Impact of Privatisation on the Sustainability of Water in the United Essay

Impact of Privatisation on the Sustainability of Water in the United Arab Emirates - Essay Example Marketing originates with the recognition of a need on the part of a consumer and terminates with the satisfaction of that need by the delivery of a usable product at the right time, at the right place and at an acceptable price. Marketing is a key function of management. It brings success to business organization. A business organization performs two key functions producing goods and services and making them available to potential customers for use. An organization business success largely depends on how efficiently the products and services are delivered to customers and how differently do the customers perceive the difference in delivery in comparison to the competitors. This is true of all firms – from large business enterprises to small firms, from multinationals operating in different countries to small firms operating in small markets. Marketing is a complex system of application as it involves of knowing the customers needs and wants. Customers’ perceptions chan ge individually and one firm cannot satisfy customers needs, but it can strive to reach the standards. To know the customer expectations market research and analysis is required. The market research involves estimating the viability of the product launch in the region, the expectations of the customers from the product the approximate number of takers for the particular product. the number of existing competitors, life of the product. To arrive to a decision a lot has to be spent to do the market research without expecting any profit of this act. ... a. Desalination equipment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 b. Gas and Steam Turbine Plants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 c. Water Supply Distribution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 d. Irrigation Equipment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 e. sub-station monitoring 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5. Does the company regularly conduct research/case studies 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6. How do you rate the potability of water supplied to our homes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7. How is the water supply in: a. Fujairah 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 b. Dubai 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 c. Abu Dhabi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8. Which sector can provide a higher volume of water supply a. Private 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 b. semi-private 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 c. government 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9. A private firm should be subjected to directives of a public agency 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10. Can your company provide enough volume of water supply to its consumers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. Can your company with its present technology and machinery meet the growing demands of Population.. 10 years from now 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 years from now 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12. Which emirate has the highest volume of water demands a. Fujairah 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 b. Dubai 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 c. Abu Dhabi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 B. COST EFFECTIVITY 1. With regards to the cost of services, which sector has the highest charge Private 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Semi-Private 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Government 1 2 3

Critical opinion on history of design Term Paper

Critical opinion on history of design - Term Paper Example Significantly, the design history also exists as a component of practice based courses with its teaching and study being as a result of the National Advisory Council of Britain and was launched in the 1960s under the art and design programs. Considerably, the council aimed at making art and design education a legitimate academic activity which necessitated the employment or ‘buying in’ of specialists from art history disciplines, leading to a particular style of delivery. Wood is among the core components of design (as a material) that most people including designers, appreciate and love; simply because it is an incredibly useful material that has minimal effect to the environment (Gustav 1). Over the years, wood has provided humans with shelter, warmth, tools and furniture and it has been a great inspiration that even the earliest man interacted with wood in this most basic ways and more. Typically, wood is embedded with many layers, all of which are symbolic in the aspects of its history in design, time and where it has been applied; for instance, wood keeps a record of its environment and each year brings new growth that marks its past or the rings of a tree can teach us about the environment and specific events in the trees life holding its history within and its living energy expresses it outward. Most of the craftsmen that use wood in design express energy that is added to the depth of the material; reflectively, furniture has been part of the human experience since the development of the non-nomadic cultures and there is historical evidence that it goes the Neolithic period (Gustav 1). This theory is an example of how design in general has been of great significance to the human era, not to forget that it does not in any negative way affect the environment. Furniture designed from wood is not only a product but is also considered to be a from of

Bottled Water vs Tap Water Essay Example for Free

Bottled Water vs Tap Water Essay Water is vital to human life. Humans can live for several weeks on water alone. However, they cannot survive for more than a few days without it. In fact, a human’s body primarily consists of 55% to 78% water (Geri Walton. ) Therefore, we need water. Life cannot exist without water. While some people prefer drinking bottled water, others prefer drinking tap water. In fact, controversy has been placed on the quality and safety of drinking bottled water versus drinking tap water. The bottled water industry has increased tremendously. They offer several brands of water including: mineral water, spring water, purified water and also well water. Water also comes in many different flavors. If you wish, you may also select carbonated water. In order to label these, each brand has to meet certain qualifications. They must be collected and strictly treated. The Food Standards Agency monitors bottled water. They adhere to rigorous guidelines as to what can and cannot be put on the label. Many believe that bottled water is much healthier than tap water. It is free of bacteria. It is free from filthy chemicals. In fact, the levels of lead in bottled water are much lower than those in tap water. Bottled water is free from contamination and safer for drinking. It prevents harmful substances and organisms from entering into the body. Bottled water has to pass through a purification process. Many companies like to include the word â€Å"pure† in their advertising of campaigns and trademarks. They realize that many people find it secure in health benefits over other products. This guarantees high-quality drinking water. Bottled water provides compelling vitamins and minerals to the human body. Sufficient amounts of minerals are important for managing a healthy human system. There are numerous health benefits for drinking bottled water. In some countries, such as Europe, humans believe that bottled waters have medicinal properties. It contains zero fat, calories and sugar. According to the International Bottled Water Association, â€Å"one of the main health benefits of bottled water is that it can replace less healthy beverages, such as soda, sweet tea, hot chocolate and sugary flavored coffees. (Ipatenco, Sara) In today’s society, bottled water may be found any and everywhere, from offices to homes and restaurants across the country. It is rejuvenating, healthy and convenient to carry around. It is great for those on the go. An accessible bottle in your bag will immediately quench your thirst. Having bottled water may result in more fluid intake. Sufficient utilization of water is important for preventing dehydration and for keeping our bodies functioning properly. Although there are several benefits of drinking bottled water, more and more people are questioning if it is actually better than tap water. In fact, many believe that bottled water is not safer or purer than tap water. Many believe that tap water tastes just as good as bottled water. During a blind taste test in New York City, the greater part of the people actually preferred the taste of tap water over bottled water. Tap water is not hazardous or harmful. In fact, it is well-regulated and inspected hundreds of times per month by the Environmental Protection Agency. These agencies make certain tap water is free of harmful toxins and other bacteria. With tap water, you are more likely to know what is in it. Tap water is tested cautiously. Every year, several tests are taken to ensure that tap water is as safe as it can possibly be. With strict standards, they are tested for micro-organisms and other chemicals and metals. It is also tested for water pathogens that could possibly cause intestinal problems. Tap water is composed of fluoride and chloronation. The enamel-protecting fluoride reduces tooth decay and enhances oral health. It is a major ingredient in toothpastes, while chlorination kills bacteria. Tap water is much cheaper than bottled water. It is free! Bottled water is extremely expensive compared to tap water. Bottled water companies make â€Å"tens of billions of dollars† per year. In today’s society, people are paying so much for bottled water when they could actually get tap water practically free. In fact, â€Å"bottled water costs 500 times more than tap water† (MacKenzie, Ashley. ) By drinking tap water, you save a tremendous amount of money. Drinking tap water is better on our environment. Water bottles are thrown into landfills. It takes more than 700 years for plastic to decompose. Reducing the amount of plastic water bottles in landfills can save energy drastically. Drinking water from a glass or using a refillable steel bottle also saves resources. By drinking tap water, you save the planet. Tap water has some bacteria that are actually beneficial to your health. The human immune system automatically strengthens its defenses against any possible harmful bacteria that it is exposed to. Our immune system is familiar with small amounts of bacteria and is equipped to prevent illnesses. For a fact, our bodies need water. Humans lose water every day through breathing, perspiration, urine and bowel movements. In order for our bodies to function properly, it is essential that we replenish it with water. Basically, bottled water and tap water come from the same sources: lakes, springs and aquifers. They each have many benefits. One must decide as to which is best. What type of water will you drink: bottled water or tap water? Make the healthy choice.

The Financial Crisis Of 2008 Finance Essay

The Financial Crisis Of 2008 Finance Essay There were many economic and political factors that lead to the financial crisis of 2008. Specific regulations, companies overstepping their boundaries with leverage, and the housing market bubble are only a few that have been said to have caused it. All of these factors were very important, and some of them are still happening today. The following four companies were on the front pages of almost every newspaper during this time, Bear Stearns Co., Lehman Brothers Holding Inc., Washington Mutual, and JPMorgan Co. To understand how these companies became major players in the financial crisis, the history of the companies must be shown. Bear Stearns Co. began when three men named, Joseph A. Bear, Robert B. Stearns and Harold C. Mayerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ [Invested] $500,000 in capital to start one of the biggest independent investment banks in history. (11) Bear Stearns Co. came to be an extremely strong company. During the stock market crash, the firm [laid] off none of its employees. (11) Bear Stearns was always a strong company and it was not until 2007 that the company had its first quarterly loss. (11) To investors of a public company, over eighty years of profits means someone is running the company right. But once that first loss happened, the stock price sunk for the first time in company history. Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. was originally a small shop (4) that Henry Lehman opened when he moved to Alabama. After [Henrys] death in 1855à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Lehman Brothers evolved from a general merchandising business to a commodities broker that bought and sold cotton. (4) Lehman Brothers helped fund many major companies that are still around today. Some of these companies include Paramont Pictures, 20th Century Fox, RCA, Haliburton, according to (4). Lehman Brothers kept growing even through the Great Depression, making it one of the largest and strongest financial services firms in the US. Washington Mutual originated in 1889 [as] Washington National Building Loan and Investment Associationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ and [lent] its first $700 to build a house in Ballard. (8) Almost twenty years following, the banks name was changed to Washington Mutual Savings Bank. In April 1990, (8) Kelly Killinger was named the companys CEO. Within the next six years, WaMu acquired 16 smaller banks in Washington, Oregon, Utah and California. (8) In the year 1999, [Washington Mutual] buys subprime lender Long Beach Financial, which writes mortgages for people with less-than-stellar credit. This acquisition was a smart move for Washington Mutual to make more money, but it ends up coming back to haunt them in less than ten years. JPMorgan Chase Co. is one of the oldest, largest and best-known financial institutions in the world. (9) JPMorgan Co. started as The Manhattan Company in 1799. (9) JPMorgan Co. merged with many different big name banks and financial institutions of the time. Some of these banks included, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank One, and The Bank of Manhattan. (9) JPMorgan Co. has also helped numerous big companies start and go public. JPMorgan helped create ATT, GE and U.S. Steel and also helped Apple Computers go public. There are a few different theories of the causes of the financial crisis. One theory is that Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the FHA caused a housing bubble because they were loaning to lower income people that could not afford the mortgage payments after the ARM payments increased over a short period of time. ARM stands for adjustable rate mortgage, which means, when a house is purchased, there is a low interest rate that people like and can easily make the payments. However, the following year, the payment includes a higher interest rate, which is harder to pay, but still manageable. Then a year or so after that, the interest rate increases to an even higher percentage and this payment is too much for the homeowner to make the payment. The high interest on top of the principal made the mortgage payments so high that the number of foreclosures increased at a very rapid rate. Foreclosures are legal [processes] by which a bankà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦takes a homeowners propertyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ [And ] is the result of non-payment of the mortgage. (3) Soon after, people owed more money on their house than it was originally worth. This caused a panic in the housing system because homeowners that have had their house for years still owed more than their house was worth. This became a huge problem for investors as well. Some people like to invest in houses and flip them to make a quick profit. Flipping a house is when a house is purchased at a cheap price and is then renovated and sold for a quick profit. These investors were able to buy the house for cheap, but since they were considered dealers instead of brokers, they had an inventory of houses that they could not sell. Having to make mortgage payments on three or four different houses cannot be easy when homeowners are having trouble making one mortgage payment. Many of these investors then had to foreclose on their houses, sending them pretty close, if not, into bankruptcy. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also major contributors to the financial crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government owned companies that were created to securitize mortgages, making the market for secondary mortgages larger. Securitizing mortgages is when a large amount of mortgages are combined into one security so investors only need to invest in one bond instead of hundreds or thousands of separate bonds, leaving more risk on the investor. AAA was, at the time, the safest bond that could be purchased on the bond market. Bonds are debt a company issues for investors to purchase, giving the company more money to operate with. Many investors choose bonds to invest in because they are extremely abundant and some are very low risk investments. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were government-owned, so the two most credible credit rating companies rated them as AAA. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had been investing in mortgages that were eventually going to overturn; the bonds were not as safe of an investment as investors thought. This had a major impact on the rating system, making it not as trustworthy, influential or reliable as before. The reputation of credit rating companies has since been hard to trust and will remain questionable for a long time. There were now a countless number of foreclosures on the books of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Homeowners were not paying their mortgage payments because they did not have a reason to if they were going to lose their house. Once mortgages started to lose value to investors and homeowners, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds were not as valuable. This caused a downturn in investments and questionable thoughts about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The second theory for the cause of the financial crisis is that greedy bankers knowingly manipulated the financial system and politicians in Washington [took] advantage of homeowners and mortgage investors. (2) This means that back in 2004 when the exemption was passed, the bankers knew that by having fewer liabilities, they could make more money. So, when banks started being able to invest more money compared to their deposits, they were able to stuff more money back into their pockets, making them even richer than before. This was not good because some people say, money is power and investment bankers did not need more power or money to risk. This extended amount of money was unhealthy because the investment banks could risk more of their money and still have enough capital to cover the bank, if needed. The third and most thought out reason for the financial crisis has ten separate factors, leading to the real answer. (2) According to (2), the ten factors are a broad credit bubble, a sustained housing bubble, excess liquidity, failures in credit-rating and securitization transformed bad mortgages into toxic financial assets, managers amassed enormous concentrations of highly correlated housing risk, risk of contagion, common stock, rapid succession of ten firm failures, and severe contraction in the real economy. The factors listed above are not blaming one person or organization for something they did. These are rational reasons that could have caused the crisis and could have made it easier to calm. However, it is dangerous to conclude that the crisis would have been avoided only if we had regulated everything a lot more, had fewer housing subsidies, and had more responsible bankers. The crisis happened on a much bigger scale than what anyone could have predicted or prevented. The financial crisis of 2008 all started when Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, passed an exemption on the regulations for the big five investment banks. The meeting on April 28, 2004 was an urgent plea by the big investment banks. (1) These investment banks were looking for a way to raise their leverage ratio. It is said that at Bear Stearnsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ [The leverage ratio] rose sharply, to 33 to 1 (1) shortly after the exemption was passed. The leverage ratio is the ratio between a companys liabilities and common equity. This was a major advantage to Bear Stearns, and the other big investment banks, because they could have a significantly lower amount of their deposits on hand than they were able to before. According to Harvey Goldschmid, a higher leverage ratio means if anything goes bad, it will be an awfully big mess.(1) This statement held true as we see today. On March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns made a deal with JPMorgan Chase Co. (12) This saved Bear Stearns from filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Bear Stearns collapse was only the beginning and nobody could stop the economy from being blind-sided. Bear Stearns spiraled from being healthy to practically insolvent in about 72 hours. This was bad news for the entire economy. Bear Stearns experienced one of the largest bank runs in the history of the U.S. A bank run is when many depositors withdraw their money from a bank in a short period of time because the public does not have any confidence in the banking system as a whole. The public panics because they want to make believe their money will be safer outside of the bank. Bank runs do not occur nearly as often as they did before the FDIC. The Federal Deposit Insurance Company ensures depositors that their money will be safe from bank runs by insuring up to $250,000. A bank run can not only shut down a poorly operated bank but could also shut down a healthy bank. JPMorgan, backed by the New York Fed extended a sure line of credit that [gave] Bear Stearns at least 28 days to shore up its finances orà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ find a buyer. (12) Bear Stearns was in immediate trouble and people were starting to believe they wouldnt make it out of that one. JPMorgan agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear [Stearns]. (13) This was a huge discount for JPMorgan because just one year earlier the stock was around $159.36. (14) This was an extreme drop in the price of a once highly valued stock. According to (14), the actual percentage of the price JPMorgan purchased at compared to the 52 week high was a 98.7 percent drop. This was by far the most dramatic drop in stock price in the 21st century, hoping to not be passed up in the near future. Lehman Brothers was a major factor in the financial crisis of 2008, not because the company was the reason of the crisis, but because Lehman Brothers was the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the United States. (6) The bankruptcy was approximately 691 billion dollars in assets. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ under chapter 11of the United States Bankruptcy Code.(5) According to the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy form, Lehman Brothers had over 150 billion dollars of bond debt and over 2.5 billion dollars in bank debts. On May 31, 2008, Lehman Brothers had total assets of 639 billion dollars and debts of 613 billion dollars. This is far from what the leverage or debt ratio should be in a major investment bank. Immediately following the Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual collapsed, causing one of the largest banks to also file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy was preceded by a large amount of withdraws from the bank in a short amount of time. This is called a bank run. According to (7), Washington Mutual had a $16.4 billion dollar run on deposits in as little as a few days. So, after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the public started to get a little uneasy because they thought Lehman Brothers was a sound company. This resulted in many depositors of Washington Mutual to withdraw all or most of their funds. Moodys and Standard Poors are credit rating companies that are believed to have had a say in the financial crisis of 2008. Investors are very reliant on credit ratings, especially when it comes to bond investments. When purchasing a bond, there are ratings, which are related to the safety of the bond. An AAA bond rating is considered the safest bond that can be purchased and any bond with a rating of BB or lower is called a junk bond. A junk bond is considered to be a risky investment because it has a higher default risk than AAA bonds. Default risk is the risk that the borrower will not pay either interest or the principle back. For instance, the U.S. government treasury bonds have a lower default risk rate than Greek government treasury bonds. As earlier mentioned, Bear Stearns Co., Lehman Brothers Holding Inc., Washington Mutual, and JPMorgan Co. were major players in the financial crisis. It is hard to choose which theory is correct, but the third theory is the most reasonable because there is never only one factor that goes into changing the economy so drastically.

Historical Types of Rationality :: Culture History Essays

ABSTRACT: In this paper we suggest that the contemporary global intellectual crisis of our (Western) civilization consists in the fundamental transformation of the classical (both Ancient and Modern) types of rationality towards the nonclassical one. We give a brief account of those classical types of rationality and focus on the more detailed description of the contemporary process of the formation of the new HTR which we label as nonclassical. We consider it to be one of the historical possibilities that might radically transform the fundamentals of our human world; in fact, this process has already begun. The paper mentions some of the main features of this process, such as formation of a new type of scientific object; new conceptual schemes; new logical and methodological equipment of scientific research; and new understanding of human nature, human mind, human action, and social order. Introduction Approaching the end of our millennium it becomes more and more evident that the modern type of rationality-which has dominated Western culture since the 17th century-is in crisis; that it has reached the limits of its potentialities and something new is being created. We seem to be experiencing the global crisis of consciousness which perhaps concerns fundamental questions of our cultural identity and signals total social crisis of our civilization. This raises a question about the nature of our current cultural this identity: Is it still modern or already "postmodern"? Or are we only experiencing the continuation from classical to modern (Krà ¡l 1994)? Is the crisis of "modernity" a permanent state from which there is no way out and where we can do nothing other than to endure bravely the fate of our time (Weber 1983)? Should we comply with its anamnesis as deconstruction and thus to acquiesce to the extremes of its dichotomies (Lyotard 1993, Derrida 1993)? Or is this crisis someth ing temporary? Should we believe in the future and hope that renovation of the past will take place in our pluralist society (Ricoeur 1992)? Do we face a decisive turnabout consisting in a return to the past, a reevaluation of the Orient and a valorization of ecology (F. Capra 1983)? Should we seek an alternative in glorification of nature and desacralization of culture (Griffin 1988)? Does the way to rescue civilization lead through deliverance of the individual "self" from the oppression of blunt rationality? Or does it lead through enforcement of the principles of fundamentalism whether with a capital "F" (radical, aggressive, insisting on the upholding of the essential articles of faith, e.

File Sharing Essay -- essays research papers

FILE SHARING Ethical Debate with Today’s Technology (INTRO) You may have illegal content on your computer right now! File sharing has become a very large issue today in society even though it has existed for decades. It has been the recent advances in our technology that has made it main stream and in the eyes of the general public. File sharing today tests the limits of technology along with our ethics making it a fuzzy grey area. When discussing file sharing's effect on society, first you should have a brief understanding about the terminology, technology, and methods that are used. File sharing in its simplest form is "anything that allows the swapping of files (audio, graphic, animation, etc) between users across a network." The breakdown of file sharing can be lumped into two basic categories, physical and virtual. Since the invention of the cassette tape, back in 1962 (about.com), people have been transferring data. Friends would copy a tape they borrowed or purchased from another friend and the chain was never ending. When the camcorders started to get smaller and more affordable movies would be bootlegged from the theater and sold. Technology today has changed immensely but still we find ourselves in the same habits of sharing. Friends can now burn CDs within 5 minutes and DVDs within an hour. The one thing that has changed is the ability to protect the media using encryption keys, water marks, and other Digital Rights Management (DRM) that prevents the media from being copied. The overall effect from this is the average person is left with the headache of not being able to do what they want with their own media, while the pirateer continues to hack and bypass security measures. The biggest contributor to file sharing these days is through software using virtual media. Before with the virtual media, the only way you could get something was if someone you knew had it. Now with the power of the web a user can find what they want from anyone around the world. The internet is probably the most basic form using websites and emails. One of the earliest forms of sharing came from Internet Chat Relay (IRC) which is still used today. IRC's initial use was for chat but users realized files could be stored on the servers hostin... ...iles come from other US computers. A legal strategy that focuses mostly on the US is unlikely to change the supply of music files. â€Å"Previous studies have relied on Surveys to assess the effect of the file sharing on the music sales. This is problematic because it is impossible to know if survey participants truthfully respond to questions about an illegal activity. This study is unique in that it uses data from file sharing servers, where the authors directly observed 1.75 million downloads during 17 weeks in the fall of 2002. Using statistical methods, they can then test if the sale of an album declines more strongly if that album is downloaded more often.† (CONCLUSION) So, even with the pros/cons, copyright laws, ethics, and facts; is file sharing an illegal crime, and one that deserves the heavy penalties as those serious crimes? Is it unethical to give a friend a copy of a favorite CD as a gift? To give something of yourself? Is file sharing an illegal infringement in the rights of the creator of those rights? Artist hasn’t loss money in CD sales due to file-sharing. The fact is that file sharing has increased sales of CD due to its popularity.

Plato’s 4 Virtues

The Four Virtues of the Republic In the Republic, Plato sets up a framework to help us establish what the four virtues are, and their relationship between them to both the city and the soul. According to Plato, the four virtues are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. There are three classes within the city: guardians, auxiliaries, and artisans; and three parts within the soul include intellect, high-spirited, and appetitive. By understanding the different classes of the city or parts of the soul, one will be able to appreciate how the virtues attribute to each one specifically.Book II of the Republic opens with Plato’s two brothers, both who want to know which is the better life to live: the just or the unjust. First, Socrates wants to know, â€Å"what justice and injustice are and what power each itself has when it’s by itself in the soul† (Cahn 130). One needs to understand what the soul is before one can talk about virtue because the relationship between the soul and virtue is excellence. This sets up the foundation that the structure of the soul and the city are similar in relation to the four virtues.In order for Socrates to accomplish this, he needs to examine the larger one first, the city, representing the ontological. Then, he is going to examine the smaller one, the soul, representing the epistemological. The establishment of each of these will display how the two mirror off one another, allowing the relationship between the city and the soul to become visible. Plato sets out the depiction that the city comes into being because not everyone is self-sufficient, but rather everyone needs different things in order to survive.Each person in the city is going to have one specific function to perform, which establishes the proper order of a just city contains three different classes: the guardians, the auxiliaries, and the artisans. In having established this ideal city, one can determine that it is completely good, therefore, it should be seen as wise, courageous, moderate, and just. Each one of the classes established in the city relates to a particular virtue. For the guardian class, â€Å"a whole city established according to nature would be wise because of the smallest class and part in it, namely, the governing or ruling one.And to this class, which seems to be by nature the smallest, belongs a share of the knowledge that alone among all the other kinds of knowledge is to be called wisdom† (Cahn 144). The intellect the guardians possess, allows the city to have good judgment and be considered wise by the people, since so few have this ability. This helps them pass legislation allowing all of the other classes to be in harmony with one another bringing the city to a state of unity.For the auxiliary class, â€Å"the city is courageous, then, because of a part of itself that has the power to preserve through everything its belief about what things are to be feared† (Cahn 144). The auxiliarie s demonstrate this kind of preservation about what is to be feared and what is not to be feared and under no circumstances do they abandon their beliefs because of pains, pleasures, desires, or fears. As they fear the destruction of the city and anything that will bring it about, â€Å"this power to preserve through everything the correct and law-inculcated belief about what is to be feared and what isn’t is what I call courage† (Cahn 145).Their determination to remain dedicated to being courageous will lead to justice within the city. For the artisan class, â€Å"moderation spreads throughout the whole. It makes the weakest, the strongest, and those in between†¦all sing the same song together. And this unanimity, this agreement between the naturally worse and the naturally better as to which of the two is to rule both in the city and in each one, is rightly called moderation† (Cahn 146).By willingly accepting the dictates of the guardians by not objecting the legislation they pass, they are putting the city in a state of harmony. It can clearly be seen that only when each class is properly performing its particular role within the city, will justice be able to prevail. For Plato, â€Å"Justice, I think, is exactly what we said must be established throughout the city when we were founding it†¦everyone must practice one of the occupations in the city for which he is naturally best suited† (Cahn 147).This only happens when the city is not in a state of internal conflict with itself allowing the highest principle, good, to be seen; making it the most unified, therefore being just. Since the proper order of the city has now been established, it is time to turn inward to one’s soul to determine where justice and injustice might lie, and what the difference is between the two. Plato believes, â€Å"if an individual has these same three parts in his soul, we will expect him to be correctly called by the same names as the city if he has the same conditions in them† (Cahn 148).Now that Plato has found the four virtues within the larger environment of the city, he now wants to investigate their relationship to the smaller environment of the soul. The first part of the soul that calculates is considered rational by having the ability to make good judgment, known as its intellect. The second part of the soul that desires certain indulgences and pleasures; such as, food, drink, and sex, is considered irrational and is known as its appetitive part.The third part of the soul is known as the high-spirited, which allows a person to get angry by giving way to the use of their emotions. The appetite of one’s soul draws a person towards things, while the intellect of one’s soul pushes that person away, thus creating two different parts. The high-spirited is, â€Å"a third thing in the soul that is by nature the helper of the rational part† (Cahn 151). Originally, the spirited part was thought of as being appetitive; however, when there is a civil war within one’s soul, the anger of the high-spirit allies with the rational part of the soul.Now that the three different parts of the soul have been identified, it is clear that, â€Å"the same number and the same kinds of classes as are in the city are also in the soul of each individual†¦Therefore, it necessarily follows that the individual is wise in the same way and in the same part of himself as the city† (Cahn 151-152). Accordingly, the intellect of the soul should rule, as the guardian class does in the city because they both display the virtue of wisdom allowing them to exercise understanding on behalf of the whole soul and city.Similarly, the high-spirit of the soul should use anger, as the auxiliary class does in the city because they both demonstrate the virtue of courage allowing them to maintain proper order and harmony needed to establish justice. When the two parts of the soul and the city work together, the virtue of moderation is exhibited; because the soul’s appetitive part and city’s artisan class will be working together to maintain a state of unity. As seen with the city, justice will only emerge in the soul when each of the three parts are properly ordered and in a state of harmony with one another.In the city, the guardians and auxiliaries exist in order to control and direct the artisan class; while in the soul, the intellect and high-spirit exist in order to rule over the appetites of the individual. Justice in the city and soul are related to one another because, â€Å"in truth justice is, it seems, something of this sort†¦binds together those parts and any others there may be in between, and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate and harmonious† (Cahn 153).When an individual is acting justly, then they are being true to the three parts of their soul, allowing the virtue of justice to surface. When each of the three classes in the city are properly performing their roles, then is the virtue of justice displayed. Plato describes justice as the perfect harmony between the parts both within the soul and within the city as the best possible combination to illustrate all four of the virtues.

Business Environment Essay

Recruitment and retention The need of recruit- There is been a new position arisen for Customer Service Executive in Buffs Supplies LTD. As now they have a website developed, there is a need of person who can run the website effectively, and make a very good use of the website to help the business to offer a good and improved service for their customers. Job description- is there to provide a clear understanding of the job details for the people who are going to apply. It outlines the things that he/she will do during his/her employment and it outlines the things that employer wants from the employee. So that Job description should include the following: * The job title/type * Position of the employee, who they will report to * The location * A summary of the job’s objectives, * Main purpose/duties/responsibilities * Pay levels, and any potential increase, benefits, uniform/dress code * Hours/ holidays * How to apply and deadline for application I’ve designed a job description document (please see attached document) for Buffs Supplies LTD to assist my manager. Person specification- gives a better understanding of what kind of person that certain company wants for the job, and to identify the knowledge, skills and ability to require to do the job as well as to fit within the company. It should include the following: * Educational/ qualification- it is essential for professional jobs like lawyers, accountants as it is directly connected to their performance as well as they should know what they should/ should be doing. If you don’t know the law you cannot work as a lawyer, simple! * Experience and training- you may need to be experienced to be able to do a good job for your role and it’s likely for employers to specify length of time of experience on their job description. A good thing of being experienced is you may not need a qualification to do certain jobs if you are experienced. * Personal interest/ attributes- it’s helpful for both parties to understand each other as it shows the requirement of people’s character for the job role. Person’s interest may relate to the job role, for example if you are not comfortable with approaching to stranger, you may not be suitable for jobs like sales person who deals with customers face to face as part of their job role, if you enjoy talking to people you might enjoy the work and motivated to be at work, meaning that success will be a closer for you. I’ve designed a personal specification with my job description for customer service executive. (Please see attached sheet) Different methods of advertising a job There are number of method that you can use to advertise your job vacancy arises. It helps the company to reach targeted group of candidate and it might also depend on the people who will be your candidate to choose where you would like advertise the job vacancy. First of all you will need to have a good job description to help the candidate what you’re looking for. I’m going to write about different methods. 1. Internal Advertising- you can employ people within the organisation instead of getting some one from outside. It might be cost efficient as you might not have to pay for recruitment agency to advertise your job, when you can put it on your company’s website, employee’s board, send internal e-mails to everyone and even put it on company’s facebook page. It is useful because if someone wants to climb to the ladder, they can do so by applying for the job vacancy. 2. Online- you can advertise it by online through job website’s such as Monster, Job Centre website etc. Advantage of online advertising is you might be able to reach a lot of people and they can search by location, industry or job titles they wish to apply. 3. Recruitment Agency- you can also advertise it through these agencies with a small charge. They will advertise the job, maybe create the job description according to the company needs and asses the applicants to ensure they meet the minimum requirements. It might be useful for them if the company needs a staff urgently they can quickly find someone to cover as they have a lots of member who are seeking for jobs. they also 4. Newspapers- this is a offline choice you can advertise it on a local newspapers to let the local know about the job vacancy. Importance of staff retention I think recruiting a new staff is an expensive, because you will have to advertise the job, do the search on the applications, interview them individually and also once you got the right candidate you will have to train them from the start pointing every single fire points etc. Instead of going through all these you can try to retain the staffs you already has so that person is already know the company’s style and people so it will be easier for him to work/deal with things. It is good for the company image and reputation to promote people within the organisation. If someone got hired and leaves after a month It will cause a problem, because they will have to do the recruitment process all over again and spend money to recruit the person will be a waste. Existing staff might be overworked so it will lead to unhappy employees and they will not perform their best as they’re tired of long hours and covering for someone else. However, businesses can avoid this situation by retaining staff as if the person stayed within the organisation and got promoted it is likely for the person to stay longer and work more harder as he will feel he is achieved something after working for the company. Ways of improving staff retention rate Businesses calculate to see how long their staffs are tending to stay with the company using the following formula. Number of staff leaving a year 100 Average number of staff employed that year This formula helps them to identify any problem so that Human Recourse can act on it to research what is going on by preparing surveys for staffs to complete or organise an open meeting with their staffs to know exactly what is going on, what is that they are happy and not happy with, so that they can act on it straight away. Reason to have high rate: this is when employees are not happy with the work they do, or the environment they work with, or even the management they are working for. It could be anything to be not happy as human expectation is increasing with the technology. However, employers should provide the right facility with the right motivation to keep the employers happy and juice them effectively. Ways to avoid these situations: to improve the rate you can do all sorts of things like showing them that they (employer) really care about them by listening to what they have to say, support them with their life, or organise some outside work events like weekend bowling competition to help them work closely with each other. Make the work place more challenging by doing competition with a price, a little investment won’t bring down the company, in that way work place might be more interesting and staff will perform better. Motivation is a key thing to get a better out of the staff and keep them within the business as well. b) Describe main employability, interpersonal and personal skills required by the new customer service executive. Organisations often look for people who are skilled or experienced so that it will be easier for both parties, from the employers view it helps them to replace the worker quickly and it may save some money as there might not need of training for example if he is trained as first aider, and the job requires to have a qualification the company does not have to train the staff who already has the qualification for it, from the employees part of view it might be easier for him to do the job and as he is experienced he will have an idea of what he is expected to do, and will be paid as a full employee, I mean some organisations pay lower wage for those who are not experienced enough. Employability skills: this is the basic skills that are needed to get, keep, and do the job. It is necessary for the candidate to have or knowledge these skills as it can be transferable during the employment as they go up the ladder in a modernised environment. It includes the following: 1. Qualification/ Previous experience in similar role and industry You may not need any qualification for some profession, but you will need your GCSE or NVQ qualification for some job roles for example if you are seeking to work as waitress as such, you may even not need any qualification as long as you are experienced enough or maybe your employer will provide a full training to do the job. However, for professions like accountant and lawyer or higher positioned job role which requires specialised skills/ qualification, you will definitely need not only GCSE but at least a Bachelor’s Degree to be considered in your application. According to my study book I’m on the right track to develop and educate myself further. Having an experience in similar role is always a bonus for employers and it is more likely for employers to consider those who are experienced and it is important that you mention it on your CV or letter indicating that you have worked in this role before. However, previous experience in similar industry is very beneficial for the employer, because they can get information about their competitors as well as an idea of how they worked to be more effective so that they can walk in a same level of their crowd. For example when I applied for a job in Harry Ramsden, I’ve put on m CV that I used to work in McDonalds, so I knew that I would definitely be invited for an interview so I did, on my interview they asked me that how McDonalds motivate their workers to stay with the business longer as I worked there for quite long time, I said to the lady that if you hire me I’ll tell you how they did it, and she smiled at me and welcome aboard! It shows that it is useful for the can didates as well as the business. 2. Knowledge of product/services This is one of the must have knowledge. For example you will obviously need to know about your product if you are a sales person, you should have a good knowledge of what you are going to sell. If you don’t know of your product, you can’t possibly persuade to sell it to different person. 3. Effectiveness in meeting personal and team targets As every business work towards achieving their aims and objectives, you must be able to meet targets to do so in the first place. You should clearly indicate if you have met any previous targets during your previous employment and any achievement, improvement you have set as a target for yourself past years, showing that to an employer will help you to get the job and it shows/proves that you are able to meet targets because of your previous achievement. 4. Ability to observe and raise professional standards There is a quote I know from my country it says if you work your hands hard, your mouth will also work hard, which means if you work hard, you will be able to feed yourself, same as that if you work hard and have a great attitude towards you work then you might get a reward/promotion. In business you are a professional, so you have to be professional to people taken be considered seriously and every organisation have a set of standard which you should meet. Personal skills: Everyone have their own character and attitude from their childhood. It might be difficult for some to change that in a day because of the job you are doing, but for some it doesn’t matter as you can learn them from others or on your own. Basically if you have the right attitude that the employer wants, it will attract the employer towards you as you are the right candidate for the job. For example if you are a kind, understanding, a good listener and most importantly patient and calm, then you are suitable for jobs like carer or consultant as the job itself requires you to be calm and a good listener as you will be hearing all kind of things and dealing with the public. A personal skill requires you to have the following: 1. Patient and hard working Patient is a very difficult thing that human being can face in difficult situations. I would consider a person who is very patient is a very calm and collective person. For some jobs you will have to be patient and calm at all times, if you can do that employers are very like to keep them as it is difficult to find these kind of people in our society and I believe making your business successful is hard work and them patient. I mean you work very hard to build your business, and it might not be success as you want it to be, so you will have to be patient to drink the juice of your fruit you plant. 2. Team work Ability to working as a team or a part of a team is essential for you and for your employer. If you are a people’s person/ easy to get along with people you might/can be a good team player as it is all about communicating and understanding each and everyone one of the team players. Employers will always look for a people who can work with the team as if you have a say of different people you can get the work done quickly and more effectively, because the things you don’t know, the other people might know so it is better for more brain than only one. Interpersonal skills: this is the skill that how you approach or deal with people and also how well you communicate with others. Customer Service Executive Employee Skills: Personal Skills: Interpersonal Skills: * Good written and spoken skills * Good IT knowledge * Previous experience in customer focused environment * * A good team player * Problem solving * Hard working * Friendly * Professional * * An excellent communicator * Good with people * c) Assess the importance of employability, interpersonal and personal skills in the recruitment and retention of staff in a selected organisation. I’ve chosen The Manchester College to assess in this task; I think The Manchester College is the largest college in Manchester and in the UK. It is important for the college to consider employability and personal skills when recruiting staff as it is an educational institution, I believe the teachers should be educated as a teacher and also the subject of their own to give their students the best knowledge possible. If the college needs to hire a new staff they should consider to hire experienced staff to save that money to put towards the existing staff training, bonus for those who worked overtime during the recruitment process, so that people get rewarded after the hard work they’ve done for their organisation, in doing that college manages to keep their staff happy, that means it is likely for them to stay within the organisation longer. To work more efficient college can carry out a skill auditing to identify the skill gap within the organisation and decide whether to hire new staff or train their existing staff. Communication is the key skill that college needs to have to be able to understand their student and their needs, so it is essential for their staff to have strong communication skills in written and verbally as it is a large organisation people will need to communicate in writing. Employees of the college should be presented and act in a professional manner, so that student and teachers will be look separately. Employability skills will be required for teachers as they have to be qualified in certain areas, whereas administrator of the college will not need to have a qualification if she/he is experienced enough. Task 2 a) Select an organisation and describe the main physical and technological resources that are involved in the running of your selected business. Physical resources – this is the things that business can use to run their day to day activities includes machinery, buildings and facilities. For my chosen organisation The Manchester College, it is very important for them to use all the resources to run effectively. They are number of main physical resources which needs them to run the business. 1. Building and Facility Building of your business may play an important role as you might not think, it is very important for businesses to have to well presentable building as it is effective in many different way. For example in my country there is a bank called Coin and the building is round and gold coloured. Anyone who saw that building will know it is a bank and will go straight to it as it is located near the airport, foreigners will have to get their money changed before they take a taxi etc. I think the prettiest campus of The Manchester College is Openshaw and it has a lots of facilities that is available for students and staffs to use such as IT suites for multimedia students, an award winning training restaurant, workshop for construction, engineering and electrical students, hair and beauty salons etc. I think the facilities that are available for student and staffs are amazing and it will be very useful for students to use these to improve their knowledge on things that they are studying. 2. Materials and waste The need of materials will depend on the business type as they all use different things. For my chosen organisation they are likely to use papers, computers, printers, pen, pencil, projectors and all sorts of office equipment as they are small teachers’ offices. Businesses should keep a close eye on what they waste, if you do that it will help them to cut costs and work more environmentally friendly. 3. Plant, machinery and equipment Businesses spend thousands of pounds on equipment and machineries to work more quickly and efficient. It is essential for them to have them and an up to date one as it helps the business run smoothly. For example teachers at The Manchester College use projectors to make it more easier for students to read or see what the teacher is teaching, and we have a library with computers which students and staffs can use to do their work. 4. Security, insurance and emergency provision I believe The Manchester College follows the Health and Safety act as I’ve seen the fire exits and there were . Also they must have the policies and provisions if there is an event of fire, there must be a staff who are trained to lead the way or make way for people in that event to keep them calm and put them in the right direction, and the people who have come to study/work to the college should have had a training or at least shown the fire exits or false alarm to see if the fire alarm works and to people know what to do in that event. All the building must have insurance against things like this to ensure the building and the employee/customers are protected, so that in any case of accident the insurance company will pay for the person who is injured or pay money to the person’s family in the event of death. Technological resources- are not only computers and printers which can be treated as physical resources. There are four main areas: 1. Intellectual property This is the right to own ideas and have a right to concerning what happens to them, if the one of the staff has new idea that no one has the business can protect it from others to use it so that business will only benefit from this idea to make more profit or attract more people. For my college if one of the teacher/ advisor got a new idea of having a nursery on site which can be paid by day and any student/employee can give their child it would be a good and new idea as it enables students with children to study/work and easy to bring her child to the place they study/work, and the business protected it, only The Manchester College can use this idea to bring in more students. 2. Accumulated experience and skills This is an experience gained over a number of years when a person has come across lots of different issues to do with the job. There is a good side and not so good side by keeping employers for a very long time. Of course, it will be worth if the employee is the brilliant one, if so the level of experience will grow. Not so good side is if it the experienced staff is not handled carefully, it may result that you will have to pay more for them or give them a special condition whereas you can hire a new staff with the same or higher skills and pay low wages. For my college I think the employees are likely to stay longer and I think teachers are feel privileged when the student comes back to her/him to show what they have got out of their education that is gained from the teacher and college. 3. Software licences, patents and copyright I believe The Manchester College bought a license from Microsoft to use their Microsoft Office Pack as it will cost them cheaper than buying it individually and install them on computers which they have a hundreds and thousands of them. So it is enabling them to use it unlimited with a one off payment. Often it is allowed for businesses to do so, not for single person/public. Patents and copyright has always been tricky to protect or should I say difficult to prove the person who stole it, because people may copy the whole idea and change the name of it to pt it on the market, so apparently it is different as it has a different name and maybe slightly different, but if people see it they won’t even recognise or know the difference. I remember one girl was selling a hoody with the logo of the college without permission from the college back home, so the college found out and they fined her parents as she was not an adult herself. b) Explain how the management of human, physical and technological resources can improve the performance of your selected organisation. Human Resources Every activity is carried put by human at The Manchester College and other businesses, so it is essential for businesses to have the right source of people to work towards their main aims and objectives. They must improve/ update their Human Resources to work effectively. I believe that my college try to manage its human resource at the level of standard as the best to provide the better future and education for us the students, considering the highly professional staff they have in my college, they hire the best possible staffs with ability and interest to care for students, so that staff will have better understanding of what students needs, also they train their staff accordingly with the new technology’s or hire new staffs who have new skill which can be introduced to the other staff. To do those things there is department especially designed to do that job. Their main job role is to manage and control the employees in the college, meaning hiring a new staff, train the existing ones to improve their employer’s ability to have the best source of employees. To manage its staff successfully the college tries to keep the existing staff as it is beneficial for the college as longer the staff stays, college won’t have to advertise jobs and train them which costs money for them to do that, instead of spending money on new person who is starting as an entry level, the company invest in their people who have stayed with them on the long run so that the employee will feel that they belong there and work more harder. Team work is always important for organisations like Manchester College as it is very large organisation and everyone have to work as a whole to get the work done, to improve team performance organisation do things like group activity, staff meeting and staff day out to make them closer so that they work with each other more comfortably, if they work closely the organisation will benefit from the use of full staff performance and things will go quicker and smoother, so that they can move forward to their next objective. Physical Resource If the college have a good facility for students, it can attract more students and people would be looking to work for them as basic standard of facility needs to meet and higher would be an advantage. It also important for them to use these facilities with its full use and keeping them up to date as the things are developing very fast and things are getting out of fashion quickly. For example if the student had learned Microsoft Office 2003 in their IT class by the time they finish their studies and find work would be 2007 and he might struggle if the new employer has the newer version and he doesn’t know how to use it properly even though it is similar to the older version, he will not get the all the benefit that the software is offering. Technological Resource As the college uses a lot of paperwork and papers, it is crucial to save them as they need to be used for hard evidence, however I would like to suggest that teachers can send their assignment brief to student e-mails which college have provided for them it saves the trees and we are going to be use the e-mail which is one of the facility college improved last year and I think we are not making a full use of it and it feels it might be waste of money to have e-mail address and not using it, to motivate students to use their e-mail college can put their names instead of student number which will look more real and nice, and not allow to have an access to any other mail service in the library so that student have no choice but to use it properly. If we can do that we will reduce the use of papers and use the facility which we don’t use. Task 3 a) Describe the sources of internal and external finance, available to Barney’s business. There are two main ways that business can access financial resources: 1. Internal sources ( within the business) This is the money you can get within the business: Owner’s savings- I believe Barney has some money for himself if he is thinking to start a new business, because it’s the owners who are often invest in their company to cover the setting up costs. It might be the only source they available immediately for them as for sole traders like Barney, banks or other financial institution unlikely to offer a loan as there is too much risk involved, and if you have that kind of money it is really good for the business as you will not have to pay it back by monthly or pay an interest. Capital from profit- this will become available after the business set up and operating. Once they have run for certain time, they may make some profit to invest into the business to run or buy more stock or buy new machinery to grow the business 2. External sources (outside the business) There are number of different external sources that business can get money from to help them to set up or invest in. Banks- they can offer loans, overdrafts and business account to businesses but you will have to have a good business plan to get it. Loans are not easy to get and might not be a good option for small business as you must pay it back with interest in certain amount of time and if the company goes down the owner will end up with huge debt. The choice I would suggest is the overdraft for him as it is flexible and you won’t have to pay a penny unless it is used, there are some banks who offer interest free overdraft, if you can get it will be a win! Friends/Family- you can always seek for help from your friends and families and you can even offer them a share for return of their investment or just borrow some money from them to put towards the business if they are nice enough. I would say it is the best option of borrowing money as you don’t pay interest and it is your family they will not give you to court unless you run with their money. Government grants- these are available from the EU, national/local government. A grant is money you can receive as a business man; a good thing about it is that you don’t have to pay it back. If Barney falls under the age group of 18-30 he can get a low interest loan from Prince’s Trust. Task 4 (a) The purpose of budgets, and how they can be used to monitor and control the performance of Barney’s business, including, the monitoring of actual performance against budget and the use of variance analysis. Budget is a written plan with spending which will occur and a revenue that is need in the future to cover these costs. The purpose of it is it gives you clear understanding of what to expect to spend/receive in the future (coming year) to prevent or act any crisis before it happens. It also can be used as a communication between the employees to understand the objectives of the business and work towards it. For owners they can see how well their managers managing the budget plan and performance of them. Budgetary control 1. Set objective for Barney Objective for Barney could look like this * Do a business related course * Get information on government grants * Find any other fund that is available to him 2. Set a plan to how to achieve these objectives He can start of with: * Do a year course in business related or hair styling course to have a better understanding of how business operate * Design business plan to show it to the banks and to apply for government grants * Get advise from people who are in the same business as his to find out what needs to be done orderly * Do an online research on advise and support from government websites to collect necessary documents to apply for government grant * Hire someone to do research on the market things like where to open the salon, and what kind of people lives in the area, and what is the average income for people in that area to help to set a price etc. 3. Prepare the plan You should produce a budget plan to attach it with your business plan to show how much is going to cost what and how you can manage to pay for it etc and you should compare it with the actual figure to analyse the situation of what has gone wrong or right and then you can take some action to prevent it in the future and more experienced on the next budgeting. Task 5 a) Study the contents of the profit and loss account and balance sheet for Wansbeck Motors Ltd and give an account of the worthiness of the business by explaining the purpose of each element. Purpose of balance sheet- is important as it shows the value of the business. * Assets things that business own * Liabilities ( debts a business owns) * Equity (the amount invested in the business) Purpose of profit and loss account- it shows how much money business making and how much money they are losing and you can identify it by looking at the profit and loss account to do something about it.

Examine the Role of the Church in Spain’s Conquest and Colonization of Continental America

Question:Examine the role of the Church in Spain’s conquest and colonization of continental America. The role of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain’s conquest and colonization of continental America was a two-fold process whereby under the facade of conversion and control lay the primary goal of gaining wealth, enforcing laws and the inevitable extension of control while condoning the beginnings of European slavery in the Caribbean. [i] Alternately, behind the movement for converting Indians lay some important influences in Spain.The Spanish Crown established royal controls over the ecclesiastical benefices and over the immense wealth of the church. [ii] Two papal bulls were issued in the year of 1493 that established the Spanish position in the New World. They also established the role that the Church was going to play in the New World. The first bull, issued on May 3, 1493, was called the Inter Caetera. It declared that lands discovered by Spanish envoys, not under a Christian owner, could be claimed by Spain.The bull also gave the Spanish monarch power to send men to convert the natives to the Catholic faith and instruct them in Catholic morals. The second papal bull issued that year expanded on the meaning of the first. The bull fixed a boundary for Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence in the New World. This boundary heavily favored Spain, showing an alliance between Spain and the Church. Under the Spanish Crown the Inquisition was resurrected in the form of the conquistadores to hunt down heretics.In repressing the last non-Christian state in the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, and in forcibly expelling Jews and the Moors, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sought to purify Spanish society in a spirit of Christian unity. The acts were militant expressions of religious statehood on the establishment of the American colonization in the latter part of the 1490s. [iii] The church which arrived in the Caribbean advocated what has been called â⠂¬Ëœwarrior Catholicism’[iv], which is the belief that military conquest and evangelization were compatible. v] Acting in conjunction with the conquistadores, the Roman Catholic Church played a vital role in the Spanish system of colonization and is argued to be one of the most outstanding revolutionary devices of the Spanish Government. [vi] By its discipline and methods it assumed, the Church was almost a military and political agency designed to push forward and defend the colonial frontiers, pacify the natives and open the way to European occupation. [vii] The subjugation of the native Indians and the extension of the territorial boundaries emphasized the role of the Church.The Church also served to maintain colonial borders against foreign encroachment. By its exclusion of heretical Protestants and by its strict censorship of books, the Church made foreign political and philosophical ideas difficult or dangerous to obtain and served as a defensive mechanism of the Spanis h Empire. [viii] It was largely through the Roman Catholic Church that Spain succeeded in transmitting its culture and political dominance in the colonization of continental America during the 16th century. [ix] The Church was not only an advance post of the Spanish Empire and a political device of colonialism.It had its own religious objectives and interests. The Spanish colonial empire was served exclusively by the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church which received active government support and encouragement in the form of grants of land to build churches, free passages for priest, free wine and oil for the monasteries. A hierarchy if archbishops, bishops, and lesser clergy were dispatched by the Crown to the New World. Priests were chiefly concerned with superintending the work of converting the natives, whom they thought of as primitive, to Christianity and â€Å"protecting† them from exploitation.The earliest groups were the friars, of whom the Dominicans were prominent. Later, the Franciscans and Jesuits became more active. The Roman Catholic Church reinforced religious superiority over the Indians through the Indians culture, religion and language. Associated with their attention to the spiritual needs of conversion, the priests endeavored to eliminate ‘heathen’ practices among those Indians that they baptized. [x] The non-Christian people of the Americas were not simply to be converted; they were to be civilized, taught, humanized, purified and reformed.The Indians to be converted were strangers speaking in many unfamiliar tongues. In most cases, when the Friars first encountered them, they had been only recently conquered and subjugated, and even if not actively hostile they were likely to retain covert antagonisms. In their experience all Spaniards were exploitative. The Indian religions were composites of ceremonies and attitudes of the most diverse sort, no single technique of conversion could be employed. Conversion required bo th the introduction of Catholic Christianity and the extirpation of existing native religions, and of the two tasks the latter was the more difficult one. xi] Modern anthropology demonstrates that the elimination of pagan traits was only partial. In Indian societies of the twentieth century, even in the areas of most active Christian labour, residual pagan forms survived. The mission programme resulted in the syncretism of the Indian religion and Roman Catholic Christianity. Indians might have responded enthusiastically to the new teaching, but they tended to interpret Christianity as a doctrine compatible with their own tolerant pagan religions, and they allowed Christianity and paganism to exist simultaneously as complementary faiths.A common Indian view held that one religious form was resorted to when another failed to bring a desired result. [xii] However, in a process of religious syncretism, as priest constructed churches out of the stones of destroyed temples, symbolizing an d emphasizing the substitution of one religion by the other,[xiii] religious saints like the Aztec’s Tonantzin and the Virgin Mary became intermingled, creating a new national symbol, the Virgin of Guadalupe. [xiv]In Mexico, Cortes’ forces destroyed Indian religious sites, cleaned them with lime and replaced images of Quetzalcoatl and other Indian gods with images of Christ and the Virgin Mary. [xv] Native temples were torn down, idols destroyed and burnt, sacrificial wells were filled-in, writings were destroyed and other material evidence, anything the Roman Catholic Church considered as paganism were destroyed. [xvi] The Church was also concerned with the material and physical welfare of the natives.Hospitals were particularly needed because of the epidemics which occasionally swept the land. A hospital not only provided treatment for the sick, but was frequently a kind of poor-house as well, where the aged and infirmed could be attended to, and where poor-relief co uld be dispensed. Virtually all the social services in the Spanish colonies were provided by the clergy. However, despite the advances in saving the Indians from exploitation, the work of the Church often caused distress and was sometimes harmful.In successful conversions, Indians supplied construction labour on the churches, hospitals, monasteries and schools without recompense, voluntarily, or at the command of their newly Christianized chiefs. The friars then proceeded to expand the Christianized area, by moving out into surrounding towns, where subordinate chapels were built. Cooperating Indians were brought into the conversion process to assist the friars. Indians who refused to accept Christianity were punished, sometimes by death.The labour of Christianization was further hindered by conflicts between friars and other branches of the society. The terms of the encomienda demanded that the masters should see to the Indians protection, with the duty of seeing that they were care d for and taught to become more civilized. Becoming more civilized really meant nothing more than giving signs that they accepted the Spanish as their masters, covering their bodies as European did, speaking Spanish and accepting the Christian faith.In return for Spanish protection the Indians were to give their service in the fields or mines of the encomenderos. The encomienda system was nothing more than a means of obtaining forced labour for the encomendero, Spanish conquistadors. No wages were paid for the work done and very often the Indians’ farms were ruined by herds of cattle or swine belonging to their encomendero. They rarely had time to grow their own food for the forced labour left them neither time nor strength.The Indians were not free to leave the encomienda and those who fled were hunted down by men on horseback with dogs. The death rate among the Indians shot up as a result of hunger, weakness and despair among people whose traditional village and family life was completely destroyed. The Church and the encomienda became rival institution, each in its own way seeking control over the native populations. This issue between them erupted openly in 1511, when the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos first condemned the colonists’ treatment of the Indian in Hispaniola.Thereafter, under the leadership of Bartolome de Las Casas, another Dominican friar and others, ecclesiastical criticism of encomienda became frequent and outspoken. The Spaniards saw the friars as officious nuisances whose object was to pry into the livelihood of encomienda Indians, criticize the encomenderos’ use of Indian labour and denounce encomienda in letters to the king. Although the rights and wrongs of the encomienda system were discussed by the Crown it was decided that this system was necessary if the colonies were to survive.There was no other way of replacing the labour that the Indians provided. It was agreed, though, that the system would be bette r organized and the rights of the Indians more properly protected. To this end the Thirty Two Laws of Burgos were published in 1512, whereby Spaniards were confirmed in their rights to coerce the Indians, but their obligations to convert them and treat them humanely were set out in great detail, even to what food, clothes and beds they were to be supplied with. Two inspectors were to be appointed in each town to ensure that the rules were kept.Those laws could have corrected the abuses, but the practical difficulties of putting them into full effect on the far side of the Atlantic and the Andes, and against powerful vested interests, were difficult to prevail over. [xvii] The crown added to the powers of the Church by giving it powers of censorship over all books entering the Empire. This was intended at first to keep out heretical Protestant works, but it was also used against political books. Education and the confessional enabled the Church and assisted the Inquisition in keeping a close watch on the movement of thought.The transatlantic movements of books were regulated in Seville. â€Å"Popular and fictional literature came under the purview of the secular authorities (in Spain), which placed a ban in 1531 on the export of romances of chivalry to the Indies as being likely to corrupt the minds of the Indians. †[xviii] To make these powers more effective, a branch of the Inquisition, a special church court, was established from Spain. Its official powers were to prosecute those who broke the laws such as blasphemy, bigamy, heresy, witchcraft, heterodoxy, and sins against God.The Inquisition punishment included penance, prison sentences, property confiscation and burning at the stake. Informers could remain anonymous and the crimes of so called heresy and witchcraft could have many interpretations. This tribunal was operating out of Lima, Mexico City and Cartagena by 1570. Protestant smugglers and raiders of all nationalities captured by the Spanish were brought before the Inquisition and charged as heretics. But most importantly for the government of the Empire, the Inquisition could be used against influential people who showed too great a tendency to criticize.In this way the Church played a part in keeping the colonies tied to Spain The Roman Catholic Church operated without competition in the circum-Caribbean colonial society during the sixteenth century, where it performed both religious and political functions. In religion, it taught and converted the native Indians to Christianity and catered to the religious needs of the Spanish community. Politically, it helped to extend the boundaries of the Spanish Empire by removing opposition to it: in the case of the Indians by its teachings; and in the case of Europeans, largely through the operation of the Inquisition.The Church did much good, but its efforts resulted in a number of drawbacks. For example the genuineness of the conversion of the Indians is doubtful. In generall y, in all the colonies, the Church catered to the spiritual needs and at the same time contributed to the preservation of the society in which they operated.

Management, Motivation, and Leadership Essay

Review Questions 1. Review the definition of management at the beginning of the chapter and briefly define each of the 4 functions. What are the challenges in carrying out these functions in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace? Planning- Determining organizational goals and action plans for how to achieve those goals. Organizing- determining a structure for both individual jobs and the overall organization. Leading-directing and motivating people to achieve organizational goals. Controlling-monitoring performance and making adjustments as needed. The challenge in planning is that planning is essentially forecasting future actions and events. Most actions or events are dependent upon contingencies that must occur in order for the plan to be successful. The highly competitive nature of today’s marketplace requires planning that can accommodate changes so management plans continue to stay on target. 2. How has the role of the manager changed in the last couple of decades? What forces have driven the changes? The old concept of a manager was one that drives employee’s to work. The assumption with this model is that people that come to work do not necessarily want to work and that micro-management techniques and a heavy hand over employees is the only thing that will motivate them to complete work according to company requirements. Now however, the new theory of management is one where the employee is expected to be more of a self-managing professional. The manager’s role is more inspirational, leading by example and instructing employees rather than â€Å"lording over† them. This change has occurred primarily in response to evidence that has found that employees who are satisfied with their workplace and enjoy their job are more highly motivated, higher producing and more focused on the  interests of the company. 3. Define technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills. How do these three skills connect with the different levels of management? How do critical thinking and decision- making skills come into play? Technical- Expertise in a specific functional area or department Human- the ability to work effectively with and through other people in a range or different relationships. Conceptual- the ability to grasp a big picture view of the overall organization, the relationships among its various parts, and its fit in the broader competitive environment. Front-line managers must have a high degree of technical skills, which help them hire, train, and evaluate employees; avoid mistakes; and ensure high quality production. Middle-level managers need an especially high level of human skills. They typically act as the bridge between departments, coordinating people and projects that sometimes have mismatched priorities. Top-level managers must demonstrate excellent conceptual skills in order to formulate a vision, interpret marketplace trends, and plan for the future. 4. Which theory of motivation do you find most compelling? What factors should you consider when choosing a motivational approach? Explain your answers. Personally, expectancy theory is the most compelling. I believe motivation is self-created. Therefor the reward is also self-created. For example, going for a run requires self-motivation, the self-reward is feeling better about yourself and looking better in return. You should consider the reward, the cost, the supply and the demand. 5. Outline the three levels of management planning in terms of scope of planning and typical questions and concerns. Why does communication withim the organization play such a vital role in effective planning? Strategic planning: Senior Management, Typically five-years time frame Should we acquire a new company? Should we begin manufacturing in China? Should we expand to overseas markets? Should we take our company public? Tactical planning: Middle management, Typically one-year time frame Should we spend more time servicing each customer? Should we hire a public relations agency to handle PR? Should we spend fewer ad dollars on TV and more on the web? Operational planning: First line management, daily, weekly and monthly TF How should we schedule employees this week? When should we schedule delivery for each batch of product? How should customer service people answer the phones? Successful firms often encourage flow of feedback up and down the organization to ensure that all key plans are sound and that all key players â€Å"buy in.† 6. What is the purpose of a mission statement? Why are the most effectictive mission statements simple, vivid, and compelling? The mission defines the organization’s purpose, values, and core goals, providing the framework for all other plans. It is simple, vivid and compelling so that the employees from the janitor to the CEO, from the customers to investors can easily understand. 7. Name five potential sources of competitive advantage that might be strengths in a SWOT analysis. Are these advantages likely to change over time? Why or why not? Premium brand name, proven management team, lower costs/ higher margins, diverse workforce, higher consumer demand. I think these are definitely likely to change simply cause who knows how long you can maintain a low cost, high margin company. Anything can happen. 8. What are the pros and cons of each key organizational structure? Which do you think would be the best fit for you? Explain your answer. Centralization: Pros: simple and efficient and the result tends to be a strong corporate image and a uniform customer approach across the front lines. Cons: typically respond more lowly to customer needs and have lower employee morale. Span of Control: Pros & cons are determined based on the abilities of both the manager and the subordinates, the nature of the work being done, the location of the employees, and the need for planning and coordinating. Line Organizations: Pros: quick decision making and no fuzziness about who is responsible for what. Cons: lack of specialists to provide advice or support line managers. Inflexibility, too much paper work and even incompetence. Line-and-Staff Organizations: Same pros as line organizations without all the drawbacks. Matrix Organizations: Pros: encourages teamwork and communication. Offers flexibility, lends itself to innovative solutions. Creates a higher level of motivation and satisfaction for employees. Cons: The need for constant communication can bog down a company in too many meetings. The steady state of flux can be overwhelming for both manager and employees. And having two bosses can cause conflict and stress for everyone. I think Spans of Control fits me best because I work best based off the location, manager, work being done and the planning and coordinating. 9. What are the characteristics of effective leaders? What leadership style do most effective leaders use? Leaders are trustworthy, visionary, and inspiring. Also includes empathy,  courage, creativity, intelligence, and fairness. I think Democratic Leaders are the most effective. 10. If an employee falls short of meeting his or her goals, what factors should a manager consider before engaging in disciplinary action? Explain your answer. I think disciplining employees for poor performance should come only after exploring the reasons for not meeting goals and making changes if necessary. Sources â€Å"Planning – The Practice of Proactively Structuring.† Planning – The Practice of Proactively Structuring. 4Shared, n.d. Web. Kelly/Williams, Introduction to Business, BUSN Student Edition 7

Nazi consolidation of power essays

Nazi consolidation of power essays To consolidate their power over 1933 and 1934, the Nazis used a number of methods to deal with a number of situations. This essay will deal with what the Nazis actually did to consolidate their power once gaining it in January 1933 after Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. They used legal means, terror tactics and propaganda to eliminate political opposition, suppress possibilities of forceful resistance, deal with Germany's broken economy and labour force, and promote their image and ideology within the national community. Through the use of these methods the National Socialists were able to successfully consolidate their power by the end of 1934. The Nazi's first aim once Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 was to eliminate all political opposition. This would consolidate their power over government. The existing opposition was divided and weak, and believed that Hitler could be controlled. They also believed they could resist his extremist demands. For an example - Carl Bachem, a member of the Catholic Centre Party at the time, revealed in later years that the prevailing view within the party was that by supporting Hitler they could 'exercise a...sobering influence' upon the National Socialists. According to historian D.G. Williamson, 'the potential opposition to Hitler was formidable, but it was divided and crippled by fatally underestimating the dynamism of the Nazi movement.' Many parties also overestimated their influence in government. The power of the Reichstag had declined throughout the last years of Weimar and the President began to rule by decree. Or, as historian William L. Shirer puts it '(By 1932) political power... was concentrated in the hands of a senile President and in those of a few shallow, ambitious men around him. Hitler saw this clearly and it suited his purposes.' As soon as Hitler became chancellor he called for national elections to be held in March. To win these electio...

Safaricom Limited Operations Management

Safaricom Limited Operations Management Firms operate under distinct and procedural aspects identifying their operations, efficacy, integrity, as well as the overall credibility in business operations. This paper has discussed the operation of Safaricom Limited. It defines its strategic management processes and the internal operations as retrieved from video and other reliable sources of this firm.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Safaricom Limited Operations Management specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Safaricom operates within the communication industry providing payable networks throughout the host country. Prior to comprehensive observation, various core operations of this firm have been identified as supplying, distributing, client management and business models. Safaricom handles customers through ensuring that its operation and business strategies run intact in a mutual mission targeting. The Company Safaricom website is accessible through www.safaric om.co.ke where most organizational information is available (Safaricom 1997). It has been defined as a leading communication firm offering networks to people in Kenya. The organization has been leading such other firms as Airtel, Orang,e and Yu among other through gathering the largest number of customers in the country. It was operating on a profit of over $390 million during the 2014 financial year. The operations are the most competitive especially in respect to the development of a responsive support system taking care of the customers. The communication industry in which Safaricom limited is conducting its business has the four firms named previously as Orange Kenya, Airtel Kenya, Equitel and Yu. The advantage of Safaricom against these companies is customer loyalty directed and maintained through high rates of communication when contacting the clients of their competitors. In fact, Safaricom has sought to eliminate or own other upcoming direct competitors strategically. For in stance, it has bought the largest share of an upcoming competitor referred to as Yu Mobile. Key Elements of Business Strategy Safaricom has developed a strategic approach that attracts and retains clients. The company developed cards to subscribe networks which bound clients from changing their contact identity as the competitors demand. It has approached the communication services through delivering devices for messaging, internet connection and voice calls. In a bid to ensure that services are rendered properly through the channels set, Safaricom has a customer care system to sought issues and collect suggestion (Deliberate Loopholes 2011). The sales department for the networks uses cards with codes to top-up airtime of prepaid services. On the other hand, the sale of computers and mobile devices has been distributed through their shops and agents.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF L earn More Operations The firms conduct sales, product distribution, network setup, and monitoring system. As a firm, Safaricom is expected to proceed in the market for a long period. The needs for communication are continuous throughout human life implying that the business model is continuous. Product process matrix life cycle stages Process Flow Safaricom products are sold through a process whereby the major retailers continuously receive the products through the wholesalers also referred to as the distributors. Distributors buy the products from Safaricom sales department at lower prices in order to ensure that the selling takes place at the intended price. The sale of airtime begins when Safaricom Limited securely forms new codes for topping up which are then printed by the production section. The produced cards are released continuously in parts through flow in the product process matrix. Business Strategy versus Operation Strategy All the employees are set to serve th e running and ensure that the process runs continuously (Nzuve Kamau 2014). The business strategy ensures that all the products made or released by the company are marketed and distributed for sale. Essentially, profits are the key aspects and reasons of conducting the business. In this perception, the operations usually feed the business and vice versa in order to ensure all aspect grow mutually. Process Structure The information regarding Safaricom is rendered through advertisements on mass media, websites, messaging, and a support system to deal with customers. Essentially, they keep both the digital records and written documents. Their physical services are rendered throughout the nation on money transfer outlets called Mpesa and Safaricom shops (Bosire 2012).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Safaricom Limited Operations Management specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The process has such fundamental pros as the eas e of accessibility. Ideally, Safaricom ought to get substantive competition than the prevailing one in order to facilitate innovations and better services to the clients. Intense Issues Safaricom Limited has not only forced customers to take its services, but also partially monopolized the services being offered. The company has invested and innovated ways to distract the initial systems of communication and money transfer services through preventing other companies from accessing their network. In fact, it has prevented the introduction of the thin SIM cards which would allow the cardholders to receive services from two of 3 distinct companies using a single phone. Moral Framework In order to curb the varying issues perceived from Safaricom limited, community involvement in decisions affecting them must be addressed. The controversy apparent in their arguments on the appropriateness of the specified prices and manipulation of prices should be done through prior public consultatio n. Choice for the Organization The realistic recommendation for the company. It should prepare strategies to access and receive recommendation and assessments from the customers at all times. This aspect can allow the company to collect important information. Four strong facts or data supporting arguments: The prominence of a marketing strategy and its business repercussions are inherent to each other. Safaricom will retain its loyal customers willingly or from pressure retrieved from the high cost off-net services from the main provider. The exploitation of customers due to the strength of a company in the market faces legal regulation as initiated by the Communication Authority of Kenya (Maina 2010). Safaricom will not loosen the hardness of penetrating the communication industry. Marketing of product to attain some business advantages requires critical evaluation and care since it determines the number of customers loyal and willing to product the brand goods or services (S lack et al. 2012). Researchers and protagonist have paid attention to this aspect in an ideally proficient and reliable. Even though this aspect has developed concise directions for marketers, they manipulate how the market is formed and developed through asserting certain ethical considerations. References Bosire, J 2012, M-PESA: Why Kenya, Simon Fraser U, Burnaby, B.C. Deliberate Loopholes: Transparency Lessons from the Privatisation of Telkom and Safaricom 2011, AfriCOG, Nairobi, Kenya. Maina, J 2010, Analytical Research for Safaricom Limited Company: A Customer Satisfaction Survey, International Business, vol. 5 no. 1, pp. 1-45.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Nzuve, S and Rebecca K 2014, Perceived Relationship between Motivation and Job Satisfaction Among Call Centre Agents at Safaricom Limited, SSRN Journal SSRN Electronic Journal, pp. 1-18. Safaricom 1997, https://www.safaricom.co.ke/. Slack, N, Brandon-Jones, A, Johnston, R Betts, A 2012, Operations and Process Management with eText: Principles and Practice for Strategic Impact, Financial Times Prentice Hall, New York.