Organizational Resources

The organization is where resources come together.

Organizations use different resources to accomplish goals. The
major resources used by organizations are often described as
follow: (1) human resources, (2) financial resources, (3) physical
resources, and (4) information resources.
(1) Human resurce.
The definition of human resource management emphasizes the sphere of
influence to encompass 'the strategic approach to manpower management
in an organization'. The process calls for a coherent objective to retain and
increase employee head-count, any organization's most valued asset. This
specialized study and application has come in the wake of realization that
the employees of an organization, individually and collectively, are the
main contributors to the achievement of business objectives. The
management of people hired by an organization involves employing
people, designing and developing related resources and most importantly,
utilizing and compensating their services to optimize business profitability
via employee performance. Today, Human Resource Management operates
in tune with other essential organizational requirements and co-exists with
the topmost management cadre. Managing human resources within a
company calls for a liaison between the organization's management
personnel and the administration of the executive rungs. It thrives on the
strength of the relationship between the management and workers of the
company
Functions of Human Resource Management:

Human Resource Management involves the development of a perfect

blend between traditional administrative functions and the well-being of all
employees within an organization. Employee retention ratio is directly
proportionate to the manner in which the employees are treated, in return
for their imparted skills and experience. A Human Resource Manager
ideally empowers inter-departmental employee relationships and nurtures
scope for down-the-rung employee communication at various levels. The
field is a derivative of System Theory and Organizational Psychology.
Human resources has earned a number of related interpretations in time,
but continues to defend the need to ensure employee well-being. Every
organization now has an exclusive Human Resource Management
Department to interact with representatives of all factors of production. The
department is responsible for the development and application of ongoing
research on strategic advances while hiring, terminating and training staff.
The Human Resource Management Department is responsible for:
 • Understanding and relating to employees as individuals, thus
identifying individual needs and career goals.
• Developing positive interactions between workers, to ensure collated
and constructive enterprise productivity and development of a
uniform organizational culture.
• Identify areas that suffer lack of knowledge and insufficient training,
and accordingly provide remedial measures in the form of
workshops and seminars.
• Generate a rostrum for all employees to express their goals and
provide the necessary resources to accomplish professional and
personal agendas, essentially in that order.
• Innovate new operating practices to minimize risk and generate an
overall sense of belonging and accountability.
• Recruiting the required workforce and making provisions for
expressed and promised payroll and benefits.
• Implementing resource strategies to subsequently create and
sustain competitive advantage.
• Empowerment of the organization, to successfully meet strategic
goals by managing staff effectively.

Ideally, a Human Resource Management Department is responsible for an

interdisciplinary examination of all staff members in the workplace. This
strategy calls for applications from diverse fields such as psychology,
paralegal studies, industrial engineering, sociology, and a critical
understanding of theories pertaining to post-modernism and industrial
structuralism. The department bears the onus of converting the available
task-force or hired individuals into strategic business partners. This is
achieved via dedicated Change Management and focused Employee
Administration. The HR functions with the sole goal of motivating and
encouraging the employees to prove their mettle and add value to the
company. This is achieved via various management processes like
workforce planning and recruitment, induction and orientation of hired task-
force and employee training, administration and appraisals

(2) financial resources.

the money that is available for a person or organization to spend

Companies often need funding for starting or continuing business operations.

Small businesses typically need start-up funds, while medium and larger
companies may need funding to expand operations or purchase competitors.
Different types of funding are usually available based on the company's size and
needs. Companies may choose to use traditional funding sources such as banks
and equity investors or apply for government grants or venture capital funds.
Each funding type offers different advantages to companies.
Types
 Traditional funding methods for business operations
include banks and equity investors. Banks and other lenders
usually require information on a company's finances and
operations before lending funds. Small businesses may have
a more difficult time obtaining bank loans since they may
have limited business history. Larger or publicly held
companies may find individual investors, mutual funds or
other equity investors to purchase stock in the company.
Venture capitalists are private investment groups willing to
invest large sums of money into businesses.

 Features
 Venture capitalists may have more requirements when investing funds into
companies. Companies may need to offer venture capitalists a fixed rate of
return, significant ownership stake in the business or input on major management
decisions to obtain their investment funds. Venture capitalists require these
options to ensure that they earn sufficient return on their invested capital. Start-
up companies or companies operating in industries or business sectors with high
risk may need to offer more benefits to venture capitalists in return for an
investment.

 Considerations
 Companies should carefully consider the terms of each funding source before
agreeing on the investment structure. Banks and other traditional lenders usually
require fixed payments starting almost immediately. This creates a negative cash
flow for businesses that may be struggling to generate revenues in their early
years. Equity investors require companies to maintain consistent periods of
income growth. Failing to provide a decent rate of return may lead equity
investors to sell investments and lower the company's wealth.
Benefits
 Working capital is the funds generated through normal business operations.
External financial resources allow companies to maintain their working capital for
daily operating purposes. Companies may also be able to negotiate favorable
terms with lenders to defer payments or limit negative cash flows. Using internal
working capital may also allow companies to avoid short-term financing needs;
short-term funding sources generally have the most unfavorable terms for
companies.
 Expert Insight
 The Small Business Administration (SBA) may offer information for
companies regarding government grants and government-guaranteed bank
loans. This type of funding is usually offered at the state and local level because
local SBA offices have a better understating of local economies. Companies may
be required to go through a lengthy application process and compete with similar
businesses looking to obtain the same funds. Guaranteed banks loans offered by
the SBA help companies limit the collateral offered to banks for debt financing.

, (3) physical Resources.

these are resources that are available to a business organisations in the form of buildings
and other machineries needed for the day to day running of the organistaion.

Examples of physical resources include, but are not limited to:

1) Buildings
2) Equipment
3) Potato Wedgies
4) Stuff in Seans Coke
(4) information resources.

The term information management is relatively new: its origins lie not in the traditional
world of libraries, nor even in the less traditional world of information science, but in the
world of the management of paper in the US Federal Government. In 1978, the US
Government introduced a proposal to control government paperwork in its Education
Amendments Bill, 1978, HR15. The proposals were met with scepticism and even
unveiled hostility at the time
'This proposed agency simply cannot be appropriate to its
task of coping with information overload. But instead of
recognizing this it generates more control mechanisms into
the system in order to try to match the proliferating
information. But the natural law at work here that dooms
this effort is that variety (information) grows exponentially
while control mechanisms cannot.'(2)
Appropriate or not, the force of arguments about the extent to which US
companies spent money simply to fill in Federal forms, held sway, and
the 'Paperwork Reduction Act'(3) became law. Marc Porat(4) gave
examples of the scale of costs involved:
'...the State of Maryland refused to accept a $60.000 grant
from HEW [U.S. Department of Health, Education and
Welfare] for a consumer education program because the
cost of completing the necessary forms would chew up
about $45,000.';
and

'An oil company spent $17 million and used 475 full-time
workers to file government reports other than taxes.'
Facts which make the passing of the Act understandable!

It is a little curious, paradoxical even, that a measure designed to reduce

the amount of information which the Federal Government needed to
process formed the basis of the idea that information has value and
ought to be organized like other organizational resources. However, the
examination of the production of information for the US government
brought about a realization that information production, storage,
retrieval, processing, and dissemination, involved costs to the
organization concerned. These costs had been hidden because, for the
most part, those involved were not designated 'information workers' but
engineers, planners, managers, and so forth. The jobs of these persons
were all centrally concerned with something other than information, at
least so far as the organization was concerned - they were involved in
project development and control, in economic forecasting and planning,
in the general management of the enterprise. It became apparent,
however, that on closer inspection, the handling and communication of
information was central to the performance of those tasks.

At about the same time as the true costs of handling information were
being discovered, information technology was beginning to influence the
way organizations performed that task. Office automation was in its
infancy and computer scientists were discovering, through the
introduction of microcomputers in user departments, that the old ways
of creating management information were no longer satisfactory (if
indeed they ever had been; see Lucas(5)). This led to a dramatic increase
in awareness of the costs of information handling, because the task was
now associated with the purchase of equipment out of the capital
budget, rather than with the purchase of forms and paper out of the
operating budget.

Information management, as a concept was the end-product of these

two developments and can be defined as:

the effective management of the information resources

( internal and external ) of an organization through the
proper application of information technology.
The two elements joined in that definition, 'information' and
'technology' are inseparable today, although much information
processing will still involve the use of paper rather than the use of
machines. I do take issue, however, with those who consider the
technology to be the 'information resource'. For example, Synott(6)
makes a statement which is almost unintelligible to an information
scientist (even allowing for the jargon):

'Information resource management is the process of

architecting and managing the technological infrastructure
of the firm. It deals with information conduit, which is a
technical issue. One addresses information conduit with
hardware (computers, communications networks, office
systems).'
Synott proposes this in contrast to his definition of information
management as dealing with information content: a problem which
requires the use of software. However, his 'information resource
management', is what others call, more appropriately, 'IT management'.
My definition, given above, includes both the information and the
technology to manage it.

• Application areas
o banking
o business
 o government
o health services
o industry
o manufacturing
• Artificial intelligence
o expert systems
o knowledge-based systems
• Economics of information
o cost-benefit analysis
o fee-based services
o information & productivity
o information economy
o value-added processes
• Education for information management
• Information management
o aiding business strategy
o chief information officers
o computer-based records management
o corporate information resources
o information mapping
o information resource management
 o manpower aspects
o online information systems
o organizational aspects
o strategic monitoring
• Information policy
o national information policies.
• Information use and users
o end-user computing
o information needs
• Systems theory