Strategic tools for the practising manager

KIT

THIS WEEK: INDIAN HANDICRAFTS MARKET

The world handicrafts industry stands at $100 billion. India's share in global handicrafts exports is about 2 per cent.

The Indian handicrafts industry is largely decentralised and wide-spread across the country.

The industry employs about 5 million artisans. Almost 67,000 exporters are present in this market.

During April-January 2005-06, the Indian handicrafts industry exported goods worth $3 billion.

The handicrafts sector has an annual average growth rate of 8.5 per cent.

The US is the largest import market for Indian handicrafts. Other major buyers include European and west Asian countries and Canada.

Major export items include metalware, woodware, hand-printed textiles and leather, wooden and cane wares, embroidered and crocheted goods, shawls, zari goods, laces, and fashion jewellery.

Foreign trade policy (2004-09) announced incentives like establishing SEZs for handicrafts, duty-free imports of trimmings and embellishments and exemption of these items from countervailing duty. The government has already approved the establishment of three SEZs in Noida, UP and Rajasthan.

Selections from management journals
NUGGETS

Statistics, case studies, history: all provide a wealth of information for policy makers. So why have most attempts over the last half century to foster development in transition economies been unsuccessful?

This paper from Bruce Kogut and Charles Ragin, published in European Management Review, proposes a new method for examining and analysing data that demonstrates why some of our cherished assumptions about what promotes growth are wrong.

Kogut and Ragin marry statistical analysis with the case study through the use of categories, capturing our natural inclination to place everything in a category ""developed or developing countries, strong or weak societies, welfare or market states.

They thus provide a powerful link between analytical research and our tendency to think in terms of relationships between categories rather than between attributes.

Read the complete article at http://knowledge.insead.edu

Doling out flashy titles may seem like a cheap way to attract and retain top recruits. But it's also risky. In the early days, Employco played fast and loose with job titles.

10 years ago, the founders of the company, an HR consulting firm and an insurance provider, decided that heavyweight titles would lend credibility to their new venture and help land customers.

A company isn't a company without a CIO, they figured. And with cash tight, doling out a few lofty titles served as a low-cost way to attract smart employees "" and keep them around.

Over the next decade, Employco, based in Westmont, Illinois, evolved from a start-up with fewer than 10 employees to an established business with 17,000 full- and part-timers.

Unfortunately, as the company expanded and the roles of top executives became more complex, some employees weren't up to the demands that came with their titles. Others lacked traditional senior-level credentials altogether, having landed their titles by default or out of necessity.

Read this article at http://www.inc.com/magazine