Critical Design Issues in the Contemporary World Essay

Critical Design Issues in the Contemporary World - Essay Example Research has demarcated means to market products not merely as solutions to actual problems but as panaceas to human desire. Consumers are â€Å"convinced† through sizable marketing efforts to acquire certain products to enhance their lifestyles. In this scenario the designer must produce objects that seem aesthetically either appealing or appalling to grab the consumer’s attention. (Dorst and Dijkhuis 1995) Functionality in design is fast receding. In comparison various designers from the past balanced both form and functionality. Architecture, film making, literature, performing arts all reflected an intertwined state of balance between form and functionality that was often hard to decipher. Form has been encouraged in recent years in preference to functionality. A designer ought to be truly independent of commercial influences to exploit their true creative potential. The dominance of the commercial influence on design has rendered design incapable of displaying more subtle tones of thought and reflection. Most products today are designed with a consideration to use and throw away as desired. This in turn encourages the commercial design of products that are more or less disposable. It is debateable is consumer’s demands push such behaviour or if business tendencies to spur consumption spur such tendencies. However what is apparent is that design has been tainted largely with commercial influences that have modified its original precepts. Another competing influence on design strategies is economics. Economical design strategies have shot to the fore front following the eighties and the nineties when advances in manufacturing strategies meant that designs could be optimised further to save material and machine costs. (Simon 1996) Large scale manufacturing operations encourage designers to optimise both the use of material as well as to optimise the manufacturing techniques in use. Such a strategy ensures that the produced design is provi ding desired functionality at low costs to the manufacturer. This aids the business operation to maximise profitability by reducing base costs while keeping profit margins higher. Economic considerations have clearly impacted the length and breadth of the design industry whether the automobile industry is considered or whether fashion design is considered. The base contention is nearly always the same to cut base costs through the optimised use of materials and processes. Often designers produce designs that are then optimised by engineers or other manufacturing experts to remove what could be considered essential design features such as curves, tricky surfaces and the like. This ensures that the design is simplified for manufacturing. (Faste 2001) Similarly clothing designs are modified too such as using different pigments for achieving dimmer or otherwise different colours etc. Overall, economics serve as a major influence on design methods and the affected design domain includes all forms and manners of designs. Large influences on design in the contemporary world stems from globalisation of cultures, societies, ideas and ultimately design influences. The fusion of various cultural influences has produced individuals that are well aware of local values and traditions just as they are well aware of design influences in another part of the world. For example, Japanese designs were known the world over for their subtle and precise character. The

Vodafone Case Essay Example for Free

Vodafone Case Essay The UK mobile telecommunications market is one of the most competitive in the world and, as a consequence, customer attrition or ’churn’ is high. In 2005, as part of a strategy to build on its market leadership, Vodafone UK began the quest for a competitor intelligence tool that would help its sales advisors reduce customer attrition and secure new sales. Vodafone wanted a service that would deliver timely, accurate information on the tariffs, deals and handsets being offered by its competitors to the employees that need it most the customer facing staff. After a rigorous analysis of competitor intelligence offerings from over a dozen providers, Vodafone UK selected CInergy’s Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢. The service delivers same day market tracking and analysis of key competitor information from other mobile operators, major retailers and mobile virtual network operators. Quarter by quarter reduction in churn Measurable improvements in conversion rates Integration with retention and sales strategy Easy deployment with minimal impact on IT/CRM systems Partnership approach to implementation and training The Challenge With thousands of tariff, handset and offer combinations available in the market, keeping contact centre advisors up to date can seem an impossible task. Vodafone UK recognised this challenge and identified that it required a competitor intelligence tool that would help it to retain existing contract customers, notably at time of contract renewal, and attract more new customers. The company had initially considered developing its own solution, but had soon found that this would have been excessively costly both in financial terms and in the amount of resource required and identified that this was not its core area of expertise. Vodafone UK also found that there was a dearth of competitor data that was comprehensive and accurate enough for advisors to rely on during high pressure customer negotiations. The company therefore sought a partner which understood the specific challenges of the mobile telecoms market and which could apply that expertise to the data it delivered. Business Objectives â€Å"This has been an excellent implementation for CInergy, and Vodafone’s innovation and dedication to the project has enabled it to achieve very good results from the CInergy AIâ„ ¢ system†. Brian Boroff, MD, CInergy International Vodafone UK’s brief was that it wanted to understand its competitive landscape more clearly, to enable it to respond swiftly and effectively to customer requests and to ensure that it had a clear picture of how its offers stacked up against the competition. Specifically, the company wanted this information to be available not just to the management and marketing functions, but directly to advisors in its contact centres who deal with customers day to day. The company also wanted a system that would not have major implications for its IT platforms and which could be integrated into the existing desktops used by contact centre advisors, complete with Vodafone corporate branding. Finally, Vodafone UK needed an exp ert in the field that could provide end to end support from designing the service, through to delivery, advisor training and rollout across the organisation. The Solution: CInergy AIâ„ ¢ CInergy had already developed its Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢ (AIâ„ ¢) competitor intelligence platform for the mobile telecoms market at the time that Vodafone issued its RFP in 2005. By designing an appropriate interface and tailoring specific service modules to meet Vodafone’s needs, CInergy was able to meet the criteria detailed in the RFP and to deliver a fully working system in a very short timeframe. After a successful trial, the service was rolled out to the majority of Vodafone’s contact centre community around the UK during 2006. Key features of Vodafone UK’s implementation of CInergy’s AIâ„ ¢ include: Comprehensive tariff and promotion monitoring Handset / device tracking with up to date pricing from all major competitors On demand, side by side comparisons of different deals, tariffs and handset options Expert analysis and scripted points that enable Vodafone sales advisors to demonstrate ’why we’re better’ Fully branded interface to match Vodafone  UK’s Intranet Reliable, accurate data analysed by teams with mobile telecoms knowledge A hosted, secure platform Delivering Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢ Vodafone and CInergy worked closely together to ensure that Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢ would deliver optimum benefits in terms of improved customer retention and sales. This partnership approach has enabled Vodafone to achieve a swift return on its investment. The company has found that its levels of churn have decreased as more sales advisors become familiar with the system and are able to integrate the CInergy AIâ„ ¢ functionality and information into their acquisition and retention processes. CInergy supported Vodafone in the development and delivery of induction training on Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢ for all contact centre advisors with access to the system. Now that the system is in use, short refresher sessions delivered in the weekly advisor meetings ensure that all advisors are kept up to date as new features are introduced. Since CInergy AIâ„ ¢ was launched in 2006, CInergy has worked with Vodafone to implement two major upgrades to the system, as well as providing regular enhancements to the interfaces, functionality and database content based on feedback from the advisors who use CInergy AIâ„ ¢every day. â€Å"Since we’ve started using the system, it has contributed to a fall in our churn rates quarter by quarter, ensuring we remain highly competitive in the UK market†. John Coulstock, Senior Manager, Vodafone UK The Results As John Coulstock, a senior manager at Vodafone, explains, â€Å"We launched Accelerated Intelligence in Q3 2006 and it is currently in use by a large number of our contact centre advisors. Since we’ve started using the system, it has contributed to a fall in our churn rates quarter by quarter, ensuring we remain highly competitive in the UK market. We’ve found that the more our agents use the system, the more sales they are able to close. The CInergy  AIâ„ ¢ application has become an integral part of our customer retention and sales strategy.† Vodafone has now renewed its contract with CInergy for an extended term. CInergy’s AIâ„ ¢ service has delivered a range of benefits to Vodafone including: A contribution to a reduction in contract churn since its launch in Q3 2006 Improvement in the rate of saves in consumer and enterprise customer bases Reduction in call handling time Increased ability to set deals in a market context leading to better acquisition performance Improvements in operational efficiency by eliminating onerous, manual data collection Improved reporting, trend prediction, forecasting and analysis Clear understanding of competitor offerings to improve key pricing messages in advertising, dealer negotiations and channel marketing CInergy AIâ„ ¢ Content Modules CInergys AIâ„ ¢ is a powerful platform which is modular to suit the needs of todays mobile operators: Tariff and price tracking Detailed handset and device information Channel specific deals and advertising Source: Vodafone KPIs, December 2007 CInergy’s Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢ has contributed to a 18.6% reduction in churn since its launch in Q3 2006. As Brian Boroff, MD of CInergy concluded, â€Å"This has been an excellent implementation for CInergy, and Vodafone’s innovation and dedication to the project has enabled it to achieve very good results from the CInergy AIâ„ ¢ system.† Vodafone UK Contract Churn Within OneYear of CInegy Al Rollout About Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢ CInergy’s Accelerated Intelligenceâ„ ¢(AIâ„ ¢) puts competitive information into the hands of customer facing teams, enabling them to counter competitive offers and achieve higher retention and sales performance. The service enables service providers to significantly improve the number of sales they  close in a single call, helping to drive down the cost of customer acquisition and retention as well as improving revenues. Accelerated Intelligence is proven in the UK mobile telecom space having worked with four of the UK’s main network operators, delivering an average incremental customer save rate of 1.59% and reduction in call handling time of 22 seconds. CInergy International was set up in 2003 to deliver customer acquisition and retention solutions to providers of mobile and fixed telecom, broadband and digital television services. â„ ¢ About Vodafone UK Vodafone UK has 18.4 million customers and is part of the worlds largest mobile community offering a wide range of voice and data communications. The company is committed to providing mobile solutions that allow both consumer and business customers to make the most of now. Vodafone customers can now use Internet on your Mobile to view and navigate web pages and their favourite sites such as YouTube, eBay and the BBC. In addition, Vodafone connects customers across the globe with roaming agreements worldwide. It provides 3G roaming in 29 countries and offers great roaming value with Vodafone Passport.

Essay --

This is the retake part of English article assignment. The requirements of this part are to write opinion about two articles related to Macro Economics and two articles related to Law, as well as a personal comment about Saunders’s Research methods book students had to read for Methodology, evaluating its educational value, as well as pointing out its weak and strong points. The students should mediate whether they like the article or not, if it’s related to lectures in the class or contradicts it, also if it illustrates something. The article chosen should not be older than 6 months and the students have to write their own comment about the article based on their knowledge built during their studying of the courses. 2. Macro Economics articles A. Comment on article 1 Globalization became an important aspect in the international economic relations. I chose this article and liked it because it discusses one of the important issues that international economic relation face, which is globalization. In my opinion it’s not only a problem, but it could be useful to certain countries, yet it could destroy the fair competition in some countries. To me, if there was no barrier or limitation for the globalization, people might stop buying the local product, which means the gross domestic production will decrease leaving the country in an economic loss. Because of globalization, most of the countries in the world will no longer concentrate on the local markets. Their focus became on regional or even world markets. It also changed the way they produced domestic goods. Just because a country might have the resources and ability to produce a particular commodity no longer means that they will produ... ...heart which gives no space for creativity. In my opinion as a student I think that the books we study should be interesting and leave a space of creativity for the student because we have many lectures and we need to study a lot of book and it is very hard for most of us to study all the books by heart, that is why the study books should be written in way that allows all the students to read it and understand the content to be able to write the idea in their own way and not just copy pasted text from the book. As a conclusion I see that the book has a rich content for those who want to be specialized as market researchers because of its intensive information but I think it would be better if we could learn the research methods in more general ways that we understand and can help us in our future jobs not just theoretical details we forget after finishing the exam.

Does Improved Technology Mean Progress? :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Does Improved Technology Mean Progress? I feel that there is progress happening everywhere in the world today. Not all progress is from new advancements in science and technology but a lot of it is. There is so much knowledge held amongst people to allow such advancements to occur. Having knowledge is a great tool because without it, there would be no progress of any sort. People need to learn that they should study as much as possible so maybe one day they can contribute to making more progress happen. Achieving progress is a helpful way of improving our standard way of living. Even though progress is a good thing, I also feel that it can cause problems too. People just need to realize that in order to produce new and better things we might have to go through some rough times on the way. New advancements will continually be arising in the future and hopefully somebody one day will find away to make it so these new advancements will not contain new problems. Machinery today keeps on getting better and better. New discoveries in technology allow us to improve the quality of our machinery so their performance level is better than some might have expected. These new technologies also make it a lot easier on people in the workforce. New technologies have a huge affect on society. Farmers, for example, have it a lot easier now than they did in the early 1900's. More advanced farm equipment is the reason for this. Aside from all the good things that arise from new machinery, there is also a few down falls. Many people loose their jobs because of all the new high-tech machinery. For this reason, I am sure some believe that progress is not always for the better. What if in the future, machinery started dominating everyone's job, what would we do then? Also at certain times, new advancements are used in the wrong way. For example, it was stated in Leo Marx's article that because of these new technology advancements, "Hiroshima and the nuclear threat; pollution and other kinds of damage inflicted upon the environment by advanced industrial societies; spectacular accidents like B-mile Island, Bhepal, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Race and Your Community Essay

My community is very diverse. On the left side of my house you will find a young, white on white, married couple and to my left the opposite is true; you will find an older, black on black, married couple. If you walk down my street you will find a wide range of colors and ages any of which may be married or single, in an interracial relationship or of the same race. The feeling tends to be live and let live, or so I thought until I actually spoke with some of my friends that are either of color or are in interracial relationships. What I found was shocking to me and that is that racism is very much alive in my community. I am a white female and I am 35 years old and I am married to a white man that is 30 years old. I have three children from a previous marriage and they are also white. Because the media tends to be geared toward people of white skin I would have to say that they represent people like me. Our local news station consists of two Hispanic news anchors and the rest of the journalists are primarily white, but I do know of one black gentleman. Every where you go in my community the two races that you see represented are whites and Hispanics. I’m not sure what the thinking is concerning the lack of recognition for the other races, but it does bother me that it is so very obvious in its exclusion of others. I am assuming that these decisions are made by leaders within the community, but who they might be I am not sure. I really don’t have much to do with â€Å"leaders† in my community outside of my Pastors and their view is very much the same as mine and that is that people are people and God made us all to be equal. My Pastor has a daughter that is mix and maybe this is one reason he is so open to all races and people. The one thing that you will notice when you walk into my church is that it looks like a racial rainbow. There are a great many races and ethnic groups represented and it is a great place to be. You have pretty much every kind of interracial marriage that you can put together with the races represented and out of this you have some pretty awesome children. I have the honor of working with the little ones and I think that it is so cool that they are growing up in a world that is so open and colorful. At least this is what I thought before I actually spoke with some of the adults about their daily lives as a person of color or in a mixed marriage with mixed children. I spoke with one woman named Roni; I have known this woman for 8 years and what I found out I will have to say was a shock to me. I was telling her some things that I was learning in this class and asked her what she thought about racism and if she experienced any form of it. I have to tell you that I honestly did not expect her to yes. Well, she did and she went on to tell me how when her oldest son was in Kindergarten she was at the Principals office on numerous occasions because of how her son was being treated. He even came home singing a song once that was slanderous towards black people. Obviously her son didn’t know what he was singing but she did and it grieved and angered her. Roni is a Hispanic woman that is married to a black man so keep this in mind when picturing her in the office of a white principal discussing racially slanderous songs that her son was taught in his class. I had such a hard time even empathizing with her. As a white woman I do not even think I have ever been a situation remotely like this. Needless to say she had to be very careful how she worded things to make the principal take responsibility for what was going on in the school. She went on to tell me many other stories of how her children were mistreated in class because of their skin color and how people look at them and stereotype them because they are not white. I would love to tell you that this was the only example of racism but I would not be telling you the truth. My best friend is a white woman in her mid-twenties and she is married to a black man and they have 4 children together. Her kids call me Aunt ShaSha. I was there when these children were born and I love them dearly. I see them as children and it never occurred to me that others may see them as anything else. Well, as I mentioned before I do not have any issues within the community. Everyone is friendly and helpful and I am usually welcomed with a smile, well if I am dressed nice but that is another paper, so imagine my shock when I took her children out to the grocery store and people actually treated my differently because I had mixed children with me. This was not the first time I had been in public with the children but it was the first time that I was out with them alone and to my dismay people actually looked down their noses to me and for the first time I realized what it must feel like to be a woman living in an interracial world. At first I thought maybe I was just having an off day so I talked to Alanna (the children’s mother) about it and she confirmed that she is treated like this on a regular basis. She went on to tell me a story about being at the doctor’s office and how the doctor was ugly to her and her son and even went so far as to refuse to treat her son. She complained to the department head and the issue was resolved, but she assured me this was not the only incident concerning racism. There is a section of my community where the racism is in reverse; it is blacks being racist towards whites. I honestly couldn’t figure it out and I was upset about it as well. In my ignorance I was upset about them always complaining about the slave days and how their ancestors were mistreated and so on and so forth. I wanted to shout to them to let it go and move on and to look around because those days were over and not everyone is racist anymore. Well, through this class I have learned so much about them and what has transpired over the last 100 years and have come to realize that it really hasn’t been long enough for the younger generations to separate it in their thinking yet and that they are upset for many reasons but one valid reason is that they have never been apologized to for the travesty they had to endure at the hands of greedy and self-serving people. I am so thankful for this class because it has afforded me the opportunity to get shocked out of my little bubble and to really get to know my brothers and sisters and some of what they go through on a daily basis. I think that my community does a good job at representing minority group interests. Our schools have ESL programs in place and there is a community health clinic that runs off of a sliding scale for those that cannot afford medical insurance. There’s child care provided at no cost by the government. I don’t mention these things to portray that all minority groups are poor, but the numbers show that there is a poverty issue among some minority groups and so I am thankful that these services are provided. I am one such person that cannot afford medical insurance at this time so I am grateful for these services. I honestly don’t know what other services need to be implemented but you can be sure that I will be talking to more people and finding out. I feel so liberated! I find myself wanting to stop people and ask them what their experiences are and how it affects them and what they would change and why. I am just not sure how people will receive those kinds of questions from a 115 pound, white woman. I think that if there was one area that I could change it would be advertising because I honestly do not believe that America is represented by the people that model for these pictures or advertisements. I would love to use people of color. Not just black or Hispanic, but the real color of America, at least in my community, is mix. It is Philippine and white or Puerto Rican and Black, but it is definitely colorful and diverse. I love my community. I know that it is not perfect but no community is or will ever be, but what my community has is a huge mix of people who the majority of love one another or at least accept everyone. Through this thinking I would have to say that we are the same. There are the ones that still have some growing to do, but progress is being made and through education and time more progress will be made.

Free Essays on Roman Fever

Friendship In Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever two wealthy American widows Alida Slade and Grace Ansley have taken their two marriageable daughters on a Continental tour. The older women linger at a restaurant with a view of the Forum while their daughters leave for an unchaperoned outing. The women talk of how carefully their mothers guarded them, and how their own mothers were in turn warned of Roman fever to keep them in at night. As the tale progressed in Rome Mrs. Slade finally, after all these years tells Mrs. Ansley that she was the one who sent her the note from Mr. Slade, asking her to meet him at the colloseum. Mrs. Slade was jealous and wanted to keep Mr. Slade at any cost, including letting Mrs. Ansley catch Roman Fever. At the end of the tale, Mrs. Slade realizes that her plan all those years ago failed, and that Mr. Slade and Mrs. Ansley did meet that night, but Mrs. Slade still felt she ultimately won the war, because she ended up with Mr. Slade in the end, and had him for 25 years, where as Mrs. Ansley only had him for that one night. Mrs. Ansley not only didn't have to wait at the colloseum, but she gave Mr. Slade what Mrs. Slade had thought she had given him, his first-born. In the end, if Mrs. Slade hadn't sent the original note to the young Mrs. Ansley, none of this would have turned out as it did, so in a way Mrs. Slade had no one to blame for the consequences but herself. After all, Grace does get Roman fever after going to the Colosseum at night but she also gets the type of daughter that Alida has always wanted. The final thought is that people are not what they seem to be. Alida and Grace have been friends for many years yet they know nothing about each other. They both know about Grace’s affair with Alida’s fiancà © but it takes twenty five years before they learn important details about the evening that change their lives- Grace finds out that Delphin did not write the letter that has been so import... Free Essays on Roman Fever Free Essays on Roman Fever Throughout human history, societies have always fabricated tales. These tales collectively known as urban myths scare people into avoiding certain activities or behaviors. In the short story â€Å"Roman Fever† by Edith Wharton, the main characters are â€Å"warned† about â€Å"Roman Fever† from their elders, and thus passed the idea of this fever to their kin in the hopes that they might heed the warning, and not give in to the â€Å"roman fever.† â€Å"Roman Fever† is recklessness it is freedom. This freedom is particularly present in the city of Rome, Italy. Here, their mothers told their daughter characters Jenny and Barbara that terrible things can happen, as soon as the sun goes down. Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade adore the city of Rome, yet worry that their daughters will be corrupted by its dark charms come nightfall. They take themselves to be proper ladies, while they think sometimes there daughters are too but sometimes think otherwise. Their daughters go about the town, and their activities are completely unknown to their mothers. This mystery is part of â€Å"Roman Fever† as Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade have never experienced a night in Rome without being met with misfortune or confusion. The city of Rome is also a place where mystery and betrayal took place for the women, as Mrs. Ansley had once tried to covet Mrs. Slade’s fiancee, a long time ago. Rome, for the ladies, reminds them of confusion it brings feelings they cannot truly make sense of. As the truth about Mrs. Slade’s than fiancee comes out, they women realize they have deep seeded resentment for each other. In Rome together, they see they do not really know one another. The only real thing the ladies have in common is there fear of â€Å"Roman Fever† â€Å"Roman Fever† according to Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade was something that would make anyone ill in their own terms. The ladies believe this to be true and are sure it happens when one visits certain parts of the ci... Free Essays on Roman Fever Friendship In Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever two wealthy American widows Alida Slade and Grace Ansley have taken their two marriageable daughters on a Continental tour. The older women linger at a restaurant with a view of the Forum while their daughters leave for an unchaperoned outing. The women talk of how carefully their mothers guarded them, and how their own mothers were in turn warned of Roman fever to keep them in at night. As the tale progressed in Rome Mrs. Slade finally, after all these years tells Mrs. Ansley that she was the one who sent her the note from Mr. Slade, asking her to meet him at the colloseum. Mrs. Slade was jealous and wanted to keep Mr. Slade at any cost, including letting Mrs. Ansley catch Roman Fever. At the end of the tale, Mrs. Slade realizes that her plan all those years ago failed, and that Mr. Slade and Mrs. Ansley did meet that night, but Mrs. Slade still felt she ultimately won the war, because she ended up with Mr. Slade in the end, and had him for 25 years, where as Mrs. Ansley only had him for that one night. Mrs. Ansley not only didn't have to wait at the colloseum, but she gave Mr. Slade what Mrs. Slade had thought she had given him, his first-born. In the end, if Mrs. Slade hadn't sent the original note to the young Mrs. Ansley, none of this would have turned out as it did, so in a way Mrs. Slade had no one to blame for the consequences but herself. After all, Grace does get Roman fever after going to the Colosseum at night but she also gets the type of daughter that Alida has always wanted. The final thought is that people are not what they seem to be. Alida and Grace have been friends for many years yet they know nothing about each other. They both know about Grace’s affair with Alida’s fiancà © but it takes twenty five years before they learn important details about the evening that change their lives- Grace finds out that Delphin did not write the letter that has been so import...

Crime Detection essays

Crime Detection essays In recent times, science has provided substantial aid to crime detection. Because anything in the physical universe has the potential of becoming an item of evidence in an investigation, a wide variety of procedures may be used in analyzing and interpreting evidence in a criminal case. These procedures include handwriting analysis, forensic photography, crime scene documentation, metallurgical investigations, chain of custody, entomology, and blood spatters. The first thing you do after securing a crime scene is document it. Always take pictures. They are the best records available. They show the crime scene as it was found; where objects are in relation to other objects, victims, rooms, etc. Take notes. Describe the scene, its over all conditions. Describe rooms, lights, shades, locks, food; anything that can indicate a time frame, condition of scene or that might have even the slightest evidentiary significance. Check dates on mail and newspapers. Diagram the crime scene. Take measurements. Photos are good to show where an object is in relation to another object, but measurements tell exactly how far. True handwriting analysis involves painstaking examination of the design, shape and structure of handwriting to determine authorship of a given handwriting sample. The basic principle underlying handwriting analysis is that no two people write the exact same thing the exact same way. Every person develops unique peculiarities and characteristics in their handwriting. Handwriting analysis looks at letter formations, connecting strokes between the letters, upstrokes, retraces, down strokes, spacing, baseline, curves, size, distortions, hesitations and a number of other characteristics of handwriting. By examining these details and variations in a questioned sample and comparing them to a sample of known authorship, a determination can be made as the whether or not the authorship is genuine. Another is, Metallu ...

Prostitution and Academic Search Premier Essay

Prostitution and Academic Search Premier Essay Prostitution and Academic Search Premier Essay 1) Murphy, Lyn Stankiewicz. "Understanding The Social And Economic Contexts Surrounding Women Engaged In Street-Level Prostitution." Issues In Mental Health Nursing 31.12 (2010): 775-784. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. â€Å"Prostitution involves the exchange of sexual services for economic compensation. Due to the sexual promiscuity surrounding prostitution, women involved in prostitution constitute a high-risk group for contracting and transmitting STDs, including HIV. Prostitution is not only a public health concern, but also an economic one. Cities throughout the United States spent an average of $7.5 to $16 million per year enforcing prostitution laws and addressing negative outcomes associated with prostitution. Thus, women involved in prostitution are a cause for concern from both public health and economic perspectives. However, little is known about why women remain in this type of behavior given the risks prostitution presents, and even less is known about how to intervene and interrupt the complex cycle of prostitution.† 2)Loveday Penn-Kekana, et al. "Men, Prostitution And The Provider Role: Understanding The Intersections Of Economic Exchange, Sex, Crime And Violence In South Africa." Plos ONE 7.7 (2012): 1-10. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. South African policy makers are reviewing legislation of prostitution, concerned that criminalisation hampers HIV prevention. They seek to understand the relationship between transactional sex, prostitution, and the nature of the involved men. Methods: 1645 randomly-selected adult South African men participated in a household study, disclosing whether they had sex with a woman in prostitution or had had a provider relationship (or sex), participation in crime and violence and

International Interview Project Assignment Research Paper

International Interview Project Assignment - Research Paper Example Chan, personal communication, January 29, 2012). Located in Southeast Asia, the country shares its water borders with China in the form of the South China Sea which is east of Vietnam. It turns out that the Philippines has a long history of being colonized by other countries and their quest for independence as a country is still being fought for until today. The first and longest staying colonizers of the Philippines according to Jennifer were the Spaniards. The country was annexed by Ferdinand Magellan in the name of Spain which was the country that financed his expedition into Asia but, the management of the country was left mostly to their Mexican counterparts. It was during this colonization that the Chinese came to settle in the Philippines. This was followed by the American Occupation, the Japanese Occupation, American Liberation, and finally, independence for the republic that began as a Commonwealth country. Jennifers ancestors came to settle in the country during the American Liberation era and have become naturalized cit izens of their adopted country. I would be hard pressed to find a Filipino with pure Filipino blood she told me. Their population always carries a mix of either one, two, or all of the following bloodlines: Chinese, American, Spanish, Japanese, and Arab blood due to the interracial marriages that always freely happened even during their colonized periods. If there is one thing that always strikes any person who first meets Jennifer, it is the fact that she has such a bubbly personality and seems to always put the comfort of those around her before her own. The department of tourism website for the Philippines (2012) explains that this spirit of kinship and camaraderie is something that was inherited from their Malay forefathers. The local hospitality though, is something that seems to be hard wired into their DNA. Nobody really knows where the race inherited it from.

Current Preparedness Issue Paper Term Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Current Preparedness Issue - Term Paper Example Thus, it is important to analyze how civilian-military coordination to emergencies in our system occurs. Unfortunately, while great strides have been made, the coordination between US civil and military agencies at the local, state and federal level still have many procedural and practical problems during emergencies. Hurricane Katrina was a fracture point that demonstrated widespread failure in the US disaster response system. There was â€Å"widespread confusion on operations, communications, and protocols† (Meyer and Baca, 2010). Blanco, Nagin and FEMA were unable to coordinate properly with each other at the leadership level, with competing and often redundant mandates. There were many other reasons for failure during Katrina, of course, some of which deserve more analysis later: Racism among local officials that led to people being locked in, FEMA becoming a backseat agency after Homeland Security, etc. But what is illustrative for the general disaster response lesson is that the problem was predictably caused by a lack of state participation in the National Response Plan. â€Å"Further demonstrating the lack of any meaningful role by state and local governments in the adoption of the NRP is the fact that the officials who approved the NRP do not include a single non-federal representative. The Department of Education, an entity with no role whatsoever in domestic incident response, is a signatory to the NRP, while FEMA is not. Not one governor or mayor signed it† (Mayer and Baca, 2010). Things have improved since Katrina, but the government should still be preparing for another debacle on that scale in the interim. Levinson and Granot (2002) make clear why military command only is predictably likely to fail by analyzing the case study of Israel. Their disaster response agency, while nominally civilian, is still staffed by former military career men with little experience in civil-military relations. When disasters happened like the 1990 trai n disaster, â€Å"the scenario went along the lines of military thinking and not according to a course-of-business civilian accident†. The case study indicates a few flaws with a purely military approach. First: Military leaders are not used to working with civilian chains of command or lack thereof. Firefighters, EMTs and police do not have as strong a chain of command as the military do, so more respect for individual autonomy is essential. Second: Military leaders tend to respond to disasters by treating them as full-scale operations. They thus tend to overescalate responses, assign too many resources (as if the situation were a battle that must be overwhelmed), and can lead to panic. Third: The focus on hierarchy not only leads to more alienation of civilian personnel, but it also has additional problems. It prevents the coordination of volunteers who are trying to do what they can but may smart at excessive command and control. It alienates those with management skills, both those people with little disaster experience and those with plenty. It can prevent coordination among multiple groups at different levels, especially pushing away NGOs like the Red Cross and religious associations. And in most emergency response agencies, the ground-level people have the most expertise, yet military planning tends to prioritize consulting people with less experience but more clout. In the military, experience at a core task is the key to promotion: In civilian life, there is

Criminal Law U5IP Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Criminal Law U5IP - Research Paper Example in interstate commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity; 3) participating in the conduct of a business engaged in interstate commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity, and 4) conspiring to violate any of the above (section 1962). In order for a RICO claim to succeed the plaintiff must show that the conduct of the enterprise or business is through a pattern of activity connected to racketeering. Prior to the enactment of the RICO Act it was difficult to combat racketeering activities (Batista 2007). It was only possible to convict lower ranking members in the rackets as they were directly involved in illegal activities. This meant that racketeering activities still affected businesses and the economy as the higher ranking members were harder to prosecute since they were not directly connected with the illegal activities. The RICO Act provides prosecutors with a tool to fight organized crime (McNeill 2009). The RICO Act is remarkably effective in combating organized crime as it does not require proving that the suspect committed an illegal act but rather that the individual owns or manages an enterprise that regularly conducts an illegal activity prohibited by the Act (Batista 2005). The RICO Act is given a ve ry wide interpretation, and as such legal issues will always arise out of its interpretation and application. The RICO criminal defense practice will, therefore, remain relevant as long as the Act is in use. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-452, 84 Stat. 941 (Oct. 15, 1970), codified at 18 U.S.C. Ch. 96,

Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Software Essay

Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Software - Essay Example Some of these advantages include; It is quite interesting in the manner the company has recognized the behavior of most technology-savvy people of the present age. As the world continues to face new realities in the wake of technological advancement, young people tend to develop the urge to dress casually. Most organizations however have failed to realize this growing need and have not thereby relaxed the dress code. This is not so for SAS. Here, employees are free to dress casually and are therefore made to feel as part of the organization. The modern employee needs to grow and advance in their career. However, the opportunities for growth are normally very limited due to financial implications and time input. As such, most organizations do not provide these opportunities for their employees. At SAS, such opportunities are certainly abundant. Employees are greatly encouraged to enroll for further training courses at the institute or elsewhere in a bid to enable their advancement and organizational growth. The company has greatly invested in bettering the working conditions for its employees. The availability of plenty of recreational facilities and the well-tended and serene environment provide a very wonderful working environment that encourages creativity and innovation. Moreover, the employees are encouraged to work 35 hours per week. Above all, the company recognizes a good pay as one of the greatest employee motivators. The employees are therefore rewarded with very competitive salaries that greatly encourage them to give their maximum output. Moreover, a good salary scale ensures that the company attracts some of the best brains in the industry so that its mission and vision are better enhanced. In a world troubled by healthcare challenges, SAS recognizes the need to ensure that its employees are least worried by healthcare issues. As such, it has developed a very comprehensive healthcare

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For Essay

Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For - Essay Example â€Å"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life.† According to Thoreau, life has become so busy with the rushing railroad and the preoccupation with commerce and other such non-essential aspects of life that the average man has completely lost sight of his own worth and the true realities of life. In detailing the costs associated with building his home, including such notes as the use of refuse shingles for the roof and sides and the purchase of two second hand windows, he rails against the inflated prices and costs of living found within the town or city as a part of the capitalistic process. â€Å"I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually.† Having rejected the concept of ownership in the form of deeds and fences as well as condemned the process of ownership in which prices become inflated well higher than they had to be, Thoreau then moves to describe the false impressions of living space to which most people in the commercial world seem to cling. Recognizing the smallness of his home, Thoreau first indicates the unnecessary extravagance of the homes of others: â€Å"Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, thei r huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants.  Ã‚  They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them.† However, he also begins to indicate how the appropriate living space isn’t just the empty rooms and built spaces of human creation, but should include the shared spaces of the outdoors, the connection with nature and the

Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Software Essay

Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Software - Essay Example Some of these advantages include; It is quite interesting in the manner the company has recognized the behavior of most technology-savvy people of the present age. As the world continues to face new realities in the wake of technological advancement, young people tend to develop the urge to dress casually. Most organizations however have failed to realize this growing need and have not thereby relaxed the dress code. This is not so for SAS. Here, employees are free to dress casually and are therefore made to feel as part of the organization. The modern employee needs to grow and advance in their career. However, the opportunities for growth are normally very limited due to financial implications and time input. As such, most organizations do not provide these opportunities for their employees. At SAS, such opportunities are certainly abundant. Employees are greatly encouraged to enroll for further training courses at the institute or elsewhere in a bid to enable their advancement and organizational growth. The company has greatly invested in bettering the working conditions for its employees. The availability of plenty of recreational facilities and the well-tended and serene environment provide a very wonderful working environment that encourages creativity and innovation. Moreover, the employees are encouraged to work 35 hours per week. Above all, the company recognizes a good pay as one of the greatest employee motivators. The employees are therefore rewarded with very competitive salaries that greatly encourage them to give their maximum output. Moreover, a good salary scale ensures that the company attracts some of the best brains in the industry so that its mission and vision are better enhanced. In a world troubled by healthcare challenges, SAS recognizes the need to ensure that its employees are least worried by healthcare issues. As such, it has developed a very comprehensive healthcare

Modern Ethical Theories Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Modern Ethical Theories - Essay Example It suggests that all our acts are motivated by our self interest. People act selfishly to promote happiness and foster their self interest. Thomas Hobbes, a believer of psychological egoism, emphasized that people are selfish unconsciously. They do things for their own interest or for their own survival. With this statement, it cancels its real essence if we talk about doing things for others. If we do things for other people, does it always means that we did it for our own interest That's the big argument now. According to Hinman, there are two interpretations about psychological egoism, it's either people act for selfishness or they act for their own interest. It may sound the same but between these two interpretations, there is a difference. It actually depends upon one's motive or the consequence the person gets doing things for other people. If we intend to do something good for other people, we did it because it satisfies us inside. It rarely happens for a person to act genuinely for it self. They even sometimes hide what's the real them. Instead, people act apparently in their self-interest. What is more vocal of a person is when it acts for a certain motive. The essence of psychological egoism cancels out when intentions comes in. It falsifies its real meaning if we consciously do something or intend something. If there are two interpretations of psychological egoism there are also two versions of ethi... l to promote one's good, it is essentially never moral not to do so-that is, there may be conditions in which the avoidance of personal interest may be a moral action. There are personal, individual, and universal ethical egoism. The first implies that a person does only his self interest and disregards the other person's behavior. The individual ethical egoism states that all people should serve my own interest and universal ethical egoism means that all persons should act exclusively for their self-interest. Among the three, the personal ethical egoism is the weakest. This kind of ethical egoism is not recommendable to others for what is important is your own interest. The strongest among the three is the universal ethical egoism. This states that you should only pursue your self-interest exclusively. Psychological egoism and ethical egoism is two different things. Psychological egoism emphasizes that human beings are selfish in nature. They don't notice it because it is subconscious. In contrast to this, ethical egoism is a kind of egoism which states that a person's action is done by the person's best self-interest. It may harm or benefit others. Ethical egoism is defined by an inherent desire to perform altruistic acts while psychological egoism is defined by inbuilt selfishness of all acts. Ethical egoism doctrines states that all persons must act to their own interest while the doctrines in psychological egoism stresses that a human's motivation of every voluntary action is a need for humans own happiness. The difference is between fact for psychological egoism and value for ethical egoism. With the two kinds of egoism we have there is a thin line between what is selfish and what self-interest is. We can say that humans are being selfish because we claim for

Germination experiment Essay Example for Free

Germination experiment Essay Method: 1. Put some soil in every beaker and make sure it is almost the same amount 2. Place 5 beans inside each beaker at the same level beneath the soil 3. Pour 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 ml of water in each beaker respectively and keep watering them every 2 days 4. Leave the beakers close to a good light source 5. After a week record the length of the stem of the plants in each beaker Variables: 1. Dependant: Height and growth of the plants 2. Independent: Amount of water 3. Controlled: Where the beakers are placed, amount of soil, amount of seeds, type of seeds, how often the plats are watered (Initially it was decided that the amount of water we would use would be 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 ml but we decided to lower the amount of water so that the plants wouldn’t drown) Results: amount of water (ml) Length of plants (cm) average length (cm) Â   Conclusion: The first thing we can see from the results is a boundary in the amount of water in relation with the beaker size and the amount of soil. In the table we can see that after the 20ml of water the seeds drowned and so they didn’t grew at all. But if we take in comparison the length of the plants in the beaker with 20ml with the one with 10ml we can see that with more water the germination takes place faster. For example in the results table we have the average growth of the plant of about 10. 5 cm and in the 20ml an average growth of 17. 8, so evidently we can say that the hight the amount of water, the faster the seeds will germinate and the higher they will grow. Evaluation: I think that in general this experiment was carried out fairly in terms of the type of seed, thay were kept in a well lit place, all the beakers had the same soil and the same amount of it, etc. The problem was that the plants were drowned so we couldn’t get a good set of results, so if he experiment had to be carried out again I would set a limit of water to allow the plants to actualy germinate.

Psychological Perspectives on Children’s Behaviour

Psychological Perspectives on Children’s Behaviour THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AS APPLIED TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOUR The main psychological perspectives as applied to the understanding of the development of children’s behaviour are; behaviourist, cognitive, social, psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive and the developmental perspective. The behaviourist perspective is the influence of the outer environment on children’s behaviour. It discards the idea that children pass through set developmental stages or milestones. But are affected by the environment to which they are exposed to. The behaviour perspective focuses on how the outer environment influences how a child behaviour. It also focuses on how the environment affects their behaviour. â€Å"The behaviourist perspective looks at learning as the result of conditioning and that behaviour is learnt by positive and negative reinforcement† (Foster, S., Green, S and Kellas, S. (2008) BTEC National Children’s Care, Learning and Development , Nelson Thornes) A key theorist linking to the behaviourist theory is Albert Bandura. His theory was the Social Learning Theory (Observational Learning). It was most recently called ‘Social Cognitive Theory’. This theory looks at the moral and social behaviour in humans. He believes we learn through conditioning and by observing others. Bandura’s experiment was called the ‘Bobo Doll experiment’. The responses were all convoyed with verbal responses. I.e. one of the types of behaviour the adult showed was aggressive behaviour. The clip showed the adult punching the Bobo doll on it’s side, placing it on the floor and sitting on it and punching it on the nose. Whilst the adult was punching the Bobo doll on it’s nose. The adult continued to kick the Bobo doll around the room. The television clip also showed the adult using a mallet and whacking the doll with it. After the television clip had finished the children were left in a playroom with the Bobo doll for ten minutes. The children were then let into a room to play with the Bobo doll. The children showed hostile and aggressive behaviour toward the Bobo doll. Some of the objects used were mallets, like the adult had. However other objects were used such as guns. The experiment revealed that beha viour can be copied through observing and imitating others. An example of this in placement would be when I was sitting at the table with the children during dinner time. During this time two children were playing around with their food and they throwing it. I showed them that we eat this type of food with our hands. I then then ate some to show them that it tastes nice and they shouldn’t be afraid to eat with their hands. This then resulted in two children copying me and eating their dinner with their hands. The second psychological perspective is the cognitive perspective. The cognitive perspective or approach is the â€Å"psychological perspective emphasising active and interpretive nature of human information of human information processing† (Coolican, H., Cherchar, A., Walley, M, Cassidy, T,. Penny, G and Harrower J Page 367). The cognitive perspective is about how children make their own choices. This perspective focuses on how what a child learns affects their actions. This means this what a child learns influences their actions. This is done by a child’s thoughts and how a child processes and stores information. The third psychological perspective is the social perspective biological perspective. This perspective looks at how a child’s behaviour is done to their genetics. This means this perspective looks at a child and how they develop an understanding of the world and their surroundings around them. A theorist that believes this is Vygotsky. Vygotsky believed children learn best through social interaction with other peers and through adult intervention and through this is, is how they develop other skills. Vygotsky felt that children were capable of achieving past their potential and their stages of development however only with support and assistance from adults. â€Å"The difference between these two levels was known as the ‘zone of proximal development’, and this has huge implications for the adult who would help extend the child’s learning and reinforce it†. (Hill., K., Tassoni P., Page 256)An example of this would be if a child who suffers from OCD. O CD is a biological condition. If something is not in the correct place, or doing certain actions. A child at one of my placements suffered from Autism and OCD, if that child didn’t have snack at a certain time, the child would get very upset. As I worked with him during reception, snack time was available throughout the whole day and was not at a specific time, he found this difficult time. To help this child, me or another teacher would go through what activities were available to him that day and what he would like to in order. This was very effective and beneficial as he knew what was happening during the day. An example of this in placement would be through free play, the children have a chance to interact and integrate with other children. Adult intervention is very important in my setting. We welcome each child into the setting and talk to them about how they feel and what they would like to do. Communication goes hand in hand with adult interaction with adult intervent ion. I and the other staff at my placement scaffold the children’s learning when needed with certain tasks and activities. An example of this would be me helping a child to build a tower with wooden blocks. I helped the child to build a tower, thus helping them reach their goal. The next time they were able to build a tower on their own. The fourth psychological perspective is the psychodynamic perspective. This perspective focuses on the subconscious and the part in plays in us making the decisions we do. Freud is a key theorist that links into this perspective. Freud’s theory is the ‘Psychosexual stages of development’. Freud’s theory is based on the early childhood experiences form the behaviour we acquire as adults. Early attachment relationships with parents form a great impact on this. The fifth psychological perspective is the humanistic perspective. Freud believed that â€Å"the unconscious mind has a large part to play in how we feel and that the influences of the unconscious mind come from past experiences and form our instincts.† (Foster, S., Green, S. Kellas S., Page 112) Freud’s developed five stages and these were ; the oral stage, the anal stage, phallic stage, laterncy stage and the genital stage. The oral stage is the first stage is about how a child finds pleasure in putting objects in their mouth. The child is intent on satisfying their libido, by placing all sort of objects in their mouth. This can however be replicated at a child’s later life by thumb sucking or nail biting. The oral stage is when a child is first born to the age of one. The anal stage takes place between the first, two years of age. The pleasure zone in this period is the anus. This stage focuses on a child controlling their bowels and bladder. This when the eg o starts to develop and starts to control the id, this is done by the child asking to achieve potty training and toilet training. The next stage is the phallic stage, this takes place between the ages of two and six. The pleasure zone during this period is the phallus. This stage focuses on how a child has developed an awareness of their genitals and how a child plays with their genitals and gain pleasure from it. At this stage the superego develops. The laercy stage follows and takes place between the ages of six and eleven years. This stages’ pleasure zone doesn’t have one. This perspective focuses on what makes a child an individual by focusing on what makes a child an individual, and that is their characteristics. The Odeipus (boy) and Electra (girl) issues are resolved. A child can now build on a relationship with a same sex parent without feeling jealousy. The last stage is the genital stage. This is between the ages of 11 years into adulthood. The pleasure zone for this is the genitals. Its main characteristics is how a child can develop having sexual feelings (puberty) to then in adulthood settling down into a relationship. Freud believed though that if an adult is fixed at a certain stage such as the oral stage, their only pleasure of the relationship would be from kissing and not from sexual intercourse. This theory may be linked into practice by if a child is fixed at a certain stage such as the oral stage (this may be nail biting or thumb sucking) may be experiencing anxiety at home, thus not being able to move on to the next stage. Freud believed that if a child didn’t progress through these set stages, then it would cause problems later on in life. He also believed that a child could stay fixed at a stage and this again would cause problems. This links into children’s development because this perspective believes that children are influenced by the world and what they see and what they do. The last psychological perspective is the developmental perspective. This perspective looks at the behaviour of a child and sees if they are meeting the requirements for their age and stage of development. A key theorist that links into this is Piaget and his four stages of cognitive development. This links into child development by seeing if children are meeting the development requirements for their age. An example of this at my placement is a behaviour specialist works closely with the school. She takes account of each child’s needs and see if they are meeting the requirements for their age and stage of development and if there is any issues. And if there are any issues, what can then be done to help the child to meet their targets. Theories have informed practice in early years settings majorly. A lot of theories are using the theories in practice every day. Each theory can be placed into a different category of development. B.F Skinner’s theory is that children use cognitive behaviour when given verbal communication. A key element in his theory is through trial and error. They will keep on trying until they succeed. A way a child learns this is through observing other adults and copy and repeats what they have heard or see. An example of this in placement would be was when I was sitting at the table with the children during dinner time. During this time two children were playing around with their food and they throwing it. I showed them that we eat this type of food with our hands. I then then ate some to show them that it tastes nice and they shouldn’t be afraid to eat with their hands. This then resulted in two children copying me and eating their dinner with their hands. One way to achieve this is by speaking clearly and getting down to their level and using eye contact. Another example of this in placement would be when a child was hitting another child. I got to the child’s lev el/ and used eye contact. I also used their name and said what that their behaviour was wrong and that we use ‘kind hands’ here and that their behaviour had made the child sad. I also said that you need to give the child a cuddle and say sorry. B.F Skinner also links into another theory of behavioural management. His This theory is that child should have a consistent behavioural management system. At my placement we respect that parents may have a different technique to the ones we use at placement, we take on board their wishes and use their technique to remain consistency so the child does not get confused about the consequences of their behaviour. There are many behavioural techniques to help manage behaviour, these are reward charts, child empowerment, inclusion games and assertive discipline. Vygotsky’s theory is linked to intellectual development. His theory is that children learn new skills with the help of adult intervention. His theory also supports that a child should be supported doing a new activity or during a new learning experience. I and the staff support this theory by assisting the children with new tasks and scaffolding their learning. This means giving them the resources they need to fulfil or complete the task and letting them find a way of completing the task, without showing them. We also give verbal praise when a child shows good social interaction skills with other children. John Bowbly is the theorist that is linked to emotional development. He links into the biological perspective. His theory focuses on that importance of early relationships a child has with their main caregiver. Bowbly believed children who had a positive attachment with their caregiver have more of higher self-esteem and children who have negative attachment their caregiver have a lower self-esteem. At my placement we support this by slowly introducing and easing a child into a setting. We had a new child recently who started. We believed it would be for the best if we slowly eased the child into the setting. This helps the child to ease into the setting, make themselves feel comfortable and familiar with the setting. This also helps prevent separation anxiety with the child and their main caregiver. References Foster, S., Green, S and Kellas, S. (2008) BTEC National Children’s Care, Learning and Development , Nelson Thornes, Nelson Thornes – 15/11/14 Squire, G., 2007. BTEC National Children’s Care, Learning and Development Student Book, United Kingdom: Heinemann 15/11/14 Image http://fateslayer99.hubpages.com/hub/Understanding-Psychological-Perspectives-and-the-Motives-Behind-Our-Actions Last Accessed on 15/11/14 at 18:12 1 Tejal Thanki

The Supernatural in Shakespeares Works Essays -- William Shakespeare

The Supernatural in Shakespeare's Works No one questions the fact that William Shakespeare is a pure genius when it comes to creating immortal characters whose characteristics transcends those of the normal supernatural beings, but most students of literature agree that his uses of the supernatural aren’t merely figments of his creative imagination. Every man, woman, and child is influenced by the age into which they are born and Shakespeare was no exception. Not only does his use of supernatural elements within his works reveal the Elizabethans’ obsession with mythical beliefs, but it also reveals his attitude toward these beliefs at different points of his writing career. Because of the profound understanding of the beliefs of his time, Shakespeare was able to create masterpieces that critics and readers have respected all over the world. In Shakespeare’s time, the belief in the presence and power of the supernatural touch life at every point. Customs were formed by it and behavior was dictated by it. Not only did the poor believe in it, but all classes of people were under its spell from nobles to the poor. It governed people’s lives down to the smallest details. They carried charms and mascots, found horror in spilling salt and walking under ladders, and dreaded the thirteenth of Friday (May 35-38). They believed that all supernatural elements were at work. The Elizabethans had always been susceptible to belief in the supernatural. As May notes, these people more that other people questioned matters beyond their vision (39). Shakespeare was clearly influenced by his race. He had an inquiring mind that refused bondage by the limitations of matter (Mish 28). Listing the numberless superstitions that Shakespeare gathered from his environment would be impossible. May believes that it is because his own observations of the habits of animals and plants were explained by stories that were more myth that truth. Elizabethans also gave superstitious explanations for changing weather and season, phase of life, and sickness and death (59-63). As a youth, Shakespeare was susceptible to all kinds of influences around him. Due to the widespread obsession with the supernatural, Shakespeare was compelled as a writer to adopt the views of the majority. The people who crowed the theaters and paid the money demanded fairies, ghost, and witches, and all the commonly h... ...onio for the terrible wrong he has don and no traces of anger or resentment linger. In this final play the supernatural is entirely beneath the control of man. All authority is taken form the spirits in The Tempest and the power to harm is gone. Shakespeare’s state of mind is best expressed at this point when Prospero reveals how man has at last attained dominion over the forces of evil (Schiller 378). William Shakespeare was a genius. Not only was he able to use the supernatural in his works to the fullest extent of Elizabethan belief, but he was skillful at molding the supernatural into remarkable assets to his plot. However, Elizabethan beliefs weren’t the only influences that shoved their way into the meanings of his plays. His whole outlook on life also played a major part in the way that he shaped the supernatural. Not only does his use of supernatural elements within his works reveal the Elizabethans’ obsession with mythical beliefs, but it also reveals his attitude toward these beliefs at different points of his career. His remarkable handling of the supernatural is on reason why William Shakespeare is generally regarded as the greatest writer of English literature.

Alcoholism among Victorians Essay -- Victorian Era

Alcoholism among Victorians Wrayburn: â€Å"It will be necessary, I think, to wind up Mr. Dolls, before anything to any mortal purpose can be got out of him. Brandy, Mr. Dolls, or - ?† Mr. Dolls: â€Å"Threepenn’orth Rum.† --Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens Throughout Victorian society â€Å"gin was the preferred spirit of the lower class, while wine and brandy were imbibed by the more comfortable citizenry† (Alcoholic Beverages 12). During the nineteenth century, the Victorians had high expectations of their class system to make sure the classes were distinct and properly represented. They â€Å"valued controlled, propitious behavior† and would tolerate nothing less (Harding Victorians and Alcohol). There was a â€Å"cultural value placed on teetotaling,† total abstinence from alcoholic drinks, but despite this value â€Å"alcohol consumption became a popular pastime† (Harding Victorians and Alcohol). Behavior such as drunkenness was strongly disapproved of because of its association with the lower class. Alcoholism: Representation of the Working Class It was widely known that â€Å"drunkenness, and the related loss of self-control, was associated with the lower classes† and therefore had negative connotations (Harding Victorians and Alcohol). Spirits, a popular hard liquor, â€Å"had become the everyday drink for less wealthy people† and â€Å"laborers commonly used spirits to flee from their desolate everyday lives† (Harding Victorians and Alcohol). The awful working and living conditions of the working class contributed to their â€Å"hard, controlled, and monotonous life, [leading] to excessive drinking of hard liquor† (Harding Victorians and Alcohol). This excessive drinking would sometimes result in public intoxication which was â€Å"regarded as anti-s... ...ss, Inc. 1996. 12. Distad, Merrill N. â€Å"Food and Diet.† Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1988. 304-307. Garwood, John. â€Å"Religious and moral Character of the Pensioners, and Provisions made for their Instruction.† Social Investigation/Journalism – The Million-Peopled City. (1853): 94-96. 11 Mar. 2005 Harding, Stephen. â€Å"Alcohol.† Victorians’ Secrets. â€Å"Absinthe and Victorians.† Victorians’ Secrets. 2000. University of Texas at Arlington. 24 Feb. 2005. Kent, Christopher A. â€Å"Drink.† Twentieth-Century Britain: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995. 239-240. Murdock, Catherine Gilbert. Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Preference of Foreign Brands amongst Chinese People

The acceptance of products of foreign origin by Chinese consumers is with a genuine enthusiasm and due to various seasons: better quality, good reputation, greater diversity of choice, more attractive appearance, a feeling of liberty, new arrivals and so on. During the recent period everything that has a foreign name had to be of good quality, high price, and all those who consumed these products were regarded as rich and refined. This research paper consists of four main parts. Initially, we believe it is necessary to present the evolution of foreign brands in China, which allows us to have an overview of the context of our research.The second part will be devoted to the presentation of he conceptual framework of the issue of foreign brands. Then, we will trace the development of consumption in China. Last but not least, we propose, from all our lectures, methods of the research to solve our problem. We will conclude with the presentation of the contributions of our research and con sidered future developments. BODY 1 . The evolution of the foreign brands in China The Chinese economy was characterized by shortages, due to insufficient domestic production before the year 1979 (Guy, 2005).Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution (1968-1978), ‘ration tickets' have been distributed to buy products in China. Obviously, it was impossible for the Chinese to make a choice among competing brands. After 1979, a reform and opening policy to engage fully in building a modern economy allowed all industrial sectors to experience prodigious growth. At that time, many foreign companies have failed to penetrate because of their lack of knowledge of the Chinese market and local habits, but foreign brands remained very attractive for Chinese. However, the price of foreign products was so high that average employees could not afford them.In 1990, many Chinese have expressed a genuine enthusiasm or foreign products, from car to food and clothing. By purchasing a product that be ars a worldly famous name, Chinese consumer achieved a part of their dream. Some even saved intentionally to be able to buy foreign products. With the deepening of reform and opening up the economy and improving the investment environment, especially with its entry to WTFO, the enormous Chinese market has attracted more and more foreign products in China, and attracts more foreign companies coming to invest.The number of applications for registration and trademark registrations is increasing, so is their proportion in the annual applications compared to all existing brands. In 1982, applications for registration of foreign brands accounted for 8. 4% with 1 565 applications. In 2002, one year after the formal accession of China to the WTFO, they increased by 25. 2% over the previous year to reach the number of 50 902, which stood 13. 7% of applications. Before 1979, only 20 foreign countries and territories had registered trademarks in China, for a total of 5130 recordings.At the end of 2003, the number of countries and territories reached 129 and the number of registrations was 361 795, as 71 times more. The proportion of the cumulative number of foreign trademarks registered in relation to the total rose from 15. 7% in 1979 to 18. 3% in 2003, representing a growth of nearly three points (1). At the same time, Chinese consumers like foreign products because they demonstrate a higher life quality. Thus, some foreign products with special character are still quite requested.For example, European or American clothing are still in vogue, and very high-end foreign products are the new trends in consumption in China. According to a study cited recently by the Financial Times, China is the third oral market for luxury products with annual sales of two billion dollars and growth prospects annual 20% until 2008 and 10% up in 2015 (9). The influence of foreign brands on consumer behavior is a hot topic. It is first studied in the literature in terms of brand strategy to be adopted by enterprises (non- domestic customers).Motormen & Sharking (1998, (10) have noted three main points to understand: 1 . How consumers in each country consider the choice of brands, 2. How they evaluate them, 3. The different needs that drive their purchasing decision. In a context of globalization of markets, there are many studies about the alternatives f a marketing strategy, standardized or localized, which derives the question of a branding strategy standardized (global) vs. brand adapted (Seafarer, 2002 (5) , Roth, 1992 (1 1), and 1995 (12)).Research shows that it is important to identify potential obstacles, for example, some national characteristics, in the process of developing a global brand. Before looking at the value of a particular brand in a given market, it is also necessary to know the predisposition with which consumers of this market consider the brand in general, and then this brand in particular. 2. The concept of country of origin and its effects on consumer behavior Indeed, much has been said and written about the role of country of origin on the perception, evaluation and choice of foreign products.However, the effect of origin on brand has rarely been studied, and only in recent years it becomes an interesting subject for the researchers, with the rise of a movement that believes that the congruence between these two variables is more important than their effects taken separately (Airier and Fort, 2005). Our research intends to adopt this congruence approach to better understand the symbolic value and the practical value of the country of origin in the perception of foreign brand by Chinese consumers. There are a smaller number of researches studying the problem of countries of origin in the context of developing countries.Bator & AAA. (2000 (3)) showed that consumers in these countries perceive the country of origin as a factor indicating not only quality but also social values symbolic, and they give preference to tradema rk ‘non-local † compared to local brands. However, these proposals were rarely tested by empirical work. The study of Bator & AAA. 2000) among Indian consumers is an important reference on this point. Their results showed that consumers in developing countries have a more favorable attitude towards brands perceived as non-local, and for reasons that go beyond evaluating the quality of the brand.According to the authors, non-local brands are regarded as symbols of prestige, at least by certain categories of consumers and for categories of products with high symbolic value. These consumers are identified as those with a high degree of standard setting influence, one of the main influences that a reference group has on n individual. This group admires the lifestyles of economically developed countries. It is interesting to note that the brands are generally presented as non-local and non- associated with a given country, as in other more conventional research on the effect of country of origin. In sum, the study Bator & AAA. Mongo consumers in India provides us with the first clues for further research on the perception of foreign brand by consumers in developing countries. In this research, an interesting feature of Chinese consumers towards foreign brands in a society in transition is explored. Basing on this literature review and its limitations, we can assume that cultural orientation can influence consumer attitudes towards foreign brand in a positive way. Cultural values are considered as determinants of attitudes and behaviors and provide a more stable and domestic-oriented consumers (Kumara and Novak, 1992 (5)). . The Chinese culture and consumption of foreign brand 3. 1 The traditional Chinese culture and consumption of foreign brand The presentation of some of these principles will help us gain a better understanding of the behaviors of Chinese people. Some elements or values are respected, promoted and implemented in everyday life, includin g how to choose a brand. The features are introduced below: -The first feature of Chinese society is the collective nature The Chinese will adhere more easily to the standards of group than people in individualistic societies.An essential element in Western culture and consumer behavior, the desire to distinguish themselves, is also in China. It assumes a difference as a member of one group over another group, while respecting individual standards of his group. We therefore believe that the consumption of the product of reign origin is rather symbolic other than utilitarian to correspond to social status. Imitation is also a behavior used for identification as a member of the group. Moreover, it is obvious that luxury products are well sold in China in recent years.This means that the brand is in the process of buying decision because it meets the needs of good social status than personal needs (Guy, 2005). -The second characteristic feature is the concept of social interaction The relationship of trust leads the development of interpersonal relationships that underpin the functioning of many Chinese. The behaviors of Chinese consumers are more easily influenced by the existing trust between people who have a good personal relationship.It is assumed that the recommendations and comments from others play a very important role in the choice of brand. The Chinese consumers tend to regard the brand as part of their social life and their relationships to others. The exchange of gifts is considered as the most direct and most visible to cultivate social interaction. The way a person respects and implements the complex rules of gifts exchange is an essential element in assessing the social position of that person. For example, luxury products and international brands that can be gifts are well sold in China in recent years. The third feature is the concept of self-esteem In Chinese tradition, the concept of elf-esteem refers to the obligation of reciprocity. It is im portant to give oneself a positive image, reflecting his role, his status and is in line with the traits that respect his group membership†¦ Len view of the higher price and ostentatious function of the international brand compared to the local brand, consumers choose brands which is best known locally and do not want to take the sis of spending money for these brands anonymous on the market (Lu, 2004 (8)).The reputation of the brand foreign in domestic market is required for the reason of saving face. 3. 2 The modern Chinese culture and consumption of foreign brand The attitudes towards international brands of Chinese consumers are influenced by modern Chinese culture as well as traditional one. Specifically, modernity, youth, success and wealth allow Chinese consumers to pay greater importance to the brand, to develop a preference for foreign brands since it itself can constitute a social and symbolic universe (Lenitive and London, 1997 (7)).Modern consumers have more ways, c onsume more symbolically; they look for products with brand, either for their good quality or value for signs of the brand through research statute. Western Life influences consumer behavior of young Chinese. The admiration of the quality of life of developed countries exerts a positive influence on the attitude towards foreign brands. The relationship of Chinese consumers with foreign brands, which includes several aspects, manifests itself in a more or less depending on different social backgrounds, different categories of people.Elements such as age, sex, education level, and the tankard of living†¦ Certainly seem to influence the perception of foreign brands. A global study published by Accentuate shows that to attract Chinese consumers increasingly sensitive to foreign brands, companies must adjust their marketing strategies to the preferences of three categories of clientele. So the â€Å"golden youth†, I. E. Young urban graduates, mostly women, who have a high sta ndard of living and significant interest to the foreign brands is the first category with the most potential.According to the study, consumers in this class are two times more likely than others to only to buy new brands (28% against 14% maximum for others), but also to be the first to test (43% against 32% maximum). The other two categories are, on the one hand, â€Å"ambitious†, young people who are sensitive to brands and covet the latest and best products, but whose incomes do not allow them to realize their dreams. On the other hand, â€Å"high income†, who are also looking for exclusive products at the cutting edge of technology, but unlike the former, deserve the brands (14). 4. Guidelines for the management of foreign brands in China – Practical ValueNumerous studies on the problem of country of origin are interested in the influence of this concept on consumer preferences, and more specifically, preferences for foreign products or domestic products. The research in this field has highlighted a trend among consumers in developing countries to prefer foreign products to domestic products because of the superiority of foreign products in terms of quality. Long accustomed to basic products and very poor quality, Chinese consumers welcome these products of foreign origin with an enthusiasm, which may explain a better quality of these products.We therefore believe that the greater the perceived quality gap between the local brands and foreign brands is, the more Chinese consumers are sensitive to foreign brands. – Symbolic Value The importance of symbolic value tends to increase when society evolves socio economically from a low level to a higher level (Supplely and GarГÃ'‘enough, 2003 (13)). The Chinese consumers today are looking for brands capable of performing not only utilities functions but also symbolic functions and give them greater importance.The value of symbols and social standards of Chinese culture invites us to assume that it esters the perception of foreign brands by Chinese consumers. We also assume that the differences of the perceived symbolic value between local and foreign brands exert a positive influence on the perception of foreign brands. 4. 2 Perception of foreign brands – Integration of foreign brands in the Chinese culture The Chinese cultural characteristics influence the behavior of Chinese consumers.More precisely, Confucianism (the collective nature, the concept of social interaction, the notion of the self-esteem and modern Chinese culture exert a positive influence on the perception of foreign brand. Segmentation of the Chinese market In addition to the cultural differences that characterize Chinese consumers, their attitudes and behaviors appear closely related to other factors such as age, sex, education level, the standard of living†¦ Indeed, the evolution of the perception of foreign brand in China takes place at a very rapid pace.This can create signi ficant differences between groups of people more or less susceptible to the effects of opening up the country, for example, between cities and rural areas, between generations†¦ For the foreign firm, it is essential to find segments of Chinese nonusers who are more sensitive to brands. – The impact of competition China is entering a new phase of its economic development during which the foreign brands are no longer in the same position visit-Г-visit the Chinese consumers. The local competition may exert a negative influence on the perception of foreign brands.The Chinese brands have made progresses and become competitors for certain foreign brands. Faced with the improving quality of domestic products and the maturity of Chinese consumers, foreign companies must understand the symbolism of consumption that is implanted in the mind of Chinese consumers as a fundamental element of Chinese culture. In summary, the situation of foreign brands in China and Chinese consume r behavior visit-Г-visit foreign brands are discussed in this paper. The Chinese preference to foreign products seems to be an interesting feature in a society in transition to consumerism.The phenomenon of foreign brands in China appears somewhat different from what is often addressed in research in marketing, because of the complexity of the market situation and cultural characteristics of today's Chinese society and consumer behavior, closely related to the combined experience of generations of Chinese. Together with globalization and integration of markets, foreign investors wishing to work in China have to be aware of this reality. To have a good strategy of building brand image, it is important to understand the symbolic values of prestige required by the Chinese.To attract Chinese consumers, our study suggests several options: to highlight differences in terms of product quality and in terms of the symbolic value of brands; to strengthen orientation to Confucianism and to the theme of modernity and youth linked to consumption; to emphasize the importance of segmentation for the Chinese market; to emphasize the difference in hooch between categories of products with high symbolic value and low symbolic value and at last to identify new constraints imposed by local competition.Finally, we hope that this study makes a contribution to knowledge about the management of the brand in general and on the issue of foreign brands in the Chinese market in particular.

Ben and Jerry’s Case Study

This case study comes from the second edition of Business Strategy: an introduction published in 2001. It is very readable and interesting, providing students with insights into how two entrepreneurs who set up an ice cream shop in a renovated petrol station became the names behind one of the most well-known ice cream brands around the globe. Students will find out how Ben and Jerry tackled the almighty (at the time) Pillsbury and Hà ¤agen-Dazs, how they developed a brand to distinguish them from competitors which included a focus on people and giving back to society, and how they successfully used PR to come up trumps in the ‘ice cream war’.At the end of the case study you will find a series of questions for students to get them thinking critically about Ben & Jerry’s strategy from its humble beginnings to where it is now. The case also provides the opportunity for students to conduct research into the current state of play. They could find out how Ben & Jerryâ €™s have further developed their brand and product offerings (they now have ice cream counters in cinemas, they offer a full selection of Fair Trade ice creams, etc. ) and what competition they now face, if any.Students will find it helpful to read chapter 20 on social responsibililty and business ethics. They could also use this longer case study as a springboard for their work on the Strategic Planning Software (SPS), to which they have free access with purchase of the textbook. The beginning Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became friends at school in the late 1960s in Burlington, Vermont in the North Eastern United States. Their reputation as the two ‘odd' eccentrics at school led them to form a strong friendship that would last for many decades.When they left school, both Ben and Jerry became ‘hippies' – social drop-outs who lived an alternative and unconventional lifestyle. They both grew their hair and a beard and together with their dog, Malcolm, they mo ved in together as flatmates. One of the interests they shared was in food and as they discussed various ways of making a living, they concluded that the two most exciting areas of fast food at the time were bagels and ice cream. Having established that the equipment needed to bake bagels would cost $40,000, the two men enrolled on an ice cream making correspondence course for the cost of $5 each.In 1978, having developed some basic ice cream recipes, Ben and Jerry set up a shop in a renovated petrol station in Burlington with a capital investment of $12,000 ($4,000 of which was borrowed). From the outset, Ben and Jerry wanted to produce a premium product and the fact that it was made from ‘fresh Vermont milk and cream' was stressed. The outlet was called ‘Ben & Jerry's Homemade ice cream' and to give the shop a unique and welcoming character, they employed a piano player to play blues in the background. Initially, the shop was a success amongst Burlington locals, many o f whom had known the men when they were growing up.The staff that Ben and Jerry employed were encouraged to take the same ‘hippiesh' view of business activity as the owners (‘every day was a party'), but the major competitive advantage arose from the uniqueness of the product. Whereas the majority of ice cream products were traditionally-flavoured, Ben and Jerry introduced unusual flavours with ‘chunks' to make the textures more interesting, such as fruit, chocolate, nuts, toffee and similar sweets. ‘Chunky' ice cream became the prominent feature of the new organisation's image. During the summer of 1978, customer numbers grew as the reputation of the shop and the ice cream grew.It was when the winter set in at the end of the year that the troubles began. Over the counter ice cream sales dried up and Ben and Jerry realised they would have to find other outlets for their products if they were to avoid bankruptcy. They persuaded a number of local grocers in Ver mont to stock the product in one pint tubs, but it soon transpired that a broader customer base would be needed. Having approached a number of national supermarket chains, Ben Cohen learned that the size of the business, not to mention his appearance and attitude to business, made the buyers reluctant to take stock from him.He was advised that he ought to seek to sell the ice cream to large independent ice cream distributors in neighbouring states who would then sell the product on to the major retail multiples. It was then that Ben and Jerry encountered a problem. The Pillsbury confrontation Ben approached the Dari-Farms corporation with a view to have it distribute Ben & Jerry's ice cream throughout the New England states. Dennis Silva, the company vice-president, agreed to take some Ben & Jerry's stock despite Ben's unconventional approach to business.In order to increase distribution further, Ben also approached Paul's Distributors where its chairman, Chuck Green, also agreed to act as a Ben & Jerry distributor. The market leader in the super-premium ice cream segment at the time was Hà ¤agen Dazs, which was then owned by the large US based Pillsbury Corporation. Pillsbury turned over $4 billion a year and had extensive food interests in addition to Hà ¤agen-Dazs including Green Giant (vegetables) and Burger King, the fast food outlet. Kevin Hurley, president of the Hà ¤agen Dazs subsidiary of Pillsbury, was the son-in-law of the company's founder, Reuben Matthus.Matthus had started Hà ¤agen-Dazs in 1959 in New York. He came up with the Danish-sounding name in the belief that it conjured up a feeling in the consumer of an exotic European brand. By 1984 when the confrontation with Ben & Jerry's took place, Hà ¤agen-Dazs held a 70% share of the super-premium ice cream market. When Hurley discovered that both Dari-Farms and Paul's were distributing Ben & Jerry's as well as Hà ¤agen-Dazs, he rang both Dennis Silva and Chuck Green. Although Ben & Jerry's still had only a tiny share of the market compared to Hà ¤agen-Dazs, Hurley was determined that the distributors he used were not going to help a competitor.â€Å"We didn't say to the distributor ‘You can't carry Ben & Jerry's. We asked them to make a choice'† said Hurley. â€Å"We just told them [Silva and Green] that they couldn't sell Ben & Jerry's and Hà ¤agen-Dazs. † This ‘it's us or them' ultimatum took the two distributors by surprise and it presented a distressing dilemma. â€Å"We were just stunned at this comment coming from Hà ¤agen-Dazs, this huge company where we were selling trailer loads of ice cream, versus this minuscule amount of Ben & Jerry's we were selling† said Chuck Green of Paul's Distribution. â€Å"They had drawn this line in the sand saying that we had to make a decision.†When Ben and Jerry heard of Hurley's threat, they arranged a meeting with the distributors to discuss the situation. In view of the potential of Ben & Jerry's, neither distributor wanted to stop taking their products, but at the same time, the thought of having Hà ¤agen-Dazs withdraw their supply could prove very damaging indeed. The three parties agreed that they would need legal representation if they were to take on the might of Pillsbury and they chose Howie Fuguet, a business lawyer who had spent his professional life defending large organisations. Like Ben and Jerry, Howie was an eccentric.He was said to have cared little for his appearance and had holes in his shoes. He agreed that Pillsbury had behaved in a curious way and sent off a letter to them setting out the nature of Ben & Jerry's grievance. Protesting that Hurley had acted unfairly, Howie wrote to the Board of Pillsbury. â€Å"It would be wishful thinking on the part of your subsidiary's officers [Hà ¤agen-Dazs] to imagine that it can bully Ben & Jerry's, stifle its growth and cause it to roll over† wrote Howie. â€Å"Ben & Jerry's represents a cla ssic entrepreneurial success story and its owners are aggressive.Hà ¤agen-Dazs will have to learn to compete on their merits in the market place. That is the American way and that is what competition is all about. † Notwithstanding the apparent ‘correctness' of Ben & Jerry's case, the legal odds were clearly stacked against them. If they couldn't beat the ‘bullying' Hà ¤agen-Dazs through normal legal channels, then another weapon would be needed. The ‘dough boy' campaign The key move was to make Pillsbury the target of the campaign and not Hà ¤agen-Dazs; Pillsbury was bigger and had more to lose. Since the mid 1960s, the symbol of Pillsbury was the Pillsbury ‘dough boy'.The dough boy was used by Pillsbury in its advertising and other corporate communications and was a valuable symbol of the company's identity. So as to avoid the appearance of an ‘ice cream war’ between two competitors, Howie proposed that they attacked the Pillsbury comp any by specifically targeting the dough boy. Accordingly, the What's the dough boy afraid of? campaign was launched, intentionally designed to appear as a ‘David versus Goliath' conflict where a small company (Ben & Jerry's) had been unfairly treated by a large ‘bully' in the shape of Pillsbury.â€Å"We didn't really know a thing about PR. We were just trying to survive† said Ben Cohen. â€Å"If we were going to go down, we wanted to let as many people as we could know what was going on. [We wanted to say that] the reason why you can't find Ben and Jerry's on the shelf is because this big corporation [Pillsbury] is trying to prevent you, the consumer, from having a choice about what kind of ice cream you want to buy. † The campaign included T-shirts, bumper stickers, bill posters and other media which all bore the statement â€Å"What's the dough boy afraid of? â€Å".Jerry launched a one-man campaign outside the Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis, Min nesota and it wasn't long before the local television news programmes started carrying the story on a regular basis. This made the public sympathise with Ben & Jerry's, but also provided a lot of free publicity for the company and its products. From its 17-strong legal department, Pillsbury assigned Richard Wegener to ‘get rid of' the ‘Ben & Jerry problem'. Wegener quickly realised the size of the task facing Pillsbury. â€Å"The publicity became bigger than the dispute itself† said Wegener.The reputation of Pillsbury was at stake and Wegener sought to bring a rapid end to the controversy. Realising that the campaign had grabbed the public's attention and the sympathies were predominantly with Ben & Jerry's, Wegener advised Hurley to back down. Kevin Hurley was persuaded to sign an out-of-court settlement agreeing not to coerce any distributors. The campaign was over and Ben & Jerry's had won. The controversy not only ensured the defeat of Pillsbury, it also acted unwittingly as an enormous amount of publicity for the Ben & Jerry's brand.After the victory The success of Ben & Jerry's after the Pillsbury confrontation was marked. The distribution channels were widened still further until Ben & Jerry's ice cream was supplied through supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, and food service operations, as well as through licensed ‘scoop shops’ (shops selling just their ice cream), franchised scoop shops, and company-owned scoop shops. By 1992, the company's turnover exceeded $130 million and it was on the verge of international development into the United Kingdom.In the super-premium ice cream sector, a number of new and distinctive product flavours were launched including ‘Milk chocolate ice cream and white fudge cows swirled with white chocolate ice cream and dark fudge cows,' ‘Chocolate comfort low fat ice cream,' ‘Mocha latte' and ‘Triple caramel chunk ice cream. ‘ In addition, non-ice cre am frozen desserts were introduced including a range of ice cream ‘novelties', frozen yoghurts and sorbets such as ‘Chunky Monkey frozen yoghurt – banana frozen yoghurt with fudge flakes and walnuts.'The Ben & Jerry's name and the company's reputation for quality meant that the new products became quickly adopted by the market. The personality of the founders helped to frame the company's culture and its mission. Two important statements were released which described the company's approach to its business. In 1988, the company stated that â€Å"We are dedicated to the creation and demonstration of a new corporate concept of linked prosperity. † This was articulated via its Philanthropy Statement and its Mission Statement.Ben & Jerry's Philanthropy Ben & Jerry's gives away 7. 5 percent of its pre-tax earnings in three ways: the Ben & Jerry's Foundation; employee Community action Teams at five Vermont sites; and through corporate grants made by the Director o f Social Mission Development. We support projects which are models for social change – projects which exhibit creative problem solving and hopefulness. The Foundation is managed by a nine member employee board and considers proposals relating to children and families, disadvantaged groups, and the environment.Mission Statement – Ben & Jerry's Ben & Jerry's is dedicated to the creation & demonstration of a new corporate concept of linked prosperity. Our mission consists of three interrelated parts: wTo make, distribute and sell the finest quality all-natural ice cream and related products in a wide variety of innovative flavors made from Vermont dairy products. wTo operate the Company on a sound financial basis of profitable growth, increasing value for our shareholders, and creating career opportunities and financial rewards for our employees.wTo operate the Company in a way that actively recognizes the central role that business plays in the structure of society by in itiating innovative ways to improve the quality of life of a broad community – local, national, and international. Underlying the mission of Ben & Jerry's is the determination to seek new and creative ways of addressing all three parts, while holding a deep respect for the individuals, inside & outside the company, and for the communities of which they are a part. Questions for students: 1.Identify the stakeholders that Ben & Jerry’s and Hà ¤agen-Dazs had in common at the time of the controversy. 2. Which of Donaldson and Preston’s view of stakeholders did Hà ¤agen-Dazs have at the time of the confrontation? Provide evidence from the case in your answer. 3. Which of Donaldson and Preston’s view of stakeholders did Ben & Jerry’s have in the case? Provide evidence from the case in your answer. 4. Comment upon the ethical behaviour of the two ‘sides’ of the Pillsbury dough boy campaign. Which side, if either, was right?