Donald Trump makes it look easy, but the words "you're fired" are always difficult to say. Letting an employee go is painful, and for many managers the process is fraught with sleepless nights and stomach-churning anxiety. But hanging onto the wrong people can ultimately make matters worse for you, your other employees, and your business. Here's how to break the news firmly but gently, so you can put the rest of your team back on track.Read the rest of this entry »

via bnet.com

Thanks to technology and globalization, more and more business teams are working together across state lines and international borders. Many corporations employ “dispersed teams,” where a manager in New York may communicate daily with colleagues in Boston, Los Angeles, and Singapore.

But even with an array of new Web-based collaboration tools at their disposal, most managers find handling remote teams extremely challenging. In order to get the best out of your far-flung employees, you need to establish a clear communication routine, take extra steps to build trust, and review processes often to make sure they’re working for everyone. Whether your employees are in other company offices, working from home, or a little bit of both, these tips will help keep your team running smoothly.

via bnet.com

It's no secret that most mergers and acquisitions fail to create value. The Wall Street Journal's "Manager's Journal" takes a look at a common problem with mergers:

But if the past is a guide, markets will focus on assets, portfolios and business synergies and overlook a key to whether the deal is successful: people.

People issues are often the root of failed deals, our research shows. That is because they are frequently an afterthought in the frenzy of a deal. Dealmakers gather reams of financial, commercial and operational data. But they often pay scant attention to what we call human due diligence -- understanding the culture of an organization, the roles that individuals play, and the capabilities and attitudes of its people.Read the rest of this entry »

via bloggingstocks.com

Every day we get another report of abusive and predatory practices in the consumer lending industry, and today is no different. Ohio's Attorney General has sued Citibank for its advertisements on the Ohio State University Campus, which included offers for FREE FOOD! -- if you'll just fill out this credit card application.Read the rest of this entry »

via bloggingstocks.com

It's never been any secret that Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) has serious problems with employee morale, employee retention, and customer service. A new piece in BusinessWeek sheds some light on just how bad it things are at the world's largest retailer, which has been suffering from stagnating same-store sales and a sagging share priceRead the rest of this entry »

via bloggingstocks.com

A landmark E.U. antitrust case upholds a record 497 million Euro fine imposed by the European Commission.

Microsoft has frequently found itself under scrutiny by regulators over the years, but the software giant has rarely felt more out of step with authority than on Monday, when a European court threw out its appeal against a 2004 antitrust decision.

The ruling comes three and a half years after the European Commission — the E.U.'s antitrust authority — ruled that Microsoft had unfairly abused the near-monopoly power of its Windows personal computer operating system to muscle out rivals.

The European Union's Court of First Instance in Luxembourg — Europe's second-highest court — has now upheld the Commission's March 2004 decision that fined Microsoft a record $670 million and ordered the software giant to change its Windows package to make it more modular and compatible with rival systems.

It's a crushing blow to Microsoft, which has engaged in a bitter nine-year wrangle with the Commission. But the ruling also confirms the role of the Commission, which had staked its reputation as an antitrust regulator on the case. A defeat would have undermined its authority and risked a flood of court appeals against every Commission decision...

via time.com

Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations meets with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang at the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) office in Beijing.

So are toys from China safe or not? If you think you're confused, it looks as if even Mattel, the largest toymaker in the United States, doesn't know.

On Friday, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, Thomas Debrowski, met with the Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, to apologize for the company's own weak safety controls. "Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Mr. Debrowski told Li. "And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys." ...

via time.com

Amid the chaos and confusion that has accompanied the credit crisis at British bank Northern Rock, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has remained tight-lipped. There was barely a word from him when the Bank, as Britain's lender of last resort, made emergency cash available to Northern Rock last week. When that triggered a run on the High Street lender, with customers lining up for days to take back their savings, King still failed to utter a word. And when the government finally stepped in Monday to offer a gilt-edge guarantee for spooked depositors in the form of cash, the silence was deafening.

Until late this week. Appearing before a committee of British M.P.s Thursday to explain the Bank's handling of the crisis — the first run on a U.K. lender in living memory — King finally opened up. The Governor, the bank's former chief economist and an academic who's taught at Cambridge, Harvard and MIT, first got wind of problems at Northern Rock on Aug. 14. The Newcastle-based bank — Britain's fifth-largest mortgage provider — leaned heavily on wholesale money markets to fund its own mortgage loans. When those inter-bank markets started to freeze up in recent weeks amid a global credit squeeze triggered by the subprime mortgage crunch, so too did the source of 75% of Northern Rock's funds. "At that point," King said, still hopeful the market would step in to help out the troubled bank, "there didn't seem much point in blowing up the train before it hit the buffers." ...

via time.com

The lunch lines weren't moving fast enough for Linda Stoll, head of food programs at the Boulder Valley, Colo., school district. Because of that, kids had barely enough time to sit and eat before the lunch period was over. So, last year, Stoll began looking for ways to speed up the queue. She discovered that many students, especially kindergarteners, can't remember their six-digit ID number, which they're required to type into keypads at the end of lunch lines. She then found out that there was technology that would allow a scanner to identify a kid qualified for lunch with the swipe of a finger, moving him or her quickly along. It would help kids who regularly forget their lunch money, and it would potentially remove some of the stigma faced by children who receive special tickets for free or reduced lunch. She proposed the idea, believing it would be the perfect solution. Read the rest of this entry »

via time.com

This is interesting research.
The paper, to be published in the Oct. 1 advanced online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at the ultimatum game, in which a proposer makes an offer to a responder on how to divide a sum of money. This offer is an ultimatum; if the responder rejects it, both parties receive nothing.

Because rejections in the game entail a zero payoff for both parties, theories of narrow self-interest predict that any positive amount will be accepted by a responder. The intriguing finding in the laboratory is that responders routinely reject free money, presumably in order to punish proposers for offers perceived as unfair.Read the rest of this entry »

via businesspundit.com