Effects of Globalisation on Operations Management

Effects of Globalisation on Operations Management Global operation management in financial institution has seen unpredictable activities in recent years due to global economic downturn and competition for market share. The key element which underpin global environment will be internationalisation and globalisation. Global operation refers to dynamics which affect the world economy and successful integration of global dispersed function or activities. According to Yip(1995) global operation can be refer to, among others global sourcing, to have manufacturing or service facilities world wide or to supply drivers of globalisation including global market, each of which increase competitiveness through increase sales by expanding into new market. On the other hand, Slack, et al (2001) argues that globalization is the opportunities for operation managers to develop both supplier and customer relation in different part of the world. Recent tactics in global competition among organisations require extension of trade internationally by the pattern of foreign direct investment which has resulted emerging newly industrialising nation. In a highly competitive global environment, companies need to set a well define operation objectives and plans to successfully compete in both domestic and global market. This assignment critically analyses the key global operation management techniques adopted by Barclays bank for its innovative process to distinguish itself as a unique global asset management firm offering tremendous service to institution and individuals. Barclays global investors are one of the worlds largest asset managers and the world largest providers of structure investment strategies. The company operation strategy should reflect its position in global, economic, political and social environment. (See Appendix one) According to this assignment there are 8 major key factors for global operation management to be considered below; Global Total Quality Management in service industries (TQM gurus) Global Inventory Planning and Control Management Strategies for Global Change Management Global Operation Design and Process Global Operations Planning, Scheduling Global Distributions and Supply Chain Management Strategy for Global Human Resources. Global strategy for operation Management Global strategies for operation management Operation management is a systematic approach to address all the issues pertaining to the transformation process that convert some inputs into output that are useful and could fetch revenue for the organisation. According to Slack, et al (2001) global operation management is the term used for the activities, decision and responsibilities of operation managers who manage the production and delivered of produce and service. The operation strategy should be part of the organisation total strategy to achieve global dominance. Financial service product faces unique challenges which need customers present during the production and service delivery. This requires Barclays to improve its operation process that will add value to achieve competitive advantage. Strategy for Managing Global Operation Effective operation through efficient use of resources world wide drive towards a globalize economic system. Global market imposes new standards on quality and time requires operation managers to think domestic market and penetrate the global market. To achieve its objectives towards globalization, there should be improve communication technologies and open financial system. The company strategy should achieve adequate utilisation of resource and adequate customer service. This strategy has prove success by positioning itself as customer-oriented organisation and empowering customers world wide to make different choices of innovative financial product to meet their needs. However, global strategy has the following draw backs; To manage multinational operation faces challenges of language and customs difference, different management style and different laws and regulation. The current economic downturn has affected consumer spending and confidence in the banking industries. Complex global operation by multinational faces ethical and environmental challenges. Operation Strategy contents In global operation content, the decision and action should be specific to achieve the objective. The content reflects the four perspectives; Operation strategy as top- down perspective Operation strategy as bottom-up perspective The market requirement perspective The operation resources perspective Global total quality management in financial service industries Total quality management The business leaders face immense pressure in todays turbulent competitive environment thats move forward by globalisation, macro-environment factors and advanced technological growth of internet. The strong market forces within this competitive environment have developed global customers who are more aware of changes in the global market. Total quality management is an important tool in any business to surmount future challenges within the turbulent financial service environment. TQM provides the financial business leaders with a formalised process in setting clear and achievable corporate objectives and at the same time guides the management in planning strategies to maximise resources and to achieve win-win partnership. Total quality management (TQM) is an organization-wide process that revolves around  the Total Quality Triad. It assumes that there is never a state of perfection (Kelada, 1996). Hence, in order to that plans are developed in an integrated manner, three important total  quality principles must be adhered to participation and commitment by stakeholders  and senior management team, employee involvement and continuous improvements to  meet customer satisfaction. Source: Bradford University Total quality management in global financial services environment In the global financial services environment, Total Quality Management (TQM) provides the overall concept that fosters continuous improvement in an organization. The implementation of a Quality Management System (QMS) does not equate to self-generated results. Continual improvement Continuous improvement of the QMS is of paramount importance for meeting and satisfying clients ever changing needs and requirements. The purpose of the project is to identify quality improvement through Kaizen program, performance measurements; benchmarking with appropriate key performance indicators; and essentially designing a balanced scorecard to achieve continual improvement. Practices by non-financial organisation Good practices implemented by construction organizations in strategic partnerships alliances and knowledge management was identified and developed recommendations for improvements to gain competitive advantage in the construction industry. TQM not suitable for financial services environment TQM is not really suitable for any service organisations but it really helps the service organisations to focus on the participation of senior management team, involvement of all employees and managing internal process towards achieving customer satisfaction. Long Term client relationship In global financial services environment business strategy is building on long-term client relationships. Over 90 percent of the work is repeated business from loyal clients. This strategy yields cost advantages, profits, and growth, allowing them to attract and retain investors and thus fuel further growth. Quality Gurus There are a number of writers whose work dominates the quality movement. Their ideas and approaches have stood the test of time and have come to from a body of accepted knowledge, to lead and advise their own movement in quality. They have become known as gurus Crosby Philip B. Deming W. Edwards Feigenbaum Armand V Ishikawa Kaoru Juran Joseph M Oakland john S Shingo Shigeo Taguchi Genichi All the above Gurus have presented their own work on quality management and have made a significant impact on the world through their contributions to improving not only businesses, but all organizations including national governments, public organizations, educational institutions, healthcare organizations, and many other establishments and organizations. Global inventory planning and control management What is planning and control? The purpose of planning and control is to ensure that operations are working effectively and the production of products and services as required. There is another purpose of planning which is to minimise uncertainty and risk and a clear view of future forecasting. Financial planning and control It is a well known fact that a successful business helps organisations to generate enough cash in order to cover costs and make some profit. The difference between sales and cost is profit. The businesses are not always expected to be profitable from the very first day but there should be an expected plan for them to become profitable. There should be proper financial controls for all the businesses. The records should be accurate and complete and should fulfil the legal requirements. The tight financial control always helps the financial organisations or any organisation to monitor their current situation and always predict the future environment. The information derived from financial statement analysis can be used to establish future operating goals (financial planning) and to determine how to meet established goals (financial control). Developing pro forma financial statements is an important part of the planning and control processes. Inventory planning and control in financial services environment Inventory planning and control in financial services environment is the method of organising the difference between demand and supply of financial products and services. Inventory control is not a small matter from a financial perspective way. Inventory is really important and major current asset for any business including financial services organisations.  As a result, there are always policies of businesses to keep the inventory as low as possible because too much cash hold up in inventory. The objective of reducing the inventory can be accomplished with modern inventory management processes that are working effectively. INVENTORY PLANNING AND CONTROL Supply The Operation Operations resources Demand The Market Customer requirements Global change management strategies in financial environment In todays world of economic and technological development, the organisations have changed significantly. The change had only been possible through restructuring, technological improvement and merging with other businesses. The most important challenge for the organisations is to implement such change to achieve the behavioural and cultural change that is most likely required to achieve the planned benefits. Behavioural change does not just happen in the organisation. Change will only occur if there is leadership, clear goals and planned benefits for its stakeholders. All of these should be properly communicated in a timely manner. Strategy for Change Three important principles to manage change are: Change management is not the goal in itself: For an organisation to be successful, change management plays an important role. Change management is all about managing the process effectively and leads to an environment where an improvement in performance are realised. The change targets must play an active role in realising the change: Change in projects will identify and successfully communicate the image, therefore letting the employees know that the planned benefits have changed and play an active role in realising those planned benefits. Employees are the greatest asset for any organisation: Employees are potentially the greatest challenge for any organisation. The image or goal of any purpose can only become reality if the employees believe in the project and have the desire to achieve it. Financial services environment In the last decade, financial services sector has undergone major changes. The financial sector is a rewarding field in which there is every chance to make or improve a career, particularly if staff is loyal, hard working and have given the correct back up support. It cannot be ignored that the current process of globalization and market deregulation has often led to restructuring within organisations. If these major changes have been mis-handled, then it would bring job insecurity and resulting increased pressure on work forces, which in turn can lead to higher work related stress, and a possible lack of commitment and motivation. Change requirement in current financial environment Capital, currently, is grossly overvalued. Company objectives are all about maximizing value for shareholders, the providers of capital. This can lead to companies adopting strategies that do not necessarily benefit stakeholders such as customers and staff. The same emphasis on capital, and shareholder value, breeds an unhealthy focus on short-term results. Shareholders of stock listed companies want better results every quarter, leading management to take decisions that are not necessarily in the longterm interests of the company and its stakeholders. This needs to change. Global Operations Design A global operation must be designed to enable efficiency and effectiveness. It must not happen by default. To design is to conceive the looks, arrangement and workings of something before it is constructed. (Slack, chambers and Johnston, 2007). Global operations design consist of process design, products or service design, process technologies and layout design. Process Design Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007; defined process design as the overall configuration of a process that determines the sequence of activities and the flow of transformed resources between them. Process design should reflect process objective. Processes should be designed so they can create all products and services which the operation is likely to introduce. (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007) The Volume-Variety Effect of Process Design Normally, the design of a process for a financial services organisation within a country is based on volume-variety. This also applies globally. Process type in service operations Process design will be determined by the volume and variety. When volume is low, there is the possibility that variety will be high. When volume is high, there is the possibility that variety will be low and so there will be standardisation. Professional services provide high levels of customised services based on customer needs. As a result may have high level of variety and low volume. Mass services process have a high number of transactions, often involving limited customisation, example gocompare.com. As a result there will be high volume and so variety may be low. Service shops process are positioned between professional services and mass services, usually with medium levels of volume and customisation. In global operations design, FSO falls within the Mass Services category. This is high volume and less variety. Therefore, there is standardisation. This is because; Uniformity Due to globalisation, there is more movement of people across the world. It is therefore important to create a uniformity of processes so that customers from different part of the world who have seen such a product or services at other parts of the world could easily identify and understand the processes. Cost Saving In FSO, it cost of money to create a process. Some of the cost are the amount paid to consultants and key management staff to design a process to achieve efficiency and effectiveness. Hence such a process is copied by other branches throughout the world to save money. Time There is also a lot of management time in process design. It is therefore better for other branches in other part of the world to copy so that management time will be saved and spent on other activities. Human Resource Management Globalisation has also lead to the movement of staff, especially senior and management staff across the world. To ensure that they fit into the system easily, process are standardised. Global Management Strategy Most FSO now see the world as a global village. For that matter, top management see the world global operation as one unit. As a result, they adopt similar processes across the whole global organisation. Products or Service Design Products and services are often the first thing that customers see of a company, so they should have an impact. A good design is to satisfy the customer. (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). As customer gets satisfied, the organisation can achieve its vision (Lynch and Cross, Performance Pyramid). According performance pyramid developed by Lynch and Cross (Advanced Performance Management, Essential text, 2007); Customers base their satisfaction on quality and delivery time. The organisation bases their satisfaction on process time and level of waste. This is known as level four. As level four is achieve, leads to level three. That is customers becomes satisfied, the organisation becomes flexible to meet customers needs and so productivity as whole increases. Level three leads to level two. The organisation then get market share and high profitability as a result of level three. Finally, the organisation finally achieve its vision. Aspects of products and services All products and services can be considered as having three aspects. (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). That is, concept, package and process. The concept, which is the understanding of the nature, use and value of the service or product. FSO may manage the three aspects mostly through both external and internal environmental analysis by using SWOT Analysis (strength, weakness, opportunity and threat), Porters five forces and Porters Diamond. Supply network design Supply network includes suppliers and customers. It also include suppliers suppliers and customers customers and so on. It is the network of supplier and customer operations that have relationships with an operation. (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). The network has a supply side. That is, network of suppliers, suppliers suppliers that provide resources to an operation. The demand side is, chains of customers, customers customers that receive the products and services produced by an operation. The supply network must be designed to reduce time and cost. The shorter network, the shorter the cycle time and so the delivery time to the customers may also reduce. Process Technology Sometimes, FSO outsource some activities to reduce the supply network to save cost and increase speed. Furthermore, information technology has also help to reduce the supply network by eliminating intermediaries. Example, e-procurement can enable FSO to access a pool of suppliers directly. For the demand side, websites like moneysupermarket.com can be accessed by a wide range of customers directly. Global Operation Planning and Control Most FSO fail because they fail to plan and control their resources globally. The situation of most banks in the current global recession is a typical example. Apart from HSBC and Barclays Bank to some extent, most banks nearly collapse. Northern Rock and Lloyds TSB are a example of failure to plan and control globally. This shows that planning and control are very important because global operation for FSO is a very high risk. Therefore, planning and control is important. This is to ensure efficiency and effectiveness globally. The whole world economy is interlinked. There is free movement of capital across the world. As a result, an economic downturn in one part of the world could affect the rest of the world. Example, the downturn of the housing market in U.S.A. nearly leads to the collapse of Northern Rock as a whole. Furthermore, the current recession in Dubai has affected the Lloyds TSB in the U.K. Some of the things that are planning and control globally are; Capacity Planning and Control This is the task of setting the effective capacity of the operation so that it can respond to the demands placed upon it(Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). That is how to deploy resources to able to meet demand. That can be termed as flexibility of resource utilisation. Globally, FSO must be flexible enough to cope with changing levels of operation. Failure in capacity planning and control normally lead to delay of delivering on time. As a result, customers get dissatisfied and the long term effect is lost of market share. Some of the factors that may affect global capacity planning and control are; Political Example are; political instability, government regulations Economics Recession, Exchange rate, Foreign exchange control. Social Culture, Religion, Availability of staff Technology Level of technology Environmental Activities of environmental agencies and international policies on  environmental issues. Legal Legislation like health and safety, anti monopoly laws Project Planning and Control A project is a set of activities with a definite start point and a definite end state, which pursues a defined goal and uses a defined set of resources. (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). It involves five stages. They are; Understanding the project environment Defining the project Project planning Technical execution Project control Global project planning and control is difficult and risky. This is because, it is very big, it covers wide area, time differences and it may involve a lot of resources. Poor planning and control of project can lead to failure. That is, more resources may be used than anticipated and the project may also not finish on schedule. A project can be planned and controlled by techniques such as critical path analysis and Gantt charts. The introduction of information technology has help to manage global projects. The most popular software for managing global projects is Groupware. Global Supply Chain Management Global operations managers of FSO have to look beyond internal view if they want to manage their operations effectively. This is because, an organisation depends on other organisations for survival and so there is the need to manage the supply and distribution of product and service. Decisions have to be made regarding supply and distribution, to ensure that the needs of end customers are met. That is, supplying customers with the appropriate products and services when needed at a competitive price. The objectives of supply chain management are quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost. Internet and mobile phone have helped most global FSO to make relationship between suppliers and customer work more efficiently and effectively. Through internet, global FSO has gained access to wide suppliers and also has used internet and mobile to deliver banking services to remote customers in different countries. STRATEGIES FOR GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCES Human resources have got a key role in entering in to a new market to find out the risk and opportunity of the market. Human resources are concerned about staffing, recruiting and retain employees, training and development, cultural compatibility, communication and technology, and policies, procedures and structure. As organizations expand worldwide, human resource management has become increasingly more complex and challenging. The global business needs highly skilled and educated people for the operation and the HR management support these people to work as a team. Many companies have developed technological tools to address and overcome the HR challenges. In the global operation the HR managers struggled to communicate with the entire workforce effectively as they are spread all over the world. Many businesses develop innovative tools to communicate effectively to the workforce. Some years before the managers are sending from the headquarters to the overseas business. With efficient HR management many companies recruiting people from local area and employing managers without concerned of their origin. The HR managers have to understand the issues arise in the global operation. Global human resource management mainly focussed on recruiting key professional. By establishing ethical standards and maintain these standards HR involved in the new operation, mergers and acquisition. The human resource management should have a thorough knowledge of companies business strategy, product and services to be successful in global business development. If the HR managers have no business knowledge their role will be limited to administrating and staffing. If the HR takes initiative responsibility for developing resource plans and solution for staffing they will have a key role in global business development. When staffing for global operation the HR management should taken consideration of the timelines of establishing the new operation, the skills and expertise required the long term and short term staff requirement, the availability of local candidate and the position which need to be filled soon. The terms and condition of the employment includes payroll and compensations has to make clear before recruiting the employees. As in the global business many countries have different rules and regulations and its HR managers responsibility to change the terms and condition according to the country in which it operates business. The HR has to maintain a policy to all employees regardless of the place they work. There are four principle alternative between local adaption and global integration. They are international strategy in which knowledge transfer from head quarters. It is suitable for the when there is only few foreign business. The second one is multinational strategy which is local adapted. The next alternative is globalisation strategy which is centralised strategy for all the global operation. The final alternative is the transnational strategy. The HR manager should involve in the due diligence process before acquisition or merger occurs. The due diligence includes analysing the experience and expertise of the proposed merging management, the employment practices and the pay and benefit practices. The consistent HR strategy would improve the efficiency of workforce and can retain trained employees which will reduce the recruiting and staffing cost. The HR should establish a consistent HR strategy as well as a consistent localisation strategy. Without a consistent HR strategy it is hard to recruit, retain and train employees. GLOBAL OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENT All the operations have got scope of improvement regardless of how well they managed. The managers should know their business and need to know how well they are operating at the present. The five performance objectives- quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost can be measure how well they are operating at the moment. The customer satisfaction is other tool for measuring the performance. The performance measures should be compared with a target. The target can be historically based, external performance based or absolute performance target. It can be also done by bench marking which is comparing with own performance or some others in the similar industry. The priority for improvement can be assessed from their performance and importance. The important-performance matrix can be used for this, which is a technique to compare the relative importance and performance to prioritize the improvement. Some other methods are using for improvement, such as break through improvement which is innovation based improvement, and the continuous improvement method as the name says it following the gradual improvement method. The business process re-engineering process is another method of improvement which recommends redesign of process to fulfil customer needs. To improve the operation, it should know the cause of failure of the operation. There are many reasons for operational failure. It could be design failures, facilities failures, people failure like errors and violation, supplier failures, customer failure and environmental disruption. Most of the failures root cause is human failures. As the failures can be controlled and improve the failures are an opportunity. Once the failures cause and effect understand the next step is try to prevent the failure in future. By maintaining the operation with care will minimise the chances of failure. The Total Quality Management could be use to improve the operation, by inspecting, controlling and assuring the operation will lead to improve the operation. The companies are improving their operation and product by experience and learning from the world to be competitive in the global business. The companies have to innovate new product and service to win the world. The traditional operational functions have to be change with the demand of the global economy for multinational organisations. The new technologies and sources able the companies to discover and access knowledge before their competitors. Therefore multinational companies have to act up on quick to the new knowledge they gain to sustain in the industry. The companies need to practice to learn from wherever the knowledge is generated. Once the knowledge is brought together it should be turned as an innovative product service or process which will help in global operation. The globally successful companies have the ability to spread their innovation across the global market. The companies have to obtain wide range of technology and techniques to be successful in global operation. GLOBAL OPERATIONAL CHALLENGE The challenges of operational management are many, but the major challenges are the impact of the globalization of markets, the changing view of the social responsibility, the environmental responsibility of businesses, the influence of technology development on operations management and the emergence of the concept of knowledge management.(Nigel slack, Stuart chambers, Robert Johnston). The challenge for operation is that it has to understand the changes in the economy

Essay on Anna Quindlen’s “A Quilt of a Country” Essay

People are such disparate things, they range from black to white to boy and girl, and of all the nations on Earth, I’d have to say that America is the one country that exemplifies that the most. Unlike other normal nations, populated with a certain groups of people who hold certain types of beliefs, America is a nation made up of all the ethnicities of the world, and unlike other normal nations, the inhabitants of America don’t tend to get along very well. Anna Quindlen writes about why America shouldn’t work, yet does, in a short article titled â€Å"A Quilt of a Country.† She uses effective evidence and valid reasoning to support her thesis, and she also divides her article into two separate sections: the first designated to proving why America shouldn’t work, and the second designated to why it does work. These two in conjunction culminate into an effective argument, that proves that America shouldn’t work, and yet miraculously does. In th e first half of the article, she immediately starts by stating a part of her claim, America is a nation of conflicting and interchanging parts, and right afterwords attacks the notion it was founded on by pointing out that most people consider themselves to be better than someone else. This serves to support her claim, that America shouldn’t work, by disproving its very foundations. She then uses a historian’s quote in order to build off of and make her analogy, that America is a quilt. This analogy reinforces her claim by drawing a striking comparison between America and a quilt and helps readers interpret what she’s saying. Afterwords she says that the American consensus to treat everyone equally has failed spectacularly, and proves it by listing numerous examples of social and racial prejudice, such as the lynching of blacks and the discrimination against women. Not only does this butcher America’s foundations(again), it also makes the allusion that America is a very violent place filled with turmoil. Both of these would support the idea that America shouldn’t have worked in the first place, which is her claim. With all those examples of failure and injustice in mind, she asserts that it would be hard to explain to children why America is great, which also supports her claim because it makes another inference that America shouldn’t work. Anna’s third paragraph is dedicated to addressing a counterclaim, that the rise of ethnic-based pride has undermined unity. She argues that America has always been undermined by differences in race, and this new rise of pride has amounted to nothing. Although the counterclaim in this paragraph  doesn’t directly oppose Anna’s claim, perhaps it even supports it, the evidence and reasoning she uses supports the idea that America shouldn’t work. Quindlen’s account of past Philadelphia is a one of distaste and hostility, and her description of other cities that existed around the same time are just as bleak. Like the other pieces of evidence, these two support her claim by giving America the appearance of a country that’s in internal conflict, and shouldn’t work. She finally moves into her last paragraph in the first half, in which she first ponders the existence of this nation, and then depicts it as being filled with conflict. Her sentences in this paragraph follow a similar structure, at least in the beginning, in which she starts out with â€Å"What is the point of a nation in which†¦Ã¢â‚¬ , and proceeds to give a negative example of the denizens of America. This repetition acts t o cement the idea that America is dysfunctional, which is the core of her claim, and after the repetition stops she ends the paragraph with a change of tone, when she says that despite all of this, America still stands. This change of tone signals the transition into the second half, in which she moves on from explaining why America shouldn’t work, to why America does work. Unlike the first half, where Anna Quindlen’s tone implies that America is a collection of warring ethnicities, she changes her diction from doubtful to dumbfounded in order to better suit her goal, proving that America does work. She starts out by claiming that the reason America remains intact is a common enemy. Anna supports her reason by listing some examples of wars where we were united against a single entity, such as the cold and world wars. After that, she points out that during times where we didn’t have a nation to fight against, we were less united and more separate. She also points out that we became reunited as a result of 9/11. This supports her reason because through deductive reasoning, the reader concludes that a common enemy is what binds the people of America. These pieces of evidence suppor t her central thesis because they prove that the existence of an enemy makes us united, which would in turn make us work together and subsequently make America work better, which is her claim. In the next paragraph, however, she starts out by bringing up that most Americans still say that â€Å"The U.S. is a unique country that stands for something special in the world†, even during peace time. This would imply that there’s another reason why America’s still united, and Anna Quindlen  uses this quote to justify her next sentence. Her next sentence which depicts America in a fashion that makes it seem implausible, supports the part of her claim that says America shouldn’t work, and she also says that it somehow does, annoyingly. This aids the second half of her claim, America does work. In the last sentence, she finally states what the other reason for America working is: two strains of behavior. She says that the first strain of behavior is the hardworking psyche of Americans, and the second strain is the pilgrim-like persona of immigrants. Her support for her reason is a quote that the immigrants of a couple decades ago are just like the immigrants of today, who work hard and are subsequently making a living, which would allude to the idea that these personalities persist throughout all of America, regardless of time or space. With that in mind, it s upports her claim because it shows that we all have something in common, and therefore can become unified more easily, which makes America work better. After all of that, she moves onto her very last paragraph; her conclusion. She starts off by pondering what word best describes the people who live in America, from tolerance to pride, and then mirrors her claim by describing America as a ludicrous idea that shouldn’t work, yet does. She then says that the people of America are so varying, you could trace back the heritage to each person who died during 9/11 to every single country in the world; this analogy aids to the allusion that America is a collage of disparate and disjointed parts. Finally, in the very last sentences of the article, she draws a connection to the beginning of the article by reusing the phrases: mongrel nation, and improbable idea, and by mirroring the beginning and last statements of her article, she creates a lasting impact on the reader. Anna Quindlen’s article, â€Å"A Quilt of a Country†, uses a wide range of evidence in order to validate her reasons, from quotes to analogies to explanations, and not only are they effective, they all help support her central thesis, one way or the other. Anna also divided her article into two separate sections, in which she focused on supporting one aspect of her claim in each. This let her orientate and tune her words for a specific purpose, and not flood the reader with conflicting conclusions. In the end, Anna succeeded in proving why America shouldn’t work, yet does, and she succeeded in proving that America is composed of different, even conflicting ethnicities. People truly are such disparate things, as Anna Quindlen would agree, they range from  black to white to boy and girl, and America is the one country that exemplifies that the most. Unlike other nations, America’s truly a wonder when it works.

Dawn Riley Essay

CEO of America True, Dawn Riley, faces several issues of various criticalities that require careful decision making. The preeminent decision that Dawn Riley faces is whether or not to spend limited funds and resources on upgrading Tag, their training boat. Concurrent with that decision, Dawn is facing several other issues and challenges that need to be addressed. In order to address each of the challenges, a standard issues matrix used below highlights the severity of an issue and the likelihood of it requiring immediate or drastic action. Red: Critical and require immediate management action or decisions Yellow: Lesser critical nature, requiring monitoring of controls to ensure that controls stay in place and does not lead to a more critical ranking. Orange: Lesser critical nature, requiring monitoring of controls and process improvement. Maroon: Issue of a least critical nature – more related to Operational Housekeeping then control concerns. Issue Analysis The issues are divided into two primary areas, leadership and technical. The technical issues include design changes and costs, determining the A-Team, how to manage constructability reviews between the sailing team and the design team, and funding challenges. Each of these issues has a technical solution that can be managed through a process or controls change. The former area, leadership, deals with Dawn Riley’s role in the team and how she shepherds the America True team through these challenges and are solved through adjusting leadership styles. Technical Issues: Funding: Part of Dawn Riley’s role is to prioritize the available budget and to seek new sources of funding. This is a constant source of strain as re-design efforts take additional funding as â€Å"there was a common perception that syndicates with unlimited resources could â€Å"outgrunt† other syndicates by making limitless adjustments. This issue is critical and requires constant management oversight and controls. The action here would be making â€Å"judicious decisions† on how to spend the funds. Tag Upgrade: America True was a smaller syndicate than normal, and their designer Kaiko could not be performing two tasks at once, designing a new part for Tag, or designing a new raceboat keel. This issue would also have implications on funding. This was a critical issue and required executive action to solve. Constructability Reviews: Fostering communication between the designers and the sailors was listed as a potential problem area given that â€Å"sailors ca n get the feeling that designers are too far removed from the problem.† However, in the same token, the sailors also felt that they could contribute more than previous experiences. This is an important issue that probably requires more monitoring than corrective action. A-Team members & Sexism: There was a limited amount of tension between A team and B team members compared to other syndicates. However, â€Å"some of the men who were afraid there would be a â€Å"quota† of women on the raceboat.† For this reason Picking A-Team members and Sexism were identified as a joint issue. Dawn faced the challenge of picking a team that was best qualified and not perceived to have favoritism or quota’s determining who would be on the boat. This is a delicate issue as lack of confidence in your team members and the selection process could lead to a breakdown of trust, one of the first symptoms of Dysfunction in a team. This is a particularly sensitive issue given that the entire issue rests entirely on personality dynamics which take leadership to successfully navigate. Leadership Issues Consensus Style of leadership: Since the outset of the project, Dawn Riley and her management team â€Å"had grown accustomed to making consensus-based decisions.† There are different times when Consensus style of leadership work well and there are times when it does not. The flaws inherent in it are obvious: time consuming, people can be hurt if their choice is not selected, etc. Tag Upgrade: This issue shows up also in the Leadership side of our issues ledger. Dawn is approaching this upgrade as though it is a singular event, however in reality it is a process that has been unfolding over time. â€Å"An â€Å"event† leader would mull in solitude, ask for advice, read reports, mull some more, then say yea or nay and send the organization off to make it happen.† In reality this decision is a process that has been unfolding over the 18 months that Dawn has been leading the team, and would have implications towards group dynamics, and affect the personal and professional relationships within the group. Riley’s leadership role in the pit: As the only Syndicate head who sailed with the crew, there is a certain amount of tension regarding her role on the boat. Even though Dawn recognized that her subordinate Cutler might have a certain amount of discomfort with Dawn in that position since she might step in to take over at any given time she chose to disregard that. Dawn’s role in the pit was to function as the â€Å"integrator† and was at a central position within the boat to react and direct as required. This suggests that Dawn likes to have a strong role on the boat similar to her role off the boat, in the middle of everything and in the know. Muddled Organizational Structure: Throughout the text, there are indications that the organizational structure is unclear or not scrupulously followed. There is no hierarchy to the organizational chart and while Dawn may make it believe it is clear on what her roles and responsibilities are, it appears that she muddles the roles herself given that there was a perception that people were â€Å"working for two masters.† Recommendations and Resolutions Were this in an earlier stage, then there would be a recommendation to solicit additional funding, however given the criticalities of the schedule and the need for the management team to focus on resolving other technical and management issues, it would be recommended that the Dawn and Chris Coffin make the decision to stay within their existing financial plan structure and field the best team they can. It is likely, given Dawn’s many responsibilities, that she could successfully attract additional sponsors unless she gave away other responsibilities regarding the team, which is unlikely to occur.

Media, Violence, And Violence Essay - 1949 Words

Violent crime statistics is continually increasing overtime, and there are a wide variety of factors that contribute to this. One influencing factor would be the media. Media and violence are both very wide and broad concepts that have massive impacts in our society, and it is important to distinguish their relationship with each other. The types of media are things such as violent video games, films, newspapers, magazines and television. One particular type of media that is often very problematized is violent video games. Different studies have shown convincing and unconvincing correlational in regards to the media and violence, but to whom do we believe? The media, especially in today’s modern society surrounds us all the time. It affects our daily lives and has become part of our everyday routines, which is why it has such a huge impact on us, and violent media is everywhere. 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