BUSINESS OUTLOOK REPORT for a food retailer of your choice but not to Essay

BUSINESS OUTLOOK REPORT for a food retailer of your choice but not to include Tesco - Essay Example ercent share is genuinely an accomplishment when taking into consideration that this type of business model has very high operating costs and with growth in convenience stores in the country that provide competitive threats to the chain. This report identifies long-run prospects for Sainsbury’s over the next five to ten years with an emphasis on specific trends in the external market that will likely serve as the drivers of change with the retailer and with the food sector. The report further provides an evaluation of whether Sainsbury’s is well-positioned for key changes in the external environment. Sainsbury was highly responsive in adapting to changing market conditions, especially as it pertains to consumer growth in ethical consumption. Ethical consumption is a type of consumer activism that dictates whether to boycott a product or make purchases based on consumer perceptions that the organisation offering the product maintains an ethical stance and set of ethical objectives and values (Grande 2007). Contemporary business research recognises that companies with the aforesaid ethical values and focus maintain higher profitability (Lys, Naughton and Wang 2013). As a result of recognising these trends, the company began adding what is referred to as Steering Committees that are involved at the highest level of governance in areas of assessing the firm’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, providing a quality and enjoyable place to work for employees, and even a climate change committee (Sainsbury 2011). All of the activities and strategies developed by the St eering Groups are highly publicised to ensure that consumers are drawn to the ethical framework of business practice provided by the company leadership. Having such a strong ethical set of values and beliefs also provides Sainsbury’s with minimised costs in relation to human resources. Companies that have very strong ethical cultures also have much less problems with employee turnover

Petroleum Economic and Oil field management 2013-2014 Essay - 1

Petroleum Economic and Oil field management 2013-2014 - Essay Example The above are but some of the few reasons why there has been limited adoption of energy conservation. The huge amounts of income, derived as petro-dollars, do significantly contribute to various state-entities’ economic survival (ElBaradei, 2013). This affects the limited nature of alternative energy resource development taking place globally. The continued rate of global industrialization, which necessitates increased consumption of energy resources, especially oil and natural gas has been a factor of concern because conservation would pose a threat to continued industrialization. Another important factor is that alternative energy resources, though significantly advantageous than the more prominent fossil fuels, are unfortunately very expensive to develop. In addition is the factor of global application and viability, as none of the potential alternatives can at the current contexts, be exploited effectively to warrant a change from oil and natural gas utility (Leggett, 2001). The case scenario above is further impacted by the fact that there is a hold/ control of this sector. This is mainly by global multinationals, which are majorly Western-based and capitalistic in nature. These firms, are powerful actors in the prevailing international relations, and hence contribute to the slow pace of change. This is influenced by the fact that major revenues are gained, not only by these firm-entities, but also by their mother-nations, which are all powerful actors in the global arena. Consumerism, which as a phenomenon has been founded on en masse production of goods and service provision, further fuels the need for oil utility, in the production of various crucial products. The underlying global industrial base is thus, the main driver of fossil fuel consumption; significantly influenced by the global industrial output and human advancement

Examining The Key Characteristics Of Rup Information Technology Essay

Examining The Key Characteristics Of Rup Information Technology Essay Initially select the rational unified process development methodology .The unified process was development in main by joining together Jacobsons use case modeling Boochs object oriented methods and Rumbaya,s object Modeling Techniques (OMT) , Many other object- oriented methods also contributed to developing this process. The goal at the rational Unified Process is to enable the production at highest quality software that meets end- user needs within predictable schedules and budgets. The Rational unified Process captures some of the best current software Development practices in a form that is tail arable for a wide range of projects and organization. The Key characteristics of RUP The Rational Unified processes in an iterative process. Built into the iterative approach is the flexibility to accommodate new requirements or tactical changes in business object. The rational behind the rational unified process is focus on models. Rather than paper documents is to minimize the overhead associated with generating and maintaining documents and to minimize the relevant information content. The Rational Unified Process place strong emphasis on building systems based on a through understand of how the delivered system will be used. The Rational Unified Process supports object oriented techniques each model is object Rational Unified Process models are based on the concepts of objects and classes and the use the UML as its notation. The Rational Unified Process configurable process although no single process suitable for all software development organizations. The Rational Unified Process is failorble and can be scaled to fit the needs of project ranging from small software development to large development organizations. The Rational Unified Process encourage on going quality control and risk management. Phases of RUP Should modified The Rational Unified Process is structured along two dimensions Time division of the life cycle into phases and iterations. Process components- productions of specific set of artifacts with well defined activities. Both dimensions must be taken in to account for a project to succeed. Structuring a project along the time dimension involves the adoption of the following time based four phases. Inception- specifying the project vision Elaboration-planning the necessary activities and require resources specifying the features and designing the architecture. Construction- building the product as a series of incremental iterations. Transition-Supplying the product to the user community. Structuring the project along the process component dimension include the following activities. Business modeling the identification of desired system capabilities and user needs. Requirements- a narration of the system vision along with a set of functional and non functional requirements. Analysis and design a description of how the system will be realized in the implementation phase. Implementation the production of the code that will result in an executable system. Testing the verification of the entire system deployment the delivery of the system and user training to the customer. Within each phase are a number of iterations. Iteration represents a complete development cycle form requirements capture in analysis to implementation testing which result in the realse of an executable product constitutly a subset of the final project under development which then is grown incrementally form iteration to iteration becomes the final system. During the elaboration the focus turns towards analysis and design. In construction implementation is the control activity and transition centers on developments Work breakdown structure With refer to project proposal the entire work break down structure represent Project schedule With referenced to the project proposal entire project plan submitted using MS project Cost estimation With respect to feasibility study in chaper2 the initial cost estimation carried out concerning three areas Total software cost , total hardware cost, total human laybour Risk managing Risk Identification in Inception Phase Identification risk is one management tool in nine project management principles. therefore should be proper method assess unknown risk can be generate and impact of risk and prepare resist to the risk .mainly critical path activities will generate risk if one goes wrong that might effect to total project related wasting time money. Therefore to minimize the risk used contingency plan. Given below is the few or risk associated with certain activities Risk on requirement gathering and analysing identifying incorrect requirements out of scope Risk associated in changing system architecture and technologies several times to fulfil additional requirement made by clients. Risk of design incorrect architecture Risk associated with reusing software component Risk associate din poor project planning in time management and resources management Risk associate with using open source tools to development process Risk associate on hardware used for the project compatibility for requirements After identifying risk it can be categorizes in to three risk namely project risk, product risk, business risk .To overcome risk and identify the proper solution use risk management process Risk Identification Risk Analysis Risk Planning Risk Monitoring List of potential risks Prioritizes risk list Risk avoidance and contingency plans Risk assessment With related risk analysis concern about security risk as in order to identify possible risk caused as physically, from software to destroy information on database as follows Physical risk Fire: Place fire extinguishers that suitable for all type of fires in every floor especially near server rooms and check continuous time intervals Flood: Place the server room as well equipment higher levels where the impact minimum Earthquakes: Locate back up server in separate location where earthquakes are minimise Tsunami: To prevent risk place the servers remote locations Equipment theft: To prevent the risk can used security cameras and security guard with lock doors to server rooms Software risk: Hacking: Used firewall protection, place intrusion detection system Eavesdropping: Used strong encryption when transferring data through the system which difficult crack the encription using complex algorithm Virus: Place co operate virus guard which consist of large virus database in order stand quarantine such a risk Information theft: Place hybrid intrusion detection system and used strong password policy

Rafting the Nolichucky :: Personal Narrative Writing

Rafting the Nolichucky The Nolichucky River is a body of water that rises from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina and flows northwest into Tennessee, then goes west to join the French Broad River after running a course of 150 miles (Britanica. Com). The Nolichucky’s most action packed stretch of water runs through a beautiful stretch of the Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests. The whitewater on this river is truly world-class. If thrills and spills are what you love, then the Nolichucky, referred to commonly as the "Noli," is the place you need to check out. As a raft-guide on the Nolichucky this past summer, I highly recommend that any physically and mentally stable student who enjoys nature should give a white water-rafting trip some serious thought. For an individual with absolutely no experience, I would suggest starting on a mild part of the "Noli." The lower area of the Nolichucky offers a mild dose of rapids and is perfect for children and those with a low tolerance for danger and extreme sports. The lower "Noli" is a five-mile trip and usually takes anywhere form three to six hours. With only one Class III on the entire trip, one could almost take a nap on this raft trip. The upper section of the Nolichucky is where you are going to get to exercise those bellowing lungs. With an array of Class IV rapids, the upper section of the "Noli" promises to provide a day of thrills and spills. Before planning a white water rafting trip, I suggest everyone to be aware of certain things. First, this is a dangerous and physical event that requires some muscle and heart. For anyone with a weight problem, heart problems, or mental instability, this activity is not suggested by the companies who provide their services in this type of activity. If you have any questions about your ability to do an activity of this nature, consult a doctor first. The main goal for all of us is to have fun and be safe. The company that I work for is called Cherokee Adventures and is located about twenty miles south of the ETSU campus. From the Culp Center, this should be no more than a twenty five-minute drive. From the campus the you need go south in the direction of US181/23. Head south on 81/23 and go 15 miles from Johnson City.

Proposed HR Program for CompuLearn Essay

CompuLearn is a private sector provider of IT-based teaching and learning programmes in business and management based in the UK, with corporate headquarters in Preston, Lancashire and with trading centers in Mumbai, Nairobia and Dubai. Its current global market is focused in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, with 200 education centers in 30 countries. CompuLearn partners with UK universities which validates its programs so that   students are able to qualify in the University programs leading to academic degrees. Its current manpower complement numbers 50 employees mostly based in the corporate office in Preston, Lancashire doing the following functions: Program Development, Customer Service, HR, Marketing, Finance, Sales, IT, Quality Assurance. CompuLearn has embarked on a mission to be market leader in e-learning delivery of University validated programs and foremost learning company in the world. It is on an expanded growth program and it adopted a new strategy to extend to 500 education centers in 60 countries over a span of 3 years. The role of HR is very critical in this new strategy, which is to attract top IT experts. It could be a relatively easy task if not for the following: 1. There is a high turn over in the IT industry in UK and new employees leave after only one month for a new job that offers better pay. 2. CompuLearn has a limited training system in place. Its strategy is to recruit highly trained staff instead of training them in house. The allocated budget for training is almost used up and was used to train the Sales team. 3. Employees have limited management skills as they are mostly technical staff whose training is not in the soft skills development. 4. The company does not have a Performance Appraisal System in place. 5. The staff at the corporate headquarters do not have a comfortable relationship with the staff of the UK universities largely due to complaints of attitude. 6. The HR Director’s strength is in micro-managing and does not have expertise in long-term management plans for the company employees. The Limitations and Constraints Faced by the Company The HR Department will play a very strategic role in supporting the growth of CompuLearn. Among other things, it needs to address the following limitations and constraints faced by the company, whether internally caused or faced by the industry in general: 1. The high turn over rate in the IT industry in UK 2. The lack of a professional or well-developed training and development program for employees 3. The employees’ limited skills in management, customer service and other soft skills 4. The lack of a well-placed Performance Appraisal System 5. The not-so-friendly attitude of the academic staff of the Universities towards the company employees at the corporate headquarters 6. The limited knowledge and skills of the HR Director in long-term planning for the management of the employees Recommendations The HR strategies recommended are based on the following assumptions: 1. Budget The company is working on a limited budget, which is just around 30% of the  annual budget of 25,000 Euros. 2. Lead Department The HR Department will take the lead in implementing the strategies. The HR Director shall formally appoint the section heads to serve as lead persons in implementing the strategies in their respective sections. The HR Director has the free hand in creating working committees to participate in the entire process from planning to implementation. The process will be participatory and with some amount of consultation from the employees. 3. Timetable The strategies are proposed for implementation on a focused basis within the first year (Year 1 – Month 1 to Month 12). Beginning Year 2 (Month 13) the focus of the activities will be on monitoring, evaluation, and implementation of improvements. 4. HR Management Perspective/Model Available literature identify different HR Management models that attempt to explain the various strategies adopted by different companies. General classifications fall under the â€Å"soft† and â€Å"hard† models, based on the definitions of employees considered as either â€Å"human† or â€Å"resource†. The hard versions consider employees as resource and adopt a rational approach to managing them, aligning their HR strategies with the strategies of the business. The soft version, on the other hand, considers employees as human and adopts strategies to train and develop them (Bratton and Gold, p. 5). The recommendations adopted in this case will be based more on the soft version of human resource management. Focus will be more on training and development as well as in developing commitment from employees. A limited form of the hard version will however allow the HR to link the strategies with the overall corporate strategy of the company. In analyzing the challenge faced by CompuLearn, a simplistic framework was designed around the following questions, based on the limitations/constraints faced by the company and to become the basis for the strategies: 1. On the high turn-over rate in the IT industry How can CompuLearn keep its employees from leaving the company after short- term engagement only? Or how can the company motivate its employees to stay longer? 2. On the lack of a professional training and development program Should the company train in-house or continue to hire experts from outside? 3. On the employees’ limited skills in management, customer service, and other soft skills. How can the employees learn the soft skills and apply them at work? 4. On the lack of a well-placed Performance Appraisal System Is there a need to formulate or adopt a Performance Appraisal System? 5. On the not-so-friendly attitude of the academic staff of the Universities towards the company employees at the corporate headquarters How can there be a more cordial relationship between the two parties? How can the company make the employees appreciate the importance of having good relations with the University staff? Can this be done through training or should the company replace those who transact with the University staff with other company employees, either through job rotation or job enrichment? 7. On the limited knowledge and skills of the HR Director in long-term planning for the management of the employees. Should the HR Director undertake refresher courses in management? Or should the company hire a new HR person who has the skills in long term planning to assist the HR Director? Below is a presentation of the proposed HR strategies and programs, in matrix form,   that can be implemented under the leadership of the HR Director. They are composed of both short term and long term strategies. The short-term strategies are those that can be immediately implemented, within the first six months from the time the recommendations will be adopted. The long term strategies are those that can be adopted over a longer period and on a continuing basis like the periodic reviews of policies and developing a system whereby improvements can take place every so often whenever warranted. It will be observed that most of the strategies will be newly introduced to the company and it can be expected that certain difficulties will be met. This will include among other things, resistance to the changes to be introduced, the difficulty of the HR Department to implement them for lack of the appropriate knowledge and skills, and with some â€Å"difficult† employees. This is all part of the process of the HR accepting the initial resistance  to the changes. The HR should be firm and consistent but at the same time adopting an attitude of openness and willingness to see through the improvements. Education and training are two important components of an empowered workforce. The saying that a company is only as good as its weakest employee is very much applicable here. Each employee is responsible for knowing about his company and performing according to the expectations set at the time of his engagement. However, it is the job of HR to find the employees who have the potential to learn more and continuously give them the opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills.

Panopticism he states that the development of discipline Essay

In Michel Foucault’s (1975) excerpt, Panopticism he states that the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries came from he emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime. During these times the major crimes committed were from the French Revolution and the major riots and civil unrest in the French society. In these prisons the Panopticon puts the inmates in a different state in which each one is there own separate individual. Foucault states that the major effect of these Panopticon are that they â€Å"induce the inmate in a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.† †Such a structure allows individuals to be seen and restricts their ability to communicate with the security, the warden, or other prisoners.† In this case, crowds are nonexistent and each person is confined to their cell where they can be viewed by the watcher. He states that this new form of punishment lead to th e development of a whole new kind of individuality for bodies. The brilliance of this prison is that the Panopticon forces blindness onto the prisoner where he or she is never sure if someone’s watching or not, inducing a harmless form of paranoia, keeping people in place. When a person is accused of a crime, society finds upon itself the responsibility of punishing him or her. The question of morality, however, is finding the perfect punishment in compensation of the crime that was committed. With the Panopticon, rather than breaking them down physically by using tortures like the thumbscrew or whips, prisoners can be broken down mentally, which allows the reconstruction of their mentality. This entire theory is effective due to the natural desire that people in general have to conform to society’s pressures. After all, it is ingrained in the natural being of humans to know that in order to survive, everyone needs a place in society whether it is as the businessman or as a joker. The fear of complete abandonment from this institution allows the system to work properly. Next, the Panopticon is essential to society in its ability to give a prisoner the chance of redeeming himself or herself to become a crucial part of society again. Instead of seeing revenge on the prisoners, this system allows them to be reformed through a force of habit. As prisoners get used to the idea that they’re being watched at all times with or without their knowledge, they adjust their behavior to meet society’s standards and norms. Thus, with a strong sense of paranoia, once the prisoner comes out of the Panopticon, he or she will rethink any decisions of breaking the rules. Once the person goes through that phase of the Panopticon imprisonment, he or she is set for a regular life in the real world with human interaction. In addition, with the Panopticon, power isn’t centralized in the hands of the warden or prison guards. The mere concept of being spied on causes others to display normal behavior, one that they want to portray to society. The real punishment that the prisoner goes through is one within his or her own mind where due to paranoia, the person shapes up to meet the rules of society in what is right rather than wrong. In this case, no one has power over another and even the amount of guards can be lessened; the prisoner is unable to tell the difference as to who is watching or how many people are watching. Power isn’t given to people but is within the architecture of the Panopticon. There will be no more vicious beatings of prisoners and no more degradation of them. In the end, they’re like everyone else, another everyday person in today’s world. Panopticism creates self-discipline forced into play through one’s own mentality of paranoia and fear, allowing criminals to be broken down mentally instead of physically, to redeem themselves as a part of society again, and to allow power to not be centralized in the hands of the warden or prison guards. It’s not only an effective system but it’s also efficient in the way that those separated from society may still have the ability to blend back in after undergoing this type of imprisonment. As a result, the concept of a Panopticon would certainly be better than the status quo where punishment is used and people are locked away behind bars without given a chance to prove that they’re reformed. Any cruel and unusual punishments that may occur are abolished and finally, for those who have made a mistake or two, redemption is finally possible.