Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Can you control the competition Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Can you control the competition - Assignment Example The firms progress in this race of competition. However, competition has been observed to be unethical at times. Firms resort to the most down trodden ways and methods to knock out their competitors. For example, the telecommunications industry today is highly competitive. Each firm knows what it needs to sell. From advertisements to deals and offers, everything by each of the firms, is highly organized and planned. However, these firms have a factor of unhealthy competition existing between them. Instead of welcoming the competition and struggling harder, they prefer demeaning their competitors through aggressive advertisements. The media has been a large shareholder of the unethical competition that firms receive. However, it cannot be criticized too much since it is also a source of healthy competition. As long as the telecommunications industry is concerned, competition cannot be avoided since a lot of profits lie with these firms. These extra profits attract new firms. The food industry has long been a competitive market. There are lots of firms making cereals but cornflakes have been a trademark of Kellogg’s alone. This is purely due to healthy competition. If this competition was controlled and other firms were disallowed from entering the cereal market, maybe Kellogg’s products wouldn’t have been this flawless (Dranove, David). Maybe it would have sit back and enjoyed its monopoly and never even tried the flavored cornflakes and those with resins and nuts. It is just competition that keeps on driving the firms to experiment. Thus competition is needed for the firm to grow. As far as the question of whether competition can be controlled is concerned, it is pretty simple to answer that in the food industry. As long as there would be demand for food, which there would be forever, there would be providers of food. As long as the providers will gain, new providers will continue to enter the market and thus there would be no way to control

Monday, October 28, 2019

Business communication Essay Example for Free

Business communication Essay Student Name: ID: 1-:learning Outcome being assessed: 1. Choose the appropriate communication channel for a business communication event. 2. Present material in context and support claims with evidence, reasoning and professional quality. 3. Design and produce a message that is responsive and appropriate within a business context. 4. Produce clear and concise memos, letters, faxes and emails. 2-Handing in format instructions Sign this page and put it as a cover for your assignment Submit a copy of your work Work must be neat and readable. Use blue ink only (or pencil when permitted). Number all pages etc†¦ 3- Marks Problem/question Marks allotted Marks obtained Feedback to students Layout Formulation (ideas/ Content) English 3 5 2 Total 10 [Lecturer should give feedback to the student for all questions with awarded marks around 60%] Program Manager Approval: Course: Business Communication Semester: Fall 13/14 Code: GEM202 Lecturer: Handout date: 29/9/13 Due date: 10/10/13 Assignment # :1 Home Assignment Maximum Mark: 10 Choose one of the following Tasks TASK1: You work for X company (you decide what kind) as a (you decide what position). You want to take a course on (you decide what topic) and have the company cover the cost. Your supervisor is basically supportive but will need to get the OK from his boss. For this you will need to make the case persuasively and in writing. Write an email proposal to your supervisor requesting the company cover the cost of the course. Convince the decision maker that the course is worth the money. Try to tie to your current and future responsibilities and explain how the company will benefit. To ensure that your proposal has sufficient level of detail, you may want to do some research on the internet on courses and choose one that might be useful to your current job. TASK2: You have been using the e-Text book for certain courses offered by McGraw Hill/KUC over the last semester. Draft a letter to the KUC management expressing your opinion on introducing the new digital books as study materials for the students. Explain for which courses you have used the e-book. How beneficial was it? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the e-book and what are your recommendations for the future. Would you like to pursue its usages, would you prefer using a print copy rather than the digital copy, or do you have any other suggestion? Use persuasive suggestion? Use persuasive arguments to support your opinion. can you please help me doing any of these tasks?

Saturday, October 26, 2019

An Analysis of the Epic Poem, Beowulf - The Character of Beowulf :: Epic Beowulf essays

The Character of Beowulf When he arrived at the Danish land, Beowulf was a young man seeking adventure and glory. Beowulf was distinguished among his people, the Geats, for his bravery. As a young man Beowulf fought in many battles and as a result showed his great character to others. Beowulf had many characteristics which helped him to succeed in battle. As a young man, Beowulf was known as the strongest man alive. His strength allowed him to dominate in battle. If it were not for his pure strength, he would not have been able to defeat Grendel, for weapons would not work. By fighting Grendel without weapons, he opened himself up to greater glorification. Beowulf's strength could not be seen as a disadvantage, while the results of his strength could. Beowulf's strength allowed him dominance in battle, but it also made him cocky. While his cockiness allowed Beowulf to be sure of himself in battle, some of his peers found it to be a character flaw. Ecglaf, in particular, saw Beowulf as cocky and vain, questioning, "Are you the Beowulf who competed with Breca...swollen with vanity..." So, while his cockiness was a flaw in the eyes of others, Beowulf saw it as self assurance and used it to his advantage. Beowulf also had a strong spirit of adventure. His spirit of adventure was part of the reason that Beowulf went to fight Grendel. Beowulf's strength and spirit of adventure had also led him to glory in many battles, including that with Grendel. Beowulf used his glory in previous battles to justify himself when coming to help Hrothgar. In addition, his self assurance, and known bravery probably guided his decision. Beowulf's spirit of adventure gained him a lot of glory, however, it could have gotten him into trouble, if he were to have taken an adventure too far. While in his young age, Beowulf used his strength for glory and recognition. As he became older his great strength was taken away from him, and Beowulf found himself without one of his greatest abilities. Beowulf then was king of the Geats, and when a dragon attacked his land, it was his responsibility to protect his people.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Chinese language and literature Essay

Chinese is a unique language. Anyone who learns it will find it difficult to really understand and master the language if he/she does not completely cast away the habits and concepts acquired from his/her mother tongue or other foreign languages. Chinese is a language of great international importance in the present world of globalization. Modern Chinese (also known as Mandarin, Pu Tonghua or Guoyu) is spoken in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, and increasingly so in Hong Kong. It is one of the four official languages in Singapore. There are significant communities of Mandarin speakers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, the USA, Mongolia, Vietnam, Brunei, South Africa, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, the UK and Mauritius. Mandarin is spoken by about 1 billion of people all over the world. It is also one of the five official languages of the United Nations. The communicative unit of Chinese is the sentence. Sentences in Chinese are quite different from those in other languages. During communication, certain parts of a sentence may often be omitted. This is one of the differences between Chinese and other languages. The language and script of the Chinese language belongs to the ‘Sino-Tibetan’ family. Chinese is also described as a tonal language, which means that a syllable generally is pronounced with a characteristic tone. On the whole Chinese lacks the inflections (suffixes, prefixes) that are characteristic of many other languages. While foreigners are under the impression that Chinese characters are countless, the fact remains that even China does not have anyone capable of mastering all the characters. The Kangxi dictionary of 1716 contains 47,000 characters whereas the Chinese dictionary of 1986-90 contains 56,000 characters. In fact there are only 3,000 characters which are often used. Other than being a language it is used for writing and keeping records. Chinese also has a great value in the field of calligraphy and is greatly appreciated as a work of art. Over the vast area throughout which Chinese is spoken, there are many different dialects. Some of which are mutually unintelligible. Chinese characters are the symbols used to write Chinese. Chinese characters developed more than 3000 years ago out of ideographs. Some of these are still in use today. Every Chinese written character represents a one-syllable word. Many Chinese words, however, are compounds composed of two or more characters. In these compounds each character contributes a meaning to the total concept. Modern Chinese characters fall into two categories: One with a phonetic component, the other without it. Majority of those without a phonetic component developed from pictographs. Characters of this type which do not contain phonetic components account for only a small proportion of all Chinese characters, but many of them are in common use. Most of the Chinese characters contain a phonetic component that tells the pronunciation and an idea component that indicates something of the meaning. These idea components are also called radicals and are often written on the left-hand side of the character. There are more than 250 radicals. The phonetic component is often a character in itself. If one knows the pronunciation of the character it is based on, one can know the pronunciation of many characters in which that component is used. One of the unsolved problems of â€Å"pinyin† is that some characters, though written differently and with different meaning, sound the same. However, usually one can tell from the context which one to use. The tone of a Chinese word is just as important as it s pronunciation. This aspect of speaking Chinese is the most difficult for English speaking people to learn. In English, the tone of a word varies with the mood of the sentence; in Chinese, the tone stays the same whether the sentence is a question, exclamation or a simple statement. The Chinese written language is an ancient and unique writing system with a history of 6000 years. There are a total of 60,000 characters, of which only 3000-4500 are frequently used. Ancient Chinese characters evolved from pictures. Each Chinese character is composed of various strokes. These strokes are basically straight lines. From top to bottom and left to right are the main directions. There are eight basic strokes used for writing Chinese characters. These strokes are used in a certain order to write Chinese characters. In the past few decades standard language has gradually been formed based on the language of the norm with Beijing as the norm and a grammar modeled on modern vernacular writing. This language is called ‘Pu Tonghua’ and is gradually being popularized. It will eventually become the form of spoken and written Chinese in universal use. b) Discuss the ways in which Chinas language and literature reflect other aspects of Chinas culture such as kinship, art, politics, religion, economics, and the Chinese world view in general. A Chinese name is composed of two parts – a surname and a given name. The surname comes first, followed by the given name. Most surnames are monosyllabic. The most common surnames are Zhang, Wang, Li, Zhao and Liu. There are a few disyllabic surnames such as Zhuge, Ouyang and Shangguan. Given names can be either monosyllabic or disyllabic.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Organisational Business Practices Essay

Organization is a principle of life. We seek the help of organizations to meet our day to day requirements such as to feeding, clothing, educating entertaining, protecting etc. However, organizations are not contemporary creations. Modern society has more organizations which are fulfilling a larger category of societal and personal needs. Organizations are so encompassing in the modern life that it is sometimes easy to overlook that each may be regarded as an entity with a specific contribution and specific goals. Organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities of two or more persons in order to achieve a common goal. It is a system of four major internal interacting components such as: task, people, technology and structure. Organizations are said to be open systems. A number of metaphors can be used to think and explain about the nature of organization. There are eight archetypical metaphors of organization: Machines, Organisms, Brains, Cultures, Political Systems, Psychic Prisons, Flux and Transformation, Instruments of Domination. General Discussion Document: Director of Marketing is proposing to introduce a new process of sales at Superior Sales Corporation for which there will be changes as per the present set up. Staff are likely to resist the change hence some suggestions are placed to reduce the resistance. Organization Structure: Functional superiority can only be achieved if there is enough reliability and focus within each business unit. Elites are those specialized organizational units with closeness to power and having superior capability. Their functions signify a particular organization’s typical capability. It is, important that more than one such elite function exist. They need to be complementary so as to make sure that they serve as a check on another. Pluralist are those essential forces that play a important role in decision making. The tension that is created amongst these forces stimulates thoughts and lead to self-improvement and competitiveness, Elite functions bring main strengths to an organization, but must assist with the whole to attain shared results. The stronger and more competent the elites are, the more difficult it is to achieve cross-functional teamwork. The organization’s challenge is therefore to ensure that these functions are on a par with that of competition, but at the same time they need to ensure that they respond to market demands by cutting across these functional compartments. Organization Cultures: Organizations are mini-societies that have their own distinctive patterns of culture. Culture is a modern concept used in a social sense to refer broadly to civilization and social system. Its increasing use within the social sciences has led to definitions of varying generality, which develop in a host of ways. Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. There is a growing literature of relevance how organization can be understood as a cultural phenomenon. It is valuable to understand the relationship between culture and industrialization. The greatest strength of this metaphor is that it shows how organizations rests in shared systems of meaning, values, ideologies, beliefs and other social practices that ultimately shape and guide organized action. Reactive and Proactive Changes: Forces for change arise out of an organization’s interaction with elements in its external or internal environment. The action of competitors, suppliers, government units or public groups may have substantial impacts on change. Social and cultural factors such as life styles, values or beliefs also lead to important changes. Forces of change may also arise from within an organization depending upon different phases of growth or demands made by different interest groups. Reactive changes occur when these forces make it necessary for a change to be implemented. Proactive change takes place when some forces to change lead an organization to conclude that a particular change is desirable and goes about in initiating the change in a planned manner. The difference between reactive and proactive changes corresponds to that between reflexive behavior and purposive behavior. Reactive change, like reflexive behavior, involves a limited part of the system whereas proactive change and purposive behavior coordinate the parts of the system as a whole. Organizational change has noted that many participants respond with dogged resistance to altering the status quo. In the industrial phenomenon workers have at times sought, in extremely violent fashion, to block the introduction of new technology. Supervisors and lower level managers have balked at large scale projects in job redesign and job enrichment; even low level employees, the presumed beneficiaries of such projects, have fought such changes. Senior managers have fought pitched battles against realignment of corporate structure. Even the proposal by a course coordinator to adopt a different style of presenting the report is capable of touching off a frenzy of defensive tactics to resist change. Such behavior may be either overt or covert. Overt resistance may take the form of employees deliberately failing to do the things necessary for successful change or simply being unenthusiastic about the change. The absence of overt resistance does not mean that resistance is not present, as resistance may be hidden from direct observation. Covert resistance can be more detrimental to change than open resistance because it is harder to identify and eliminate. There are at least two sets of factors which explain the process of resistance. One set relates to the personality and the other relates to the social system. Decreasing the Resistance: Managers who have been responsible for implementation have developed personal perspective consisting of assumption and strong feelings about how change should be introduced. These philosophies fall into two camps, either tops-down or bottoms-up. The Tops-down Strategy: The advocates of this strategy believe that, in general, people resist changes and require direction and structure for their well being as well as to work efficiently and effectively. The basic psychological contract between employees and management, it is assumed, is one in which the employee provides work, effort and commitment and expects in return pay, benefits, and a clear definition of what is expected to be done. It follows that it is the management’s responsibility to design the changes it deems appropriate and to implement these thoroughly but quickly by directives from the top. The Bottoms-up Strategy The advocates of this approach profess what to them is a more enlightened view of human nature. They argue that people welcome change and the opportunity to contribute to their own productivity, especially if the change gives them more variety in their work and more autonomy. These managers assume people have a psychological contract which includes an expectation that they be involved in designing change as well as in implementing it. Commitment to change, they say, follows from involvement in the total change process and is essential to successful implementation.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Meursault vs MLK Jr essays

Meursault vs MLK Jr essays Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who was deeply committed to bringing justice to the Negroes of America. He expressed this commitment in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. This letter tells us a lot about the way in which King saw the world and the power relationships within it. It painted the picture of a determined man who saw his place in the grand scheme of things and knew how to use his power to achieve his goals. The character Meursault from the Albert Camus novel The Stranger also manipulates power to his advantage. Meursault on the other hand seems to be completely indifferent to what is going on around him. These two men have opposite personalities and yet they both come to the same end... power. How is this possible and what does this say about the typical power theory? To answer this question I will examine the ways in which both King and Meursault understand love, justice, religion and law. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail King expresses his love for the church, his love for freedom and his love for America. He follows the words of Jesus, who said, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and persecute you (479.) This approach to ones enemies is an interesting one. Rather than gaining power in the relationship by pushing others down it aims to gain power by lifting them up. Say person X hates person Y. Kings approach was that Y should return that hate with love. The desired result was that X would not be able to hate someone who loves him/her without feeling guilty and instead give the love back thus making the two equal. Meursault definitely does not share Kings opinion on love. Whereas King goes by the principle that love will be returned with love and leave nothing but equality Meursault does not see the importance in the whole thing. Marie obviously loves him but he does not love her (5...

Monday, October 21, 2019

desert fox essays

desert fox essays Erwin Rommel was born in 1891. As field marshal he was known best for his capture of 9,000 allied forces during World War I. On the Germans invasion of France in 1940, Rommel commanded the well-known Ghost Division or otherwise known as the German 7th Panzer Division. Pushing every machine and every man to extreme limits, Rommels forces moved 350 miles in six weeks. Never had tanks moved so far in such little time. Rommel joined the German army in 1910. He won awards for his bravery in WWI. After he pushed to the English Channel in 1940, and received the many victories in the Ghost Division he was made lieutenant general and placed in command of the Africa Corps in North Africa, where he earned worldwide recognition. Rommel was a popular military leader even though his tactics were unconventional to other leaders. Other than sit in command rooms located far from the battle field to direct the troops, he instead lead his troops from the front lines. He was also known to help the soldiers build a bridge or if the convoy was in trouble was there to give a helping hand. In 1944 the Western front was the only area that hasnt had full allied assault. Hitler put Rommel in command of the defense of the western front. He then went to survey the coastal defense from the north to the Mediterranean, and was discouraged at the sight. The defense was widely scattered, none of which could withstand a full scaled allied attack. The infantry were in the worst condition. They included POWs and German soldiers exhausted from fighting with the Russians. The men were poorly trained, had hardly any artillery, and some even lacked the physical strength to endure military action. Although the situation seemed bleak, Rommel set out to bring order to the western front. Just the sight of Germanys great hero raised the spirits of the poorly trained forces. He organized the troops and set them ...