Business Management
Business management is gathering people together in order to complete a similar goal. It deals with planning, organizing, staffing, and leading. For many, including myself, business management is the right career choice. However, there are many different aspects of business management. I will be discussing three articles which are about the aspects of business management.
The first article is “Firms That Never Sleep” from The Economist. This article discusses a business that takes advantage of different time zones. This idea of being able to have more shifts by exploiting the fact that we have different time zones presents many benefits as well as difficulties. The major benefit is increased productivity. Companies are able to have three different shifts in three different time zones. Taking advantage of time zones will increase productivity by a lot. Also, companies have the ability to have someone in another time zone do the same job as someone in the time zone receiving the service or good could save on labor. Companies can move their operations to where labor is cheapest. However there are some challenges to this method. One of the big problems with this method is the lack of communication between shifts. The only communication may be through telephone or emails. This causes a problem because managers and the team have a hard time knowing what to expect from the shift before them. Therefore companies need to make sure that every shift knows what is expected from there.
The second article is called “Shopping and Thinking” from the magazine The Economist. This article discusses businesses and mergers. It takes a look at if mergers are really good for the company. So the major question is, is all this buying and selling good for companies? According to some influential analysts it is. He forces managers to focus on creating value for the shareholders. The merging of different companies allows for new innovations. It brings the ability for companies to invent new products to a whole other level. The ability to invent new products is what keeps firms ahead. However, there is a huge problem with mergers. This problem is the amount of debt and time that goes in to them. So the answer to our questions, is all this buying and selling good for companies? Well it depends on the companies. If the company has the ability to invent new products and make more profits than the amount of debt they have, then of course it is good for the company. However, if the company is having trouble redeeming themselves from their debt that it probably was not good for that company.
The third article is called “From Multilocal to Multicultural” written by Adrian Wooldridge in the magazine The Economist. This article has to do with multiculturalism and how companies need to have a wider variety of people. Creating this policy of multiculturalism would improve chances of recruiting and motivating able people from all different companies. Many companies are now taking pride in the fact that their senior managers are from different countries. Americans feel that they have an advantage to this theory of multiculturalism because their country is ‘the melting pot.’ The Europeans also feel they have an advantage to multiculturalism because of their past of having many multiculturalism companies. Their citizens have also become linguists making it easier to communicate with different cultures. A benefit to this is that companies tend to have one set of rules with their global shareholders making it much easier to operate. Multiculturalism, in my opinion, is a positive change for many companies.
All of these articles discuss important aspects of business management. In businesses, managers need to focus on such things as different shifts, mergers, and multiculturalism. Most importantly they all deal with planning, staffing, organizing, and leading which is the core to business management.




Works Cited
Anonymous. The Economist. London: Jan 10, 1998. Vol. 346, Iss. 8050; pg. 16, 1 pgs
Anonymous. The Economist. London: Dec 14, 1996. Vol. 341, Iss. 7996; pg. 63, 1 pgs
Wooldridge, Adrian. The Economist. London: Jun 24, 1995. Vol. 335, Iss. 7920; pg. SS14, 2 pgs