 2014, President Barack Obama amended Executive Order 11246 to add prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This is the first such amendment since gender (sex) was added in 1967:

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
July 21, 2014

Remarks by the President at Signing of Executive Order on LGBT Workplace Discrimination
East room

10:39 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Welcome to the White House, everybody. I know I'm a little late. But that's okay because we've got some big business to do here.

Many of you have worked for a long time to see this day coming. You organized, you spoke up, you signed petitions, you sent letters -- I know because I got a lot of them. (Laughter.) And now, thanks to your passionate advocacy and the irrefutable rightness of your cause, our government -- government of the people, by the people, and for the people -- will become just a little bit fairer.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Amen. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: It doesn't make much sense, but today in America, millions of our fellow citizens wake up and go to work with the awareness that they could lose their job, not because of anything they do or fail to do, but because of who they are -- lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. And that's wrong. We're here to do what we can to make it right -- to bend that arc of justice just a little bit in a better direction.

In a few moments, I will sign an executive order that does two things. First, the federal government already prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Once I sign this order, the same will be explicitly true for gender identity. (Applause.)

And second, we're going to prohibit all companies that receive a contract from the federal government from discriminating against their LGBT employees. (Applause.) America's federal contracts should not subsidize discrimination against the American people.

Now, this executive order is part of a long bipartisan tradition. President Roosevelt signed an order prohibiting racial discrimination in the national defense industry. President Eisenhower strengthened it. President Johnson expanded it. Today, I'm going to expand it again.

Currently, 18 states have already banned workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And over 200 cities and localities have done the same. Governor Terry McAuliffe is here; his first act as governor was to prohibit discrimination against LGBT employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia. (Applause.) Where did Terry go? Right back here.

I've appointed a record number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender public servants to positions across my administration. They are ambassadors and federal judges, special assistants, senior advisors from the Pentagon to the Labor Department. Every day, their talent is put to work on behalf of the American people.

Equality in the workplace is not only the right thing to do, it turns out to be good business. That's why a majority of Fortune 500 companies already have nondiscrimination policies in place. It is not just about doing the right thing -- it's also about attracting and retaining the best talent. And there are several business leaders who are here today who will attest to that.

And yet, despite all that, in too many states and in too many workplaces, simply being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender can still be a fireable offense. There are people here today who've lost their jobs for that reason. This is not speculative, this is not a matter of political correctness -- people lose their jobs as a consequence of this. Their livelihoods are threatened, their families are threatened. In fact, more states now allow same-sex marriage than prohibit discrimination against LGBT workers. So I firmly believe that it's time to address this injustice for every American.

Now, Congress has spent 40 years -- four decades -- considering legislation that would help solve the problem. That's a long time. And yet they still haven't gotten it done. Senators Terry [Tammy] Baldwin and Jeff Merkley are here. They have been champions of this issue for a long, long time. We are very proud of them. I know they will not stop fighting until fair treatment for all workers is the federal law of the land. Everyone thanks them for that. (Applause.)

But I'm going to do what I can, with the authority I have, to act. The rest of you, of course, need to keep putting pressure on Congress to pass federal legislation that resolves this problem once and for all.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Amen!

THE PRESIDENT: Amen. Amen. (Applause.) Got the "amen" corner here. (Laughter.) Well -- (sings) -- (laughter.) You don't want to get me preaching, now. (Laughter.)

For more than two centuries, we have strived, often at great cost, to form "a more perfect union" -- to make sure that "we, the people" applies to all the people. Many of us are only here because others fought to secure rights and opportunities for us. And we've got a responsibility to do the same for future generations. We've got an obligation to make sure that the country we love remains a place where no matter who you are, or what you look like, or where you come from, or how you started out, or what your last name is, or who you love -- no matter what, you can make it in this country.

That's the story of America. That's the story of this movement. I want to thank all of you for doing your part. We've got a long way to go, but I hope as everybody looks around this room, you are reminded of the extraordinary progress that we have made not just in our lifetimes, but in the last five years. In the last two years. (Applause.) In the last one year. (Applause.) We're on the right side of history.

I'm going to sign this executive order. Thank you, everybody. (Applause.)
(The executive order is signed.)

END
10:47 A.M. EDT
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/07/21/remarks-president-signing-executive-order-lgbt-workplace-discrimination

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND DIVERSITY

"Diversity" as a term of art used in the context of affirmative action law and policy gained prominence in the Supreme Court decision of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Bakke, the Court ruled that the attainment of diversity in university admissions was a constitutionally permissible goal. Diversity as one factor among many in higher education admissions was later upheld in the Supreme Court's 2003 decision of Grutter v. Bollinger.

In employment, "diversity management" gained prominence in the 1990s as a voluntary effort by corporate America, unrelated to the mandatory compliance embodied in the law. Unlike the Executive Order regulations, there is no standardized method for attaining diversity. Diversity programs have different definitions and appear to vary from organization to organization.

Dr. Roosevelt Thomas, founder of the American Institute for Managing Diversity and author of Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of your Total Workforce by Managing Diversity, argues that diversity is "any collective mixture characterized by similarities (ties that bind) and differences (differences that distinguish)." Thomas views diversity management as an evolution beyond affirmative action and its focus on race and gender. He sees affirmative action as a "Band-Aid" approach that focuses on the symptom, not the problem. According to Dr. Thomas, affirmative action has not enabled the nation to move toward an appreciation for diversity in its many forms.

A United Nations study on Best Practices in Diversity Management defines affirmative action as the "framework for a diversity management program."
Diversity Management means looking at: "1) the mindset of an organization; 2) the climate of an organization; and 3) the different perspectives people bring to an organization due to race, workplace styles, disabilities, and other differences."

There are many similarities between methods used for affirmative action programs and diversity management programs. Affirmative action programs require policy statements from senior management, workforce analyses, measures of underutilization of protected groups, placement goals where necessary and action oriented programs.

CEO commitment is essential to a successful affirmative action program and senior management is required to sign the affirmative action plan for the contractor. In the 2000 amendments to the Executive Order 11246 regulations, the Department of Labor emphasized that the affirmative action program is a management tool, a diagnostic process used to promote equal opportunity, not simply a paper exercise.

The diversity management profession has grown in recent years. The position of Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) has emerged and many CDOs report to the CEOs of their corporations. Diversity managers have attained a status that most often exceeds that of the affirmative action officer. In many cases, the affirmative action officer now reports to the diversity manager.

Stony Brook University's discussion of the relationship between affirmative action and diversity addresses the results sought by both approaches:
Affirmative action is numbers oriented, aimed at changing the demographics within the organization. Managing diversity is behavioral, aimed at changing the organizational culture, and developing skills and policies that get the best from everyone. Affirmative action opens doors in the organization while managing diversity opens the culture and the system. Managing diversity does not replace affirmative action; rather, it builds on the critical foundation laid by workplace equity programs.

Affirmative action and managing diversity go hand-in-hand, each reinforcing the gains of the other. Without affirmative action's commitment to hiring and promoting diverse employees, organizations would rarely have the diversity of staff to reach a stage where differences are valued and diversity is effectively managed

WHY IS DIVERSITY IMPORTANT ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES?

Student bodies are no longer composed of primarily male, White students. Some estimates show that half of America's current workforce now passes through college first and 75 percent of students in high school spend at least some time studying in a higher education setting. That number is up from an elite 4 percent in 1900. What's more-the number of college students from low-income and minority families continues to rise. More Americans from every color and creed are now earning college educations so college faculty should reflect that. While students can certainly learn from people outside their own sex, ethnicity and belief system, faculty with similar backgrounds provide stronger role models. - Dr. Matthew Lynch

Diversity in faculty should not only be sought out for the students' advantage though; the college faculty as a whole benefits when many different perspectives are represented. It is important to have diversity in student populations but those groups are temporary college residents. Faculty members have the long-term ability to shape the campus culture and make it more in sync with the rest of the world.

As AAAED Distinguished Scholar William B. Harvey wrote:

"The prospect of the court dismantling a policy that works should disturb and compel action among all higher education leaders. They've seen as well as I, as the former chief diversity officer at a leading university and founding president of the national professional association of diversity officers, how diversity enhances the learning environments for all students and improves the quality of education at institutions where affirmative action policies have been embraced." Case Currents, July/August 2012

While nearly 30 percent of undergraduate students around the nation are considered minorities, just over 12 percent of full-time faculty are minorities. That number drops to around 9 percent for full-time professors of color. Though half of all undergraduate students are women, roughly one-third of full-time professors are women. In 1940, the number of women faculty was at 25 percent, showing just how slowly this particular minority group is climbing. The numbers are going in the right direction, but not quickly enough.

President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy meet with civil rights leaders

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND INCLUSION

Never has it been more critical to understand the engine that "compliance" is for the diversity bus we collectively drive. Affirmative Action has many meanings to many people, but stripped of words heavy with hidden meaning and agenda on all sides of the issue, it is about action. It's about taking positive action steps, reaching out action steps---affirmative, positive action steps.

It is a call to use some "elbow grease" to achieve, first, the representational diversity in the workforce (and our student body) we all seek. Using that "elbow grease" entails attending to multiple details, to look at all the trees as well as the whole forest to help bring in people from all different backgrounds---and it requires action,--- active thinking and then action,--- to "deal with"; "to manage"--plan for, build planning and strategies around---the very diversity we bring in.

These multiple details include reviewing policies and procedures--actively---to see where they help or where they hinder our representational diversity. .--this kind of review, if affirmative, if action oriented, can be one foundational element to rooting out systemic issues of discrimination and is part of "diversity" in action.

These multiple details include reviewing what we do when problems arise that will drive people away, reduce perhaps our representational diversity---we are not defined by what happens, we are defined by how we handle it.: and never has this been made clearer to us since April of 2011 when all of us, every institution of higher education were told we were NOT dealing with sexual violence, with rape, against women correctly or effectively. It is active and it is affirmative of our communities to take action, do investigations, and speak up quickly, etc., when "bad things" happen. AND MOST IMPORTANT, to take action to identify the areas of culture and climate that need attention---need elbow grease---need action to change. We use the outcomes of investigations actively to analyze what some of the framing is, systemic issues perhaps, etc., and then determine best practices to address what we learn so that our diverse communities can be one in which all thrive, feel included, listened to, attended to when bad things happen.

Affirmative Action is a key element of the "inclusion" framework: positive, affirming action is required to make sure all feel included---welcome, wanted, accepted, respected, partnered with for success and present at all input and decision making tables.
It is active and it is affirmative--it takes action, elbow grease and the will and the commitment to have diversity dialogues--diversity dialogues themselves are a type of program, an affirmative action program. --Dr. Carmen Suarez

WHY DO WE NEED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?

Affirmative action is the responsibility of all managers, not only the human resources or multicultural departments. Managers should actively recruit, even when there are no vacancies or when someone is not in the job market. Identify the "stars."

Affirmative Action is consistent with the principles of merit. Affirmative Action and Excellence are not mutually exclusive terms. Excellence comes in all colors and genders.

As President Clinton stated: "Affirmative action is an effort to develop a systematic approach to open the doors of education, employment and business development opportunities to qualified individuals who happen to be members of groups that have experienced longstanding and persistent discrimination." Where there is more affirmative action, there is less discrimination.
The Nation's Demographics are changing.
On May 17, 2012, the United States Census Bureau reported that "Most Children Younger than Age 1 Are Minorities." The New York Times put it more simply: White births are no longer a majority in the United States." " Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities - including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race - reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country's history", wrote the Times.

This is a significant event, long predicted by demographers - a milestone in this nation's history. Overall, whites will remain the largest population for some time, accounting for 63 percent of the population. The birth data augur a longer-term future that will be quite different from the country founded by Europeans. In the words of one demographer, the United States is becoming a more "globalized, multiethnic country." Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia and are less than half of the population in major cities including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis.

Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority group, numbering 52 million in 2011. They constitute 16.7 percent of the population and grew by 3.1 percent since 2010. African Americans are the second-largest population of color, numbering 43.9 million in 2011 (up 1.6 percent from 2010). Asians are the second-fastest growing group, increasing by 3.0 percent since 2010. Asians numbered 18.2 million in 2011.
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2043 the minority population is projected to become the majority. The agency bases its projections on the 2010 census. In the report the agency projects that the population will grow more slowly, continue aging and become more diverse. In 2032 the net international migration will overtake its natural increase as the driver of our population growth.

"In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way," wrote Justice Harry Blackmun in Bakke. A positive program of nondiscrimination will be needed as long as there are racial, gender and other disparities in contracting, higher education admissions and employment. The tent has widened since the 1960s and now includes successive movements for women, ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities and the LGBT community.

Why do we need Affirmative Action? Because simple fairness demands it. The nation's future requires it.

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About Affirmative Action, Diversity and Inclusion | American Association for Access Equity and Diversity - AAAED

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In its Final Report to President Eisenhower, the President's Committee on Government Contracts, headed by Vice President Richard Nixon, concluded: Overt discrimination, in the sense that an employer actually refuses to hire solely because of race, religion, color, or national origin is not as prevalent as is generally believed.

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Did you know that there are 3 types of repatriation tax? I found this article useful on my journey because I read about repatriation but I had no idea what all it meant.

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Two proposals to address multinational corporations' large stockpile of offshore profits - a transition tax on those profits and a repatriation tax holiday - may appear similar at first blush but are opposites in many ways. A transition tax is a sound policy that would raise revenues for infrastructure investments or other uses; a repatriation holiday is a tax cut that loses revenue and consequently cannot pay for anything. A third proposal, a "deemed repatriation," could resemble a transition tax or a repatriation tax holiday, depending on the tax rate. All three types of proposals are sometimes referred to as "repatriation taxes," but it is important to distinguish among them because of their very different effects on revenue and multinationals' incentives to shift profits offshore. (See Figure 1.)

U.S.-based multinationals do not pay U.S. corporate tax on their foreign profits until the profits are "repatriated" to the United States. As a result, many firms use accounting maneuvers to report as much of their profits offshore as possible to avoid U.S. taxes. Multinationals have roughly $2.6 trillion in profits booked offshore, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates. Both a transition tax and a repatriation tax holiday try to deal with these offshore profits - but in very different ways.

Heightening the confusion, several proposals have claimed to link each of these approaches to boosting investment in U.S. infrastructure. But while a transition tax can pay for such added investment, a repatriation holiday cannot. As Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has stated, "Tax holiday proposals designed to pay for [replenishing the Highway Trust Fund] sound great until you look at the details. Saying you're going to use something that loses money to pay for anything is just wrong. Therefore, saying you're going to use it to pay for infrastructure is just bad policy, plain and simple."

Similarly, White House National Economic Council Director Jeff Zients has said the Administration is "not supportive of a voluntary repatriation holiday. . . . It costs a lot of money" and has emphasized that the Administration's proposal for a transition tax "is very different than a repatriation holiday, which we believe is bad policy."

Transition Tax

Any corporate tax reform that alters the tax treatment of future overseas profits will likely include a one-time transition tax on existing foreign profits as part of the shift to the new tax system. A transition tax or "toll charge" would clean the slate of existing tax liabilities. Such a tax would be mandatory: multinationals would have to pay U.S. taxes on existing foreign profits whether they repatriate them or not. To achieve this, transition taxes would deem all foreign profits to have been repatriated and thus subject to the transition tax rate. (Most proposals would allow the companies to pay the tax over a period of years.) Future overseas profits would then be taxed under the new rules agreed to as part of tax reform.

A transition tax would raise one-time revenues that could help fund infrastructure investments or reduce deficits. For example, the President's budget proposes a compulsory 14 percent transition tax on existing offshore profits, which would raise $299 billion to fund infrastructure investments, as part of transitioning to a new international tax system.

Former Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp also included a transition tax in his 2014 tax reform proposal, at a maximum rate of 8.75 percent on most foreign profits. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also proposed in 2015 a framework for international tax reform and endorsed the broad transition tax approach in President Obama and Chairman Camp's frameworks.

Since transition tax revenues would be one-time in nature, they could not help pay for permanent corporate rate cuts on an ongoing basis (or provide permanent infrastructure funding either). For example, as noted above the President's 14 percent transition tax proposal raises $299 billion. As the President's Framework for Business Tax Reform notes, if those revenues were coupled with corporate rate cuts:

[...A] package that appears revenue-neutral in the first ten years would lose roughly $380 billion in the second decade, and even more thereafter. For this reason, the one-time revenues raised by business tax reform should be matched with one-time investments or deficit reduction, as the President's Framework proposes.

Repatriation Tax Holiday

A repatriation tax holiday is designed to encourage multinationals to return overseas profits to the United States by offering them a temporary, sharply reduced U.S. tax rate on those profits. It gives participating multinationals very large tax breaks (especially those that have aggressively shifted profits offshore) and increases deficits over the long term, as explained below. Because it loses revenues, it cannot be used to fund infrastructure investments or anything else.

The repatriation tax holiday enacted in 2004 failed to produce any of the promised economic benefits, such as boosting jobs or domestic investment, according to a wide range of independent studies by economists associated with the National Bureau for Economic Research, the Congressional Research Service, the Treasury Department, and other analysts.

Enacting a second repatriation tax holiday would boost revenues during the holiday period as companies rushed to take advantage of the temporary low rate, but would bleed revenues thereafter. A two-year holiday at a tax rate of 5.74 percent would lose $96 billion over 11 years, JCT estimated in 2014 (see Figure 2). As JCT explained, the biggest reason for the revenue loss over time is that a second holiday would encourage companies to shift more profits and investments overseas in anticipation of more tax holidays, thus avoiding taxes in the meantime.

Because a repatriation tax holiday loses revenue, claims that it can pay for infrastructure are mistaken. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) proposed in 2015 a repatriation tax holiday at a 6.5 percent rate that they claimed could help finance infrastructure investment. But JCT estimates that their proposal would lose $118 billion over ten years, so it couldn't finance infrastructure spending.

Key Differences Between a Transition Tax and a Repatriation Holiday

1. A transition tax is compulsory and raises revenues; a repatriation tax holiday is optional and loses revenues. As noted, the President's proposed transition tax would raise $299 billion over 2016-2025. Because the revenues stop flowing in after the transition period, it makes sense to use them for one-time infrastructure investments, as the President proposes. A repatriation holiday, in contrast, reduces revenues over time.

2. A transition tax is part of corporate tax reform that can be designed to reduce or eliminate incentives to shift profits and investments offshore; a repatriation tax holiday increases those incentives. A transition tax would be coupled with corporate tax reforms that could be designed to reduce or eliminate the incentive for companies to shift profits offshore. The President, for example, has proposed a 19 percent minimum tax on future offshore profits, so multinationals could no longer defer tax on their foreign profits until choosing to repatriate them. By contrast, a repatriation tax holiday is a stand-alone tax cut that lacks such reforms; it would strongly encourage firms to shift profits and investment offshore in subsequent years in anticipation of another tax holiday.

3. A transition tax could bring other benefits as part of corporate tax reform. Unlike a repatriation tax holiday, which has been shown to provide none of the promised economic benefits, a transition tax could yield economic benefits if used for one-time investments, such as infrastructure, or to reduce the deficit.

The most fiscally responsible approach would be for corporate tax reform to reduce deficits. But even a reform package that is revenue neutral should meet the revenue-neutrality standard over the long run as well as in the initial ten-year budget window. Otherwise, policymakers could use timing gimmicks to craft a corporate tax reform package that is revenue neutral over the first ten years but swells deficits and debt after that.

Stand-alone Deemed Repatriation

A "stand-alone deemed repatriation" is in many ways a hybrid between a repatriation holiday and a transition tax. Like a transition tax, it would be compulsory and deem overseas profits to have been repatriated and subject to U.S. tax. Unlike a transition tax, it would be a stand-alone measure not coupled with a permanent reform to the international tax system. How a stand-alone deemed repatriation would impact revenues and tax avoidance would depend on the rate.

If the deemed repatriation rate is set low, it would work more like a repatriation tax holiday. Imagine if a deemed repatriation rate were set at the 5.25 percent rate offered under the 2004 repatriation tax holiday. Even though companies would be required to treat all their offshore profits as having been repatriated and subject to the tax, because the rate is so low, they would likely choose to repatriate most of their profits even if the tax were instead structured as a voluntary "holiday."

Like a repatriation tax holiday, a deemed repatriation would generate one-time revenues. But revenues would be lost on some of the profits repatriated at the low 5.25 percent rate that would have otherwise been repatriated over time at the normal 35 percent statutory rate. A deemed repatriation at a low rate would also encourage multinationals to expect that future deemed repatriations or tax holidays will be set at a similarly low rate. Thus, also like a repatriation tax holiday, a deemed repatriation at a low rate would encourage multinationals to shift more profits offshore in the future (because it would make them more confident that any eventual U.S. tax on those profits would be far lower than 35 percent). This would further bleed future revenues.

If the deemed repatriation rate is set high (close to the 35 percent statutory rate), it would work more like a transition tax. For example, consider a deemed repatriation rate at or very near to the 35 percent statutory rate. The higher rate would generate more initial revenues from the deemed repatriation. In addition, to the extent that some of the profits deemed to have been repatriated would have been repatriated voluntarily over time at the usual 35 percent rate, the loss of revenue on those future repatriations would be smaller. Finally, the higher rate might alter multinationals' expectations about the rate that they will eventually face on any future offshore profits - it could reduce their expectations that policymakers will offer them future tax holidays or deemed repatriations at much lower tax rates. That might therefore even reduce their incentive to shift profits offshore, and bolster future revenues.

If the deemed repatriation rate is set between these two extremes, it is difficult to predict precisely how multinationals would respond. Any "deemed repatriation" rate should be set as close to the 35 percent statutory rate as possible - at least high enough to avoid giving multinationals even more reason to shift future profits overseas. Otherwise, it would effectively act like a repatriation tax holiday, and would worsen tax avoidance and lose revenues in later years. As with a transition tax, any one-time revenues from a "stand-alone" deemed repatriation should be dedicated to one-off investments or deficit reduction, and not paired with proposals that have lasting costs.

We are not aware of any congressional proposals for a deemed repatriation, though commentators and policymakers have discussed the option.

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Three Types of "Repatriation Tax" on Overseas Profits: Understanding the Differences

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Two proposals to address multinational corporations' large stockpile of offshore profits - a transition tax on those profits and a repatriation tax holiday - may appear similar at first blush but are opposites in many ways.

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Although the primary characteristics of planning are defining, Purposes, Advantages and potential disadvantages, and the primacy there are other things that should be considered when thinking about these characteristics.

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The following are the essential characteristics of planning which describe the nature of planning:
1. Planning is primary function of management:

The functions of management are broadly classified as planning, organisation, direction and control. It is thus the first function of management at all levels. Since planning is involved at all managerial functions, it is rightly called as an essence of management.

2. Planning focuses on objectives:

Planning is a process to determine the objectives or goals of an enterprise. It lays down the means to achieve these objectives. The purpose of every plan is to contribute in the achievement of objectives of an enterprise.

3. Planning is a function of all managers:

Every manager must plan. A manager at a higher level has to devote more time to planning as compared to persons at the lower level. So the President or Managing director in a company devotes more time to planning than the supervisor.

4. Planning as an intellectual process:

Planning is a mental work basically concerned with thinking before doing. It is an intellectual process and involves creative thinking and imagination. Wherever planning is done, all activities are orderly undertaken as per plans rather than on the basis of guess work. Planning lays down a course of action to be followed on the basis of facts and considered estimates, keeping in view the objectives, goals and purpose of an enterprise.

5. Planning as a continuous process:

Planning is a continuous and permanent process and has no end. A manager makes new plans and also modifies the old plans in the light of information received from the persons who are concerned with the execution of plans. It is a never ending process.

6. Planning is dynamic (flexible):

Planning is a dynamic function in the sense that the changes and modifications are continuously done in the planned course of action on account of changes in business environment.

As factors affecting the business are not within the control of management, necessary changes are made as and when they take place. If modifications cannot be included in plans it is said to be bad planning.

7. Planning secures efficiency, economy and accuracy:

A pre- requisite of planning is that it should lead to the attainment of objectives at the least cost. It should also help in the optimum utilisation of available human and physical resources by securing efficiency, economy and accuracy in the business enterprises. Planning is also economical because it brings down the cost to the minimum.

8. Planning involves forecasting:

Planning largely depends upon accurate business forecasting. The scientific techniques of forecasting help in projecting the present trends into future. 'It is a kind of future picture wherein proximate events are outlined with some distinctness while remote events appear progressively less distinct."

9. Planning and linking factors:

A plan should be formulated in the light of limiting factors which may be any one of five M's viz., men, money, machines, materials and management.

10. Planning is realistic:

A plan always outlines the results to be attained and as such it is realistic in nature.

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10 Nature or Characteristics of Planning - Discussed!

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ADVERTISEMENTS: The following are the essential characteristics of planning which describe the nature of planning: 1. Planning is primary function of management: The functions of management are broadly classified as planning, organisation, direction and control. It is thus the first function of management at all levels.

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Risk of being a multinational Corporation (Module 4)

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Risk of being a multinational Corporation (Module 4)

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We all know with the benefits of a multinational company comes the risk. What are the benefits of running one of these huge companies and what are the risks associated with those benefits. There has to be a huge culture risk when going to market in a foreign country along with barriers that make it a little harder to set up shop right?

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The social, political and economic developments of the last decade have encouraged favourable climate for companies to become multinational and transnational with minimum risks of losing their investments.

The formation of European Economic Community EEC) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and stable economic and trade relations with Pacific Rim countries have created conditions in which the benefits and risks of operating in these other countries are no different than the benefits and risks undertaken in domestic operations.

However, in dealing with the "developing" countries, the multinational corporations have to be aware of the potential benefits and risks which are both generally higher as compared to operating in "developed" countries. Some of the benefits and risks are explained as follows:

The labour costs are always lower in underdeveloped and developing countries and the work force can be trained equally well for all the skills needed to perform the job. Accordingly, the multinational corporations can concentrate their labour intensive operations in such countries.

2. Potential for high rate of return on investment:

Higher profit is the major reason why any organization would become global in operation, because these new opportunities are not generally available in the domestic market either due to saturation of the market or severe price competition. Furthermore, it is possible to charge higher prices for the product in new markets.

A multinational company which has a global base and is worldwide oriented has access to a much larger market for their product. India alone, with a population of nearly 900 million people provides a large market for consumer goods. China, with more than 1.2 billion people is opening up to products, both consumer as well as industrial, produced in the western countries.

4. Availability of capital resources:

With a broad base of operations, a multinational company has a much wider access to financial resources, especially in joint ventures. Even the governments of many countries provide capital requirements in order to lure the organizations to build operational facilities in their countries.

5. Availability of natural resources:

International activities can increase access to raw materials and other natural resources. Many developing countries have unexplored natural assets that can be highly utilised. Companies operating in many countries, thus have a much broader base for raw materials.

These risks are again primarily focussed on businesses operating in "developing" countries which are differentiated by their lack of economical and technological development, strong national and cultural affiliation and unpredictability in political and legal changes. Some of the risks involved in these situations are:

1. Higher potential for loss of assets by nationalization or war:

As the reality of the situation dictates, the global environment is highly tense with conflicting ideologies, civil wars and political unrest. These developments provide insecure environment which justifies reluctance on the part of many multinational corporations to take unnecessary risks.

Many companies lost their assets in Cuba when it came under communist rule. Kennecott Copper Company lost all its assets in Chile when it temporarily became a communist country. Many Indians lost their businesses in Kuwait when the country was invaded by Iraq during the Gulf war.

2. Possible changes in political system or political parties:

Even when the host country has a democratic form of government, the party in power may lose the elections and the alternative party may change the industrial policies that may become unfavourable to the interests of the multinational company. A case in point is the winding up of Coca Cola company operations in India when the opposing party became the governing party in 1977 and changed some of the policies which negatively affected the operations of Coca Cola Company.

3. Possible backlash by host country citizens:

The local citizens may get the feeling that they are being exploited for the benefit of a foreign company. This hostility may exist due to some genuine national concern. For example, during the tragedy that occurred at Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, many people were heard saying "this could never happen in America," meaning that the safety and the operating standards are not so stringent in the operations of plants in a developing country due to low premium placed on the lives of people in the developing countries.

4. Difficulty in retrieving earnings:

Some countries have very strict foreign exchange laws and these may change from time to time, depending upon the situation of foreign exchange reserves and international balance of payments status. The host countries may require that the earnings be spent within the country and not be transmitted back to the host country.

5. Lower skill levels and lower motivation in the work force in underdeveloped countries:

The development of skills is a phenomenon which sometimes takes years to perfect. Hastily trained workers are more likely to make costly mistakes. Also these workers are generally not paid well. Lower pay levels do not provide adequate incentives to be dedicated to work. The fact that usually higher paying, more responsible and decision making positions are kept by the personnel of the parent company hardly provides an environment of high morale and motivation.

6. Difficulty in maintaining efficient and fast global communication and coordination:

Even though the advent of computers and satellite communications has expanded the communication network so that in most situations it is possible to have instantaneous communication between and among countries, the connections are still very poor in and with the underdeveloped countries. That can delay the important decisions for emergencies causing disruption and losses.

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What Are The Different Benefits And Risks Faced By Multinational Enterprises?

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ADVERTISEMENTS: The social, political and economic developments of the last decade have encouraged favourable climate for companies to become multinational and transnational with minimum risks of losing their investments. The formation of European Economic Community EEC) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and stable economic and trade relations with Pacific Rim countries have created ...

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How does a company benefit from a single-use plan? (Module 5)

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How does a company benefit from a single-use plan? (Module 5)

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To learn more about the benefit of a single use plan I needed to understand it more and what it means for a company. How does it help in the budget, what does it do for the company in the long run, how are the programs implemented?

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A plan is a commitment to a particular course of action for achieving specific results. From this it follows that there are a number of plans for achieving different goals. Managers, normally, commit the mistake of taking major programmes only as plans. But a number of future courses of action are also plans. For example, starting the production of a new product or settings up a new factory is considered plans. The plans may be classified according to origin, use, purpose, kind etc.

Some of the plans are in the form of standing plans while others are single use plans. Single use plans are used only once and not over and over again whereas, repeat use plans are used again and again. For example, objectives, policies, strategies, rules, procedures etc., are standing plans because once formulated, they will be used for a long period and repeatedly. On the other hand, programmes and budgets are single use plans because once these are achieved, these are to be formulated again.

Following diagram illustrates various plans:

Planning is a commitment to a particular course of action undertaken to achieve specific results. It consists of several components or derivative plans that are generally bound together. These components are known as plans. There can be several types of plans. It is easy to see a major plan such as establishing a new enterprise but some future courses of actions are also plans. Any course of future action is a plan.

Various plans may be classified into:

(1) Standing plans and

(2) Single-use plans.

1. Standing Plans:

Standing plans are made to be used time and again. These plans are formulated to guide managerial decisions and actions on problems which are recurring in nature. Standing plans are also called 'repeated use' plans because these provide guidelines for actions to be taken in future. These plans provide unity and uniformity of efforts in meeting repetitive situations arising at various levels of the enterprise. These plans provide ready guidelines for tackling situations of recurring nature. These plans not only help in co-ordination but in effective management also. Standing plans include objectives policies, procedures, methods, rules and strategies.

Standing plans help an enterprise in the following ways:

(i) Standing plans help in achieving co-ordination in the enterprise. These plans bring consistency, uniformity and unity in efforts.

(ii) Senior executives are able to delegate their work to subordinates since procedures, rules, regulations etc. have been laid down for taking necessary decisions.

(iii) These plans help in achieving goals even if these are vague, complex or multi-dimensional. The policies, methods, rules, procedures etc. provide ready frames of reference whenever some difficulty arises in taking decisions.

(iv) Standing plans are formed after a lot of thinking, discussions and arguments. Whenever decisions are needed to be taken, these plans help in quick decision making. These plans are great labour saving devices as they provide frames of references for tackling recurring situations.

(v) These plans help in better administrative control. They provide rational bases for evaluating the results of various efforts put by different persons working at various levels of the enterprise.

2. Single-Use Plans:

These plans are made for handling non-recurring problems. Single-use plans are also referred to as 'specific plans' since these are meant to solve a particular problem. These plans are formulated to handle non-repetitive and unique problem. These plans cannot be used again and again; these become obsolete after achieving their purpose. The examples of these plans are: projects, budgets, programmes.

Purpose or Mission:

The mission or purpose identifies the basic function or task of an enterprise. Every organization has or should have a purpose so that its working becomes meaningful. The purpose or mission is assigned to every organization by the society. The purpose of a business is to produce and distribute goods or services, the purpose of public works department is to construct and maintain roads, the purpose of courts is to interpret and apply laws and so on. The purpose is a standing plan in a business organization which defines its basic purpose in the light of which other actions are designed.

An organization's purpose consists of a long term vision of what it seeks to do and the reasons why it exists. The organization's mission indicates exactly what activities the organization intends to engage in now and in future.

The basic questions to be answered by an organization are:

(i) What business we are in?

(ii) What wall our business be?

(iii) Who are our customers?

(iv) What are our values and beliefs?

(v) What will be our utility to the society? and so on.

Objectives:

Objectives or goals are the ends towards which every activity is aimed-they are the results to be achieved. Objectives are a prerequisite for planning. No planning is possible without setting up of objectives. While enterprise objectives are the basic plan of the firm, a department may also have its own objectives. Though departmental objectives will contribute to the attainment of enterprise objectives but the two sets of goals may entirely be different. For example, the objective of the enterprise may be to earn a certain amount of profit, while selling its products.

Enterprise objectives influence the management philosophy and practice. Objectives have greater influence on the working of an organization. All other types of plans such as policies, strategies, procedures, rules, budgets etc. assist in the attainment of stated enterprise objectives in an economical and efficient manner. Objectives are related to the future and are an essential part of the planning process.

Policies:

Policies are general statements or understandings which provide guidance in decision-making to various managers. These are standing plans providing guidance to management in the conduct of managerial operations. Policies define boundaries within which decisions can be made and decisions are directed towards the achievement of objectives. Policies also help in deciding issues before they become problems and making it unnecessary to analyze the same situation every time it comes up. Managers can delegate authority within the given parameters and can still retain control over what their subordinates do. In the words of Koontz and Weihrich. "Policy is a means of encouraging discretion and initiative, but within limits."

Strategies:

The word 'strategy' has long been used in the content of military action plans. It was used to state the grand plans made in the light of what it is believed an adversely might or might not do. Managers now use strategies in the broader areas of business operations. A strategy is a comprehensive and integrated plan designed to assure that business objectives are accomplished. The long term objectives of the enterprise are determined and requisite resources are allocated and deployed to achieve the desired results. The purpose of strategies is to determine a picture of the kind of enterprise that is envisaged. Strategies do not attempt to outline the programmes for achieving objectives but they furnish a framework for guiding thinking and action.

Procedures:

Procedures are details of action or the guidelines for the achievement of business objectives. Procedures give details of how things are to be done. No room is left for judgment. These should help in implementation of policies. Procedures also determine the policy of responsibility and accountability. According to Terry, "A procedure is a series of related tasks that make up the chronological sequence and the established way of performing the work to be accomplished."

Procedures should be distinguished from policies. A procedure is a guide to action whereas a policy is a guide to thinking. Policies are guidelines for taking decisions and procedures consist of various methods to accomplish each phase of work. Policies offer scope for interpretation in order to see that they fit in a particular situation whereas procedures are tailor-made and do not offer any scope for interpretation.

A procedure is explained with the help of taking the case of purchasing raw materials for a concern:

(i) Every department needing raw materials will send a purchase requisition to the purchase department giving quantity specifications, type and quality materials required.

(ii) The purchase department will consolidate the requirements of various departments. A combined order is prepared and sent to the suppliers. The purchase department maintains the list of suppliers and regularly collects quotations from them. The copy of the purchase order is also sent to the receiving and inspecting department.

(iii) The receiving department compares the goods received with the order placed. Any discrepancy in quantity, quality, etc. is reported to the purchase department.

If the goods are proper and according to the order then a report about it is submitted to the purchase department.

(iv) After receiving a satisfactory report from receiving and inspecting department, purchase department forwards the bill to accounting department for payment.

(v) Accounting department checks the bill and then makes the payment to the supplier.

Whenever a material purchase is needed then the same procedure is followed. Different tasks require different procedures and they are followed in the same way.

Advantages of Procedures:

1. Basis of Control:

Procedures give a detail of sequences to be followed for completing a task. It can be seen whether the work is proceeding according to the plan or not. Procedures are used as a control mechanism because any discrepancy in completing the work can be determined at once.

2. Consistency:

Procedures help to ensure consistency and uniformity of performance. Once the procedures are established, they can be similarly used again and again.

3. Standardization:

The standardization of procedures reduces the need for decision-making in similar situation. Wherever a task is to be performed, the same procedure will be followed for doing it. This increases efficiency in doing a work.

4. Co-ordination:

Procedures establish a sequence to be followed for each work. This helps in coordinating the activities of different departments or sections because same procedures will be followed by all of them.

Limitations:

1. Rigidity:

Rigidity is followed in following procedures. They are continuously used over and over again. This discourages initiative and discoveries.

2. Constant Review:

The same procedures cannot be followed for long terms. The changing situations necessitate the review of procedures. To keep them effective they should be constantly updated. They should be suitably adjusted to suit the present situation.

Rules:

A rule is a plan that lays down a required course of action with regard to a situation. A rule is in the nature of a decision made by management regarding what is to be done and what is not to be done in a particular situation. A rule is definite and rigid and allows no deviation or discretion to the subordinates. Like procedures, rules do not prescribe a chronological sequence of steps to be taken to achieve a given objective. A rule may or may not be a part of the procedure. A rule such as 'No smoking in the factory' will not form a part of the procedure. On the other, a rule to make payment within 21 days will be the part of a procedure.

"Rules prescribe the limits of acceptable behaviour of the members of the organization. Rules will enable managers to predict the behaviour of their subordinates, how will they act in a given situation. Rules channel the behaviour of workers in a desired direction. Workers sometimes resent rules for stifling their actions. The problem does not lie with the rules, but the manner in which they are put to the workers. Management should try to frame only those rules which are necessary and those too should also be explained properly to the employees.

Programmes:

A programme is a sequence of activities designed to implement policies and accomplish objectives. It is devised to meet a particular situation. Programme may be taken as a combination of policies, procedures, rules, budgets, task assignments, etc. developed for the specific purpose of carrying out a particular course of action. Separate programmes are prepared for accomplishing different tasks. The same programme may not be used for achieving other goals. It is a single use plan laid down for new and non-repetitive activities.

In the words of Koontz and O'Donnell, "Programmes are complexes of goals, policies, procedures, rules, task assignment, steps to be taken, resources to be employed and other elements necessary to carry out a given course of action." To quote George Terry, "A programme can be defined as a comprehensive plan that includes future use of different resources in an integrated pattern and establishes a sequence of required actions and time schedules for each in order to achieve the standard objectives."
Characteristics of Programmes:
The following are the characteristics of programmes:

1. A programme is a single use comprehensive plan. It is formed to achieve a particular purpose only. Once the goal is achieved the programme will not be used again.

2. A number of small plans are prepared to formulate a programme. The programme for increasing sales by 20 per cent may require a number of small plans to be formed.

3. A programme is prepared to achieve organisational goals.

4. It gives a time limit up to which the programme is to be implemented. A strict time table is fixed for doing a particular task.
Advantages of Programmes:
5. A programme should ensure coordinated planning efforts.

Following are the advantages of programmes:

1. Programmes lay down a course of action to be followed for achieving organisational goals. The details of actions to be taken and time schedule to be followed are all decided in advance. This enables smooth implementation of plans.
Limitations of Programmes:
2. Programmes are helpful in creating better co-ordination in the organisation. The policies, procedures, rules, budgets, etc. are in order to provide proper coordination.

3. The programmes are action-oriented plans and provide motivation to employees.

1. If the programmes are not carefully framed, there is a danger of their being failing. The actions to be taken and the procedures to be followed may be properly selected. Such lapses at the initial stage will make the programmes ineffective.

2. There is always a risk of inadequate co-ordination. In case various elements of programmes like policies, procedures, rules, etc. are not balanced properly then the programmes will not be properly coordinated.

3. The major programmes have a number of sub- programmes. All the sub-programmes should be successfully carried out for completing the main programme. Any lapse in implementing a small programme can endanger the whole exercise.
Characteristics of Budget:
Budgets:

A budget is the monetary or/and quantitative expression of business plans and policies to be pursued in the future period of time. The term budgeting is used for preparing budgets and other procedures for planning, co-ordination and control of business enterprise.

According to Institute of Cost and Works Accountants, London, "A budget is a financial statement and /or quantitative statement prepared prior to a defined period of time, of the policy to be pursued during that period for the purpose of attaining a given objective." In the words of George R. Terry, "A budget is an estimate of future needs, arranged according to an orderly bases, covering some or all of the activities of an enterprise for a definite period of time." In the words of Crown and Howard a budget has been defined as, "A pre-determined statement of management policy during a given period which provides a standard for comparison with the results actually achieved."

1. A budget should be based on past figures. The possibilities in future should also be taken into account.
Need for Preparing Budgets:
2. A budget be flexible so that it is modified according to the requirements of the situation. Rigidity in budgets sometimes creates difficulties.

3. The persons at various levels should be involved in preparing a budget. This will help in getting willing cooperation of everybody while implementing budgets.

4. A budget should be a specific statement. The quantities or monetary information should be clearly mentioned in a budget.

5. There should be an active involvement of top management while preparing a budget.
Classification and Types of Budgets:
Budgeting is essential for policy planning and control. The budgets are essential due to following reasons:

1. Budgets are required for formulating future policies.

2. They are needed for ensuring co-ordination among various departments or segments of an enterprise.

3. Budgets act as a tool of control in the hands of management. Budgets fixed for various persons will be the criterion fixed for assessing performance.

4. Budgets act as motivation for various employees. When targets for performance are fixed then persons will try to achieve them at the earliest. They have been given a goal for which they should work.

The budgets are usually classified according to their nature. The following are the types of budgets which are commonly used.

A. Classification on the Basis of Time:

1. Long-term budgets.

2. Short-term budgets.

3. Current budgets.

B. Classification on the Basis of Functions:

1. Functional or Subsidiary Budget.

2. Master Budget.

C. Classification on the Basis of Flexibility:

1. Fixed budget.

2. Flexible budget.

A. Classification According to Time:

1. Long-term Budgets:

The budgets are prepared to depict a long-term planning of the business. The period of long-term budgets varies between five to ten years. The long-term planning is done by the top level management; it is not generally known to lower level of management. Long-term budgets are prepared for some sectors of the concern such as capital expenditure, research and development, long-term finances, etc. These budgets are useful for those industries where gestation period is long i.e. machinery, electricity, engineering, etc.

2. Short-term Budgets:

These budgets are generally for one or two years and are in the form of monetary terms. The consumers goods industries like sugar, cotton, textile, etc. use short-term budgets.

3. Current Budgets:

The period of current budgets is generally of months and weeks. These budgets relate to the current activities of the business. According to I.C.W.A., London. "Current budget is a budget which is established for use over a short period of time and is related to current conditions."

B. Classification on the Basis of Functions:

1. Functional Budgets:

These budgets are related to different functions, the number of these budgets depends upon the size and nature of the business.

The commonly used functional budgets are:

(a) Sales Budget.

(b) Production Budget including:

(i) Raw material Budget

(ii) Labour Budget

(iii) Plant utilisation Budget.

(c) Purchase Budget.

(d) Cash Budget.

(e) Finance Budget.

2. Master Budget:

Various functional budgets are integrated into master budget. This budget is prepared by the ultimate integration of separate functional budgets. According to I.C.W.A., London, "The Master Budget is the summary budget incorporating its functional budget." Master budget is prepared by the budget office and it remains with the top level management. This budget is used to co-ordinate the activities of various functional departments and is also helping as a control device.

C. Classification on the Basis of Flexibility:
Advantages of Budgeting:
1. Fixed Budget:

The fixed budgets are prepared for a given level of activity, the budget is prepared before the beginning of the financial year. If the financial year starts in January then the budget will be prepared a month or two earlier i.e. November or December. The changes in expenditure arising out of the anticipated changes will not be adjusted in the budget. There is a difference of about twelve months in the budgeted and actual figures.

According to I.C.W.A., London, "Fixed budget is a budget which is designed to remain unchanged irrespective of the level of activity actually attained." Fixed budgets are suitable under static conditions. If sales, expenses and costs can be forecasted with greater accuracy then this budget can be advantageously used.

2. Flexible Budget:

A flexible budget consists of a series of budgets for different levels of activity. It, therefore, varies with the levels of activity attained. A flexible budget is prepared after taking into consideration unforeseen changes in the conditions of the business. A fixed budget is defined as a budget which by recognizing the difference between fixed, semi- fixed and variable cost is designed to change in relation to the level of activity.

The flexible budgets will be useful where level of activity changes from time to time. When the forecasting of demand is uncertain and the undertaking operates under conditions of shortage of materials, labour, etc., then the budget will be more suited.

Budgets act as a tool in the hands of management. They help in improving the efficiency of the business.

The following are some of the advantages of budgeting:

1. Improves Efficiency:

Budgeting helps in improving efficiency in the organization. Every person gets a target for achievement. Since performance is evaluated against the targets given, employees try to improve their efficiency.

2. Coordination:

The working of different departments and sectors is properly coordinated with the help of budgeting. The budgets of different departments have a bearing on one another. The co-operation of various executives and subordinates is necessary for achieving budgeted targets.

3. Economy:

The planning of expenditure will be systematic and there will be an economy in spending. The finances will be put to optimum use. The benefits derived for the concern will ultimately extended to industry and then to national economy.

4. Consciousness among Employees:

Budgeting creates consciousness among employees. By fixing targets for the employees, they are made conscious of their responsibility. Everybody knows what he is expected to do and he continues with the work uninterrupted.

5. Time Bound:

The budgets are prepared for specific periods and the performance is judged at the end of these periods. The results of employees' working can be known after a specified time.

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Plan Types: Standing and Single-Use Plans (With Diagram)

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ADVERTISEMENTS: A plan is a commitment to a particular course of action for achieving specific results. From this it follows that there are a number of plans for achieving different goals. Managers, normally, commit the mistake of taking major programmes only as plans. But a number of future courses of action are also plans.

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What does it take to be a thriving organization?

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Management by Objectives with the professor..........Einstein that it. (Module 5

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Management by Objectives with the professor..........Einstein that it. (Module 5

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Even though the reading on this topic was thorough, I need a little more to help explain it. Lets see what Einstein has to say about it.......

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Forecasting, then, now, and where is it going (Module 5)

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Forecasting, then, now, and where is it going (Module 5)

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Forecasting is when you predict future things that are going to affect your organization so companies are able to better plan where the company needs to go in certain situations. But where did it come from? Who decided it was going to be a factor? All questions that Mr David Orrell answered in his video on the subject

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Forecasting in the past, present, and future: David Orrell at TEDxParkKultury

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Time Clock Cartoon Schedule Conflict Cartoon I Won Cartoon Cartoon Computer Software Assembly Line Cartoon Winner Cartoon Team Pushing Cartoon Do Not Come in Cartoon Cartoon Hug Cartoon Time Cartoon Pushing Assembly Cartoon Manufacturing Cartoon Production Cartoon Schedule Book Schedule Conflict Production Scheduling Cartoon Scheduling Meetings Cartoons Medical Scheduling Cartoon

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When making decisions I wanted to get some examples of programmed and non-programmed decisions so I would know exactly how it worked.

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What Is the Difference Between Programmed & Unprogrammed Decisions From a Business Perspective?

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The act of decision making from a business perspective is choosing an option from a list of alternatives that benefits the business the most. A decision made in business sometimes comes easily to a manager because it relates to a situation encountered before; this is a programmed decision.

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How are you able to make a rational decision?

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Joseph Cohen on Rational decision making - Yahoo Video Search Results

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The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.

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Daniel Khaneman and Amos Tversky won a noble peace prize for their work on decision making based on human intuition. I found an article on that piece that helped me better understand their research.

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One could call Daniel Kahneman the unicorn of economics. As a psychologist, he had a profound influence on people who criticized the homo economicus (the theoretical notion that our economic decisions are always perfectly rational), instead showing how people actually make decisions. His insights forever changed the field, paving the way for what's now called behavioral economics.

If we want to understand and shape the system, Kahneman claims that we need to understand the humans who act inside it first. Long-time companion Amos Tversky and Kahneman dedicated their academic life to the psychological phenomena around judgement and decision-making, establishing a new way of thinking about human errors based on heuristics and biases.

Kahneman is listed as one of the most important economists alive today, even though he vehemently denies this to be true.

Daniel Kahneman

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (shared), 2002

At a glance

Born: 1934, Tel Aviv, Israel

Field: Psychology, Economic Psychology

Prize-winning work: Prospect theory; integration of cognitive psychology into economic analysis

First steps: As a 10-year old, he wrote his first essay on the psychology of religion

The author's secret: Doesn't like his best-selling book "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow"

Attitude: Deeply pessimistic about everything

One rainy day in Manhattan

When you snag an appointment with Daniel Kahneman (which can take up to a year!), you want everything to be perfect to welcome the man in demand: flowers, seats, lunch, even the room temperature. But while waiting for Kahneman in a downpour in front of a Downtown Manhattan hotel, trying to spot his limousine, there's a tap on the shoulder. "Hi, I'm Daniel." And well, there he is. Cloaked in a long black coat, shaking his wet umbrella: he'd walked.

Happiness is a disappointment

Taking a taxi might have been a happier solution in the unpleasant weather, but Kahneman admits that happiness is actually the biggest disappointment in his career, at least when it comes to research. "I was very much expecting to find one thing," he says, immediately casting an air of suspense, "but we found exactly the opposite." He smiles. Kahneman is referring to the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), a process he invented and is still in use today. DRM is a way to ask people about every part of their day on a daily basis, focusing on their emotions. He expected to find a broader change in emotions than in life satisfaction, but the plan didn't work out. "We were convinced that if we looked at the difference between teachers in good schools and in bad schools, we'd find a much bigger difference in emotions than in satisfaction. It turned out the opposite was true," he calmly reveals. "We found that it's actually emotionally miserable to be poor, but beyond a certain level of poverty, it stops making any difference. But for life satisfaction, the more you have, the more satisfied you are with your life."

Can a single question reveal what we're thinking?

In general, Kahneman is critical of how surveys on happiness are devised. A political question at the beginning could lead to an overall unsatisfactory result, for example.

Get new questions as they launch

Single questions in psychology are of high relevance, as he shows using an example that was discussed with a little controversy. He introduces Linda. All we know about her is that she's 41, has studied philosophy, was very active in political movements, and marched in antinuclear protests. "The question is," Kahneman offers, "How likely is she to be a bank teller? Or how likely is she to be a bank teller who's also active in the feminist movement?" He smiles, and admits that 90 percent of the people surveyed think that she's more likely to be a feminist bank teller, even if it's not logical. "Because if she's a feminist bank teller, she is a bank teller. You can give people hints and then they won't make the mistake." It's not just the question you ask, but the way you ask the question.

Can we rely on our intuition?

Kahneman was confronted with this question while serving in the Israeli army in 1956. He recognized that recruiters were relying on intuition too much when recruiting soldiers. So he took his first job as a psychologist and made significant updates to the system, which are still in use. "People were asked not to worry about the general impression of that person, but to ask specific, very detailed questions about several topics," he says. He explains the six traits they focused on, for example, punctuality or masculine pride. Each trait was rated separately and at the end, all interviewees had to close their eyes and write down their overall evaluation. "Intuition is okay, but you don't want to have it too early," he says. "This is what we're working on today. To work out instructions for people who are making decisions in businesses or in government in exactly the same way. To break up a problem into elements and to delay intuition until the end."

How should we make decisions inside a group?

He refers to studies on judgments and immediately uses a pivotal word: noises. "Judgment is much less stable and much noisier than most people think. I call noise an invisible problem," he explains, and cites a remarkable notion about intuition: It feels just the same when it's wrong and when it's right.

In organizations, which Kahneman calls "factories" of decisions and judgments, reducing noise is very important. "If you have different people who are going to reach a decision together, the noise reduction technique is to have every one of them write down their answer before the discussion," he says. "Because otherwise the first person who talks has too much influence."

People who rise in an organization are likely to be optimists.

He underlines that these people are usually more willing to take risks. "They're the people who get things done. A few decisions are successful, people think you can walk on water, and they promote you further." Again we see that our intuition cannot judge what's right or wrong.

Thinking intuitively, thinking analytically

Kahneman later developed the two systems to describe our mental life: system one defines the effortless, intuitive part of our thinking and system two explains the kind of concentration that involves effort. "My favorite example is making a left turn into traffic," he says with excitement. "You'll stop the conversation. When you're putting effort into one thing, you cannot do other things at the same time. System one doesn't have that limitation." Because in life, we learn intuitively and apply it - like how children say "doggie!" every time they see one.

Now, by making decisions we have the choice between those systems. "You could run or you could walk", Kahneman says, and leads into the general mechanism he calls the "lazy system". "Our mental life is like walking slowly. Mental life is easy, mostly. We can concentrate, but mostly we don't like to; we avoid it." He notes that there are differences in how "lazy" people think and decide, but this is not necessarily a negative. "Intelligent people who can solve many problems effortlessly can get away with being more lazy," he adds.

How should we make important decisions?

Kahneman shares some advice on making important decisions. "You should slow down and get advice from a particular kind of person. Somebody who likes you, but doesn't care too much about your feelings. That person is more likely to give you good advice."

The assumption of rational investors can be dangerous

Kahneman points to the fact that one has to be extremely cautious in financial decisions. He calls it risky, if not dangerous, when people who have little knowledge of the financial system need to make decisions about which stocks to buy for their retirement, for example. "That becomes silly," he quips. "The assumption that individual investors are rational. That leads to serious mistakes."

With Prospect Theory, the work for which Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, he proposed a change to the way we think about decisions when facing risk, especially in finance. Along with Amos Tversky, he found out that people aren't first and foremost foresighted utility maximiziers, but react to changes in terms of gains and losses. "And gains and losses are short-term," Kahneman states. "They're immediate, emotional reactions. This makes an enormous difference to the quality of decisions." He demonstrates that when people think of the future, they think of the near future far more than the distant future. Changing the perspective from people acting to obtain long-term wealth, to people not wanting to lose tomorrow, significantly alters our understanding of behavior. "People put much more weight on losses than gains. People hate losing."

Subjectively, it feels like you believe in something because you have the arguments for it," he says. "But it works the other way around. You believe in the conclusion, and then you create supporting arguments. That's fundamental.

The essential question is: why do people believe in their conclusions? Partly because people we love and trust believe in the same conclusion. Kahneman calls it "emotionally coherent". It's psychologically coherent, but not in the sense that it provides solid evidence. Voting, he says, is emotionally driven and one of the most powerful emotions is anger. It leads people to seek out an enemy.

Kahneman shares the story of his childhood in Paris, where he grew up as a jewish boy in World War II. "I'd gone out to play with a friend and I had my sweater with my star on it," he says. He'd turned it inside out, so no one would see it. "I saw a German soldier in a black uniform, and I knew that those were absolutely the worst. We walked towards each other and then he called me."Even decades later, the experience is clearly emoitional. "I was afraid that he would see the star inside the sweater, but he didn't. He hugged me and showed me pictures of a little boy. And he actually gave me some money."

Both went their separate ways, but the significance remains to this day. "It showed the complexity of people. He would have killed me easily, but in that context he was just a father of a little boy."

Referring to anti-Muslim tendencies in our present society, Kahneman knows that society has no historical memory. Both populists and terrorists use powerful emotional triggers; they address people's fear and direct their anger towards the unknown stranger. "That's very easy to believe. And it's very effective."

Will we learn from the history of mankind and avoid mistakes?

Can we ever get over this and avoid the mistakes of the past in future? Kahneman clarifies that he's an eternal pessimist and not able to solve such problems by simply responding: "No." But luckily, as he says, this won't be his job. "I am only a psychologist." He puts on his black coat again, opens his umbrella and steps out into the downpour. In this context, it's definitely not a lazy decision.

The value of investments can go down as well as up. Your capital and income is at risk.

Can game theory end world conflict?

Robert J. Aumann
Nobel Laureate, 2005

Can you reverse engineer a good outcome?

Eric S. Maskin
Nobel Laureate, 2007

Get new questions as they launch

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One could call Daniel Kahneman the unicorn of economics. As a psychologist, he had a profound influence on people who criticized the homo economicus (the theoretical notion that our economic decisions are always perfectly rational), instead showing how people actually make decisions. His insights forever changed the field, paving the way for what's now called behavioral economics.

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They say that group decision making is hit or miss and there's a lot of steps to take when coming to a decision. This article looked a little further into the pros and cons of collaborative decisions.

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Group Decision Making - advantages, model, type, disadvantages, Group decision making methods

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Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed. Group Decision Making: Gr-Int

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They have so many different ways to find out what is going to affect a company good or bad. So it should come to no surprise that they test the environment as well.

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Business leaders can control aspects of the internal environment that can positively or negatively affect a company's operating and financial results. For example, leaders shape their company's culture, establish the company's organizational structure and create policies that guide employee behavior. However, the greatest challenges to business success may be a consequence of the external environment over which a company has little, if any, control. To address these challenges, business leaders conduct an environmental analysis and develop policies and processes that adapt company operations and products to this environment.

External Environment

The external environment consists of a general environment and an operating environment. The general environment consists of the economic, political, cultural, technological, natural, demographic and international environments in which a company operates. The operating environment consists of a company's suppliers, customers, market intermediaries who link the company to its customers, competitors and the public. Both the general and operating environments provide business opportunities, harbor uncertainties and generate risks to which a business must adapt. For example, countries with large populations may coincide with a large market size for particular products. However, to offer its products in these markets, a company may be required to contend with a government that erects obstacles to trade in the form of tariffs, product standards and customs procedures.

Purpose of Environmental Analysis

Successful businesses adapt their internal environment -- including human and financial resources, policies, technologies and operations -- to the external environment. The company performs an environmental analysis to identify the potential influence of particular aspects of the general and operating environments on business operations. This analysis identifies the opportunities and threats in a business environment in terms of a company's strengths and weaknesses. For example, a company may consider the impact of operating in a communist country and the threats posed by government-controlled resources. A company might also consider the opportunities of a government-controlled market in terms of competing products, the implications of well-educated and well-paid consumers to product development and sales and the impact of the location of its primary suppliers in a country in economic crises.

Environmental Analysis Process

An organization relies on strengths to capture opportunities and recognize weaknesses to avoid becoming a victim of environmental threats. A company performs an environmental analysis to gain an understanding of these strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The environmental analysis then influences corporate planning and policy decisions.

This environmental analysis is a three-step process in which a company first identifies environmental factors that affect its business. For example, the company might consider if a market is "difficult" because of its remote geographic location or the area's unfavorable economic conditions. The company then gathers information about the selected set of environmental factors that are most likely to impact business operations. For example, the company might review International Trade Center surveys that relay information about trade barriers that companies face in particular countries. This information serves as input to a forecast of the impact of each environmental factor on the business. For instance, a company might project the volume of products likely to be sold in a country in light of existing poor economic conditions and significant trade barriers.

Limitations of Environmental Analysis

An environmental analysis reviews current environmental conditions to forecast a future business environment. The static nature of the analysis ensures that unexpected environmental changes are not considered in a company's business projections. In addition, the environmental analysis is but one source of information that's evaluated as a company develops a strategic plan. As a result, the analysis does not guarantee business success. The benefit of the analysis is also limited by the reliability and timeliness of data used in the analysis.

References

Business Environment; A.C. Fernando

Organisations and the Business Environment; Tom Craig and David Campbell

Understanding Business Environments; Michael Lucas

About the Author

Billie Nordmeyer works as a consultant advising small businesses and Fortune 500 companies on performance improvement initiatives, as well as SAP software selection and implementation. During her career, she has published business and technology-based articles and texts. Nordmeyer holds a Bachelor of Science in accounting, a Master of Arts in international management and a Master of Business Administration in finance.

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What Is an Environmental Analysis for a Business?

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Business leaders can control aspects of the internal environment that can positively or negatively affect a company's operating and financial results. For example, leaders shape their company's culture, establish the company's organizational structure and create policies that guide employee behavior.

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Competitive Dynamics in Business (Module 7)

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Competitive Dynamics in Business (Module 7)

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In this subject this particular article stood out.

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COMPETITION-BASED THEORIES OF BUSINESS STRATEGY, Strategic Conflict, Competitive Dynamics Theory - Strategic Management in the 21st Century. Theories of Strategic Management - Academic library - free online college e textbooks

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Although the industry-based view of business strategy emphasizes the importance of industry structure and RBV emphasizes the value of firm resources for competitive advantage, it is also recognized that the decisions a firm makes in terms of its actions and reactions in relation to its competitors in a market is a major determinant of firm performance.

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Organizational Direction in Business (Module 7)

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Organizational Direction in Business (Module 7)

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So how exactly does a company use the environment in business to find out the affecting factors and what direction they should be moving in?

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References

1. B.S. Chakravarthy and Y. Doz, "Strategy Process Research: Focusing on Corporate Self-Renewal," Strategic Management Journal, volume 13, special issue, Summer 1992, pp. 5-14, quote from p. 6.

2. L.B. Mohr, Explaining Organizational Behavior (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982); P.R. Monge, "Theoretical and Analytical Issues in Studying Organizational Processes," Organization Science, volume 1, number 4, 1990, pp. 406-430; A.H. Van de Ven, "Suggestions for Studying Strategy Process: A Research Note," Strategic Management Journal, volume 13, special issue, Summer 1992, pp. 169-188; and A.H. Van de Ven and G. Huber, "Longitudinal Field Research Methods for Studying Processes of Organizational Change," Organization Science, volume 1, number 3, 1990, pp. 213-219.

3. A.H. Van de Ven, "Central Problems in the Management of Innovation," Management Science, volume 32, number 5, 1986, pp. 590-606.

4. L.R. Sayles, Leadership: Managing in Real Organizations, second edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989).

6. For discussions of processes in the quality literature, see: H.J. Harrington, Business Process Improvement (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991); E.J. Kane, "IBM's Quality Focus on the Business Process," Quality Progress, volume 19, April 1986, pp. 24-33; E.H. Melan, "Process Management: A Unifying Framework," National Productivity Review, volume 8, 1989, number 4, pp. 395-406; R.D. Moen and T.W. Nolan, "Process Improvement," Quality Progress, volume 20, September 1987, pp. 62-68; and G.D. Robson, Continuous Process Improvemen (New York: Free Press, 1991). For discussions of processes in the reengineering literature, see: T.H. Davenport, Process Innovation (Boston: Harvar Business School Press, 1993); M. Hammer and J. Champy, Reengineering the Corporation (New York: Harper Business, 1993); and T.A. Stewart,"Reengineeering: The Hot New Managing Tool," Fortune, 23 August 1993, pp. 40-48.

7. M. Hammer, "Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate," Harvard Business Review, volume 68, July-August 1990, pp. 104-112.

8. J.D. Blackburn, "Time-Based Competition: White-Collar Activities," Business Horizons, volume 35, July-August 1992, pp. 96-101.

9. E.H. Melan, "Process Management in Service and Administrative Operations," Quality Progress, volume 18, June 1985, pp. 52-59.

10. Davenport (1993), chapter 7; Hammer and Champy (1993), chapter 3; Harrington (1991), chapter 6; and Kane (1986).

11. Hammer and Champy (1993), pp. 108-109; Kane (1986); and Melan (1989), p. 398.

12. Moen and Nolan (1987); and Robson (1991).

13. Davenport (1993), pp. 10-15; and Hammer and Champy (1993), pp. 32-34.

14. T.H. Davenport and N. Nohria, "Case Management and the Integration of Labor," Sloan Management Review, volume 35, Winter 1994, pp. 11-23, quote from p. 11.

15. I. Price, "Aligning People and Processes during Business-Focused Change in BP Exploration," Prism, fourth quarter, 1993, pp. 19-31.

16. Kane (1986); and Melan (1985) and (1989).

17. H. Gitlow, S. Gitlow, A. Oppenheim, and R. Oppenheim, Tools and Methods for the Improvement of Quality (Homewood, Illinois: Irwin, 1989), chapter 8.

18. P.F. Schlesinger, V. Sathe, L.A. Schlesinger, and J.P. Kotter, Organization: Text, Cases, and Readings on the Management of Organization Design and Change (Homewood, Illinois: Irwin, 1992), pp. 106-110.

19. J. Browning, "The Power of Process Redesign," McKinsey Quarterly, volume 1, number 1, 1993, pp. 47-58; J.R. Galbraith, Organization Design (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1977), pp. 118-119; and B.P. Shapiro, K. Rangan and J.J. Sviokla, "Staple Yourself to an Order," Harvard Business Review, volume 70, July-August 1992, pp. 113-122.

20. For example, see: A. March and D.A. Garvin, "Arthur D. Little, Inc." (Boston: Harvard Business School, case no. 9-396-060, 1995).

21. K.E. Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing, second edition (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 34.

22. S.C. Wheelwright and K.B. Clark, Revolutionizing Product Development (New York: Free Press, 1992).

24. L.A. Hill, Becoming a Manager ( Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), pp. 20-21.

26. H. Mintzberg, D. Raisinghani, and A. Théorêt, "The Structure of Unstructured Decision Processes," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 21, June 1976, pp. 246-275; P.C. Nutt, "Types of Organizational Decision Processes," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 29, September 1984, pp. 414-450; and E. Witte, "Field Research on Complex Decision-Making Processes - The Phase Theorem," International Studies of Management and Organization, volume 2, Summer 1972, pp. 156-182.

27. Witte (1972), p. 179.

28. Mintzberg et al. (1976); and Nutt (1984).

29. For studies on capital budgeting, see: R.W. Ackerman, "Influence of Integration and Diversity on the Investment Process," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 15, September 1970, pp. 341-351; and J.L. Bower, Managing the Resource Allocation Process (Boston: Harvard Business School, Division of Research, 1970). For studies on foreign investments, see: Y. Aharoni, The Foreign Investment Decision Process (Boston: Harvard Business School, Division of Research, 1966). For studies on strategic planning, see: P. Haspeslagh, "Portfolio Planning: Uses and Limits," Harvard Business Review, volume 60, January-February 1982, pp. 58-74; and R. Simons, "Planning, Control, and Uncertainty: A Process View," in W.J. Bruns, Jr. and R.S. Kaplan, eds., Accounting and Management: Field Study Perspectives (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987), pp. 339-367. For studies on internal corporate venturing, see: R.A. Burgelman, "A Process Model of Internal Corporate Venturing in the Diversified Major Firm," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 28, June 1983, pp. 223-244; and R.A. Burgelman, "Strategy Making as a Social Learning Process: The Case of Internal Corporate Venturing," Interfaces, volume 18, number 3, 1988, pp. 74-85. For studies on business exit, see: R.A. Burgelman, "Fading Memories: A Process Theory of Strategic Business Exit in Dynamic Environments," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 39, March 1994, pp. 24-56.

30. Bower (1970).

31. G.T. Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); I.L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972); L.J. Bourgeois, III and K.M. Eisenhardt, "Strategic Decision Processes in High-Velocity Environments: Four Cases in the Microcomputer Industry," Management Science, volume 34, number 7, 1988, pp. 816-835; K.M. Eisenhardt, "Speed and Strategic Choice: How Managers Accelerate Decision Making," California Management Review, volume 32, Spring 1990, pp. 39-54; J.W. Fredrickson and T.R. Mitchell, "Strategic Decision Processes: Comprehensiveness and Performance in an Industry with an Unstable Environment," Academy of Management Journal, volume 27, number 2, 1984, pp. 399-423; J.W. Fredrickson, "The Comprehensiveness of Strategic Decision Processes: Extension, Observations, Future Directions," Academy of Management Journal, volume 27, number 4, 1984, pp. 445-466; and I. Nonaka and J.K. Johansson, "Organizational Learning in Japanese Companies," in R. Lamb and P. Shrivastava, eds., Advances in Strategic Management, volume 3 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1985), pp. 277-296.

32. Janis (1972).

33. A.C. Amason, "Distinguishing the Effects of Functional and Dysfunctional Conflict on Strategic Decision Making: Resolving a Paradox for Top Management Teams," Academy of Management Journal, volume 39, number 1, 1996, pp. 123-148; D.M. Schweiger, W.R. Sandberg, and J.W. Ragan, "Group Approaches for Improving Strategic Decision Making," Academy of Management Journal, volume 29, number 1, 1986, pp. 51-71; and D.M. Schweiger, W.R. Sandberg, and P.L. Rechner, "Experimental Effects of Dialectical Inquiry, Devil's Advocacy, and Consensus Approaches to Strategic Decision Making," Academy of Management Journal, volume 32, number 4, 1989, pp. 745-772.

34. Janis (1972), pp. 146-149.

35. Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988).

36. E.H. Schein, Process Consultation: Its Role in Organization Development, second edition (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1988), pp. 17-19.

38. Schein (1988), p. 21.

39. Ibid., pp. 22-39.

41. Ancona and Nadler (1989), p. 24; Schein (1988), p. 50.

42. D. McGregor, The Professional Manager (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1967), pp. 173-174; and Schein (1988), pp. 57-58, 81-82.

43. R.L. Daft and G.P. Huber, "How Organizations Learn: A Communication Framework," in S.B. Bacharach and N. DiTomaso, eds., Research in the Sociology of Organizations, volume 5 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1987), pp. 1-36; C.M. Fiol and M.A. Lyles, "Organizational Learning," Academy of Management Review, volume 10, number 4, 1985, pp. 803-813; G.P. Huber, "Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and the Literatures," Organization Science, volume 2, number 1,1991, pp. 88-115; B. Levitt and J.G. March, "Organizational Learning," Annual Review of Sociology, volume 14, 1988, pp. 319-340; and P. Shrivastava, "A Typology of Organizational Learning Systems," Journal of Management Studies, volume 20, number 1, 1983, pp. 7-28.

45. Nevis et al. (1995), p. 76.

46. T. Kiely, "The Idea Makers," Technology Review, 96, January 1993, pp. 32-40; M.A. Cusumano and R.W. Selby, Microsoft Secrets (New York: Free Press, 1995); Garvin (1993); J. Simpson, L. Field, and D.A. Garvin, "The Boeing 767: From Concept to Production (A)" (Boston: Harvard Business School, case 9-688-040, 1988); R.C. Camp, Benchmarking (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: ASQC Quality Press, 1989); and R.E. Mittelstaedt, Jr., "Benchmarking: How to Learn from Best-in-Class Practices," National Productivity Review, volume 11, Summer 1992, pp. 301-315; A. De Geus, "Planning as Learning," Harvard Business Review, volume 66, March-April 1988, pp. 70-74; Huber (1991), pp. 105-107; Levitt and March (1988), pp. 326-329; and J.P. Walsh and G.R. Ungson, "Organizational Memory," Academy of Management Review, volume 16, number 1, 1991, pp. 57-91.

47. Shrivastava (1983), p. 16.

48. Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988); and Eisenhardt (1990).

49. B. Blumenthal and P. Haspeslagh, "Toward a Definition of Corporate Transformation," Sloan Management Review, volume 35, Spring 1994, pp. 101-106.

50. A.M. Pettigrew, "Longitudinal Field Research: Theory and Practice," Organization Science, volume 1, number 3, 1990, pp. 267-292, quote from p. 270.

51. Van de Ven (1992), p. 80.

52. Van de Ven and Huber (1990).

53. C.J.G. Gersick, "Revolutionary Change Theories: A Multilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm," Academy of Management Review, volume 16, number 1, 1991, pp. 10-36.

54. For studies on creation, see: D.N.T. Perkins, V.F. Nieva, and E.E. Lawler III, Managing Creation: The Challenge of Building a New Organization (New York: Wiley, 1983); S.B. Sarason, The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972); and A.H. Van de Ven, "Early Planning, Implementation, and Performance of New Organizations," in J.R. Kimberly, R.H. Miles, and associates, The Organizational Life Cycle (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980), pp. 83-134. For studies on growth, see: W.H. Starbuck, ed., Organizational Growth and Development: Selected Readings (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1971). For studies on transformation, see: J.R. Kimberly and R.E. Quinn, eds., New Futures: The Challenge of Managing Corporate Transitions (Homewood, Illinois: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1984); A.M. Mohrman, Jr., S.A. Mohrman, G.E. Ledford, Jr., T.G. Cummings, E.E. Lawler III, and associates, Large-Scale Organizational Change (San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989). For studies on decline, see: D.C. Hambrick and R.A. D'Aveni, "Large Corporate Failures as Downward Spirals," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 33, March 1988, pp. 1-23; R.I. Sutton, "Organizational Decline Processes: A Social Psychological Perspective," in B.M. Staw and L.L. Cummings, eds., Research in Organizational Behavior, volume 12 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1990), pp. 205-253; and S. Venkataraman, A.H. Van de Ven, J. Buckeye, and R. Hudson, "Starting Up in a Turbulent Environment," Journal of Business Venturing, volume 5, number 5, 1990, pp. 277-295.

55. Gersick (1991), p. 10.

58. P. Selznick, Leadership in Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), pp. 103-104.

59. Tushman, W.H. Newman, and E. Romanelli, "Convergence and Upheaval: Managing the Unsteady Pace of Organizational Evolution," California Management Review, volume 29, Fall 1986, pp. 29-44.

60. R.M. Kanter, B.A. Stein, and T.D. Jick, The Challenge of Organizational Change (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 375-377.

61. R. Beckhard and R.T. Harris, Organizational Transitions, second edition (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1987); K. Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science (New York: Harper, 1951); E.H. Schein, Professional Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), pp. 76-84; and N. Tichy and M. Devanna, The Transformational Leader (New York: Wiley, 1986).

63. C. Perrow, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations," American Sociological Review, volume 32, number 2, 1967, pp. 194-208, quote from p. 195.

64. D.A. Garvin, "Leveraging Processes for Strategic Advantage, Harvard Business Review, volume 73, September-October 1995, pp. 76-90.

65. See, for example: Galbraith (1977); and Schlesinger, Sathe, Schlesinger, and Kotter (1992).

66. W.G. Astley and A.H. Van de Ven, "Central Perspectives and Debates in Organization Theory," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 28, June 1983, pp. 245-273, quote from p. 263.

67. C.A. Bartlett and S. Ghoshal, "Beyond the M-Form: Toward a Managerial Theory of the Firm," Strategic Management Journal, volume 14, special issue, Winter 1993, pp. 23-46.

68. Hales (1986); Mintzberg (1973); Sayles (1989); and L.R. Sayles, Managerial Behavior (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

69. J. Pfeffer, "Understanding Power in Organizations," California Management Review, volume 34, Winter 1992, pp. 29-50, quote from p. 29.

72. E.M. Leifer and H.C. White, "Wheeling and Annealing: Federal and Multidivisional Control," in J.F. Short, Jr., ed., The Social Fabric (Beverly Hills, California: Sage, 1986), pp. 223-242.

73. Hill (1992); and Kotter (1982).

74. W. Skinner and W.E. Sasser, "Managers with Impact: Versatile and Inconsistent," Harvard Business Review, volume 55, November-December 1977, pp. 140-148.

75. Examples include The Soul of a New Machine, featuring Tom West, the leader of a project to build a new minicomputer at Data General Corporation, and My Years with General Motors, written by Alfred Sloan, who resurrected General Motors in the more than twenty years that he served as the company's chief executive and chairman. See: J.T. Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981); and A.P. Sloan, Jr., My Years with General Motors (New York: Doubleday, 1963).

76. Mintzberg (1973), p. 92; Sayles (1964), chapter 9; and Hales (1986).

77. Kotter (1982).

79. Sayles (1964).

80. Hill (1992); Kotter (1982); F. Luthans, R.M. Hodgetts, and S.A. Rosenkrantz, Real Managers (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1988); and Mintzberg (1973).

81. D.J. Isenberg, "How Senior Managers Think," Harvard Business Review, volume 62, November-December 1984, pp. 80-90, quote from p. 84.

82. Sayles (1964).

84. D.C. Hambrick and A.A. Cannella, "Strategy Implementation as Substance and Selling," Academy of Management Executive, volume 3, number 4, 1989, pp. 278-285.

85. Mintzberg (1973), pp. 67-71; and Sayles (1964).

86. Isenberg (1984); and M.A. Lyles and I.I. Mitroff, "Organizational Problem Formulation: An Empirical Study," Administrative Science Quarterly, volume 25, March 1980, pp. 102-119.

87. Sayles (1964), pp. 170.

88. Mintzberg (1973), pp. 67-71.

89. D.A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner (New York: Basic Books, 1983), chapters 1, 2, and 8.

90. MacMillan and Guth (1985); and Bower and Doz (1979), pp.152-153.

91. Mohr (1982), p. 43.

92. E.D. Chapple and L.R. Sayles, The Measure of Management (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 49-50.

93. Garvin (1995).

94. E.H. Schein, Process Consultation: Lessons for Managers and Consultants (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1987); and Schein (1988).

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The Processes of Organization and Management

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References 1. B.S. Chakravarthy and Y. Doz, "Strategy Process Research: Focusing on Corporate Self-Renewal," Strategic Management Journal, volume 13, special issue, Summer 1992, pp. 5-14, quote from p. 6. 2. L.B. Mohr, Explaining Organizational Behavior (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982); P.R. Monge, "Theoretical and Analytical Issues in Studying Organizational Processes," Organization Science, volume 1, number 4, 1990, pp.

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To maintain a flourishing company you are going to of course want to have organization. Here are some of the reasons its important in the business world

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The importance of organising becomes clear with the help of the following points:
(1) Benefits of Specialisation:
Under organising all the activities are subdivided into various works or jobs. For all the sub works, competent people are appointed who become experts by doing a particular job time and again. In this way, maximum work is accomplished in the minimum span of time and the organisation gets the benefit of specialisation.
(2) Clarity in Working Relationship:
Organising clarifies the working relations among employees. It specifies who is to report to whom. Therefore, communication becomes effective. It also helps in fixing accountability.
(3) Optimum Utilisation of Resources:
Under the process of organising the entire work is divided into various small activities. There is a different employee performing every different job.

By doing so, there is no possibility of any activity being left out or any possibility of unnecessary duplicating any job. Consequently, there is optimum utilisation of all the available resources (e.g., material, machine, financial, human resource, etc.) in the organisation.

Organising process makes the organisation capable of adapting to any change connected with the post of the employees. This becomes possible only because of the fact that there is a clear scalar chain of authority for the manager's right from the top to the lower level.

Whenever a managerial post falls vacant, it is immediately filled up by promotion. Since every subordinate is well aware of the working of his boss, there is no difficulty for his taking up the new post.

(5) Effective Administration:

It has generally been observed that there is always a condition of doubt about the authority of the managers among themselves. The process of organising makes a clear mention of each and every activity of every manager and also of their extent of authority.

It is also made clear as to whom a manager order for a particular job shall. Everybody also knows to whom they are accountable. In this way, the confusion on authority is put to an end. Consequently, effective administration becomes possible.

(6) Development of Personnel:

Under the process of organising, delegation of authority is practiced. This is done not because of the limited capacity of any individual, but also to discover new techniques of work.

It provides opportunities of taking decisions to the subordinates. By taking advantage of this situation, they try to find out the latest techniques and implement them. Consequently, it helps them to grow and develop.

The process of organising allows the employees the freedom to take decisions which helps them to grow. They are always ready to face new challenges. This situation can help in the development of the enterprise. This helps in increasing the earning capacity of the enterprise which in turn helps its development.

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7 Points on the Importance of Organising in Business

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ADVERTISEMENTS: The importance of organising becomes clear with the help of the following points: (1) Benefits of Specialisation: ADVERTISEMENTS: Under organising all the activities are subdivided into various works or jobs. For all the sub works, competent people are appointed who become experts by doing a particular job time and again.

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Satya Nadella on the Microsoft company and the structure gave good insight on how a company is put together. The introduction to this model talked about his vision but I wanted to see the speech for myself.

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Microsoft CEO: 'We want to empower every person and organization on the planet'

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks to USA TODAY's Marco Della Cava about his three years at the helm of the iconic tech company.

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One of the key factors in business is labor and how it is going to be divided up among jobs and the people doing them. I researched a little bit about the labor laws in Florida to help me better understand this process and how things work.

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Florida - May 2017 OES State Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

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These occupational employment and wage estimates are calculated with data collected from employers in all industry sectors in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in Florida.

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There are a lot of factors to vertical dimensioning and I need a little more info on this so I found this article to help give a little more insight.

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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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Lets see it in a video

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Definition of organizational structure: The typically hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority, communications, rights and duties of an organization. Organizational structure determines how the roles, power and responsibilities are as...