An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a set of processes and practices that enables an organisation to reduce its environmental impacts and increase its operating efficiency.

As a follow up to my article on value addition to minerals published in Mirror Business on March 11, 2014, I would like to highlight the attempts by the researchers in Sri Lanka and also various government entities in value addition to graphite in th

Water and energy are linked with an eternal bond. Many countries blessed with rivers and waterfalls have harnessed their inherent kinetic energy through hydro-electricity in fulfilling their energy needs. Sri Lanka is one such country.   Bu

Growing links with China have supported economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. But the burgeoning commercial and financial ties between the developing subcontinent and the world’s second-biggest economy carry risks as well. These links also exp

Do you work for a company that has a traditional bureaucratic management style? If so, chances are quite high that your workplace is probably not as effectively run as one whose philosophy is ‘empowerment’.

How crucial it is to ‘delight a customer’. Raising customer satisfaction is such an obvious point. Management tends to forget the importance of delighting a customer. Customer satisfaction is talked about in creative copy writing. What is

Not everyone chooses a career – some, if they are honest enough, will confess that they got into a career by chance. And once the course of time runs and the biological clock runs, most would choose to stay within the comfort zones of known rou

Be it swapping coffee for cocoa in Central America or bracing for drought in Sri Lanka with a return to ancient water storage systems, scientists and growers should jointly chart a path to adapt to climate shifts despite uncertainties over future gro

Every day we are moving closer to having almost as many mobile subscribers as there are people on earth. Close to 40 percent of the world’s population are now ‘online’ and some 750 million households globally are connected to the in

It’s not uncommon to find major homegrown brands in Sri Lanka either undernourished or underexploited but after a period of neglect, they need to be reexamined and refreshed from the ground up.

Sri Lanka’s problem of flagging export growth has generated much discussion. The answer that many are converging on is a single word: DIVERSIFICATION. But ‘diversification’ is a double-edged concept in exports. You can either diver

A recent article by Gail Tvreberg from a think tank on ‘Our Future World’ and reproduced in ‘Oil Voice’ magazine of February 4, 2014, highlights that solutions to our energy dilemma will not work if we do not understand that t

“Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation” is a humorous fumble rule used by English teachers and professors when lecturing about proper writing techniques. The press release by the MD of a hotel built during the colonial era informs of i

Last two weeks, we saw how goal setting is a powerful way of motivating people and of motivating managers. Today, the value of goal setting is so well recognized that entire management systems, like Management by Objectives (MBOs), have goal setting

Investing in real estate has been the traditional method of securing future financial stability by increasing one’s net worth. With the advent of share trading, investments in property have been in direct competition to attract investment rupee

Almost everyone on the planet has been asking a question no one is yet able to answer – what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that was on a routine flight from Kuala Lampur to Beijing.

A reserve fund can only be used for replacement and non-routine repairs of common elements and assets of the condo: for instance, replacement of roof, windows, boiler, carpets and security system. Other examples are non-routine repairs to the chiller

Following is an interview of Ceylon Tobacco Company PLC (CTC) Chief Executive Felicio Ferraz appeared in the FY13 annual report of the company that was released to the Colombo Stock Exchange yesterday.

Unlike annual crops such as vegetables or field crops, the perennial nature of tree crops requires that their nutrient needs be maintained in a holistic and long-term manner.  Practices such as fertilizer application, water management and prunin

Professor Dave Ulrich, the most influential international thinker in HR and author of over 25 books, talks about his proposed visit to Colombo on April 30 and the key topics he plans to address in Colombo.

There is presently a great interest on value addition to mineral resources that could be commercially exploited in Sri Lanka. However this interest was vigorously promoted by the Geological Survey Department (present GSMB) from the early 1960s and wh

In the previous section, we discussed the two restrictions imposed on the amount you can borrow. First, the initial margin, which is the initial amount you can borrow.

We saw last week that goal setting is an opportunity to focus the efforts of employees on the things that matter. A goal provides them with a direction and also allows them to prioritise their work. 

The United Nations celebrates the 2014 International Women’s Day under the theme of ‘Equality for women is progress for all’. Ensuring gender equality matters in many ways to the development process of a country. Gender equality mat

The other day, my mobile phone rang – it was a wrong number. But as I and thousands of other Sri Lankan women discover to their dismay every day, the caller rang back – many times in fact, whispering what no woman wants to hear.

Korea is no stranger to economic hardship, recovery and progress. The Korean War during 1950-53 took 1.5 million lives and destroyed close to 40 percent of the country’s industrial facilities. Yet, it overcame this turbulent history to become a

Previous Verité Insights have documented the “long-procrastination” in the achievements of targets set out in the budget. The mismatch between expectation and reality has been particularly a problem in the area of government revenu

Our Condominium Act was based on the condo operations of Singapore. Singapore obtained more information with regard to setting up condominiums from Australia. Since the introduction of condominiums in Singapore, they also have various problems that h

Several approaches, techniques and systems were developed in the 80s and 90s to tackle the problem of tapper shortage and rising costs of production, which were not adopted on a large scale due to low productivity of prevailing clones in the 80s/90s,

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” This line from Alice in Wonderland has been true in many organisations and companies. They often don’t have or maybe don’t articulate very well real b