Business news from The Times 100 | Teaching business studies by example

Motivation

by jnaylor on May 14, 2012 in People

Keeping employees motivated is a key task for managers and a major part of this is understanding what incentives or rewards will most persuade individuals. Motivation may take various forms – financial, such as pay, or non-financial, such as recognition for a job well done. ARM, the world’s leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property, relies [...]

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Responding to the business environment

by jnaylor on May 14, 2012 in External environment

The high street retailer Clinton Cards has recently gone into administration and is an example of how external factors can affect businesses. Clinton Cards’ decline was accelerated by a key supplier refusing to support a debt restructuring proposal. (BBC, 9th May 2012, The Times newspaper, p47, 11th May 2012) The business was also subject to [...]

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Promotion through sponsorship

by jnaylor on May 8, 2012 in Marketing

Promoting products and services to consumers can take many forms, from traditional press advertising to celebrity endorsements. The US-based basketball league NBA regularly uses sponsorship as a form of promotion with companies such as Anheuser-Busch, the makers of Budweiser beer, and the sports drink maker, Gatorade. (BBC, 27th April 2012) Kia Motors, as a relatively [...]

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Understanding job roles

by jnaylor on May 8, 2012 in People

Getting people with not just the right skills but also the right aptitude is a challenge for all organisations. The UK energy supplier British Gas ensures its new recruits gain the all-round qualities necessary to meet its high service standards through its employee training and development programmes. Knowing what career to pursue is a major [...]

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Business ethics and sustainability

by jnaylor on April 30, 2012 in External environment

Speaking at the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in London Prime Minister David Cameron has said that renewables can be one of the cheapest forms of energy within years. However, they need to become economically self-sustaining, truly global, and must receive continued research support. (BBC, 26th April 2012) Mr Cameron announced a new initiative provisionally called [...]

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Stakeholders as partners

by jnaylor on April 30, 2012 in Strategy

The impact stakeholders can have on a business is considerable. Suppliers, for example, can affect production, quality and costs. Shareholders can influence the direction a board may take. A business or organisation therefore needs to take account of how its actions affect its different stakeholders. Leeds City Council is proposing changes to reduce the size [...]

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Using assets efficiently

by jnaylor on April 23, 2012 in Operations

Reviewing use of a business’ assets can generate new ideas, deliver cost savings or inspire best practice. Staffordshire County Council has recently backed plans to share facilities with other publicly-funded organisations. About 100 possible buildings have already been identified. This plan to share properties with the district’s emergency services could save £20m over five years. [...]

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Promotion online

by jnaylor on April 23, 2012 in Marketing

In the old days of advertising (e.g. a few decades ago), things were simple: TV, print and radio were the key media for advertisers to convey their Big Idea to large groups of people in a controlled manner. However, digital technology and the internet, with its explosion of mobile and other web-enabled devices over the [...]

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Effective communication

by jnaylor on April 16, 2012 in People

Effective communication depends on ensuring that every aspect of the communication, from the message, the format of the message and the medium used have been chosen to match the abilities of both the sender and receiver. Bernard Matthews, the UK’s largest turkey producer, discovered that the ‘noise’ caused by earlier negative press articles several years [...]

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Contingency planning

by jnaylor on April 16, 2012 in Strategy

Since 2002, Mozilla, the non-profit organisation that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the internet, has seen its most famous product, the Firefox browser, steadily gain market share against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Firefox now has about half a billion users, a huge number of whom help create the software. Google pays Mozilla millions of [...]

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