Race as a factor in the evaluation of the admissions process Case Study

Race as a factor in the evaluation of the admissions process - Case Study Example Race as a factor in the evaluation of the admissions’ process The moral defense of a university’s practice to incorporate race as a factor in the evaluation of the admissions’ process can be examined through the application of diversity and diversity compensation arguments. The presence of obvious group disadvantage which is experienced by members of a certain race would imply that the consideration of race as a factor in admissions is conducive to the reduction of the racial groups’ social limitations while, eliminating the aspects of historical discrimination, the prejudiced mindset of mass media, educational, occupational and residential segregation and the negative impact of the cycle of poverty. The accumulation of this aspect promotes the emergence of individual disadvantages which translates into group disadvantage. For example, research on career opportunities and housing arrangements for racial groups indicates that discrimination and stereotyping is prevalent. The presence of these elements adversely affects the ability of minority students and harms their potential for further development. Through the application of the concepts of aforementioned arguments it can be concluded that race can be justified as an element of consideration in the holistic admissions process which evaluates the individual candidate’s abilities beyond the traditional measures of admissions criteria and takes into account the significance of their life experiences.

Effects of missing an appointment Essay Example for Free

Effects of missing an appointment Essay There are a wide range of effects for a person missing an appointment. Missing an appointment effect the individual who missed the appointment, least of all. Regardless of reason, not showing up for a scheduled time is a great disrespect to all the people that might have benefited from the scheduled time. Missing an appointment punishes others that may have gained from that time slot. There are many solutions to not missing an appointment, and by following the steps to prevent from missing an appointment gives a common courtesy to others. People’s time is extremely valuable and by missing an appointment it shows an extreme amount of disrespect. The main people being affected by my inconsiderate decision were the physical therapists, the patients, and least of all I. The people who work for you are being thrown under the bus when an appointment is missed. In my case, the people at the physical therapy clinic who work tirelessly to provide care for others that are injured, to get them back in fighting shape. By missing the allotted time all of the preparation and care to make me better was essentially thrown down the drain. A substantial amount of time was wasted that could have been used to benefit me or another soldier. I cannot reiterate enough, the selfishness of missing an appointment. All that was needed was a simple call, a common courtesy, for the situation to be resolved. By missing my appointment I basically told the physical therapy clinic that my time is more valuable than yours, which is very disrespectful. The others that were affected by my decision to miss the appointment were all of the other patients seeking care. Being a soldier requires many physical demands which often incur injuries. It is extremely important for any soldier seeking care to be able to receive the proper treatment. By me missing my appointment it took time away from another soldier that could have received treatment. By calling ahead it could have potentially given someone else who needed that time with the physical therapy clinic, a chance to get seen and treated. I inadvertently placed myself before others by not calling ahead and cancelling, or rescheduling my allotted time with the physical therapy clinic. I briefly put aside some of my basic values of being a soldier when I missed the appointment. There are many solutions that could have been done to avoid the missed appointment, and will be done in the future. Something as easy as putting an alarm in my phone, could have helped me to not miss my appointment. I also could have been more proactive with my leadership and let my chain of command know when and what time my appointment was. Certain safeguards in the future will be put in place to prevent this lack of respect for others, to not happen again. The more people I let know of my appointments will prevent me from missing any future appointments. I feel I can improve as a soldier from this incident and by me missing this appointment it will make me become more considerate for others and give me a better awareness of when and where my appointments are. On Friday I missed my physical therapy appointment and while I feel this was an outlier of events, I cannot and will not let this happen again. The only reason I can provide as to why my appointment was missed is that I work sick call at the Aid Station, and it ran later than normal that morning. As a medic I know first-hand the importance of holding true to a scheduled appointment. I know what it feels like being on the other end of the spectrum. When I screen patients and a patient misses an appointment it feels like someone has wasted my time. In other words it feels like a slap in the face, which makes me missing my appointment that much more inexcusable. Others that feel the effects of missing an appointment are the direct chain of command. The lack of respect by one person can reflect negatively on a whole organization. By missing an appointment others wonder if the unit as a whole treats appointments and others with that same lack of respect. In my case I have great NCO’s and a great support system that has done nothing but help me in my career and teach me the in’s and out’s of how to be a good soldier and an even better person. However, with my lapse in judgment my decision reflected very poorly on my leadership. That in itself is enough for me to understand the negative outcomes by missing my appointment. Overall the effects of one individual’s mistake can be felt by a plethora of different individuals and groups. From the Physical therapy clinic whose time could have been better spent helping other patients to me as an individual. I think something good that has come out of my mistake is that I now have a much better perspective of all the different people that my decision affected. Appointments are very easy to cancel ahead of time to give another person a chance to seek treatment. For so many people and organizations effected a simple phone call or preventative measure would have resolved the situations.

Comparing China and Russias Approach to Change :: Political Politics

Comparing China and Russia's Approach to Change Gradualism is naturally the most feasible approach to any situation. Since the fall of the iron curtain, Russia and China have chosen to move towards democracy. China has chosen to take the natural, more gradual approach to democracy while Russia has chosen the fast-paced, more dangerous approach. These two nations have chosen to change their economies from a collectivized command one to a market oriented one in order to increase the standard of living in their countries. In recent years, China is booming and becoming more and more successful, while Russia seems like it is regressing back to parochial ways. It is impossible to compare anything but Russia and China's approaches to change, and the results that incurred. The two nations have vastly different economies and to compare one economy to another would be illogical. China and Russia's approach to change are vastly different, almost like night and day. China's political and economic policy has always been to do things gradually. Whereas Russia believed in going through the necessary changes quickly, so that the hardship would in turn pass just as quickly. In the implementation of their policies, we have seen that China's approach has led to a 29% of growth in their industrial field. But in comparison, Russia only yielded 15% with their approach. But one must keep in mind that China has more industrial sectors than does Russia, so their job in improving industry is notably easier than Russia's feat in developing an industry. Politically, the two nations have the same policies that they held in their economies. China believes in gradually letting the people have more access to political freedom. And again, Russia's policy has been to flood them all at once with these new found freedoms. Unfortunately Russia's policy hasn't been the most naturally feasible approach again. Their people have been suddenly bombarded with all of these new found freedoms they have never experience before. They are like little children let loose in a candy store. There are all of these new things available to them, and most of the younger generation wants too try everything at once. All of these citizens experimenting with their new freedoms are creating political chaos. The Russian citizens don't have time to savor their new freedoms and are just trying to grab them from left and right. For they are probably afraid that if they don't take their freedoms quickly, they will leave as quickly as they came.

capital punishment :: essays research papers

Capital Punishment and Deterrence Abstract Capitol Punishment has been around since the beginning of mankind; eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. Since then the public have debated for or against capital punishment revolving around issues of deterrence, retribution, discrimination and Irreversibility. Leaving us with the responsibility to analyze the factors surrounding capital punishment. A number of studies have also been done specifically on the deterrent effects of capital punishment. Many officials believes that capital punishment not only prevent s the offender from committing additional crimes but deters others as well. The research of Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon J. Hawkins demonstrated that punishment is an effective deterrent for those who are criminally inclined. Another research has been to examine murder rates in given areas both before and after an execution. Clear and cole(2000) have examined more than 200 studies evaluating the effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring crime. A recent study found that a significant deterrent effect is associated with the increased use of capital punishment since 1977 ( Dezhbakhsh, Rubin and Shepherd, 2001). Michael Radelet and Ronald Akers attempted to determine if having the Death Penalty indeed act as a deterrent on criminal homicide. Is the theory of â€Å"Just Deserts† (Bedau, 1978; Finckenenauer, 1998) in anyway credible? It is also often argued that death is what murderers deserve, making criminals reap what they sow. Most believe that in order to assure deserts, the punishment should always fit the crime. It would require us to rape rapists, torture torturers, and inflict other horrible and degrading punishment on offenders. It would require us to betray traitors and kill multiple murderers again and again, punishments impossible to inflict. ( Bedau 1978). However the principle of just deserts is understood to require that the severity of punishments must be proportional to the gravity of the crime, and that murder being the gravest crime deserves the severest punishment, then the principle is no doubt sound. But it does not compel support for the death penalty. What it does require is that crimes other than murder be punished with terms of imprisonment or other deprivations less severe than those used in the punishment of murder. Criminals no doubt deserve to be punished, and punished with severity appropriate to their culpability and the harm they have caused to the innocent. But severity of punishment has its limits -- imposed both by justice and

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

The following are the major problems KID were facing: It mistakenly tied up the profit, the number of stores, and the sales of machines and ingredients together. Moreover, it was too aggressive. It was hungry to show its ‘perfect performances' to investors by beautifying their book value. From non-financial perspective, there are serious drawbacks behind the expanding, and the growing numbers of stores made the K Doughnuts ‘everywhere', which made customers lost their feelings of freshness of It.As the case mentioned, KID raised Its purchase price on the Michigan franchise In order to get the Interest of loans back and KID recorded the interest under as an immediate income, profit. In the meanwhile, it booked the cost of buyback the franchise and the payment to the executive as an intangible asset, which the company did not amortize. In my opinion, the interest should be recorded under equity and the cost and payment could be booked as properties, cost, or at least they n eed to be amortized.KID got the interest from the franchise and successfully raised Its revenue to attract Investors but it in fact sacrificed Its hardliners' benefits by offering an over value purchasing prize. Moreover, keeping the previous executive till the trade closed and giving a huge amount of compensation makes me wonder if there was an inside trade. Exhibit 1, 2& 3 shows the unhealthy growth of KID. Compared to the growth of total revenues in the whole company, revenue that each stores contributed (total revenue/ total factory stores) was not increasing accordingly.On the contrary, the expansion of stores brought the corporation high expenses and venture. The cost of opening a new store, aqualung It and close It was paid in vain. The number of stores grew too quickly. The exhibit also shows the abnormal high value of stock-price patterns compared to the S 500 Composite Index but it was finally down to the earth' in the end of 2004 influenced by the divesting of Montana Mil ls and closing down of 3 underperformed stores.Viewing the company structure, revenues were generated from on-premises retail sales at company-owned stores (accounting for 27% of revenues); off-premises sales to grocery and convenience stores (40%); manufacturing and distribution of product mix and machinery (29%1 and franchisee loyalties and fees (4%). Actually, the ideal revenue resources of this kind of corporation should mainly come from the franchisee royalties and fees but not from distribution of mix and machine. The company supposed to boost the sales of its main product: doughnuts but not to expansion blindly.Once its doughnuts become popular and profitable, people will be willing to get In to the business and pay KID franchisee royalties and fees. However, the realistic was many units were losing money off-premises, and franchisees were not motivated to grow their sales, which fleets a governance problem in this corporate that the company itself did not has mutual benefits with its franchisees. The stock price of KID was fluctuated severely in recent years and the suggestions of buy, sell or hold from analysts were closely related to the stock price and scandal. ND January 2005, when the stock price was at its peak, at 22. 51 dollars per share (first under estimate), at 15. 71 dollars per share (divested Montana Mills) and at less than 10 dollars per share (credit-facility defaulted). Crispy Seeker's share price was $40. 63 right after its PIP, giving the firm a market capitalization of nearly $500 lions. The stock price might be over valued at first because KID was so popular at the time and therefore the public drove up the price. After a series of problem, the company restated its financial statements for the PAYOFF, which reduced pretax income by between $6. Million and $8. 1 million. This movement sharply decreased the tax expenses of the company, which is proved by items of income before income taxes, provision for income taxes and income taxes refundable in Exhibit 2. It is strange that given a large amount of amortized intangible asset, the company still ad a high level of tax shield as shows in the depreciation and amortization expenses from Exhibit 1 . Thus, the company might be showing a higher profit for investors but lower income for tax purposes, changing the treatment of amortization between the two.This practice violated the requests and rules in GAP. Knowing the accounting tricks that KID was playing, people can approximately calculate its book value by amortizing its asset, increasing its cost and tax, which leads to a deduction of profit. Influenced by the divesting of Montana Mills, the interest expenses, income tax refundable, long-term notes receivable, Joint venture ND intangible in 2004 increased dramatically and the share price dipped compared to them in 2003 as we can see from the Exhibit 1&2.However, it is odd that the interest expense raised so much when then the long-term debt decreased. Furthermore , from the Debit-to- equity ratio in Exhibit 7, we can see that the level of debt and financial distress went down in 2004. Therefore, guess is that the company might use the total long-term liabilities in calculating the interest expenses in order to have more tax benefits. As its known to all that the higher the ratio of liquidity, average, activity and profitability are the better the company's situation is in.Compared to other quick-service restaurants in Exhibits, only the receivables turnover and inventory turnover of KID was slightly lower than the average, which means the corporation was not performing absolutely badly. And in Exhibit 9, when comparing to average restaurant, Kid's cash & equivalents, notes payable, long-term debt, income taxes payable, all other current were much more lower and the trade receivables, intangibles, deferred taxes and shareholder's equity were higher than the common stores.Unexpectedly, the net income of KID on May 9, 2004 was negative 24,458, but it went up to positive 5,763 three months later on August 1, 2004. How could the situation be turned around in such a short time? As a matter of fact, an over-valued stock price will eventually go down to what it supposed to be in a high efficient market. This is one of the reasons that the bubble of the stock broke and the price slumped. Along with the revelation about the company's franchise accounting practices and the wrong operating methods, they explained the devalued of its stock.I think the doughnuts company should not rely heir profit on the sales of high margin machines but to make its actual product (signature doughnuts) better since it contributed around 60% to the total sales. In the meanwhile, KID should inherit its factory style', which provides newly baked fresh healthy trend among people influenced the sales of its products, improve their ingredients or explore new recipes are necessary. Furthermore, through research and sufficient preparation are important befo re exploring overseas market or expansion. KID already had its brand, goodwill and own steady customer group, it still has a chance to fight back.

The Voice Within - Critical Analysis essays

The Voice Within - Critical Analysis essays I felt that this song was explicit in its dealings with experience, as it focused generally on the ideas that one can only truly trust ones self when times get rough, and that it is through fighting through your bad experiences that you come out stronger. Innocence was portrayed mostly through symbolism and the repetition of the idea of the young girl. Also, the song drew parallels within itself, so as to depict the journey from innocence to experience, in self-reference. Experience was explored in the text through various vehicles, and in its various manifestations. The idea that the world has fallen in line two, expresses a sense of total misery and vulnerability. It is only through an awful or a series of awful experiences the world. Also, the line is very similar to the idiom ones wall is falling. The similarity draws the audiences attention to the idea that the subject is exposed to the adversities of the world, without any protection or salvation. In line four, the words, youll soon be free to fly evoke images of a soaring eagle, which is a very powerful symbol of experience, and of overcoming the experiences which may have prevented one from succeeding in their pursuits. I felt that the next stanza and the fifth stanza were poignant in their scrutiny of innocence, and paralleled each other befittingly. I felt that the idea of dreaming and the concept of nothing is harder than it seems reflected the childlike concepts that most people lose with maturity in both age and practise. Thus the image evoked is the young girl figure we have become aquatinted with, in the fantastic state of naivety. In the fifth stanza, we look to reality rather than fantasy. ...in a world where innocence is quickly claimed we see that the experiences of reality are so far removed from the ideal dream world of the young girl, that she has no choice but to accept re...

Workplace Discrimination Prohibited by Title VII Laws

Workplace Discrimination Prohibited by Title VII Laws Title VII is the portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which protects an individual from employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Specifically, Title VII prohibits employers from hiring, refusing to hire, firing, or laying off an individual due to those factors. It also makes illegal any attempt to segregate, classify, or limit the opportunities of any employees for reasons related to any of the above. This includes promotion, compensation, job training, or any other aspect of employment. Title VIIs Significance to Working Women With regard to gender, workplace discrimination is illegal. This includes discriminatory practices that are deliberate and intentional, or those that take on a less obvious form such as neutral job policies which disproportionately exclude individuals on the basis of sex and that are not job related. Also illegal are any employment decisions based on stereotypes and assumptions regarding the abilities, traits, or the performance of an individual on the basis of sex. Sexual Harassment and Pregnancy Covered Title VII also offers protection to individuals who encounter sex-based discrimination that takes the form of sexual harassment including direct requests for sexual favors to workplace conditions that create a hostile environment for persons of either gender, including same sex harassment. Pregnancy is also protected. Amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions. Protection for Working Mothers According to the Georgetown University Law Center: Courts have ruled that Title VII prohibits employer decisions and policies based purely on an employer’s stereotyped impression that motherhood...are incompatible with serious work. Courts have found, for example, that the following conduct violates Title VII: having one policy for hiring men with preschool aged children, and another for hiring women with preschool aged children; failing to promote an employee on the assumption that her childcare duties would keep her from being a reliable manager; providing service credits to employees on disability leave, but not to those on pregnancy-related leave; and requiring men, but not women, to demonstrate disability in order to qualify for childrearing leave. LGBT Individuals Not Covered Although Title VII is wide-ranging and covers many workplace issues faced by women and men, it is important to note that sexual orientation is not covered by Title VII. Thus lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender individuals are not protected by this law if discriminatory practices by an employer occur that are related to perceived sexual preferences. Compliance Requirements Title VII applies to any employer with 15 or more employees in both the public and private sector including federal, state and local governments, employment agencies, labor unions, and training programs.

DB 3 - Art Example

DB 3 DB 3 Symbols in Artworks Insert Insert s A symbol can be defined as a written or printed sign used for presenting an element, operation, quality, quantity or relation as in music, artworks or mathematics.The piece of art that is going to be examined with respect to the symbols it has is Leonardo Da Vinci painting Mona Lisa. Whilst the art is viewed under a microscope, Italy National Committee for Cultural Heritage discovered that when the eyes of â€Å"Mona Lisa† are magnified, there are tiny numbers and letters, which can be seen (Pisa, 2010). Historian experts argue that the barely distinguishable figures and letters represent something of a real-life Da Vinci Code. The symbol in the right eye seems to be letters LV that could well stand for the artist’s name, Leonardo Da Vinci. In the Mona Lisa’s left eye there are also symbols; however, they are not as defined. Even though it is hard to make them out clearly, they appear to be letters CE, or could be letter B.The Mona Lisa Painting also has a symbol of Dan Brown blockbuster, which is The Da Vinci Code (Pisa, 2010). It was converted to a film in 2006 that starred Tom Hanks. Hanks character interprets secret messages that are hidden in the painting and Da Vinci’s other artworks.Part 2The symbol that I often encounter every day is a Cross. I usually pass nearby a cathedral. The cross means the symbol is the intersection of the love of God and His justice. The next symbol is the apple logo, which I usually see on a billboard on my way to school. The symbol is derived from the Bible story of Adam and Eve. The bitten apple signifies the fruit from the ‘tree of knowledge’. The similarity of the symbols is their hidden meaningThe Cross The Apple Inc LogReferenceNick Pisa, 2010. Mona Lisa Painting ‘Contains Hidden Code:’ The Telegraph Media group Limited. Accessed on 26th February 2014 from telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8197896/Mona-Lisa-painting-contains-hidde n-code.html

The British Sport Horse Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

The British Sport Horse Industry - Essay Example The most important breakthrough in the thoroughbred industry was the commercialisation of horse breeding and the achievements of UK in international events. Local breeders were provided with avenues to improve on their crafts and continuously evolve equestrian in UK. In addition, the local breeders were given the autonomy to compete with the foreign breeders. The equine industry has several potentials including revenues for the government and ordinary individuals. Indeed, these developments are critical in the decision of investing on horse breeding. Definitely, breeding horses provide opportunities for investors to create local breeding fences that will house majority of the horses used for different purposes. The next discussions will assess the market for equestrian and the processes that have to be considered before entering to such venture. Also, other aspects that impact the proposed investment will be analysed. In the 1970s to the early 1890s, horses were principally imported and used for military purposes. The number of horses was less that 200,000 and valued currently at approximately 250 million Sterling Pounds. Because of the excessive cost, the government during that period suggested local breeding of horses. After the controversy in the British Equestrian industry, the government decided to create a new institution to manage the development of thoroughbreds used for equestrian. It is important for the country to improve its methods in breeding horses. (SHBGB, 2006) The government created the program involving the Ministry of Agriculture and War Office offered premiums to breeders. The project continued since the individuals from the military supported the financial necessities of the project. The project, however, was stalled when UK was involved in the Second World War. After the war, the project was backed first by the Totalisator Boards, and subsequently by the HBLB. The project became more independent and decided to stop the financial backing in support to its own operations. It was the start of a new era in the UK equine industry. (SHBGB, 2006) Through the years, the demand for horses has increased as equestrian and other events have become prominent. Selective breeding has been emphasised among local breeders. The focus of breeding shifted to quality and the promotion of competition. Consequently, the Sports Horse Breeding of Great Britain was established to regulate the industry. The committee determined the horses to be used in specific events such as equestrian. 1.2. The Current Situation The Sports Horse Breeding of Great Britain (SHBGB) is composed of professional with direct and indirect interest to horse breeding. SHBGB members select a council that will lead the society. Out of the 3,500 members, 15 will be selected as the representative of the society. To further expedite its functions, SHBGB divided the institutions into three sub-committees. These committees include: the Brood Mare Committee, the Stallion Committee, and the Show Committee. The sub-committees have tasks to perform to ensure that local bred horses are superior and perform beyond expectations. (SHBGB, 2006) Holistically, the purpose of SHBGB is to maintain the stud books. Moreover, SHBGB is tasked to disseminate information on the achievements of the British bred

International Marketing Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

International Marketing - Assignment Example Three aspects of McDonald’s global marketing management are discussed – the degree of standardization or adaptation of marketing mix, the globalization model employed, and the country of origin effect, of McDonald’s international operations. 1.0 Standardization or adaptation of McDonald’s marketing mix Critically analyse the extent that your chosen global brand’s marketing mix is standardised and/or adapted across international markets. Conclude by providing a 2-3 paragraph summary that discusses whether you consider this to be an appropriate strategy(s). Remember to support your answer. Product – McDonald’s continuously innovates its products in line with the changing tastes and preferences of its local market. An example is McDonald’s Indian market, where the customers are predominantly vegetarian. As a result of adaptation, the company removed some of its popular international offerings – ham, beef, and mutton burgers – from its menu, and instead offered a predominantly vegetarian menu. It does, however, offer Chicken Maharaja Mac, a recent concoction based on consumer taste. In Spain it has McMuffin con Huevo, and in Hawaii it has Kahuna Burger (Nation’s Restaurant News, 2005). Illustrated below is one of the localized products of McDonald’s, and a curiosity among Western customers used to the Big Mac. Below is shown the vegetarian burger specially developed for the Indian market, with the ingredients and taste custom designed to suit this growing market. Source: Bhartiya, et al., 2008, p. 22 Place – McDonald’s policy on place, specifically referring to distribution channels, is to have its product available to the customer at the right place, at the right time, and in the right quantity and quality. In the USA, nearly half of all customers are within a 3 minute drive to an outlet of McDonald’s. In the outlets, customers are offered McDonald’s â⠂¬Ëœvalue propositions’ – hygienic environment, pleasant ambience, specially programmed music, polite and prompt service. Certain areas are dedicated to children where an indoor playground is usually situated. More recently, internet wifi service has been provided. As far as place is concerned, McDonald’s maintains the same quality standard worldwide. Price – McDonald’s strategy of affording value pricing and bundling strategies are largely standardized, such as the happy meal, combo meal, and family meal, for which it offers discounted pricing. However, as to the price vis-a-vis meal portions, these are strategically adjusted to target the middle and lower income consumers. Promotion – McDonald’s promotional thrust is a combination of standardization and adaptation. Standardization is evident in the style, the message, and the use of the same mascots, particularly Ronald McDonald who has represented the company throughout the world s ince 1963. A market study determined that Ronald McDonald has the second highest name recall

Winter dreams Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Winter dreams - Essay Example During winter time, at the end of the year everyone makes himself a survey and sees what was wrong and right, and what he would have wanted to live or to have. Now the most interesting and unexpected dreams are born.Winter dreams differs from person to person, in accordance with the person's age, character, social and financial condition, religion and country. All these factors influence and shape a person's dreams because we refer to the ones around us and our needs.Winter dreams was a theme often used by the writers, poets or it was used in many magazines. Maybe people were inspired reading the novels, short stories, articles on this topic, but the truth is the exchange is reversed: in all these pieces of paper exist a bit of our soul.and writers wanted to take part in these dreams. Charles Dickens did this too and his contribution was greater than the other writers because his message moved many and succeeded to change something in the mentality of his age. "A Christmas Carol" was a novel about the holiest period of year and was considered a book which wanted to resurge the spirit of Christmas and which offered a brand new image to its values: kindness, cadge, forgiveness. This redefinition came in a decline period of this holiday. Thus, the book may be considered as an accomplished winter dream.Dickens organizes the structure of the novel in a certain way, hoping that the readers will see that winter dreams have changed the main character in the end, have made him a better person. The point of view is that of the main character, but this overlaps with the others. The author presents the story at third person singular, seeming that we are told an objective story, but through this technique the author gives the readers the possibility to see facts in their own opinion. Winter dreams and all those charity deeds are seen by the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge , with irony, but in fact he is the one chaffed. So, the readers can realize that Ebenezer's type of behavior regarding Christmas and winter dreams is not appropriate, and that those poor people he detests, will help him in the end to change. Ebenezer Scrooge is a greed selfish business man . In the beginning of the novel it can be said that he doesn't know the notion of dream(maybe only the proper meaning), but gradually it can be discovered that this term existed in his mind and soul but was repressed many years ago. This character is in fact a symbol for all those who want to minimize holidays and even life, shortening it to the financial prosperity. The first lines of the novel talk about the death of Jacob Marley, a good friend of Scrooge seven years ago . Then the action moves in the business man's office during the winter holidays. Charles Dickens does not aleatory use this number. Seven in Hebrew means to be complete , and it is associated with God, with the spiritual perfection1. In Bible and in different writings this number is used very often. If seven means a completed cycle it may emphasize a new beginning. So, Scrooge was doomed to this behavior seven years , but now a new chance was given to him. This symbol may be seen as a part of winter dreams , because we tend to think of God and the holy things during Christmas time. Scrooge is visited by three ghosts in Christmas Eve and this is the event that will make him change forever. Ghosts are an often used motif in winter writings because this period is considered to be the bridge moment between the two worlds: of livings and of deaths. The number of spirits, three , is full of meaning again: three represents what is solid, real, complete . God has three main characteristics: omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. This can

Week 2 discussion Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Week 2 discussion - Assignment Example 239), as well as balancing its flexibility. One of the methods of creating a balance between the need of flexibility with the need for stringent order for purposes of creating a culture of innovation is for an organization to reconsider its main aim of operation, and define its corporate objectives (Shehabuddeen, 2007). As the company experiences growth in its operations, it tends to employ new people, who come with a different mindset. This people have a higher tolerance of risk, as opposed to the old employees, who are stable and familiar with the business operations. To reconcile this people, the company must define its objectives, and create mechanisms that will ensure employees adhere to the rules and objectives of the organizations. The organization must restructure its goals, and its culture, and redefine the responsibility of older members of the organization, for purposes of encouraging innovation and flexibility in the business set up (Frankline et al, 2009). To create a balance between the need for flexibility and the need for stringent measures of a business organization, the organization needs to initiate a change in its recruitment process (Patel and Patel, 2008). It must create new methods of assigning duties, and change the manner of interaction within the organization. It must create a new reward policy that encourages innovation, as well as the need of stringency in the business set up. The traits to look for in recruitment are people with a right mind set, people willing to challenge the status quo, and individuals willing to learn and adapt a challenging environment. Finally, the organization needs review its internal and external operations. This is by creating a managerial group whose role and purpose is to communicate the expectations of the company to its employees (Shehabuddeen, 2007). This group will encourage innovation, and develop ways and methods of balancing the need of

Popular Culture Projects Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Popular Culture Projects - Essay Example Often it is found that the new innovation faced stiff resistance from what already was there, which can be named as traditional culture. But when the new culture infiltrates into the deeper layer of the society through various means it become the mass culture. It breaks all the societal taboos and mores framed earlier. One can say it is a cultural invasion. The whole world is witnessing now such a cultural invasion in the name of popular culture of the nineteenth and twentieth century. So many theories corroborate to the evolution of this popular culture which has deep impact on the every facet of human life. The new innovations due to large scale industrialization add to so called pop culture. Every moment the tradition in the society faces a competition with the modernity. But it is the people who decide what to prevail. Gone are those days when a few intellectual mass monopolized the culture and imposed that on the society to act accordingly. In this pop culture era elitist view o f the society take a backseat seeing the political culture changing its shape. Popular culture has been defined differently by different scholars. Raymond William(1983, p.237) argues that "the word 'popular' has at least four current meanings. First it can simply refer to those objects and practices that are well liked by a lot of people or it can refer to objects and practices deemed inferior and unworthy the term can also refer to work deliberately setting out to win favor with the people. Finally the term can refer to the objects and practices actually made by the people for themselves (cited by Harrington & Bielby, p.2) Alan Swingewood (1977, p.5-8) points out that the aristocratic theory of mass society is to be linked to the moral crisis caused by the weakening of traditional centers of authority such as family and religion. He also points out there is no question of domination here anymore. This view establishes the fact that popular culture has become the need of the people now (cited in Wikipedia, 2006) In modern urban mass society several factors contributed towards the evolution of popular culture such as 1. The development of industrial mass production, 2.the introduction of new technologies of sound and image broadcasting and recording, 3. the growth of mass production industries such as film, broadcast radio, television, book publishing industries as well as print and electronic news media (Wikipedia, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=Popular_culture&oldid=72053444) The distinction between the highbrow and lowbrow culture became very faint with the advent of this popular culture. "Soon the term 'middlebrow' was introduced to qualify this phenomenon and to dismiss it as threatening the authenticity of both high and popular culture"(Wikipedia, 2006) With the pop music, video, adventure sports, evolve some persons who make some lasting and indelible impressions in the minds of public and are termed as celebrities. According to David Marshall, Canadian media theorists and author of the book Clebrity and Power , celebrities were an invention that heralded the democratic ear of fame business. The term celebrity has its roots in latin word

Revaluation of Yuan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Revaluation of Yuan - Essay Example Although this devaluation will help the exports of the foreign countries to grow, it will hurt the domestic growth perspectives of China, including preservation of domestic growth and stability, and also the stability of political power. Unlike other countries, the communist political party of the country has maintained an equal distribution of goods and services and income among the poorest section of the country, being consistent with the high rate of economic growth. The author has opined that a sudden devaluation of Yuan will hurt the employment structure of the formal as well as the informal sector of the country. This reduction in employment will occur through shifting of â€Å"low-wage manufacturing to countries such as Vietnam and Sri Lanka†. This will cause the domestic rate of growth of income to reduce and thus the level of domestic protests and the degree of political instability will be accelerated in the country. However, as the country is willing to maintain its 8% annual rate of economic growth, with low rates of annual inflation of about 3%, the national propaganda of the country’s communist party is to stick to its current exchange rate determination process. Hence, the foreign countries and business organizations are expecting a much appreciated value of Yuan in the future; however, the future expectations of the economic and trade related effects on the Chinese and the global economy are required to be evaluated before proceeding with the revaluation policy (Lamont). The writer has wrongly revealed the point of view of the communist government of the country regarding the decrease in the amount of employment in the formal sector of the country. The devaluation of the Chinese currency in terms of other currencies will reduce the level of employment in the formal sector of the country and will increase the level of unemployment in the country as large section of the country’s industrial sector is dependent upon the indigen ous technologies. If the country is made open with significant reduction in the value of the Yuan, then it is most likely that the business leaders of the global enterprises will start investing in the industrial sector of the country. This will induce significant level of foreign technologies across the country that will increase the level of unemployment consisting of those laborers who are unable to work with those foreign technologies. However, the notion that the devaluation will reduce the level of employment and will hurt the growth process of the country is not entirely true. This is due to the fact that currency devaluation will increase the level of country’s exports of different goods and services. This will also induce the indigenous products and services to reach the global market and thus the level of production of these goods and services will rise up. This will essentially increase the level of income in these indigenous industries and thus the level of invest ments in technological development will be raised. Hence, not only the future level of income will rise up, this will lead to greater level of development of various indigenous technologies (with the help of significant integration of indigenous technologies with global technologies). Hence, the level of future growth rate of income will also rise up in the country and this will be sustainable as well. Greater amounts of exports will also help the informal

How online newspaper reporting will influence the adjustment of Literature review

How online newspaper reporting will influence the adjustment of foreign policy in democratic and autocratic countries - Literature review Example There are two major aspects that may define the extent to which the media influence the foreign policy making process. First, the level of direct knowledge that the public has on the agenda of the foreign policy discussion determines the level of media influence on the formulation of foreign policy (Croteau & Hoynes, 1997:54). This is because; under circumstances where the public has a high level of knowledge in relation to the agenda, such as the existence of a foreign crisis that the public is aware of, such an agenda is likely to generate a high level of public opinion that demands that the policy formulators must pay attention to the views and feelings of the public, regarding the policy (Altschull, 1984:32). For example, where a country is to enter into a foreign trade agreement with other foreign nations relating to the exploitation of a country’s resources, the media plays the role of informing the public, which in turn raises a public opinion that demands the ear of th e policy formulators. On the hand, where the foreign policy agenda is an issue that the public has little or no direct knowledge about, the media plays the role of publicizing the issue, so that the public becomes aware of the existence of such a policy agenda, and thus raises its opinion. Secondly, the nature of the effect that the policy agenda will directly have on the people also defines the level of media influence on the foreign policy making process (Graber, 2006:937).

Revaluation of Yuan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Revaluation of Yuan - Essay Example Although this devaluation will help the exports of the foreign countries to grow, it will hurt the domestic growth perspectives of China, including preservation of domestic growth and stability, and also the stability of political power. Unlike other countries, the communist political party of the country has maintained an equal distribution of goods and services and income among the poorest section of the country, being consistent with the high rate of economic growth. The author has opined that a sudden devaluation of Yuan will hurt the employment structure of the formal as well as the informal sector of the country. This reduction in employment will occur through shifting of â€Å"low-wage manufacturing to countries such as Vietnam and Sri Lanka†. This will cause the domestic rate of growth of income to reduce and thus the level of domestic protests and the degree of political instability will be accelerated in the country. However, as the country is willing to maintain its 8% annual rate of economic growth, with low rates of annual inflation of about 3%, the national propaganda of the country’s communist party is to stick to its current exchange rate determination process. Hence, the foreign countries and business organizations are expecting a much appreciated value of Yuan in the future; however, the future expectations of the economic and trade related effects on the Chinese and the global economy are required to be evaluated before proceeding with the revaluation policy (Lamont). The writer has wrongly revealed the point of view of the communist government of the country regarding the decrease in the amount of employment in the formal sector of the country. The devaluation of the Chinese currency in terms of other currencies will reduce the level of employment in the formal sector of the country and will increase the level of unemployment in the country as large section of the country’s industrial sector is dependent upon the indigen ous technologies. If the country is made open with significant reduction in the value of the Yuan, then it is most likely that the business leaders of the global enterprises will start investing in the industrial sector of the country. This will induce significant level of foreign technologies across the country that will increase the level of unemployment consisting of those laborers who are unable to work with those foreign technologies. However, the notion that the devaluation will reduce the level of employment and will hurt the growth process of the country is not entirely true. This is due to the fact that currency devaluation will increase the level of country’s exports of different goods and services. This will also induce the indigenous products and services to reach the global market and thus the level of production of these goods and services will rise up. This will essentially increase the level of income in these indigenous industries and thus the level of invest ments in technological development will be raised. Hence, not only the future level of income will rise up, this will lead to greater level of development of various indigenous technologies (with the help of significant integration of indigenous technologies with global technologies). Hence, the level of future growth rate of income will also rise up in the country and this will be sustainable as well. Greater amounts of exports will also help the informal

Womenwomen Empowerment Through Self Help Group Essay Example for Free

Womenwomen Empowerment Through Self Help Group Essay The present study is an attempt to analyse the role and performance of SHGs in promoting womens empowerment in Thiruvallur District , Tamil nadu. The broad objective ofthe study is to analyses the operating system of SHGs for mobilization of saving,delivery of credit to the needy, management of group funds, repayment of loans, in building up leadership,establishing linkage with banks and examine the social benefits derived by the members. In order to collect and gather primary data, field observation and structure questionnaire survey methods were employed. In addition, information was also collected through discussions and interviews with local NGOs and governments grass roots level workers. The Mahalir Thittam was implemented in Phase I during the Year 1997-98 in Thiruvallur district. In Thiruvallur District there are 539 Village Panchayat (Grama Panchayat). SHGs are formed in all Village Panchayat and the number of Self Help Groups will be from 3 to 11. In order to reduce the dependency of SHGs on its project partners, it has been decided to form Panchayat Level Federation in every Village Panchayats. The Panchayat Level Federation will consist of the members of the representatives from various SHGs in that particulars Village Panchayats. At present, there are 296 PLFs in Thiruvallur District compressing of 2106 Self Help Groups. The study reveals that SHGs had set a new agenda for financial intermediation by banks in the form of micro-credit. By the formation of SHGs, credits are demanded for various purposes (domestic, health, festivals, repayment of old debts, investment, etc. ). Similarly different economic activities Manufacturing of Paper Cup ,Jute Bag ,Catering Technology,Leather and Rexene ,Tailoring,Herbal Products ,Beauty Parlour,Soap Manufacturing,Agarbathi ,Diary products, Screen Printing are undertaken by the SHG members after joining the group. Habits of savings, economic independence, self confidence, social cohesion, asset ownership, freedom from debt, additional employment, etc. benefits are derived by the SHG members. Thus, SHGs have served the cause of women empowerment, social solidarity and socio-economic betterment of the poor for their consolidation.

Consumer Expectations Before and After Purchase

Consumer Expectations Before and After Purchase Introduction: Background to research: Until recently, consumer behaviourists had many theories of satisfaction. Rather, a post decision phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance (Festinger1957) was thought to provide a sufficient framework for understanding post purchase responses. Researchers later expanded the theories more recent theoretical and empirical works (Andreasen 1977; Day 1977; Oliver 1977) generally agree that satisfaction results from a subjective comparison of the expected and received product attribute levels, as originally proposed by (Engel 1968), but that the exact nature of satisfaction process is unknown. In addition psychological concept remains in dispute. Why the customer would seek out one -and only one-branded object or brand set to fulfil his or her needs? This is the pertinent question because the present era of global competition seemingly would enable the customer to move to better alternatives as soon as they materialised. Product improvements, refinements, and innovations are new product introductions are predicted. (See cooper 1993,p.4).Satisfaction research has been â€Å"king† spawned by the widespread adoption of the marketing concept, efforts to align marketing strategy with the goal of maximizing customer satisfaction have been pursued in earnest by the product and service providers (post purchase research 1993 wylie, p.1).( Richard L Oliver journal of marketing; 1999; 63, p. 33) Context of research: The purpose of Research: 1. The purpose of this study is to balance service quality and product quality into an integrated model. 2. The management of the company can make different strategies to make the customers satisfied to full extent. 3. The outcomes of the research helps the top level managers to make their strategies in production and servicing for their products for the new and existing customers. 4. To explore the effects of the three consumer perceptions (product quality, service quality and price fairness) on satisfaction and loyal behaviour. Automobile industry maintenance service is chosen as an examined object because both â€Å"technicians, skills and parts† quality are essential to consumers. Perceived quality: As stated by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985), quality has been a complex but vague construct which demands further investigation for the industries to highlight product and service quality as satisfaction management. It should be defined as the consumers judgement about a products overall excellence or superiority. Consumer product perceived quality is positively related to consumer loyalty. Perceived service quality: Parsuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry established the five-gap model in 1985, which established the structure and measurement of the methods to measure service quality and consumer satisfaction were basically the same, with both based on comparisons of expectation and performance. Perceived service quality is positively related to customer satisfaction. (Journal of consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction and complaining behaviour; 2001; 14, p 125) (Parsuraman Zeithaml, and Berry, vol 52 April 1988, p39) they indicate that consumers quality perceptions are influenced by a series of four distinct gaps occurring in organisations. The gaps on service providers side, which can impede delivery of services that consumers perceive to be of high quality, are: 1. Difference between consumer expectations and management perceptions of consumer expectations. 2. Difference between management perceptions of consumer expectations and service quality specifications. 3. Difference between service quality specifications and the service actually delivered. 4. Difference between service delivery and what is communicated about the service to consumers. The mangers of service providers need to know how to measure the service quality, and whether consumers actually purchase from the firms that have the highest level of perceived service quality or from those with which they are most â€Å"satisfied.† (Cronin, j.joseph, jr July 1992.) Expected outcomes: The aim of the proposed research is to: Develop an attractive environment in the dealers service station. Develop a good media and communication in solving the queries of the customers. The actual response of satisfaction from the customers on the company products and services. LITERATURE REVIEW: Executive summary: All marketers need to be aware of the effect of globalization, technology, and deregulation. Rather than try to satisfy everyone, marketers start with market segmentation and develop a market offering that is positioned in the minds of the target market. To satisfy the target markets needs, wants, and demands, marketers create a Product, one of the 10 types of entities (goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas). Marketers must search hard for the core need they are trying to satisfy, remembering that their products will be successful only if they deliver value (the ratio of benefits and costs) to customers. Every marketing exchange requires at least two parties—both with something valued by the other party, both capable of communication and delivery, both free to accept or reject the offer, and both finding it appropriate or desirable to deal with the other. One agreement to exchange constitutes a transaction, part of the larger idea of relationship marketing. Through relationship marketing, organizations aim to build enduring, mutually satisfying bonds with customers and other key parties to earn and Retain their long-term business. Reaching out to a target market entails communication channels, distribution channels, and selling channels. The supply chain, which stretches from raw materials to the final products for final buyers, represents a value delivery system. Marketers can capture more of the supply chain value by acquiring competitors or expanding upstream or downstream. In the marketing environment, marketers face brand, industry, form, and generic competition. The marketing environment can be divided into the task environment (the immediate actors in producing, distributing, and promoting the product offering) and the broad environment (forces in the demographic, economic, natural, technological, political-legal, and social-cultural environment). To succeed, marketers must pay close attention to the trends and developments in these environments and make timely adjustments to their marketing strategies. Within these environments, Marketers apply the marketing mix—the set of marketing tools used to pursue marketing objectives in the target market. The marketing mix consists of the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. Companies can adopt one of five orientations toward the marketplace. The production concept assumes that consumers want widely available, affordable products; the product concept assumes that consumer want products with the most quality, performance, or innovative features; the selling concept assumes that customers will not buy enough products without an aggressive selling and promotion effort; the marketing concept assumes the firm must be better than competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating customer value to its chosen target markets; and the societal marketing concept assumes that the firm must satisfy customers more effectively and efficiently than competitors while still preserving the consumers and the societys wellbeing. Keeping this concept in mind, smart companies will add â€Å"higher order† image attributes to supplement both rational and emotional benefits. The combination of technology, globalization, and deregulation is influencing customers, brand manufacturers, and store-based retailers in a variety of ways. Responding to the changes and new demands brought on by these forces has caused many companies to make adjustments. In turn, savvy marketers must also alter their marketing activities, tools, and approaches to keep pace with the changes they will face today and tomorrow. Receiving service: The convenience of receiving service is presumably lowest when a customer has to come to the service organisation and must use specific outlet. Offering service through several outlets increases the convenience of access for customers but many start to raise problems of quality control as convenience of access relates to the consistency of the service product delivered. For some type of services the companies come to customer. This is, of course, essential when the target of the service is some immovable physical item (such as a building that needs repairs or pest control treatment, or a garden that needs land-scaping). But since its usually more expensive to take service personnel and equipment to the customer than vice versa, the trend has been away from this approach to delivering consumer services. The key to generating high customer loyalty is to deliver high customer value. A companys value proposition is much more than its positioning on a single attribute. Most of the successful companies are raising expectations and delivering performances to match. These companies are aiming for TCS Total Customer Satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is both a goal and a marketing tool. Companies that achieve high customer satisfaction ratings make sure that their target market is known. After sales support management system is apart of ERP Enterprise Resource Planning solution dealing with the support module after the sales of product. It creates an advanced environment to the organization, which are in to technical support after sales e.g. Companies offering electronic goods and motor vehicles etc. The functional features include: Customer complaints tracking Service engineers information tracking Job scheduling for the complaints Spares management Online support Reports. Customer complaints tracking: Complaint is the starting point of any technical support system. With out a client request the technical support is not initiated. Complaint tracking is done as follows: Client may come down or make a phone call or complaint online The client is validated. The client may have an annual maintenance contract or may have a product in warranty or of warranty. The intensity of the complaint is to be estimated to allocate resources. Expected service type has to be finalized. It may be online assistance indoor or onsite assistance. Service Engineers Information tracking: Information about the engineers is inevitable in job scheduling. Information about the engineers has to be added, deleted or modified in the database. It may contain the following: The name, id of the engineer; the skill set of the engineer; the status of the engineer. Job scheduling for the complaints: Job scheduling means sequencing the request with respect to its intensity, Assignment of a service engineer and creating a job card. It is done to optimize the technical resources and to render the best service to the customer. Minor problem are processed by technicians and complex requests are handled by the expert team. The job card includes the following: The complaint id, the assigned engineer id, the data and time of service, the spare details, no. of man hours required etc. The spare part name and serial number. The available quantity of each spare part. The prize, warranty and other specifications. The suppliers information. Online support: The service is done online also. The client may visit the website to obtain basic support information about the product and FAQ. He can chat with the service engineer on phone or online. Report: The report reflects the current status of the system. The reports that can be generated are as follows: Customer request report and status of the system. Service engineer report provides the information about the skills and strengths of the support team. Job scheduling report states the allotment of the engineers to jobs. Spares report discloses the availability of all the spares in the system. Receipts and payments report gives information about the cash flow in the System, generation of bills: Customer satisfaction tracking: Customer satisfaction is the key concept to dictate the future of the organization. In order to maximize the customer satisfaction along with quick response and efficient service some other activities are to be performed. They may be as follows: Reception of the customer with hospitality. Entertaining environment to the customer. Providing guidance about the usage and maintenance of the product. Offering gift and discounts. Toyota company profile and Feedback and Control: As it implements its strategy, the firm needs to track the results and monitor new developments in the internal and external environments. Some environments are fairly stable from year to year. Other environments evolve slowly in a fairly predictable way. Still other environments change rapidly in significant and unpredictable ways. Nonetheless, the company can count on one thing: The marketplace will change. And when it does, the company will Need to review and revise its implementation, programs, strategies, or even objectives. A companys strategic fit with the environment will inevitably erode because the market environment changes faster than the companys 7-Ss. Thus a company might remain efficient while it loses effectiveness. Peter Drucker pointed out that it is more important to â€Å"do the right thing† (effectiveness) than â€Å"to do things right† (efficiency). The most successful companies excel at both. Once an organization fails to respond to a changed environment, it has difficulty recapturing its lost position. This happened to the once-unassailable Motorola when it was slow to respond to the new digital technology used by Nokia and others, and kept rolling out analogue phones.17 Similarly, Barnes Noble did not immediately recognize the threat posed by Amazon. COMs Internet-based book retailing model; then, as a latecomer to e-commerce, it had more of a struggle establishing itself. Clearly, the key to organizational health is the firms willingness to examine the changing environment and to adopt appropriate new goals and behaviours. High-performance organizations continuously monitor the environment and use flexible strategic planning to maintain a viable fit with the evolving environment. Toyota Motor Corporation, Japans #1 carmaker, has a driving ambition to become greener. The company makes a hybrid-powered (gas and electric) sedan the Prius that isbeing snapped up in US and European markets. Its gas-powered cars, pickups, minivans, and SUVs include such models as Camry,Corolla, 4Runner,Land Cruiser, Sienna, the luxury Lexus line, the new Scion brand, and a full-sized pickup truck, the V-8 Tundra. Toyota also makes forklifts and manufactured housing, and offers consumer financial services. Once a dark horse in the global automotive game, Toyota has begun to close the gap on General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, and has already passed Ford Motor. While most of its North American and European competitors are contracting their operations due to falling demand and overcapacity, Toyota is growing to meet increased global demand. The company has an expressed plan of gaining a global 10% share of the automotive market by the early 2010s. To do this, Toyota feels it must build the cars where, or very near where, they will be bought. To this end Toyota opened new vehicle plants in the Czech Republic in 2005 and is scheduled to open its 11th US plant in San Antonio, Texas in 2006. The greatest focus of Toyotas overseas strategy is currently in China, a country that is expected to become the second-largest car market (behind the US) by 2010. By that year Toyota wants to have a 10% market share in China. Like its competitors, Toyota is beefing up its Chinese operations by joining forces with local automotive players. With its Chinese partner China FAW Group Corporation, Toyota builds Land Cruisers and Corollas in China. Through another agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Group, Toyota began jointly developing engines in 2005. Also in association with Guangzhou Automobile, in 2006 the first Chinese-built Camry rolled off the assembly line in Nansha near Hong Kong. The Camry is the best-selling car in the US and has been a leading import in China. The Chinese-built Camrys are priced to move in an effort to quickly boost Toyotas market share. Late in 2006 Toyota fired a salvo over the deck of GM when it said it aimed to build 9.8 million vehicles by 2008. GM sold 9 .2 million vehicles in 2005 the second-largest volume the company has ever produced in a single year. The announcement came at a time when GM and its equally bedraggled US counterpart Ford are desperately trimming capacity to stay competitive. Toyota out-built Ford back in 2003 and now has GM in its sights. While growing its worldwide production base; Toyota has committed itself to leading the charge toward the development of more efficient, environmentally friendly vehicles, primarily powered by hybrid gasoline-electric technology. Toyotas global production of hybrids in 2005 totalled 151,000 units, or two-and-one-half times production levels of the previous fiscal year. Toyotas hybrid plans going forward are even more ambitious. The company says it wants to build one million hybrids by the early 2010s. In addition to the Prius, Toyota currently offers hybrid versions of the Highlander SUV and the venerable Camry. Late in 2006 Toyota bought a 5.9% stake in Isuzu Motors. The two companies plan to cooperate on engine technologies with Isuzu concentrating on small diesel engines and diesel emission controls while Toyota will focus on environmental improvements for gasoline engines and alternative fuels. The move marks the second time in as many years that Toyota has taken advantage of a broken GM alliance with a Japanese partner. Toyota bought an 8.7% stake in Fuji Heavy Industries from GM in 2005. History In 1926 Sakichi Toyoda founded Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. In 1930 he sold the rights to the loom he invented and gave the proceeds to his son Kiichiro Toyoda to begin an automotive business. Kiichiro opened an auto shop within the loom works in 1933. When protectionist legislation (1936) improved prospects for Japanese automakers, Kiichiro split off the car department, took it public (1937), and changed its name to Toyota. During WWII the company made military trucks, but financial problems after the war caused Toyota to reorganize in 1950. Its post war commitment to RD paid off with the launch of the four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser (1951); full-sized Crown (1955); and the small Corona (1957). Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., debuted the Toyopet Crown in the US in 1957, but it proved underpowered for the US market. Toyota had better luck with the Corona in 1965 and with the Corolla (which became the best-selling car of all time) in 1968. By 1970 Toyota was the worlds fourth-largest carmaker. Toyota expanded rapidly in the US. During the 1970s the oil crisis caused demand for fuel-efficient cars, and Toyota was there to grab market share from US makers. In 1975 Toyota displaced Volkswagen as the USs #1 auto importer. Toyota began auto production in the US in 1984 through NUMMI, its joint venture with GM. The Lexus line was launched in the US in 1989 Because of the European Communitys restrictions on Japanese auto imports until the year 2000, Toyotas European expansion slowed. Toyota responded in 1992 by agreeing to distribute cars in Japan for Volkswagen and also by establishing an engine plant (later moved to full auto production) in the UK. The sport utility vehicle (SUV) mania of the 1990s spurred Toyotas introduction of luxury minivans and light trucks. Hiroshi Okuda, a 40-year veteran with Toyota and the first person from outside the Toyoda family to run the firm, succeeded Tatsuro Toyoda as president in 1995. The next year Toyota consolidated its North American production units into Cincinnati-based Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America. In 1997 Toyota introduced the Prius, a hybrid electric- and gas-powered car. The next year Toyota boosted its stake in affiliate Daihatsu (mini-vehicles) to about 51% and started Toyota Map master (51%owned), to Make map databases for car navigation systems. Okuda became chairman in 1999, replacing Shoichiro Toyota, and Fujio Cho became president. Also that year Toyota agreed to form a joint venture with Isuzu to manufacture buses, and it announced plans to invest $800 million to boost US auto production by 16% (200,000 vehicles) to about 1.45 million. In 2000 Toyota launched the Will VI, a sedan aimed at young people. It announced that it was building an online replacement parts marketplace with i2 Technology and that it had formed a financial services company (Toyota Financial Service) and a brokerage firm (Toyota Financial Services Securities Corp.). Toyota also bought a 5% stake in Yamaha (the worlds #2 motorcycle maker) and raised its stake in truck maker Hino Motors from about 20% to almost 34%. International developments included Toyotas agreement with the Chinese government to produce passenger cars for sale in China. The cars are to be built by Tianjin Toyota Motor Corp., a joint venture between Chinese carmaker Tianjin Automobile Xiali and Toyota. Early in 2001 Toyota opened a new plant in France. Later that year the company formed an agreement with PSA Peugeot Citroà «n to begin joint car production in Europe (production began in 2005). Toyota also increased its stake in Hino Motors to 50% with partners Toyoda Gosei, Ltd. and Horie Metal Co., Ltd., Toyota formed a joint venture in 2002 to manufacture resin fuel tank systems. In 2004 Toyota announced that it would establish 14 Lexus dealerships in China; the dealers were all open by mid-2005. Later in 2004 Toyota forged a joint venture agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd. to build engines in China In 2005 Toyota bought just fewer than 9% of General Motors 20% stake in Fuji Heavy Industries the Japanese maker of Subaru passenger vehicles. Satisfaction as defined: The satisfaction was â€Å"the buyers cognitive state of being adequately rewarded for the sacrifice he has undergone† (Howard and Sheth 1969, p.145). Hunt (1997b) summarised the feelings of a number of speakers at the first consumer satisfaction conference among the definitions offered were need fulfilment, pleasure/displeasure, expectation-performance interactions, evaluation of the purchase or Consumption experience, evaluation of the benefits of consumption, comparison of actual with ideal outcomes, and the Attribute â€Å"deficit/ surplus† obtained from the purchase. On the basis of the diverse views, Hunt concluded that satisfaction is an evaluation rendered that the product experience was at least as good as it was supposed to be,† in effect an â€Å"evaluation of an emotion†(pp.459-460). Satisfaction may be best understood as an evaluation of the surprise inherent in a product acquisition and/or consumption experience. In essence, it is the summary psychological state resulting when the emotion surrounding disconfirmed expectations is coupled with the consumers prior feelings about the consumption experience. (Richard L. Oliver.) When you visit your favourite restaurant, you expect to have a nice meal. That positive expectation, in itself, is a form of satisfaction. We call it anticipation-satisfaction. When the host sees you and remembers your name, thats recognition-satisfaction. Of course, once youve had that tasty, filling meal, and you feel a warm glow, that outcome is also a satisfaction. Its called need-satisfaction. What happens when youre so pleased with a restaurant that you go out of your way to rave about it to your friends? Thats referral or recommendation-satisfaction. And when the restaurant manager says, â€Å"Come again,† and you reply, â€Å"You can bet on it!† youve expressed a recommitment, or what we call, pledge-satisfaction. What happens when the owner gives you a free dessert just for being a great patron, and youre surprised and delighted about it? Thats what we refer to as surprise-satisfaction. Seeing and being seen in a trendy eatery confers an additional perk: status -satisfaction. As you can see, dining out can lead to several forms of customer satisfaction, and I havent listed half of them. Whatever our business is, we need to know whether were serving our customers as capably as we can, so which satisfaction definitions and measures should we use? Defining customer satisfaction is a very important undertaking—one that even the most customer-focused companies, fail to do. If we dont define it carefully, how can we monitor and measure it, let alone produce it on a consistent and reliable basis? If you ask most business owners how they define satisfaction, sooner or later theyll mention repeat business. Theyll ask, do customers come back and buy again? This is retention-satisfaction. Retention-satisfaction is especially significant because it can be rather easily monitored, and it can be measured in dollars and cents. But it isnt foolproof. This article entitled, â€Å"Just Because They Buy Again Doesnt Mean Theyre Satisfied.† I pointed out that clients might feel they have no other viable choice than to buy from you. Cable television customers used to fit this profile before they could sign-up for satellite-television. Customer service departments are known to track dissatisfaction more than satisfaction. Theyll carefully note every angry letter that comes in the mail, believing that there are perhaps 50 or 100 people who feel the same way, but who didnt bother to write. Paying attention to letters is fine, but the inferences we make about how many silent customers they represent, is little more than a wild hunch. Moreover, service providers shouldnt infer that the absence of angry letters implies the presence of happy customers. Instead of counting letters, Id rather monitor and interpret customer satisfaction behaviours as they occur. The best time to do this is when service transactions conclude. Why wait days or weeks to receive a letter, which only one-in-ten thousand people might write? When you monitor actual transactions, you can tap into a large, continuous universe of customers that is much more representative of feelings-at-large. For instance, we monitor and measure at least three customer behaviours: (1) Their voice inflections; (2) The language they use to express gratitude; and (3) Their pledges to do additional business after being subtly cued to indicate this intention.(To learn more about this system, please refer to my book, Monitoring, Measuring, Managing Customer Service: Jossey-Bass/JohnWiley:2000). How do you measure customer satisfaction? Is it connected to real customer value? When was the last time you seriously explored alternatives? By taking a fresh look at these questions you can create true breakthroughs. You can systematically deliver todays satisfactions while inventing tomorrow Market Definition: The automotive aftermarket is valued according to the retail selling price (RSP), including taxes, of service parts, wear tear parts, mechanical parts, tires, crash repair and consumables accessories. Service parts include filters, wiper blades, ignition plugs and engine oil components. Wear tear Parts include batteries, emission systems, brake pads discs and ride control. Mechanical parts are defined as those parts which are neither changed as part of a service are considered to be wear tear parts. These include transmission and power train parts. Crash repair includes body parts, lighting, glass, paint and solvents. Consumables include cleaners, waxes, polishes, windscreen washes and antifreeze. Accessories include in-car entertainment, alarms security, alloy wheels, storage, interiors (mats etc.) and exteriors (spoilers etc.). Labour charges and wholesale-related revenues are not included. The data only relates to the market for the repair of light vehicles (cars light commercial vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes in weight). Any currency conversions used in the creation of this report have been calculated using constant 2004 annual average exchange rates. Market analysis: The European auto aftermarket sector reported disappointing results for 2001-2005.Annual growth remained marginal at the outset of the review period in 2002-2003, before entering a decline that is expected to last until the end of 2010.The European auto aftermarket generated total revenues of $89.7 billion in 2005, representing a compound annual rate of change (CARC) of -0.2% for the five-year period spanning 2001-2005. The slump in the market was primarily driven by decline in the German, UK and French markets. Positive growth was exhibited by the Spanish and Italian markets. Sales of mechanical parts form the leading segment in the market, generating total revenues of $27.9 billion in 2005, equivalent to 31.1% of the overall market value. In comparison, the crash repair sector was worth $19 billion, which represented a 21.1% share of the markets value. Looking forward, the European auto aftermarket is expected to decelerate from its current value growth position. With an anticipate d CARC of -0.5% over the 2005-2010 periods, the market is expected to reach a value of $87.5 billion by the end of 2010. Further decline in the French and German markets will act to undermine total revenue for the region; however, the UK market is expected to recover. Competitive landscape: In 2002, the German-based Volkswagen had the largest market share in Europe, with18.4%of new registrations. However, this was almost half a point lower than in the previous year. The company managed to keep revenues and operating costs stable over the period despite lower sales, due to price increases above inflation as well as cost-cutting measures. PSA Peugeot Citroà «n is close behind Volkswagen, and increased its market share by more than half a point in 2002. Indeed, in 2002 the Peugeot 206 overtook the VW Golf as the best-selling car in Europe. The market is highly competitive at the top end, PSA are only than three points ahead of Ford, a company which could well bounce back if its cost-cutting measures fulfil their initial promise. For all three companies, the necessity is to keep on churning out bright and successful new models, and PSA currently looks like it has the edge in terms of technology and design. Below these three companies, Renault, GM and Fiat have been loosing market share, or in Renaults case hanging on to what they have with only a thread. Fiat has suffered from flooding in one of its main parts factories, which has further set back the already beleaguered Italian car maker, but the company has not yet released details of its long-term recovery plans, if it has any. Despite the openness of European car markets, national loyalty still plays a great influence. In France, PSA and Renault lead, whereas in Germany, Italy and Spain, Volkswagen, Fiat and Seat respectively have strong positions. The smaller count ries in Europe provide an exception to this rule, as Belgium and the Netherlands have no substantial car manufacturers of their own but instead act as distribution hubs for other countries. The UK market is led by the large American companies, which cynics may say illustrates where its loyalties lie. Leadin

Hemingway And nada :: essays research papers

Hemingway and "Nada" In "The light of the world" written by Ernest Hemingway Steve Ketchel, a boxer symbolizes a Jesus figure for a woman called Alice. Alice, a 350 pound, unpleasant prostitute struggles with her current life. Her central being focuses at the belief that she had a sexual relationship with Steve Ketchel. This wishful illusion arises from a complex she has because of her ugly and unpleasant appearance. Nick Adams, the main Hemingway character, believes that Alice, although she has really given up her life, still has the chance to change and live a happy life. Steven K. Hoffman would call this belief Alice has "nada". Nada is a term used in Hemingways story "A clean well lighted place". Steven K. Hoffman interpreted the word in an Essay he wrote. The word nada translated to English, basically means "nothing". But further it means much more than the simple word nothing. Nada from the point of Alice's view means that there is nothing behind of her belief. That means that her life is not based on a concrete belief. She does not believe in any religion; her religion is Ketchel. That arises from her place in society. In society she is ranked very low. A prostitute has nothing to say in our society. And since she is that low she cant set her goals higher. Her goals could be the goals Jesus talks about. Her goal in life was and still is to sleep with more and more guys. Back to nada it means that she has nothing; nothing to believe in and nothing to live for. Alice lives in an illusion. It seems that she suppresses the fact that she is a fat prostitute. How much lower can you get? She suppresses her problems with her dreams and illusions. The most important belief is that she had a sexual relationship with Ketchel. That is her main belief. For a normal American, Jesus would the most important belief. Ketchel gives her the strength to withstand her complexes. Ketchel in other words symbolizes Jesus. That is of course very sad. When comparing Jesus with Ketchel, you will not find any connecting. Ketchel is just a popular boxer among her friends and she knows nothing more of him. For her Ketchel is more than just a man to have sex with. As said, for her Ketchel is Jesus. "There was never a man like that.", said Alice. Alice did not succeed in her life. Not that it is over, but till now she did not make herself happy. She is unhappy, she is a prostitute and the most

Concord University Department of Education :: Colleges Education Teaching Essays

Concord University Department of Education Philosophy Statement Forest Witcraft once said, "One hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the size of my house, or what kind of car I drove. But the world may be a little better, because I was important in the life of a child." Teachers are not just educators; they are parents, social workers, nurses, and even friends. I believe that a good teacher can play all of those roles and more at the same time, without wavering. Children are not only our future, but they are our present. Without children, there is no hope, no love, or no potential. If our children cannot look to us, educators, as role models, who will they look too? I feel that the only way to become a good role model is to be an effective teacher. By using an open mind and an open heart, I plan to touch the life of a child in a positive, educational manner. For if one life can be forever changed, so will mine. The definition of education is â€Å"the action or process of educating or of being educated, knowledge and development resulting from an educational process† (Webster Online Dictionary, 2004). We are not just talking about teaching, we are talking about effective teaching; Bringing a child from dark to light when it comes to learning. But how do we teach effectively? I believe motivation is the best key. If you cannot motivate your student’s to their best, then you’re not being an effective teacher. For this motive, teachers should make the learning process fun. If learning is fun and entertaining, students learn and don’t even realize it. Also, to be an effective teacher we must have high standards and high expectations. High standards and expectations make the students expand their minds and they are forced to excel in their work. But can you force students to excel? Yes, with the proper incentive. This then brings us back to motivation. As teacher, we should not strive to be good, but strive to be the best. For if we as instructors reach for the best, so will our students. Our attitudes are greatly reflected onto our children. I remember so many times having teachers who were just at school for the pay check and how it greatly showed in their work. I also remember teachers who were genuinely excited about teaching.

Office 365

Abstract This project will centers on Microsoft office 365. We are going to discuss how Microsoft Office 365 have the ability to impact the business environment in a way that we never thought it was possible. In this report we will be describing Microsoft office 365, its benefits, how it will be implemented into the business, its critical assessments, course integration, and we will compare and contrast some of the review on this technology. Office 365 Table of Contents Summary4 Benefits6 Implementation Plan8 Course Integration9 Critical Assessment: Critique Technology (Compare and Contrast the technology)11 Review of Technology11 Compare and contrast12 Pricing12 Storage13 Works Cited13 Summary Office 365 is a new offering from Microsoft that utilizes the cloud to provide online, seamless, collaboration for businesses and non-profit organizations. Office 365 contains all the familiar applications and productivity tools that everyone is already familiar with, but hosts them in a cloud environment that minimizes maintenance and storage costs while allowing individuals to work from virtually anywhere and on any device. As a cloud-based service, Office 365 offers all the benefits you would expect from a hosted software suite. The pay-as-you-go model allows organizations to pay for only what they need at any given time by increasing and decreasing subscriptions on the fly. With highly automated maintenance, dynamic storage capabilities and deployment flexibility, local IT departments can spend less resources managing desktop software and focus their efforts on strategic initiatives. The largest impact of using the cloud-based Office 365 suite  ¬will be visible to both, users and IT departments. Users will always have the latest features by performing upgrades behind the scenes without any interaction from local IT departments at no additional cost. Microsoft Office 365 consists of five components that are aimed at increasing the productivity of the user base. These include the Office Professional Plus, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Web Apps, and Lync Online. While each of those components are all cloud-based through the web, they carry the same user-interface and familiarity with the existing Microsoft offerings for desktops. Additionally, content and documents can be transferred back and forth between the desktop applications and Office 365 applications seamlessly. First on the list of offerings in the Microsoft Office 365 suite is the Office Professional Plus package. This package consists of all the traditional Microsoft Office applications including, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and OneNote. Each of these applications functions almost identically to their desktop variants and carries the same user interface. Users will be familiar with the environment and require minimal training. While the Office Professional Package allows you to create, modify and view documents, it relies on another component to store, organize, and manage the documents and content. This is the SharePoint Online component. At its core, SharePoint Online is a content management system that allows for collaboration, workflows, real-time updates, and access level management. In addition to the traditional content management functionality, SharePoint Online is also a web portal that allows organizations to create websites and communicate enterprise wide. Functionality includes, but is not limited to wikis, blogs, and discussion forums. The Exchange Online and Lync Online components are all about communication. Exchange Online is an online, service-based email server that works very much like Microsoft Exchange Server. It includes email functionality, content management, and calendar management. Lync Online takes this one step further by adding video and web conferencing functionality, enterprise instant messaging and virtual meetings. All of these communication features of Office 365 are available online from virtually anywhere. Being able to access everything from virtually anywhere is complimented by the ability to use almost any type of device to use Office 365. This includes cell phones, tablets, and even kiosks in malls and other public places. This functionality comes from the Web Apps component of Office 365. Web Apps makes editing, viewing, and sharing content a possibility no matter where you are and what devices you have available to you. It works with all Microsoft Office documents and even enables email and Lync communication functionality on mobile devices. It's the next step in taking the desktop experience to your mobile device. All of these features come together to provide an online solution to meet the demands of today's organizations. By minimizing maintenance, reducing cost, and adding mobility and flexibility, Microsoft aims to offer a next generation solution that will reap all the benefits of the cloud. Benefits Office 365 has an array of endless benefits. The many benefits include cost, security, ease of use, and many other factors. Some of the benefits that it offers are anytime, anywhere access, professional face for your business, ease of communication and collaboration inside and outside your organization, friendly user interface, straightforward to use e-mail, collaboration, and online meeting solutions, safety and security, seamless coordination with the tools you already know, no requirement for advanced It knowledge, 99. 9-percent availability, flexibility of your business and much more. One major benefit is that you can view your documents, e-mails, calendars, and contacts from on virtually any device you that you own. You also don’t necessarily have to be in a central location. You can view all your documents or email anywhere in the world. Office 365 is a very basic easy to use infrastructure. Everything is user friendly and straight forward. Another feature is that you can edit your documents or edit your calendar from any device. It’s also very safe and secure. The anti-virus and ant-spam are updated frequently. With this technology you can rely on never losing a document again. It’s all stored in a cloud environment. With the cloud environment you can communicate with people all over the world. With this environment it saves businesses a lot of money. Office 365 is based on a pay as you go option. The pricing is based per person on a monthly basis. It’s virtually very cheap to purchase. One key benefit is that it is very cost effective. This product is a pay-as-you-go service. Even though the prices are on a monthly base it’s still very affordable. Microsoft came up with three different plans. Businesses can choose their preference based on the necessity or features they want. Everyone from small businesses to educational institutions can utilize this product. Office 365 helps businesses save money and time. Office 365 can be used on a vast array of devices from PCs to hand held devices. The first plan is designed for a small business which consists of up to 25 employees. This plan is paid monthly. This plan is six dollars per user/per month. This access includes mobile access. With mobile devices the only requirement is that it has a Wi-Fi connection. With this fee it includes many features such as e-mail, ease of access to view documents anywhere, use of SharePoint, and many other functions. With e-mail functionality you get up to 25MB of storage. E-mail archiving is also a great benefit. Another feature is the ease of access of viewing documents online. Not only can documents be viewed online but documents can be easily edited online also. The second plan is for midsize businesses and enterprises. This plan can be purchased on a monthly plan or a yearly plan. The cost is ten dollars to twenty seven dollars per month. This cost is per user/per month. The key benefits with this plan is that you get 24/7 support, anti-virus is supported, ease of distributing documents through SharePoint, and the use of instant messaging for business meetings. Another major benefit is that you can have unlimited e-mail storage. It also consists of â€Å"Enterprise voice†. This is a key advancement in order to lower the costs of communication. With this feature you don’t need the use of a telephone but you do need internet connection to use the many features. The last plan that is offered is the â€Å"Kiosk Worker Plan†. The price is four dollars to ten dollars per user/per month. This plan is geared towards people who work in retail or people who share PCs. This plan consists of a 500 MB e-mail storage size. Kiosk workers utilize Microsoft Exchange to view their e-mail or calendar. They also have the ease of editing documents on the web. They only have basic editing rights. With the four dollar plan they can only view the documents and they can’t make any changes. Implementation Plan The way office 365 is going to be implemented into the business is simple, but it is very important that when you introduce a new product like Office 365 that we do so methodically, by doing so we avoid lot of errors and make it easy for the people that are going to be using this product. What we must first do is a detail introduction of the product to all the active stakeholders, this done by either calling for a meeting or sending information and introduction guides to the stakeholders. After the introduction briefing it is now up to us to study the costumer infrastructure and do a run through of all the activities that we will do and the problems that might occur during this process. Upon this review we can now give the costumer timeline and guidance of the installation process. Upon completion, it is now time to give the company help or service desk training regarding common problem solving. After this we can now start doing the testing of the product on site and in the process giving training to those that are eventually going to be using Office 365. Finally we do the actual migration of our data into the new cloud system. Office 365 will now allow user to access their e-mail, important documents, contacts, and calendar on nearly any device from almost anywhere. It frees you to work where and when you choose, allowing you to respond to important requests right away, no matter where you are. Because you can use your mobile device to access e-mail and documents, you won’t have to hurry back to the office or look for a Wi-Fi hot spot if you are using your computer. When traveling, you can access your e-mail and even edit online documents from most popular web browsers and easy to use. Office 365 is easy to try, simple to learn, and straightforward to use. It works flawlessly with the programs you know and use most, including Outlook, Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint. With Office 365, you can choose which tools to use. With Office 365, you can create a password-protected portal to share large, hard-to-email files both inside and outside your organization, giving you a single location to find the very latest versions of files or documents, no matter how many people are working on them. Powerful security features from Microsoft help protect your data. Office 365 is backed with a 99. 9-percent uptime, financially backed guarantee. Office 365 helps safeguard your data with enterprise-grade reliability, disaster recovery capabilities, data centers in multiple locations, and a strict privacy policy. It also helps protect your email environment with up-to-date antivirus and anti-spam solutions. Course Integration Microsoft Office 365 has numerous benefits to offer its prospective customers, individual, small and medium business to enterprises and government agencies. Throughout the course so far we have learned about IS topics ranging from new technologies, strategies, techniques, best practices and ethical and managerial challenges. Microsoft Office 365 is built primarily from the ground up to support cloud computing and provide access from anywhere at any time and using the vast majority of wireless devices that support Wi-Fi. Cloud Computing in Office 365 represents a competitive advantage that the company keeps advertizing about. Microsoft came up with a strategic planning and competitive pricing model tailored to its customers. They have different pricing schemes that suit and appeal to everyone. Part of the company’s strategic planning is to capitalize on the â€Å"Five Industry Forces†, in which they are among the first to enter this market, they don’t fear threats of new competitors entering this market since it requires a great deal of investments, they have the bargaining power of suppliers since they provide something that not many companies can provide, they don’t fear any threat generated from any substitute in the market since there are not that many companies providing the same service, and they have a very well and respectful brand. Some small size companies that do not afford the cost of sophisticated functional systems depend heavily on Office application to fill this gap and provide them with all functionalities that enable them to carry on with their day-to-day activities. Microsoft Office 365 provides the ultimate solution for collaboration and communication through several means either through Exchange server for big organizations or Outlook for small companies and also through Lync. Microsoft Office 365 promises 99. 9% availability and uptime through its innovative cloud computing. The company uses Service Level Agreements with their customers to define the level and the quality of expected services and the estimated time to recover from an outage. As the number of malicious threats increase on the application level, Microsoft promises a much secured environment backed by industry standard anti-virus, anti-phishing and anti-spam that alleviates the effort of maintenance off the IT folks and let them concentrate on their core business. Throughout the course, we talked about the new approach of cost saving and cost reduction of applications through the use of Software as a Service (SaaS). Office 365 is a great example for this approach, in which the company bundles different set of tools and applications and make them available on demand for a monthly fees. This model reinforces the â€Å"economies of scale† in application operations, in which an application provider may be able to provide better and cheap services. As much as Office 365 has plenty of good things to offer; it is also inevitable from the ethical and managerial challenges. Among these challenges are, hosting all these data in its data center presents a big challenge for the company. One of the biggest questions is how Microsoft will handle security and privacy. In a release note from Microsoft detailing the security and privacy features of the application and in lieu of the Patriot act, Microsoft stated â€Å"In a limited number of circumstances,  Microsoft may need to disclose  data without your prior consent, including as needed to satisfy legal requirements, or to protect the rights or property of Microsoft or others (including the enforcement of agreements or policies governing the use of the service). † Critical Assessment: Critique Technology (Compare and Contrast the technology) Review of Technology Office 365 is about being connected and be able to work virtually anywhere. Office 365 offers many services to the costumers. For example, †¢ SharePoint Online o Intranets o Extranets o Collaboration, connectivity, productivity †¢ Exchange Online o E-mail, calendars, contacts and tasks o Cross platforms (PC, Web, Mobile) o Collaboration, connectivity, productivity †¢ Lync Online (The new version of OCS) o Communication capabilities like chat, audio- or video calls. o Collaboration, connectivity, productivity †¢ Office Web Apps Online version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote o Totally awesome. o Collaboration, connectivity, productivity †¢ Office Professional Plus o All the familiar Office application you’re used to playing around with is of course included â€Å"Office 365†. The cloud keeps the IT-departments irresponsible for the hardware and patching or upgrades needs to be taken care of. Microsoft will be responsibl e for the cloud and they will provide hardware and patching or upgrades when they are needed. Also, security is Microsoft responsibility, and with office 365, organization can be hooked up in a minute. Compare and contrast Pricing A. Google Apps †¢ Google Apps for Business  costs either $5 a month per user or $50 a year per user. †¢ It's free for â€Å"accredited not-for-profit 501(c) (3) entities with < 3,000 users, K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. †¢ Fewer than 10 users you can use Google Apps for free. †¢ You can also use Google Docs, without Google Apps, for free. B. Office 365 †¢ Starts at $6 per user per month for small organizations with less than 25 employees. †¢ $10 – $27 for more than 25 employees per month †¢ There's also kiosk pricing at $4 or $10 a month. No discounts for education. C. Zoho †¢ Starts at $3 – $5 per user per month †¢ E-mail is a  separate service  and costs $2. 50 – $3. 50 per user per month †¢ There are also free versions of both the e-mail service and Docs Storage A. Google Apps †¢ Provide 25GB per user for e-mail and 1GB per user for documents. †¢ E-mail attachment sizes are limited to 25MB. B. Office 365 †¢ The basic 365 plans provide 25GB of e-mail storage. †¢ Attachments are limited to 35MB. C. Zoho †¢ Offers 1GB of storage †¢ Mail includes 10-15 GB per user depending on the plan. Attachments are limited to 10MB. Works Cited Crane, R. (2011, July 25). Why Office 365’s small business plan may not suit small business. Retrieved october 25, 2011, from boxfreeit: www.. com/Productivity/why-office-365s-small-business-plan-is-no-good-for-small-business. html Lynn, S. (2011, July 1). Office 365: The Good and Not-So-Good. Retrieved October 25, 2011, from Pcmag: http://www. pcmag. com/article2/0,2817,2387974,00. asp#fbid=_CcTS-_Hax6 Microsoft. (2011, June 25). micfrosoft . Retrieved october 25, 2011, from Office 365 : http://www. microsoft. om/en-us/office365/what-is-office365. aspx#fbid=oP-bkIxUagi Microsoft. (2011, July 21). microsoft feed. Retrieved october 25, 2011, from microsfot feed: http://microsoftfeed. com/2011/top-10-benefits-of-microsoft-office-365/ Simon. (2011, 07 04). Office 365 Detailed Service Descriptions. Retrieved 10 25, 2011, from Simon May: http://simon-may. com/uk-technet/office-365-detailed-service-descriptions/ Topal, J. (2011, june 07). Moving to the cloud with Office 365. Good or bad business decision? Grid User Post. Retrieved october 25, 2011, from community offcie 365: http://community. ffice365. com/en-us/b/the_grid/archive/2011/06/07/grid-user-post-moving-to-the-cloud-with-office-365-good-or-bad-business-decision. aspx Office 365 – Part 1: What Is Office 365 and How Can My Organization Benefit from Using It? † Tobias Zimmergren, 12 June 2011. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. Finley, Klint. â€Å"Office 365 vs. Google Apps vs. Zoho. †Ã‚  ReadWriteWeb – Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. Readwriteweb, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 Oct. 2011. . Zack Whittaker, June 23, 2011. Microsoft: ‘We can hand over Office 365 da ta without your permission'