Squeezing Blood from an Onion

There is a new to the business paradigm that can be easily noticed if you pay attention to trends in the business climate that we see in the business news sections of our local newspapers. It's odd when we notice that even in good economic times, there will often be sudden waves of lay offs in businesses that we know are doing well.

Anybody who has been the victim of a lay off can empathize with the disruption and emotional trauma such a change can cause. Studies in business trends have documented that the phenomena of large scale business lay offs has been much more prevalent in the last ten years than in previous eras of the history of our business communities. So one has to ask, what has caused this shift in behavior by employers?

While economic conditions and sudden shifts in the marketplace can have a lot to do with how employers manage their staffing, that is not sufficient to explain this dramatic change of behavior in the business relationship between employer and employee. The real base cause of this change comes from a change in philosophy of employers.

The historic business model between employer and employee is one of a mutually supportive contract. Whether the contract is agreed to or just understood, the agreement is the employer will pay the employee and provide him or her with the basic needs they have to work on site for them. The employee will, in return perform his or her duties on time and well, come to work reliably and to be a loyal employee. This model is mutually supportive, creative and based on trust.

The business paradigm that has resulted in a lay off based model with a basic change to how employees are viewed such that…

§ Employees are viewed as a nuisance and a cost that many times the employer resents. This resentment is especially acute in regards to employee benefits such as insurance and vacations which the employer sees as not his responsibility.

§ Employees are expected to fulfill their role in the previous business model but to do so strictly from gratitude for the paycheck and no more. As such, the employer expects the same return from the previous model but they want to change the model in terms of employer expectations with no change from the employee side.

§ Long term benefits can be suppressed via a frequent turn over in the employee base. By replacing experienced staff, the need to see salaries rise and to provide vacations and eventually retirement benefits is reduced because the employer keeps the work force at the entry level status indefinitely.

§ The base assumption of this new model is that there is an inexhaustible supply of skilled labor "out there" in the unemployed labor pool. Therefore, current employees can be easily replaced with eager unemployed people so the human resource equation becomes exploitive.

While this business model does make some economic sense, like any equation, the base assumption has to remain perpetually true for the model to work long term. But this equation only works in a depressed economy where there are a large amount of skilled people on the labor market. This approach to human resource management can backfire badly if there is a shift in the labor markets that eliminate that abundant supply of replacement workers.

This exploitive approach to management of employees changes the assumption of trust between employee and employer to an assumption of distrust. It can have a devastating affect on employee morale so that even employees still being employed will deliver poor performance because they no longer are in a supportive relationship with management. The answer of "Well, then we will just fire those dead beats and get new ones" is not a working solution because once the employee morale is low, productivity across the work force goes down and stays down.

This affects the ability of the businesses to support current projects and deliver quality good and services to the marketplace. And as an exploitive attitude toward workers results in poor products and services for clients, the business will begin to lose market share which is the early signals that the business is destined for extinction. This is reason enough to reexamine the business model of employment and reconsider returning to a trust relationship with the employee base in our companies, for their good as well as for our own.

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Will DRM Save the Record Industry?

Without a doubt the single most influential agent of change in business trends in the last ten to twenty years has been the internet. There is virtually no business segment or market that has gone unchanged by this powerful force. But of all of the various businesses impacted by cyberspace, the music industry has to the one that has seen the most dramatic change and the greatest challenge to keep up, adapt and survive an onslaught of change unprecedented in its history.

The first major challenge that cyberspace brought to the music business was a complete shift to how music would be sold to music fans worldwide. In what can only be described as an avalanche, the music buying public virtually abandoned conventional record stores and retail outlets and took the majority of their music purchasing business online. But this mass influx of business could not be tracked to any one web site that was executing the revolution. Because of a revolution in how bands and Indie record labels do business online, the music audience followed and began buying their CDs and even concert tickets directly from artists or record labels online and getting those products instantly via downloads.

But as drastic as the market changes this paradigm shift in consumer behavior represented, it was nothing compared to what the internet had in store for the music world. The next wave of change represented a threat to the music business so serious that it had the potential of putting the music industry out of business forever. When music consumers began to share digital music electronically over the internet using file sharing software such as Kazaa, Limeware and BitTorrent, suddenly it was possible for a music customer to access all the music they wanted for free by simply downloading this music from another internet user's computer.

The plummet in music sales as result of these two forces was drastic and traumatic to the music world in general. At first, the music business executives were at a loss of exactly how to go about stopping the widespread file-sharing phenomenon. They tried to shut down the software services that provided the networks to users with lawsuits and other punitive actions. These litigations took a long time and cost a huge amount of money and all the while the flood of free music going out over the internet continued to increase. Worse of all, when they did slow down one file sharing network, it seemed many more cropped up to replace it which began to look like a nightmare scenario of constant lawsuits against a never-ending and constantly growing enemy.

Public pleas to the music loving public were another attempt to appeal to the conscience of the music world that if artists could not get paid, there would be no more new music. But the opposite seemed to be the case. As more and more Indie musicians began to capitalize on file sharing and using it as a method of marketing, the quantity and quality of good music only seemed to increase in this new music marketplace.

The final attempt seemed to be this technology called DRM. DRM is a digital "lock" that would be required to go on every piece of music released on the internet. Music with DRM would not be playable except to customers who had a legal right to use it. At first, this seemed like a viable solution. But even DRM didn't stop the flood of lost revenue through file sharing. And hackers seemed more than happy to learn to undo any technical locks the music industry could come up with.

So as we move into the last half of the first decade of this century, the music industry is learning to work with this new music marketplace rather than fight it. And by learning lessons from the Indie labels and how to serve customers in a digital world, there seems to be a new solution on the way but one that is dictated on the customer's terms rather on the terms of the big music labels. Somehow, that seems like it is the way it should have been all along.

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Ten easy steps for development! So why is it so hard to do it?

1. Adopt an effective policy in which array of priorities for the allocation of limited resources. These priorities is better guided through a broad participatory process selection and program, a full appreciation of the allocation of resources within which priority choices must be made and effective monitoring of the indicators measurable result. For most countries the focus is on economic growth and poverty reduction that incorporate strategies for meeting the Millennium development goals agreed by the United Nations General Assembly. This approach can be widely adopted largely reflective of the requirements for the participation of the IMF poverty reduction and Growth Facility program (PRGF). However, as countries have progressed there was a corresponding evolution of national strategies to reflect more than promotion of the private sector, infrastructure development and economic growth. However, in some countries there are only limited observations on realistic sector resources constraints to facilitate significant budgetary processes regarding public investment. Some argue that without a significant tax, it is near impossible to establish a significant policy matrix. Often, when developing the monitoring of results and expenditures of the budget is weak or non-existent. Taking account of these observations, it shouldn't be surprising that there is little coordination between the sector's plan, and that investment programmes serves as a list as it makes a rational for theme development objectives within a clear framework consistent national development. 2. Implement an effective planning and preparing budget process that has a strong bottom-up size, participation of a wide range of stakeholders and is fully aware of the relationship between the budgetary resource allocations and results. A budget process fully reflects on recurring charges linked to investment and diligent to ensure debt sustainability. This in turn implies the adoption of a functional based on multi-annual fiscal framework incorporating properly national development goals. Additionally requires the corresponding coordination of ministries, departments and agencies and their effective participation in the process of preparation of the budget. The implementation of the budget requires the approval of the legislature. Such recognition would come only after a vigorous debate to ensure that fiscal policy is sound and that the budget is consistent with the objectives of the policy. 3. Develop effective and fully functioning of institutions that are well able to cope with the policy, the rules of procedure, as well as performing in all areas reflected in the financial statements and key to meet service delivery and in all districts of the country. The absence of effective or appropriate institutions can lead to informal institutional arrangements to fill the gaps. These informal institutional arrangements can lead to abuse through patronage and corruption. 4. effect a public finance effective and comprehensive legal and regulatory framework management holding public officials accountable; one that has the clarity to guide the practice of public finance management unequivocally; promotes transparency; and the basis of auditable standards against which good practice can be easily defined and punished offences. The legal and regulatory framework must meet these objectives as well as being flexible to accommodate adequately reform efforts. This is achieved through a correct hierarchy of the Constitution, laws and decrees, regulations, manuals and circulars with a well-defined chain of match officials the power to issue such instruments. 5. Introduce separate management structures clear policy assignments of roles and responsibilities between national and local institutions for the development of infrastructure and service delivery. This must be supported by clear and transparent agreements for the collection of revenues from local communities, a horizontal and vertical transparent allocation of funds and transfers from Central Government to local communities and the accurate and timely monitoring of such flows.

Get the Best Company Formation Services

One of the best ways through which to get a reputable company that will offer you great returns is through forming a company in the UK. This is largely because you do not have to be a citizen or there in person to see through the process. This is thanks to the UK company formation services, which are easily availed to anyone who takes an interest in the industry. While there are several of these services, once you have decided this is the best alternative for you, you should weigh your options before signing up with any of these service providers. For starters, you must ensure that they form legit and clean organizations. This means that they should have the capability of signing you up as the director and shareholders from the beginning instead of using agents. This is because it can prove to be a major setback when you need to open bank accounts or carry out anything that involves credit transactions such as opening a merchant account. Note that this is because anyone who does a search online will first find the first shareholders names and as such, will require that you deliver proof to show that you own the organization. In essence, this means that no directors or shareholders will appear in the registry apart from those selected by you. Another factor that you need to consider when getting these services is their ability to offer trademark registration protection. Your trademark is an important aspect that should not be tampered with '' with. For this reason, they should be able to notify you whenever somebody is registering a trademark that could affect you in any way. This is because if this happens, you might not be allowed to use the name you have selected for your organization. The repercussions for this can be mean when you consider you have already invested money and time into the project. There are instances when someone might register an organization that has a name that is similar to yours and this could be a major cause of worry. It is therefore important to select a service that is able to guard you against such incidences. They should be able to spot this before it occurs and have the right measures into place to ensure that complete formation of will not be possible. Notes that this is important since if it is formed by people who are malicious, they might taint your good name and credibility by using the same name as yours. To cap it all, they should be prepared to go to great lengths to ensure that you are always protected on all business fronts. Companies of the United Kingdom are easy to form and run efficiently, and for this reason, should not shy away from considering this possibility. Also, be sure to select a training company that can offer professional services that are governed by a high level of respect. It should also have experienced staff to deliver services that are close to perfection.

It is important to compare Cash for gold websites?

When you realize that it's so easy to get money quickly by crate for Golden Web sites, it is just as easy to pack and send all the gold you can find in your House for the first company you see offering this service. While generally you will be able to get a good price for gold (thanks to today's economic conditions and the strong demand for gold)-you can still get a better deal if you look elsewhere. You should be aware that due to the current high value of gold, there are hundreds of cash for companies opening gold in the United Kingdom. Looking around and checking out the different rates offered by cash for gold service, suddenly to sell your gold becomes a little more complicated. But certainly won't be hard! To compare different cash for gold websites became ten times easier, thanks to the comparison sites as those that compare insurance quotes. A site rich in comparison to compare rates and offers from most major cash for gold service in United Kingdom. So why the prices vary so much? You need to remember that every company out there will be different as they refine the gold. Some companies will refine the gold themselves by their own refineries-while other companies will outsource the services means that they cost more. When an enterprise has more outgoing costs, they need to do for that, passing on the cost to you. Comparing cash for gold websites that you can filter out companies that offer less money for your gold, which lets you choose only from companies that provide you with the best deal. That's about it, would you really want to sell gold to a company that is going to give less, at a time when gold is at its most valuable? For making it use the current value of gold, you need to ensure you're getting the right deal. After all, it's incredibly unlikely that you will be able to sell for a high price at any time in the near future. Avoid time-consuming internet searches and phone calls and simply use a comparison service to help you clarify who's going to give more. Is really easy, really easy and really fast.