Microsoft Case Study Harvard Business School - 3008 Words

Bill Gates Believed Microsoft’s core source of competitive advantage was the ability to attract, motivate and retain superior people. In attracting employees Microsoft mainly targeted the stars. Stars are the core employees that can add value to the organization through their knowledge, skills and abilities (Boselie, 2010). At Microsoft there has been a hands on mentality made for ambitious people. Lepak and Snell (2007) built a theory about different employees and its HR strategies. Microsoft has an internalized and relational focus with its employees. Strategic value of employees is high because employees are given high autonomy. In general all employees are highly unique. This is why Microsoft has always wanted to hire young and†¦show more content†¦Therefore Microsoft in the present culture scores low on goal and should increase this in the future. Procedure The growth of Microsoft has negatively influenced the freedom of the employees. The introduction of regulation has increased bureaucracy. Microsoft scores high on checking, documentation, measurement and rationalization. The desired culture would be to score lower on procedure to enhance creativity and flexibility. How does it fit with the strategy and culture? The strategy of Microsoft is to have a computer on every desk installed with Microsoft. A high performance culture plays a key role in Microsoft. In this culture excellent performance, knowledge, commitment, motivation, autonomy, teamwork and loyalty are only a few of the important norms, values, habits and routines important when desiring and maintaining a high performance culture. Mutual investment should keep employers and employees happy and help maintain the environment and culture Microsoft is in. There are four major culture types within an organization, namely the Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchy and the Market (Kim amp; Quinn, 1999). These four cultures are translated into a model, named the Competing Values Framework. This framework shows the cultures, organized between two dimensions. The framework shows which culture coincides with which dimension, to show the effectiveness of the organization and the organizational culture. (source: Kim amp; Quinn, 1999) WhenShow MoreRelatedBill Gates and Microsoft1662 Words   |  7 PagesBill Gates and Microsoft â€Å"Microsoft was founded based on my vision of a personal computer on every desk and in every home, all running Microsoft software,† Bill Gates once remarked (Stevenson). Everyone has their own dream but this was Bill Gates dream when he first co-founded Microsoft. This dream came to haunt him 12 years later when he was caught. Microsoft was charged with using its power to eliminate its competitor in the Web-browser market in the mid-90s (Stevenson). 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Computerized or electronic spreadsheets are of much more recent origin. Information Systems oral history and some published newspaper and magazine stories celebrate Dan Bricklin as the father of the electronic spreadsheet. In 1978, Harvard Business School student, Daniel Bricklin, came up with the idea for an interactive visible calculator (see email from Frankston, 4/15/1999a). Bricklin and Bob Frankston then co-invented or co-created the software program VisiCalc. We can look back and recognizeRead MoreCase Study : Regional Medical Centre Essay919 Words   |  4 Pages Case Study The subject case study is the Regional Medical Centre which is based in San Jose and offers primary and speciality healthcare services for people from the bay area and nearby areas. Being a healthcare entity for patients with chronic illnesses, this institution is also the university support for the nearby medical college. The business intelligence balanced scorecard which was incorporated in the system is as tabulated below: Customer perspective Economic and financial perspective Read MoreStrategic Management Case Analysis: Apple Inc. Essay1027 Words   |  5 PagesStrategic Management Case Analysis: Apple Inc. Veronica R. Hart Kaplan University Strategic Human Resource Management Unit 1 GB 520 p. 1-6 March 9, 2011 The 2008 Harvard Business Case Study on Apple Inc, describes the very popular corporation with 24 billion in revenue as of 2007 and how the company has had some problems yet sustainability over the years. The status of the company was examined in detail by the article which revealed a number of strategic moves under the leadership ofRead MoreEssay on Microsoft: Paul Allen and Bill Gates 1875 Words   |  8 Pagesanything, and one invention can change the whole world. In the case of the developing world of technology, many tried, but only a few could get a stake in the fast moving industry and throughout it all one name has stamped their name on the PC business, Microsoft. It started with two teenagers who envisioned an endless world of possibilities for the world of computing at an early stage. Paul Allen and Bill Gates were two high school students who attended Lakeside their dreams of one day being computer

Missouri Compromise of 1820 †Kansas-Nebraska Act Free Essays

In the forty years leading up to the Civil War, the United States Congress did its best to enact a number of different pieces of legislation that were all designed to regulate the budding issue of slavery in so called â€Å"border† states. In places like Kansas and Missouri, there was no clear cut answer to the slavery question. In fact, the discussion went on for decades in these two states. We will write a custom essay sample on Missouri Compromise of 1820 – Kansas-Nebraska Act or any similar topic only for you Order Now Starting with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress made it clear that they would take all necessary measures to bring an accord between pro-slavery states and those who opposed it. The aptly named compromise mandated that slavery couldn’t take place anywhere north of the Louisiana Territory, except for the area of Missouri, where slavery would be allowed. The congressional legislation continued in 1850, when a series of laws was put into place in order to keep balance between the slave and free states. Called the Compromise of 1850, the primary objective of this legislation was to bring California into the union as a free state, in order to shift the balance between the two sides. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 continued this long line of legislation and put more control of the issue in the hands of the people. It established the two states and let the people their make their own choice on the matter of slavery. These three laws were extremely important in helping to establish the distinct party lines on the issue of slavery and set the stage for the conflict that eventually led to the Civil War. These acts had varying levels of significance and success, depending upon who one might be asking. This essay will address the impact of each act on the development of the United States as a whole during a time when tempers were flaring and spirits were high. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was one of the most important pieces of legislation to come about during the time leading up to the Civil War in the United States. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate struggled immensely with this compromise because they could not come to a working accord on the matter. The fact that the various factions that had control over congress held vastly different opinions on slavery did not help matters in the least bit. In short, people from the South had a vested financial interest in keeping slavery alive, while those people in the North had a similar financial interest in getting rid of slavery. In a way, it was all a song and dance done in order to keep the idea of control in place for both sides. Specifically, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 did a couple of things which had a huge impact on the country and made necessary the legislation that would soon follow. During that time, the Missouri Territory was close to becoming a state, but a great debate raged on about what kind of state it would ultimately become. Since the proposed Missouri state was a gateway to the west and was an important addition to the growing country, each side wanted to get their hands on the state. Though the immediate result of the compromise was that it brought another large slave state into the union, the more important and overlying impact was that it split the country into two halves. Above the state of Missouri, there could not be any more slavery. That meant that Missouri would become something of a battleground state and it also meant that the lines were now clearly drawn. It was the North against the South and there was that anyone could do to change that after the fact. Even great American thinker Thomas Jefferson knew that the creation of a slave state in Missouri would go a long way to ripping the Union in pieces. He wrote to John Holmes and said, â€Å"A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper† (Jefferson). That rhetoric was ultimately an omen for what was to come for the United States. Though it would be another four decades before the country would go to war, the creation of Missouri as a slave state opened the door for even more unreasonable discourse and further legislation. While the Missouri Compromise was one single piece of nation changing legislation, the Compromise of 1850 was a series of laws that had a similarly large effect on the country. It was clear with these laws that Congress was trying to do everything in their power to make sure that the country did not go to war. Though it would eventually be imminent, there was some thought in 1850 that the Union could be saved without the nation having to go through a debilitating Civil War. The Compromise of 1850 did a lot to help bring the nation together, although it could be said that the effort was too little and too late. California was ready for statehood at this point and it brought that state into the Union as a free one. Like all compromises, this one was two sided, though. It also did much to help improve the prospects of the slave holding southern states. Though the series of laws did away with the slave trade in the U.S., it did establish a law that would help slave owners to bring their slaves back. The Fugitive Slave Act was a strong measure that required all people to help in this effort. If the nation’s history was a sentence, this compromise could certainly be used as a semi colon. It put aside some of the tensions that both sides had and it also had some people convinced that a solution was on the horizon. Though it might have looked like a step in the right direction, it appears in hindsight that this bunch of laws was nothing more than a pause between the tenuous situation leading up to 1850 and the Civil War, which came a mere eleven years later. Still, this was a positive measure for the country in that it did attempt to do something to rectify the situation. It was not the last series of laws aimed at doing this, though, as the Kansas-Nebraska Act a few years later was also important. Whatever good will was built during the Compromise of 1850 was certainly smashed to pieces with the events that led up to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This act started out as a good thing, but quickly deviated from that plan. Initially, it was passed in order to help open up the Western area of the United States for exploration by white settlers. It helped to establish Kansas and Nebraska in that area. Still, the more important point is that this act gave the people of those territories the right to choose whether or not they would have slaves or not. This was a step in the right direction for those people who felt strongly for states’ rights, but it failed to serve as a solution for a nation that genuinely needed answers to their questions. The people of the United States, at that time, had no way of making such a decision by themselves. In fact, the political positioning and jockeying that went along with this act was a negative byproduct that the writers of such an act could have never imagined in the beginning. The Kansas-Nebraska Act also did away with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and with that, did away with any progress that the act had established during that time. From this important act came the American ideal of â€Å"Popular Sovereignty†, which was truly a people based system that put all of the power in the hands of the states’ residents. Most historians feel that this law did not achieve its desired impact and it really had a negative effect on the Union. This law pleased those from the South, while it angered Northerners, who felt that such a law was in favor of slavery. This event marked one of the last straws leading up to secession and eventually, the Civil War. Because of it, the North felt that they could no longer trust the Southerners in power and because of that, there was no turning back. These three acts happened over the course of many years, but they were all intertwined and all had a profound impact on the changing dynamic of the United States prior to the Civil War. Congress was clearly grasping at straws, and although their motives may have been pure in regards to writing the laws, the intended meaning did not hit the mark. The Missouri Compromise drew lines between the two sides for the first time and gave each section of the country its own identity. That was a pre-cursor to war, but it certainly was not the thing that caused the nation to battle itself. The Compromise of 1850 sought to dissolve the tension that existed and was put into place by the Missouri Compromise, but it really did not do enough to cause any real, noticeable change in the Union. It did create a little bit of good will and promote some camaraderie between the two sides, however, which was a positive thing at the time. Unfortunately, all of that positive momentum was destroyed in the few years that followed the writing of the 1850 Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was sloppy and did not take into account what people from the North might think about the dissolution of the previous laws. In short, it became a dividing force that pushed a country apart as it was just about to come together. All of these events were representative of the struggle faced by the Union during the time that they were written. Even the most influential and smartest people of American society were not able to write laws that could bring a country together when the fundamental problems were ripping at its core. Works Cited Jefferson, Thomas. 22 April 1820. Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html          How to cite Missouri Compromise of 1820 – Kansas-Nebraska Act, Essay examples

It was a dark and stormy Halloween night and Sal a Essay Example For Students

It was a dark and stormy Halloween night and Sal a Essay nd Jess her best friend were at Sals house for the night to watch movies. Knock, Knock, Knock, Sal, someones at the door do you want me to answer it?, Jess yelled to Sal who was upstairs doing her hair in the bathroom. Yeah Cool Jess its probably just some more annoying trick or treaters anyway, replied Sal. Jess got up off the couch and approached the door making sure to peer through the peephole to see who it was. All she could make out were two small dark figures so she guessed they were trick or treaters. She then opened the door just enough so she could have the latch on. Grrrrrrr we are the creatures from hell, screamed the smaller of the two figures. Both the figures were dressed with a bed sheet that had obviously been painted black and thrown over their heads with just two tiny holes where the eyes would be. The other figure then said whats it gunna be lady, trick or treat? Jess opened the door fully now and beckoned them to come inside. Just wait here, she said as she ran up the stairs and into the bathroom where Sal was still combing her hair. Sal what should I give those two boys, asked Jess. I dunno give them one of those chocolate things near the fridge, Sal replied. Jess turned and went back down the stairs into the kitchen to find the bars. Are you still there boys?, she yelled. But there was no reply. Jess stopped and went back to the front door. To her surprise the boys had vanished and there was no sign of them. Fine she thought to herself at least it saves two more chocolate bars for me. Suddenly Jess heard a voice but she didnt know what it said or where it was coming from. Is somebody there?, Jess inquired taking a huge gulp at the same time. Yeah me, replied the voice in a strong tone. Arggghhhhh Jess screamed as she saw a tall man bearing a long sharp knife. Jess turned around and bolted back up the stairs as fast as she could. Sal, Sal thethe theres a huge guy with a knife downstairs, Jess stuttered. What are you on about Jess?, replied Sal. Im serious Sal theres a guy with a knife downstairs and hes gunna kill us, shrieked Jess as the panic set in. Sal was begining to get worried now as she tried to think straight. Now calm down Jess, Sal said softly, There are two of us and only one of him right?, Right!, replied Jess. So all we gotta do is each grab something heavy and go face this guy head to head, explained Sal. Sal slowly began walking out of the bathroom and beckoned Jess to follow. The girls now proceeded along the hall and into Sals room. Sal looked for her baseball bat while Jess ran to Sals brothers room for something she could use to hit this intruder. She found a golf club lying under his bed, grabbed it and ran out the room, her and Sal met just above the stairs. You ready?, she asked, Readier than ill ever be!, Sal replied, not so enthusiasticly. OK, here goes! The two girls now began to make there way downstairs both shivering in terror. Suddenly it all got too much and Jess collapsed and began tumbling down the stairs. She rolled all the way to the bottom dropped her golf club and then landed flat on her back motionless. At that the moment Sal who was standing still in shock noticed a man enter through the front door and move towards Jess brandishing a knife and a briefcase. Sal screamed at the top of her voice you leave my friend alone you bastard, and charged towards the man swinging her bat. Sal had a huge swing but didnt actually connect with the man who was now bent down next to Jess asking her if she was alright. The man then looked up at Sal and said, Wow thats some greeting you two have got there. .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd , .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .postImageUrl , .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd , .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:hover , .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:visited , .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:active { border:0!important; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:active , .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u672c8faa596d942f110956e879f223bd:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: The Ways We Lie Essay Sal stopped for a moment and stared at the man with a confused expression. Im Tim Shaw from Demtal Shopping Service and I was wondering whether you girls were interested in purchasing the one and only Tasaki meat knife, explained the man. Jess who was now sitting upright began to chuckle. You mean you arnt some Psycho here to murder .

Sexuality and society free essay sample

Human sexuality has a very vital role in everyone’s life and society. Understanding human sexuality is itself a complex topic to discuss. However, the topic becomes more complicated when discussed from a sociological point of view. Many researches have been conducted in the past on sociology and sexuality. There are many sociological perspectives which are considerable while talking about human sexuality, however, this paper will primarily discuss and research on the sociological perspective of homosexuality on society. Regardless of the gender difference that is a male or female, the impacts of human sexuality on society is very prominent. It has a major influence on a person’s own personality, on other’s personalities and most importantly on society. While classifying the sexual orientations of human, usually a person is attracted to the opposite sex and has feelings and sexual desires for the opposite gender, biologically termed as heterosexuals. However, there are some people who do not feel the same way as heterosexuals and have sexual feelings and desires for same sex. We will write a custom essay sample on Sexuality and society or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page These people are attracted to the same gender and are sexually oriented as homosexuals. The third sexual orientation is bisexuality; bisexuals are those humans who are attracted to both the genders that are male and female both and have sexual tendencies for both of them. While the last ones are asexual; they are not attracted towards any sex. Thesis Statement: Homosexuality or the desires for the same sex that is being ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ has a very deep impact on society. Many societies and religions in the past and at present do not allow or accept homosexuality for its people. From sociological point of view these people are against the biological and usual system of human lifecycle portraying negative impacts on society. Understanding Homosexuality: All the previous sociological researches including that on human sexuality too, have their basic elemental assumption that human behavior is learned from the surroundings. This statement is clearly elaborated by Kimmel and Fracher; â€Å"That we are sexual is determined by a biological imperative toward reproduction, but how we are sexual—where, when, how often, with whom, and why—has to do with cultural learning, with meanings transmitted in a cultural setting†. According to many of the researchers and previous theories it has been concluded that homosexuality is not natural and biological. Researchers and social scientists believe that it is learned from the surroundings and the culture. While a few scientific inquiries suggested that it is a mixture of nature and nurture; while the environmental factors are contributing towards the sexuality of a person some of the hormonal and brain structure also adds to it. Society and Homosexuality: On a broader perspective, homosexuality can be termed as a product of society; since the social exposure to a person during his adolescence moulds him accordingly for his/her sexual desires. However, societies are much in a conflict over this issue. Many societies across the US and the world do not accept or allow homosexuality or corresponding activities. Homosexuals avoid revealing their sexual orientations in many societies of the world. This is majorly because of intolerance and the negativity towards homosexuality. Sociologists believes that acceptance of homosexuality in societies can increase the number of homosexuals in those societies. As people will start accepting them, there will be chances that more people will like to change their sexual orientation and would become homosexual or bisexual. Many cases have been evidenced in recent years where change in sexual orientations among adults was noticed. The psychological effects of homosexuality on societies and its member also are of vital importance. Gay practices in public places disturb people and many of the social elements are offended by it. It portrays a great psychological influence on the youngsters particularly children. Many anti-gay movements and petitions have been filed in different countries of the world to create fear and to put an end to homosexuality. However, the consequences were not as it was expected. Many religions across the world do not accept homosexuality as a part of their life or society. They consider it a practice against the system created and defined by God. Different societies have defined different strict punishments for homosexuality. Many religious families also do not accept any of its family member if he/she is homosexual, thus excluding him from their family. This is a deep social, cultural and religious conflict which has its negative impacts on society and homosexuals as well. Many homosexuals do not reveal their identity and disclose their orientation as gay. This is because of; the conservative religious factor or the intolerance and non-acceptance of society towards him/her. Sociologists have learned that, to many homosexuals, being gay or homosexual is a shame or curse. They avoid interacting with people at school; work and even home thus become isolated. This is mainly because of the fear that someone does not get to know about their sexuality. Those individuals who have accepted themselves as gay are also being bullied at school, work and by friends and family. Researchers have shown that such homosexual individuals try to commit suicide just to hide their sexuality and to avoid being bullied. The suicide rate among homosexuals is comparatively high as compared to heterosexual individuals. The role of media, advertising and internet in a society cannot be denied while talking about its sexual boundaries. Many sociologists and researchers have studied the impacts of advertising, television and internet on society particularly sexuality and homosexuality. They are not just conveying the idea in fact through the portrayal of different vulgar and desirable ideas and picture, people particularly young and children try to fit in that place and a sense of desire is created among them. Many ads and television shows in the west at present portray and promote homosexuality as societies have managed to live with them. Many sociologists believe that this factor is greatly affecting the societal scale of heterosexuality. The Societal Acceptance: The sociological perspective is altering gradually regarding the acceptance of homosexuals in many societies of the world. Different societies and countries are accepting homosexuals and are legalizing them in their territory including USA, Canada, Europe and South America. In response to those anti gay movements, a number of gay rights movements took place in many societies. Moreover, many sociologists put forward the idea of reducing the rate of suicides among these homosexuals and the majors to overcome them. Societies at present are becoming liberal and taking homosexuality as a part of life and human cycle. However, a number of societies still have the same approach of not accepting homosexuality on the basis of culture, religion and other conservative approaches. However, it is said that societies in which homosexuality has been allowed such as the Netherlands and San Francisco in US have greater rates of diseases and health issues. The Social Family Institution: Disturbance among the family institutions is also created because of homosexuality within or outside the family. According to many sociologists culture and surrounding is one major area that shapes and structures the entire family process. Different practices within families are done because of the age, sex, gender, ethnicity factors. Sociologist also has studied that how families are influenced and affected by homosexuals and their practices and how it has altered the family structure. The major building block that is ‘family’ in societies where it has been legalized and accepted has fallen apart. It has been researched that as many as 80% of the children in such societies are born outside the family. Homosexuality is also creating a biological barrier for society with its existence and expansion. With more turn out of homosexuals in societies, the definition of family is also being revised. Gay marriages are taking place in the regions of the world where they are legalized. Men marrying men and women marrying women do not fit in the definition of the family it is normally used to be. These gay couples are not able to conceive a child due to biological reasons, however, if they really want they adopt children in order to complete their definition of family. This may badly affect the biological chain of human lifecycle; decreasing the overall population rate. Conclusion: It is very difficult to predict the future structure of society. Homosexuality should be understood from the cultural, political and legal framework from any society. Where on one hand one cannot accept homosexuality, on the other hand one gives you almost every reason to accept it as a part of society. However, the association between society and homosexuality is very strong and is very deep. Sociologists are very much concerned regarding this relationship; some of them are in favor while the others are against this relationship. Some sociologists believe that it is society and its components which contribute towards the formation of homosexual people. While some elements of society do not believe in homosexuality saying it is not allowed in their religion or culture. From adolescence to adulthood, homosexual people face different problems and obstacles and so do their surroundings. Where on one hand homosexuals commit suicide, on the other hand some homosexual are marrying same genders, and fighting for their rights thus creating a chaos and disturbance in society. The cultural and sociological impact on society by homosexuality is very negative and disturbing for some age groups particularly the children and the youngsters. However, the sociological perspective on homosexuality is altering gradually worldwide. With its acceptance in many part of the West, societies are now focusing on accepting homosexuality as a part of it. The major need is to umbrella the family structure and the family institutions which are in serious threat from homosexuality.

Looking at Breast Cancer in a Different perspective Essay Example

Looking at Breast Cancer in a Different perspective Essay Example Looking at Breast Cancer in a Different perspective Paper Looking at Breast Cancer in a Different perspective Paper Breast cancer, as we all know is a disease that most women can acquire, and a few of men can have. The said disease has been included in the top ten causes of death of women in the United States. Breast cancer is triggered by aging, some genetics factors (if one in the family had the symptoms), and female hormonal changes and for some genetic changes. There had been a number of programs that caters to the awareness of the human being of their susceptibility to the said disease. In the programs that are implemented nowadays, it is very important that we set standards and evaluate if they are reaching the goals of their campaign. Aside from the non-controllable factors for breast cancer, there are also some activities that promote it. So, in this assessment, some circumstances will be cited in order to determine the changes and enhancements for the implemented program to make it more effective. Screening for breast cancer, by doctors and even for some, self-screening is implanted and encouraged for women to avoid the spread and growth of the cancer cells. In what I remember, someone could have only one breast because the other one is removed with its cancer cells, which make it hard to bear for women, off course. Since men also acquire breast cancer, I think we should design a scheme that will make them aware that they too could have it with their strenuous activities. There should be leaflets and booklets that will describe symptoms of the cancer. Moreover, awareness really should not be put last on the list of the health sector of the government, that they will give such time in order to promote activities and foods that can help avoid it. References Brooks-Harris, J. E. Shollenberger, K. G. (1998). Group facilitation skills for student learners, a work book. Retrieved August 10, 2008, from http://www2. hawaii. edu/~jharris/facilitation. html Interagency Gender Working Group, Men and Reproductive Health Task Force (2003). Implementation Guide. Retrieved August 10, 2008, from jhuccp. org/igwg/guide/intro. html

Word Choice Tortuous vs. Torturous - Proofread My Paper

Word Choice Tortuous vs. Torturous - Proofread My Paper Word Choice: Tortuous vs. Torturous The way that language evolves is fascinating to word nerds like us, especially how different words develop from the same origins. â€Å"Tortuous† and â€Å"torturous,† for example, can both be traced back to the Latin term torquÄ“re, which means â€Å"to twist.† This shared root is why these words are similarly spelled. However, â€Å"tortuous† and â€Å"torturous† also have importantly distinct meanings, so you need to know how each is used. Tortuous (Twisting or Complicated) The literal meaning of â€Å"tortuous† is fairly close to its Latin origins, since it means â€Å"full of twists.† We might use this term to describe a long and twisting route, for instance: They followed the tortuous road up the mountain. Are we nearly there yet?(Photo: Srdjan Marincic/wikimedia) However, â€Å"tortuous† can also mean â€Å"excessively complicated,† such as in the following: It was difficult to follow his tortuous speech and the audience left the hall confused. The important thing to remember is that â€Å"tortuous† mean â€Å"twisting† or â€Å"complicated.† Torturous (Involving Torture or Suffering) â€Å"Torture† refers to inflicting pain as punishment or to gain information (e.g., â€Å"the confession was given under torture†). It can also mean â€Å"extreme pain or suffering.† The term â€Å"torturous† therefore means â€Å"related to or involving torture†: Prolonged solitary confinement is considered a torturous punishment. More generally, we sometimes use â€Å"torturous† to describe something that is very unpleasant: Professor Jones’ lectures were torturously dull. These uses might seem a long way from the root of â€Å"twist,† but they make more sense if you imagine someone writhing and twisting in pain while being tortured! Were not sure whats happening here, but it definitely looks torturous. Tortuous or Torturous? â€Å"Tortuous† and â€Å"torturous† are often confused because something â€Å"tortuous† (i.e., complicated) could also be considered â€Å"torturous† (i.e., unpleasant). For example: G. W. F. Hegel’s tortuous writing is torturous to read. Possibly not a fun-loving dude. Nevertheless, since these terms have very distinct meanings when used literally, you should always make sure you’ve picked the right word for what you’re describing. Remember: Tortuous = Twisting or complicated Torturous = Involving torture or suffering

Final Essay on Law Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Final on Law - Essay Example The concerns of a structural functionalist include the ability of the system to meet its needs as well as any form of dysfunction in it or how the feedback mechanism reflects a system’s efficiency. Moreover, he is interested in changes that are lasting and become part of the institution as well as culture and the location of authority in the system as the key in the identification of decisions and their nature (Powers 153). In understanding the perspective of a structural functionalist with respect to the criminal justice system, it is important to note that the latter is underpinned by several principles. The first principle is that society can be viewed as a system rather than as a cacophony of individual choices and actions. Second, society is being held together by values and culture that its members share and hold together. The third principle is that the institutions within society play a role in stabilizing it. Finally, change is ever present in a social system, but thi s takes place slowly and is driven by the abandonment and dropping of institutions that are flawed and do not contribute to or are not in harmony with an efficient social system (Garner 324). The framework of the criminal justice system

The Robe of Love Myth, By Laura Simms Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Robe of Love Myth, By Laura Simms - Essay Example Because of the jealousy the other three somehow convinced the king that she the only source of all the troubles in the kingdom. One morning when she didn't agreed King's point of view, in a fit of rage he banished her from the kingdom by saying "Your ill will is the cause of all my problems. And, you have not born me a child after years of marriage!" (Laura Simms, p. 21). The Queen left to India. One night the Queen dreamed of a magnificent Golden Tree and by the next morning she became pregnant. The King also dreamed of the Golden Tree and went to India in search of her wife. Following the advise of a sage he went to find the Golden Tree, at last he found the Golden tree in the middle of the boiling lake. He risked his life and took a single branch from the tree and found his wife's face on every leaf. He wept until his heart was cleansed of selfishness. He found his wife and asked for her forgiveness, she gladly forgave him. 'The Magic Drum' is a story about a young Inuit woman who refuses to marry. No man or suitor was ready to marry her because she was too different. When the woman saw a handsome strange she decided to get married but the stranger never looked at her. She followed him wherever he went. She followed him until she became a skeleton. When she felt something was burning she woke up and realized she was still a skeleton. An old man came to her house and said her dance while he plays the drums and vice versa. Strangely she became younger and the old man too became younger. They danced and laughed and finally disappeared. The old man pitted her fate and wanted to show his love towards her when only her skeleton remains were left. When she came to know that someone do care about her she felt happy and regained her body in flesh. He to regained his body and love for each other made them young. Pure and selfless love brings happiness and joy back into their lives. 'Krishna and Radha' is the story of Lord Krishna and the reincarnation of goddess of love Maya as Radha. Lord Krishna was a young boy who falls in love with Radha. Radha was much elder to Krishna and was fascinated by his charm. Other girls in the village were also attracted by his charm and fell deeply in love with him. Lord Krishna knows that other girls were also in love and since he don't want to hurt their feelings allowed them to be in the fascinating dream world of pure and lust less love which is divine. Krishna and Radha were separated and later he became king and married, Radha waited for him all her life. He fought battles and had married more than once and was worshipped all over the country and still she waited for him. This story depicts the power of true and pure love that has immense patience and faith in his/her partner and willing to spend the whole life just waiting for them. Love has no boundaries and is there to be shared with everyone. 'Savitri' is a story of a woman who lost her husband. Princess Savitri was married to a king and both were happy. One day when she was worshipping the god she came to know about the demise of her husband. She was shell-shocked and was determined to get back her husband from the clutches of god of death. When God of death comes to earth to take the soul of her husband, she persuades him to bring her husband back alive. God of death denies her obligations and starts his journey. But the princess impresses him by praising his deeds and valor. He brings her husband back

Importance of Education Essay Example for Free

Importance of Education Essay Education is the word which has the origin of latin. The original word is Educare (In Latin) which means to bring up. Education helps one to shape his/her future and It moulds the personality of an individual. Now a day’s people think that education would help them in their money making purposes. Definitely it is false view. Each one of us have different medium and of different cultural norms. However everybody is united through EDUCATION. It is quite very clear that, it mould a personal to put his knowledge in more useful things. There are many reasons Why Education is More Important? But the main basic reasons where education is more important is, It train up human minds which is incomplete without education. It shows the right path, think right and to make decisions in right time. Only throught the attainment of education, man is able to received information from his society, they are able to acquaint themself with past history. Education helps the human being in every aspects of their life. With good education of this generation government takes care in the progress in developing the country. The central and State government have announced many schemes for the children’s education, every child should receive their primary education. Now education is viewed as a vital key to success in life, and knowledge has become every individual’s aim or concern. The Eminent Scholars think that only through education one can make the country flourished. Even now many poor people believe that they can earn more by sending their wards to work. On the other hand it is a great blender. They couldn’t give basic education to their wards. Even though we have improved our literacy rate, there is a existence of uneducated persons. Every learned citizens of the country should ensure the education of the fellow citizen. We can say that a person will not be in proper sense when he is uneducated. Education is the need of an hour. It the one of the important things which differentiates the human being from the other creatures. It makes the uncivilized as civilized in their society. It brings more precisely, the perceived goal to make the individual better in the society.

Chemistry Study Guide Essay -- essays research papers

Chemistry Study Guide Chapter 9- Thermodynamics KE=  ½ mv2 w= F∆x w= force Ãâ€" distance ∙ A state function refers to a property of the system that depends only on its present state. ∙Internal Energy = heat + work ∆E = q + w ∙Pressure = Force/Area = P = F/A ∙Work= - external pressure Ãâ€" change in volume w = - P∆V Enthalpy H = E + PV qp = ∆E + P∆V ∆H = qp ∆H = H products – H reactants Ideal Gas Law PV = nRT Energy â€Å"heat† = 3/2 R∆T Cv = 3/2 R = â€Å"heat† required to change the temp of 1 mol of gas by 1K at constant volume Energy required = â€Å"heat† –   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  energy needed   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  energy needed to do to change the translational  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  the PV work energy Cp = 3/2 + R = 5/2 R = Cv + R = Cp E = 3/2 RT (per mole) ∆E = Cv∆T (per mole) ∆E = nCv∆T â€Å"Heat† required = qp = nCp∆T   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   = n (Cv + R) ∆T   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   = nCv∆T + nR∆T   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   (∆E) (PV) ∆H = ∆E + ∆(PV) ∆H = ∆E + &am...

Human Resources and Management Control Essay

An International bank, Santander Ltd. Has taken over the Abbey National bank, due to this take over, the Abbey National bank has been subjected to change you are the nominated senior managers at Abbey National bank ( at strategic level) using the available public domain information kindly execute the following takes in your role as strategic HR manager / change consultant. Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization and also HRM is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training. As Abbey National Bank is one of the largest banks in UK. The bank provides banking and insurance services nation-wide and is the backbone for country’s banking infrastructure despite arrival of a dozen other banks, including giants like Barclays and Nat west. The characteristic of human resource management are by no means universal. There are many models and practices within different organizations are diverse. The most significant feature of HRM is importance attached to strategic integration, which follows from top management‘s vision and leadership and which require the full commitment of people to it. There are different models of HRM Fiedler Contingency Model The contingency theory allows for predicting the characteristics of the appropriate situations for effectiveness. Three situational components determine the favourableness of situational control: Leader-Member Relations: Referring to the degree of mutual trust, respect and confidence between the leader and the subordinates. To build a strong team: There should be a great relationship among the employee, manager and the general manager because it is the foundation of the organization. Without a great relationship, the general manager or the manager cannot qualify to speak into the lives and influence the employees. It is communication that brings life into relationships. When communicating a lot with a particular person, the person will grow closer. From the case, there’s a lack of communication leads to a breakdown in relationship which leads to a loss of leadership. The manager needs to rebuild the relationship with his staffs and also communicate much more effectively than before. That is why if you want to make any organization work, communication is the key. David Guest’s (1989, 1997) model of HRM it has 6 dimensions of analysis * HRM strategy * HRM practices * HRM outcomes * Behaviour outcomes * Performance outcomes * Financial outcomes The model is prescriptive in the sense that it is based on the assumption that HRM is distinctively different from traditional personnel management (rooted in strategic management, etc.). It is idealistic, implicitly embodying the belief that fundamental elements of the HRM approach (essentially those of the Harvard map) such as commitment have a direct relationship with valued business consequences. However, Guest has acknowledged that the concept of commitment is ‘messy’ and that the relationship between commitment and high performance is (or, perhaps, was – given the age of this material) difficult to establish. It also employs a ‘flow’ approach, seeing strategy underpinning practice, leading to a variety of desired outcomes. We have discussed two model of HRM both are good but as Abbey National is a growing company so that the D.Guest’s model of HRM is best for Abbey National so if Abbey National follows this model it must be succeed to ach ieve its goal. HRM leads to improvement in organizational performance. HR practices have the quality to improve the employee attitude and behaviour, impact of technology, increase the efficiency of employees , higher levels of productivity, quality and customer services, Assess the impact of strategic human resource management activities in Abbey National and evaluate the contribution of strategic human resource management to the achievement of a Santander’s objectives at Abbey National In today’s businesses, the right approach and management of the company’s employees can greatly affect the company’s overall performance. A strategic approach in Human Resource Management is vital especially in growing companies. Through the adoption of best human resource management practices the Abbey National bank aims to make a real difference in people’s lives. Skilled people combined with other resources have the capacity to generate value. First and for most , people in work organization set over all strategies and goals , design work system , produce goods and services , monitor quality , allocate financial resources and market products and services. Human beings therefore become a â€Å"Human resource â€Å". The efficiency and performance of staff and their commitment to the objectives of the Abbey National bank are fostered by good human relationship at work. Due to this fact, it is necessary to give proper attention to human resource management and harmonious employee relations. The human resource management of Abbey National not only helps to establish, develop, maintain and communicate office policies throughout the entire company and also to represent, help, advice and consult with the most important asset of the company â€Å"the employee†. Abbey National ‘s human resource management team develop hiring plans and recruiting policies, it also works for employee relations, separations, contracts, performance, reviews, benefit and pension plans. The purpose of Abbey National’s human resource management team is basically to utilize an employee‘s ability effectively by coaching them to improve those abilities and at the same time improving their working environment so that they feel satisfied with their job. The purpose of an organization is to accomplish the goals and objectives which indicate within the organization and human resource management indicates how they plan on reaching those goals and objectives. Strategy planning is indicating where Abbey National is going over the next year or more, the focus of a strategic plan is depending on the entire organization. There is a verity of perspective, models and approaches which used in strategic planning. The strategic plan is developed on the nature of the Abbey National’s leadership, culture of organization, complexity of the organization’s environment, size of the organization, expertise of planner etc. Companies fail because a number of reasons and mismanagement can be one of them. Operations may spin out of control if personal agendas and politics are placed, and in growing companies, this should be monitored and prevented. Developing not only management but also its employees is significant. To keep up with competition, employees should be given with a number of reasons to stay with the company, and do their jobs exemplary well. Their continuous growth, the right compensation and benefits, and Work-life balance is just some of the things that motivate employees to perform better, producing better results for the customers and ultimately, the company. Abbey National‘s human resource management should increase the interest return on the investment in the organization’s human capital and decrease the financial risk. According to Armstrong 2006 human resource management policy refers to â€Å"the continuing guidelines on the approach the organization intends to adopt in managing its people† Abbey National‘s human resource management policies reflect the values and philosophies of the organization. Abbey National‘s human resource management policy is notably a reference point when employment practices are being developed and during decision-making regarding the people in the organization. Abbey National ‘s human resource management provides guidance on implementation of procedures and what actions should be taken in line with the policy to effectively carry out day to day taken. Before establishing a new work system or change process, a careful evaluation of operating policies is vital to determine their impact on employee attitudes and behaviors. It is important to note that human resource policy is the key to a successful change effort, resulting in greater acceptance and a more positive, motivated workforce. So first Abbey National evaluates the operating policies of change and after that they can apply the same and for this purpose Abbey National mu st know the following:- Analyse the business factors that underpin the new human resource planning in Abbey National and assess the human resource requirements for next two years for the process of developing a human resource plan for Abbey National Ans. Human resource planning is a process of evaluation and identification of HR requirement to achieve the organizational goals to ensure competitive advantage in the market place. Human resource planning is a key component of every corporation’s strategic business planning. Human resource planning describes the organization’s objectives and plans and helps the workers to achieve these objectives. HR Planning involves gathering of information, making objectives, and making decisions to enable the organization achieve its objectives. HR have an enormous task keeping pace with the all changes and ensuring that the right people are available to the Organization at the right time. It is changes to the composition of the workforce that force managers to pay attention to HR planning. The changes in composition of workforce not only influence the appointment of staff, impact of technology increase in productivity but also the methods of employee development and changing nature of work. It becomes very critical when Organizations merge, plants are relocated, and activities are scaled down due to financial problems. The most important reason why HR Planning should be managed and implemented is the costs involved. Because costs forms an important part of the Organizations budget, workforce planning enable the Organization to provide HR provision costs. When there is staff shortage, the organization should not just appoint discriminately, because of the costs implications of the other options, such as training and transferring of staff, have to be considered. There are many business factors in Abbey National bank that underpin human resource planning, some of them are the stage of business, business growth, business change and decline, labour cost control, labour budgeting, labour market trends and regulations and demographic trends etc. Human resource requirement HR Planning requires that we gather data on the Organizational‘s goals and objectives. Once Abbey National understands where the Organization wants to go and how it wants to get that point. The needs of the employees are derived from the corporate objectives of the Organization. They stern from shorter and medium term objectives. Therefore, the HR Plan should have a mechanism to express planned Company strategies into planned results and budgets so that these can be converted in terms of numbers and skills required. The HR profession has undergone some changes in recent years. There has been some movement away from staff welfare and administration-centered activities towards strategy and planning. HR departments are now expected to add value to the organization they support. The exact nature of the work varies according to the organization, but is likely to include: Working closely with departments, increasingly in a consultancy role, assisting line managers to understand and implement policies and procedures; Developing with line managers HR planning strategies which consider immediate and long-term staff requirements; Planning, and sometimes delivering, training, including inductions for new staff; the human resource management also know the government policies and internal and external requirement of the organization like labour requirement, skill requirement, labour market and competition. Present a critical evaluation on how the human resource plan can contribute to meeting an Abbey National objectives in your evaluation, analyses the impact of organizational structure and organizational culture? People are the greatest asserts in any Organization. The Organization is at liberty to develop its staff at full pace in the way ideally suited to their individual capacities. The main reason is that the Organization’s objectives should be aligned as near as possible, or matched, in order to give optimum scope for the developing potential of its employees. Once Abbey National in action, the HR Plans become corporate plans. Having been made and concurred with top management, the plans become a part of the company’s long-range plan. Failure to achieve the HR Plans due to cost, or lack of knowledge, may be serious constraints on the long-range plan. Child (1997) defined organizational structure as comprising â€Å"all the tangible and regularly occurring features which help to shape their members behavior†. The structure of an organization can be regarded as a frame work for getting things done. It consists of unit, functions, divisions, departments and formally constituted work, teams into which activities related to particular processes, projects, products, markets, customers, geographical areas, or professional disciplines are grouped together. The structure indicates who is accountable for directing, coordinating and carrying out these activities and defines management hierarchies, the chain of command as who is responsible to whom for what at each level in the organization. The organization has to design the organization structure. It may be hierarchical or flatter. It may, also, be, traditional, line and staff organization, Functional organization Or modern viz, Project organization, Matrix organization etc. Weber‘s bureaucratic theory emphasized the need for a hierarchical structure of power. It recognized the importance of division of labor and specialization. In functional organization a form of departmentalization in which employees engaged in functional activities such as marketing or finance are grouped into one unit. In divisional organization under the structure, activities and people are grouped into divisions according to products, market or a combination of both with each division self-managed and operating as a profit centre. However, there is overall control which comes from the corporate headquarters. In here, financial as well as R&D activities are centralized in order to profit from economies of scale and reduced cost. In project organization a team is formed temporarily which works with restricted resources within a defined time to accomplish a certain task and after the task is achieved the team is disbanded. Matrix structure involves dual hierarchy that is balance between project and functional departmentalization. In a matrix organization each employee reports to both a functional or divisional manager and to a project or group manager. Research has shown that structure plays a vital role in human resource performance, for example, the level of management, grouping of people and tasks will determine the amount of relationships and co-ordination in the organization. However, structure does not act in isolation as the link to performance. According to Galbraith and Nathanson, they noted that high performance is achieved by congruence between structure and other variables such as culture, reward system and business strategy. Therefore, organization should align all these factors in order to enhance organizational performance. Organizational culture is the pattern of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that may not have been articulated but shape the ways in which people behave things get done. There are a number of ways in which to classify different types of organizational culture. Handy (1981) describes four main types of organizational cultures * The power culture is one with a central power source that exercises control. There are few rules and the atmosphere is competitive. A power culture is frequently found in small entrepreneurial organization and relies on trust, empathy and personal communication for its effectiveness. Control is exercised from the centre by the selection of key individual. * Role culture is one in which work is controlled by procedures and rules and the role description, is more important than the person who fills it. Role culture rests on the strength of strong organizational pillar. For example, finance, purchasing and production. * Task culture is job oriented or project oriented. It is one in which the aim is to being together the right resources and people and utilizes the unifying power of the group. * Person culture is one in which the individual is the central point. The organization exists only to serve and assist the individuals in it. For example architects, doctors or consultant. Culture is an important factor in successful technology, implementation, innovation, mergers, job satisfaction, organizational success and team effectiveness and to the importance of determining whether organization has an organic or mechanistic culture. Culture impacts most aspects of organizational life, such as how decision are made, who makes them, how rewards are distributed, who is promoted, how people are treated, how the organization responds to its environment and so on. Culture is clearly an important ingredient of effective organizational performance. Chatman and Cha refer to the use of the following three managerial tools for managing and changing culture and if Abbey’s human resource management follow these tools they should succeed in achieving its goals and objectives. Examine how the effectiveness of human resources management could be monitored in Abbey National and make justified recommendations to improve the effectiveness of human resources management The goal of human resource management is to help an organization meet its strategic goals by attracting, developing and retaining employees and also by managing them effectively. It aims to achieve a fit between managing the organization’s employees and the overall strategic direction of the organization. Abbey National‘s human resource planning deals with recognizing and fulfilling the human resource needs of the organization. In order to meet the effectiveness objectives of management control, Abbey National’s human resource plan should be formulated in such a way that it conforms to the organizational strategies and corporate plan. At the micro level, Abbey National needs to do career planning for employees and succession planning for key positions in the organization. At a macro level, Abbey National needs to carry out workforce planning and salary planning; the nature of the human resource planning process is primarily dependent upon the organizational size and the hierarchical structure within the organization. For the Abbey National‘s human resource plan to be successful, it has to be supported fully by the top management, the Abbey National‘s human resource department, and the line managers. Recruitment and selection, training and development and compensation management are some of the areas over which the organization needs to exert control. One of the effective ways of assessing human resource functions is to use metrics in the control process. Abbey National ‘s evaluation of the recruitment process will help in exercising control over certain aspects of the recruitment process like the costs incurred on the recruitment process, the people involved in the process, the quality of the new recruits, the final number of recruits selected, and the success rate of each sourcing channel. The effectiveness of training and developing activities of the Abbey National can be assessed by monitoring job-impact indicators. The returns on the investment made one the training activities can also be measured by using quantitative tools like benefit to cost ratio. The attrition level in Abbey National can be assessed by using two metrics employee turnover rate and employee retention rate. These metrics are periodically computed and the values compared with the industry average and with the past records of the Abbey National. Abbey National‘s human resource auditing/ accounting refers to the process of identifying measuring, and communicating the value of the human resource of the Abbey National. Various human resource accounting models have been developed to aid managers in valuing their human resource assets. Employee engagement has to distinct yet related main factors employee satisfaction and employee commitment. Employees who are both satisfied and committed to the Abbey National are said to exhibit a high degree of engagement with their employer. Employee’s engagement levels can be periodically assessed through surveys. High levels of employee engagement are characteristics of the Abbey National which is considered by employee s as a great place to work or as an employer of choice. The workforce scorecard approach views the workforce in term of the contribution made by it instead of cost incurred on it. It makes use of metrics instead of benchmarking. It also makes the line managers jointly responsible with the human resource professionals for execution of the Abbey National‘s strategy. The workforce scorecard has four dimensions. Workforce success, leadership and workforce behaviour, workforce competencies and workforce mind set and culture. All these four dimensions help in assessing workforce effectiveness. Abbey National’s human resource information systems are specialised application software built for implementing, monitoring and benchmarking human resource processes in Abbey National. At an operational level, the HRIS is used for transaction processing and administrative purpose. With a change in the competitive scenarios Abbey National is using the HRIS for strategic human resource management and decision making. The HRIS is useful for controlling human resource management in the Abbey National and achieving its management control objectives of efficiency, effectiveness, disclosure and compliance. References and Bibliography 1.Abbey National Bank 7,Dec 2012 web.7,Dec 2012-12-07 http://www.banking-business-review.com/companies/abbey_national_plc 2.Human Resource Management 7,Dec 2012 web.7,Dec 2012-12-07 http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/f/hr_management.htm 3.Contingency Model of HRM 7,Dec 2012 web.7,Dec 2012-12-07 http://www.studymode.com/essays/Fiedler-Contingency-Model-666139.html 4.Guest’s model of HRM 7,Dec 2012 web.7,Dec 2012-12-07 http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/introduction_to_hrm/guest-hrm.htm 5Human resource requirement 7,Dec 2012 web.7,Dec 2012-12-07 http://www.prospects.ac.uk/human_resources_officer_job_description.htm 6.Basic information of human resource management 7,Dec 2012 web.7,Dec 2012-12-07 http://humanresources.about.com/od/hrbasicsfaq/a/hr_faq.htm 6.Strategic approach to human resource management 8,Dec 2012 web.8,Dec 2012-12-08 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HxRaqrcGn-0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true 7.Importance of human resource management 8,Dec 2012 web.8,Dec 2012-12-08 http://www.aimpapers.com/samples/Strategic_Importance_of_Human_Resource_Management_1_.pdf 9.Armstrong’s policy of human resource management 9,Dec 2012 web.9,Dec 2012-12-09 http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Armstrong_s_Handbook_of_Human_Resource_M.html?id=vZHCLf0YJpcC&redir_esc=y

Define and Discuss ‘Retail Experience’ Essay

Define and discuss ‘retail experience’. Use a case study example to demonstrate its application. How does the retailer create and enhance value? Define and discuss ‘retail experience’. Use a case study example to demonstrate its application. How does the retailer create and enhance value? David Olu RETAIL MANAGEMENT Define and discuss ‘retail experience’. Use a case study example to demonstrate its application. How does the retailer create and enhance value? When people go shopping they want to encounter an enjoyable experience which will satisfy their needs so in recent years retailers have tried to take the shopping experience to another level in order to encourage consumers to build a relationship with the brand. The purpose of this essay will be to outline what is meant by the term â€Å"retail experience†. The main focus will be on a particular case study involving Apple in order to explain how the retailer goes on to enhance value. Retail experience can be seen as a process in which a retailer packages an experience together with products. (Berman B & Evans J 2010) highlight that â€Å"A Retailers image depends heavily on its â€Å"atmosphere†. When looking at atmosphere it is the psychological feeling a customer gets when visiting the retailer.’’ It is noted that atmosphere can influence hedonic value this is an important aspect of the experience, because this is what plays a vital role in gaining a customer’s interest and it can help in leading the customer into the buying process. All of the major retailers will aim to provide a relaxing environment for their consumers because shopping is considered as fun and pleasurable (Jones, 1999). There are some key factors that contribute to this, first we look at music because it provides entertainment for shoppers Turley and Chebat (2002). Followed by lighting the appropriate use of it,  such as product spotlighting and dim ambient lighting, and thirdly the use of bright and vibrant colours. Swinyard (1993) reiterated this by pointing out that â€Å"Mood states are present in virtually every shopping encounter, and could have a significant effect on shopping behaviour†. And In Relation to this (Kemp and Kopp 2011) also put forward that Emotions shape our everyday existence, including our consumption and purchase behaviour. So this could mean that a consumer in a bad mood may tend to view shopping activities differently from one in a good mood. When a customer enters the store atmosphere they are not able to experience the music in seclusion or smell the scent without seeing the colours as well they do not walk on the floor-covering without feeling the ambient temperature. The typical customer experiences amounts of all these and other incentives as an on-going, collective experience. So it can be argued that most buying environments are purposefully designed to produce specific emotional effects in shoppers. Berman & Evans J (2010) argued that â€Å"The presentation merchandise and the displays that bring shoppers into the store are very important in creating a retail image. So other factors which have to be considered when looking at retail experience is the layout of the shop itself because if the shop is nicely laid out it will encourage customers to spend more time in the shop than originally planned. So retailers have to consider the layout of the products and how they can appeal to customers and also clearly labelled displays if they have any in order to make the customers indentify what is on sell clearly. So it is always essential for a business to ensure that the shop is properly organised. A store exterior provides a powerful impact on a business’s image this should be planned effectively a store exterior consists of the total physical exterior of the store itself, with a storefront most retailers can present a traditional, trendy, upscale environment, in relation to retail experience customers who happen to pass a shop they usually judge a store by its exterior so this can be used to draw in customers with things like display windows showing products will be able to catch a customer’s attention  straight away most retailers make use of mannequins in order to grab people’s attention. Customers always want to feel valued and welcomed when they visit a shop so when they enter the shop they expect a good customer service from the members of staff this is crucially essential for an organisation to manage. Because not only will shoppers appreciate the store due to the products offered, or atmospherics’ but they will have more of a strong interest due to the kindness of the salesperson (Lombart and Jeandrain, 2003). If the members of staff are always available and helpful it will create a customer satisfaction and this can be considered as a key determining factor with benefits of repeat shopping and buying behaviour if managed effectively so with this it means that customers will always have a good experience, when they encounter polite and helpful members of staff and this will also create a positive image for the business. Promotion is another tool in which retailers will aim to provide satisfaction to their customers so in order for them to do this they implement special offers as a strategy to achieve this, if an organisation regularly provides promotion as part of its experience it will find that they will attract more customers. So for example retailers like Tesco or Asda regularly offer promotion and they go head to head on offers in order to gain draw in more people. Not only will offering promotions attract repeat custom it will also allow the organisation to generate profit. All different kind of Retailers will try to use different ways in order to bring that retail experience that their consumers desire so retailers who connect with customers through experiences which are personally relevant , memorable, interactive and also emotional are more likely to increase sales and brand loyalty and this is why experience stores such as Apple have emerged, reason being that they want customers to bond with the brand, at first hand , a â€Å"try before you buy† approach . Apple is one of the biggest leading technology companies in the world apple provides customers with an attractive and relaxed environment where they can  handle. â€Å"Apple has been developing its experience stores since 2001 and by the end of 2008 the company had opened some 250 increasingly sophisticated stores† (Jones, & Comfort, 2010). Benghazi (2012) States that entertaining browsing experiences might help a browser to learn more about the offers and characteristics. Customers will be able to use knowledge in order to make a decision on whether they should purchase the product or not so in regards to this Apple provide their consumers with a live interaction of their products for example the Apple store in London’s regent street lets customers get involved in â€Å"Getting started workshops† this includes showing customers how to set up a new Mac, connecting to the internet and sending emails. This goes to show that Apple are trying to involve their customers with a firsthand experience of the brand and the products they offer, the experience goes beyond the store itself the company provides summer camps for children and youth workshops. Children aged 8-12 years get what is known as a â€Å"hands-on Mac experience, during a 3 hour workshop 8-13years olds can compose a song â€Å"in a garage band†, construct a photo album and create key note presentations. This illustrates on how Apple are trying to expand retail experience to their customers by going beyond the in store experience this will in return generate a positive outcome for Apple. Within regards to the designs of the stores, the interior represents three values, which are transparency, community and service. There is the open spacious interior containing the computers, IPods and IPhones which are neatly placed on tables this portrays transparency. Community is encouraged by the store through its theatre and its lounging areas and then the commitment into services is branded into customers minds as they are able to visit the genius bar, each store is looked at as a place where people can feel comfortable and are not intimidated by technology. Apple stores may be designed to sell but also at the same time they are designed to teach, customers who walk into an apple store just for a casual play of the products can find that the experience can quickly turn into some serious learning. When we look at a typical apple store it has three  spaces the first one is usually for play and for purchasing, and the other one is for learning a customer would typically come across these areas in that order. The shop is laid out in a simple manner enabling the customers to move around freely to admire the products within the store. Like any other store, apple stores consist of members of staff who wear a blue t-shirt with the apple logo in the middle making them easily recognisable to the public as the staff with a casual look. There always there to help customers with their knowledge on how to use the products. The members of staff always ensure to ask customers if they need help if the customer looks lost, this type of retail setting allows customers and members of staff to interact as the members of staff are always asked questions in regards to the products, and the questions that the customers ask the staff guide the learning and they reveal what has been learned and what else is there left to be learned. So in a sense Apple have able to take the relationship between the customers, staff members and the store to a different level of retailing and learning. The Apple store has built relevance into every section of the shop, the members of staff are aware that they have to start with the customer and with whatever knowledge the customer knows and then progress on from there. Despite the technology the apple store experience is more focused on forming a relationship with the products rather than just focusing on products. An Apples store experience generally provides a powerful image about the brand Apple is able to combine products together with service effectively in order to reward their customers with a unique experience in which customers are able to feel like learners who are able to develop valuable skills. The Apple store learning experience is greatly adapted and focused on the interests and the needs of the individual customer. Conclusion Retail experience is vital for all of the retailers to establish in order to looking at Apple they have successfully established an environment where customers would want to come back again and again so in conclusion Apple has shown that they value their customers by ensuring that their customers experience the products at first hand and by also taking that experience out  of the store by providing their customers with things like summer camps. It is vital that Apple continue to bring this experience to their customers because it will mean that they will generate repeat custom and also they will be able to attract new customers. Bibliography Books Berman, B. and Evans, J. (2010) Retail management a strategic approach. 11th Ed. New Jersey: Pearson education Inc, p.508, 509,510,512. Internet Sonera, T. (2006). Apple case study. Available: www.buyukdemirci.com/Apple/Apple_case_.pdf. Last accessed 18th November 2012. Journals Ballantine, P. et al. (2010) Atmospheric cues and their effect on the hedonic retail. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 38 (8), p.1, 2. Burns, D. and Neisner, L. (2006) Customer satisfaction in a retail setting: The contribution of emotion. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 34 (1), p.50, 51. Jones, P. et al. (2010) Retail experience stores: experiencing the brand at first. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28 (3), p.243. KEMP, E. and KOPP, S. (2011) Emotion in consumption. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 10: p.1. Kronrod, A. et al. (2012) Hedonic Consumption and compliance with assertive messages. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., 39 (1), p.52. Nsairi, Z. (2012) Managing browsing experience in retail stores through. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 40 (9), p.678. Swinyard, W. (199300) The Effects of Mood, Involvement, and Quality of Store Experience on Shopping Intentions. Journal of consumer research, 20p.271. Washor, E. et al. (2009) At the Core of the Apple Store: Images of Next Generation Learning. The Phi Delta Kappan, 91 (2), p.61, 62, 63

The Logic Behind -logic and -logical

The Logic Behind -logic and -logical The Logic Behind â€Å"-logic† and â€Å"-logical† The Logic Behind â€Å"-logic† and â€Å"-logical† By Mark Nichol Why does the English language allow one to select between, say, biologic and biological, neurologic and neurological, and technologic and technological? Why complicate our language lives with the choice? Is the universe malicious? According to one study, the suffix -ic is preferred over the variant -ical by a ratio of 8 to 1. Curiously, however, when -log precedes the suffix, the ratio is reversed. (In another example of this phenomenon, called potentiation, -ness is much more common than -ity except when the suffix is preceded by able.) But that doesn’t answer my questions. For the most part, the choice seems to be personal or institutional preference, because there’s usually no distinction no logic, for example, to selection of -logic or -logical. For example, the style guide of the American Academy of Neurology prefers the shorter form, but in other contexts, neurological prevails. One researcher points out that, as you might have guessed, -ic (from the Greek suffix -ikos) was the original suffix; -ical, formed by adding the French suffix -al, came later. For the most part, usage organically caused a divergence, so that, for example, a historic occasion is memorable, whereas a historical occasion is one that merely occurred. For another example, economic refers to economics, while economical is used more generally to refer to the quality of economy. In this case, as with some others, the former can mean the same thing as the latter but seldom does. Comic and comical, and geometric and geometrical, are two of the many other sister terms with both (occasionally) identical and (usually) distinctly different meanings. Sometimes, one form predominates for obvious reasons (fanatical, for example, developed in favor of fanatic because the original form came to be applied as a noun), but in other cases, the variation for reasons seldom clear triumphs (botanical versus botanic, for example.) So, which form should you use in a given context? The dictionary is helpful for most -ic/-ical debates, but the -logic/-logical (and -logous!) issue is an outlier. In such cases, consult an authoritative source. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Has vs. Had8 Proofreading Tips And TechniquesI wish I were...

Pronouncing Dour and Other OU Words

Pronouncing Dour and Other OU Words Pronouncing Dour and Other OU Words Pronouncing Dour and Other OU Words By Maeve Maddox A reader asks: How does one pronounce properly the word â€Å"dour†?   Should it rhyme with â€Å"sour† or â€Å"door† or be pronounced something like the whiskey â€Å"Dewar’s† or perhaps â€Å"doer†? Dour is an adjective that came into English from a Scottish word that in turn probably came from the word that gives us durable: durus: â€Å"hard.† A dour person presents a stern, harsh, forbidding exterior. Here are some examples of dour found on the Web and in Wuthering Heights: Never the dour child in his eyes, Eleanor [Roosevelt] was instead his â€Å"own darling little Nell.† Not only did Kierkegaard inherit his fathers melancholy, his sense of guilt and anxiety, and his pietistic emphasis on the dour aspects of Christian faith, but he also inherited his talents for philosophical argument and creative imagination. The social worker had remained silent throughout the conference, with a  dour  expression on  his  face. [Heathcliff] managed to continue work till nine o’clock, and then marched dumb and dour to his chamber. In my early (US) education, I learned to pronounce the vowel sound of dour like the oo in goose: DOOr. This is the only pronunciation given in the OED. The online pronouncing dictionary Howjsay gives a second pronunciation in which the vowel sound is pronounced like the vowel sound in out: DOWr. Merriam-Webster Unabridged (online version) shows the phonetic symbols for the OW pronunciation first, but the audio feature gives the OO pronunciation. According to Charles Elster, (The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations), a survey of American sources indicates that the OO pronunciation was the only one in US speech until the 1940s. He speculates that the OW pronunciation developed by false analogy with words like our, hour, flour, sour, scour, and devour. I hesitate to label DOWr â€Å"US pronunciation.† Many US speakers do make dour rhyme with sour, but many others pronounce dour as the English and Scots do. Regional US pronunciation varies widely (and sometimes wildly) when it comes to words spelled with ou. For example, some speakers pronounce tour to rhyme with tore and tourist to rhyme with forest. When I was growing up, the most common American pronunciation of route was ROOT. We even had a popular song about getting our kicks on Route 66 that was sung with the ROOT pronunciation. Nowadays, many (again, not all) American speakers make route rhyme with shout, losing the distinction between the noun route (â€Å"a line of travel†) and the verb rout (â€Å"to put to flight†). Here are a few more ou words grouped according to pronunciation of the vowel sound. Some readers are sure to disagree with the groupings, but here goes anyway. My authorities are the OED, M-W, and Howjsay: OW as in how: foul loud house flour hour sour OO as in you>: cougar louvre tour tourist OR as in for: court mourn O as in toe: moulder moult soul UR as in URN: journal journalist journey schwa (an indeterminate uh sound) moustache Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Farther vs. FurtherRules for Capitalization in TitlesMay Have vs. Might Have

Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 77

Summary - Essay Example The target market of this corporation is the small businesses and the home PC users. It wishes to promote its product and services using local media such as local newspaper and radio. This is because at this developmental stage its main target market is local. It will also distribute fliers within the vicinity of the company to attract the local clientele. The manager will be the owner of the business whose responsibilities will be to oversee the daily operations. Originally the staff will consist of only three individual, the technicians, sales persons and the administrative staff. Since the organization will be dealing with an area that requires great technical knowledge, it s crucial that the integration of the necessary hardware be done with precision. The customers will choose the desired look they need o their customized computers and then the company technical expert will work with this. The company will minimize costs of production by ordering computer pats in large scale form the suppliers. Daily operations will involve consultations with the salesperson and technicians and sales. The employees will be expected to work 8 hours a day for five days. In case they are required to work extra hours, this will be paid different. IN all operations, efficiency and quality will be emphasized so as to retain and attract more customers through word of mouth. The first six months, the workers will be maintained at only three staff members and this will minimize the cost. After one year into operation, computer heavens will increase its staff depending on the requirement. It is believed that the company will have a larger customer base. The staff could be increased up to six members but this will highly depend on the business requirements of that time. At its third birthday, Computer Heavens will have proved its viability and should have an even larger staff and even have plans of expanding the business to other areas. The company plans to

Discuss the relationship between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Essay

Discuss the relationship between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - Essay Example 476 - 1453). In form and style, medieval art had normally been confined to subjects of chiefly religious worth, especially as Christianity struggled to cope during the Dark Ages due to barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire. At the time, the western civilization merely hoped for salvation from havoc and crises through the Roman Catholic Church and this event serves to justify how and why the advent of medieval art, which is Christian art by nature, owed most of its substance to the themes that speak of religious influence (Medieval Art). As Roman Catholic Church portrayed a principal role in addressing the issues of hostility and brutality of men, the art history of the Middle Ages was inevitably led to depict the essence of Christianity in attempting to resolve the outcome of turmoil thereof. Faith and objects of Scripture, thus, became central to the core content of the medieval art which includes illuminated manuscripts, fresco and panel paintings, embroidery and tap estry art, mosaic, and tessera. Bronze art, ceramic art, as well as metalwork by silversmiths and goldsmiths account for the significant part of the identity and shape of the medieval art whose artists were highly disposed to create pietistic structures such as those inspired by biblical images. The period further consisted of schemes which brought about models of scriptural beings that were designed via architectures of Romanesque and of Gothic fashion. ‘Renaissance Art’, on the other hand, emerged the time when people of Europe were enlightened by the principle of humanism after all the unfortunate occurrences in the Middle Ages. It blossomed to embody the later historical art period which is characterized by new technique and invention toward a form or style meant to express ample departure from medieval art. Based on the world history, in general, Renaissance (14th – 17th century) pertains to the era of Enlightenment otherwise understood as the Golden Age or the great span in which European nations gradually learned to leave behind brutish human ways and engage in higher order of intellect as human beings capable of developing a moral society. Human endeavors in the West brought in a number of very indispensable discoveries that sustained the foundation and richness of knowledge in literature, philosophy, and science though religion took on paths toward reform and under these circumstances was the later historical art period given birth. With Renaissance art, Greco-Roman paintings and sculptures resurfaced to exhibit an artistic evolution that defied former conventions. While the medieval art focused on the symbolist approach of painting and sculpting animal and mythological figures in muted color, the Renaissance art replaced the idea of symbolism with the realization that a human subject of art in three dimensions would promote the value of man in the realm of intelligent existence and journey of change. Artists of the Renaissance add ed volume to the work and refined details which the artists of the Middle Ages overlooked especially in the aspect of designating visual elements appropriately so as to convey more of nature, sentiment, and thought through the art piece. Apparently, the humanist perspective of art in the Renaissance was adapted to in the course of enlightening men about the power of the

New Orleans Jazz Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

New Orleans Jazz - Assignment Example Further societal differences like the class difference present in the society between these two communities is also attributed to result in the rise of Jazz music (Custodero). It is from these societal differences that the drum beats and horn blowing sounds were taken by the whites and blended with the music they heard from the churches and barrooms to give birth to this new genre of music now known as Jazz music. In line with the social factor that led to the rise of Jazz music in New Orleans, an ethnic group known as the Creoles were also credited for the rise of this new genre of music. These were French and Spanish speaking blacks who majority originated from the West Indies before settling in Louisiana. After the purchase of American state of Louisiana, these individuals out rightly became American citizens, therefore, the Geographical aspect of both Louisiana and New Orleans are contributor to the rise of Jazz music (Jazz In The International Sphere: Glocal Jazz Dialects And Po ly-Idiomatic Creative Music). The Creole musicians made some of the best society bands in New Orleans due to their delicate tone, precise technique and authentic flow of music. It is the blend of this music from the blacks living in New Orleans that gave birth to jazz music.

Quantization process

Quantization process Quantization is a process of mapping an infinite set of scalar or vector quantities by a finite set of scalar or vector quantities. Quantization has applications in the areas of signal processing, speech processing and Image processing. In speech coding, quantization is required to reduce the number of bits used for representing a sample of speech signal there by the bit-rate, complexity and memory requirement can be reduced. Quantization results in the loss in the quality of a speech signal, which is undesirable. So a compromise must be made between the reduction in bit-rate and the quality of speech signal. Two types of quantization techniques exist they are: scalar quantization and vector quantization. Scalar quantization deals with the quantization of samples on a sample by sample basis, while vector quantization deals with quantizing the samples in groups called vectors. Vector quantization increases the optimality of a quantizer at the cost of increased computational complexity and memory requirements. Shannon theory states that quantizing a vector will be more effective than quantizing individual scalar values in terms of spectral distortion. According to Shannon the dimension of a vector chosen greatly affects the performance of quantization. Vectors of larger dimension produce better quality when compared to vectors of smaller dimension and in vectors of smaller dimension the transparency in the quantization is not good at a particular bit-rate chosen [8]. This is because in vectors of smaller dimension the correlation that exists between the samples will be lost and the scalar quantization itself destroys the correlation that exists between successive samples so the quality of the quantized speech signal will be lost. Therefore, quantizing correlated data requires techniques that preserve the correlation between the samples, such a technique is the vector quantization technique (VQ). Vector quantization is the simplification of scalar quantization. Vectors of larger dimension produce transparency in quantization at a particular bit-rate chosen. In Vector quantization the data is quantized in the form of contiguous blocks called vectors rather than individual samples. But later with the development of better coding techniques, it is made possible that transparency in quantization can also be achieved even for vectors of smaller dimension. In this thesis quantization is performed on vectors of full length and on vectors of smaller dimensions for a given bit-rate [4, 50]. An example of 2-dimensional vector quantizer is shown in Fig 4.1. The 2-dimensional region shown in Fig 4.1 is called as the voronoi region, which in turn contains several numbers of small hexagonal regions. The hexagonal regions defined by the blue borders are called as the encoding regions. The green dots represent the vectors to be quantized which fall in different hexagonal regions and the red dots represent the codewords (centroids). The vectors (green dots) falling in a particular hexagonal region can be best represented by the codeword (red dot) falling in that hexagonal region [51-54]. Vector quantization technique has become a great tool with the development of non variational design algorithms like the Linde, Buzo, Gray (LBG) algorithm. On the other hand besides spectral distortion the vector quantizer is having its own limitations like the computational complexity and memory requirements required for the searching and storing of the codebooks. For applications requiring higher bit-rates the computational complexity and memory requirements increases exponentially. The block diagram of a vector quantizer is shown in Fig 4.2. Let be an N dimensional vector with real valued samples in the range. The superscript T in the vector denotes the transpose of the vector. In vector quantization, a real valued N dimensional input vector is matched with the real valued N dimensional codewords of the codebook Ci , the codeword that best matches the input vector with lowest distortion is taken and the input vector is replaced by it. The codebook consists of a finite set of codewords C=Ci,, where , where C is the codebook, L is the length of the codebook and Ci denote the ith codeword in a codebook. In LPC coding the high bit-rate input vectors are replaced by the low bit-rate codewords of the codebook. The parameters used for quantization are the line spectral frequencies (LSF). The parameters used in the analysis and synthesis of the speech signals are the LPC coefficients. In speech coding the quantization is not performed directly on the LPC coefficients, the quantization is performed by transforming the LPC coefficients to other forms which ensure filter stability after quantization. Another reason for not using LPC coefficients is that, LPC coefficients have a wide dynamic range and so the LPC filter easily becomes unstable after quantization. So LPC coefficients are not used for quantization. The alternative to LPC coefficients is the use of line spectral frequency (LSF) parameters which ensure filter stability after quantization. The filter stability can be checked easily just by observing the order of the LSF samples in an LSF vector after quantization. If the LSF samples in a vector are in the ascending or descending order the filter stability can be ensured otherwise the filter stability cannot be ensured [54-58]. The angular positions of the roots of and gives us the line spectral frequencies and occurs in complex conjugate pairs. The line spectral frequencies range from. The line spectral frequencies have the following properties: Ø All the roots of and must lie on the unit circle which is the required condition for stability. Ø The roots of and are arranged in an alternate manner on the unit circle i.e., The roots of equation (4.6) can be obtained using the real root method [31] and is The coefficients of equations (4.6) and (4.7) are symmetrical and so the order p of equations (4.6) and (4.7) get reduces to p/2. Vector quantization of speech signals requires the generation of codebooks. The codebooks are designed using an iterative algorithm called Linde, Buzo and Gray (LBG) algorithm. The input to the LBG algorithm is a training sequence. The training sequence is the concatenation of a set LSF vectors obtained from people of different groups and of different ages. The speech signals used to obtain training sequence must be free of background noise. The speech signals used for this purpose can be recorded in sound proof booths, computer rooms and open environments. In this work the speech signals are recorded in computer rooms. In practice speech data bases like TIMIT database, YAHOO data base are available for use in speech coding and speech recognition. The codebook generation using LBG algorithm requires the generation of an initial codebook, which is the centroid or mean obtained from the training sequence. The centroid, so obtained is then splitted into two centroids or codewords using the splitting method. The iterative LBG algorithm splits these two codewords into four, four into eight and the process will be continued till the required numbers of codewords in the codebook are obtained [59-61]. The flow chart of LBG algorithm is shown in Fig 4.3. The LBG algorithm is properly implemented by a recursive procedure given below: 1. Initially the codebook generation requires a training sequence of LSF parameters which will be the input to LBG algorithm. The training sequence is obtained from a set of speech samples recorded from different groups of people in a computer room. 2. Let R be the region of the training sequence. 3. Obtain an initial codebook from the training sequence, which is the centroid or mean of the training sequence and let the initial codebook be C. 4. Split the initial codebook C into a set of codewords and where is the minimum error to be obtained between old and new codewords. 5. Compute the difference between the training sequence and each of the codewords and and let the difference be D. 6. Split the training sequence into two regions R1 and R2 depending on the difference D between the training sequence and the codewords and. The training vectors closer to falls in the region R1 and the training vectors closer to falls in the region R2. 7. Let the training vectors falling in the region R1 be TV1 and the training sequence vectors falling in the region R2 be TV2. 8. Obtain the new centroid or mean for TV1 and TV2. Let the new centroids be CR1 and CR2. 9. Replace the old centroids and by the new centroids CR1 and CR2. 10. Compute the difference between the training sequence and the new centroids CR1 and CR2 and Let the difference be . 11. Repeat steps 5 to 10 until . 12. Repeat steps 4 to 11 till the required number of codewords in the codebook are obtained. Where N=2b represents the number of codewords in the codebook and b represents the number of bits used for codebook generation. represents the difference between the training sequence and the old codewords, represents the difference between the training sequence and the new codewords. The quality of the speech signal is an important parameter in speech coders and is measured in terms of spectral distortion measured in decibels (dB). The spectral distortion is measured between the LPC power spectra of the quantized and unquantized speech signals. The spectral distortion is measured frame wise and the average or mean of the spectral distortion calculated over all frames will be taken as the final value of the spectral distortion. For a quantizer to be transparent the mean of the spectral distortion must be less than 1 dB without any audible distortion in the reconstructed speech. But the mean of the spectral distortion is not a sufficient measure to find the performance of a quantizer, this is because the human ear is sensitive to large quantization errors that occur occasionally. So in addition to measuring the mean of the spectral distortion it is also necessary to have another measure of quality which is the percentage number of frames having a spectral distorti on greater than 2dB and less than 4dB and the percentage number of frames having a spectral distortion greater than 4dB. The frames having spectral distortion between 2 to 4dB and greater than 4dB are called as outlier frames [54]. In order to measure objectively the distortion between the quantized and unquantized outputs, a method called the spectral distortion is often used in narrowband speech coding. For an ith frame the spectral distortion (in dB), is given by equation (4.19). (4.19) Where and are the LPC power spectra of the unquantized and quantized ith frame respectively. The frequency f is in Hz and the frequency range is given by f1 and f2. The frequency range used in practice for narrowband speech coding is 0-4000 Hz [12, 33]. The conditions for transparent speech coding are: Ø The average or mean of the spectral distortion (SD) must be less than or equal to 1dB. Ø There must be no outlier frames having a spectral distortion greater than 4dB. Ø The number of outlier frames between 2 to 4dB must be less than 2%. These three conditions are required to evaluate the performance of a quantizer. At a given bit-rate, an optimization process has to be carried out so as to obtain better performance i.e., accepting a large average spectral distortion for a few outliers. In the design of a vector quantizer instead of using the mean squared error (MSE) distance measure the weighted LSF distance measurement is used. This is done to place emphasis on the low frequency LSFs and on the LSFs with higher power spectrum. The weights used can be of two types they are: static or dynamic [54]. Ø Fixed or Static weights : These are used to place emphasis on the low frequency LSFs in order to account for the sensitivity of human ear for low and high frequency LSFs. Ø Varying or Dynamic weights : These are used to place emphasis on the LSFs with high power spectrum. There exist a number of vector quantization techniques each one is having its own advantages and disadvantages. Each technique is developed to decrease the parameters like spectral distortion, computational complexity and memory requirements. The vector quantization techniques that exist are the Split Vector Quantization (SVQ) technique, Multistage Vector Quantization (MSVQ) technique, Split-Multistage Vector Quantization (S-MSVQ) technique and Switched Split Vector Quantization (SSVQ) technique. As marketability and cost of a product depends on the complexity and memory requirements, the performance of the vector quantization techniques is measured in terms of spectral distortion in decibels, computational complexity in kilo flops per frame and memory requirements in floats. The performance of a vector quantization technique mainly depends on how efficiently the codebook is generated. The codebook can be generated efficiently using a large training set and using more number of bits for codebook generation. The goal involved in the design of each vector quantization technique is to make the technique to use more number of training vectors and less number of bits for codebook generation there by the spectral distortion, computational complexity and memory requirements can be reduced. It has been observed that as the number of bits used for codebook generation decreases the computational complexity and memory requirements decreases but the spectral distortion increases, this increase in spectral distortion can be reduced by increasing the number of training vectors used for codebook generation [62-71]. The block diagram of an Unconstrained Vector Quantizer (UVQ) is shown in Fig 4.4. Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique is the most awful vector quantization technique used for achieving lowest distortion at a given bit-rate and dimension. In LPC-10 the order of the filter chosen is 10 and so the length of each LSF vector will be 10. In Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique the quantization is done on vectors of full length i.e., using 10 samples of an LSF vector. From Fig 4.4 S1, S2, S3Sn are the input LSF vectors to be quantized using the Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. The main advantage of this vector quantization technique is that it is expected to give lowest quantization distortion at a given bit-rate as the correlation that exists between the samples of a vector is preserved. But the disadvantage with this quantization technique is that as vectors of full length are used, at higher bit-rates the computational complexity and memory requirements increases in an exponential manner making it impractical for applications requiring higher bit-rates. Another problem with this quantization technique is that at higher bit-rates the size of the codebook will be large and the generation of the codebook for this type of quantization technique will be difficult on general purpose computers as the memory available with them is limited. So the number of training vectors used for codebook generation must be limited in number or the length of each vector must be reduced. In practice on general purpose computers the codebook cannot be generated even with train ing vectors less than the number of codewords in a codebook at higher bit-rates. But the number of training vectors required to generate the codebook must be large than the number of codewords in a codebook otherwise there will be too much over fitting of the training set [54]. The computational complexity and memory requirements of a b bit, n dimensional vector quantizer are calculated as follows [54]: Ø To calculate the mean square error (MSE) between two vectors of n dimension, n subtractions, n multiplications and n-1 additions are required. So a total of 3n-1 flops are required. Ø To search a codebook of 2b code vectors, (3n-1)2b flops are required in addition to the minimum distortion search requiring 2b-1 flops. Ø So the number of computations made by a b bit, n dimensional vector quantizer is Total complexity = (3n-1)2b + 2b-1 = 3n2b-1 flops per vector. (4.24) In the computing the complexity each addition, multiplication and comparison is considered as one floating point operation. So a b bit n dimensional vector quantizer requires a codebook of 2b code vectors, it needs to store n2b floating point values, it computes 3n2b 1 flops per vector. Instead of the mean square error distance measure if weighted distance measure is used in the design of a vector quantizer the complexity increases from 3n2b 1 to 4n2b 1 flops per vector. The computational complexity of an Unconstrained Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.25) Where n is the dimension of the vector b is the number of bits allocated to the vector quantizer. The Memory requirements of an Unconstrained Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.26) Exhaustive search vector quantizers achieve lowest distortion at the expense of complexity and memory requirements at higher bit- rates. So to make the vector quantizers more practical for vectors of larger dimension and higher bit-rates structural constraints are imposed on the design of a vector quantizer or codebook. One way of achieving this is to decompose the codebook into a Cartesian product of smaller codebooks i.e., C = C1 * C2 * C3 . ..*Cm. The advantage with smaller codebooks is that the computational complexity and memory requirements can be reduced to a very great extent. This is because the number of bits used for codebook generation will be divided among the sets of the decomposed codebook [12, 18]. Examples of product code vector quantization techniques are Split Vector Quantization (SVQ), Multistage Vector Quantization (MSVQ), Split-Multistage Vector Quantization (S-MSVQ), Switched Split Vector Quantization (SSVQ). In this thesis two product code vector quantization techniques are proposed they are: Switched Multistage Vector Quantization (SWMSVQ) and Multi Switched Split Vector Quantization (MSSVQ) techniques [54, 72]. The main disadvantage of Unconstrained Vector Quantizer is that the complexity, memory requirements are very high and the generation of codebook is a very difficult task as vectors of full length are used for quantization without any structural constraint. As a result more number of training vectors and bits cannot be used for codebook generation. With these constraints the quantizer cannot produce better quality quantized outputs. So to improve the performance of Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique a well known technique called Split Vector Quantization has been developed. The concept behind Split Vector Quantization is that, in it vectors of larger dimensions are splitted into vectors of smaller dimensions and the bits allocated to the quantizer are divided among the splits (parts). Due to splitting the dimension of a vector gets decreased hence more number of training vectors and bits are used for codebook generation. As a result the performance of quantization is increas ed, the complexity and memory requirements are reduced. But the main disadvantage with this technique is that, due to splitting the linear and non linear dependencies that exist between the samples of a vector will be lost and the shape of the quantizer cells will be affected. As a result the spectral distortion increases slightly. This increase in spectral distortion can be compensated by increasing the number of training vectors and using more number of bits for codebook generation. The number of splits in this type of quantizer must be limited in number otherwise the vector quantizer will act as a scalar quantizer. In Split Vector Quantization the training sequence used for codebook generation will also be splitted into vectors of smaller dimension and each split of the training sequence is used to generate separate sub codebooks, there by independent vector quantizers exist and the bits must be allocated to each of them. As a result less number of bits will be available at each quantizer, the computational complexity and memory requirements gets reduced as they depend on the number of bits allocated to the quantizer and on the dimension of the vector to be quantized. The block diagram of a three part Split vector quantizer is shown in Fig 4.5. From Fig 4.5 it can be observed that a vector S1 of dimension n is quantized by splitting it into sub-vectors S11, S12, S13 of smaller dimensions. Each of these sub-vectors are quantized using their respective codebooks. In this work the order of the filter is taken as 10 and so the LSF vector contain 10 samples and these 10 samples are splitted into three parts of 3, 3, 4 samples [54, 73-75]. From results of Split Vector Quantization technique it is proved that the computational complexity and memory requirements gets decreased when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique. So Split Vector Quantization technique is superior to Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique in terms of the computational complexity and memory requirements. In a Split Vector Quantizer of n dimension, SP splits, operating at b bits per vector. The vector space Rn will be splitted into SP subspaces or splits or parts of lower dimension then the dimension of each subspace will be and . The number of independent quantizers will be equal to the number of splits and the bits used for quantization are divided among the splits and is . Where is the number of bits allocated to each vector quantizer. The computational complexity of a Split Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.27) Where ni is the dimension of a sub-vector in ith split bi is the number of bits allocated to the ith split of a quantizer sp is the number of splits. The Memory requirements of a Split Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.28) Multistage Vector Quantization is a modification of Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique. It is also called as Multistep, Residual or Cascaded Vector Quantization. Multistage Vector Quantization (MSVQ) technique preserves all the features of Unconstrained Vector Quantization technique and decreases the computational complexity, memory requirements and spectral distortion when compared to it. When compared to Split Vector Quantization technique, Multistage Vector Quantization technique shows significant improvement in the quality of the speech signal, by decreasing the spectral distortion, but at the expense of increased computational complexity and memory requirements. This is because Split Vector Quantization technique deals with vectors of lower dimensions while Unconstrained and Multistage Vector Quantization techniques deal with vectors of larger dimensions. So the complexity and memory requirements are less for Split Vector Quantization technique. Multistage Vector Quantizer is a cascaded connection of several vector quantizers, where the output of one stage is given as an input to the next stage and the bits used for quantization are divided among the stages connected in cascade [12, 14]. As a result the computational complexity and memory requirements get reduced when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. The generation of codebooks at different stages of a three stage MSVQ is shown in Fig 4.6. From Fig 4.6 it can be observed that the codebook at the first stage is generated by taking the training sequence as an input. At the second stage the codebook is generated using the quantization errors of the first stage, likewise the codebook at the third stage is generated using the quantization errors of the second stage. This process is continued for the required number of stages [76-80]. The block diagram of a three stage Multistage Vector Quantizer is shown in Fig 4.7. Its implementation requires the design of vector quantizers at each stage. In Multistage Vector Quantization the input vector s to be quantized is passed through the first stage of the vector quantizer so as to obtain the quantized version of the input vector i.e., . The quantization error or residual error at the first stage will be computed which is the difference of the input vector and the quantized version of the input vector. The quantization error at the first stage is given as an input to the vector quantizer of the second stage so as to obtain the quantized version of the error vector at the first stage i.e., . Likewise the quantization error at the second stage will be given as an input to the vector quantizer of the third stage so as to obtain the quantized version of the error vector at the second stage i.e., and this process can be continued for the required number of stages. Finally the decoder takes the indices Ii from each quantizer stage and adds the corresponding c odewords to obtain the quantized version of the input vector i.e., [54]. In a Multistage Vector Quantizer each stage acts as an independent vector quantizer and the total bits available for vector quantization will be divided among the stages. Then the complexity of a particular stage becomes, where bj is the number of bits allocated to the jth stage. This is less than the complexity of Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. Likewise the memory requirements at each stage are , which is less than the memory requirements of Unconstrained Vector Quantizer. The computational complexity of a Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.29) Where n is the dimension of the vector bj is the number of bits allocated to the jth stage P is the number of stages The Memory requirements of a Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.30) In order to improve the performance of Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques a hybrid product code vector quantization technique called Split-Multistage Vector Quantization technique has been developed. Split-Multistage Vector Quantization technique is a hybrid of Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques. At reasonable improvement in the quality of the output speech signal, Split-Multistage Vector Quantization technique provides the lowest spectral distortion, computational complexity and memory requirements when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantization, Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques [73-80]. The decrease in spectral distortion is due to summing of the quantized errors at each stage. In Split-Multistage Vector Quantization the dimension of the vectors to be quantized has been reduced by means of splitting. Likewise the bits used for quantization are also divided among the stages and among the splits of each stage. As a result the computational complexity and memory requirements get decreased when compared to Unconstrained Vector Quantization, Multistage Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques. This is due to the decrease in the dimension of vectors, number of bits used for quantization at each stage and at each split of the vector quantizer. The generation of the codebooks at each stage of the Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is similar to the codebooks generation at each stage of the Multistage Vector Quantizer. But the difference is that each stage of the Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer involves the generation of several sub codebooks. The number of sub codebooks generated at each stage is equal to the number of splits at that stage. In this work, Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer with three parts (splits) and three stages have been developed. The performance of quantization depends on the number of stages and on the number of splits at each stage. As the number of stages increases the quality of the quantized output can be increased, but there must be a limit on the number of stages and on the number of splits at each stage as the number of bits at each stage is limited. The allocation of the bits at each stage is shown in Table 4.1 and the allocation of bits to each split of a stage is shown in Table 4.2. From Ta bles 4.1 and 4.2 it can be observed that the minimum number of bits at each stage with three parts must be at least three. So with three parts (splits) and three stages, in Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer the number of bits at a frame cannot be reduced below 9 bits. The block diagram of a Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer with three parts and three stages is shown in Fig 4.8. The block diagram is similar to three stage Multistage Vector Quantizer except for the splits at each stage. In Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer each split is treated as a separate vector quantizer and the vectors at each split are quantized independently. The quantization mechanism involved in Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is similar to the quantization mechanism involved in Multistage Vector Quantizer, except that in Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer at each stage the sub-vectors are quantized independently. Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is a hybrid of Split Vector Quantizer and Multistage Vector Quantizer. The equations for computational complexity and memory requirements are derived from the complexity and memory requirement equations of a Split Vector Quantizer and Multistage Vector Quantizer. Equations (4.31) and (4.32) below are obtained from the equations (4.29) and (4.30) by including the splits (SP) at each stage with a summation term having limits from 1 to SP. The computational complexity of a Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.31) Where nji is the dimension of a sub-vector in jth stage ith split bji is the number of bits allocated to the jth stage and ith split of a quantizer P is the number of stages sp is the number of splits. The Memory requirements of a Split-Multistage Vector Quantizer is given by equation (4.32) Switched Split Vector Quantization (SSVQ) is one of the latest vector quantization techniques and is developed to improve the performance of Split Vector Quantization technique. Switched Split Vector Quantization technique is a hybrid of Switch Vector Quantization and Split Vector Quantization techniques and is used to exploit the linear and non linear dependencies that exist between the splits of a Split Vector Quantizer. In Switched Split Vector Quantizer initially the Switch Vector Quantizer partitions the entire vector space into voronoi regions and exploits the dependencies that exist across all dimensions of the vector space. Then a Split Vector Quantizer is designed for each of the voronoi regions. As a Split Vector Quantizer is adapted to the local statistics of the Voronoi region the sub optimalitys of the Split Vector Quantizer will be localized. In a Switched Split Vector Quantizer a number of vector quantizers are connected in parallel and it can be implemented in two wa ys: hard decision scheme and soft decision scheme. In hard decision scheme each vector to be quantized is quantized in only one of the codebooks connected in parallel, the selection of a codebook for quantization depends on the nearest codeword selected in the initial codebook. An initial codebook is one which is designed for the selection of a switch. The initial codebook is generated by the training vectors used for the generation of the codebooks at the vector quantizers connected in parallel. The number of codewords or centroids in the initial codebook is equal to the number of switches chosen or number of codebooks connected in parallel and these centroids are used to form the Switch Vector Quantizer. In soft decision sc