How the Role of the Organizational Trainer Has Changed in the Last Ten Essay

How the Role of the Organizational Trainer Has Changed in the Last Ten Years - Essay Example hanging working practices and a highly competitive business environment has called upon most organizations to hire employees who can handle these (Stwart, et al, 2005, p. 357; Hodson and Sullivan, 2007, p. 221; Holman, 2005, p. 1; Verburg, 2005, p. 50). Some skills, structure of knowledge, and working practices have been termed as irrelevant. Due to the significance that change comes with, there is therefore a great need for organizational trainers to live up to the challenge of helping people to not only unlearn some of the redundant skills, but also to acquire and relearn new ones. This is part of what has made the role of the Human resource Development to change from training to development. Therefore, the role of an organizational trainer (Human Resource Development) has changed in a number of ways. First, there is a rising interest being developed among organizational trainers in labor aspects such as long-term unemployment, inadequate skills, and equivalent opportunities. Secon dly, they are faced with the task of raising awareness on the significance of training, and continue with spreading the concept that, in the long run, it is the development of the labor skills and the learning culture that an economy’s long-term competitive performance and its enterprises are based on. Thirdly, the trainer is preoccupied with the role of coming up with nation-wide training techniques that should be determined by people, investors and national competencies. Fourth, there is the establishment of corporate mechanisms that should be determined by core activities leading to the development of non-core services such as instruction and consultancy. Fifth, the trainer should take part in organizational restructuring that include decentralization, empowering senior operating... Apart from accepting their position in organizations, trainers had a strong belief in the value of their training and were eager to invest in it. A trainee’s evolving career depended on the trainer’s finite range of knowledge and skills backed by wide experience. The provision of this early training set a pace for long-term professionalism such that, once people were trained, they were expected to exercise the contents of the training throughout their career lifetime. There was no room for more investment in training. These conventional views have been overtaken by time due to the change that has come with the twenty-first century. This change has not only made most organizations to cope with it, but has also caused individuals to affirm the fact that with time, their training becomes obsolete. New technology, changing working practices and a highly competitive business environment has called upon most organizations to hire employees who can handle these (Stwart, et al, 2005, p. 357; Hodson and Sullivan, 2007, p. 221; Holman, 2005, p. 1; Verburg, 2005, p. 50). Some skills, structure of knowledge, and working practices have been termed as irrelevant. Due to the significance that change comes with, there is, therefore, a great need for organizational trainers to live up to the challenge of helping people to not only unlearn some of the redundant skills, but also to acquire and relearn new ones. This is part of what has made the role of the Human Resource Development to change from training to development.

Information Technology Management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Information Technology Management - Assignment Example that it prepares me to become well grounded in the organizations fundamental theory, making of decisions, becoming a leader in the organization and learning the ropes of team work. By learning Information Systems, one becomes well versed with current research methods and new information technologies that are emerging (Turban & Wood, 2013). As globalization sets in, IS prepares you for the emerging opportunities in software systems industry in any part of the world. It is quite interesting since it exposes one to world cultures and available opportunities for growth through communications between different cultures, global development systems and languages. Information Technology Management equips one with relevant knowledge for the development of creative and effective solutions of IT based on an absolute understanding of business opportunities and challenges. ITM prepares one to have a strong technical foundation in new approaches to information systems development which is inclusiv e of planning, analyzing, designing and programming (Turban et al, 2006). My career objective is Information technology Manager. ITM will prepare me to manage a network of people working in systems development, provide maintenance for major applications and implementing them. Information technology managers as well as information systems managers are in charge of secure and effective computer systems operations, software and hardware and applications used in both private and public organizations (Standing and Jackson, 2008). No organization can run effectively with the absence of such professionals since their skills and competencies are an integral part of every organization despite of the size or area of specialization. They are useful in an organization since they are responsible for: The role of an IT manager in the banking sector and that of the healthcare industry has both similarities and disparities. In the banking sector an IT manager is comes across different challenges

Some Moral Minima Essay Example for Free

Some Moral Minima Essay In Some Moral Minima, Lenn Goodman argues that there are certain things that are simply wrong. Do you think Goodman is right? Using specific examples, explore the challenges Goodman presents to relativism. Determine whether you think there are such universal moral requirements, and defend your answer in a well-argued three-page paper. Your paper must be formatted according to APA (6th edition) style. You dont need any sources other than the Goodman paper and the text for our course. However, you must cite all your references properly. If you would like to refer to APA samples and tutorials, visit the Ashford Writing Center, within the Learning Resources tab in the left navigation bar, in your online course. Some Moral Minna By Lenn Goodman The Morally Right In â€Å"Some Moral Minima† I believe Lenn Goodman is right when he says certain things are simply wrong. I agree with Goodman on the issues he discusses such as slavery, genocide, terrorism, murder, rape, polygamy, and incest. I agree with Goodman on these issues because there is never a good time to kill for the sake of killing, rape for the sake of sex, or take ones rights away for the sake of gaining respect or wealth. Goodman basically discusses that every person whether it be man, woman, or child has the rights to live and be free from any and all inhumane treatment. Goodman’s main understanding is not to be quick on judging things we don’t understand, but to judge those things that are not morally right. I believe that all people are equal and have the right to live their own life as do the violators should have no rights to commit these unruly acts of wrong. Who are we to judge anyone or why should others have the right to murder, rape, or rip the rights of people away from them? The bible states, â€Å"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you† (Matthew, 7:12, Standard Version). I believe this is the best way to look at the situation on any of the issues that Goodman discusses. We should never judge anyone due to their sexual orientation, physical/mental handicapness, or any other feature in which they have no control over, such as the poor and the wealthy. Goodman discusses slavery as a act of wrong in the article and I really agree with his views on this issue. In the past some of our forefathers thought of slavery as a racially ethical right. Today in our society there are still some of the older generation that still look down upon the African American population simply because of the color of their skin.

Crowdsourcing As An Effective E Commerce Strategy Business Essay

Crowdsourcing As An Effective E Commerce Strategy Business Essay ABSTRACT With the growing trend of social websites and their usage for e-commerce activities, crowdsourcing has become an innovative strategy to conduct e-commerce. The paper aims to explore on its effectiveness as an e-commerce strategy, firstly by trying to understand the history of crowdsourcing. Secondly the paper will look at the methodology and definitions of various types of crowdsourcing. Thirdly, the paper will define how crowdsourcing is used in e-commerce. Next, some case studies of business that uses crowdsourcing are discussed, with analysis on its success and failures. Finally, the paper will provide suggestion on how crowdsourcing can be an effective strategy. 1. INTRODUCTION Introduced by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in the June 2006 issue of Wired magazine, the term crowdsourcing describes a process of how new web-based businesses organize labor, by outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by contractors or employees, to a community (usually online) through what amounts to an open call for proposals. Howe offers the following definition: Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers. (Howe, 2006) Howe further explained that true crowdsourcing involves a company accepting the idea received, processing it and producing for sale; and the idea provider being rewarded, in most cases, monetarily. This is to differentiate crowdsourcing from open sourcing, which is a cooperative activity initiated and voluntarily undertaken by members of public. In other words, crowdsourcing happens when a company posts a problem online, individuals in the community offer solutions to the problem, the winning ideas are awarded some form of a monetary reward, and the company mass produces the idea for its own gain. In another article, titled Power of Crowdsourcing, by Matt H. Evans, he states that Crowdsourcing taps into the global world of ideas, helping companies work through a rapid design process. From both definitions, it can be understood that crowdsourcing needs a channel that is able to reach out to the masses to be effective, and the most obvious choice is the internet. This is further complimented by the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, whereby individuals are able to interact and define the web rather than being passive browsers of the web. This makes crowdsourcing even more attractive as it allows companies to tap into the potential vast collective intelligence of the masses to achieve their business strategy. As such, e-commerce businesses (businesses that uses the internet to handle the buying and selling of products or services) are the most likely adopter of crowdsourcing technique for their e-commerce strategy. E-commerce strategy is the plan and courses of action that a company undertakes to offer its products and services on the internet to achieve its business goal. For companies that have existing offline operations, e-commerce strategy will most likely be focused on integrating its offline operations into an online presence. This will include how to best represent the company online, the infrastructure and framework required to do so and the range of activities needed to promote the companys core activities on the World Wide Web. Another reason that crowdsourcing is gaining popularity is because in todays globalised market, competition in innovation is very fierce and in-house research and development is getting more costly. As mentioned in The Global Brain, by Nambisan Sawhney, 2008, These forces rapidly decreasing product life cycles, decreasing internal innovation productivity, and global competition together are creating a Red Queen effect  [1]  in innovation: Companies have to invest more and more just to maintain their market position. This make crowdsourcing a viable option, as it allows the tapping into the vast intelligence of the masses, like what former Sun Chief Scientist, Bill Joy says, Most of the smart people in the world dont work for your company. More importantly, this intelligence can be obtained at relatively low cost. 2. POPULUARITY OF CROWDSOURCING To understand the current popularity of crowdsourcing, this paper has referred to PBworks ( http://crowdsourcingexamples.pbworks.com/ ), one of the worlds largest provider of hosted collaboration solutions for business and education, which has a wiki that provides a comprehensive list of companies that uses crowdsourcing. In addition to the wiki, as the list provided by PBworks is purely textual, this paper has also referred to Grant Silverstones article, Friday Fact Box Crowdsourcing ( http://www.gottaquirk.com/2010/01/29/friday-fact-box-crowdsourcing/ ), for graphical representation of the list. Extracted are two graphical breakdowns of industries that use crowdsourcing, one group using purely crowdsourcing as their business strategy, and the other using crowdsourcing as an add-on initiative to their current business, without disrupting their own core business strategy. In the chart (Fig 1.1), it shows the current industry breakdown of companies using Crowdsourcing as their main business strategy. According to PBworks, out of the listed 141 companies, the majority, or 43% belongs to general business, such as marketing, sales, advertising and finance. This is followed by Design (15%) and then Media (13%), while Tourism makes up the least at 1%. Fig 1.1 (Source: Grant Silverstone, Friday Fact Box Crowdsourcing) In addition to that, in Fig 1.2, it shows that of these 141 companies, a huge majority comes from USA (65%), Europe (13%) and UK (6%), while Brazil, Africa and Russia only make up 1% each. Fig 1.2 (Source: Grant Silverstone, Friday Fact Box Crowdsourcing) From these two charts, it can be derived that majority of companies using crowdsourcing efforts are those in industries that traditionally requires large community networks (such as sales, news and marketing) and creativity capacity (such as design, advertisement, media). While industries that requires specific skills (such as Education) and are more systematic (such as Science and IT) are less popular with companies to consider using crowsourcing as a business strategy. Moreover, crowdsourcing is mainly engaged in western countries, which the economy and infrastructure are much more developed. This is an important factor as mentioned earlier that a good networking channel is needed for the success of crowdsourcing. Next in Fig 1.3, it shows the industry breakdown of companies that initiated crowdsourcing efforts to complement their current business strategy, with the majority from IT at 33%. It is also interesting to note too that nearly all these companies in the list are big players in the industry, such as Adobe, BMW, Nokia and so on. Fig 1.3 (Source: Grant Silverstone, Friday Fact Box Crowdsourcing) From the chart and the list, it can be seen that currently, crowdsourcing is still a new idea and not attractive enough to draw companies to venture into it as a complement process to their existing business strategy. However, big companies, with huge resources, do see the potential of crowdsourcing and are able to invest into it. This is also the reason why IT industry is the major contributor to crowdsourcing initiatives, as they have the knowledge and expertise to tap on the internet to maximize crowdsourcing potential. 3. Examples of Business using Crowdsourcing To understand how crowdsourcing is currently being used in businesses and its effectiveness, it is necessary to look at real cases. The paper will look into 3 companies, each with distinctive methods of engaging crowdsourcing, namely Threadless, Amazon Mechanical Turk and Cambrian House. Threadless Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store launched in 2000 by Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart, with $1,000 in seed money after entering and meeting in an Internet t-shirt design contest. They wanted to start their own design competition, but instead of hiring a jury, they decided to let the designers themselves pick the winner. Source: Threadless: http://www.threadless.com How it works In the beginning, members of the Threadless community will submit their t-shirt designs online, where the designs are then put to a member vote. The winner would get free T-shirts bearing the winning design, while everyone else would get to buy the shirt. Currently, Threadlesss receives on average, one thousand designs in any given week, of which, only ten designs from the voted top hundred to print and sell through an online store. DeHart and Nickell also increased the bounty paid to these winners to $2,000 in cash, a $500 gift certificate ($200 in cash if they trade in the certificate), as well as an additional $500 for every reprint. This is because limited batches are printed and sold out shirts will only be re-printed if there is enough demand from customers requesting for a re-print. On occasion, special contests will run in association with various sponsors. These contests set a theme for designs, with a selection of additional prizes, often related to the sponsor, being awarded to the chosen winner. How Successful was Threadless The Threadless community is currently six hundred thousand strong, producing about one thousand designs for voting each week. In 2006, Threadless had managed to generate $17 million in revenues and it is still growing rapidly. Threadless boasts, according to Jeffrey Kamikoff (Threadless Chief Creative Officer), incredible profit margins. Each shirt that sells for between $12 to $25 is produced at a cost of just $5. Moreover, Threadless need not do any advertising or marketing, as the community itself will self-perform such functions. The designers will persuade friends and community members to view and vote for their work. Threadless will also rewards the community for those who submit photos of themselves wearing a Threadless shirt or refers a friend who buys a shirt with store credits (worth $1.50 and $3.00 respectively). This crowdsourcing strategy helps Threadless to sell an average of ninety thousand T-shirts a month. However, Threadless had also suffered by their own success. Their spring sale in March 2008 resulted in serious server downtime, resulting in the offer of $50 vouchers to inconvenienced customers and the promise to never ever let this happen again forever ever. Eighteen months later, a special one day sale to tie into the 09/09/09 date saw Threadless pummeled again by insane amounts of traffic, with users reporting inability to access the site for extended periods some never getting through. The customer experience was impacted by such a lack of planning of traffic which was to be expected from a company dealing with such huge social community. It was only from these experiences that Threadless had begun to look into better managing their wildly fluctuating levels of traffic in their infrastructure. Amazon Mechanical Turk Amazon Mechanical Turk is a service launched on November 2, 2005 by Amazon.com, which was initially invented for in-house use by Peter Cohen as a service to find duplicates among its web pages describing products. As of 2010, though still in beta, Mechanical Turk has grown to be a crowdsourcing internet marketplace for work where businesses (known as Requesters) publish tasks (known as Human Intelligence Tasks or HITS), and workers (known as Providers) complete them for a monetary payment that was set by the Requesters. Amazon Mechanical Turk gives businesses immediate access to a diverse, global, on-demand, scalable workforce and gives Workers a selection of thousands of tasks to complete whenever and wherever its convenient. Source: Amazon Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com How it works Amazon Mechanical Turk, as mentioned is a market place for tasks that computer and machines cannot do, or cannot do it precise enough. These tasks can only be done by human intelligence, such as writing reviews or detecting specific objects in images. The process of Mechanical Turk is firstly, companies will post jobs (HITS) at MTurk (Amazon Mechanical Turk Market Place), then deposit the HITS payout amount into their MTurk account. Next, workers, who are registered members of MTurks, will look for tasks that they feel that they can perform. Once they take up the task, they will be assigned to it, but there will not be any contract. These HITS are tasks that are fairly easy and quick to execute, with most of them being able to be completed under 20 to 30 seconds or less and payout at about 10 to 50 cents. After the HIT is completed and submitted, Amazon Mechanical Turk will automatically transfer the money from the Requesters prepaid HIT balance to the workers Amazon gift certificate account. With the payout, workers can choose to either transfer the money to their bank account or to their amazon.com gift certificate balance. For every task performed, Amazon will take a cut. In addition, Requesters can also give bonus to workers w hom they like the task done. Besides the Official MTurk website, there is another website, Turker Nation (http://www.turkernation.com ), a forum for workers and requestors to meet and discuss the work at hand. Issues with Hits are discussed here. The site is independent from Amazon, and is not related to Amazon in any way. How Successful was Mechanical Turk Since its launch in 2005, the number of worker members in Amazon Mechanical Turk had grown in numbers. By March 2007, there were reportedly more than 100,000 workers in over 100 countries. MTurk is popular with companies as they find that HITS are a very affordable way to outsource large groups of similar tasks that are very simple to complete. Companies find the MT task auction model attractive because it reduces payroll costs of having to employ normal workers to perform such tasks. However, while Companies or Requesters find the cost of engaging MTurk to complete HITS attractive, there are many criticisms. As HITS are typically simple, repetitive tasks and users are paid often only a few cents to complete them, many have criticized Mechanical Turk as a market place for slaves. Moreover, workers are paid as contractors rather than employees, requesters enjoy tax advantages and low cost, and they also avoid laws regarding minimum wage, overtime, and workers compensation. Workers, on the other hand, must report their income as self-employment income. In addition, some requesters have taken advantage of workers by having them do the tasks, then rejecting their submission in order to avoid paying. Amazon.com does not monitor the service and refers all complaints to the poster of the HIT. Nevertheless, in view of such criticism, MTurk is still attracting workers, especially those living in second and third-world economies, because the impact of earning those few extra dollars will be magnified many times over. Cambrian House Launched in 2006, Cambrian House started as a crowdsourcing community that pioneered the idea of harnessing the power of the crowd to create ideas for websites and software products. Its mantra is You think it; crowds test it; crowds build it; you sell it; you profit. Source: Cambrian House: http://www.cambrianhouse.com How it works Cambrian House calls itself a community of people with broad talents and interests to create web-based products that the world wants, markets those products, and shares in the profits. They cater to people with no time to pursue new ideas or anyone with a vision and motivated to submit ideas. The way Cambrian House works is, firstly, Individuals register and create a profile of their capabilities in its website. They can then participate within the community by initiating ideas. The community will then test these ideas and give the approval on those that are feasible. Next, Cambrian House staff will create a brochure site to test the winners popularity and usability within the community. If the idea survives, the contributor will then seek people with passion and skills in the community to construct or co-develop the commercial version of the idea, by awarding them with Royalty Points (the amount you receive for coming up with an original idea) or Cambro (Cambrian Houses currency, 1 Cambro = $1 USD). Cambrian House will fund the project and if needed, they can also seek additional funding from the community. Once the product is created, the project champions can then seek marketers, business development professionals, and or SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts in the Cambrian House community to deal with the promoting, selling and delivery of the product. Finally, once the product starts to sell, every member that contributed will earn Royalty Points or Cambro that had been negotiated with the business champion. In short, every member in the Cambrian House community can participate by not just giving ideas but also in bringing members ideas to life. There are no limits to number of projects members can join. During every development stage, everyone involved will also participate as peer-reviewers at select decision gates along the way to measure the individuals contribution. Although Cambrian House crowdsources the conception and creation of its products, ideas are subject to editorial review by a core team and actual production is subject to a set of quality guidelines. In the case of conflicting code or design contributions, the community decides which the best is. An example of how Cambrian House involves in every project is its first product (a video game) which was emerged from the community forums and seemed popular, so it risked $8,000CAD on a preliminary website to promote the game. It sailed through the market test selling hundreds of pre-orders at half-price ($9.95CAD) in a single weekend. That response encouraged Cambrian House to invest more for the next development stage. Cambrian Houses eventual goal is to turn each project into a separate, independently funded firm, but only after it has been market-validated. How Successful was Cambrian House The original Cambrian House community was deemed successful as it managed to achieve the most important component of crowdscourcing by attracting 50,000 plus members and more than 7000 ideas from the crowd. However, Cambrian House did not realized that although the crowd was great at thinking and testing, it was less interested when it came to the building element of Cambrian Houses model. Moreover, there are weaknesses in the idea-community model which include the challenge of convincing users to study and vote a rapidly growing pool of ideas, of which some are of relatively low quality, the management difficulty of distributed development, and the large number of duplicate submissions. After unsuccessfully trying to raise a new round of capital, in May 2008, Cambrian House announced the sale of much its assets to the New York-based venture capital company Spencer Trask. While Cambrian House will carry on as a vendor of Crowdsourcing software, its existence as a crowdsourcing community had come to a close. In reflection, Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky states in a letter (excerpt): Indeed, our model failed. In short: we became a destination people loved to bookmark more than they loved to actively visit. The limiting reagent in the startup equation is not ideas, but amazing founding teams. A key assumption for us, which proved out NOT true: given a great idea with great community support and great market test data, we would be able to find (crowdsource) a team willing to execute it OR we could execute it ourselves. We needed amazing founding teams for each of the ideas this is where our model fell short. What we learned: it would have been better to back great teams with horrible ideas because most of the heavy lifting kept falling back on us, or a few select community members. A vicious cycle was created leading all of us to get more and more diffuse. Hence: the wisdom of crowds worked well in the model, but it was our participation of crowds aspect which broke down. Trying to find people willing or capable to take on the offspring (our outputs) of the Cambrian House model was hard and/or incredibly time consuming. (Michael Sikorsky, 2008) The lesson from Cambrian House is that the crowd only is not enough as it needs to be managed and needs an inspiring leader to guide it. 6. How can Crowdsourcing be an Effective E-Commerce Strategy? After looking at the definition and cases of crowdsourcing, it is understood that crowdsourcing has the potential to help e-commerce businesses gain competitive advantage, but like all business strategies, it is does not guarantee success. Nevertheless, crowdsourcing can be effective as an e-commerce strategy by helping companies in 5 ways. Crowdsourcing, firstly, can help companies to do market prediction by using the crowd to understand market desires. Companies can use the crowd to test the appeal of any new business ideas. Besides that, companies can derive from the crowd, emerging market desires and trends. Secondly, in addition to the knowledge of market desire, companies can draw information from crowdsourcing for product and business innovation. Based on information drawn from the crowd, companies can prioritize new business ideas, conduct product tests, rank next best enhancements with existing products and uncover methods to reduce costs and improve service. Thirdly, as mentioned, the knowledge of the crowd is very powerful. As such, crowdsourcing is a good option to solve problems that are difficult to solve internally with the companies current resources, by inviting answers or solutions from the crowd. Companies can also collaborate with the crowd to find new scientific discovery. Fourthly, besides solving internal problems, crowdsourcing can also help to tackle external issues, such as marketing. Companies can invite crowd to help in the creation of campaigns. Lastly, crowdsourcing is relatively much cheaper than hiring workforce for doing similar jobs. As companies only need to reward those who had contributed in the crowd, and it is usually not of huge amount, crowdsourcing is able to help companies to cut cost. With the above it mind, crowdsourcing effectiveness depends on how and under what environment it is used. Based on all the information gathered, the paper has come up with a few key points to effective crowdsourcing. Firstly, the crowd that crowdsourcing wants to tap into must be of substantial size. For example, if Threadless has only a member base of 100, and maintains its process of choosing ten winning designs every week, it will come a time whereby members might lose interest or doubt the integrity of these winning designs. Moreover, one of the characteristic of crowdsourcing is that the crowd is to represent the market, as such, the larger the community or crowd, the better the representation it will be. Secondly, companies must understand the crowd. When companies use crowdsourcing, they are usually targeting a specific community, which is formed by a common interest. Therefore, if companies want to crowdsource, they will need to know the community strengths and weaknesses. For example, if Threadless decides to request its community to submit computer programming works, it might not get anything or the works might be of inferior qualities. Thirdly, companies need to know what they want and need from the crowd. This is one important factor that determines the effectiveness of crowdsourcing. For example, in Amazon Mechanic Turk, if requesters post HITs with ambiguous requirements, the workers might have difficulty understanding what is needed of them and provide works that are irrelevant or not to the intended requirements. This will cause many rejected tasks, which is a waste of time of the companies and crowd, thus causing inefficiency. Next, companies need to recognize the contributions of crowd. Monetary reward is a way to acknowledge the crowds contribution, but usually crowd works mainly not for monetary reason. Participants of crowdsourcing are often leisure users, whose main motivation to participate is to be recognized and feel they are part of the community. The more affiliated they feel towards the community, the more willing they will be in providing help in tasks presented. Lastly, companies need to have adequate resources to manage the crowd and support the output from the crowd. This is one mistake that many companies make when they do crowdsourcing, as they thought the crowd will be able to contribute in every part of their business plan. This is generally not the case, as experienced by Cambrian House. As mentioned in the previous point, the crowd is usually made up of leisure participants, as such, they will be more willing to engage in task that requires less effort like providing ideas and suggestions, as compared to more tedious task like building the actual product which will be avoided. 7. Conclusion The above discussion has shown that crowdsourcing, when used correctly can be highly effective as an ecommerce strategy. It is able to tap into the power of the crowd for knowledge which is virtually unlimited at very low cost. Just like Threadless, by keeping the crowd motivated, business will grow as knowledge from crowd grows. However, it is important to note that there are situations where crowdsourcing is not possible or impractical. First of all, jobs that are confidential in nature, such as lawyers and accountants, and high level jobs, like business process planning, are not possible to be crowdsourced. As shown by Cambrian House, the crowd needs to be monitored by the company and provide resources when needed for successful manifestation of ideas. As such, it is not possible to fully crowsource a business process to the crowd. Internal workforce is still needed as the crowd might not fully understand the companies business models and goals and these internal employees are able to monitor and ensure the crowds contributions are within the companies guidelines and process. Moreover, too much reliance on the crowd could be construed as unethical and open the company up to criticism about the true nature of its social mission. By using Amazon Mechanical Turk, many companies have been seen as operating virtual sweat shops. As such, physical workforce is needed to balance the image of the company.

Peace of Westphalia :: Ancient Rome Roman History

Peace of Westphalia The two treaties of Mà ¼nster and Osnabrà ¼ck, commonly known as the Peace of Westphalia, was the culminating element for the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years' War. It established a final religious settlement and provided for new political boundaries for the German states of central Europe. The impact of the Peace of Westphalia was broad and long-standing, as it dictated the future of Germany and ex-territories of the Holy Roman Empire for some time to come. The Peace of Westphalia put down the Counter Reformation in Germany and instituted the final religious arrangement the German states had been crying for. It renewed the terms of the Peace of Augsburg, namely that each state of the Empire received the liberty to be either Lutheran or Catholic as it chose; no individual freedom of religion was permitted. If a ruler or a free city decided for Lutheranism, then all persons had to be Lutheran. Similarly in Catholic states all had to be Catholic. In addition to re-instituting the Peace of Augsburg in its traditional form, the Peace of Westphalia included Calvinism to Lutheranism and Catholicism as an acceptable faith. On the controversial issue of church territories secularized after 1552 the Protestants won a complete victory. With the advent of the Peace of Westphalia, the squabbling between Protestants and Catholics was finally put an end to. The Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved with the Peace of Westphalia. This had been advanced with the drawing of internal religious frontiers in the days of Luther, although now it was confirmed. Borderlands of the Empire fell away. The Dutch and Swiss established themselves as independent, as did the United Provinces. The western frontier of the Empire was carved up among France, Sweden and the Dutch. France took control over three Lorraine bishoprics which they had occupied for a century. The Swedes received the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden and the western half of Pomerania, including the city of Stettin. Sweden enlarged its trans-Baltic possessions, and in addition claimed the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers in Germany. The Dutch obtained only the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. On the interior front of the Empire, both Brandenburg and Bavaria increased their statures. Brandenburg lay claim to eastern Pomerania, the large archbishopric of Magdeburg, and t wo smaller bishoprics. Bavaria received control of the Palatinate and a seat in the electoral college, increasing the Empire's electors to eight.

Tradition and Customs in So Long A Letter by Mariama Ba Essay -- Paper

Tradition and Customs in So Long A Letter by Mariama Ba Tradition and customs very often hold an important position in ones life and culture. The novel So Long A Letter, by Mariama Ba, is based on the Senegalese culture and shows how important tradition is in Africa. The novel is a series of letters written by a recently widowed woman, Ramatoulaye, to her best friend Aissatou. The transition through the many grieving stages and traditional mourning events are explained, as well as a woman?s place in a Senegalese society and family. According to Muslim tradition, which was the dominant tradition in Senegal, when Ramatoulaye?s husband, Modou, passed away, she had to mourn over her loss for three months. During this time, friends and family members gathered in her house to accompany her. One of the traditions, which she wasn?t too fond of, was having to give up her possessions and belongings as gifts to her in-laws, as well as her deceased husband?s personal secrets. This whole process was a way of giving up herself as a person. ?Beyond her possessions she gives up her ...

Managerial Account

Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which of the following statements is true? A. The word â€Å"cost† has the same meaning in all situations in which it is used. B. Cost data, once classified and recorded for a specific application, are appropriate for use in any application. C. Different cost concepts and classifications are used for different purposes. D. All organizations incur the same types of costs. E. Costs incurred in one year are always meaningful in the following year. 2. Which of the following is a product cost? A. Glass in an automobile. B. Advertising. C. The salary of the vice president-finance. D. Rent on a factory. E.Both â€Å"A† and â€Å"D. † 3. The accounting records of Georgia Company revealed the following costs: direct materials used, $250,000; direct labor, $425,000; manufacturing overhead, $375,000; and selling and administrative expenses, $220,000. Georgia's product costs total: A. $1,050,000. B. $830,000. C. $895,000. D. $1,270,000. E. some o ther amount. 4. Costs that are expensed when incurred are called: A. product costs. B. direct costs. C. inventoriable costs. D. period costs. E. indirect costs. 5. Which of the following is not a period cost? A. Legal costs. B. Public relations costs. C. Sales commissions. D. Wages of assembly-line workers. E.The salary of a company's chief financial officer (CFO). 6. The accounting records of Reynolds Corporation revealed the following selected costs: Sales commissions, $65,000; plant supervision, $190,000; and administrative expenses, $185,000. Reynolds's period costs total: A. $250,000. B. $440,000. C. $375,000. D. $255,000. E. $185,000. 7. Yang Corporation recently computed total product costs of $567,000 and total period costs of $420,000, excluding $35,000 of sales commissions that were overlooked by the company's administrative assistant. On the basis of this information, Yang's income statement should reveal operating expenses of: A. 35,000. B. $420,000. C. $455,000. D. $567 ,000. E. $602,000. 8. Which of the following entities would most likely have raw materials, work in process, and finished goods? A. Exxon Corporation. B. Macy's Department Store. C. Wendy's. D. Southwest Airlines. E. Columbia University. 9. Selling and administrative expenses would likely appear on the balance sheet of: A. The Gap. B. Texas Instruments. C. Turner Broadcasting System. D. All of these firms. E. None of these firms. 10. Mideast Motors manufactures automobiles. Which of the following would not be classified as direct materials by the company?A. Wheel lubricant. B. Tires. C. Interior leather. D. CD player. E. Sheet metal used in the automobile's body. 11. Which of the following employees of a commercial printer/publisher would be classified as direct labor? A. Book binder. B. Plant security guard. C. Sales representative. D. Plant supervisor. E. Payroll supervisor. 12. Lake Appliance produces washers and dryers in an assembly-line process. Labor costs incurred during a r ecent period were: corporate executives, $500,000; assembly-line workers, $180,000; security guards, $45,000; and plant supervisor, $110,000.The total of Lake's direct labor cost was: A. $110,000. B. $180,000. C. $155,000. D. $235,000. E. $735,000. 13. Depreciation of factory equipment would be classified as: A. operating cost. B. â€Å"other† cost. C. manufacturing overhead. D. period cost. E. administrative cost. 14. Which of the following costs is not a component of manufacturing overhead? A. Indirect materials. B. Factory utilities. C. Factory equipment. D. Indirect labor. E. Property taxes on the manufacturing plant. 15. The accounting records of Diego Company revealed the following costs, among others:Costs that would be considered in the calculation of manufacturing overhead total: A. $149,000. B. $171,000. C. $186,000. D. $442,000. E. some other amount. 16. Which of the following statements is true? A. Product costs affect only the balance sheet. B. Product costs affe ct only the income statement. C. Period costs affect only the balance sheet. D. Neither product costs nor period costs affect the Statement of Retained Earnings. This can also be a true statement if the period costs were prepaid (i. e. , prepaid advertising, depreciation). E. Product costs eventually affect both the balance sheet and the income statement. 17.In a manufacturing company, the cost of goods completed during the period would include which of the following elements? A. Raw materials used. B. Beginning finished goods inventory. C. Marketing costs. D. Depreciation of delivery trucks. E. All of the above. 18. Which of the following equations is used to calculate cost of goods sold during the period? A. Beginning finished goods + cost of goods manufactured + ending finished goods. B. Beginning finished goods – ending finished goods. C. Beginning finished goods + cost of goods manufactured. D. Beginning finished goods + cost of goods manufactured – ending finishe d goods.E. Beginning finished goods + ending finished goods – cost of goods manufactured. 19. Holden Industries began July with a finished-goods inventory of $48,000. The finished-goods inventory at the end of July was $56,000 and the cost of goods sold during the month was $125,000. The cost of goods manufactured during July was: A. $104,000. B. $125,000. C. $117,000. D. $133,000. E. some other amount. 20. Carolina Plating Company reported a cost of goods manufactured of $520,000, with the firm's year-end balance sheet revealing work in process and finished goods of $70,000 and $134,000, respectively.If supplemental information disclosed raw materials used in production of $80,000, direct labor of $140,000, and manufacturing overhead of $240,000, the company's beginning work in process must have been: A. $130,000. B. $10,000. C. $66,000. D. $390,000. E. some other amount. 21. The accounting records of Bronco Company revealed the following information: Bronco's cost of goods manufactured is: A. $519,000. B. $522,000. C. $568,000. D. $571,000. E. some other amount. 22. The accounting records of Brownwood Company revealed the following information: Brownwood's cost of goods sold is: A. $721,000. B. $730,000.C. $778,000. D. $787,000. E. some other amount. 23. For the year just ended, Cole Corporation's manufacturing costs (raw materials used, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead) totaled $1,500,000. Beginning and ending work-in-process inventories were $60,000 and $90,000, respectively. Cole's balance sheet also revealed respective beginning and ending finished-goods inventories of $250,000 and $180,000. On the basis of this information, how much would the company report as cost of goods manufactured (CGM) and cost of goods sold (CGS)? A. CGM, $1,430,000; CGS, $1,460,000. B. CGM, $1,470,000; CGS, $1,540,000. C.CGM, $1,530,000; CGS, $1,460,000. D. CGM, $1,570,000; CGS, $1,540,000. E. Some other amounts. 24. Glass Industries reported the following data f or the year just ended: sales revenue, $1,750,000; cost of goods sold, $980,000; cost of goods manufactured, $560,000; and selling and administrative expenses, $170,000. Glass' gross margin would be: A. $940,000. B. $1,190,000. C. $1,020,000. D. $380,000. E. $770,000. 25. Variable costs are costs that: A. vary inversely with changes in activity. B. vary directly with changes in activity. C. remain constant as activity changes. D. decrease on a per-unit basis as activity increases.E. increase on a per-unit basis as activity increases. 26. Which of the following is not an example of a variable cost? A. Straight-line depreciation on a machine that has a five-year service life. B. Wages of manufacturing workers whose pay is based on hours worked. C. Tires used in the production of tractors. D. Aluminum used to make patio furniture. E. Commissions paid to sales personnel. 27. The fixed costs per unit are $10 when a company produces 10,000 units of product. What are the fixed costs per un it when 8,000 units are produced? A. $12. 50. B. $10. 00. C. $8. 00. D. $6. 50. E. $5. 50. 28.Total costs are $180,000 when 10,000 units are produced; of this amount, variable costs are $64,000. What are the total costs when 13,000 units are produced? A. $199,200. B. $214,800. C. $234,000. D. Some other amount. E. Total costs cannot be calculated based on the information presented. 29. Baxter Company, which pays a 10% commission to its salespeople, reported sales revenues of $210,000 for the period just ended. If fixed and variable sales expenses totaled $56,000, what would these expenses total at sales of $168,000? A. $16,800. B. $35,000. C. $44,800. D. $51,800. E. Some other amount. 30.The salary that is sacrificed by a college student who pursues a degree full time is a(n): A. sunk cost. B. out-of-pocket cost. C. opportunity cost. D. differential cost. E. marginal cost. Essay Questions 1. Consider the three firms that follow: (1) Southwest Airlines, (2) BMW, and (3) Target. These firms, examples of service providers, manufacturers, and merchandisers, tend to have different characteristics with respect to costs and financial-statement disclosures. Required: Determine which of the preceding firms (1, 2, and/or 3) would likely: A. Disclose operating expenses on the income statement.B. Have product costs. C. Have period costs. D. Disclose cost of cost good sold on the income statement. E. Have no meaningful investment in inventory. F. Maintain raw-material, work-in-process, and finished-goods inventories. G. Have variable and fixed costs. 2. Consider the following cost items: 1. Sales commissions earned by a company's sales force. 2. Raw materials purchased during the period. 3. Current year's depreciation on a firm's manufacturing facilities. 4. Year-end completed production of a carpet manufacturer. 5. The cost of products sold to customers of an apparel store. . Wages earned by machine operators in a manufacturing plant. 7. Income taxes incurred by an airlin e. 8. Marketing costs of an electronics manufacturer. 9. Indirect labor costs incurred by a manufacturer of office equipment. Required: A. Evaluate the costs just cited and determine whether the associated dollar amounts would appear on the firm's balance sheet, income statement, or schedule of cost of goods manufactured. B. What major asset will normally be insignificant for service enterprises and relatively substantial for retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers? Briefly discuss. C.Briefly explain the similarity and difference between the merchandise inventory of a retailer and the finished-goods inventory of a manufacturer. 3. Consider the following items: A. Tomatoes used in the manufacture of Hunts ketchup B. Administrative salaries of executives employed by Jet Blue Airlines C. Wages of assembly-line workers at a Ford plant D. Marketing expenditures of the Atlanta Braves baseball club E. Commissions paid to Coca-Cola's salespeople F. Straight-line depreciation on manufactur ing equipment owned by Dell Computer G. Shipping charges incurred by Office Depot on out-going orders H.Speakers used in Sony home-theater systems I. Insurance costs related to a Mary Kay Cosmetics' manufacturing plant Required: Complete the table that follows and classify each of the costs listed as (1) a product or period cost and (2) a variable or fixed cost by placing an â€Å"X† in the appropriate column. 4. In discussing the operation of her automobile, a doctor once observed that gasoline is a fixed cost because the cost per gallon is relatively stable. Insurance, on the other hand, is a variable cost because the cost per mile varies inversely with the number of miles driven. Comment on the doctor's observation.