Analysis of the Book Bitch and the Movie Based on the Book Essay

Analysis of the Book Bitch and the Movie Based on the Book - Essay Example The essay "Analysis of the Book Bitch and the Movie Based on the Book" presents the comparative analysis of the book "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women" and the movie "Taken" based upon the book. In the 2008 movie "Taken" directed by Pierre Morel was released, the story is a spinoff from Elizabeth Wurtzel’s book "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women". It used to be that in the old days, girls and women used to have to be accompanied everywhere they went. In Medieval Spain, women had to be accompanied by a chaperone when they were asked out by a gentleman who would come calling. There are traces of this in the movie when Liam Neeson’s character, Bryan, insists that his daughter not goes alone to France. Even when his daughter insists that she is taking her peer and friend Amanda with her to France - who is also 17 years old - Bryan is not convinced that it’s the best idea. He has a bad feeling about it. His wife Lenore, however, insists that he will never let his daughter do anything. She will come to later regret urging her husband to allow the teen to go with her friend to Paris. It is when the girls take a trip in a Parisian taxi that things go horribly wrong, and an Albanian gangster kidnaps the girls and sells them into slavery. This is when Bryan, the ex-CIA officer, springs into action - as he is told he only h as 96 hours max to save his daughter before she is lost forever. The author’s contentions that the way girls and women are perceived today is an accurate portrayal of what goes on in real life.

HRM Case Study on You Never know Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

HRM Case Study on You Never know - Essay Example Many deserving people are fighting to get a basic job which will at least pay their mortgage and on the other hand, people who cannot even read properly, let alone develop strategies for a company, get great jobs. Why is this? It all boils down to the resume. If someone has carefully crafted their resume by making even their simplest and easiest tasks show up as if they have climbed Mount Everest, it is obvious that it will impress the company. On the other hand, there are also those who are so gullible that they will not show up their most important experiences clearly so that they become overshadowed in the resume and don’t earn them as much credit as they deserve. The fault can also be ascribed to companies for not being thorough in their selection. More often than not they may drop a very worthy candidate’s resume in the bin just because the font was not right or his English Language might be a little weak. I personally know a case from â€Å"Reckitt & Benkiser† who rejected a girl candidate for their Management Trainee program because her father was a retired employee of â€Å"Unilever†. They might have had this assumption that she will pass on secrets to a rival company. Everyone does not make their own resume. As a business student I know that there might be a handful students who â€Å"really† know how to do this job well and everyone will come up to them to get their resume made. Either this, or there may be people who hire professional help to get their resumes made. This practice happens in abundance because companies look for, and hire, only those candidates who have a snappy line in their resume which will catch the eyes of the company. Writing a goal has never been tougher. Simply writing â€Å"to get a good job in a multinational company to make a career† is never enough. You have to write â€Å"explore my horizons in the prestigious working environment this company offers and make my time in this

Impact of Data on Competitive Strategy

Impact of Data on Competitive Strategy Prachi Mankotia Will data transform competitive strategy? (A) Argue that competitive strategy, from the perspective of Michael Porter, is essential for firm success (hence Philip Evans is not correct in arguing that strategy is invalid). What is Strategy? Before explaining the concept of strategy, it is essential to highlight the term Value Proposition. A value proposition is a thirty-second elevator speech stating the specific benefits a product or service offering provides a buyer. It answers why the product or service is superior to competing offers. As such, the value proposition becomes a critical component in shaping strategy (Principles of Marketing, 2015). Strategy is often misinterpreted with aspirations, actions, and vision of the firm. It is interesting to note that many people say that it is our strategy to be number 1 or it is our strategy to grow, our strategy is to do international business, etc. but these are not strategies. Strategy defines the companys distinctive approach to competing and competitive advantages on which it will be based. Thinking strategically is the starting point to the firms success. The firms try to be the best in the market, be it the best car, the best toothpaste, or anything for that matter, but this is the worst error that firms make. They try to compete in the same dimensions. Instead, they should try to be unique. The process of strategic planning Strategic planning is a process that helps an organization allocate its resources to capitalize on opportunities in the marketplace. Typically, it is a long-term process. The strategic planning process includes conducting a situation analysis and developing the organizations mission statement, objectives, value proposition, and strategies (Principles of Marketing, 2015). A situational analysis includes analysis of both internal and external factors. Organizations conduct SWOT analysis based on this situation analysis. The strengths and weaknesses depend on the internal factors whereas the opportunities and threats depend on the external factors. Once a company has analysed its internal and external environments, managers can begin to decide which strategies are best, given the firms mission statement. This is a very broad model but Michael Porter came up with a better model to make this concept clear. Competitive strategy: essential for success of the firm A companys economic performance results from two different causes, one being the industry structure and other strategic positioning within the industry. Strategic thinking must encompass both these factors. Michael Porter developed an approach for analysing industries and the model was called the Five Forces Model (Porter, 1980). This model helps the firms to identify their current competitors as well as those who can be competitors in the future and firms can find the best way to position themselves in the industry. The second part in strategic thinking is the strategic positioning which means achieving superior performance within an industry. Only two ways can achieve profitability; by being able to command a higher price(differentiation) or by being able to produce an equivalent product at lower cost. So, the firm needs to identify its root to competitive advantage. With this comes the concept of value chain. Value chains is the set of activities that the company does to deliver value to the customers. All competitive advantage resides in the value chain. Strategy is manifested in choices about how activities in the value chain are configured and linked together. Often, operational effectiveness is presumed to be a strategy but it is not a strategy. Though it is a necessity but it not sufficient for the company to be profitable eventually. This is because over long run, the competitors will figure out the companys best practice and then it will be hard to be distinctive. This is also known as strategic convergence which leads to lower prices and no one is profitable, all try to stay in the game. Therefore, the company should consider strategic positioning because it presumes that the company is operationally effective. It is about making choices to be unique, to be different to meet different needs to the set of customers that the company chooses to target. Some examples of competitive strategy This section of the paper illustrates examples for both industry structure and strategic positioning within an industry, which are essential for the success of the firm. Airline industry vs Business Software industry Michael Porter gives an example of the industry structure using the Five Forces Model (Porter, 1980). He explains that for any industry to attain average level of profitability, it is essential to understand the fundamental structure of forces. The airline industry has horrendous profitability since decades because of unattractive industry structure. It is very easy for customers to switch airlines; the airframe and engine manufacturers also have a lot of power and there are high levels of rivalry because of costs being fixed. Many few airlines make money and even they dont make it for a long time. Business software industry, on the other hand, has a very attractive industry structure. This is because it becomes very difficult for the customers to switch from one software to the other. The costs of producing a software and bringing it up is also very high, so there are not much substitutes. This makes the software industry very profitable. This is not random and it is very important for the industry to understand the underlying structure to make profits and succeed. IKEA: Furniture Retailer Company This example portrays all important attributes that a company needs to cover to create a successful strategy. The very first attribute is to have a unique value proposition, i.e., who are your customers, what are their needs and what relative price you must offer. A strategy is when a company competes to be unique. The value proposition of IKEA includes customers who seek quality and sophisticated design but at a very low price point. They have a wide array of stylish and space efficient furnishings. They made many key choices in the value chain to be unique, and that is what a strategy is, a combination that suits your companys value proposition. IKEA delivers its products in a box, there is no fixed furnishing, everything is dismantled and packed compact in a box. Another attribute to strategy is to make clear trade-offs and choosing what not to do. Part of a successful strategy is that a company cannot seek to make everybody happy, it must choose its target market and focus on the ir needs and not compromising on certain factors to include everybody. Michael porter also makes it clear that a company shouldnt imitate IKEA because in this way, it might be altering the advantages it has. No one can imitate them because strategy is about making choices and tying them together to benefit the organization. Another attribute to a successful strategy is how the activities in the value chain are connected. Like in IKEA, all its activities are mutually connected, their design, production, the way they do logistics, etc. This is another reason no one can copy a good strategy because for that everything needs to be copied which wont work because the company from whom youll be copying, is doing that for a long time now. The last attribute that makes a successful strategy is that change is continuous but not change in strategy, not change in value proposition. Conclusion All the above examples and concepts clearly indicate that a strategy is often misinterpreted with a firms aspirations, visions, and actions. A strategy is the means to get to those aspirations, it is the core understanding of distinctive issues, it is the set of choices a firm makes to deliver those values. Thinking strategically means to compete to be unique and not the best. Strategy is about making choices, and with choices comes trade-offs. A good strategy is a unique set of choices made from the value chain that Michael Porter has introduced and a competitive strategy leads to a firms success. Phillip Evans mentioned his point of data taking over strategy but even he is not sure of it. He quotes value chain can breakup but not necessarily. His views are based on assumptions whereas Porters view proves that competitive strategy is essential for the firms success. Moreover, data can help a firm to increase its potential for competitive advantage, but Porters value chain is important for a firm to decide the combination of choices to make to use its competitive advantage in the right direction to achieve success. Therefore, it is evident that Competitive Strategy, from the perspective of Michael Porter is essential for firm success. References Principles of Marketing (2015). University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing edition. https://youtu.be/KvYwKM5bY0s http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_evans_how_data_will_transform_business http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/dstools/porters-generic-competitive-strategies/ http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueproposition.asp https://www.information-management.com/opinion/big-data-and-analytics-help-business-transform-and-gain-competitive-advantage

Dengue in Malaysia Essay -- Health, Diseases

Dengue has now emerged as one of the major public health problems in Malaysia. It was first reported in 1901 in Penang and since then the disease has become endemic concentrating mostly in urban areas. The objectives of this study were to utilize the temporal-spatial model to determine high risk areas for the dengue outbreak. This study examined a total of 25000 confirmed dengue fever cases, geo-coded by address in the city of Subang Jaya between Jan 2006 and December 2009, were included in the study. The results were drawn from a measurement of the three temporal risk characteristics (Frequency, duration and intensity) in order to determine the severity and magnitude of outbreak transmission.The values of the three indices were considered high in a spatial unit when their standard values were positive. Measurement of the three temporal risk indices found that there were areas with significant high value for each of the temporal indices. This suggested that areas within Subang Jaya M unicipality had different temporal characteristics for dengue occurrence. The utilization of three risk measures enabled to identify higher-risk areas for the occurrence of dengue fever, concentrated in the city’s northern region. The correlation coefficient for all the three types of relationship was above 0.7. The value indicated that there was a strong correlation between each temporal risk indices. Even though case notification data are subject to bias, this information is available in the health services and can lead to important conclusions, recommendations and hypotheses. As a recommendation, the temporal risk indices can be utilized by public health officials to characterize dengue rather than relying on the traditional case incidence data. ... ...rrupted cases. This index gives an idea of the persistence of transmission and represents the average duration, in weeks, of epidemic waves that occurred in the given period. †¢ Intensity index (ÃŽ ³), characterized as the mean incidence of cumulative dengue cases occurring in consecutive weeks per epidemic wave that had persisted for more than two week. It can be expressed as: ÃŽ ³ = TI / OE where TI is the incidence rate during the given period and OE is described above. It assesses the severity of transmission, and is based on sequences of weeks with the occurrence of uninterrupted cases. High values mean time-concentrated transmission. The dengue cases were provided by MPSJ where dengue cases were summarized according to the housing area, on a weekly basis. Therefore, this study used a week as a temporal unit for better comparison on different indices.

Analyzing Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet 54 Essay

Edmund Spenser’s â€Å"Sonnet 54† The world is like a theater and his love is like watching drama unfold on stage. Love has it’s ups and downs, sometimes you’re happy and feel like you are watching a comedy, but then soon after you can become miserable just like the sadness you feel when watching a tragedy. The woman he loves doesn’t seem to happy when he is nor does she try to make him feel better when he is upset, instead she makes fun of him and mocks his feelings. She doesn’t seem to be affected by anything, so he comes to the conclusion that she isn’t a caring person nor can she be, she’s just a heartless human being incapable of love. The rhyme scheme is that of a Spenserian Sonnet. Spenser uses conceit throughout the first two quatrains in order to get his points across of how love compares to the shows of the theater. Beginning in the third quatrain, Spenser shifts from talking about what his love is like to talking about how the woman he loves mocks him. Spenser uses Caesura in line 13 of the couplet. â€Å"What then can move her? if nor mirth nor moan,† This pause is used to get you to understand the importance of this question. He’s so distraught by the fact that this woman is so void of emotion, he can’t believe that nothing affects her and that she can treat him so badly. He ponders if anything could make her feel. It is interesting how the third quatrain makes somewhat of a different point than the first two. Typically the first three quatrains are used to restate the point of the writer. Each of the three quatrains form their own sentence, as well as the couplet. I believe Spenser does this in order to try and make each point of each quatrain important to the reader. Each quatrain describes something specific but different, they do however all keep with his description of his love. It seems that the couplet’s sentence show’s that the woman is the main cause for his ups and downs and he comes to the conclusion that she will never change. Spenser uses many poetic devices such as his conceit of love being like someone watching a play, enjambment, breaks and caesurae to get his points across. The content of Sonnet 54 still rings true today, most people probably feel as if their love life is like that of a production on stage.

Human Behavior in an Organization Essay

In an organization there are lots of factors to be considered for the company to achieve its goals and objective and succeed. These factors include communication, motivation, leadership skills, personal characteristics of employees, interaction between and among employees and teamwork. Communication is significant in transferring information because the information to be transferred must be precise and accurate to avoid miscommunication. Failure to communicate proper information might cause a negative long-term effect on the company. Furthermore, miscommunication may result to personal conflicts between members of an organization. Persons or employees in the organization must feel motivated to achieve the goals and objectives that should be met. This motivation may come from personal factors, such as for family and self-competence, or external factors, such as salaries or benefits are tied to performance of doing a job. Highly motivated members are the ones who mostly done their job efficiently. Management must motivate employees for them to do their jobs efficiently and effectively so as to lessen any probable negative impacts to the organization. There is always a person or a group of persons that will initiate any activities done by an organization and we usually call these people as leaders. A leader must be sensitive to feelings of others but not to the extent that it would prejudice any undertakings made by the group. We see different kinds of leaders, there are those who are autocratic or who don’t listen to what others has to say but there are also those that listens, hears and considers the point of view of others. Conflicts may arise in an organization primarily because of the personal characteristics of each employee that are not acceptable to others. This should not be done because everyone is different in his or her own way. Conflicts between employees would result to negative effects that would cause to fail to meet the objectives. These problems between members must be resolve to build a better relationship between them and to be able to prevent this problems to arise again in the future. In any activity that an organization should do, teamwork must always be present. This is very important to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives efficiently. In a team, each one must do their part to help achieve the goal and not help prejudice the activity. In a team, together everyone achieves more, which means that if members would just work together, all of the objectives, even the least important objective will be met. There are weaknesses and strengths inside a group and this must be taken into considerations, to eliminate these weaknesses and improve those strengths. Team building activities may be done by the organization to improve the relationship between and among members so as to have a team that works together for a common goal. Hence, goal congruence arises, which is very important factor that must exist inside the organization. Thus, proper communication, motivation, leadership skills, relationships between members and teamwork must exist within an organization. In this way, any goals and objectives of the organization will be met. As long as each one of the members do their parts well, nothing could go wrong and the organization will be successful in any activities they will undertake.

Free Essays on Family Life Cycle

The family life cycle consists of six stages, which for the basis of a person’s life. It begins with The Young Adult in which parents learn to accept separation from their children, the development of intimate peer relationships and becoming independent financially. I will be entering this stage soon enough to the point where my parents have told me about their struggles and what I should do when entering this stage. I have learned to become dependant on myself financially and how to separate from them in the future. The second stage involves The Newly Wed Couple in which a couple commits to a new relationship. They learn to adjust to each other, set up a joint home and interact with both families. Both of my parents found the separation from their families hard to do because once they had their arranged marriage they would move from India to Canada. They would be leaving a familiar environment and living with a complete stranger. My parents had to start from the beginning and learn how to accumulate their finances within a joint account. This taught me how to become prepared for a similar situation I will face in the future and how to become responsible for my significant other and myself. The family life cycle continues with The Couple with Young Children, and how they learn to accept new members into the family unit. â€Å"This includes adjusting the marital relationship to accept children, taking on the roles of being parents, and realigning relationships with families of orientation to include grandparent roles.† – Text Book.... Free Essays on Family Life Cycle Free Essays on Family Life Cycle The family life cycle consists of six stages, which for the basis of a person’s life. It begins with The Young Adult in which parents learn to accept separation from their children, the development of intimate peer relationships and becoming independent financially. I will be entering this stage soon enough to the point where my parents have told me about their struggles and what I should do when entering this stage. I have learned to become dependant on myself financially and how to separate from them in the future. The second stage involves The Newly Wed Couple in which a couple commits to a new relationship. They learn to adjust to each other, set up a joint home and interact with both families. Both of my parents found the separation from their families hard to do because once they had their arranged marriage they would move from India to Canada. They would be leaving a familiar environment and living with a complete stranger. My parents had to start from the beginning and learn how to accumulate their finances within a joint account. This taught me how to become prepared for a similar situation I will face in the future and how to become responsible for my significant other and myself. The family life cycle continues with The Couple with Young Children, and how they learn to accept new members into the family unit. â€Å"This includes adjusting the marital relationship to accept children, taking on the roles of being parents, and realigning relationships with families of orientation to include grandparent roles.† – Text Book....