Subject : Principles and Practices of Management

1. What are the fundamentals of staffing and manpower? Explain the different methods of selection recruitment, training and development.
2. Explain the nature and functions of Directing.
3. Discuss the importance of Coordination in managerial functions.
4. What is the importance of planning in an organization? Describe the different plans with their objectives.
5. Explain the methods of Departmentation.
6. Explain the different approaches to leadership and its role in management.

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1. a) Shares and its classification

Section 2 (46) defines a share “as a share in the share capital of a company and includes stock except where a distinction between stock and share is expressed or implied”. This definition does not encompass the meaning of a share.

Classes of shares

The most common classes of shares are:

• Preference
• Equity or Ordinary
• Deferred or Founders’

A public company and a private company that is a subsidiary of a public company may not issue shares other than equity, preference and Cumulative Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS).

Preference shares

A preference share is one that carries the following two rights over holders of equity shares:

• A preferential right in respect of dividends at a fixed amount or at a fixed rate, and
• A preferential right in regard to repayment of capital on winding up.

Equity shares

‘Equity share’ means a share that is not preference share (Section 85). The rate of dividend is not fixed. The Board of Directors recommends the rate of dividend that is then declared by the members at the Annual General Meeting. Before recommending dividend on equity shares, the Board of Directors have to comply with the provisions of law as regards depreciation, transfer of a minimum amount to reserves, etc. The holders of equity shares have voting rights in proportion to the paid-up equity capital of the company (Section 87 (1)).

Cumulative Convertible Preference Shares (CCPs)

The Government of India vide its guidelines dated 19 August 1985 permitted issue of another class of shares by public limited companies, called cumulative convertible preference shares.

Deferred or founder’s shares

A private company can issue shares of a type other than those discussed above (Section 90). Thus, it may issue what are known as deferred shares. As deferred shares are normally held by promoters and directors of the company, they are usually called founder’s shares.

Non-voting shares

‘Non-voting shares’ as the term suggests are shares that carry no voting rights. These are contemplated as altogether a different class of shares which may carry additional dividends in lieu of the voting rights. The Companies (Amendment) Act, 2000, provided for issue of such type of equity shares under Section 86.

  Sweat equity shares

The Companies (Amendment) Act, 1999, allowed issue of sweat equity shares subject to fulfillment of certain conditions. The new Section 79A was inserted for this purpose

1. b) Meetings and its classification

Section 291 empowers the Board of Directors to manage the affairs of the company. In this context, meetings of shareholders and directors become necessary. The Act has made provisions for following different types of meetings of shareholders: (i) Statutory Meeting; (ii) Annual General Meeting; (iii) Extraordinary General Meeting; and (iv) Class Meetings.

  Statutory meetings (Section 165)

The most important legal provisions regarding statutory meetings are:

It is required to be held only by a public company having share capital. A private company or a public company registered without share capital is under no obligation to hold such a meeting.

It must be held within a period of not less than one month and not more than six months from the date on which the company is entitled to commence business.

At least 21 days before the day of meeting, a notice of the meeting is to be sent to every member stating it to be a Statutory Meeting.

  Annual general meeting (AGM) (Sections 166-168)

As the name signifies, this is an annual meeting of a company. The provisions relating to this meeting are:

Every company, whether public or private, having a share capital or not, limited or unlimited must hold this meeting.

The meeting must be held in each calendar year and not more than 15 months shall elapse between two meetings. However, the first AGM may be held within 18 months from the date of its incorporation and if such general meeting is held within that period, it need not hold any such meeting in the year of its incorporation or in the following year. The maximum gap between two such meetings may be extended by three months by taking permission of the Registrar, who may so allow for any special reason.

 The meeting must be held

• On a day that is not a public holiday
• During business hours
• At the registered office of the company or at some other place within the city, town or village in which the registered office is situated. (Section 166 (2)).

  Extraordinary Meeting (EGM) Section 169

Clause 47 of Table A (Schedule – I) provides that all general meetings other than AGMs shall be called the EGMs. The legal provisions as regards such meetings are:

EGM is convened for transacting some special or urgent business that may arise in between two AGMs, for instance, change in the objects or shift of registered office or alteration of capital. All business transacted at such meetings is called special business. Therefore, every item on the agenda must be accompanied by an ‘Explanatory Statement’.

 An EGM may be called by:

• Directors of their own accord
• Directors on requisition
• Requisitionists themselves
• The Tribunal.

The Board of Directors may call a general meeting of the members at any time by giving not less than 21 days notice. A shorter notice may, however, be held valid if consent is accorded thereto by members of the company holding 95 percent or more of the voting rights (Section 171).

  Class Meetings

A company has two classes of shares – equity shares and preference shares. The class meetings are held for these different classes of shareholders, as and when their rights are affected.

Answer:- The procedure for filing a complaint and admission of complaint in consumer protection act

Procedure for filing a complaint

There is no fee for filing a complaint before any of the aforesaid bodies. The complainants or their authorised agent can present the complaint in person. The complaint can also be sent by post to the appropriate Forum/ Commission. The complaint should be addressed to the President of the Forum/Commission. A complaint should contain the following information:

• Name, description and address of the complainant

Answer:- The circumstances under which breach of condition is treated as breach of warranty

Breach of condition to be treated as breach of warranty – According to Section 13, under certain circumstances, a breach of condition is to be treated as a breach of warranty, i.e., the right to repudiate the contract is deemed to have been lost. These circumstances are:

Where a contract of sale is subject to any condition to be fulfilled by the seller, the buyer may either:

• Waive the condition
• Elect to treat the breach of the condition as a breach of warranty.

Answer:- The procedure of registration of partnership firms

 1 Application for registration

Section 58 lays down the procedure for registration of partnership firms. A partnership firm may be registered at any time by post, or delivering to the Registrar of Firms of the area in which the business of the firm is situated or proposed to be situated, a statement in the prescribed form and accompanied by the prescribed fee, stating:

Answer:- Structure of the Research Report

The reporting requires a structured format and by and large, the process is standardized. As stated above, the major difference amongst the types of reports is that all the elements that make a research report would be present only in a detailed technical report. Usage of theoretical and technical jargon would be higher in the technical report and visual presentation of data would be higher in the management report. (more…)

5  a.   What is the analysis of variance? What are the assumptions of the technique? Give a few examples where the techniques could be used.

1. The following data represents the number of units produced by four operators during three different shifts:

Perform a two-way analysis of variance and interpret the result.

(a.   Meaning, Assumptions and examples , b.   Formulas, Calculation, Solution and Interpretation to the problem)

Answer:-

1. i. Schedules and Questionnaires: The questionnaires always, even the schedules, begin with standardized instructions. These begin by greeting the respondent and then introducing the researcher and then the purpose of questionnaire administration. For example, in the study on organic food products, the following instructions were given at the beginning of the questionnaire: ‘

Answer:- Meaning of hypothesis

A hypothesis is a tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables. A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study. For example, a study designed to look at the relationship between sleep deprivation and test performance might have a hypothesis that states, “This study is designed to assess the hypothesis that sleep deprived people will perform worse on a test than individuals who are not sleep deprived.”

Answer:- Meaning of Descriptive Research designs

As the name implies, the objective of descriptive research studies is to provide a comprehensive and detailed explanation of the phenomena under study. The intended objective might be to give a detailed sketch or profile of the respondent population being studied. For example, to design an advertising and sales promotion campaign for high-end watches, a marketer would require a holistic profile of the population that buys such luxury products. Thus a descriptive study, (which generates data on who, what, when, where, why and how of luxury accessory brand purchase) would be the design necessary to fulfill the research objectives.

Answer:- Meaning of Research

The dictionary defines the former as a prefix meaning ‘again’, ‘anew’ or ‘over again’. Search is defined as a verb meaning ‘to examine closely and carefully’, ‘to test and try’, or ‘to probe’. Together, they form a noun describing a careful, systematic, patient study and investigation in some field of knowledge, undertaken to establish facts or principles.’

1. Dominance principle in game theory,

At times, a convex combination of two or more courses of action may dominate  another  course  of  action.  Whenever  a  course  of  action  (say A s or B q ) is dominated by others, then that course of action ( A s or B q ) can be deleted from the pay-off matrix. Such a deletion will not affect the choice of the solution, but it reduces the order of the pay-off matrix. Successive reduction of the order using dominance property helps in solving games

In a game, sometimes a strategy available to a player might be found to be preferable to some other strategy / strategies. Such a strategy is said to dominate the  other one(s). The rules of dominance are used to reduce the size of the payoff matrix. These rules help in deleting certain rows and/or columns of the payoff  matrix, which are of lower priority to at least one of the remaining rows, and/or  columns in terms of payoffs to both the players. Rows / columns once deleted will  never be used for determining the optimal strategy for both the players.

This concept of domination is very usefully employed in simplifying the two – person zero sum games without saddle point. In general the following rules are used  to reduce the size of payoff matrix.

PRINCIPLES OF DOMINANCE

Rule 1: If all the elements in a row ( say ith row ) of a payoff matrix are less than or equal to the corresponding elements of the other row ( say jth row ) then the player A will never choose the ith strategy then we say ith strategy is dominated by jth strategy  and will delete the ith row.

Rule 2: If all the elements in a column ( say rth column ) of a payoff matrix are greater than or equal to the corresponding elements of the other column ( say sth column ) then the player B will never choose the rth strategy or in the other words  the rth strategy is dominated by the sth strategy and we delete rth column .

Rule 3: A pure strategy may be dominated if it is inferior to average of two or more other pure strategies.

1. Constituents of a Queuing System,

The constituents of a queuing system include arrival pattern, service facility and queue discipline.

1. Arrival pattern: It is the average rate at which the customers arrive.
2. Service facility: Examining the number of customers served at a timeand the statistical pattern of time taken for service at the service facility.
3. Queue discipline: The common method of choosing a customer for service amongst those waiting for service is ‘First Come First Serve’.

1. Differences between PERT and CPM

There are no essential differences between PERT and CPM as both of them share in common the determination of a critical path. Both are based on the network representation of activities and their scheduling, which determines the most critical activities to be controlled in order to meet the completion date of the project.

  PERT

Some key points of PERT are as follows:

PERT was developed in connection with an Research and Development (R&D) work. Therefore, it had to cope with the uncertainties that are associated with R&D activities. In PERT, the total project duration is regarded as a random variable. Therefore, associated probabilities are calculated in order to characterise it.

It is an event-oriented network as in the analysis of a network, emphasis is given on the important stages of completion of a task rather than the activities required to be performed to reach a particular event or task.

PERT is normally used for projects involving activities of non-repetitive nature in which time estimates are uncertain.

It  helps  in  pinpointing  critical  areas  in  a  project,  so  that  necessary adjustment can be made to meet the scheduled completion date of the project.

  CPM

• CPM was developed in connection with a construction project, which consisted of routine tasks whose resource requirements and duration were known with certainty. Therefore, it is basically deterministic.
• CPM  is  suitable  for  establishing  a  trade-off  for  optimum  balancing between schedule time and cost of the project.
• CPM is used for projects involving activities of repetitive nature.

Answer:- A. Explanation of Monte Carlo Simulation

The Monte-Carlo method is a simulation technique in which statistical distribution functions are created by using a series of random numbers. This approach has the ability to develop many months or years of data in a matter of few minutes on a digital computer.

Answer:- a. Steps in Hungarian method

Hungarian method algorithm is based on the concept of opportunity cost and is more efficient in solving assignment problems. The following steps are adopted to solve an AP using the Hungarian method algorithm.

Step 1: Prepare row ruled matrix by selecting the minimum values for each row and subtract it from the other elements of the row.

Answer:- a.   Degeneracy in transportation problem

A basic solution to an m-origin, n destination transportation problem can have at the most m+n-1 positive basic variables (non-zero), otherwise the basic solution degenerates. It follows that whenever the number of basic cells is less than m + n – 1, the transportation problem is a degenerate one. The degeneracy can develop in two ways:

Case 1 – The degeneracy develops while determining an initial assignment via any one of the initial assignment methods discussed earlier. (more…)

Answer:- Meaning of Linear programming problem

Linear Programming (LP) is a mathematical technique designed to help managers in their planning and decision-making. It is usually used in an organisation that is trying to make the most effective use of its resources. Resources typically include machinery, manpower, money, time, warehouse space, and raw materials. (more…)

Churchman, Aackoff, and Aruoff defined operations research as “the application of scientific methods, techniques and tools to the operation of a system with optimum solutions to the problems” where ‘optimum’ refers to the best possible alternative.

Types of Operations Research Models

Physical models

These models include all forms of diagrams, graphs, and charts. They are designed to tackle specific problems. They bring out significant factors and interrelationships in pictorial form to facilitate analysis. There are two types of physical models. They are:

1. Iconic models
2. Analogue models

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Answer:-

Description of the 4 types of project performance evaluation techniques

(1) Project goals. Project goals are the baseline of determining the success of the project. Therefore, the formulation of the project goals is a direct factor of the success of the project constraints. Project goals include the achievement of targets, the binding targets, and other conditions to be met. Binding targets include the project scope, quality, profit or cost targets, time targets and the need to meet regulatory requirements; the achievement goals include the outcome and the impact of the planned social and economic, improving the institutional system and the macro planning, policy objectives of the project’s requirements.

(2) Profitability. Mainly refers to the income of the project implementation and the prediction of project income which is based on the situation actual construction of the project, that is, the economic benefits, the social and environmental benefits and the sustainability of project benefits.

(3) The implementation process. It includes progress, schedule, quality, performance contracts, project risk, communication management, third-party behavior and so on.

(4) The value of the project. Technical progress of the project includes studying the application of the new technologies and effects (project development and application of scientific and technological achievements and effects, and effects of the introduction of technical innovations, promote the use of new technologies and effects), the main effect of the implementation of the basic work management (technology intelligence and information effect, the implementation of standardized effect, the commencement of the effect of measurement), technical depth, and other effects (effects of rationalization proposals and technical improvements

Listing of any 4 benefits performance measurement and evaluation

Performance measurement and evaluation are powerful tools to improve management and decision making at all levels. Participatory approaches, in particular, can help to build capacity for ongoing improvement at local levels. The following chart maps some of the key benefits and how they can be used

Benefits of Performance Measurement and Evaluation

√ Policy and Program Planning and Development – Results may confirm policy and program direction, or identify gaps that need to be addressed.

√ Decision Making about Funding – Finding out what works well/not so well can be used to guide  future funding decisions/priorities.

√ Clarifying Goals – At the outset, developing a “road map” clarifies goals, explains  the “big picture” and ensures everyone shares a common focus.

√ Tracking Progress – Enables monitoring and, if required, permits adjustments to be  made along the way.

√ Reporting Results – Promotes accountability and communicates what works well to  facilitate improvement and ongoing development.

Answer:-

Definition of quality planning

A quality plan is a document, or several documents, that together specify quality standards, practices, resources, specifications, and the sequence of activities relevant to a particular product, service, project, or contract. Quality plans should define:

Answer:-

1. Parametric estimating tool of cost estimating

An estimate is the most knowledgeable statement one can make at a particular point in time. A complete estimate includes:

• Effort/Cost
• Schedule
• Risk
• Reliability