INNOVATION

Innovation and Innovative Solutions Through Partnerships

The world is becoming more interconnected and organizations that want to succeed in this new environment need to become more connected as well. It is a challenge to individuals, teams, businesses, and the wider world. To innovate, many high performing firms are collaborating beyond their organizations with their extended networks of suppliers, customers, business partners and others. This Paper tries to examine the role of organizational partnership on innovation. In this paper we reviewed various research work done on collaborative innovation. The purpose of this paper is to examine recent patterns and developments in the literature on innovations in business through collaboration.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Chinese Sweatshops:The Result of Outsourcing by Global Business Giants

Everywhere on this earth where there was enormous surplus, perhaps the ultimate destination of desperate workers were the sweatshops. It has its origin between 1830 and 1850: A special kind of workshop where a middleman, “the sweater”, directed the workers in garment making “under arduous conditions” was termed as sweatshops. To fulfill their minimum basic needs, the workers aggressively went there as they had no other way. Analysts sometimes used it to describe a workplace which was “physically or mentally abusive, or that crowds, confines, or compels workers, or forces them to for work long and unreasonable hours, as would be the case with penal labor or slave labor”. Charles Kingley in his writing ‘Cheap Clothes & Nasty’ in 1850 used the term “sweater” for the subcontractor and “sweating system” for the process they did their business. It was the National Labor Committee which brought the sweatshops “into the mainstream media”.

ECONOMICS

Special Economic Zones in the Emerging Economic Scenario : Issues and Challenges

Special economic zone is a "duty free enclave" that is to be treated as foreign territory for the operations of trade, duties and tariff. The SEZ are governed by special legislative policies and systems, which are otherwise not applicable in the country. The concept of special economic zones is a powerful instrument, which is designed to achieve the rapid growth in manufacturing, employment and export. It offers the only way in filling the gap between China, South East Asian nations and India in terms of manufacturing and employment. It is also an essential tool to attract foreign capital, technology and will help to integrate national economy with global economy. The main objective behind the establishment of special economic zones was to transform the agrarian economy into the industrial economy. In India the deliberations over the philosophy of the special economic zones was started in the year 2000. Finally, SEZ Act was passed in 2005 and notified on 10th Feb. 2006. In the present paper, an effort has been made to examine the government policy on SEZ and thereafter an attempt has been made to analyze critically the implications of SEZ in agricultural sector, food security situation, displacement of masses, fiscal deficit, external sector, social sector and labour laws. The last section of the paper deals with the concluding remarks and certain suggestions.

Dr.Raj Kumar
Head
Department of Commerce
Government College
Shimla,Himachal Pradesh

ETHICS IN MANAGEMENT

"Ethics in Business and Value Addition" A Case: Polyhydron Pvt Ltd,Belgaum-Karnataka(India)

This paper throws light on the importance of ethics in business and the value addition because of ethical conduct, and exemplifies the same with a case study on Polyhydron Pvt. Ltd., Belgaum.Polyhydron Pvt. Ltd., is a flag ship company of Polyhydron group of companies. It was established in 1982 and manufactures Hydraulic Radial Piston Pumps, Valves and Accessories. Its products are priced unbeatably low, and Polyhydron Pvt. Ltd. has changed the price marginally in the last 25 years. Polyhydron is known for its ‘Ethical Management’. At Polyhydron Pvt. Ltd., honesty is not a policy, but ‘the policy’. It believes in building quality from the SOURCE. Self-inspection is the Best Inspection is also its policy.In conclusion, in the new millennium it has become imperative for businesses throughout the world to conduct business ethically to survive, develop, and flourish. The process of globalization of the Indian economy will make it inevitable for all the Indian business to evolve into ethical organizations; else their very survival will be at stake in the seamless global economy of the new millennium.

Ethical Acceptability of Neuromarketing- Relevance,Limits and Limitations

Applying the methods of the neurology lab to the questions of business world has become a common phenomenon. In this paper, we try to relate the application of neuroscience to the field of marketing/advertising and examine its ethical acceptability, relevance, limits and limitations. We believe that an understanding of the neuro-scientific changes that influence the positive buying behaviour is not going to be of much use to marketing field itself. It only studies the neurological pattern that is impacting the buying behaviour but this pattern needs to be generated in the mind of the buyer by means of conventional/traditional marketing. Use of neuroscience technologies to boost advertising effectiveness or attain tangible marketing objectives may prove to be a potential danger to the consumer’s autonomy and choice in deciding upon a positive buying behaviour. One can argue that the purpose of all marketing initiatives is to manipulate consumer behaviour yet it is an attack on the autonomy and private thought. Adding to the existing threats, neuroscientists are busy exploring possible solutions with intrusive technology to decipher a person’s mental movements. The basic idea of this paper is to highlight that the neurological process that takes place internal to an individual can neither be ethically manipulated nor freely influenced without regulatory constraints. In this paper we also bring out our theory called “sweet-ball theory” to explain that neurological techniques are irrelevant to the activity of marketing. Hence, we strongly believe that an extensive study of neurological sciences in the field of marketing is a futile exercise.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Leadership Through Competing and Caring

For India, growth is an imperative. The country aspires to be a major economic power house by the end of the century’s first quarter. To achieve that, India needs to accelerate and maintain an economic growth rate that is beyond the 6-7% per annum that has been seen since the early 1990s. To achieve this India needs people with vigor, honesty and all the more goodness in mind and heart. If India should be lead, it should be by people with serene and sincere minds and hearts. As the recession has set in world wide, only those economies will survive the onslaught of severe recession which are capable of providing effective and charismatic leadership. Strong and capable leaders are the most critical resource for a country’s development. A nation especially a developing one, needs leaders not just in the business area but in all walks of life, especially political and social. Once of the biggest challenges confronting India in this time of transition is able leadership that can envision the big picture in an increasingly global economy. What then are the guiding principles that a leader, in the current Indian context, must use to effectively steer his organization and the wider community around it, to success?

Minakshi Jain
Professor
National Institute of Technology
Hamirpur,Himachal Pradesh
minakshi@nitham.ac.in

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Minimizing Fuel Expenses in Fleet Management by Using Theory of Constraints

Energy resource and transport facility are the most important resource to define the wealth of a nation. Transport consumes the petroleum resource like petrol, diesel and gas, which are limited energy resources available in nature. For the past two decades the cost of the petroleum products are increasing and fuel saving or fuel economy are the trend in the universe. Economically consuming these resources is a way to save energy resource and wealth of the transport department and the nation. In this concern this paper concentrates on fuel consumption in a set of selected service industry transport department buses. Transport plays as a vital role in finance of the service industry. The successful functioning of the transport department and it profit limited by number of constraints. Breaking the constraints is observed as way to improve the profit by using a thinking process tool Theory Of Constraints. In this work this tool concentrates on breaking one of the selected constrains at a time instead of governing the constraints for achieving goal of maximizing profit by fuel economy.