Training and development is said to be beneficial for both firms and Research Paper

Training and development is said to be beneficial for both firms and employees. Why then are some organisations and individuals reluctant to invest in training - Research Paper Example he essay will develop into an analysis of various factors that characterise training and development such as human resources development as well as mentoring and coaching. This section will also attempt to investigate why other organisations and individuals are reluctant to invest in this noble initiative that is beneficial to both parties involved. A conclusion will be drawn at the end on the basis of the main ideas that are going to be raised in the main part of the discussion which is centred on training and development. During the contemporary period, it can be noted that organisations operate in a dynamic environment which is characterised by different changes. In most cases, these changes are necessitated by various factors which include the following: economic, political, social as well as cultural and demographic among others (Schultz et al 2003). In order for the organisation to remain viable as well keep pace with the changes taking place in the environment, it is imperative for them to put measures that the employees are developed and trained to know the changes that may take place in their operations so as to be prepared to face the consequences that may affect their day to day dispensation of duties. Workers’ skills ought to be upgraded to meet the dictates of the constantly changing environment in which they will be operating. It is imperative to provide basic training to the employees so that they are equipped with the required knowledge to undertake the challenging tasks that can arise as a result of change in the operations of the organisation that can be encountered. Basically, employee training is job related learning that is provided by the employers for their employers and the aim is improvement of the employees’ skills, knowledge and attitude so that they can perform their duties according to the set standards (Swanepoel et al 1998). More often than not, successful training begins with the needs assessment to determine which employees

Fast Food Nation Essay Example for Free

Fast Food Nation Essay In this nation, fast food is filling up every ounce of our daily lives. An industry that started with a small innocent number of hamburger and hot dog stands has spread to every corner of the nation and the world. When we are to tired or have no time to make dinner after a long and extremely busy day, fast food restaurants is where we go to get our meals. Not only that, but fast food is now sold at airports, cruise ships, universities, high schools, elementary schools, and even hospitals. With the amount of money spend on fast food increasing every year, many Americans still are not aware or simply just do not care how our beloved fast food is prepared and how it is bad it is for our health. However, after reading the novel, â€Å"Fast Food Nation,† by Eric Schlosser, there is definitely one less American buying fast food for a long while. This book has made me disgusted with not only the food but how Americans could eat fast food with the way it is prepared. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music combined. Schlosser describes the growth of the fast food industry as being driven by fundamental changes in American society. From the 1970s onwards, with a steady decline in the hourly wage (adjusted for inflation) of the average US worker, more and more American mothers were working outside the home. In 1975, about 1/3 of US mothers with young children did this. Today, almost 2/3 of such mothers are employed. A generation ago, three-quarters of the money used to buy food in the US was spent to prepare meals at home. Today, about half of that money used to buy food is spent in restaurants mainly fast food restaurants (in 1968, McDonalds had 1,000 restaurants; today it has about 30,000, and 2,000 new ones each year). http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schlosser-fast.html.

Edward Jenner :: essays research papers

Edward Jenner â€Å"Now James, I need you to try to stay completely still. It may hurt your arm a bit when I make the cuts. It won’t take too terribly long, and if you pay close attention it will be done before you know it. Nurse, please hold his arm out towards me. Please be sure that he doesn’t move his arm, I don’t want there to be any accidents.† â€Å"Those were the last words I heard until the first tests were over. I was in the office of one of the most amazing men I have ever known. His name is Edward Jenner; and I was one of his test subjects in finding a cure for smallpox. Smallpox is a disease that most people who contract it call one of the most painful and frightening experiences of their lives.† â€Å"My name is James Philliphs, the first person given the smallpox vaccine; and the one who helped Edward Jenner prove that it actually works. At the first appointment I stepped into Jenner’s office, he told me about the test procedure, and the called for an assistant to help him run the test. He then asked me to sit down a chair and relax, then asked me to stay patient and stay still as he made two small cuts in my arm. Well, he made the cuts; and they didn’t hurt at all. Now Jenner told me he would be introducing a lesser-known disease called â€Å"cowpox† to the cuts. Cowpox was believed by some to be the only safe way to effectively develop immunities to smallpox. Jenner himself said that when someone had overcome cowpox; they had also become immune to smallpox.† â€Å"A little less than fifty or so days after the first day of testing, was called back to Edward Jenner’s office for my second appointment. We followed basically the same procedure as the first time. Although this time he introduced the cuts to smallpox. The strangest thing happened, we waited and waited. But like Jenner predicted, it had no effect on me at all.† Everyone who heard the news of Jenner’s discovery was amazed. He had successfully come up with the first safe cure for naturally occurring smallpox. Before Jenner’s acclaimed â€Å"Vaccination†, the only way to become immune to smallpox was to get infected by it, and then hopefully survive it. A woman named Mary Wortley introduced this method in 1718, 78 years before Jenner’s solution.

Coach Inc Case Preparation Essay

Coach Inc. Case Preparation: Key Facts: Low cost provider strategy Focused on matching key luxury rivals in quality and styling while beating them on price by 50 percent or more; competitive advantage Multichannel distribution model (indirect wholesales to third-party retailors vs. direct-to-consumer sales. Priorities increase global distribution and improve same-store sales productivity Build market share in NA, Japan Raise brand awareness and build share in underpenetrated markets Increase sales of products targeted towards men Create an online marketing presence using coach.com, etc 4.2 billion in sales in 2011 (20 percent annual increase) 63 percent were handbags, 27 percent accessories, 10 percent other products 16.7 million to 880 million in net income  2012 direct-to-consumer accounted for 87% of 2011’s net sales, indirect wholesaler had net sales of 540 million Coach, Inc. in 2012: Its strategy in the ‘accessible’ luxury goods market 1. Describe the macro environment of the luxury goods industry. Political Factors: The market in China was restricted for some time by the Chinese government Economic Conditions: the economic downturn in 2007-2009 hurt the luxury goods industry Sociocultural Forces: healthy/green movement, more conservative with money after the downturn etc Technological Factors: more ways to talk to consumers, provide brand awareness, and allow consumers to buy (websites, mobile apps, etc.) Environmental Factors: weather not really a concern in the luxury goods industry Legal/Regulatory Conditions: none mentioned in the case really, other than the counterfeit laws which are in place to help the luxury goods industry 2. What are the defining characteristics of the industry? What is the industry like? Defining characteristics of the industry/what is the industry like includes many competitors, growing demand as middle class and upper class expand, diversity in luxury products (using your brand name and  attaching it to other products/lines i.e., men’s products for coach). 3. How is the market for luxury handbags and leather accessories changing? What are the underlying drivers of change, and how can these forces change the industry? The market doesn’t seem to be changing very much, maybe expanding as more money and other countries are becoming wealthier (India). Drivers of change are new internet capabilities and applications, product and marketing innovation, changing societal concerns, attitudes, and lifestyles Different wants handbags for the more on the go lifestyle, environmentally friendly bags/processes. 4. What key factors determine the success of makers of fine handbags and leather accessories? KFSs are: diverse products, ahead of trends (fashion), marketing research, lower price point than competition, brand loyalty/recognition/awareness 5. What is competition like in the industry? Which of the five competitive forces is the strongest? Which is the weakest? What is the industry’s potential for profitability? Many competitors in the luxury goods industry. Strongest of the five forces I believe is rivalry, competitive pressures come from other firms in the industry, competitors numerous equal size and competitive strength, face high exit barriers, diverse countries of origin Weakest of the five forces I believe is potential new entrants, because brand recognition is so important in the industry Industry’s potential for profitability is high, markets are large and expanding, their sales are already high etc. 6. What does your strategic group map of the industry look like? The three main categories: haute-couture, traditional luxury and accessible luxury The first two are not where Coach competes but where some of its competitors are, where they have created other product lines that compete in the accessible luxury category. DKYNY, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton, (last two created diffusion lines) are competition in the accessible luxury category 7. What recommendations would you make to Lew Frankfort to improve the company’s competitive position in the industry and its market performance? Follow their current plans and strategies to open up and pursue growing markets to improve market performance, and increased market share will help their competitive position.

Johnson Johnson Case

The corporate strategy that Johnson& Johnson pursue is to encourage autonomy in each division and cultivate entrepreneurial culture throughout the organization. It has heavily relied on acquisitions to grow over the years to expand the company into a board range of businesses in the healthcare industry. As Johnson& Johnson has grew into a complex enterprise, granted near-total autonomy has fostered each division to develop and expand its best-seller products and to be responsible for their promised achievement. This independence attributes most to the company’s success.It also provides the firm with the ability to respond quickly to emerging opportunities. Each division has the freedom to develop its own strategy, and to work with its own resources. However, this decentralization brings up the company’s overhead costs. Merger and acquisition has also brought up quality control problems that some of its products have been recalled. Johnson &Johnson has evolved to have to p-notch products and strong skills in all three basic divisions: drugs, devices, and diagnostics, that few companies can compete for.To increase collaboration between these divisions will attract new business opportunities, and the firm will benefit from his convergence by allowing different units work together. Weldon has pushed all of its units to work together to deal with different health problems and to work on new opportunities. As a leader, Weldon understands the importance of entrepreneurial spirit in the company. So he takes steps and cautions to foster collaboration among disparate operations.He set up groups that draw people from different division to work together on specific health problems, and each of the groups will be reported every six months on potential strategies and projects. He is also pushing for more internal growth that to accelerate top-and bottom-line growth. Weldon encourage employees to share database across the various business units to further improve innovation. To create a sustainable competitive advantage, Johnson &Johnson has to have valuable resources.By acquiring different segment of healthcare industry, they have the ability to develop new products that requires different segments of healthcare industry. Encouraging synergy will improve its efficiency and effectiveness in solving difficult health problem and neutralize threats, because few companies have such large resources as Johnson& Johnson does. Since few firms could actually be able to attain the idea of synergy, the resource that Johnson &Johnson has is rare. Besides that, Johnson & Johnson has to make sure their resource is difficult to imitate and difficult to substitute.Apparently, for competitors who own as large resources as Johnson& Johnson does will be able to perform same synergy; however, if Johnson& Johnson come up with some unique idea and products on curing one of the difficult health problems and get patent on it, it will be then difficult for competit ors to imitate. In order to be hard to substitute, Johnson &Johnson has to make sure their products have distinctive effectiveness that it would be hard to achieve without their products.From balance sheet, Johnson& Johnson’s liquidity, as measured by current assets compared to current liabilities, increased over the year. We might be tempted to conclude that its balance sheet has grown â€Å"stronger† currently. But its net income per sale has dropped dramatically. This might be caused by a string of product recalls and consumers are lost confidence in their products after recalls. Quality issues have risen since converging of two divisions, which directly affect Johnson& Johnson’s reputation. Investors are starting to question Johnson &Johnson’s management.Its financial picture looks even worsen now. Synergy to fix the manufacturing problems that had caused the recalls are taking longer than expected, and some brands might not return to shelves until 20 13. Current situation that Johnson& Johnson though may not put the company in a struggle condition, Consumers are losing faith in its products. Also, recent legal losses for Johnson &Johnson related to its antipsychotic drugs and the announcement to remove out some ingredients that have been proved harmful to personal health have made its overall picture worsen.From its 2nd quarter 2012 conference calls, they mentioned that their current main goal is to restore reliable supply and to regain trust from consumers. Consumers have lost some degree of confidence in Johnson& Johnson because of the recalls. But they have also mentioned in the conference calls that its pharmaceutical team achieved success in new products launching and their Synthes acquisition successfully closed in the 2nd quarter. Although they are still dealing with the negative impact of the

5 Exercises to Sneak in at Work!

5 Exercises to Sneak in at Work! You’re triple-booked with meetings, eating at your desk- with no time for a social life let alone a lunch hour! And it’s the holiday season, when all our best habits are dissolving into sugar cookies and sparkling cocktails and cheese trays. No time to hit the gym? If you can carve out just 15 minutes from your workday, you can keep up your fitness without having to drop any of your spinning plates. Try this simple routine a few days a week. All you need is you, your cubicle, and a little willpower!RELATED:Â  Top 9 Stress Relieving Activities at Work That’ll Keep You Happy1. SquatsTarget area: thighs and butt. How to do it: stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Focus your body weight in your heels as you push your hips down to knee level and lean forward at a 45 degree angle. Make sure to keep your knees above your ankles and your core strong. Do this 12-25 times. Extra credit: hold a book above your head to step up the intensity.2. PlankTarget area: core, arms, everything. Combat the negative effects of slumping at your desk and help your posture and alignment at the same time. How to do it: lower your forearms to the ground, fits and elbows flat, your palms directly below your shoulders. Keep your neck and spine neutral, keep your shoulders down and back, and stay as straight and firm as possible for 15 seconds. Repeat 4 times.3. LungesTarget area: legs, lower body. Stand with your feet together and your hands on your hips. Take a large step forward so your front and back leg are at a 90 degree angle. Return to the feet together position and repeat with the other leg. Get all the way down your office hallway. Extra credit: hold the book over your head doing this one too.4. Push-ups and Chair DipsTarget area: arms, arms, arms. Start with doing push-ups (you can use a desk to build up to the real thing), bending at the elbow and lowering your body until you arms are at a 90 degree angle. Repeat 10 times. Then, immediately, go to the c hair. With your back to it, use your arms to lower yourself until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Straighten your arms to raise yourself back up Repeat 10 times. Do this duo 3 times in succession.5. Power VsTarget areas: abs, quads, hip flexors. How to do it: sit at the edge of your chair and lean your torso back. Tuck your pelvis, hold the base of the seat for support, and then raise your knees and extend your legs into a ‘V’ position. Hold for 5 seconds. Lower and raise up again. Repeat 10 times.Do this series of easy heart-pumping, ab-tightening, body-toning exercises twice through a few times a week and you’ll start to see results without letting your job suffer. No gym membership required!

History Behind The Atom Essays - Atomic Physics, Nuclear Physics

History Behind The Atom Essays - Atomic Physics, Nuclear Physics History Behind The Atom The History Behind The Atom Throughout the discovery of the atom, many scientists worked to formulate how the atom works. Which began in the early 1800s with John Dalton, to our current model of the electron cloud developed by Schrodinger. During this long process of the discovery the atom, took many models and scientists. The entire group of scientists who assisted in the discovery of the atom used each others model to improve each others theories. Firstly, John Dalton showed that, collectively, the three laws, the law of definite proportion, the law of conversation of masses, and the law of multiple proportion. These three laws demonstrate the existence of the atom. Also, Using these three laws he developed a theory called, Daltons Atomic Theory. This includes five basic principles; 1) all matter is made of indivisible and indestructible atoms, 2) atoms of a given element are identical in their physical and chemical properties, 3) atoms of different elements have different physical and chemical properties, 4) atoms of different elements combine in simple whole-number ratios to form chemical compounds, 5) atoms cannot be subdivided, created or destroyed when they are combined, separated, or rearranged in chemical reactions. However, after scientists look more carefully at his points they found some weaknesses. One weakness was that the atom was found to be indivisible, and they had smaller particles. After Dalton came up with the five points, J.J. Thompson came along. He discovered that charged and magnets deflected the straight paths of cathode rays. In addition, he discovered negative and positive charged particles. He stated that the atom was made of smaller particles called, electrons and protons. In the discovery of the electron he used the Cathode-ray tube. As he researched he came up with a model of the atom, he stated that the atom was a plum pudding model. This model featured negatively charged electrons embedded in a ball of positive charge. After, J.J. Thompson came Ernst Rutherford, who was a student of Mr. Thompson. He created gold-foil experiment which untimely-disproved J.J. Thompsons theory. In this experiment he directed a beam of alpha particles at a very thin gold foil sheet. This was so the Rutherford could measure the angles of the particles coming off the gold foil. Sheet. Most of the alpha particles went through the sheet, however some of the particles hit the foil and bounced back. The reason of this was that the particles that bounced off the nucleus and the particles that went straight through traveled in the empty space. The major was that his experiment was that the atom would eventually lose its energy and collapse in the nucleus. Around 1913, a Danish physicist named Niels Bohr came up with a new model to further our knowledge of the atom. In his model, he purposes that the electrons in the atom can reside only to certain energy levels. He related his model to a ladder, a person can stand on the rungs of the ladder, and however it is impossible for a person to stand between the rungs. The only way for the electron to jump to the next level is for it to have a Quantum leap. Which is the leap from one energy level to another, and the lowest energy level is called the ground state. Thus, comes to the conclusion that electrons are quantized. Helping Bohrs model become superior, Plank declared that energy comes in packets or bundles of energy that is discontinued. This went all against classical science and he was not favored with the other scientist. Helping prove Bohrs model he used the bright-line spectrum, which helped him prove his model. There was one flaw in his model, which was that it did not work with mu ltiple elements. After Bohr and Plank, another educated scientist came along who was DeBroglie, he purposed the Wave Particle Duality Theory. This theory stated that matter can act like waves, and waves can act like particles. To prove his theory he used the mathematical expression of mc=hc. Which meant that the m stood for the mass particles and the stood for the wavelength. Taking DeBroglies model to a further extent was Heisanburg; he treated electrons as particles. He