Ethical and Nonethical: Why only two options?

There is a common tendency among people to move everything or to adjust everything (and everyone) towards the mean (or is it the central tendency?). What it means is that people on the superior half do not get appreciated as they should be in an absolute manner and people on the other (inferior) half get unnecessary sympathy.
The point that i m trying to make is in reaction to some of the questions that i have confronted recently. The quality that i m talking about is the morals and ethics being practiced by people.
Qualities/attributes/performance are generally measured in a relative sense, a person's wealth (rich and poor), knowledge ("he is more knowledgeable than me"), class performance (ranks) and so on and so forth. But when it comes to ethics and moral values people generally tend to make judgment in a more absolute sense rather than relatively. Not even Lord Ram was sparred in this regard (yes, i m talking about the "agni-parikhsa" of Maa Sita).
So, why this bias? The answer to me lies in the same old central tendency and even more in the tendency of human beings to "pull" or downplay others' qualities so as to justify one's inability to stick to the right path.
When it has been generally agreed upon that attaining 100% in any measurement is close to impossible (one of my learnings from MBA) then why do we try to impose 100% compliance in ethical behavior. People generally try to find out that one-off incident/instance to totally negate a certain person's otherwise "morally/ethically" commendable behavior. But why this discrete function of ones and zeros, we are humans not machines! Can't we assign a percentage rating to the level of ethical soundness.
[THIS POST NEEDS SERIOUS REVIEW AND I'LL BE BACK WITH A MORE THOROUGH AND ELABORATE POST]

PS: Comment is a scarce commodity here, so every kind of it is welcome :)

I m back!

My google analytics shows that the weekly trend of no. of visitors is on a declining spree recently (after showing strong positive trend for quite some time- although the visitor count never exceeded 9/week). And so it requires some drastic measures to be put in place. So, here I am back to the writing board.
Things have changed way to steeply that even "change" does not aptly explain the happenings. I-banking lost its existence, markets went hay wire, I got 7.8 in IV term [is thr a negative correlation between economic growth and my CG? :)], I lost my wallet, Jumbo and Dada retired, Aby came second for the first time in IIM L and ...
To start off with cricket, the retirement of Dada was really sad and even though it was time for Jumbo, the way he had to bid adieu was unfortunate. The story of these two great contributors was kind of compressed in their final appearances; while Jumbo held onto his final wicket as a C&B with stitched fingers (which speaks of the commitment that this man has showed over and over again), Dada's final test was an equally apt summary of how "Bollywoodish" has been his journey- he missed out on a hundred in the first innings (that 85 will still be remembered as his final reply to critics) and the first ball duck in the second innings which happened around a loud applause from within and outside the ground.
The "Dadagiri" which changed the whole mindset of Indian cricket will forever be remembered as the most crucial mile stone in Indian cricket and had I not witnessed Sachin I would have ranked Dada as the best Indian player ever. And when I say, "best player", I look at the whole package that this man brought to the game. He was instrumental in Indians becoming fearless abroad and more importantly becoming the ones who look straight into the the eyes of the opposition rather being stared at.

Blogger's Block

Its been almost 2 months since my last post and that is why this post. Although many blogs are in the pipeline [typical MBA jargon :)] but it will take time to come up with the next blog (or is the wait over?). Just to commit myself to the posts and to accelerate the process of pipeline to blogspace, i thought of putting up a list of up coming blogs. Although not in order but here's a tentative list of what I am supposed to come in next one month or so:
1. The Theory and Practise of "Nightouts": An Empirical Observation
2. The World of One Dimensional Performance Measures
3. The Blogger's Block
4. The BIG picture
5. Term IV review- What have we learned?
6. Valuation- How subjective can you be?
7. EXECUTION- The need of the hour!

Wait and watch!

The BIG Picture

I knew this would happen. But I am happy that it continued for a while and now I am back. The thing I am talking about is the string of posts that I could manage (a total of 10 posts in 3 months); and I did a great job going by my historical trend.

So, where's this post headaing. I want to focus it on the "big picture" concept; but excuse me for if I wander a bit [or may be 10-20 bits :)]

So what's this funda of BIG picture. Its one of the mangement/intellectual jargon of looking at things/processes/systems/business/organizations from a high enough point so that the whole of it is clearly visible. Or in other words simply- "looking at the big picture".

But why? The point is to have every aspect of a particular system in mind before making any decision or understanding the whole system; and not merely looking at the tit-bits. For example: if you have to understand MBA; merely falling for the huge salary(and that too is an well articulated illusion) would not give a complete picture. There are a whole lot of more important things that one must consider before making up an opinion about MBA.

I think that one went out of the "BIG picture" arena and into the why MBA debate.

Anyways coming back to the big picture idea; its important to incorporate such vision into your outlook and I feel it is valid for all aspects of life and not just management.

But then what's the point. If its important then let it be; why this post???

There you go! You learn the most when you don't do it right. And having learned it the the hard way....(unfinished)

Mid Term Review Continued...

Commercial Bank Management that is! Quite interesting as the course started off. Its mid term time now and feels like nothing has been learned till now. This seems to be the problem in every course; all seems well and fine (understanding seems to be settling in) until there's no examination and every learning seems to pass bye during the time the same is required the most.
The course is basically about the banking industry. We learn about the organizations taking a general framework so why there's this need to dedicate a full course on a single industry and more importantly why is this course oversubscribed. The answer to the first question lies in the inherent nature of banking sector which makes its quite unique as compared to most of the other industries.

• There is too much of debt
• We compare performance through ROA
• Since debt is a part of operations hence too much of it is there, and thats why strict regulations for capital ratios are there to check exccesive leverage (risk of  bankruptcy)

Service Operations Management-This post is meant for academic purpose only and thereby don't expect it to be interesting unless you really are interested in the subject.
To cut the story short it is my mid term exam day (SOM exam i mean) and hence this post to elaborate my understanding.
I would take "education" as an example of service to explain the concepts learned.
Definition
"Any act of creating an intangible output through and interaction between the customer and servers"
So education is-
"A service where the customers (students) interact with the servers (professors) to undergo a n experiential transformation (gain knowledge)"


Role
As per the book there are some classifications of services-VAS, Manufacturing, Personal and so on. By those classification, education fits into Government Service, but then what about private institutes and even non funded national institutes (IIMs). I can't find any fitting classifier for these.

Mid Term Review I (Strategy Management)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~DISCLAIMER~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIS CHAIN OF POSTS CONTAINS POTENTIALLY HARMFUL MATERIAL AS THE POSTS ARE HIGHLY ACADEMIC IN NATURE AND MAY IMPART SERIOUS INJURY TO THE INTELLECTUAL HEALTH OF THE READERS. THE WRITER WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR AN SUCH CASUALTIES.
So mid term exams are here again. I will try to pen down my learnings from the various subjects till now. The first one in line is SM as it is the first in the exam schedule. As is clear from the course name this one is about learning strategy as being formulated and practiced by corporates. The course structure has been designed around a number of case studies. The discussions basically build around the case facts and to identify strategic elements from the way a particular organizations reacted or pro acted in various periods during a period of time.
Although it is always a good exercise to extract learnings out of "success stories"; which is mostly the content of all the cases but I feel it would be handy to look at the "grand failures".sfs

Learnings from cases:

Arvind Mills

This case highlighted one of the most important aspect of strategic planning-"settings objectives with specific time frames". The company realized the need for structuring its business strategy in wake of unfavorable environment for the industry and set time based objectives.

The approach taken by the company can be understood through the Abell's model of business. The company first extended its product line (customer functions) and ventured into Denim manufacturing realizing its favorable resource capabilities. Then it gradually extended its target market (customer groups). The company also identified and incorporated new technology for manufacturing to improve quality.



Walmart
The case highlighted the operational aspects of strategy particular to retail sector. The company's CA was cost leadership. It employed numerous measures to ensure highly competitve pricing and yet maintained relatively high margins. Moving along the value chain firstly it enjoyed high bargaining power with suppliers mainly because of rationalization and development of supplier network. Then it created high operational efficiency through standardization of merchandise, computerized inventory control, efficient distribution system. It ensured employee participation/contribution to business motive by pegging bonuses with profits and also discouraged luxurious spending by top management. The other end of value chain was taken care through ploys like local pricing and higher display area in stores.

Service Operations Management

There is a quiz tomorrow in Service Operations Management (SOM) and i thought it would be nice to write within this realm. This course is primarily structured to develop an understanding (rather an appreciation) about operational aspects in services. The course seems very similar to most of the ops courses where we talk about quality, 2X2 matrices, ....
The course has been divided into two sections with each section being taken by a different faculty. The difference between the two sections is quite visible in the topics being covered; the initial section is about a broad outline about services and role of operations in services while the latter part is more about the application of operations tools in solving problems related to services (supposedly).