Environmental Scan Paper free essay sample

Organizations use environmental scans so that they are aware of their surroundings, internally and externally, before getting into strategic planning. What environmental scanning is is the â€Å"monitoring, evaluation, and dissemination of information† (Wheelen Hunger, 2010) gathered from the environment inside, as well as outside of the organization. This information is passed to key people within the organization to use strategically and to avoid unwanted surprises; it provides factors that have an influence on the direction and goals of an organization. An analysis of the internal environment of an organization is done to help identify its strengths and weaknesses. It looks at the organizational culture and structure, the interactions between all levels of employees, the operations, resources, and many other factors (Environmental Scanning, 2013). This information can be gathered by observations, discussions, interviews, and surveys; this will provide a variety of sources for determining the present capabilities of the organization. An analysis of the external environment of an organization is done to help identify its opportunities and threats. We will write a custom essay sample on Environmental Scan Paper or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It looks at natural, societal, and task environments in order to determine changing trends and patterns in order to forecast the future directions and impacts of these changes on the organization. First, Walmart will be analyzed using a SWOT chart. The following is a look at some of its internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats (Walmart Canada, 2013): Strengths †¢Powerful and well-known brand †¢Large expansion, including globally †¢Strong customer base †¢Convenience of broad product line in one location at low prices †¢Unique corporate culture Weaknesses †¢Many part-time employees †¢Market share lower in countries outside the US †¢Questionable quality of products due to low prices †¢Broader focus means a thinner focus Opportunities †¢Further expansion to more countries †¢Improve image in local communities †¢Recessions drive customers to buy lower cost products †¢Continue with green promotion †¢Continue with the super centers Threats †¢Negative image when it puts smaller business out of business in local communities †¢Large competition since Walmart is a leading competitor †¢Economical state of all countries it operates in Unions trying to break their way in Next is to look at the competitive advantages of Walmart. The first and most prominent due to its advertisement of it is the products low cost. Walmart has continuously promoted itself as a place where you will save money. Quite often, this is the factor that draws consumers in, as the prices are better than th e competitors; it has a cost advantage. Another competitive advantage is its variety; Walmart provides wide ranges of products, and has been creating super centers so that consumers have one-stop-shops to go to at low prices.

People’s Attitude Towards Abortion in Australia free essay sample

People’s attitude towards abortion in Australia Abstract: The hypothesis, â€Å"It is apparent that in Australia people are not supportive of abortion. † would be tested in the report. The aim of it was to reveal the current views of people in Australia towards abortion, under the circumstances of different age and cultural background. A questionnaire about justified reasons, legalization and values on abortion was constructed and the target group would be 20 international students and 20 local Australians. The international students were mainly Chinese, and a few from South-East Asia. Though most participants did not have a really strong stance of supporting abortion or not, when there were further questions about Pro-choice behaviour and legalization of abortion, it was discovered that participants were actually in respect of freedom of choice, and agreed that abortion should be legalized. Therefore it could be said that comparing the 2 sides, participants were rather supportive to abortion. Based on the results, extended researches covering a larger target group which could mostly represent different cultural groups could be conducted to test whether abortion was really generally acceptable or not or could it be legalized under all cases. We will write a custom essay sample on People’s Attitude Towards Abortion in Australia or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Introduction Abortion had been a controversial issue for hundreds of years, discussions and debates were always held to argue whether it should or should not be declared legal. This issue was crucial at all time because the attitude towards it were mainly influenced by various important values of life like morality, human rights and freedom of choice, adding that they were the key factors to determine whether it should be declared legal. â€Å"Abortion can be defined as the expulsion or removal of an embryo or foetus from the uterus of the pregnant mother† (Blade, 2008). It could be divided into two types. First, the â€Å"spontaneous abortion† occurs when the mother’s body ejects the foetus due to different reasons, usually natural ones (without human effort). This report focused on another type of abortion, â€Å"induced abortion†. This was what people usually mean when they use the word abortion. In other words, it was the â€Å"termination of pregnancy†. After the Federation in 1901, abortion was handled by the British Offences Against the Person Act of 1861. In the act, abortion was illegal , no matter under what circumstances. However, since then, abortion would be legal in some cases under the law. For instance, Natasha,(1998), suggested that under the McGuire ruling (1986) in Queensland, abortion could only be legalized when the mother was in threat that abortion could preserve her life or health. Another case that abortion could be legalized was that if the newborn baby would die immediately or within a short period. For the current legislation about it in Queensland under the Queensland Criminal Code, the viewpoint remained similar that the court would prohibit abortion unless the mothers life or health is in danger. Though, it did not reveal any response on the change of attitudes of people towards abortion. The aim of the report was to reveal the current views of people in Australia towards abortion, under the circumstances of different age and cultural background(international students versus local Australians). It appeared that nowadays more and more people were supportive to abortion. This view would be supported by the results from survey and then a discussion part of it would be included and at last the conclusion and recommendation would be formulated. Methodology: Questionnaires about the attitudes of abortion of people were used to collect data for the report. A qualitative methodology was used. The reason for choosing it was because the report focused more on depth, rather than quantity. According to the Family Health International (2005), a qualitative research provided information about the â€Å"human† side of an issue, which was often contradictory. It could also interpret the complex reality or create a better understanding to a specific situation and the implications of the qualitative data. Another important point was that it could help identify intangible factors (age, gender, nationality, religion, etc) in the report. These factors were the keys that influence a person’s attitude toward the issue. The emphasis of the questionnaire was to understand participant’s standpoints for or against abortion, therefore 10 out of 14 questions were about their opinion, the rest were 3 attribute questions and 1 knowledge question. The total number of participants was 40. There were altogether 20 international students studying in Australia and 20 local Australians completed the questionnaire. Among the participants, 23 of them were female and 17 were male. In the student group, 2 of them were under or below 18 and 18 were at the age of 19 to 30. Among the local Australians, 6 of them were between 31-45 and another 14 were 45 or above. A point to note was that for the international students, 15 of them were Chinese. To make sure the information would be kept secret, no questions were about identity or other private information. The questionnaires were given out in two ways. The first way was to distribute them at school and at homes, and another way was to distribute them through the internet. Participants were quite interested to the questionnaire as they thought that it was a controversial issue. However in the process, participants found confused with the last open-ended question about the relationship between culture, age and abortion as it was not required to state reasons but lines were given. Moreover, due to a lack of time in completing the questionnaire, i. e. in 5 or 10 minutes, the data collected might be distorted. Results: The purpose of the questionnaire was to find out the attitudes of people in Australia towards abortion.

Free Essays on The Godfather Trilogy

Using a film or up to 3 films of your choice, explain how editing and mise-en-scà ¨ne can accentuate or detract from the narrative. For this essay, I have chosen The Godfather Trilogy. (COPPOLA, F.F., 1972 - 1990). Using these great movies, I would like to demonstrate the positive impact of editing and mise-en-scà ©ne on the narrative. I will start with very short summary of the story of first two parts of the trilogy, focusing mainly on Michael Corleone’s character and its development to the king of underworld. Afterwards, I intent to clarify how does mise-en-scà ¨ne make the narrative real and which methods is Francis Ford Coppola using to create a complex and real-looking Mafia world. Furthermore, show which particular features are attendant to the first two parts. Lastly, I will pick up the key sequences and discuss their editing and mise-en-scà ¨ne. The trilogy begins in New York in Corleone’s family house with a wedding of Vito’s daughter and we witness the contrast between the loud party outside and the silent and cold study, for the first time. Whole story is mainly about Vito Corleone and his son Michael Corleone. In the first part we can see the relationship between father and the son and the second part is edited to show their resemblance and unification. After the hit on Vito, Michael who wanted to stay out the family business has to step in, to protect his pop. His personal conflict culminates in the scene, when he assassinates Solozzo and police captain McCluskey. (I will discuss this scene later) He is forced to hide in Sicily, where he gets married, but his wife is murdered by men attempting to kill him. In the meanwhile, his brother Sony is assassinated. He finally returns to USA and renews his love for Kay. Vito passes him the throne of the Corleone Family. After Vito’s funeral Michael takes con trol and the intense and famous baptism sequence follows. During this sequence Michael’s men kill every head of... Free Essays on The Godfather Trilogy Free Essays on The Godfather Trilogy Using a film or up to 3 films of your choice, explain how editing and mise-en-scà ¨ne can accentuate or detract from the narrative. For this essay, I have chosen The Godfather Trilogy. (COPPOLA, F.F., 1972 - 1990). Using these great movies, I would like to demonstrate the positive impact of editing and mise-en-scà ©ne on the narrative. I will start with very short summary of the story of first two parts of the trilogy, focusing mainly on Michael Corleone’s character and its development to the king of underworld. Afterwards, I intent to clarify how does mise-en-scà ¨ne make the narrative real and which methods is Francis Ford Coppola using to create a complex and real-looking Mafia world. Furthermore, show which particular features are attendant to the first two parts. Lastly, I will pick up the key sequences and discuss their editing and mise-en-scà ¨ne. The trilogy begins in New York in Corleone’s family house with a wedding of Vito’s daughter and we witness the contrast between the loud party outside and the silent and cold study, for the first time. Whole story is mainly about Vito Corleone and his son Michael Corleone. In the first part we can see the relationship between father and the son and the second part is edited to show their resemblance and unification. After the hit on Vito, Michael who wanted to stay out the family business has to step in, to protect his pop. His personal conflict culminates in the scene, when he assassinates Solozzo and police captain McCluskey. (I will discuss this scene later) He is forced to hide in Sicily, where he gets married, but his wife is murdered by men attempting to kill him. In the meanwhile, his brother Sony is assassinated. He finally returns to USA and renews his love for Kay. Vito passes him the throne of the Corleone Family. After Vito’s funeral Michael takes con trol and the intense and famous baptism sequence follows. During this sequence Michael’s men kill every head of...

How to Distinguish Between a File and a Directory in Perl

How to Distinguish Between a File and a Directory in Perl Lets say youre building a Perl script to traverse a file system and record what it finds. As you open file handles, you need to know if youre dealing with an actual file or with a directory, which you treat differently. You want to glob a directory, so you can continue to recursively parse the filesystem. The quickest way to tell files from directories is to use Perls built-in ​File Test Operators.  Perl has operators you can use to test different aspects of a file. The -f operator is used to identify regular files rather than directories or other types of files. Using the -f File Test Operator #!/usr/bin/perl -w$filename /path/to/your/file.doc;$directoryname /path/to/your/directory;if (-f $filename) {print This is a file.;}if (-d $directoryname) {print This is a directory.; } First, you create two strings: one pointing at a file and one pointing at a directory. Next, test the $filename with the -f operator, which checks to see if something is a file. This will print This is a file. If you try the -f operator on the directory, it doesnt print. Then, do the opposite for the $directoryname and confirm that it is, in fact, a directory. Combine this with a directory glob  to sort out which elements are files and which are directories: #!/usr/bin/perl -wfiles *;foreach $file (files) {if (-f $file) {print This is a file: . $file;}if (-d $file) {print This is a directory: . $file;}}​ A complete list of Perl File Test Operators  is  available online.

Recruitment and Selection of Talented Staff (Tesco) Dissertation

Recruitment and Selection of Talented Staff (Tesco) - Dissertation Example Tesco, one of the largest retailers and largest private employer in the UK, have lost market share and company reputation in recent times due to high employee turnover. They expect to add 20,000 UK but it is not known to what extent they have a structured recruitment and selection process. With the aim to evaluate if retailers align the recruitment and selection of talent with their corporate strategy, three research objectives were stated. The study concludes that Tesco has not given focus to employee recruitment and retention in their corporate strategy. Their corporate strategy focuses on brand building as they have been suffering from an adverse brand image. While Tesco is proactive in the recruitment process they do not employ informal methods of recruitment. Corporate strategies reflect long-term workforce strategy and direct the recruitment and selection policy but this has not found to be valid in the case of Tesco. SMART recommendations have been made which would help Tesco reduce employee turnover. Employee recruitment has been the focus of research by many scholars and there has been an increase in the variety of recruitment topics (Breaugh, 2008) thereby suggesting that recruitment is a critical function of the HRM. Esbjerg, Buck and Grunert (2010) are of the opinion that human resources management (HRM) practices of retailers has not been the focus of researchers although larger retailers face several challenges in managing the work force. The success of the organizations depends upon their ability to tap into the talent and skills of their employees. This requires a holistic approach to recruitment and the selection process. Human resources are now considered valuable capital, valuable assets that should be motivated and retained in the organization. However, this implies that the recruitment and selection of the right people with the right skills in the right position would make the difference between success and failure of an organization (HRMID 2005). Recruitment is no more based on the traditional approach of personnel management. It has undergone tremendous changes due to globalization,

Communcation in the work place as an lpn Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Communcation in the work place as an lpn - Essay Example Wherever a LPN has the opportunity to use communication skills, they should. Care facilities are places where lives are frequently on the brink; a miscommunicated thought could end someones life. There is one thing a nurse must do above all else: know the capabilities of the staff and how to delegate responsibilities amongst them. This is another element of communication that sometimes goes unnoticed. It is often forgotten that a nurse needs to be effective in written communication as well as oral communication. This is because notes may need to be looked over by another member of staff. When a LPN is effective in communication, there are many benefits for patients and fellow staff alike. If communicating properly, a LPN could improve patient care, both inside and outside of the hospital; reduce unnecessary spending, or improve the way that money is being spent; and improve the role played in patient

Case Study Toyota crisis Essay Example for Free

Case Study Toyota crisis Essay Organizational Crisis negatively effect organization’s name and image, as well as adversely impact employee by instilling doubt, insecurity and distrust (Tahmicioglu, 2010). Employees are directly effected by the crisis, as they are the primary stakeholders (Obston, 2014) and brand ambassadors of the company. Thus, to ensure wellbeing of employees, especially in time of catastrophe, they should be well informed and fostered under the guidance of company’s leaders. Leaders at Toyota should take an immediate action; start with early internal crisis communication, take accountability and show their commitment to resolving the crisis. Male (2004) suggests, being proactive and transparent lessen doubt and distress among employees. It will be beneficial if a live talk is set up with the employees. Live podcast will personalize the message, and will allow employees to directly hear compassion and empathy in the leader’s voice. Establishing an active feedback loop is also very effective (Miller, 2014), an online forum on company’s intranet will be a great way to facilitate two-way dialogues between employees and executives. The forum will be pivotal in giving direct feedback to employees’ questions and concerns, and for consistently providing updated information. Along with starting communication, hotlines dedicated for crisis should be provided as part of employee assistance program; employees should be encouraged to actively use the services to get professional help they need for dealing with crisis. Lack of immediate dialogue leads to speculation (Miller, 2014), and when the magnitude of the crisis is as big as Toyota’s recall, consistent media scrutiny and amplification of negative news can further fuel anxiety and uncertainty among employees (Cole, 2011). Therefore, its imperative leaders eradicate uncertainty by giving timely crisis communication that precedes external news and provide continuing support to employees. An early two-way dialogue is a good start to lessen the chaos among distressed employees. However, in addition to continuing practice of honest internal communication, for the long run, leaders will need to establish processes specific to employees’ welfare to restore lost trust.  Organizational strategy needs to improve to rectify behaviors that effected employees’ welfare in past. Toyota’s work philosophy which Liker (2004) described as â€Å"The Toyota way,† was known for continuous improvement and people development; however, aggressive focus on rapid growth (Cole, 2011) resulted in detrimental practices, such as, reward system based on cost control versus quality control, poor training, declining working conditions and work overload (Sullivan, 2010; McNeill, 2013; Cole, 2011). These practices were not only damaging to employees trust, but also clearly violated psychological contract (Rousseau, 1995) of Toyota employees. To rebuild eroded trust caused by the violation of contract, leaders need to validate employees wellbeing is not compromised again. Gillespie and Dietz (2012) recommend implementing a strategy that will safeguard against future untrustworthy actions. This can be done by articulating and enacting a system instilled with high ethical standard, clearly communicated processes and better working conditions. Providing flexible working hours, manageable workload and regular training programs will prove leaders mean well; consistently incorporating employees voice will assure their role is imperative in recovery of company image. Lastly, proactively engaging in regular evaluation of processes will result in improved performance and ultimately recapturing the reputation. References: 1. Cole, R. E. (2011). What Really Happened to Toyota. MIT Sloan Management Review The New Business of Innovation. 2. Gillespie, N., Dietz, G. (2012). The recovery of trust: Case studies of organisational failures and trust repair. Institute of Business Ethics: London. 3. John, S. (2010). A think Piece: How HR caused Toyota to Crash. Retrieved from http://www.ere.net 4. Liker, J. (2004). The Toyota way 14 Management Principles from the Worlds Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill 5. Male, B. (2010). How to handle a product recall. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com 6. McNeill, D. (2013). Cover-up: Toyota and Quality Control. The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 36, No. 1, 7. Miller, J. (2014). 4 Tips to help leaders communicate during a crisis. Retrieve from http://smartblogs.com 8. Obston, A. (2014). 5 ways to communicate with employees during a crisis. Retrieved from http://www.ragan.com 9. Tahmicioglu, E. (2010). Surviving your company’s mistake. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com 10. Rousseau, D. (1995). The psychological contract: Violations and Modifications. The Organizational Behavior Reader. 8th ed.