The Art of Taming the Business: Business Essays

PREFACE All the business chapters in this book were written as assignments by the author as an MBA (Management of Business Administration) student in University of Northampton. There are thirteen altogether, some are essays and some are reports. Most of these were written with an intention that these could be published one day. Also the chapters were written with an idea that it should not just reach business readers but also general readers who want to know business or just have an interesting read.

The first two chapters are part of the often hyped Business subject the Marketing and the chapters are a case study about marketing a product and the study of various marketing orientation and planning principles adopted by organizations across the globe.

The next chapter (Chapter III) is a case study on Organizational Strategy and the application of different strategic models for the chosen company. It also suggests future action plan and does a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis for that plan.

Chapter IV, V and VI are part of Operations management and all three are case studies and the first two are of two American Car companies and the third one is about American Defence. Chapter IV is about performance measurement and chapter V is about Lean Management and chapter VI is about Total Quality Management.

The next chapter (Chapter VII) is something that is more relevant to the current age of economic crisis than anything else which is the Corporate Recovery. This is again a case study of an American Airline company.

The next two chapters (Chapters VIII and IX) are about people management and about handling of downsizing and enhancing the organizational behaviour.

Chapter X is about Corporate Finance and presents an investment portfolio analysis for the Young's Brewery to acquire a stake in other related companies.

Chapter XI is about Cross cultural management for doing business in UK, India and France and how to understand and handle cross cultural issues. The cross culture models are used in such a way that it would be easy for readers to do the same for other countries as well.

Chapter XII is about the recent nationalisation problems encountered by the West and some possible solutions.

Chapter XIII is about Future Leaders and concludes with Jesus' words