Autobiographical story Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Autobiographical story - Essay Example The conversations go on with more lies and chest thumping with juvenile descriptions of their dreams and fantasies. I was always the quite one in my clique. I shared my room with my younger brother and could not even mount pictures of my favorite female celebrities. I remember getting an old copy of Playboy from one of the boys in the group. It was difficult hiding it. I perused through the pages and before my brother or nosy sister could coming knocking on the door, I had tossed it out of the window. Fortunately, we lived in a flat, and no one could easily trace the trash to my room the following day. I remained aloof most of the time watching cartoon with my brother. I fitted the group simply because I had a beautiful older sister that most boys in the school admired. A perfect opportunity presented itself two days before my seventeenth birthday. The class had taken a trip out of the city to a zoo. Talks about girl and alcohol had beginning taking their toll on me. Every time we sat or met at the group, Tony, who claimed most of the experience, would introduce a topic charismatically. The topic would easily degenerate into a detailed description of his sex escapades and how much the girls loved him. I would look on fantasizing and wishing I were the one. From the groups, I would spend most of my time in bed or the bathroom ruminating and reliving Tony’s vivid description. I longed for the day I would remain alone with my dream girl. The trip to the zoo out of the city was that perfect opportunity. Tony suggested that we needed to contribute about one hundred and twenty dollars with which to buy refreshments. From the grim on his face, it was obvious what he meant. I was among the first boys in the group to contribute. I even contributed fo r some of my friends who could have otherwise either taken longer or hoped out of the plan. On the bus, I luckily sat next to Lucie, the most beautiful

Advanced Financial Accounting (The FASB and IASB) Essay

Advanced Financial Accounting (The FASB and IASB) - Essay Example Overview of CSR reporting Corporate social responsibility has been an integral part of corporate functions since time immemorial. It is very difficult to trace the roots of the phenomenon or how it all started but one fact is clear that corporate social responsibility has come to stay with the corporate world. Perhaps the undeniable fact is that the benefits of undertaking corporate social responsibility cuts across several quarters of business functioning including to the ordinary customer or citizen who lives in the neighbourhood of a given company. A clear instance can be given as a multinational company that makes regular end of year donation to given Children’s Hospital in all countries where they have their branches. In such a situation, the ordinary citizen in the said country will benefit from the donations that are done to hospital but the benefit will not end there as the publicity that the company will receive from the media by way of broadcasting their donations as well as the good will that beneficiaries will develop will lead to the eventual expansion of the company in terms of the company’s customer base. ... Identifying the parties involved in corporate social responsibility as stakeholders, Haddija (2006) state that the only way that stakeholders can be assured that companies are interested in corporate social responsibility not just because of their share of the benefit is to implement and effective corporate social responsibility reporting system. The role of stakeholders in CSR Reporting There are three major stakeholders who can be identified as far as corporate social responsibility reporting are concerned. These stakeholders are staff and managers of companies, shareholders of companies and beneficiaries of corporate social responsibility. Each of these stakeholders have very important roles to play as far as corporate social responsibility reporting is concerned that cannot be compromised in anyway (Prempeh, 2008). Management and Staff In the first place, the staff and managers of various organisations who undertake corporate social responsibilities are enshrined to keep comprehe nsive data at three stages of any corporate social responsibility project. These three stages are pre-implementation, implementation and post-implementation stages. Before any corporate social responsibility project is undertaken, the leadership of the institution is expected to set a budget and planning team whose responsibility will be to estimate how much the company wishes to spend on the entire project. The planning and budget are integrated in such a way that the entire plan of what is expected to be achieved in the course of the corporate social responsibility project but have an even allocation of funding. The role of the planning and budget team and by extension the role of the staff and

Growing of the Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Growing of the Business - Essay Example You should then summarise, in a short paragraph, which parts of the business you need to strengthen. Madhu’s, an Indian restaurant, as well as the catering and ready meal businesses owned by Sanjay Anand, is a relatively successful organization that makes ?5m sales. However, as the external environment of the company is changing, it is facing some challenges. In particular, while the sales are stable, the profit has decreased to ?300,000, down from ?500,000 in the previous year. Therefore, it is necessary to determine which aspects of organizational functioning can be improved in order to improve performance. A SWOT analysis of the human resource management, accounting and finance, and marketing functions of the company should be conducted for this purpose. Human resource management Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats Most of Madhu’s chefs are professionals in cooking traditional Indian meals. They are brought from India and taught additional skills, such as, for instance, hygiene standards. New British immigration laws do not allow Sanjay to hire people from India. There is no strategy for finding non-Indian chefs. It is possible to hire Europeans and then teach them. This requires organizing special courses. It might be problematic to find people willing to train new employees. In addition, training unskilled people will call for additional expenditures. Other aspects of business operations may suffer. So, it is clearly seen that the hiring strategy of the company is not efficient under the new conditions of the external environment. The new legislation requires Madhu’s to introduce new strategies and tactics for finding, recruiting and training employees. The company should reconsider its whole mode of operations in order to determine how to implement new strategies at the lowest cost and with the greatest advantage. Accounting and finance Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats Much attention is devoted to financial position o f the company, performance is evaluated regularly. The owner is not willing to risk and increase prices as the external conditions change. Financial resources are limited. Cut spending for some aspects of operations in order to finance new activities. Reduced financing of some company’s functions may negatively impact the overall performance. Since Madhu’s has limited financial resources to be invested into business development, it might be reasonable to consider some alternative sources of financing. Additional capital can be received from banks or external investors, for instance. Marketing Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats The company has a number of loyal and returning customers, as well as good reputation in the market. The products are well-positioned and reasonably priced. Promotional campaigns for catering services target mostly weddings, thus not covering other groups of potential customers. As an option, distributing Madhu’s ready meals in sup ermarkets will allow to strengthen the brand and make it more recognizable by the clients. If not designed correctly, marketing programs for the new services will, while call for expenditures, bring low results, forcing the company to withdraw the promoted service or product from the market. Though the brand is well-established and quite recognizable, it is possible to increase sales by means of providing alternative services and products to other customer groups. Diversification might be a good alternative that will help to cover wider audience and strengthen the brand, thus making even corporate clients, such as supermarkets, for instance, willing to cooperate with Madhu’

Reaction paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Reaction paper - Essay Example He himself admits that Zyklon B had been used for delousing and as claimed, 95% of the gas had been to address infectation problems leaving only 5% to kill people. The real question redounds to the verity of the extermination of over 4 million Jews in the Holocaust as proliferated in hundreds of books. The revisionist view definitely stimulates critical thinking and appreciation of the facts as presented. If indeed Cole is correct in saying that there had been no extermination and that we had all been victims of Soviet deception and of exaggerated number and facts then the truth continues to be beyond our grasp. I guess much like everyone else, we had been emotionally invested in the gruesome stories of the holocaust which makes for a riveting story. But a good story and the truth are two different things. The search for the truth is perhaps among the most difficult endeavor to take. History can dependent and subjective. Cole’s allegation that Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess had been tortured to admit to the killings through gas chambers and his subsequent execution in Auschwitz after the Nuremberg Trial is but a farce which had fooled everybody. If this were true, then the concept of justice as we know it must be reconsidered.

The Life And Work Of Elvis Presley Music Essay

The Life And Work Of Elvis Presley Music Essay Elvis Presley is one of the greatest artists of all time the changes that he went through during his career was controversial and also a success. Elvis changed music genres during his career, his distinctive way of entertaining the audience, and many people praise him as a great icon. Marcus Greil has praised Elvis for his influences on people, a great entertainer, but besides being able to capture the attention by the fans, there is a negative standpoint where Greil states Elvis lacks in his originality. People focus on the peripheral features and the commercialized product he became and Marcus views Elvis attitude toward music is different, instead of concentrating on one genre, he transformed himself multiple times to become part of the music trend. People would recognize for his deep tone voice, his signature dance moves on stage, and his self image. I agree with Marcus praise towards Elvis because he is popular for his talent in the entertainment industry and how Elvis became a product of what people wanted him to be. Elvis career slowly developed and changed through many types of genres, Greil states, The cultural range of his music has expanded to the point where it includes not only the hits of the day, but also patriotic recitals, pure country gospel, and really dirty blues (Marcus, 1975, p.121). Elvis was successfully able that he could do many genres not just what he was good at such as rock n roll. In the Mid 1950s rock and roll lecture, Echard (2011) discussed how he was exposed to different genres when he was growing up, Elvis was extremely open minded in terms of musical style. Some of the kind of music he enjoyed included: hymns and gospel, country music, R+B, and TPA pop. As an amateur he used to sing all these kinds of music (slide 7). This gave him an advantage to become a great singer, and be very flexible in what he did, he was able to transform his image and change into a different direction of genre , Almost as soon as he got to RCA, Elvis image began to soften a little and his material moved in a more pop direction (Echard,14). Besides looking at the singers artistic abilities, Marcus have incorporated nationalism and Rock and Roll together, Marcus posited a notion of Americanism that would embrace rock n roll in its entirety (Mazullo, 2000,145). Elvis was very important part of Americas music history and Marcus that he represented inventing new creativity to the music in the quote he mentioned, If they define different versions of America, Presleys career almost has the scope to take America in (Marcus,121). This shows that he was important part of the Rock and roll history, Elvis was able to show America, certain music genres was not just for Black or White people, I think may have brought a rebellious side but at the same time it is making a statement to country. In Marcus perspective of Rock and roll gives a confidence image to the audience, rock and roll was best understood as a cultural form that worked against the American grain, because of its antiestablishment message, while still representing a distinctive national character (Mazullo,145). People critiqued him at the start of his career doing something very different, media was a big help with developing him as a big artist, It was through the influential TV performances that Presleys early somatic presence was relayed to homes in America (Sewlall,2010,47). This point goes back to Marcus (1975) that the opportunity to create new material in music is not there, his presentation of mastery the grandest fantasy of freedom, but it is finally a counterfeit of freedom: it takes place in a world that for all its openness (Everybody Welcome!) is aesthetically closed(Marcus,123). Popularity became important when media was important, Echard (2011) discussed in the Mid 1950s Rock and roll lecture, the radio was important and a lot of people were exposed to the music. Later on, it led to marketing other artists, such as teen idols. In the lecture of 1958-1964, Echard (2011) discussed the personality became more important than the music, which is an issue because it took away their chances to compose original songs, Teen idols were invariably young and cute. Often they were inexperienced performers with comparatively weak voices and mild personas when compared to the first- generation rock and rollers. They were usually accompanied by studio musicians rather than by bands of their own (slide 5). This represented the country, being able to put attractive music to the audience was important to the music market. There was also an issue of what kind of artist they wanted him to be because record because they thought they want to satisfy the majority of the population, Elvis was marketed as the hillbilly catElvis came to national attention, the first impulse of a larger record industry was to market him as a country musician. (Echard,2011, slide 11). This supports what Marcus critiqued about Elvis, people want to advertise and control in a certain way that we lost the sense of originality, Other critiques that he discussed in the book The mystery train was while his fame was rising the meaning of music was fading away, The golorious oppression of that presentation parallels the all-but-complete assimilation of a revolutionary musical style into the mainstream of American culture, where no one is challenged and no one is threatened (Marcus,123). New teen idols, applies with the quote how they did not need to worry who wrote the better song, Echard (2011) discussed an example of Frankie Avalon i n the 1958-1964 lecture, his image was less dangerous than Elvis. His music was intended for the youth Audience. Elvis was portrayed as perfection, he had the physical attributes about him, it influenced people to be drawn to his personality, he was the typical guy girls wanted, Greil quoted, great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of shlock, a great heart throb, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American (Marcus,121). Everything that is described here, I believe is just the peripheral characteristics of Elvis that is shown to us, Marcus has a good standpoint of Elvis capability to just to please his fans by the presentation of his performance. Even though he lacked originality, he showed a confidence in his music which showed through his performance, he was able to interpret other peoples songs better than the original version by another artist, and to know that even though other signers would have come up with a version of the new black music is acceptable to teenage America, of who did emerge in Elviss wake, none sang as powerfully, or with more than a touch of his magic (Marcus ,141). The story of his humble life and to rise to fame, I believe that many people were inspired in him in some way even if someone was trying to become an artist or becoming something else, he was relatable to the general public even though he presented with a lot of star qualities, Marcus stated in his book, A real glow passes and forth between Elvis and his audience, as he shares a bit of what it means to transcend the world of weakness, failure, worry age and fear, shows what it means for a boy who sprung the poor to be godly and shares tha t too. (Marcus,127) Greil Marcus presented with relevant arguments about Elvis Presleys development of his career, he presented the disadvantage of the emerging lack of original songs written by the artist because the production became the important part of making a successful single. Marcus had a strong understanding of Americas new music trend and being able to explain that Rock n roll was influential even though it is not a popular genre today. Media was important to promote the artist, Elvis Presley was able to perfect his presentation, which did not matter, if he wrote a song or not, his technical skills and the image was already the total package, his influences of performances influenced other artists. His legacy has left an imprint in the music industry, most people today are still able to recognize who is, songs that he did have been done by the artist today.

Sylvan Learning Systems Case Study Essay -- Education Tutoring Essays

Sylvan Learning Systems Case Study The Sylvan case study illustrates the challenges of building value and improving business performance through an acquisition and diversification strategy that did not coincide with the capabilities and competencies that originally built the Sylvan brand. Sylvan was founded by W. Berry Fowler in 1979 and during his six year tenure, Berry developed the franchise business model, training and educational programs, and teaching methodology that provided Sylvan with a competitive advantage in the education industry.1 Berry Fowler built his business strategy through an intimate understanding of customers needs and developed Sylvan’s core competencies around providing supplemental education designed to fill the educational gaps experienced by students. 1 Upon Berry’s departure, Sylvan’s new CEO, Douglas Becker, embarked on a corporate-level strategy of related diversification. However, this strategy did not successfully translate into financial economies between business es nor did it obtain significant market power through these additional levels of educational diversification.2 To that end, this case study will look more closely at Sylvan’s process of diversification and acquisition strategy, management’s leadership as Sylvan transitioned from their founder and the new course the organization charted to address additional challenges for the new millennium. W. Berry Fowler founded Sylvan Learning Center with an investment of $14,500 in 1979.1 As a former teacher and through his own experience of receiving tutoring help during college, Fowler hoped to prevent students falling short academically by filling the educational/learning gaps left by students’ primary educational provider.1 During his six year tenure, Fowler built Sylvan’s competitive advantage through its low cost franchise model, educational programs and teaching methodology. Of particular importance to the success of Sylvan Learning Centers (and sustained competitive advantage) was the ability to capitalize on the expertise and resources of local franchise owners (Fowler lacked the capital to expand on his own) and gain maximum benefit from knowledge they diffused throughout the organization.2 Additionally, through a focused strategy of augmenting K-12 educational services offered by the public school system, Sylvan was able to capitalize and to integrate their i... ...e activities and focus that were critical to the Sylvan’s earlier success (i.e. Sylvan Ventures). That being said, Sylvan’s recent split into two companies to allow better focus and better investment decisions is clearly a gigantic step in the right direction. The goal of this restructuring through down scoping was to reduce Sylvan’s level of diversification, to eliminate unrelated businesses that didn’t serve a strategic purpose, and to help top-level managers refocus on the core business.2 In the case for Laureate, Becker and his top management can solely focus on post-secondary education. For Educate, Inc, Chris Hoehn-Seric and his top-management can solely focus on the K-12 education market. With this focus, Educate, Inc and Laureate should marshal their resources to continue to define and mine opportunities in their respective segments of the fragmented educational market. References: 1.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ashaye, Cotts, Gray, Perry, â€Å"Sylvan Learning Systems†, Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. 2.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hoskisson, Hitt, Ireland, â€Å"Competing for Advantage†, Thomson Learning 2004. 3.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Educate, Inc., http://www.educate-inc.com 4. Laureate Education, Inc., http://www.laureate-inc.com

Biomedical approach Essay

The Biomedical approach includes the administration of various pharmacological agents which can be utilized to treat various mental disorders. It is usually administered for short durations in combination with psychotherapy. It brings back to normal the various chemical substances that are present in the brain (neurotransmitters). When the neurotransmitter levels are normal, the effect of psychotherapy would be better. The biomedical approach can be utilized to treat various psychiatric disorders such as ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety, etc (MINDD Foundation, 2008). The psychodynamic approach includes various theories that utilize the internal drives and forces that may be present in the individual (some of which may be unconscious), to ensure that the individual can undergo a psychological change and get to better control over several problems. It is effectively utilized in pain management. Psychodynamics is considered to be the interaction of the id, ego and the superego so as to satisfy ones needs (which play an important role in the development of the personality). The psychodynamic approach was developed by the followers of Sigmund Freud. This approach gives greater consideration to the unconscious motives that affect behavior, emotions and feelings. The behavior of adults is strongly affected by the childhood motives (Simply Psychology, 2009). The humanistic-existential approach concentrates on the motivations and the needs of the individual and is similar to the psychoanalytical theory. This therapy focuses greater on the free will of the individual rather than on obstructing human nature. This is one of the major differences that are present between humanistic-existential and psychoanalytical approach. It also tends to concentrate greater on solving the problem rather than the problem itself (University of Hawaii, 2008). Cognitive and behavior therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy that involves determining and sorting out improper thoughts (that may be associated with depression), solving various problems and improving the problem-solving skills, and ensuring that people are able to engage in more enjoyable activities (that can ensure that the individual learns about potentially rewarding activities and performs them in the future) (University of Michigan, 2006). Reference Simply Psychology (2008). Psychodynamic Approach, Retrieved on May 29, 2009, from Web site: http://www. simplypsychology. pwp. blueyonder. co. uk/psychodynamic. html The MINDD Foundation (2008). The Biomedical Approach, Retrieved on May 29, 2009, from Web site: http://mindd. org/s/archives. php/48-Biomedical-Treatments. html The University of Hawaii (2008). The Biological Paradigm, Retrieved on May 29, 2009, from Web site: http://www2. hawaii. edu/~heiby/overheads_%20paradigms. html University of Michigan Depression Center (2006). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Retrieved on May 29, 2009, from Web site: http://www. med. umich. edu/depression/cbt. htm