ACCOUNTING

Accounting is the language of business! By far the most meaningful thing I’ve taken away from this chapter. Looking at it now I realize how true that really is. Without it, we would never be able to run a successful business or even know if we are profitable or not. Accounting keeps track of all the financial data put into our business, organizes the information, and then translates it into something we can use to lead us in a better way. VERY IMPORTANT!

You wouldn’t dare spend money if it was trapped in a box and you couldn’t see how much you had, you would be too fearful to spend it all. Accounting works in the same way. It tells the owners of the company how much they can afford to spend to improve their business and keep up with expenses. Without accounting, which every company should invest in getting a proffesional to do it I believe, businesses would ultimately fail. Their accounts would run dry and everything would be so clustered and unorganized that it would be impossible to track where your money is going every month.

 

CH12

I got addicted to that beer game! Very fun way to represent a model of how supply chain management works. This chapter taught me a lot about the sort of work that I would like to go into. I’d like to do something with business and this is an interesting chapter to kind of get a more inside look at what I can expect in the business line of work. The game taught me how hard it can be just to balance an inventory, much less keep customers satisfied. My first job I’ve ever worked was at a small, family-0wned barbeque restaurant that was just opening up. The location, in my opinion, was great. (Right off one of the main highways, across the street from a really big neighborhood that I lived in.) However, the place barely generated any business and the family ended up having to close down the place after only 4 months. It was interesting to be in that sort of situation for my first job though. The manager was the owner’s youngest son who was only a couple years older than I was. Everyday we would talk with one another about what we would be doing differently to make the place more successful. We thought our ideas were solid and really would have worked, but of course the owner never even listened to a word we had to say.

(His loss I guess.) We did no advertising and the prices were a little ridiculous for barbeque. This is where learning the pricing strategy in this chapter becomes so important. I can remember countless times customers would come in and leave after seeing the price. In economics we learn a lot about supply and demand and the rule goes that if the demand isn’t as high as you want/need it to be, then you lower the price. The owner never did this, and lost a large portion of the possible clientel who he could of got hooked. The food was really good, and I know people would have came back repeatedly if they tried it once. But the owner was just too set in his ways and I believe his business fell because of that.

This is what the restaurant would look like on a regular basis…

CH 11 (Marketing and Customer Driven Markets)

My older sister recently graduated from Texas Tech with a marketing degree so a lot of information in this chapter were things I’ve heard directly from her. She’s told me about how much they emphasize on the same 4p’s we’ve learned in this chapter.  From producing a prodcut that reaches a certain target audience, to advertising it in a way to achieve the best possible results is what she said they placed a heavy importance on in her classes. It’s funny to hear about these things because once you learn how important advertising is and how strong of a tool it is, you begin to see all the advertisements on tv in a different light. Everything put into those commercials are there for a purpose and intended to reach a certain group of people. Once you realize that, you can see why these companies are able to get these products off the shelves and into the hands of the people they intendced it to get to.

I mean even deciding what channel a commercial will air on is a big advertising move that I have started to notice. (for example Viagra commercials are always coming on the History and Discovery channel, and yet I’ve never seen one aired on MTV haha) In the type of free market society we live in, customers are the ultimate driving force of our economy and it’s what decides the price of a certain product. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is something my conomics professor has constantly stressed as to why our market works the way it does.

As for the ice skating rink question you asked in the blog, I have a friend that has been working there since they opened and he says it’s packed every single night; he even said there was ticket scalping going on in the parking lot! So, I guess there’s always a market for some things no matter where you are; just goes to show how spontaneous people can be.

CH 10 (Managing Human Resources)

I can relate alot with this particular chapter in terms of having a job and “employment at will.”  I already knew about what this was because it is preached to us daily at work that we are replaceable and that we need to be conducting our work in an exceptable manner or we WILL get fired. Definitely works as a motivator… But I enjoyed watching the videos on the class blog; they gave me a good laugh- especially the one from the movie Waiting, that’s a great movie haha. I think the presence of unions are great for employees and help keep work conditions fair and reasonable. Before there were Unions in the U.S. child labor and unsafe working conditions were prominent in everyday life. I remember reading in a book once that if a man were missing an arm or leg it was more likely due to the dangerous work done in the fatories rather than coming back from a war.

I mean not even wearing shoes, REALLY?!

Today, Unions work together to try and improve life for workers and that is something I value very much. Big corporations, like Wal-Mart, need to see that we are not just pawns in their scheme that they can just play with and manipulate; We are American people providing a service for them and we need to be respected for the work we do and taken care of by our employers, not threatened.

 

 

CH. 9 (What Motivates Workers)

As I read the class post and watched the videos on employee motivation, I learned the importance of workers’ motivation towards their line of work. The one thing I really took away was learning about the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to help motivate employees. The former being the one we are most common to seeing with pay raises and bonuses always being pushed around as incentives in  a company. The intrinsic rewards are what I believe is the real foundation for a solid, successful business. These rewards incorporate ways to raise employees moral and job satisfaction through trust and job enrichment. Employees are the important, behind-the-scenes force that drives a whole company. Therefore, their satisfaction and attitude towards work can ultimately decide the company’s production rate. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shows what our basic needs are to help describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.

The videos we watched also interested me and taught me a lot about the assembly line and the concept of time and motion. It’s hard to believe Ford would be as successful as they are today without the concept of the assembly line and the findings of Fredrick Taylor. As you look in any car manufacturer today you will see Taylor and Henry Ford’s vision continue to grow and advance but with the same concept they thought of almost a century ago!

 

The time and motion guys in the video seem like an employees’ worst nightmare! I know from personal work experience, it can be frustrating to have someone tracking your every move and trying to give more guidance than you want. Although it’s important for the company to find ways to cut time and improve production, it’s often never good for the workers. Job enlargement could be a possible result from this in order to combine roles of two workers into one. Actions like this can debunk worker’s satisfaction and actually have a negative affect towards the production time.

The 21st Century isn’t so bad…

The regulations and standards set for our commercial products in the U.S. is something that I think has advanced our quality of life greatly. In this chapter I learned about quality management and how manufacturing companies use continuous quality improvement to minimize defective products. This is something that would be unheard of a century ago since businesses were less worried about quality and more focused on driving up profits. In my history class, we discussed the progressive era and the uprising of organizations to oversee the quality of how goods were produced. One example is the USDA.

These days we see the USDA seal on practically every produce item we buy in our super markets, but before the USDA came about, it was sickening the way our food was handled and processed. The Jungle was a book written by Upton Sinclair that ultimately brought about improvements in the manufacturing business. It wasn’t long after the publishing of this book, that working conditions started to change drastically. From child labor laws to more regulations, the manufacturing industry saw much needed improvements during this time. I think it’s important to our nation that we do make improvements like this because it really does make a huge difference on our standard of living and sets us apart from the rest of the world in that regard.

As we continue to grow in the field of industry I think improvements in TQM and Operations Management can help solve a lot of problems we still face with products. We still continue to have recalls on certain goods and a lot of times those are things that can be stopped. The MAIN reason for all of these recalls always is because of some sort of hazard or injury. With TQM, we can save a number of lives and prevent accidents from ever happening and I think this is highly important!

We now live in an age were technology has made goods and services more readily available than ever. With these mega factories and mass production lines, new regulations should be brought forth to ensure companies aren’t skipping any vital safety inspections. The way these companies are regulated are important to our daily lives, our nation’s economy, and above all our environment. With most factories now being loaded with program software and computers and robots doing most of the work, we have a huge opportunity to improve quality of goods while keeping cost low. There’s several things we have corrected in our industrial world in the last 100 years and I think it’s safe to say that we can certainly be happy we don’t face the same terrible issues experienced in the 20th century.

Teamwork Equals Success

It’s interesting to see UA’s organization chart and how each job is connected to one another. It’s certainly a lot more complicated and taller than I would have guessed it would be.

Compared to this chart of a general business, it’s easy to see how many different fields a University has to cover with extra job positions. This is an interesting concept that I’m learning about for the first time and I can definitely see how it can help organize a company.

Teamwork is an important part of business that can absolutely make or break a company’s chances of success. Just like in sports, when a group can work together as a team, their chances of winning multiply greatly. By placing employees into a group and encouraging them to be more collectivistic, companies raise creative competition in offices. With this type of environment, the best ideas usually rise to the top and work can get done much faster when things work correctly. Pixar is a great example of how this method can prove success. I believe more businesses should take this approach and promote teamwork rather than the depressing office spaces we have now.

 

Obviously Pixar’s work environment promotes great relationships with others in the workplace just by how the office is set up. This type of setting leads to easy communication with one another, which this chapter also teaches us, is another very important part of business. As long as creative minds are in an open environment where they are comfortable to freely share ideas and how they feel about certain projects, Pixar (and other companies like them) will continue to have success.

The Perfect Manager

It’s crazy how there can be such a diversity in the type of personalities of the people we work with at our jobs, and yet almost every time we have what we consider a “cool boss”, they usually always have the same characteristics. While leadership is something I believe people are either born with or they aren’t, managing seems to be something almost anyone can learn. Really what it all comes down to, is gaining respect from your employees in some sort of fashion (which is why we do see different managing styles) and getting a job done successfully. I’ve worked a couple restaurant jobs since being out of high school these last couple of years, and it’s given me a great opportunity to see how businesses work on several different scales. From starting out at a mom and pop bar-b-q place, to a big corporate chain, to where I am now, a well respected local family owned restaurant started from the ground up, Cypress Inn. I’ve loved it so far, and it’s given me a chance to see the behind the scenes working of a successful business that isn’t over run with corporate scum. These jobs have all been lined with several different types of managers and managing styles, and at the end of the day the best ones always seem to have the same qualities, which is why I believe managing can be learned by anyone. The best managers I’ve worked for have always thought about the team or company collectively as a whole and never makes brash decisions without consulting everyone first. Respect plays a huge part in business and managers should be doing whatever it is they need to to gain that respect from the people that they are trying to lead. In almost every environment I’ve worked, the managers that gained the most respect were the ones that worked the hardest to earn it. And for these managers, the employees are almost always willing to work as hard as their bosses are as a mutual sign of trust. Hard work, integrity, discipline, loyalty, and knowledge of what it is they’re doing have all been characteristics of the good bosses I’ve had, and the bad ones almost always lack at least one of those traits.