Business Basics Assignment

1. Human Resource departments are often portrayed as powerless work units, existing on the periphery of an organization's operations. Articulate an argument demonstrating the importance and centrality of HR departments in today's chaotic and competitive world. How can a weak HR department help bring a company to an early demise? (one page response, single-spaced)

2. Newly minted MBAs looking for employment assiduously avoid jobs in the "operations" areas of companies (e.g., manufacturing, order processing, paper flow processing) because they see these to be boring, dead-end jobs. (Generally, they prefer to work in sexy areas such as finance, marketing, and sales.) Interestingly, a key thrust of business process reengineering has been to focus on making dramatic improvements in the operations areas of business, because operations lie at the heart of most enterprises. Explain how poor, neglected "operations" is in fact the ugly duckling that can mature into a swan. How can companies that neglect their operations find themselves in serious trouble? (one page response, single-spaced)