The System that Couldnt Deliver Essay Example for Free

The System that Couldnt Deliver Essay Three years ago, Diana Sullivan, was recruited by Lenox from a major competitor to work as its Chief Information Officer. Sullivan, a 20-year veteran information systems executive, knew going into this job that computers had never been one of Lenoxs strengths. James Bennett, Lenoxs Chief Executive Officer told Sullivan that they simply need a tool that would help their agents provide fast and reliable information needed to close a sale. After years of hard work, Sullivan thought she had done her job well by delivering Lifexpress on time and on budget. Lifexpress is a sophisticated computer-aided system that enabled Lenoxs 10,000-plus agents to do everything from establishing a prospects financial profile, to selecting the most appropriate products from the companys myriad policies and generating all the paperwork needed to close a sale. Lifexpress, however, wasnt boosting sales productivity as much as management had expected. Two of Lenoxs competitors had launched similar systems and are already running ahead of them. Sullivans Boss, Chief Financial Officer Clay Fontana seems to be blaming Sullivan for the problem. Bennett appeared to correspond with Fontana. They believe that since Lifexpress is Sullivans system then she should be accountable not only for its creation and implementation but for realizing the business goals that goes with it as well. Yet Sullivan believes that had already taken what the necessary steps to bring the company up to speed. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM How can information technology projects help Lenox achieve its business goals?OBJECTIVES1.To describe the companys attitude towards information technology2.To determine how Lenox can achieve radical performance improvements through the use of information technology THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Decisions on investments in IT are both critical and contentious. With a thorough understanding of a companys strategic context, managers can identify business and IT maxims that can help determine the IT infrastructure capabilities necessary to achieve their business goals.Management by Maxims The framework is made up of four components. 1.Considering Strategic Context. To clarify infrastructure requirements, companies also need to understand the current strategies and strategic intents of each business unit, the synergies between units and the firms experiences and beliefs in the value of leveraging those synergies.2.Articulating Business Maxims. Business Maxims capture the essence of a firms future direction. It is grouped into six categories: cost focus; value differentiation as perceived by customers; flexibility and agility; growth; human resources; and management orientation. It is therefore important for managers to prioritize the relative importance of maxims to ensure that the most important messages are understood. Business Maxims form a base from which business and IT executives can work together to identify IT maxims. 3.Identifying IT Maxims. IT Maxims describe how a firm needs to connect, share, and structure information and deploy IT across the firm. It is grouped into five categories: expectations for IT investments in the firm; data access and use; hardware and software resources; communications capabilities and services; and architecture standards approach. 4.Clarifying a Firms View of IT Infrastructure. IT Infrastructure has four views: none, utility, dependent and enabling. Firms take on one view. There is no one best view but rather one is more appropriate for a particular firm, according to its strategic context and business and IT Maxims. A firms view of infrastructure should change together with its strategic context and business maxims. a.None View. It is when a firm decides to do without IT economies among its businesses. It does not invest in IT infrastructures at the firmwide level. b.Utility View. IT infrastructure is viewed as a way to reduce costs through economies of scale and sharing. c.Dependent View. IT infrastructure is viewed as a response to specific strategies. d.Enabling View. IT infrastructure is viewed as a core competence that provides competitive advantage. Firms with this view are industry leaders in terms of infrastructure investment levels and provide extensive infrastructure services in a highly centralized way. CASE ANALYSIS Lenox Insurance Company admits that computers were never their strength and with the way they are going, it will never be. Bringing in new technologies, updating key applications and the reorganizing and streamlining of the information services organization should never be seen as a cure all to the problems plaguing the organization. An information services overhaul is not a feel-good pill. New technologies should be met with fresh attitudes and ideas. Information Services is just one of Lenoxs many problems. In fact, it is not one of its biggest problems when Lifexpress became operational. It is that its top people, its Chief Financial Officer and Chief Executive Officer have no idea about the concepts of product strategy and increased productivity. The way the Chief Executive Officer and the CFO understand increased productivity is how Lifexpress translates into increased sales. Lifexpress effect on Lenoxs productivity is that it cut the processing of all the necessary paperwork from four weeks minimum to a matter of hours. If thats not an increased in productivity, I do not know what is. Lifexpress should be assessed on its own merits and not on comparisons to competitor systems. Lifexpress was received positively by Lenoxs technologically challenged agents. This could only mean that the agents will get the hang of using the Lifexpress system given time. It is just that Lenoxs agents have a steeper learning curve having a handicap of technological incompetence. Ease of use is relative Lenox insurance company should take the steeper learning curve into consideration. The completion of the Lifexpress project in itself was a success and credit should be given to Sullivan. The project was made operational on time and in budget. It is hard to argue with these facts. It is given that Lenox Insurance Company has more product offerings than its competition so Lenoxs  Lifexpress project should be expected to be more complicated and therefore will take more time to cover all of its services. The Lenox Insurance case resonates with the parable of the mustard seed. As it is now, the proverbial mustard seed, the Lifexpress system cannot be brought into fruition with Lenox Insurance Companys initial technological shock. But it should not lose hope. Lenox Insurance Company can still cultivate its lad to be fertile, given time. Using the management by Maxim Framework, Lenox does have a clear strategic context improve productivity and help the sales force close on more new policies using information services. But it did not have a clear articulation of its business IT maxims. For one, Lenox confuses the goal of increased sales with Lifexpress effect of increased productivity. Starting from a technological handicap relative to competition, Lenoxs investment in Lifexpress was a big leap enough. It is time for them to get back to the drawing board and reassess their business strategies that need to be saved from the quicksand of confusion. The clear articulation of an agreed position in a form that executives understand and act on is sorely lacking in Lenox. Because of this, accountability is muddled and could lead as it is to Lenoxs case to endless and pointless finger pointing. To this end, Sullivan is partly to blame, she should have discussed her role in clear detail with Lenoxs top executives. She could have been spared of all the accusations being thrown at her. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION Once and for all, Lenoxs top people should sit down and reassess their strategies using the 4-point Management by Maxim framework. They should agree on courses of action and execute them accordingly. Bibliography: Byron Reimus, The IT system that couldnt deliver, Harvard Business Review (May-June 1997)

Issues with Cadburys Workforce

Issues with Cadburys Workforce One of the most important workforces issues that Cadbury has to tackle after the Krafts takeover will be the psychological contract and the employee engagement, thus, the fundamentals issues this paper work address are; explores some of the most important external and internal influences and business pressures that Cadbury is facing now, recommending the most appropriate strategic responses and describing some of the key Human Resource issues that the company have to bear in mind during the whole process of this transition. Secondly, this essay does a depth analyses of how Cadbury should tackle their psychological contracts issues, through a fully understanding of the workforces expectations and beliefs towards the Cadburys new employer, generally these expectations are out of the formal or legal contract, which means they are unwritten and unspoken but they still play an important role during this takeover. In addition to the psychological contract, this essay also explores another important issue in this takeover which is the employee engagement, this engagement generally is something given by the employees to the company which shows their commitment, effort and dedication, using the best of their capabilities to achieve the companys goals, therefore, this paper studies how Cadbury should make an appropriate adoption of the employee engagement concept bringing a tremendous vantage for the company. 216 words STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK Business Pressure Cadburys company was built nearly two hundred years ago in Birmiham Great Britain, where during whole these years the company has stood up of the crowd for its chocolates quality and has even been awarded for the British Queen in February 1984 (Cadbury 1) Cadbury has also launched some chocolates which have became in a totally British iconic, chocolates bars such as wispa, which was first launched in 1981 and the creams eggs which sell around two hundred million units every year in the UK, and the Dairy Milk which was first launched in June 1905 and has become a mega well-known brand in many different varieties around the world (Cadbury 2), All these products and much more, have made that Cadbury become nowadays the second most engaging brand in the UK, according to a study made by the agency Hall Partners (2010), this study measures how the British people are engaged with brands and analyse how do they feel and think about it. The study reveals that Cadbury is a UK proud brand that British people love; as during whole these years, Cadbury has built a strong relationship with its customers and products in a consciously and unconsciously way. http://www.netimperative.com/news/2010/february/cadbury2019s-and-google-top-uk2019s-10-most/view Hence, taking into the account all these historic facts of Cadbury, it seem obvious that after the announce of Krafts takeover, a huge business pressure had grown all over UK regarding to continuation of the workforces inheritance , the maintaining of their manufactories in UK and the loss of jobs seems to be the most complicated business pressure. As a complement, after the acquisition of Cadbury in  £11.9 billion, Kraft is on  £7 billion debt, and to be able to solve this issue Kraft has created a saving plan of  £450 million a year (The Guarding 3) to pay off all its debts to the Royal Bank of Scotland, which ironically is 84% owned by the UK Government, which means that the UK government has borrowed the money to sell out one of the most engaging British companies. http://www.cadbury.co.uk/cadburyandchocolate/ourstory/Pages/ourstoryFlash.aspx#/1941_1980/product/1971_creme_egg (2) http://www.cadbury.co.uk/cadburyandchocolate/ourstory/Pages/ourstoryFlash.aspx#/1820_1860/product (1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/04/cadbury-kraft-union (3) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8470776.stm (4) Strategic Responses Seems to be a very tough task, to set a good and appropriate strategic response, after all these enormous business pressures that surround Cadbury, hence, Kraft should start doing a deep analyses of each one of the business pressure, covering the customers and workforces expectations, to fully understand the whole context. Once exist a better understanding of the whole picture, Kraft should be more likely to face these business pressures in a more efficiently and appropriate manner, setting up the best possible strategic responses to tackle the whole problem. However, bearing in mind that my understanding of the whole picture will never be as deeper as the one Kraft could achieve inside their world, my best possible strategic responses should be keeping their pledges, showing the commitment and interest of Cadburys new owners to the workforce, doing the best of their capabilities to keep the social and ethical values, analysing the business strategic and vision of the company. On the other hand, UK Government should do everything they can, to ensure the jobs are kept in UK after the Krafts new acquisition, however the Cadburys Chairman has admitted that jobs loss are unavoidable as a consequence of the big acquisitions price of  £11.9 billion (The Indepent 2010 5), but as strategic response to this issue, Kraft should make a further investment in better technology machines to increase the productivity and reduce their overhead costs more efficiently without the need to make jobs redundant. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/takeover-will-mean-job-cuts-says-boss-of-cadbury-1873155.html (5) HRM Factors; possible impacts There are many numbers of possible HR impacts in this unexpected and unwelcome Krafts takeover, the first of them, is one of the most common HR impacts which takes place in most of the takeovers, these are the workforces strikes, which are already happening in Cadbury, the employees are desperately seeking for a plan or a law from the UK government which secure their jobs and give them work stability. Secondly but not less important, as consequence of this unwelcome takeover, Cadburys workforce might change its attitude and loyalty towards the company, creating a stressful and uncomfortable workplace environment for everybody, leaving as a result, a depth impact in the productivity of the company. Additionally to the job instability, lack of support from the companys new owner and stressful environment, all these issues could make that the best workforces men remaining in the company, decide to jump out of the ship before the company decides to throw them out. Lastly, the workforces future expectations, beliefs and principles might also change towards the company, meaning a partial or total loss of the engagement from the employees which could easily lead a collective decrease in the productivity. HRM Strategic to tackle As HR strategic, one of the first issues to tackle should be to build a much healthier workplace environment to the wellbeing and productivity of all the company, however to be able to solve this issue the strategic should starts improving the lack of communication between all the workforce, making ice-breaking session involving all manager and plant workers. On the other hand, the HR strategic, should also look at the terms and conditions of the workforces formal contracts, giving additional benefits, securing their jobs stability to all the workforce or at least the best workers and lastly making periodically reviews of their salaries and their current position in the company, all these incentives are with the aim of create a better perception of their psychological contract and get back the employees engagement. As a complement and improvement of the psychological contract perception, the company should also invest in their employees, giving them special training and special support wherever needed, earning also some of the trust which has been lost during this whole process. In support of the business pressures, strategic responses and HRM factors mentions above, the table below shows a strategic framework as develop by Sparrow and Pettigrew to complement the main points which have just been described, this framework shows some of the external influences issues and business pressures that Cadbury is currently facing after Krafts takeover, highlighting the most strategic responses and the HRM factors to my point of view. Business Pressure Strategic Responses HRM Factors Cadbury Now UK Prime Minister has done nothing to secure the Cadburys jobs Takeover will lead to a collective jobs redundant and losses at Cadbury as part of the annual cost saving plan of  £450 millions Public and government concerns about maintaining social, ethical values, and inheritance of Cadbury Customers value and expectations towards Cadburys product may change specially within UK Lack of trust between Cadburys new owners and Cadburys employees A massive disappointed from the UK citizens regarding to the money that RSB bank has lent to Kraft to takeover Cadbury Agreement between Cadbury and UK Government to maintain the Cadburys workforce Better technology machines should be used to increase the productivity and reduce the costs efficiently Show the commitment and interest of Cadburys new owners to the workforce, doing the best of their capabilities to keep the social and ethical values, analysing the business strategic and vision of the company. Keeping promises up to the workforce and showing them that the company really cares and worries for its employees POSSIBLE IMPACTS Possible strike from Cadburys workforce Insufficient support from the Company to the workforce, deteriorating the communications Hidden pressure that managers are not aware of The workforces attitude towards their work activities may change, leaving an impact on the company productivity Stressful work environment Employees concerns about jumping ship and their future career within the Cadbury Cadbury in the Future The UK Government cannot do legally anything to stop the massive fires; they were only concern about their votes There are not hopes that anything will change for the better as result of the takeover The takeover brings a deeper financial crisis for UK Government concern about lack of investment from Cadbury Kraft in UK The maintaining of the Cadbury manufactories in UK The inheritance of Cadbury have come to the end Make an aggressive marketing camping to show everybody the benefits, the takeover has brought To expand the manufacturing production along UK, Create a strategic plan to help sustain the inheritance of Cadburys workforce families HRM STRATEGIC TO TACKLE Restructure the workface of the company Create a healthy workplace environment for the employees wellbeing and productivity of the company Retain the best employees of the Company ensuring them long-terms stability Maintain terms in staff legal contracts (e.g. pension schemes) Revise recruitment policies (to retain existing staff + attract new talents from outside) Introduce training + long-term benefits for commitment of existing staff Conduct ice-breaking sessions for new managers and employees to build positive relationships 1470 words Management of the Psychological Contract and Employee Engagement The management of the psychological contract and employee engagement is one of the areas how Cadbury could tackle its challenges in strategic people management; however to be able to tackle it appropriately, first is essential some degree of understanding of what a psychological contract and what employee engagement is. Psychological Contract There are many different definitions of what the psychological contract is; this concept was first introduce by Argyris, C. (1960), to refer to the different expectations that the employers and the employees have out of the formal contract, since this concept was introduced, many writers have attempted to modify and refine it. At a general level, the concept of Psychological Contract refers to a voluntary agreement between the employee and the employer in exchange of compensations (Rousseau, D. Schalk, R. 2000), in this voluntary agreement, each party, held a number of commitments and beliefs, those beliefs can take the form of promises, expectations or obligations which are generally unwritten and unspoken in the legal agreement contract, however they still play a critical role as they can be interpreted differently by each party (Osborn Jones 2000). This concept of psychological contract implies that either the employee or the employer can have a different perception of anothers expectations, voluntary commitments, obligations and aspirations which are out of the formal contract of employment (Herriot, P. et al. 1997). Therefore, a certain degree of mutual understanding of the agreement between both parties is essential to achieve each participants goals. (Rousseau, D. Schalk, R. 2000), Employee Engagement This seems to be an easy topic to define and describe, however after some research, the huge numbers of definitions regarding this issue seem to be uncountable, making this topic unclear but at the same time attractive enough to the HR consultancy market, consulting firms, business press and some academics writers. Having said that, one of the most complete definitions I found about employee engagement out there to my point of view is the one by Robinson et al., (2004). A positive attitude held by the employee towards the organization and its values. An engaged employee is aware of business context and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organisation. The organisation must work to develop and nurture engagement which requires a two-way relationship between employer and employee. Robinson et al., (2004) has also stated in his work, a set of additional characteristics of the employee engagement, which include a belief in the organisation, and the desire of the employees have to work and make the organisation better, basically the concept Robinson presented in his paper work is about the employees having a bigger picture and a better understanding of the business context as well as keeping up to date with the latest information which concern to his/her field. Relation between the Psychological Contract and the Employee Engagement Having defined the employee engagement as; a positive attitude, behaviour and/or outcome from the employees towards the company and its values, being aware of the whole business context and working together with the colleagues in order improve the performance of the company and gain the best benefits for the organization, and having defined psychological contract as; a set of beliefs which can take the forms of promises, expectations and/or obligations existing in a voluntary agreement between the employee and the employer. It seems to be a straightforward relationship each other definitions. Both definitions are relate to the employer and employee relationship, and the first challenge is to efficiently manage the loyalty and trust instead of dictate the rules by organizations, this relationship is fragile and should not be taken for granted by any of the parties, the second challenge is to keep a healthy relationship for the wellbeing of both participants. http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/news/features/Opinion/927664/Engagement-depends-clear-psychological-contract-employee-employer/ On one side, the employer expects that their employees always performance to the best of their capabilities, being loyal to the company and understand the whole business context, and on the other hand the employees want to be respected, valued, heard and compensated by the employers, therefore the key issue is to build mutual trust which engage the employees with the employers, always keeping an eye on the psychological contract, which means, keeping clear and understandable expectations for both participants (Wellin, M. 2007) However, Cadbury Previous Psychological Contract Having already analysed the general psychological contracts context, is much easier now to deepen in the previous Cadburys psychological contract, but bearing in mind this contract is a pure metaphoric action, where each participants have their own voluntary commitments regarding to the performance and fulfilment of each other, we can infer that each one of the 45000 UK Cadburys workforce have a different psychological contract, which make this an even bigger scenario to analyse but at the same time a extremely attractive, as based on the records, (reference) it shows that most of UK workforce had a similar metaphoric contract. Thus, is unavoidable raise a fundamental question; How Cadbury former owners made that all the forces underlying the legal agreement of their workforce where so similar to each other and how did they manage to sign 45000 similar psychological contracts where does not even exist a physical document as it is a subjective phenomenon? There are evidences (Morrinson, E. and Robinson, S. 1997) which indicate that the performance of each participants psychological contract is directly proportional to how clearly each participant has spelled out the conditions and exchange of their mutual agreement. This last paragraph makes me conclude that, Cadbury has truly understood this issue and has conveyed its commitments, beliefs, and expectations through their whole workforce, establishing in this way some degree of mutual agreement among its 45000 UK employees. Rousseau, D. Schalk R. (2000) indicated in his work that, when both participants of the psychological contract believe that they owed each other something, is very likely that each one gets whatever they desire. The power of the promises Cadbury seems to have conveyed well its expectations and beliefs, establishing a degree of mutual agreement. However, this might not be enough to unify the similar conditions of the psychological contracts in 45000 employees during 180 years. Is remarkable to note at this point, that all sort of beliefs cannot be taken as part of a psychological contract, what this means is, not all expectations, promises and obligations that arise in the workplace can form part of the psychological contract context, as if this happen the concept itself will be weak enough to utilize as an analytical tool (Convoy and Briner 2005), The challenge here is to identify and clarify, which promises, expectations, and/or obligations can be categorized as part of the psychological contract context, nevertheless, does not exist any concern for this essay to deepen in this subject. Having clarified that, psychological contracts are basically a subjective phenomenon based on implicit promises; promises which do not include any belief derive from other inferences. Despite to what we normally think that promises can only be a verbal action, in the psychological context the promises can also be inferred, and is right there, when it becomes difficult to properly interpret these promises into the psychological contract framework. The two key issues here are; primary, do not set promises in the legal contract which could lead to a future misunderstanding of the employees, second do not take into consideration promises derives from any inferences. Tackling the Challenges of the Psychological Contract Having spelled out the success of Cadburys previous psychological contract, is notorious that Kraft / Cadbury has the key issue to maintain the same psychological contract within the UK workforce in order to manage this takeover in the most appropriate way. Kraft will not enjoy of the current Cadburys workforce commitments until they truly understand its ingrain psychological contract as well as its own culture identity Therefore Kraft / Cadbury, in order to tackle the challenges of the psychological contract in the most effective way, they should firstly, fully understand the drivers of their beliefs and what make the employees engage with the company so tightly, taking into consideration the culture differences. As the saying goes, England and America are two different countries separated by the same language; this is a clear caveat to Kraft / Cadbury does not forget that exist some underlying forces of the legal contract, which could leads or infer to a misunderstanding of the beliefs between both participants and as consequence a disengagement of the workforces commitments. For instance, Kraft / Cadbury could hire an external local brand auditor to investigate the reason(s) of key employees engagement, such as plant employees and/or relevant senior employees with the company and/or the brand itself, this audit should be placed with the aim of understand the whole picture in a much clear scenario, before any action takes place to align the companys psychological contract Once these employee engagements reason(s) are clear and there are not doubts of the workforces beliefs, it is equally essential that Kraft/Cadbury spells out their own expectations towards the future of the company and most importantly, the future of their workforce, this action should be made in the most understandable way, covering the entire negatives and positives beliefs so that the workforce can clearly understand the companys position and deal with it in the same psychological contract context. However, this action of conveying the negatives and positives beliefs towards the company and workforce, does not guaranty that the workforce will accept them and share the same commitments that they were sharing before the merger, but at least it will not create wrong expectations, setting up fair rules during the game. Actions such as the recent announcement of the closing Somerdales factory close to Bristol, (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article7022608.ece) losing approximately 400 UK jobs, once Kraft had mentioned that there were not going to be any job cuts during the first six months of the merger, this announcement only creates unrealistic expectations among the workforce towards the company, and being this action the first impression which Kraft has given to their employees of breaking the pledges, it only shows the lack of principles and lack of commitments to keep what they say. These types of actions are the ones which Kraft has to avoid will happen again, after this announcement; it seems to be obvious that the way how Kraft expresses its beliefs and commitments, certainly has not been well understood not only for its workforce but also for all its UK customers and the UK government. Therefore, if Kraft really wants to be engage with their workforce is going to have to work even harder to firstly recover the trust which ever had gained and secondly to rectify the first opportunity which has just spoiled out. CONCLUSIONS

Time Series Space Phase Qualitative Analysis and Application

Time Series Space Phase Qualitative Analysis and Application Dan CHICEA1 and Silviu REI2 ABSTRACT: In a coherent light scattering experiment using a laser beam and a cuvette containing a suspension the interference field has a boiling speckle aspect. Using a detector and a data acquisition system a time series can be recorded. A possible definition for the space phase of a time series is defined. The distribution of the velocities and the trajectory in the phase space are analyzed both for computer simulated samples and for recordings on two suspensions that have the average particle size measured using Dynamic Light Scattering procedure. The results reveal that the distribution of the velocities and the trajectory in the phase space can be used in a qualitative way to characterize the average particle size in suspension. KEY WORDS: time series, phase space, velocity distributions, suspensions 1 INTRODUCTION If coherent light is incident on a medium with scattering centers (SC hereafter) a non-uniformly illuminated image is obtained, currently named speckled image, having a statistical distribution of the intensity over the interference field. The speckled image appears as a result of the interference of the wavelets scattered by the SC, each wavelet having a different phase and amplitude in each location of the interference field. The image changes in time as a consequence of the SC hereafter complex motion of both sedimentation and Brownian motion [1-3]. This complex motion produces fluctuations of the image intensity in each location of the interference field, giving the aspect of â€Å"boiling speckles†. The speckled image can be observed either in free space and is named objective speckle or on the image plane of a diffuse object illuminated by a coherent source and it is named subjective speckle in [4]. The review paper [5] names the two types of speckled images as far field speckle and image speckle. In this work the objective speckle, respectively the far field speckle is considered, recorded and analysed. Although light propagation through disperse systems such as biological cells in suspensions or grouped in tissues has been studied extensively, especially using image processing techniques [6], [7] the scattering process modelling and characterization is not straightforward. Recording the far field fluctuations on a certain location using a detector and a data acquisition system will produce a time series. Time series have been extensively analyzed using different procedures. A widely used class of procedures start with the Fourier transform to produce the power spectrum density (PSD). The shape of the PSD depends of two parameters. Finding them using a least squares fit will provide information on the size and size distribution of the particles in suspension. Just some of the papers that describe in detail and report results found using the above mentioned procedure, currently named Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), are [8-12]. An alternative procedure to analyse time series, whether produced by a detector and a data acquisition system in a light scattering experiment or extracted from a recording using a charged coupled device (CCD) [13], in a qualitative manner, using the patterns of the time signal in the space phase, is presented in the next section. 2 SPACE PHASE The space phase (SP hereafter) is the collection of all states for a system. A time series is actually a vector x(i), i=1à ·n, containing the collection of values, intensity if we record a far interference field in a light scattering experiment, and n is the total number of recorded values. Typically, the values are recorded at equal time intervals, Δt=1/fs, where fs is the sampling rate of the data acquisition system. We can define a velocity at time t, hence corresponding to the value x(i) of the time series, as the variation rate of the time signal at that moment: (1) We therefore find a pair of [x(i), v(i)] for each value in the time series, a total of n-1 pairs. Each pair represents a point in the 2 dimensional space, which we can define as the space phase (SP) for the time series. First a simple algorithm to generate in a realistic manner time series that were recorded during a DLS experiment was established. A time series, as results from the Fourier analysis of the recorded data [8-11], can be modelled as an overlapping of harmonic functions of different frequencies. Moreover, the smaller the particles in suspension are, the bigger the turnover point is [8] in the PSD. With these facts in mind, a program to generate the time series with a sampling rate fs was written and used. The program generates a certain number nf (50 for the work reported here) of amplitudes ai in the range [1, 10] using a uniform random distribution, with a random initial seed, computed using the system clock. It also generates nf frequencies fi in the range [f1, f2] and initial phases φi in the range [0, 2Ï€] and the vector containing the moments ti with the desired number of values, equally spaced at Δt. Each value xi is computed using equation (2): (2) In [8-12] it is stated that the smaller the particles are, the bigger the frequencies are, therefore an attempt to simulate experimentally recorded time series for different particles in suspension must have different frequency ranges. Several time series were used in the simulation presented in this work and two of them were selected. We call the first s1, having the 50 frequencies generated in the range 100-200 Hz and the second s2 with the frequencies in the range 2000-2500 Hz. Each series lasted for 2 seconds and fs was 10000 Hz, thus having 20000 values each. Figure 1:A 0.5 s sequence of each series. The blue line is for s1 and the red line for s2. A plot of a 0.5 s sequence of each series is presented in Fig. 1. It reveals a faster variation of the s2 time series than in s1, as expected. The SP for the two time series, s1 and s2 is presented in Figs. 2 and 3. We notice the big difference in the SP shape. S1 that contains slower fluctuations is elliptic closer to a circle for this axes range selection while s2 that contains faster fluctuations is a prolonged ellipsis. The distribution of the velocity values v, in SP, for the two series, each value calculated with equation (1), is presented in Fig.4. We notice the difference between the two distributions, laying in being wider for the s2 time series containing faster fluctuations. Moreover, we notice that the distribution is symmetrical in both situation and the resemblance with the Gaussian is very good. Figure 2:The SP for s1. Figure 3:The SP for s2. Figure 4:The distribution of the velocity values v, in SP, for the two series. The blue line is for s1 and the red line is for s2. 3 RESULTS and discussion The results of the qualitative analysis presented in the previous section were compared with experimental results. A water sample from a river was extracted after a heavy raining and was analyzed using the DLS procedure described in details in [8 12]. The DLS results reveal that the average diameter was 0.134 ÃŽ ¼m. We name this time series rw1. After 24 h the sample was analyzed again and the average diameter was found to be 0.635 ÃŽ ¼m. We name this time series rw2. The average diameter increased because the inorganic suspensions, like sand and silt, which have the biggest concentration and smaller diameter, became sediment, while the organic particles having the density closer to the water density remained suspended. Fig. 5 reveals the SP for the experimental rw1 time series and Fig. 6 for the experimental rw2 series having bigger particles in suspension. Examining the two imagines we notice that the SP of rw1 appears to have more domains, as there are at least two groups of particles in suspension, the inorganic particles, having bigger concentration and the organic particles, which remained suspended. Figure 5:The SP for rw1. Figure 6:The SP for rw2. The other feature of the SP that appears to present differences was the velocity distribution. The distribution for the velocity distributions of rw1 and rw2 time series recorded during a DLS experiment are presented in Fig. 7. Examining the velocity distributions we notice that the distribution of rw2 is wider than the distribution of rw1. Moreover, we notice that the distributions cannot be viewed as simple Gaussian distributions but as a complex overlap of several distributions and this can be the result of the fact that the particles in suspension, both in rw1 and rw2 have a complex size distribution rather than a mono dispersed distribution, therefore the simple observation from Fig. 4 does not stand in all situations. Figure 7:The distribution of the velocity values v, in SP, for the two series. The blue line is for rw2 and the red line is for rw1. 4 CONCLUSION The SP was defined for a time series as the collection of all possible states. Several time series were generated using a computer code written for this purpose. The time series were the sum of 50 harmonic functions with random amplitudes, phases and frequencies, the last being generated in a certain interval. Two series with frequencies in the intervals 100 – 200 Hz and 2000 – 2500 Hz were generated starting from the assumption that the frequency of the fluctuations in a DLS time series strongly depends of the suspended particle size. A scatter plot in the SP and a velocity distribution are presented for each of the two samples. The simulation reveals that the plot of the SP can give a qualitative image about the particles assumed to be in suspension. The smaller the particles are and the narrower the particle size distribution is (reflected in smaller frequency range), the more prolonged the image in the SP is. Moreover, smaller particles (hence bigger frequencies) produce a wider velocity distribution. A narrow frequency interval produces a symmetrical distribution resembling very well a Gaussian. These qualitative conclusions are confirmed in part by the results of the same procedures applied on experimentally recorded time series during a DLS experiment. Using the two river water samples, we found the shape of the image of the SP appears to exhibit different domains if there are more types of particles in suspension. And more, the velocity distribution appears to be the sum of several distributions, under the same circumstances. These conclusions suggest a simple procedure that can be used in monitoring the evolution of the particle size in a suspension, as in sedimentation of particles in rivers, colloid aggregation or biological fluids. The shape of the space phase and the width and shape of the velocity distribution can provide qualitative information on the distribution of the average suspended particle diameter. Work is scheduled to simulate the time series in a more realistic manner, considering a complex size distribution of the suspended particles. Here are mentioned the institutes from where are the authors (Style 1, Times New Roman, 10 points, left, normal)[R1] 1 Professor, Ph.D., Faculty of Sciences, Department of Environmental Sciences, Physics, Physical Education and Sports, University â€Å"Lucian Blaga†, Sibiu, Romania 2 Physicist, M.S., Group Leader, Continental Automotive Systems, Sibiu, Romania E-mail: [emailprotected]; [emailprotected] 5 REFERENCES à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Coherent Light Scattering on Nanofluids Computer Simulation Results, Applied Optics, Vol. 47, No. 10, pp. 1434-1442, (2008). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, A Simple Algorithm to Simulate Nanoparticles Motion in a Nanofluid, U.P.B. Sci. Bull., Series A, Vol. 76, Iss. 2, pp: 199-206, (2014). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Radu Chicea, Liana Maria Chicea, Using Chodin to Simulate Coherent Light Scattering Dynamics on Biological Suspensions, Romanian Journal of Biophysics, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 157–170, (2010). à ¢- º Joseph.W. Goodman, Statistical Properties of Laser Speckle Patterns, in Laser speckle and related phenomena, Vol.9 in series Topics in Applied Physics, J.C. Dainty, Ed., Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo, (1984). à ¢- º David Briers, Laser Doppler, Speckle and Related Techniques for Blood Perfusion Mapping and Imaging, Physiol. Meas. 22, R35–R66, (2001). à ¢- º David Briers, Donald D. Duncan, Evan Hirst, Sean J. Kirkpatrick, Marcus Larsson, Wiendelt Steenbergen, Tomas Stromberg, and Oliver B. Thompson, Laser speckle contrast imaging: theoretical and practical limitations, Journal of Biomedical Optics 18(6), 066018(1-9), (2013). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Biospeckle Size and Contrast Measurement Application in Particle Sizing and Concentration Assessment, Romanian Journal of Physics, Vol. 52, Numbers 5-7, pp. 581-587, (2007). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, A Study of Nanoparticle Aggregation by Coherent Light Scattering, Current Nanoscience, vol. 8 issue 6, pp. 259-265, 2012, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/157341312800167704. à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Revealing FE3O4 Nanoparticles Aggregation Dynamics Using Dynamic Light Scattering, Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials – Rapid Communications vol. 3, no. 12, pp. 1299 – 1305, (2009). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Nanoparticles And Nanoparticle Aggregates Sizing by DLS and AFM, D. Chicea, Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials – Rapid Communications vol. 4, issue 9, pp. 1310 – 1315, (2010). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Emil Indrea, Carmen Monica Cretu, Assesing FE3O4 Nanoparticle Size by DLS, XRD AND AFM, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced MaterialsVol: 14,Issue: 5-6, pp: 460-466, (2012). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Revealing FE3O4 Nanoparticle Aggregation in Aqueous Suspension by Nonconventional Optical Methods, Journal of Optoelectronics And Advanced Materials Vol. 15, No. 9 10, pp. 982 – 988, (2013). à ¢- º Dan Chicea, Application of Whole Blood Coherent Light Scattering Dynamics Analysis Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials,Vol. 10, No. 8, pp. 2163-2167, (2008). 6 notation The following symbols are used in this paper: 1 ACADEMIC JOURNAL OF MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING, VOL. 7,ISSUE 1/2009 [R1]Trebuie facut un review la povestea asta !!!

The Forbidden Love of Romeo and Juliet :: Free Essay Writer

As the feud between two families, Capulet and Montague, continue, their children, Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague, face a bigger problem; forbidden love. Taking place in Verona, an ignorant Romeo first meets a childish Juliet at the Capulet’s party. Romeo and his kinsman, Benvolio, attend the party masked, searching for his first love, Rosaline. Coincidentally, Romeo meets Juliet, a new beauty, and falls in love with her not knowing the fact that she is a Capulet. The feud continues, leading one mistake after another, until both families realize their selfishness at the last minute. The unfortunate tragedy of two â€Å"star-crossed lovers† is ironically caused by the impetuosity of Romeo and Juliet themselves (Shakespeare 7). Impetuosity is the main flaw that leads to the early death of Romeo and Juliet. Impetuosity in their sense of honor, love, and their sense of idealism contributed to Romeo and Juliet to an early death. They both had a sense of honor and were full of love and idealism. These virtues, honor, love and idealism, that seek to sustain life, end up destroying them. Romeo and Juliet become victims of their own fate because they carry everything to the highest standards and are too inexperienced to decide the fate of the love between them. Romeo had honor as his virtue, which caused him to fight Tybalt for killing Mercutio: Romeo. †¦My very friend, hath got this mortal hurt / In my behalf – my reputation stained / With Tybalt’s slander – Tybalt, that an hour†¦ / And in my temper softened valor steel! (3.1.116-122) Romeo denies the fate of Mercutio who fought against Tybalt and lost, so he challenges Tybalt to fight in defense of his honor. His sense of honor would not allow himself to ignore the death of Mercutio. It mandated his absurd behavior to take Tybalt’s life which even further separated the Montague and Capulet family. Moreover, Romeo still decides to marry Juliet after he takes Tybalt’s life. His sense of honor leads him to find Father Lawrence who will marry both Juliet

Taxing and E-Commerce Essay -- Internet Tax Sales Papers

Taxing and E-Commerce With the advent of the Internet, e-commerce exploded, and in 2003, the estimated value of online sales was 95.7 billion dollars (epaynews). It also is estimated that 30% of online users buy online (epaynews). As e-commerce and the revenues from e-commerce increase, so do the questions and problems concerning taxes. Because of the global nature of the World Wide Web, and more than 30,000 tax jurisdictions in the United States (US), (Internet Taxation) it is easy to see the complications that exist in the taxation of e-commerce. Who do you tax? How is it collected? Can taxes be collected from a sale that was made in another state, and what is considered a substantial â€Å"nexus† in the buyers state. Because 75% of the American population have access and use the Internet (Don’t Tax the Internet) this is an issue that affects the majority of Americans. According to an article published by the Citizens For a Sound Economy, â€Å"State and local access fees could add 20-25 % to the average Internet consumer’s bill †¦ that may not sound like much in Washington, but it could strand millions of low-income Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide† (Don’t tax the internet). Because taxation is an issue that affects most Americans, it is important to understand what types of taxes that there are and that could be levied, the past and current internet taxation policies, and finally the challenges and benefits of internet taxation. There are many different taxes that are being considered at this time, and that could be levied on the Internet and its users. The first type, which is being considered, affects all Internet users, as it is a tax on Internet access. In some states where this type of tax does exist it is ... ...d affect global consumers, I think that it is fair that the consumer be subject to the vendor’s country’s tax. I learned a lot from the research that I did. I learned that those in the government are considering Internet taxation, and whether we agree or disagree, it is important that we get involved. Otherwise, we may end up with an outcome that we disagree with. Work Cited Epaynews: http://www.epaynews.com/statistics/purchases.html Internet Taxation: http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/centers/dewitt/course/internetandsociety/taxation/ Don’t Tax the Internet: http://www.cse.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=1748 Internet Taxation: Which side are you on?: http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol4/internet-taxation.htm E-Commerce and Internet Taxation: Issues, Organizations, and Findings: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jun00/gordon-murnane.htm

Breaking Dawn: Between the book and movies Essay

There are many differences between breaking dawn the book and breaking dawn (parts 1 and 2) the movie. Some are blatantly obvious while others you have to know where to look to even be able to spot them. I’ll start with the book and part one of the movie. Edward and Bella had talked about her staying human for a full year before she turned so she could attend Dartmouth, But in the movie there was no talk at all about collage. In the movie Edward shares with Bella his rebellious vampire period the night before the wedding while in the movie it is only told is the book Twilight. The day of the wedding comes and it goes on quite beautifully. Many speeches were given in the movie yet none were described at all in the book. After the wedding Edward and Bella leave to go to the place where they were said to have their honeymoon. They were their 17 days after the wedding when belle discovers she was pregnant. In the movie it had only been 14 days since the wedding. She had decided to keep the baby and becomes very ill and forced to have the baby removed from inside of her because if she wasn’t Bella would have died. Edward roomed the baby and had no other choice but to turn her. Bella awakes from her transformation in the book wearing a silk blue dress and stiletto heals. In the movie she is wearing a blue dress but is also barefoot. She is then presented to her daughter which they names Renesmee. Edward showed Bella Renesmee’s powers and got to hold her for a bit. It was suggested she should hunt so Edward and Bella left. In the movie Bella encounters a mountain lion and a deer at the same time. After she had smelled a human and went after him. Edward stopped her. In the book the animals were hunted separately and she never goes after the human she smells. They get back and soon after Jacob arrives and Bella gets into a fight with him because of the fact that he had imprinted on her daughter and had given her the nickname Nessie. Which means Lock-Ness monster. Seth tries to stop them from fighting as a wolf and Bella pushes him hard into a tree with her new vampire strength, injuring his shoulder. In the book she injures him enough that Carlisle had to treat him for the broken shoulder. In the movie it isn’t bad enough for medical attention at all. A couple of weeks go by and Christmas arrives. Bella goes to her dads house with Edward and Renesmee. Renesmee is given a shiny golden locket theta day while in the movie it in given to her the night before the confrontation of the Volturi. The day of the confrontation came and Bella had Jacob ready to take Renesmee away if a fight breaks out. Well in the book the confrontation with the Volturi is almost peaceful. Alice and Jasper arrive just in time to present Nahual and Huilen. The Volturi see that Renesmee isn’t a threat to them and leave soon after. In the movie Alice arrives at the beginning and a huge battle scene occurs. Many people lose their lives including Carlisle, Jasper, and Aro. However it was only a vision of what would happen if the volturi decided to stay and fight. Nahuel and Huilen emerge from the woods and tells their story and then leave. Soon after Aro decides to leave because he doesn’t want to stay and fight only to die in the process. So as you can see this is only a few of the differences between Breaking Dawn the book and parts 1 and 2 of Breaking Dawn the movie.

A case study of clothes R Us Essay

Introduction Clothes R Us opened its doors and began operations more than a decade ago.   When the company first opened, the founders and CEOs were on the floor trying to sell to customers their various clothes and designs. The clothes came with economized prices, saved customers time that would have been spent looking for the right attire and in so doing make the customer’s lives less complicated. The store has grown so much in the past decade, to become a major supplier chain that is not only nationally recognized but also globally renowned. The phenomenal growth comes with even higher growth in terms of annual sales and income. The company has surprisingly continues to maintain some sort of loose human resource strategy. Managers have paid little attention towards restructuring the human resource and monitoring of performance especially when it comes to fixed employees. Lack of a centralized system to control and manage the departments’ means that there are no specific details on the performance of employees.   Clothes R us has operated with a decentralized, freewheeling culture in which each store manager has treated his or her own employees as some kind of personal kingdom in which the manager has the right to control their recruitment and performance as they see fit. Majority of the full time sales people have college degrees in addition to vast experience in their area of specialization. However, there is continued discontent with the reliance on casual employees.   The origin of the problem stemmed from the early days when the company required cheap labor. Unfortunately, the continued reliance on casual employees has caused demoralization among the permanent employees. A company that was seeing much growth in the past is not facing a crisis in human resource. Defining the problem Even with various strategies coming to play to ensure that the company does not run out of required manpower, these will only be effective if the permanent employees are motivated to perform at a much higher level.   Clothes R US is only starting to realize the importance of a motivated work force. The challenge comes in ensuring and maintain the motivation of employees.   Continued reliance on casual employees has restrained the flexibility of the permanent employees. Employees lack the opportunity to be independent. Casual employees take up roles that would require creative management and skills; as such the company is now suffering from the existence of a dull work force. Managers have been slow in understanding, how flexibility motivates the employees.   Flexibility is not just in items of duties but also in terms of the work hours and even the work place. A common quote is that change is as good as a rest. Professional human resource consultants often advice companies to ensure that employees have a variety of talents, shifts and even work desks. The change often serves to make the job seem new and therefore motivate the employee.   Poor motivation also means high turnover of the employees. Low confidence:   confidence is a character that lays down the foundation of employee motivation. It is important for employees to feel they not only have the skills but also the know how to deal with various challenges at the work place. Since, Clothes R US focuses more on employing temporarily employees to manage simple tasks; employees are fast losing confidence in their ability to perform. With the planned expansion, the company is now facing a crisis. Employees are unwilling to leave their comfort zones, unwilling to volunteer for the new project and even opting for increased turn over.   Because majority of the employees in the company exhibit low self esteem, they are unable to make use of their skills and talents. Further, they are completely unable to form positive work relationships. This means that they are less than loyal to the company and thus more likely to seek other employment even when they are earning less. It is not surprising therefore to find that employees of cloths R US are always finding excuses as to why they are not performing, why the company is not growing rather than enhancing their own skills to ensure better performance.   The company is currently having a permanent work force suffering from low self esteem. Lowered expectations: one of the main drawbacks of relying on current and contingent employees is that the performance levels and expectations of success have been lowered in the company. It is therefore not surprising to find that the permanent employees only do as much as is expected of them to meet their own duties. The permanent employees do not push themselves or even apply themselves wholeheartedly and diligently to their jobs. The company low expectations have served to kill employee morale to do better and better at each task. Instead, employees report to work, do the minimum and leave the rest to the casual employees. Contingency syndrome: contingency workers often provide an advantage to employers. Clothes R US began taking advantage of this group of worker during the early years of expansion. Contingency workers do not expect benefits and are often paid much less than permanent workers. They are given challenging tasks which would otherwise cost the company in terms of training permanent employees to ensure they have the skills to complete the job.   Unfortunately, the increase of contingency workers in the company has had a negative impact. Contingency workers tend to bring restlessness in permanent employees who are convinced that life could get better and more interesting outside the company. Further, contingency workers do not posses the security and stability of permanent employees; they therefore lack commitment to the job which tends to rub off on permanent employees. They prefer the freedom of their temporary status and often seem to be highly compensated for simple tasks. This situation is likely to de-motivate the permanent employees in addition to causing conflict and strain with the other employees. With time, the permanent employees begin to lose interest in particular tasks foe which they feel they should also be compensated and rewarded. Legal implications Change in organization structure: a move or expansion of Clothes R US not only affects the location of the business but also the organization and business structure. Managers will need to sit down and re-define jobs and responsibilities to accommodate the new store. This also means determining the methods through which the stores will receive their inventory and distribute the same. As a registered business, the company will need to report the change in structure. Gopal (2008) indicates that this is a step that is often over-looked during expansion and which could prove slightly more than costly to the new venture. Registered businesses need to record such changes and report them to the registrar of businesses for their own protection. Should a dispute arise, the company will turn to the changes recorded with the registrar and this is what will be used to determine the direction of the case. Business licenses: although the new store will be operating as a franchise of the main store, it is important to note that licenses will be required for this particular business. This includes licenses to operate in Sheffield, and also distribute items in Sheffield. Lack of a license is considered fraud and could land senior managers and the business itself in a lot of legal problems. In addition, the business will require a tax registration. Many business owners assume that the new venture will operate with the same tax registration. However, according to the law, both businesses are separate ventures and require individual tax registration licenses. Zoning requirements: although there are several clothing and fashion businesses operating in Sheffield, before opening the store it is important to research and find out some of the zoning requirements. To avoid congestion zoning laws are changed frequently. Should such law take effect before the opening of the business, it is likely that the same business could be closed before taking off. Non- disclosure: being in a volatile industry such as fashion and clothing; the company has expanded very fast. With a high turnover of employees, it is not surprising that many other businesses with almost similar structure including marketing and customer relationship are being set up.   This exposure is a result of ignoring the importance of a non-disclosure agreement with all employees. Confidential information is leaked, former employees set up competing shops all because the non- disclosure is ignored, (Dessler 2000). From here on henceforth all employees permanent and contingent should sign non-disclosure agreements prepared by the legal departments and carefully structured for the company needs. Non- disclosure agreements are not just for the employees but also other stakeholders who come into contact with the company. This includes suppliers who may be tempted to contact competitors with sensitive information that could earn them a good and better profit. This means that all contracts must include a tight and binding non- disclosure agreement. This reduces the exposure of the company and gives a chance to legally fight any exposure by stakeholders, suppliers and employees (former and present) successfully. Maintaining healthy relationships During a move such as is planned by Clothes R US, the company often ignores the needs of the human resource or does not adequately address such needs. A move and expansion such as this one is likely to bring feelings of anxiety or apprehension. If such feelings are not properly addressed, the employees will become less than motivated and conflict levels may arise. The following are some of the strategies which could be employed to ensure a healthy relationship during the move: Communication: the communication channels between employees and senior managers of Cloths are US have not always been open. Employees are often in the dark about exactly what is happening to the company. Of course, this is because managers have been plagued with the disease of contingent workers. During this move, it would be advisable for the managers to be open and develop an open door policy with regard to issues facing the company and assisting employees manage the challenges they are facing.   Through proper and good communication, senior managers of the company can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their own employees. It may also be surprising to learn that some employees possess talent, skills and information that would not only make the move much easier bust also more profitable to the company. Empowerment: employees of Clothes R Us have suffered from lack of empowerment. This has led to lowered performance and serious problems in motivation. The moving period is an ideal opportunity to empower the permanent employees by providing them with unique tasks cultured for their own training and set of skills. This will give employees an opportunity to become more involved and therefore foster commitment to the project. Mathis and Jackson (2003), state that In addition, empowerment will free managers to focus on the bigger tasks rather than sweating the details. This is a great opportunity for employees to test their own abilities and creativity in dealing with the challenges that come forth. The result is a much more motivated and high skilled set of workers who are committed to the project fully. It is time for the senior managers to trust their own employees. Groups and Teams: the company definitely requires some form of synergy in the work force. This could be easily achieved by relying on groups and teams. In teams, members are expected to communicate, bounce ideas around and correct each other’s mistakes. The result is that there is a diverse set of knowledge. Further, tasks are completed as a team fostering healthy and positive relationships which have been lacking within the company. According to Jeffs (2008), to enjoy the full fruits of groups and teams, the managers have the responsibility of ensuring that the teams are composed of members with complimentary knowledge, skills and characters. This reduces the amount of conflict that could be experienced and promotes more positive forms of challenging each other. The groups also need to enjoy some sort of autonomy with minimum supervision so that the members enjoy the freedom of decision making.   The teams in themselves are leaders, coaches and guides in the tasks that are. Recommendations The problems faced by Clothes R US can be resolved simply though the three components of the expectancy theory by Vroom Victor. His theory suggests that when employees believe that high efforts are often met with high rewards, they become more motivated. The components of such motivation are: Increasing expectancy: employees of the company have been suffering from low expectations, a situation that has been brought on by increased reliance of young, temporary workers. Senior managers have an opportunity to communicate that high efforts will lead to great rewards for permanent employees. Based on this, employees need to be challenged to take up challenging tasks, the success of which will be increased rewards. It is the success in such tasks whether in a team or individually that are likely to increase the level of expectancy.   For workers to have the confidence to take up such challenging tasks, they may require extra training and team building activities that will give them the confidence. Increasing instrumentality: managers at Clothes R US have ignored and barely understand the importance of instrumentality to increasing employee motivation. Instrumentality speaks to the employee’s perception about the extent to which performance within certain tasks will lead to desired goals and results. Such goals include, increased pay, job security and the chance to undertake more interesting and captivating projects.   Instrumentality can be achieved simply though the expansion of job duties and flexibility of job titles which allow employees to test their own abilities and talents. For example, should the company link pay rises to performance; there will be increased instrumentation and as such more motivation not just to work but to excel at work. This will also deal with the issue of increased turn over. Increasing valence: expectancy theory acknowledges that when it comes to goals and outcomes, people are different. Whereas some workers may respond to pay increase, others are more interested in challenging tasks and projects. Valence therefore addresses how each of the outcomes appears to employees. Senior managers will not just throw in what they think will be attractive to employees. Rather, they will take time to understand the work force and appeal to their own variety of desires, goals and needs. A key challenge for the managers of Clothes R US, is finding the right pattern of motivation while at the same time trying to expand the scope of the business. No matter how many desirable outcomes the managers present to the employees, if they continue to feel that temporary workers can do better than motivation will go down, (David 2005).   This means scaling down on the contingent workers and relying more and more on the permanent employees. The company has the challenge of brining back confidence to its workers. This means focusing on diversity in the job specifications and ensuring flexibility in the tasks assigned to the work force. References David, F. R. (2005).  Strategic management: Concepts and cases. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall. Dessler, G. (2000).  Human resource management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gopal, C. C. R. (2008).  Business legislation (textbook with suggested answers). New Delhi: New Age International (P) Ltd., Publishers. Jeffs, C. (2008).  Strategic management. Los Angeles: SAGE. Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2003).  Human resource management. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-western.    A case study of clothes R Us Essay Introduction Clothes R Us opened its doors and began operations more than a decade ago.   When the company first opened, the founders and CEOs were on the floor trying to sell to customers their various clothes and designs. The clothes came with economized prices, saved customers time that would have been spent looking for the right attire and in so doing make the customer’s lives less complicated. The store has grown so much in the past decade, to become a major supplier chain that is not only nationally recognized but also globally renowned. The phenomenal growth comes with even higher growth in terms of annual sales and income. The company has surprisingly continues to maintain some sort of loose human resource strategy. Managers have paid little attention towards restructuring the human resource and monitoring of performance especially when it comes to fixed employees. Lack of a centralized system to control and manage the departments’ means that there are no specific details on the performance of employees.   Clothes R us has operated with a decentralized, freewheeling culture in which each store manager has treated his or her own employees as some kind of personal kingdom in which the manager has the right to control their recruitment and performance as they see fit. Majority of the full time sales people have college degrees in addition to vast experience in their area of specialization. However, there is continued discontent with the reliance on casual employees.   The origin of the problem stemmed from the early days when the company required cheap labor. Unfortunately, the continued reliance on casual employees has caused demoralization among the permanent employees. A company that was seeing much growth in the past is not facing a crisis in human resource. Defining the problem Even with various strategies coming to play to ensure that the company does not run out of required manpower, these will only be effective if the permanent employees are motivated to perform at a much higher level.   Clothes R US is only starting to realize the importance of a motivated work force. The challenge comes in ensuring and maintain the motivation of employees.   Continued reliance on casual employees has restrained the flexibility of the permanent employees. Employees lack the opportunity to be independent. Casual employees take up roles that would require creative management and skills; as such the company is now suffering from the existence of a dull work force. Managers have been slow in understanding, how flexibility motivates the employees.   Flexibility is not just in items of duties but also in terms of the work hours and even the work place. A common quote is that change is as good as a rest. Professional human resource consultants often advice companies to ensure that employees have a variety of talents, shifts and even work desks. The change often serves to make the job seem new and therefore motivate the employee.   Poor motivation also means high turnover of the employees. Low confidence:   confidence is a character that lays down the foundation of employee motivation. It is important for employees to feel they not only have the skills but also the know how to deal with various challenges at the work place. Since, Clothes R US focuses more on employing temporarily employees to manage simple tasks; employees are fast losing confidence in their ability to perform. With the planned expansion, the company is now facing a crisis. Employees are unwilling to leave their comfort zones, unwilling to volunteer for the new project and even opting for increased turn over.   Because majority of the employees in the company exhibit low self esteem, they are unable to make use of their skills and talents. Further, they are completely unable to form positive work relationships. This means that they are less than loyal to the company and thus more likely to seek other employment even when they are earning less. It is not surprising therefore to find that employees of cloths R US are always finding excuses as to why they are not performing, why the company is not growing rather than enhancing their own skills to ensure better performance.   The company is currently having a permanent work force suffering from low self esteem. Lowered expectations: one of the main drawbacks of relying on current and contingent employees is that the performance levels and expectations of success have been lowered in the company. It is therefore not surprising to find that the permanent employees only do as much as is expected of them to meet their own duties. The permanent employees do not push themselves or even apply themselves wholeheartedly and diligently to their jobs. The company low expectations have served to kill employee morale to do better and better at each task. Instead, employees report to work, do the minimum and leave the rest to the casual employees. Contingency syndrome: contingency workers often provide an advantage to employers. Clothes R US began taking advantage of this group of worker during the early years of expansion. Contingency workers do not expect benefits and are often paid much less than permanent workers. They are given challenging tasks which would otherwise cost the company in terms of training permanent employees to ensure they have the skills to complete the job.   Unfortunately, the increase of contingency workers in the company has had a negative impact. Contingency workers tend to bring restlessness in permanent employees who are convinced that life could get better and more interesting outside the company. Further, contingency workers do not posses the security and stability of permanent employees; they therefore lack commitment to the job which tends to rub off on permanent employees. They prefer the freedom of their temporary status and often seem to be highly compensated for simple tasks. This situation is likely to de-motivate the permanent employees in addition to causing conflict and strain with the other employees. With time, the permanent employees begin to lose interest in particular tasks foe which they feel they should also be compensated and rewarded. Legal implications Change in organization structure: a move or expansion of Clothes R US not only affects the location of the business but also the organization and business structure. Managers will need to sit down and re-define jobs and responsibilities to accommodate the new store. This also means determining the methods through which the stores will receive their inventory and distribute the same. As a registered business, the company will need to report the change in structure. Gopal (2008) indicates that this is a step that is often over-looked during expansion and which could prove slightly more than costly to the new venture. Registered businesses need to record such changes and report them to the registrar of businesses for their own protection. Should a dispute arise, the company will turn to the changes recorded with the registrar and this is what will be used to determine the direction of the case. Business licenses: although the new store will be operating as a franchise of the main store, it is important to note that licenses will be required for this particular business. This includes licenses to operate in Sheffield, and also distribute items in Sheffield. Lack of a license is considered fraud and could land senior managers and the business itself in a lot of legal problems. In addition, the business will require a tax registration. Many business owners assume that the new venture will operate with the same tax registration. However, according to the law, both businesses are separate ventures and require individual tax registration licenses. Zoning requirements: although there are several clothing and fashion businesses operating in Sheffield, before opening the store it is important to research and find out some of the zoning requirements. To avoid congestion zoning laws are changed frequently. Should such law take effect before the opening of the business, it is likely that the same business could be closed before taking off. Non- disclosure: being in a volatile industry such as fashion and clothing; the company has expanded very fast. With a high turnover of employees, it is not surprising that many other businesses with almost similar structure including marketing and customer relationship are being set up.   This exposure is a result of ignoring the importance of a non-disclosure agreement with all employees. Confidential information is leaked, former employees set up competing shops all because the non- disclosure is ignored, (Dessler 2000). From here on henceforth all employees permanent and contingent should sign non-disclosure agreements prepared by the legal departments and carefully structured for the company needs. Non-disclosure agreements are not just for the employees but also other stakeholders who come into contact with the company. This includes suppliers who may be tempted to contact competitors with sensitive information that could earn them a good and better profit. This means that all contracts must include a tight and binding non- disclosure agreement. This reduces the exposure of the company and gives a chance to legally fight any exposure by stakeholders, suppliers and employees (former and present) successfully. Maintaining healthy relationships During a move such as is planned by Clothes R US, the company often ignores the needs of the human resource or does not adequately address such needs. A move and expansion such as this one is likely to bring feelings of anxiety or apprehension. If such feelings are not properly addressed, the employees will become less than motivated and conflict levels may arise. The following are some of the strategies which could be employed to ensure a healthy relationship during the move: Communication: the communication channels between employees and senior managers of Cloths are US have not always been open. Employees are often in the dark about exactly what is happening to the company. Of course, this is because managers have been plagued with the disease of contingent workers. During this move, it would be advisable for the managers to be open and develop an open door policy with regard to issues facing the company and assisting employees manage the challenges they are facing.   Through proper and good communication, senior managers of the company can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their own employees. It may also be surprising to learn that some employees possess talent, skills and information that would not only make the move much easier bust also more profitable to the company. Empowerment: employees of Clothes R Us have suffered from lack of empowerment. This has led to lowered performance and serious problems in motivation. The moving period is an ideal opportunity to empower the permanent employees by providing them with unique tasks cultured for their own training and set of skills. This will give employees an opportunity to become more involved and therefore foster commitment to the project. Mathis and Jackson (2003), state that In addition, empowerment will free managers to focus on the bigger tasks rather than sweating the details. This is a great opportunity for employees to test their own abilities and creativity in dealing with the challenges that come forth. The result is a much more motivated and high skilled set of workers who are committed to the project fully. It is time for the senior managers to trust their own employees. Groups and Teams: the company definitely requires some form of synergy in the work force. This could be easily achieved by relying on groups and teams. In teams, members are expected to communicate, bounce ideas around and correct each other’s mistakes. The result is that there is a diverse set of knowledge. Further, tasks are completed as a team fostering healthy and positive relationships which have been lacking within the company. According to Jeffs (2008), to enjoy the full fruits of groups and teams, the managers have the responsibility of ensuring that the teams are composed of members with complimentary knowledge, skills and characters. This reduces the amount of conflict that could be experienced and promotes more positive forms of challenging each other. The groups also need to enjoy some sort of autonomy with minimum supervision so that the members enjoy the freedom of decision making.   The teams in themselves are leaders, coaches and guides in the tasks that are. Recommendations The problems faced by Clothes R US can be resolved simply though the three components of the expectancy theory by Vroom Victor. His theory suggests that when employees believe that high efforts are often met with high rewards, they become more motivated. The components of such motivation are: Increasing expectancy: employees of the company have been suffering from low expectations, a situation that has been brought on by increased reliance of young, temporary workers. Senior managers have an opportunity to communicate that high efforts will lead to great rewards for permanent employees. Based on this, employees need to be challenged to take up challenging tasks, the success of which will be increased rewards. It is the success in such tasks whether in a team or individually that are likely to increase the level of expectancy.   For workers to have the confidence to take up such challenging tasks, they may require extra training and team building activities that will give them the confidence. Increasing instrumentality: managers at Clothes R US have ignored and barely understand the importance of instrumentality to increasing employee motivation. Instrumentality speaks to the employee’s perception about the extent to which performance within certain tasks will lead to desired goals and results. Such goals include, increased pay, job security and the chance to undertake more interesting and captivating projects.   Instrumentality can be achieved simply though the expansion of job duties and flexibility of job titles which allow employees to test their own abilities and talents. For example, should the company link pay rises to performance; there will be increased instrumentation and as such more motivation not just to work but to excel at work. This will also deal with the issue of increased turn over. Increasing valence: expectancy theory acknowledges that when it comes to goals and outcomes, people are different. Whereas some workers may respond to pay increase, others are more interested in challenging tasks and projects. Valence therefore addresses how each of the outcomes appears to employees. Senior managers will not just throw in what they think will be attractive to employees. Rather, they will take time to understand the work force and appeal to their own variety of desires, goals and needs. A key challenge for the managers of Clothes R US, is finding the right pattern of motivation while at the same time trying to expand the scope of the business. No matter how many desirable outcomes the managers present to the employees, if they continue to feel that temporary workers can do better than motivation will go down, (David 2005).   This means scaling down on the contingent workers and relying more and more on the permanent employees. The company has the challenge of brining back confidence to its workers. This means focusing on diversity in the job specifications and ensuring flexibility in the tasks assigned to the work force. References David, F. R. (2005).  Strategic management: Concepts and cases. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall. Dessler, G. (2000).  Human resource management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gopal, C. C. R. (2008).  Business legislation (textbook with suggested answers). New Delhi: New Age International (P) Ltd., Publishers. Jeffs, C. (2008).  Strategic management. Los Angeles: SAGE. Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2003).  Human resource management. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-western.