The Human Elements and Current Issues in Business

THE HUMAN ELEMENTS IN BUSINESS

The human elements in business are very important because business itself depends on people as investors, customer’s employees and as managers.Individuals too depend on business to provide them with goods and services to satisfy their needs and wants. At every stage of business, people are involved as Investors, employees’, customers or managers. Businesses themselves are a group of people who seek to earn profit by providing goods and services to others. Hence, it is essential to understand the different roles these individuals play.

1. The owners of business: the main purpose of those who own business or invest in a business is to make profits and increase their savings. Larger business concerns like the UAC in Nigeria are owned by larger number of people who contribute towards the business known as shareholders.

2. Workers: Business depends on a large group of workers who must perform the actual and mental labour that is necessary to bring into being all of the many and varied types of goods and services produced. These people provide the business person with labour and skills for a price. They expect to be paid for the services they render. Thus, the business person must adequately compensate his workers in order to develop a loyal and efficient work-team necessary for efficient production of goods and services.

3. The management: the individuals charged with the responsibility of operating business enterprises and of endeavouring to do so profitably are commonly referred to as management. In some situations, owners may also be managers as in the case of small scale firms. However, in larger companies, particularly those with great number of shareholders (owners),the management may consist of individuals who may not own any stock in the business they operate. Thus, managers have the responsibility of satisfying three (3) groups of people viz; Consumers, Workers and Owners.

4. The Owner – manager: This refers to a business person who operates his business himself. The disadvantage here is that if the business has a bad year, the owner-manager too will have a bad year because his pay is what the business earns. Some of the objectives of the owner managers include:

i.        To be independent from “the boss”

ii.      To be responsible for the development of their abilities so that when the business succeeds, they know that it is through their personal abilities.

iii.    To maximize earnings

iv.    To achieve the status associated with owner-manager; and

v.      Maintenance of family tradition.

5. The Professional manager: A professional manager is one who works for others. He attempts to achieve the goals that are established by the owners of the business. He is responsible to the owners of the business and his actions and performance are judged by those who employ him. He generally becomes a specialist in one particular aspect of business than being generally responsible for the entire operation.

CURRENT ISSUES IN BUSINESS

The current hot topics include globalization, diversity, ethics and social responsibility, quality, productivity, participative management, teams and small business.

1.      Globalization: The trend toward doing business in other countries continues. Globalization means being able to deploy a company’s best achievement in any country to the rest of the world. This is what makes the world a global market.

2.      Diversity:Is the degree of differences among members of a group or organization. Some of the problems available in dealing with diversity of people include; ethnocentrism, prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one owns group is superior to others. Prejudices and stereotypes are related to ethnocentrism. Prejudices are preconceived judgments of a person or situation. Stereotypes are positive or negative assessments or perceived attributes towards people or situation. A business manager must know how to manage diversity in order to get his people to work as ateam.

3.      Ethics and social responsibility:In recent times, there has been increased emphasis on business ethics. Ethics are standards of right and wrong that influence behavior. Right behavior is considered ethical and wrong behavior is considered unethical. Government laws and regulations are designed to govern business behavior. Social responsibility is the conscious effort to operate in a manner that creates a win-win situation for all stakeholders.

4.      Quality and Total Quality Management(TQM):As the global economy expands, the need to offer quality products and services become more essential for survival. Quality is conformance to expectation. The core values of TQM are to focus everyone in the organization on delivering customer value and to continuously improve the system and its processes.

5.      Productivity:Is performance increase relating outputs to inputs. In order words, productivity is measured by dividing the outputs by the inputs.

Productivity = Output

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Input

6.      Participative Management:the trend today is increasing the level of employee participation. This is done through effective communication, motivation and empowerment.

7.      Teams:As part of the growth of participative management, more emphasis is being placed on teamwork as the major means of increasing productivity. A team is small number of members with shared leadership who perform interdependent jobs with individual and group accountability, evaluation and rewards. It has long been recognized that team participation in decision-making results in better decisions and more commitments to their implementation.

8.      Small business:A small business is independently owned and operated; it is not dominant in its field and has fewer than five hundred (500) employees’. The current trend in Nigeria is towards small business.