Financial Analysts Questions Essay Example for Free

Financial Analysts Questions Essay Technical Questions 1. Can you explain quarterly forecasting, updating revenue and expense models? 2. What projects have you implemented these skills? 3. In conjunction with these projects how do you execute input of detailed plans and forecast into the financial systems? 4. Describe how you coordinate plan transfers. 5. Are you familiar with creating daily sales reports? 6. What processes do you use to create reports? 7. Have you created month-end sales reports? 8. Have these reports involved your knowledge of analysis concerning actual and planned revenues, balance sheets and expenses? 9. Can you describe the practices you use for analysis of financial and management reporting? 10. Do you have experience in annual planning processes? 11. What profitability models have you used for forecasting a project? 12. Are you familiar with developing business casing and ad hoc analysis? 13. How would you maintain these items during a project? 14. Have you ever worked on a budget for an expansion program? 15. What financial practices did you target for this project? Responsibility 1. How do you relate with program administrators and financial personnel? 2. Do you compile and share monthly data involving income, investment, sales forecasting, shipments and cash flow reports? 3. What long range plans have you implemented for the business area? 4. Are you accounting and knowledge of financial systems abilities used to corporate profit/loss reports? 5. Have you been responsible for maintaining a financial system database? 6. Have you ever prepared work force reviews? Technical Tasks Questions 1. What computer systems would you use to prepare illustrated technical reports using graphs, spreadsheets and draw charts? 2. What various securities in this industry are you familiar with and how would you compare and evaluate? 3. How do you Interpret data concerning investment programs? 4. Can you define price yields, stability economic influences, future trends and investment risks? 5. How do you achieve knowledge of developments in the fields of industrial technologies? 6. Can you relate some basic business, finance and economic theories? 7. What monitoring skills do possess involving economic, corporate and industrial developments? 8. What steps do you take when preparing plans of action for financial analysis? 9. Have you presented oral or written reports on entire industries, individual corporations or economic trends? 10. Can you describe some recommendations you have to companies or individuals concerning investment procedures? 11. How do you attract new corporate clients? * How has your degree prepared you for a career in Financial Analysis? * Tell me about a financial analysis you completed on a case in one of your classes? * Describe a previous situation where you have demonstrated your analytical skills. * What interests you most about a financial analyst position? * What quantitative courses have you completed? What were your grades in each of them? * How will you be able to handle working long hours and studying for the CPA exams at the same time? * How can India improve its competitiveness? * What stocks do you follow? Why? * What is a cash flow? * What is a present value analysis? * Describe at least three methods of valuing a company. * If you had a $1,000 investment that went down 40 percent and then up 20 percent, what would your investment be worth? * What is your opinion of derivative statements? * Describe EVA and how it can be used to determine the attractiveness of potential projects. * Describe the advantages and disadvantages of using EVA, NPV, discounted cash flows, and payback period as methods of determining the attractiveness of potential projects. * Explain activity-based costing. What are its pros and cons? * Explain marginal costing and standard costing. * Explain ratio analysis. * How does A/R and inventory fluctuations affect the income statement? * Walk me through a DCF analysis. * How do you get to EBITDA from revenues? * When you are given a large financial analysis project to do, what are the first things you do? * Describe a decision you had to make on your own regarding the credit risk of a new client. What was the outcome? * Tell me about a financial analysis decision you got wrong. What was the outcome? What did you learn from the experience? * Describe your level of experience with the software used in your position as a financial analyst. * What steps have you taken to improve your technical writing ability?

Lifestyles of K-Pop Authors

Lifestyles of K-Pop Authors Kpop or Prison? South Korea is a sovereign state in East Asia, with many rules of etiquette and customs based on traditional Chinese ways, but moulded into a unique culture through industrialization, urbanization and westernization. The author, Sonja Vegdahl Hur stated that lurking behind the sometimes stoic Korean faà §ade is a multitude of emotions. However, in the Kpop industry idols are expected to show a profusion of emotions but have to refine them in order to create an image of complete perfection, this is to attract audiences and conform to the trends in their society. Kpop is a genre that originates from 1980s South Korea and is heavily based on audiovisual content and a fusion of foreign musical elements. They present idols in a debut showcase which consists of television broadcast promotions and online marketing instead of radio. But to get to the stage, idols must go through a tough training period for sometimes many years. Sixty years ago Korea was a war-torn country but is now flourishing. This has been achieved through hard work which has been transferred to education. But the globalisation of an already competitive system has caused too much stress from a young age.   Is being diligent in Korea worth the cost of their mental health? These companies obviously use idols dreams against them as in order to be the best, entertainment industries put idols through gruelling periods of dance, vocal training, learning many languages and instruments. Granted, this method does have strengths; the ingrained idea that success is key to a good life, no matter the cost is a great motivator, but is living their dream worth the stiff price in health and happiness? I dont think so. The proof is in the West. Many artists are extremely popular like Beyoncà ©, yet they never had to learn difficult dance routines or another language to rise to the top. But, this also shows where culture differs, the image of perf ection is not necessarily as important in the West as it is in Korea. Idols are mostly required to dye their hair, wear contacts and get double eye-lid surgery to remove the epicanthic fold in order to appear more perfect and European. All idols participate in music shows such as Inkigayo (like our MTV music charts) where all digital sales, physical album sales, streams and music video views are totalled up and the winner gains the trophy this is vital for the group survival in the industry as if their popularity is in constant decline with hardly no wins the company will most likely drop them and this usually means theyll lose their homes and source of income as its all provided by the company, yet they still have to pay a large proportion for it. Trainees are constantly disciplined by the companies theyre signed under. An ex-SM Entertainment trainee revealed, If you dont improve but youre pretty they tell you to stay underwater and hold your breath for 5 minutes and make you sit in a V and drop basketballs on your stomach when you breathe. This is apparently to encourage the trainee to work harder but it breaches human rights as Korean law prohibits such practices of inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. A famous law suit emerged in 2009. A popular group TVXQ, took their management to court over a 13 year contract which ended with success and the ruling prompted the Fair Trade Commission to bring a model contract in an attempt to improve standards. Another ex-trainee, Stella Kim was interviewed by Le Film Magazine and specified her ordeal during the period she trained under SM; If you were deemed overweight, then you would be weighed in front of everybody and shamed for it. Howbeit, the training affected her even aft er she quit, she went through a stage of anorexia and at her lowest point weighed 90lbs at 5ft 7 along with Korean students at her college in America recognising her and calling her ugly or fat. This shows that training in Korea needs to be reformed as the current method creates idols to develop feelings of self-worthlessness with a distorted set of social values. Soloists and groups need fans in order to keep gaining popularity. However, some fans go overboard and develop a harmful fixation on idols. In Korea theyre called Sasaeng fans. These people are notorious for engaging in actions that inaugurate an invasion of privacy. For example, a member of JYJ, Yoochun found that his home and parking lot had CCTV cameras installed by Saesangs. On the other hand is the opposite extreme, anti-fans. This refers to the torment of idols where people construct organisations to mentally and physically threaten idols. They have committed many crimes and go to extreme methods such as, Yoon Kye-Sang from the group G.O.D who received a drink adulterated with bleach and laundry chemicals which was drunk by his mother, who had to hospitalised. Idols are heavily criticised for appearance in Korea as there is a massive expectation of perfection. A case with girl group Red Velvet, included comments against their youngest member, Yeri who was only 17 at the time, w here netizens internet citizens wrote derogatory sexually explicit comments about her on a live show. In comparison to Western artists, Kpop idols work considerably harder for a little amount of freedom and profit. A comment on a website, Quora mentioned that, Kpop isnt about selling music its about selling idols people that fans worship.   Furthermore, Kpop artists are overworked; F(x)s Krystal collapsed on stage due to fatigue as sleeping only 2 hours a day became too much to handle, whilst forced to perform. Even after training life for idols is still stressful and difficult. 9MUSES ex-member, Sera mentioned in the documentary, No one treats me as a human being. But idols have to abide by the contracts and stick with the companies until it ends. The contracts allow the companies to take away human rights and basic freedoms which any ordinary person would have. For example, the right to contact family and under the Korean Labour Standards Act it says working hours per week should not exceed 40 hours. In the i-D Magazine (fashion culture magazine), 2NE1 member CL stated, You have to be perfect. You have to perform well, you shouldnt date anyone and fans have a standard image, especially with girls because boys can date anyone.   This conveys the issue of sexism in Korea. Statistics from a picture on Instagram revealed that there was at least a 10 million Won ( £6839.32) pay gap between male and female idols. An actress, Jang Ja Yeon, age 29 committed suicide and explained in a let ter that her former agency CEO, Kim Sung Hun had forced her to meet influential people at parties to provide sexual favours in order to keep her job. In conclusion, Kpop life and training is far worse than artists from Europe. They have more freedom and arent always faced with the difficulty of being from a different nation. To improve conditions, I think companies could (and should) let their idols sleep more, eat, wear and sing what they want. To be more equal, both genders should be paid for doing the same thing and whilst training be allowed more free time to rest and be treated more like a human being and not an object to gain the company more money and fame. Whilst netizens complain about idols low health, they should in fact criticise their companies more in order to make a change and the industry must realise that the combination of extremely high standards and a lifestyle that makes those standards impossible to meet wont make idols happy or able produce content to the best of their ability. Therefore, they deserve better working conditions. Bibliography Primary Source: Culture Shock! Korea, by Sonja Vegdahl Hur, published October 1st 1992 Date read: 30/09/16 Primary Source: i-D Magazine, CL versus Jeremy Scott, published April 22nd 2013 Date Read: 19th September 2016 Primary Source:   9 Muses of Star Empire, Documentary DVD, made in 2012 Date Watched: 24th August 2016 Secondary Source: http://www.asianjunkie.com/2016/02/19/stella-kim-who-was-almost-an-snsd-member-talks-about-her-time-in-korea/ Le Film Magazine interview Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://nextshark.com/stella-kim-snsd-interview Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35368705 Date accessed: 19th September 2016 Secondary Source: http://seoulbeats.com/2012/04/open-world-entertainment-and-the-ugly-side-of-kpop/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/suicides-in-korean-entertainment-scene-5-celebs-who-took-their-own-lives Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.kpopbehind.com/2014/03/kpop-behind-scenes-kpop-idols-trainee.html Date accessed: 02/10/16 Secondary Source: http://kpopsecrets.tumblr.com/post/61623658107/confessions-of-an-ex-sm-trainee Date accessed: 02/10/16 Secondary Source: https://www.wattpad.com/192489278-my-experiences-as-kpop-trainee-temporary-trainee Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.koreaboo.com/news/ex-sm-entertainment-trainee-reveals-the-reality-of-trainee-life/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: https://extrakorea.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/how-k-pop-trainees-are-mistreated/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.allkpop.com/article/2015/07/13-extreme-accounts-of-sasaeng-fans Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.koreaboo.com/interactive/11-extremely-disturbing-sasaeng-stories-idols/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.koreaboo.com/news/netizens-mock-red-velvet-calling-them-pig-velvet-claiming-they-all-got-fat/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.allkpop.com/article/2016/03/netizen-calls-red-velvets-joy-dirty-because-of-her-sweat-stain Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.allkpop.com/article/2016/04/red-velvets-yeri-gets-hate-from-netizens-again Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.allkpop.com/article/2015/09/red-velvets-yeri-encountered-sexual-and-hate-comments-during-live-broadcast Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.koreaboo.com/news/idol-group-abused-agency/ Date accessed: 02/10/16 Secondary Source: http://beyondhallyu.com/k-pop/k-pop-slave-contracts-a-closer-look/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://seoulbeats.com/2012/06/at-odds-idol-working-conditions-and-the-entertainment-biz/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.koreaboo.com/video/9-shocking-times-idols-fainted-collapsed-stage/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://antikpopfangirl.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-differences-between-k-pop-and.html Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-major-differences-between-the-K-pop-industry-and-the-American-pop-industry Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-cultural-differences-between-South-Korea-and-the-USA Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.mykoreanhusband.com/tag/cultural-differences/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://kpopselca.com/forum/general/i-just-feel-like-kpop-is-soo-unhealthy-after-reading-this-t27173/ Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/61110/20150810/former-exo-members-tao-luhan-and-kris-treated-unfairly-due-to-ethnicity-chinese-stars-get-mixed-reactions-from-fans-on-social-media.htm Date accessed: 01/10/16 Secondary Source: http://listverse.com/2015/05/19/10-horrifying-realities-from-the-world-of-asian-pop-music Date accessed: 03/10/16 Secondary Source: http://874422525907122389.weebly.com/blog/how-korean-idols-are-mistreated Date accessed: 03/10/16 Secondary Source: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130513111334AAZODVC Date accessed: 01/10/16

Franklin, Rosalind (1920 - 1958) Essay -- Papers

Franklin, Rosalind (1920 - 1958) Franklin was a Londoner by birth. After graduating from Cambridge University, she joined the staff of the British Coal Utilisation Research Association in 1942, moving in 1947 to the Laboratoire Centrale des Services Chimique de L'Etat in Paris. She returned to England in 1950 and held research appointments at London University, initially at King's College from 1951 to 1953 and thereafter at Birkbeck College until her untimely death from cancer at the age of 37. Franklin played a major part in the discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick. With the unflattering and distorted picture presented by Watson in his The Double Helix (1968) her role in this has become somewhat controversial. At King's, she had been recruited to work on biological molecules and her director, John Randall, had specifically instructed her to work on the structure of DNA. When she later learned that Maurice Wilkins, a colleague at King's, also intended to work on DNA, she felt unable to cooperate with him. Nor did she feel much respect for the early attempts of Watson and Crick in Cambridge to establish the structure. The causes of friction were various ranging from simple personality clashes to, it has been said, male hostility to the invasion of their private club by a woman. Despite this unsatisfactory background Franklin did obtain results without which the structure established by Watson and Crick would have been at the least delayed. The most important of these was her x-ray photograph of hydrated DNA, the so-called B form, the most revealing such photograph then available. Watson fir... ...anklin's showing an image of the now famous Photo 51. Franklin, went on to study the tobacco mosaic virus, and continued her work in absolute dedication, despite having been diagnosed with cancer in 1956 (probably due to the chemicals she was using). She died two years later, 37 years old, never knowing how much her work had played a role in Watson and Crick's discovery. In 1963 they received the Nobel prize for their discovery, along with Wilkins, Franklin's collaborator. In 1968 Watson's popular book, The Double Helix, recounted the events leading to their ultimate discovery, making clear for the first time how critical Franklin's experimental work had been. Franklin's social isolation prompted by the contempt male scientists showed toward her as a woman-scientist, is one of the tragedies in the history of science.

Literature Review and Learning Journal

Energy is an extremely significant cost factor in managing the United States petrochemical industry (Neelis et. al, 2008). According to the current business scenario, US faces an increasingly competitive and challenging business environment all over the globe, the US petrochemical industry seeks out to curtail their production costs without affecting their production output or yield. The uncertainty in oil prices is one of the most crucial factors that have a negative impact on forecasted earnings of the petrochemical industry. The most applicable method of price forecasting in petrochemical industry is making the estimations of average cost that has to be produced in a new plant in order to determine the economic size and eventually the reasonable profit. Viable and cost-effective investment in the petrochemical industry through installing energy efficient practices as well as technologies meets the tremendous challenge of preserving the maintenance of a high quality energy product. Energy usage is a significant source of emissions incorporated in the petrochemicals industry. This source of emission in the petrochemical industry causes a tremendous improvement in energy efficiency. Also the competitive factors comprising of number of manufacturer as well the employment of new technologies for the development of petrochemicals are the cause of strategic options employed in the manufacture of petrochemicals. Discussion Strategic management evaluates critically the significant initiatives taken by an organization’s top management to allocate its resources efficiently and effectively in order to attain maximum business feasibility nd profitability. The Chinese petrochemicals companies are Petro China Company limited and China National Petroleum Corporation. CNPC holds approximately total reserves of 3. 7 billion barrels (590,000,000 m3) of oil equivalent. CNPC produced approximately 54 billion cubic metres of natural gas in 2007. CNPC invested most of its domestic assets into a separate company known as Petro China, during a plan of restructuring their organization. CNPC has around 30 international production as well as exploration projects. These projects are completed in joint coopeartion with numerous Asian, European, American as well as several countries that are included in USSR. The countries that are included comprised of Azerbaijan, , Peru, Sudan, Thailand, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela, Myanmar, Oman. The exploration projects, both domestic and overseas, are run by a wholly owned subsidiary, the Great Wall Drilling Company (GWDC). So, strategic management consists of making clear the organization’s mission, business goals that are necessary to be achieved for the survival of business as well as its objectives. Public sector does not measure in cost but it is equivalent that is very much central to the production as well as delivery of public commodities and services. The market failure occurs because the goal of private sector in the economy organizations is usually to increase efficiency and effectiveness, thus attaining the business objective of producing the goods and services at a lower cost in comparison to the prevailing production costs in the industry (Baume & Tolbert, 1985). As private sector failed because of the market failure, public sector does fails because of the higher inefficiencies in the deliverance of service. The most common example of these inefficiencies is regarded as Public Education. The area of public education has immensely failed to match up to the level of Private Institutes that are operating independently in providing quality education as well as incorporate improved learning with the students. There have been dire movements that consist of demanding the transfer of the Public Education charter into the cruel hands of the Private sector NPO’s. If the public sector is to collaborate effectively with the private sector, the most important decision is to tackle the appropriate selection of organization related to that sector (Bryson, 211, pp. 473). The discussion of the most eligible alternative that is widely known as public choice is very critical. This also holds true for how values that are holding private sector’s infrastructure can be institutionalized into public sector. Institution itself is independent (Olson & Euyong, 1998). It is the design that is the most integral part of any organizations goal realization. Conclusion: Furthur research and development should be conducted in order to set up plants for producing oil efficiently and effectively. Also, there is a need to eliminate and reduce oil wastage in order to maximize oil production. 2nd literature review Introduction: This literature review highlights the issue of building up manpower through effective human resource management skills. Setting up an oil company requires good people management skills as any good organization always requires the capable human resources to fulfill the needs of a successful and viable organization. Organizations work through people and these people need some skills and competencies to perform their duties. Today, skillful workforce is considered as a single source of gaining sustainable competitive advantage and to manage this force human resource departments are established and huge amount of budget is allocated for this purpose. Recently training is taken as a critical component for the success of any organization. Therefore, companies are increasing their investment in training programs to improve employees’ performance that in turn can give rise to overall performance of organization. Basically training is conducted because of current or expected performance deficiency related to skills, knowledge, and abilities. So, undoubtedly, training and performance is naturally interlinked. When any management person realizes the problem in productivity they identify which type of training is required for solving the issue. Discussion Employee training in an oil sector is an important factor in the success of an organization. Also the labor is particularly cheap in China so it requires effective management in working efficiently and effectively (Armstrong, 2000). Training is not a single step process but it is a group of activities to provide employees with required or improved KSA’s that helps them to perform efficiently and in accomplishment of organization’s goals. It provides organizations increased employee commitment, improved job performance, enhance organization flexibility to adopt changes due to internal and external factors, reduce conflicts among employees, gives high motivation, improve thinking, creativity and physical competencies, and create an overall environment of dedication towards organizational objectives. Training is a five step process that starts from the training need analysis and ends at evaluation stage. Training is not only provided to improve and teach new skills but also to refresh existing skills with the alignment of new technologies and other factors. According to the research, there are five major benefits of training programs. First one is enhanced skills, second is succession planning, decrease time of supervision, management of risk, and improved motivation. Performance management is also a major function of Human Resource Management. It has different components related to measures of managing and assessing employee performance. Performance management includes improvement of individual and overall performance, delivering expectations of management from supervisors and managers, promote communication between management and employees, supervising subordinates to improve their performance by rewarding and recognizing them, and solve poor performance issues. Performance management comprise of five key factors as motivation, appraisals, promotions, coaching or supervising, and poor performance issues are resolved. The US petro chemical company operating in China needs to set up a learning organization in order to enhance faster growth and sustainability in the region. The successful organizations have focused on creating learning organizations through incorporating the five disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, team learning and systems thinking (Senge, 2010). As human resources are the assets of an organization they need to be developed efficiently and effectively through the approaches of gaining personal mastery. Personal mastery is a discipline that focuses on creating and broadening personal vision as an employee to gain focus and motivation for achieving better results in terms of output and profit as well as personal development (Senge, 2010). Mental models describe the perspectives, generalizations and assumptions that the employees hold in their minds about the world. If the mental models are negative then it can hamper the employees in their personal growth as well as in attainment organizational objectives and vision. Positive attitudes of employees helps build up a shared vision towards organizational success. (Senge, 2010). This can be major human resource gap. Human resource development is an strategy to fill out HR gaps that causes major problems in achieving effective organizational performance and profitability (Ulrich, 2012). Human resource development encompasses human resource practices that are crucial to the effective, competitive and sustainable development of human resource management system. The categorization of human capital has been sub-divided into three categories which are intellectual capital, social capital and organizational capital. Human resource development encompasses crucial aspects of effective work practices that include recruitment and selection processes, employee training and development and performance management and compensation management to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities of employees. These HRM practices conducted effectively results in the retention of quality employees and the dismissal of shirkers. One is of the major aspect of human resource development and management is the recruitment and selection of employees (Senge, 2010). Job Assignment, Recruitment and Selection Recruitment and selections are crucial for the organization, because it makes sure that the right kind of individual is selected so that they can bring success to the company (Senge, 2010). The strategic fit between the individual and the organization is done through recruitment and selection and it can be seen in the following diagram. Recruitment and selection is one of the most crucial and important phases of human resource development. It is the most initial phase in human resource development and management. As a first step a pool of candidates are selected that meet the eligibility standards for the jobs in an organizations, then out of these pool of candidates the most suitable ones are screened and selected through various tests and interviews by which their knowledge, skills and abilities are analyzed. After the recruitment and selection phase comes the next crucial step of training and development of employees. Conclusion It is a fact that China is a very successful company and its overall economic performance is improving year after year. The proof of its success can be seen in its wide operations in almost every country. Training and performance management as HR functions are very important for developing a sound management in the petrochemical sector of the country. So, the US management believes on the key role of performance management system and training programs in retaining and attracting high performers that in turn leads to improved overall business performance and gives extreme consideration to these functions. So, in the success or increasing financial results training and performance management functions are playing vital role. In conclusion, performance management is directly related to business performance or success. Training is indirectly related to business success because without measuring performance gap, need of training cannot be identified and performance management helps in recognizing this need. Training is directly related to performance management because when training is given it increases performance of individuals that leads to improve business performance and when a business perform well it becomes successful. The success of an organization is based on attracting and retaining the right kind of individuals. The process of recruitment tends to discover the sources of human resources to meet the requirements of staffing of the company and to implement effective measures so that talent could be attracted to fulfill the positions within the organization (Senge, 2010). Recruitment is very much Recruitment and selection are one of the major functions of the HR department. Recruitment process is based on a systematic procedure that starts from sourcing the talent and ending on interviews (Ulrich, 2012). There is a major gap in efficient recruitment procedures if they are not planned by keeping in mind the HR needs of an organization. (Senge, 2012) Recruitment procedures can be conducted effectively by laying out a proper recruitment plan through extensive research and analysis by creating a strategic human resource management plan and recruiting employees to create a competitive advantage in the industry. It is a strategic task and forms the basis for how the company is able to grow and achieve their business targets (Ulrich, 2012). Learning Journal Introduction The United States of America is faced with cut throat competitive and challenging business environment all over the globe, the US petrochemical industry seeks out to curtail their production costs without affecting their production output or yield. The uncertainty in oil prices is one of the most crucial factors that have a negative impact on forecasted earnings of the petrochemical industry. The most applicable method of price forecasting in petrochemical industry is making the estimations of average cost that has to be produced in a new plant in order to determine the economic size and eventually the reasonable profit The modules I have chosen are strategic management to gain competitive advantage and development of a core competency that is what others do not have is the key to implement a successful business strategy as is the case with the globally successful business schools of the world. Micheal Porter’s five forces also impacts to a great extent in the viable strategic management of a business. These forces are bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, threat of new entrants, existing rivals and threat of substitute products and services. These are the industrial competitive forces that have to be analyzed and assessed for capturing the market by implementing a viable strategy. The mangers who are involved in the strategic planning concerned with the business of petrochemicals must be concerned with the future prices forecasting of petrochemicals as well as the factors that regulate these prices. Strategic management is concerned with developing effective policies as well as strategic plans, more often related to projects and the programs. These projects and programs are effectively developed and designed to accomplish and achieve these goals and objectives. After that the allocation of resources is done to implement strategically these policies as well as plans, in addition to projects and programs. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards achievement of its business goals and objectives efficiently and effectively. Recent studies and leading management theorists have advocated that strategy needs to start with stakeholders expectations and use a modified balanced scorecard which includes all stakeholders. I learnt that the collaboration between the public and private sector organizations is inevitable to ensure that the public policy has been implemented and met. Public sector organizations are mostly government owned. They cannot ensure efficiency in every public goods and service they are providing. This is the system where private sector organizations are offered the tenders from public sector in order to carry out the production as well as deliverance of different varieties of public goods. Personal development is one of the major factors of attaining success in achieving one’s learning objectives as well as career development. Personality traits, economic stability, social status, institutional, cultural and dispositional variables are some of the most important factors when people decide upon their career decisions. Career development and decisions are one of the most crucial decisions of one’s life as they shape a person’s future prospects and sets out his vision for future. Discussion Economic stability is one of the major factors that influence the role in executing one’s career objectives. The ever increasing tuition fee is one of the major causes that affect students of not so high calibre for students who could not get into the university they choose. There seems to be a dearth of good educational institutions particularly in Asian countries because many high achievers in academics do get scholarships for getting into the best university. The students who cannot get scholarship are often the ones who have the aptitude for the subject but just because they have not secured good grades they are left out from scholarships. There is a contrasting situation if we analyze the European countries and United States as there is a wide range of good universities to take into account when applying for higher education in universities (Daib, 1999). Psychological factors also impacts to a great extent on career choices. The introverts and the extroverts are the two major personality categories; the introverts choose to vary in their selection of subjects as compared to extroverts. There is also a third category of individuals which is known as extroverted introverts ( The extroverts usually choose careers that require field work whereas the introverted personalities choose careers that will not let them reach out from their comfort zones. Both can choose the same career fields relating to the level of how introverted or extroverted are they (Wright, 1987). The extroverted introvert individuals are one of the important and complex personalities when it comes to analyzing their career choices (Sofer and Raimes, 2002). They pose a defensive self which reflects their extroverted side whereas deep inside themselves they know that they are introverts. Their career choices can be unexpected as compared to both the categories of individuals that is the extroverted and the introverted (Blackhall and Michelle, 2010). There are four stages of career development that consists of exploration, option analysis and decision-making, planning and implementation (Sofer and Raimes, 2002). The stage of exploration consists of analyzing different career options and exploring a wide range of career options including different studies and aptitudes required. The stage of option analysis comprises of the options available to make a successful and promising career as well as the fulfilment of learning objectives (Underwood,1989). The third stage is planning in which you plan to tread on the way as a career you have chosen for yourself (Bouma and Atkinson, 1995). The research and development should have to be enhanced in order to support the further viability of the new petrochemical setup in China Conclusion The module also helped me in understanding personal development. Personal development is one of the major factors of attaining success in achieving one’s learning objectives as well as career development. Personality traits, economic stability, social status, institutional, cultural and dispositional variables are some of the most important factors when people decide upon their career decisions. Career development and decisions are one of the most crucial decisions of one’s life as they shape a person’s future prospects and sets out his vision for future. The determination of career and learning objectives is one of the basic human rights and it is the right of every person to have his dreams of education and careers fulfilled. Also, it is of utmost importance that an individual should make a right career choice irrespective of the cultural, social and other pressures that have an impact on the long term mission and vision of an individual. With many factors influencing the career choices and learning objectives it is imperative that the right learning and career choices should be made in order to have a promising and successful future. Direction For Furthur Research How can the strategic management of the US petrochemical industry be improved to gain more markets in China? What are the ways to attract ideal employees for the organizational setup for petro chemical industries in China?

Prevention Of Sexuall Harrasment In The Army essays

Prevention Of Sexuall Harrasment In The Army essays The elimination of sexual harassment has been a long-standing goal of the United States Army. During recent years the issue of sexual harassment has received significant political and media attention in both government and private sectors. This heightened awareness on the cause of sexual harassment has intensified national debate on prevention strategies. The Army has set up clear guidelines on how to train and educate people on how to both prevent and deal with sexual harassment. Sexual Harassment affects everyone. It detracts from a positive unit climate that promotes individual growth and teamwork. Sexual harassment victimizes males as well as females and can occur at any time, and is not limited to the workplace. For these reasons, the Army says that sexual harassment cannot and will not be tolerated (Army Command Policy 94). The Armys policy on sexual harassment is quite clear. Sexual harassment is unacceptable conduct and will not be tolerated (Army Command Policy 94). It also states that the leadership at all levels will be committed to creating and maintaining an environment conducive to maximum productivity and respect for human dignity. Another point the Army makes with this policy is that prevention of sexual harassment is the responsibility of every soldier and DA civilian. Leaders set the standard for soldiers and department of the Army (D.A.) civilians to follow. The Army basis its successfulness regarding this policy on mission accomplishment, and this can be achieved only in an environment free of sexual harassment. Websters Dictionary defines sexual harassment as the making of unwanted and offensive sexual advances or of sexually offensive remarks or acts, especially by one in a superior or supervisory position or when acquiescence to such behavior is a condition of continued employment, promotion, or satisfactory evaluation. The Army has clarified this definition even mor...

Oliver Stone, Get Your Facts S essays

Oliver Stone, Get Your Facts S essays Oliver Stone, Get Your Facts Straight! Some have said that Oliver Stones The Doors was a realistic and accurate portrayal of Jim Morrisons life and The Doors musical escapades. Unfortunately, director Oliver Stone has a habit of putting his own beliefs and ideas into the mouths of his characters. This would not necessarily be bad if his characters were fictional. Jim Morrison and his fellow band members are real, and those who knew him best are still living. The first major mistake that Stone made took place when Jim and Ray Manzarek (Kyle Maclachlan) were attending UCLA film school. A recreation of Jims short student film is shown. In Stones version there is quite a bit of what seems to be Nazi propaganda. Scenes of Hitler and his troops shouting and holding up Nazi flags are shown with Kilmer reading Jims poetry in the background. The WWII footage in Jims original film was grossly misrepresented. It was a funny, light scene with a large German girl dancing on a T.V. to American rock music in the background. Stones version made Jim out to be a disciple of Adolf Hitler. In addition to all the anti-Semitism Stone placed in the film, he also had Kilmer misquoting Friedrich Nietzsche. The scene at Andy Warhols party was Stones next mistake. Stone manages to make the other members of The Doors into the bad guys. Jim stands alone. It is an emotional scene that has Jim asking the other Doors to stay at the party because he doesnt ...know what could happen tonight, maybe death. All the members of the band were friends, friends that dont desert each other when they are in need. In reality, the other members of The Doors did not leave Jim at the party, and he never verbalized a premonition of anything bad happing. Stone may have needed something to move his plot further, but did he really have to slander others to do this? Another mino...

Unit recall Essay Example

Unit recall Essay Example Unit recall Essay Unit recall Essay I can recall a time where I had to maintain focus and persistence in spite of obstacles that I was facing at the time. This is in fact, in recent history as I was going through a combination of events that seems to have come out of nowhere. I am a full time student, and set to graduate in two quarters. Around the end of Spring quarter and beginning of the Summer Quarter, I lost my Job. In addition to that, I was the nearing the end off long term relationship. Not to mention, it is the start of the Summer! I had to motivation to continue in my education. My main focus was to find work. Money that I had saved up was fading, and fading fast. What makes matters worse, I was unable to receive unemployment. I knew that I needed to find a Job soon. So as you can imagine, that last thing on my mind is getting my education, much less finishing up the summer quarter. But, with all that was going on Im my life, and the combination of emotions and feelings coming and going in my head, I know that I did not come this far to quit now. If I can compare those feeling to a football season, hen it would be similar in many ways. All the hard work, injuries, fatigue, blood, and sweat that was endured during the regular season and playoffs, Just to give up and fold during the Super Bowl is not an option. In conclusion, I did maintain focus and I made it through the summer quarter, but barely. It was not very pretty, in fact was my worst quarter in my time in school, but nevertheless, I made it through. I also started a new Job that pays well. And as far as that relationship, well, lets Just say Eve already moved to bigger and better things. And so far so good.

WEEK3 - INTL 6000 - CLASSMATE PAPER CRITIC PAPER Assignment - 1

WEEK3 - INTL 6000 - CLASSMATE PAPER CRITIC PAPER - Assignment Example However, it would have been better also leading off with the aid given to the Free Syrian Army, which has fuelled the conflict even more and made peace even more difficult to attain (Daily Mail.com 1). The literature review also discusses the issue that the different author’s have formulated and briefly, talks about the author’s research orientation. However, it would have been better if the writer had commented on whether the author’s problem statement was clearly defined and whether the author had clearly established the relevance of the study to the issue within his literature review. However, the writer does indicate the specific problem and thesis that the author seeks to discuss in their research articles. For example, while discussing the article Intervention and Democracy by Bruno & George, the writer indicates that the authors are discussing the types of interventions that the United States should pursue in the conflict as a third party to achieve democracy in the region. The fact that the results are not new or surprising should have led the writer to comment on ways that the authors would have approached their problem or thesis differently. For exam ple, it would have been better if the writer had used the US’s threat of â€Å"consequences† if the Syrian government did not respect the wills of its people and used chemical weapons (Williams 1). The transition between different authors and articles covered in the literature review is well done. However, while the writer does cover some of the research designs and methodologies used in some studies, it is not done for most of the studies. The writer could also have indicated if the material had been written to appeal to the reader’s emotions, rhetorical, or one sided. For instance, it is clear that Gordon Hahn’s article Russia in 2012: from Thaw and Reset to Freeze is biased against the role of Russia in the conflict. The role played by President Putin, which is different from

American Perspective on Racism MexicanLatin American Studies Program Essay

American Perspective on Racism MexicanLatin American Studies Program - Essay Example On the contrary, ethnicity and nationalism have grown in political importance in the world, particularly since the Second World War. The United States has a long history of racism and racial discrimination. For centuries conflicts have taken place between the Whites, blacks, Mexicans and the Asians. Race hatred often leads to the violence. The people guilty of race discrimination often form extremist groups to defend their country from minority takeover, and ultimately increase the tension and hatred between the two races. Many surveys have been conducted to study the nature and intensity of Racism in American culture. According to General Social Survey, conducted in 1990, 40 to 56 percent of the whites were of the view that Hispanic and Blacks are prone to violence and prefer to live off welfare (Steeh and Schuman, 1992). The minority of Hispanics includes Mexicans, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central and South American, or other Hispanic heritage. They are consists of more than 500 tribes with almost entirely different cultural heritage, traditions, languages and ancestry. The 2000 census showed that the Hispanics are the Americas largest minority. According to the Times magazine 58 percent of this minority is of the Mexican origin. The majority of Mexican Americans are most prominent in the areas, which were formerly the part of the Mexico, i.e. Southern California and Texas. The largest of Mexican Americans community was located around the Los Angles in Southern California, El Paso in Far West Texas, and the metropolitan areas of the South Texas. The Mexican American, just like the other minorities of the United States, reside in the non-economically viable ethnic enclaves: isolated, and other forms of ethnic discrimination. Mexicans are a mixed race, most of them are white having Spanish ancestry, but almost half of them are not white. They are mestizos. It has been observed that among the Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, mestizos are in the worst condition (Gamio, 1971). According to the Auditors of Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Mexican Americans and especially the non-white Mexican Americans experience discrimination in the housing market from realtors and lending institutions. The auditors have also found out that the Mexican Americans faced discrimination due to their skin color and not due to their Mexican accent. Most of the Mexican Americans are the offspring of the Mexicans who voluntarily migrated to United States in the 20th Century. Hence it is the duty of the community, to which they have migrated, to assist them in adapting and absorbing them to American Society, but they were then busy in a war and colonization. This had fundamental consequences for the ability of these enclaves to provide resources to the generations of Mexican Americans. Hence, although many people thought that the increasing immigrations of Mexicans into the United States is a Mexican problem, it is actually an American problem.

Computing;object oriented modelling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Computing;object oriented modelling - Essay Example Software having a large amount of programmers and developers associated with it are bound to cause confusion if their processing life cycle is not properly documented and diagrammed. Object Oriented Modeling is used during the requirements analysis and design phases of a software life cycle to properly document the features that are expected from the software. 90% of process modeling is done in the object oriented fashion due to its wide acceptance. When object oriented modeling was first introduced it was the target of a lot of criticism and a lot of languages claimed to be perfect for it. Later, UML (unified modeling language) was accepted as a standard. UML is a standard for object oriented modeling. Therefore, Object oriented modeling is a design technique used to model different objects (entities) participating or interacting with a system. After understanding what object oriented modeling is all about we must strive to answer the question whether it is worth spending time doing it. The basic reason for creating a proper documentation is to facilitate software reuse. Software reuse could be defined as , â€Å"placing reusable chunks of software on a shelf in a reuse library and then hoping that someone will later reuse these already written, already tested, already commercially hardened chunks of code in other applications, with great savings in cost and time.† (â€Å"Software Reuse and Software Product Lines† by http://www.biglever.com/technotes/reuse_spl.html?source=reuse) During the course of development of Information technology, IT professionals have realized that if software are developed systematically and not in an ad hoc fashion then their different modules could be used to facilitate different other software developments as well. Object oriented modeling could be an important tool for software reusability. Two factors make object oriented modeling really useful in the reusability of different software components. (â€Å"Going beyond

Client Assessment Report in Counseling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Client Assessment Report in Counseling - Essay Example He was able to overcome his castration anxiety and identify with his father. However as he grew up, his father expected him to take over the family business. This did not feature in his ambitions since he had a strong desire to start his own IT firm which he went on to do. Conscientiousness as one of the five factors found in Goldberg’s trait theory of personality deals with the assessment of an individual’s degree of organization, persistence, and motivation in goal-directed behavior. Dickson being high in conscientiousness seemed to be what created the wedge in the relationship with his father and therefore it crumbled. It was because of this that Dickson found himself sinking into a depressed state. Dickson is the only son in a family of three of which he is the middle born child. According to Alfred Adler; the birth order was seen to influence the formation of the personality of an individual. Being a middle born the universal traits expected to feature in Dickson i ncluded independence on behavior. Alfred advanced that middle born less closely identify with the family because they receive less attention compared to the first or last born children. They, therefore, learn to look out for themselves and they tend to report having been less loved as a child. His older sister who is eight years his senior is a successful figure in her father’s family business. This heightened the pressure to join the family business even more and his refusal to do so was just seen to be much worse because as a boy, he is expected to have been socialized by his father to take up the role of the head of the family business. The age difference also put a strain on the sibling relationship between him and both his sister. This is because even his younger sister was ten years younger than he was. Age difference affects sibling relationships whereby, the contextual influences e.g. the environmental influences vary with different generations. Growing up, Dickson en joyed spending most of his time reading and studying in order to excel in his studies with the sole purpose of making his father proud. His introverted lifestyle allowed him to get very good grades all through his school life but this came at a high price. It denied him the chance of socially interacting with his peers who at the adolescent stage are key agents of socialization or the way in which orientation to the society normally occurs. Studies by Dunn and Plomin et al (1990) have shown that peer groups influence an individual into acceptance of new rules of behavior and provide lasting experiences for personality. Dickson, therefore, missed out on the opportunity to learn various ways of how interaction with others besides his father occurs. Dickson grew up looking up to his father who he saw as his role model. In Albert Bandura’s social learning theory; it was advanced that children learn through observational learning or what is alternatively referred to as modeling.

Communication in the Work Environment Assignment

Communication in the Work Environment - Assignment Example An example of this type of problem can be seen when a worker discovers that a piece of equipment is not working up to standard even though expectations have been clearly outlined that are need of that piece of equipment working at its optimum. Effective communication can be lost as the worker tries to explain the problem and the manager is only hearing excuses as to why expectations cannot be met. Failures in communications can result in strained relationships between managers and workers as information is not given or processed correctly. Management Style The way in which workers and managers communicate with one another is often defined by the management style that a manager will adopt. The type of leadership that is established will have an effect on how a worker responds and is able to communicate to the manager. As well, the way in which an individual has experienced speaking with leadership will also have an effect on how they can communicate to a manager. Communications styles develop long before an individual enters the workforce, but they can be trained in order to provide for more effective communications (Young, 2009). Often times it is a lack of communications training that will position a worker so that are unable to give information to an employer. There are four basic types of management that will affect the way in which communication develops between a manager and an employee. The four types are autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and laissez-faire. In an autocratic type of management, information is proprietary and all decisions are made by the manager. A paternalistic manager will make decisions upon the basis of what is best for the employees. Through good relationships with employees, this type of manager acts as a guardian for their interests. In a democratic style of management the manager will allow employees a voice in the decision making process with discussions and a fairly free flow of information allowing for some equality within the groups and teams of the organization. In the laissez-faire form of management, the manager avoids his responsibilities and the employees end up picking up duties without any form of true organization (PM4DEV, 2007). An autocratic leader is one which leads through closing off his position from those under them so that it is difficult to communicate. In this type of leadership fear often develops because of the proprietary nature through which information is withheld. Employees will not be sure that the information that they are trying to communicate fits into the situation where little top down communication as occurred. A paternalistic manager might also see the same kind of reluctance from employees as they do not want to cause friction or issues with a leader who has become a friend or has been seen to be acting in the employees’ best interests. The democratic style of management allows for the best potential for good communications as the leader has formed relationship s with the employees but is still actively managing the business. Teamwork allows for a free flow of information so that employees understand the relevance of the information that they may choose to impart. Laissez-faire styles of management usually accompany a complete breakdown as the manager has specifically shown that they are not interested in the work and goals that need to be accomplished. It is clear that communication is best developed through management that includes building a

Recommendation for Incentive Programms and Plans Essay

Recommendation for Incentive Programms and Plans - Essay Example It is imperative to go through some of these drawbacks to ensure that they do not get in the way of the company’s development. One of the incentives introduced by a manager is that of having the employees receiving a promotion or a salary raise anytime that they produce results that appeal to the expectations of the manager (Muller, 2013). This is important in that most people get into the corporate arena with the aim of earning a lot of money for them to manage or rather improve their living styles. It is important to understand that this incentive has a drawback that revolves around it failing to have negativity. Negativity in this case is the employer does not impose any challenge to the employee if he or she fails to deliver appropriate jobs as expected. It is important to have this challenge as it makes the employee realize that there is a negative side to failure. One way through which to challenge this incentive is by ensuring that the employee is charged in the case of him or her failing to deliver appropriate work. One way through which to charge the employee is by having them deducted their commissions (Hartman, 2011). Commissioning is one of the ways through which employers motivate their employees as an incentive to have them work harder save from the monthly salary they receive. It is thus only fair to ensure that they are charged for poor performance by ensuring that part of their commission is actually deducted. Another incentive that employers have is buying or rather treating employees after they achieve certain goals. This is a very motivation appropriate plan as the employees get to work even more knowing that they will receive additional benefits. However, it is imperative to understand that increased working of the employees can create or rather creates the drawback of having them not providing quality work. In the contemporary environment, there is the issue of quality and quantity. The major drawback that

Client Assessment Report in Counseling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Client Assessment Report in Counseling - Essay Example He was able to overcome his castration anxiety and identify with his father. However as he grew up, his father expected him to take over the family business. This did not feature in his ambitions since he had a strong desire to start his own IT firm which he went on to do. Conscientiousness as one of the five factors found in Goldberg’s trait theory of personality deals with the assessment of an individual’s degree of organization, persistence, and motivation in goal-directed behavior. Dickson being high in conscientiousness seemed to be what created the wedge in the relationship with his father and therefore it crumbled. It was because of this that Dickson found himself sinking into a depressed state. Dickson is the only son in a family of three of which he is the middle born child. According to Alfred Adler; the birth order was seen to influence the formation of the personality of an individual. Being a middle born the universal traits expected to feature in Dickson i ncluded independence on behavior. Alfred advanced that middle born less closely identify with the family because they receive less attention compared to the first or last born children. They, therefore, learn to look out for themselves and they tend to report having been less loved as a child. His older sister who is eight years his senior is a successful figure in her father’s family business. This heightened the pressure to join the family business even more and his refusal to do so was just seen to be much worse because as a boy, he is expected to have been socialized by his father to take up the role of the head of the family business. The age difference also put a strain on the sibling relationship between him and both his sister. This is because even his younger sister was ten years younger than he was. Age difference affects sibling relationships whereby, the contextual influences e.g. the environmental influences vary with different generations. Growing up, Dickson en joyed spending most of his time reading and studying in order to excel in his studies with the sole purpose of making his father proud. His introverted lifestyle allowed him to get very good grades all through his school life but this came at a high price. It denied him the chance of socially interacting with his peers who at the adolescent stage are key agents of socialization or the way in which orientation to the society normally occurs. Studies by Dunn and Plomin et al (1990) have shown that peer groups influence an individual into acceptance of new rules of behavior and provide lasting experiences for personality. Dickson, therefore, missed out on the opportunity to learn various ways of how interaction with others besides his father occurs. Dickson grew up looking up to his father who he saw as his role model. In Albert Bandura’s social learning theory; it was advanced that children learn through observational learning or what is alternatively referred to as modeling.

Recommendation for Incentive Programms and Plans Essay

Recommendation for Incentive Programms and Plans - Essay Example It is imperative to go through some of these drawbacks to ensure that they do not get in the way of the company’s development. One of the incentives introduced by a manager is that of having the employees receiving a promotion or a salary raise anytime that they produce results that appeal to the expectations of the manager (Muller, 2013). This is important in that most people get into the corporate arena with the aim of earning a lot of money for them to manage or rather improve their living styles. It is important to understand that this incentive has a drawback that revolves around it failing to have negativity. Negativity in this case is the employer does not impose any challenge to the employee if he or she fails to deliver appropriate jobs as expected. It is important to have this challenge as it makes the employee realize that there is a negative side to failure. One way through which to challenge this incentive is by ensuring that the employee is charged in the case of him or her failing to deliver appropriate work. One way through which to charge the employee is by having them deducted their commissions (Hartman, 2011). Commissioning is one of the ways through which employers motivate their employees as an incentive to have them work harder save from the monthly salary they receive. It is thus only fair to ensure that they are charged for poor performance by ensuring that part of their commission is actually deducted. Another incentive that employers have is buying or rather treating employees after they achieve certain goals. This is a very motivation appropriate plan as the employees get to work even more knowing that they will receive additional benefits. However, it is imperative to understand that increased working of the employees can create or rather creates the drawback of having them not providing quality work. In the contemporary environment, there is the issue of quality and quantity. The major drawback that

Cognitive Dissonance in Marital Satisfaction Essay Example for Free

Cognitive Dissonance in Marital Satisfaction Essay Most people get married because they love their partner. They like the way they are with each other, honest, loving, understanding, fun, etc. Some are arranged marriage as they are unable to find the love of their life. However some get divorced as they are no longer compatible and they get turn off very easily. They are frustrated and bored. For those who want to continue to stay in an unhappy marriage due to many reasons such as the kids, their reputation, family, etc. as an alternative to divorce will ignore their feelings and convince themselves that the marriage is working well. They tend to adopt a cheerful attitude. They offered patience and understanding to make it appear as if the marriage was happy. Cognitive Dissonance is a feeling of discomfort caused by performing an action that is inconsistent with one’s belief (Franzoi, 2009, p.162). Basically it is a disagreement between ones personal beliefs and ones actions. It is the difference between how they would like to be and how they are. Cognitive dissonance is an aversive drive that causes people to (1) avoid opposing viewpoints, (2) seek reassurance after making a tough decision, and (3) change private beliefs to match public behavior when there is minimal justification for an action. Self-consistency, a sense of personal responsibility, or self-affirmation can explain dissonance reduction. (Socio-psychological tradition) (Festinger, as cited in Griffin, 2011) How can we observe â€Å"cognitive dissonance† in Marital Satisfaction? In Marital Satisfaction, we can observe cognitive dissonance in 3 different areas: Behavioural, Mental Emotional. Behavioural Observation There will be marital stress. They wear ‘masks’ at home and they will feel exhausted as they struggle with their life. Their journey will be full with pain and grief. They pretend things are okay in their marriage when there is distance. They say nothing is wrong when their feelings are truly hurt. They don’t necessarily lie to their spouse; they just shade part of the truth. They don’t feel comfortable being their true self with their spouse because they are afraid of judgment or mockery. They will purchase self-help books, confessed their feelings to a marriage counsellor or friends that they can trust. They offer patience and understanding to the spouse to make it appear as if the marriage was happy. They will smile and put on a happy face especially in front of the children to avoid them from knowing but will let out their true feelings and cry it out at night. They will lay awake at night and try to rationalize things that they have done so that it is acceptable. Their physical health will be affected as they are facing with too much stress in their life. They too may run into problem as they seem to be lying to themselves. Even though cognitive dissonance can resolve internal anxiety, it can also reinforce future bad decisions or behaviours e.g. lying Mental Observation Their mind will be filled with thoughts of whether they are doing the right thing. They feel turned off with what they are doing. They could not be themselves and their anxiety in wanting to be themselves and do what they like to do increases. They have sleepless nights thinking the sacrifices that they have made to make others happy when they themselves are not happy.. The dissonance caused by such contradictions will also create an unpleasant mental tension, which can range from minor irritation to deep pain as long as it continues. They are unable to relax and feel comfortable until they have been able to eliminate the dissonance or at least reduce it considerably. They can use Self-justification to escape from the discomfort. This is also a major threat to marital satisfaction because both partners tend to justify their behaviour in a way that allows them to be right while either explicitly or implicitly making their partner wrong. Emotional Observation They will be unhappy or semi-happy. They are unwilling to admit their frustration, acknowledge their crumbling marriage and obtain a divorce due to their culture, religion or the children. They constantly experienced a lingering feeling of doubt about the relationship. With that, they attempt to change their opinions to coincide with the behaviour they felt was expected of them and adopted a cheerful attitude towards their marriage to convince themselves that the marriage is working well. On the other hand, this can also make them become stronger in facing any challenges in their life. If they are optimistic, they will make the best of the marriage as the decision is in their hands. They are not able to be the person that they are but who they are might not be the best person. Cognitive dissonance can also reinforce future good decisions or behaviours e.g. more understanding, patient, increase communication between spouse, etc. Conclusion Successful marriage is not about getting their partner to do what they want; its about being who they are. This aspect of cognitive dissonance isnt bad; it can act as a motivation to be true to their deepest values, by making them behave in more loving and compassionate ways. It can help them change the unhealthy attitudes and behaviours. However, cognitive dissonance is most painful to people when some significant part of their beliefs about themselves is threatened. This usually occurs when they have done something that is inconsistent with their image of themselves. If a person has a fairly positive self-concept, believing herself reasonably smart, competent, and moral, she will use self-justification as a way to preserve her positive self-image.

Building Social Capital and Expanding Networks

Building Social Capital and Expanding Networks In 2005 MySpace was the most popular website on the internet, even more than Google. Samy Kamkar, a 19 years old computer enthusiast in attempt to find an exploit on the social website inserted some code to allow him to be added as a friend if someone visited his profile account, furthermore the code would replicate on the visitors account and those visiting the infected account would also add him as a friend. In just nine hours Samy reached 480 accounts. In thirteen hours he was up to 8800. And in just over eighteen hours he had spread to about a million accounts, which was almost 1/30 of the total accounts on MySpace at the time. In an attempt to get rid of the worm he deleted his account. However, when he successfully deleted his profile the whole MySpace went down too. Samy was convicted of computer hacking and ordered to not touch the internet for the next following three years. What this really tells us is just how connected we all are. This concept was well known even before MySpace was conceptualized. In 1929 the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy wrote a story called Chains. In Chains one of the characters challenges another character to find on Earth a person who he cannot connect with in less than five intermediaries. This is where the six degrees of separation originated from. The theory states that we are as connected to Donald Trump as much as we are to the fishmonger on the southern Japanese coast. This means that picking up two random people on the globe they are linked to each other in just six steps. In 1960 a Harvard psychologist, Stanley Milgram, tested an experiment called the small world experiment, named after the phenomenon that happens at parties when you meet someone you dont know but share a peer in common and say it is such a small world. Stanley Milgram examined the average length between American citizens.   What he did was sending three hundred packages to people in Boston and Nebraska with the goal to reach a common target person in Boston, but they were not allowed to send the package directly to him but through an intermediate who might know him or forward it to a further person that had a better chance to know him and progress the same way. Of the three hundred packages sent, only 64 made it and the average path was 5.2 steps. And that was all the experimental confirmation the six degrees of separation had at the time. Few years before Milgrams work, mathematician Paul Erdos experimented the same principle over similar networks and found out that when the number of links per node is small, the network is fragmented, however when exceeded one connection per node, the behaviour of the network changes and form a giant cluster where all the nodes seem kinked to each other. This cluster is what we might define as a small world network. While these tests prove the Trump-Japanese fishmonger thesis stated above, on the counterpart true social networks work slightly different. In 1994 Brian Turtle and two colleagues at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania created a game called Six Degrees of Kavin Bacon, the game, inspired by Karynthys theory, it consists in naming a celebrity and find a movie path to Bacon in as few steps as possible. Brian and his fellows came to conclusion that Kevin Bacon was the true centre of the movie universe. The movie network consists of actors who are connected by virtue of having acted together in one or more feature films. We are not just talking about Hollywood, but any movie made anywhere, anytime at all. According tothe Internet Movie Database (IMDB), between the years 1898 and 2000, roughly half a million people have acted in over two hundred thousand feature films. If you have acted in a movie with Kevin Bacon, you have a Bacon number of one (Bacon himself has bacon number of zero). Since Kevin Bacon has acted in quite a lot of movies and at last count had acted with 1550 people, it follows that 1550 actors have a Ba con number of one. This might sound a lot, and certainly Bacon has acted with many more people than the average, but it is still less than 1 percent of the total population of movie actors. Moving outward from Bacon, if you havent ever acted with him, but you have acted with somebody else who has, then you have a Bacon number of two. For example, Marilyn Monroe was in Niagara (1953) with George Ives, and George Ives was in Stir of Echoes (1999) with Kevin Bacon, so Marilyn has a Bacon number of two. In general, the object of the game is to determine an actors Bacon degree by figuring out his shortest to the great man. The small steps linking every actor to the next resembles a small world network, but unlike random network real social networks show a certain level of clustering in some points. The key component in real social networks is not only to have a high degree of clustering that means that friends of mine have other friends that are friends to each other, but also to have some few random acquaintances in order to reach distant other social networks. In 1970, a researcher named Granovetter published a paper called The Strength of Weak Ties where he stated that you as an individual are more likely to get a job through those random acquaintances than your close friends. In fact close groups of individuals are very likely to know the same people and share the same information, but are the random acquaintances that allow you to reach new jobs, places and be exposed to the outside world. Since the advent of social networks the rate of six degrees of separation have significantly dropped in between four and five steps. In 2011 Facebook stated that 92% of their users were connected through just 5 steps and at the present trend it is very likely to drop even further in the following years.  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   Thus, it is clear how the weaker the tie the better opportunities we have access to. Lets explain this with a clear example: me, Simone, as an Italian immigrant, I moved to the United Kingdom as an undergraduate student and I knew only one person, so my social network was two including myself,   I was trying to find a job and I could find any, so one of my housemates told me his older sister is a supervisor into the local Hilton hotel and she might be able to give me a part time job as a waiter, I started working in hospitality and this gave me a lot of exposure and access to a lot wealthy people, including very successful individuals. I kept on studying Film editing and working in hospitality while deciding what to do with my life and along came this man on his 30s talking about while he was staying in Cardiff overnight, apparently he had some work to do at BBC Wales, I shared a couple of thoughts and told him I was interested in getting an entry position in post production so he asked me for my contact details. About a month later I received a call from a di fferent person at BBC Wales where I was asked if I would be interested to attend a two weeks work placement at the Film Editing department. YOUTUBE VIDEO LAWHence, new information came into my network that was not previously there, this opportunity ended up being much more fulfilling than what I had in mind originally. So, if I had not built this network of ties that opportunity would have never been presented to me, if I was not willing to go out my comfort zone and pursued interest in those people that had something for me I would perhaps gave up and never started postgraduate studies at the Bournemouth University. This path of ties is defined as Social Capital. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1983) defined Social Capital as: The aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. He explains that much like money, the more friends, acquaintances and professional ties one has, the more knowledge one has, the more likely one is to be successful in a specific pursuit. What is more important during university is building weak ties, interpersonal ties, each relation we tie with someone is different. Granovetter (1973) explains that there mainly three kinds of ties: weak, strong and absent. The strength of each can be correlated to an amount of time one spends with another, the emotional intensity of that tie, the level of intimacy involved, and the level reciprocity. Ideally, weak ties are low-time, low emotion, low-intimacy, high reciprocity ties formed for the purpose of transmitting information. What we want to achieve is to build weak ties that allow us to bring brand new information and social capital inside our network. Weak ties are not only used to accumulate social capital, but also help us reduce our dependency from primary groups e.g. family, weak ties are Large-scale groups that give us social capital to inject back into our primary groups. A way to build social capital through weak ties is using Online Social Networks (OSN) are what help us build weak ties and they are defined as purposeful online outreach programs with the aim of creating weak ties to bring new information (Social Capital) to an individual or primary group. BOOK LIBRARY FIRSTSocial Capital:features of social life networks, norms, and trust that enables participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectivesSocial capital, in short, refers to social connections and the attendant norms and trust. Putnam, 1995, pp. 664-5 There is often confusion about what social capital is. At first glance has something to do with community. Civil society and the social fabric its about how people are connected with one another.   P. 1 Up today, it is not clear what should be counted as social capital and what should be excluded from the concept. Societies are not composed of isolated individuals. People are connected with one another through intermediate social structures webs of association and shared understandings of how to behave. This social fabric greatly affects with whom, and how, we interact and co-operate. It is this everyday fabric of connection and tacit co-operation that the concept of social capital is intended to capture. Social capital is the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintances and recognition. Acknowledging that capital can take a variety of forms is indispensable to explain the structure and dynamics of differentiated societies. (Bordieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 119) A number of critics have argued for a clearer distinction between the subcomponents of social capital. Putnam framed the concept in terms of its public goods aspects, explicitly including reference to the facilitation of co-operation. Social capital is composed of forms that have three basic components: network, norms, values and expectancies that are shared by group members; and sanctions. These three components should be recognizable in almost any form of social association. They can be compared to one of the most familiar and ubiquitous forms of social capital the traditional, locally embedded community, or neighbourhood. The first component is the social network. These relationships may vary from simple recognition to deep friendships. The second component is the social norms. These are the rules, values and expectancies that characterize the community members. Living in a neighbourhood, and our relationships with our neighbours, are characterized by certain rules or social norms. Many of these rules are unwritten. Some of these norms have a behavioural component and others may be more affective in nature. In the modern neighbourhood, these norms might include: helping our neighbours where possible; being courteous and considerate and feeling positive and supportive towards our neighbourhood. These norms may also include more specific habits of reciprocity. The thi rd component is sanctions. Sanctions are not just formal such as punishment for breaking the law. Most are very informal, but nonetheless effective in maintaining social norms (Luzzati, 2000). Neighbourhood living is associated with certain kinds of association on good and bad behaviour. These often appear very mild in form but are still very effective. Neighbours find ways of communicating their disapproval of acts that violate the unwritten codes of the neighbourhood. The sanction may be though someone being told directly, such as through a disapprovance glance, an angry exchange of words or even the threat of action. More commonly, however, the sanction is indirect and subtle, such as though gossip and reputation. The sanction can also be positive, such as praise for a helpful act. Recent theoretical work has sought to break the notion of social capital down into different sub-types. Perhaps the most important of this distinction is between bonding and bridging social capital. In terms of networking Mark Granovetter made a distinction between weak and strong ties (M.S. Granovetter, 1973, 1985). Weak ties, he noted, such as with acquaintances and various contacts, were extremely useful to people in terms of getting information, opportunities and jobs. Strong ties, such as with family and close friends, provided a more intense, multi-stranded form of support, and as such might be expected to play a greater role in emotional well-being. In short different forms of social network, characterized by different forms of personal ties, seem to have different advantages and benefits. NETWORK STRUCTURE, JENGOLBECK it is really important to think about the considerations that have to take into account when considering a network. Networks consist of nodes and edges.   If we consider Facebook network, the nodes represent the friends and the edges the friendships on Facebook.   However, in real life we need to be very clear about what the edges are. Do the edges indicate social relationships between the people? Do they connect people to the classes? Is it both? Going back to the Facebook example, nodes represent people, however edges might represent not only friendship, which is absolutely fine, but an edge can connect two people who like the same music band or who went to same college. To the same extent, a LinkedIn network might reveal a different network of people according to the company they work for or people who have a similar level of expertise or certification to use professional software. So if you consider a network based on friendship, what does it mean to have a high between this? In that case it means that the person contains a lot of information and really stands between different groups of people. While a high degree centrality can represent people who have a lot of connections. So, lets consider building a network of the MAPPE framework at Bournemouth University. Step one is going to be to define the nodes. What are they and what are the criteria for being included. Which people get included as nodes? Is it just the students? Is it teachers? Is it janitors, or the librarians? Generally youll want some mix, possibly between having just students and having all the teachers. If we only include students will lose a lot of tangential people who actually do contribute.  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   Once defines who the nodes are the next stop is to define the edges. What does an edge represent and what is the criteria for adding one, so if we continue with the same example of the MAPPE framework, we might want to add an edge if two people know each other but   what if they only know one of another? So, what if the two students are in two different courses of the framework and they never interact with each other and they never actually meet but they do know that each o ther exist? Their relationship could still be important. I had been living between Wales and England for just five years and was beginning to feel like I had a new home with new friends, but still felt closely connected to my old ones. It occurred to me, however, that if you asked the average College student how close he or she felt to a random person in the United Kingdom, the answer would probably be not very. After all, most of my friends in Italy had never met another British before, and few of my British friends knew any Italian. The two countries are on virtually distant, and despite a certain cultural similarity and a good deal of mutual fascination, are viewed by most of their inhabitants as being almost impossibly distant, even exotic. Nevertheless, at least some small group of Italians and some small group of British actually were very close to each other, although they might not have known it, by virtue if a single common friend-me. A similar state of affairs applied on a smaller scale between my different groups of friends at University of Bournemouth. I belong to the Department of Media and communication, which is a average size graduate department in which there are more foreign students than British. I spent an awful lot of time in this department and got to know the other graduate students pretty well. But I also worked as supervisor in a local Italian restaurant and the Hilton Hotel in Cardiff, and most of the friends from Cardiff were fellow media students in various related disciplines. Finally, I had lived in students houses and had made some good friends there. My classmates know each other, my housemates know each other, and my restaurant colleagues know each other. But the different groups were all quite, well, different, without me to come and visit, my housemates, for example, would have precious little reason ever to have a meal into my restaurant. That two people can share a mutual friend whom each regard as close, but still perceive each other as being far away is a facet of social life at once commonplace and also quite mysterious. However, it is enough saying that we dont just have friends, rather we have group of friends, each of which is defined by the particular set of circumstances that led to our getting acquainted. Within each group there will tend to be a high density of interpersonal ties, but ties between different groups will typically be sparse. The groups, however, are connected by virtue of individuals who belong to more than one group. In time, these overlaps between groups may grow stronger, and the boundaries between them blur, as people from one group start to interact with people from another via the intermediation of a mutual friend. Over the years I spent at University of South Wales, my different groups of friends eventually met each other and occasionally became friends themselves. Even some of my Italian friends came to visit, and although they didnt stay long enough to form any lasting relationships, the boundary between the two countries is now, in some small way, less distinct than it was. According to Duncan J. Watts (2003) there are four major factors to consider when examining networks: First, social networks consist of many small overlapping groups that are densely internally connected and that overlap by virtue of individuals having multiple affiliations. Second, social networks are not static objects. New relationships are continually being forged and old ones abandoned. Third, not all potential relationships are equally likely. Those who I meet tomorrow depend by those who I know today. Finally, we occasionally do things that derive from our instinct, personal preferences, characteristics, and such actions may lead us to meet new individuals which we have no connection with. My decision to move to the United Kingdom was driven solely by my desire to go to graduate school, and I didnt know a soul when I got there, nor did anyone else that I knew. In other words, we do what we do in part because of the position we occupy in our surrounding social structure and in part because of our innate preferences and characteristics. In sociology, these two factors are called structure and agency, and the evolution of a social network is driven by a trade-off between the two. Because agency is the part of an individuals decision making process that is not constrained by his or her structural position, actions derived from agency appear as random events to the rest of the world. Of course, decisions like moving to another country or going to graduate school are derived from a complicated mixture of personal history and psychology and so are not random at all. Once these apparently random affiliations have been made, however structure reenters the picture and the newly created overlaps become the bridges over which other individuals can cross and form additional affiliations of their own. The dynamic evolution of relationships in a social n etwork, therefore, is driven by a balance of conflicting forces. On the one hand, individuals make what seems like random decisions to launch themselves into new social orbits. And on the other, they are constrained and enabled by their current friendships to reinforce the group structure that already exists.  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   Check 73 for finale The use of Social Network Sites for the Employment Seeking Process Tom Sander Phoey Lee Teh The Internet increases network density and constantly provide new opportunities for the individual. The job seeking process is heavily influenced by it. Companies and applicants can access information and resources instantaneously. The impact of Social Network platforms on the employment seeking individuals and the social [emailprotected]@@ While the importance of networking when seeking for employment has been widely explored in many articles (Granovetter) Social networks are arising new conditions for the society. Social Networks are increasingly becoming important in job hunting. A group of at least three individuals connected to each other with a tie is considered a social network. Social Networks over the Internet have a similar structure, the exchange of resources is web based, the size and speed of information is much faster than traditional networks. Each social individual lives in social networks. Social networks can be split in three categories: the ones within the individual participate and contribute; those which existence is known to the individual finally those which the individual is unaware of. The first two are considered the most relevant individual as provide suitable positions and influence the daily life of the individual. (Olugin Olguin at al. 2009). Those who seek employment gain valuable information from social networks, and while the support of social networks has been studied by many scholars the capital coming from web based social networks needs further investigation. Social networks connect individuals to each other and enable collective actions and the sharing of information and resources. The members of a network are connected through relationships of various kind; this connections represent the mechanism which keeps the network connected and functional. Each connection can be more or less important to the individual.  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   P.100   THE NETWORK STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL Networks can be considered as a market where the individual can exchange, access, and share a great variety of goods and resources in pursuit of his/her interest. Certain individuals or groups of people receive higher returns in quicker period of time; some have higher positions and other lowers, and some reach their goals quicker than other. Human capital, as described by @@@, refers that the people who do better are those who are more capable and skilled than the others. Social capital is the contextual complement of human capital. The social capital says that those who do better are those who are more connected. Some people or groups are connected to others, sharing trust, supporting each other interests or being dependent on exchange to others. Being involved in one of relations is an advantage that goes under the name of Social Capital. BORDIEU, COLEMAN DEFINITION IL LAVORO DEL RUNNER As a former runner and assistant I must admit the life of a runner is no easy task and definitely not the most glorious in the film industry, but it is an essential step towards bigger and farer achievements. Essentially, a runner provides vital assistance to a senior figure in a company. The word runner is not coincidence that refers to the mansion to make sure everything runs smoothly. For many, working as a runner is the most valuable experience to get a foot in the door of TV or Film industry. Typically it is expected to perform a great variety of tasks, from carry people and equipment around to serve coffees or picking up lunch for the entire crew. However what is most valuable about being a runner is networking. While performing the tasks you are assigned you are exposed to many professional figures and building relations to those individuals is much more worth it than anything you may learn during your time as a runner. Linking with higher positions may be the necessary step to move forward in career and move from runner to assistant. Being nice, willing and having a good attitude it is a better business card than your name and phone number on a piece of paper. You never know when an assistant vacancy will be open and As Rees (1966) and Granovetter (1974) suggest, several job opportunities are accessible through social networks, for instance contacting friends, relatives or personal contacts. Because seeking employment can be costly in terms of resources and time, job seekers who access their social network tend to receive better and faster information compared to those who rely on more formal strategies such as job ads or private employment services. According to Granovetter (1974, 1995) better information travel through social networks and provide better options and positive effects such as increased wages or greater job satisfaction. According to Montgomery (1992) we derive that not only obtaining a job via networks, but also just engaging in search through networks can lead to higher wages and cost effectiveness in job search.Granovetters model assumes that social networks provide more job offers than formal job search methods. Furthermore Montgomery (1992) points out that if a job seeker received a job offer from formal methods, this does not exclude the chance to receive additional job offers from social networks that could offer a higher wage. In addition to Montgomerys study, Franzen and Hangartner (2006) assume the existence of what they call job adequacy distribution according which those who seek employment through social networks are more likely to access satisfying position as network contacts have better information on specific job characteristics as well as better information on the preferences of the job seeker. Considering the population of graduates, in addition to the obvious characteristic of having low level of human capital, this group contains or will in the near future a very limited number of employed people. This situation presents a disadvantage because of lack of employed individuals which represent a major source of information in employment seek (Jackson, 2004). If the unemployed are not exposed to this kind of source there is very limited advantage into belonging to such network. The strength of weak ties thesis emphasizes the informational advantages provided by networks (Granovetter, 1973). In particular, it remarks the chances of accessing non-redundant information about employment opportunities. The reason behind this assumption derives by the fact that weak ties help injecting different and unfamiliar pool of information inside primary networks. Furthermore, Ensel (1981) and Villemez (1986) argue that job seekers with advantaged social resources, including networks, tend to obtain better labour market outcomes. Weak ties are considered better resources and facilitate access to unfamiliar information, hence considered to supply better offers.