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NGOs:
Roles and Responsibilities
--
Deepak
Kumar
This
article discusses the distinctive roles played by the NGOs
aiming primarily at the well-being of the society. It also
discusses the responsibilities of NGOs towards the people
by looking after their needs and empowering them with both
financial and non-financial support.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Institutionalizing
Support to SHGs: The APMAS Experience
--
C
S Reddy,
Jennifer Livingstone and Sandeep Manak
Microfinance
has developed over the past several years as an effective
tool to combat poverty, especially in rural areas, and bring
about development. Hundreds of organizations are working in
this sector including the APMAS in Andhra Pradesh. Founded
in 2001, APMAS is unique in its business model. It acts as
a support organization to the self-help movement. Through
its service offerings, it helps to strengthen the Self-help
Groups (SHGs) by assessing their operations, and offering
advice on capacity building. It also has a strong research
and advocacy group that has facilitated several key workshops
to foster innovation and collaboration in the self-help movement.
APMAS has begun its operations towards promoting livelihood,
taking advantage of its experience of quality assessment and
enhancement. Some of their key implementation experiences
and lessons learned, are highlighted in this article.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Volunteer
Management for NGOs
-- Harsh
Bhargava and Parthib Sarkar
Volunteers
are the key to success of any NGO. The objective of this project
is to prepare a manual for effective management of the change
agents (volunteers) of the Byrraju Foundation by studying
the existing best practices in the field of volunteering.
The manual specifies what the Foundation expects from its
change agents. The article concludes that preparing a volunteer
manual is quite different from preparing an employee manual,
which most organizations possess. The Volunteer Management
Manual, prepared as a result of this project is, therefore,
a distillation of best practices and has been prepared keeping
in mind the present and future changes in the field of volunteering.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Sustainable
Rural Transformation: Experiences of the Byrraju Foundation
-- T
L S Bhaskar and Verghese Jacob
This
article outlines the history and functioning of the Byrraju
Foundation with a special focus on its delivery modules. All
internal and external activities of the Foundation are broken
down into modules with well-defined value creation processes.
These modules directly touch the lives of the beneficiaries.
Examples of such modules are primary healthcare, school education,
waste management and livelihood. The beneficiaries are the
customers of these modules. One of the key values of the Foundation
is to integrate and effectively use the applications of information
and technology in an effort towards achieving sustainable
development. Programs like Project Ashwini, I-Shravan, and
Swathi are initiated by the Foundation to use technology effectively
in order to address the day-to-day problems at the village
level, thereby impacting the lives of the beneficiaries. The
Foundation, thus, aims at building trust with the village
community before initiating programs in delivery modules or
entering into long-term collaborations with corporates which
are willing to associate in a partnership-based development.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Resserved.
Enhancing
Success Rate among
Start-up Enterprises
-- C
Venkata Ramana,
A Ramachandra Aryasri and D Nagayya
This
article presents the pre-requisites for start-up enterprises,
and looks at the various aspects on which entrepreneurs have
to take decisions while promoting their start-up enterprises.
Four major deterrents for starting a new business are opportunity
cost, ambiguity aversion, lack of capital, and cultural inhibitions.
Testing the entrepreneurial potential in a promoter helps
in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the person.
The stages of business development, causes of business failures,
and the pros and cons of a few aspects on which the entrepreneurs
have to take key decisions are highlighted in the article.
These are:
(a) doing business in teams vs. solo;
(b) taking
loan vs. venture capital;
(c) business school education vs.
gaining work experience; and
(d) innovation vs. imitation.
The article suggests strategies for overcoming seven typical
business crises, starting crisis, cash crisis, delegation
crisis, leadership crisis, financial crisis, prosperity crisis,
and management succession crisis. While suggesting that the
severity of the crises needs to be minimized or preferably,
the authors also emphasize that care should be taken to ensure
that the crises do not occur, by effective planning. Along
with planning, thoughtful execution and monitoring of key
parameters form the main elements of the success of start-up
enterprises.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Information
Content of Bonus Issues of Selected Companies from the Indian
Industrial Sector during 2000-04: An Empirical Analysis
--
Munmun
Mohanty
The
issue of bonus shares is considered important from an investor's
perspective. It is believed to induce an upward revision in
expectations regarding future earnings and dividends. To accountants,
however, it has no real economic significance. The aim of
this article is to find out whether investors actually attach
some kind of importance to the announcement of bonus issues
or not. This has been studied by tracing the behavior or share
returns around the announcement period. The usual event study
methodology has been used for this purpose. The results show
that investors give less importance to the announcement of
bonus issues.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Structural
Components of Production Organizations
--
Purnima
Agarwal and Jaya Chitranshi
There
is a perennial need for structural changes in organizations
to keep pace with technological advancements and improvement
in the competency levels of employees. The basic purpose of
this study is to pinpoint the type of changes which have occurred
in the structural components of production organizations.
A questionnaire on the perceived institutionalized structures
is given to 262 managers working in five well-established,
ISO-certified, production organizations of Lucknow. On the
basis of the Principal Component Analysis, five components
of perceived institutionalized structures have emerged, namely,
systems, role of top management, rule-bound approach, role
of first-line supervisor, and environmental uncertainty and
need for social approval. Systems was found to be the most
prevalent structural component followed by the rule-bound
approach and environmental uncertainty and need for social
approval. First-line supervisors were found to have limited
discretion and top management was found to have little control
in production organizations.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Research
Summary
The
Venture Development Processes of "Sustainable" Entrepreneurs
The
research paper educates the aspiring and budding entrepreneurs
about how new ventures can meet economic, social and environmental
objectives. It dicusses the "venture development process",
with the help of which entrepreneurs can recognize the opportunity
and launch their ventures by assembling the available resources.
©
1995-2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. IUP holds the copyright for the summary. |
