By: Aamarpali Puri

Concept research foundation_1_dr_puri_presentation

By : Niladri Nath Sanyal

The external and internal factors which stimulates our desire to attain a particular goal is “MOTIVATION”. It is an act or a process of giving someone a reason to do something. It literally acts as a force on us. Motivation is awakening before dawn. It can only be inferred by observing a person’s behavior. It guides a person to act in a particular way for a specific behavior.

MOTIVATION: AN ORGANIZATIONAL POINT OF VIEW

Motivation is very important for an organization because of the following reasons:

• PUTS  HUMAN RESOURCES INTO ACTION: 

Every organization requires physical, financial and human resources to accomplish the goals. It is through motivation that the human resources can be utilized by making full use of it. This can be done by building willingness in employees to work. It will help the organization in securing best possible utilization of resources.

• IMPROVES  LEVELS OF EFFICIENCY OF THE EMPLOYEES :

The level of a subordinate or an employee does not only depend upon his qualifications and his abilities. For extracting the best of his work performance, the gap between ability and willingness has to be filled up which helps in improving the level of performance of the subordinates. This will result into:

Increase in productivity;

Reducing cost of operations;

Improving overall efficiency.

• LEADS TO ACHIEVEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS:

The goals of an organization can be achieved only when the following factors take place:

There is best possible utilization of resources;

There is cooperative work environment;

The employees are goal directed and they act in a purposive manner;

Goals can be achieved if coordination and cooperation takes place simultaneously which can be effectively done through motivation.

• LEADS TO STABILITY OF WORKFORCE:

Stability of workforce is very important from the point of view of reputation and goodwill of an organization. The employees can remain loyal to the organization only when they have a feeling of participation in the management. The skill and efficiency of the employees will always be an advantage to the organization.

EMPLOYEE DEMOTIVATION: Causes and Solutions

DEMOTRIVATION IS CONTAGIOUS:  Even one demotivated employee who constantly cribs about work or other undesirable factors can quickly work on demotivating others too. Organizations are prone to the dangers of demotivation at all times. However, it is very important to tackle it without any delay.

“Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being positive about what could go right”

Billy Cox

Everyone needs to be motivated or enthused in all respects of life. Motivation is the key to a happy and productive organization. For an employee to work well, the essence of motivation lies in him putting in his entire effort into his work and at times even to go beyond doing prescribed tasks.

Motivation plays an important role in employee productivity, quality and speed of work. A proper efficient leader should be chosen in all the departments of an organization to motivate their subordinates.

“If you build an army of hundred lions and their leader is a dog, in any fight, the lions will die like a dog. But if you build an army of 100 dogs and their leader is a lion, all dogs will fight like a lion.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

By: Prapanna Lahiri

 In the annual customary speech from the ramparts of the historical Red Fort in Delhi, Shri Narendra Damodardas Modi, India’s 15^th Prime Minister on August 15, 2014 announced a nation wide programme, christened Swach Bharat Abhiyan (translated into English it reads Clean India Campaign) as a tribute to the dream of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi for a clean India. Gandhi in his days was fiercely aware of the pathetic situation in rural India and emphasised in no uncertain terms his concern for cleanliness and sanitation as integral part of living. Nothing emphasises his passion on the issue of cleanliness than his words “Sanitation is more important than Independence”. Earlier, in his presidential address to the Parliament on June 9, 2014 President Pranab Mukherjee said, “We must not tolerate the indignity of homes without toilets and public spaces littered with garbage. For ensuring hygiene, waste management and sanitation across the nation a “Swachh Bharat Mission” will be launched. This will be our tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary to be celebrated in the year 2019.

Early in the morning, on October 2, 2014, marking the 145th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Prime Minister Modi visited Rajghat, the memorial to the Father of the Nation and then proceeded to Valmiki Basti, a housing colony in the capital that houses sanitation workers. The Prime Minister took a broom himself and swept a pavement at this colony in a symbolic start to the cleanliness drive before him formally launching at Rajpath in the capital, the mega nationwide ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ (Clean India drive) that aims at a cleaner country in the next five years. On his way, the Prime Minister also made a surprise stop at a police station at the Mandir Marg, in the heart of the capital to check on its cleanliness. There were no officers present at the police station as ironically all of them had been deputed for the PM’s visit to the area. Shri Modi cleaned the police station and impressed on the policemen present there about the importance of cleanliness. He also offered prayers at a temple and visited a house that Mahatma Gandhi lived in. At the India Gate on Rajpath he led a cleanliness pledge which 30 lakh government employees across the country joined. Exhorting the people to clean every corner of the country Modi rued, “Today is the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhiji and Lal Bahadur Shastriji. We have gained freedom under leadership of Gandhiji, but his dream of clean India is still unfulfilled.” He encouraged people by pushing Indians into believing that they can certainly clean the streets and roads when they could reach Mars at a minimal cost. Moving above politics he humbly acknowledged the role of all those who worked for this programme earlier even though they must have been in different forms and with different names so long the objective was to ensure a clean India. In his speech on the occasion, Mr Modi also invited nine people he named, to join the cleanliness drive and requested each of them to enlist nine more into the initiative to make it viral. Among those invited to take up the challenge were Goa governor, Mridula Sinha, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, yoga guru Baba Ramdev, Congress parliamentarian and former union minister Shashi Tharoor, actors Kamal Haasan, Priyanka Chopra and Salman Khan, industrialist Anil Ambani and the team of popular TV serial Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma. Actor Aamir Khan was among those who also joined the PM for the event. He flagged off a walkathon at Rajpath and the people were surprised seeing him not merely taking a token few steps, but marching with the participants till the residence of former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, nearly 800 metres away, before he got onto his car. Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, usually a public holiday was ordered by the Prime Minister to be made a full working day in 2014 for government employees. He had instructed bureaucrats and ministers to lead their departments in cleaning offices, including toilets on the day.

The following are the hard facts about the state of sanitation and cleanliness in the country –

•  Half of India’s population still practise open defecation – putting them at risk of cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid as per a United Nations report.
• India was losing 6.4 percent of GDP annually because of diseases and deaths caused by poor access to sanitation according to a World Bank report of 2006.
•  A Water Aid research says about 16 million Indians a year gain access to a basic toilet. This has to increase to more than 100 million a year if the whole population is to have a toilet by 2019.
• Towns and cities in India are littered with garbage resulting from massive urban migration, poor civic planning and inadequate waste disposal systems with rivers and lakes getting polluted with sewage and industrial effluents.

The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ was described as “beyond politics” and “inspired by patriotism”. The programme broadly envisages:

1. Elimination of open defecation
2. Every household will have a toilet by 2019
3. Conversion of unsanitary toilets to flush toilets
4. Eradication of manual scavenging
5. 100% collection and scientific processing/disposal/ recycling of Municipal Solid Waste
6. Bringing about a behavioural change in people regarding healthy sanitation practices.
7. Awareness generation among the citizens about sanitation and its linkages with public health
8. Strengthening of urban local bodies to design, execute and operate systems
9. Creation of environment that enables private sector to participate in Capital Expenditure and Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs
10. Spreading awareness in urban slums and villages by putting on street plays about rubbish disposal, handing out leaflets about washing hands and even giving out broomsticks to members of the public.
11. Spreading awareness by campaigns by civil society organisations and companies in urban slums and villages by putting on street plays about rubbish disposal, handing out leaflets about washing hands and even giving out broomsticks to members of the public.

There are silver linings which make us optimistic about the campaign.  The campaign has lived on and would remain alive and kicking with the determined Prime Minister as the nation’s conscience keeper.  Awareness is the key and every citizen has to do his or her bit to make it succeed. Industry chamber CII has announced it would mobilise its members to build 10,000 toilets across the country by 2015-16. Earlier a number of companies including Tata Consultancy Services and Bharti Foundation, an arm of Bharti Enterprises had pledged a total of Rs 300 crore each to build toilets in schools. Let the campaign succeed and let India shine clean to realise the dream of the Father of the Nation.

By: Aamarpali Puri

What is Liquid Crystal?

It is the fourth state of matter. It generally lies between the solid and liquid phase. It is formed from organic compounds.

It was discovered by Austrian Chemist, Frederich Reintzer (1888). He found that Cholesteryl Benzoate does not melt in the same manner as other compounds and has two melting points. When solid Cholesteryl benzoate is heated it melts sharply to form a turbid liquid and at higher temperature an equally sharp change to a clear liquid occurs. On cooling the changes take place in reverse direction at the same temperatures. The temperature at which the solid melts to form turbid liquid is usually called the transition point, and the higher temperature, at which the true liquid is obtained, is referred to as the melting point.

Liquid crystals are very important in the study of Optics, Chemistry and Polymer science. If an electric field is applied to liquid crystal the molecule will align in the same direction as the field. It exhibits unusual optical effects like it is doubly refracting and gives interference pattern in polarized light. There are three basic phases Smectics, Nematics and Cholesterics.

In Smectics normal liquid flow does not occur; the movement is of gliding nature, in one plane. Molecules are ordered in one direction in approximately parallel layers. This arrangement may be compared to number of hair brushes, in which bristles are parallel but set at random, placed one on top of another.

Nematics have mobile thread like structure. If viewed along the lines of the forces of a magnetic field the turbid liquid appears clear. Molecules are aligned but the layers are not there. The molecules can be compared to a loose bundle of cigars, so that individuals can move up and while remaining parallel.

Cholesterics are optically active compounds. They show marked coloured effects in polarized light as a consequence of layered structure.

Some uses of Liquid Crystals are in Flat Screen Television, Wrist watches, Laptop screens, Digital clocks, Thermometery etc.

Liquid Crystal Display televisions (LCD TV) use LCD display technology to produce images. LCD televisions are thinner and lighter than Cathode Ray Tube (CRTs) of similar display size. LCD televisions produce a black and coloured image by selectively filtering a white light.

By: Prapanna Lahiri

Strategic Human Resource Management:

Human resource management (HRM) in any organisation is about human beings. In modern business an organisation’s manpower is viewed as its resources and assets helping it to achieve its goals, Human resource can be technically defined as the total knowledge, abilities, skills, talents and aptitudes of an organisation’s workforce.

Human resource management basically is concerned with selection of right persons for the right jobs (staffing), providing continuous assistance in their skill development (training) and providing essential inputs and formulations to create a team spirit where employees satisfy their desires by developing themselves (motivating) that will eventually contribute to the attainment of organisational goals.

The concept of Strategic HRM initially started being discussed around the early 1990s and was variously sought to be defined by academics as:

• Proactivemanagement of the employees of a company or organisation
• The undertaking of all those activities affecting the behaviour of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of business.
• The pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable the organisation to achieve its goals.

Strategic HRM is constantly evolving and remains a subject of ongoing discussion by academics and other commentators. One has to understand the term ‘strategy’ to analyse strategic HRM. This word originally was used in the military context and is widely used in present-day corporate world. It envisages thinking ahead to determine which option will provide maximum benefits in order to survive and grow in a highly competitive environment. In the words of Jauch and Glueck, “Strategy is a unified, comprehensive and integrated plan that relates the strategic advantages of the firm to the challenges of the environment.” Strategy is all these – perspective, position, plan and pattern and is designed to ensure that the basic objectives of the organisation are achieved through its proper execution”.

All enterprises, big or small, for their success, have to manage the use of three critical resources which are:

1. Technology used to make a product or deliver a service.
2. Finances the organisation uses to pay for its requirements
3. The people whose skills and talents are utilised to effectively do the work needed to be performed.

Successful organisations have strategic plans that are specific to effective management and utilisation of these three critical resources. Hence, strategic human resource planning is part of the overall strategic planning practised in an organisation. When creating a human resources plan, it is important to consider what employees need and what the company can reasonably supply.

AIMS OF STRATEGIC HRM

The underlying principle of strategic HRM is the perceived advantage of having an agreed and understood basis for developing approaches to people management in the longer term. The fundamental aim of practice of strategic HRM is to generate strategic capability by ensuring that the organisation has the skilled, committed and well-motivated employees needed to achieve sustained competitive advantages. While deliberating on the aims of strategic HRM it is imperative to consider how HR strategies will take into account the interests of all the stakeholders in the organisation, employees in general as well as owners and management.

From the point of view of interest of stakeholders there can be two approaches to strategic HRM:

Soft strategic HRM: It will place greater emphasis on the human relations aspect of people management, stressing continuous development, communication, involvement, security of employment, the quality of working life and maintaining work life balance, making ethical considerations more important.

Hard strategic HRM: It will emphasise more on the yield to be obtained by investing in human resources in the interests of the business.

THE PROCESS

The process includes typical human resource components such as hiring, discipline and payroll and also involves working with employees in a collaborative manner to enhance retention, qualitatively improve work experience with a view to maximise mutual benefit of employment for both the employee and the employer. While we talk about proactive management of human resource components it encompasses identification and exploitation of opportunities for taking pre-emptive measures against potential problems and threats to make every such action result oriented. It simply means avoidance of a scenario where things are allowed to happen and then reacting to take remedial measures. Strategic HRM focuses on taking actions that differentiate the firm from its competitors (Purcell, 1999).

Following are the successive phases of the strategic process;

• Defining the organisation’s vision and mission
• Establishing short term and long term objectives to achieve the organisation’s vision
• Selecting strategy to attain these objectives
• Aligning the organisation structure, systems and processes with the selected strategy
• Making decisions commensurate with the strategy and the organisational structure
• Providing organisational leadership pertinent to the strategy
• Evaluating the effectiveness of the strategy in achieving the organisation’s objectives

BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC HRM:

1. As opined by Ulrick and Lake, the strategic HR framework aims to leverage and / or align HR practices to build critical capabilities enabling an organisation to achieve its goals.
2. It helps analyse the opportunities and threats that are critical from the point of view of the enterprise. .
3. Strategic HRM offers both financial and non-financial benefits to an organisation which practices it.
4. Proper implementation of strategic HRM reduces the attrition rate and motivates employees.

LIMITATIONS OF STRATEGIC HRM ARE:

1. Inability of the management to clearly communicate the vision and mission of the company to the employees.
2. Resistance to change from bottom line workers and labour unions.
3. Diversity of workforce makes it difficult for the management to handle them as planned.
4. Conflict in the ranks of employees over the issue of authority and the related fear of victimisation
5. Changing market scenario may create pressure on effective implementation of strategic HRM.

CONCLUSION:

Strategic HRM is in some ways an attitude of mind that expresses a way of doing things. It is realized in the form of HR strategies formulated.  To say the least strategic HRM is the key to improved business performance.

By: Anamitra Roy

“Research is creating new knowledge.”

Neil Armstrong

Research refers to a systematic and objective investigation of a subject or a problem with the objective of finding an answer or solution. Research methodology refers to the methods by which the research is being carried out. It’s the research design which governs all decisions from identifying relevant sample, data to be collected, data collection and analysis techniques. More concretely, research methodology can be referred as the skeleton of the research. It is the research method which makes the finding of a research relevant, valid and universally acceptable. Research methodology provides a rationale for the method of enquiry, which in turn makes the outc2ome of the research scientific.

According to Paul E. Green, Donald Tull and Gerald Albaum (2004) research is broadly of two types, viz. basic research and applied research.

Basic research is done for the enhancement of knowledge. It is also called pure or fundamental research. The main objective of this type of research is to increase the boundary of knowledge. The outcome of basic research is not a readily saleable commodity. Mostly the researcher connected with this type of research is the first person to do so. Example of topics on which basic research can be carried out are how the universe came into existence, how the idea of religion came to human minds, how the theory of making a state came to human minds etc.

One of the advantages of basic research is that it helps to create a base for the topic on which the research is being carried out. This type of research contributes towards enhancement of knowledge.

But apart from this, basic research also has some disadvantages. This type of research does not have a base. It is the researcher who has to create a base and then carry on with the research.

Moreover, the outcome of basic research does not have any market value.

The outcomes of basic research are applied in reality to solve the complex everyday problems and this is done through applied research, sometimes also referred as decisional research. Applied research tests and validates a proposed theory discovered through basic research and underlines its limitation or may further refine it with necessary changes to overcome application challenges in different situations. The essence of the applied research is to refine, further investigate or solve a particular problem. It can only be commenced when some of basic facts so far discovered are reasonably correct.

Applied research has a base and is easier than basic research. Many a times it is seen that a problem has more than one solution. In this type of approach it is the researcher’s duty to not find out the solution but the best/ most viable solution. The outcome of this type of research has a market value.

Applied research cannot be done on a small scale. This is because applied research requires a huge amount of money. This research approach requires a detailed analysis of the real life problems which can be a complex job.

One of the common points of both basic and applied research is information on the basis of which this will be done. That’s why; information/ collection and utilization of it occupy a very important area of research. Information refers to a recorded experience that is useful for decision making. The recording of the experiences help the researchers to reduce the uncertainty while taking a decision. Authenticity of information also plays a crucial role in the quality of decision made.

Characteristic features of information are as follows:

1. Accuracy: Accuracy is the degree to which the information reflects reality.
2. Time: It is essential to take into consideration the time of collection of information as it is bound to change with time.
3. Sufficiency: Information should be adequate enough to be able to take a decision.
4. Availability: Information must be available to the decision maker when decision is being made.
5. Relevance: Information must be relevant enough for the decision maker to take decision on the basis of it.

A reference drawn from “Research for Marketing Decisions” by Paul Green, Donald Tull and Gerald Albaum (2004) for classification of information, classifies it into primary and secondary.

Primary information is that which is collected from sources directly, eg. Information from surveys, filling of questionnaires etc. and secondary information is that which is collected indirectly, eg. Information collected from magazines, newspapers etc.

On the basis of sources, primary information was classified into internal and external. Brief discussions on these are as follows:

1. Internal Information:
2. Information extracted from within is internal information. Such information may be extracted from internal reports, purchase and sales documents, books of accounts, management reports etc.
3. External Information:
4. Information extracted from outside is called external information. Such information may be extracted from surveys, interviews, questioning respondents, natural and controlled experiments, observations, hidden investigations etc.

In conclusion it may be pointed out that like any other activity research is also a journey, the success of which depends on the passion, zeal and interest level of the researcher. Moreover, many scholars prefer to believe that research is just not a science. It is an art as well and hence, application of it depends on the person pursuing it i.e. the researcher. So although effort has been made to frame theories and guidelines about research methodology, it actually varies from time to time, place to place and case to case. There cannot be fixed rules and regulations about research methodology. It is due to this varying nature of research methodology that there is always a degree of uncertainty involved with research which makes it so interesting for study and understanding purposes.

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.”

Albert Szent Gyorgyi

Bibliography:

• Green, Paul E., Tull, Donald S. & Alabaum, Gerald (2004). Research for Marketing Decisions, 5^th Edition, United States, Prentice – Hall.
• Gupta, S.P. (2011). Statistical Methods, 4^th Edition, Delhi, Sultan Chand & Sons.