Pros and Cons of Partnership as a Form of Ownership Essay Example for Free

Pros and Cons of Partnership as a Form of Ownership Essay Q.1 Identify the pros and cons of the partnership as a form of ownership? A partnership is formed when two or more people engage in a business activity and share investment, profit and loss. Just like any other form of ownership, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Following we discuss some of the pros and cons of a partnership. Pros of the Partnership (1) Ease of Formation: Partnership is comparatively simple to form. All you need to form a partnership is an agreement. A verbal agreement is enough to start a partnership however it is much recommended that partnership be formed based on a written legal partnership agreement. (2) Funding: Partnerships generally have a low startup cost. With two or more people investing capital in the company, the business will have a much stronger financial ground. Two or more people can also have better access to outside funds needed to run the business (3) Divided Responsibility: In a partnership responsibilities of running a business are shared by the owners. Shared responsibilities ease the work load on individuals and can also increase productivity by splitting responsibilities in a way that individuals can use their special skills to maximize the output. (4) Support: Owning and running a business can be very demanding, challenging and stressful. Having a business partner can give you a little peace of mind because a partner can provide moral support when needed. (5) Taxation: The income profit/loss in a partnership flows through the business to individual partners for taxation. In other words the partners are taxed only on the basic of personal income i-e how much loss or profit a partner endured. Cons of Partnership: (1) Liability: In a partnership both partners have un-limited liability (not in LP and LLP). Both partners are responsible for not only their own actions but also the actions of their partners. So, if your partner fails to pay a debt, you personally are responsible for paying that debt and vice versa. If someone sues the partnership and the business doesn’t have enough money to cover the expenses than the partners personal assets will be at stake. (2) Conflicts and Disagreements: Partnerships are for the long term and over the course of time conflicts arise and disagreement happens. Whether these are personal or management style conflicts. They can adversely affect the business. When general partners don’t agree it can delay the decision making time of the company and a bad conflict is enough to dissolve a partnership. (3) Dependence on Partners: The success of any partnership depends heavily on contribution from all partners. If a partner withdraws the business will be crippled, if a partner dies the partnership can die with him. Moreover you can’t make any business decision on your own you’re dependent on your partner. (4) Difficulty Withdrawing: It is not that easy to get out of a partnership. Whoever needs to withdraw will be personally liable for any monetary obligations due at the time of withdrawl. Q.2 Discuss funding options for small business? In order to run a business you need capital. Getting the money together to start a new business is the top priority of any entrepreneur. There are several ways to finance a small business. Following are some options for financing a small business. (1) Personal Resources: Using your own assets is the most common form of small business financing. You can use money from your saving, ask family or friends for capital or use a credit card. (2) Loans: In order to startup a new business, entrepreneur borrows money from the banks. The banks charge an interest rate on the money lent. The business owner must pay the original money borrowed plus the accumulated interest over the life of the loan. In today’s economy it is not easy to secure a commercial loan with the bank. A better and easier way for a new business to get a bank loan is with loan guarantee from the SBA. (3) Angels Investors: Another way to fund a small business is by private investors. Angel Investors are individuals who have a lot of money and are looking to invest a large amount into a profitable business for financial gain and profits. (4) Venture Capital: The companies who fund promising and high potential companies in exchange for ownership shares are known as venture capital firms. Venture capital is the money provided by venture capital firms to startup businesses that are perceived to have a long term growth potential. It has a high risk for investor but also has potential for above average profit returns. 3. Determine and discuss how managerial accounting can help managers with product costing, incremental analysis and budgeting? Managerial accounting provides accounting information needed by managers inside an organization to run its day to day operations. It provides managers with financial information’s needed to make sound business decisions. Managerial accounting information includes budgeting, product costing, performance reports, variance analysis and financial ratios. Following we look at three managerial duties that rely on information received from managerial accounting: (1) Product Costing: Product costing is the process of accurately determine the cost of a single product, by analyzing all the expenses that accrued from the beginning (raw material) to the end (sale). In traditional costing method indirect costs are applied to products, based on an overhead rate that is predetermined. The traditional costing system is easier and much simpler but fails to add the cost of non-manufacturing goods that are associated with the production of that item. (2) Activity Based Costing: Activity Based Costing is a new method in costing. It’s much more complicated that the traditional costing system. ABC gives a much more accurate product cost. Under activity based accounting associated with production of an item is determined and priced. This priced activity is than assigned to every product that requires the prices activity for production. Managerial accounting provides managers with the financial information needed to determine the cost of a manufactured product. (3) Incremental Analysis: Incremental Analysis is a decision making tool. It is used for the analysis of financial information needed to make an informed decision. In incremental analysis two different alternatives are weighed out in terms of cost/profit and the impact of the outcome of this analysis will have on a particular decision. It basically points our related cost and revenue of each alternative and the impact this alternative will have on future income. After using incremental analysis and choosing one alternative over the other. The cost change that occurs due to choosing the alternative is called incremental cost. Managerial accounting provides us with the numbers needed to compare two different alternatives, pick the right one and analyze the difference in cost. Budgeting: It helps managers plan and control costs and revenues. Budgeting is a tool for managers to determine how much money needs to be spent in order to generate a certain level of income. Budgeting in simple terms can be called forecasting; in budgeting we prepare a very detailed statement of financial results that are likely to happen in a time period to come. Companies use budget to plan for a future period based on financial statements. Managerial accounting provides managers with the financial statement for budgeting. Q4. Discuss the basic components of the marketing process using the product or service of your choice as an example? Marketing strategy can be described as an activity to position a product, attract customers while promoting the interest of stakeholders in a business. Marketing makes it possible to communicate the value of a product or service to consumers. Following the basic components of marketing process is explained briefly using artificial jewelry as a product. (1) Product Strategy: Methodologies, tools and technology used by a business to differentiate and distinguish its product from its competitors, is called product strategy. In terms of artificial jewelry my strategy would be to describe my product in full detail including where it was made, who it was designed by and what metals were used in its formation. I would also set my product apart by choosing appealing packaging and I would back the quality of my product by giving guarantees. And above all I would provide exemplary product designs and excellent customer service. (2) Pricing Strategy: Pricing Strategy is very important in marketing because it generates a turnover for the company and it’s also important because it affects other components of marketing as well. In terms of artificial jewelry first I would do a thorough research on competition prices, than I would calculate my final cost and select a pricing objective. I would compare my sale price with that of my competitors, and make sure that my price is lower than the competitors and value of my product is higher than the competition. Initially, I would keep my profitability low and will try to build clientele base by providing unbeatable prices. (3) Distribution Strategy: Distribution plays a very important role in marketing strategy. It involves how well the final product is delivered to the consumer. The product must be delivered to the end user in the right quantity, at the correct date and time. In terms of artificial jewelry most of my sales will be distributed at shows and festivals organized by different entities and a major part of my sales is also going to be web based. I will contact different shipping companies to find out the best courier in terms of price and value. And ship my jewelry through the best medium, at minimum amount of tie. (4) Promotion Strategy: Promotion Strategy is also vital part of marketing. A promotion strategy includes all the ways used by companies to provide information about their product in such a way that it would ultimately increase the company’s sale. In terms of artificial jewelry I would offer some sort of coupon and advertise my discount. Offer free shipping (when possible), maintain customer relations and send out promotional information to existing clients. Q.5 Discuss the role of social responsibility and technology in the marketing function. Social Responsibility in Marketing: Being socially responsible for an organization means that it cares and shows concerns about the people and environment in which they conduct business. Marketing can be described as promotion, selling and distribution of a product. Social responsibilities in marketing would first of all include truth telling about their product , all the information about the product should be correct and up to date. Companies should be concerned about their environment and take steps to make a cleaner. Companies should also show support for social causes in marketing. Company should market their product in a way that it doesn’t offend any group of people. Technology in Marketing: The technological boom in the past years had definitely revolutionized marketing. The internet has created numerous marketing opportunities for businesses. Now days there are numerous marketing firms that work exclusively on the internet. At first radio changed marketing, than TV and now it’s the age of hand held devices and internet. Marketers now days know that constant technological advances require evolution in the marketing process. With technological advances it’s much simpler and quicker to get customer feedback. It is much simpler to deliver the product to the customer and to do market research and maintain your brand reputation. Technology had had a great impact on marketing.

How Learned Helplessness Can Impact Patient Satisfaction Nursing Essay

How Learned Helplessness Can Impact Patient Satisfaction Nursing Essay Ever since To Err is Human did patients really start to care about the quality of care they received from their physicians, hospitals, and healthcare organizations. However, healthcare organizations had already recognized the importance of patient satisfaction several years earlier. Many organizations started measuring patient satisfaction as a way to judge the perceptions of how their patients viewed their experiences while under their care. There are many facets to measuring patient satisfaction but to date the concept of learned helplessness has not been incorporated into the mix. Learned helplessness is a phenomenon occurring in many places in our society. It affects how we work, interact with others, conduct our business, and employ our thoughts and views on healthcare. When experience with uncontrollable events leads to the expectation that future events will also be uncontrollable, disruption in motivation, emotion, and learning may occur. That phenomenon has been called learn ed helplessness (Cemalcilar 2003). Armed with a better understanding with how learned helplessness plays a role in patient satisfaction healthcare settings will be better able to alleviate this discomforting phenomenon and thus should raise patient satisfaction scores. This paper serves as a vehicle to investigate the concept of learned helplessness combined with a review of patient satisfaction and provide guidance for research to further our understanding of the relationship between the two. Literature review: Learned helplessness came about by accident in 1965 by Martin Seligman and his team while studying the relationship between fear and learning. Seligman observed an unexpected behavior while investigating Pavlovs theory on stimulus and response. Seligman didnt pair the bell with food but rewarded the dog with a small shock while restraining the dog to keep it from running away. The researcher thought that the dog would experience fear after hearing the bell and would try to run away or display some other type of behavior. After this the dog was placed into a box with two compartments divided by a low enough fence that the dog could see the other side and escape if the dog so desired. To their amazement, after the bell was sounded the dog didnt try to run away but instead just laid or sat on the one side of the box. The researchers repeated the test but instead of sounding the bell they gave the dog a small shock. As was the case with the bell the dog decided to stay on its initial sid e of the box. The test was repeated with a dog that had never been subject to any of the previous experiments and when given the shock the dog took flight and jumped over the small fence to escape. What was decided was that the first dog, while being restrained, learned that trying to get away from the shock was pointless and the dog had no control over its destiny and was therefore helpless. Some researchers have contended that the dog just thought he was being punished for some act of wrongdoing or that the end of the pain from the shock was indeed the reward. However, this behavior has been used in a variety of situations which will be explained here in an effort to learn more about this phenomenon. Learned helplessness has detrimental effects on children. They develop a lack of self-confidence in challenging tasks which result in deterioration of performances (Dweck, Davidson, Nelson, Enna, 1978). These children do not develop good problem solving strategies and can suffer from lack of attention and think that all of their efforts are fruitless. Children like this are often held back a grade in an effort to bolster their social and academic skills. In the end, they get a message that they are worthless and hopeless (Berger, 1983). These children may be inadequately prepared to take on new learnings and perform out of the ordinary tasks. Failure become synonymous in these childrens vocabulary and repeated efforts may do little to change their outlook. In Eriksons view, he suggests that children with few successes will become inferior which leads them to have a low self-esteem (Berger, 1983). Most learned helpless students give up trying to gain respect through their academic pe rformance so they turn to other means for recognition. They may become the class clown, bully or tease. When they begin adolescent years they try to gain respect through antisocial behaviors (Berger, 1983). With learned helpless children, competence is almost entirely destroyed. They lose confidence within themselves because they experience failures, leading them to believe they are failures. They might feel competent about something at first but if they fail in that activity they wont bother to try it again for fear of failure. Autonomy is also faint in a learned helpless students life. They feel as though they have no control over their environment because no matter how hard they tried in the past, they never succeeded. As for relatedness, learned helpless students feel as though they dont belong because they believe that they dont relate to the environment. This is why they become the class clown, bully or tease in order to get their recognition. These results may include becomin g an antisocial individual during their adolescent years or earlier. These three factors are all detrimental to an individuals growth and development in our social world today. There have been a few scales conducted and measured trying to use this construct in a variety of situations. The majority of these studies utilized learned helplessness as a secondary construct in explaining either complaint behavior (Lee and Soberon-Ferrer 1999) and measuring the relationship between empowerment and learned helplessness (Campbell and Martinko 1998). The study showed that there were many differences between empowerment and learned helplessness. Another study was conducted in a hospital setting with a reported reliability of 0.85. It had a positive relationship with Becks hopelessness scale (r=.252) and a negative correlation with Rosenbergs Self-Esteem scale (r=-.622) (Quinless 1988). Another way it can affect people is through different emotions such as pessimism, futility, risk aversion, depression, and self-esteem. It has been defined in people as a state of which the consumer cannot control their destiny or outcomes and therefore relinquish control over a certain situation. What research to date has been conducted to study patient behavior with learned helplessness? Raps et. al (1982) found that the longer a patients length of stay was the worse the patient performed on cognitive tasks that index learned helplessness. First, they determined this because of a perceived loss of control by the patient. Second, increased hospitalization resulted not only in increased deficits but also in increased vulnerability to identical deficits produced by minimal amounts of uncontrollable noise, suggesting that the process underlying the deficits in the no-noise conditions is learned helplessness produced by hospitalization. Third, increased hospitalization disrupted performance at the problem-solving tasks, but not at the verbal intelligence test-replicating the previous results from laboratory studies of learned helplessness and suggesting that the deficits of our subjects were not a general deterioration but instead a more specific difficulty with new learning (Rap s et al. 1982). Fourth, increased hospitalization produced increased depressive symptoms that covaried with poor performance both across and within conditions. This pattern suggests again that perceptions of helplessness caused the observed deficits, since depression involves a diminished sense of efficacy (Raps et al. 1982). Faulkner (2001) set out to investigate the relevance of learned helplessness and learned mastery theories in the respective development of dependence and independence in older hospitalized people. Faulkners experiment shows how an exposure to uncontrollable or disempowering circumstances potentially places patients at risk of developing learned helplessness. This condition has the potential to retard self-care performance in the absence of supervision, direction, or active personal assistance thus rendering patients dependent (Faulkner 2001). Moreover, this dependence may not remain specific to the task within which LH was induced, but may generalize to affect patient performance in other activities. To date the accepted scale to use when measuring learned helplessness is the LHS scale developed by Quinless and McDermott-Nelson. A conceptual definition is necessary in order to further explore this phenomenon. Learned helpless can be defined by a state in which a person thinks that they cannot control their own destiny and the life experiences which happen to them. This definition incorporates the key elements found throughout the research: loss of control, depression, low self-esteem, pessimism, and defeat. Learned helplessness can have the potential for explaining some variation in patient satisfaction scores. In order to further explore how the two are interrelated, an investigation into patient satisfaction must be employed. Patient satisfaction: With the effectiveness of medical care being increasingly measured according to economic as well as clinical criteria, the inclusion of patients opinions in assessments of services has gained greater prominence over the past 25 years (Sitzia Wood 1997). As health care budgets come under scrutiny, so consumers in the West have become more critical of the health care provided, organizing and claiming rights as active participants in the planning and evaluation of health services (Sitzia Wood 1997). An increase in interpersonal relationship interest sparked the development for a need to understand the patient-physician relationship which gave rise to patient satisfaction measurement. Consumer advocate groups such as the National Consumer Council produced Patients rights, which influenced the rise of consumerism in healthcare. The term patients rights became the rallying cry for Patients to have more control and say about the care that was extended to them. What then determines what pa tient satisfaction is? Linder-Pelz (1982) approached a definition of patient satisfaction through five social-psychological variables proposed as probable determinants of patient satisfaction with health care. These are outlined as: Occurrences-the event which actually takes place, and perhaps more importantly, the individuals perception of what occurred; valueevaluation, in terms of good or bad, of an attribute or an aspect of a health care encounter; expectationsbeliefs about the probability of certain attributes being associated with an event or object, and the perceived probable outcome of that association; interpersonal comparisonsan individuals rating of the health care encounter by comparing it with all such encounters known to or experienced by him or her; and entitlementan individuals belief that s/he has proper, accepted grounds for seeking or claiming a particular outcome. Ware et al. (1983) gives a more definitive taxonomy with eight dimensions: interpersonal mannerfeatu res of the way in which providers interact personally with patients (e.g. respect, concern, friendliness, courtesy); technical quality of carecompetence of providers and adherence to high standards of diagnosis and treatment (e.g. thoroughness, accuracy, unnecessary risks, making mistakes); accessibility/conveniencefactors involved in arranging to receive medical care (e.g. waiting times, ease of reaching provider); financesfactors involved in paying for medical services; efficacy/outcomes of carethe results of services provided (e.g. improvements in or maintenance of health); continuity of careconstancy in provider or location of care; physical environmentfeatures of setting in which care is delivered (e.g. clarity of signs and directions, orderly facilities and equipment, pleasantness of atmosphere); and availabilitypresence of medical care resources (e.g. enough medical facilities and providers). CMS has mandated the HCAHPS measures of patient perception of quality of care as a c ondition of Medicare participation (Griffith White 2007). CMS (Medicare) states the supplier shall conduct beneficiary satisfaction surveys and make the results available upon request and/or listed on their Internet website (if applicable). The supplier shall document and review on a quarterly basis a percentage of beneficiaries satisfied with services. These surveys include questions that are divided into five groups: Your care from nurses, Your care from Doctors, The hospital environment, Your experiences in the Hospital, When you left the Hospital, Overall rating of the Hospital, and Demographic questions. These questions must be incorporated into commercial patient satisfaction surveys and publicly reported. In some cases referring physicians may act as agents for their patients and are concerned with clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction and cost. This is important because if they are not satisfied with their patients responses, they may divert their patients elsewhere. However there are some concerns for those that dont buy into patient satisfaction scores. These fall into the category of social-psychological artifacts. LeVois et al. (1981) states that Social desirability response bias argues that patients may report greater satisfaction than they actually feel because they believe positive comments are more acceptable to survey administrators. Similarly, ingratiating response bias occurs when patients use the satisfaction survey to ingratiate themselves with researchers or medical staff, especially if there are any reservations over the anonymity of respondents (Sitzia Wood 1997). Why then study patient satisfaction? Typically patient satisfaction surveys are after the services have been rendered and the patient has left the hospital or physicians office. Most of the surveys use a 5 point Likert scale with 5 indicating excellent or highly satisfied and 1 being poor or highly dissatisfied. Most managers think that getting an average of 4s is very good or good enough and trying to achieve a 5 rating is too costly or time consuming. This is not the case. Many managers also think that they should focus on unsatisfied customers but research has shown that no matter how much time, effort, and money they invest, there will always be a small percentage of patients that are dissatisfied. Managers should then focus on moving those four ratings to fives. When it comes to customer loyalty, excellent has a different meaning from the other rating categories (Otani et al. 2009). Highly satisfied customers are the ones that are loyal and return for their next encounter or recommend others to the same physician o r facility. This usually comprises of about 75% of the physicians business so it is imperative that they keep this group happy and highly satisfied. In an emerging competitive market such as healthcare, managers should focus on achieving excellent ratings to distinguish their organization from others (Otani et al. 2009). Patients that are merely satisfied will seek care elsewhere and look for other providers. Even though the cost of switching hospitals is quite high, patients have more choices now than they did in previous eras. What are some other reasons to highly satisfy these patients? Satisfied patients tend to comply with prescribed medical treatments (Ford, Bach Fottler 1997). Due to an increase in chronic conditions, it is more imperative that patients follow the treatment process prescribed. This can reduce length of stays and lower readmission rates thus reducing costs. Also, it decreases switching. When a patient changes physicians, he or she may be required to retake te sts, which increases the patients costs and may hurt the patient (Otani et al 2009). Another factor is patient satisfaction is now considered a key part of the healthcare quality improvement initiative (Shortell and Kaluzny 2000). Many managed care organizations use patient satisfaction data to determine reimbursement rates to healthcare providers, and many leading companies will not contract with health plans that do not require a patient satisfaction survey. Providers with positive patient satisfaction survey results may receive more financial incentives than providers with poor patient satisfaction survey results (Kongstvedt 2001). In addition a 1 standard deviation point increase in the quality of pt/physician interaction equals a 35% lower chance of a patient complaint for the primary care physician, and a 50% lower chance of a patient complaint for a specialist (Saxton et al. 2008). Saxton (2008) also reports that a one standard deviation decrease in patient satisfaction equal s a five percent increase in the physicians risk management. Compared to physicians in top satisfaction scores: Physicians in middle 1/3 of scores had malpractice lawsuit rates 26% higher while Physicians in bottom 1/3 of scores had malpractice lawsuit rates of 110% higher. According to Saxton (2008) the top five patient priorities are: Response to concerns/complaints during stay, Degree to which hospital staff addressed patients emotional needs, Staff effort to include patient in decisions about their treatment, How well the nurses kept the patient informed, and Promptness in responding to the call button by the patient. One issue not investigated thoroughly is the billing activities of the hospital or caregiver. Richard Clarke, HFMA CEO and President has stated the best care, and great customer service provided during the patients hospital encounter can be destroyed quickly by confusing, complicated, or incorrect billing afterwards (Swayne et al. 2008). According to Swayne (2008, the top five hospital bill features that irritate customers the most are: confusion about what the patients insurance company has paid, confusion about the balance the patient owes the hospital once the insurance company pays its share, use of medical terminology that the patient does not understand, sending a bill to the patient before the insurance company has processed the patients claims, and inability to determine exactly what services the hospital has provided and what the patient is being charged for the service. Follow-on activities are also another area that the physician or caregiver can alter patient satisfaction scores. Many providers think that once the patient is out the door the experience ends there. After a patient has been seen by a physician or is leaving the hospital after surgery, there is a likely need for further services: a child with an ear infection has to return in 10 days for another check-up to make sure the infection is no longer present; after hip surg ery a patient may need to be relocated to a rehabilitation facility to learn to walk again (Swayne 2008). All of these additional services are value adding service activities. All of these factors play a role in learned helplessness as the patient may become frustrated by not having an excellent experience throughout the visit or after the visit. Proposed study: This paper shall utilize the current learned helplessness scale (LHS) and apply it to see how it moderates patient satisfaction scores. Method of study: The proposed model for this study is: Patient Satisfaction Scores Internal State of patient Patient Experience Learned helplessness Learned helplessness This research was consistent with the often used S-O-R paradigm. This paradigm assumes that environments contain stimuli (Ss) that cause changes to peoples internal or organismic states (Os), which in turn cause approach or avoidance responses (Rs) (Mehrabian and Russell 1974). It is anticipated that higher levels of learned helplessness will negatively impact patient satisfaction scores. The area most anticipated are those consistent with loss of control in fulfilling the needs of the patient, like care from the nurses, care from the physician especially in information sharing, and billing issues from either the hospital or the insurance company. The construct will be viewed as a moderator. In general terms, a moderator is a qualitative (e.g., sex, race, class) or quantitative (e.g., level of reward) variable that affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between an independent or predictor variable and a dependent or criterion variable. Specifically within a correlation al analysis framework, a moderator is a third variable that affects the zero-order correlation between two other variables. In the more familiar analysis of variance (ANOVA) terms, a basic moderator effect can be represented as an interaction between a focal independent variable and a factor that specifies the appropriate conditions for its operation. (Baron Kenny 1986). Data collection: Data collection shall be the most challenging facet of this study. It is important to gather rich data that will either support or disprove the theory that learned helplessness lowers patient satisfaction scores. A large enough sample is to be gathered in order to fully demonstrate this phenomenons capability. The LHS will be distributed along with the chosen hospitals patient satisfaction survey and patients will be asked to complete them. It may be necessary to delay the distribution of the survey so the patient has ample time to be contacted or experience learned helplessness form billing issues that may arise. After a sufficient number of surveys have been returned to the author, statistical regression methods will be employed to assess statistical significance as it relates to learned helplessness and patient satisfaction scores. Different factors can be cross-tabulated to see if there are any generalized effects on the scores like age, race, financial, and educational positions . Model fit could be assessed using SEM or other methods to ensure proper allocation and model assessment. Limitations As stated before data collection shall be difficult in performing this study. Hospitals may be reluctant to allow a researcher, independent of the organization, access to their patients and their satisfaction data. This reluctance could be over a variety of factors including patient privacy, fear of inappropriate scores released to the public, and a general distrust for academic research. It may be necessary to conduct this study as a joint venture so the hospital may learn from this study as well as the researcher. Another limitation is patient recall. This is always a factor since consumer recall plays a role in remembering perceptions, actions, and behaviors that occurred in the hospital or caregivers office. Since billing is an issue with learned helplessness, the delay in presenting the surveys may affect memory recall. The last limitation may be that of the construct being studied itself. Since there is little research on learned helplessness as it relates to patient satisfacti on or patient experience it may be difficult to determine how strong a score on the LHS scale must be to fully realize an effect on patient satisfaction. Conclusion: This paper has outlined the construct of learned helplessness and how it potentially could interact with patient satisfaction scores. Patient satisfaction scores are of the upmost importance to hospitals and caregivers as it affects their quality ratings, their allocation from CMS, and their reputation in general. While this project is a major undertaking, the author feels that it is worthy of such time and effort as patients and caregivers seek to further understand the patient experience in healthcare settings. This paper has outlined a course of action and while this project needs to be further investigated, it lays the necessary framework for a study worthy of journal submission. Future research could fully implicate different ways that learned helplessness is formed in different healthcare settings allowing for richer analysis into how patients react to different perceived outcomes. Hospitals and caregivers should be able to use information from this study to redesign their pati ent satisfaction surveys to allow them to gather richer data and use this to improve satisfaction scores which ultimately affect the bottom line. In this new age of healthcare reform, it is imperative that healthcare organization strive in every effort to raise the bar of patient outcomes, not only physical outcomes but mental outcomes as well.

Strategies for Utilising IT in Business Operations

Strategies for Utilising IT in Business Operations EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Carsem founded in the year 1972 and had been acquired by Hong Leong Group in the year 1984. Carsem had been allocating most of its revenue in the research and development to maintain its position in the market. The main objective of this report is to understand how Carsem utilize it available information technology (IT) infrastructure in operating the daily business processes associate with the challenges it faced. Analysis carries out enable the challenges to be group into three categories which are management, organization and technology perspective. In the generation of this report help had been provided by Mr. Chai and Mr. Koay (IT engineer from Carsem IT department) in the investigation of Carsem IT infrastructure and the challenges its faced in the maintaining of those infrastructure. Apart from that this report also evaluates and proposes on the cloud computing which will help to minimize and overcome challenges identified. Clouding had been recognized as a latest delivery model and provides comprehensive services which allow Carsem to compete in the market without the needs to spend an excessive investment in which this investment may be channel for organization products and services research and development. Cloud computing comes with a list of benefits and costs in which Carse needs to analyze and weight to which extend the clouding is needs in ones organization business processes. An organization that had decided to adopt clouding need to realize the cost associated with the implementation and come out with a series of strategy to transform those costs to benefits to be further competitive advantage in the industry. Parts of the benefits associate with clouding are: Reduced in the IT infrastructure investment. Automated system and application updates Allow IT to shift focus in the development of new program Highly secure infrastructure by the vendors Parts of the costs associate with clouding are: Organizational changes which lead to organization culture shock Information security issue Control issue over the data and information stored in cloud 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Carsem Carsem, a leading provider of turnkey packaging and test services to the semiconductor industry, and offers one of the largest package and test portfolios in the world with recognition of one of the largest in unit volume production in the industry. Carsem have proved to be one of the six largest independent semiconductor sub-contract assembly houses in the world. As a member of the Hong Leong Group (Appendix 2), the company has been operate in the assembly and test services for over 25 years with over 10000 employees and assembles in excess of 100 million units each week with 65 percent of this volume is fully electrically tested product. Carsem has three high-technology manufacturing factories (as shown in Appendix 5). Carsem organizational structure as shown in Appendix 3. 1.2 Carsem Strategy To be competitive in the industry and establish a long term relationship with customer, Carsem need not only compliance with Moores Law, which stated that device complexity doubles about every 18months (as shown in Figure 1 Appendix 4); but also to responses progressively to the Moores Second Law, which stated that cost increase on a semi-log scale (as shown in Figure 2 Appendix 4). To coherent with the Moores Laws, Carsem Technology Center (CTC) had been established as a Research and Development department in drive for the cost competitive and technology advancement. The role of the CTC as stated below and Carsem latest technology solutions such as system in package (SiP), copper wire bond (Cu WB), etc (as shown in Appendix 6) are some of the effort by CTC. Re-invest existing products for cost and efficiency Develop new capabilities in processes and equipment to push existing design envelopes Introduction of new materials per assigned material roadmap Drive towards a center of excellence for Semiconductor Subcontractor Packaging Provide a platform for the Nurturing and Education of Carsem Engineering Graduate Program 1.3 Carsem Services and Products Carsem incorporated with highly sophisticated equipment to ensure that the services stated below meet with the quality standards (as shown in Appendix 7) set by the automotive, telecommunication, computer and consumer electronics industries. Carsem is not only a world leader in manufacture of the MLP package with over 12 billion units shipped worldwide but also excel in the services of designing modeling of new package and process. Carsem offering a full range of turnkey test services for RF, mixed-signal, linear, digital and power devices. Product groups for each factory are shown in Appendix 5. Services: Packaging and Assembly Test Services 1.4 Carsem Vision and Mission Carsem employees strive to improve in quality, productivity, delivery, services and cost in order to be competitive and profitable in lieu with Carsem Vision and Mission shown in Table 1. The homepage URL of the Carsem Semiconductor is: http://www.carsem.com/. 1.5 Semiconductor Industry Semiconductors, or microchips, are tiny, powerful devices that control electrical current. They work like electric switches, either blocking or conducting the flow of electrical current. The best known semiconductors element is silicon. As per the Wikipedia, the semiconductor industry is the aggregate collection of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductor devices, or microchips. Semiconductor industry had been considered as a high-technology industry by where the companies allocate a large sum of their revenue to research and development. The industry is recognized as a key driver for economic growth in recent years by where the development of new semiconductor products, manufacturing technologies and applications has lead to the development of other important industries, such as computers, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. The industry consists of four main products as shown in Table 2. In year 2009, Intel still remains as the market leader for 18 consecutive years despite the global semiconductor revenue decline on year 2009. Mean while as per the source from iSuppli Corporation, the global semiconductor revenue on year 2010 had growth to $304 billion with a growth of 32.5 percent compare to year 2009. Top 20 semiconductor suppliers ranking recorded by iSuppli Corporation such as Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, etc as shown in Appendix 8. 2. CARSEM INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE 2.1 Computer hardware platform Carsem engaged with Dell and Acer on it client machines; meanwhile Dell, Sun and Hewlett-Packard (HP) had been chosen in the support of it Server machines. The reason behind the choice is none others that cost related decision and the after sales service support and maintenance. 2.2 Operating system (OS) platform Carsem had been adopting in Microsoft Windows (Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows NT4) for years in managing the resources and activities of the client machines. Linux, inexpensive and robust open-source software; Microsoft Windows Server 2008, most flexible and robust OS had both need the choice of Carsem for it server OS. Sun Solaris is also another OS by Carsem in managing it server machines. The need to control and reduce IT spending and license cost had been the main factors for above OS selection. 2.3 Enterprise software application Carsem had been attached with Oracle and Microsoft for years such as Oracle Database, SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange 2010, Microsoft Office, etc for it enterprise software application. The interrelationship between OS and enterprise software application had make Carsem to make such a decision with the consideration of Carsem needs. 2.4 Data management and storage Carsem selected Dell Equalogic Storage area networks (SANs) network-based storage technologies which connect multiple storage devices on a separate high-speed network dedicated to storage. The SAN with it huge storage capacity and stable performance is suitable for Carsem business processes. 2.5 Networking and telecommunication platform, Internet platform Carsem wide area network (WAN) had been attach with Telekom Malaysia (TM) providers for years due to the provider able to provide Carsem with a customized package pricing. Apart from that, WAN network equipment such as network termination unit (NTU) circuit, Cisco router is provided by TM as well. Carsem had been using Cisco router and switch for it local area network (LAN) for years for it is a market leader. Mean while as per management direction Dlink Wireless AP had been the choice in support Carsem wireless local area network (WLAN). To further align with management direction cost related, Carsem had been deploy with Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) under Asterisk for the recent years. 2.6 Consultants and system integrators Carsem maintain a continuous consultation contract with it providers such as Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, and TM due to providers able to provide a consistence and prompt service as needed. Providers professional skills and experiences on the infrastructure often give a handy solution to Carsem in a timely manner to minimize the factory losses due to the IT infrastructure down time. 2.7 Choice of Carsem In general the factors affecting the selection of IT infrastructure in Carsem including the management direction, business processes, budget, licenses, ease of use, life span, support, maintenance, associated partnership gain and etc. Take one examples, in choosing the brand of client computer hardware, there might be a number of vendors offering the same specification. But due to the product life span and in house supporting, Carsem had chosen Dell. Reason for engaging with Dell for years is due to the redundant to change by where the organization will need to go through a total change and adopt all necessary. Although the process is onetime deal but if the change does not generate a great improvement and additional benefits there is no value to make the change. This potential changes will also resulting in significant increase of the company cost. Another factor that is affecting the selection would be on the cost basis, by where the selected providers able to provide the infrastructure is a relatively low price compare to its competitors. This point is also applied to the maintenance cost. Dell solid reputation proven to be a reliable and prompt support services provider and that is another reason of Carsem choice. Dell also provides complete solution through its partnerships with software vendors such as Microsoft. As per Ratnam (Carsem former group IT Manager), Carsem manage to get Microsoft licensing through Dell so that the servers and desktops supplied to Carsem arrive with pre-installed software, all within one purchase order. For examples, in selecting an OS platform, Microsoft is preferable over others due to the system is more flexible and robust by where it can support a wide range of application included a third party software. 2.8 Carsem challenges in managing IT infrastructure Carsem faced with a legacy IT infrastructure that could not be accommodate the expanding manufacturing orders, the organization wanted to consolidate its server environment. The larger Carsem user base, the more diverse the environment, the greater the challenge will be. Some of the challenges are as per Table 3. Table 3: Challenges in managing IT infrastructure 3. CLOUD COMPUTING 3.1 Cloud computing Cloud computing, ‘a new delivery model; refers to style of computing in which various resources servers, applications, data, and other often virtualized resources are integrated and provided as a service over the Internet (Australian Government, Department of Finance and Deregulation, 2011). Cloud provides virtual server, software, store and secure immense amounts of data, application, which is accessible only by the authorized applications and users. Cloud computing eased the integration of photos, maps, and GPS information to create a mash up in customer Web browsers. As per professional like US National Institute of Standards and Technologys (NIST) and Sun Microsystems, 2009, cloud computing is pay-per-use networking computer with a minimal management effort and service provider interaction. Visual of NIST working definition cloud computing as shown in Appendix 9. 3.2 Cloud computing characteristic and types In general there are five essential characteristics that promote the cloud model included on-demand self service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service. In detail cloud computing enable user to adopt and devise various resources as ones requirement without interaction with the services providers at any available clients platform such as laptop, mobile phones or PDAs. User gathers necessary resources through clouding in a flexible manner without the awareness on the resources location in a pay-per-use method. Detailed descriptions of each characteristic are shown in Appendix 10. Cloud computing can be on public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud depending on an organization requirement (Appendix 11). Temporary application may be deploy in a public cloud due to cost censes and likewise a dedicated application should adopt a private or hybrid cloud. 3.3 Cloud computing services models Cloud computing providing a comprehensive services from hardware to applications and all this services may be grouped into three categories: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as per Appendix 12. Organization will choose a cloud service based on the organization specific business, technical, and operational requirements. SaaS is a model that offers software as service over the internet. SaaS eliminates the need to install and run the application on the client hardware. PaaS providing a computing platform as service which compliance of cloud infrastructure and cloud applications. IaaS services deliver a virtualization platform for computer infrastructure. The top cloud computing providers such as Amazon, Google, 3Tera, etc are shown in Appendix 13. 3.4 Cloud computing trends Could computing isnt a new technology or a new architecture; its a new delivery model. This model is still an evolving paradigm. As per NIST, cloud computing definitions, use cases, underlying technologies, issues, risks, and benefits will be refined in a spirited debate by the public and private sectors. These definitions, attributes, and characteristics will evolve and change over time. In general cloud computing is like weather, full with uncertainty but a trend can be observed through it grow. The top ten cloud computing trends of current clouding are as stated below (Appendix 14). 3.5 Cloud computing solutions 3.5.1 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Amazon EC2 is a specialized IaaS by where it provides a sizeable computing capacity to an organization through clouding. Amazon EC2 with the pay-per-use concept allow an organization to scale up and down as per the latest computing requirement by only paying for capacity the organization actually use. It saves the needs for an organization to spend heavily on its IT infrastructure in order to operate its business processes. Amazon EC2 allows an organization to have complete control over the selected combination of instances, operating systems and software. With the highly reliable environment and numerous securing mechanisms, Amazon EC2 providing an assurance service to an organization. With the Amazon CloudWatch, an organization can had an overview of its resources utilization and performance at own pace. This solution is suitable to be adopting by Carsem as it coherent with the business processes and environment requirement. 3.5.2 Google App Engine With its specialties in PaaS, Google App Engine enables an organization to develop and host applications on the cloud platform without the needs for the organization to hold any server. With no set-up costs and recurring fees, an organization will only need to pay on the resources such as storage and bandwidth that are used by organization to support those applications. Google App Engine with its ability to automatic scaling enables an organization to scale up and down according to its current needs. 3.6 Cloud computing benefits and costs Clouding able to reduces organization hardware and overall IT expenses, apart from the benefits of pay-per-use. With the scalability of the clouding, organization may choose to expand its storage without the needs to pay an expensive price for the hardware and the programs. The availability of Cloud solutions enables an organization to run project at own ease and increase the deployment of new products. There is no payment needed by the organization on the future updates due to clouding provide automate updates services. Clouding reduces IT focus on system administration work such as manage servers and application upgrades and channel their skills in integrating the legacy system with the new cloud solution. The availability of templates allows the implementation and deployment of cloud services is much easier and minimizes the needs of IT. Clouding also enable users to access and updates information anywhere as their own convenience. Data are being managed and protected by the skilled vendors and the amounts of infrastructure needed had been the responsible of the cloud providers. This will ease the pain of an organization in deciding on the purchasing and the maintenance of the infrastructure base on the rapidly increasing workload. With the high secure infrastructure by the cloud providers, an organization is being relief off the infrastructure disaster such as power lines cut off, flooding, fire, security, etc. Clouding able to reduce the run time of an applications and enable the batch jobs to be completed in a short time frame so that management able to make a prompt decision. As the cloud services is provided via internet, internet service loss may result an organization unable to perform its business processes or unable to make a prompt decision. Due to the physical infrastructure locations is unknown to the organization, the data and information might run at risk of not be compliance with local privacy requirements. Apart from that organization might run at a risk that the data being expose to others users especially for public cloud which might had hundreds to thousands user. Organization might loss of control over its storage due to had no insight of cloud provider contingency procedures whether there are any backup, restore and disaster recovery. Organization might run into cloud providers that are using different application programming interface which resulting both application unable to synchronize. Below table summarize a list of benefits and costs in running cloud computing. 4. CLOUD COMPUTING ADOPTION Carsem need to take into consideration forces such as market demand, business strategy, IT department strategy, IT assessment and competitors IT infrastructure related services in the implementation of cloud computing. 4.1 Market demand for Carsem services Semiconductor industry had been growing in a pace and face constant demand for products. In order to maintain its position in the market, Carsem needs to ensure that its customers, suppliers and employees are satisfied with the services provided. Currently Carsem facing with the challenges of maintain a good rapport with its customers by where queries unable to be attended on time and customers facing a hard time in getting a real time product status via extranet established by Carsem. Apart from that suppliers also having difficulty in monitoring the raw materials inventory level for a prompt replenish due to no inventory tracking system established. There is no real time data shared with the oversea sales team which will enable the team to make an on time potential sales decision due to the data are locked away with the factory. Mean while information availability to the in house employees to make an immediate disposition is an existing challenge, as the information is only made available to a specific level of employees with granted access right. 4.2 Carsem business strategy Carsem goal of maintaining as a leading semiconductor sub-contract assembly house by providing zero defects products in a reasonable pricing achievable through a series of strategy such as maintaining a good relationship with the customers, continuous improvement system towards zero defects, quality control measurement, on-going research and development of high-technologies products and comprehensive monitoring system. In order to maintain a good relationship with customers, on time delivery and products information visibility need to made available. To further impress the customers, Carsem employees will need to be able excel in operational, services and technology delivery. A good monitoring system will ensure that the product deliver on time with zero defects, never the least ensure that Carsem inventories is in a healthy state. Continuous improvement system such as employee suggestion system (ESS) or operators advancement training program will ensure that the employees equipped with needed information for their job. 4.3 Carsem IT department strategy IT department is a crucial department in driving Carsem business strategy to meet with market demands. The department prior tactic is to conduct a throughout analysis by department basis to understand each department requirements and access needs towards the use of information system. The result will enable the IT department to create a fitting system to drive the business strategies smoothly to achieve information sharing and better decision making. Therefore total cost ownership (TCO) analysis is needed to justify to which extend an investment is needed. TCO included direct costs and indirect costs such as software and hardware acquisition cost, setup cost, maintenance cost, infrastructure cost, downtime cost, space and energy cost associate with non other the hiring cost. Management will be able to make a wise decision base on the TCO analysis. 4.4 IT assessment IT department strategy will lead to the need of IT assessment, as an appropriate IT tools are key to IT strategy success. IT assessment will be consisting of an inventory check on the current IT infrastructure available in house in comparison to IT infrastructure needed in association of the IT strategy drawn. The assessment will also need to take into consideration whether the IT infrastructure compatible with individual department needs. Apart from internal assessment, external assessment is also critical. A comparison also need to be carry out between IT infrastructure suppliers to enable a better choice; taking into consideration the factors such as cost, support, standard, licensing etc. IT department need to ensure that there is a database information available persistence to customers IT infrastructure so that Carsem data and information successfully directed to customer. The most common systems used in today market included ERP system, data mining system, information sharing system, reporting system to resolve current challenges faced by Carsem effectively with future expansion therefore cloud computing will be the optimum environment to run above mention system. 4.5 Competitor services and investment In terms of the hardware platform, Carsem nearest competitor is engaged with Dell and conducting with dos system for its software. In general, Carsem and its competitor are offering the same standard of services to its stakeholders. To a certain point, Carsem competitor had a better system by where they had establish a share point system by where it allows employees to upload and share documents thru share point portal. In term of the operation system support, Carsem is gaining an advantage as Carsem had engaged with MES system compare to its competitor which still yet to develop to the MES. 5. CONCLUSIONS 5.1 Recommendations Carsem should go for cloud computing to be at the edge of competitive advantage. Cloud computing solutions such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Google App Engine are suitable to be adopted by Carsem. The stated clouding solution will ease off the burden such as managing issues, financial costing, and maintenance problem and in the mean time promote a secure environment for data storage and enable the user to access whenever and wherever they like. 5.2 Summary of findings Carsem had been rapidly growing to achieve competitive advantage in the semiconductor industry. Through the competitive forces model, it is get to know that Carsem is facing with the problem of satisfying its stakeholders due to the incompetence IT infrastructure. Carsem will also need to ensure that both its business strategy and IT strategy are aligned to meet with the markets demand. Additional knowledge of its competitors services and IT infrastructure investment are some essential forces in determining Carsem success. Challenges identified associate in managing Carsem IT infrastructure can be grouped into three categories which are management, organization and technology perspective. Carsem need to realize that information system is the key for solving business problems. As such information system needs to be managed wisely to gain competitive advantage in the market. Information delivers on time will save up time and in turn resulting in cost saving.

Good Use: What is it Good For? :: Teaching Writing Education

Good Use: What is it Good For? I sit here at my computer surrounded by writings about good use. They are beside me, in front of me, next to me. I have read them all many times and I still wonder if I have figured out an answer to "What is good use and what is it good for"? Good use is something that I feel is ingrained in us from kindergarten on. We are taught the proper way to write and the proper way to talk. It distinguishes the educated from the uneducated. Oh, we may try to say that good use does not matter, but we notice when 'bad use' is evident. We see words that are misspelled and sentences that make no sense at all. We hear words used totally out of context or mispronounced. We try not to be judgmental, but, in the back of our minds, there is a little gnome whispering little opinionated thoughts about the ignorance before us. Okay! Okay! I can see everyone getting defensive on that last comment. But if we are honest with ourselves, it is true. We talked in class about good use being a class distinction. There is no avoiding it. Of course, there are the extremes. The example of Niles from 'Frazier' is the utmost extreme in constant good use. Or is it? Maybe it is just an example of class. But Frazier would be of the same class as his brother and he does not speak in such extremes. This is very sad. Now I am arguing with myself in this paper. I think I have triggered an idea, though - Niles is not an example of good use. He is using a dialect that he is comfortable with, that is not common among us. It makes us think of good use because it is so formal. The dialect does consist of good use, but it is not the epitome of it. Frazier and even his Dad speak in ways that would constitute good use. You do not have to use formal english to be considered using good use. Now it may sound like I am getting away from the class distinction, but I don't think that I am. I think the class still shows up, especially in people who have not had a chance at an education. Then there is a definite lack of good use, as we know it.

Management Policy :: essays research papers

OPERATION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT All organizations have operations.† A manufacturing company may conduct operations in a foundry, mill, or factory. Our interest is in the management of operations, or operations management (OM), including the usual management cycle of planning, implementing, and monitoring/controlling. The driving force for OM must be an overriding goal of continually improving service to customers, where customer means the next process as well as the final, external user.  § Since there is an operation element in every function of the enterprise, all people in all jobs in every department of the organization should team up for improvement of there own operations management elements. Teaming Up with Customers What happens when suppliers and customer are disconnected? Consider design work, for example. Whether we speak of goods or services, time- and distance separation in the supplier-customer connection invites trouble. Question: â€Å"What’s your Job?† Question: â€Å"But isn’t your job to serve the customer?† In grocery stores, where the supplier-relationship is immediate, the operations manager system is hard pressed to maintain a customer focus. The customer is the next process, or where the work goes next. A buyer’s customer is the associate in the department to whom the purchased item goes; a cost accountant’s customer is the manager who uses the accounting operations-where the design will be produced or the service provided. It is also clear that throughout the organization, people not only have customers, they are customers. Let’s turn our attention to what customers want. A Short List of Basic Customer Wants The requirement is a recipient’s or customer’s view of a good or service. A close partnership with the customer’s actual requirements. A close partnership with the customer helps create good specifications, increasing the supplier’s ability to f ulfill the customer’s needs. What else do customers want? Customers have six requirements of their providers: High levels of quality. High levels of service. Low costs. OPERATIONS STRATEGY An organizational commitment with wide ranging effects, such as continuing improvement in meeting customer needs, is called a strategy. Strategy itself is necessary because of competition, and successful strategy ensures that company strengths match customer requirements. Integrated Business Strategy To accomplish its aims, the business team must plan strategy in all four-line functions. A comprehensive strategic business plan deals with issues affecting the whole organization: employees, markets, location, line of products and services, customers, capital and financing, profitability, competition, public image and so forth. Management Policy :: essays research papers OPERATION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT All organizations have operations.† A manufacturing company may conduct operations in a foundry, mill, or factory. Our interest is in the management of operations, or operations management (OM), including the usual management cycle of planning, implementing, and monitoring/controlling. The driving force for OM must be an overriding goal of continually improving service to customers, where customer means the next process as well as the final, external user.  § Since there is an operation element in every function of the enterprise, all people in all jobs in every department of the organization should team up for improvement of there own operations management elements. Teaming Up with Customers What happens when suppliers and customer are disconnected? Consider design work, for example. Whether we speak of goods or services, time- and distance separation in the supplier-customer connection invites trouble. Question: â€Å"What’s your Job?† Question: â€Å"But isn’t your job to serve the customer?† In grocery stores, where the supplier-relationship is immediate, the operations manager system is hard pressed to maintain a customer focus. The customer is the next process, or where the work goes next. A buyer’s customer is the associate in the department to whom the purchased item goes; a cost accountant’s customer is the manager who uses the accounting operations-where the design will be produced or the service provided. It is also clear that throughout the organization, people not only have customers, they are customers. Let’s turn our attention to what customers want. A Short List of Basic Customer Wants The requirement is a recipient’s or customer’s view of a good or service. A close partnership with the customer’s actual requirements. A close partnership with the customer helps create good specifications, increasing the supplier’s ability to f ulfill the customer’s needs. What else do customers want? Customers have six requirements of their providers: High levels of quality. High levels of service. Low costs. OPERATIONS STRATEGY An organizational commitment with wide ranging effects, such as continuing improvement in meeting customer needs, is called a strategy. Strategy itself is necessary because of competition, and successful strategy ensures that company strengths match customer requirements. Integrated Business Strategy To accomplish its aims, the business team must plan strategy in all four-line functions. A comprehensive strategic business plan deals with issues affecting the whole organization: employees, markets, location, line of products and services, customers, capital and financing, profitability, competition, public image and so forth.

Movie Analysis: “Goodfellas” and “A Clockwork Orange”

Goodfellas: a film on Juvenile Delinquency. The film â€Å"Goodfellas† by Martin Scorcese showcases the day-to-day life of a Mafia family. As compared to other mafia movies that focus on an individual character, Goodfellas showcased the mafia account as a whole, general point of view. The movie’s main character is Henry Hill, whose transition from a street scum to a mafia became the main plot of the story. All the other events were more in-depth analysis of the formation of a mafia family, its management, its initiation, and its ups and downs (Cannon, 1997). Henry Hill dreamt of a mafia life. He spends time on the streets, looking at working-class people, thinking about their clothes, cars, and basically every luxury that he could dream about. For him, mafia is the only way to achieve a luxurious life. He started running errands for small time gangsters, until one time, Paul Cicero took him under his wing as his apprentice. He became Pauli’s sort of a right hand. As an apprentice, he has adopted some of the mafia ways, and came into liking it, getting accustomed with it. Young Henry’s ways were never a good sight for his parents. They didn’t like him getting along with his gang that’s why they always fill him with arguments, telling him to get away from them. But he never listened to what they say. He liked the gangster life: he easily gained a following, using these people to scare others, thus gaining â€Å"respect† from many people. You are respected by a lot of people if they fear you, and that’s what Henry Hill wanted to earn. Henry failed his schooling, something that his parents never found out, since he put on some frighteners on the postman to make sure that the letters from the school never reaches his parents. There came a time when Henry was arrested by the local police. He was investigated, asked who was with him, but he chose to put a tight lid in his lips. He never squirmed, even with the threats and the physical pains that they gave him. Unknowingly for Henry’s part, he has just completed the final part of the initiation; he is now officially a â€Å"goodfella.† He has been tested by the top leaders of the mafia family, including Pauli, James Conway, and Tommy DeVito. The following years were the â€Å"good times† for Henry. Money was flowing like water for him. The respect he was looking for back then is easily given to him at these good times; even the cops fear him and give him respect. At a certain point in his career, he met a fine young woman, Karen. This Jewish girl becomes his wife and bore of his kids after a few years. Meanwhile, Henry hasn’t given up on a life of a women and wine, wherein he has mistresses and keeps on going into nightclubs. Well, they can have anything they want in these â€Å"good times.† The glory days came to an end when another member, Tommy, killed an important mafia member. Pauli and Henry wind up in jail, but their lives were merely affected: they’re respected even in prison. But his family suffered. Karen was deserted by the people she trusted because there is no more Henry to earn them respect. While in prison, Henry became addicted to drugs. This broke him to half the man he was before. It was then became his problem when he was finally released. A Clockwork Orange. This is set in the future England, 30 years from the actual time that it was made. It revolves around the character of Alex de Large, age fifteen; a leader of a small group of gangsters, which calls themselves as â€Å"droogs.† His activities revolve around deriving pleasures from classical music, to raping various women, and ultraviolence – a random act of unjustified, extreme violence (Dirks, 1996). Alex’ character is basically full of negative aspects, wherein he is used to abusing other people just for the fun of it. He is sent to school by his parents but chose to skip and not attend at all. He has an eccentric character which is justified by his terrarium and a pet boa named Basil. He also has an expensive audio system: a stereo sound deck that plays most of his classical recordings collection. The reign of the evil Alex after an arrest: this was set-up by his droogs. He learns that the person they robbed died, leaving him as the only suspect for the crime, as a murderer, not just a robber. He was sent to prison with 14 years in his head. After two years, he was given a chance to be set free by means of a parole. This is through a deal: he will be a test subject of a certain Ludovico technique, wherein it was said to solve societal crimes. Because of that, he became incapable of violence, and also not able to touch naked women, and not being able to stand Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. When he was released, he has nowhere to go. His parents did not welcome him in their own house. While wandering in the streets of London, he encountered previous acquaintances. These people were oppressed by the evil Alex. Apparently, they have returned the favor and all attempted to kill him. They were assaulting him, and Alex is left with nothing to do but run. The Ludovico left him as a violence-free man, wherein he can’t fight back, even in self defense. He came into the woods and came into a house of a writer. The writer discovered that it was Alex who has raped his wife and has beat him to a pulp. He then drugged Alex and planned to drive him insane by making Alex hear the Ninth Symphony in full blast. Alex decided to kill himself by jumping out of the window, but he did not succeed in killing himself. The movie came to an end with Alex returning to his old self, and a narration, telling that he was cured. Characteristics of Juvenile Delinquents. Looking closely at how the movies portrayed these delinquents, it could be generalized that these delinquents exhibit certain characteristics different from their peers. These characteristics can be classified as either fundamental personality factors, mode of social interaction, or some background traits. It could then be seen as that this traits could be significant indicators of delinquent activity in a person. This is essential in finding out the sources or causes of certain delinquencies, thus making it easier or better to understand these people (Mason, 2004). Fundamental personality factors are often seen as the major trait of a certain delinquent. They exhibit these traits in front of the people, unknowingly or knowingly, since it is their innate trait in them. These traits include hyperactivity, alcoholic tendency, and psychosis. They are often small in stature and of poor health conditions. These are more on the males than the occurrence in females. Their outlook towards the society, or their social interactions could also be a proof of their delinquency. This is associated with bad temper or short temperedness, which is commonly found on most of the delinquents. The traits that are indicators of their social interactions can be unpopularity among peers, disruptive behavior is school, a difficult childhood as perceived by parents, violence towards others, and poor performance in school works and activities. Theories of delinquency. The theory that could be applied in the movie â€Å"Goodfellas† was the Strain Theory. This is theory states that the conditions of a society which could be detrimental to the success or social status of a person could cause him to become a delinquent. In the movie, the young Henry Hill was transformed to become a juvenile delinquent because of his dream of becoming a mafia, because he wants to alleviate his position in life. He is living a poor life, that is why he was somewhat driven to live a life of a gangster. This is a solid manifestation of juvenile delinquency under Strain Theory (â€Å"Strain Theory†, 2001). The theory that could be associated with the movie â€Å"Clockwork Orange† is the Self –Control Theory of Delinquency, proposed by Gottfredson (Welch, 1998). In this theory, it is stated that self control is the main theme in which crimes originates. It is not deterministic; hence the people who engage on these crimes seek a sort of gratification, a certain pleasure that is why they engage on various analogous behaviors. These behaviors that provide this short time pleasure or gratification are smoking, drinking, gambling, irresponsible sex and much more. These are commonly manifested by criminals, who are looking for that instant achievement of pleasure or gratification. Causes of delinquency. In the movie â€Å"The Goodfellas,† as well as the â€Å"Clockwork Orange,† the main cause of his delinquency was his motivation to alleviate his social status from poor to a well-off person, and he views that the only way he can achieve it is through becoming a gangster. With this, he opened himself on becoming a juvenile delinquent. He didn’t attend school, he was involved in fights and other illegal activities, and he adapted the ways of the gangsters who was with him. Analyzing this carefully, we could see that a cause for his delinquency was his social status: he was poor, and he didn’t want to stay that way. Another is the environmental factors that play on a person’s life. This is accounted by his frequent rendezvous with these gangsters, which is also the reason why he adapted a delinquent kind of lifestyle. Juvenile Justice. Juvenile justice is a law in the justice system that deals with persons which are found to have committed crimes below the legal age which is 18 years old. This juvenile justice system is aimed towards rehabilitating these young criminals, since they are not yet of the right age, and assumed to be not in the right frame of mind. But they could relinquish their hold on these criminals depending on the weight of the crime, or the court waives to do so (Burns, 1994). There is legislation for the protection, care, and custody of these children under their jurisdiction, since they are the ones that manage these legal concerns. People often deal with this delinquency problem by looking at the root of the problem: society and its components The society shouldn’t rely on the authorities alone. They have a lot of other concerns that they may have little time to deal with juvenile delinquencies. The people should start with their own homes and see whether they have proper communication with their children. Another is making sure that the environment is safe, free from other factors that could elicit delinquency. If it still couldn’t be managed, then that’s the time we need professional help. The authorities are more than willing to help, especially if the people are cooperating with them. There should be partnership with the authorities and the locals in order to solve the problem of juvenile delinquency. References: Burns, K. S. (1994). Juvenile Justice System. from http://www.karisable.com/crpunyouth.htm Cannon, D. (1997). GoodFellas (1990).  Ã‚   Retrieved April 8, 2007, from http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/GoodFellas.html Dirks, T. (1996). A Clockwork Orange (1971) Retrieved April 8, 2007, from http://www.filmsite.org/cloc.html Mason, T. (2004). The characteristics of delinquents. from http://www.timothyjpmason.com/WebPages/Deviance/Deviance4.htm Strain Theory. (2001).  Ã‚   Retrieved April 8, 2007, from http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/courses/en205d/student7/anomie.html Welch, K. (1998). Two Major Theories of Travis Hirschi.  Ã‚   Retrieved April 8, 2007, from http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/hirschi.htm      

Gender Roles and relationships within families Essay

Gender Roles and relationships within families. Different sociologists have had different views to whether conjugal roles have become equal. Researchers have measured different aspects of equality in conjugal roles. Some have focused on the division of labour in the home. They have examined the allocation of responsibility for housework between husband and wife and the amount of time spent by spouses on particular tasks. Others have tried to measure the distribution of power within marriage. Willmott and Young, and Gillian Dunne are amongst those who have argued that conjugal roles are equal. However many sociologists such as Ann Oakley, have carried out research into the area of conjugal roles and have found little evidence that couples share equal division of domestic tasks. Willmott and Young tend to agree that conjugal roles have become more equal. During the 70’s they announced the arrival of the symmetrical family, a family where husbands and wives were similar in their roles. In the home the couple ‘shared their work and shared their time’. Husbands were thought to be helping with the housework, childcare and decision making more often. Willmott and Young discovered that 72% of husbands helped with these household tasks. They thought that the change from separate to joint roles resulted mainly from the withdrawal of the wife from her relationships with female kin, and the drawing of the husband into the family circle. Ann Oakley is one sociologist who criticises this view of Willmott and Young. In 1974 Oakley pointed out that included in this 72% figure were husbands who did very little, only had to perform one household chore a week. During the 1970’s she collected information on 40 married women who had one child or more under the age of 5 and were themselves aged between 20 and 30. Half of her sample was working class and half was middle class. She found greater equality for domestic tasks in the middle class than in the working class. However in both classes few men had a high level of participation in housework and childcare. She found that most wives saw these jobs as their own responsibility, where only 15% of men in marriages participated in them at a high level. Sociologists such as Ann Oakley have argued that women have increasingly been taking on a dual burden: they have retained primary responsibility for household tasks while also being expected to have paid employment. Jonathan Gershuny agrees with Ann Oakley and disagrees with the statement that conjugal roles have become equal. He points out that dual burden could lead to increased inequality between husbands and wives as a rising proportion of women suffer from it. He believes that dual burden is a result of lagged adaptation where there is a time lag between women taking up paid employment and men adapting to this by increasing their contribution to domestic labour. In 1992 Gershuny studied the changes in hours worked by men and women over time, analysing data from 1974/5 to 1987. It showed a gradual increase in the amount of domestic labour performed by men. This increase was greatest when wives were in full-time employment. Husbands whose wives worked full time doubled the amount of time they spent cooking and cleaning. Gershuny concluded that though women still bear the main burden of domestic labour, there is a gradual trend towards greater equality. However it is still a long way off from becoming equal. In conclusion from the evidence presented it is clear that there is little support to Willmott and Young’s study that conjugal roles have become equal. Gillian Dunne however suggests that household tasks and childcare in single sex relationships have become equal, but haven’t in heterosexual relationships. There is though a trend towards greater equality. Gershuny’s research into childcare all suggests this trend. Therefore it appears that conjugal roles have not become equal, but evidence shows they are becoming more equal.