William Shakespeare`S Macbeth Essays (863 words) -

William Shakespeare`S Macbeth Character Sketch: Young Macduff a.k.a son In William Shakespeares Macbeth, an epic play about blood, glory and pride, Young Mcduff's tragic yet heroic lifestory is revealed. His father of course is Macduff, one of Scotland's most prestigous nobleman, and his mother is Lady Macduff. Macduff was very close to King Duncan and after his untimely death, he always had his suspicions about Macbeth. He chose not to join Macbeth's coronation and later fled Scotland as a traitor leaving his family alone in a ruthless and chaotic country that Scotland had become known for. These actions led to his family having to fend for themselves and eventually being killed by murderers sent by Macbeth. Young Macduff was killed by murderer's sent by Macbeth. This was Macbeth's attempt to essentially keep Macduff on his heels. This backfired because Macduff vowed to kill Macbeth, and as we all know he kept true to his promise. Moreover, Young Macduff only appears in the play briefly and it is in his own murder scene. He looks to be a young lad that is a little big for his age, and thus is treated more like a man by people he encounters. He is an average looking boy that dresses in earthy toned robes that represent his down to earth attitude. Young Macduff's character is one that is charcterized not by his appearance but more so by his inner being. Infact his name in the play's script is simply son. I feal this was Shakespeare truly giving Young Macduff a name that is a definition of his character. He is a son that shows great passion and love for his family and is driven to succeed largely in part to this passion. He is also witty, courageous, and intelligent, a potent combination not only for a child but for a man. Furthermore, young Macduff's intelligent and witt shines amazingly bright during his last conversation. When his mother tells him that his father was a traitor, and traitors are liars that get hanged by the honest men. He replies to Lady Macbeth by telling her that the traitors must be stupid because there are easily enough traitors to join and hang the honest men. Later he denounces his mother's statement that his father is dead by telling her that if his father truly had been killed she would be crying and since she was not crying it must be a good sign. Both these statements show Young Macduff's witt and intelect, but his most important characteristic is his courageous love for his family. Even when his own murderer's spoke ill of his father he snaped and insulted them by calling them shag-eared vilians. That leads me to his most courageous and significant line in the play. He has killed me, mother. Run away, I pray you! (IV,II, ll.90-91). This line shows the essence of his courag e and love for his family. Even while he is being brutally slayed he looks out for his family and want's them to be saved. He makes an emotional plea to his mother to flea for she is probably the next one to be killed. To continue, Young Macduff's greatest character traits are his intellect, his witt, his love for his family and his courage. These are simply the characteristics of a noble man who is just trying to do the right thing. Unfortunetly two of his best points are also his flaws. He loves his family to a flaw, and he is courageous to the same extent. He didn't have to stand up for his father and he didn't have to plea to his mother but he did and he was courageous enougjh to do it, even if it meant being killed in a much more brutal manor. Furthermore, Young Macduff is vital to the plot for it is his death that triggers Macdufff to kill Macbeth. Even deeper than that, Young Macduff represents Scotland and all that it can be as a witty intellectuall powerhouse, but more so, waht it is a nation mared in bloody chaotic confusion. You see Young Macduff is Scotland and Scotland is Young Macduff. Moreover, Young Macduff is a dynamic character in the physical sense. He is introduced than killed

Everything You Need to Know About Instagram Analytics to Hit Your Goals

Everything You Need to Know About Instagram Analytics to Hit Your Goals On an average day of Instagram, 80 million photos are shared. 80 million! No wonder Instagram has doubled in the last two years with its highly visual nature among such an actively engaged community of users. Among  such a lively feed of content, it may be nerve-wracking trying to figure out where your business fits in, but it doesnt have to be so. Every great Instagram  account has to start somewhere, and once youve started, you can build up your Instagram audience over time with the help of Instagram analytics to optimize every aspect of your posts. With Instagram analytics, its not just about posting for the sake of joining in, but rather about using Instagram as a tool to meet your goals. But lets be honest. Before any goals can be met, you  need to completely understand all of the Instagram metrics, choose the ones that match your goals, and then optimize your Instagram strategy and posts to hit those goals. So, with that, lets dive in! Table of Contents: Why Pay Attention to Instagram Analytics? 17 Important Instagram Metrics to Monitor 4 Free Instagram Analytics Tools to Measure Performance 5 Paid Instagram Analytics Tools to Consider Using Data to Power Your Instagram Marketing Strategy Download Your Free Instagram Analytics Infographic Need help remembering which metrics matter most on Instagram? Download this free infographic and keep it on hand for reference.Everything You Need To Know About Instagram Analytics + 8 Free Tools Why You Need Instagram Analytics Data allows us to make better, smarter decisions for both our business and our audience. As Instagram continues to grow with over 400 million daily active users, that's a pretty great opportunity to reach and draw in not any audience, but the right audience. Without analytics, an Instagram post is a shot in the dark amidst the great clutter of all the  other millions of photos, but with analytics, a path becomes clear and a strategy can be made. Let's get started  by introducing all of the analytics out there, and find which one matters most for your  specific audience and goals. Without analytics, an Instagram post is a shot in the dark. Where Can I Find Instagram Insights? Some metrics are best measured with third-party tools (like , and others that we'll cover). But, you can find a lot of these metrics in-app with Instagram Insights. Here's how it works: Looking for more info on Instagram Insights? Check out the official support docs here. Measure Instagram Performance With 's Social Profile Reports Here at , we work hard to build the best all-in-one content + social media marketing calendar out there. Recently, we rolled out Social Profile Reports. These are detailed network-specific analytics reports (including Instagram) that give you a birds-eye view of your performance. Access top social profile reports from one dashboard.  Stop downloading reports from individual platforms (or multiple third-party tools). Quickly view important social KPIs for Instagram (and other top networks) right inside . Refine your social strategy with actionable insight.  Track your social performance so you know what’s working (and what isn’t). Use real-time data to make updates to your social strategy, so you can continue to drive results. Connect with your audience + create posts that stand out.  Track engagement stats and  stop guessing at what will (or will not) resonate with your followers. Utilize your social profile reports to identify top content AND start creating posts you know your audience will love. Get social profile reports delivered right to your inbox  with scheduled reports. Create and schedule easy-to-understand reports to your team + stakeholders on a weekly or monthly basis. Giving everyone a pulse on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest performance. Best of all, you can try it yourself! You can get a free trial for 14 days, or even schedule a demo with our team. Alright, now let's get down to what you came here for: being a mad scientist when it comes to analyzing your Instagram content. 17 Instagram  Analytics Smart Marketers Need to Measure You may be thinking... 17? 17 analytics I have to keep track of? And the answer is no. In order to have an awesome Instagram strategy, there's only a few, key analytics to keep track of. But it completely depends on your goals. To help decipher which ones suit  your goals best, here's a guide to the top 17 Instagram analytics broken down into three key categories. Recommended Reading: What 20 Studies Say About the Best Times to Post on Social Media (Including Instagram) Profile Analytics While Instagram profiles are quite limited compared to other social networks, there are three key components you can track with analytics: Follower count, Website clickthroughs, and Profile views. Follower Growth:  Your follower count is located directly between your post and following counts at the top right of your app. This is the most prominent metric across the entire Instagram app, and the very first thing anyone checks when they go to your account. Simply put, this is your audience's first impression of your account. Because of this, it's easy to get  lost in striving to constantly gain followers. But instead, remember to focus on the right kind of followers. Simply use this metric to keep track of your growth over time. Recommended Reading: How to Get Way More Instagram Followers With 20 Easy Tactics Website Clicks: The one and only place you can directly guide your audience to, is your website URL  in the profile section of your account. As it's the sole location, having your  most prominent URL  here is key to gaining traffic to your website. At , we use this URL  to guide our audience to our trial signup page, a most recent blog post, feature announcement, or whatever it may be for that day.Whatever you choose, make sure it's the most important page you'd like your audience to visit. To track how many of your audience are clicking on this URL, go to your analytics icon in the top right corner, and swipe through the metrics on the top. The website clicks will be the fourth and last option. Whatever you choose, make sure it's the most important page you'd like your audience to visit. To track how many of your audience are clicking on this URL, go to your analytics icon in the top right corner, and swipe through the metrics on the top. The website clicks will be the fourth and last option. Profile views: While not everyone chooses to follow your account, you can still track how many profile views you've had, plus how that compares to the previous week. This metric can give you an idea of general interest in who you are and what your account is about. In the same swipe location where  website clicks is located, you can find this on your third swipe in. Audience  Analytics Your audience is essential to growing your business and hitting your goals, so with these 7 key audience metrics, you can get to know your audience super well. Check it out: Age: Oftentimes, businesses will create user  personas that have key characteristics of their ideal, target audience, and age is always on the top of the list. Using the Instagram Insights, you can see the exact age range of your Instagram audience! Click the analytics icon in the top right corner, then "See More" under Followers, and boom! It shows the variety of age groups and where your specific audience falls. It can also sort by gender within the age category, so you can see if gender impacts your age range or not. It can also sort by gender within the age category, so you can see if gender impacts your age range or not. Use this specific metric to see if your Instagram audience's age is aligning with your user  persona. If it's not, you may need to change the imagery type or tone of your posts so it becomes consistent with your goals. Gender: Along with age, gender is another way to get to know your audience. In the same area in your Instagram Insights, it displays your audience's age ratio. For example, right now, 's audience is 70% women and 30% men. That ratio is very close to our other traffic, so we know our content is hitting our same target audience across multiple platforms. Location: Location is a  simple metric within Instagram Insights that displays both the top cities and top countries your audience is following from. The location metric is definitely more helpful to some businesses rather than others as some might completely rely on location for their business such as hotels, tourist attractions, local shops, etc. For us at , this metric is great to see our global audience. Where are we most popular? Use this location metric to see what communities follow you most. For us at , this metric is great to see our global audience. Where are we most popular? Use this location metric to see what communities follow you most. Active Hours: In the same location as the above under 'Followers', you'll also be able to find the most active hours from your audience. This is the time your audience is checking in on your account the most often, which in return, lets you see what hours are the most popular, and best time to post. Find the hour that fits your audience best, and take advantage of it. Active Days: Similar to active hours, Instagram Insights will show you the most active days your audience is checking your account. They may vary just slightly, but none the less, there's always a clear winner. Find your top days, and start scheduling your Instagram posts for those popular  days. Instagram Story Impressions: As of August 2016, Instagram released a new feature called Instagram Stories. Similar to the commonly known Snapchat, you can post your daily events in a story that only displays for a 24-hour period time. Businesses can you use these stories for a variety of ways from showing off their team culture, connecting at events, or simply for another way to reach their audience with news and questions. To find your Instagram Story metrics, go into the Instagram Insights tab via the analytics icon, and scroll down to the Stories section.From there, you can see the impressions on each Instagram story, which represent how many people have viewed your story. Top Followers: This metric allows you to see which followers are the most valuable to you whether by their engagement, size of account, keyword, location, etc.  Knowing your top followers, leads to potential partnerships, cross-promotion, or any other marketing campaigns as you can directly contact those who are already helping you grow.Why not see if there are more possibilities? While this metric isn't found directly in Instagram Insights within the app, you can find your Top Followers by using tools like Social Rank. If you click on 'Followers', you can sort by most engaged, most valuable, etc.- so pick the one that you're most interested in, and then a #1-#10 summary list will appear below. Take this list, and reach out! Instagram Content Analytics Beyond your account profile and audience analytics, there's the actual content itself. Instagram has both image and video sharing, so between the two, there are so many variables to make your content perform well from the color scheme, visual layout, the written caption, filter, you name it! Thankfully, the content analytics can give you  insight into what posts are working well, and then from there you  can analyze what individual variables work best. Likes:  Instagram users 'like' 4.2 billion posts per day! This is the simplest way to quickly see the performance of an Instagram post. To 'like' a post, your audience clicks the heart icon, and then below that, it shows the number of total likes on that given post. Likes are the easiest way for your audience to quickly scroll through their feed, while still engaging in your content, so this is a great place to start analyzing which content works, and which doesn't.| Comments: Comments are the next level of engagement from your audience as they not only 'liked' or scrolled past your post, but stopped to say something and voice their opinion. Comments don't necessarily all come pouring in at once, but rather appear over time as most brands continue to see a majority of comments 18-24 hours after the initial post all the way up to 19 days! You can find your comments by selecting a given post in Instagram, and then by scrolling to 'view all # comments' to see what was precisely said.Instagram now allows users to 'like' other people's comments too, so make sure to jump into the discussion, reply where you see fit, and like the comments you enjoyed most.The Instagram app includes both likes and comments in their notifications feed so that you can track and be alerted of these two analytics as they receive attention. Not only can you find them there, but if you'd like a large overview of likes and comments per account, you can find it in the The Instagram app includes both likes and comments in their notifications feed so that you can track and be alerted of these two analytics as they receive attention. Not only can you find them there, but if you'd like a large overview of likes and comments per account, you can find it in the Social Engagement Report! You can sort by any given period of time, and then it'll show you the performance per account and per message. Saves: Instagram released a new saving feature as of late  2016 that allows you to privately save any Instagram posts that you want to keep for later on. Rather than screen-shotting the Instagram post, you can simply click the ribbon icon in the bottom right of your Instagram post. From there, it will go into your Saved tab that's located on your profile page. Instagram insights include this metric within the individual Instagram post. Click 'View Insights' directly below your post, and then the amount of saves you've received is in the far right-hand. If your content is being added to a saved bucket, you definitely know it resounded with your audience and was something they plan on returning to later on. Nice work! Impressions: The total impressions on a given Instagram post is the total number of times your post has been seen. This could be from the direct newsfeed that users are scrolling through or through strangers on search. If they've simply seen your post, it'll track an impression. This metric is helpful to see overall viewership, but it doesn't give any insight on how well your audience engaged or interacted with a given post, so use this one sparingly. Reach: Similar to Impressions, but slightly different is Reach. Reach is defined by the total number of accounts that have seen your post. While impressions is total number of times, Reach is total number of accounts. This is a good metric to have as we know having the same person viewing the same post over and over doesn't necessarily equate to success. Reach allows you to see on an account level, to analyze how large your audience actually is. Engagement: Engagement is the number of unique Instagram accounts that have liked, saved, or commented on your post. Basically, it takes the data from your likes, saves, and comments, and rolls them into one metric for you called engagement.  This is an awesome metric to keep track of as most goals often coincide with interacting with their audience.There are several tips and tricks  to grow engagement, so try a few and watch your engagement grow! Plus, has your  Social Engagement Report suited for just this! You can select any given period of time, choose the Instagram network, and it'll analyze your total messages sent, the engagements received, and then finalize an engagement rate for you. We love using this to get the overall picture of our engagement over time. Top Posts: Lastly, there's top posts, or rather those Instagram posts that are top performing. Within Instagram insights, you can click on 'Top Posts' to see all of your posts sorted by their number of impressions from top to bottom within the last 30 days. While this metric only takes into consideration the impressions or  how many times your posts was seen, this can be helpful to see the bigger picture of which posts have the best curb appeal. Bonus:  If you'd like to see your top posts based on real engagement rather than just impressions, the Social Engagement Report shows you just that. Choose your timeframe, and see up to 20 of your top messages on Instagram. This is a great tool to see posts that not only look good, but have audience interaction. d use to track your Instagram efforts from your audience to your shared content.But, if we're honest, that's A LOT to keep track of. That's where Instagram tools come into play, so below we have some of favorite free and paid tools to save you time by seeing them all in one place, while making your more strategic with Instagram. Recommended Reading: How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts With One Powerful Tool How to Schedule and Measure Instagram Posts In One Place Go From Spontaneous to Strategic With Instagram Scheduling in [Demo]3  Free Tools for Measuring Instagram Performance Instagram Insights: With the introduction of Instagram Business accounts, Instagram Insights provides a lot of information at the touch of your hands, whenever you  have a free moment. They no longer simply present the likes and comments of a post, but rather numerous audience metrics and individual post metrics that weren't possible before. Plus, it's free! The only downside to Instagram Insights is that it's fairly limited in that it has set time frames for metrics: 1 week for most profile analytics and 30 days for top posts. Are you using #Instagram Insights to measure your performance?Square Lovin SquareLovin has a free account that will send you an email report of your chosen Instagram account. If you'd like, they allow can download the report to Excel or export to PowerPoint. Within SquareLovin, they show your total posts, engagements, and a large chart of your overall activity over time.There's also a section of Top Posts that is sorted by most engaged post with a nice comparison metric. Lastly, they have a chart that shows which keywords are common in your comments as well as your most active commenters. Within SquareLovin, they show your total posts, engagements, and a large chart of your overall activity over time.There's also a section of Top Posts that is sorted by most engaged post with a nice comparison metric. Lastly, they have a chart that shows which keywords are common in your comments as well as your most active commenters. And.... even more analytics from best time and day to publish, to what cities and filters work best for you. This is definitely a great tool to see extensive analytics for Instagram. SocialRank SocialRank is definitely the easiest as far as connecting your account and diving into the data right away. As mentioned above, this is one of the few places you can analyze your top followers by numerous factors, so you can get very specific.You can also compare across accounts to see how they differ, which would come in handy for anyone with multiple accounts for the same business. SocialRank also lets you download the info to a CSV file or PDF to share with others. Definitely recommended! 5 Paid Tools to Consider Iconosquare Iconosquare is probably the most well-known  Instagram Analytics tool available on the market. Between its beautiful dashboard with all the  posts in a line, and its various metrics from followers to engagement, I can certainly see why. Iconosquare has both overview metrics to see what your top post or top engaged post is, as well as individual analytics for any given Instagram post to see its lifespan over time. While Iconosquare does have a two-week free trial, it is a paid service with a variety of plans to choose from. Their features are quite extensive, so use their pricing chart to find where you and your team might fit. Quintly Quintly is a web-based tool that not only tracks your Instagram analytics, but all of your other accounts as well. Quintly is great at seeing how your analytics compare to your competitors as you can set benchmarks for your accounts, and they also have tailored reporting so you can send that data to whomever might be interested in seeing the progress. Lastly, Quintly allows you to set up custom metrics if you wish (which is always super needed!) as well as campaign tracking so you can see how a given campaign is performing across all networks. Lastly, Quintly allows you to set up custom metrics if you wish (which is always super needed!) as well as campaign tracking so you can see how a given campaign is performing across all networks. Quintly does have a 'forever free' plan, but the data is limited to 30 days. So if you're serious about analytics, they have four paid plans available for purchase. Keyhole Keyhole is another great platform to see all of your analytics in one place in a simple dashboard. They can track a few different networks such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but uniquely can track any given hashtag, keyword, mention, or url as well. For Instagram, primarily, simply add whichever account you'd like data for. From there, you'll find your basic metrics up top, a chart of your posts performance over time, and then your top posts by engagement. Keyhole  also shows your top engaged hashtags used, and optimal best times to post to help in the creation of your future posts. Keyhole has a 3-day free trial, but that's a pretty short amount of time to really dive into your analytics. So they offer 5 paid plans that cover a wide variety of features. Minter.io Minter.io was specifically made for Instagram analytics. Once you enter your account info or a hashtag, you can choose any given period of time, and then start capturing data. Minter.io shows your audience, growth over time, their gender, and location. They also have an engagement tab that shows the top commented, most likes, top interacted, etc.Lastly, and probably my favorite element of Minter.io, is their optimization tab. This tab includes best times top post, best days to post, and really goes in depth on all the variety of ways to optimize your Instagram posts. Here's a grand list of all that the metrics they collect for Instagram: Minter.io has a 14-day free trial, but beyond that, it  is a paid service with three main plans to choose from. You've probably heard of before (wink, wink). But as a marketing management calendar my team and I work in every day, it's so handy to have all our analytics right alongside our campaigns so we not only schedule content, but can see what's working and what's not. Through 's desktop and mobile app, you can schedule Instagram posts in advance using 's best time feature, making one less step to think about. After scheduling our posts, my team and I go into our Social Engagement Report under the analytics tab to see how our Instagram posts performed. (This report has all of the networks, but let's focus on Instagram.) At , we're all about investing our time in the 10x projects rather than the 10% projects, so this report lets us see clearly where to focus our efforts in Instagram. The very first step is selecting the date period we'd like to analyze. From there, an overview chart will appear that shows how our posts are doing based off engagement (likes, comments, and shares). I personally love this, because we care more about engagement at than general impressions. The same goes for our top posts section. In here, you can choose to see up to your top 20 posts based off the Instagram post's overall engagement. weighs comments slightly more than likes appropriately so that posts with 20 comments rank better than 20 likes. This way, we have a completely accurate overview of which posts are top-performing, and then we can create content similar to that to grow our audience and reach our goals. Then, we also use Social Profile Reports to get a more granular view on our Instagram performance. This also lets us see our best posting times, to help us optimize our schedule: Plus, we can drill into our engagement rates by day of week and time of day: And, it gives us another place to see our top Instagram posts: has a 14-day free trial that includes scheduling to all networks, which includes the mobile app that schedules posts to Instagram (more features coming soon to mobile!). The more advanced plans such as Team Pro and beyond receive all of the analytic reports including Top Content, Social Engagement (seen above), and Team Reports. Try it out for yourself! There ya have it! Four free tools, and five paid Instagram analytic tools to keep your metrics all in one place to make you and your team even more efficient when it comes to Instagram scheduling and analysis. Don't be scared to sign up and utilize the trials of all of the tools to get a feel for which one is best for you and your goals. One will certainly feel best, and then you can rock your Instagram strategy.

How did early Chinese philosophers come to have a long-lasting Essay

How did early Chinese philosophers come to have a long-lasting influence on the - Essay Example Chinese philosophy came to spread throughout the region specifically because of the political and military power of the Chinese kingdoms and later empire. At its height of political power, the Chinese empire was the most advanced in the Far Eastern region with a culture that was based on the teachings of its philosophers. The result was that many of the neighbouring states often sent their young people, especially from the aristocracy, to study in China and this resulted in their being especially influenced by the Chinese philosophers. When these individuals returned to their homelands, they brought back the philosophy that they had learnt with them and ensured its propagation among their people. Because it was the norm for the general population to imitate or follow the example of the ruling class, Chinese philosophy took root in the intellectual development of the region, with many schools of thought being developed for the purpose of ensuring that teachings of Chinese philosophers were further developed and propagated (Ebrey 42). In this manner, Chinese philosophers came to have an immense influence on the later intellectuals in the entire region and this situation also helped in the propagation of the cultural dominance of the Chinese in later years. Among the most influential reasons for the Chinese philosophers’ influence on the intellectual development of the region is that the region already shared a common religion in the form of Buddhism. The fact that a large chunk of the population practiced this religion ensured that Chinese philosophy could be easily accepted by the populations outside of the Chinese empire (Denecke 38). There were instances where Chinese philosophy came to be a part of the basic life of the people of the entire region and this was mainly through its spread by Buddhist monks and scholars.

Marketing Channels and Logistics Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Marketing Channels and Logistics - Case Study Example Apart from being technologically uperior to the exiting American car in the egment and on par with the Japanee verion, it wa deigned to offer the amenitie and tyling of an expenive car at a lower price. The built-in value propoition would be value a perceived by it buyer. The timing of aturn' launch alo gave it a fillip, a the economy wa coming out of a receion, when 'value' wa conidered to be everything by the American conumer and the need for an all-American car to be pitted againt foreign make, epecially the Japanee wa widely felt. (Barabba, 2004, 55-109) aturn laid the mot tre on cutomer atifaction. They focued on the cutomer a an individual and their relationhip with their car. The retailer were aked to let the cutomer pend time alone with their car. They made ure that their franchiee were excluive aturn dealer and the howroom were built to pecification provided by the company. Thi enabled the cutomer enjoy the "experience" of buying a car and trike an immediate rapport with the dealer. Their pot-ale ervice experience wa alo a key factor. They developed a feeling of "family" between owner, dealer, and the company. (Barabba, 2004, 55-109) ince the early 1980', General Motor' ale hare in the U.. ... A part of their partnerhip approach GM drew the entire company together - management, worker, dealer and union- and created a 'college' tyle, flat working environment forming the Group of 99 which wa reponible for developing the manufacturing proce and the product of the aturn Corporation. Thi approach gave the labor union a better ay at aturn than they had previouly at General Motor. Thi tructure, rather the lack of it helped build a unique brand identity becaue all the key player became engineer of the brand and thi involvement and enthuiam wa tranferred to the cutomer. (Barabba, 2004, 55-109) The GM Company made ue of the new partnerhip agreement to reet union guideline and reduce the price of the final product, a the additional labor cot were not tranferred to the conumer a with the old guideline. The aturn worker' profit haring wa tied to performance of the aturn Company only. Thi increaed the ownerhip and ene of belonging greatly. Initially GM ued an organizational tructure with independent department. Each department worked independently and toed the idea 'over the wall' to the next department. Thi lowed down the entire proce and extended the time needed to develop new product. tringent time contraint for aturn meant that uch a tructure would be diatrou. (Barabba, 2004, 55-109) To over come thi, concurrent engineering wa ued in the development of aturn. Thi involved multifunctional team which meant there wa greater undertanding of the problem and alo problem olving wa fater. A upply chain i a network of facilitie and ditribution option that perform the function of procurement of material, tranformation of thee material into intermediate and finihed product, and the ditribution of thee finihed product to cutomer. upply chain exit

Workplace Drug Testing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Workplace Drug Testing - Essay Example Drug Testing may help in identifying and understanding employee situation and deciding on whether to employ a new person because drug abusers always have a certain behavior pattern. Drug abusers may find it hard to follow normal performance standard and make an individual unable to follow normal time patterns. In that case, drug testing amongst employees may boost general performance of the organization. Moreover, the Fourth Amendment of the constitution permits drug testing amongst employees thus making it a legitimate need for government agencies. Drug testing is therefore done because it is a Federal Law requirement. Finally, drug testing acts as a social responsibility because it is a way of combating drug use and saving many people’s career. When employees test positive, several companies send employees for treatment instead of laying them off.Testing Affect Employees’ RightsDrug testing tends to interfere with the privacy of individual employees to some extent. Fo r instance carrying out urine testing is intrusive and an invasion of employees’ privacy. This is because workers are asked to list all the drug prescription as well as over-the-counter drugs taken in the last 30 days. Listing the drugs taken for the last thirty days is an intrusion of privacy because it may be possible to know and understand medical histories of the employees tested for drugs. Medical reports for individuals are always confidential and should not be revealed to the third party, as is the case.

Leadership Styles in Knowledge Management

Leadership Styles in Knowledge Management This research paper aims to study the three basic leadership styles widely practiced in the organizations as well as the emerging concept of knowledge management and examine individually the relationship of these leadership roles on the knowledge management. The three leadership styles under focus are: transformational, transactional and laissez-faire. The purpose of this research is to identify which leadership style is more effective in relation with the knowledge management. Hence, to help organizations make the best use of this phenomenon and increase their knowledge sharing among different hierarchical levels to exercise maximum levels of learning and innovation in their work environment. It will also enable corporations to gain the competitive advantage with respect to their human capital and. When it is discovered that which managerial style has the positive impact on the knowledge management, it will result into employee empowerment and motivation. Among the important finding s are that effective knowledge management or knowledge sharing processes lead to a competent work environment and the employees get more involved with their jobs as they feel that their ideas are valued. Moreover, they tend to get more creative and challenging, but these behaviors are majorly dependent upon the managers attitude and whether he or she encourages such contributions or interferences from the subordinates and is flexible and open to change and innovation. In the outcomes, transformational leadership has proved to positive relationship with knowledge management and that of the laissez-faire has a negative effect on it. This paper has derived findings through extensive study of literature reviews on these main concepts which is based on theoretical researches. Keywords: Knowledge management, Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership, laissez-faire, Communication. Introduction: Background of study: In this research we are going to study the various factors affecting the issue of Knowledge Management among employees and how can it become most useful for the growth of an organization. The concept of Knowledge Management basically is about the knowledge an individual possesses about anything and this particular kind is referred to as tacit knowledge which is usually gained through personal observation, experience, values and beliefs. Such form of knowledge is usually exhibited in informal settings and could not be formally written or documented into a proposal to the manager. As it is something that can cross an employees mind instantaneously but he or she might not feel confident to share their idea openly in the given atmosphere, where they might think it would sound insignificant or absurd to others. To sum up, the purpose of knowledge management is to provide strategies, processes and technology to amplify the overall organizations learning (Satyadas et al., 2001). Moreover, s ystem oriented view is highly being emphasized and companies are installing technology applications ranging from traditional data-processing areas to expert networks enabling expert-to-expert communication. These systems are designed to store and make profit from the existing explicit, implicit as well as tacit knowledge of organizations. Hence, they facilitate the flow of knowledge in the processes and also record the information that which employee has put in the knowledge and how its implementation could help the organization, so that the right person should get the reward fairly and it is done as an act of encouragement for others. In todays world of immense market competition and rivalry among brands, there is an increasing need of formulating progressive organizational strategies constantly for a companys survival. There organizations are now paying most attention to the notion of innovation, which is majorly generated from the employees. Hence, it is highly important for an o rganization to have a culture that is flexible, open to new ideas, adaptive to change and appreciative of contribution of knowledge. Hence if the sharing of knowledge from individuals is encouraged and valued, it can enable a company to be competitive and help in achieving its goals, provided it is in relevance with the problem. (Birasnav, Rangnekar, Dalpati, 2011) Moreover, if that knowledge is used and followed through, it gives a sense of recognition, achievement and personal satisfaction as well as a sense of belonging. It matters most especially to the senior employees who do not much care about the other lower components of the Maslows motivation theory of hierarchy, as those needs are already fulfilled at this stage. Leadership Styles are at the center of Knowledge Management importance and approaches that have caught the attention of researchers and scholars for long periods. Overly technical view of Knowledge Management seems to downplay the importance of soft factors that impact the Knowledge Management phenomena. Significance of study: Managing knowledge and intellectual capital has become the key drivers of new knowledge and new ideas to the innovation process, to new innovative products, services and solutions. It helps in better achieving and even exceeding the objectives. (Knowledge Management in Health Science Libraries, 2007) The purpose of knowledge management should not be to become just knowledgeable but to be able to create, transfer and apply knowledge with aim of better achieving the objectives. Problem Statement: The current competitive setting of organizations and the changing management paradigm has highlighted the importance of Leadership Styles on Knowledge Management. Identifying Leadership Styles that promote concept and practice of Knowledge Management is crucial as the growth and competitiveness of organizations in new-age economy. Research Question: What are the different leadership styles that affect knowledge management in organization? What are the ways in which different leadership styles affect knowledge management? Purpose of study: The purpose of this study is to examine the different roles of leadership in the knowledge management and how this has an impact on the overall organization. Research objectives: To identify and evaluate different roles of leadership To examine the impact of these different roles of leadership on knowledge management Delimitation: Only few educational institutes are surveyed for the primary research from Rawalpindi and Islamabad only. Literature Review: Knowledge management has been identified as one of the most important resources that contribute to the competitive advantage of an organization. Behavioral and interpersonal skills are most often known as the essentials for successful knowledge management. Knowledge can be within individuals or within the relationships between the individuals groups or sub groups. Without verbal or even the non verbal communication the only way to organize knowledge transfer would be to move around people holding the relevant knowledge. (Ferenc, 2003) For many years it had not been studied despite its importance in this information age; only recently leadership theories and researches have addressed the role of leadership in knowledge management. Researchers (Beron et al. 2006), (Viitala, 2004) suggested that the design and building management information system is one way in which leaders at the top of a corporate have an impact on organizational performance. Recent development in the organizational knowledge literature stresses the importance of knowledge management to building a sustainable competitive advantage. (Bogner and Bansal, 2007) and to the importance of leadership for the success of knowledge management. Recently the growing information systems and knowledge management have continuously stressed the lack of leadership support for the failure of many knowledge management projects. (Davenport et al. 1998), (Chandrashekhar, 2009). It has been found that 42 percent of an organizations knowledge resides in the minds of the employees (Clark and Rollo, 2001); therefore it is dependent upon the leaders how to make the best use of it. Furthermore, as discovered by Doppelt (2003) that in order to achieve sustainability in a corporation, leadership is the key, because a competent and committed leader encourages dialogue which as a result leads to change and so barriers such as sticking to old ideas and cultural frameworks, past practices, tunnel vision and such approaches tha t come in the way to draw new progressive visions for the future. According to the researchers Jong and Hartog (2007) and Aragon-Correa (2007) every leadership style has its own pros and cons; but transformational leadership is more attentive and engaging with the sub-ordinates and encourages them to be creative and focuses on the firms learning and innovation. Whereas, Bass (1985) presented that transactional leaders are not much involved with the subordinates work unless there is a need when a problem arises. On the other hand, he also stated that transformational leaders motivate their workforce, rouses their intellectual skills and acts as role models for them. Moreover, they also have the quality of inspiring the employees into acquiring goal accomplishing skills and improve their performance in achieving the corporate vision (Nemanich and Kellar, 2007). Also, they train, encourage and support their subordinates keenly and optimistically and promote individual and team spirit a mong them. Consequently, it is paid back in the form of boosting employees performance in their tasks and bringing high returns from them (Yulk, 2006; Boerner et al, 2007). Information management: Information as now a day includes both physical and electronic information. Now its the organizations and its structures that must be capable of managing that information throughout the information lifecycle regardless of its sources and formats. Thus the focus on information management is the ability of organization to capture, manage, preserve, store and deliver the right information to right people at right time. Information management becomes the corporate responsibility that needs to be addressed and followed from the senior level management to the front line management. Information is the key asset for an organization and thus should be treated as corporate asset. (Information Management) And it must be made available to everyone and must be shared. People management: Knowledge is the main driver for organizations performance. It affects performance by making it possible for people to perform well. So the instrument by which knowledge affects the performance is through people. So knowledge management must be people focused (Wiig, 2004) (Corral, 1999) Cindy Johnson, Director of Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing at Texas Instruments states: Knowledge management is really about recognizing that regardless of what business you are in, you are competing based on the knowledge of your employees. They way of making knowledge available has evolved over time. It started with family clans where knowledge was passed from father to son by the process of learning. With the new ideas of working in teams, groups, and as institutions, people work closer to benefit from the knowledge of each other. Process Management: Knowledge management is considered as an approach where the employees of the companies would leverage from the buried knowledge that was held closely to them. This enabled the evolution of the term learning organizations where knowledge is always evolving and is being made assessable to all the employees who are eager to attain it and apply it. The focus on improving, re-engineering and managing business process is considered as corporate assets. The companies are taking charge of how they will deliver value to their customers by focusing on process effectiveness and efficiency. While KM and process engineering was evolving at the same time, there were no efforts to combine them in the same architecture. KM has always been focusing on the best practices and proven practices but it had failed to understand how valuable the fusion of process and knowledge can be. So process management gives the ability to view, manage, evaluate, and adapt the business activities, applications, and peop le in organizations to achieve goals. And to achieve these goals there is a need for the management of knowledge where people get an easy access to share and create knowledge (Records, September 2005). Leadership and knowledge management: There is no doubt about it that leaders are the ones who set the standards for others in the organizations and they are one of the biggest driving forces who inspire and motivate them to achieve what they meant to achieve so leaders have direct impact on how organizations should see and deal with knowledge management but if knowledge management is not being conducted on all levels in the organization starting from the top then it would not be as effective as expected (Singh S. K., 2008) Leaders have vital role to play on every level to manage the knowledge but particularly CEO should take part in this process because if he would take it seriously and feel that there is really a need of managing this thing like other practices in the organization then the rest of the people also take it seriously. Organizations with strong cultures and promising compensation programs will not succeed without committed and responsible managers. According to Singh it is the major responsibility of top executives of the organizations to make such strategies and create such values in the organizations which encourage employees to share, create and value knowledge and leaders should provide them with the opportunities to do so and then afterwards measures should be taken to evaluate employees behaviors, attitudes and productivity that are required for effective knowledge management (Singh S. K., 2008) Four broad approaches were studied to understand the leaders and leadership through the trait approach, the contingency approach, the behavior approach and the transformational approach and some of the approaches does have a role in knowledge management but they are not enough to understand knowledge management systematically. The trait approach does have impact on knowledge management and considers it important thing for leaders, contingency and behavior approach also considers knowledge management vital for effective leaders. The transformational approach also support this phenomena that information creation, keeping and sharing facilitates in obtaining shared vision and values in the organization (Lakshman, 2007). Leaders self realization of importance of knowledge management really matters in the effectiveness of knowledge managements practices in the organization and realization is needed in two dimensions, one internal other external. Internally it is achieved by establishing technological and socio-cognitive ways of managing knowledge and externally it is by realization of valuing customer focused knowledge management (lakshman, 2009). Information revolution changes way of doing things in the corporate context, it enhanced the value of time and customers need quick Reponses with relevant and useful knowledge of the products and services so that transformed the process of leadership too by speeding up the inputs, requirement of quick and customized information regarding product and its functions which further builds competition in the business environment. Likewise he emphasizes the need for knowledge managers to achieve and maintain equilibrium between motivating team members with urgency and providing them with time and space to reflect. To become the knowledge sharing and managing organization, leaders have to take the responsibility and have to choose the appropriate leadership style to lead the organization effectively. (Viitala, 2004) Transformational leadership: A framework was established to implement quality management within an organization actually a system of profound knowledge .While implementing it leadership and knowledge management were measured and it was found that in order to implement such system leaders required should be participative, collaborative and inspiring (Gapp, 2002) Transformational leadership have potential to effect employees perceptions through the returns that organization get in the form of human capital benefits and these leaders also have potential to make those benefits greater by adding them in the knowledge management processes, encouraging inter personal communication among employees and creating organizational culture. (Birasnav, Rangnekar, Dalpati, 2011) It is possible for transformational leadership to enhance organizational innovation through creating a participative environment or culture and it can do so directly or indirectly by changing organizations culture which encourages knowledge sharing and management in the organization. It is in the control of transformational leadership to promote such culture so the employees have autonomy to speak about their experiences and knowledge. (Nguyen Mohamed, 2011) There is relation between magnitude of knowledge acquisitions and transformational leadership. In todays challenging world organizational culture should be more empowered and that is achieved by transformational leadership which encourage people to be open about their choices and decisions. (D.Politis, 2001) He encouraged the role of participative leadership, it is this leadership style which relies heavily on the leader functioning as a facilitator rather than simply a leader who orders and wants his assignments done in time. Employee would not be comfortable in sharing knowledge unless employee knows that he/she would be supported by their leaders. Finally, (C.B.Crawford, 2005) argued that there is a clear relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge management in organizations. Crawfords research is pre empirical and made the point very clearly that empirical testing is needed to understand the relationship of transformational leadership and organizational knowledge constructs. Crawfords research provides some basis from which to speculate that transformational leadership might be a causative factor influencing greater knowledge management skills. Transformational leadership and personal innovation are linked. It was found that transformational leaders are more innovative than transactional and laisse-faire leaders. Innovation is considered to be the key factor for knowledge leaders; innovation is the name of managing and creating information and knowledge through different ways. Transactional Leadership: The second variable we are studying in this research, affecting the knowledge management in organizations is the transactional leadership style. This style of leadership is influenced by the concept of reward and punishment; such leaders believe that the employees performance is mainly dependent upon these two factors. That means that when there is an incentive the workers put in their best effort and the reward is in monetary terms in most of the cases; while when they fail to achieve the set target they ought to be punished. (Oshagbemi Ocholi, 2006) Similarly, transactional leaders impose their authority on their followers to take work from them and clearly state what they want and also give employees the opportunity to get detailed information and guidance before they accept an assignment. Such leaders emphasize on present issues; they do not get involved with the employees tasks unless a need arises and in the beginning of a project they provide the workers with all the resource s needed for its completion and after that the task becomes totally the responsibility of the workers (Bass, Cacioppe, Gronn, Hughes.et.al, Popper, Zakkai, 2002).Transactional leadership has two major components, contingent reward and management by exception (MBE). Here, contingent reward means the reward that an employee is promised by the manager, to be acquired if the required target is achieved by him or her and the MBE approach is used to make sure that one should never fail to achieve the desired result due to the resource constraint. Leaders must be clear in explaining what they actually expect and the organizational goal is achieved they must give the recognition. It was also extracted from that manual that MBE is of two types, passive and active. In MBE active, the leader clarifies the standards to be followed and also defines the unacceptable standards of work and are likely to punish if they are not followed. In this strategy, mistakes and errors are identified and steps are taken to correct them. While, in MBE passive, the leader plays a passive role who does not clarify the standards or the requirements to be met by the employees, but only gets involved when there is an obvious issue. Hence, in this case passive style is not considered to be un systematic in correcting the negative issues. (Ogunlana, 2008) Transactional leaders pay more attention to physical and security needs of the employees. The relationship between the leader and the subordinates mainly revolves around the attraction of reward system as a return for their efforts. It is also said that in transactional leadership one person takes the initiative to make a contact with others in order to make a contract of exchanging functions for the benefit of the organization (Birasnav, Rangnekar, Dalpati, 2011). Laissez-faire: Whereas, the third variable in this study is the laissez-faire leadership style, in which the leader gives complete freedom to the employees to make decisions regarding the completion of a task while answering their questions wherever they find problems and the workers are provided with all the necessary resources and tools for that by the leader. Apart from that only little guidance is provided by the leaders and the followers are expected to solve problems on their own (C.B. Crawford, 2005). This strategy is successful in case the workforce is highly experienced, skilled and capable of their jobs, otherwise if the labor lacks these expertise, the researchers recommend it to be an ineffective and the weakest form of leadership which yields poor productivity for the organization, as there are some workers which are unable to solve problems and meet deadlines on their own. Although, in such situations the work environment is quite relaxed, free of work pressure and without interferenc e from the manager, but still it brings frustration and demonization among the teams when they are unable to produce the desired results, without the required feedback and assistance from the manager. But laissez-faire strategy contributes to the employee empowerment and it gives a visionary worker the opportunity to perform according to his or her own will. Lassiz- faire is a leader who always runs away when there is a need to make an important decision or when there is a serious problem (Ogunlana, 2008). The phenomenon of knowledge management is applicable on the whole organizational structure, taking into all the levels of hierarchy. While studied empirically it was discovered that the relationship between the different components of knowledge management and transformational leadership, transactional leadership and self-management have a link with the accomplishment of knowledge forms. Moreover the leaders should be able to give an empowering environment to the employees. Although according to the empirical findings, which are quite limited in this aspect, as well as the theoretical assumptions of a number of authors, there is a need for participative collaborative leadership style in order to facilitate the flow of knowledge. Hence it was pointed out that empirical testing of the knowledge attributes in an organization should be carried out, to find out the relationship between the management of knowledge and transactional leadership in a firm. (C.B. Crawford, 2005) The researcher selected a sample of 1,046 males and females enrolled in liberal classes who were side by side employed in different economic sectors. In the first round they were asked to answer the questions based on the behavioral aspects of knowledge management in which the questions taken from the Barth (2003) typology of personal knowledge management categories. In the round they were asked to fill in the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5-S (MLQ) derived from Bass (1985) which comprised of scales measuring the attributes of the three leadership styles: transformational, transactional and laissez-faire. The scales ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree and as a measure for superior performance or as a self-report measure. But he used the MLQ as a self-report of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership characteristics. Finally, in the last round, the respondents were asked about their demographics considered important for the research including se x, age, years of employment, education, career type, position at work and use of technology. While conducting the analysis, only the position variable was used that described the respondents as senior managers or executive, supervisors and at entry level. Though the basic purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the knowledge management attributes and the transformational leadership style. In the end various correlations were found that determined the degree of the relationship between the knowledge management behaviors and transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership. Eventually, the outcome of the investigation concluded that the variables leadership and knowledge management are significantly related, both in the organizational setting as well as in theoretical context. The most important results included that there exists a strong relationship between knowledge management and transformational leadership. Moreover, transactional leadership, i t was discovered that as knowledge management is technical in nature, the more effective management style would be transactional. Furthermore, transactional leaders are more goal oriented and not much concerned about the personal development of the sub-ordinates. In addition, another finding was that transactional leadership had strong correlations with knowledge management and contingent reward and it had considerable negative correlation with management by exception. On the other hand, it was analyzed that laissez-faire came out to have a negative effect on knowledge management, which indicates that a leaders role is very essential in managing knowledge behaviors in corporate. Consequently, the negative correlation between the two components indicated an inverse relationship, which means that when knowledge management behavior increases, the extent of laissez-faire decreases (C.B. Crawford, 2005) Additionally that investigation also showed that the hierarchical position an employee has in a company also has a link with the knowledge management, as people handing more information are expected to possess more skill and grip on building knowledge management capabilities. Likewise, leadership attributes are practiced and exerted most according to the position an individual holds; the more the responsibility, the greater the actions of a leader exhibited, to succeed in following an aim or achieving a goal. As a result, there were higher levels of transformational leadership witnessed as the position in a corporate increased, whereas transactional and laissez faire got less. Hence, the position in the hierarchy is also crucial in examining the relationship between knowledge management and leadership attributes; and that variable proved to be predictive of knowledge management, just like transformational leadership. Only transformational leadership style, not transactional or laisse z-faire was related to the impact of position on knowledge management. In that investigation, it was concluded that transformational strategies worked best even where the most technical skills were required, in modern corporate environments as compared to transactional or laissez-faire and are more successful in other organizational constructs too because of their person-centered approach. Whereas, transactional strategies did not enhance knowledge management behavior and laissez-faire leadership slowed it to a significant extent. Furthermore, the higher the positions got in a corporate for individuals; they dealt with knowledge more effectively, because they then adopted more of transformational strategies. But in the significance, leadership is of much greater value than the position variable, effecting knowledge management. (C.B. Crawford, 2005) Laissez-faire as leadership style exhibits ineffectiveness, unproductiveness and dissatisfaction. These leaders avoid interfering in the followers jobs and stay away from taking the responsibility their position demands and also avoid developing a relationship with the subordinates. (Ogunlana, 2008) Proposed Methodology: The sampling method that we will use is purposive sampling which is a non-probability sampling technique. Subjects would be selected because of we will be able to select people of interest and exclude who do not suit the purpose of research. The sector chosen for this study is educational sector, coordinators and head of departments would be researchers respondents. Total sample will be 100 individuals.

The Three Gorges Dam Essay -- China Chinese Infrastructure

Flood control and drought relief The most significant function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem of a seasonal river like the Yangtze. Millions of people live downstream of the dam, and many large and important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai lie next to the river. Plenty of farm land and the most important industrial area of China are built beside the river. In 1954, the river flooded 47.75 million acres (193,000 kmÂÂ ²) of land, killing 33,169 people and forcing 18,884,000 people to move. The flood covered Wuhan, a city with 8 million people, for over three months, and the Jingguang Railway was out of order for more than 100 days. In 1998, a flood in the same area caused damage to the value of billions of dollars. The Chinese government asked for support from its military to fight the flooding. Two thousand and thirty-nine square kilometers of farm land was flooded. The flood affected more than 2.3 million people, and 1,526 were killed. The reservoir's flood storage capacity is 22 cubic kilometers (18 million acre feet). This capacity will reduce the frequency of major downstream flooding from once every 10 years to once every 100 years. With the dam, it is expected that major floods can be controlled. If a "super" flood comes, the dam is expected to minimize its effect. Power distribution The electricity generated by the Three Gorges Dam project is sold to the State Grid Corporation and China South Power Grid Corporation at a rate of ÂÂ ¥250 per MWh ($32.5 US). Nine provinces and two cities consume the power from it, including Shanghai. The power distribution and transmission of the Three Gorges Dam project cost about 34.387 billion Yuan. It was completed in December 2007, one year ah... ...t into the reservoir on average per year, in time, this silt could accumulate behind the walls of the dam, clogging the turbines' entranceway. Further, the absence of silt down stream would have two dramatic effects: ? Some hydrologists think that this could make downstream riverbanks more vulnerable to flooding.[45] ? The city of Shanghai, more than one thousand miles (1600 km) away from the dam, rests on a massive plain of sediment. The "arriving silt -- so long as it does arrive -- strengthens the bed on which Shanghai is built... the less the tonnage of arriving sediment the more vulnerable is this biggest of Chinese cities to inundation..." Also, the weight of the dam and reservoir can cause induced seismicity, which occurred with the Katse Dam in Lesotho. The Benthic sediment build up is a cause of biological damage and reduction in aquatic biodiversity. The Three Gorges Dam Essay -- China Chinese Infrastructure Flood control and drought relief The most significant function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem of a seasonal river like the Yangtze. Millions of people live downstream of the dam, and many large and important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai lie next to the river. Plenty of farm land and the most important industrial area of China are built beside the river. In 1954, the river flooded 47.75 million acres (193,000 kmÂÂ ²) of land, killing 33,169 people and forcing 18,884,000 people to move. The flood covered Wuhan, a city with 8 million people, for over three months, and the Jingguang Railway was out of order for more than 100 days. In 1998, a flood in the same area caused damage to the value of billions of dollars. The Chinese government asked for support from its military to fight the flooding. Two thousand and thirty-nine square kilometers of farm land was flooded. The flood affected more than 2.3 million people, and 1,526 were killed. The reservoir's flood storage capacity is 22 cubic kilometers (18 million acre feet). This capacity will reduce the frequency of major downstream flooding from once every 10 years to once every 100 years. With the dam, it is expected that major floods can be controlled. If a "super" flood comes, the dam is expected to minimize its effect. Power distribution The electricity generated by the Three Gorges Dam project is sold to the State Grid Corporation and China South Power Grid Corporation at a rate of ÂÂ ¥250 per MWh ($32.5 US). Nine provinces and two cities consume the power from it, including Shanghai. The power distribution and transmission of the Three Gorges Dam project cost about 34.387 billion Yuan. It was completed in December 2007, one year ah... ...t into the reservoir on average per year, in time, this silt could accumulate behind the walls of the dam, clogging the turbines' entranceway. Further, the absence of silt down stream would have two dramatic effects: ? Some hydrologists think that this could make downstream riverbanks more vulnerable to flooding.[45] ? The city of Shanghai, more than one thousand miles (1600 km) away from the dam, rests on a massive plain of sediment. The "arriving silt -- so long as it does arrive -- strengthens the bed on which Shanghai is built... the less the tonnage of arriving sediment the more vulnerable is this biggest of Chinese cities to inundation..." Also, the weight of the dam and reservoir can cause induced seismicity, which occurred with the Katse Dam in Lesotho. The Benthic sediment build up is a cause of biological damage and reduction in aquatic biodiversity.

Associate Program Material Essay

Hard Drive Hard drives are complex storage devices in a computer. When installing a hard drive, you must consider numerous interface standards. You also must think about specific factors, such as the computer’s application, the type of motherboard, speed and noise, gigabyte barriers, subsystems, future storage needs, and archival issues. Refer to Ch. 8 of A+ Guide To Managing & Maintaining Your PC for a deeper understanding of these issues. You may measure hard drive performance by looking at three different sources of information. The first is the data rate, the number of bytes per second the driver can deliver to the processor. The second is the seek time, the amount of time it takes when the processor requests information from the driver and the first byte of information is delivered to the processor. The third is the memory capacity of the hard drive. For this assignment, you replace the internal hard drives from the computer featured in the Computer Hardware Simulator (CHS). The current internal hard drives are old and starting to fail. You need to replace the current hard drives with similar drives or drives with more storage capacity. Search the Internet for three types of hard drives compatible with the CHS computer, and enter your information for each drive into the New Hard Drive Chart below. After comparing the two drives, make a recommendation on which you would purchase and justify your decision. You only have a budget of $45 to work with, so choose carefully.

Service Delivery Systems McDonalds

Service Delivery Systems McDonalds Abstract The hospitality industry is more of a service industry, thus for an effective operational management, the focus should be on the quality of service that customers receive from the company. When quality and satisfying services are offered, then customers can develop loyalty to certain company, a factor that builds a strong brand name for the company.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Service Delivery Systems: McDonalds specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In the United States of America, the service industry account for over 80% of the economy’s job market; in hotel and tourism industry, much efforts has been made to improve the service delivery systems in the sector (McCluskey, 2004). The government has some policies meant to protect its population form poor quality form the sector players. McDonald is the world largest hamburger and fast food restaurants; which operates centrally and franchised business; to remain competitive in the fast developing industry, management should develop a quality service delivery system to all its over 31,000 restaurants in 119 countries. To manage and control service delivery, the management has to set some benchmarks and see their strict adherence (McDonald Official Website, 2011). This paper discusses service delivery systems in operation management; it will use the case of McDonald to diagnose the issue. Brief history of McDonald McDonald is a leading world sandwich provider with more than 31,000 restaurants in 110 countries in the world. Other than itself operating from a central point, it is in the business of franchising; the group restaurant was established in 1940 in San Bernardino, California by a duo by the names Richard and Maurice McDonald. It is known for its fresh quality fast food; the main fast food that the company is known with is sandwiches. The company offers both counter service and drive-through service depending with the locatio n and the nature of the particular outlet; it has both inside and outside catering however inside catering takes most of the business time. The company aims at improving quality and getting higher returns with the delivery of quality services and fresh foods (McDonald Official Website, 2011) Literature review Service in the hospitality industry In the hospitality industry the ability and willingness to provide quality services is seen as an essential strategy for success and survival; a service can be defined as an encounter between business and a customer that has supporting facility and using facilitated goods.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In McDonald for instance when a customer make an order for a hamburger then the hamburger is the facilitating good, the restaurant I the supporting facility while the people who were involved right from the supply of the ma terial to the service by the waiter form the chain of service (Neal and Quester, 2006). Any business, in the hospitality industry, has the customer as the most important stakeholder; they aim at creating good cooperation through the service they offer. Customers on the other side are motivated by factors within their psychological core, the consumer environment, and by marketer-controlled activity. Success in a business is attained when management can understand effectively the expectation of their customers and align their services and duties to satisfy those needs. As the saying goes, â€Å"a happy customer tells another while unsatisfied customer tells two others†. The phrase implies that it is much easy to lose customers than it is to gain them. The leadership of McDonald has been attributed to the quality of service they offer; however, no optimal level of service delivery that can be said to be the best, however, it should be continually be improved (Metters, Kathryn, M adeleine and Steve, 2006). Chart 1 The diagram below shows how different elements of service delivery lead to improved customer service: From the above diagram, it can be seen that service quality is an element of a number of elements that need to be implemented in an organization. McDonald and its franchisee should ensure that it ha s a flow chart of events that can be followed with the aim of having and end of satisfied customers.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Service Delivery Systems: McDonalds specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Organizations that offer service responsive to customers’ need perform better than those who do not care or are rigid to change. The hospitality industry is currently under pressure due to high competition and changes in consumers’ preferences. To remain competitive in this market, a company need to ensure it satisfy its customer. Sandwiches are fast foods present in most fast food joints but the choice of one is dependent on the customer. McDonald is an American Sandwich specialist company with its head office in United States of America. It has been in the business for over 70years thus the company has a pool of human resource that need to have well mastered the trade; at the same time, the company needs to have a service improvement charter for its continued success (McDonald Official Website, 2011) In the hospitality industry, there is high contact of service providers and the customers, the high interaction need to be strategically managed if it will be maintained. The experience that a customer gets now of service encounter has a wide influence on the attitude, perception and the feeling that he delivers from the institution. Though McDonald is a fast food restaurant, the internal customer has a large encounter with the external customer either directly or indirectly. Service quality and the experience that customers get form the company shoul d be looked into and improved accordingly (Cook, 2008) Service quality The utility that certain individual customers get from certain commodity is the quality of the commodity as long as the customer is concerned. There cannot be a single definition of service quality since it is more of the receivers’ perception that determines whether he will be willing to trade with the company in the future. When concerned on the quality of a service, there are two most important deviations: technical quality and functional quality. Technical quality deals with what is delivered while functional quality is all about how it has been delivered.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Technical quality is tangible while functional technical is not. McDonald management has the role of ensuring that the group of restaurants meets both technical and non-technical quality provisions (Kotler, Bowen and Makens, 2003). The chart below summarizes the service quality phenomenon: Chart 2 Service Encounter Or â€Å"Moment Of Truth Moment of service is the moment that a customer and the service he is receiving interact; it ranges from the general perception that a customer gets with the mention of a certain products or a certain business. McDonald has a strong brand name that offers the customer an appealing feeling; the name has to be protected by offering quality services and provision of goods that meets the demand of a customer. When a customer is within the premises of the business, the service offered, both tangible and technical should be of a high class that improves the general feeling derived by the customer. This is the way that the organization can strengthen its brand name (Kandampully, 2002), Service Operations Strategy When developing a certain effective service operational strategy, McDonald need to undertake an elaborate internal and external audit analysis, the analysis will offer the company with the right approach to improve its services. Three questions needs to be answered genuinely: Where the current position as far as service provision is concerned? What level of service quality does the company aim at offering? What are the expectations of the customers and what level are our competitors offering With clear answers to the above questions, then the management will be able to develop an effective service delivery system (Blomme, Rheede and Tromp, 2009). The following are the areas that need to be addressed in the system: Location issues To reach the target customers effectively, the management should ensure that it is located in areas that target customers can get delivery in the required time and space. McDonald being a fas t food needs to be located in areas with high population, and t accessible. For example, in busy streets, airport sites and bus terminals. When offering a franchise, the company should ensure that the franchisee company has a strategic location that can tap the target market effectively. In the cases, that the restaurant has low flow of customer, the chances that quality and fresh foods are not offered is high. When a restaurant is established, the managers should devise cost leadership, differentiation, and focus the products to the needs of the customer (Hartline, Wooldridge, and Jones, 2003), Service Strategy With the restaurants established, then managers should ensure they have a system of how service will be offered, service means that the those people offering the front service, waiters, cashiers, supervisors and manager, and those people offering the tangible products should be sensitive to the needs of a customer. Consumer preference theory states that for a customer to buy a certain product, the product must be outstanding among the options that the market offers; McDonald products can be said to be services, the services thus need to be outstanding and quality. To be outstanding, there must be continuous products innovation and an innovation that ensures that products can be differentiated. When a customer is able to differentiate a certain company’s products then the company is able to self-market itself and lead to increased customer satisfaction. Creativity and product innovation comes handy in creating product differentiation. McDonald is known for its international recognized sandwiches. To ensure that it remain competitive and create a more customer satisfactory goods, the company keeps inventing and improving the quality of sandwiches they serve. A continuous program of training of staffs should be implemented as it will assist the company offer the much need service quality (Grà ¶nroos, 2000). Products differentiation McDonald aims a t offering quality fast foods: the success of the company is dependent on the quality, freshness and reliability of the products. When a company is developing a product, there should be the need that the product is supposed to fulfill. Fast food joints are places where consumers should get a quick service; this implies that they should have an effective queue flow to ensure that they have ready products adequate for the consumers at a particular point in time and still the products have not stayed in the restaurant for many hours (PIZAM and SHANI, 2009). Other than the foods being available, the management should ensure that the foods are of the right quality and tastes that they offer is pleasant and offers a memorable experience to the customer; this will increase the utility that the customer will get. The trend that the customers follow at one given point is a change to the product that gives them a higher utility. When the product is developed, the team should always invest in offering something extra to the consumer. Products come with the idea of packaging, and how the product is presented to the final consumer, there is need to have a pleasant look as the way as the way the product is handled has an effect on its successes (Bebko, 2001). The role of operation managers in maintaining service delivery system Operations managers have the role of overseeing service delivery system are effective, they are the ones who make policies that target the improvement of the system. In an outlet of McDonald the operating management can be seen on three levels, outlet manager, daily managers, and supervisors; they should be working as a team to maintain and uphold high service delivery. When they are enforcing the laid down rules, they should be open for additions and improvement areas of deficiencies, they should from time to time undertake internal and external audit to gauge the success of the outlet. To implement and maintain high services operation manager shoul d adopt quality management systems like the use of TQM (total quality management system), adoption of Six sigma polices and the use of lean thinking; the spirit of Kaizen (continuous improvements) should be embarked on. With such polices that aim at improving the internal operations for efficiency developed, then the group of hotels will maintain and attain high service delivery. Of late the hospitality industry is faced with challenges of coping with changes brought about by globalization, people expectations are changing; McDonald operating management teams should be robust in analyzing and developing required intelligence that can assist the company improve on its service delivery. In foreign outlets, McDonald should develop culture intelligence teams that will assist when making decisions that fit the country of operation. Change in the industry should offer operating managers the drive to research on the best strategy to improve and grow their service delivery. Recommendation a nd conclusion McDonald is doing fairly well in the hospitality industry; however, the service of the chain of restaurants can be improved further to assist in the consolidation of the company’s leadership role. The major challenge facing the company is how to manage the large number of franchisee located in different areas. The management at central level should come up with a service quality charter that looks into technical and functional quality objectives. This will enhance service delivery. To expand customer base and get their loyalty, the company should look into its service delivery and aim at improving the experience that a customer derives; the â€Å"moment of truth† with the customer should offer a memorable experience that can make the customer hunger for more services. High quality service should look into the products quality, speed of service and the general outlook of the restaurants. McDonald leadership team has the role of pioneering a service improve ment strategy; an effective service strategy is strong competitive advantage in the hospitality industry. References Bebko, C. ,2001. Service encounter problems: Which service providers are more likely to be blamed?Journal of Services Marketing, (15)1, 6,pp. 480-495. Blomme, R., Rheede, A. and Tromp, D.,2009. The hospitality industry: an attractive employer? An exploration of students and industry workers perceptions of hospitality as a career field. Journal of Hospitality Tourism Education, (21) 2, pp. 6-14 Cook, S.,2008.Customer Care Excellence: How to Create an Effective Customer Focus. New York: Kogan Page Publishers Grà ¶nroos, C. ,2000. Service management and marketing: A customer relationship management approach. Chichester: Wiley. Hartline, M., Wooldridge, B. and Jones, K. ,2003. â€Å"Guest perceptions of hotel quality: determining which employee groups count most†. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 1(1),pp.43-52. Kandampully, J. ,2002. Service s management: The new paradigm in hospitality. Melboune: Hospitality Press, Kotler, P., Bowen, J. and Makens, J. ,2003. Marketing for hospitality and tourism. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall. McCluskey, M., 2004.How Mature is Your Service Operation? Supply Chain Management Review, (8) 5,Pp. 17–20. McDonald Official Website.2011. McDonald. Available at  https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html Metters, R., Kathryn, K., Madeleine, P., and Steve, W.,2006. Successful Service Operations Management. Thomson South-Western: Mason. Neal, C. and Quester, P.,2006. Consumer behaviour: implications for marketing strategy.NewJersey: McGraw-Hill. PIZAM, A. and SHANI, A,. 2009. The Nature of the Hospitality Industry: Present and Future Managers Perspectives. Anatolia, (20)1, pp. 134-150.

Tourist motivation Essay Example

Tourist motivation Essay Example Tourist motivation Essay Tourist motivation Essay Tourist motive is seen by many authors as one of the cardinal elements in understanding tourist decision-making behavior. A sound apprehension of travel motive plays a critical function in foretelling future travel form. The large reply to the basic inquiry, why do people go? has occupied the heads of tourer research workers for many old ages. Assorted methods have been employed to bring out travel motivations. The undermentioned literature will cast visible radiation on assorted theories that can be used to hold a cognition why people travel to urban finish. Tourist motive can be defined as the planetary integration web of biological and cultural forces which gives value and way to go picks, behavior and experience. ( Pearce, Morrison A ; Rutledge, 1998 ) . Put merely, motive is a province of rousing of a thrust or demand which impels people to activity in chase of ends. Once the ends have been achieved the demand subsides and the single returns to the equilibrium-but merely briefly because new motivations arise as the last 1 is satisfied. As cited in Seaton ( 1997 ) motive of the single individual to go, to look outside for what he can non happen inside have been mostly created by society and shaped by mundane life. Gray s ( 1979 ) travel-motivation theory, poses merely two chief motivations for travel. One is the desire to travel from a known to an unknown topographic point, called in Gray s theory wanderlust . The other motivation is what Grays called sunlust . This generates a trip to a topographic point which can supply the traveller with specific installations that do non be in his or her ain topographic point of abode. Some of the motivations which determine their travel picks are diversion, pleasance, new experiences, cultural involvement, shopping. Harmonizing to the push and pull construct, Crompton ( 1979 ) , push factors explains the desire for travel while the pull motivations have been used to explicate the existent finish choice.A Nine motives of leisure travellers were identified and classified seven as socio-psychological or push motivations and two as cultural or pull motivations. The seven push motivations were, flight from a perceived mundane environment, geographic expedition and rating of ego, relaxation, prestigiousness, arrested development, sweetening of kinship relationships, and facilitation of societal interaction. The pull motivations were freshness and instruction. Maslow ( 1943 ) identified two motivational types: tension-reducing motivations ; arousal-seeking motivations. Harmonizing to Maslow, there are five demands organizing a hierarchy, come oning from the lower to the higher demands. At the underside are the basic demands for nutrient, H2O and air. Then, above them is the demand for safety, security, and protection. Maslow argued that if the lower demands are fulfilled the person would be motivated by demands of the following degree of the hierarchy. Cooper et Al ( 2005 ) criticises Maslow s theory stating that why and how Maslow selected the basic five demands remain ill-defined, although Page ( 2003 ) feels that it has relevancy in understanding how human action is apprehensible and predictable compared to research which argues that human behavior is basically irrational and unpredictable. Though much unfavorable judgment about Maslow s theory, the touristry industry has borrowed a batch from Maslow because he provides a convenient set of containers that can be comparatively labelled and supply a utile model for understanding psychological motivational factors in touristry. Therefore, for illustration, although the evident intent of a trip may be for shopping, the underlying psychological motive may be to affect their neighbors and derive higher societal position. Iso-Ahola ( 1982 ) says that tourers will exchange functions while on vacation, and that over clip different demands will originate. Single motive may non ever move as the finding factor for travel. If within the vacation, the initial demands are satisfied, other motives might emerge. Indeed, it is congruous with Maslow s theories of demands to reason that if ab initio there is a primary demand for relaxation while on a vacation, the satisfaction of that demand will make consciousness of other demands such as geographic expedition of topographic point as a agency of geting a sense of belonging or to enable procedures of self-actualisation to take topogr aphic point. Dann ( 1981 ) has identified seven elements of tourer motives: travel as a response to what is missing yet desired ; finish pull in response to motivational push ; motive as phantasy ( prosecute in behavior and activities that are culturally unacceptable in their place environment like harlotry and gaming ) ; motive as classified intent ( VFRs ) ; motivational typologies ; motive and tourer experiences ; motive as auto-definition and significance ( the manner in which tourist define their state of affairss and respond to them ) . [ Page A ; Connell,2003 ] . P.Pearce ( 1988 ) as cited in Ryan ( 1997 ) lists five travel motives which he calls travel calling ladder where tourers develop changing motives of relaxation, stimulation, relationship, self-esteem and development, fulfilment. In Pearce s theoretical account, the motives listed can be divided into two classs. The demands may be egoistic or directed at others. Therefore, for illustration, relaxation may be a solo exercising where the holiday-maker seeks a quiet reposeful clip entirely or it can be relaxation in the company of others, jumping from the demand for external exhilaration and desire for freshness. Stimulation can be autonomous which springs from the concern for ain safety, or it can be directed toward others originating out of the concern for other s safety. Relationship can be autonomous which means giving love and fondness and keeping relationships, or it can be directed at others which means having fondness, to be with group rank. Self-esteem and development possibly autonomous like development of accomplishments, particular involvements, competency and command, or it may be directed at others like prestigiousness, glamor of going. Fulfilment is wholly autonomous as it fulfils single dreams, understands oneself more and experience interior peace and harmoniousness. There are some unfavorable judgments against Pearce s travel motives. For illustration, Pearce argues that stimulation may be understood along a dimension of hazard and safety of ego or others. However, it might be argued that there is a existent and typical difference between these two motives. Cohen ( 1972 ) as cited in Shaw A ; Williams ( 2002 ) , draws attending to the fact that all tourers are seeking some component of freshness and unfamiliarity while, at the same clip, most besides need to retain something familiar. How tourers combine the demands for freshness with acquaintance can in bend be used to deduce a typology. Cohen distinguished tourer utilizing sociological rules into organized mass tourer, single mass tourers, adventurer and vagrant. They feel that it is non based on any empirical informations. In add-on, these groups were besides differentiated along the lines of contact with the tourer industry, with mass tourers being termed institutionalized and the more individualistic tourer being regarded as non-institutionalised. Smith ( 1977 ) provided a more elaborate discrepancy of Cohen s tourer typologies. Smith ( 1977 ) identifies 7 classs of tourer who have been termed as interactive typologies : adventurer, elite, off-beat, unusual, inchoate mass, mass, and charter. Shaw A ; Williams ( 2002 ) opines that Plog s typology is based on inquiring tourers about their existent general life styles or value systems, frequently utilizing perceptual information derived from interviews. Plog s ( 1987 ) typology can be used to analyze tourer motives every bit good as attitudes to peculiar finishs and manners of travel. In footings of the latter, a tourer typology developed for the American Express ( 1989 ) has categorised travelers as: adventurers, fuss-budgets, dreamers, economizers and indulgers- all of whom viewed their travel experiences in different ways.

Marketing strategy of Adidas Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Marketing strategy of Adidas - Essay Example The firm that is analyzed in the paper is Adidas, the largest sport manufacturer in Europe and has Puma and Nike as its major competitors. They have divided their whole range of products into two segments: Adidas Performance and Adidas Originals. Adidas performance aims to show the loyalty and devotion of the brand to athletes, while Adidas Originals are all about fashion and lifestyle. The definition stated by Philip Kotler is: â€Å"The science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services†. Adidas have been since its inception looking for opportunities in the market by constant market analysis. It has been seen that they have been the company of many firsts and therefore a company who has been creating a niche in many sectors. They introduced Adidas originals to target the market that did not wear the sportswear as they had no relation with sports but then Adidas cashed in on the opportunity by releasing a line of casual wears which would ultimately establish them in the non-sport sector as well. Main points from the definition: science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.... The only new thing it has ventured into is the fashion and style apparel industry as well. It has done the promotion of its products by hiring clubs and sportsmen from different sports and countries to be their ambassadors.. As for their casuals line they have even hired sportsmen in this arena but used them to portray the use of Adidas besides the sports they play, in their routine lives. Task Two SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning method that is used by companies to identify their internal and external conditions in one go. Strength and weakness are utilized as internal analysis tools while the opportunity and threats are used for external analysis. The SWOT analysis for ADIDAS is as follows (Smit, 2000): Strength: Adidas is a very established brand. It has been in the market since 1949 producing the sportswear for the world to wear. Deliverance of the promise. Adidas is a premium brand that promises to offer the best quality and delivers the same. Brand Ambassadors. Adidas has a very long and powerful list of brand ambassadors that includes people from nearly all the sporting arenas. It has sponsorship for huge sporting events like NASCAR and the IPL recently held in India. It has also had major sponsorship for some of the famous Football events. Diversity in the product range. Excellent supplier relationships. They have never had any lawsuits in relation with child labor or poor working. Adidas has a very established network of distribution; their goods are sold worldwide. Weaknesses: They are very heavily reliant on the sports industry alone. This may prove to be a disadvantage at a point as they have to diversify into other sectors as well to increase their own portfolio and reduce risks. They are