China approves $1.3 bn Renault-Dongfeng joint venture

 
 Assalamualaikum..please read n enjoy this article...

Beijing has approved a long-awaited $1.3 billion joint venture between French car-maker Renault and Chinese giant Dongfeng, the Chinese firm said in a statement Thursday.
Each partner will have a 50 percent share in the new company, it said, adding the government had approved the deal and "the production of 150,000 multiple purpose vehicles and engines per year".

The two will invest a total of 7.8 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) in the joint venture, which will be based in Wuhan in the central province of Hubei, said Dongfeng, China's second-biggest car maker.
The project has been a decade in the making, after a previous unsuccessful joint venture by the French firm in China, which is the world's biggest car market.

Renault began operations with China Space Sanjiang Group in 1993 to produce the Traffic minibus, but production stopped in 2003. Dongfeng and Renault have been in talks since then.
Auto sales in China rose 4.3 percent year-on-year in 2012 to 19.31 million units, hit by limits on numbers imposed by some cities to ease traffic congestion and tackle pollution.

But a report by the consultancy McKinsey predicted last year that the country's passenger car market would grow eight percent annually to 22 million units by 2020.
Dongfeng has previously been reported to be negotiating to buy a stake in another French car firm, PSA Peugeot Citroen, with which it already has a joint venture.

"Through entering into the joint venture contract with Renault SA and the establishment of the joint venture, the overall competitiveness, brand value and technical strength and profitability of (Dongfeng) will be enhanced," the Chinese firm said.


 China invest about $1.3 billion in making a joint venture between Renault and Dongfeng. It a lot amount of money right. But being joint venture with the foreign their pitfalls. Sometimes the knowledge and expertise of local partner turn out to be less valuable than expected. 

sources from: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/top-stories/china-approves-dollar13-bn-renault-dongfeng-joint-venture-2

How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management

I found this from Harvard Business Review online magazine...so what do you think?

Since the early days of Google, people throughout the company have questioned the value of managers. That skepticism stems from a highly technocratic culture. As one software engineer, Eric Flatt, puts it, “We are a company built by engineers for engineers.” And most engineers, not just those at Google, want to spend their time designing and debugging, not communicating with bosses or supervising other workers’ progress. In their hearts they’ve long believed that management is more destructive than beneficial, a distraction from “real work” and tangible, goal-directed tasks.
 
A few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page with questions about expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-gritty issues. And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals.
 
Google now has some layers but not as many as you might expect in an organization with more than 37,000 employees: just 5,000 managers, 1,000 directors, and 100 vice presidents. It’s not uncommon to find engineering managers with 30 direct reports. Flatt says that’s by design, to prevent micromanaging. “There is only so much you can meddle when you have 30 people on your team, so you have to focus on creating the best environment for engineers to make things happen,” he notes. Google gives its rank and file room to make decisions and innovate. Along with that freedom comes a greater respect for technical expertise, skillful problem solving, and good ideas than for titles and formal authority. Given the overall indifference to pecking order, anyone making a case for change at the company needs to provide compelling logic and rich supporting data. Seldom do employees accept top-down directives without question.
 
Google downplays hierarchy and emphasizes the power of the individual in its recruitment efforts, as well, to achieve the right cultural fit. Using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process, the company goes to great lengths to attract young, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers. It screens candidates’ résumés for markers that indicate potential to excel there—especially general cognitive ability. People who make that first cut are then carefully assessed for initiative, flexibility, collaborative spirit, evidence of being well-rounded, and other factors that make a candidate “Googley.”
 
So here’s the challenge Google faced: If your highly skilled, handpicked hires don’t value management, how can you run the place effectively? How do you turn doubters into believers, persuading them to spend time managing others? As it turns out, by applying the same analytical rigor and tools that you used to hire them in the first place—and that they set such store by in their own work. You use data to test your assumptions about management’s merits and then make your case.

Apple Inc. SWOT analysis 2013

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation, which designs, manufactures and sells personal computers, consumer electronics and software, and provides related services. The business has experienced a tremendous growth from 2001 when it has introduced its iPod mp3 player. Apple Inc. is considered to be the most successful electronics company in the world. Their main competitor are Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Amazon.com, Inc., International Business Machines Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Dell Inc., LG Electronics, Lenovo Group Limited, Hewlett-Packard Company, Sony Corporation and many others.

Apple Inc. SWOT analysis for 2013:

 

Just WAnt To SHare POrteR FiVe FoRces in AirLine IndusTry

Airline Industry Porter Five Forces

PoRtEr FiVe FoRces

To measure how strong the industry's competitive force, we will use five force analysis. The five factors must act together to determine the nature of competition within an industry. What that the five competitive factor?...

Let me told you all. 

●Competition from rival sellers  
●Competition from potential new entrants
●Competition from producers of substitute products 
●Supplier bargaining power 
●Customer bargaining power

 Lets enjoys all the diagram below:

Diagram 1 shown how to determine the degree of competitive rivaly.

,

 This table summarize barriers to entry. Every company will have at least one barrier, therefore very important to determine the threat of new entrants. The following table helps summarise the issues you should consider.

 

• Substitute product

A substitute product can be regarded as something that meets the same need
Substitute products are produced in a different industry –but crucially satisfy the same customer need.  If there are many credible substitutes to a firm’s product, they will limit the price that can be charged and will reduce industry profits.
As an example, consider the many substitutes that consumers now have to buying a newspaper for their news:

• Customer bargaining power

Several factors determine the bargaining power of customers which is:

• Supplier bargaining power

If the supplier forces up the price paid for inputs, profits will be reduced. It follows that the more powerful the customer (buyer), the lower the price that can be achieved by buying from them.
Suppliers find themselves in a powerful position when:

• There are only a few large suppliers
• The resource they supply is scarce
• The cost of switching to an alternative supplier is high 
• The product is easy to distinguish and loyal customers are reluctant to switch
• The supplier can threaten to integrate vertically
• The customer is small and unimportant
• There are no or few substitute resources available

Just how much power the supplier has is determined by factors such as:

PeSteL aNalysIs

As I said in last entry now I would like to share the effective tool used in situation analysis to identify the key external (macro environment level) forces that might affect an organization.. What I means here is by doing PESTEL analysis. By doing this PESTEL analysis, we will understand the overall situation around the company. 

Therefore, the aim of doing PEST is to:

• Find out the current external factors affecting an organization
• Identify the external factors that may change in the future;
• To exploit the changes (opportunities) or defend against them (threats) better than competitors would do.

 In order to perform PESTEL analysis managers have to gather as much relevant information as possible about the firm’s external environment. Nowadays, most information can be found on the internet relatively easy, fast and with little cost. When the analysis is done for the first time the process may take a little longer and as a beginner you may find yourself asking “What changes do I exactly look for in politics, economic, society and technology?” 


The figure might be useful when gathering information for PESTEL analysis..

 That all at this moment...thank you..

BrIefLy ShaRe aboUt MacR0 eNviRoNmeNT

Hi peep,...

Lets discuss about micro environment...micro environment means encompasses the broad environmental context in which a company’s industry is situated that includes strategically relevant components over which the firm has no direct control.

lets look and enjoy the diagram below:

  So, as a manager, we must alert with the this external environment and try to adapt the situation..

I thing that all for now. Next i will tell you all the tool to analyze this macro environment..
See you soon..