The tutoring business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The tutoring business - Essay Example Customers can be reached through different forms of communication. Through networking, the customers can be reached by email, cell or telephone as well as social network sites such as face book and WhatsApp. These forms of communication are fast, secure and efficient. Video conferencing can also be used to conduct business. For instance, skype is a method of communication that enables two people to communicate face to face through the use of video system though they may be located in different places. The other effective method of reaching customers is the use of cell phones. Voice calls can be made or text messages can also be used to link people from different areas. This helps the tutors and the students to exchange vital information. Direct interaction between the tutors and their students can also help these two groups to link with each other. Through face to face communication, the tutors and the students can know each other better quite easily. In order to provide customer ser vice, there are different styles that can be used. The most important thing that we are going to take into consideration is to listen to all their concerns. Effective listening to the customers is a very important component of conducting business. When we listen to the customers, we will be in a position to understand their needs. The other step that we will take in order to provide quality feedback is to provide them with feedback so that they may get to know their progress in learning other languages.

Economics Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 3

Economics - Assignment Example Manufacturers are essentially limited to the manufacturing of mobile handsets and accessories and supply them to the mobile phone network service providers. Most of the major manufacturers of mobile phone sets are however, foreign and UK imports mobile phones. Major manufactures of mobile phone handsets include Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Sony Ericson are all foreign firms providing mobile phone handsets and other accessories to the service providers.1 Network operators offer airtime and data services to the end users as well as other tied services. They also offer services to indirect services providers as well as the virtual network service providers. They also sell packages to the customers as well as to the dealers to provide pay as you go as well as other bundled services to end users. Dealers actually operate through their retail outlets and offer mobile phone handsets as well as services obtained from the network operators. Though there are large numbers of smaller and independent dealers however, market seems to be dominated by the few very large dealers such as phone4U and other dealers. The growth of mobile phone networks in UK started during 1985 when government started to de-regulate the market. Since then there has been mushroom growth of the mobile networks in the country. Over the period of time, new services have been added thus increasing the overall depth and breadth of the market. (Doyle and Smith, 1999) Some estimates suggest that there are more than 80 million users of mobile phone data services across the country. Such growth in the market therefore suggests that UK is one of the growing markets for the mobile phone networks. What is also critical to understand that the overall number of service providers have remained limited despite such growth in the market. Initially very few operators were allowed to operate however the overall inclusion rate has increased in the recent past. Firms like Orange, O2, and Vodafone

Scientific Management - for a Different Time and Place Essay Example for Free

Scientific Management for a Different Time and Place Essay Scientific Management was first described by Frederick Taylor in the late 19th century. Its relevance to modern day management is widely debated in academic circles. In this essay, I will address the question of whether Scientific Management has a place today, in a 21st Century Knowledge Economy, or whether it belongs to a ‘different time and place. I will argue that much of modern management practice is derived from Taylor’s theories and that in this sense his work is very relevant. Next, I will examine the context in which Taylor developed his principles and contrast this with the contemporary context. Then I will evaluate the relevance of each of Taylor’s 4 Principles to today, with help from a case study of the NUMMI car manufacturing plant. Finally, I will examine the modern forms of Scientific Management, and what the future holds. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Academic Contribution of Scientific Management â€Å"Every method during these past hundred years that has had the slightest success in raising the productivity of manual workers – and with it their real wages – has been based on Taylor’s principles. (Drucker, 1999) Taylor’s Scientific Management played a crucial part in the formation of management as an academic discipline. Many of our modern systems are built on the foundations laid by Scientific Management and elements of this are still clearly visible in modern business practice. Before Taylor’s ideas, business management was not taught or even considered a discipline. It was seen as a matter of personal style and that there was no ‘one best way’. Taylor challenged this idea and laid the foundations for management to be studied and evolve. He believed that management should e trained and qualified. Harvard, one of the first universities to offer a degree in business management in 1908, based its first-year curriculum on Taylors scientific management. Scientific Management influenced many thinkers, including James McKinsey, founder of the consultant firm bearing his name. McKinsey built on Taylor’s ideas and advocated budgets as a means of accountability and measuring performance of managers. Today the McKinsey consulting firm is one of the prime contributors to management thinking; hey believe that Scientific Management is the future, an idea which will be contested later in this essay. â€Å"Before scientific management, such departments as work study, personnel, maintenance and quality control did not exist. † (Accel-Team) Taylor’s philosophy was important in the development of principles of management by theorists. Scientific Management advocated the division of labour, the separation of planning from operations, clear delineation of authority and the use of incentive schemes for workers. Taylor greatly contributed to the analysis of work design and gave rise to method study, including his time studies, which are described later in this essay. Management literature has taken many new twists since Taylor’s day, with Drucker coining the term â€Å"Knowledge Workers† in 1959. Drucker’s book Landmarks of Tomorrow, describes the declining importance of manual labour. This marked a need to move away from Scientific Management, a system based on physical standardised tasks. In 1980, management evolved further away from SM when Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham argued that workers need meaning and responsibility in their work to perform well, in their book Work Redesign. This idea contrasted with the disregard to the worker’s emotions and humanity in SM. The Context of Scientific Management: Does the Purpose It Was Developed for Have Any Relevance Today? Scientific Management was designed with physical labour in mind. Taylor was inspired by what he observed in the steel industry, and developed a style of management which could be applied to the construction, processing and train industries among others. Today, tertiary activities form the majority of the economy in developed economies. Taylor’s system was designed in a time when secondary activities were just replacing primary activities as the largest sector, and tertiary activities were hardly developed at all. From this comes the argument that today we have moved into a knowledge economy and a new style of management must replace the now obsolete Scientific Management which was designed for standardized physical tasks. Gary Hamel terms this new style ‘Management 2. 0’. Taylor developed SM to counteract phenomenon of soldiering which he encountered in the steel industry. The reasons for soldiering were as follows: â€Å"1. The almost universally held belief among workers that if they became more productive, fewer of them would be needed and jobs would be eliminated. 2. Non-incentive wage systems encourage low productivity if the employee will receive the same pay regardless of how much is produced, assuming the employee can convince the employer that the slow pace really is a good pace for the job.  Employees take great care never to work at a good pace for fear that this faster pace would become the new standard. If employees are paid by the quantity they produce, they fear that management will decrease their per-unit pay if the quantity increases. 3. Workers waste much of their effort by relying on rule-of-thumb methods rather than on optimal work methods that can be determined by scientific study of the task. † (NetMBA, Business Knowledge Center) Soldiering is not a common practice in knowledge economies. The problem that Taylor developed his principles around are from a ‘different time and place’ as these three reasons are largely non-existent now. The first reason for soldiering is no longer a problem because today incentive wage systems encourage high productivity through bonuses. Workers believe high productivity will result in promotion rather than jobs being eliminated. In the successful NUMMI car manufacturing plant a no layoff policy was employed to ‘eliminate workers’ fear that they are jeopardizing jobs every time they come up with an idea to improve efficiency. ’(Adler)

The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver :: Information Theory Research Report

The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver For my research report, I read The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. This book is an in-depth description of their theory. While I will focus mostly on Weaver's translation and application of information, I will also touch on the theory's core ideas as explained by Shannon. The information theory is the extentsion of Nyquist's and Hartley's origingal ideas on the subject. However, Claude Shannon includes new factors such as "the effect of noise in the channel, and savings possible due to statistical structure of the original message and due to the nature of the final destination of information." Shannon's ideas were based on the fundamental problem in communication, which he described as the "difficulty of reproducing at one point the message selected at another point." The most significant aspect is that the actual message sent is one "selected from a set" of possible messages. A system had to be formed to work for each possible selection. Shannon also constructed the Linear Model of Communication. It is rare to see a communication text book that doesn't include this model, or a model that is based on this one. However, modifications had to be made because Shannon and Weaver both overlooked the importance of feedback. Warren Weaver helps us understand Shannon's complex theory by explaining it in layman's terms. Weaver uses the word "communication" in a broad sense to incorporate all the different ways one person's mind could affect another. Basically, it encompasses all human behavior. Weaver simplistically describes the three levels of communication problems. The first level, Level A, is the technical problem. The technical problems deal with the transfer of sets of signals from sender to sender. These sets of signals could be as simple as written speech or as complex as telephone or television transmission. The second level (Level B) is concerned with the understanding and interpretation of the meaning by the receiver when compared with the intended meaning of the sender. Level B is referred to as semantics problems. Level C, the effectiveness problems, is the final communication problem. It is concerned with how well the meaning is conveyed to the receiver. Weaver goes on to describe numerous problems within each of the previous three. One of the major problems in each of these categories was that of entropy. Entropy may be simply defined as randomness.

Advantages and disadvantages of the civil war Essay

In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, the Confederacy and the Union both had numerous advantages and disadvantages and there were multiple women and slaves that contributed to the war. To begin with, the Confederacy had its significant advantages that helped it push through the war, one of which was its strong leaders. Many believed â€Å"Stonewall† Jackson and Robert E. Lee were some of the best officers even before the war. Also, they had the advantage of fighting on their own soil. They knew the terrain better that of their counterparts. A psychological aspect could be that fighting for their land, for their families, could have been the driving force or motivation. Moreover, they have longer coast lines which increased the travel time and decreased the chances of blockade or capturing of ports and major cities. On the other hand, the Confederacy did have several disadvantages as well. First, they were not recognized by Europe at all which limited their foreign aid. The Confederacy also had minimal factory production and industry. At the beginning of the war, the Confederacy had only one-ninth the industrial capacity of the Union. But that statistic was misleading. In 1860, the North manufactured 97 percent of the country’s firearms, 96 percent of its railroad locomotives, 94 percent of its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and over 90 percent of its boots and shoes. There was not even one rifleworks in the entire South. The railroad system that the Union had was far more sophisticated than that of the Confederacy, having over ten thousand more miles of railroad tracks that were, in itself, more modern. Due to the large amounts of manufacturing businesses and the railroad system to move the products, the Union, unlike the Confederacy, could produce and ship weapons, clothing, and food at a much more efficient rate than their counterparts. Also, because they were a newly founded â€Å"sovereign state†, the Confederacy did not have a professional, organized standing army and navy. The army and navy of the Federal United States were already organized and ready for war. Since, The Union had a naval advantage and the confederacy had Long Coastlines that were hard to defend,the union could block the Confederate’s ports for supplies. Furthermore, the economy of the Confederacy was destroyed by the Union. Second, the Union also had its many advantages as well as some disadvantages. One of the North’s significant advantages in fighting the war was that the industrial, urbanized Northern states held a significant edge in the population and manpower. The North had over twenty-two million people whereas the South had just over nine million (three and a half million of whom were blacks). Additionally, the Union had already an more experienced government since it was around for some years, when on the contrary, the Confederate government was fresh and new. Also, as mentioned before the Union was far more industrialized with its vast networks of factories, railroads, and ships which exceed any amount of industrialization in the south. This aspect gave the Union of being able to transport supplies and equipment faster and finance the war much better than the Confederacy. Finally, as it was also mentioned previously, the Union did have a large navy that allowed them to block major southern ports. During the horrible four years of the Civil War, women who did not own property, did not have the right to vote, or did not have many civil liberties came together in support of the war efforts. Women were so eager to help that they hid their identity by dressing as men, taking up masculine names, and took up arms of their own. They cared for sick and dying soldiers, risked their lives to gather information as spies, cooked, cleaned and care for children. The tenacity and love with which these women served their country was astounding, and yet often overlooked. About 3,000 women served as Union army nurses. Dorthea Dix was one women who was acknowledged for being the Nation’s first superintendent of women nurses. Clara Barton was recognized for being the first women to work in the U.S. Patent Office and was given the name â€Å"Angel of the Battlefield.† Sally Tompkins was a Confederate army nurse commissioned as captain because she performed her hospital duties so heroically. Finally, Belle Boyd was honored for being a brave Confederate nurse and spy. After President Lincoln presented the Emancipation proclamation, which held a section for the enlistment of African Americans into the Union Army, African American men rushed to enlist. This time they were accepted into all-black units. The first of these was the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored Regiment, led by white officer Robert Gould Shaw. Their heroism in combat put to rest worries over the willingness of black soldiers to fight. Soon other regiments were being formed, and in May 1863 the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops. Black recruiters, many of them abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, brought in troops from throughout the North. Douglass proclaimed, â€Å"I urge you to fly to arms and smite with death the power that would bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave.† Others, such as Harriet Tubman, recruited in the South. On March 6, 1863, the Secretary of War was informed that â€Å"seven hundred and fifty blacks who were waiting for an opportunity to join the Union Army had been rescued from slavery under the leadership of Harriet Ross Tubman†¦.† By the end of the war more than 186,000 black soldiers had joined the Union army; 93,000 from the Confederate states, 40,000 from the border slave states, and 53,000 from the free states. They participated in about 500 Civil War battles and skirmishes. Although they were treated unequally they continued to volunteer. For example, white privates in the Union army were paid $13 monthly with and extra $3.50 clothes allowance, while black privates in the Union were only paid $10 monthly WITHOUT an extra clothes allowance. It wasn’t until 1864 that Congress equalized the pay for the black and white soldiers. Also, the mortality rate of blacks were higher than that of whites due to the fact that they were assigned to labor duty in the germ-ridden garrisons where they were likely to ctach typhoid, pneumonia, malaria, or other diseases.

Festival: Chinese New Year and Tangy Pineapple Tart Essay

Malaysia is a land known of its multicultural and the diversity of religions. As this country is made up of different races, the people of Malaysia inevitably celebrates a variety of festivals. To the Chinese, the most important festival is the Chinese New Year, which usually falls on the month of January or February. Before the festival, throngs of shoppers head for shops in search of mandarin oranges, new year tit bits, new clothes, plants like bamboos, money plants or little kumquat trees that bear the prosperous meaning. Some families even get together to bake and prepare the new year delicacies like the yummy and tangy pineapple tart, almond cookies and so on. The Chinese also make it a point to settle all debts before the new year begins as it symbolizes bad luck to bring forward debts from the past. On the eve of the new year, family members get together for a special reunion dinner. Younger unmarried members of the families receive red packets containing money when they go around visiting friends and relatives. The Muslims celebrate Hari Raya Puasa which marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting. The festival begins with prayers at the mosque early in the morning. Some people visit the cemetery to pray for family members who have departed. After that, there are visits to relative’s house and feasts. The most popular dish during this time will be the ketupat which is made from rice, chicken or beef rendang, a dish that is cooked with a lot of coconut milk. Green packets containing money will also be distributed during this festival. Deepavali or the festival of lights is celebrated by the Hindus. Homes of Hindus are decorated with little colorful lamps which symbolize the victory of good over evil. On this auspicious day, Hindus dress in new clothes will go to the temple in the morning to pray. Then, they either visit their friends or invite friends over to their homes for feast. These festivals of different races have opened up chances for Malaysians to know and understand the cultures of others. This situation will definitely build up the spirit of unity among the people in this fortunate land.

Donatello Essays - Donatello, The Feast Of Herod, David, Free Essays

Donatello Essays - Donatello, The Feast Of Herod, David, Free Essays Donatello Michelle Hoell Professor Kranz Humanities 2 16 Nov. 2001 Donatello is known as the most important sculptor of the Early Renaissance. The author, John Pope-Hennessy noted him as one of the greatest artists who ever lived (Pope-Hennessy p.11). Donatello was a modest person who was very dedicated to his works. Because of his great dedication, he was able to create so much art in so many different varieties (Poeschke p.5). Donatellos origins, his accomplishments, and his impact are important aspects to appreciate the sculptor, Donatello. Donatello was born on 1386 in Florence, Italy by the name Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi. (library p.1). His father, Niccolo di Betto Bardi, was a wool comber. It is thought that he learned his career from one of the stone sculptors for the Cathedral of Florence around 1400 (britannica p.3). He assisted Filippo Brunelleschi, with whom he may have visited Rome and studied monuments of antiquity there (Blood p.1). Donatello started sculpting at the age of twenty. Donatello created masterpieces with stone, clay, bronze, or gold (Poeschke p.376). He is said to have worked in Lorenzo Ghiberti's shop and also had a shop of his own in Florence. Later in life he studied Roman Ruins and became a humanist. Donatello died on December 13, 1466 at the age of eighty. He never married and had no children (Blood p.1). Donatellos works can be separated into three periods. The first period is comprised of works done before the year 1425. During the first period, Donatello was greatly influenced by the Gothic style, yet classical and realistic influences were also Hoell 2 present. During this time Donatello identified himself as a realist. Most of his weeks of this period were spent in Florence (Blood p.2). One of the works completed during the first period is the marble David was one of Donatellos earliest works, which was completed around 1412 (britannica p.2). On February 20, 1408, Donatello was commissioned to make one of the buttresses, which were going to be placed on the choir of the Duomo in Florence. A total of twelve buttresses were supposed to be made by several different sculptors but the task was never completed. When Donatello finally completed his work, it was criticized of being too small to be placed in its location, which was eighteen meters high. The David ended up in the Duomo workshops for a few years. Then, in July 1416, it was moved to the Palazzo Vecchio. Donatello was then paid five extra florins to make some alterations to the statue. This may be when the very intricate details were added to Goliaths face and hair. He may have also added details to the clothing, such as seams, folds and fringes, during this time. Because of this, Donatello was noted of putting much more importance into the details of the sculpture more than any sculptor of this time puts (Poeschke p.27, 377). A while later the Prophet David was given a place of honor in the city hall to represent political freedom. Donatellos David was chosen for this place. Ghilberti, the leader in International Gothic Style, influenced this sculpture. International Gothic Style consisted of soft curves, which the Dav id processed. The construction of the drapery also had a Gothic look. This work was made for the Cathedral but was later moved to Palazzo Vecchio in 1416. There, the David symbolized civic patriotism. It was later shadowed Hoell 3 by the huge Michelangelo version of David (britannica p.2). The David can be seen on page nine and is image one. Another work done during the first period is St. George. It was one of Donatellos most powerful works. It had demonstrated personality and confidence, which has not been seen since the classical antiquity (britannica p.2). St. George is image four on page ten. There appears to be holes made into the marble. These holes are thought to have held a wreath or bronze helmet on the head. The right hand was carved to hold a sword of lance made of bronze. The statue was completed on 1415 and the tabernacle niche in which is placed was completed around 1417 (Pope-Hennessy p.63, 64). It is unsure if Donatello had anything to do with designing the tabernacle in