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Pressures/Challenges

The changes in business environment pose challenges on the organizations which need to be responded to. Following are the pressures

• Competition for cheaper factors of production Cheaper factor of production is a challenge for the survival of a company in competitive market. Factors of production are basic elements of reducing manufacturing cost. Cheap and skilled labour Availability of raw material, infrastructure.

• Changing workforces Lack of availability of skilled and experience force in market is a challenge for an organization. Continue change in work force is harmful for an organization.

• Enhanced customer quality For the enhancement customer quality consistently provide innovative products, with outstanding customer service and help their customers achieve operational excellence. An Organization ability to provide outstanding product quality, service support, and their ability to enhance product quality, achieve shorter delivery times, reduce scrap, rework and reduced life cycle costs

• Technological Obsolescence Technological obsolescence is the result of the evolution of technology: as newer technologies appear, older ones cease to be used. For example, new media for storing digital information rapidly replace older media and reading devices for these older media become no longer available. Newer versions of software constantly render older versions obsolete and the hardware required by this software also changes over time. Consequently, information which relies on obsolete technologies becomes inaccessible. Currently, it seems that the lifetime of digital storage media generally exceeds the life of the technology that supports it.

• Information overload In recent decades, technology has so enhanced our ability to gather data that the sheer volume of data now outstrips our capacity to deal with it. Informatics is taking this seemingly unmanageable flood of data and transforming it into information that helps solve key problems in fields like medicine, genetics, chemistry, Internet security and engineering

Corporate social responsibility Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an expression used to describe what some see as a company’s obligation to be sensitive to the needs of not only all of the stakeholders in its business operations but more importantly the community at large. It has been defined as:

“The continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as the local community and society as large.” Businesses are now seen as partners of the communities in which they may be located rather than simply as a profit making set up serving the needs of their stake holders.

Corporate social responsibility incorporates the principle of sustainable development along with “triple bottom line reporting” reflecting not only financial results but also social and environmental impact of the business.

The CSR may be looked after by an independent department reporting directly to the board or may be a part of the business development or human resource department.

Ethics Corporate or business ethics have attained vital importance in today’s world. The issue not only addresses matters such as how those charged with governance and managing businesses take decisions but importantly the employee conduct and behaviour the corporations responsibility in terms of its image, product, branding, trade, business practices and compliance with not only national and regional but also international laws.

The huge number of financial and corporate scandals has moved the regulators to take suitable action. In Pakistan all listed companies particularly are required to follow the code of corporate governance.