What Is Strategy?

Today's dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity, quality, and speed, managers have embraced tools such as TQM, benchmarking, and reengineering. Dramatic operational improvements have resulted, but rarely have these gains translated into sustainable profitability. And gradually, the tools have taken the place of strategy. As managers push to improve on all fronts, they move further away from viable competitive positions. Michael Porter argues that operational effectiveness, although necessary to superior performance, is not sufficient, because its techniques are easy to imitate. In contrast, the essence of strategy is choosing a unique and valuable position rooted in systems of activities that are much more difficult to match. In answering the question ‘what is strategy? ’, some theorists focus more on the role of strategy in allowing a firm to ‘position’ itself in an industry, hence to make choices regarding ‘what game to play’. Others focus more on the role of strategy in determining how well a given game is played. Strategy is about both: choosing new games to play and playing existing games better. One of the biggest disagreements among strategy researcher concerns the process by which strategies emerge. Some describe stratgy as a rational and deliberate process, while others describer it as an evolutionary process which emerges from experimentation and trial and error. Some place more emphasis on external factors, like the structure of the industry to which he firm belongs (e. g. the industrial organization approach), while others place more emphasis on factors internal to the organization, like the way production is organized (e. g. Resource-Based approach). Furthermore, some describe a relatively static relationship between strategy and the environment where firms respond to external conditions, while others describe a dynamic picture of competition, where firms not only are influenced by the environment, but also actively seek to change it. (e. g. he Schumpetarian approach). This feedback relationship between firm strategy and the environment is the focus of industry ‘lifecycle’ studies which look at the sources and effectrs of changes in industry structure. Porter(1996) claims that not all business decisions are strategice. Decisions can only be defined as strategic if they involve consciously doing something ‘differently’ from competitors and if that difference results in a sustainable advantage. To be sustainable it must be difficult to imitate. Activities which simply increase productivity by making existing methods more efficient (‘operational efficiency’) are not strategic since they can be easily copied by others. Although a firm must engage in both types of activiteis, it is strategic activies that will allow it to develop a sustainable superior performance. One of the factors that renders strategies hard to imitate, hence unique, is that they are the result of a complex interaction between diffenrent activities, which is not reducible to the sum of the indicidual activities. It is this synergy between activities that produces value, not the activities in themselves. Whittingtton(2001) introduces us to four different perspectives on stragey: the classical perspective, the evolutionary persperctive, the processual perspective and the systemic perspective. The classical perspective assumes that the manger has near to complete control over how to allocate the internal and external resources of the firm, and can thus manipulate the internal organization of the firm to better suit these objectives. In this view, strategic behaviour is guided by rationality, opportunism and self-interest. The evolutionary perspective places emphasis on behacioural differences between firm (e. g. some firms base their descisons on rational caculations, others simply on imitaion) and on the market selection mechanisms that allow some firms to frow and survive and others to fail. This view causes the image of the heroic entrepreneur, centreal to the classical perspective, to fall apart: it is not one manager but the mix between the forces of market selection, random events, and processes of positive feedback that determine performance. The processual perspectiver holds that economic outcomes emerge from the interactions between individuals and between individuals and their environment. The result of this interacion is unpredictable because actions are often unintended. Humans are not perfectly rational but ‘bounded’ in their rationality. This, along with the fact that interaction between individuals is guided not only by self-interest but alsoby collective bargaining and compromis, causes economic dynamics to be fuzzy and unpredictable. The systemic perspective argues that each of the above approaches is characterized by a narrow view of the world: a Western, often Anglo-Saxon, view. The ‘rationality’ of a particular strategy depends on its specific historical, social and cultural context. Strategic behaviour is ‘embedded’ in a network of social relations that includes cultural norms, class and educational background, religion and so on. Hence what if labelled as ‘irraional’ behaviour in one context may be perfectly rational in another.

Free Will in Scientific Psychology Essay

Actions are freer than others, and the difference is palpably important in terms of inner process, subjective perception, and social consequences. Psychology can study the difference between freer and less free actions without making dubious metaphysical commitments. Human evolution seems to have created a relatively new, more complex form of action control that corresponds to popular notions of free will. It is marked by self-control and rational choice, both of which are highly adaptive, especially for functioning within culture. The processes that create these forms of free will may be biologically costly and therefore are only used occasionally, so that people are likely to remain only incompletely self-disciplined, virtuous, and rational. BACKGROUND What shall I do? Why did you do that? Are people captains of their fate, or are they mere products of their times and victims of circumstances? Should they be held responsible for their actions? These and similar questions pertain to the psychological problem of free will, also known as freedom of action. At the core of the question of free will is a debate about the psychological causes of action. That is, is the person an autonomous entity who genuinely chooses how to act from among multiple possible options? Or is the person essentially just one link in a causal chain, so that the person’s actions are merely the inevitable product of lawful causes stemming from prior events, and no one ever could have acted differently than how he or she actually did? My thesis is that free will can be understood in terms of the different processes that control human action and that, indeed, these differences correspond to what laypersons generally mean when they distinguish free from unfree action. To discuss free will in the terms of scienti? c psychology is therefore to invoke notions of self-regulation, controlled processes, behavioral plasticity, and conscious decisionmaking. Address correspondence to Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306; e-mail: baumeister@psy. fsu. edu. The extreme positions on free will have been staked out through centuries of philosophical debate. On the negative side, the deterministic position can be traced from Democritus through Spinoza, Comte, and Freud. It leaves no room for free human choice. Everything that happens is the unavoidable product of prior causes. The universe resembles a giant machine, grinding along exactly as it must. There is no difference between the categories of possible and actual in this view: Everything that happened was inevitable, and nothing else was ever possible. The subjective impression that when you make a choice you really can choose any of several options is an illusion, because forces outside your consciousness are in motion to determine what you will choose, even if you do not know until the last minute what that choice will be. On the other side, Jean-Paul Sartre (1943/1974) argued passionately in favor of human freedom. He contended that people are always, inevitably free—‘‘condemned to freedom,’’ in his famous phrase. Life is a series of choice points, and at each choice point, you could have chosen differently than you did. (Thus, the category of the possible is far, far more vast than the category of the actual, in this view. ) When people say they could not help acting as they did, they are engaging in self-deception (bad faith, in Sartre’s term), because they could actually have acted otherwise—could have held their tongue, walked another step, resisted the temptation, and so forth. Other outcomes really were possible. In between those extremes, many thinkers have proposed limited or partial freedom. Kant (1797/1967) proposed that people have a capacity for free action but only use it sometimes. For him, freedom meant acting in a morally virtuous manner based on enlightened reasoning. His argument thus aptly sets up the emphasis on self-control and rational choice as two widely adaptive forms of free will. If free will is only occasional, whereas behavior is constantly occurring, then it is necessary to posit two systems for guiding behavior: a default one that mostly runs the show and an occasional one that sometimes intervenes to make changes. Free will should be understood not as the starter or motor of action but rather as a passenger who occasionally grabs the steering wheel or even as just a navigator who says to turn left up ahead. 14 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science Volume 3—Number 1 Roy F. Baumeister OBJECTIONS TO THE VERY IDEA Many psychologists disdain the idea of free will, for several reasons. First, some think that in order to be a scientist it is necessary to believe in determinism, because a scientist studies causality and cannot tolerate or accept exceptions. Second, and related to the ? rst, free choice (especially the full, extreme case of total freedom) cannot seem to be explained in scienti? c terms. Causality is how the human mind generally (and the scienti? c mind particularly) understands events, and there is no way to explain a free action causally. In other words, even if free will exists, there is no use in scientists talking about it, because there would be no replicable patterns of behavior. (On this I disagree most emphatically—see below. Third, and perhaps more formidably, plenty of research has by now shown that people are sometimes mistaken when they believe their actions to be free, insofar as factors outside their awareness do exert a causal in? uence on them (e. g. , Bargh, 1994; Wegner, 2002; Wilson, 2002). The fact that automatic, nonconscious processes are the direct causes of action (e. g. , Libet, 1985, 1999) seems now well established and has dealt a severe blow to some theories of conscious free will. But new theories of action have separated the deciding from the initiating (Gollwitzer, 1999), and free conscious choosing may have its main role in the deciding (deliberative) stage. To illustrate, free will would have more to do with deciding (now) to walk to the store when the rain stops (later) than with directing each footstep during the actual trip. Modern research methods and technology have emphasized slicing behavior into milliseconds, but these advances may paradoxically conceal the important role of conscious choice, which is mainly seen at the macro level (Donald, 2002). Meanwhile, there are several objections to the determinists too. To require scientists to believe in determinism seems unwarranted. After all, the deterministic hypothesis—that every event is fully and inevitably caused by prior events and nothing else than what happened was ever possible—is itself unproven and even unprovable, so it requires a big leap of faith. Determinism is also contrary to everyday experience (in which people do make choices, and they believe subjectively that more than one outcome is possible). Moreover, to say that scienti?c data and especially psychological data point to determinism is itself severely overstated. Most psychological experiments demonstrate probabilistic rather than deterministic causation: A given cause changes the odds of a particular response but almost never operates with the complete inevitability that deterministic causality would entail. These objections do not disprove determinism, but they certainly raise questions. It seems unreasonable to require that every scientist must believe something that is unproven, unproveable, contrary to daily experience, and incongruent with our data. A further objection to determinism is the observation that freedom and choice are woven deeply into the fabric of human relations and activities. If freedom and choice are completely illusions—if the outcome of every choice was inevitable all along—why must people agonize so over decisions? Why do they argue and strive so much for the right to decide (that is, for power and liberty)? Why has so much political, economic, and social struggle been aimed at increasing freedom if freedom is just an illusion? The presence versus absence of choice, control, autonomy, and freedom has been shown to be a signi?cant causal factor in many aspects of human life, including dissonance and consistency (Linder, Cooper, & Jones, 1967), reactance (Brehm, 1966), stress and coping (Glass, Singer, & Friedman, 1969), and motivated performance (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Moreover, with few circumscribed exceptions, people almost always prefer freedom and are better off with it—and seemingly not just because the lack of freedom prevents them from securing tangible rewards. It is not as if people would be ? ne with slavery or prison if only the food were better. Countless people have risked and sacri?ced their lives in ? ghting to achieve and defend freedom, and it is very dif? cult to ? nd historical instances of uprisings or wars based on a demand for less freedom. Laypersons may not understand the concept of free will in the same way as philosophers and scientists, but they use ‘‘freedom’’ to denote some psychological phenomena that are powerful and important. PSYCHOLOGY’S TASK In my opinion, it would be a mistake for psychologists to argue about whether free will exists and to debate the conceptual details. Philosophers and others have already spent centuries re? ning the concepts through such argument, and repeating their work would not be a good use of time and effort. In comparison with philosophers, psychologists are amateurs at conceptual re? nement and debate but are specialists at conducting experimental tests of causal hypotheses. Our expertise is thus not well suited for ascertaining the existence or nonexistence of free will, which is probably impossible to prove. Researchers such as Wegner (2002) and Bargh and Morsella (2008, this issue) may show that people are sometimes unaware of the causes of particular behaviors, but such ?ndings are incapable of establishing that all behaviors are the result of ? rm causal processes of which people are unaware. Conversely, it seems equally impossible to prove that a given person could have acted differently than he or she did under exactly the same circumstances. Psychology’s contribution lies elsewhere. Psychologists should focus on what we do best: collecting evidence about measurable variance in behaviors and inner processes and identifying consistent patterns in them. With free will, it seems most productive for psychologists to start with the well-documented observation that some acts are freer than others. As already noted, dissonance, reactance, coping with stress, and other behaviors have been shown in the laboratory to depend on variations in freedom and choice. Hence, it is only necessary to assume that there are genuine phenomena behind those subjective and objective Volume 3—Number 1 15 Free Will in Scienti? c Psychology differences in freedom. In a nutshell, we should explain what happens differently between free and unfree actions. Thus, the optimal agenda for psychology would be to ? nd out what people mean when they use concepts of freedom, choice, and responsibility in their daily lives and then to illuminate the inner processes that produce those phenomena. WHAT MAKES ACTION FREE? A starting point for psychology is to identify what aspects of an action make people regard it as free versus unfree. To be sure, some factors can contribute to a mistaken sense of freedom in one’s own action. Wegner (2002) showed that when the thought of an event immediately precedes its actual occurrence, people believe they have caused it, even if in reality they have not. For example, when participants who were moving a cursor around a computer screen along with someone else (akin to having four hands on the pointer on a Ouija board) heard the name of some image mentioned and then the cursor stopped there 2 s later, they believed that they had intentionally caused the cursor to stop, even though the stopping was actually programmed by the apparatus (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). There are several ways to interpret these ? ndings. One is to suggest that all conscious will and volition are illusions: From the observation that people are sometimes mistaken about conscious will, one could extrapolate that they are always mistaken. Another is to suggest that people do not have a direct, introspective way of knowing when they initiate action, and so they rely on salient cues to give them the feel and subjective impression of having acted or chosen, and this system of cues can be fooled. Shifts in the social distribution of causality and agency are important to people, and these correspond to social phenomena that people have encountered for millennia. Power, for example, confers on one person the right to make decisions that may affect others (e. g. , Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), and the long history of power struggles can be viewed as being about who gets to choose. Studies by Brehm (1966) and his colleagues have also shown that people are very sensitive to having their freedom of choice restricted by others. When an option is taken away from them, they respond by desiring that option more, by trying actively to reassert that freedom and take that option, and even by aggressing against whomever restricted their freedom. Such patterns seem hard to reconcile with the view that all free will and choice (in every sense) are illusions: Why would people care so much about something that is entirely inconsequential? Another approach to understanding what people mean by free will is to have participants rate how free a stimulus person’s actions are. Stillman, Sparks, Baumeister, and Tice (2006) had participants rate scenarios that varied systematically along several dimensions. Participants rated people’s actions as freest when their choices were made after conscious deliberation, when their actions went against external pressure rather than going along with it, and when people acted against their shortterm self-interest. Thus conscious, rational choice and selfcontrol seem to be integral parts of what people perceive as free. When people wrote autobiographical accounts of their own acts that felt free or unfree, pursuing long-term personal goals was central to the feeling of freedom. The difference suggests that people see free will in others as useful for restraining their socially undesirable impulses, but in themselves they see free will in the sustained pursuit of (enlightened) self-interest. As Dennett (1984, 2003) has argued, free will is hardly worth having unless it helps you get something you want. THE EVOLUTION OF FREEDOM Several recent authors have argued that human freedom of action is a product of evolutionary processes (e. g. , Dennett, 2003). I proposed that the de? ning thrust of human psychological evolution was selection in favor of cultural capability (Baumeister, 2005). That process might well have included a new, different way of controlling behavior, whose purpose was enabling the beast to function in a complex, information-based society. The hallmarks of this new form of behavioral control include personal responsibility, conscious deliberation, invoking abstract rules and principles to guide actions, autonomous initiative, and a capacity to resist urges that have earlier evolutionary roots but that may be incompatible with civilized life (e. g. , eating any food you ? nd when hungry, including what is on the plates of other restaurant patrons). Whether this pattern will satisfy the various theological and philosophical de? nitions of free will is hard to say, but it could well correspond to what ordinary people mean when they speak of free action. The previous section noted that free will has to be useful for bene? ting the person. Evolution has favored animals with psychological processes insofar as those processes help them pursue their goals. A more intelligent animal, for example, may be better able to ? nd food and reproduce than a less intelligent one. In human cultural life, however, there is sometimes a tradeoff between short-term and long-term goals, and much of the success of the human species is based on our ability to sacri? ce short-term goals for the long-term ones, as in delay of grati? cation (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004). For example, taking someone else’s food may bring short-term bene? ts, but if it leads the other group members to imprison or expel the person, it could be self-defeating in the long run. Hence free will may be most useful in fostering the pursuit of enlightened self-interest. Were evolution working instead to enable the human animal to pursue what it wants right now to maximum effect, it might have promoted physical strength, speed, and ferocity rather than brainpower and social skills. But to succeed and live harmoniously in a cultural group, the animal is best served by being able to inhibit its impulses and desires. Perhaps ironically, free will is necessary to enable people to follow rules. 16 Volume 3—Number 1 Roy F. Baumeister Let me focus brie? y on two of the most important phenomena that are associated with the concept of free will: self-control and rational intelligent choice. The cultural-animal argument has the following assumptions. First, self-control and smart choice are much more highly developed in humans than in other animals and thus are among the most distinctively human traits. Second, these traits are highly conducive for living in a cultural society. Third, these traits are probably interrelated in the sense of sharing some inner processes and mechanisms, which suggests that one evolved ? rst and the other piggy-backed on the ? rst one’s system. My speculative evolutionary scenario is that self-control evolved ? rst, because it is useful already in merely social (as opposed to cultural) groups. For example, it would be natural for hungry animals to eat food that they see and want, but in many social groups the alpha male would beat up any other who tries to take his food or usurp his other prerogatives. Therefore, in order to live in social groups, animals must develop the capacity to restrain their impulses and bring their behavior into line with externally imposed constraints. Moving from social to cultural groups substantially increases the importance of following rules, including moral principles, laws, commands, religious prescriptions, norms, and customs. Rational intelligent choice, then, evolved later than selfcontrol and was even more distinctively associated with culture. Culture is based on information, and the large amount of information in a culture creates great opportunities for reasoning powers to sort through it and draw action-relevant conclusions. Human decision making is far more complex and varied than that in other species. As Searle (2001) pointed out, rationality is widely regarded as a central human trait, but not all have noticed that rationality entails at least some limited concept of free will—at least to the extent that one can alter one’s behavior on the basis of that reasoning. Put another way, self-control gives the capacity to alter your behavior to conform to the group’s rules, and rationality enables you to work out your own rules and then behave accordingly. This line of thought ? ts the view of free will as a sometime thing. People are incompletely rational and self-controlled. They have the capacity for acting for acting rationally and exerting self-control, but they only use it sometimes. This suggests the capacity is limited. WHY FREE WILL IS LIMITED Our research on ego depletion provides one way to understand why free will is at best an occasional phenomenon. In testing several competing theories about self-regulation, we consistently found that people performed relatively poorly at almost any self-control task if they had recently performed a different self-control task (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). The implication is that some resource is used up by the ? rst act of self-control, leaving less available for the second. Choice may also deplete the same resource. Vohs et al.(2006) found that making a series of choices led to poorer self-control on subsequent, unrelated tasks, as compared with just thinking about items or answering questions about them without making choices among them. The fact that effortful choice uses the same resource as self-control links the two main forms of free will and supports the idea that they share a common underlying mechanism. Thus, the traditional concept of ‘‘willpower’’ does appear to be a useful metaphor, insofar as both self-control and rational choice rely on some kind of power. To move beyond metaphor, Gailliot et al.(2007) began studying blood-glucose dynamics. Glucose is a chemical in the bloodstream that is the fuel for brain (and other) activities. Although all brain processes use glucose, some use much more than others, and self-control is a likely candidate to be one of these more expensive processes. Gailliot et al. (2007) found that acts of self-control caused reductions in the levels of glucose in the bloodstream, and that low levels of blood glucose after initial acts of self-control were strongly correlated with poor self-control on subsequent tasks. Moreover, experimental administrations of glucose counteracted some of the ego-depletion effects. That is, drinking a glass of lemonade with sugar enabled people to perform well at self-control even if they had recently gone through a depleting exercise of self-control. Lemonade made with a sugar substitute (thus not furnishing glucose) had no effect. These ? ndings suggest that human evolution developed a second, new, and expensive way of controlling action. It involved using relatively large quantities of the body’s caloric energy to fuel complex psychological processes. If the cultural-animal argument is correct, then these processes should have improved biological success by enabling people to behave in more advantageous ways. Ample evidence con? rms that this second executive mode of action control has adaptive bene? ts and that when its resources are depleted or inadequate, behavior is less successful. Nondepleted persons outperform ego-depleted ones at making effective and unbiased decisions (Amir, Dhar, Pocheptsaya, & Baumeister, 2007), at logical reasoning and intelligent thought (Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003), and at active coping with unexpected setbacks (Vohs & Baumeister, 2006). Self-control has multiple bene? ts, and people who are high on the trait end up more successful in work and school, are more popular and better liked, have healthier and more stable relationships, commit fewer crimes, and have less psychopathology (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988; Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). And as for following rules generally, there is some cross-cultural evidence that countries with higher rule of law report signi? cantly higher subjective well-being (Veenhoven, 2004). Volume 3—Number 1 17 Free Will in Scienti? c Psychology BELIEVING IN FREEDOM This brief article has argued that psychology’s task is to ? nd out what people perceive as free will and what genuine psychological phenomena underlie those perceptions. Such investigations will not establish whether free will exists according to some philosophical or theological de? nitions, and it remains possible that many laypersons’ beliefs about free will are partly or wholly mistaken. If free will is entirely an illusion, however, then it becomes especially perplexing that people devote so much time and effort to sustaining those illusions. Belief in free will is highly relevant to many social, legal, and moral judgments. For example, if all actions are fully caused and therefore inevitable, why does the legal system spend so much time trying to establish whether a perpetrator was acting freely? ‘‘Heat of passion’’ crimes are just as fully caused as any other crimes, in that view, so it makes little sense for judges to award lighter sentences. Yet they do. One possible explanation for the widespread social belief in free will is that it helps produce socially desirable and harmonious actions. To return to the cultural-animal framework, I am assuming that people evolved so as to be able to live and work in culture (Baumeister, 2005). Anything that makes people better able to do that, including improvements in cooperation and prosocial actions or reductions in antisocial actions, would therefore be bene? cial. To speculate, cultures that believed in free will might have outreproduced and supplanted cultures that did not. Belief in free will does support socially desirable actions, according to Vohs and Schooler (2008). They found that participants who had been induced to disbelieve in free will were subsequently more likely than a control group to cheat on a test. Further studies by Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall (2006) using the Vohs–Schooler methods found that inducing participants to disbelieve in free will made them more aggressive and less helpful toward others. If we combine the cheating, aggression, and helping ? ndings, it seems reasonable to suggest that belief in free will is conducive to better, more harmonious social behavior. CONCLUSION A scienti?c approach to free will should perhaps start with the view that freedom of action evolved as a new, more sophisticated form of controlling behavior. Its two components, self-control and rational intelligent choice, conferred important advantages by enabling the human animal to function within a cultural society. Recent evidence about ego depletion and glucose dynamics suggests that this new, freer form of action control is biologically expensive, which may help explain why free will is only used occasionally. Nonetheless, even its occasional use may contribute greatly to increasing the ? Exibility and adaptive diversity of human behavior. Acknowledgments—Work on this article was facilitated by a grant from the Templeton Foundation, and it builds on research supported by Grant MH57039 from the National Institute of Mental Health. REFERENCES Amir, O. , Dhar, R. , Pocheptsaya, A. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). The fatigued decision maker: Ego depletion changes decision process and outcome. Manuscript submitted for publication. Bargh, J. A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, ef? ciency, intention, and control in social cognition. In R. S. Wyer Jr. , & T. K. Srull (Eds. ), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed. , pp. 1–40). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bargh, J. A. , & Morsella, E. 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Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78. Sartre, J. -P. (1974). Being and nothingness. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel. (Original work published 1943) Schmeichel, B. J. , Vohs, K. D. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Intellectual performance and ego depletion: Role of the self in logical reasoning and other information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 33–46. Searle, J. R. (2001). Rationality in action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Knopf. Stillman, T. D. , Sparks, E. , Baumeister, R. F. , & Tice, D. M. (2006). What makes freedom? Situational factors that in? uence ratings of free will. Manuscript in preparation. Tangney, J. P. , Baumeister, R. F. , & Boone, A. L. (2004). High selfcontrol predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271–322. Veenhoven, R. (2004). World database of happiness: Continuous register of scienti? c research on subjective appreciation of life. Retrieved September 26, 2004, from http://www. eur. nl/fsw/research/happiness Vohs, K. D. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2006). Does depletion promote passivity? Self-regulatory resources and active coping. Manuscript in preparation. Vohs, K. D. , Baumeister, R. F. , Nelson, N. M. , Rawn, C. D. , Twenge, J. M. , Schmeichel, B. J. , & Tice, D. M. (2006). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative. Manuscript submitted for publication. Vohs, K. D. , & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19, 49–54. Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wegner, D. M. , & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. 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Mobile Number Portability Essay

Introduction Mobile number portability (MNP) enables mobile telephone users to retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network operator to another. MNP (Mobile number portability) is implemented in different ways across the globe. In India the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) implemented the MNP facility firstly in Haryana in November 2010 and then extended to all parts of the country in January 2011. The facility is available for both pre paid and post paid customers across mobile operators with in the same telecom circle. Vodafone India, formerly Vodafone Essar and Hutchison Essar, is the second largest mobile network operator in India after Airtel. It is based in Mumbai, Maharashtra and which operates nationally. It has approximately 146.84 million customers as of November 2011. In terms of active subscriber base in Kerala Vodafone is the second largest player with a market share of 19.8%. Kerala is one of slowest growing market with high proportion of MNP requests. By March 2012, Kerala registered 2,066,487 Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests, resulting into churn rate of 6.08% which is one of the highest in India. This study is an attempt to understand the customers’ response towards MNP facility with special reference to Vodafone customers in Pookottumpadam. Pookottumpadam is one of the growing villages in Nilambur taluk of Malappuram district Comment [a2]: Heading font size 14 and body text 12 Comment [a3]: In this paragraph introduce about your topic Comment [a4]: Here introduce about your special reference product or organisation Comment [a5]: Here introduce about what you are going to do with this project Significance of the study Active wireless subscriber base in Kerala is 72.67% resulting in 24.72 million active mobile users. Vodafone is the second largest mobile operator in terms of active subscriber base and fastest growing wireless operator in Kerala. By March 2012, Kerala registered 2,066,487 Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests, resulting into churn rate of 6.08% which is one of the highest in India. Vodafone is one of the companies which benefitted from the MNP service. So this study highly relevant and will be useful to mobile operators as well as to mobile subscribers for making informed decision regarding porting from one operator to other. Comment [a6]: State why your study is relevant and how it will useful to various interested groups Statement of the Problem Mobile Number Portability is a powerful tool in the hands of customers to bargain from their existing mobile operators for better quality in services and fare tariff for services. Under MNP, if the subscribers are not satisfied with the services of their service provider, they can change their service provider while retaining the existing phone number. But in India this facility has got poor response comparing to other countries because of very little pent up demand for it when compared to other countries. So this study will reveal awareness level, opinion and use of MNP facility among Vodafone subscribers in Pookottumpadam. Comment [a7]: State your hypothesis here. Hypothesis is your assumption that you are going to prove through this study Objectives of the study To know the awareness level of MNP facility among Vodafone subscribers To examine the factors influencing the porting decision of mobile users To analyse customers satisfaction after availing MNP facility Comment [a8]: Write two or three specific objectives of the study. Methodology and Data Collection a. Scope of the study This study will be conducted among Vodafone customers in Pookottumpadam village, Nimambur taluk, Malappuram district Comment [a9]: Scope means the area of coverage. Ie the geographical area where you are conducting your study b. Sampling Plan 30 Vodafone customers will be randomly choosen for the purpose of study. The data will be collected through structured questionnaire. Comment [a10]: Mention about the number of samples and methods of sampling c. Methodology This study will be based on both primary and secondary data. The primary data will be collected through questionnaire specially designed for this survey. And secondary data will be gathered from the relevant journals, web sites and other sources. Comment [a11]: Here mention about the sources of data and methods of collecting data Chapterisation The study will be presented through the following chapter schemes 1. 2. 3. 4. Introduction Review of Literature Analysis and Interpretations Finding, Suggestions and Conclusions Comment [a12]: The important chapter in your project Limitations of the study 1. The shortage of time and money will limit the number of samples in to minimum 2. The advanced statistical tools not used for analysis Comment [a13]: Mention two or three factors that will limit the quality of your study Reference http://www.boneless.in/2012/05/kerala-wireless-telecom-market-2012.html www.vodafone.in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_number_portability Comment [a14]: Quote the material you referred while drafting synopsis preferably books

Leadership Profile PART II Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Leadership Profile PART II - Essay Example All sorts of leaders, be it a political leader, group/team leader (for a project), leader in any field or discipline(s) and any n' every leader; they, despite being unique by several of their attributes, they have a few similarities (Gareth & Charles, 2005). They show some of the similar patterns which can be integrated into a few categories or types of leadership styles as per the leadership theories given by renowned observers and theorists. These include several theories which have provided exceptional guidance to assist people over the whole globe and to help out leaders in leading their subordinates effectively as per the prevailing conditions and situation of an organization. Some of those world renowned theories are discussed briefly below. It will be pertinent to note here that we have already looker at the reasons and chosen the transformational leadership style to explain the behaviour of our chosen leader namely Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra. Fred Fiedler was the one who developed a contingency or situational theory of leadership. Leadership theories may be of great help in molding the behaviors of leaders but they also need to be effective enough to assist leaders in different situations. Now that many theories are there, a lot of researchers have agreed on the point that actually no "one" style of leadership is always right for every person, who is a leader. Therefore, for different conditions and circumstances, these conditional theories were developed to be applicable in different cases with respect to the task at hand, the type of organization and the people involved (G. Northouse, 2006). In this theory, the developer i.e. Fiedler emphasized on three main things that were the structure of the task, the relationship between the leaders and the subordinates, and the power that the leader has and is entitled to exercise on his own discretion. Transformational Leadership: James MacGregor Burns wrote in his book 'Leadership' about the concept of "transforming leadership" (G. Northouse, 2006). According to him, transformational leadership actually takes place when a leader changes his subordinates or followers in three important styles. He inculcates a feeling of cumulative and/or shared gains in the employees i.e. to work not only for their selves only but also fro the sake of the organization's benefit. This results in the subordinates having more trust in their leader, performing at higher levels of productivity and effectively contributes to the achievement of the organizational goal and objectives that are the target for any organization. (Bernard M. Bass, 2005) Path-Goal Theory of Leadership: This theory emphasizes on the leaders to motivate their employees by clearly stating them the means of achieving high. This includes guiding them as to how they should achieve the organizational goals, controlling their performance and monitoring their output results, lauding them for good work and respecting what they did and then further guiding them how to improve on the mistakes that were made and also how to achieve new and higher benchmarks. Leader-Style Theory: Leader style, also known as "Trait Theory" is another way of identifying and analyzing the key characteristics of a successful leader. This approached was used for actually separating the critical leadership traits of born-leaders so that

Operational part for Business plan Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Operational part for Business plan - Case Study Example It is necessary that the operational business plan needs to consider the following aspects before considering the various ramifications of the product line and how it could genuinely benefit the manufacturers, sellers and buying consumers or users. The supply chain needs to consider the following steps in terms of ensuring not only complete customer satisfaction but also building of loyalty and wider growing acceptability, among the customers who make up the clientele base of this product/service to consumers. It is seen that in the case of loyalty cards, the range of products/services that could be benefited by loyalty cards would be high since booksellers, DVD stores, supermarkets, etc., and almost all consumer products shopping centres in malls, or local stores could benefit from the use of loyalty cards. Next, in terms of variety, it could cater to wider coverage in terms of a wide range of product lines as "Smart cards enhance the productivity of transactions and nourish increased purchasing." (Benefits of Smart Card-based Customer Loyalty Solutions. 2008). The variation with respect to loyalty cards would depend upon the demand generated for each variety of cards, depending upon customer preferences for them. . Again, the visibility aspect would also be need to be build since high visibility is a must in order to attract and retain customers to collect percentage points, or get discounts. The company must develop the ability to manage the results of the customers' perception, about the benefits achieved from continuous usage of loyalty cards and the virtues of holding and utilising this card must be extolled to the customers.V's Type HighLow 1st V Volume 2st V Variety 3rd V Variation 4th V Visibility (Operations Management Study Guide. 2008). Manufacturing the product or outsourcing it This is an important question from point of view of the marketing of loyalty cards since the use of this card would significantly reduce the profits margins between 5% to 20%, by most conservative estimates. However, it is estimated that there would be definitely be enhanced turnover, due to use of cards over a period of time that could yield higher profits due to induction of new customers through loyalty cards scheme. It has been found that this scheme is more attractive to new customer than to existing ones . Therefore, it is necessary to keep the manufacturing aspects of this card at the lowest in order that maximum profits are

Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 5

Philosophy - Essay Example They are motivated and have directions with clear mission in life. Religious people are the only ones to feel comfort through their supernatural powers where their involved in religious practices to seek divine interventions, from their practices such as prayers. Through these activities they believe that their goals will be achievable as they work under these motivation aspects to achieve their goals. Non religious are viewed as people who will only feel comfortable when the things they care about overcome challenges on them and prevail their success, that the only thing that can bring meaning to their life. The Relationship between the religious people and non religious is that all groups have to work under certain motivation factors to gain comfort, by committing themselves to things they care about such as, promising careers, their families and material things to support their satisfaction in life. Even though, they have different capabilities and approaches to achieve them. Reli gious people may seek supernatural assistance to overcome their challenges while the non religious have to come up with new things to counter the challenges they face every day in their life... Finally to be on the light sides to know the meaning of life is being able to learn the meaning of comfort which will help people achieve a meaningful life, without literary interpreting it as only information we learn or reflect only on purpose of life merely as to accomplish certain tasks we believe we were created for on this universe. The premises Tom Nagel also a philosopher argues that life is not about accomplishing purposes or meeting certain objectives that we interpret to have been created for, while we feel uncomfortable and loss of sense to them. as per religious believe that God created us to abide by the religious rules and acknowledge his presence, but to do things in a way that opens up to us the meaning of life why we should live? What do we think about for our comfort? This what those religious practices teaches Christian’s to trust so that they can overcome difficulties in their life and find comfort for a meaningful life. Therefore, life has not actually been fully understood by people as their view things according to their understanding and external influences may be their customs, beliefs and norms will evaluate their meaning of life. In fact, there is endless interpretation of life from all sorts of things and evidences, so circumstances and practices we do in our life shapes our comfort levels and the purposes we should achieve in our life for us to live or have a mean full living on universe. Life has so many encounters and challenges every day and people in every generation that preceded the other. They try to interpret things that are beyond their power differently and have different views, solutions and understanding on them. The main purpose of the questions people have every day in their life is to get the information and the real b ackground why things happen like that, and what can we do to understand them. For example, people may want to know. What does it mean when the sky above is blue but there is a dark line all the way around the horizon? This question may find a lot of answers from different angles. Where people may see it according to the purpose they think is there to serve so information cannot only define the purpose of life, this

Prep 7 Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Prep 7 - Coursework Example The environment has a strong influence when it comes to gene expression. For example, the mixture of genes he inherits and the environment, he interacts with determines the personality of an individual. Various environmental cues can alter the gene expression. They are the extracellular and intracellular concentrations of different ions (Dawkins, 1999). Reaction norms could be used to understand phenotype plasticity in the below manner. Phenotype plasticity shows the degree to which the phenotype of an organism is. The response patterns display the relationship between the genotype and phenotype (Dawkins, 1999). The variability could be structural variations and copy number variations. The difference between broad sense and narrow sense heritability is that the general sense shows the genetic contributions to the phenotype variance of a population and the strict sense does not reflect genetic contributions. Heritability is measured by coming up with the relative contributions of non-genetic and genetic differences to the total phenotypic variation in a population (Dawkins, 1999).The narrow sense heritability and the strength of selection work together in a manner that their response is since they are necessary for selecting (Dawkins,

Strategic Leadership and Future Leaders (DB) Essay

Strategic Leadership and Future Leaders (DB) - Essay Example I would also choose a leadership style which relates to my persona and comment on another which doesn't. (Yellid) The servant leader relationship was coined by Robert Greenfield, wherein the leader's role is reduced to that of a steward, with special regards to human, financial and statistical recourses of an organization. Although the concept is not new and Chanakya, a great thinker from India, has already mentioned its true worth in the 4th century BC, the fact still remains that it was indeed Robert Greenfield who reinforced it with an official stamp. The reason why I advocate the cause for a servant leader relationship is because the servant leader, during its manifestation phase, is blessed with the power of listening, empathy, awareness, conceptualization, healing, stewardship, persuasion and community building. The leader is also stated to be a humble servant of the organization and strives to help his/her employees in their future growth. Unlike a typical top down relationship, servant leadership is based on trust, empathy and ethical use of power. (Yellid) Over here, a leader has to create a positive relationship with the organization.

Effectiveness And Efficiency Of Government Website Essay

Effectiveness And Efficiency Of Government Website - Essay Example The chief work of the Ready Government website is to educate the public through communication. Therefore, the question is has the website managed to reach the public thorough communication? Is the website effective and efficient in its vital mandate to the public? Lastly, what means has the ready government website used to dispense information? Various bodies have been set up in the America from way back that handle emergency situations in the country like Red Cross and AMREF (Bullock, 281). Furthermore, there are departments like homeland security, national response framework, central intelligence agency, federal bureau of investigations and many more (Bullock, 81).  There are numerous procedures put in place by Ready Government website to communicate with the public, most obvious is the website itself. The website has all the information that the public needs in case of emergency whether it is preparedness or emergencies. The website also educates the public on safety locations i n case of disasters and also affected and dangerous areas. The website receives letters and also sends out letters to the public free of charge. This shows that there is a flow of communication. Additionally, publications are available for download in disaster management (Abramson, 22).  Another way that the Ready Government website communicates effectively with the public is through its corps volunteer’s activities that ensure the safety of the society by ensuring that communities get a fast response in emergency situations (Matthews et al, 121). The pledging sector is easy to access on the website (Abramson, 23). Furthermore, the Ready Government website has managed to communicate with the public effectively and efficiently by taking into consideration the disabled.

Drug Usage Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Drug Usage - Article Example Marconova is also one such offshore company that is concerned about the health and drug usage among employees of Heerema Marine Contractors. Marconova is handling its first project on Heerema Marine Contractors, so it wants to take extreme care of the fact that employees work efficiently. Marconova had conducted similar kind of test last year on the employees of Heerma Marine Contractors, which were conducted at three different locations and included all employees working under Heerma Marine Contractors. Marconova has an experienced team of doctors and nurses, who offer their services worldwide. They are usually responsible to conduct test and present reports and suggestions to the employees. The person who is responsible for testing makes an announcement one hour before the test and then urine samples of the employees are taken for the test. These tests try to find out the usage of drugs and narcotics among employees. Drug usage develops addiction of the substance used, and the empl oyee or individual is forced to use the substance again and again. This addiction is very problematic for the employees as they lose control of their self. It also deviate attention from the work and reduces the effectiveness of employees. It is important to note that the drug usage among people and employees have been increasing significantly in past few years. It is important that the problem is assessed and strict measures are taken in order to prevent future problems. According to the results of the test taken by Marconova, 2% of the samples were found positive, showing usage of drugs. It is learned that one of the causes of Exxon oil spill is the usage of drugs by its employees, which led to negligence of different operational aspect.

Tourism in Myanmar Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Tourism in Myanmar - Essay Example The case of Myanmar is one which shows how negative impressions of traditional media have led to a lack of tourism. The conditions of the country are known for political unrest, tyranny and social communism, all which have stopped the tourist industry. Currently, Myanmar is interested in opening the doors to tourism, specifically to build the economy and to develop a global openness required. The need to change the tourist perspectives; however, is limited by the negative impressions. To change this, the use of social media can be used with strategies that develop positive impressions on the cultural and social activities that one can enjoy in the region. By creating a social media strategy, there will be the ability to reach a larger target market while creating interactions and developments with the tourism and travel industry. Introduction The ability to reach current target markets is one which is no longer dependent on brick and mortar stores and traditional advertising. To reac h the needed areas, there is the need to create more alternatives with the use of online marketing, specifically with the current trends that are available. Social media is one of the areas which invites new opportunities for advertising while ensuring that the correct target market is met. This paper will look at the marketing of a mystical country, Myanmar, with the use of social media. ... The problems with the country are based on multi – faceted perspectives that come from the political and social agendas that are in the area. The problems are based on political issues, interests and agendas that have turned tourists away from the region. Many look at the area as corrupt while other tourists do not regard the place as a destination because of the political and cultural system. The ability to be open for tourism is not a primary concern in the area, making it difficult for travelers to move through the region while finding the best outlets for the travel desired. These particular problems are continuous with the references such as the area being the land of fear, specifically because of the political regime and social closure that is surrounding the area (Henderson, 2010). The development of Myanmar to the current date is one which is continuing to follow this trend, leading to a large number of individuals to not travel into the area. The socialist economy and political agenda is followed by the closure within the country for travel. However, the current changes into a global economy and into alterations with the political and economic system are also indicating that there is the need to open Myanmar to travel and to alter the political and economic perspectives of the country (Toshihiro, 2010). In current years, they have opened to tourism with the recognition that Burma needs to expand into offering more opportunities for expansion in this area. The movement has opened to an average of 3,000 from China visiting the area in 2011, which is a 33% increase from past years. The global number of visitors has increased to 792,000 travelers, which is inclusive of a

How Can Resourcing and Development Add Value in the Modern Workplace Essay Example for Free

How Can Resourcing and Development Add Value in the Modern Workplace Essay According to Ann Marie E. McSwain, Assistant Professor at Lincoln University, â€Å"leadership is about capacity: the capacity of leaders to listen and observe, to use their expertise as a starting point to encourage dialogue between all levels of decision-making, to establish processes and transparency in decision-making, to articulate their own value and visions clearly but not impose them. Leadership is about setting and not just reacting to agendas, identifying problems, and initiating change that makes for substantial improvement rather than managing change. In the modern workplace, a good leader can lead the team to success and vice versa. The importance of a good leader in an organization cannot be doubted. However, one of the most challenging issues in the modern workplace is keeping talents. Talents or leaders may leave the organization for better offer or higher rate of pay. If no successor to drive it once the leader or key person leaves, the organization may get into troubles. In order to maintain the morale and loyalty for the other employees, another good, competent with respect of others should be appointed as leader. Other than leaders, junior grading employee should also be prepared to develop their career to some senior positions. This can explain why a career management (include succession plan for experienced staff) is so essential in an organization as a way of people sourcing. Career management is the combination of structured planning and the management choice for one’s own professional career. It is a process for employees to become aware of their interests, values, strengths and weaknesses, to get information about job opportunities within the organization, helps to identify the career goals, establish an action plan to achieve the career goals. Succession plan is a process to identify and develop internal potential employee to fill up the key or critical organizational positions. The main purpose of succession plan is to ensure the availability of competent, capable and experienced employee to prepare to be appointed to those positions when they become vacant. Succession planning meaning that prepare the experienced employees to undertake some key roles, focus on leadership continuity and sharing knowledge, provide a more effective and efficient monitoring and tracking of employees’ proficiency levels and the skill gaps and counter the increasing difficulty of recruiting talents externally. Succession plan is a very important and necessary part of an organization to reduce risk, create a proven leadership model, increase employees’ working morale and help the business to run smooth continuity and expand. Both people sourcing way are aids to develop talent and long-term growth, improve the capabilities and overall performance of workforce, create employee retention, meet the career development requirement of existing employee and improve support to employees throughout their employment. Career management is important in the eye of the organization and the employee. From the organization’s view, the failure to motivate their employees to plan for their career may result in shortage of employees to fill up the vacant, lower the employees’ commitment and inappropriate use of money which allocated for the training and development programs. From the employee’s view, lacking of career management may result in frustration, having a feeling that they are not value in the organization and unable to find some other suitable employment when the job nature changed, no matter due to mergers, acquisitions, restructuring or downsizing. The outcome for a successful career management includes employees’ personal fulfillment, goals achievement and a newly promotional theme in the modern workplace which is work-life balance. Different practices of people sourcing method can be used in different size of an organization. Entrepreneurship, partnership and limited company are some practices of forming an organization. Entrepreneurship means the one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods. The most obvious formation of entrepreneurship is to start a new business. Entrepreneurship means that the business is run by an owner which call entrepreneur. Partnership is similar to entrepreneurship other than the organization is managed by at least two or above owners. Limited company means it is an organization which shareholders whose liability is limited by shares. Entrepreneurship is usually some small business and has fewer employees than limited organization which runs large business. If the business runs smooth and expand, entrepreneurship can turn into a limited organization. After choosing the right method of people sourcing within an organization, the organization can benefit from different kinds of advantages. With the right practice of people sourcing method in the right size of organization, the organization will be added value. Add value† can mean contributing directly to organization goals and deliver business objectives. Every organization has its goal and objective because these goals and objective can help the organization to define business and drive itself to success. Since the organization’s goal and objective are uses to lead itself to success, all the policies and procedures should follow its direction, including its employee sourcing way. Thomson, a pioneer in the old print economy, helped to create the electronic age with online system and CD-ROM products. One of the goals of his company, Thomson Corporation, is to become the dominant global e-information and solutions business. In order to make the growth strategy become successful, Thomson has to keep some key employees and motivate some junior employees because he believes that the essence to have employee retention includes creating a satisfying an challenging work environment, maintaining the right fit between the employees and their jobs and making sure that his employees have the right tools to perform their jobs successfully. Another goal of his company is to facilitate employees’ career development. In order to achieve this goal, Thomson had to educate his employees that career opportunities are available within the company and he had made it easier for employees to move within the company. By executing the career development within the company, Thomson had developed an online career center for his employees. The website includes seven hundred to nine hundred jobs listing every month. His employee can go to this website and choose specify preferred locations and full time or part time job. Meanwhile, a personal search agent would notify the employee whenever a new opening related jobs or career interests are posted automatically. The website had been developed to include self assessments so that the employees can decide whether they if they have the required skills. If the employees found that he needs some education or training to quality for a position, the website will link them to some courses. The design of the website is a kind of career management for the employees which can retain and motivate employees. After that, their supervisor will conduct performance appraisal annually to review their performance. As the career management systems start from self assessment, reality check, goal setting and finally the action planning, every employee in Thomson Corporation develop their career through the above steps. Self assessment refers to the use of information by the employees to found out their career interests, values, aptitudes and behavioral tendencies and it usually involves some psychological tests. In Thomson Corporation, employees can identify their occupational and job interests, e. . work in different types of environments and identify the relative value they place on work and the leisure activities through the career centre. Through the self assessment, employees may start to consider where they are in their careers, identify the future plans and assess them to fit in the current job with available resources. Reality check means the information that the employees receive about how their organization evaluates their knowledge and skills which help them to fit into organization’s plan. The said information is given by their supervisor as part of the performance appraisal process which included the performance review and employee’s career interests, strengths and possible development plans. Goal setting mean the process of employees developing short term and long term career objective. The goals usually relate to desired positions, level of skill application, work setting or skill acquisition. Employees in Thomson Corporation may have chance to achieve skill acquisition through specify training. Besides, development plan may be written out after the performance appraisal. The development plans include the descriptions of strengths and weakness, career goals and development plans for reaching the career goals. Action planning means how the employees determine their way to achieve short term or long term goals. An action plan usually involves in enrolling to some training courses, conducting information interviews or applying for a vacant within the organization. The information in the website is useful for ensuring the employees’ abilities, skills and nterests matches their jobs. If there is a mismatch, the website will provide some related training information and courses details for them to develop their skills. Other than the employee can benefit from such activities, the organization will benefit from the systems too. Firstly, it can reach a large number of potential job seekers after they post a vacant. Secondly, the website had provided detailed accessible information about the jobs which can facilitates employees’ development. Employees will then aware of what knowledge and skills are needed for the job. Thirdly, the system encourages employees responsible for an active role in the career management. This is congruent with a psychological contract and protean career. Career management is uses for junior grading employees and succession planning is designed for experienced or senior employees. Career management is usually applied to some small entrepreneurship and succession planning is applying to some large size limited companies. As large companies usually divided into few sections and each section will be managed by a line manager, an effective succession plan should be used. Motorola, Inc is an electronic and wireless communications company. In 1991, Motorola restructure itself and set out some new objectives and goals. Meanwhile, Motorola had promoted a succession plan named Organization and Management Development Review (OMDR). The objective would be diversity and sought to accelerate the advancement of women and minorities within the organization. The company goal which is within ten years the number of women and minorities at all levels of management should be representative of the number of women and minorities in the available talent pool. They also made a commitment that every year that at least three women and minorities would be appointed as vice-president among the twenty to forty people. In OMDR, the process of identifying the high potentials would be requires each section to submit a list of candidates in four categories: white men, women, minorities and technical staff. The succession plans are prepared for each high potential and their progress within the organization is being tracked. If the high potential leave or fall out of the list in the future, their supervisor must explain why this would happen. In order to counter the erception that most of the women and minorities are still in the feeder pool, a replacement chart had identifies some key positions and three people who could fill each one was developed. The first priority would be an immediate successor. The second priority would be a person who should success the incumbent if the organization had three to five years to prepare. The third priority would be the most qualified woman or minority candidate at that time, in addition to any women or minorities had already on the first two priorities. Women and minorities must be included even needs to hire externally. Besides the replacement chart, there are some other key elements of the program such as career planning. All individuals would receive a guidance to set out the career goals and develop some strategies to achieve them. The guidance of the program is give by managers through some informal mentoring and through the organization’s women’s leadership conference. In this case, Motorola had show the linkage between the succession planning initiative and the organization’s business goals which emphasis was placed on the business success that can flow from having a socially diverse workforce. Since Motorola sees diversity as a business initiative and not only human resources department but all line managers are responsible for the program’s implementation. Senior managers are required to keep tracking of the representation of women and minorities in their units. The succession planning is then effective because of the cooperation of all employees. Effective career management and succession plan can drive small size company or large size company to success through adding value to it. It can help the employers and employees to fulfill the company objectives and goals. In order to make the plan effective in the company, the below ten points should be noted. First, the organization must define the targets and goals clearly. It should set a time frame and numbers creates impetus for action. Without a clear direction, employee may not know what or how they should do to go for success. When the employee knows the company objective and goal and the time frame, they can set out their own career development plan. Second, the organization should define the details and meaning of the succession plan to include the widest talent pool. Succession plan is not yet common in modern workplace. High potential will be attracted to work in those companies with succession plan in order to get higher achievement. Third, the organization should inform the employee about the succession plan and to let them know that they should be ready all the times. It is because when they are on the radar, they will ask more questions about their development and it is harder for them to be lost within the organization. Fourth, the organization should implement the career management careful and have strategic planning for targeted individuals’ career development. Since being identified is not enough, the organization should consider the potential benefits of encourage informal mentoring. Fifth, the organization should ensure there is strong leadership and commitment from senior management. This is because initial and ongoing personal involvement of the director is an important criterion to lead the plan to success. Sixth, the career management and succession plan must be integrate into the business objective and positioned as a response to the business need. A clear linkage between the business goal and the desired results of the career management will help to gain commitment from the organization and employee. Career management must be success when it portrayed as a core issue. Seventh, the organization should make all the line managers accountable for the success of the initiative. Since the career management is a business initiative, all employees should be responsible and accountable for its delivery, especially the line managers. Eighth, the organization should encourage the employees to take an active role in the career management. The organization should let the employee know that the career management is a tool to help them to get higher achievement which is benefiting them. Ninth, the evaluation should be an on-going one which uses to get improvement. Tenth, career management should be linked to other human resources practices such as performance management, training and recruiting systems. The organization may evaluate the career management through several outcomes. First, the reactions of the managers and the employees who use the career management can be determined through some surveys. Second, some more information with objective related to the results of the career management system can be tracked such as the time needs to fill up a vacant, the percentage of usage of the system. Talent management is a new direction in the modern workplace. Career management and succession plan can help both the small size organization and large size organization to add value through contributing directly to organization objective and goal. In order to success, all organization should focus on the career development of employee more than business since employees are the most valuable assets within an organization

The research process: Beginning to end

The research process: Beginning to end THE RESEARCH PROCESS Introduction The research process is the steps included or needed to conduct a research from the beginning to the end. Research that have been identify should be carried out in a deliberate and systematic manner in order to produce a substantive besides useful outcomes (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). The specific way in each of these stages and their attendant sub-stages is operationalized will wary from project to project (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Furthermore, research also is an extremely cyclic process, where the review of earlier work might be necessitate for the later stages (Leedy and Ormrod, 2001). Therefore, it can be difficult to determine on where to begin or where to end the research due to its cyclic (Leedy and Ormrod, 2001). According Weaver and Lawton 2006, there are basically seven steps in the research as shown below. Step 1: Problem Recognitions According to Leedy and Ormrod, 2001, a research begins with a problem. Therefore, the first step in any research process or before conducting a research is to recognize the problem or issues that interest the investigator (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). In tourism-based corporation, the core issues that require research are reduced patronage and declining market share (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). From a destination perspective, additional concerns may be harbored about negative community reactions to tourism or declining environmental conditions that will affect the industry (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). However, methodological bias of the researcher might dictate the problems As we know, before starting to conduct a research, at first we should come out with a question because all of the research that begins with a question. Besides that, curiosity of a researcher is often used as a foundation for scholarly inquiry. Before start to conduct a research, the researcher should know the problems a nd broad issues that interest them to conduct a research. Researcher should clearly understand and clarify what they want to know to conduct the research. After problem has been recognized and the researcher understand what they want to know to conduct the research, it will makes them easier. Researcher can ask themselves question on what they want to know actually based on the research that will be conduct. By this, it can help them to conduct a better research because they have the purpose for conducting the research. After problem has been recognizing, the researcher can plan or create a useful framework for clarifying or contextualizing the broad problem. For example: if you are interested in finding out about how many students will take the opportunity to involve themselves in the sports events in school? You might need to pose out a question that what is the advantages of taking part in sports event in school? Researcher should understand what they really want to find out by t his topic. They should indentify what problem, concepts or keywords in this question on what they want to know by doing this research and then plan their framework well before start to do their research. Step 2: Question formulation After all the problem and topic that researcher identify or broad problems that have been selected, research questions must be focused to prevent that time and resources are not wasted on tangential avenues of investigation(Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Furthermore, hypothesis may be expressed when question formulation. As a basis for question formulation, it is helpful to clarify that the level of investigation that is warranted by the problem and the resources of the company or destination that are available. There are four levels of investigations which are description, explanation, prediction and prescription. All of this level will be using based on the research that will be conducted by the researcher. The first level if the investigation is description (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Description it is the most basic level of inquiry. For example, the managers of a particular destination are concerned that the local people appear to be increasingly hostile toward visiting tourists. The logical first step in addressing this issue is to describe the actual situation, by asking questions such as what are the attitudes of local residents towards visiting tourists. Next level for the investigation is explanation (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Explanation is the decision whether to or not to proceed to this level of investigation, which is to explain the resultant patterns is often constrained by the availability of resources. However, the decision should be based on whether one or more serious problems have been revealed after the research process has been completed at the descriptive level. For example, the perceived hostility of residents involves only a few isolated incidents instigated by known troublemakers, and then there is probably no compelling reason to precede any further investigation. But, if the suspicious of emerging hostility have been confirmed, and the parameters of the hostility are identified as being broad-based, then the explanation is necessary towards its resolution. Level three for the investigation level according to Weaver and Lawton, 2006 is prediction. Prediction means once a plausible explanation for a problem is found out, the further investigation is to predict the problems consequences if no remedial measures are taken. As with any prediction involving humans, this stage of inquiry will be speculative, but it is possible to engage in intelligent and well-considered speculation that will inform the final stage of prescription. Example would be like asking what will happen to the local tourism industry if no steps are being carried to address the hostility of young adults towards tourism. Lastly, the final stage of the level of investigation according to Weaver and Lawton (2006) is prescription. Prescription is the culmination of research process, involving the consideration of various solutions to the problems. If the predictive phase reveals that the above situation is highly volatile, and that the community will endure great suffering if no correction action was taken, then it is essential to proceed with prescriptive phase. To summarize, the intervention or the actions that should be taken to ensure optimum outcomes for the company or destination, is a core component of the process in management and in applied research. Appropriate solutions or prescriptions will only emerge as a result of the knowledge that is obtained through preliminary research at the levels of description, explanation and prediction (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Step 3: Identification of research methodology and/ or methods Next step of the research process is to identify the methodologies that will be use to conduct the research that the researcher already selected (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). In the other words means identify the specific research methods that will be best allow the project or research to be proceed, and normally all this probably will based on the problem that have been identified and the question set for the research. For example, in the descriptive phase, the investigators may undertake quantitative surveying in which resources, time; cultural and social context will be taken into account. Whereas in the explanatory phase, the researcher will engage in qualitative, in-depth interviews to identify the reasons for revealed attitudes and behavior. While for prediction level, the interviewer has a number of options that can be pursued in conjunction with each other to see whether the different methods yield the same results. As shown in the above example, the usage of all the techniques in the same research process also can be known as methodological triangulation. Furthermore, If all of this four methods for the research reveal the similar outcomes, it will gives the researcher high degree of confidence that the real situation of their research that they want to be conduct has been identified. Moreover, it is likely that each of the method will yield its own unique insights into this situation, thereby strengthening the knowledge base that is obtained from the research. Step 4: Data collection After the most appropriate have been identified, the next step of the research process can be proceeded (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). In a former case, a sample of data collection mostly is randomly drawn from the population and each of the members of the population has the equal probability to be selected as the sample for the data (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Researchers will simple drawn out all the names of those will be involves in the research by using the random number tables to prevent biases when collecting the data. However, researcher also will select a large enough sample so that inferences can be made about the entire population. According to Neuman 1997, it is advisable that the sample should be at least of 30 per cent of the entire population to make sure that it will achieve the same effect. In the data collection, researcher commonly will practiced the non-probability or convenience sampling in the qualitative research and deliberate selection of certain cases to build th e sample for the research that will be conducting. (Weaver and Lawton, 2006) Besides that, for the data collection, once the sample size and procedure of selection for the research have been decided, the actual or the process of the data collection can be started and there is few factors that need to be considered at this stage such as consistency for the result in as short a time period as possible, timing of the interviewing or observation for the research (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). The reason is that it can save the cost and resources for the research without wasted and the collection of the data will be more accurately as well. Theory will be developed from the data gathered and analyzed by the researcher (Neuman, 2000). Furthermore, each research that will be conducted must use an appropriate data collection technique based on the research methodology that has been chosen. The researcher might also involve in pilot study or test, in which the researcher will conduct a trial test of the data collection tools and analysis by using the same sample of the po pulation used in the final study (Jennings, 2001). Besides that, once the sample size and selection procedure have been decided, the actual data collection can be started (Weaver and Lawton, 2006).   The main goals of both quantitative and qualitative studies are to maximize the responses and the accuracy of the research (Walonick, 1993). The researchers will also validate the data collection process When others data collection service are being used, by contacting a percentage of the respondents to verify that they were actually being interviewed ( David S. Walonick 1993). Not only that, the checking process for inadvertent errors in the data also involves data editing and this process normally required a computer to check for the out of boundaries data. Step 5: Data analysis The data analysis is the next stage after data collection, which is a stage that attempts to answer the related research questions by examining and assessing the collected information to identify patterns and meanings (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). At this stage, filtering and organizing the database to eliminate the invalid responses usually will be involves to get a better result for the research. Next (at least in quantitative research), it is follow by the coding and entering of the data that already been collected into a computer software system such as SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) facilities which have the further classification and analysis (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Actual analysis of the research can be undertaken after all the data already been cleaned to eliminate error in the coding procedure. According to Weaver and Lawton, 2006, the most basic analysis in a qualitative research is to record a simple descriptive statistics such as means, frequencies and standard deviation besides test also can be use when in a more sophisticated level. Researcher need to be open to the data to ensure that the data that they collected do not force the data (Glaser 1992). According to Neuman 1997, qualitative data analysis includes organization of the same categories as well as the relationship development and process models based on a constant comparison of the text-based data. There are 3 aspects of data analysis which is data reduction, data displaying and drawing conclusion (Miles and Huberman 1994). The relationship between different variables and groups can be examined or determined simultaneously by using multivariate technique, such as analyzing the factor and the multidimensional scaling. Level of sophistication depends on the nature of the research question and the datas characteristic collected by the researcher (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). In a qualitative research, the sorting, comparing, classifying and synthesis of the collected informat ion can be involves in analysis for qualitative research (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Step 6: Data presentation In data presentation, the results of the analysis should be presented in the way that can be easily understood by the target audience. When preparing data for presentation, make sure that you are choosing the key points of the research (Gayle Jennings 2001). The most common devices that use to presenting data is by using tables and graphs but great care also should be always be taken to avoid complexity and clutter particularly if the intended audience is non-academic (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). The reason is that to prevent that audience did not understand what are being present. Furthermore, researcher also can use maps for their presentation because maps are extremely efficient means of presenting spatial information if being constructed properly (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). According to Jennings 2001 Power point presentation also can be use to present the data but there is some consideration when using it to presenting data such as slides should not overwhelmed with text, text is ea sy to read, try not to use colors that are hard to focus on or gaudy, not to over use different font and different style such as italics, bold, use an infra-red or timber pointer if need to indicate something, do not turn your back to audience and check out the slide is in the correct order.   Step 7: Data interpretation The final stage of the research process is data interpretation, in which the meaning from the research results will be extracted (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). This is the stage where important implication of the research result are considered from theoretical and/or practical perspective besides in this stage, researcher also will consider higher levels of investigation which means the researcher will revisit the previous stages(Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Data that been interpret maybe will be influence by the methodological and other biases of the researcher.   The important of the effective interpretation at the specific or broad level cannot be overstated since leads to translation of research results into policy decision and other outcomes that are important to the target audience (Weaver and Lawton, 2006).   

Hemingways Economy Of Style English Literature Essay

Hemingways Economy Of Style English Literature Essay A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is arguably not only one of Hemingways best short stories but also a story that clearly demonstrates the techniques of Hemingways signature writing style. Hemingway is known for his economic prose-his writing is minimalist and sparse, with few adverbs or adjectives. He includes only essential information, often omitting background information, transitions, and dialogue tags such as he said or she said. He often uses pronouns without clear antecedents, such as using the word it without clarifying what it refers to. Hemingway applies the iceberg principle to his stories: only the tip of the story is visible on the page, while the rest is left underwater-unsaid. Hemingway also rarely specifies which waiter is speaking in the story because he has deemed such clarification unnecessary. The essential element is that two waiters are discussing a drunk old man-the rest can be omitted according to Hemingways economy of style. When the older waiter contemplates the idea of nothingness, Hemingway loads the sentences with vague pronouns, never clarifying what they refer to: It was all a nothing.  .  .  . It was only that.  .  .  . Some lived in it  .  .  . Although these lines are somewhat confusing, the confusion is the point. This nothingness cant be defined clearly, no matter how many words are used. Hemingway uses fewer words and lets the effect of his style speak for itself. The Deceptive Pacing of the Story Hemingway does not waste words on changing scenes or marking the passage of time, leaving it up to us to keep track of whats happening and the storys pacing. For example, only a brief conversation between the waiters takes place between the time when the younger waiter serves the old man a brandy and the time when the old man asks for another. Hemingway is not suggesting that the old man has slugged back the brandy quickly. In fact, the old man stays in the cafà © for a long time. Time has lapsed here, but Hemingway leaves it up to us to follow the pace of the story. The pace of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place may seem swift, but the action of the story actually stretches out for much longer than it appears to. The sitting, drinking, and contemplating that take place are languid actions. We may read the story quickly, but the scenes themselves are not quick. Just as Hemingway doesnt waste words by trying to slow down his scenes, he also refrains from including unnecessary transitions. F or example, when the older waiter leaves the cafà © and mulls over the idea of nothingness, he finishes his parody of prayer and, without any transition that suggests that he was walking, we suddenly find him standing at a bar. Hemingway lets the waiters thoughts serve as the transition. When he writes, He smiled and stood before a bar, were meant to understand that the waiter had been walking and moving as he was thinking to himself. And when the waiter orders a drink at the bar, the bartender offers him another just two sentences later. Again, Hemingway is not suggesting that the waiter gulps his drink. Instead, he conveys only the most essential information in the scene. Existentialism and the Lost Generation The term Lost Generation refers to the writers and artists living in Paris after World War I. The violence of World War I, also called the Great War, was unprecedented and invalidated previous ideas about faith, life, and death. Traditional values that focused on God, love, and manhood dissolved, leaving Lost Generation writers adrift. They struggled with moral and psychological aimlessness as they searched for the meaning of life in a changed world. This search for meaning and these feelings of emptiness and aimlessness reflect some of the principle ideas behind existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophical movement rooted in the work of the Danish philosopher Sà ¸ren Kierkegaard, who lived in the mid-1800s. The movement gained popularity in the mid-1900s thanks to the work of the French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus, including Sartres Being and Nothingness (1943). According to existentialists, life has no purpose, the universe is indiffer ent to human beings, and humans must look to their own actions to create meaning, if it is possible to create meaning at all. Existentialists consider questions of personal freedom and responsibility. Although Hemingway was writing years before existentialism became a prominent cultural idea, his questioning of life and his experiences as a searching member of the Lost Generation gave his work existentialist overtones. Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes Life as Nothingness In A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Hemingway suggests that life has no meaning and that man is an insignificant speck in a great sea of nothingness. The older waiter makes this idea as clear as he can when he says, It was all a nothing and man was a nothing too. When he substitutes the Spanish word nada (nothing) into the prayers he recites, he indicates that religion, to which many people turn to find meaning and purpose, is also just nothingness. Rather than pray with the actual words, Our Father who art in heaven, the older waiter says, Our nada who art in nada-effectively wiping out both God and the idea of heaven in one breath. Not everyone is aware of the nothingness, however. For example, the younger waiter hurtles through his life hastily and happily, unaware of any reason why he should lament. For the old man, the older waiter, and the other people who need late-night cafà ©s, however, the idea of nothingness is overwhelming and leads to despair. The Struggle to Deal with Despair The old man and older waiter in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place struggle to find a way to deal with their despair, but even their best method simply subdues the despair rather than cures it. The old man has tried to stave off despair in several unsuccessful ways. We learn that he has money, but money has not helped. We learn that he was once married, but he no longer has a wife. We also learn that he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide in a desperate attempt to quell the despair for good. The only way the old man can deal with his despair now is to sit for hours in a clean, well-lit cafà ©. Deaf, he can feel the quietness of the nighttime and the cafà ©, and although he is essentially in his own private world, sitting by himself in the cafà © is not the same as being alone. The older waiter, in his mocking prayers filled with the word nada, shows that religion is not a viable method of dealing with despair, and his solution is the same as the old mans: he waits out the nighttime in cafà ©s. He is particular about the type of cafà © he likes: the cafà © must be well lit and clean. Bars and bodegas, although many are open all night, do not lessen despair because they are not clean, and patrons often must stand at the bar rather than sit at a table. The old man and the older waiter also glean solace from routine. The ritualistic cafà ©-sitting and drinking help them deal with despair because it makes life predictable. Routine is something they can control and manage, unlike the vast nothingness that surrounds them. Motifs Loneliness Loneliness pervades A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and suggests that even though there are many people struggling with despair, everyone must struggle alone. The deaf old man, with no wife and only a niece to care for him, is visibly lonely. The younger waiter, frustrated that the old man wont go home, defines himself and the old man in opposites: Hes lonely. Im not lonely. Loneliness, for the younger waiter, is a key difference between them, but he gives no thought to why the old man might be lonely and doesnt consider the possibility that he may one day be lonely too. The older waiter, although he doesnt say explicitly that he is lonely, is so similar to the old man in his habit of sitting in cafà ©s late at night that we can assume that he too suffers from loneliness. The older waiter goes home to his room and lies in bed alone, telling himself that he merely suffers from sleeplessness. Even in this claim, however, he instinctively reaches out for company, adding, Many must have it. The thought that he is not alone in having insomnia or being lonely comforts him. Symbols The Cafà © The cafà © represents the opposite of nothingness: its cleanliness and good lighting suggest order and clarity, whereas nothingness is chaotic, confusing, and dark. Because the cafà © is so different from the nothingness the older waiter describes, it serves as a natural refuge from the despair felt by those who are acutely aware of the nothingness. In a clean, brightly lit cafà ©, despair can be controlled and even temporarily forgotten. When the older waiter describes the nothingness that is life, he says, It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. The it in the sentence is never defined, but we can speculate about the waiters meaning: although life and man are nothing, light, clealiness, and order can serve as substance. They can help stave off the despair that comes from feeling completely unanchored to anyone or anything. As long as a clean, well-lighted cafà © exists, despair can be kept in check.