The Hindu Business Line : Big Blue’s green strategy

Generally, we all have survival strategies to handle the exigencies of weather. But, to help ensure the planet’s survival, do our organisations have a climate change strategy?

Here is an example of how a corporate responded to climate change.

In 2007, IBM announced a plan to redirect $1 billion a year across its businesses to dramatically increase the level of energy efficiency in information technology, inform Andrew J. Hoffman and John G. Woody in Climate Change: What’s your Business Strategy? ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

The Big Blue’s plan includes new products and services for IBM and its clients that will sharply change the world’s business and public technology infrastructures into ‘green’ data centres, the authors explain. What are the potential savings? Almost 50 per cent energy savings for an average 25,000-sq.ft data centre!

“Called ‘Project Big Green,’ IBM’s initiative targets corporate data centres where energy constraints and costs can limit their ability to grow. The initiative includes a new global ‘green team’ of more than 850 energy efficiency architects from across IBM.”

Crucial read.

Technological change

Technology may be regarded as part of a spectrum ranging from hardware to social and organisational structures, says Mark Hughes in Change Management in Organisations ( www.jaicobooks.com). Citing published works, he writes how technology has been explained using metaphors — such as “machine, organism, and information-processing brain.”

The author also cautions how “techno-lust” rather than rational analysis can motivate technology. “Technological developments can distract senior management from considerations about overall strategy…”

A chapter on ‘technological change’ speaks of four competing explanations offered by researchers, thus: “Woodward concluded that there was a relationship between the type of technology used and organisation structure. Child introduced strategic choice as a means of emphasising the role of managerial choice, rather than technology, in shaping work and organisation. Braverman offered a Marxist explanation of how workplace changes increased managerial control and de-skilled employees. Piore and Sabel demonstrated how flexible specialisation represented an approach to employment and work organisation offering customised products using advanced technologies in a craft way.”

For the avid student of change.

Reversible compensation

We are so used to ‘ctrl+Z’ — the keyboard shortcut to undo and backtrack — that we take the reversal facility as almost a given, in any situation. Alas, it may not always work with employee compensations.

You may be able to reclaim the company car from an employee, strip him of his title, or take him out of the partnership; but increasing the base pay may be a one-way route, warns a forthcoming book from Harvard Business Press.

“Prestige rewards, too, are often hard to undo,” adds Steve Kerr in Reward Systems: Does yours measure up? Have you ever tried to persuade someone to vacate his window office, he asks? Reversible compensation by any name — bonuses, incentive pay, variable compensation, compensation at risk — is an attractive vehicle for distributing financial rewards, Kerr advises. “Reversible compensation can also serve as a shock absorber, by permitting an organisation to reduce payroll without taking out people,” he reasons.

Filled with insights and anecdotes.

Transfer pricing guidance

AE1 Ltd, an Indian company manufacturing CD writers, supplied 10,000 nos. of the product to AE2 Ltd, a related foreign company, at Rs 2,000 a unit, and 200 nos. of the same product to AE3 Ltd, a related Indian company, at Rs 2,750 a unit…

This is one of the examples, on ‘the application of comparable uncontrolled price method,’ in Guidance Note on Report on International Transactions Under Section 92E of the Income-Tax Act, 1961 (Transfer Pricing) ( www.icai.org).

For starters, ‘uncontrolled transaction’ is a transaction between enterprises other than associated enterprises, whether resident or non-resident. CUP or ‘comparable uncontrolled price’ is an area of interest, for tax professionals, as evident from some of the recent news reports.

Recommended addition to the practitioners’ shelf.

Guard yourself against ‘infomania’

Mobile technology is already revolutionising working life, and whatever one writes about it is out of date as soon as it is published, observes Adrian Mackay in Recruiting, Retaining and Releasing People: Managing redeployment, return, retirement and redundancy (Elsevier). While the ability to access e-mail during downtime spent travelling or waiting for meetings can bring vast time savings and speeds of response to busy managers, there is a worrying trend, the author alerts.

“HP called it ‘infomania’ — an obsessive desire to receive and respond to e-mail communications however trivial: laptops on the beach, PDAs at breakfast while on weekend retreats.”

Moreover, there is a risk of alienation of many people working remotely too much — both from the employee feeling isolated not having the direct human contact and the manager fearing they are losing control of their staff, Mackay foresees.

“Personal contact is vital and managers must make time to get together and speak to people — have that coffee in contact with other people, not just in company of your e-mails.”

Instructive takeaways.

Computer study as a dropout antidote

In Gujarat, the dropouts betweens standards 8 and 10 (not appearing for the SSC exam), in the age group of 15-18 years, add to more than 2 lakh. If you add the number of students who are not able to clear the SSC exam, the number of those discontinuing studies between standards 8 and 10 mounts to 4,50,000.

“These dropouts are potential entrants into the labour force and thus are important from the point of view of foundation for building the superstructure of qualified manpower in the economy,” avers an essay in Gujarat: Perspectives of the future, edited by R. Swaminathan ( www.academicfoundation.com).

“To enhance their eligibility and employability, these students need to be exposed to emerging requirements in the labour market — study of English from standard 5, study of computers, science and mathematics, and vocational training and skill development through basic modules, and the use of modern technology for communication and learning,” the essay proposes.

Informative and directional.

Ribbon facility

Autodesk releases new versions of AutoCAD every year, and the latest version has a new tool panel called the ‘Ribbon,’ informs George Omura in Mastering AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009 ( www.wileyindia.com). This includes the most common tools needed to produce technical drawings of all types, he adds.

“There is more information available on every tool, making this version of AutoCAD one of the easiest to learn. All you have to do is hover your cursor over a tool or menu option to find out what it’s for and how to use it…”

For the hands-on user.

Tailpiece

“To express our support to the US President-elect…”

“You decorated the walls with ‘Stars and Stripes’ and changed the screensavers on the desktops?”

“And also renamed the upma items in the canteen!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in