Influence of Close Relationship Status and without Close Emotional Essay

Influence of Close Relationship Status and without Close Emotional Relationship Status on GPA - Essay Example This relationship can impact many aspects our day-to-day life. Friends in need are friends indeed. More than that, close relationship with friends will impact the way an individual reacts or respond to both positive and negative things. If the friends make a positive impact on an individual or student in a academic environment, then he/she will absorb those positive aspects and use it many aspects of life particularly education. However, if the friends are a negative influence on the student, it will wreck not only his/hers education, but whole life. â€Å"The influence of peers can be both positive and negative. On the positive side, it can serve as an important incentive for adolescents to perform well in school. On the negative side, peer influence can lead to discipline problems and delinquent behaviors both inside and outside school† (â€Å"Students’ Peer Groups in High School† 1997). Relationship is completely an emotional characteristic which affects the e ntire psychological processes and it particularly has impacts on the curriculum development. So when students are limited to move with the people around then how the relationship is affecting the entire GPA? My hypothesis is that how close relationship status or without close emotional relationship status affect the GPA in and out. Thus, in this study we are interested in analyzing the influence of GPA (junior GPA, California State University Northridge GPA (CSUNGPA) and overall GPA over (1_ Close relationship status and (2) without close emotional relationship status. The earlier studies mainly focused on finding how whether the student will perform better, if he/she has relationship with academically oriented friends, more than the delinquent oriented friends. According to the survey done by the National Center for Educational Statistics, it is suggested that â€Å"students who had more "learning-oriented" friends tended to perform better in school than other students over the co urse of their schooling, and students who spent time with those interested in delinquent activities were less likely to experience success in school.† (â€Å"Students’ Peer Groups in High School† 1997). Thus, it is clear that finding the influence of these relationships on the GPA is very much an important aspect because they are dependent upon each other, as relationship are omnipresent things, which will and will continue to have impacts on every aspect of human or students’ life. In addition, the correlation between relationships and GPA at colleges plays an important role in guiding them to choose a better future careers as well as other future course of actions. Our prediction is that close relationship status may influence the GPA scoring to a considerable extent. In my opinion, GPA is more when the close relationship is stronger. For this, we first of all see the distribution of close relationship status. From the PSY 320L Survey there are several v ariables involved in finding out the influence of the GPA viz. Junior GPA, California State University Northridge GPA (CSUNGPA) and overall GPA. We are interested in analyzing the influence of these GPAs over any of the two relationships (1) the closerelationship status as well as (2) withoutclose emotional relationship status. Method Participants Participants were all students at CSUN. The age ranged from eighteen to fifty-four

Knox Case Study Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Knox Case Study - Research Paper Example As his manager, I would be positive about his success in winning a new client to the company but would not communicate his strategy to other employees and external stakeholders. I would also urge him to be more sensitive to possible ethical concerns. No action should be taken against Knox for his initiatives but he should instead be advised to be more careful not to breach ethical values in his sales initiatives. My reaction would be based on an understanding of dilemma that employees face in defining moments and the possible consequences of victimizing employees for choosing a right thing over another. Knox did not take advantage of the client but used his skills to draw the client’s attention to what he could offer and subsequently what his organization could offer. He was also not deceitful but generated mutual benefit for both the company and the client and should therefore not be reprimanded (Humphreys, Amed, Pryor, Hanson, Peppers, Rogers and Borg, 2009; Badaracco, 1998) . Being another manager in the company, I would consult with Armadillo to determine their opinion about their interaction with Knox. My interest would be to determine their derived utility from the interaction for ethical consideration. If they consider the approach dishonest and they believe that Knox initiatives coerced them, then I would explain to them our ethical policies and consider a remedy and a possible action against Knox. Their satisfaction with the initiative would, however, communicate utilitarian ethics because ethics is circumstantial (Badaracco, 1998). I would advise other salespeople to be careful in their sales initiatives because while some clients might consider such acts as ethical, others may be offended because of cultural diversity.

Thessaloníki Case Essay Example for Free

Thessalonà ­ki Case Essay Salonica or Thessalonà ­ki means the victory of Thessalonian and it is the capital city of Macedonia and in Greece it is the second largest city while in the whole of Southern Eastern Europe, it one of the largest city. The city still retains a number of Jewish and Ottoman buildings together with a good number of Byzantine architectural monuments. Thessalonà ­ki was founded by a king from Macedon known as King Cassander at around 315 BC who gave it the name Thessalonà ­ki which was his wifes name and the wife was a half sister to Alexander the Great (David 2004). When the kingdom of Macedon was no more in 168 BC, the Roman Republic took over the city and it became one of its own. The city tremendously grew and it became the capital city of Macedonia. In 379 BC, the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum was split into two which gave rise to the West and East Roman Empires and the new Prefecture named Thessalonà ­ki as its capital city. In 1204, immediately after the capture of Constantinople which happened by the fourth crusade, Thessalonà ­ki was redeemed and it was no longer under the Byzantine. (Donald 2000) In 1246, Thessalonà ­ki was recovered by the Byzantine Empire who later sold it to Venice in 1423 who ruled the city until on 1430 29th March, when Thessalonà ­ki was again captured by Ottoman Sultan Murad.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Over the reign of Ottoman, Thessalonà ­kis Jewish and Muslims increased in numbers and by 1478, the city had a total of 4,320 Muslims and 6,094 Greek Orthodox together with a good number of Catholics but there were no Jews. In order to prevent the Greeks from dominating Thessalonà ­ki, Ottoman welcomed the Sephardic Jews who were thrown out of Spain by Isabella and Ferdinand. For the next two centuries, Thessalonà ­ki grew to be the largest Jewish city in the whole world and it was nick named â€Å"The Mother of Israel† (Albert 1923). The Ottoman Empire was founded by the Turkish Osman but unfortunately it suffered so many problems like, the ancestor of the Mogul dynasty in India, the 1402 attack by the Tamerlane and the Mongol ruler of Samarkand. Constantinople was the main threat of the empire but when he was captured in 1453 it was an advantage to the Ottoman Empire since it was able to stabilize in the region. Thessalonà ­ki was under the empire until 1912, when it was worn back by the Greek about 90 years following the other Greece cities which had already gained their independence from the Ottoman Empire. The destruction of the Ottoman empire was overseen by the Mustafa Kemal who was born and brought up in Thessalonà ­ki in 1923, he later became the president of the Republic of Turkey. He was a very good leader but a dictator but he brought great reform in Turkey and he greatly emphasized on a strong Turkish nationalism which lead to him getting the title of â€Å"Father Of the Turks† in 1935.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   At the beginning of the 20th Century Thessalonà ­ki was dominated by the European but the situation changed and currently it is completely filled by the Greek. (Apostle 1980) In the late 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, Thessalonà ­ki was drastically destroyed by a series of fire which resulted   in to the 1917 devastating fire incident that destroyed so many homes leaving many citizens being homeless and it resulted to the city center being rebuilt and re planned which took a period of twenty five years. In 1978, Thessalonà ­ki suffered a number of drastic earthquakes, which led to many casualties and disruption and it also destroyed many early churches.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   From the time when Thessalonà ­ki came into being which is like 2,000 years ago, the Jewish in that city contributed so much in its development. From the foundation of Thessalonà ­ki the leader of Egypt who was also the initiator of the Ptolemaic dynasty had also acted as a Macedonian General working under Alexander the Great and his name was Ptolemy, I (Donald 2000). He was requested by the founder of Thessalonà ­ki Kassandra to give a number of his Jewish artisans to beef up the team that was building the city. When the Jewish Artisans went to Thessalonà ­ki they did not went back to their homeland after completing their task of rebuilding the city which resulted to the foundation of the Jewish community in Thessalonà ­ki. In 140 BC the Jewish from Alexandria also arrived in Thessalonà ­ki who were later followed by the Jewish from Macedonian who arrived in 10 AD. From the Holy Bible in the book of Acts of Apostles it is recorded that in 50 AD St Paul visited Thessalonà ­ki where he taught in the synagogue which shows that the Jewish community was already established in Thessalonà ­ki by then.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   During the following century very many Jews came to Thessalonà ­ki, but the largest mass migration of Jews to the city happened at the end of the 15th Century. (David 2004) By then the Jewish who were in Spain were doing very well for some time and it resulted into the Jewish community producing very great artists, scholars, artisans, traders, scientists, artists and philosophers. But in 1492 the trend suddenly came to an end when Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain and the inquisition felt like the Jewish were flourishing very much and if they could be given a chance they may be they could have planned on how to overthrow them hence they decided to do away with the threat and they threw them out of their territory. After the departure of the Jewish community from Spain, the Spanish dug out their cemeteries and they even set ablaze the areas where the Jewish were living and they even renamed those places by giving them new Christian names so as to do away and to forget the Jewish community, they even went to an extend of destroying anything that could have brought their memories back.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Ottoman Empire warmly welcomed the Spanish Jewish whom he saw as new taxpayer and he could not comprehend why the Spanish could do away with such important and valuable resource. From the middle of the 15th Century when the Ottoman Empire took over Thessalonà ­ki, that city had been almost abandoned thus the Jewish Community who were later joined by other Jews from different troubled parts had superior strength than other communities who later joined them (Edward 1947). They had authority in Thessalonà ­ki and they worked in different mines, they started the first printing house and just like they did in Spain, they produced very great artists, scholars, artisans, traders, scientists, artists and philosophers. They also did very well in businesses, commerce and in industries while their professionals established their own organizations and charitable institutions. The Jewish lived in prosperity and in harmony with other Christians and their Muslim neighbors they even ganged up with them in war.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Thessalonà ­ki was one of the very important cities in the Ottoman Empire and it remained under the Empire up to the year 1912. Thessalonà ­kis day of rest was Saturday which was the Jewish Sabbath Day. In October 1912, the city was captured by Greek and in March 1913, the king of Greece King George the first was assassinated in the city. In 1915, which was during the world war one, some forces captured the city and they wanted to use it as a base against the supporters of German Bulgarians. Later a mysterious fire accident attacked the city and it caused a lot of destruction and the results of the destruction was that a good number of Jewish population vacated the city and they resettled in different places like, America, Paris and Palestine (Albert 1913). The Jewish who vacated were replaced by Greek refugees who were evicted from Turkey in 1922 after the Greco-Turkish war. This caused the city to increased in size very fast and it was named â€Å"The Refugee Capital† while others called it â€Å" The Mother Of The Poor†. In 1941 Thessalonà ­ki was captured by the forces of Nazi Germany until 1944 but later it was attacked by bombing which drastically destroyed it while many Jewish were exterminated by the Nazis which resulted to only a thousand Jewish population remaining in the city. However, the citys glory was restored since it was rebuilt very fast after the war. (Apostle 1980) Currently Thessalonà ­ki has been transformed into a modern city which has very wonderful roads and boulevards that has been laid out and designed in a grid pattern. The city also has well designed and wonderful shopping streets, restaurants, hotels, concert hall and even nightclubs. Work Cited Albert H., The Government of Ottoman, New York : Alpha Publishers, 1913. Apostle Papagiannapoulos, History of Thessalonà ­ki, Wales :   DA Capo Press, 1982. Apostle Papagiannapoulos, Thessalonà ­ki, LA : Baton Rouge Press, 1980. David Willett, The Greece, West minister : West Minister John Knox Press, 2004. Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, Wales: DA Capo Press, 2000. Edward Shepherd, The history Of Ottoman Empire, LA: Baton Rouge Press, 1947.

Business Report: SimVenture

Business Report: SimVenture This report is based on the engagement with SimVenture a business simulation which allows us as a team to setup and run our virtual company and learn about business and being an entrepreneur. This report evaluates team performance and decision making within the perspective of results achieved in the simulation at the end of three virtual years. This report also reflects the use of relevant entrepreneurial theories into practise while making decisions in the business and clearly stating the financial achievements at the end of it. The report takes you through the initial six months of the business in details where the crucial strategies were developed; thereafter the illustration is only on a half yearly basis. A question with many answers is that what drives people to turn into entrepreneurs to begin companies? Frequently we as individuals are not completely sure ourselves, and the answers to the questions are apt to change over time as our perception keeps changing. The reasons can be divided into two broad categories. First, the reactive reasons being things those are objectionable about working for others. They are the negatives that push us out. And secondly, the active reasons being things that are attractive about having our own business. They are positives that pull us out. Starting a new company is an immense challenge and to those with entrepreneurial impulse, it is very appealing (Kurtako et al, 2001). The attributes that a successful entrepreneur should possess while the start-up of a business is a competitive mind-set, one in which flexibility, speed, innovation, and strategic leadership are valued highly. With this mind set, firms can identify and completely exploit opportunit ies that emerge in a new competitive landscape. These opportunities surface primarily because of the disequilibrium that is created by continuous change. More specifically, although uncertainty and disequilibrium often result in seemingly hostile and intensely rivalrous conditions, these conditions may simultaneously yield significant product driven growth opportunities. Through effective entrepreneurial leadership, growth firms can adapt their behaviours and exploit such opportunities (Kurtako et al, 2001). It is interesting to see the differences between mind-set of an Entrepreneur, Manager and a Bureaucrat from the self explanatory Fig 1. Scenarios and assumptions at the beginning of the game Prior to the beginning of our business, we assumed to have a finance of  £10,000 for start up. The business was supposed to commence with a one man show by our virtual entrepreneur, who had already been working for 40 hours a week in another business. But as a team we had decided each individual to take the decision making responsibility of a particular department, with me being the one in charge of marketing. We initially decided to get our entrepreneur working part time for this new venture at a monthly salary of 500 £. He had been selling computers to friends and families for the past few years and always had a knack towards technology and assembling computers. Having only one sales order in hand for the first month, our entrepreneur intended to begin his business from home so as to maintain his costs as low as possible. At this stage the aspects which are of utmost concern are that he has limited knowledge in sales, marketing and about his local competitors. Our new business was inspired by the venture development stages, namely: New Venture Development, Start-Up Activities, Growth, Business Stabilization, and Innovation (Kurtako et al, 2001). Of these five stages the first stage consisted of activities associated to initial formulation of the venture, which has been mentioned above. The stages into which our business activities over the 3 years of simulation could be split into are Start-Up Activities and Growth. Start-Up Activities Stage The Start-Up Activity encompasses the foundation work needed in searching for capital, carrying marketing activities, taking up competitor analysis and developing effective entrepreneurial skills. This stage is typified by strategic and operational planning steps designed to identify the firms competitive advantage and uncover funding sources. With the availability of limited skills and working hours, in the first month we decided to outsource our firms competitor analysis and market research activities to specialized external agencies, the primary intention behind outsourcing being to get expert and skilled services efficiently. A legal advisor had been hired to specify the terms of a customer contract, not only keeping in mind the benefits of detailing the scope of work and means and methods of payment, but also with a future view to gain trust from prospective clients (a contract can also be seen as a marketing tool) and establishing a strong relationship with them while negotiati ng the terms of the contract. Other major customer awareness activities of the first month were to publish a press release for the launch of the company; joining a business networking group; and creating a standard website, designed and supported in-house to balance time and expenses of our working entrepreneur. Apart from these we had planned to take up a book based writing skills training course for our virtual entrepreneur, to provide him with the expertise of business communications which most small business owners lack in. And we planned to invest on a distributor research, because it is difficult and very expensive to reach a market with many customers with a directly employed sales force. Moreover distributors by and large aim to win business on sales rather than technical services. And our core competence being technical expertise we decided to use distributors to enhance our sales, although they bought products from us at a lower rate. After evaluating the suppliers on the criteria of their prices and flexibility to pay on account, we decided to choose ProSupply as our supplier because of its 60 days credit offering, at an additional expense of 0.5 £ per component. Apart from the legal liabilities of a limited company to maintain accurate information on its financial transaction which includes sales, purchases, income and payments by an organization, book keeping assists any entrepreneur to maintain the business on top of its competition by easily watching how the business is performing. Thus having a small scale start up business we decided to keep this particular activity in house. The second month of our business started on a positive note as we received two grants disbursed by the government,  £500 each: one was for training and the other was for research activities to be conducted. Although we had invested time on the application process for this funding, as a new company with limited finances this allowance was much needed to us. We also happened to receive our customer research report, following which we decided to choose our target customers to be Corporation. This decision was completely based on a few factors from our customer research report: market size, order size, order frequency and typical price. These four factors provided us inputs to calculate the average orders generated per year and the probable sales for each segment. Analysing our market research report (Fig 3) closely we noticed that there were much similarities in the product preferences sections of Corporations and ICT Businesses and both customers catered to a similar typical price ra nge of  £630-680. This made us decide to build a product with preferences that would suffice both the customer segments providing each one of them differentiation on certain product attributes. Referring to Porters generic strategies framework, we were serving a narrow market which demanded product uniqueness, thus we decided to use a differentiation focus strategy to increase our market share rapidly. Also a firm using a differentiation focus strategy enjoys a high level of customer loyalty which discourages other firms to compete directly. Analysing the competition and market report together, we designed our product offering to cater for both the target segments with the following attributes: extreme features, good quality, extreme performance, good style. Thus the product was differentiated for the Corporations with extreme performance, where they had demanded only for a good performance, and for the ICT Businesses with good quality and good style, where they had demanded for above average quality and above average style only. The unit cost of the product was  £452.62 and it was priced to the customers at  £679 initially, which was pretty high as compared to what our competitors were offering. I individually thought for market penetration a lower price was required. The marketing activities for this month were placing an advert in a local newspaper and joining a business community network where we could make our target customers aware of our unique selling points. Apart from this we spent our entrepreneurs remaining time in negotiating contracts with our distributors, namely: Norman, Harton Brothers, Rad, and Aztak, and manufacturing three product units in-house anticipating the future demand. We negotiated with our distributors in terms of size of orders per month, price of each unit of product and the methods of payments. The rationale behind choosing three of them as our distributors was because Normans had the maximum share in ICT Businesses followed by Solo Businesses and Corporations, Harton Brothers had 20% share in ICT Businesses and Rad captured 30%market share for ICT and Solo Businesses. Although Aztak held very little market share with ICT Businesses or Corporations but we still went with them, which I personally feel might not have been an appropriate move. Since at the end of the previous month, the number of enquiries were too low to sustain our business, thus the third month was very crucial for us where we had to take our strategic moves very carefully. Therefore we intended to hire a consultant to carry on a customer research, which we thought would help us find the reason behind the low number of enquiries. Along with a lucky break which resulted in good publicity for our company in the local media, this month we planned to go for a direct marketing campaign with 3000 basic leads bought as a database and promotional materials being designed in house. In the remaining time we planned manufacturing 9 products for future sales. On the fourth month of our business, we received the customer research results which provided us with the statistics of what our customers thought about our product and how did they hear about us. We used this information to fine tune our product design, work out the best marketing approach and get the price right with respect to our competitors. We understood that previously we had set up a very high price for our product to maximise short term profits, which was the reason for us to receive lower number of enquiries which hardly turned into orders. As quoted by Dolgui and Proth (2010), High price is accepted if it agrees with the value of the product perceived by the customers, otherwise such a strategy leads to commercial failure. While a low price can lead to a commercial success depending on the number of clients attracted by the product, but a low margin should be compensated by a higher number of items sold. Moreover with a high or a low price strategy the image of the items s old by the company is somewhat frozen and a long term price expectation is established, which can reduce the flexibility of the decision-making system. Thus justifying the aforesaid analysis we had to set the unit price of our product neither too high nor too low, at  £660, while we were operating in a range where customers were ready to pay from  £630- £680. On the marketing front we managed to attend the monthly business club meeting and exhibit ourselves at the Business2Business matters along with a direct marketing campaign to 3000 leads. Since by now our entrepreneur was overdoing his hours every month which was gradually making him tired, thus we decided to increase his part time working hours to 51 hrs a week and increasing his salary by  £100 to keep him happy. This was the fifth month of our business where we already had sales of 4 products from our last month and another new order for 4 products to be sold this month. The business was gradually taking its pace, but there were financial hurdles in front of us. Due to lack of cash in our account we were unable to pay our suppliers on time. The options we had to borrow money were either through bank loans or friends and family or overdraft or by selling equity. We thought the most viable option we had was to take a loan of  £50,000 for three years at an interest rate of 13% from the bank. Our monthly instalment to the bank summed up to  £1684.70 for three years which was lesser than our monthly estimated profit after selling units to distributors (refer Appendix 1). I individually thought we should have taken our first loan from friends and family instead of a bank because the interest rate was only 5.25%. Eventually in the next month we could have taken a bank loan. There was a business exhibition which was supposed to be held in the month of February, the next year. Having considered the fact that such events would provide us a platform to bring our product in front of the targeted customers and make them aware of it, we booked a place for our entrepreneur in this event, bearing in mind that Corporations were our primary target segment. Apart from this we also booked two more exhibitions for our entrepreneur to attend during the next month. One was an exhibition at New Ventures and the other was at Sparks. We heavily started relying on exhibitions primarily as a mean of marketing and advertisement for our business. We had a very clear marketing plan as a start-up company, which was the process of determining a comprehensive approach to the creation of customers. For developing this plan, the following elements were critical to us: Marketing research: determining who the customers were, what they want and how they buy. Sales research: promoting and distributing products according to market research finding. Sales forecasting: coordinating personal judgement with reliable personal information. Marketing plan: formulating plan for achieving long term marketing and sales goal. Evaluation: identifying and assessing deviations from marketing plans. (Kuratko and Hodgetts, 2007) As a marketing mix (refer Fig 5) for our Product offering we were having a strategy of focus differentiation to targeting only two business client segments. Our Price was set neither too high nor too low and was rationalized by setting it to  £660. We Placed our product through distribution channels, direct and indirect selling and also had a retail shop in place from the sixth month. And for Promotion we used individual communication channels like word of mouth, networking, public relations and direct marketing, and mass communication channels like exhibition, website and advertising. The sixth month was a fortune turner for us when we received 9 orders for the next month. Anticipating this huge number of orders, we already had been manufacturing products from the previous few months, even though at times we didnt have a single order to deliver. Our application for bank loan had been approved and we were able to successfully raise  £50,000 to clear all our pending bills. Having the right communication and marketing skills because of our previous training in the relevant departments this month we decided to create a small advert in-house, for a trade magazine. Since our business was growing bigger, this was the time when we had to decide relocating to a retail unit from the next month which was 100 sq. ft and  £208 of rent per month. Also convenience is an issue for most shoppers, whether its business or individual shoppers, and so sales location can have a major bearing on sales performance. Since we were only operating in a B2B environment we developed the fo llowing business model (refer Fig 6) where our products were reached to our customers either buy the distributors (which gave us less profit but large number of sales) or through our retail shop (which gave us higher profit but lesser number of sales). Because of the sudden rise in sales, hereafter we had to follow a model where most of our manufacturing had to be outsources and the remaining was to be built in-house. This month onwards we transited from the Start-Up Activities stage to the Growth Stage of our business. Growth Stage The Growth stage often requires major changes in entrepreneurial strategies, which is reformulated because of competition and other marketing forces (Kurtako et al, 2001). Thus now onwards our primary focus became the management of various departments involved in our business including the various stakeholders: direct customers, distributors, suppliers etc. The planning of operations was a major part of our start up venture. From the self explanatory Fig 7, we had adopted the bottom-up and the market requirements perspectives to design our operational strategy. The bottom-up view of operations strategy was to see strategic decision making as an accumulation of practical experiences. After all, our business would find it difficult to invent strategies in a total vacuum. Our ideas were formed from our previous months experience of dealing with customers, suppliers and their own processes. These were strategic ideas which emerged over time as our organisation begun to understand the realities of the situation. The market requirements perspective begun from the commonsense notion that our operations strategy should reflect what our business was trying to do in its markets. Our competitors competed in different ways; some competed primarily on cost, others on the excellence of their products or services, others on high levels of customer ser vice, others on customising their products and services to individual customer needs, and so on. Our operations function therefore had to respond to this by providing the capabilities which allowed us perform in an appropriate manner to satisfy the requirements of our market (Slack et al, 2007). After the initial breakthrough in the sixth month of our business, the next six months were more or less running at a constant pace, with 7-9 orders every month on an average. We did have to improve our product design based on the Customer Research results and by comparing our offerings with that of our competitors. We attended a marketing exhibition and carried out marketing campaigns with other sales activities almost every month to keep our enquiries and order numbers high. Apart from that, instead of failing to cater to our increased order rate every month, we kept manufacturing products by primarily outsourcing the major bulk of it at ( £452.62+ £80)  £432.62 per unit and partially building it in-house. By the end of the first year our business had again dried up in cash, thus making us unable to pay suppliers on time. It was time to consider a funding option again to cater to our growing business needs. As overwork was making our entrepreneur tired, this affected the sche duled tasks being incomplete in few of the months during this span of six months. We had the option of recruiting an employee for our business which I individually thought as the wisest option, but as a group we thought it wouldnt have been affordable for our entrepreneur in terms of time and money to opt for a new employee at this stage of our business. Thus we increased his part-time working hours and paid him a larger salary, doing our best to keep him happy and motivated. Previously and in future we not only did motivate him with only extrinsic factors like money but also encouraged him with intrinsic motivational factors like relevant training in various departments, namely: Production, writing skills, design and development, basic finance, business management, IT, communications skills, marketing and sales which helped him build a entrepreneurial identity of his own (enhancing his business qualities as an entrepreneur). In the first six months of the second year our main focus was to look out for the most feasible source of finance to our business. With the various options available in simventure, a bank loan of  £30,000 was the most viable option, which got approved within a span of three months. There was a noticeable increase in number of orders, the average being around 11 orders monthly, but on a couple of occasions the count had spiked to 16 and 17 orders which resulted in generating cash inflow for our business in the later months. During this period we also realised that the insufficiency of cash in our account was due to the fact that some of our customers did not clear their bills on time. Thus we had to take on the Credit Control strategy to closely observe all our customers who owed us money. A process was implemented which adhered to three steps. The first step was to send our customers a written reminder to clear their dues. If this didnt work the second step was to give them a phone call in the same regards. And if the first two steps failed then the final step was to take a legal action against the defaulter by hiring a third party agency who charged us 20% of the recovered money. In this process we had to compromise on shedding off a part of our profits rather than agonising our suppliers by failing to pay them on time, which could have lead to termination of our contract with them. During the last six months of our second year we had an average of 13 orders which was more than before. There had also been a dip in orders to 9 in number during the month of November and December. During this period we also decided to hire a few resources (namely: Premium Equipments, Premium Furniture, Premium Tools, Premium Transport) for our retail space to cater to the smooth running of the business as we were constantly growing. The marketing, advertising and sales activities were more or less similar to the previous half of the year, with our entrepreneur planning to attend more number of exhibitions for ICT Businesses apart from Corporations. The first six months of the third year saw a little decrease in orders, with the average being 11 orders a month. Because of this our entrepreneur had more time than the previous six months, which he decided to invest in an aggressive marketing campaign to create a base for the last six months of the third year of our business. He had also suffered from illness for 5 days during this period. The last six months of our third year was the span in our business where we received the most number of orders, the highest being 19 in the month of August. Our business had an added advantage, i.e. the economy became stronger resulting in rising of customers confidence in us. With Net Assets of  £240,077.47, Fig 8 depicts the financial health of our business at the end of the third year. And Fig 9 highlights the sales vs. Profit for the 3 years showing that although there had been continuous increase in sales over the three years, but the profit maximization was only achieved in the 2nd year of our business. This is because of the fact that with the increase in cost of sales in the third year of our business we didnt increase the product price, which resulted in decrease of profit margins, when compared to the previous year. Conclusion Throughout the span of this report we have been focussing on the competitive and entrepreneurial mindset of a start-up business owner, by recognizing and exploiting the opportunities that came across. We have been discussing about the entrepreneurs engagement in key areas of strategy, marketing, operations, finance and HR which enhanced the performance of our organization. The critical evaluation of decisions taken over the three years span of our business has given us an understanding of how differently various obstacle could be tackled. We begun from the star-up activity stage of a business simulation and happened to reach the growth stage in our business, by developing and nurturing our abilities as an entrepreneur while taking vital decisions at various junctures across the span of three years of entrepreneurship. Appendix 1 Distributor Order size Price / unit Fixed cost / unit Overhead Cost* Profit / unit Cost of total sale Profit per month per distributor Normans 10  £599  £452.62  £90  £56.38  £5,426.20  £563.80 Harton Bros 15  £594  £452.62  £90  £51.38  £8,139.30  £770.70 Aztek 5  £604  £452.62  £90  £61.38  £2,713.10  £306.90 Rad 25  £589  £452.62  £90  £46.38  £13,565.50  £1,159.50 Total 55  £2,386  £1,810.48  £360  £215.52  £29,844.10  £2,800.90 *Note: Overhead cost is estimated by adding Manufacturing cost (i.e.  £80 for any order above 25 units) and miscellaneous cost ( i.e.  £10 kept as a margin) Table : Distributor Analysis Source: Adopted from SimVenture

Macbeth - A Tragic Hero :: essays research papers

William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, written in the 1600’s is a perfect example of Shakespeare’s ability to manipulate his audience through creating a tragic hero. A tragic hero who, because of a flaw, tumbles from a well-respected hero to a cowardless murderer. It is through Shakespeare’s manipulation of figurative language, dramatic conventions and social expectations of the seventeenth century, do the audience witness the demise of this mixed up man. Macbeth’s persona of the tragic hero is enhanced even more when the characters around him influence his decisions, creating mayhem inside his mind and disorder throughout Scotland. Shakespeare positions his audience to respond to the central theme: the struggle between good and evil, by illustrating to the audience his weaknesses, which through the guidance of the supernatural, leads to murder and mayhem and eventually madness. It is this influence of the supernatural that leads to Macbeth’s t ragic persona and in turn his physical and mental destruction. Shakespeare utilises these techniques to embody in Macbeth characteristics indicative of that of a seventeenth century tragic hero. Aristotle described the Greek image of the tragic hero as one who takes: part in a fictional account of a set of events that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude.† (The Poetics) Macbeth conforms to the image of the tragic hero by possessing a flaw and dying because if it. His flaw of being led too easily is evident through the actions of characters who influence Macbeth. Macbeth is involved in a story intertwined with evil, disorder, conflict and failure; all resulting finally in his death. Part of being a tragic hero is possessing a flaw. A flaw which will inevitably lead to self-destruction; the fall of the tragic hero. In the play, the central protagonist Macbeth, is confronted with the supernatural and the prophesy of becoming king. He cannot help but want this position, as this flaw also includes his weakness through over ambition. It is generally said that those possessing a flaw will die. The first Thane of Cawdor was a traitor, Duncan was too trusting, Banquo did not act on the knowledge he had about Macbeth’s murders, Lady Macbeth helped plot the murder of Duncan, and Macbeth destroyed the natural order and harmony of the time. All of these d eaths are a result of Macbeth’s over ambition to become king, fuelled by the prophecies of the evil witches. Like Macbeth, a tragic hero has choices, a conscience of right from wrong and in the end must die, because to live would create mayhem and a feeling that his actions were justified.

Summary of Oedipus Rex Essay -- essays papers

Summary of Oedipus Rex Summary for "Oedipus Rex" The storytelling method that is employed in most classical writing, i.e. the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as Greek tragedy, allows for the development of two stories. One is the story of the "now." The "now" is told through the actions and events of the play or story. The other story that is told is the "past." The "past" is composed of stories that are told by characters and gives needed background information about the main characters and events. In Oedipus Rex, the realization of Oedipus's tyrannous rise to power is the "now" story. The story of Oedipus's birth and placement in the world is the "past" story. Both of these stories are woven into the play and each holds a place in the overall telling of the story. The "now" story in Oedipus begins with the scene in front of the palace of Oedipus at Thebes. In this scene, we find out that Thebes is experiencing hard times. The citizens of Thebes have come to Oedipus to find a solution. He sorrowfully tells them that he can think of no solution to the problem, however, he has sent Creon to ask the god Apollo for help. Creon returns and has good news. Apollo has given him the knowledge to remove the pestilence that is in Thebes. Oedipus, along with the other citizens of Thebes, is very interested in this information. Creon tells that the only solution to the pestilence is to expel the murderer of Laius, the former king of Thebes. Once again there is an unanswered question. How to find the murderer of Laius? Oedipus and Creon's pondering of the situation results in only one lead. One of the men that accompanied Laius when he was murdered lived through the ordeal. He knows only that it was a group of robbers that murdered Laius, not a single man. Seeming to be stuck on this problem, Oedipus takes the advice of Creon and sends for the seer Teiresias. Teiresias arrives. He does not bring the same news that Creon brought. Creon brought hope but Teiresias brings mystery and fear. He refuses to divulge the answer to the question because he worries that the knowledge could bring more harm then good. Oedipus, at first, pleads with Teiresias to realize the information and then begins to threaten him. Eventually, Teiresias explains that Oedipus is guilty of the crime, and that Oedipus is the answer to the question. Oedipus, now outraged, accuses... .... He learned, instead, that he was fated to kill his father and lie with his mother. After hearing this, he fled. On his flight, he came to a crossroad in which a carriage of men shoved him from the road. He became angry and killed them all. Unknowingly, he had just killed Laius and fulfilled the prophecy of patricide both he and Laius had been given. The rest of Oedipus's history is just the completion of his abandonment and confirmation of his heritage. These come from the messenger and the herdsman. The messenger tells the tale of how he had received Oedipus in the mountains from another man and he had brought Oedipus to Polybus to raise. He told that Oedipus was not of Polybus's blood. The herdsman told how he was the agent that tied Jocasta's tale and the messenger's together. He was the man to whom Jocasta had given the baby Oedipus. He told how he could not abandon the baby in the mountains and thought that it would be safe to give the baby to a man from Corinth, the messe nger. With the completion of this tale Oedipus knew that he was the offspring of Jocasta and Laius and that all of the prophecies were true. He then proceeded to blind himself and live a life of a wanderer.

Impacts on Social Media Essay

As we begin to discuss social media and is impact on mass communications as a whole, we must first define what it is and how it came to be. The Dynamics of Mass Communications defines social media as a set of Internet tools that encourages content sharing and community relationships. Users are able to create online communities by exchanging, distributing and receiving content information. Social media has rapidly integrated itself into our personal and professional lives over the past decade or so. Information is more available to the public today because of social media. The history of social media started with the BBS (Bulletin Board System) in the late 70’s. Most BBSs were involved in illegal or other shady practices like adult content, virus codes, and instructions on hacking and phone hacking, but BBSs were the first type of sites that allowed users to log on to it and interact with one another. This interaction was a lot slower than what individuals are used to in today’s society. Genie was created by a General Electric subsidiary (GEIS) in 1985 and was an early online service. It was a text-based service, and was considered the first viable commercial competition to CompuServe. This specific service was created to make use of time-sharing mainframes after normal U>S. business hours. Not too long after, America Online (AOL) started as an online service and made great strides with making the Internet more universally accessible within the United States. In 1988, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was developed and used for file and link sharing and even keeping in touch with others. Readers could classify it as the father of instant messages as we know it today, though it was limiting access to most people. Touching the topic of early social networks, dating sites are sometimes considered the first social networks. Dating sites began to crop up just as soon as people began to get online with the Internet. These sites allowed users to create profiles with a photo and contact other people. Let’s not forget about Classmates.com, but dating sites and Classmates.com rarely  allowed you to keep a friends list and profiles appeared to be severely limited. The actual social networks like Six Degrees and LiveJournal were a tad bit more advanced than what dating sites had to offer. Six Degrees allowed users to create a basically-static profile while LiveJournal was created in 1999 and was a social network built around blogs that were constantly updated that encouraged other users to follow one another and form groups to interact. It wasn’t soon after that social interaction had found its way to online games. World of Warcraft is one the most famous for allowing players to interact both in the game would and on related forum and community sites. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games became popular in the early 2000’s though there were indeed other role-playing and other games prior to that. Additionally, the early 2000’s brought more advanced social networks and social media to the playing field. Some examples that most people are familiar with would be Friendster (2002), YouTube (2005), MySpace (2006), Facebook (2004), Tumblr (2006), Twitter (2006), and Instagram (2010). All these networks took a toll on millions and billions of people around the globe. People are more connected and up to date because of them. Social Media as a whole has brought a lot of positive effects to the world as we know it today. Social Networks started as a place to connect with your friends in an easy, convenient, and free from charge way. Social networks play an important role with social media. It has allowed individuals to connect with old friends from school, co-workers, and even with complete strangers. It has also provided us with the opportunity to build back a lost relationship or even better relationships with whom that are unable to meet us personally, and involve them with our lives and even take input into their personal lives with specific events that are happening with us. We are now able to communicate our thoughts and perceptions over different topics with a large number of audiences. Our voices are heard louder than ever with the help of social media and social networks. For example, with the Trayvon Martin case, people used social media to conduct marches and protests. On social networks, like Instagram, users blocked out their profile picture to show their involvement for wanting justice for that specific case. We have the option to make groups with people who are like minded and share the  related news with them and ask for their opinion or input about the topic. Far as businesses, they are using social media and social networks to promote their own products and there are a number of customized applications that are being made on social platforms, whose main and only purpose is to promote the product or brand given to them. The negative effects of social media seem to be quite questionable. Studies have shown that the extensive use of social media can quite frankly cause addition to the users. Throughout the day, people tend to feel the need to post something on their pages and check other posts as it has become an important part of everyday life. Extreme usage of social media had resulted in isolation of the individual. The level of human interaction has decreased tremendously and people appear to be less active. Individuals would rather check their smart-phones or tablets than actually picking up a book or a newspaper per say. Interpersonal communication has reduced and there aren’t many face to face communications and meetings being held because many people have lost their full ability to converse while being in the same room. Social Media is also affecting the productivity of people. Users are more distracted. Again, I must state that people are so caught up in texting, blogging, updating a status, and posting any and everything that it to the point where they cannot get specific things done. A prime example would be texting while driving or being on a social network while attempting to write a research paper or even complete homework. According to media bistro, the average person spent three hours and seven minutes online each day in 2012. It appears as online media becomes more popular; other media sources become less popular. People are not reading magazines, newspapers, listening to the radio, or watching television as much as they used to. As the popularity of social networks and online video increases, so does our time online. YouTube has more than one billion users that visit their website each month. Seventy two hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The list just goes on and this also goes for Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Pinterest, Hulu, and Instagram. It seems nowadays that there are social and user-generated sites for just about every activity you can possibly imagine. There are social shopping sites and social financial planning sites. There are even sites to share goals and meet like-minded people. Sites to plan your travels and share them with others. There are so many apps and sites that accommodate the average person for me to say that social media has indeed made life better for people. Social media has become a huge part of millions of lives worldwide. On the other hand, social media has made everyday life harder or horrific for everyday people. Because social media has grown in popularity and mainstream, it can be used by stalkers to track their victims or even find new ones. Social networks make these privacy settings available to users to help prevent stalkers and predators from being able to see their update. In addition to stalkers, we must also consider cyber-bulling. Cyber-bulling has increased over the years and has affected a lot of social network users. These things can make it harder on individuals. One final thing that needs to be discussed is the fact that the people who have degrees to be covering the news face their job being at risk. News stations and news broadcasts are now up with competition against social media and social networks. This is because people use their mobile devices to obtain the news now a days. This is because it is more convenient to access things from your phone than to take time out to turn on the television or go buy a newspaper. This could make everyday life harder for them if they lose their job. Social media has come a long way since the days of BBSs and IRC charts and social media continues to evolve on a daily basis. With major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements, it’s sure to keep evolving in the coming years. While in many ways social media has allowed us to share everything from the simplest to most sacred events of our lives with more people in real time, it has also taken away from the action of â€Å"living in the moment.† The one thing we can all conclude is that social media is not just a phase, and it most definitely won’t be going away anytime soon or at least until something better comes along. WORS CITED http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/how-social-media-made-me-better-person http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-social-networking/ View as multi-pages