Saturday, August 31, 2019

AP Bio Lab

However, the e pigments will eve up the chromatography paper at different rates because they are not e equally soluble to the solvent. Photosynthesis has two main stages, the lightheartedness reaction and the lightheartedness reaction. Light independent reactions occur only in the light a ND produce TAP and NADIA which are then used by the lightheartedness reactions to fuel its pr access. Part B of this lab involves differing variables of light and carbon dioxide and the effects they have on the rate of photosynthesis.In this experiment, the rate of photosynthesis will be assured through the floating of leaf disks in solution. Ill. Hypothesis, Materials, and Method part A: Hypothesis: The plant will produce varying bands of yellow and green pigment TTS along the chromatography paper. Part B: Hypothesis: The more light or carbon dioxide there is, the faster the rate of p Hottentots. IV. Variables Independent Variable: Colors of the bands Dependent Variable: Plant pigment part e: Indep endent Variable: Sodium bicarbonate solution Dependent Variable: Time each disk took to floatControl: Water/Soap solution without carbon dioxide V. Data and Observations. Part A: Plant Pigments and Chromatography Observations: The plant produced five visible bands of color: dark green, light green, green, light yellow and dark yellow. All of the bands were the same distance apart ex kept for band 4 and the solvent front which were both mm apart. Data: Band # Distance(mm) Band Color o. Scorn dark brown 2 1. Mm light green 3 2. Mm green 4 4. Mm light yellow Solvent Front 6. Mm dark yellow Part B: Photosynthesis

Friday, August 30, 2019

Environmental Dumping Essay

The natural resources that a country controls are integral factors in one’s growth and success. If these natural resources are translated into something useful and are properly appropriated while being maintained in a healthy state, can bring in so much revenues and benefits to a country. Thus, it is of great importance that nation’s leaders take massive measures of protecting the natural resources that their countries possess. More so, international leaders should make it a point that the awareness for harnessing sound environmental policies is being enforced. This however, if not done, might impede the growth not only of a certain country’s national economy, but may turn in international economic losses as well. However, given this considerably enormous importance that the environment plays in a nation’s success, more often than not it is one of the most neglected areas in a country’s development. The past two decades, the calls for environmental justice grew louder and louder. Most of the injustices done against natural resources are mostly hastened by human’s aggressions. In search for various ways of generating economic prosperity, humans, in particular nation’s leaders have overlooked the necessity to maintain proper environmental precautions that shall keep natural resources in a fine state (Adeola, 2000, p. 687). In a globalized world wherein the human consumption is reaching far end level in all countries especially the more advanced ones, international waste dumping poses a great problem. More than the issue of high rate consumption there is, dumping of wastes has been more critical than ever. It reaches far more issues in the aspect of environmental justice and human rights. The issue of environmental justice and human rights are interconnected. Leaders of more advanced and powerful nations have used their superiority to manipulate international policies related to environmental issues in such a way that they get the upper hand and the benefits from the weaker states’ natural resources. In most cases, environmental policies are maneuvered in such a way that it rather serves as genocidal acts to legally drive away minority groups so that their natural resources and lands may be appropriated in accordance to the wants and wishes of wealthy nations (Adeola, 2000, p. 687). Accordingly, given that industrialized nations have a greater share in the world consumption, hence they should be the first entities who are ought to be responsible for cleaning their wastes. But nonetheless, weak nations suffer the blunder of having to become dumpsites for advanced countries against their will. With the fact that advanced countries can manipulate rules to satisfy their needs, weak countries can be legally forced to receive industrial wastes from first world countries (Adeola, 2000, pp. 688-689). Powerful nations have seized the privilege of gaining economic benefits, while they have successfully and painstakingly avoided the responsibility for their own wastes (Adeola, 2000, pp. 688-689). Strong countries would usually use their influence over the international economic arena to forcefully use other countries as dumpsites of the waste generated in industrialized nations. And given that most of the countries worldwide have adhered to the tenets of globalization, most of the poor nations voluntarily submitted to the idea that they have to willfully succumb to the calls of more industrialized nations, thus accepting the idea to serve as industrial dumpsites. Thus giving weak nations the brunt of bearing the dismal effect for their environment and natural resources, that at most times have not been generated int heir countries. Though there are certain conventions/policies which have been set up to control this alarming irresponsible dumping of wastes, still, there are blunders that can be pointed out. In addition to waste dumping, another issue that should worry the international community is the trading of recyclable wastes. Although the Basel Convention is bound to formulate policies geared towards setting a standard on trading of wastes, more often than not, these policies favor richer nations. In effect, the Basel Convention has not been so successful in regulating waste trades. The definitions that it has set out are vague and often do not coincide with the nation’s own set of definitions. For example, a hazardous waste according to the Basel Convention may not be considered hazardous for a particular country, therefore completely not abiding with it. Thus, these inconsistencies make these definitions and policies unfit for use (Alter, 1994, pp. 109-110). In addition, different countries have opposed the Basel Convention to its use arguing that the possible banning of waste trade can harm their economy. Most of the countries, both the developed and developing nations, that halting the trade will serve grave effects on their economy. First, developed nations could lose an ample amount of economic profits if they lose the chance of dumping their wastes on poorer countries. And on the other hand, the claim of less developed nations that they can only afford second hand materials to be used in their industries, rather than generating raw materials of their own which are more extravagant to produce (Alter, 1994, pp. 111-112). Moreover, recent data and statistics are able to show the manner at which waste dumping has been proven to serve distinct harsh effects on the economy, health and well being of the nations that have been brought up to serve as dump sites. This matter has put the issue of social inequity in the light. The problem of the distribution of environmental hazards has been lopsidedly pushed towards the weaker nations, whilst leaving richer nations away from the problem that they have created. Given the ill conditions of their consumption patterns – their poor economic abilities render the people residing in such area the tendency to consume less than the population in rich countries – they bear the brunt of having to accommodate industrial wastes which have been ironically not produced and consumed within their countries (Anderton, 1994, pp. 29-248). Thus, in such matters, cleaning your own mess does not count. Racism and the logic of whoever stays stronger gain the upper hand (Anderton, 1994, pp. 29-248). Thus, the more powerful a state can be, the easier they can get to bend laws against the will of weaker nations and their inhabitants not mindful of the harmful effects it might render them. Much of the contradiction and irony lie in the fact that as much as human beings benefit largely from the blessings that the environment and its natural resources has bestowed upon them, humans are the first to be blamed from the hastening process of its depletion. More than an issue of high consumption in industrialized nations, the powerful leaders of the world have not devised a way towards proper disposal of their wastes. Industrial wastes have been dumped haphazardly, thus contaminating the environment and gravely affect natural resources. Environmental injustice is even more highlighted with the fact that the country who generates more wastes, is generally the country who gets away with it by dumping their wastes somewhere else as a form of a â€Å"recyclable wastes† which in any way generate more environment toxins. In the guise of economic prosperity and austerity measures, environment suffers a lot. Rich countries dump industrial toxins as a form of generating more profit for trading their wastes. While developing and poor countries accept these wastes and use scrap materials because they are cheaper, unmindful of the harmful emissions they may release that can endanger their environment. Thus, though high-end consumption in industrialized countries may pose a threat to the environment, irresponsible dumping of the wastes generated through these consumptions serve more dangerous as the former. And if the international community does not make regulations on proper disposal of these wastes, environment is off to suffer gravely than ever. References Adeola, Francis. January 2000. Cross-National Environmental Injustice and Human Rights Issues. American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 43 No. 4. Alter, Harvey. August 1994. Controlling International Trade in Wastes. Anderton, Douglas. et al. May 1994. Environmental Equity: The Demographics of Dumping. Demography. Vol. 31, No. 2.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

CORE Questions and Answers like Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

CORE Questions and Answers like - Essay Example His theory does not negotiate neither on the argument based the reach to the need nor on the level of compromising ones’ luxury towards a social cause. Even though, Singer’s theory does not precisely define the level of sacrifice one should do to equate against ones social responsibility. In the context of ‘The Truth about Fortune’, it is very easy to take a utilitarian support as the emphasis here is on the cause of the security of the society, no matter the methodology undertaken to achieve it. Breach of laws and regulations on torture of prisoners are justified here on the utilitarian grounds that this is at times the only solution towards the social cause. The cases as ‘the ticking bomb’ and the ‘slower-fuse high-level terrorist’ are left with no other option than to go on with extreme torture levels. However this theory also does not precisely define the level determining the need of taking the extreme steps. However the second context is much easy to be pursued by a utilitarian as this practically does only affect him in the utility level and not in the implementation level. The surprise in the Singer’s theory thus well goes with his thesis. Peter Singer is an Australian Philosopher who specializes in practical ethics, approaching ethical issues from a utilitarian perspective. His work ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ was published in the revised edition of Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1972. In this essay, the author through the perceptive of the Bengal famine in 1971 tries to evolve the theory that helping the ones in need is more the fellow human’s duty than a charity. Moral attitudes are to be shaped by the needs of the society and he reckons the need of people within the society who would observe the rules that make the social existence tolerable. As of his thesis, the moral point of view requires us to look beyond the

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

The factors that affect the likelihood and sustainability of collusion Essay

The factors that affect the likelihood and sustainability of collusion in a specific industry - Essay Example Fundamentally, collusion is aimed at restricting or distorting competition within the market that the firms in that industry serve, and thereby reap the benefit of high and uncontrolled profitability. Therefore, this analysis seeks to establish the factors that affect the likelihood of collusion within the Air Travel Industry, and how such collusion is sustainable. Factors that affect the likelihood of collusion and sustainability in the Air Travel Industry Hypothetical Case: Air Canada and West Jet have been accused in colluding on fares on direct flights from Edmonton to Fort McMurray. The Air Travel Industry is an industry that is fairly competitive, considering that there are various airlines that operate within any given country or region, thus making the business of air travel fairly competitive3. Nevertheless, the Air Travel Industry also presents the opportunity for creating a monopoly or an oligopoly, considering that it is an industry that has low number of players. ... Therefore, there are high barriers to the entry for new firms, considering that economic barriers such as the high cost of entry prevent investors from being able to enter the Air Travel Industry4. Thus, barriers to entry form one of the structural features of the market and industry that make collusion more common and sustainable in this industry. The market and industry structure of Air Travel entails a high initial cost of entry, because purchasing and licensing an aircraft to be used for Air Travel purposes is a costly affair, in addition to the legal barriers that are brought about by the government tight control of the industry5. Further, the Air Travel Industry depends highly ion the benefits of the economies of scale in order to survive and thrive to profit earning levels, which requires that the firm operating in the industry should have several aircraft that operates in different destinations, both locally and internationally, to ensure that the route that earns low profits is compensated for, by the one earning high profits, thus the average profitability of the firm becomes substantial6. This is an aspect that serves to reduce the threat of new entrants, since the new entrants will be required to purchase several aircrafts, and undergo the restrictive government legislation procedures in order to finally enter into the industry, thus making the threat of competition low7. It is this low threat of competition that serves as an incentive to encourage the collusion between the few firms that have managed to operate in the industry, and thus make such collusion sustainable, considering that virtually all the firms operating in this industry have overcome the market challenges involved, and thus no single firm

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

A look into the perspective of Operation Management in the context of Essay

A look into the perspective of Operation Management in the context of a Bank Call Centre - Essay Example Thus, the relationships and observations are considered to be independent of the theories used to explain them and can hence be studied, manipulated at will, and controlled as needed by the researcher. Another major characteristic of rationalist research is the goal of determining the distributions of a set of pre-specified variables in the population or verifying a set of pre-specified relationships. The main focal pint is to primarily considering the rationalist methods of modeling by equations, laboratory experiments, and statistical survey analysis in making comparisons to case research. Note that the division here does not parallel a frequently-used one of dividing operations management research between so-called 'theoretical' a misnomer, since all these paradigms can be theoretical and 'empirical' methods. Typical equation-modeling research would include variants of the economic order quantity formulation as well as production-inventory system simulations. Statistical survey research is currently being used in quality management, supply chain, and technology management investigations, among many others. Rationalist research methods also have their draw-b... First, obtaining valid empirical generalizations depends to a large extent on the use of sampling procedures that are rigorous, representative of a well-specified population, and provides a source of information concerning the constructs to be measured. Yet, despite the importance of employing rigorous sampling criteria for generalizability of the findings, the great majority of quantitative studies based on sampling appear to use samples of convenience or opportunity. A call center is a service network in which agents provide telephone-based services. Customers that seek these services are delayed in tele-queues. The attempt summarizes an analysis of a unique operation management record of call center operations. The data comprise a complete operational history of a small banking call center such as UTI, call by call, over a full year. Telephone call centers allow groups of agents to serve customers remotely, via the telephone. They have become a primary contact point between customers and their service providers and, as such, play an increasingly significant role in more developed economies. For example, it is estimated that call centers handle more than 78% of all business interactions and that they employ more than 2.5 million people. While call centers are technology-intensive operations, often 70% or more of their operating costs are devoted to human resources, and to minimize costs their managers carefully track and seek to maximize agent utilization. Well-run call centers adhere to a sharply-defined balance between agent efficiency and service quality, and to do so, they use queuing-theoretic models. The UTI center provides several types of services: information for current and prospective customers,

Monday, August 26, 2019

What health and wellness means to you Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

What health and wellness means to you - Essay Example In a personal context I believe health and wellness are primarily about achieving a broad based and holistic sense of balance dependent on nurturing and taking care of the varied facets of my life, are they physical, mental, spiritual, social, financial, or intellectual that blend together to endow the human life with happiness and peace. Yes I agree that keeping the body free of disease by avoiding unhealthy habits, exercising regularly and eating the right diet are essential to my innate sense of wellness. Yet, this is not the be all and end all of my sense of wellness. For me, staying healthy is about continually striving to strike the right balance between my career and academic pursuits, my commitment to my family and the society, in which I live, my spiritual life and the intellectual aspirations I tend to have. In fact for me all these aspects of my life are closely intertwined and linked to each other, and a deterioration or neglect even in one of them directly translates into negatively impacting the other aspects of my health and wellness. For instance my career pursuits endow me with a sense of security and confidence, and any deterioration in them not only shakes my confidence in my ability to lead a successful and secure life, but also gives way to mental anxiety and stress that may make me eat unhealthy , have sleepless nights, avoid my family and friends, and not able to concentrate on the spiritual side of my personality. Similarly, my association with my family and the society in which I live endows me with a sense of identity and acceptance (Cattan & Tilford, 2011). If for some reason, say too much involvement in my career pursuits, I start ignoring my family beyond what is acceptable and normal, I will eventually become victim of a sense of isolation and mental anxiety, irrespective of the progress I may be excelling in the career aspects of my life. This may also make me develop physical and mental maladies like high

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Chinese Christian History Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Chinese Christian History - Research Paper Example There is a current interest in Chinese Christianity studies owing to what many quarters see as an upsurge in the number of Christians in the country in recent times, with some estimates putting the number of Chinese Christians at anywhere between 25 million to 200 million, said to be the highest those numbers have ever been in China, with prospects for more growth in the number of new entrants to Christianity moving forward. This, in spite of a history of Christian persecution and persecution and suppression of religious expression by the government authorities in China through time, making it difficult to come up with accurate assessments of the state of Christianity in the country at any given time. The implication is that the persecution must drive some of the Christian activities underground, so that at any given time in history, one can say that the official numbers belie an even larger underground population of Chinese Christians who choose to remain incognito rather than face the wrath of the Chinese bureaucratic machine. That said, the history of Chinese Christians is interesting, given that at even today’s conservative estimates, the number of Chinese Christians attending Sunday service now dwarf the total number of European Christians, with a large potential upside. This paper basically traces the historical roots of this present-day phenomenon of the meteoric rise in the numbers of Christians in China (Gardam; Kelman; BillionBibles.org; Liqiang and Yinan; Christians in China; Moll; Orso; Yao). II. Chinese Christian History A. How Chinese Christianity Developed The earliest form of Christianity that took root in China had its origins in what is called Nestorian Christianity, which is a form of Christianity introduced by Alopen, a Nestorian \Christian from Syria, who came into China in 635 during the time of the Tang Dynasty. The religion was perceived and received by the local Chinese Buddhists as a variant of Buddhism itself, and via this asso ciation was received positively by the Chinese at the time, calling the religion of Alopen a brilliant religion worthy of admiration. The Chinese from the Tang period had a curious stance towards Western religion at the time, and this version gained some traction and toleration for some period of time, before it was rooted out of mainland China during the purge of the 9th century, when its perceived association with Buddhist precepts made it a candidate for purging. Several other waves of Christianity met with some mild success but failed to take root as well, from the 13th all the way to the 18th centuries, before a fourth Christianity wave that occurred during the 19th century developed sturdier roots in Chinese society. During this time, coercion on the part of the western powers allowed Christianity as advanced by missionaries to gain ground even with the corresponding advance of western economic and political interests resulted in Christianity being perceived as part of this dr ive, and so was resisted in some measure by the Chinese. The backlash from all this was the targeting of Christian groups in China in 1919, and the further withering of the roots of Chinese Christianity in the ensuing years due to the pressures exerted on it by the budding Communist Party. During this tim

Saturday, August 24, 2019

The Sports Restaurant (Final Paper) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Sports Restaurant (Final Paper) - Essay Example critical skills and abilities needed to start and run the proposed business would come from the management team with the following skills: entrepreneurial, leadership and management, communication, problem-solving, conflict-negotiation, and genuine enthusiasm as well as knowledge in running a restaurant. It would make money through effective strategies using the 4Ps: Product: since the core competency of the sports restaurant is the use of very healthy and high protein organic food and supplements, as well as the preparation food could be tailored according to the customers’ distinct tastes and preferences, the restaurant is expected to be appealing to the health conscious clientele. Place: to be situated in commercial district where business or even universities abound. Price: competitively priced since sources of raw materials could be supplied by local dairies, farms, and reliable suppliers. Promotions: initially in local advertising medium: radio, flyers, posters, to name a

Operation Management techniques in service organisation Essay

Operation Management techniques in service organisation - Essay Example A few of the theories that have been included in this study include Schmenner’s theory. In his theory he has classified the types of service industries as well. The main argument of this study has been the importance to customer relationship and how this forms the base of success of service industry as a whole. The study has shown the most essential aspect of the success of the business is mainly customer contact and a low degree of differentiation. The major finding also indicate that companies that are innovative but do not have a good relationship and contact with the customers are relatively not as successful as that of companies with better contact with customers. It is essential to understand and as has been discussed by the author as well, there is a vast difference between the manufacturing industry and the service industry and the tactics of one cannot always be useful for the other. Also the lack of knowledge of what would work on retaining customers could cost the companies a great deal of the market as well. The research that has been conducted has been based on a few of the authors. The various other researches which have also been mentioned like Verma (2000), Wright & Mechling (2002) are also very reliable and well designed researches. The research has been strong with a strong link to the literature review and the theories of operations management. The one theory which is acceptable in this research is Schmenner’s typology. The choice of authors is appreciated due to the strong research and contributions that these authors have made to the field of operational management. The main positive aspect of the writing of these authors is the simple and straight forward application and explanation that they provide. Also although they do deal with some extremely important elements of the subject, it is clear that they understand the needs of students

Friday, August 23, 2019

Modern Day Muscian Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Modern Day Muscian - Research Paper Example Music was affected with romantic revolution that swept the literature world (Blanchard & Acree, 183). The two artists worked exceptionally hard and extensively improved music industry. There were significant similarities and divergences on the historical period between Beethoven’s and Lennon’s music careers. The two artists existed in dissimilar centuries and historical periods. Beethoven began his musical career earlier than Lennon did, virtually because he was born before him. They lived in dissimilar societal settings that subsisted differently. At that epoch, man was inventing new ideas that would ease work. The development was also evidenced in the music world when Beethoven came up with nine symphonies and five piano concertos (Blanchard & Acree, 183). He majorly concentrated on romantic songs and composed orthodox music that influenced the appreciation of love songs. He influenced the populace to love and appreciate songs that pass indispensable message of romance to the masses. Conversely, Lennon came to existence much earlier in the twentieth century. The music world had experienced much of improvement since Beethoven passed away. Lennon came up with the rock style of music and was occupied in songwriting partnership that distorted the music panorama globally (Makela, 225). The historical period in which they existed was dissimilar from each other, and consequently prejudiced their compositions. The comparison that existed between Beethoven’s works of art and the historical period was that both composed songs that were sung using similar instruments. The piano was the main instrument used by two parties to make song enjoyable and fascinating to the public. The similarity that existed between Lennon’s works of art and historical period was that the songs passed the message of peace to public (Makela, 117). He also performed in groups which was a common thing done in the historical period. Another similarity was the instruments he used were

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Ethics and Financial Services Essay Example for Free

Ethics and Financial Services Essay Question A1 Outline the frauds identified in the case and explain the inconsistencies with proper accounting treatment. Relate your answer to broad accounting concepts and accounting standards where relevant. (8 marks; approximately 800 words) Answer: Livent Inc. is a theatre production corporation registered in Toronto, Canada. Therefore, all the accounting behaviours were subject to the General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) of Canada. In a broad sense, the GAAP imposes four main constraints on the accounting behaviours of companies – objectivity, materiality, consistency and conservatism. In the case of Livent Inc., there are several behaviours that was inconsistent with the proper accounting regulations in general. Large kickback scheme At the very beginning of the entire fraud by Livent, the two executives, Drabinsky and Gottlieb, fabricated transactions that did not exist at all, in order to transfer the revenue of the company secretly to their own pockets. They made the fake transaction on their balance sheet by colluding with their vendors. Drabinsky and Gottlieb received the money from vendors and asked them to fabricate evidences of charging fees. Manipulation of accounting records The kickback scheme sacrificed the net profit of the company, and as a result, Drabinsky and Gottlieb started manipulating the records. There were evidence from later investigation that Livent was exaggerating its revenue from the box office to show that it kept good income statement with good  profit. Also, they asked the accountants at Livent to modify the financial statements to hide the potential financial problems Livent had and to exhibit good operating performance to attract more investment. Drabinsky even used special software to manipulate the financial statements to make them as if they were the original record and hard to be detected. Keeping the fraud as secret to auditors With the help of the special software, Livent Inc. was able to keep two records of their financial performances, the phony one and the real one. And the outside auditors did auditing of Livent based on the phony financial records Livent provided. Therefore, the Deloitte, Livent’s outside auditing company, could hardly see signs of fraud during annual auditing. Significantly, the fraud of Livent Inc. broke the accounting principle of objectivity, which is also the primary standards companies should stick to. The objectivity principle basically requires that all kinds of financial statements the companies offer should be based on the facts. That is to say, every transaction and item recorded in the financial statements should be supported by unbiased and objective information. Under no circumstances are the managers, shareholders and accountants allowed to fabricate or distort any accounting reports and materials of the company. However, what Drabinsky and Gottlieb did at Livent went against the accounting standards. The fact that the two partners urged the internal accountants to modify the seasonal expenses and liability is definitely away from the proper professional behaviours. Livent benefited from manipulating its performance with additional investment and bank loans, which boosted aggressive expanding plans of Livent. It is even intolerable that the company invented the special software, which allowed unlimited arbitrary modification of all the accounting records of the company. This made the fraud much easier and less likely to be discovered because it enabled the manipulation looked as if they were the original data. Elrod and Gorhum (2010) made quantitative research on the way of detecting fraud by examine the extent to which the cash flow from operation and the earnings from continuing operations are correlated. Livent Inc. forced the accounting staff in the company to comply with the fraud behaviour without any doubt. The executives showed a â€Å"matter-of-fact† attitude toward the fraud. The accountants, independent auditors were not working independently and objectively as required by GAAP. On the contrary, they have been coerced or instructed to make fake accounting records, and did not show cooperation with the independent outside auditors. GAAP intends to ensure auditor independence. But Messina used her previous influence at Deloitte to disturb the independency of Deloitte auditors in examining the financial performance of Livent. The objectivity principle additionally restricts unreliable reports, materials and sheets offered to the auditors for annual auditing. Under the current accounting principles and standards in Canada and the United State, the auditors are responsible only for ensuring the preparation of all the accounting documents of the company align with the GAAP. But the outside auditors do not have access to the detailed daily record of the company. Therefore, the annual auditing is unable to prevent managerial collusion if the company provides counterfeit accounting materials. Livent was giving the fake balance sheet, income statement and other reports to Deloitte, which is not allowed by the accounting standards to a broad extent. Some companies correct their cheating behaviour when the situation improves, which makes it even harder to be detected. Nonetheless, such behaviours done by Livent are inconsistent with the standard professional ethics and regulations. Moreover, the aggressive developing strategy Livent had taken also violated the conservatism principle that the GAAP requires. This principle asks the accountants to exclude the uncertain income or revenue, while include the possible losses and risks in the financial statement. The conservative accounting behaviors are necessary because they can effectively prevent the shareholders and investors from potential losses. But in this case, Drabinsky is in such a haste to pursue aggressive development of the company, and obviously was exaggerating its revenue as well as concealing its losses. Question A2 Describe the corporate ethical culture at Livent Inc. How did this culture affect employee behaviour? Explain and justify your answer. (12 marks; approximately 1,200 words) Answer: Several researches supported the argument that the corporate ethical culture had large influences on the behaviours of the employees and their ethical judgements. The company does not have to have a specific code of ethics for the employees to constraint their ethical behaviours. The corporate environment in itself is enough for influencing the ethical behaviours inside the company. Nwachukwu and Vitell (1997)’s research found that the ethical culture in corporate has certain impact on the moral conviction of the employees upon what is right and wrong. Fraudulent behaviour was a very significant issue in the development of companies. It was because that it had tremendous impacts on the corporate, the employees as well as the public. Also, the difficulties in preventing such behaviours were to define, prevent and detect it. Schwartz (2013) made research and emphasized the three key factors in maintain an ethical corporate culture in the company. They are the set of ethical beliefs or values throughout the company, establishing â€Å"formal ethics program† and the ethical leadership throughout the development of the company. However, in the case of Livent’s fraud, all the three factors were lack in the system of the company. They had no clear ethical values, as the self-regulation mechanism, set and administrated inside the company to constraint the behaviours of not only the employees, but the senior executives as well. The unethical culture set by the top executives had not only influenced, but also forced all the staff, especially the accountants, to cooperate and to help conceal the fraud from being detected by the outsiders. This caused the company running under a set of very unethical corporate culture. It seemed to be routine to manipulate the financial records in Livent Inc. for quite a long time. As early as the year of 1990, Drabinsky, together with his best partner Gottlieb, began the kickback scheme to illegally create fake transactions to transfer money from the company to their own pockets. Then later Dranbinsky and Gottlieb had to tell even bigger lies and got more people involved in in order to make up for the expense losses from the kickback plan. The company lacked ethical leadership from the very beginning. To make the financial performance of Livent look promising,  Drabinsky and Gottlieb meddled in the daily accounting records as well as the preparation of the annual financial statements that were handed in and were examined by the auditing company, Deloitte. The executives and the senior level staff were not establishing positive example inside the company so as to maintain a positive ethical corporate culture. What’s even worse, they acted as the leading role in such fraudulent behaviours and arbitrarily got the other employees into the serious fraud scheme. Drabinsky and Gottlieb shouted at and coerced the staff and even the senior level managers to fulfil their ambition. They developed a specific computer software inside the company’s accounting system, so that they were able to take control of the financial status of the company. They could adjust any amount and transaction records in the system to make the quarterly, semi-annually and annually report of financial performance of Livent look promising to invest in. Even worse, by applying the software, Livent was able to cheat on the accounting records as if they were the raw figures, and avoid being discovered. It had also facilitated the fraudulent behaviours and motivated the employees and the executives to fraud continuously. Another serious issue inside Livent, besides the manipulation of the accounting records and financial statements, is the overwhelming attitude of viewing fraud as a matter of fact among executives as well as the employees. Even if some of the accounting staff including Messina and Webster questioned the unethical behaviours they got involved in, they were influenced by the overall environment and paid no attention to the fraudulent behaviours in Livent. They took for granted that what they did was to follow the instructions of the executives so as not to get fired. The employees would see Drabinsky shouting and bullying the accountants and even the senior level staff in the company if they had any different opinions against him. This was in fact establishing bad example for the employees and was to warn the other staff to just accept the deviant behaviours as a matter of fact. For a long time, employees were aware of the fraud happening, but were unwilling to avoid it. Llopis et al. (2007) argued that â€Å"effective communication is essential for the ethical message to be properly assimilated†. However, in Livent, the top two executives, Drabinsky and Gottlieb, were much too autocratic in the way of managing the company. There  were barely any information about the ethical culture passed to the employees, and the staff had little freedom to do their job but to listen to Drabinsky’s instructions. Last but not least, Livent Inc. lacked proper self-regulation mechanism to prevent the non-ethical behaviours. More often than not, self-regulation are considered as the last prevention of bad corporate ethical culture. Schwartz (2013) pointed out that the set of ethical value of the company was critical for making ethical decisions. Real self-regulation should not be independent of the public interest. Instead, the behaviours under self-regulation should be compatible with the social values and principles. In addition, as the ethical value of the company should not be arbitrarily decided by the executives or a few people in the company; instead the set of ethical value should gain the consent of the majority of the employees (Llopis et al. 2007). Yet, what the set of value acquiesced by the employees in Livent went against the public’s interest, and thus led to the unethical corporate culture overall. Formally, inside Livent, they did not have complete ethical programs including regulations on the professional operation of each position to prevent fraud. The ethical value of the company should be clearly stated in the policies and regulations, or even set incentive mechanism to encourage the employees to follow and to form good habits. In conclusion, there were three factors causing the unethical corporate culture inside Livent. The first is the long-standing fraudulent behaviours from the top executives, which were then passed down to the employees of lower levels arbitrarily. Second element of the unethical culture was the attitude of taking committing fraud as a matter of fact, and thus no one in the company were willing to discourage it. Finally, the lack of internal ethical corporate regulations or values established throughout the company accelerated the forming of unethical corporate culture. Working under such environment, the employees got involved in the fraudulent behaviours willingly or unwillingly forced by their boss. Moreover, their original ethical judgement became vague as they got used to the prevalent fraudulent working culture after a long time. They loss the sense of justice to judge the right and the wrong things. They might even rationalize what they had  done to be just and necessary. PART B Question B1 Why do you think Maria Messina become complicit in the fraud(s)? Explain your answer using the fraud triangle. (15 marks; approximately 1,500 words) Answer: The fraud originally started with the large kickback scheme by Drabinsky and Gottlieb, and finally Maria Messina, as the chief financial officer of Livent, got involved and helped in the huge fraud. Messina’s motivation to become complicit in the fraud can be explained by the theory of fraud triangle, which reveals much of the psychology of committing a fraud. The three key factors in the fraud triangle, considered as prerequisites of fraudulent behaviours, are the pressure, the opportunity and the rationalisation of doing it. Pressure The pressure of committing the fraud, according to the theory of fraud triangle, is more often than not â€Å"non-shareable† (Dellaportas 2013). The type of pressure may be related to financial issues, or may come from the job and working atmosphere. Dellaportas (2013) pointed out that the evil ideas can also be the source of pressure that causes fraud. People in Livent who joined in the fraud had different reasons of incentive to do illegal things as they had different kind of pressure. For example, for the two executives, Drabinsky and Gottlieb, they shared financial pressure. At first, their greed for money stimulated them to design the large kickback plan to secretly transfer money from the company to their own pockets. And later, just as Brenna and McGrath (2007) described in the paper, the executives had the motivation to fraud to keep the company at good performance so that they could gain high bonus as well as keep continuous outside investment for the company. But the motivation and pressure for Messina was a little different. Although as CFO of Livent, her bonus was linked with the performance of the company, the evidences in the  case and in the trial were insufficient to decide whether her fraudulent behaviour was directly motivated by financial pressure. However, it is clear that she was forced to involve in the fraud, like many other accountants at Livent, because of the coercion of Drabinsky and Gottlieb. Messina testified that the executives including Drabinsky would shout at the accountants and force them to cooperate in work. She worked under the pressure of the executives in the company. Messina would be at the risk of losing her job if she did not follow the instruction of Drabinsky. The financial situation was negative long before Messina joined Livent, meaning the fraud had already started before Messina was able to stop it. Taking over the responsibility of managing the financial performance of the company, she was faced with the situation out of her control. The environment of fraud and routine to manipulate the financial records had long been formed. The frequent use of software that enabled Drabinsky to easily manipulate the financial records and financial statements as much as he wanted was a common behaviour in Livent, acquiesced by everyone in the company. Under the threat of Drabinsky, Messina thus had no choice but to try her best to manage the fraud from being detected, making herself really exhausted by the daily work. The pressure Messina faced as the chief financial officer was unable to share with other colleagues and she was forced by the financial pressures to involve in the fraud. She could feel the threats from Drabinsky and the already very troublesome financial situation. And she could perceive that her subordinates and other staff in Livent were suffering the bully and coercion from their executives as well. Opportunity The factor of opportunity in the fraud triangle refers to the ability to commit the fraud and in the situations like the one in the case, such opportunity mainly results from having specific professional skills or knowledge. That is to say, the person was able to manipulate skilfully and knew how to avoid being discovered by his supervisors or regulations. In addition, the trust that the person is able to accomplish the job in accord  with laws also contributes to the opportunity. The trust existing in the relationship between the supervisor and the employees may contribute to getting authorized without careful screening. The trust caused the space of opportunity to fraud expanded. In case of Livent, Messina was an experienced accountants as well as a Chartered Accountant, who had been promoted to partner of the Deloitte Touch, LLP in Canada. Her previous experience in the industry enabled her to have a good knowledge both in accounting and auditing. That is to say, Messina potentially knew how to manipulate the accounting records daily and prepare the fraudulent financial statement annually. Also, she understood the normal practice of outside professional auditors, who were responsible for examining the financial performance of the company and avoiding inconsistency with the GAAP. Thus, Messina could give professional advice to Drabinsky and Gottlieb so that their manipulation of the accounting records would not be detected in the annual auditing. Besides her professional knowledge and skills in assisting in the fraud in accounting, the opportunity for Messina to get involved also includes the trust on her and her influence in her previous company. Messina had worked at Deloitte Canada for quite a long time and had been promoted to position as partner before she left the company and became CFO of Livent Inc. She had therefore built broad relationship within Deloitte, who was the outside auditing firm for Livent at that time. As Dellaportas (2013) pointed out in the research, insufficient internal regulation and supervision upon such fraudulent behaviours prompted the fraud to continue without being detected by others. However, in the specific case of Livent, there was no self-regulation mechanism at all, since the entire company, from the executives to the employees of the lowest-level, got involved in the fraud. Thus, it was hopeless to discover and discourage such deviant behaviours by the people inside the company. This caused the fraud of Livent to continue to expand and to be very serious. Rationalisation The rationalisation is not rational, instead it is an excuse for the person  who commits the fraud to justify the behaviour to himself. Coleman (1987) discussed this factor of fraud within the context of white collar crimes, and he argued that rationalisation is not an â€Å"after-the-fact† excuse. In fact, people who commit the crime do not realize that their behaviours are deviant. A large number of white collar crime criminals argued that they considered the laws to be unjust or unreasonable, causing them to break the rules (Coleman 1987). The factor of rationalisation is more risky than the other two factors because the people who have violated the laws believed that they had the right reason to do so. He also mentioned other common argument of the fraudulent behaviours. They claimed that such behaviours were the only way for them to achieve the goal or to â€Å"survive† (Coleman 1987). Based on the research results from Dellaportas (2013), he identified the three most common way of denial that people think to justify their fraudulent behaviours. People would rationalize their behaviour as they deny the â€Å"responsibility, injury and victim†. First, the offenders will shirk responsibility and say someone else are supposed to be in charge of the fraud. Secondly, they justify what they have done by arguing that there is no victim in this situation. Finally, if there is victims, the offenders may consider that the victims deserve the sufferings. Thus, they are free from taking responsible or even committing their fraud is illegal. Definitely, there were rationalisation inside Messina that made her behaviour â€Å"just† according to her own value. After quitting the partner position at Deloitte, Messina believed it to be right or rational for her to help Drabinsky in the fraud. Or otherwise, she would lose her job and would be unable to survive. And the overall atmosphere inside the Livent, considering what they were doing as â€Å"matter of fact†, alleviated the employee’s sense of responsibility for the fraud. Messina could hardly feel guilty and never considered about the consequences of helping the company’s fraud. She might rationalize her efforts in the fraud as under the instruction of Drabinsky, instead of out of her own willingness. The above analysis clearly dissected the reasons why Messina became complicit in the fraud from the perspective of psychology. However, as Dellaportas (2013) discussed, the influence of each factor in the fraud triangle varied  from case to case, and was not often equally impacting the fraud behaviours. Recent researches intend to improve the fraud triangle by considering additional factors into the model to better understand the behaviour of fraud in current times. What Messina had done assisted the fraud in Livent to continue for quite a long time after she joined Livent. Messina became the complicit in the serious fraud due to the pressure she was facing, mainly financially, the opportunity she was able to take advantage of and the rationalisation she found for herself to justify her deviant behaviours. Dellaportas (2013) discovered, through case study from ten accountants’ committing fraud, that the opportunity of committing fraud was a much more important factor in dete cting fraud and to take control of it. The motivation and rationalisation contributed less in this kind of accounting fraud cases. Question B2 Comment on the adequacy of the disciplinary action taken against Messina. (5 marks; approximately 500 words) Answer: Finally, Messina was fined for $7,500 and was suspended from doing accounting practice for two years. It is adequate but not enough punishment for Messina’s violation to the accounting standards according to the facts already known. After joining Livent, what Messina did in the Livent’s case of fraud went against the code of professional ethics, which discourages cheating and manipulations. Also, her behaviours broke the securities law in the United States, where the trial of Livent was held. Her involving in the fraud conflicted the interest of the public, especially the investors, who were unable to judge the real performance of Livent from their financial reports. Messina abused her authority in Livent and her influence on Deloitte, for the interest of her own and the executives at Livent. At the very beginning of joining Livent, Messina faced coercion and threats from Drabinsky to keep decent records by manipulation. However, she did not take positive action to resolving the conflict of interest between Drabinsky and herself. Proper ways when one faces conflict of interest is to  quit the job or decline to do the fraud. Messina could have turned to a confidential counselling firm for advice so that she did not have to get involved further in the fraud. On the one hand, it is enough punishment for her involvement in the fraud. She helped the accounting department at Livent to conceal the manipulation of financial statements. Also, as former partner at Deloitte, she abused her influence on the outside independent auditors to comb the financial reports of Livent before they filed to ensure the fraud undetected. What she did violated the standard professional codes for accountants and auditors, and thus she should be subject to penalty. According to the documents from Securities and Exchange Commission (1999), Messina was involved in discussion and approval of every manipulated records. She helped to hide these materials from the auditors so as not to be discovered the inflation in the company’s revenue. On the other hand, the SEC is conservative in judgement because of lack of evidence in proving Messina’s role in the fraud. First, it requires further investigation of the case to identify what she really did and her attitude in the fraud supported with evidence. Moreover, Messina, according to the case material, did show adversarial attitude toward Drabinsky’s fraud plan at first. It means that she still sticked to professional discipline in the beginning, though she yielded to Drabinsky’s bullying later. Also, Messina showed humble attitude in investigation and trial, and cooperated with the commission to investigate the case. It is adequate that the judges punished Messina both financially and professionally. She not only has to give back the illegal money she gained from the fraud, but also should be prevented from doing the practice until she can finally reflect on her mistakes before returning to the business as chief financial officer. However, the amount of fine is too little for Messina to realize her improper behaviours, considering the massive consequences of the fraud and the amount of money they benefited from manipulation. But the judgement should after all based on the evidences and regulations. The judge should take the good and bad things Messina had done  throughout the fraud into account to decide. Also, the punishment against Messina requires further investigation of her role in the fraud, which is disputable. References Coleman, J W 1987, ‘Toward an integrated theory of white-collar crime’, American Journal of Sociology, vol 93, no. 2, pp. 406-439. Dellaportas, S 2013, ‘Conversations with inmate accountants: Motivation, opportunity and the fraud triangle’, Accounting Forum, vol. 37, pp. 29-39. Elrod, H Gorhum, M J, ‘Fraudulent financial reporting and cash flows’, Journal of Finance and Accountancy, vol. 11, pp. 56-61. Llopis, J, Gonzalez, M R Gasco, J L 2007, ‘Corporate governance and organisational culture: The role of ethics officers’, International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 96–105 Nwachukwu, S LS Vitell, S J 1997, ‘The influence of corporate culture on managerial ethical judgments’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 16, no. 8, pp. 757-776. Schwartz, M S 2013, ‘Developing and sustaining an ethical corporate culture: The core elements’, Business Horizons, vol. 56, pp. 39-50. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1999, Securities and Exchange Commission versus Garth H. Drabinsky, Myron I. Gottlieb, Robert Topol, Gordon C. Eckstein, Maria M. Messina, Diane J. Winkefein, D. Grant Malcolm and Tony Fiorino, 99 CIV.0239, Litigation Release No. 16022, retrieved 15 Aug 2013, .

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

A Study of Change Management in Coca Cola

A Study of Change Management in Coca Cola Introduction According to a Greek philosopher Heraclitus there is nothing permanent than change. He believed that change is the core of universe. This quote describes the importance of managing change in human as well as organizational life. A structured approach to transfer organization, its people and processes from current state to a desired future state is called change management. This process gives employees the ability to accept changes in the existing environment of the business. Change can be of different type for example, change in technology, operations or strategies etc. company needs to implement individual strategies to cope with each type of change. Organizations need to change and adopt dynamic survival strategies to stay alive in uncertain political, social and economic environment (Hiatt and Creasy, 2003). All environmental factors present in the nature experience change on continuous basis. Human nature resists change, so managing that resistance requires well planned change management strategies. This report is aimed at describing the importance of change management for organization its motives and objectives, change management processes, how company can involve all the stakeholders for successful implantation of change management and the strategies that an organization can adopt to implement the successful change. Reasons for adopting change Organizations need change for the following reasons: To respond to the rapidly changing environment To improve the overall performance of the company To rapidly respond to the customers demands To improve the effectiveness and efficiency To increase the employee performance To create the best practices inside the organization and setting standards for the industry To improve profitability and return on overall investment Change management is needed for organizational survival. So the company should adopt to change management techniques in order to maintain its worth in the industry. Importance of change management In a study 327 project managers had responded to the question that if you had a chance to do it again, what would you do differently? Most of them responded that we will implement an effective change management program planned way before starting the project. This study highlights the importance of change management in an organizational perspective. Change management moderates the risks that can cause failure (Jeff and Creasey, 2003). The change management process Change management is being studied by the philosophers, researchers and business experts for many years. A number of change management theories, approaches and philosophies are developed by psychologists and management professionals to implement successful change in the organization (Paton and MacCalman, 2008). There are three phases of change management i.e. preparing for change, managing change and reinforcing change. Preparation for change phase includes assessment of change capabilities and capacity and developing a strategy that fit to those capabilities. Second phase i.e. managing change phase includes processes like planning and implementation of strategies made in the first phase. Last phase which is the reinforcement of change includes the processes like collection and analyzing of feedback data, finding out gaps and coping with determined degree of resistance from inside and outside the organization and taking corrective actions to successfully conclude the change managemen t process (change management learning center, 1996-2011). Change managementA case of Coca Cola Corporation Coca Cola is a retailer, marketer and manufacturer of non-alcoholic drinks and is known worldwide for it coca cola beverage. In addition to its coca cola brand, Coca Cola Company offers 500 beverages and non beverages brands in about two hundred countries. The company was founded by Asa Candler in year 1892. Its headquarter is located in Atlanta, Georgia of United States of America. The company had total net income of approximately 11.8 billion US dollars in year 2010 with total number of employees 139,600 worldwide. Companys brand i.e. Coca Cola stands number one in the list of most well known brands of the world (Coca Cola company, 2006-2011). Coca Cola is a type of company that requires making changes in its products and business strategies according to the consumer expectations and external environment. Here in this study we would quote different examples from coca cola corporations history and will examine that what were the triggering events for opting the change and what strategies the company developed and implemented in order to successfully going through the transitioning process. Coca Cola Corporation is among one of the oldest corporations of the world. It has gone through many internal and external changes since it has been in existence. The company has used techniques of change management in order to survive from the consequences of those events. The company has faced a lot of external changes, for example in world war II, the company was able to manage its existing position at that time and also entered in many new markets and discovered new niches. The company established 64 plants across the world to supply drinks to the troops (Coca Cola company, 2006-2011). The company also provided free drinks to soldiers which were the part of its strategy to become a patriotic symbol for the people of the country. Also it boosted the sales, so the company achieved two objectives by carefully planning to respond to that external environmental change. The plants developed by the company in war era helped its expansion after the war. Barton et al (2002) reported that Coca Cola Corporation adopted acquisition strategy in time of Asian financial crisis. The company acquired bottling, coffee and tea shop businesses in Korea and Malaysia. Beverage is a type of industry where tastes and preferences of the consumers change on continuous basis. Coca Cola Company also responded to such consumer changing behaviors in effective way by developing new products like Diet Coke and Coca Cola Zero. The company also committed a marketing blender when a rival company launched a black beverage with comparatively sweet and smooth taste. The product was named as new Coke. But the sales gradually went down and company faced severe consumer critics and protests. The company managed this situation very commendably by restoring the old formula and naming the bottle as diet coke (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010). As people are becoming more health conscious and willing to invest on health based products, coca cola is developing juices and vari ous energy drinks as well. This shows the companys strategy to responding varying consumer tastes and expectations and changing itself according to it. The coco cola company used theory of organization change presented by Kotler (1996) which elaborated the procedure to manage change on the people dimension of the organization. The well known CEO of coca cola Corporation Mr. Gouizetta who remained CEO of the company for seventeen years determined and solved the problem in manufacturing of drinks. He was the key man in revising coca colas operations and tailoring strategies that helped the company standing high among its competitors. He achieved objectives of the firm by planning and leading the tasks by himself and provided an inspirational leadership to the employees. He was the one who appointed talented human resource like Ivester who took great part in covering the weaknesses and exploiting the opportunities for the company (The Coca-Cola company case. n.d.). In addition to making operational and strategic changes, the company also changed its advertising strategy by targeting various groups of consumers like American consumers. African consumers, Middle and far eastern consumers and European consumers. The company altered the packaging of its coca cola brand and developed more product lines and broadened them globally (The Coca-Cola company case. n.d.). The present condition of coca cola company worldwide is very good. The company is selling its beverages throughout the world successfully. But in some countries, coca cola stores are not as according to the companys main marketing, inventory and efficiency theme. The company is planning to align its performance standards according to its own corporate culture and strategies with the help of a comprehensive change management plan. These changes will be implemented within the business operations and management of the company. CHANGE MANAGEMENT AT COCA COLA Employee engagement The recent change management at coca cola is directed towards the intrinsic values and motivations of the employees and can be referred to as employee engagement. The change management process, together with internal branding programs is expected to bring about ideal behaviors in employees, which would align the operations of coca cola worldwide, and bring about efficiency throughout coca cola across all its business segments. Coca cola hopes to bring about a thoroughly integrated system of communications, and focus on creating brand relationships with their employees. This would enhance the operations of Coca cola, as an integrated approach would mean all employees believe in engaging fully in the values, and this would become an inherent part of the employees at a personal level. Coca-cola is actively seeking to incorporate the change into its company if the recent conference on internal branding and and employee engagement held in February,2011 by Robin Gee, Head of Employee Engagement for Coca-Cola Refreshments (CCR) is any indication. Robin Gee is responsible for building capability in engagement, maintaining engagement momentum and ensuring that engagement is integrated into CCRs people practices (Samdahl,2011). For this purpose, employee engagement surveys are conducted twice every year for all the coca cola associates, which serve to highlight the areas where action is required, and further actions and implementations can henceforth be executed. Coca-cola believes that their business results hinge on the dedication of their employees to operational excellence. The company truly recognizes the importance of the people to the business, and knows that to continue to bring about tremendous results it is bringing in, employees throughout the world should believe in the values intrinsically, and therefore the employee engagement is being focused on all the countries the company serves to align thoroughly integrate and align the company so that operational efficiency can be achieved. Importance of change to coca cola Employee engagement is very significant to all segments of operations at coca-cola and has translated into performance in areas where employee engagement is higher. For coca-cola, an engaged workforce means: A more committed workforce Employee performance aligned with organizational objectives Employees have a clear idea of what is expected of them and what are the deliverables Customer experience focus an inherent part of employees values, who strives to provide a better experience to the customers. Customer focus was identified as a central tenant of the multi-year engagement strategy to be implemented in 2011( Gee,2011) When employees are aligned with company goals, they themselves adopt a proactive approach towards issues such as waste elimination Employees awareness gives them a voice which helps to influence legislations at local levels An integrated system of communication is very helpful in the volatile and dynamic markets of today, where conditions change very often and the company has to be responsive at all times Therefore, for all the business segment of coca-cola wherever they are located across the world, the change towards employee engagement is justified if they have to reap the fruits gained by an effective system of integration. Ensuring the Involvement of Required Stakeholders Coca Cola Company can use two change management tools to make sure that all people who are required to be the part of change management process. These tools are Force Field analysis and AKADAR model. Force field analysis is a technique developed by Kurt Lewin to scrutinize the forces that are causing an opposition to change process (Bass, 2009). By doing Force Field Analysis, Coca Cola Company will be able to inductpeople who are in need of appropriate training. Anothr useful tool is AKADAR model which stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. Through AKDAR model, firm creates awareness about the need of change, generate desire in the people to help in transitioning process, give knowledge to the people that how they can help the change process, develop an ability in the people to go through the change and provide them with continuous reinforcement to withstand the change (CMLR, 2011). Ensuring that change is successful Some considerations that will facilitate the change management process include: productive and consequential dialogues and talks with employee representatives Online and paper surveys from all the stakeholders involved in the change throughout the world, and with associates to gain an insight on their perceptions Effective communication at this stage for informing the stakeholders the reasons for change and the benefits it would bring Overcoming the inertia by taking all stakeholders in confidence. The surveys can serve as a pre requisite to gain an insight on the stakeholder perspective Details of the action planning process communicated to all those who would initiate the change Recommendations for Coca Cola Company In the volatile dynamics with which companies operate today, change in inevitable. Therefore, the focus should not be on avoiding change, rather bringing about a smooth transition towards the new change by communication about the change, and ensuring all parties of the change that it is for the best of all those involved. To successfully implement organizational change of any nature, a specific regards to organizational structure, design, culture, management and leadership is required to see whether the change would make a best fit with the organizational goals and objectives. First of all the company should ascertain the core problems exist in the company for the change management. The company may develop a change management program for responding to financially uncertain environment of the world. It can also develop change management programs for better operations and logistics. The company can introduce new procedures and technological systems to carry out operations. Programs can be introduced in forms changing companys mission and corporate culture enhancements. For all that, the most essential thing is to train upper management to provide them with specific skills necessary to effectively going through the transitioning process. Following is the brief expression of plans that the company can adopt. Systems thinking Systems thinking can be used to guide the successful change in the organization. The model is based on an integrative and interactive open system which consists of the variables, attributes, internal relations and environment. The system is based on characteristics like wholeness, interdependence, chain of influence, need for balance and adaptability etc in an open system where communication is seen as an integrated process that facilitates change within the organization. Several system characteristics are: wholeness and interdependence (the whole is more than the sum of all parts), correlations, perceiving causes, chain of influence, hierarchy, suprasystems and subsystems, self-regulation and control, goal-oriented, interchange with the environment, inputs/outputs, the need for balance/homeostasis, change and adaptability (morphogenesis) and equifinality: there are various ways to achieve goals. Different types of networks are: line, commune, hierarchy and dictator networks. Communication in this perspective can be seen as an integrated process not as an isolated event. Establishing new structure It is a well known fact that Coca Cola Corporation was a entrepreneurial venture started by one person who bought the formula from another firm and laid foundations of that beverages manufacturing firm. Current structure of the coca cola company is simple with minimal labor and management division. New system that can be adopted by the company may be the machine bureaucracy which Henry Mintzberg (1992) defined as an organization with clearly defined hierarchy, well defined area of operations, standard operating procedures, proper rules and regulations, well division of labor, formal relationships among the member of organization, centralized decision making, technical competence and standardization of work. Reducing employee defiance Opposition of change is a common human behavior. Particularly, in the workplace people resist the change in organizational culture, structure and policies. But in order to successfully and effectively implement the change management program, it is important for Coca Cola Company that it should develop strategies to reduce employee defiance to change.Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) explained six strategies which can be useful for coca cola Company in employee defiance management. First strategy is to involve the employee in change process and make them participate as far as they can. Second strategy is to communicate the change management programs to the people effectively as educate them about the benefits the programs would bring. This will make them comfortable in adopting the change. Third strategy is negotiation and agreement. The company should create a consensus on important change issues and with the agreement of all important stakeholders; it should launch the change management program. The resistance level will be zero on change programs that are being launched with the mutual agreement of all relevant stakeholders. Fourth strategy is that to support the employees who are due to some disability or emotional or psychological issue or some other threat unable to adapt to the change. If the company develops and proper channel to feel such people taken care of, they would adjust gradually to the change management program. In case of failure of above mentioned four strategies, company can manipulate the employees by calling union leader other relevant ones as fifth strategy. Sixth strategy is to force the employees with articulate or non-articulate methods but this is not a very good approach. Conclusion To conclude, it may be said that communication can be a key element to successful change management. Communicate the changes to the employees, tell them why the change was inevitable and how they will benefit from the change. The management should itself adopt a positive attitude towards the change so that employees can follow their lead and welcome the change. Coca-cola as a company has a heritage of embracing change rather than resist it and it should translate into their future endeavors towards change management to ensure that the organization is best poised to market and environmental conditions.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Defining The Input And Output Devices Computer Science Essay

Defining The Input And Output Devices Computer Science Essay In the Airline, input and output devices are significant equipment to operate the information system. Input devices are hardware components that enable users to interact with the computer and used to transfer data from outside world to computer system. Without input devices, you would not able to feed instructions to a computer. The most common input devices are mouse, keyboard, scanner, webcam, touch screen, microphone and so on. Another input devices are not apply on Airline. Output devices are any peripheral that receives or displays output from a computer. It is also data processing carried out by information in either visual or auditory format to show at equipment. The most common output devices are monitor, printer and speaker. 2.2 The input and output devices communicate with computer Nowadays, the Airlines Company uses the advanced technology to operate with smoothly. Input devices can divide up to pointing devices, pen-based computing, voice recognition and optical scanning. In pointing devices, keyboards are a most commonly devices for entering data and text to the computer system. Pointing devices benefits have issuing commands, making decision and responding immediately display on monitor screen or printer (MBA Knowledge Base, 2010). For example, counter girl make use of keyboard to input the passengers personal information and confirm the passengers seats. It can manipulate simply and reduce the wrong information. Besides that, electronic mouse is the most popular pointing devices to move the cursor on the screen, likewise make icon and menu selections (MBA Knowledge Base, 2010). Passengers can use the mouse to activate various activities selected to check the information they needs. Touch screen also a device can use the computer to touch the surface to dis play on the screen. The computer senses the point in the grid where break occur and respond with propriety feedback. There are many touch screen system set up in the waiting hall for passengers use. Pen-based computing are most being used in many personal digital assistants. The PDA has fast processers and software that recognizes of handwriting. It can substitute of writing on paper to the screen seem send e-mail, make selections and enter hand written data into the main computer (MBA Knowledge Base, 2010). For example, the Airlines Companyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s supervisor can send some minor and emergency message to inform headquarters. Voice recognition is the easiest way for data entry, world processing and conversational computing. It is most natural method to communicate with computer. Voice input has become a new trend and convenience technology to use. Voice recognition systems analyze and classify speech or vocal tract patterns and convert them into digital codes for entry into the computer system. Basically, voice recognition system is being require training recognize the voice to differentiate and achieve high degree accuracy. So the voice recognize system have huge vocabularies to provide help to support the system. Another, speaker-independent voice recognition systems also enable understand few word from the voice it has never heard before (MBA Knowledge Base, 2010). For illustration, telemarketing surveys, stock quotations services, airlines ticket-booking systems and account balance inquiries. The advantages of using voice recognition system is permit operators entry data without using hands to key in data and write down data in paper, they can provide the data as fast as possible and more exact input. Optical scanning devices read text or graphics and convent them into digital input to the computer. There are many types of optical scanners; they are use photoelectric devices to scan the characters. Compact desktop scanners have cheaper and ease for personal computer so they are more popularize. In addition, flatbed scanners are faster and provide higher revolution color scanning but it is larger and more expensive than another optical scanner (MBA Knowledge Base, 2010)s. For example, airport use the optical scanners to scanning the passengers airlines tickets to confirm the passengers personal data. It also can make sure passengers check in to the passengers compartment. Other that, output devices is most information from the computer to export visual or auditory format such as printer, speaker, monitors and other wise. The purpose of the output devices is to translate the data to information for computer user. There include visual response, sound and media devices. Monitor is hardware to display visual output for the user. The images use video card processes to shows as monitor. Monitor and video card quality is identify how the definition of images. Video card just affect the images not related with word and office work (Lysis, 2010). The airlines companies set up the monitor on every seat for passengerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s entertainment and inquire about location of flying. It is customer services and facilities to passengers on the way. Speaker is hardware to output the sound for the user. Speaker and sound card are use at the same time, there are depend quality of this two component to give determine the detail. This type of sound setup is used by multimedia creators (Lysis, 2010). For example, airport have many speaker set up in anywhere, they can utilize the facilities to inform importance message to all the people in airport. Printers are an external hardware device to taking computer data and generating a hard copy data. There have matrix ribbon printers, matrix ink-jet printers and laser printers. Laser printers are the most common use in Airlines Company (Lysis, 2010). For example, they are using printers to print out some news or airline tickets. Owing to the world goes on the green campaign, so there are many company apply the technology to reduce in paper and globosity resources. 2.3 Input and output devices provide a high-level implemental environment in customer services Nowadays, Input and output devices provide a high-level implemental environment for the airlines company services. Competition in the airlines industry is at all-time high, challenging providers to reduce costs while improving quality (Nelson publishing, 2000). In this environment, airline companies strive for attractive customers and carry though exist customers. It is more challenging and arduous works. National Airlines has experienced tremendous success meeting the high demand for air travel to and from Las Vegas (Fred Crescente, 2000). They use cost- effective interactive voice response (IVR) to advance the customers services and growing the support system for customers. IVR offers National Airlines the flexibility to leverage in-house Web- development staff to speedy develop and response new voice application as soon as possible. This tool is increase the customers demand and enhance the competitive promotions. Input and output devices have increased overall sufficiency though lower costs. Callers requiring immediate and timely flight information can now access data instantly, with virtually no time spent waiting for an agent (Crescente, 2000). Input devices can provide the customers booking airlines ticket faster than service counters. Besides that, customers also can use the internet to booking tickets and get a new promotion. Output devices is perform to company understand the customer demand. They can satisfy the customerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s request to achieve the target of company. In between, input and output devices need to balance the company supply and customer demand. Customer services is important part of Airline Company, it can represent the airlines image. 2.4 Conclusion In conclusion, we understand the input and output devices perform a significant role in information system. It can help the users to communicate with the internet. The internet can share the new information to whole country people. Input devices are tools to input the data into the computer to make process. Output devices are passing by the data processed to display the information for reference. Base on my understanding, airline companies are using the technology devices to improve the implement and speed. Airline Company interacts with the airport to achieve the best customer services. Customers will be enjoys the flies from the beginning and the end. No matter the any problem was occur, they also can manage it by information system. In my opinion, Airline Company may increase the internet customer services because can reduce the paper work to reach go green on the world. The information system with technology is more modernize in this era.

Monday, August 19, 2019

William Golding - Lord of the Flies :: Free Essay Writer

William Golding - Lord of the Flies William Golding William Gerald Golding, born in Cornwall, September 19, 1911, is a prominent English novelist, an essayist and poet, and winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize for literature. Golding's often allegorical fiction makes broad use of allusions to classical literature, mythology, and Christian symbolism. Although no distinct thread unites his novels and his technique varies, Golding deals principally with evil and emerges with what has been characterized as a kind of dark optimism. Contents: A plane crashes over the Atlantic. The only survivors are schoolboys and a choir. There are no grown-ups on the island they landed on. Ralph and Piggy find a shell and Ralph blows it. All the boys come together and they call an assembly. Ralph wins the vote for a chief and he and Jack, the leader of the boys choir, and Simon climb the mountain to explore the land. They discover it being an island. The boys have another meeting in which a little boy describes a beast he maybe has seen in one of his nightmares. Ralph gets the idea to make a fire and smoke on the mountain in order to get noticed and rescued. At first the boys collect wood as fuel, but they haven't got any matches or other instruments to inflame the pile. Then Jack suggests to use Piggy's specs to light it. So they do, but by accident they burn down a large part of the forest. Piggy calls their attention to the disappearance of the little boy who has uttered his fear about the beast. It is most likely that he died in the flames in the forest because he has never been seen again. While Ralph and Simon try to build shelters Jack and the others either hunt or rush off and do whatever they want. Neither the hunting nor the building of the shelters is successful because they don't work together. Ralph thinks that huts are more urgent in case that it rains and accuses Jack not to have helped them. This is the first sign of Ralph's and Jack's antagonism. Simon is seen to separate himself from the others; sometimes he goes to a place he likes and stays there for a long time. Jack and his choir go hunting. At the same time a ship passes the island. Because Jack needed all of them to hunt a pig they let the fire out. Ralph and Piggy are indignant of Jack's carelessness. This drives Jack to violence and he breaks Piggy's specs. This evening for the first time the hunters play their game: one pretends to be the

Sunday, August 18, 2019

A Clean Well-Lighted Place :: A Clean Well-Lighted Place Essays

A Clean Well-Lighted Place Today in class we talked about plot in relation to "A & P" by John Updike. I had always thought of plot as just being the sequence of events, but after our reading assignment I realize that there is much more to it. I’d never thought of looking for plot in things like patterns. My reaction to "A & P" is mixed because I disagree with the main character being a hero (as Updike intended). While reading the story I thought that the girls who came into the store were merely looking for attention. I feel this way because the girls were prancing around in their bathing suits, which was probably a big deal in 1961, and the fact that ‘Queenie’ kept her money between her breasts shows that she was obviously trying to provoke a reaction. Other than the fact that one of the girls blushed when asked to leave I don’t think they were embarrassed and I don’t think the main character was trying to be particularly heroic. I gathered from all the sexual description tha t he was only interested in the girls physically. I also think that he just hated his job at the A & P because it was boring, since he always refers to the customers as a type of farm animal, and was just looking for an excuse to quit. What better excuse to quit than one that might make him look good to some cute girls? He would be through with his boring job and might score a date. We also talked about point of new in relation to "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty today. I’ve never read anything where I really didn’t trust the narrator like in this story. I though the story was confusing because I could never figure out who was telling the truth. Sister seemed to have a very slanted view on things and thought that everyone was ‘out to get her’. Since the story was told from her (an unreliable narrator) point of view it gave me a feeling of turmoil like I have when I experience an argument in my own home. In that way Welty achieved her goal of making the reader feel involved in the story. I guess that Welty explained why Sister lives at the P.O., but I don’t understand why she thought anyone would care. A Clean Well-Lighted Place :: A Clean Well-Lighted Place Essays A Clean Well-Lighted Place Today in class we talked about plot in relation to "A & P" by John Updike. I had always thought of plot as just being the sequence of events, but after our reading assignment I realize that there is much more to it. I’d never thought of looking for plot in things like patterns. My reaction to "A & P" is mixed because I disagree with the main character being a hero (as Updike intended). While reading the story I thought that the girls who came into the store were merely looking for attention. I feel this way because the girls were prancing around in their bathing suits, which was probably a big deal in 1961, and the fact that ‘Queenie’ kept her money between her breasts shows that she was obviously trying to provoke a reaction. Other than the fact that one of the girls blushed when asked to leave I don’t think they were embarrassed and I don’t think the main character was trying to be particularly heroic. I gathered from all the sexual description tha t he was only interested in the girls physically. I also think that he just hated his job at the A & P because it was boring, since he always refers to the customers as a type of farm animal, and was just looking for an excuse to quit. What better excuse to quit than one that might make him look good to some cute girls? He would be through with his boring job and might score a date. We also talked about point of new in relation to "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty today. I’ve never read anything where I really didn’t trust the narrator like in this story. I though the story was confusing because I could never figure out who was telling the truth. Sister seemed to have a very slanted view on things and thought that everyone was ‘out to get her’. Since the story was told from her (an unreliable narrator) point of view it gave me a feeling of turmoil like I have when I experience an argument in my own home. In that way Welty achieved her goal of making the reader feel involved in the story. I guess that Welty explained why Sister lives at the P.O., but I don’t understand why she thought anyone would care.

Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club :: Essays Papers

Joy Luck Club Anaylsis In the movie "Joy Luck Club," four women are introduced. Their lives are described, their mother's lives are described, and their grandmother's. This movie shows three generations of Chinese women and how each of their lives have progressed and changed. Through every generation, there is a constant underlying tension between mother and daughter. The pressure that a mother applies to her daughter is described. In one incident the mom forced her daughter to play the piano. The daughter didn't even like playing the piano. However, the mother forced her daughter to practice daily, and perform in talent shows. When the daughter would complain, the mom would reply by saying, "don't be disobedient." It's sad when a mother forces their child to participate in something that the child doesn't feel in their heart. However, pressures like this aren't just applied by Chinese mothers. In America it is so common to see parents (mom and dad) forcing their child to do something against their will. My best friend, Rachel, is half black and half white. She is really tall and an incredible basketball player. Sadly she is so sick of playing basketball. Her mom forces her to practice everyday, attend basketball camps, play for the school team and a recreational team. Rachel's mom is making Rachel play basketball in college. Althou gh Rachel is amazing on the court, she doesn't like it. Similar to the scene in the "Joy Luck Club," both mothers are pressuring their daughters to do something that they have no desire to. This creates major tension between mother and daughter. Sadly, it seems that parents don't realize the pressure they apply. In the mean time their children are growing to hate the particular activity and dislike their parents. Another scene where tension between mother and daughter is shown is when the daughter breaks down and begins to cry because of not feeling accepted by her mother. The daughter complains that through her entire life, she has never met her mom's standards. Anything that she does or did, was inadequate and always in need of improvement. The decisions she makes in her life can never be perfect. The man she marries, the job she takes and anything else never satisfies her mom.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Relationships in Love Medicine

Rachel Robinson April 15, 2013 Multicultural Literature Christian Davis Relationships in Love Medicine Love Medicine is a series of short stories that was written by Lousie Erdrich in 1984 and covers a time span of 60 years. Love Medicine is set in North Dakota on an Indian reservation known as Turtle Mountain. Although the novel is fiction, the cultural, social, and economical aspects depicted are very realistic. Hertha Sweet Wong describes Love Medicine as â€Å"Metafiction, ironically self-conscious in its mode of telling, concerned as much with exploiting the process of storytelling as with the story itself. (35) Erdrich’s Love Medicine is not so much based on plot as on several key relationships. These relationships include; the love triangle between Marie, Nector, and Lulu; June and how her death made an impact on other characters and Lipsha a key figure to understanding the novel. June is introduced at the beginning of the novel by telling the story of her death. Altho ugh June is dead through the entire novel her memory lives on as her family and friends recall memories they shared with June and even some of their own memories throughout the novel. June will figure throughout the novel as a touchstone for the other characters† (Sweet Wong 57) June’s death affected all of the characters in the novel. June is â€Å"†¦the erratic and once vivacious beauty of the family†¦Ã¢â‚¬  as described by Sweet Wong. (38) June left behind her husband Gordie and her son King, along with her lover Gerry whom she also had a son with named Lipsha. Every character in the book is impacted by June’s death. June is said to be â€Å"the catalyst for the narrations that follow, stories that trace the intricate and often antagonistic relationships in the two families from which she came† (Sweet Wong 38).Junes son, King, buys a car with the money he receives from his mother’s death. The car is a shiny new sports car, which the o thers do not go near to because they are afraid that it is a ghost. June’s death also affected her niece Albertine’s relationship with her family. Albertine’s mother did not invite Albertine to the wedding but instead sent her a letter explaining to her that her Aunt June was dead and already buried. Albertine was very upset with her mother and refused to speak with her because of the way she handled the situation.Lipsha Morrissey is June’s abandoned son and is arguably the key figure to understanding the whole novel. Lipsha is the one who makes the love medicine, from which the title of the novel comes from. Lipsha’s first attempt at using the love medicine was for his grandparents who were on the verge of splitting because his grandfather, Nector, does not love his grandmother, Marie, anymore. Lipsha fails in getting a blessing from the priest and a nun and therefore makes the medicine incorrectly. He then tries to give it to his grandfather but he refuses to take it suspecting foul play.Lipsha knows that the medicine will not work unless both his grandmother and grandfather take the medicine so his grandmother, who also wanted to resolve the relationship, forces her husband to eat the heart. She forces it down his throat and Lipsha’s grandfather ends up chocking and dying from it. This causes Lipsha to realize that his meddling with the love medicine was very dangerous and not something to take lightly. Lipsha is a key figure to the novel because he shows how the love medicine is very dangerous.Lipsha learned a lesson through his actions of meddling with the love medicine. Lipsha shows us what happens when the love medicine is misused. â€Å"I could tell him it was all my fault for playing with power I did not understand. Maybe he'd forgive me and rest in peace† (212-13). Lipsha acts based upon how he feels rather than what is logical. He really understands the meaning and purpose of life. Lipsha sees how his grandmother, Marie, is hurting and helps her out. Nector has a confusing and complex relationship with two women, Lulu and Marie that unfolds throughout the novel.According to Hertha Sweet Wong, â€Å"Nector also articulates the strategy he will follow throughout the course of his life: he goes consistently with the current never fighting very strongly if at all† (62). Although Nector married Marie he loves Lulu and cannot get pass these feeling for her. Nector’s marriage with Marie is pretty happy until he realizes he is still in love with Lulu. Nector begins having an affair with Lulu that lasts for five years. Although the affair is intended for Nector to finally get what he has yearned for his whole life it suddenly turns into a complicated mess.What started as a carefree affair with the love of his life turned into a strict scheduling of when he as to see Lulu and get time away from Marie. The relationship became serious and turned into something that Nector need ed. He made Lulu into what seemed like a second wife and turned this care free love into a chore. Nector became controlling over Lulu and wanted her to only be his. Everything increased in complexity when Lulu had Nectors child. Nector gets fed up with the double relationships tries to leave Lulu. Once he realizes he cannot bear to be without her he decides to tell Marie he is leaving her for Lulu.To add to the complexity of the situation, Nector accidentally burns down Lulu’s house in the middle of all of this. With the mess of events Nector caused he ends up staying with Marie until he is out in a retirement home at an old age. At this retirement home Nector has very poor memory. Lipsha tells us of how Nector begins an affair with Lulu once again at the retirement home. Marie is desperate for Nector to remain faithful to her and searches for a way for him to be forced to. Her solution is to ask for help from Lipsha to make love medicine that will keep Nector faithful.Lipsha messes up in the process of making the medicine and Nector ends up dying from it. This seemed to be the only way to ultimately resolve the conflict between the women. â€Å"Love Medicine is a powerful novel. It develops hard, clear pictures of Indian people struggling to hold their lives together, hanging on to the edge of the reservation or fighting to make a place for themselves in bleak mid-western cities or devising ingenious ways to make more break for freedom, but its most remarkable quality is how it manages to give new form to oral tradition† (Sweet Wong 42).The characters in Love Medicine intermingled and interacted with each other in a way that takes priority over the plot of the novel. June was not alive throughout the novel but her death and figure played a very significant role in the novel. â€Å"June’s loss will underscore each character’s sense of identity when the tribal community and, concomitantly, each character’s potential for survi val† (Sweet Wong 57) Lipsha is a very important, if not the most important, character in the novel.Lipsha was the one who made the love medicine and intermingled in the other people’s love lives. Nector’s love triangle with Lulu and Marie is a complicating mess that is a key part to the novel. Nector was never satisfied with what he got and always wanted more. In the end he could not have what he wanted and ended up with neither of the women. All Marie wanted was for Nector to stay faithful to her but Nector’s heart belonged to Lulu.