The relationship between shareholders and managers in a company

Managers are appointed by the owners of the firm –the shareholders. Managers may have the personal goals that compete with shareholders wealth maximization.It creates the potential conflict of interest often known as agency theory.A company has stakeholders such as employees, debt holders,consumers, suppliers, government and society. Managers may perceive their role as reconciling conflicting objectives of stakeholders. Managers may pursue their own personal goals at the cost of shareholders, or may play safe and create satisfactory wealth for shareholders than the maximum. Managers may avoid taking high investment and financing risks that may otherwise be needed to maximize shareholders’wealth.

Mechanisms used to motivate the managers to act in shareholders’interests:
Managerial compensation
Direct intervention by shareholders
The threat of firing
The threat of takeover

Society

Society is the environment we live in or rather the people with whom we live with. An individual after being born has to live in a society, the primary society being the family. But is this society ( Hindu society) good?? Well, I think it's bizarre.

First of all there are unlimited limitations in a society. Society tells us what we should do and what we shouldn't. It differentiates the right from the wrong and tames individuals as it wants to. It is through society that we do certain things that we don't want to, and the worst part is that when someone says something about society the others oppose him or at least don't  support him; but they also know the bad impact of societial values for individuals. Why are we not allowed to do what we want to?? live how we want to?? The answer is society. Why is there a differentiation between men and women? Why is there class and caste divisions? Why is there the false belief of god and heaven and hell? The answer is society. The society instead of guiding people to the right direction uses them for it's benefit implying the politicians the bureaucrats. Thus, society is nothing more than a means of controlling the masses and conditioning them in a specific way.

System Vulnerability and Abuse

Information systems use data in the form of computer files that are accessed by large number of people and by groups outside the organization. Consequently, computerized data are more susceptible to destruction, fraud, error, and misuse.When computer systems fail to run or work as required, firms that depend heavily on computers face a serious loss of business function. For example, firms which need Web sites continuously available online for electronic commerce stand to lose millions of dollars for every business day that the sites are not working and firms relaying on computers to process their critical business transactions might face a total loss of business function if they lose computer capability for more than a few days.

Why Systems are Vulnerable??

When large amounts of data are stored in electronic form they are vulnerable to many threats like hardware failure, software failure, personnel activities, terminal access penetration, theft of data, services, and equipment, fire, electrical problems, user errors, program changes, and telecommunication problems.
Advances in telecommunications networks and computer software have magnified the vulnerability. Through telecommunications networks, information systems in different locations can be interconnected and the possibility for unauthorized access, abuse, or fraud is not limited to a single location but can occur at any access point in the network.

Additionally, more complex and diverse hardware, software, organizational, and personnel arrangements are required for telecommunication networks, creating new areas and opportunities for penetration and manipulation. Wireless networks using radio-based technology are even more vulnerable to penetration because radio frequency bands are easy to scan. LANs that use Wi-Fi standard can be easily penetrated by hackers armed with laptops, wireless cards, external antennae, and freeware hacking software.

Hackers and Computer Viruses: A hacker (or intruder) is a person who uses the latest technology and their skills to gain unauthorized access to a computer network for profit, criminal mischief, or personnel pleasure. There are many ways that hacker break-ins can harm businesses. For example, in denial of service attack, hackers flood a network server or Web server with many thousands of false communications or requests for services in order to crash the network.

Hackers propagating computer viruses have caused serious disruptions too. Computer viruses are rogue software programs that are difficult to detect, which spread rapidly through computer systems, destroying data or disrupting processing and memory systems. Many viruses today are spread through the Internet and diskettes from outside source or infected machines.

Organizations can use antivirus software and screening procedures to reduce the chances of infection. Antivirus software is software designed to detect and often eliminate, computer viruses from infected area.

E - commerce

Electronic commerce (EC) describes the buying, selling, transferring or exchanging of products, services or information via computer networks, including the Internet. E-business is a broader definition of EC, including buying and selling of goods and services, and also servicing customers, collaborating with partners, conducting e-learning and conducting electronic transactions within an organization.

The types of e - commerce are:

Business-to-consumers (B2C) - In this case, the sellers are organizations and the buyers are individuals.eg. Amazon.com etc

Business-to-business (B2B) - Involves sales of goods and services among business organization. ChemConnect’s Website for buying and selling natural gas, refined and intermediate fuels, chemicals, plastic etc

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) - In this case an individual sells and products or services to other individuals.eg. eBay, the giant web auction site

Consumer-to-business(C2B) - In this case consumers make a particular need for a product or services, and organizations compete to provide the product or services to consumers.eg. Priceline.com where the customer names the price and suppliers try to fulfill it.

Business-to-employee (B2E) - In this case organizations provide different services to the employee through web

E-government - In this case the government provides services to its citizens via EC technologies.

Computer Hardware

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Hardware refers to the physical equipment used for the input, processing, output, and storage activities of a computer system. It consists of the following:

Central processing unit (CPU)

Primary storage

Secondary storage

Input technologies

Output technologies

Communication technologies

The central processing unit (CPU): performs the actual computation inside any computer. The CPU is a microprocessor  made up of millions of microscopic transistors embedded in a circuit on a silicon chip.

Primary memory: Is the working space of the computer. It holds the program that is currently being executed. It is fast and expensive memory that allows the computer to access data quickly. E.g. RAM, ROM

Secondary memory: The memory device that works as supplement to main memory is the secondary memory.

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Role of leadership in group behavoir

Leadership is a central part of understanding group behavior as it's the leader who directs others towards the desired goals. The recent efforts using the big 5 personality framework( extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, experience) has implied better results. Leadership is defined as the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or a set of goals. Leaders may be managers but not all leaders are managers, nor are all managers leaders. The non sanctioned leadership(the ability to influence others that exists outside the formal structure of the organization) is as important as the formal leadership. Thus, leaders can be both made or may be born in that way; leaders may emerge through the formal organizational structure or even without it.

Some of the leadership theories are:
1. Trait theories - That consider personal qualities and characteristics that differentiate leaders from non leaders.
2. Behavioral theories - Indicate certain behaviors differentiate leaders from non leaders
3. Contingency theories - like Fielder model, Situational leadership theory, Path goal theory etc.

Roles of managers

A manager is a person who achieves goals through other people. Basically a manager has three roles: Interpersonal roles, Informational roles and Decisional roles. Interpersonal roles are such roles that require a person's skill to interact with others( like figurehead, leader, liaison). Informational roles are roles requiring a manger to collect information both from inside and outside the organization and take action( like monitor, disseminator, spokesperson). Decisional roles are such roles that require a manager to be a good leader and make decisions under certain circumstances( like entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator).

A manager must perform 4 important steps:
1. Planning - Process through which goals are defined, strategies established and plans developed.
2. Organizing - Determining what tasks are to be done ad who is to do them
3. Leading - Includes motivating employees, directing  others and selecting best communication channels
4. Controlling - Seeing weather plans made are being accomplished or not and taking corrective action.

Sex - dirty or enlightening?

If we deny sex, if we fight against our sexual bodily needs it becomes the center, the more you fight aagainst it the more you want to have it; the more you yearn for it. So is it a dirty bodily need of humans or is it making love, making joy, meditating??

It is often believed and seen in today's 21st century that sex has become very impure, very dirty. It is misunderstood by people as more of a bodily need but in reality sex energy is also related to the love and bliss energy inside us. Love is seen as the creative refinement of sex. Only when the love reaches it's perfection, when two people two souls merge into one and understand each other fully only then the absence of sex follows and there is Brahmacharya.

It is said that the first glimpse of meditation for humans came from sex. At the time of the orgasm, the mind becomes blank, you don't think about anything; that is the enlightened mind the free mind. But this state is achieved only for a fraction of a second and it's taken away. The only way to achieve that pleasure continuously is by meditating.

Knowledge

There  is a difference between knowledge and knowing... but what is it?? Knowledge is somewhat a therapy whereas to know means to experience. Knowledge is possible for everyone even for those who are not capable of knowing as knowledge is innate; it is inside everyone; it's not a matter of learning but rather just a mere realization of what we already know.

Knowledge creates distance, the more a person knows the more the distance; to live in mystery is a bliss. Knowledge creates a distance, a divide which we must avoid. A person who is logical is absolutely sane, he understands and perceives things from the mind whereas a person who is illogical is insane, or so it is considered in our society. But in reality sanity needs to be balanced by insanity, a person must be sometimes illogical sometimes too. Logic is the base of knowing; we learn it; we create a logic but intuition is knowledge. To know means to understand the world but to understand the world we must first understand ourselves, and to understand ourselves we must have knowledge, we must follow our instinct our intuition.

Knowledge has to be negated, but we generally replace it. We replace what we believe in with something else but it is only though insight that we can burn away the knowledge and not replace it with other knowledge, only then there is emptiness.

Organizational behavior

Organizational behavior is the study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Through organizational behavior the individuals of any organization are studied and their effectiveness is improved.

There are various objectives of the systematic study of the organizational behavior. The objectives are:
    1. Complementing intuition with systematic study
    2. Evidence based management( this implies basing management decision on the best available scientific evidence)

There are various disciplines/ social sciences that contribute to the OB field. They are:
    1. Psychology - It studies the individual behavior in OB
    2. Sociology - It studies the group behavior in OB
    3. Social Psychology
    4. Anthropology

The social psychology and anthropology studies relationships between these individuals and groups.

Economics

Economics is the study of consumer behavior and producer behavior. It studies the actions of certain consumers and producers with respect to the market conditions that may vary. The basic study of economics depends on the demand and supply models that studies consumers and producers. Through the demand and supply models the consumers and producers have certain assumptions through which their study can be completed.

Economics studies either the behavior of the individuals or the society at large. The study of individual units is the study of microeconomics whereas the study of group behavior is the study of macroeconomics. The major difference between micro and macro economics is that microeconomics studies demand and supply curves, consumer and producer behavior whereas macroeconomics studies about national income, GDP of the nation etc.

The importance of the study of economics is that through economics we can study the individual preferences of people and conclude the conduct of market equilibrium through demand and supply models.