SICOMS Library Blog

What are Your Strengths? How to Identify Your Strengths

2010-06-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

"What are your strengths?" is one of the most common job interview questions and difficult to answer. Prepare before the interview by using simple guidelines to identify your strengths.Before you can answer the job interview question "What are your strengths?" you need to understand your specific strengths.strengths.(Original Source :http://www.best-job-interview.com/what-are-your-strengths.html)
What is a strength?
A strength can be defined as a combination of talent, behavior, skills and knowledge that you apply consistently to produce a successful result. To identify your strengths you need to look at four criteria. What activities make me feel involved and engaged? Ask yourself these questions:
When I am busy with this activity do I think about other things and when it will be over or am I totally concentrated on the task at hand? Do I look forward to doing this activity again?
What are my spontaneous reactions to the situation and activity? Ask yourself:
When do I feel a sense of "rightness" and enjoyment? What activities give me a sense of satisfaction? What activities consistently produce the desired results?

Ask yourself:
Where do I perform at a high level?
What provides a consistent pattern of successful results?
What seems to be done well and effortlessly?
Where and when do I experience rapid learning?
Ask yourself:
What activities and tasks have I been able to learn quickly?
In what areas and activities have I experienced quick insight and understanding?
Use the strengths-finder list below to identify possible activities/skills/knowledge-areas/behaviors that can be translated into strengths by answering the questions above.
What are Your Strengths?

1.activating, adapting, administering, analyzing, arranging
2.budgeting, building, briefing, balancing
3.communicating, controlling, co-ordinating, creating, checking
4.deciding, detailing, developing, directing, devising
5.empathizing, evaluating , examining, explaining
6.finding, fixing, formulating, finalizing
7.guiding, gathering, generating
8.helping, handling, hosting
9.imagining, implementing, influencing, initiating, innovating, improving
10.judging
11.keeping
12.learning, listening, locating, launching
13.managing, mentoring, monitoring, motivating
14.negotiating, navigating
15.observing, organizing, overhauling
16.persuading, planning, preparing, presenting, problem-solving
17.questioning, qualifying
18.researching, resolving, reporting, recording, repairing
19.scheduling, selling, setting -up, supervising, simplifying, speaking
20.teaching, team-work, trouble-shooting, training, tracking
21.understanding, uniting, upgrading, updating
22.verbalizing, volunteering, verifying
23.writing, working

If it feels good when you are performing an activity the chances are that you are using a strength. Your strengths are things that come naturally and relatively easily to you.
Once you have identified your strengths it is important to understand what they mean on a practical, work-related level in order to answer the question What are Your Strengths?. Relate your strengths to the tasks and activities involved in the job you are interviewing for.
What are your strengths and weaknesses? - sample

The Philip Kotler interview

2010-06-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Few people have dominated a single business discipline as surely as Philip Kotler has dominated marketing. His book, Marketing Management, is the definitive marketing textbook and has been read by students for the last 40 years.
His most recent book is Chaotics (with John Caslione) which provides a new take on the economic downturn. Philip Kotler talked with Stuart Crainer in London.
Q:With success comes responsibility. Do you ever feel daunted by the sheer reach of Marketing Management which is now in its thirteenth edition?
I've been gratified that it's adopted in all countries by graduate schools of management. The concern is that if my formulation of the discipline of marketing is wrong, I've set back the world.
So far, many attempts have been made to build another version of marketing and they all have failed. Apparently, I am able to sense the next set of ideas and I put them in just before someone else hits those ideas.
Q:What first ignited your interest in marketing in the first place because it's been a lifetime's passion?
I am trained as an economist and it was what was missing from economics that led me into marketing. I studied under Milton Friedman and became a monetarist and a free market thinker at the University of Chicago and then I went to MIT and I studied under two Keynesians who won Nobel prizes -- Bob Samuelson and Robert Solow.
But I began asking whether economists are in touch with the marketplace? Are they of any help in decisions like, how many salesmen should I have? What should I spend on advertising and what about media mixes and so on? These subjects are not part of the economist's mindset.
I got into thinking that maybe I should look at the books written on marketing. At that time they were very good and all ran to 800 pages but they were primarily descriptive – what is a salesman and what is a wholesaler?
I decided to recast marketing on the basis of what we know about economic theory, organisational theory, consumer psychology and mathematics and those basic disciplines supported a whole new look at the field of marketing.
Q:It's easy to forget that marketing was a fledgling discipline at that time.
It really started in the 1910s, the word marketing, because we always had the word market. It went through some interesting stages, in fact, we could read some of the old marketing books and remember things we've forgotten.
For example, there is a very good book by Beckwith back in the forties about credit and how credit should be disciplined because if you are too generous in lending money to people who won't pay it back, you could have a bust. One would find some treasures in some of the old books where they spotted things that we've forgotten about.
Q:How do you stay fresh – you have written about marketing from virtually every angle?
I read outside of marketing because some of the best ideas are in quantum physics and look at what we are doing with nano-technology and so on.
One of the things that I am proud of is broadening the concept of marketing. Previously it was only about selling goods or services and I said, my God, we have the tools to sell causes, like say no to drugs and don't smoke, and then we got into marketing personalities, bands, singers who wanted to get high visibility and we could market places that want more tourists, want more industry or factories. Broadening the concept of marketing was one of my pleasures.
Q:You are still doing that.
Yes. I have a book on museum marketing and strategy, I have a book on educational marketing and a book on performing arts marketing.
Q:Which other marketing thinkers do you admire because when we do our Thinkers 50 ranking, you are always the top marketing guy.
I still have to put Peter Drucker at the head because although we think of him as the father of management, I think of him as the grandfather of marketing.
He said that the purpose of a company is to create customers and then he went on to say that the two most important functions of a business are innovation and marketing, all the rest are costs. That influenced a lot of my thinking.
Then within marketing there has been Ted Levitt at Harvard with his marketing myopia, his globalisation article and a number of other things. There have been some very good original thinkers both outside of the field of marketing who gave us some sense of things, like Marshall McLuhan about media, but inside the field there are a lot of great people.
Q:Your most recent book is called 'Chaotics'. It comes out at a time, obviously, of turbulence and recession, which is often a time when HR budgets and marketing budgets are the first in line to be questioned and then cut.
Yes and we have talked about what marketers and businesses should do during hard times when the cycle is in the down phase and usually it's spelled out, cut your budgets and cut everything by 20 per cent.
This, to me, is the biggest mistake because every company is winning through some virtue that it has. One company may be best at service; if you cut 20 per cent of everything in a service-minded company that means we get less service from them, and have less of a reason to prefer them.
We need very selective cunning but the truth is there are some companies that ought to welcome the recession as a time when there is enough dis-equilibrium to make new opportunities.
I love companies that see the opportunity side rather than the danger side of a recession. I think it was Ryanair where they said, finally, a recession, now we can really go after the big guys.
Q:It is a difficult message because people aren't very comfortable with turbulence and uncertainty, naturally.
Yes and we distinguish, by the way, between the business cycle phase and turbulence. Turbulence will exist even after the business cycle is over and we want to see turbulence as a set of spikes of varying sizes that are disturbances to a business.
We believe that we are headed for heightened turbulence. With globalisation and digitalisation, businesses will be hit faster by more disruptions and interruptions and so on than ever before. I keep telling CEOs, be reachable wherever you are.
Companies have to know when their strategy has decayed and is not working. There is a concept we have called Strategic Inflection Points. General Motors had one about 15 to 20 years ago. That is to say their strategy was dying and they kept to it and now we know that they failed completely.
Q:You also talk about hyper-competition, which I know Richard D'Aveni talked about in the 1980s and 1990s but that does now seem to be reality.
That is a major factor in the turbulence we are seeing and experiencing. There are three things, actually. There are business cycles which we can predict. There is secular change where an industry is absolutely changing the rules -- like the way online is taking over our newspapers and other traditional media.
Airlines went through that secular change when we began to get discount airlines. Then there is this third thing: there are more spikes and the question is how companies should prepare for this.
We believe that they need things such as an early warning system, scenario planning and flexible budgeting. Until those processes and systems are put in place their ability to cope with changes, sudden and otherwise, will hurt them.
Q:Something like scenario planning has been around for a long time.
It actually started with the military because they have to imagine scenarios, but we are at a stage now where the uncertainty level is so great that we also have to imagine some of the things that could happen. We distinguish between undetectable turbulence and detectable turbulence.
The early warning system takes care of things we should have noticed anyway but we have to imagine what is the worst that could happen? What would make us a house of cards so we would just fall apart? We don't know the probabilities, but let's at least loosen our minds and think out of the box, what might hurt us?
We can do the same with opportunities. What is the best that we could imagine? How would we take advantage of it if it happens? I am talking about thought exercises, I am not talking about you choose one scenario and say that is the one we are going to have and we are going to use the response to that scenario.
We don't know which one of them will work but what we learn in the process of trying to build scenarios has been invaluable.
Q:We are in a period of unprecedented turbulence do you feel optimistic? Yes. I think we have bottomed out in some places, in many places, actually. They talk about green sprouts being noticed. I think if I were in Asia I would be more optimistic because what I saw on this last trip was very great resilience in places like Indonesia and China. They are complaining in China that they were expecting a 10 per cent growth rate in GDP and it is 8 per cent. We would love to hit 4 per cent or even 2 per cent.
I think Britain and the US have people with unbelievable creativity and skills so I think we will see an up trend. I think it is going to be slow – I am waiting for 2010 to see if there is a real pick up.
Q:Do you think marketing is heading in the right direction with people understanding it more and it being practiced more professionally? It is a good question because marketing to so many people means advertising or it means hard selling. The imagery is very bad. But when it is practised beautifully…
You have an example of it in Tesco and the way with its club cards it can learn so much more about what different groups of people in its community want and how Tesco could address those different groups. Marks & Spencer picked itself up from a bad situation through good marketing thinking and Richard Branson is always full of new ideas -- the talent pool is incredible.
I have to rewrite my marketing management book every three years because so much new has happened. I told a CEO who wanted me to sign his book that I couldn't do it because he is still working on the first edition of "Marketing Management" and it's well thumbed.
I said, do you like the chapter on the Internet? He says, you're joking. I said, did you use the concepts of brand equity, customer equity and customer lifetimes? He said, that's not in the book, are you trying to sell me a new book? I said, yes, for your sake.
Marketing changes, it's not geometry; geometry hasn't changed for 2,000 years. That's why I keep getting this excited and why I enjoy it.

Increasing confidence as more staff jump ship

2010-06-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

The US jobs market is still a long way from being as buoyant as it was before the recession. But it's a significant sign of returning confidence that more Americans quit their jobs in the past three months than were laid off - and the first indication for employers that they could soon be experiencing a stampede for the exit as their top performers quit in droves for better opportunities elsewhere.
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After 15 months in which layoffs exceeded voluntary departures, official figures from the US Department of Labor show that the number of people quitting their jobs in April rose to almost 2 million compared with just 1.75 million who were laid off - the lowest number since January 2007.
Almost a million (982,000) private-sector jobs have been created this year, the figures showed. And while that's still a long way from enough to replace the 8 million that have vanished as result of the recession, the number of people willing to quit of their own volition is a clear sign t5hat confidence - and opportunities - are returning.
Just how profound the implications for this could be is spelled out in a report by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), a research and advisory services company, which claims that a quarter of companies' top performers plan to leave their current job within a year, a far higher figure than the heady days of 2006 when the proportion was just 10 per cent.
The study also revealed that one in five employees identify themselves as "highly disengaged", a three-fold rise since 2007 and a direct reflection on the way employees feel they have been treated since the recession took hold.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, said that many top performers feel neglected and taken for granted. In addition, many of them are struggling by working in companies with broken business models.
"Imagine being in a company within the financial sector right now — or the pharmaceutical industry or maybe the media industry.
"There is massive turbulence in those entire industries, and those working in such companies feel that they're not involved in figuring out how to help move their company forward. They also feel that somehow they're not nearly as important as they used to be. They're struggling by working within depleted teams, given that many of their peers might have been fired over the last couple of years.
"My sense is that 50 per cent of the workforce is spending more than half of their time looking for their next job," she added.
"And keep in mind that the top performers are the most mobile, the ones who can get new jobs easily."
And if companies face a very real flight risk, they shouldn't think that offering their top performers better career prospects internally is necessarily the answer, either.
The CEB's research, which included a recent survey of 20,000 high-potential employees in more than 100 organizations worldwide, also reveals that nearly four out of 10 internal job moves made by people identified as high-potential employees end in failure.
"Organizations are at a real risk of losing their most talented employees as disengagement levels increase, the economy recovers and the labor market warms up," said The CEB's Conrad Schmidt.
"It is paramount that companies act now, not only to re-engage and retain high-potential employees, but to re-evaluate and shore up their succession plans and preserve leadership development within their organizations."

Steven Spear on high velocity organisations

2010-05-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

It's a fast paced world we live in. Blink and the competition has stolen a march, and disappeared along the fast lane leaving you languishing on the hard shoulder. So how are corporate leaders to keep up?
Steven Spear senior lecturer at MIT, and an expert on how exceptional organisations can create competitive advantage through the strength of their internal operations, has an answer - high velocity organisations.
The author of The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition talked to Des Dearlove.
How would you describe a high velocity organisation?
In the book I write about companies succeeding over many years, sometimes decades, in even the most hypercompetitive markets. Given the intense rivalry in these markets, no one should get a lead, and if they do then others should overtake them. But these high velocity companies, as people start to close the gap, come up with another good idea about what the market needs, what to offer the market, and how to deliver it, and they keep running away. So they're the firms setting the pace – leaving it to everyone else to try and catch up.
Can you name some of the high velocity organisations you looked at in your research?
When I first started my research, I looked at Toyota. Toyota not only maintained a lead over its rivals, but widened the lead. It kept advancing quality and productivity, entered new regions, expanded its product portfolio, adding new brands like Lexus, and at the time was on the cusp of introducing new technology like the Prius hybrid. It just kept running away from the field.
Other companies that had continued to create and then widen a gap in hypercompetitive markets included Southwest Airlines in commercial aviation in the United States, and Alcoa, in heavy industry.
You spent some time at a Toyota supplier in the US. What did you discover?
Toyota realised a long time ago that it has these very, very complex systems. The car is complex, the equipment to make the car is complex, the factory is complex, the supply network is complex.
And it kept discovering that as much as it invested in trying to design these complex systems, it designed very imperfect systems. But there was discovery over time where it realised that if it couldn't design perfect systems, it had to constantly, relentlessly discover perfection.
If you can't see the subtlety, the nuance, and the details of how work gets done, you're likely to miss opportunities to get better. But if you really train yourself, starting with what's going on in the truck, and then working your way to much more sophisticated situations, more nuanced situations, you have a chance to gain insight and convert what you don't understand into knowledge which is useful.
Are there some characteristics and universal principles that apply across the board?
Sure. It's rooted in the problem people have, particularly when working in large groups that no matter how smart they are, how much effort they invest, they're going to design something complex and it's going to be broken. The problem is they just don't know how.
The folks at these high-velocity organisations are optimistic, though, in the sense that they believe that if they can see the problems and see them quickly, they can solve those problems. So, the very first capability or principle here is that work is designed in these high-velocity organisations so that the problems are immediately evident when and where they occur.
Anything else? The second capability is that when problems present themselves, these organisations don't just say that's normal, it always happens, and then work around the problem - cope and compensate.
When they see problems, they swarm them very aggressively, and with tremendous discipline, they understand the root cause of the problem, develop a treatment, and then follow up to make sure the treatment works. And if it does, they realise they've converted something which they didn't understand - that's why they had the problem - into something which they do understand.
How do you use that knowledge for the organisation's benefit?
Once they've got this little pocket of knowledge, the most sophisticated organisations realise that if you've had ignorance in one place, you probably have the same ignorance laced throughout your system. If you can get a multiplier effect by spreading what's learned locally in a disciplined fashion and make it systemically useful, then you get this huge return on your investment in solving the problem.So the third capability of these high-velocity organisations is tremendous discipline around knowledge sharing.
What about leadership in this context?
Well the fourth capability is leadership. The conventional wisdom on what a leader does is that they make decisions, they delegate other decisions, they give commands, they enforce them, and they ensure compliance. But at Toyota when I asked people to tell me about the best leader they've ever had, every single person told me a story about a leader they had, at some point, who took the time and effort to teach them how to be a great learner in their right, and how to teach others to do the same.
So this different style of leadership also sets the high velocity organisations apart?
That's right. When people say, what's difficult about this? The tools are not the hard part. There are hundreds if not thousands of people who can sell you the tools. The hard part is the leadership model. With high-velocity organisations, their whole operating system is based on the premise that the job of a leader is to find ignorance, convert it to knowledge, and teach others to do the same. So to convert a company from a typical company into a high-velocity fundamentally demands that leaders change their posture and their approach from telling other people what to do, to helping other people discover and, when in doubt, leading the way on discovery. And the thing about leading the way on discovery, the very first step is raising your hand and saying, I just don't understand.
Although we don't know the full details behind what has happened at Toyota recently, what do you think might have been the issue?
Toyota has become extraordinarily successful based on a model of developing people to be very agile learners, so that the products and the processes got much better more quickly than anyone else in the industry could manage. That development of people depends on a very intimate coaching process, and that coaching process has had more and more demands placed on it as Toyota's business expanded through the 1980s and 1990s. The real challenge is maintaining the intimacy and continuity of those coaching mentor apprenticeship relationships and developing enough people fast enough. I certainly do not think it invalidates Toyota's approach towards achieving greatness; what it says is that achieving greatness is rate limited and the critical processes that are the rate limiters are the processes you use to develop people.

Leader or manager?

2010-05-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

Too many people still confuse strong leadership with good management and vice versa. So I thought I would provide some simple guidelines and examples to differentiate between the two and determine whether an individual is either or both
Wikipedia cites 12 clear distinctions between good managers and strong leaders, but I'd just like to concentrate on four of them and put those into some kind of context.
Leaders focus on people, whilst managers focus on systems.
Leaders do the right thing, whilst managers do things right.
Leaders inspire trust, whilst managers rely on controls.
Leaders originate, whilst managers imitate.
We can all cite examples of strong leaders, but how many of us can do the same for good managers?
Leaders and managers don't necessarily come out of the same bucket, and yet in business and commerce it is often taken as given that good leaders and strong managers are one and the same.
But did Alexander The Great develop and execute military campaigns which are still considered mandatory reading by the military strategists of today, by concentrating on systems, imitating others and doing things right? Did Ernest Shackleton give considered thought to his chances of survival in sailing 800 miles in an open boat in the Southern Ocean, from Elephant Island to South Georgia?
In 1945, Winston Churchill was beaten comprehensively by Clement Atlee in the UK general election because the country wanted a manager, not an inspirational leader. And what was it that drove Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela to pursue similar goals which, at the time, were deemed impossible to achieve?
If these men are considered amongst the great leaders of our time, then what makes them so and do they also qualify as good managers? I suspect that the answer is probably not, because inspiration and originality and organisation and planning are strange bedfellows.
For example, Alexander's legacy was not the longevity of his empire, but the cultural influences which remained as a result of his conquests. Had he planned this? If Ernest Shackleton had been a better planner and organiser, would the Endurance have been crushed in the ice and the survivors stranded; prompting his heroic rescue?
Had Winston Churchill, an inspirational but disorganised leader, not replaced Neville Chamberlain, a capable manager and skilled organiser, at the start of the World War II, would Britain have been defeated by Germany?
And what of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela? Did either of them conclude that campaigns of violence and terrorism would have been less successful than the campaigns of non-cooperation and non-violence they opted for? And was this inspired and original thinking, executed with organisation and planning, or was this just a case of doing the right thing at the right time?
The answer, I suspect, is that it is a little bit of both. Being a good leader isn't something that you take out of a textbook or a training manual. Becoming a good leader, in whatever circumstances, is ingrained within us, should we choose to look for it and release it. It's just that, more often than not, our employers and superiors would prefer us to act more as capable managers than inspirational leaders, because leaders tend to challenge the status quo.
Managers, after all, are there to manage - and it's always easier to recognise, assess and evaluate those who manage versus those who lead. As Paul Birch, in his book 'Instant Leadership' suggests, managers concern themselves with tasks, whilst leaders concern themselves with people.
And yet history will again prove that in turbulent times and periods of uncertainty, people everywhere will look towards those who lead, as opposed to those who manage, for their own inspiration.

What Are Some Career Options in Supply Chain Management?

2010-05-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

What Are Some Career Options in Supply Chain Management?
Because Supply Chain Management covers every component of the business cycle, from production to customer service, those interested in a career in Supply Chain Management have many job roles to choose from. Read on for a description of a few career options.
According to careersinsupplychain.org, a web site created by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), there is a wide variety of career options in Supply Chain Management. Here are just a few.
Supply Chain Analyst
Many begin a career in Supply Chain Management by obtaining a position as a Supply Chain analyst. Supply Chain analysts use quantitative and analytical skills to gather and interpret data about demands, productivity and costs. They use analysis to help improve and predict Supply Chain Management processes. Working for Supply Chain members such as manufacturers, logistics service providers and retailers, Supply Chain analysts also:
Investigate problems and find causes and solutions
Create performance reports
Monitor the compliance of logistics service providers
Customer Service Manager
Customer service managers help meet the needs of customers by directing the actions of customer service employees. They make sure that order entries are accurate and products are delivered to customers quickly and efficiently. Customer service managers also:
Create processes to identify and resolve customers' problems
Create and evaluate standards for customer service
Work with transportation, logistics and marketing and sales departments to fulfill customers' orders while controlling costs
Warehouse Operations Manager
Warehouse operations managers control and direct the operations of warehousing or distribution centers. They manage the inbound activities of receiving of goods and managing inventory; they also manage the outbound activities of fulfilling and shipping orders. Warehouse operations managers also:
Create procedures for housekeeping, safety and security
Hire, train and supervise warehouse employees
Manage productivity
Supply Chain Software Manager
Supply Chain software managers design software tools that measure and help increase productivity. They manage distribution technology such as warehouse operations systems, order taking systems and electronic communication systems. Supply Chain software managers also:
Develop software solutions for business areas such as transportation, customer service, warehousing and production planning
Incorporate supply chain information into a company's databases
Provide general computer support

Interview with Michael Shermer on skepticism and evidence based management

2010-05-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

Michael Shermer is an adjunct professor in economics at Claremont Graduate University, founder of the Skeptics Society, chief editor of Skeptic Magazine and (co)author of many books and articles that take on everything from the existence of Bigfoot to Intelligent Design and why people believe in such phenomena. Recent publications include The Mind of The Market. He is also contributing editor and monthly columnist for Scientific American, and is the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Lecture Series at Caltech. Managementsite.com interviews him about skepticism in general and the emergence of evidence based management in particular.

The Skeptics Society is inspired by the philosophies of great thinkers, like the 16th Century Dutch philosopher and lens grinder Baruch de Spinoza, who tried to understand human nature throughout his life and the 20Century theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who said all our science is child play and primitive compared to reality, but it is the most precious thing we have. Skepticism is a method, not a position. Skeptics are not cynical.
Richard: On the English Wikipedia entry about you, there is the following statement: I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6th, 1983, on the long climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado….I got the impression you had an epiphany. Like you denounced everything you believed in previously and chose the scientific method. Like a conversion to science. What happened on the mountain?

How to lead your customer into temptation

2010-05-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

According to Stanford marketing professor Baba Shiv, it all comes down to the choice between cake and fruit salad.For a 1999 research paper, Baba Shiv, then an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, told two groups of experimental subjects that they would be participating in a memory study. He asked the first group to memorize a two-digit number; the second group got a seven-digit one. Then, before the subjects were asked to recall the numbers, Shiv offered them a choice: a scrumptious piece of chocolate cake or a healthy bowl of fruit salad.Shiv was less interested in feeding his subjects than in validating a new model of how consumers make decisions. Marketers tend to view consumer needs as monolithic: Meet them and you make the sale. But now psychologists suggest that consumer decisions are really the outcome of an epic battle.On one side, they say, are primitive emotions such as desire and fear--known as "affective" urges. On the other are higher-order cognitive thoughts, such as "Cake is not healthy." If that's true, Shiv wondered, could a marketer improve the odds that the side favorable to a certain product will win out?Remarkably, 63 percent of the subjects who were trying to memorize the longer number chose the cake, compared with 41 percent of those in the shorter-number group. "We distracted the cognitive side so that people were more likely to go with emotional impulses," Shiv says.
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An Interview with Sam Pitroda

2010-05-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

An Interview with Sam Pitroda

By Niti Bhan and Ric Edinberg

Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda, better known as Sam Pitroda, born in Titlagarh, Orissa, India, is an inventor, entrepreneur and policymaker. Currently chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission, he is also widely considered to have been responsible for India's communications revolution. He is the Chairman and CEO of World-Tel Limited, an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) initiative. He holds many key technology patents, has been involved in several startups, and lectures extensively around the world on the implications of communications and information technology.

DesignwithIndia had the opportunity to interview him to share his thoughts on design and the future of India.

Question: Mr Pitroda, you have extensive experience with the user centered design methods and tools that the Chicago school promotes through your position as member of their Board of Trustees.

Can you share with us your vision of how India's design community can apply design thinking, design research as well as tools and methods in order to best effect positive change in India and add social and economic value? Also, What key 5 areas do you see as priorities for India to focus on for social and transformation design initiatives?

Sam: In my perspective, before we can look at the priority areas to focus on, we must first take a closer look at the challenges that face India today. These can be broadly summarized into three areas:

1. Disparity
2. Development
3. Demographics

Our nation is well known for one of the most obvious and gaping divides in disparity of income for the majority of the population, 550 million of whom are under 25 years of age, versus the very few who are rich in any currency standards. Our nation also requires high speed development - not only economic, but also social, educational and skills – this is our future workforce, we must provide development opportunities; we must focus on empowering them. What India must do is invest in the future, face the enormous human resource development problem and find solutions within our principles of democracy for all and the multiplistic perspectives of our diverse nation.

Our priorities for India can be identified as follows:

• Knowledge
• Infrastructure
• Institutions

Therefore we must look at the challenge of developing our nation’s resources – the youthful population who are our future. The basic need is education, across all linguistic and social barriers, around the nation. At every level, there is a gaping void in terms of infrastructure required and numbers of teachers to meet the demand.

Today when we talk of teaching, automatically visualize a classroom, teacher, formal setting, investment in infrastructure – at the speed at which we need to train our youth, we can’t afford to build schools in every village – the entire concept must change. The cost of physical transaction is too high and would take too long to overcome, if we use the analogy of the banking example. A branch transaction for a bank costs Rs 50 but an internet transaction costs Rs 2. An SMS or a mobile phone call is even cheaper. We need to think outside the box.

Can we devise a way to take the knowledge available to those who need it the most? Can we provide education in the most cost effective format possible for rapid dispersal across the nation?

How do we bring down the transaction cost of every possible service to be delivered to the common man in India, the humble kisan, the aam junta ?

By using existing technological infrastructure to minimize costs and maximize reach, both in terms of return on investment and social value created.

How best do we bring the best the 21st century has to offer to the villages of India, with the benefits of learning, knowledge and culture in a manner that best fits their needs and yet serves to minimize the effect on the surrounding ecology?

That is our challenge and our brief to the Indian design community.

Question: Based on your experience as Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission, what advice can you offer the Indian design community on how best to support the improvement and growth of India's design knowledge and thus support national competitiveness?

Sam: We have already begun work on many information portals – we should look at capturing the vast knowledge in the field of design and creativity, both developed in India and abroad and creating an information exchange portal – one that can provide the cross fertilization of ideas garnered from our villages, our leading education institutions and from around the world. Why should we re-invent the wheel when we can learn and share so much using the technologies available to us?

Question: Now that the Government of India has ratified the National Design Policy what are your thoughts on the implications of this policy for the Indian design industry?
Sam: It’s hard to say, different people interpret the document differently. I think design has traditionally been defined as and too narrowly focused on design as craft or textiles, and later as products, but according to the document, design isn’t really about processes. A new design methodology is needed for this policy to be effective, but this isn’t yet a visible priority in the document. We need a ‘Design’ for new changes and new processes. This type of thinking isn’t emphasized in the policy.

Question: Additionally, what are the implications of this policy for India on the global stage?

Sam: Well there are 1.2 billion people in India, and so we need to focus on our interior markets first. We need to establish the design needs for the country, and we are already doing this with a large white paper on design and architecture, due at the end of this year. I think we may need to do this just for design. We need a plan on how many schools we’ll need, and what sort of programs they’d need to maintain: some for innovation, some for industrial design, some more focused on methodology. We definitely will need to provide the human resources for manufacturers and for that we’ll need more design schools.

Question: Finally, Mr Pitroda, every well-intentioned policy needs actionable next steps in order to make difference at grassroots level, what would be your advice to the government on how best to make the NDP actionable?

Sam: There are several factors that our Indian Design Institutes will need to take into consideration that are perhaps outside the typical notion of what design education is supposed to be about.

First, we need to have a broader view of design. India is a big, diverse place. Design will have to respect local customs with local applications. Take the computer, for example: 110 million people speak Marathi, but there is no localization to serve this population. So what we need is a combination of standards with flexibility to provide for localization needs. Open source is one avenue that can help solve some of these issues, but we have to figure out how to do it cheaper, more flexible, and scalable.

Second, the days are gone when you can have a silo-mentality. Today all research requires a multidisciplinary and a collaborative approach that provides for shorter product cycles, and faster projects.

Third, our family and interpersonal structures in India are very different than a place like the US. For example, a whole life can be played out on the street. Some people bath, sleep, eat and live there. Here in the US, our streets are empty except for shopping. Life in India is on the street, its open and in public. This kind of structure has different implications for the types of products and services than in the US. How do you take advantage of this?

This kind of sensitivity is our opportunity.

What we really need though is to produce thought leaders. We need individuals who can rise above the silos, above local politics, that can think outside boxes. These thought leaders have to ask important questions, experiment and not be afraid to fail. We need to help develop our new designers, as people who have the capacity to imagine for India, not just replicate irrelevant products and structures leftover from the days of the British.

Retail is Rebounding Already -- Time to Get Busy!

2010-05-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

Can you feel it in the air? See it on your cash register? Retail sales are going up. In fact, they've been rising for six straight weeks, and have been mostly up for the better part of five months now.The International Council of Shopping Centers is still playing it safe and forecasting April sales will be flat to down 3 percent, but look for their prediction to be low. It's time to wake up and smell the recovery -- and plan your strategy for capitalizing on the retail rebound. Entrepreneurs seem to be getting the picture -- studies a month back showed a gloomy outlook but the April Discover Watch showed small-business confidence rebounding. The evidence that we may be on the way back up out of the downturn has accumulated until it's getting hard to ignore.

Pitfalls of Using Social Media as an HR Tool

2010-05-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

On the surface, one would think job applicants wouldn't want their prospective new bosses to know how drunk they got at a party the night before the job interview. But just how could a potential employer discover such things? Easily. It's written all over the applicant's Facebook wall for everybody to see and comment on. (Girl, you barfed behind the couch? OMG! BTW, remember when you got drunk and broke the vase at my mom's house? LOL!)Online social networks are virtually an information gold mine for human resources professionals and others who do the hiring. In fact, in a survey conducted by the executive search firm ExecuNet, three quarters of respondents claimed they use the web--and social media in particular--to screen potential job applicants. So, who's LOL-ing now? Using social networks as an employee-research tool is commonplace today, offering HR professionals instant access to all sorts of information about job candidates (and current staff). And--as with all advances in business--some built-in challenges and previously unseen complications are coming to light.

India's Thinker

2010-04-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Globally renowned management guru C.K. Prahalad passed away on 17 April after a brief illness at a San Diego hospital, family sources said. Prahalad, 69, is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.He was a Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and was well known for writing best sellers on management subjects, including The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit.Hailing from the textile city of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, Prahalad did his graduation in Science from the Loyola College in Madras (now Chennai) and did his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. After his doctorate from Harvard Business School, the well-known corporate thinker had been associated with the University of Michigan.He was also on the board of several top Indian and global companies and institutions like Hindustan Unilever, Indus Entrepreneurs and Washington-based World Resources Institute. With the demise of C.K. Prahalad, the No. 1 spot in the management world and in rankings like the 'Thinkers 50' is vacant. In 2009, for the second time running, C.K. Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy, topped CrainerDearlove's 'Thinkers 50' list of the Most Influential Business Thinkers. Even compatriots like Gary Hamel, a long-time collaborator of Prahalad's was at No. 10, while Michael Porter followed at no. 11. In the 1990s, Prahalad and Hamel had the universe of management and business in active discussion with their concept of 'core competence' that urged companies to focus on their core strengths. Competing For The Future, a book, they co-authored in the mid-1990s was a bestseller and a conversation starter of sorts at boardrooms around the world.In the first half of the 21st century, Prahalad again set the world thinking with his advocacy of co-creation, that suggested companies must work together with consumers to create products rather than the usual model of thrusting products down the throat of consumers. To be sure, Prahalad was not a guru with lofty ideals. He preached austerity to business leaders and also advised them to not just spend time chasing the high spenders. His seminal work in 2004, The Fortune At The Bottom of the Pyramid, gave a new meaning to growing businesses in a socially responsible manner. The inspiration for Prahalad's thinking was India's 300 million who lived on less than Rs 50 per day, who could be an audience for everything from consumer goods to healthcare. It was this persistence that probably led companies like Hindustan Unilever to invest in projects like Shakti to reach the interiors of the country. In India, Prahalad was the poster-boy in the management fraternity, someone businesses could give an arm and a leg to have on their advisory board. Prahalad, too, believed in the potential of developing countries, as could be seen from his interactions with Indian delegates at the various seminars that he addressed in the country. In one such gathering some years back, Prahalad pointed out that developing countries could experiment more freely because they were often starting on a fresh slate and had little baggage to forget. He said, “It is more difficult to forget than to learn.” Even the impact he left on the world of management education, and business in general, is not going to be forgotten anytime soon.

Contents Features of Scientific American Today-Recent Issue

2010-03-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

Dear All,
Recent Issue of Scientific American Today (March 2010-Vol 5 No 3) is now available at our library.Its contents features are

The Brain's Dark EnergyBrain regions active when our minds wander may hold a key to understanding neurological disorders and even consciousness itself By Marcus E. Raichle
The Moon That Would Be a PlanetTitan, Saturn's largest natural satellite, scarcely deserves to be a called a mere moon. It has an atmosphere thicker than Earth s and a surface that is almost as varied By Ralph Lorenz and Christophe Sotin
Fusion's False DawnScientists have long dreamed of harnessing nuclear fusion—the power plant of the stars—for a safe, clean and virtually unlimited energy supply. Even as a historic milestone nears, skeptics question whether a working reactor will ever be possible By Michael Moyer
Evolution of MineralsLooking at the mineral kingdom through the lens of deep time leads to a startling conclusion: most mineral species owe their existence to life By Robert M. Hazen
Toxic Gas, LifesaverHydrogen sulfide, a lethal gas best known for smelling like rotten eggs, turns out to play key roles in the body—a finding that could lead to new treatments for heart attack victims and others By Rui Wang
Worm CharmersAs Charles Darwin had suspected, earthworms that flee from ground vibrations do so to escape hungry moles—even though sometimes it is humans chasing them By Kenneth Catania
Climate Change: A Controlled ExperimentScientists have carefully manipulated grasslands and forests to see how precipitation, carbon dioxide and temperature changes affect the biosphere, allowing them to forecast the future By Stan D. Wullschleger and Maya Strahl

Thought for the Week

2010-03-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

Manager Visibility No Guarantee of Fixing Problems

2010-02-24T20:11:00.000-08:00

Published:February 22, 2010
Author:Julia Hanna

Source:HBS Working Knowlede http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6352.html

Observing and understanding the tasks and challenges that workers face every day is important. But managers who merely put in time "walking the floor" are not doing enough; in fact, it can make employees feel worse about their situation.
In their working paper "Going Through the Motions: An Empirical Test of Management Involvement in Process Improvement," HBS professor Anita L. Tucker and Harvard School of Public Health professor Sara J. Singer show that communicating with frontline workers can backfire if managers make only a token effort to resolve issues their staff is encountering.
Drawn from the health-care industry, the research is based on a sample of 69 randomly selected hospitals, 20 of which participated in a three-part cycle of process improvement activities. Focusing on one area of the hospital at a time, the hospital's top administrative and medical officers spent 30 to 60 minutes with frontline workers involved in the processes of a particular unit. In addition, they held open communication forums related to patient safety. After generating a list of issues from these two activities, the group decided which ones to solve, and senior leaders communicated to workers what actions had been taken.
The 20 hospitals identified 1,732 safety-related problems in areas such as facility design and maintenance, equipment and supplies, communication, staffing, and medication issues. On average, hospitals identified 86 problems, took action on 67 percent, and provided feedback to frontline workers on 24.5 percent.
The researchers reviewed surveys taken before and after process improvement activities, supplementing them with in-person interviews with frontline staff, department managers, and the CEO.
Following the findings
Some of the findings supported what Tucker and Singer had already hypothesized. For example, when the hospital took action on a higher percentage of problems, it had a positive effect on organizational climate. The researchers also confirmed their belief that identifying those problems more negatively affected senior managers' perceptions of the organizational climate for improvement than the frontline workers who observed and lived those problems every day.
However, there were surprises, too. Identifying many problems to correct had a somewhat negative impact overall. Most significantly, Tucker and Singer found that senior managers' communications with frontline workers regarding their corrective actions had a clear negative impact on frontline workers' perceptions of the organizational climate for improvement—quite the opposite of what they had anticipated.
"When we went into this study, I really believed the common theory behind improvement thinking, which is that you first go out and find a lot of issues," Tucker says. "You obviously can't address everything, so you pick one or two, fix them, and then explain why you weren't able to get to the others. In fact, identifying all these issues dredged up negative sentiment, fixing only one or two amplified that feeling, and then telling frontline workers what had been done made it even worse."
Ironically, the process improvement approach used in the study mirrors that of the incident reporting systems employed in many hospitals. Tucker notes that these systems have their place, as they provide the opportunity for workers to anonymously report safety violations being made by physicians and other health-care workers. But her research shows that they can also be counterproductive on many levels when used as a vast collection vehicle.
"It's a bit of a Pandora's box," she says. "Identifying more is not necessarily better if the organization then ignores the majority of the concerns."
A Pareto problem
The philosophy behind incident reporting systems is similar to that seen in a Pareto chart, Tucker adds.
"Pareto's theory was that 80 percent of the cost is caused by 20 percent of the problems, so you find lots of issues, identify patterns, and select the one or two most highly leveraged problems to solve to get the biggest results. Instead, our findings suggest that solving issues as they arise with intense and substantive actions is much more productive in creating a climate where it's clear that the manager is concerned enough to improve the systems."
Of the 20 hospitals that participated in the program, 9 registered greater improvement in organizational climate and performance. Some of the negatively performing hospitals engaged in low levels of activity, but one poorly performing hospital in particular caught Tucker's eye.
This institution had high levels of activity when it came to gathering information and acting on problems, reporting 66 safety-related problems, taking action on a well above average 91 percent, and providing feedback on 83 percent. So why wasn't this organization rewarded with a better organizational climate and performance? Tucker and Singer went back to the interviews and observational data.
The answer, they say, is because management was auditing workers by catching them on technical mistakes and telling them how to do something the right way.
"You can see how that would erode the staff's trust in management," Tucker says. "A worker might think, 'Leadership just doesn't get it. I'm not doing these things because I don't know any better. Look at this environment and the complexity of issues I have to deal with. Instead of helping, they're basically slapping me on the wrist.' "
In contrast, hospitals that were able to improve their safety climate took action on the issues raised, and conducted site visits "in the spirit of being truly curious about the problems they observed and how they could help people do their job better," Tucker says.
The same findings can be applied to any industry or organization. "What we're finding is more related to human psychology than anything health-care specific," Tucker says.
It's helpful for managers to be reminded that their symbolic physical presence on the frontlines does not necessarily have a positive impact.
"Yes, it's important to interact with employees, but understand that the most effective question to ask is, 'What can I do to make your job easier?' " she adds. "It's all about working with the unit manager to help people be more effective, not just looking for positive or negative actions."
Long tail problems
Tucker hopes to focus future research on figuring out how organizations can successfully attack what she calls the "long tail" of problems.
While it's highly visible mistakes such as medication errors that make the headlines, health-care managers need also be concerned about less dramatic infrastructure-type problems—such as insufficient supplies of pumps or intravenous poles—that are easily ignored but eventually add up to real trouble.
"In complex services like health care, there are many opportunities for systems to fail because of the multiple interactions and hand-offs between people of different disciplines. It is more like 50 percent of the problems cause 80 percent of the issues, rather than there being just a handful of highly significant problems," she says.
"People get discouraged because they fix something and don't see the needle move in a big way. It's my belief that management and frontline workers in the health-care industry are going to need to address many issues on multiple dimensions, and figure out how to do so in a cost-effective manner

Speeches of T.P. Sreenivasan Former Ambassador of India to the United Nations

2010-02-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

Free Online Management Journals

2010-02-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Dear users,
You can access the following online journals without any barriers!!!!!!!!!!!!

Academy of Marketing Science Review
African Population Studies
Annals of Economics and Finance
Asian Development Review
Bank Investment Marketing
Bank Systems & Technology
Bank Technology News
B Quest
Brazilian Electronic Journal of Economics
Business Communications Review
CESifo Forum
Chimera
Demographic Research
Economics Bulletin
Electronic Business Asia
Electronic Business
Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies
Electronic Journal of Evolutionary Modeling and Economic Dynamics
Electronic Markets
Electronic News
Finnish Economic Papers
Forbes
Fortune
IMF Staff Papers
Information Technology and Disabilities
Informationweek
Insurance Conference Planner
Journal of Accountancy
Journal of Applied Economics
Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies
Journal of Business in Developing Nations
Journal of Business Logistics
Journal of Economic Education
Journal of Economics and Finance *
Journal of Electronic Commerce Research
Journal of Empirical Generalisations in Marketing Science
Journal of Financial Planning
Journal of International Business Studies *
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce
Journal of Knowledge Management Practice
Knowledge Management World
M@n@gement
National Real Estate Investor
Nova Economia
Public Administration and Management
Regional Economist
Reserve Bank of India Bulletin
Reserve Bank of India Bulletin: Weekly Statistical Supplement
Review of Network Economics
Site Management & Technology
South African Journal of Information Management
The Industrial Geographer
Time
Vertiflite
Wall Street & Technology
Wireless Review

Thought for the Week

2010-01-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

"Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were."

- David Rockefeller

Newly Arrived Books

2010-01-14T19:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Users,

The following new books are now avialble at our library

1. We Are Like That Only by Rama Bijapurkar

Incisively analytical, this book explains why the Indian consumer is like that only, why Consumer India will not change in a hurry and what it takes to build winning businesses in such a market. A powerful book, it is the definitive epitaph for formula strategy approaches to Indias consumer markets, especially of the global transplant kind.
Publisher: Penguin Books India
2.For God, Country, and Coca-Colaby Mark Pendergrast

For God, Country and Coca-Cola is the unauthorized history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it. From its origins as a patent medicine in Reconstruction Atlanta through its rise as the dominant consumer beverage of the American century, the story of Coke is as unique, tasty, and effervescent as the drink itself. With vivid portraits of the entrepreneurs who founded the company—and of the colorful cast of hustlers, swindlers, ad men, and con men who have made Coca-Cola the most recognized trademark in the world—this is business history at its best: in fact, “The Real Thing.”

3.Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur by Richard Branson

Business Stripped Bare is a dynamic, inspirational and truly original guide to success in business and in life. Whether you are an executive, an entrepreneur or just starting out in the business world, Richard strips down business to show how you cansucceed and make a difference.

4.The SNOWBALLWarren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

THE SNOWBALL is the much anticipated book recounting with intimate detail the life experience and life-wisdom of the man known as "The Oracle of Omaha": Warren Buffett. Though writers have penned thousands of pages about Mr. Buffett and his extraordinary gifts as a businessman and investor, THE SNOWBALL offers an unprecedented portrait of Buffett's life, of his values and his strategies, of his total experiences—all of which combine to tell a great American story.

5.A Better India, A Better World by Narayan Murthy

With one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world and an array of recent achievements in technology, industry and entrepreneurship, India strides confidently towards the future. But, in the world’s largest democracy, not everyone is equally fortunate. Some 300 million Indians are still prey to hunger, illiteracy and disease, and 53 per cent of India’s children are still undernourished.What will it take for India to bridge this great divide? When will the fruits of development reach the poorest of the poor, and wipe the tears from the eyes of every man, woman and child, as Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt? And how should this, our greatest challenge ever, be negotiated?In this extraordinarily inspiring and visionary book, N.R. Narayana Murthy, who pioneered, designed and executed the Global Delivery Model that has become the cornerstone of India’s success in information technology services outsourcing, shows us that a society working for the greatest welfare of the greatest number—samasta jananam sukhino bhavantu—must focus on two simple things: values and good leadership. Drawing on the remarkable Infosys story and the lessons learnt from the two decades of post-reform India, Narayana Murthy lays down the ground rules that must be followed if future generations are to inherit a truly progressive nation.Built on Narayana Murthy’s lectures delivered around the world, A Better India: A Better World is a manifesto for the youth, the architects of the future, and a compelling argument for why a better India holds the key to a better world.

6.How Google Changed The World by Virginia Scott
It’s the Universal dream – start a company, make a fortune, and retire early. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin struck gold with their search engine. That vein of gold just gets richer and richer. How did these young men and their company become so successful so quickly? How did they influence the world to such a degree that the name of their company and the act of using their search engine become a household word? How did they gain the attention of over half of the people in the world searching for information, leaving their competitors in the dust? These are some of the questions this book answers. What started as a graduate school project with the goal of perfecting how people search for information on the World Wide Web grew into a company that shook not only the world of search but dramatically changed the worlds of advertising and communication. It changed the lives of those who use Google and who depend on it for research, news, quick answers, shopping, communication, and collaboration. It has even changed how we are able to view and explore our entire planet as we marvel at and take advantage of the satellite images provided by Google Earth. No one can deny: Google has changed the world.

Recently Added Books for Research Methods

2009-02-20T05:50:00.000-08:00

o1173 : SPSS for Windows Step by Step: A Simple Guide and Reference 16. 0

ByDarren George and Paul Mallery

Table of Contents

1. An Overview of SPSS for Windows Step-by-Step

2. SPSS Windows Processes: Mouse and keyboard processing, frequently-used dialog boxes, editing output, printing results, the Options Option

3. Creating and Editing a Data File

4. Managing Data: Listing cases, replacing missing values, computing new variables, recoding variables, exploring data, selecting cases, sorting cases, merging files

5. GRAPHS: Creating and editing graphs and charts

BASE SYSTEM MODULE

6. FREQUENCIES: Frequencies, bar charts, histograms, percentiles

7. DESCRIPTIVE Statistics: Measures of central tendency, variability, deviation from normality, size, and stability

8. CROSSTABULATION and Chi-Square (2) Analyses

9. The MEANS Procedure

10. Bivariate CORRELATION: Bivariate correlations, partial correlations, and the correlation matrix

11. The T TEST Procedure: Independent-samples, paired-samples, and one-sample tests

12. The One-Way ANOVA Procedure: One-way Analysis of Variance

13. General Linear Models: Two-Way Analysis of Variance

14. General Linear Models: Three-Way Analysis of Variance and the influence of covariates

15. Simple Linear REGRESSION

16. MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS

17. NONPARAMETRIC Procedures

18. RELIABILITY ANALYSIS: Coefficient alpha () and split-half reliability

19. MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING

20. FACTOR analysis

21. CLUSTER ANALYSIS

22. DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS

ADVANCED and REGRESSION MODULES

23. General Linear Models: MANOVA and MANCOVA: Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Covariance

24. General Linear Models: Repeated-Measures MANOVA: Multivariate Analysis of Variance with repeated measures and within-subjects factors

25. LOGISTIC REGRESSION

26. Hierarchical LOGLINEAR MODELS

27. General LOGLINEAR MODELS

28. RESIDUALS: Analyzing left-over variance

01174 ; Quantitative Methods for Decision Makers, 4/E

by Mik Wisniewski

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Tools of the trade

3. Presenting management information

4. Management statistics

5. Probability and probability distributions

6. Decision making under uncertainty

7. Market research and statistical inference

8. Quality control and quality management

9. Forecasting 1: Moving averages and time series

10. Forecasting 2: Regression

11. Linear programming

12. Stock control

13. Project management

14. Simulation 15. Financial decision-making Conclusion

Newly Arrived Books

2009-02-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

The following books are now available at our library

01161 - Principles of Corporate Finance ; Brealey, Richard A,etal

01162 - Operations Research : Theory and Applications ; Sharma, J K

01163 - Projects : Planning,Analysis,Selection,Financing,Implementation and Review ; Chandra, Prasanna

01164 -65 Operations Research ; Potti, L R

01166 - Case Study Solutions : Courses in Finance ; Kaushal, H

01167 - Stock Exchanges,Investments and Derivatives ; Raghunathan, VRajib, Prabina

01168 - Marpol Consolidated Edition 2006

01169 - Modeling the Supply Chain ; Shapiro, Jeremy F

01170 - Manual of Merchant Shipping Act,1958 ; Gill, J S

01171 - Operations Management: Theory and Practice ; Mahadevan, B

01172 - Organisatioanal Behaviour ; Chandan, Jit S

One Day Workshop on Supply Chain Management

2009-02-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

Workshop on Supply Chain Management

An Emerging Tool for Profitability

************************************************

A special focus on Materials Management for

Health Care Systems/SMEs

February 21 st 2009 (Saturday)

KIED

(Kerala Institute of Entrepreneurship Development)
Rockwell Road (Off HMT Road) H.M.T JunctionKalamassery,Ernakulam

Organised by

SICOMS

Sadanam Institute of Commerce and Management Studies

Pathiripala,Palakkad

Further information /Details please contact

Prof.(Dr.) Sivaraman

Mob : 9447081992

Table of Contents of Harvard Business Review February,2009

2009-02-12T06:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Users,

Harvard Business Review,February 2009 is avialable at our library

Table of contents

*Executive Summaries

*Seize Advantage in a Downturn ;David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter

*Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions ;Andrew Campbell , Jo Whitehead , and Sydney Finkelstein

*How to Design Smart Business Experiments ;Thomas H. Davenport

*How to Thrive in Turbulent Markets ;Donald Sull

*From the Editor: Navigating the Downturn

*The Editors;HBR List :Breakthrough Ideas for 2009

*HBR Case Study:Gen Y in the Workforce ;Tamara J. Erickson

*HBR at Large:Moon Shots for Management ;Gary Hamel

*Managing Yourself:Stop Overdoing Your Strengths ;Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser

*Panel Discussion:Eureka!;Don Moyer

Free Online Trial to SAGE Journals in Education

2009-02-02T01:31:00.000-08:00

Free Online Trial to SAGE Journals in Education
(February 1 – March 31, 2009)

Dear Users,

Get acquainted with SAGE's many journals in Education and related disciplines now during their free online trial period. They are currently offering free full–text access to 39 titles for two months.

Active Learning in Higher Education
Adult Education Quarterly
American Educational Research Journal
Arts and Humanities in Higher Education
Autism
Canadian Journal of School Psychology
Community College Review
Education and Urban Society
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice
Educational Administration Quarterly
Educational and Psychological Measurement
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
Educational Policy
Educational Researcher
European Physical Education Review
Gifted Child Quarterly
Improving Schools
Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership
Journal of Early Childhood Literacy Journal of Early Childhood Research
Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics
Journal of Hispanic Higher Education
Journal of Learning Disabilities
Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment
Journal of Research in International Education
Journal of Studies in International Education
Journal of Teacher Education
Journal of Transformative Education
Management in Education
Music Educators Journal
NASSP Bulletin
Remedial and Special Education
Review of Educational Research
Review of Research in Education
School Psychology International
The Journal of Special Education

Theory and Research in Education

Urban Education

For registering and more details please visit

https://online.sagepub.com/cgi/register?registration=FT91513&WT.mc_id=1092019JA_regbnm&WT.mc_ev=click

The Nine New Mega Opportunities of 2009

2009-01-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

The business issues of 2009 are not only hyper-accelerated but they will take many sudden turns... Naseem Javed has carefully selected the NINE hot opportunities for 2009

For more details http://www.themanager.org/Javed/Nine_Mega_Opportunities_2009.htm

Why Washington Must Face New-Cyber-Name-Economy?

2009-01-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

The serious objections by US Department of Commerce to ICANN's new policies www.icann.org - on creating unlimited domain suffixes are primarily based on old domain name thinking and continued fear of losing control of Internet. The comments lack serious knowledge of global business naming problems surrounded by international demands of multiple-cyber-branding platforms now impacting 99% of buyers and sellers worldwide. Businesses need to create global name brands for the new world with great speed and minimal costs and this time Washington could lead this charge or risk losing support to control the Internet.
The proposed ICANN plan offers a brand new superior device to fit new platforms and technologically advanced solutions amidst global image and name identities positioning. Here are the three key facts.

The nomenclature issues
Today 95% of the business names identities all over the world are collapsing for being either too similar or identical. They are often highly diluted, dictionary, geographic, family or generic names and despite combined worldwide advertising expenditures of a billion dollar per day, these identities are only gasping for constant oxygen but will never achieve stardom.
The proposed domain is not just a suffix, rather a brand new type of domain, it's a name without a suffix and far too superior in its cyber-branding applications and as such should not even be called a gtld. It offers the fastest and cheapest mechanism to create a new layer of cyber-brand with global visibility with protection, upon approval the applicant will exclusively acquire a one of a kind intellectual asset of a cyber name identity and play on global ecommerce. Based on rules of trademarking, the name identity will not be confused as someone else's name brand and equally will be protected from any one else using that name brand. The application process under trademark rules, will not grant confusingly similar suffixes 'bank'
or 'banking' and the same suffix will be 100% owned and controlled by its owner eliminating cyber-squatting by others. ICANN is like creating a wheel while businesses will have to think in terms of bicycles and cars.
Based on study by ABC Namebank, there will be some 100,000, business names worldwide that will have to respond, by evaluating, modifying and applying to create new interactions, they will need all this re-branding to further energize new cyber-branding platforms. Some names will be impossible to fix, some name will be legally fought or publicly contested resulting in bidding wars, making the scene very passionate and challenging. The same study points to 18,000 companies that are already spending over one Millions dollar monthly in advertising and marketing as they will have no other choice but to seriously attempt to secure a name identity to guide their image on course.

window.google_render_ad();

The trademark issues
Today businesses desperately need global access and that demands global name protection umbrella. A typical globally trademarked name could easily cost 2K-5KUSD per application, per country and at times after several years of paper pushing may only ends up in as many as 100 of the 250 countries. Often, these candidates, gets dropped during the process for repeated opposition and resistance from other similar names while still struggling to maintain a spotlight position in its marketplace. The stories are embarrassingly painful. The global trademarking procedures are unnecessarily slow and overly complicated. Of the hundreds of millions of names all over the world only less than few thousand names are properly filed worldwide and protected. The costs plus a decade long struggle is prohibitive for most growing businesses. Some 5000-trademark law firms around the world are battling this out.
The new tool offers a clear saving of 95% of time and 95% of traditional advertising cost to create global cyber presence. Tens of thousands of businesses currently pushing weaker or similar brand identities will find this a great lifesaver.
The new re-branding era of the new global-scale mediums is around the corner and this new plan offers a great platform

ICANN is only one body issuing exclusive global name rights to one single unique identity, traditional global trade marking deals with 250 countries and their bureaucracies. The new cyber-branding platform will create a more precise black and white name clearance issues and eliminate too many grey zones to create prolonged legal battles.

The Internet break-up issues
The center of Internet is neither Washington nor Beijing; it is now just an ocean in between, with 3 billion users by 2020 if accessed on intelligent platforms it offers free customer reach, ever assembled in the history, it is a solid base for big players and a goldmine for start-up and SME. While the old domain suffix extension has served their limited value and out side .com all other are presumed mostly ineffective, a brand new more powerful domain tool for the 2020 global pool is very essential. Countries all over the world want to play this game openly and creating unlimited suffixes provides that blanket.
On the other hand, China alone could easily split the current Internet in two and the rest of the other groups will follow. Based on language and usage hierarchy, it is Chinese, English, Hindustani, Russian, Spanish…and each language group easily justifies their own system while technology provides the support. Embracing global naming and language realities ICANN further softens the issues and create open harmony among nations. A break-up must be avoided at all costs.
Old mediums are almost dead and these new multi-billion-user pools of global information and customer bases are more dynamically entangled and interactively responsive with buyers and sellers. Technologically advanced global scale NAMING platforms for web-portals, social-media, and global village to universal access are a must for businesses and consumers alike. The new name-economy, where countries create powerful globally recognized exclusive brand names to declare superiority over other nations has fully arrived. What took decades to create global name recognition is now demanded in one single afternoon. The ICANN unlimited suffixes provide special tools to fuel these new concepts and platforms.
The CEOs around the world, if interested in any serious image expansion, irrespective of size of operations, will have to raise some tough questions about their current name identities what will provide umbrella names to their empires. They have to identify a solid long-term game plan, as this is a global race. The adverting agencies all over the world can also create a huge advantage to come out from their doldrums and re-energize their role on these new platforms. US could lead, embrace the big changes and show the way.
This road is tough, the path is twisted but the direction of the global mindshare is very straight and the new global cyber-branding platform is where the ocean is. The big change is inevitable.
By Naseem Javed

Features of Harvard Business Review -January 2009

2009-01-15T02:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Users,

Harvard Business Review (January 2009 Vol.4 No.1) now available at our library

Table of Content
Executive Summaries
Picking the Right Transition Strategy Michael D. Watkins
The Quick Wins Paradox Mark E. Van Buren and Todd Safferstone
Women and the Vision Thing Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru
How Not to Lose the Top Job Marshall Goldsmith
The Last Act of a Great CEO Thomas J. Friel and Robert S. Duboff
From the Editor: Watch That Next Step—It’s a Big One The Editors
January 2009 Issue Departments
Forethought
To Lead, Create a Shared Vision
Start Networking Right Away (Even If You Hate It)
Shareholder Value Must Top the CEO’s Agenda
Women Gain (Hidden) Ground in the Boardroom
Picking the Right Insider for CEO Succession
Lego CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp on leading through survival and growth
Planning a Start-Up? Seize the Day...
Fulfill the Dream of Leading a Nonprofit
Best of HBR
HBR Classics on Leadership Transitions
HBR Case Study
From Regional Star to Global Leader Nitin Nohria
Different Voice
Playing to the Back Row A Conversation with Ringmaster Chuck Wagner
HBR Research Report
What Can Coaches Do for You? Carol Kauffman and Diane Coutu
HBR at Large
How GE Teaches Teams to Lead Change Steven Prokesch
Panel Discussion
Is Experience Enough? Don Moyer

Recently Subscribed Cases

2009-01-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Users,

The following cases (from IIM Ahmedabad) are now available at our library

1.Arul M J ; Pay Roll Issue

2.Dixit Mukund R and Pandey I M ; Clariant India Ltd.(B)

3.Raghuram G,Tripathy A and Bhatt Gunjan ; Coil and Sheet Steel Company Limited

4.Kalro A H,Sastry S T and Tripathy A ; International Cosmetic Limited

5.Jain,Abhinandan K ; Maruti Udyog Limited International Marketing\

6.Srivastava,Manish ; Revolutionizing Blood Banking in India : Prathama Blood Center

7.Ravichandran N ; Royal Enfield Motors Limited

8.Ramani K V and Mishra Gouri Shankar ; Vizag Port Traffic Study

9.Tripathy Arabinda ; Coal inventory at M/S Cement India Limited

10.Shukla P R and Gandhi Shailesh ; Bharat Construction Company Limited

Newly added Books

2008-12-16T23:18:00.000-08:00

01134 - Industrial Costing : A Practical Guide To Managers and a Reference Book for Students of Cost Accountancy at PG and UG level ; Menon, T S K
01135 - Marketing Management; Kotler, Philip Keller, kevin Lane
01136 - Operations Research: Theory and Applications; Sharma, J K
01137 -38 Operations Management for Competitive Advantage; Chase, Richard B,etal
01139 - Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act,1952 (19 0f 1952]
01140 - Bibliography of Cases and Notes; 1996
01141 - Business Research Methods ; Zikmund, William G
01142 - Applied Multivariate Statistical Analysis ;Johnson, Richard A Wichern,Dean W
01143 - Introduction to Operational Research ; Kothari, C R
01144 - Projects : Planning,Analysis,Selection,Financing,Implementation,and Review ; Chandra, Prasanna
01145 -46 Business Research Methods; Cooper, Donald R Schindler, Pamela S
01147 – 48 Financial Management: Text Problems and Cases ; Khan, M YJain, P K
01149 -51 Organisational Behaviour ; Robbins, Stephen PJudge, Timothy A
01152 -53 Organisational Behaviour ; Luthans, Fred
01154 -55 Fundamentals of Human Resource Management; DeCenzo, David ARobbins, Stephen p
01156 -57 Corporate Finance ; Ross, Stephen A,etal
01158 - Elements of Shipping ; Branch, Alan E
01159 - Shady Puzzles ; Nowacki, MarkLoo, Ivan
01160 - Bound Together : How Traders,Preachers,Adventures,and Warriors shaped ; Globalization ; Chanda, Nayan

GLOBE:The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange

2008-12-10T07:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Users,
"Connecting the world and unlocking the deep web"

Now you have a good opportunity to explore world information through an educational Search Engine - Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange.

The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) alliance was established between the following founding members: the ARIADNE Foundation in Europe, education.au in Australia, LORNET in Canada, Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) in the USA, and National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME) in Japan. These organizations have committed to work collaboratively on a shared vision of ubiquitous access to quality educational content. Since its inception, GLOBE has attracted the interest of other organisations with similar goals and as a result, the GLOBE community continues to grow.
For more details click here http://www.globe-info.org/en/aboutglobe

Thought for the Week

2008-12-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

"To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation."

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Thousands of world newspapers at your fingertips

2008-12-02T01:30:00.003-08:00

Dear All,
Now you can access thousands of world newspapers from online newspapers.com
You can also access nearest 300 Indian newspapers from this site.

BBC Radio World Service

2008-11-24T01:20:00.000-08:00

Dear All
Do you want to Listen BBC's Internation Radio Service ?? Please Click Here http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/
Now You can see the following Links
News
Business
Documentaries
Arts ans Culture
Find a programme
Radio Schedule
intereact
Presents,etc
If you will click on Find a programme number of useful options will open.One of the link the Interview is very important for management students.The Interview BBC bring you the world's leading players, thinkers and cultural figures - and every once in a while they feature someone who just has an important story to tell. If you want to listen the programme please click on the link listen.
You can also browse the Interview archive .From the interview archive page You can selct the name of any person and click audio to listen the programme.

Features of November 2008- Harvard Business Review

2008-11-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Users,

Latest issue of the Harvard Business Review is now available at SICOMS Library.The November 2008 issue features the following:
*Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets
*Cisco Sees the Future
*Tomorrow’s Global Giants? Not the Usual Suspects
*Teaming Up to Crack Innovation and Enterprise Integration
*What Is a Free Customer Worth?
*When Your Colleague is a Saboteur
*Smart Power
*How to Become an Authentic Speaker
*When Teams Can’t Decide
*Risk Aversion
Subjects Covered:Business valuation, Valuation, Cross functional teams, Collaboration, Individual performers, Talent.

Thought for the Week

2008-11-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable."
-Clifton Fadiman

Gmail Gets Free Video Chat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-11-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

Dear All,
The users of Gmail service can now choose to communicate with friends notonly through chat and e-mail but also through voice and video. To use this free service, users just need a webcam and a smallWeb browser plugin to start video chatting. And, those without a webcam canuse an audio chat option, says Google. To get started, open a Gmail chat window, click on the'Options' menu at the bottom and choose 'Add voice/video chat', which willwalk you through a one-time installation of a free plugin. When you re-openGmail, you'll notice your 'Options' link in your chat window has changed to'Video & more'. Open this menu and click 'Start video chat' to startchatting. You can pop out the video and change its size and position, orswitch to full screen.
Gmail voice and video chat is being rolled out over the nextday or so on PCs and on Macs. Google Apps customers get this service aswell, at no extra charge, and can voice or video chat with any other Gmailor Apps users. To use voice and video chat, your PC must have Windows XP or amore recent version, or an Intel-Based Mac with Mac OS X v10.4 or later. Itworks in browsers that support the latest version of Gmail (Google Chrome,Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 7.0 and Safari 3.0). For more detail : http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnews.asp?edid=30056&magid=11&ntype=email&email1=ramakant.navghare@gmail.com

New Arrival List

2008-11-12T01:11:00.000-08:00

01127 - Airport Business ; Doganis, Rigas

01128 - Small is Beautiful : A Study of Economics as if People Mattered ; Schumacher, E F

01129 - Legal Aspects of Marketing in India ; Sople, V V

01130 - Human Behavior at Work ; Newstrom, John W

01131 - Psychology; Myers, David G

01132 - Abnormal Psychology; Holmes; David S

01133 - Understanding Psychology; Feldman, Robert S

Thought for the Week

2008-11-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

"Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success."
- Brian Adams

Recently Subscribed Foreign Journal

2008-11-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

Harvard Business Review is the leading Management magazine
Published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. .It delivers the latest techniques, best practices and the most thoughtful advice from the world's leading management experts.

HBR is packed with ideas on leadership, strategy, managing change, and a host of other topics and ideas that can help you literally transform your business.Harvad Business Review is the source of the best new ideas for people who are creating, leading, and transforming business.
Now Harvard Business Review is available our library. We are started to subscribing HBR from October 2008 onwards. Please come to library and use it maximum.

Web 2.0 in business

2008-11-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

Ten outstanding examples of business social media projects harnessing the power of community and collaboration
Read More

USEFUL WEBSITES FOR LANGUAGE RESOURCES & DICTIONARIES

2008-10-30T03:03:00.000-07:00

Dear User,
Everyone who writes to needs to use a dictionary or thesauru from time to time or atleast they should.If you try using a serach on any search engine for dictionary you will see that there actually hundreds and hundreds of different sites.The followinf are some interesting and useful online dictionaries and language resources on the internet.

www.m-w.com/netdict.htm

Free dictionary and thesuarus,including an online audible pronounciation database

www.one-look.com

Called the faster finder this claims to search 700+online dictionaries simultaneously with atotal word count of over 4 million

www.xrefer.com

Contain Encyclopedias,dictionaries and thesuarus and books of quotations

www.yourdictionary.com/

Comprehensive and authoritative portal for language

www.oed.com

An expensive subscription service,but some background documents and a word of the day are free

www.plainenglish.com

www.worldwidewords.org

This is a fascinating list of english words and phrases

www.foreignword.com

This is link to hundreds of online dictionaries and translation engines and thiusands of specialised glossaries

www.wordwizard.com

A portal for Word lovers

www.thesaurus.com

An online Version of Roget's Thesuarus of English words and Phrases

www.dictionary.com

An online Dictionary and Thesaurus

www.ask.elibrary.com

A comprehensive digital archive for information seekers

www.shirleytaylor.com

Newly Arrived Books

2008-10-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

01118 – 01119 Sreenivasan, T P ; Words,Words,Words : Adventures in Diplomacy
01120 - Govindarajan, Vijay & Trimple, Christ ; Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators : From the Idea to Execution
01121 - Morrell, Peter S ; Airline Finance
01122 - Bazargan, Massoud ; Airline Operations and Scheduling
01123 - Shaw, Stephen ; Airline Marketing and Management
01124 – 0126 Biyani, Kishore Baishya, Dipayan ; It Happened in India : The Story of Pantlooms,Big Bazar,Central and the great Indian Consumer

Thought for the Week

2008-10-27T02:23:00.000-07:00

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."

-Carl Jung

Thought for the Week

2008-10-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

"As with all great teachers, his curriculum was an insignificant part of what he communicated. From him you didn't learn a subject, but life! Tolerance and justice, fearlessness and pride, reverence and pity, are learned in a course on long division if the teacher has those qualities."

-William Alexander Percy

Searching the Internet increases brain function

2008-10-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function. The study, the first of its kind to assess the impact of Internet searching on brain performance, is currently in press at the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and will appear in an upcoming issue.
"The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults," said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA who holds UCLA's Parlow-Solomon Chair on Aging. "Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function."
As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity, and increases in deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function.
Small noted that pursuing activities that keep the mind engaged may help preserve brain health and cognitive ability. Traditionally, these include games such as crossword puzzles, but with the advent of technology, scientists are beginning to assess the influence of computer use — including the Internet.
Additional details on the study and further research on the impact of computer technologies on the aging brain are highlighted in Small's new book, "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," published today.
For the study, the UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal research volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the study participants had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.
Study participants performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during these activities. This type of scan tracks the intensity of cell responses in the brain by measuring the level of cerebral blood flow during cognitive tasks.
All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, demonstrating use of the regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities, which are located in the temporal, parietal, occipital and other areas of the brain.
Internet searches revealed a major difference between the two groups. While all participants demonstrated the same brain activity that was seen during the book-reading task, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain, which control decision-making and complex reasoning.
"Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading — but only in those with prior Internet experience," said Small, who is also the director of UCLA's Memory and Aging Research Center.
In fact, researchers found that during Web searching, volunteers with prior experience registered a twofold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience. The tiniest measurable unit of brain activity registered by the fMRI is called a voxel. Scientists discovered that during Internet searching, those with prior experience sparked 21,782 voxels, compared with only 8,646 voxels for those with less experience.
Compared with simple reading, the Internet's wealth of choices requires that people make decisions about what to click on in order to pursue more information, an activity that engages important cognitive circuits in the brain.
"A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older," Small said.
Small added that the minimal brain activation found in the less experienced Internet group may be due to participants not quite grasping the strategies needed to successfully engage in an Internet search, which is common while learning a new activity."With more time on the Internet, they may demonstrate the same brain activation patterns as the more experienced group," he said.
Researchers noted that additional studies will address both the positive and negative influences of these emerging technologies on the aging brain.
Source: University of California - Los Angeles

New Arrival List

2008-10-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

01113 - Patel,Raj ; Stuffed and Starved : What Lies Behind the World Food Crisis

01114 -Gopalakrishnan,P ; Handbook of Materials Management

01115 -Froyen,Richard T ; Macroeconomics : Theories and Policies

01116 -Abel,Andrew B and Bernanke,Ben S ; Macroeconomics

01117 -Graham,Anne ; Managing Airports : An International Perspective

Thought for the Week

2008-10-10T02:26:00.000-07:00

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”
-Winston Churchill

Workshop on Supply Chain Management

2008-10-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

One Day Workshop on "Supply Chain Management:An Emerging Tool for Profitability"

24th October 2008

at Hotel Gazala

Near H.P.O., Palakkad.

Organised by

Sadanam Institute of Commerce and Management Studies (SICOMS)

Pathiripala,Palakkad(http://www.sicoms.info/)

In Association with

Palakkad Management Association

Marutharcode,Palakkad

Thought for the Week

2008-09-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."

- Buckminster Fuller

New Subscribing Journals

2008-09-19T01:05:00.001-07:00

Dear Users,
You have a good News!!!!!
From Agust 2008 onwards our library has started to subscribing the following three important journals

1.Economics & Political weekly [The Economic and Political Weekly, published from Mumbai, is an Indian institution which enjoys a global reputation for excellence in independent scholarship and critical inquiry.]

2.Dalal Street Investment Journal [India's No 1 investment magazine, the one and only complete Resource guide for a wide loyal base of over 5 lacs HNI readers. It is a one-stop-shop for all investment related opportunities and is the most widely referred and accepted journal in the finance and investment space]

3.Chartered Accountant [-is a monthly journal publishrd by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India]

Please visit our Libraray and use maximum

New Arrival List

2008-09-19T01:05:00.000-07:00

01018 -01050 -New Encyclopedia Britanica
01051 - My Country My Life ; Advani, L K
01052 - Cases in Operations Management : Building Customer Value through World- Class Operations ; Klassen, Robert DMenor, Larry J
01053 - Six Sigma ; Brue, GregHowes, Rod
01054 - Identity and Violence : The Illusion of Destiny ; Sen, Amartya
01055 - M B A Entrance Guide
01056 - Romance of Tata Steel ; Lala, R M
01057 - Intellectual Property Law : Concept to Commercialisation ; Ryder, Rodney
01058 - Prey ; Crichton, Michael
01059 - True at First Light ; Hemingway, Ernest
01060 - Three Trillion Dollar War ; Stiglitz, Joseph E Bilmes, Linda J
01061 - Power of Now : A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment ; Tolle, Eckhart
01062 - Brand Positioning : Strategies for Competataive Advantage ; Sengupta, Subroto
01063 - Math Explorer : A Journey Through the Beauty of Mathematics ; Weaver, Jefferson Hane
01064 - Supply Chain Management : From Vision to Implementation ; Fawcett, Stanley E,etal
01065 - Mira and the Mahatma ; Kakar, Sudhir
01066 - Kite Runner ; Hosseini, Khaled
01067 - Entrepreneurship ; McMillan, Alex
01068 - Supply Chain Management : From Vision to Implementation ; fawcett, Stanley E,etal
01069 - Islamist : Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain,What I Saw Inside and Why I Left ; Husain, Ed
01070 - Management Accounting : Case Studies ; Williams, JohnSims, Adrian
01071 - Managing Retailing ; Sinha, Piyush KumarUniyal, Dwarika Prasad
01072 - Supply Chain Management and Reverse Logistics ; Dyckhoff, Harald,etal [Ed]
01073 - Principles of Hospital Administration and Planning ; Sakharkar, B M
01074 - Phantoms in the Brain : Human Nature and Architecture of the Mind ; Ramachandran, V SBlakeslee, Sandra
01075 - Joke ; Kundera, Milan
01076 - You are Here ; Madhavan, Meenakshi Reddy
01077 - Odessa File ; Forsyth, Frederick
01078 - Haj ; Uris, Leon
01079 - Principles of Supply Chain Management : A Balanced Approach ; Wisner, Joel DKeong Leong, GTan, Keah Choon
01080 - Retail Supply Chain Management ; Ayers, JamesOdegaard, Mary Ann
01081 - Roots ; Haley, Alex
01082 - Inheritance of Loss ; Desai, Kiran
01083 - Zorba the Greek ; Kazantzakis, Nikos
01084 - Gospel According to Jesus Christ ; Saramago, Jose
01085 - Thousand Splindid suns ; Hosseini, Khaled
01086 - Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time ; Haddon, Mark
01087 - You Will See It When You believe It : The Way to Your Personal Transformation ; Dyer, Wayne W
01088 - Sea of Poppies ; Ghosh, Amitav
01089 - Advertising and Marketing in Rural India : Language Culture and Communication ; Bhatia, Tej K
01090 - Business the Richard Branson Way : Ten Secrets of the World's Greatest Brand Builder ; Dearlove, Des
01091 - Cases in the Environment of Business : International Perspectives ; Conklin, David W
01092 - Elephant the Tiger and the Cellphone : Reflection on India in the twenty first Century ; Tharoor, Shashi
01093 - Strategic Management and Business Policy ; Kazmi, Azhar
01094 - Doctor Zhivago ; Pasternak, Boris
01095 - Hospital Stores Management : An integrated Approach ; Gupta, Shaktikant, Sunil
01096 - Global Strategy ; Peng, Mike W
01097 - Logistical Management ; Bowersox, Donald JCloss, David J

Free Downloadable Books of Taslima Nasrin

2008-08-28T03:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Users,
Here the details of Taslima Nasrin's Free Downloadable Books.
(A) Autobiographies
1. My Girlhood ( autobiography 1st part) -English 1999 (293 Pages)http://taslimanasrin.com/MY%20GIRLHOOD.pdf
2. My Stormy Youth (autobiography 2nd part)-English 2002Wild Wind ( India, Srishti Publishers, 2005)http://taslimanasrin.com/MY%20YOUTH.htm
3. Amar Meyebela (prthom porbo)1999 (My Girlhood) (236 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/meyebela.pdf
4. Utol Hawa (dwitio porbo) 2002 (Gusty Wind) (379 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/UTOLHAWAFINAL.pdf
5. Dwikhondito (tritio porbo)2003 (Split Into Two) (394 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/dwikhondito.pdf
6. Sei Sob Ondhokar (choturtho porbo)2004 ( Those Dark Days) (370 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/sei-sob-ondhokar.pdf
7. Ami Bhalo nei, Tumi Bhalo Theko Prio Desh (ponchom porbo) 2006, (445 Pages) (I am not fine, but you stay well my beloved country) http://taslimanasrin.com/aami-bhalo-nei.pdf
(B) Essays
8..Narir Kono Desh Nei 2007, (192 Pages) (NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN) http://taslimanasrin.com/narir_kono_desh_nei.pdf
(C) Novelette
9. Homecominghttp://taslimanasrin.com/My%20Documents/homecoming%20-final.pdf N.B. :- This web link was NOT working at the time of access.
(D) Poetry
10. Bondini 2008 (104 Pages)(PRISONERS POEMS) http://taslimanasrin.com/bbondini.pdf
11. Bhalobaso? Cchai Baso 2007 (95 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/bhalobaso_cchai-baso.pdf 12. Kichukkhon Thako 2004 (84 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/kicchukkhon-thako.pdf
13. Khali Khali Lage 2002(75 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/khalikhalilage.pdf
14. Jolpodyo 2000 (76 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/jolpodyo.pdf
(E) Short Story for Children
15. Bhuter Golpo (17 Pages) http://taslimanasrin.com/vuter_golpo.pdf

New Arrival List

2008-08-25T21:08:00.001-07:00

Accession No:00926,Title:Three Mistakes of My Life,Author:Bhagat, Chetan

Accession No:00927,Title:Oil,Water, and Climate: An Introduction,Author:Gautier, Catherine

Accession No:00928,Title:Doctors,Author:Segal, Erick

Accession No:00929,Title:Sky is Falling,Author:Sheldon, Sidney

Accession No:00930,Title:Bancroft Strategy,Author:Ludlum, Robert

Accession No:00931,Title:Iraq Confidential : The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy,Author:Ritter, Scott

Accession No:00932,Title:Greatnes Guide,Author (3):Sharma, Robin

Accession No:00933,Title:Istanbul : Memories of a City,Author:Pamuk, Orhan

Accession No:00934,Title:Making Globalisation Work,Author:Stiglitz, Joseph E

Accession No:00935,Title:Digital Fortress,Author:Brown, Dan

Accession No:00936,Title:Brida,Author:Coelho, Paulo

Accession No:00937,Title:If Tomarrow Comes,Author:Sheldon, Sidney
Accession No:00938,Title:Day of the Jackal,Author:Forsyth, Frederick

Risk & money management apt for profitable trading

2008-08-18T00:32:00.000-07:00

Author : Deepak Mohoni

Market’s four-week winning streak ended last week, with the BSE Sensex finishing 2.92%, or 444 points lower, and the Nifty losing 2.18%. The CNX Midcap lost a comparatively smaller 1.68%. Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) was the biggest winner among Sensex stocks with a 1.5% gain. The other gainers were Reliance Industries (RIL), Grasim Industries, Satyam Computer Services, Infosys Technologies, ONGC and ITC, with accruals ranging between 1.1% and 0.2%. With an 8.9% loss, HDFC was the biggest loser among Sensex stocks. The other losers were DLF, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro, Hindalco, Jaiprakash Associates and Tata Steel, with losses between 8.6% and 5.4%. Vishal Infotech was the biggest winner among the more heavily traded non-Sensex stocks with a 29.8% gain.

Other non-Sensex winners with gains ranging between 10.4% and 2% were Polaris Software, Cairn India, Reliance Industrial Infrastructure, HCL Technologies, Glenmark Pharma, Rolta India, Zee Entertainment, Gail, ABB and Siemens. SEL Manufacturing was the biggest loser among the more heavily-traded non-Sensex stocks with a 20% loss. Other losers were First Winner Industries, HDIL, IDBI Bank, Landmark Property, Bombay Dyeing, Bank of Baroda, Mercator Lines and IFCI, with losses between 18.5% and 8.6%. Intermediate trend: The market’s intermediate downtrend apparently ended on Thursday, with the Sensex breaching its downtrend trigger level of 14,888. The Nifty fell through its equivalent of 4,464, and the CNX Midcap under 5,834, confirming the Sensex’s action. An intermediate downtrend will be established beyond any doubt if the market does not strongly bounce back immediately after it reopens this week. In any case, the Sensex will have to go above last week’s high of 15,580 to be back in an uptrend. The corresponding levels for the Nifty and the CNX Midcap are 4,650 and 6,016, respectively. Global indices are in mixed intermediate trends, with the other BRIC countries - Russia, Brazil and China - falling to six-month lows or worse last week. The Hang Seng and the Nikkei are also in intermediate downtrends, while Europe and the US markets are holding out. The Sensex was the strongest global index from the time its intermediate uptrend started on July 16.

Long-term trend: The indices have falling intermediate tops and bottoms and are therefore, in major (i.e. long-term) downtrends. This means we are still in a bear market. The market’s long-term trend will turn up if the Sensex closes above its previous intermediate top of 15,580 if an intermediate downtrend is clearly established. Otherwise it will have to go above 17,736. Global indices are also in long-term downtrends, and most made lower intermediate bottoms than the ones they did back in March. Tokyo’s Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng are the exceptions. So, for the moment, there are no early signs that the global bear phase could be coming to an immediate end. Trading & investing strategies: Long-term investments should now be made after the intermediate downtrend ends. There is not much point in getting out of existing holdings now, as the bear market is now over six months old and had resulted in a 40% fall in the Sensex when the July lows were hit. Going by the history of the past 20 years, we should be closer to a market bottom than the last top. Swing trading should work well on the short side, once an intermediate downtrend is visibly on. Remember that proper risk and money management is more important for profitable trading than a bet on the market’s direction. Global perspective: As mentioned, major international markets are in mixed intermediate trends, with Europe and America still in intermediate uptrends, while most emerging markets are in downtrends. The Dow will enter an intermediate downtrend if it were to breach 11,344. Almost all the global indices are in bear markets. The Dow will have to stabilise above 13,200 to enter a bull market. The Sensex had gained 1.4% in the 12 months that ended on Wednesday, keeping it at the seventh spot among 40 well-known global indices considered for the study. Brazil still heads the list with a 9.1% gain. Belgium, Spain and Slovakia occupy the next three spots. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 10.3% and the Nasdaq Composite 1.2% over the same interval. (These rankings do not take exchange rate effects into consideration)

Thought For the Week

2008-08-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”
-Pearl Buck

Did You Create Blog!!!

2008-08-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

Hai Users,

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There are free Open Source blog tools, which help you create and manage your blog site.

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Library Rules and Regulations

2008-07-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Dear All,
Welcome to SICOMS Library and information Services.
About the Library
The Library and Information Service at the SICOMS aims at providing value added information services in all areas of Business and Management Studies. It acts as the Knowledge centre of faculties and student in the Institute for their teaching and learning activities. It houses thousands of books in printed form and 25 printed Journal. Besides the printed materials the Library provides an access of E- Books and E-Journals through SICOMS Digital Library.
Services
The SICOMS Library and Information Service offer the following services:
Ø Reading Facilities
Ø Reference
Ø Photocopying
Ø Circulation
Ø Computerized Information Search
Ø Library Orientation Programme
Ø Newspaper Clipping
Ø Current Awareness Services
Ø Selective Dissemination Services
Ø New Arrival List
Ø Library Blog (http://sicomslibrary.blogspot.com/)
Library Timing
Open 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM
Circulation of Books will be between 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM and 1:30 PM to 5.00 PM.
Rules and Regulations of the Library
Ø All the Students and Staffs are the Members of library
Ø The SICOMS Library follows an open access system.
Ø Books or other materials taken from the stacks should not be re-shelved by the users but should be left on the tables.
Ø While entering the library, users should leave their personal belongings, such as bags, brief-cases, personal books, and parcels. However, they can carry loose papers and note books.
Ø Silence must be maintained at all times in all areas of the library and should not disturb other users in any way.
Ø Smoking and use of Cell phone are strictly prohibited.
Ø Library users shall be respectful of library furnishings, equipment and material. Users shall handle all library items with utmost care. Pencil or pen markings, earmarking of pages, removal of binding, tearing pages, or mutilation in any manner of library materials is not allowed. If anyone is found doing so, he will be charged the full replacement cost of the material.
Ø Reference books, Journals, Video CDs, Current Magazines and Newspapers are only for reference. They are only for consultation within the Library and are not to be taken out of the Library.
Ø Documents can be issued only on production of the Identity Card.
Ø All documents are to be returned on or before the due date mentioned, if not, fine will be charged, as per library rule.
Ø Books may be renewed only once, by the expiry of the due date, provided there is no reservation for the same.
Ø The Librarian may recall items issued at any time, even before the due date, in which case, the student shall immediately surrender the item(s) called for.
Ø Borrowed books are non-transferable and borrower shall remain responsible for material issued for him until the material is returned.
Ø Users have to make sure that the book issued to him, do not have any damage before laving the issue counter.
Ø Newly added books will be kept for reference for one week from the date of arrival
Ø Fines will be imposed on all overdue materials at the rate of Re 1.00 per day
Ø Library remains closed on Institute Holidays

Thought for the Week

2008-07-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

"Change your thoughts and you change your

world"
-Norman Vincent Peale

India to attract billions for financing Clean Technology innovation

2008-07-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

"Australia & India are on the verge of a great economic partnership," said HE John McCarthy, the Australian High Commissioner to India. He was speaking at the 2nd India Cleantech Forum, in New Delhi. The Confederation of Indian Industry, CII-Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development and Clean Technology AustralAsia are jointly organising this Forum to identify the challenges and opportunities for accelerating investment, transfer and deployment of Clean-tech in the surging Indian market- arguably the biggest Clean-tech market in the world. Over 30 of the world’s experts and leaders in Clean-tech will be presenting vital market knowledge and opportunities for Clean-tech in India during this two day Forum.
McCarthy added that the success of the partnership depends on how we promote growth today to tackle the central issues of Climate Change, Sustainability and Clean Technologies which will be discussed in the forum today. He pointed that India and Australia place climate change and sustainable development at the core of policy issues and that the two nations have collaborated though partnerships like the Asia Pacific Partnership for clean development & climate change, have built a fund for strategic research, and have engaged in other collaborations to build markets for renewable energy and clean technologies. He emphasized that the private sector is a great source of ideas and stressed that visionaries of clean- tech, who are demonstrating care for environment and sustainability need to be provided the right policy setting, accompanied with realignment of regulations, backed with the right political will.
Earlier delivering the Key note address at the inaugural session, Mr. Fred R. Buenrostro, Former Chief Executive Officer of CalPERS; America’s largest pension fund, highlighted that asset allocations to clean technologies in emerging markets is on the rise and that emerging economies like India, attracting institutional investors from developed countries like the US, can be the showcase economies relying on renewable energy and clean-tech. He stressed that this is the right time for transformational investments for providing solutions to some of world’s biggest challenges like climate change, rising energy costs and rising costs of food.
Presenting the immense growth opportunities in new investment areas of clean technologies and renewable energy like wind technology, solar technology, and bio-fuels amongst others; Mr. Chris Greenwood, Director of New Energy Finance, UK, said that the investments in the clean technology sector will reach a rate of 10 billion USD per week by 2030. He added that many clean technologies require heavy engineering and there is a demand supply gap, raising the prices of these technologies. He stressed that energy infrastructure in developing countries should be based on low cost, decentralized solutions.
Speaking on the occasion, Dhiraj Nayyar, Senior Assistant Editor, The Financial Express, said that although this is the right time for the industry and policy makers for developing and promoting clean technology, there is a need for greater information dissemination and public awareness on clean technologies in a democracy like India.
Atul Singh, Chairman, CII National Committee on Environment and President & CEO Coca-Cola India, opened the two day forum, saying that Clean-tech solutions can strike the right balance between environment and development. He said that the forum was timely under the current national & global circumstances especially against the backdrop of India’s recently released National Action Plan on Climate Change.
The two day forum, is bringing together over 300 participants representing key political leaders, Clean-tech industry leaders, local government, investors, technology companies and others to discuss "Cleantech Solutions: Financing the Technological Innovation for Sustainable Development in India”. The forum features the Cleantech Innovation Showcase of 15 Indian and international companies with commercially proven technologies. These companies are seeking growth capital and partnerships to meet rapid demands for sustainable development in India.(Source http://www.indiainfoline.com/news/innernews.asp?storyId=73060&lmn=1&cat=5 )

SnapFiles

2008-07-04T02:48:00.000-07:00

Hai SICOMS Library Users,
You have a breaking news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If You want to Downloading quality software files from the Internet please click here http://www.snapfiles.com/

Supply Chain Management

2008-06-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

Managing the flow of goods in a complex global market
Supply chain technology has come a long way in recent years in its ability to help retailers source goods and manage their flow into distribution centers and stores. Retailers that effectively take advantage of this technology and related business processes maximize their ability to satisfy customers with the right products while maintaining the most efficient flow of inventory and contractual relationships with suppliers.
“Best-in-class companies continuously manage their inventory throughout their supply chain to improve customer service levels, forecast accuracies and perfect order metrics,” says Nari Viswanathan, research director, supply chain management and logistics, at research and advisory firm Aberdeen Group Inc., a unit of Harte-Hanks Co., in the March 2008 report, “Technology Strategies for Closed Loop Inventory Management.”
In a second report released in March, “Supply Chain Innovator’s Technology Footprint 2008,” Viswanathan notes that 80% of 805 surveyed companies, including retailers and consumer goods manufacturers, were transforming their domestic or international supply chains. Best-in-class companies, the report says, keep total logistics costs to 5% of sales, turn their inventory 28 times per year and ship 96% of orders in full on the customer’s requested schedule.
Rising expectations
That’s not to say that running efficient supply chains and inventory management systems is getting easy. Consumers are increasing their expectations of access to preferred products across all shopping channels—online, store or contact center; financial pressures are increasingly forcing retailers to cut costs and improve profit margins; and global competition and market development are pushing retailers to source products from a greater number of suppliers in more distant markets.
Indeed, Viswanathan has found that retailers and other types of companies cited rising supply chain costs, followed by pressures to improve return on investment and improve customer service levels, as the top forces driving more efficient inventory management. “Examining the key pressures that companies are facing with respect to inventory management, we see that the corporate need to improve return in invested capital, rising supply chain costs and the pressure to improve service levels are acting simultaneously and creating the need for balancing these three mutually exclusive business pressures,” he says.
To address these challenges, retailers have access to an expanding base of supply chain management technology. It covers the broad spectrum of finding suppliers and sourcing products, managing contracts and monitoring manufacturing and labor policies with distant suppliers, managing cross-border tariffs and customs requirements, collaborating with suppliers to match production with planned product rollouts, and getting visibility into inflow of goods and managing any interruptions.
The evolution of web-based systems, meanwhile, is presenting retailers with more options for deploying supply chain technology applications. With more common use of web hosting, and of XML and other web-enabled integration technologies, vendors are offering more applications—either on-premise or hosted and available on-demand—for managing supply chain and inventory systems.
Finding the right mix
Some applications provide visibility into the movement of goods at multiple points between supplier and buyer, with a few of those incorporating radio frequency identification to track package movements, while others provide enterprise integration from front-end order management and processing of purchase orders on up through the supply chain for collaboration with suppliers to better match demand with production.
Retailers who figure the right mix of supply chain technology for their operations can improve their performance in getting the right products to the right destinations at the right time.

Business wants GST hike put on agenda

2008-06-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

The federal government's tax review should consider raising the GST, say big business.
The Business Council of Australia also wants a sustained cut in the government's overall tax take, as it calls, in a report published on Thursday, for the scope of the tax review to be broadened.
"How can we fundamentally address core issues such as the balance of taxes on work, investment and consumption without including the key consumption tax in our considerations?" Fairfax newspapers quoted the council's president Greg Gailey as saying.
The business council, representing 100 chief executives from Australia's biggest companies, says excluding the GST from consideration is a mistake, particularly with the ageing population threatening the government's income tax revenue.
"If we want to deliver on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's vision for a 'root and branch' review of the tax system we need to put everything on the table, including the role of the GST, and question whether tax reform really needs to be revenue neutral," Mr Gailey was quoted as saying.
Treasury Secretary Ken Henry is heading a panel reviewing Australia's tax system.

Thought For the Week

2008-06-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

"Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them"

-Paul Hawken

Remote infra management is the next big thing in tech business

2008-06-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

Managing computer servers, networks and desktops remotely from locations such as India will be the next big business to emerge in offshore tech services, industry experts say, and companies such as HCL Comnet Systems and Services Ltd, Satyam Computer Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd are gearing up to address this market—projected to reach at least at $13 billion (Rs55,770 crore today) by 2013.
For more information Click Herehttp://www.livemint.com/2008/06/24230509/Remote-infra-management-is-the.html

Warm Welcome To our Library Blog

2008-06-24T02:26:00.000-07:00

Hai Colleagues,
Warm Welcome to Our Library Blog.The SICOMS Library Blog is created for providing up-to-date information regarding services, events, resources, and news relevant to the Library as well as our Institute.Through this libray blog You can easly interact your ideas and suggestions with others.