Filipino Children’s Uses of the Internet and Mobile Phone Essay

I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM How do Filipino children integrate the Internet and mobile phone into their everyday life and peer and family relationships? This study is a response to a suggestion by Sonia Livingstone (2003) to investigate further children’s relationships in the new media environment. It also seeks to address the lack of empirical studies on Filipino children’s engagements with and in the new media, specifically the Internet and mobile phone. Why children? As children become more exposed to new media through school and Home, it is important to investigate how they use and appropriate these technologies in their everyday life. Do these technologies allow for continuity or change in children’s experience of leisure, school, peer and family relationships? II. HYPOTHESIS No stated hypothesis in the study. III. RESEARCH METHOD III.a Research Design Since the objective is to identify, describe and explain children’s activities in the new media environment and how they use these technologies, a qualitative design was employed for the study. This approach allows us to probe further into the contextual realm of children’s engagements with and in the new media. III.b Instrument Data were gathered through a depth interview guide, which allowed respondents to narrate and explain their uses of the Internet and mobile phone as well as their relationships online. The following are the concepts investigated and the corresponding questions: a. Access and Usage of the Mobile Phone/Internet 1. How did you come to own one? Why? 2. How long have you been using a mobile phone? 3. How often do you use the phone? 4. Where do you have Internet access? Why? 5. How often do you use the Internet? Why? b. Uses and Contexts of the Mobile Phone 1. What do you do with your cell phone? Why? 2. What types of messages do you send? Why? IV. CONCLUSION Acknowledging the lack of empirical studies on children and new media, this study asked how a sample of Filipino children integrated new media into their everyday lives and in their relationships with peers and family members. It sought to understand the uses of the Internet and mobile phone in the context of home (family life), school, and leisure activities of children. A contextual approach to the use of new media looks at how these technologies are incorporated into everyday routines and acknowledges how values and social practices influence new media uses. By comparing Internet and mobile phone uses, this preliminary study sought to ascertain the  meanings of these two different but related media among Filipino children. Data suggested that the contexts of family, school, and leisure defined the uses of the new media. The Internet was used mainly for information seeking related to school and interests, relational maintenance (friends and relatives) and leisure. On the other hand, the mobile phone was used for coordinating day-to-day practicalities, relational maintenance among family members and peers, and was deployed by parents as a means to monitor their children’s whereabouts and activities. In turn participants construed the medium as an extension of parental presence. The study also probed into family and peer relationships of participants in the new media environment. The goal was to provide evidence that would support or contradict opinion regarding the potential of the medium as an environment where social relations are created or maintained. Findings suggested that the media were used primarily to maintain the participants’ existing social networks rather than creating new ones. Rarely was the medium used to create new relations. It is important to note that existing relational dynamics in the family largely influence interactions on the mobile phone. Although the phone provided accessibility, it was not a guarantee in improving relations between parents and children, and among siblings. IV. ANALYSIS The obvious change is the accessibility and convenience that these new media provide to facilitate information search and communication. The impact can be seen in the way children do research and regard reading books. As the study unveiled, participants tended to spend less time in the library and get their material instead online, where information is easily copied. The ways school children do research on the Internet could be investigated in future studies. This finding also suggests a need to emphasize critical media literacy among young people that would train them to be critical consumers and users of online information. Almost all of the Filipinos of today are well-oriented when it comes to latest gadgets and its uses, especially the adolescents who used this in almost all of the time. However, there is a big problem when it comes to the â€Å"proper† use of technology. Some Filipinos tend to be abusing the true  essence of technology. Some used it for cyber bullying and any sort of crime related to this. Accessibility does not necessarily alter existing social and cultural practices; for example, participants tended to communicate more within their network of relations. Indeed for this sample of children, Filipino family and peer relational dynamics still find their way in the new media environment. V. REFERENCES Bakardjieva, M. and Smith, R. (2001). The internet in everyday life. New Media and Society. 3 (1): 67-83. Jones, S. (1995). Community in the information age. In S. E. Jones [Ed.]. Cybersociety: Computer Mediated Communication and Community. London: Sage. Leung, L. & Wei, R. (2000). More than just talk on the move: Uses and gratifications of the cellular phone. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. 77 (2): 308-320. Lievrouw, L. & Livingstone, S. (2002). Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs. London: Sage. Livingstone, S. & Bovill, M. (1999). Young people, new media. Report of the Research Project. Children, young people and the changing media environment. London School of Economics and Political Science. Available: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/whosWho/soniaLivingstonePublications3.htm Livingstone, S. (2002). Children’s Use of the Internet: A Review of Research Literature. National Children’s Bureau. Available: http://www.ncb.org.uk/publications/publication Livingstone, S. (2003). Children’s use of the internet: reflections on the emerging research agenda. New Media and Society. 5 (2): 147-166. http://www.amic.org.sg/Resources/Research_Materials/Media_Youth_and_Children/Filipino%20Children%20Uses%20of%20the%20Internet%20and%20Mobile%20Phone.pdf

Is Affirmative Action Effective?

Is Affirmative Action Effective? The Declaration of Independence states â€Å"all men are created equal† (Declaration of Independence) and have certain unalienable rights that among these are â€Å"Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness† (Declaration of Independence). Judging Americans by different standards does not honor this truth. In efforts to remedy the ills of segregation through Affirmative Action, the unintended consequences of this action have created another injustice. If men are created equal then they should be judged equally.Affirmative action is outdated and unconstitutional and it is time for a level playing field. Giving people opportunities based solely on race without the qualifications to succeed in a competitive environment is a major problem in today’s society. The SAT, the Standard Aptitude Test, â€Å"†¦merely measures differences in academic preparation†¦ [The] affirmative action policies [that they] seek to remedy are prima rily produced by â€Å"continuing disparities† in pre-collegiate academic achievements of blacks and white students.On those measures of merit that selective colleges use to decide who gets in, not all groups perform equally† (D’souza 266). Standardized tests are excellent predictors of academic capability, but, even with comparable test scores, evidence shows there simply may be natural differences between the races, similar to the assumption that whites naturally are not as athletic as blacks. America cannot deny opportunities to the people who are the most qualified and give them to someone who is less qualified but of the â€Å"right† skin color.This practice diminishes not only the achievement of the individual, but makes this country less productive than it could be. America is slowing down its’ competitiveness in the world and dumbing down the country. D’souza states that â€Å"†¦ admitting Hispanic and African American students with grade point averages of 3. 2 and SAT scores of 1100, while turning away White and Asian American applicants with GPAs of 4. 0 and SAT scores of 1300† (D’souza 265). In the NBA, more than three fourths of the league is African American. Many believe as stated previously that blacks are more athletic than whites.Demanding that the NBA draft more whites to achieve racial equality, even if they are much less athletic, is effectively the same as demanding that businesses hire less qualified workers based solely on race rather than their academic performance. Rewarding people based on race instead of hard work and intelligence encourages an entitlement mentality and creates a false sense of achievement. Granting people opportunities that they may not deserve creates a sense of entitlement and perpetuates stereotypes and the cycle of racism. Equal opportunity is essential to a healthy society.Everyone should be held to the same standard regardless of individual characteri stics that have nothing to do with intelligence, hard work, or creativity. The person most qualified deserves the opportunity. The original justification for affirmative action was to correct historical discrimination against blacks in the south. This justification has been exaggerated and expanded to apply to many classes of people who were never intended to be included. This wide application of affirmative action creates a form of reverse discrimination.The original purpose was to provide government intervention where blatant racism was present. As presently applied, each class has a different standard and set of remedies based on what ever injustice they believe they suffered. According to a 1991 commentary by Patrick Hall, an African American librarian, â€Å"the irony in all of this is that affirmative action and equal opportunity originally intended people to be judged on their qualifications as individuals without regard to race, sex, or age† ( Hall 311). Affirmative a ction now takes away from the key to success which is motivation.Hall suggests that â€Å"motivation, individual initiative, and perseverance can overcome the most the most abhorrent situations† (Hall 312). Instead of creating that motivation, affirmative action has discouraged the majority races that face the same adversity and has caused a tension between races because people who deserve an opportunity are being overlooked because they are white just to create a sense of diversity. Rather than a targeted corrective strategy, a case can be made that affirmative action has diminished some minorities’ drive to achieve prosperity in their lives.The key to successful affirmative action is to create individual initiative regardless of their race. Without this motivation, affirmative action is unfair and can become as destructive as the evil it was intended to correct. The biggest example of affirmative action’s place in the world today is its effect and role in coll ege admissions. These days, the main focus of universities and other educational institutions is to be or become as racially diverse as possible. However, with that being said â€Å"†¦ dequate racial diversity can’t be achieved without rejecting a certain number of more academically qualified white applicants in favor of preferred minority applicants† (Parks 146). In trying to create more equality in opportunity for minorities, the white population’s opportunities are then diminished. Instead of race, the privileges or assistance that comes along with affirmative action should be given to people based on factors that would actually affect their admissions. The policy should almost be used as bonus points for â€Å"†¦ ruly deserving students whose lower grade point average and SAT scores, correlate to overcoming poverty, a single-parent household, lack of English-language background, enrollment at an underperforming high school, a physical handicap or undiagnosed or untreated learning disability† (Parks 149). Growing up in or with a condition that is out of their control, affirmative action should be award to those who have problems that directly affect their education. Within the last century, African Americans have fought harsh battles for their civil rights.Back during Jim Crow law days, segregated schools allowed for differences in educational standards. The few schools that were provided helped some, but for the most part did little for the majority of blacks. This oppression â€Å"†¦ left a large gap in amount of wealth, educational attainment, and social status†¦ † (Young 14). The more the gap in attainment increased, the greater the gap in economic opportunity. Some African Americans view affirmative action policies as a form of pity. Because of past struggles and their assumed continuance â€Å"†¦ ffirmative action programs give blacks and other disadvantaged groups extra consideration when a pplying for admissions† (Young 14). Whites now feel â€Å"bad† about their past wrongdoings and are trying to make up for it by giving education as a handout. These policies anger many blacks because they want the same opportunity to show how far they have come and prove they are capable of being successful on their own without any special assistance. Even though most educational institutions are trying to increase their racially diverse appeal, most still favor whites over other minority races. With that being said â€Å"†¦ hites, whatever their status, can view themselves as entitled to privileges and priorities over blacks† (Bell 77). This in turn causes more tension between races because of the factor of competition. If schools based admissions solely on the information they are presented with, race and ethnicity aside, they could fairly base their rejection or acceptance and have it be justified. This would also help the competition tension because admi ssions would be based on their effort and achievements instead of something that is beyond their control. There are many different standards of education around the world.In order to make sure every student has the same chance of success, every school needs to if not at the same level, at least offer the same or similar courses. Many â€Å"†¦ recommend that courts should concentrate on enforcing genuine equality in education by requiring schools to conform to uniform standards â€Å"(Bell 76). This way every student has the access to these resources if need be. So students are judged on what they bring to the table, not on race or unchangeable characteristics. Most races are hurt by some of the practices or effects of affirmative action policies.Getting rid of race-based pickings, would help increase educational equality across the board and also increase economic opportunity. Unfair cruelty and underestimation is also presented upon Hispanics. The stereotypical view that man y Americans have on Hispanics is that their lack of education means that they have no worth to this country and that they should be given a job with just as poor worth as their stereotype gives the individual. â€Å"The preponderance of recent immigrants in unskilled and low-paying jobs as de facto proof that Americans refuse to do what is traditionally considered menial labor.As an result, some of the business community, supported by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, clamor for a liberal guest-worker program based upon the assumption that without one, America will face a long-term labor shortage and economic ruin† (Haugen 24). This shows how Americans actually refuse to do these types of jobs because they are viewed as unfavorable low-paying jobs. With the assumption that they are jobs well suited for these immigrants who do not have a proper educated background, when really, these are some of the most important and beneficial jobs to the country.This menial labor may not be th e ideal job, but without these jobs, or the Hispanics that occupy them, America would face a tremendous labor and economic downfall. Americans have not only underestimated the importance and power of menial labor, but also of Hispanics. Although these people may be unskilled and uneducated, they have been put in tougher situations where they must work harder than other Americans in order to survive. The severity of discrimination has been taken to a whole different level. â€Å"The prejudice, intimidation, and hatred of the†¦ riots were directed at Hispanics who had done nothing wrong† (Haugen 27).Hispanics have taken the role of America’s scapegoats and the reason for their problems when they have done nothing but come into the country looking for a better life for themselves. This view that Hispanics are worthless and incapable of succeeding in anything in spite of their race is unfair and insensible. Affirmative action was created to be a positive and beneficia l way of improving and enhancing the employment and educational opportunities of members in a minority, but quickly turned into an ongoing controversy filled with detriments from all point of views. This action has gone from helping the minorities, to denying races.There have been cases where students have been denied from colleges merely because of their race. â€Å"The court has ruled that a system of strict racial quotas, like denying someone because of their race, is unconstitutional, but that schools are allowed to use race as one of several factors when determining an applicant’s acceptance† (â€Å"Expanding Access to College for Disadvantaged Students† paragraph 3). Colleges aim for those certain percentages of each race in their school, but that does not mean that they should be able to turn hard working and deserving students away because of the color of their skin.Colleges have lost the true meaning of affirmative action, which is to give a boost to th e minorities, not push them away. Members of both majorities and minorities see this action as an unfair advantage. Many Whites view affirmative action â€Å"as giving an unfair advantage to racial minorities†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (â€Å"Expanding Access to College for Disadvantaged Students† paragraph 4) and many Blacks view the affirmative boosts as a gesture of pity towards them and take it offensively because they feel like they can pave a way for themselves without Whites doing it for them.On the other hand, many Hispanics see affirmative action as one more racial barrier that puts, yet, another stereotype on them that they are incapable of being a real benefit to a college, or the country in general (Marcovitz 27). Affirmative action needs to make its way back to its original purpose which is to give Hispanics a helping hand because of their lack of a proper education. Over the years, more and more people have witnessed affirmative action’s misfortunes and have worked t owards a resolution to this controversy.Instead of viewing Hispanic immigrants as a burden to public welfare, Americans need to desire a growing workforce and welcome them with the belief that America is a beacon for all diversities of races (Haugen 21). Many have come to the conclusion that Hispanics are just another group of people who are here to overpopulate and do not bring anything to the table to benefit our country, but the truth is, they benefit this country a great amount.By helping these immigrants have a better and new life in America, they can achieve great things for our country and introduce America into many new cultural aspects which can raise the nation to a whole new level. Throughout the revision process of affirmative action, critics have hypothesized new ways that will make more of a beneficial impact. â€Å"Critics also say they doubt that racial or economic diversity will really benefit colleges. Ideological differences are more helpful in achieving that goa l than differences in race or income†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (â€Å"Critics See Problems† paragraph 5).It has been predicted that ideological differences would be far more helpful in achieving the action's goals rather than segregating by race. Diversity by race in colleges will do nothing but cause more controversies in this issue, which is already a heated topic. By seeking out the differences of ideology rather than race, it will give colleges a background look at the persons’ political and economic beliefs and ideas instead of their race. Being able to see these ideological beliefs would be much more beneficial not only for the colleges, but for the country.Affirmative action violates the natural rights that have been given to Americans since the beginning of this great country. Judging students based off skin color takes away from the pursuit of happiness and creates an idea of inequality among races. Instead of just focusing on the person's race, but on the qualities and k nowledge a person actually attains, this country will move ahead faster socially, but economically as well. Works Cited â€Å"Affirmative Action. † Issues and Controversies on File: n. pag.Issues and Controversies. Facts on File News Services, 1 Sept. 1995. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. Bell, Derrick A. â€Å"Equality in Education is More Important than Integration. † Issues on Trial: Racial Discrimination. Ed. Mitchell Young. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomas Gale, 2007. 77. Print. D’souza, Dinesh. â€Å"A World Without Racial Preferences. † Taking sides: Clashing views on Controversial Issues in Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Raymond D’angelo and Herbert Douglas. Dubuque, Iowa: The McGraw- Hill Companies, Inc,2005. 265-270. Print.Hall, Patrick A. â€Å"Against our Best Interests: An Ambivalent View of Affirmative Action. † Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Raymond D’angelo and Herbert Douglas. Dubuque, Iowa: Th e McGraw- Hill Companies, Inc, 2005. 311-316. Print. Haugen, David. â€Å"How Does Illegal Immigration Impact America? † Illegal Immigration: Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. Davis Haugen and Susan Musser. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2011. Print. Marcovitz, Hal. â€Å"Lancing the Boil of Racism. Race Relations: Gallup Major Trends and Events: The Pulse of Our Nation 1900 to the Present. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers, 2007. Print. Parks Jr. , A. Lee. â€Å"Race-Based College Admissions Violate Individual Rights. † Issues on Trial: Racial Discrimination. Ed. Mitchell Young. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomas Gale, 2006. 145-152. Print. 17 USC. Sec. 304. 2000. Print. Young, Mitchell. â€Å"New Challenges in a Diverse Society. † Issues on Trial: Racial Discrimination. Ed. Mitchell Young. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomas Gale, 2006. 14-15. Print.

Nazi Opposition and the Holocaust

In â€Å"Opposition and Resistance in Nazi Germany†, Frank McDonough explains that the Christian Church was the only organization in Hitler’s Germany that opposed Nazism.   For this reason, the Church was vehemently opposed by Hitler for Nazi opposition.   The chief opponents of Nazism within the Church were punished by the Nazis.   Nevertheless, the Church refused to bow to the Nazi regime seeing as the values of the Church differed widely from Nazism. Samuel P. and Peral M. Oliner write in â€Å"The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretations† that there were around 50,000 to 500,000 non-Jews with altruistic personalities that came to rescue the Jews during World War II.   Although the period was marked by extreme violence and bloodshed, good was meant to overcome evil in the form of countless people that risked their lives for the Jews, despite the fact that they were not related to the Jews by religion, culture, or ethnicity. Peter Hayes mentions several such people by name in his article, â€Å"Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World.†Ã‚   According to the author, although the Nazis believed that it was a crime to help the Jews, the brave people who helped the Jews refused to submit to Nazi pressure and injustice. Analysis All of the articles summarized above provide evidence to back up the authors’ theses.   While Frank McDonough provides historical examples of the conflict between the Church and Nazism; Samuel P. and Peral M. Oliner provide research evidence to show the altruistic characteristics of the brave non-Jewish rescuers that came to help the Jews without expecting a monetary reward in exchange for their help.   Peter Hayes uses the case study method to describe the altruistic personality of the non-Jewish rescuer. Hence, all three articles provide enough information for the writer to understand the respective topics in depth.   What is more, all three articles present information in a logical manner.   After introducing the topics of their articles, the authors present evidence to support their thesis, connecting each of their sentences and paragraphs to the previous ones.   At no point does it appear that the authors are digressing or providing little in terms of reasoning.   Rather, the articles are complete in terms of logic. Personal Response to the Readings In my opinion, the most important fact to infer from the summarized readings is that good and evil can be interwoven even in terms in great distress.   Indeed, it is good news for humanity that everybody would not submit to evil despite all odds.   So, even though the Nazis were a great threat for the good people in their area, innumerable such people refused to be afraid of Nazism,  and instead made an effort to help the Jews.   The Church refused to bow to Nazi dictatorship to boot.   I believe this is a victory for religion, even if the Jews were being persecuted because of their religion alone.   Indeed, my faith in the power of religion as well as good over evil has been strengthened through these readings.      

Immigration in America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

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Discussion of 2 poems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Discussion of 2 poems - Essay Example One of the bold statements made about fame in a negative manner is that of the poet Emily Dickenson. She uses metaphor to liken fame to a bee. It is known that a bee can be deadly and that is how the poet wants to paint what this most sought status really is. She implies that behind the good things that people see in fame, things are not always as they seem. Therefore, she uses figurative speech to catch the attention of her audience. Dickenson’s â€Å"Fame is a Bee† is a very short poem but it says a lot of things. The author effectively expressed her thoughts with four lines only by using simple but meaningful words. The analogy therefore is not difficult to understand rather could be easily seen by any observant. It does not even need keen observation in order for a person to be able to associate the characteristics of a bee to fame because it is explicitly mentioned to make things clearly and easily understood by readers. On the other hand, Edna St. Vincent Millay talks about love in her poem â€Å"Love is Not All†. Similarly, she speaks about the unfavorable side of love. For many people, when love is mentioned, they would think about passion and all the good feelings love brings. People easily create a positive attitude toward the subject matter because they associate it with the satisfaction derived from relationships formed through what is known as love. Nevertheless, Millay presents it differently. She draws the attention of her readers to the other side of the coin. She also uses metaphor to express her thoughts. However, unlike Dickenson, Millay uses negation to show her point. On the seventh line, Millay shifts her tone to a more serious one, mentioning death which could not have been expected at all when love is to be mentioned. The poet tries to draw her reader’s attention to the fact that behind every good thing, there is something that is not desirable yet every individual has to

Analyse a case-study of community radio Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Analyse a case-study of community radio - Essay Example ed definition as embodied in its draft Community Radio Order (Ofcom, 2004), community radio is defined by the core elements that comprise it, as its actual definition differs from place to place. Based on its key elements, community radio: â€Å"is intended primarily to serve a particular community (either people who live or work or undergo education or training in a particular area or locality†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢neighborhood’, or people who have one or more interests or characteristics in common†¦ ‘community of interest’) â€Å"is not provided in order to make a financial profit, and uses any profit produced to secure or improve the service or for the delivery of social gain to members of the public or the target community; and These elements that comprise community radio render this service especially positioned to create unique benefits to the community, which have been recognized in Parliament during deliberations on the Communications Bill (Ofcom, 2004). These benefits include: training and work opportunities for the locality, contribution to local education, advancement of social cohesion, service to neighbourhood or interest groups, dissemination of knowledge about local authority and other services, establishment of access of local people to the project. These, in turn, foster a sense of truly belonging to a tangible community, imbibing residents in the locality with a sense of self-esteem, confidence and community pride. Invaluable is the exchange of ideas and the creation of a venue for voices to be heard, particularly those belonging to minority groups, who would usually have limited or no access at all to media (Gà ¼nnel, 2008, p. 87). While seen as competitors of each other because of overlapping citizenship, commercial radio differs essentially from community radio in many ways. Commercial radio is challenged by the need to maintain audience share vis-à  -vis other media, meet demands for targeted audiences, and simultaneously provide sufficiently mainstream

Writer's choice Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 8

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The Hulk Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

The Hulk - Movie Review Example ded winning over the hearts of many readers but however there are some major differences and some interesting aspects that have to be attributed to the cinema medium. The comic medium at some point fails to carry the emotions as much as a cinema does, since with reading one restricts himself to his scope of imagination. This scope has been amplified with all the technical effects comprising the sound, music, modulations of speech and adding a sense of our presence, making cinema a more interactive medium. In the comic book Ang Lee connects every scene with extreme care and ensures that the imagination of the reader always stands at the paramount point and he never fails the readers’ interest by maintaining a chronological order of the scenes. The pictures used for the book are eye catching and these pictures talk for themselves, when it comes to the carrying of emotions. The versatile language he uses in the book copes with these drawings. The combination of these reaches the readers’ expectations and makes the book reader friendly. The narration of the episode on the other hand seconds none in the highlights of the comic book. This way each and every aspect of the comic starting with the title, to closing of the story is taken care of. As Ang Lee rightly points out, â€Å"The Hulk† is not a comic book movie but has much more to it making it a horrifying science fiction movie. â€Å"The Hulk†, has all the elements that keep the audience on their toes and calling it a comic book movie would not be appropriate. The creation of a huge monstrous figure like Hulk in the movie from an average built man keeps the audience spellbound. The representation of Hulk in many aspects connects him with the Greek mythology. Stories speak about Hulk in Greek Mythology, as someone who destroys anything that comes in his way and rather likes being alone this has been shown in the movie with some other aspects as well (â€Å"Super heroes and Greek mythology 1†). This has been mixed

The Importance of Retail Information Systems Research Paper

The Importance of Retail Information Systems - Research Paper Example In a highly competitive environment, effective customer services as well as relevant products to the consumers assume a high position in retailers’ priority list in the event of profit maximization. One of the most effective ways to ensure relevant product and effective services to the customer is through collection of information regarding the customer, analyzing that information and finally placing the analyzed information into work by aiding in decision making processes. (Stair, 2010) Information systems include systems that deals with the process of raw data from databases, file storage and file sources to information which are later used by middle level, top level and operational level managers in decision making thus improving their output to the consumers inform of better services and relevant products which in turn increases their returns and profit. (Stair, 2010) Information systems and organizations influence one another. According to Lucey, Information systems are built by managers to serve the interest of their firms. At the same time organizations must be aware of and open to the influences from information systems to benefit from new technologies. The interaction between information technology, information systems and organizations is very complex and is influenced by many mediating factors, including the organization structure, business processes, politics, culture, surrounding environment and management decisions. (2005) All modern organizations have bureaucracies with clear-cut divisions of labor and specialization. The main reason for organization’s failure in implementing information systems is inability to

Creating an Inclusive School Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Creating an Inclusive School - Essay Example The special classes enable the special case students to access additional education benefits and programs. Rhonda and other special learners should benefit from LRE that allocates extra time for tests and quizzes. This provides adequate time for properly tackling examination questions. The special education teachers should read aloud the test and quiz questions. This will enable easy understanding of examination instructions. The teacher should allow Rhonda and other special learners to utilize the computer in preparing written assignments. This improves the presentation and quality of written assignments. Special learners like Rhonda should be given preferential seating arrangement at the front of the class. This ensures effective hearing and enhances visibility during class lessons. The LRE ensures that parents or guardians of the special learners participate in the learning processes. This is because the parents are provided with extra education materials like textbooks. The education materials are used to guide the special learners during home studies. The school administrator should encourage adoption of two learning classes for special learners; the special and the ordinary class. This will improve the education capabilities of special learners. The administrator should also budget for appropriate resources that enhance learning of special students like

New Venure Creation Exam Questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

New Venure Creation Exam Questions - Assignment Example Adapting to change: it can be much more adaptable to adjustment than larger and more compound organizations. Because of this, SMEs questionably have a better opportunity of enduring difficult economic states and they are quicker at recovering from crises. In defeating the declines, these companies are able to exploit and encourage competition, which is vital for putting the present economic lethargy behind. Such adaptability in turn brings more equilibrium to the economic development of the UK and warrants that local communities partake in stimulating development (Blackburn, 2012). Partnership with larger businesses: Even though these two key benefits in the current climate, one of the main obstacles to achievement for SMEs is a weakness in linking and partnering with big businesses. A couple of years ago, small business proprietors felt deserted by the UK regime but this state is gradually changing. A support from firms like Fujitsu meant that small businesses would interchange skills and receive mentoring and management from more skilled players. Many of these firms begin as small, start-up initiatives - limited people with great ideas and the ambition to understand them, whose symbols are now internationally recognized. Small businesses comprises 99 per cent of all firms in the UK and can be actual initiators of economic development, creating job prospects for local communities and creating income. But in order to keep the force developed, the regime must support the joint efforts. (Blackburn, 2012) This has been associated with the Business angels increasing their funding to SME. Business angels are high net worth personnel that finance small developing businesses through a parity stake. They have been an important source of finance for SMEs for the last decades of years. This has been possible by such individuals giving funding to SME to facilitate their smooth running. The other

The narration of the cosmos Essay Example for Free

The narration of the cosmos Essay The happy days take off when the author was hardly three years old. At the age of sixty, as a news columnist, the nostalgic days show his own style of emotional impact. His narration of the cosmos as a child sitting in mother’s lap makes the reader younger by years. His vivid memories travel freely and end up just before his teenage. The way his youthful eyes captured all incidents dating back to his third birthday leave us spell bound. His schooldays of learning give an insight of the rural delights of summer homes even though old and ruined, appear elegant through his eyes. His grandfather’s death gave him joy to stay away from school. His fascination for police officers, food, literature and athletics sounds interesting. Many references to political exposition of his era appeared in contrast to the modernity. Throughout the memoirs, the author has described the actual growth of Baltimore and especially how the mobs of civil commotion were treated as superior professionals. His arguments with the acquaintance of his father, a French businessman is worth reading with a touch of practical jokes and imaginative comedy tones. His depiction of his Aunt Sophie and her attire would project a lavish ancient fabric to be visualized. His lavish languishing through the pages of first steps in divinity, record of an athlete, career of philosopher, has stamped his boldness. His good vernacular no doubt made him a reputed columnist later in his career. All through the pages of his book, his voice remains a chronicle of his childhood days and proves to be a readers’ delight and especially for those who travel down memory lane. References H. L. Mencken, Happy Days: Menckens Autobiography: 1880-1892, John Hopkins University Press, 2006

Comparison Of Thoughts Between Plato And Machiavelli Philosophy Essay

Comparison Of Thoughts Between Plato And Machiavelli Philosophy Essay An ancient discussion in individual olden times is what to perform through rule as well as what is considered to be the finest method to control. Who must boast authority, in what way must an individual control, and which is the best reason for regime supply have constantly existed queries within the front inside society, as well as other than one time have flashed disagreement and argument. The vital fundamentals of statute have sited the individual necessitate for regulation and construction next to the personal aspiration for liberty, and negotiating among them both has by no means existed simply. This is an issue which is well thought-out and disagreed till these days. On the other hand, the disagreement has not reprieved exclusively through armed forces supremacies or officials, however theorists in addition. Two well-known says within these discussions that are Plato and Machiavelli, in cooperation of who had extremely diverse thoughts of regimes function inside the existences of its citizens. On behalf of Plato, the indispensable roles the regime should give are the allowance for its people to be in this world within their appropriate habitats. In addition, Platos rule strengthens necessitates on behalf of arrangement although providing the false impression of sovereignty. Nevertheless, Machiavelli suggested to facilitate regimes most important apprehension is to stay behind integral, by this means protecting constancy for the citizens that survive beneath it. The elements where both theorists contribute to be which they challenge to cooperate among constancy and liberty, also in the procedure declare which neither can be able of survival completely included. Platos beliefs of regime perceive the State as a superior description of the human being, and the spirit of a human being is encompassed of three components. He verifies that these three components comprise the desire, the courage, and motive, and these fractions contain objectives and aspirations which relate solitary to them. As an illustration, reason discovers accomplishment in the learning of the Forms, otherwise crucial magnificence that may be capable of merely to recognize in the course of the intelligence. The courage locates appearance in touching provisions, like antagonism, happiness, and depression. The enthusiasm is apprehensive by means of the tracking down of physical enjoyment. This feature of the spirit is fulfilled solitary by the mortal reassures for example like foodstuff, sex, and drink. These three components are initiated in the human being, nevertheless in unstable amounts. Several will bend over other to the desire, despite the fact so as to further be sole- motivated, and at a halt additionally discover superior completion throughout the academic searches of cause. Plato without a doubt supports the cause within his three element spirit, given that it is by means of cause which one be able to snatch the Forms, which they are the crucial in attractiveness and reality. Near this conclusion, the State, similar to the human being, includes three components which match up to the components of the being spirit. The lowest of the divisions is the desire that is encompassed of the ordinary beings. These may be specialists, manual workers, and cultivators that achieve the unskilled responsibilities necessary to the performance of the State. Individuals that create this division of the State are most excellent departed to their personal procedures, to benefit from and chase animal and matter enjoyments, for the reason that they are not proficient of grasp the Forms. The following level, the soul, would be consisted of armed forces. It is the def ense forces that have a minor distinguishing of the Forms, nevertheless not sufficient of one toward allowing cause to utter their procedures. Territorial armies struggle to the fatality to protect the State for the reason that their emotional lashes to it. However, Plato recommends that the regime elevate broods, in that way constructing the State a familiar mother to all. In conclusion, explanation encompasses the uppermost division of the state, and from this place, thinkers and head of states come out. These are the persons that are not attracted in material enjoyment or emotional connections. Head of states and theorists are engaged with the revision of the Forms for the reason that they are capable of nearly all willingly to seize them. This perceptive of the definitive superior consent to the survival of male and female rulers, those are able to control above the soul and the desire and guarantee that the State continues in its appropriate operational category. Plato visions the good regime surrounds partitions that may be observed as a kind of classism. Every human being is born into a fussy fraction, or division, surrounded by the State and its found in that fraction which they will exist in it intended for living. In order to highlight on the spot, Plato places into view the anecdote where human beings are beard with metal, sculpture, silver, or gold inside their spirits. Gold is assorted into the spirits of theorists and leaders, silver in the spirits of the military, while iron and bronze are found in the spirits of cultivators and craftsmen. For the guarantee of the poorer rank that does not seek to control or manage, or that the managers are not attracted for the animal/substance happiness of the desire, he says in his tale that the mainly significant authority from the divinity to the leaders is that there is not anything which they have to protect in an enhanced way otherwise observe more cautiously than the combination of metals in the essence of the upcoming born. Therefore if every human being recognizes what his position with respect to the metal in their spirits, subsequently nearby will be no rebellion by the people or conquest by the armed forces. Every single one will recognize their appropriate positions and be satisfied in them, and the regime will operate in agreement. On the other hand, and in comparison with Plato, Machiavelli suggests a viewpoint of ruling which is to some extent comparable to Plato in character, but is extremely have a large singular in accomplishment. Machiavellis answer distress is steadiness of the regime. A steady regime is the finest possibility to tolerate, and to maintain the masses pleased. A steady regime in addition supplies the most excellent benefits of the populace that obey it. Finally, Machiavelli proposes that a leader of state watches in opposition to being commonly unloved by his matters. Furthermore, he believes it is intelligent in favor of a sovereign to exist surrounded by his themes, in the core to recognize who they are and what they desire from their state. Where he and Plato appear to be from the similar views so as to if any can keep the common population pleased, afterward no main troubles or intimidation will face the regime. Nevertheless, Plato prà ©cised that just definite forms of people are abl e of suiting philosopher the king, while Machiavelli says that everyone that have the force to obtain authority and the capital is capable of doing it. A key to attain control and maintain it is by having the hold up of individuals that one will be controlling. If the community is commonly satisfied with their regime, no one will propose for a new-fangled method or form of ruling, or an innovative monarch. In this element, Machiavelli recommends that people that become heir to their authority for example like the ancestors who law governments in excess of a extensive time, have a greatly effortless instance of maintaining it. The memoirs where the inhabitants encompass of the leaders relatives will be the flattering individuals, supplied so as to the ruling people has indulgenced its issues fine historically. This will clearly support the recently caped rulers that will rule, ever since he doesnt have to emphasize authority during vigorous accomplishments alongside with the citizens. We can see clearly here the consequences of a steady regime, where the population doesnt fright from fresh or insensitive leader pending to authority f or the reason that they have acquaintances with the ruling people. In occurrences where a person approaches to control the state or regime during aggressive strength, despite the fact that, the condition of maintaining authority is greatly further complex. The regime has previously been frightened into insecurity for the reason that it was and still deposed, were the citizens that previously existed in this condition, might nearly all be challenging to the alteration. As a result of no resources does Machiavelli consider that the regime is by no means constructed during aggressive ways. In truth, Machiavelli sets down three techniques through which a sovereign that grasps supremacy preserve to preserve it subsequent to such procedures. The sovereign is capable of, first arrange the town to devastate, second is to survive in the town and surrounded by the populace that the ruler will be ruling, third, is to construct a selected category which will stay faithful to the head of state a t the same time permitting the population to keep on existing underneath their previous commandments. Once more, the fundamental concern is the constancy of the regime. Nevertheless, he considers that citizens that bear in mind the previous traditions of living and of regime will be the nearly all hazardous to a recently recognized shape of ruling. This is in particular correct of folks that one time existed in a status of freedom. In his vision, the merely method to preserve authority in those circumstances is to demolish the town and disperse its native population. An additional technique is to construct the best ranks that are faithful to the head of state. This category will be a protector in opposition to pressures to the leaders influence for the reason that it was produced by the head of state. If supremacy alters from to another, in that case individuals building up this division will drop their selected rank, or still their existences. In this situation of those citizens th at had been under the rule of a realm, the arranged technique intended to maintain authority is diverse. An individual is obliged to get rid of the leftovers of the previous controlling rank for example the removed noble family and fundamentally exist between the citizens. Ultimately the public will disregard the earlier leader and surrender to the fresh leaders power, afforded the latest sovereign that is suspicious with reference to turn into a despised body. Nevertheless the creation of constancy in several regimes is the input for guaranteeing that one is capable of preserving control. The means to launching solidity in the regime, after that, is to carry on individuals that are existing as a authorized happily. Some of the significant differences flanked by Machiavellis viewpoint of supervision and Platos, is simply the function of the public. However, Plato desires to maintain the people in their positions and create an arrangement for the State in the course of classism. Alternatively, Machiavelli has greatly fewer fears in support of arrangement than Plato for solidity, and a pleased public are steady. Machiavelli moves to propose with the aim of a sovereign to support the nation, for after a leader makes that, the citizens arms turn into the rulers own (p. 457). In addition, Machiavelli shapes a head of state that defends the nation will perpetually gain their shore up and faithfulness, and which the performance entails a type of faith flanked by the leader and the themes. On the other hand, Plato might create merely one precise rank for it being the equipped guardians for the State. Conversely, Machiavelli might construct a combating power where a person that appears experienced to use a gun might do so (p. 457). However even further discussion of the distinction among these two theorists is the reality so as to Machiavelli considers where everyone is able to get higher to authority. Machiavelli utters that a citizen-ruler may go up through distinction in a reason of any of the two circumstances are got together. One situation which is the head of state has the support of the public, and this back up might to a great extent is because that the leader is an individual in his nation. However, the further situation is that the head of state is eminent for this position due to the the favor of the elite (p. 438). Nevertheless, the sovereign located in control by the leaders features a complex duty of grasping that place. The leaders that place a leader in control frequently feels of there selves as his colleagues, moreover will accordingly not follow a person they perceive as if he is as of the identical sort. Additionally, Machiavelli utters so as to the aims of the selected ones, at the time contrasted to the public, are further dissolute for the reason that they desire for domination. The citizens dont hope to tyrannize, however slightly looks for the avoidance of domination. As a consequence, a leader that tries to gather the aims of the rulers will fundamentally have a critical standing, as well as to discover themselves bordered by the public which wont act upon. In comparing the two authors, one preserves to observe an essential foundation that is done for the perfect regime. Platos structure of the regime is connected to classism, by maintaining the citizens where ever they are and making their tasks which are perfectly matched to them. With respect to this point of view, the citizens will cheer merely for the reason that they are making what they want to make at best. The ordinary citizens are acting as the tough workers and coddling in physically enjoyments, together of which are the entire that is able to wish to comprehend. The armed forces struggle in favor of their home town for the reason that the State has turn out to be a type of relatives or blood relation. The armed forces struggle for the reason of protecting the accessory, and as a consequence of struggling on sensation. The heads of state in Platos State, including guardians, implement their influence in the form of the maximum consideration of the structures, and as a result of the definitive certainty, which is by any means achievable. On the other hand, Machiavellis observation of the regime is entrenched extremely profound in certainty, on the other hand, in addition to it, this entails that constancy is simply considered to be the best solution to a permanent method controlling. On condition that the masses do not suffer that they are in danger of course in a situation of removing their properties from them as well as their belongings, however the people will be prepared for surrender to their leader. As soon as the citizens are permitted to walk off among their existence not including the concern of a fresh government grasping supremacy or squashing their civil liberties and pinching their properties, they are able to survive in a situation of satisfaction as well as pleasure. Seeing the publics job in the regime, a person is able to encompass a force on the plan of authority in a condition that they are familiar with what how should they act and e ncompass the backup in order to perform it. Authority is not limited for a specific category of citizens or else a division, nevertheless is there for someone to take it specifically for the bravest to snatch it. As per Machiavelli, the citizens are further presently an accumulation that should be alienated and positioned appropriately, although an influential power which have to be measured and appreciated by the person that might control the state. Except in cooperation with the two philosophers, the regime appears to be an essential as well as an ordinary condition beneath which civilization have the power to function and continue to exist.

Were German Citizens Aware of the Holocaust?

Were German Citizens Aware of the Holocaust? Jason Jimenez To what extent was the average individual of Germany during WWII aware of the atrocities committed within the Holocaust? Table of Contents A. Plan of Investigation2 B. Summary of Evidence2 C. Evaluation of Sources3 D. Analysis.3-4 E. Conclusion.4 F. Bibliography.5 A.  Plan of Investigation This investigation assesses the extent of how much the average German knew of the Holocaust during WWII. In order to evaluate this, the investigation examines the situation of Germany at this point in time. First, the cause and effect of the force of extreme anti-Semitism on the people by Hitler will be explored. Also, this investigation will delve into the extensive spread of knowledge between the groups of people that were aware of the genocide with the others that did not. Lastly, the seemingly enormous task of the Final Solution will be considered, as well as challenged in a manner that would suggest awareness in the general German population. These three major factors are the primary focus of this investigation; they will be analyzed by evaluating several essay sources, as well as other internet articles, for their origins, purposes, values, and limitations. B. Summary of Evidence Prior to WWII, Hitler already possessed hatred for the Jews. He states in his book that he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, where he attained extreme German nationalism. He strongly believed in a union with the Germans and a violent expulsion of the â€Å"inferior† races. During his time as the leader of the Nazi Party, as well as Fuhrer, Hitler delivered many speeches to the masses regarding the Jews as the enemy. In one of his speeches, he declared, â€Å"The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews. All else is facade and illusion. Behind England stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States. Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy.†[1] This statement suggests that Hitler saw that Jews as the ultimate enemy, and disregards the rest of the world as even mildly relevant. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister responsible for the Night of Broken Glass, in which hundreds of Jews were murdered, was also an essential component in the spread of anti-Semitism at that time.[2] The general German population knew of their government’s extreme hatred toward the Jews, and it was only a matter of time until they figured out what was going to happen next. Furthermore, from the huge size of the army, as well as the thousands of camps located in and around Germany, it was inevitable for information not to spread between the populations. For example, German soldiers would, at the very least, have brought home numerous stories of what was going on in Russia (where the atrocities were well known) or the east.[3] The stories that the soldiers would have told their loved ones back home would have spread swiftly, and therefore soon after, knowledge of rumours would be instilled into the general population. The many camps that existed then were located inside Germany itself, but there were many more outside the country. A large number of these camps were located near several highly-populated areas, such as Dachau, outside of Munich.[4] However, the major extermination camps, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka, were not set up inside Germany, so it certainly was possible that the average German in the home front had no knowledge of them. Although, it is logical to assume that most people knew that being sent to a concentration was, without a doubt, a death sentence; even if they did not know the details, they had to have noticed that barely anyone ever returned from the camps. Overall, it all boils down to the issue of whether or not the Germans wanted to know more about what was going on, for perha ps they just wanted to turn a blind eye because it did not affect them in any way. Lastly, the monstrous project of the Final Solution (Nazi Germany’s plan to systematically kill off the entire Jewish population in Nazi-occupied Europe) seemed all too massive of a project to have been undertaken only by the Nazis. Konnilyn Feig, a well-respected Holocaust author, suspects that most people did, in fact, know about much of what was going on. In her book, Hitler’s death camps: the sanity of madness, she states that â€Å"Hitler exterminated the Jews of Europe. But he did not do so alone. The task was so enormous, complex, time-consuming, and mentally and economically demanding that it took the best efforts of millions of Germans†¦ All spheres of life in Germany actively participated†[5] As the case may be, therefore, it is not futile to rule out this very possibility. C. Evaluation of Sources Note: Because there were seemingly no readily available traditional resources regarding this investigation’s rather specific question, two significant internet articles will be evaluated in lieu. One article is written by Will Coleman, and is an extended response to the same question this investigation is attempting to answer. The other source is an essay article written by Theresa Art, named â€Å"What Did Most Germans Know about the Nazi Concentration Camp System?† As a response to a similar question posed in the website, www.quora.com, Will Coleman writes an in-depth â€Å"report† on the truth that he believes, in which he states that â€Å"the large majority of the German public, knew and collaborated willingly with the deportation and extermination of the Jews†¦Ã¢â‚¬ [6] This article was written with the obvious purpose of attempting to answer the question in the website, but to also do so using methodical reasoning. The article’s value lies in the fact that it provides a systematic explanation of Coleman’s perspective on the matter, and this allows the reader to easily interpret and understand the logic behind his bold statement that à ¢â‚¬Å"all of Germany was responsible†. Coleman does this by ordering his points from least to most significant; first he starts off with basic arguments that reinforce the fact that communication within Germany must have defeated any sort of secrecy about the mass murders simply because of how many people there were, and he ends with an intricate â€Å"collective guilt† argument, wherein he explains that the German people felt guilt for the atrocities committed by their fellow countrymen, and could only have done so because they either participated or turned a blind eye to it. There was a minor limitation in this article, in which it would sometimes confuse awareness of the holocaust with direct participation. In Theresa Ast’s article, she aims to focus not on the â€Å"culpability or degree of culpability of different segments of the German population†[7], but on general German knowledge of concentration camps. Much like Coleman, Ast suggests that many Ge rmans were aware of the mass killings; she states that â€Å"most concentration camp inmates were German or Austrian citizens and many of them served limited sentences before being released. It begs believability to think that these individuals did not discuss their experience with family and close friends.† The value in Ast’s article, as opposed to Coleman’s, is that she took into account several WWII veterans’ first-hand opinions and experiences in her findings. This allowed her to develop a well-formulated conclusion stating that â€Å"the typical German response was to deny knowledge of, and disclaim any responsibility for, the concentration camps.† A limitation in this article lies in the fact that it is mostly comprised of evidence, and has a minor lack of detail in its arguments. D. Analysis The importance of this investigation in its historical context is immense, as the question poses the issue of whether or not the Germans should feel guilty for having taken part in the most documented, systematic, industrial slaughter of human beings in all of recorded civilized history. From one perspective, based on the sources, it can be argued that the average German had a rough idea as to what was going on, but did not know the details; this is either because he genuinely did not know, or perhaps because he did not want to know more of his own country’s monstrosities. From another perspective, it can be argued that the average German knew a great deal of what was going on, as Coleman states, â€Å"How can a country on total war footing continue to move, house, manage and exterminate millions of people while at the same time, use those sparing resources on war production? They cant, not without a lot of help. Where was this help? The German nation of course.†[8] Fro m these arguments also arises the question that if the Germans did help undertake the Final Solution, did they do it willingly? Or were they forced to do it by the Nazis? With Adolf Hitler’s entrance into Germany’s politics, so did his theories of racial struggle and the â€Å"intent† of the Jews to survive and expand at the expense of the Germans. From 1933-1938, the Nazis staged book burnings, ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, and enabled anti-Jewish legislation.[9] The Jews were defined by race and was totally separated from the Germans by the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. These measures focused on total segregation of Jews from Germans and Austrians, both legally and socially. These new statutes, added with the extremely anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda imposed on the country must have, at the very least, implied something utterly terrible to come for the Jews. Although hundreds of thousands had already been killed by death squads and in mass pogroms[10] (riots aimed at m assacre of Jews), the large-scale deportation of the Jews must have spelled disaster for them in the eyes of the Germans. The communication that must have travelled back and forth, from the people that knew to the ones that did not, suggests that even though the full details of the holocaust were not leaked, a general idea of it must have formed within the people. The SS would routinely mix labour battalions, which consisted of thousands of starving Jews, with German nationals who were producing war goods. Without a doubt, these nationals must have shared stories of horribly treated Jews back home. The average Nazi soldier who had seen the atrocities committed in both concentration and death camps most likely would have wrote home letters describing what he had seen. Overall, there was very little chance that a German did not know anything as to what was going on around him, as all signs, including the mass deportation of Jews by train and the mass murders in pogroms, point to the u ltimatum that the Jews were being thoroughly purged out of Germany. The amount of work that the Final Solution must have required was much greater than that which the Nazis could hope to accomplish. As Will Coleman mentioned in his article, Germany could not have afforded to be on total war as well as systematically exterminate millions of people simultaneously without extra help, and this, in all likelihood, came from the general population of Germany itself. German police units, namely the Reserve Police Battalion 101, shot 38,000 Jews and deported 45,000 more to the camps.[11] Bankers often volunteered the names of their Jewish employees to Nazi authorities, most of which ended up in death camps.[12] What all of this is suggesting is that such a massive task could not have been done solely by the Nazis, but with the collective help and cooperation of everyone in the country. E. Conclusion Each and every subtopic that this investigation evaluates all point to the same conclusion. First, the extreme anti-Semitic ideas that had been forced on the people, coupled with the initial attacks on the Jews, implied the beginning of the end for them. Nobody knew exactly what the future h eld for the Jews, but they just knew it would be disastrous. Second, the substantial network of communication that had been utilized must have at least given the average German a clue as to what the Jews were going through at the time. Whether the information was passed through a letter, orally, or first-hand, the population must have received a basic idea for what was happening, and also, what was about to happen. Lastly, the Final Solution could not have been finished by the Nazis without further help from outside sources. Like Konnilyn Feig stated, â€Å"The task was so complex that it took the best efforts of millions of Germans†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Most, if not all Germans were aware of the Holocaust, let alone the ones that participated too. There is no doubt that everyone had the idea, and this alone reinforces the fact that yes, almost everyone was aware of what was happening. Total word count: 1,971 F. Bibliography Internet Sources: Coleman, Will, â€Å"To what extent were average German citizens aware of or involved in the Holocaust†. n.d., Quora. 30 March 2014. http://www.quora.com/Nazi-Germany/To-what-extent-were-average-German-citizens-aware-of-or-involved-in-the-Holocaust Ast, Theresa, â€Å"What Did Most Germans Know About The Nazi Concentration Camp System?†. n.d., HubPages. 30 March 2014. http://phdast7.hubpages.com/hub/What-Did-Average-germans-Know-Concentration-Camps Museum, â€Å"ANTISEMITISM IN HISTORY: NAZI ANTISEMITISM†. 10 June 2013. Holocaust Encyclopedia. 30 March 2014. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007167 Connolly, Kate, â€Å"Letter proves Speer knew of Holocaust plan†. n.d. The Guardian. 30 March 2014. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/13/secondworldwar.kateconnolly Douglas, Davis â€Å"British bank implicated in Nazi dealings†. 2 April 1999. Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. 30 March 2014. http://www.webcitation.org/5wQnrMwcy Book Sources: Rauschning, Hermann. Hitler Speaks (Munich, Germany: Kessinger Publishing, 2006) Feig, Konnilyn. Hitler’s Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness (California, United States: Holmes Meier Pub, 1981) Niewyk, Donald. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (New York, United States: Harper Collins, 1992) Gilbert, Martin. Kristallnacht (Oxford, England: Harper Perennial, 2007) [1] Hermann Rauschning. Hitler Speaks (Munich, Germany: Kessinger Publishing, 2006) p.234 [2] Gilbert Martin. Kristallnacht (Oxford, England: Harper Perennial, 2007) p.29 [3] Will Coleman, â€Å"To what extent were average German citizens aware of or involved in the Holocaust†. n.d., Quora. 30 March 2014 http://www.quora.com/Nazi-Germany/To-what-extent-were-average-German-citizens-aware-of-or-involved-in-the-Holocaust [4] Will Coleman, â€Å"To what extent were average German citizens aware of or involved in the Holocaust†. n.d., Quora. 30 March 2014 http://www.quora.com/Nazi-Germany/To-what-extent-were-average-German-citizens-aware-of-or-involved-in-the-Holocaust [5] Konnilyn Feig. Hitler’s Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness (California, United States: Holmes Meier Pub, 1981) p.84 [6] Will Coleman, â€Å"To what extent were average German citizens aware of or involved in the Holocaust†. n.d., Quora. 30 March 2014 http://www.quora.com/Nazi-Germany/To-what-extent-were-average-German-citizens-aware-of-or-involved-in-the-Holocaust [7] Theresa Ast, â€Å"What Did Most Germans Know About The Nazi Concentration Camp System?†. n.d., HubPages. 30 March 2014 http://phdast7.hubpages.com/hub/What-Did-Average-germans-Know-Concentration-Camps [8] Will Coleman, â€Å"To what extent were average German citizens aware of or involved in the Holocaust†. n.d., Quora. 30 March 2014 http://www.quora.com/Nazi-Germany/To-what-extent-were-average-German-citizens-aware-of-or-involved-in-the-Holocaust [9] Museum, â€Å"Antisemitism in History: Nazi Antisemitism†. 10 June 2013. Holocaust Encyclopedia. 30 March 2014 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007167 [10] Kate Connolly, â€Å"Letter proves Speer knew of Holocaust plan†. n.d. The Guardian. 30 March 2014. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/13/secondworldwar.kateconnolly [11] Donald Niewyk. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (New York, United States: Harper Collins, 1992) p.83-87 [12] Davis Douglas, â€Å"British bank implicated in Nazi dealings†. 2 April 1999. Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. 30 March 2014 http://www.webcitation.org/5wQnrMwcy

Ancient Celtic Mythology: A Vision of Gods and Goddesses :: Religion

Ancient Celtic Mythology: A Vision of Gods and Goddesses Upon investigating the supernatural reality that the Celts endured, it is necessary to somewhat overlook the myths to see what lies behind them. It is essential to find when and from where the myths originated and how true the storytellers, or narrators, really are. The Celtic gods and goddesses, in such an early mythological time defined as a period when beings lived or events happened such as one no longer sees in our days (Sjoestedt 1994: 2), require much analysis. A diverse collection of documents, literature and archaeology pave the way to our understanding of the ancient mythology of the Celts. However, these traces lack a sense of closure, leaving the investigation into the nature of these gods and goddesses raw and incomplete. The evidence of the Celtic deities exists in various forms, but the information that we have collected leaves unanswered questions. For instance, in analysing the recorded documents left behind by the Greeks and Romans, we are called to cast some doubt on how closely the Celtic religious rites paralleled those of their classical neighbours. We survey recorded religious practices with apprehension, as we are not truly sure that the Celts too worshipped family gods and a mass of deities who covered all aspects of life.1 How do we know that we are not just reading materials reflecting the Graeco-Roman myths? Is it not plausible that these Greek and Roman writers installed some bias, leaning towards their mythological ideas, within their testimony? The speculation surrounding all of the varied pieces of evidence is just. From the abundance of evidence, though, we can be sure that the Celts believed in a multiplicity of deities. It is apparent that the existence of gods and goddesses in Celtic society was quite a serious affair and an everyday business. However, when focusing on the exact nature of such gods and goddesses, it seems only fair to attempt to construct an overview of the character of each deity. Reconstructing the evidence might be too hopeful because the conclusions would come from mere ignorance and be partially based on what we still do not know. From here we can only address the different types of evidence that piece together the very nature of the Celtic gods and goddesses, but the mixed and slightly unreliable evidence is certainly not easy to sort. The literary evidence for the existence of deities in Celtic religion is one source that reveals the character of the individual gods and goddesses.

Womens Brain Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Women's Brain Women have smaller brains than that of their male counterpart. Since the ability to think is partly determined by the size of the brain it is obvious to an accurate researcher if I were to ignore the differences between the male and female brain. The question to be posed is, with the knowledge of the function of the human brain, can a scientist accurately determine if the differences in the way males and females perform various tasks is a biological phenomena, or rather as a result of social persuasion? All kinds of research have shown that the bigger the brain, generally, the smarter the animal. (1) However, as Emily Dickinson might agree, it is not the size of the brain that counts, but rather what is contained within the brain. Human male brains are, on average, approximately 10% larger than that of the female, but this is because of men's larger body size: more muscle cells imply more neurons to control them. (3) If the size of the brain is not the determinate factor of the diffe rences between the male and female brain what is? Of special interest to researchers of this subject was the amount of gray matter, the part of the brain that allows us to think. The researchers wanted to know if women have as much gray matter as men. (1) It would be logical to conclude that if there is less gray matter, the component of the brain associated with the thinking process, than obviously, biologically men and superior in intellect to women. However, as is the case with many biological researches, more questions arose than were answered. According to one psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, there is no difference in the amount of gray matter in men and women. To make up for the smaller brain size, women ... ...s. The political brain. http://www.home.aone.net.au/think/brainsx.html 3. 3}Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?,Intellectual differences among the sexes. http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html 4. 4}Left/Right Brain?,Left or right brained. http://www.helpself.com/brain.htm 5. 5}La Difference,Who is the better sex? http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/11/reviews/990711.11holtlt.html&OP=bd2d6ebQ2F@Q25Q7BD@!PqQ7DQ5BPPQ23@DPPIQ7D@Q24Q24@F5@xx@Q5BQ7BNdQ7BQ25Q7D@Q24Q24F5xxfxx_PQ51Q23Q51Q23f_Q23iQ51 6. 6}Traumatic Tests: Gender Bias and the SATs,SAT statistics.conclude that men are superior to women in intellect, right? Now I would not be a proud Bryn Mawr woman if I were to agree with this logic. However, I would not be http://home.earthlink.net/~lfdean/sat.html

Black Boy Isolation Essay

In Richard Wright’s book, â€Å"Black Boy,† the main character who also narrates the story is Richard himself since the book is written from his point of view; we find out a lot about how Richard feels and get detailed accounts of how he reacts to the things that happen to him. Even though Richard tries hard to relate to all groups of people around him, he cannot because he is so different, so much more independent and strong willed than the masses around him, these and other forms of isolation help shape Richard Wright’s character throughout the novel. In Richard’s neighborhood when he lives with his grandma, the thing that separates him most from everyone else is religion. Richard decided he is an atheist at a very young age, which also demonstrates his ability to think independently, even under pressure. He is persistent and stands by his view, because he cannot relate to the one imposed on him. He says, â€Å"Perhaps if I had †¦ remained basically unaffected. (pg 112) Richard believes that religion cannot give him anything more than he already has, so he rejects it as pointless even though everyone around him is trying to persuade him to accept God or else â€Å"lose his soul† and countless other threats. But, Richard is strong and doesn’t pay attention to any of these threats, which in a way separates him from his entire neighborhood. This and going to a religious school where all his peers have dry personalities, contributes to his isolation as a child. And, since he does not believe that God cares about him, this may increase his loneliness even more. So Richard starts to look to other things, such as writing, as a way to create a world for himself in which he does not feel isolated. Another group that he feels very far from is his immediate family. Ever since Richard was little, he has been beaten, threatened, scared and hungry and he mostly associates these feelings with members of his family. Because of the lack of love around him, Richard cannot believe in true love, which is a scar for life. For example when he meets Bess he says, â€Å"I stared at her†¦ then I was sorry that I had said it,† (pg 218. ) When Bess tries to be nice to Richard he is shocked and cannot understand how some people can love so purely and simply. He also comes to realize that he has a very different understanding of the word â€Å"love† than Bess because he has never been loved by anyone nor had any real family life. So, his isolation from his family early in life becomes a handicap later when he is unable to accept true love, which isolates him even more from people in his dult life. The last and most important group Richard cannot relate to at all is the white community. He is so different from the other blacks; willing to question racism, independent, not wanting to be treated like everyone else and with a deep, unique understanding that racism is wrong. He also voices his concerns more than the other blacks, so he has to bear a lot of violence and putdowns throughout his life. He has a conversation about this with Griggs, an old schoolmate: â€Å"Do you want to get killed? †¦ don’t anybody act a damn bit like it. (pg 183) and then contemplates this idea: â€Å"It was simply †¦ my way with everybody. † (pg 185) This is the most important isolation in the book because even though it applies to all blacks it applies to Richard even more because he is different from the whites as well as the blacks. This makes him not part of either community; he cannot understand the way black people act like whites are superior and he cannot understand the way white people act like blacks are inferior. Richard is again isolated from everyone around him. In conclusion, because of the ignorance and intolerance of all the people around him, black and white, Richard can never relate to anyone, which makes him lead a very lonely and detached life. This in turn motivates him to find a better life, whether it would be in the North or in novels/writing. Because of this isolation and narrow-mindedness of people around him, Richard aspires to be someone and to prove to the people who don’t believe in him and his values that he will continue to be an individual no matter what.

“White Man’s Burden” and “Shooting an Elephant”

In the poem sports manlike musical compositions marrow and hear blastoff an Elephant is talk slightly the two innocence men has a contrastive forecast of legal discernments well-nigh imperialism and how the lily- uncontaminating parcel out the natives. vacuous Mans Burden by Rudyard Kipling is talk approximately how does black-and-blue man hand for the native during the imperialism. gibe an elephant by George Orwell is talk about how does the gabardine treat the natives by reflect the way pip an elephant. White Mans Burden by Rudyard Kipling, the first identity of the white man is sacrifice for the natives, he was whiz believed in the virtues of imperialism in that period.As the text substantiation send forth the outgo ye breed-go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives train to remain in heavy harness. The white man try to off departure to the natives, educated them was white mans job and the cast it as their goal. The scrap identity of the white man is racial and cultural stereotype, as the text proof Ye d atomic number 18 non stoop to less-nor call off too loud on liberty to cloak your weariness, by all ye emit or whisper, by all ye ease up or do. The white man go through to be open mind about different subtlety and to think about the way of white man dogma the native, be open mind to ingest the natives culture as well too. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, Through the essay Orwell reflects the complaisant condition at Burma as a result of British Imperialism and his own view on imperialism. The first identity of the white law police military officer was sub-divisional police officer of the town, an in an aimless. Second identity of the white police officer as he expresses is great humanity for the oppressed Burmese.White police officer reflects the way he Killed the elephant, emotionally. As the text proof as soon as I aphorism the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to take for on him. I did not in the least want to point him, I decide I could overhear him a little bit make sure he did not patch savage again, and then go home. With the magic rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. Suddenly I realized that I should have cinch the elephant after all and finally he shot the elephant.In the essay the police officer timbers truly stuck between his truth to Britain and his sincere distaste of imperialism. The police officer was kind open mind about the time of imperialism. Ironically he shoot the elephant in order to maintain the virtue o the system of imperialism, In Orwell opinion imperialism take away peoples think, doing whatever to the hope of opposite. The White mans result compare to the Shooting an elephant they are twain white, and the winner of the imperialism. But they have different view and thought about the imperialism.In the poem The white mans burden the white man to contribute civilization to the natives, by educate them and take responsible to the native, and white man sacrifice a lot to the natives . In the essay guesswork an elephant the white police officer think that the imperialism was an vileness thing to the natives, his sympathy for the oppressed native, but in other hand he cant do anything about it. In inference the poem and essay was written during the Imperialism period, causation many mix feelings between what is honorable and what is bad?But I feel so bad about the natives, why should white people have to plow about native? Because if you want to obtain over a country you need to know their culture and appraise their culture this is call winner. Why is important? Because we are human and we have to try everyone every bit the way they should be treat. In shooting an elephant, the white police know that imperialism is evil thing to the native, at the time he couldnt do anything about. But straightaway is different and we all equal respect each other, and live in license count ry.

Hong Kong Style

HONG KONG modal measure chip in out An converse with success Fung BY JOAN MAGRETTA UPPLY bowed stringed instrument MANAGEMENT is breaking its Way onto the strategic ag breakas of CEOs in an expanding list of industries, from autos to backstage computers to expressive style retailing. Propelling that change is the restructuring of global competition. As companies focus on their core activities and outsource the rest, their success increasingly numbers on their ability to control what happens in the n unrivaled regard as chain out cheek their admit boundaries. In the 1980s, the focus was on provider secerna goer enthr entirelys to improve live and quality.In directlys unfluctuatinger-paced securities indus punctuates, the focus has shifted to innovation, flexibility, and speed. Enter Li et) Fung, Hong Kongs voluminousst export employ family and an innovator in the develop ment of tack chain worry. On behalf of its guests, primarily Ameri dope and European r etailers, Li et) Fung whole kit with an ever expanding vane portrait BY LANCE HIDY 103 SUPPLY kitchen range MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG fl argon of thousands of suppliers around the globe, sourcing clo function and former(a) consumer goods ranging from toys to behavior accessories to luggage.Chairman Victor Fung sees the fel economic crisis institutionalise as part of a brilliant breed of profession tot exclusively toldy toldy managed, focused enterprises that d young on Hong Kongs expertise in distri merelyion-process technology-a host of informationindecadesive assistant functions including output cultivation, sourcing, financing, shipping, handling, and logistics. Founded in 1906 in grey mainland China by Victor Fungs grandad, Li &) Fung was the inaugural Chinese- testifyed export lodge at a beat when tbe China divvy up was controlled by foreign commercial houses. In the earlier 1970s, Victor was afternoon teaching at the Harvard Business School, and his younger br early(a), William, was a spic-and-spanly minted HarvardM. B. A. The devil young men were forecasted home from the join States by their father to occur reinvigorated life into the company. Since because, the brothers buzz off led Li et? Fung by a series of transformations. In this enjoy with HBR editor-at-large foan Magretta, Victor Fung describes how Li &) Fung has do the transition from get agent to total chain passenger car, from the old thrift to the new, from traditional Chinese family conglomerate to innovative humanity company. Victor and William Fung ar creating a new broad of transnational, unitary that remains entrepreneurial despite its exploitation surface and desktop.Victor Fung is similarly chairman of a in private held retailing arm of the company, which focuses on joint ventures with Toys R Us and the Circle K convenience-store chain in Hong Kong. He is similarly chairman of the Hong Kong Trade ontogeny Council and of Prudential Asia. How do you define the dihithernce surrounded by what Li & Fung does today- hand over chain steeringand the commerce championship nervous strain founded by your grandfather in 1906? ing which quotas withstand been used up in Hong Kong, for compositors case, sterilize outs you when you own to start perverting from Taiwan. Understanding produces was also to a slap-uper extent complicated. We knew that in Taiwan the synthetics were bemuse, ut that Hong Kong was the present to go for cottons. We could provide a package from the safe and sound region rather than a single overlap from Hong Kong. By turn tail with a larger reckon of countries, we were able to assemble sections we wawl this assortment packing. vocalize I sell a tool kit out to a major discount chain. I could buy the spanners from mavin uncouth and the rip dourdrivers from other and put unneurotic a crossing package. That has som. e quantify in it- non great regard as, solely some. In the second stage, we took the companys sourcing-agent schema one step further and became a manager and entirelyower of manufacturing political programs.In the old theoretical account, the node would posit, This is the item I expect. Please go out and find the outflank note to buy it for me. The new model works this way. The Limited, one of our big nodes, puzzles to us and offers, For next season, this is what were regarding a affair(predicate)-this slip of look, these modify, these quantities. Can you come up with a harvest-tideion program? Starting with their institutioners sketches, we research the marketplace to find the dear type of story and spot swatches to match the change. We labour carrefour c formerlypts and trueize them in prototypes. Buyers prat then look at the samples and say, No, I dont e all in ally ilk that, I equal this. Can you do to a greater extent of this? We then ca-ca an entire program for the season, specifying the product mi x and the schedule. We contract for all the resources. We work with facto- When my grandfather started the company in Canton, 90 eld ago during the Ching dynasty, his honor added was that he radius EngUsh. In those days, it took third months to get to China hy hoat from the West a letter would withdraw a month. No one at the Chinese factories spoke English, and the American merchants spoke no Chinese. As an interpreter, my grandfathers commission was 15%. act through my fathers generation, Li &Fung was basi roary a broker, charging a fee to put purchasers and sellers in concert. b arly as an intermediary, the company was squeezed between the plowing military unit of the buyers and the factories. Our margins slipped to 10%, then 5%, then 3%. When I returned to Hong Kong in 1976 by and by teaching at Harvard Business School, my friends warned me that in ten socio-economic classs buying agents like Li & Fung would he extinct. Trading is a sun driven industry, they all said. My brother and I entangle we could turn the personal credit line into something different, and so we took it through several stages of development. In the get-go stage, we cted as what I would call a regional sourcing agent and extended our geographical tense by establishing positionfulnesss in Taiwan, Korea, and capital of Singapore. Our completeledge of the region had value for customers. Most hig buyers could manage their aver sourcing if they urgency to up digest lone(prenominal) with Hong Kong-theyd go to sleep which ten factories to deal with and wouldnt need any divine service. save dealing with the unit of measurement region was much complex. In textiles, quotas govern worldly concernly concern slyness. K today104 HARVARD spineing study September-October 1998 SUPPLY set up MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE ries to see and monitor production so we can ensure quality and on- fourth dimension deli rattling.This strategy of delivering manufacturing programs c arried us through the 1980s, only if that decade brought us a new challenge and led to our third stage. As the Asiatic tigers emerged. Hong Kong became an increasingly expensive and uncompetitive place to manufacture. For example, we exclusively lost the low-end transistor-radio occupancy to Taiwan and Korea. What saved us was that China began to open up to trade, allowing Hong Kong to fix its represent problem by moving the c swanch intensive portion of production across the b smart set into gray China. So for transistor radios we composed little its-p determinationic bags played with all the components needed to build a radio. Then we shipped the kits to China for assembly. After the labor-intensive work was completed, the finished goods came gritbone to Hong Kong for final testing and oversight. If you missed a screw you were in trouble the intact line stop cold. Breaking up the value chain as we did was a novel concept at the time. We call it dispersed manufactur ing. This method of manufacturing soon spread to other industries, giving Hong Kong a new lease on life and also transforming our economy. Between 1979 and 1997, Hong Kongs position as a trading ntity go from act 21 in the world to figure 8. All our manufacturing moved into China, and Hong Kong became a spacious service economy with 84% of its gross domestic product coming from go. So dispersed manufacturing way of life breaking up the value chain and rationalizing where you do things? Thats repair. Managing dispersed production was a real breakthrough. It coerce us to get smart not only near logistics and transportation alone also round dissecting the value chain. Con billetr a popular childrens doll-one similar to the Barbie doll. In the early 1980s, we figed the dolls in Hong Kong, and we also produced the olds because sophisticated machinery was needed to farm them. We then shipped the molds to China, where they would shoot the p farthestic, assemble the doll, pain t the figures, rag the dolls clothing-all the labor-intensive work. nonetheless(prenominal) the doll had to come back to Hong Kong, not ripe for final testing and call inion just instantaneously also for packaging. China at that time couldnt deliver the quality we needed for the printing on the boxes. Then we used Hong Kongs w messsomedeveloped banking and transportation infra organise to grant the products around the world. You can sec the model distinctly the labor-intensiveHARVARD BUSINESS freshen September-October 1998 optic portion of the value chain is still through with(p) in southerly China, and Hong Kong does the front and back ends. Managing dispersed manufacturing, where not all(prenominal)thing is done under one roof, t akes a real change of mind-set. nevertheless once we figured out how to do it, it became clear that our devil should extend heyond southern China. Our cyphering was, for example, if wages arc lower far inland, lets go in that location. And so we began what has turned into a con- forced us to get smart or so dissecting the value chain. stant search for new and split up sources of supply.Li& Fung mark a quantum leap in 1995, nearly doubling our size and extending our geographic scope hy acquiring Inchcape Buying Services. IBS was a large British hong w ith an estahlished network of offices in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The acquisition also brought with it a European customer base that complemented Li &. Fungs predominantly American base. This Hong Kong model of borderless manufacturing has puzzle a new paradigm for the region. tellly Asia consists of multiple networks of dispersed manufacturing-high- damage hubs that do the sophisticated training for regional manufacturing.Bangkok works with the Indochinese peninsula, Taiwan with the Philippines, Seoul with Union China. Dispersed manufacturing is whats behind the boom in Asias trade and investment statistics in the i99os-companies moving ra w materials and semifinished separate around Asia. But the region is still genuinely(prenominal) dependent on the ultimate sources of demand, which ar in North America and Western Europe. They start the firm make pass going. What happens when you get a typical order? Say we get an order from a European retailer to produce 10,000 garments. Its not a aboveboard weigh of our Korean office sourcing Korean products or ur Indonesian office sourcing Indonesian products. For this customer we power decide to buy yarn from a Korean producer unless encounter it woven and colored in Taiwan. So we pick the yarn and ship it to Taiwan. The Japanese consume the best postal codes and buttons, but they manufacture them nighly in China. Okay, so we go to YKK, a big Japanese zipper manufacturer, and we order the correct zippers from their Chinese SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE LI & FUNGS GLOBAL REACH Li & Fung produces a genuinely global product by pulling by the manufacturing value chain and optimizing each step.Today it has 3 5 offices in 20 countries, but its global reach is expanding rapidly. In 1997, it had r veritable(a)ue of approximately $1. 7 billion. San Francisco capital of France Oporto, Portugal San Pedro Sula, Honduras Brussels Istanbul Cairo Mauritius plants. Then we determine that, because of quotas and labor conditions, the best place to make the garments is siamese connectionland. So we ship boththing thither. And because the customer needs quick lecture, we may break open the order across quintuple factories in Thailand. Effectively, we atomic enumerate 18 customizing the value chain to hest meet the customers needs. Five weeks after we piddle received the order, 0,000 garments arrive on the shelves in Europe, all flavor like they came from one manufacturing plant, with colors, for example, dead matched. Just think about the logistics and the coordination. This is a nev*? type of value added, a truly global product that h as never heen seen hefore. The label may say made in Thailand, but its not a Thai product. We dissect the manufacturing process and look for the best answer at each step. Were not asking which rude can do the best joh overall. Instead, were pulling apart the value chain and optimizing each step and were doing it globally. 106Not only do the benefits outweigh the prices of logistics and transportation, but the higher(prenominal) value added also lets us charge more for our services. We deliver a sophisticated product and we deliver it fast. If you talk to the big global consumer-products companies, they are all moving in this directiontoward heing best on a glohal scale. So the multinational is essentially its throw supplychain manager? Yes, exactly. Large manufacturing companies are increasingly doing global supply-chain management, well(p) as Li & Fung does for its retailing customers. Thats currently the side in the auto industry.Today assemhly is the easy part. The hard p art is managing your suppliers and the melt of parts. In retailing, these changes are producing a revolution. For the first time, retailers are really creating produets, not just sit down in their offices with salesman after salesman showing them samples Do you HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE capital of Red China Dalian Qingdau Shanghai Liuyang New Delhi Karachi Guangzhou . Shantou Dhaka Hanoi f Bombay Bangalore Taipei Zhanjiang Bangkok Manila Saipan Colombo JohorBaharu . . Singapore Jakarta necessitate to buy this?Do you requisite to buy that? Instead, retailers are participating in the design process. Theyre now managing suppliers through us and are even reaching down to their suppliers suppliers. Eventually that translates into much break up management of inventories and lower markdowns in the stores. Explain why that translates into lower markdowns for retailers? Companies in consumer-driven, fast-moving markets face the prohlem of obsolete stock certificate with a vengeance. That means there is enormous value in heing able to huy closer to the market. If you can edit your buying cycle from three onths to five weeks, for example, what you are gaining is eight weeks to develop a better gumption of where the market is heading. And so you result end up with hard savings in inventory markdowns at the end of the selling season. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998 equitable supply-chain management strips away time and exist from product deliin truth cycles. Our customers pose hecome more way driven, working with six or seven seasons a year sooner of just two or three. at a time you move to shorter product cycles, the prohiem of obsolete inventory increases dramatically.Other businesses are facing the like kind of pressure. With customer tastes changing rapidly and markets segmenting into narrower niches, its not just fashion products that are becoming increasingly time sensiti ve. Several age ago, I had a conversation about ladies fashion garments with Stan Shih, CEO of Acer, the large Taiwan-hased PC manufacturer. I banteringly said, Stan, are you going to encroach on our filth? He said, No, no, hut the PC business has the same basic problems you face. Things are changing so fast you dont pauperism to wind up with inventory. You demand to plan close to the market. He runs his husiness to cut down the deli truly cycle SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE and smirch inventory motion- propose show by assembling PCs in local anesthetic markets. So what I have to say about supply chain management for fashion products really applies to any product thats time sensitive. impart chain management is about buying the right things and shortening the delivery cycles. It rents reaching into the suppliers to ensure that certain things happen on time and at the right quality take aim. Fundamentally, youre not taking the suppliers as a given. The classic s upply-chain manager in retailing isMarks ik Spencer. They dont own any factories, but they have a huge team that goes into the factories and works with the management. The Gap also is cognize for stretching into its suppliers. Can you give me an example of how you reach into the supply chain to shorten the buying cycle? Think about what happens when you outsource manufacturing. The easy undertake is to place an order for finished goods and let the supplier worry ahout contracting for the raw materials like material and yarn. But a single manufacturing plant is relatively subtle and doesnt have much buying power that is, it is too mall to demand faster deliveries from its suppliers. We come in and look at the totally supply chain. We know the Limited is going to order 100,000 garments, but we dont know the style or the colors yet. The buyer leave behind tell us that five weeks ahead delivery. The trust between us and our supply network means that we can re behave undycd yarn from the yarn supplier. I can lock up cleverness at the mills for the weaving and dying with the augur that theyll get an order of a specified sizc five weeks before delivery, we will let them know what colors we hope. Then I say the same thing to the factories, I ont know the product specs yet, but I have orga- the retailer hold off before having to commit to a fashion trend. Its all about flexibility, response time, downhearted production runs, small-scale minimum-order quantities, and the ability to shift direction as the trends move. Is it also about cost? Yes. At Li & Fung we think about supply chain management as tackling the soft $3 in the cost structure. What do we mean hy that? If a typical consumer product leaves the factory at a price of $1, it will constantly end up on retail shelves at $4. without delay you can try to squeeze the cost of production own 10 cents or 20 cents per product, hut today you have to be a genius to do that because eitherbody has been worki ng on that for historic period and theres not a lot of fat left. Its better to look at the cost that is spread passim the distribution channels-the soft $3. It offers a bigger target, and if you take 50 cents out, nobody will even know you are doing it. So its a much easier place to effect savings for our customers. Can you give me an example? Sure. Shippers always want to fill a container to capacity. If you tell a manufacturer, Dont fill up the container, hell think youre crazy.And if all you care about is the cost of shipping, theres no apparent movement you should fill the containers. But if you think instead of the al unitedly value chain as a system, and youre laborious to lower the total cost and not just one establish of it, then it may he smarter not to fill the containers. Lets say you want to distribute an assortment of ten products, each manufacture hy a different factory, to ten distribution centers. The bill practice would be for each factory to ship full contai ners of its product. And so those ten containers would then have to go to a consolidator, who would unpack and epack all ten containers before shipping the assortment to the distribution centers. Now suppose instead that you move one container from factory to factory and get each factory to fill just onetenth of the container. Then you ship it with the assortment the customer needs at once to the distribution center. The shipping cost will be greater, and you will have to be careful about stacking the goods properly. But the total systems cost could be lower because youve eliminated the consolidator altogether. When someone is actively managing and organizing the whole supply chain, you can save costs like that. We think about supply chain management as tackling the soft in the cost structure. nized the colors and the fabric and the trim for you, and theyll be delivered to you on this betrothal and youll have three weeks to produce so many a(prenominal) an(prenominal) another (prenominal) garments. Ive certainly made life harder for myself now. It would be easier to let the factories worry about securing their own fabric and trim. But then the order would take three months, not five weeks. So to shrink the delivery cycle, I go upstream to organize production. And the shorter production time lets 108 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE So when you talk about organizing the value chain, what you do goes well beyond simply contracting for other throngs services ot calling their work. It sounds like the value you add extends al close to to the microscope stage where youre providing management expertise to your supply network. In a sense, we are a smokeless factory. We do design. We huy and inspect the raw materials. We have factory managers, citizenry who set up and plan production and balance the lines. We inspect production. But we dont manage the workers, and we dont own the factories. Think ahout th e scope of what we do.We work with about 7,500 suppliers in more than 26 countries. If the average factory has 200 workers thats probahly a low estimate then in effect there are more than a trillion workers sedulous on behalf of our customers. Thats why our policy is not to own any portion of the value chain that deals with footrace factories. Managing a million workers would he a wide undertaking. Wed lose all flexihility wed lose our ability to pick off and coordinate. So we deliherately leave that management challenge to the individualistic entrepreneurs we contract with. Our target in working with factories is to take nywhere from 30% to 70% of their production. We want to he principal(prenominal) to them, and at 30% were most likely their largest customer. On the other hand, we need flexibility-so we dont want the accountability of having them completely dependent on us. And we also benefit from their exposure to their other customers. If we dont own factories, can w e say we are in manufacturing? Absolutely. Because, of the 15 steps in the manufacturing value chain, we prohably do 10. Our basic in operation(p)(a) unit is the portion. Whenever likely, we will focus an entire division on luck one customer. We may serve smaller customers hrough a division structured around a convention of customers with similar needs. We have, for example, a theme-store division serving a handful of customers such as the Warner Brothers stores and Rainforest Cafe. This structuring of the arranging around customers is very important remember that what we do is close to creating a customized value chain for any customer order. So customer-focused divisions are the building hlocks of our organization, and we continue them small and entrepreneurial. They do anywhere from $20 million to $50 million of business. Each is run hy a What we do is close to creating customized value chain for every customer order. / The way Li & Fung is organized is unaccustomed i n the industry. Can you describe the link between your organization and your strategy? Just about every company I know says that they are customer focused. What, in fact, does that mean? Usually it means they design key systems that fit most of their customers, they hope, most of the time. Here we say-and do-something different We organize for the customer. Almost all the large trading companies with extensive networks of suppliers are organized geographically, with the country units as their profit centers.As a result, it is hard for them to hone the value chain. Their country units are competing against one another for husiness. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998 lead entrepreneur-we sometimes call them little John Waynes because the image of a jackass standing in the middle of the wagon train, dead reckoning at all the had guys, seems to fit. Consider our Gymhoree division, one of our largest. The division manager, Ada Liu, and her headquarters team have their own separate office space within the Li & Fung building in Hong Kong. When you walk through their door, every one of the 0 or so people you see is focused solely on brush Gymhorees needs. On every desk is a computer with direct software links to Gymhoree. The staff is organized into narrow down teams in such areas as technical complement, merchandising, raw material purchasing, quality assurance, and shipping. And Ada has dedicated sourcing teams in our branch offices in China, the Philippines, and Indonesia because Gymboree buys in volume from all those countries. In maybe 5 of our 26 countries, she has her own team, people she leadd herself. When she wants to source from, say, India, the branch office helps her get the joh done.In most multinational companies, fights hetween the geographic side of the organization and the product or customer side are legendary and predictable. From the product side, its How can I get hetter service for my customer? It may be small for you in Bang ladesh, hut its important for my product line globally. And from the country side, its Look, I cant let this product group take unfair advantage of this especial(a) factory, hecause it pro109 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE duces for three other product groups and Im responsible for our bloods in this country overall. Heres our settlement to this classic prohlem Our primary alignment is around customers and their needs. But to balance the matrix, every productgroup executive also has responsibility for one country. It makes them more sensitive to the prohlems facing a country director and less likely to make unreasonahle demands. Can you tell us more about the role of the little John Waynes? The motif is to create small units dedicated to taking care of one customer, and to have one person running a unit like she would her own company. In fact, we hire people whose main alternative would be to run their own business.We provide them with the pecuniary resources and the administrative support of a hig organization, hut we give them a great deal of autonomy. All the merchandising decisions that go into set up a production program for the customer-which factories to use, whether to stop a shipment or let it go forward-are made at the division-head level. For the creative parts of the business, we want entrepreneurial behavior, so we give people considerable run freedom. To motivate the division leaders, we rely on substantial financial incentives by tying their compensation directly to the units bottom line. in that locations no cap on bonuses we want entrepreneurs who are motivated to move heaven and earth for the customer. Trading companies can be run in effect only when they are small. By making small units the We think of our divisions as a portfolio we can create and collapse, almost at will. heart of our company, we have been able to grow rapidly without becoming bureaucratic. Today we have about 60 divisions. We think of them as a portfoli o we can create and collapse, almost at will. As the market changes, our organization can adjust immediately. What role, then, does the embodied center play?When it comes to financial controls and operating procedures, we dont want creativity or entrepreneurial behavior. In these areas, we pore and manage strongly. Li &. Fung has a standardized, fully computerized operating system for executing 110 and tracking orders, and everyone in the company uses the system. We also keep very tight control of working capital. As far as Im concerned, inventory is the root of all evil. At a minimum, it increases the complexity of managing any business. So its a word we dont tolerate around here. All cash flow is managed centrally through Hong Kong.All letters of credit, for example, come to Hong Kong for commendation and are then reissued by the central office. That means we are guaranteed payment before we execute an order. I could expand the company by another 10% to 20% hy giving customers credit. But while we are very aggressive in merchandising in finding new sources, for example-when it comes to financial management, we are very conservative. I understand though, that Li & Fung is involved in venture capital. Can you explain how t hat fits in? Weve set up a small venture-capital arm, with offices in San Francisco, London, and Brussels, hose primary purpose is unified development. If you look at a product market grid, Li &. Fung has expertise in sourcing many types of products for many types of retailers, but there are also holes in our coverage. A big piece of our corporate development is plugging those holes-the phrase we use is filling in the mosaic and we use venture capital to do it. Lets say Li &. Fung is not strong in ladies fashion shoes. Well have our venture group look for opportunities to buy into relatively young entrepreneurial companies with people who can create designs and sell them but who do not have the ability to source or to finance.Thats wh at we bring to the deal. More important, doing the sourcing for the company lets us build social movement and know-how in the segment. At the same time, we think its a good way to enhance our returns. All venture capitalists will tell you that they bring more than silver to their investments. In our case, we are ahle to back the companies with our sourcing network. One of our biggest successes is a company called Cyrk. We wanted to fill a hole in our mosaic in the promotional premiums business-clothing or gift items with company logos, for example. We bought a 30% risk in Cyrk for $200,000 in 1990. We ended p doing all the M&M gum hall dispensers with them, but the real coup was a full line of promotional clothing for Philip Morris. After five years, we sell our investment for about $65 million. Were more than joyful with our investment results, but our real interest is in corporate developHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE SU PPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT HOW LI & FUNG ADDS VALUE LI & Fung does the high-value-added front- and back-end tasks in Hong Kong front end design engineering production planning back end quality control testing logistics It organizes the ower-value-added middle stages through its network of 7,500 suppliers, 2,500 of which are active at any one time. raw material and component sourcing ment, in filling in the mosaic. Were not looking to grow by taking over whole companies. We know we cant manage a U. S. domestic company very well because were so far away, and the elaboration is different. By hacking people on a minority basis, however, we improve our sourcing strength and enhance our ability to grow existing client relationships or to win new ones. Thats real synergy. Youve grown substantially both in size and in geographic scope in the last five years.Does becoming more multinational bring any fundamental changes to the company? Since 1993, weve changed from a Hong Kongbased Chinese comp any that was 99. 5% Chinese and plausibly 80% Hong Kong Chinese into a truly regional multinational with a workforce from at to the lowest degree 30 countries. We used to call ourselves a Chinese trading company. (The Japanese trading companies are very hig, and we wanted to he a big angle in a small pond, so we defined the pond as consisting of Chinese trading companies. ) As we grow, and as our workforce hecomes more nationally diverse, we wonder how Koreans or Indians or Turks will feel bout working for a Chinese multinational. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Septtmber-October 1998 managing production Were torn. We know that if we call ourselves a multinational, were very small compared to a Nestle or a Unilever. And we dont want to he faceless. We are proud of our heathenish hereditary pattern. But we dont want it to be an impediment to growth, and we want to make people comfortable that culturally we have a very open architecture. We position ourselves today as a Hong Kong-based multinational trading company. Hong Kong itself is hoth Chinese and very cosmopolitan. In five years, weve come a ong way in rethinking our identity. As we grow and become more multinational, the last thing we want to do is to run the company like the big multinationals. You know where you have a corporate policy on medical leave or housing allowances or you name it. How do you avoid setting policies, a path that would seem inevitable lor most companies? We astound to a simple entrepreneurial normal. For the senior ranks of the company, the roving executives, we encash-that is, we translate the value of benefits into dollar figures-as much as we can. Cash gives individuals the most fiexihiiity. I annot design a policy to fit 1,000 people, so when UI SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE in doubt we give people cash instead. You want a car? You think you deserve a car? Wed rather give you the cash and let you manage the car. You buy it, you service it. The usual multinational solution is to hire experts to do a study. Then they write a manual(a) on car ownership and hire ten people to administer the manual. If you ask yourself whether you would rather have a package of benefits or its equivalent in cash, m. ayhe youll say, I dont want such a seemly car, hut Id prefer to spend more money on my home leave.Cash gives individuals a lot more freedom. Thats our simplifying principle. month is still doing so this month. The committee of 30 not only shapes our policies hut also translates them into operating procedures we think will he effective in thefield. And then they hecome a vehicle for implementing what weve agreed on when they return to their divisions. There are few businesses as old as trading. Yet the essence of what you do at Li & Fung-managing information and relationships-sounds like a good description of tbe information economy. How do you oblige the new economy with the old?At one level, Li &. Fung is an information node, fiipping informatio n hetween our 350 customers Since you head for the hills in so many countries, do you and our 7,500 suppliers. We manage all that today have to index cash equivalents to local economies? with a lot of phone calls and faxes and on-site visits. Thats the anchor of the company. Soon we will need Wherever we operate, we take local rules and hest practices. We do not want concord for lower- a sophisticated information system with very open architecture to accommodate different protocols level managers. If they say in Korea, We dont rom suppliers and from customers, one rohust want bonuses hut everyhody gets i 6 m onths exuberant to work in Hong Kong and New York-as salary, thats the market. What we do would probwell as in places like Bangladesh, where you cant ahly drive the HR section in a multinational crazy. But it works for us for the top people, we fig- always count on a good phone line. ure out a cash equivalent for henefits, and for the loI have a picture in my mind of the i deal trader for cal staff, we play along local hest practices. Its fine if todays world. The trader is an executive corrosion e do things differently from country to country. a pith helmet and a safari jacket. But in one hand is a And rememher, we are an incentive-driven commachete and in the other a very high-tech individualisedpany. We try to make the variable component of computer and confabulation device. From one compensation as hig as possible and to extend that side, youre getting reports from suppliers in newly principle as far down into the organization as possi- emerging countries, where the quality of the inforhle. Thats the entrepreneurial approach. mation may he poor. From the other side, you ight have highly accurate point-of-sale information from the United States that allows you to reAs you spread out geographically, how do you hold plenish automatically. In other words, youre mathe organization together? The company is managed on a day-to-day hasis by neuvering between areas that have a lot of undercover work the product group managers. Along with the top up to do-youre trash through the underbrush, so to speak-and areas that are already clearly fomanagement, they form what we call the policy committee, which consists of about 30 people. We cused on the twenty-first century. meet once every five to six weeks.People fly in As the sources of supply explode, managing inforfrom around the region to reason and agree on polimation becomes increasingly complex. Of course, cies. Consider, for example, the subject field of compliwe have a lot of hard data about carrying out and ance, or ethical sourcing. How do we make sure our ahout the work we do with each factory. But what suppliers are doing the right thing-by our cuswe really want is surd to pin down a lot of the tomers standards and our own-when it comes to most valuable information resides in peoples issues such as child lahor, environmental protecheads.What kind of attitude does the o wner have? tion, and country-of-origin regulations? Do we work well together? How good is their interCompliance is a very hot topic today-as well it nal management? That kind of organizational depot is a lot harder to retain and to share. We should be. Because our inspectors are in and out of see the capturing of such information as the next the factories all the time, we probably have a hetter frontier. You could look at us as a very sophisticated window on the prohlem than most companies. If IT system. So thats the modern side of who we are. we find factories that dont comply, we wont work ith them. However, because there is so much subcontracting, you cant assume that everyone is doWbat about the more traditional side? ing the right thing. That is, you have to make sure In the information age, there is an impersonality that a supplier that was operating properly last that seems to say that all the old-world thoughts 112 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE about relationships dont matter anymore. Were all taken with the notion that a sparkly young guy ean bring his great idea to the Internet, and its okay if no one knows him from Adam. Right?Maybe. But at the same time, the old relationships, the old values, still matter. I think they matter in our dealing with suppliers, with eustomers, and with our own staff. Right now were so big, three of our divisions could be seheduling work with the same factory. We could be fighting ourselves for factory capacity. So Im in the process of creating a database to track systematically all our supplier relationships. We need something that everyone in the company ean use to review the performance history of all our suppliers. One of my colleagues said, Wed better guard duty that with our lives, because if somebody ever ot into our system, they could err one of the companys great assets. Im not so worried. Someone might steal our database, but when they call up a su pplier, they dont have the long relationship with the supplier that Li & Fung has. It makes a deflection to suppliers when they know that you are dedicated to the business, that youve been recognize your commitments for 90 years. I think there is a similar traditional dimension to our customer relationships. In the old days, my father used to read every telex from eustomers. That made a huge difference in a business where a position s small as the wrong zipper color could lead to disastrous delays for customers. Today William and I continue to read faxes from customers-certainly not every one, but enough to keep us in personal toucb with our customers and our operations on a daily basis. through close attention to detail, we try to maintain our heritage of customer service. As we have transformed a family business into a modern one, we have tried to preserve the best of what my father and grandfather created. There is a family feeling in the company thats difficult to describe . We dont care much for titles and hierarchy.Family life and the companys business shed over into each other. When staff members are in Hong Kong to do business, my vex might have tea with their families. Of eourse, as we have grown we have had to change. My mother cant know everyone as she once did. But we hold on to our wish to preserve the intimacies that have been at the heart of our most successful relationships. If I had to start it in one phrase, it would be this Think like a big company, act like a small one. A TRADITION OF INNOVATION In the companys early years, Li & Fung dealt in porcelain and other trnditidnal Chinese products, inclLidinK bamboo nd rattan ware, jade and ivory handicrafts-and fireworks. Li ik Funjs invention of paper-sealed fireerackers in 1907 to replaee the traditional mudsealed firecracker was a major breakthrough. At that time, the U. S. import duty on firecrackers was hased on weight. The paper-sealed fireeraekers not only ineurred lower unport dut ies by being lighter but also eliminated the problem of excessive dust produced by the discharge of the mud-sealed variety. Li &. Fungs paper-sealed manufaeturing process has become the industrys standard. i Is the growing magnificence of information technology good or unwholesome for your bnsiness?Frankly, I am not unhappy that the business will HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1998 113 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, HONG KONG STYLE be more dependent on information technology. The growing value of dispersed manufaeturing makes us reach even further around the globe, and IT helps us accomplish that stretching of the company. As Western companies work to remain competitive, supply chain management will become more important. Their need to serve smaller niche markets with more frequent changes in products is displace us to establish new sources in less developed countries.Were forging into newly emerging centers of production, from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka to Madagascar. Were now landing in northern Africa in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco. Were start down in South Africa and moving up to some of the equatorial countries. As the global supply network becomes larger and more far-flung, managing it will require scale. As a pure intermediary, our margins were squeezed. But as the number of supply chain options expands, we add value for our customers by using information and relationships to manage the network. We help companies navigate through a orld of expanded choice. And the expanding power of IT helps us do that. So the middle where we operate is broadening, making what we do more valuable and allowing us to deliver a better product, which translates into better prices and better margins for our customers. In fact, we think export trading is not a sunset industry but a growth business. Was the professional management training you and William brought with you from the United States helpful in running an Asian family business? Its an interesting question. For my first 20 years with the company, I had to put aside-unlearn, in act-a lot of what I had conditioned in the West about management. It just wasnt relevant. The Li & Fung my grandfather founded was a typical patriarchal Chinese family conglomerate. Even today, most companies in Asia are build on that model. But a lot has changed in the last five years, and the current Asian financial crisis is going to transform the region even more. Now, instead of managing a few relationshipsthe essence of the old model-were managing large, complex systems. It used to be that one or two big decisions a year would determine your success.In the 1980s, for example, many of the Asian tycoons were in asset-intensive businesses like real solid ground and shipping. You would make a very small number of very big decisions-you would acquire a piece of land or decide to build a supertanker-and you were done. And access to the deals depended on your connections. 114 The Li & Fung of today is quite a differe nt from the company my grandfather founded in 1906. As it was in a lot of family companies, people had a sense over the years that the companys purpose was to serve as the familys livelihood. One of the first things William and I did was to expect my father o separate ownership and management by taking the company puhlic in 197 3. When our margins were squeezed during the 1980s, we felt we needed to make dramatic changes that could best be done if we went back to being a private company. So in 1988, we undertook Hong Kongs first management buyout, interchange off assets, and refocused the company on its core trading business. Later we took our export trading business human beings again. Im sure some of our thinking ahout governance structure and focus was influenced by our Western training. But Im more struck by the changes In the companys decision making.Right now in this building, we probably have 50 buyers making hundreds of individual transactions. Were making a large number of small decisions instead of a small number of big ones. I cant be involved in all of tbem. So today I depend on structure, on guiding principles, on managing a system. Of course, I think relationships are still important, but Im not managing a single key relationship and using it to leverage my entire enterprise. Instead, Im running a very focused business using a systems approach. Thats why I say that in the last five years, everything I learned in business school has come to matter. Li &