memo for motion against summary judgment :: essays research papers

I.     Introduction and Standard for Opposition to Summary Judgment      Crowell Academy, Inc. furthermore, Arturo Gomez, (hereinafter, on the whole â€Å"Crowell†) were horribly careless and utilized adamant offense in their duties including the fencing club. The dealing intensity of Crowell was so terribly inconsistent in order to put Lajuana Barnett helpless before Crowell’s carelessness. In conclusion, the exculpatory proviso contained in the discharge structure (see discharge structure) is void as against open approach. Thus, under Maryland law, it is up to the trier of actuality to decide whether the exculpatory condition is unenforceable. Thusly, there is a debate with respect to the real issue of material truth identified with Crowell’s Answer, Crowell can be at risk to Lajauna Barnett for carelessness, and Crowell isn't qualified for Summary Judgment as an issue of law.      Summary Judgment ought to be allowed distinctly upon an indicating that there is no real issue concerning any material actuality. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co. v. Rairigh, 59 Md. Application. 305, 313, cert. denied, 301 Md. 176 (1984). In the event that there is a contention between the surmisings which might be drawn from the proof under the steady gaze of the court, synopsis judgment isn't appropriate. Boucher v. Riner, 68 Md. Application. 539, 543 (1986) (citing Coffey v. Derby Steel Co., 291 Md. 241, 246-247 (1981)). Except if the realities are so clear as to allow a decision as an issue of law, it is for the trier of truth to decide if a defendant’s careless direct adds up to net carelessness. Jacob v. Davis, 128 Md.App. 433, 465 (1999) (citing Artis v. Figures, 100 Md.App. 633, 652 (1994)). By and large, exculpatory understandings in any case legitimate are not translated to cover the more outrageous types of carelessness wilful, wanton, crazy, or gross. Winterstein v. Wilcom, 16 Md.App. 130, 136 (1972). II.      Statement of Undisputed Material Facts 1.     Defendant Arturo Gomez is the fencing trainer at Crowell and consistently applicable to this issue went about as Crowell’s hireling. 2.     Crowell gives weapons and electronic scoring gadgets for club individuals; club individuals give their own defensive hardware, including veil, glove, coat, and plastron. 3.     In the fencing Club meeting before October 16, 2001, Gomez taught colleagues in footwork preliminary to permitting them to deal with weapons 4.     In the October 16, 2001 club meeting, Gomez trained club individuals to wear their defensive gear for their underlying involvement in utilizing their weapons. 5.     Plaintiff’s nerve was cut off under her left arm when an epee cut through plaintiff’s coat. 6.     Plaintiff had put the plastron on her correct arm.

Substainable Tourism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Substainable Tourism - Research Paper Example For example, the program to build different offices including shopping centers, film corridors, lodgings and gambling clubs on the Sentosa Island was started in 2005 by the legislature of Singapore (Quah, 2010). The essential goal of this task was to make new openings other than expanding outside ventures and the travel industry. As indicated by Chen (2009), the focal point of the SDC in creating areas along the coastline is producing new roads for relaxation, for example, yachting and wind-riding which inevitably is adding to the age of more employments for the nearby populace. The legislature has likewise changed numerous recreation exercises including betting along the southern piece of Singapore. Other than pulling in ability and speculation, this move is improving Singapore’s notoriety as a liberal city. SDC has exploited these ongoing changes by building up a few club at huge numbers of its areas. Bunnell (2010) says that SDC utilizes more than 1000 specialists at every one of its club and gives circuitous work to another 5000 through close by bars, cafés, providers and lodgings.

CP13 Podcast with Mike Smalls from Hoopla Software about Boosting Team Performance

CP13 Podcast with Mike Smalls from Hoopla Software about Boosting Team Performance INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi folks! Do you have a sales team and are really interested in pushing up your motivation while achieving more results? Today we have an entrepreneur who knows all about this. Hi, Mike, who are you and what do you do?Mike: Hello, Mike Smalls, Im the founder and CEO of Hoopla. So I lead the strategy and direction of the company.Martin: What is Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla is a sales motivation and communication platform that allows companies to take          normally hidden data from backend systems like CRM systems and other areas, and bring that data to light. In order to drive the right kind of behaviors and actions from the sales teams and other people within the company by highlighting successes, creating competitions and recognizing performance as it happens through big screen TVs or mobile devices around the company. Its like an ESPN network for the entire company.Martin: Mike, can you elaborate a little bit on your background and at what point in time did you come up with this idea? Was there some kind of moment where you thought: Ah! Thats a super cool idea?Mike: So my background is in building and running sales teams, sales and marketing teams for a variety of companies, big companies like Symantec as well as a bunch of start-ups. I just kept seeing the same kind of patterns and challenges. I wanted to solve problems that I had, which was getting folks to do the right kind of actions and behaviors in advance to produce results as opposed to reporting on information after the fact.So getting them to do the right kind of calls, meetings, and create opportunities we needed to tap into their natural psychology. And the Ah-ha moment really was sitting in front of my TV on a Sunday watching a football game. When I watched one of these athletes do a flip into the endzone just to get on the Sunday highlight reel and the next weeks review show. I realized that the wiring of an athlete and a sales person are very similar. They love to be on stage an d they love to get the recognition and they love to compete and win. So there is a lot of similarities between athletes and sales people. That was the Ah-ha moment.Martin: Cool, so after this football match what did you do next?Mike: I was actually working for a company. I actually had a special clause in my contract that allowed me to work on my start-up in kind of my spare time without worry of them owning the idea. I had this idea where I hired a developer that came and worked out of my house. I paid him with my own money to build a prototype of an early sketch that I kind of thought through. It was very different from what Hoopla is today, but it was the beginnings of that. Essentially it was taking that data that was buried and was putting it out in an application, which then I was able to show some early investors, some seed investors the concept. Once that prototype was done it allowed me to raise a little bit of money to get the whole thing launched.Martin: Cool, so you got investors before you approached potential clients?Mike: Well, actually there is a sidebar to this story. One of the things I did to try and get prepared for launching this company was that we created a free application. It was just a simple little countdown clock that counted down the number of selling days left in a week, month, quarter, year, or what have you, subtracted out the weekends. That worked inside of sales force and it displayed the remaining selling days right at the sidebar. It was a component of Hoopla, but I figured we would get that out there on the market first to see if we could get some early adoption for free and build our marketing database.That actually was a really great start because what it did was allow us to get into communication and conversations with potential customers before we launched the real product. To date, we have had over 2,000 companies download that free little countdown clock that is forming the basis for our marketing efforts.Martin: Cool , Lets talk about the first three or six months after you successfully raised the money and you developed the MVP version and put it out to the sales force. What was it really like when you got the money to your bank account and started to build a team?Mike: Well, first of all, it was a little leap even though I had a little money it wasnt a lot. It wasnt enough to live off of. I ended up taking a serious haircut in salary, pay, compensation, and all that. I knew the clock was ticking from day one, but it was invigorating in that we got our very first customer. That moment when you sign that contract and they give you a check it is really invigorating. What happened from there was the word of mouth started to spread. Things started to build and to grow. Once we had the investment dollars we still had a six months of development to go before we could actually get out there and sell it full force.Martin: Understood.BUSINESS MODEL OF HOOPLA SOFTWAREMartin: Lets talk about the business model. So who are your major customers? Is it only the sales department or others functions? Are you focusing on a specific industry or region? What are your target customers?Mike: That is a good question. We started out built completely on the sales force platform and so our customers were the only customer who was used sale force at the beginning. Sales teams were the subset within that. Our customers were all sort of mid-size and larger companies that had inside sales teams that did transactions and had a lot of activity that they wanted to track and measure.One of the main components of our system is our TV experience where the individual reps are being highlighted on the screen and they are being recognized. Having people inside an organization to be able to view that was a key element for that first success. We have since expanded out that customers can use us with other data sources as well as other departments. That core first audience of that inside sales team that within t hese organizations is still our primary foot in the door. We do sell in the US, Europe, Australia, and Canada. Those are our four main geographies.Martin: Cool, I want to understand a little bit more how the product works. Is it really that a customer is building the dashboard for himself and needs to plug in the TV in order to show this to the sales people? Or is it that you are automatically building some great dashboards and distribute them to the TV?Mike: Yes, good question. We have a bunch of template elements that can be displaced. So leaderboards, top performers, countdowns, and team versus team kind of elements. We have all these kind of templates that are fed by the data that the customer will link into our system. That linking in can come from a sales force report or it can come from a CSV file, Excel file, and soon a Google sheet spreadsheet. All that information can be fed in automatically.The customer doesnt have to be an expert in design or all that. Essentially it is like building a PowerPoint slide show if you will. Put these different components together that play in a loop and they are dynamically being updated as the data is changing. One of the key things that people love is the automated alerts or news flashes that occur whenever data changes that it significant. A deal gets closed, a goal gets met, somebody achieves something, there is fan fair, there is a song that plays, a video that plays and each individual rep can put their own walk-up song, their own custom soundtrack to their face and their image, or show a GIF image. It gets real fun and they have a lot of fun doing that.Martin: Okay, I understand. So this is the unique selling point, I guess.Mike: Part of it, yes.Martin: Imagine Im a sales guy. I have at least two options when I want to understand my metrics. I can either use Hoopla software or I can use some other dashboard provider which delivers me some real time analytics? Why should I use Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla makes everything come to life and it is pushing that information out, it is broadcasting that information out as opposed to you having to log into some system to do your own analysis and to remember to do that, right. So to what is happening is as things are occurring in your organization information is being pushed out. People are being celebrated. Wins are being recognized. People can even challenge each other live on a given metric. So I might challenge you to a three-day competition that you have to accept and its all public information through a broadcast. The big difference is that its relevant, interesting, and engaging, but its being pushed out to you and being broadcast to you as opposed to you going I need to go check my dashboard.Martin: So you are trying to use gamification and pushing the message out there?Mike: Yes, thats right. Game mechanics play a role here because its recognition, competition, and you can see progress against goals. It is very relevant as opposed to static informa tion.Martin: Can you put some light on how the competitive situation in a sales team changes once the Hoopla system is in place? For example, what is the average uplift in productivity, sales, per sales person, whatsoever? And what is the effect of the people selling the lowest? Are they team motivated?Mike: Those are good questions and they come up a lot. First of all from an uplift perspective, are customers report to us all kinds of uplift activities that they see happening. Anywhere from 30% on up and it is pretty amazing the kind of changes that can happen. Sort of to highlight that we have, one customer they bought Hoopla and they had this problem where they had to field in a sales force that wasnt being updated. It was like a lead source field and they wanted to get that done. What they did was created a little highlight and then focused on that. A competition around who could get those fields updated. The first day they broadcasted that information out there people started t o question what field do we have to fill up and etc. By day three, 100% had been changed and been filled out. So by this quick and simple little highlighting gamification techniques, it actually causes the behavior change.Your question about top performers versus bottom: I think one of the things that are interesting is people have control over these metrics. This is not something happening to them. So if for example you are measuring people on the number of calls being made and they are at the bottom of the list. They have control over how to change that. They can see that and see that as a fair system versus the manager giving favoritism for somebody over another and they dont know if its fair or not. This is an objective system. Its clear how you can win. That makes it much more motivational.Martin: How is your pricing model working and how did you come up with this price point?Mike: Our pricing model is we charge per user, per month. Its around $15 a user, per month. It actually goes down depending on your connections. But that price point was built on some research that we did by talking to existing customers. We actually hired a firm to help us with that to help us  understand the optimal point where customers really saw the value and wanted to have a price point that mapped to the value proposition. We did a lot of analysis on that and that has really been paying off for us. It helps to give us an optimal curve in terms of price point and value gained by the customer.Martin: Mike, I understand how your business model is working right now. But did it change significantly over the years?Mike: Not significantly, but definitely we have made tweaks. We have made changes things as we have learned by talking to customers and by seeing what happens on a given quarter or month basis. But nothing really has been significantly different. Its just minor changes to packages and pricing over time.Martin: How are you now a days acquiring customers and what did you do in terms of customer development?Mike: So we started off very direct sales, inside sales, where we were using that marketing tool of a free application to kind of generate leads to then contact those folks to create our first customers. We built up a sales organization that did that over time. What we have been doing in the last six months is steering more and more toward making the self-service experience much more possible with the product. You can now go up to Hoopla.net today. You can sign up for a free trial. You get 14 days. You can set up your whole system. At the end of that time, you can just put your credit card in and you buy the product without even talking to anyone if you want or we are here to help. We have live chat. We have people on call. People that can help with the demo of it. The goal is to reduce all the friction to let people buy on their own and add users as they need.Martin: Mike, when you are looking into the future for the next two or three years, what t hings of the following do you want to focus on? Is it:An internationalization because you said that youre only active in only four countries?Do you want to focus down on the sales department meaning extending the value propositions you are offering the sales department? OrExtending the current value proposition you have that means active metrics and motivation gamification and extending this to other departments like for example marketing, customer support, product, and so on?Mike: I would say that it is the latter. Our vision is that Hoopla is applicable and valuable to every employee in every company. We think every company in the world should be using the product because it makes the employees perform better. It makes them more engaged. It gives them visibility into where they are against their goals, progress, and against each other. So we think that multiple departments are the right answer going forward.Martin: When you started out what had been your expectations? So lets say this is what I wanted to have achieved after four years and now you are here and what is the delta between what you have expected and what you actually achieved?Mike: Good question. You know that everybody always assumes a perfectly linear growth path that keeps going up and to the right. When the day you start till you advance four years and everything goes perfectly and smoothly. I think the difference in reality versus expectation is that is a very herky-jerky path to success. It is not a smooth road. You have got to expect a lot of bumps along the way and be able to react to those changes. Nothing ever goes as planned. Things take twice or three times as long as you expect, but you just got to stay the course otherwise you will get derailed. So it is definitely different than I expected, but very rewarding.Martin: What have been the biggest bumps and how did you circumvent or manage them?Mike: I would say categories of bumps, right. It is people, hiring the right kind of people and putting them on the team. Its making the right kinds technology and product decisions. Where do you put your investment? How fast do you spend your money? Do you optimize for growth or different areas?I think there is learnings along the way. You know the CEOs job is to make sure we have the right strategy, make sure we have the right people, and that we have money in the bank. I have made mistakes in each one of those areas, but I think we are settling down it that.Martin: Good stuff.ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE FROM MICHAEL SMALLSMartin: Great, I assume you have a lot over the years. So if your child comes up to you and says: Daddy, I would like to start a company and imagine your child is a little bit older like 15 or 16 or so. What type of advice would you give your child?Mike: Well, I would say first of all the company is going to be more successful if youre attempting to solve a problem you are intimately aware of, something you are passionate about. Just starting a company for starting a companys sake I would not recommend it. I would recommend you first identify an area of expertise and a problem to solve that you are passionate about solving because you have to be able to stick with it. I would also give him advice or her advice that you need to be prepared for a long grueling effort and you have got to be prepared for that. Its not a get rich quick scheme at all. I would recommend that as well.Martin: Any other things that you have learned?Mike: I would say go with your gut because you are going to get a lot of advice from a lot of people, investors, other folks, and if you get tossed and turned a little bit you are going to get off course. If you follow your gut you know exactly what and your gut can usually be trust on that. I think that is a key piece of advice.I would say dont spend the money too quickly, be careful, be conservative about it. It goes fast. So you have to make sure you are managing your finances very well because its a long road an d you want to be equipped for that.Martin: So when I talk to start-ups most of them, especially in the early days have problems with generating sales. Either because they dont understand the customer, they dont know how to reach them, close a deal, etc. You have lots of experience in terms of sales. What is your advice on really closing a deal and getting to the customers fast and cheap?Mike: You know its back to the old crossing the chasm model, but you have to find the early adopters that are going to have influence with other customers. One of the most important things you can do is build sort of band equity and word of mouth within a particular area. If you have got a product and you want to find those customers that want to be your advocates and you want to really leverage those advocates to help spread the word to other customers.We had the wonderful experience of having some early influential customers that they would tell other people about it or people would come to their o ffices with our product on the walls, being used and they wanted to know more about it. I think its that and making sure that you create really good equity with your customers so you dont burn any of those bridges. You treat everybody fairly. Its better to start off with a good group of customers than to have bad word of mouth to be spread out there.Getting to them the challenges are always breaking through the noise. That is why we did the countdown clock. It allowed us to get in the door. But finding those customers and asking them for referrals, asking people to spread the word for you are really key elements.Martin: Mike, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and walking us through how you business model and your model works. Thank you so much.Mike: My pleasure. Thank you.Martin: Have a great day.THANKS FOR LISTENING! Welcome to the 13th episode of our podcast!You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi folks! Do you have a sales team and are really interested in pushing up your motivation while achieving more results? Today we have an entrepreneur who knows all about this. Hi, Mike, who are you and what do you do?Mike: Hello, Mike Smalls, Im the founder and CEO of Hoopla. So I lead the strategy and direction of the company.Martin: What is Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla is a sales motivation and communication platform that allows companies to take          normally hidden data from backend systems like CRM systems and other areas, and bring that data to light. In order to drive the right kind of behaviors and actions from the sales teams and other people within the company by highlighting successes, creating competitions and recognizing performance as it happens through big screen TVs or mobile devices around the company. Its like an ESPN network for the entire company.Martin: Mike, can you elaborate a little bit on your background and at what point in time did you come up with this idea? Was there some kind of moment where you thought: Ah! Thats a super cool idea?Mike: So my background is in building and running sales teams, sales and marketing teams for a variety of companies, big companies like Symantec as well as a bunch of start-ups. I just kept seeing the same kind of patterns and challenges. I wanted to solve problems that I had, which was getting folks to do the right kind of actions and behaviors in advance to produce results as opposed to reporting on information after the fact.So getting them to do the right kind of calls, meetings, and create opportunities we needed to tap into their natural psychology. And the Ah-ha moment really was sitting in front of my TV on a Sunday watching a football game. When I watched one of these athletes do a flip into the endzone just to get on the Sunday highlight reel and the next weeks review show. I realized that the wiring of an athlete and a sales person are very similar. They love to be on stage an d they love to get the recognition and they love to compete and win. So there is a lot of similarities between athletes and sales people. That was the Ah-ha moment.Martin: Cool, so after this football match what did you do next?Mike: I was actually working for a company. I actually had a special clause in my contract that allowed me to work on my start-up in kind of my spare time without worry of them owning the idea. I had this idea where I hired a developer that came and worked out of my house. I paid him with my own money to build a prototype of an early sketch that I kind of thought through. It was very different from what Hoopla is today, but it was the beginnings of that. Essentially it was taking that data that was buried and was putting it out in an application, which then I was able to show some early investors, some seed investors the concept. Once that prototype was done it allowed me to raise a little bit of money to get the whole thing launched.Martin: Cool, so you got investors before you approached potential clients?Mike: Well, actually there is a sidebar to this story. One of the things I did to try and get prepared for launching this company was that we created a free application. It was just a simple little countdown clock that counted down the number of selling days left in a week, month, quarter, year, or what have you, subtracted out the weekends. That worked inside of sales force and it displayed the remaining selling days right at the sidebar. It was a component of Hoopla, but I figured we would get that out there on the market first to see if we could get some early adoption for free and build our marketing database.That actually was a really great start because what it did was allow us to get into communication and conversations with potential customers before we launched the real product. To date, we have had over 2,000 companies download that free little countdown clock that is forming the basis for our marketing efforts.Martin: Cool , Lets talk about the first three or six months after you successfully raised the money and you developed the MVP version and put it out to the sales force. What was it really like when you got the money to your bank account and started to build a team?Mike: Well, first of all, it was a little leap even though I had a little money it wasnt a lot. It wasnt enough to live off of. I ended up taking a serious haircut in salary, pay, compensation, and all that. I knew the clock was ticking from day one, but it was invigorating in that we got our very first customer. That moment when you sign that contract and they give you a check it is really invigorating. What happened from there was the word of mouth started to spread. Things started to build and to grow. Once we had the investment dollars we still had a six months of development to go before we could actually get out there and sell it full force.Martin: Understood.BUSINESS MODEL OF HOOPLA SOFTWAREMartin: Lets talk about the business model. So who are your major customers? Is it only the sales department or others functions? Are you focusing on a specific industry or region? What are your target customers?Mike: That is a good question. We started out built completely on the sales force platform and so our customers were the only customer who was used sale force at the beginning. Sales teams were the subset within that. Our customers were all sort of mid-size and larger companies that had inside sales teams that did transactions and had a lot of activity that they wanted to track and measure.One of the main components of our system is our TV experience where the individual reps are being highlighted on the screen and they are being recognized. Having people inside an organization to be able to view that was a key element for that first success. We have since expanded out that customers can use us with other data sources as well as other departments. That core first audience of that inside sales team that within t hese organizations is still our primary foot in the door. We do sell in the US, Europe, Australia, and Canada. Those are our four main geographies.Martin: Cool, I want to understand a little bit more how the product works. Is it really that a customer is building the dashboard for himself and needs to plug in the TV in order to show this to the sales people? Or is it that you are automatically building some great dashboards and distribute them to the TV?Mike: Yes, good question. We have a bunch of template elements that can be displaced. So leaderboards, top performers, countdowns, and team versus team kind of elements. We have all these kind of templates that are fed by the data that the customer will link into our system. That linking in can come from a sales force report or it can come from a CSV file, Excel file, and soon a Google sheet spreadsheet. All that information can be fed in automatically.The customer doesnt have to be an expert in design or all that. Essentially it is like building a PowerPoint slide show if you will. Put these different components together that play in a loop and they are dynamically being updated as the data is changing. One of the key things that people love is the automated alerts or news flashes that occur whenever data changes that it significant. A deal gets closed, a goal gets met, somebody achieves something, there is fan fair, there is a song that plays, a video that plays and each individual rep can put their own walk-up song, their own custom soundtrack to their face and their image, or show a GIF image. It gets real fun and they have a lot of fun doing that.Martin: Okay, I understand. So this is the unique selling point, I guess.Mike: Part of it, yes.Martin: Imagine Im a sales guy. I have at least two options when I want to understand my metrics. I can either use Hoopla software or I can use some other dashboard provider which delivers me some real time analytics? Why should I use Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla makes everything come to life and it is pushing that information out, it is broadcasting that information out as opposed to you having to log into some system to do your own analysis and to remember to do that, right. So to what is happening is as things are occurring in your organization information is being pushed out. People are being celebrated. Wins are being recognized. People can even challenge each other live on a given metric. So I might challenge you to a three-day competition that you have to accept and its all public information through a broadcast. The big difference is that its relevant, interesting, and engaging, but its being pushed out to you and being broadcast to you as opposed to you going I need to go check my dashboard.Martin: So you are trying to use gamification and pushing the message out there?Mike: Yes, thats right. Game mechanics play a role here because its recognition, competition, and you can see progress against goals. It is very relevant as opposed to static informa tion.Martin: Can you put some light on how the competitive situation in a sales team changes once the Hoopla system is in place? For example, what is the average uplift in productivity, sales, per sales person, whatsoever? And what is the effect of the people selling the lowest? Are they team motivated?Mike: Those are good questions and they come up a lot. First of all from an uplift perspective, are customers report to us all kinds of uplift activities that they see happening. Anywhere from 30% on up and it is pretty amazing the kind of changes that can happen. Sort of to highlight that we have, one customer they bought Hoopla and they had this problem where they had to field in a sales force that wasnt being updated. It was like a lead source field and they wanted to get that done. What they did was created a little highlight and then focused on that. A competition around who could get those fields updated. The first day they broadcasted that information out there people started t o question what field do we have to fill up and etc. By day three, 100% had been changed and been filled out. So by this quick and simple little highlighting gamification techniques, it actually causes the behavior change.Your question about top performers versus bottom: I think one of the things that are interesting is people have control over these metrics. This is not something happening to them. So if for example you are measuring people on the number of calls being made and they are at the bottom of the list. They have control over how to change that. They can see that and see that as a fair system versus the manager giving favoritism for somebody over another and they dont know if its fair or not. This is an objective system. Its clear how you can win. That makes it much more motivational.Martin: How is your pricing model working and how did you come up with this price point?Mike: Our pricing model is we charge per user, per month. Its around $15 a user, per month. It actually goes down depending on your connections. But that price point was built on some research that we did by talking to existing customers. We actually hired a firm to help us with that to help us  understand the optimal point where customers really saw the value and wanted to have a price point that mapped to the value proposition. We did a lot of analysis on that and that has really been paying off for us. It helps to give us an optimal curve in terms of price point and value gained by the customer.Martin: Mike, I understand how your business model is working right now. But did it change significantly over the years?Mike: Not significantly, but definitely we have made tweaks. We have made changes things as we have learned by talking to customers and by seeing what happens on a given quarter or month basis. But nothing really has been significantly different. Its just minor changes to packages and pricing over time.Martin: How are you now a days acquiring customers and what did you do in terms of customer development?Mike: So we started off very direct sales, inside sales, where we were using that marketing tool of a free application to kind of generate leads to then contact those folks to create our first customers. We built up a sales organization that did that over time. What we have been doing in the last six months is steering more and more toward making the self-service experience much more possible with the product. You can now go up to Hoopla.net today. You can sign up for a free trial. You get 14 days. You can set up your whole system. At the end of that time, you can just put your credit card in and you buy the product without even talking to anyone if you want or we are here to help. We have live chat. We have people on call. People that can help with the demo of it. The goal is to reduce all the friction to let people buy on their own and add users as they need.Martin: Mike, when you are looking into the future for the next two or three years, what t hings of the following do you want to focus on? Is it:An internationalization because you said that youre only active in only four countries?Do you want to focus down on the sales department meaning extending the value propositions you are offering the sales department? OrExtending the current value proposition you have that means active metrics and motivation gamification and extending this to other departments like for example marketing, customer support, product, and so on?Mike: I would say that it is the latter. Our vision is that Hoopla is applicable and valuable to every employee in every company. We think every company in the world should be using the product because it makes the employees perform better. It makes them more engaged. It gives them visibility into where they are against their goals, progress, and against each other. So we think that multiple departments are the right answer going forward.Martin: When you started out what had been your expectations? So lets say this is what I wanted to have achieved after four years and now you are here and what is the delta between what you have expected and what you actually achieved?Mike: Good question. You know that everybody always assumes a perfectly linear growth path that keeps going up and to the right. When the day you start till you advance four years and everything goes perfectly and smoothly. I think the difference in reality versus expectation is that is a very herky-jerky path to success. It is not a smooth road. You have got to expect a lot of bumps along the way and be able to react to those changes. Nothing ever goes as planned. Things take twice or three times as long as you expect, but you just got to stay the course otherwise you will get derailed. So it is definitely different than I expected, but very rewarding.Martin: What have been the biggest bumps and how did you circumvent or manage them?Mike: I would say categories of bumps, right. It is people, hiring the right kind of people and putting them on the team. Its making the right kinds technology and product decisions. Where do you put your investment? How fast do you spend your money? Do you optimize for growth or different areas?I think there is learnings along the way. You know the CEOs job is to make sure we have the right strategy, make sure we have the right people, and that we have money in the bank. I have made mistakes in each one of those areas, but I think we are settling down it that.Martin: Good stuff.ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE FROM MICHAEL SMALLSMartin: Great, I assume you have a lot over the years. So if your child comes up to you and says: Daddy, I would like to start a company and imagine your child is a little bit older like 15 or 16 or so. What type of advice would you give your child?Mike: Well, I would say first of all the company is going to be more successful if youre attempting to solve a problem you are intimately aware of, something you are passionate about. Just starting a company for starting a companys sake I would not recommend it. I would recommend you first identify an area of expertise and a problem to solve that you are passionate about solving because you have to be able to stick with it. I would also give him advice or her advice that you need to be prepared for a long grueling effort and you have got to be prepared for that. Its not a get rich quick scheme at all. I would recommend that as well.Martin: Any other things that you have learned?Mike: I would say go with your gut because you are going to get a lot of advice from a lot of people, investors, other folks, and if you get tossed and turned a little bit you are going to get off course. If you follow your gut you know exactly what and your gut can usually be trust on that. I think that is a key piece of advice.I would say dont spend the money too quickly, be careful, be conservative about it. It goes fast. So you have to make sure you are managing your finances very well because its a long road an d you want to be equipped for that.Martin: So when I talk to start-ups most of them, especially in the early days have problems with generating sales. Either because they dont understand the customer, they dont know how to reach them, close a deal, etc. You have lots of experience in terms of sales. What is your advice on really closing a deal and getting to the customers fast and cheap?Mike: You know its back to the old crossing the chasm model, but you have to find the early adopters that are going to have influence with other customers. One of the most important things you can do is build sort of band equity and word of mouth within a particular area. If you have got a product and you want to find those customers that want to be your advocates and you want to really leverage those advocates to help spread the word to other customers.We had the wonderful experience of having some early influential customers that they would tell other people about it or people would come to their o ffices with our product on the walls, being used and they wanted to know more about it. I think its that and making sure that you create really good equity with your customers so you dont burn any of those bridges. You treat everybody fairly. Its better to start off with a good group of customers than to have bad word of mouth to be spread out there.Getting to them the challenges are always breaking through the noise. That is why we did the countdown clock. It allowed us to get in the door. But finding those customers and asking them for referrals, asking people to spread the word for you are really key elements.Martin: Mike, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and walking us through how you business model and your model works. Thank you so much.Mike: My pleasure. Thank you.Martin: Have a great day.THANKS FOR LISTENING!Thanks so much for joining our 13th podcast episode!Have some feedback you’d like to share?  Leave  a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed thi s episode, please  share  it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post.Also,  please leave an honest review for The Cleverism Podcast on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Ratings and reviews  are  extremely  helpful  and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.Special thanks  to Mike for joining me this week. Until  next time!

Afropithecus - Facts and Figures

Name: Afropithecus (Greek for African ape); pronounced AFF-roe-pith-ECK-us Habitat: Jungles of Africa Historical Epoch: Middle Miocene (17 million years ago) Size and Weight: About five feet tall and 100 pounds Diet: Fruits and seeds Distinguishing Characteristics: Large size; relatively long snout with large teeth About Afropithecus Paleontologists are still trying to sort out the complicated relationships of the early African hominids of the Miocene epoch, which were some of the first true apes on the prehistoric primate evolutionary tree. Afropithecus, discovered in 1986 by the famous mother-and-son team of Mary and Richard Leakey, testifies to the ongoing confusion: this tree-dwelling ape had some anatomical features in common with the better-known Proconsul, and it also seems to have been closely related to Sivapithecus as well (a genus to which Ramapithecus has now been assigned as a separate species). Unfortunately, Afropithecus isnt as well attested, fossil-wise, as these other hominids; we do know from its scattered teeth that it fed on tough fruits and seeds, and it seems to have walked like a monkey (on four feet) rather than an ape (on two feet, at least some of the time).

Legalization Of Marijuan A Controversial Issue Essay

Zhewei Yang Ms. Nutter Health 2016/11/11 Legalization of Marijuana A controversial issue relating to the legalization of Marijuana has been brought to the attention of the public. Many Americans support the legalization of marijuana for numerous reasons, such as it is a useful aid to alleviate medical ailments and it has a low risk of abuse; nevertheless, others people do not believe that the marijuana should be legalized. When the practical reasoning is involved, however, I believed that the positive impacts of remaining marijuana illegal outweigh the negative aspects of illegalization of marijuana. To support my opinion against the legalization of the marijuana, I have organized my paper into. In the first section, I provide an account However, I need to provide an historical context about marijuana HISTORICAL CONTEXT In 1545, marijuana was brought by the Spanish the New World. In 1611, the English introduced marijuana in Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the America.1 Then marijuana became a major commercial crop and was grown as a source of fiber. Some historians analyze that marijuana emerged because of Prohibition, a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages in the nation.2 Marijuana replaced the alcohol to achieve the recreational use because it was not a social threat. Marijuana clubs were built in every major city in United States. According to the research, until 1930s, the U.S. Federal

Cohesive Strangers in Tobias Wolff’s Say Yes - 792 Words

In Tobias Wolff’s Say Yes, a central strain between the husband and wife is illuminated and never settled by the end of the story. The tension revolves around racism and the meaning of true love. In this story plot, point of view and irony reveal a married couple that becomes strangers. The story commences talking about a married couple that seems to have a solid relationship where they work really well together. Having this cohesive and unified relationship really helps to set the story up for the conversation they have about racism and marriage. The husband believes he knows his wife, but he doesn’t really know her at all. The husband says to the wife, â€Å"A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know†¦show more content†¦The story makes clear that the husband knows he needs to put a stop to the tension created from the argument so he goes to tell his wife the only thing she wants to hear in the first place. Because the entire story is told through third person limited point of view, the husband doesn’t seem to see how much this argument affects his wife until he speaks to her in the bathroom. The point of view in this story has a lot to do with how the story is perceived. For the entire story, it is told through the husband and narrators perspectives. Because of this, the argument is portrayed as more of a game or competition to see if the husband can win the fight, â€Å"He took a deep breath. He had won the argument but he still felt concerned†(247). The husband is also portrayed in a light that makes him look unsympathetic to his wife’s feelings about their love, â€Å"He hoped that she appreciated how quickly he had come to her aid. He’d acted out of concern for her, with no thought of getting anything in return, but now the thought occurred to him that it would be a nice gesture on her part not to start up that conversation again, as he was tired of it†(247). The story suggests that the husband isn’t taking this argument as seriously as the wife is and that he doesn’t see the severity of the underlying meaning of the fight. C loser to the end of the story the husband finally comprehends how much his words impacted his wife’s

Case Study of BUPA Insurance Company-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Case Study of Bupa Insurance Company. Answer: Background of the Organization Bupa is a leading healthcare organization that provides health and care services over Australia and New Zealand. The organization helps the members to lead a long, healthy and happy life. It offers both healthcare and insurance services for the customers to ensure good health of their family and wellness. The company has to follow a standard procedure for every activity whether it is enrolment of insurance policies or handling of insurance claims. In this report, the focus is particularly on describing the process of claims handling within the organization. A model is designed to illustrate on the flow of activities that is being followed by the company when a health insurance claim is lodged by customer. Textual description of the chosen process The process that has been chosen for this report in health insurance claim handling that depicts the process that is being followed by Bupa insurance to handle claim requests from customers. The process that has been undertaken in this particular study is one of the activities that is being carried out in the business operations of the company. This process helps the customers to live a long, healthy and happier lives with support of the company. The process of claims handling comprises of two cases that is the claim amount may or may not exceed the range covered by the insurance policy being enrolled by the customer. The claiming of the health insurance amount can be processed by the customer as per their requirement whether hospital treatment, health issues or accidental incident but the receivable amount depends on the value of the enrolled insurance policy. In the chosen process, first step is taken by the customer who files a claim request to the company against their insurance policy. It is assumed that the customer is a member and has an insurance policy enrolled within the company. Then the request is being passed onto the claims handler who is responsible for handling the claims processing within the company. The claims handler after receiving the claim request from the customer checks whether the policy is valid or not. Now, if the claims handler finds the policy to be valid then he/she will enter the data into system so that it can be processed further or else the claim will be reject as there is no valid policy as mentioned by the customer. After the data is being entered into the system, the claim request is being forwarded to the Assessor in the service centre for investigating the case. The Assessor handling the case will then check whether the claim being requested in under the policy coverage or not. If the assessor finds that the claim is being under coverage then he/she approves for preliminary estimate of the amount that can be given against the policy. The approved estimate may or may not exceed the range fixed for the insurance policy so if the estimate is found to exceed the range then the request is being passed onto the Assessor present in the Headquarter and if it does not exceeds the range then the claim request will be passed to the Senior Assessor. The Assessor present in headquarter is then requested to conduct an investigation on the case that has been put forward by the customer. After checking the requirements of the customer, the Headquarter assessor identifies whether the mentioned cause for claim is under the coverage of enrolled policy by the customer. If the Headquarter assessor finds that it is under coverage then he/she processes further to determine the actual expense and approves the case but forwards to the Senior Assessor to check the case for the claim request which is again connected indirectly with the Assessor in service centre remains as if the estimate does not exceeds the range. Now after verification of the claims case by Senior Assessor, data is being entered into the management system for processing of payment and the claims handler is being informed about the payment being processed. The claims handler then processes payment to the customer and at the time of payment processing the system has to perform two operations. The system after processing claim amount for the customer closes the case and files the claim being processed against the requested claim on behalf of the particular customer. Finally, the customer can fulfill the requirements with the claim amount being processed from the health insurance claim process. BPMN model of the chosen process Figure 1: BPMN model for Health Insurance Claim process (Source: Created by Author) Overview and explanation of assumptions The assumptions that has been considered for designing the business process model in context to the health insurance claim process are listed as below: The type of claim being made is one that can be lodged online, and does not require the policy holder to phone, mail in a claim, or visit a claim branch in order to lodge the claim. The health insurance claim is logged online by the policyholder prior to the claim being received by the Health Insurance Company (presumably via a support portal). The health insurance claim being lodged includes specific details about the claim including the claimants details, the practitioner they are claiming services for, and the item codes for the individual services they are claiming for. The health insurance claim contains photos or scanned copies of receipts for the health service as a verification method for the health insurance company. The conditions of the policy being valid (indicated in an early step in the process) also include the assumption that the policy has surpassed all waiting periods associated with type of claim being made against the policy. The health insurance claim being made is that of general dental, as to not need to differentiate the different types of claims being made and ways that they can be made. The health insurance company has a system that calculate the refund amount, and no manual intervention to calculate the amount needing to be refunded is needing to be made by the finance team. The system used by the health insurance company stores all previous claim requests that are able to be reassessed and reopened should the circumstances require it. Once the claim is finalized on the end of the insurance company, no intervention is needed by the claimant in order for the claim to be marked as closed. Bibliography de Oca, I. M. M., Snoeck, M., Reijers, H. A., Rodrguez-Morffi, A. (2015). A systematic literature review of studies on business process modeling quality.Information and Software Technology,58, 187-205. Harmon, P. (2015). The scope and evolution of business process management. InHandbook on business process management 1(pp. 37-80). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Koschmider, A., Caporale, T., Fellmann, M., Lehner, J., Oberweis, A. (2015). Business process modeling support by depictive and descriptive diagrams.Enterprise modelling and information systems architectures. Li, Y., Cao, B., Xu, L., Yin, J., Deng, S., Yin, Y., Wu, Z. (2014). An efficient recommendation method for improving business process modeling.IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics,10(1), 502-513. Pinggera, J., Soffer, P., Fahland, D., Weidlich, M., Zugal, S., Weber, B., ... Mendling, J. (2015). Styles in business process modeling: an exploration and a model.Software Systems Modeling,14(3), 1055-1080. Rosa, M. L., Van Der Aalst, W. M., Dumas, M., Milani, F. P. (2017). Business process variability modeling: A survey.ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR),50(1), 2. Van Der Aalst, W. M., La Rosa, M., Santoro, F. M. (2016). Business process management. Welcome. (2018).Bupa - a global healthcare company. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.bupa.com/

Job design in an Organization

Job design in an organization is crucial from various perspectives as it deals with work rearrangement aimed at overcoming any employee dissatisfaction. In respect to this, there is always renewed hope and strength for employee to perform his or her duty successfully (Robertson Smith, 1985).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Job design in an Organization specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Applying this to any customer service professional, the company will be able to reflect a good picture generally of the whole business system, because when the customers are served with enthusiasm, they are able to develop a unique liking of the company. For this case, considering improvement of working conditions for customer service professional in the credit card company, various ways of restructuring and reorganizing the working system are necessary in order to improve working conditions and also enable good reputation because the customer care provides a link between the customers and the company. As always expected, there must be rewards through better pay package. The incentives that should be offered to the customer care would include getting offered credit cards with low interest rates, a periodic reward of points to the employee when it is revealed that the employee is very much committed to the company’s work. There must also be granting of leave for the employee to refresh, especially from a period of a tiresome work session. In addition, there would also be on job training in order to acquire more skills in the credit card business process. The knowledge on the credit card business helps customer care make informed decisions when advising the customers, which may include marketing strategies. There must also be an innovative working environment which is admirable for the employee to work in the company effectively (Parker Wall, 1998). In enhancing job design for the customer service in th e credit card company, both scientific and management practices ought to be practiced. This ensures that both analytic and objective approaches to solving issues in the organization are crucial. The customer care should know exactly his or her role and what is expected from him/her in the job. This enables the creation of clear objectives for the work so that the credit card business is kept operational in a successful way. The customer care must know the set out roles which enhance motivation in whatever is required at all the times.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Incorporating the job characteristic model, the customer care is to know exact identity of the task. This calls for the need to know the exact responsibility that he or she has in the marketing and creation of good relations of the company with the customers. The customer care should also have autonomy. This dete rmines the schedule of the work plan at all given times that should be decided solely by the employee. The skills of performing the work are also very important as a contributing factor for the process of motivating the customer care. The significance of the task allocated is important too because the company knows exactly the expected outcome of the process. Through this, providing positive feedback to the customer care for any good performance is necessary as this is an inspiring factor coming from best job design. The design model should also include room for self expression of the customer care. Through this, all the views are incorporated for the best benefit of the company so as to enable more allocation of credit cards to the customers (Parker Wall, 1998). Finally, improvement of customer care’s job conditions will enable good performance and develop cordial relations with other customers. Consequently, this reflects good image of the company and more customers in nee d of credit card will register for the services. Through the job design, motivation of the employees is observed because from the school of human relations, a business is taken as a social systems whereby productivity is heavily influenced by emotional and psychological factors of the employees (Parker Wall, 1998). This will finally promote good business. References Parker, S. Wall, D. (1998). Job and work design, organizing work to promote well- being and effectiveness. California: Sage publications. Robertson, I. T. Smith M. (1985). Motivation and Job Design: Theory, research and practice. New York: Hyperion Books.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Job design in an Organization specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This essay on Job design in an Organization was written and submitted by user Callan Edwards to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Definition and Examples of Infinitive Clauses

Definition and Examples of Infinitive Clauses In English grammar, an infinitive clause is a subordinate  clause whose verb is in the infinitive form. Also known as an infinitival clause or a to-infinitive clause The infinitive clause is called a clause because it may contain such clausal elements as a subject, object, complement, or modifier. Unlike most other subordinate clauses  in English, infinitive clauses are not introduced by a subordinating conjunction. Verbs that can be followed by infinitive clauses (as objects) include: agree, begin, decide, hope, intend, like, plan, and propose. Examples and Observations Im sorry but theres a handsome man in my spoon. Youll have to come back later.(Tom Tucker, The Kiss Seen Round the World. Family Guy, 2001)Jane was firm in her desire to live life on her own terms.Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slums of Mumbai.If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.(Yiddish proverb)We merely want​ to live in peace with all the world, to trade with them, to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours, so that the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads and our churches and not for guns and planes and tanks and ships of war.(President Dwight Eisenhower, quoted in Time magazine, 1955) Infinitive Clauses as Subjects and Objects A subordinate clause with an infinitive often acts as the subject or object of the main clause. In the following examples, the whole infinitive clause [in bold] is understood as the subject of is human, is decadent or was unnecessary. - To err is human.- To drink Martinis before noon is decadent.- For Mervyn to redirect Maggies mail was unnecessary. And in the following examples, the whole infinitive clause [again in bold] is understood as the direct object of hates, loves and expected. - Jim hates to wash his car.- Rosie loves to plan parties.- Phil expected Martha to stay at home all day. In case this is not obvious at first, you can test this by answering questions such as What does Jim hate? (answer: to wash his car), or What did Phil expect? (answer: Martha to stay at home all day). (James R. Hurford, Grammar: A Students Guide. Cambridge University Press, 1994) Perfect Infinitives To express time preceding that of the main verb, the infinitive takes a perfect form: to have past participle. (58) The parents were lucky to have found this specialist for their sick child. The perfect infinitive can be used with progressive aspect to emphasize duration. This construction consists of to have been V-ing. (59) He was too scared of the police to have been telling lies all the time. (Andrea DeCapua, Grammar for Teachers: A Guide to American English for Native and Non-Native Speakers. Springer, 2008) Passive Infinitives An infinitive that is derived from a passive finite verb clause will itself be passive: (20) a. I expect that all the calamari will be eaten before 7:00. (passive verb)(20) b. I expect all the calamari to be eaten before 7:00. (passive infinitive) You can verify that to be eaten is a passive infinitive in (20b) because it contains the passive marker [BE (-en)]: be eaten. Remember that eaten is a transitive verb; in its active form, it will have a subject (an indefinite pronoun like someone or they) and a direct object (all the calamari). (Thomas Klammer et al., Analyzing English Grammar, 5th ed. Pearson, 2007)

State System Planning Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

State System Planning - Research Paper Example The concept of alternatives has been echoed by Amekudzi and Meyer who say that â€Å"an important step in planning and thus a component of conceptual framework is analyzing alternatives† (3). State system planning can take the form of many projects for example the roads and the air transport system. The planning system is considered as smart growth because of the way it helps in strengthening the government. The concept of planning has various factors driving it; according to the OECD, â€Å"the movement is being driven by growing public concern† (133). This was in reference to the spatial system planning; the book further describes other leading reasons for the development of the planning system as highway congestion, land consumption, need for infrastructure, and other costs of sprawl. This is the sector of high interest and is considered most by the state because of the many benefits that it offers the citizens. Washington state department of transport has this as one of its priorities; the Washington state policy has broadened its interest in many modes of transport. According to a report by the Washington State Department of Transport, this body has the role of advocating for the safeguarding of aviation facilities, safety in air transport, ensuring that air transport meets the required capacity, as well as getting rid of environmental impacts (wa.gov). For this to be achieved, the authority has to ensure that there is advocacy and partnership. Another similar project is the one in Minnesota which was named â€Å"State Aviation System Plan† as reported by the department, â€Å"the primary objective of the Minnesota state aviation system plan is to provide the state with excellent planning tools to assist in making informed decisions guiding the developm ent of Minnesota’s system of airports and expending funds in a cost-effective manner† (Washington State

Organisational Transformation in Practice Essay

Organisational Transformation in Practice - Essay Example My role in this acquisition and change process has provided immense learning experience in terms of organisational change process and people’s psychology. A patchwork of this experience combined with learning from the module will be elaborated in this discussion. Literature findings will be confined to organisational change and its psychological implications on employees. Attempt will be made to provide a few probable and implementable suggestions for situations that did not conform to the need, as identified in literature. Background of the company: Armen Technologies (AT) is a multinational company that provides information technology enabled business services in four regions of the world including Europe, North Africa and South East Asia. Headquartered in Beijing, AT has more than 5000 employees. Its business volume and spread were enriched when AT acquired the IT Company VTL Solutions. This acquisition process resulted in overall growth of AT, but after much struggle. Cont ext: At the outset, this acquisition process was absolutely strategic and involved many negotiations during long period. From HR perspective, this acquisition seemed extremely lengthy and complex process. The acquisition process that began with various types of negotiations followed into aligning the acquired company’s businesses, clients, customers and employees with the acquiring company’s systems. One of the most significant parts of this acquisition was reinstating the confidence of both companies’ employees at all locations. This task required a strategically planned approach and to be executed by highly experienced personnel. While the general transformation process during and after the acquisition itself was complex and multidimensional event, transformation with respect to processes and systems in the human resources perspective was equally challenging. On a broader note, the HR aspect involved activities such as integration and alignment and corporate c ommunication along with assistance in implementation of change strategies. Corresponding literature findings: Mergers and acquisitions act as change agents in corporate restructuring (DePamphillis, 2011; p.4). Organisational changes that follow mergers and acquisitions are usually uneven and face numerous obstacles. According to Marks and Mirvis (2010), the fervor of success after acquisition usually infuses equally faster in the acquired company but in a retrospective manner, usually in the form of patronizing attitudes of its employees. To add further, unilateral integration of organisational systems and policies leads to greater turbulence in the acquired company. Culture-fit is a core ingredient of organisational sustenance post acquisition (DiGeorgio, 2002). Studies related to organisational change and mergers and acquisitions provide vast and diverse views that are mostly practically implementable and have been successfully implemented in many situations. For instance, various change implementation models that have been proposed include McKinsey’s 7-S framework, Kotter’s (1996) eight-step model, Lewin’s 3-phase model of change ADKAR model etc (Hiatt & Creasey, 2003; Cameron & Green, 2004). All these models provide comprehensive and systematic methods to implement change. Several other models are suggested to diagnose change, such as, Kurt Lewin’s force field analysis model (Cameron & Green, 2

The Effects of Sexism in Schools

The Effects of Sexism in Schools The theme about stereotypes and prejudice is really important in our society. Walter Lipmann is the man, who defines first the term stereotype in his book How society thinks (1922). He says that stereotype is something that helps us live in the reality easily. That is the positive said, the negative is, that stereotype thinking stops us from out of the box thinking and open mind. Walter Lipmann also defines the term stereotype à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¾ stereotype is a commonly held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals, standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions. Prejudice is a term, which defines our tendency for judging someone before we know him. These terms have a positive said too- they make communication easy for us. But I think that the negatives about stereotypes and prejudice are more than the positives. There are many stereotypes even in the education system. One of the most common stereotypes is sexism. It affects every said of our lives. Almost every men and woman have same stereotypes about the gender roles. The really important aspect of this problem is that sexism is well known in education system and many kids are suffering from it. It begins in elementary school and continues till graduating from college, sometimes even after that. Little boys and girls are constantly told about their gender roles and how they should react and behave, because of those roles. They are given no choice they should behave as expected and no other way. There is another aspect of the problem. In schools and colleges, teachers and professors expect different results by boys and girls. The boys are considered with less potential and everyone expects lower grades by them. Girls are considered as good in some things, but awful in math, physics and other science like that. Those opinions can make things really difficult for the children, because they cant show their real abilities and skills. Sexism, which entered the lexicon in 1970 as an analogue to racism, connotes a fundamental and pervasive institutionalized bias on the basis of sex, with discrimination usually directed against woman ( Frazier and Sadker 1973).The rationale for sexism is the biological difference between males and females that dictates differential social roles,status, and norms ( Sleeter and Grant 1988). From Sexism in single-sex and coeducational independent secondary school classrooms by Valerie E. Lee, Helen M., Marks and Tina Byrd. In thos pharagraf of theyre study, they explain the term sexism. The study begins with explanation that sexism begins way back in the history. Likek other socializing institutions, the family and the church ,have inevitably transmitted sociocultural sexism, so did the schools. Classrooms, where the process of schooling largely occurs, are primary sites for sexist socialization. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¾ In an ideal world, children would be raised in a society free of gender stereotypes. Such freedom from these stereotypes would allow children to exhibit behaviors and acquire skills based solely on their personal preferences devoid of the constraints of the societal norms that surround their particular gender (Bem 1983). However, in the real world, from the moment of their birth, children are placed into either a boy or girl category (Bem 1983; Fagot and Leinbach 1993; Kimmel 2004). This seemingly fundamental physiological distinction is automatically surrounded by a system of societal expectations that determine which behaviors are appropriate for boys and which are appropriate for girls (Fagot and Leinbach 1993) and facilitate the creation and maintenance of gender role stereotypes (Ridgeway and Correll 2004) in Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Eaglys social role theory (Eagly and Steffen 1984). From this paragraph, we can make the logical conclusion, that something in our society and educational system is wrong. We raise our children in a world, in which these stereotypes are very common. These categories that we put kids in have an effect o n their entire life. In school, boys and girls come with some ideas how to behave. They learn that from their family direct, or by coping models of behavior. Since the first grade, everyone continues to expect from children to act as they are told to- like a girl or a boy. Girls cant play with cars and toy soldiers, because they will become women, and this is not good for a woman. The woman should we nice and tender. If the boys are sometimes a little rude- this is not a problem, because from them this is expected. If they want to play with dolls this is not write, because they can grow up feminize. This is something that reflects really hard on children psychic. When they grow up, they continue to follow that models of behavior and that is cosign a lot of problems. In the education is the same- the boy should we really good in math, but if he can write, this is a little strange. A girl should write beautiful, but nobody would belief, that she knows a lot about physics. This is a h uge problem, because it makes communicating, growing up, developing a hard and intense process, which is put in frame and cant go out of it- other way the kid is consider as strange. As an example for that frames may be considered situation of gender and mathematics in England and Wales. Teresa Smart wrote an article on that mater, which is explains why girls abandon science before leaving school Gender and mathematics in England and Wales. In the article, Smart explains, that the stereotype- boys are good in mathematics is putting girls under pressure and they prefer to focus on other sciences. The difference between boys and girls are also discussed in the study Gender differences in mathematical achievement related to the ratio of girls to boys in school classes by Terje Manger and Rolf Gjestad. This study discuss the importance of the number of boys and girl in the classroom. The authors are analyzing a research, done in 3 grade in classes with many boys and less girls, many girls and less boys, and a class with a balance. The results do not support the single-sex teaching theory. That theory clames, that single-sex school gives an opportunity for developing to both sexes. In that study, authors also prove, that there is a difference between boys and girls in mathematics: The differences in mathematical achievement between boys and girls are well documented in the educational and psychological literature. While the differences in general samples are decreasing (Feingold 1988) disparate proportions favoring boys are well-known in mathematically gifted samples,(Benbow 1988 ; Benbow and Stanley 1983; Hyde, Fennema and Lamon 1990).The differences also vary according to mathematical subskills. Boys seem to perform better than girls on tasks requiring application of algebraic rules or algorithms, as well as on tasks in which the understanding of mathematical concepts and number relationship is required (Mills, Ablard and Stumpf 1993). The newest researches on that matter are proving something different- every one of us has different part of the brain developed more than the other. People, who have more developed write part, are with better achievements in mathematics and other sciences like that; people, who have more developed left part of the brain are good in history, literature and other. That is a prove, that the difference is not coming from the gender. From grade school to graduate school to the world of work, males and females are separated by a common language. This communications gender gap affects self-esteem, educational attainment, career choice, and income. But its hidden lessons generally go unnoticed. Sexism in the classroom: from grade school to graduate school by Myra Sadker and David Sadker. Myra and David Sadker are researching classroom interactions in elementary and secondary schools. Their article is focusing on four of their conclusions of the research. The first conclusion they made is: male students receive more attention from teachers and are given more time to talk in classrooms. The second conclusion: Educators are generally unaware of the presence or the impact of this bias.. The third conclusion: Brief but focused training can reduce or eliminate sex bias from classroom interaction.. The four conclusion : Increasing equity in classroom interaction increases the effectiveness of the teacher as well. Equity and effectiveness are not competing concerns; they are complementary. Myra and David Sadkers first study is proving, that male students are involved in more interaction than females. Teachers are talking more to them and allow them to talk more in class. The teachers observed in this study were both male and female; they represented both white and minority groups; they taught in the areas of language arts, social studies, and mathematics. This proves, that the teachers were affect mainly by the sexism stereotype in classrooms. The educators are not aware of the impact of sexism in the classroom. They dont realize, that their behavior in not adequate. They dont understand, that this way they are stopping females developing, and lowing their chances for receiving good education. This unawareness of the educators is a big problem in schools. Sexism cant be removed, when nobody realizes that its there. All it takes, to removing sex bias from classrooms is to train the educators. They need to know, that sexism has to be removed from the classrooms, that this is cosign problems to females not only in school, but also later, when they are working. When there is sexism in the classroom, the education process cannot be effective. When teachers are not realizing the problem and cant remove it, they cant be useful to the children. If there is equity in the classroom, the process will be effective, this will increase the chances of children to have a good education. In her paper : Gender freedom and the subtleties of sexist education, Barbara Houston is discussing the idea of gender-free education. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the following three distinct meanings. In the first sense, the strong sense, a gender-free education would be one that made active attempts to disregard gender by obliterating gender differentiations which arose within the educational sphere. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.Another example of this approach is the elimination of activities, such as wrestling, in which there are thought to be significant gender differences in achievements due to natural and ineradicable biological differences between the sexes. In her paper, Houston is focusing on the education, that eliminates gender and its ignoring it. The idea is, that gender should be no longer used as a criteria, that boys and girls should not be separated and not be given instructions how to behave, judged by their gander : à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ gender-free to mean freedom from gender bias. On this un derstanding, a gender-free education would eliminate gender bias. From this sources, discussing the theme about sexism in school, can be made several conclusions. Sexism, as sociological and culture understanding of the gender differences, exist in schools of all kinds. Sexism is the separation between boys and girls, based on their biological differences and affects a lot their education. Male student are given priority, females are underrated- they cannot show their real potential. This is big problem in classrooms, because sex roles are putting educational process in frames, they stop boys and girls to develop, learn everything they want to, not what they supposed to. Teachers sometimes are not aware that there is sexism in their classroom and they dont know how to eliminate it. The good education is one, that is gender-free, which is not focused on the gender differences and is removing this as a criteria for educating.

Abortion Cases of the 19th Century :: Essays Papers

Abortion Cases of the 19th Century Although abortions were very dangerous, as well as socially unacceptable during the nineteenth century, women were not altogether unable to obtain abortions and many suffered accusations of infanticide. Here I will present a few of the more famous cases from the period, demonstrating the occurrence of abortion, the availability of providers, and the consequences faced by those who necessitated the procedure. One case that dominated the pages of The Revolution, the paper owned by Susan B. Anthony and edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, was the sentencing of a young girl to hang for the death of her child. While not a case of abortion, the death was termed an infanticide and drew strong opinions from the public as well as both the editors. The unfortunate Hester Vaughan, an English girl living in Philadelphia, was discovered in a tiny tenement room devoid of furniture February 8, 1868, forty-eight hours after giving birth. Alone during labor, without food or heat, she was found frail and feverish with her baby dead beside her. She was immediately brought to the police and imprisoned, under the assumption that she had killed her child. For thirty dollars, she acquired the services of a lawyer by the name of Goforth and underwent a brief trial. Having never actually confessed to committing the crime, she was nonetheless sentenced to death by County Judge Ludlow, and placed in Moyamensing Prison until her execution. Once news of the case reached the public, the women of The Revolution unleashed their sympathies in article after article denouncing the indictment. In an August 6, 1868 editorial it was written: â€Å" If that poor child of sorrow is hung, it will be deliberate, downright murder. Her death will be far more horrible infanticide than was the killing of her child. She is the child of our society and civilization, begotten and born of it, seduced by it, by the judge who pronounced her sentence, by the bar and jury, by the legislature that enacted the law (in which because a woman, she had no vote or voice), by the church and the pulpit that sanctify the law and deeds, of all these will her blood, yea, and her virtue too, be required! All these were the joint seducer, and now see if by hanging her, they will also become her murderer.† However, Hester never had to face the day of her execution and instead spent nearly two years in jail.

Nine Dragons Paper Essay

1.How does MRs. Cheung Think?What does she believein when it comes to building her business? Mrs. Cheung is a very innovative person. Her thinking is extremely positive, creative, advance and quite original. She possess perseverance, determination with a business and marketing mentality and with her know-how business approaches, constructed a corporation that was a leading force in the industry. Her creativeness and originality is evident as she was the first to use waste paper to create packaging paper. When it comes to building her company, she believes in expansion, premeditated and tactical planning . 2 .How would you summarize the company’s financial status? How does it reflect the business development goals and strategies employed by Mrs. Cheung? NDP has been investing at an incredible pace – best demonstrated by comparing the company’s cash flows from operating activities in 2007 and 2008 with the cash flows from investing activities. –NDP has clearly been profitable in recent years, and demonstrates a high rate of profitability one would not ordinarily see in this type of semi-commodity based business –NDP’s rate of profitability, however, has been sliding, reflecting rising input prices and greater competitive markets for its products –The company’s growing debt burden is large and getting larger . 3. Is NDP in trouble? How would your answer differ if you were an existing shareholder, a potential investor, or an analyst? The company still appears to be marginally profitable in this difficult business environment,but profitability is a concept which focuses more on the corporate income statement, not cash flows. The result is that it appears the company will need to borrow even more to survive the year. †¢ Existing shareholders are clearly down, and would like to see the company executive management take measures to improve share price sooner rather than later. They are, however, minority shareholders, Mrs. Cheung and family holding more than 70% of the firm. †¢ Potential investors might see the company has a ‘good bet’, given the current share price low and the prospects for long-term competitiveness .

The Legendary Invention of Silk

Is the fabric known as silk 7000 years old? Did people wear it from as long ago as 5000 B.C. -- before civilization began at Sumer and before Egyptians built the Great Pyramid? If silkworm cultivation or sericulture is as much as seven millennia old -- as the Silk Road Foundation says it may be -- the chances are poor that we will ever know exactly who invented it. What we can learn is what the descendants of the people who discovered silk wrote about it and what their legends say about the origins of processing silk. Although there are other stories and variations, the basic legend credits an early Chinese empress. She is said to have: 1. Cultivated the silk-producing caterpillar (Bombyx mori).2. Fed the silkworm the mulberry leaf that was discovered to be the best food -- at least for those interested in producing the best silk.3. Invented the loom to weave the fiber. Raising Silk On its own, the silkworm larva produces a single, several hundred-yard-strand of silk, which it breaks as it emerges as a moth from its cocoon, leaving residue all over the trees. In preference to gathering the tangled silk caught in the trees, the Chinese learned to raise the silkworms on a fattening diet of the leaves of carefully cultivated mulberry trees. They also learned to watch the development of the cocoons so they could kill the chrysalis by plunging it in boiling water just before its time. This method ensures the full length of silk strands. The boiling water also softens the sticky protein holding together the silk [Grotenhuis]. (The process of pulling out the strand of silk from the water and cocoon in known as reeling.) The thread is then woven into beautiful clothing.   Who Was the Lady Hsi-ling? The main source for this article is Dieter Kuhn, Professor, and Chair of Chinese Studies, University of Wà ¼rzburg. He wrote Tracing a Chinese Legend: In Search of the Identity of the First Sericulturalist for Toung Pao, an international journal of sinology. In this article, Kuhn looks at what the Chinese sources say about the legend of the invention of silk and describes the presentation of silk manufactures invention across the dynasties. He makes note of the contribution of the lady of Hsi-ling in particular. She was the principal wife of Huangdi, who is better known as the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor (Huangdi or Huang-ti, where Huang is the same word we translate as Yellow when used in connection with the great Chinese Yellow River, and ti is the name of an important god that is used in the names of kings, conventionally translated emperor) is a legendary Neolithic era ruler and ancestor of the Chinese people, with almost godlike proportions. Huangdi is said to have lived in the third millennium B.C. for 100-118 years, during which he is credited with giving numerous gifts to the Chinese people, including the magnetic compass, and sometimes including silk. The principal wife of the Yellow Emperor, the lady of Hsi-ling (also known as Xi Ling-Shi, Lei-Tsu, or Xilingshi), is, like her husband, credited with discovering silk. The lady of Hsi-ling is also credited with figuring out how to reel silk and inventing what people needed to make clothing from the silk -- the loom, according to the Shih-Chi Record of the Historian. Ultimately, the confusion seems to remain, but the upper hand is given the empress. The Yellow Emperor, who was honored as the First Sericulturalist during the Northern Chi Period (c. A.D. 550 - c. 580), may be the male figure depicted in later art as a patron saint of sericulture. The lady Hsi-ling is more often called the First Sericulturalist. Although she had been worshiped and held a position in the Chinese pantheon since the Northern Chou Dynasty (557-581), her official position as the personification of the First Sericulturalist with a divine seat and altar only came in 1742. Silk Clothing Altered the Chinese Division of Labor One could speculate, as Kuhn does, that the job of making fabric was womens work and that therefore the associations were made with the empress, rather than her husband, even if he had been the first sericulturalist. The Yellow Emperor may have invented the methods of producing silk, while the lady Hsi-ling was responsible for the discovery of silk itself. This legendary discovery, reminiscent of the story of the discovery of actual tea in China, involves falling into an anachronistic cup of tea.   Chinese scholarship from the seventh century A.D. says that before the Yellow Emperor, clothing was made of bird (feathers can protect against water and down is, of course, an insulating material) and animal skin, but the supply of animals didnt keep up with demand. The Yellow Emperor decreed that clothing should be made of silk and hemp. In this version of the legend, it is Huangdi (actually, one of his officials named Po Yu), not the lady of Hsi-ling who invented all fabrics, including silk, and also, according to legend from the Han Dynasty, the loom. Again, if looking for a rationale for the contradiction based on the division of labor and gender roles: hunting would not have been a domestic pursuit, but the province of the men, so when clothing changed from skins to cloth, it made sense that it would have changed the storied gender of the maker. Evidence of 5 Millennia of Silk Not quite the full seven, but five millennia puts it more in line with important major developments elsewhere, so it is more easily believed. Archaeological evidence reveals that silk existed in China as far back as around 2750 B.C., which puts it, coincidentally according to Kuhn, close to the dates of the Yellow Emperor and his wife. Shang Dynasty oracle bones show evidence of silk production. Silk was also in the Indus Valley from the third millennium B.C., according to New Evidence for Silk in the Indus Valley, which says copper-alloy ornaments and steatite beads have yielded silk fibers upon microscopic examination. As an aside, the article says this raises the question of whether China really had exclusive control of silk. A Silken Economy The importance of silk to China probably cant be exaggerated: the exceptionally long and strong filament clothed a vast Chinese population, helped support the bureaucracy by being used as a precursor to paper (2nd century B.C.) [Hoernle] and to pay taxes [Grotenhuis], and led to commerce with the rest of the world. Sumptuary laws regulated the wearing of fancy silks and embroidered, patterned silks became status symbols from the Han to the Northern and Southern Dynasties (2nd century B.C. to 6th century A.D.). How the Secret of Silk Leaked Out The Chinese guarded its secret carefully and successfully for centuries, according to tradition. It was only in the 5th century A.D. that silk eggs and mulberry seeds were, according to legend, smuggled out in an elaborate headdress by a Chinese princess when she went to her groom, the king of Khotan, in Central Asia. A century later they were smuggled by monks into the Byzantine Empire, according to the Byzantine historian Procopius. Silk Worship Patron saints of sericulture were honored with life-size statues and rites; in the Han period, the silkworm goddess was personified, and in Han and Sung periods, the empress performed a silk ceremony. The empress helped with the gathering of the mulberry leaves necessary for the best silk, and the sacrifices of pig and sheep that were made to the First Sericulturalist who may or may not have been the lady of Hsi-ling. By the 3rd century, there was a silkworm palace which the empress supervised. Legends of the Discovery of Silk There is a fanciful legend about the discovery of silk, a love story about a betrayed and murdered magic horse, and his lover, a woman transformed into a silkworm; the threads becoming feelings. Liu recounts a version, recorded by Tsui Pao in his 4th century A.D. Ku Ching Chu (Antiquarian Researches), where the horse is betrayed by the father and his daughter who promised to marry the horse. After the horse was ambushed, killed, and skinned, the hide wrapped up the girl and flew away with her. It was found in a tree and brought home, where some time later the girl had been transformed into a moth. There is also a fairly pedestrian story of how silk was actually discovered -- the cocoon, thought to be fruit, wouldnt soften when boiled, so the would-be diners got their aggression out by beating it with sticks until the filament emerged. Sericulture References: The Silkworm and Chinese Culture, by Gaines K. C. Liu; Osiris, Vol. 10, (1952), pp. 129-194 Tracing a Chinese Legend: In Search of the Identity of the First Sericulturalist, by Dieter Kuhn; Toung Pao Second Series, Vol. 70, Livr. 4/5 (1984), pp. 213-245. Spices and Silk: Aspects of World Trade in the First Seven Centuries of the Christian Era, by Michael Loewe; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland No. 2 (1971), pp. 166-179. Stories of Silk and Paper, by Elizabeth Ten Grotenhuis; World Literature Today; Vol. 80, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug. 2006), pp. 10-12. Silks and Religions in Eurasia, C. A.D. 600-1200, by Liu Xinru; Journal of World History Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 25-48. Who Was the Inventor of Rag-Paper? by A. F. Rudolf Hoernle; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Oct. 1903), pp. 663-684.