Successful Development Of Technology At Microsoft

The success of Microsoft can be viewed from a number of perspectives. This ranges from its managerial and organizational position to the development and processing of its products and services for its customers. This implies looking at how Microsoft invents new products with substantial utility to the customers, strategies implemented by the company to make different groups and divisions to work together in harmony to achieve mega success.Having the best brains in the organization is not just enough to bring out the best software and the best products for the market. There must be effective managerial skills; these would harness the potentials the best brains in technology improvement, retain their autonomy just like any other highly qualified person would do, yet still work together to give the company the best. This paper evaluates the secrets of Microsoft’s success in developing superb technology and remaining on top of the market.Since it is very difficult to maintain the best brains within an organization without having them move out to practice their skills on the private basis, the paper tries to evaluate how the company maintains these best software developers and their work in harmony to bring out the best for the company. Microsoft currently is the world’s largest manufacturer of PC software, and having annual revenue of $8. 7 billion.It is probably the only PC Company that has handled more PC software projects than any other company in the world. This task is Herculean as there is a lot of complexity involved in the process, for example the development of Windows 95 that has more than 11 million lines of code and required an expansion team of more than 200 programmers as well as testers. This is one of the greatest challenge that most of the rivals to Microsoft are unable to do and thus the difficult in competing [Reimer, 2008]Their philosophy on product development and improvement for the last few years has been to develop its roots as a highly flexible, entrepreneurial company that does not to take up too many of the structured software-engineering practices that are commonly practiced and promoted by organizations such as the International Standards Organization and Software Engineering Institute. Microsoft strategy is developing a loosely structured small-team that some people might refer to as hacker style of product development.Their objective is to get many small as well as parallel teams that are composed of three to eight developers each, or individual programmers who eventually work together as one team in order to build large pile of products relatively fast while still allowing individual programmers and the team members their freedom to evolve their designs and even operate nearly autonomously [Hardmeier, 2008]. The small parallel teams develop features and whole products freely while at the same time frequently introducing new technologies concepts.However, since the developers are free to innovate w hile working with Microsoft, they are required to synchronize their changes frequently so that the product components work in harmony. In this regard, there are several lessons to be learned from how Microsoft develops its software products; some apply to other organizations, and some may not. Software developers as well as their managers from other organizations can discover useful ideas after careful consideration of such factors as their company’s goals, strategies, marketing resource constraints, and development culture and software reliability requirements [Reimer, 2008].They can also learn to frequently synchronize and carry out periodic stabilizations of their products. Without this approach implemented by Microsoft, it would probably never have been able to design, develop, and ship the products it offers now and is planning to offer in the future [Reimer, 2008]. Teams of programmers at Microsoft and testers usually synchronize and periodically stabilize the changes t hey make to their products in progress, thus yielding products such as Publisher, Excel, Office, Windows 95, Word, Works, and Windows NT etc.Since the mid-1980s, Microsoft as well as other PC software companies has recognized that they build software products in response to quality. Many of them have also found it important to have larger teams in order to come up with PC software products that consist of hundreds of thousands or even millions of lines of source code hence requiring hundreds of people to build and then test them over a certain period [Hardmeier, 2008]. The technology development approach must have a mechanism that allows developers to test their product with their customers and also refine their designs during the development process.In most industries, many of the companies are now using prototyping and multiple cycles of concurrent design, build, and testing activities aimed at controlling interactions and also make fundamental changes in their product development . In the software industry, researchers and their managers have talked about â€Å"interactive enhancement,† a â€Å"spiral model† for iteration in the phases of the project development, and the â€Å"concurrent development† of multiple phases and the activities for the past 20 years.Unfortunately most companies are reluctant to formally adopt these recommendations. Since users’ needs for most software are very difficult to understand and the changes in hardware and software technologies are very frequent, it is not wise to design a software system completely in advance [Lemo, 2008]. Microsoft teams start the process of product development at the point of creating a â€Å"vision statement†, and then define the goals for the new product and the user activities that need to be supported by the new product features.Then, the product managers or the marketing specialists take charge while the consulting program managers who specialize in writing functi onal specifications of the product are also incorporated. In consultation with developers, program managers, then write a functional specification that outlines the product features with organized schedules and the staffing allocations; the initial specification document rarely covers all the details of each feature. During product development, team members revise the features set and details, and learn about the new product.Experience at Microsoft has shown that the feature set in a specification document may sometime change by 30% or even more. Project managers are obliged to divide the product and the entire project into different parts; they also divide the project schedule into three or four milestone junctures called sequential sub projects meant to represent the completion points for major portions of the new product in each of the milestone subproject, all the feature teams are expected to go through a complete cycle of development, feature integration, testing, as well as f ixing problems.Throughout an entire project, they (feature teams) are required to synchronize their work in the process of building the product as well as finding and fixing errors on a daily, weekly basis. The program developer is expected to fix detectable errors at the end of a milestone subproject. These error correction is a way of stabilizing the product and thus enable the product developing team to have a clear understanding of the parts of the product that have been successfully completed. After this achievement, the development team usually proceeds to the next milestone, [Hardmeier, 2008].One of the most important things in high-tech companies is employing creative people, but directing their creativity is supreme. This is the task of the managers. Microsoft has a strategy for tackling this problem; it structures projects into subprojects that contain priority-ordered features; and the buffer time that is within each subproject gives the developers adequate time to respon d to the changes, unexpected delays and difficulties. Microsoft projects usually use the vision statements as well as outline specifications rather than a detailed design and the complete product specifications before coding.This is done because the teams have realized that they cannot determine, in advance, what the developers need to build a good product. This approach gives the developers and program managers enough room to adapt to change, the unforeseen competitive opportunities and even threats. This is particularly related to the applications products, since development teams try in many instances to devise features that copy directly to the activities that typical customers perform. Thus the teams need to have continual observation and testing with the users during development [Lemos, 2008].Most of the product designs have modular architectures that allow team members to add or combine features in a predictable straightforward manner. In addition, the presence of managers al lows team members to have their own schedules, but this is only after the developers have critically analyzed tasks in detail. Managers are then mandated to â€Å"fix† project resources by limiting the number of experts they allocate to each of the project; they also limit the time spent on projects, especially for the applications like Office and multimedia products, so that team members can delete features if they are far from reaching deadlines.But it should be noted that cutting features in order to save schedule, time has not always been possible with the operating systems projects. In these kinds of projects, reliability is of more importance than the features. Most of the features in the operating system are closely coupled and thus cannot be easily deleted individually. The daily building of processes at Microsoft has several steps. First, to develop a feature for a product, developers check out private copies of source code files which are located at a centralized ma ster version of the source code.They then implement their individual features by making necessary changes to their private copies of the source code files. The developers are then mandated to create a private build of the product that contains the new features and test it. Changes from the developers’ private copies are then checked from the source code files to the main master version of the source code. This check-in process has an automated regression test to ensure that changes to the source code files do not create errors in other parts of the product.This check-in by the developers back to the master copy is done at least twice a week but in some instances they may check it daily [Lemos, 2008]. Irrespective of the way the individual developers check in their changes to the main source code, a designated developer, often called the project build master, generates a complete build of the product on a daily basis by using the master version of the source code. Product team s at Microsoft also test features as they continuously build them from various perspectives. This may include bringing in customers from the street to try prototype in a Microsoft usability lab.Also most of the Microsoft teams work from a single physical site with common development languages (primarily C and C++), standardized common coding styles and development tools. This common language and common site and tools help team members, debate, communicate, resolve problems face to face and design ideas. A small set of quantitative metrics is used in the project teams to help guide decisions in order to complete a project and also when to ship a new or upgraded product to market [Lemos, 2008]. Conclusion There are important lessons to be learnt from Microsoft especially for organizations and managers in various industries.The synch-and-stabilize approach that is used at Microsoft is particularly suited to fast-evolving markets that have complex systems products, competition around fa st-evolving product features as well as defacto high technical standards and the short life cycles. Of particular interest and important lesson is how Microsoft coordinates the work of a large team of professionals thus successfully building many interdependent parts although continually changing and requiring a constant high level of communication, coordination is still maintained.Indeed, one should appreciate that it is difficult to ensure such communication and the effective coordination there, and at the same time still allow engineers, designers and marketing people enjoy the freedom to be creative. Achieving this sought of balance is inevitably the central dilemma that the managers of product development usually face—in PC software and in many other industries. REFERENCE: Jeremy Reimer. Microsoft set to launch new marketing campaign. Ars Technica. Retrieved on 28th March 2008. Sandi Hardmeier. Microsoft – The History of Internet Explorer. Microsoft. Retrieved on 28th March 2008 Robert Lemos. Trust or treachery? Security technologies could backfire against consumers. CNet news.com. Retrieved on 28th March 2008   

Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 35~36

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Yeah, but You Can't Dance to It The Colonel was standing in the middle of the mother-of-pearl amphitheater when the whaley boys led Nate in. â€Å"You two go on now,† the Colonel said to the whaley boys. â€Å"Nate can find his way back.† â€Å"You came out of your lair,† Nate said. The Colonel looked older, more drawn than when Nate had seen him before. â€Å"I don't want to be in contact with the Goo for what I'm going to tell you.† â€Å"I thought it didn't get information that way,† Nate said. The Colonel ignored him. â€Å"I was hoping you would have had a brainstorm to solve my problem, Nate, but you haven't, have you?† â€Å"I'm working on it. It's more complex –  » â€Å"You've been distracted. I'm disappointed, but I understand. She's a piece of work, isn't she? And I mean that in the best sense of the word. Never forget that I chose to send her to you.† Nate wondered how much the Colonel knew about them and how he knew it. Reports from the whaley boys? From the Goo itself, through osmosis or some extended nervous system? â€Å"Distraction has nothing to do with it. I've thought a lot about your problem, and I'm not sure I agree with you. What makes you think the Goo is going to destroy humanity?† â€Å"It's a matter of time. That's all. I need you to carry a message for me, Nate. You'll be responsible for saving the human race. That should go some measure toward consoling you.† â€Å"Colonel, is there any chance you can be more direct, less cryptic, and tell me for once what the hell you're talking about?† â€Å"I want you to go to the U.S. Navy. They need to know about the threat of the Goo. One well-placed nuclear torpedo should do it. It's deep enough that they shouldn't have any problem justifying it to other countries. There won't be any fallout. They're just going to need someone credible to convince them of the threat. You.† â€Å"What about the people down here? I thought you wanted to save them.† â€Å"I'm afraid they're going to be a necessary sacrifice, Nate. What are five thousand or so people, most of whom have lived longer than they would have on the surface, compared with the whole human race, six billion?† â€Å"You crazy bastard! I'm not going to try to convince the navy to nuke five thousand people and all the whaley boys as well. And you're more deluded than I thought if you think they'd do it on my word.† â€Å"Oh, I don't expect that. I expect they'll send down their own research team to confirm what you tell them, but when they get here, I'll see to it that they get the message that the Goo is a threat. In any case you'll survive.† â€Å"I think you're wrong about the Goo finding us dangerous. And even if you were right, what if it just decides to wait us out? On the Goo's time scale, it can just take a nap until we're extinct. I'm not doing it.† â€Å"I'm sorry you feel that way, Nate. I guess I'll have to find another way.† Nate suddenly realized that he'd blown it – his chance to escape. Once he was outside Gooville, there would have been nothing to force him to do what the Colonel wanted. Or maybe there would be. Right then he wanted very badly to see Amy. â€Å"Look, Colonel, maybe I can do something. Couldn't you just evacuate Gooville? Drop all the people on an island. Let the whaley boys find somewhere else to live. I mean, if I reveal the Goo to the world, it's all sort of going to be out of the bag anyway. I mean –  » â€Å"I'm sorry, Nate, I don't believe you. I'll take care of it. Evacuation wouldn't make any difference to the people here anyway. And the whaley boys shouldn't exist in the first place. They're an abomination.† â€Å"An abomination? That's not the scientist I knew talking.† â€Å"Oh, I admit that they are fabulous creatures, but they would have never evolved naturally. They are a product of this war, and their purpose has been served. As has mine, as has yours. I'm sorry we didn't see eye to eye on this. Go now.† Just like that, this crazy bastard was going to plan B, and Nate had no idea how to stop him. Maybe that was what he was really brought here for. Maybe the Colonel was like someone who makes a suicide attempt as a cry for help, rather than an earnest attempt to end his life. And Nate had missed it. He started to back away from the Colonel, desperately trying to think of something he could say to change the situation, but nothing was coming to him. When he reached the passageway, the Colonel called out to him from the steps by the giant iris. â€Å"Nate. I promised you, and you deserve to know.† Nate turned and came a few steps back into the room. The Colonel smiled, a sad smile, resolved. â€Å"It's a prayer, Nate. The humpback song is a prayer to the source, to their god. The song is in praise of and in thanks to the Goo.† Nate considered it. A life's work contemplating a question, and this was the answer? No way. â€Å"Why only male singers, then?† â€Å"Well, they're males. They're praying for sex, too, aren't they? The females choose the mates – they don't need to ask.† â€Å"There's no way to prove that,† Nate said. â€Å"And no one to prove it to, Nate, not down here, but it's the truth. Whale song was the first culture, the first art on this planet, and, like most of human art, it celebrates that which is greater than the artist. And the Goo likes it, Nate, it likes it.† â€Å"I don't believe it. There's no evolutionary pressure for it to be prayer.† â€Å"It's a meme, Nate, not a gene. The song is learned behavior, not passed by birth. It has its own agenda: to be replicated, imitated. And it was reinforced. Have you ever seen a starved humpback, Nate?† Nate thought about it. He'd seen sick animals, and injured animals, but he'd never seen a starved humpback. Nor had he ever heard of one. The Colonel must have seen something in Nate's reaction. â€Å"There's your reinforcement. The Goo looks after them, Nate. It likes the song. I wouldn't be surprised if all of whale evolution – size, for instance – was accelerated by the Goo. We should have never started killing them. We wouldn't be at this juncture if we hadn't killed them.† â€Å"But we've stopped,† was all that Nate could think to say. â€Å"Too late,† the Colonel said with a sigh. â€Å"Our mistake was getting the Goo's attention. Now it has to end. The gene has had its three and a half billion years as the driving force of life. I suppose now the meme will have its turn. You and I will never know. Good-bye, Nate.† The iris opened, and the Colonel walked into the Goo. Nate ran all the way home, not sure how he had navigated through the labyrinth of tunnels, but found his way without having to backtrack. Amy wasn't at his apartment. His pulse was throbbing in his temples as he approached the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing to try to call her, but he decided instead to go directly to her on foot. He checked at her place, and then at her mother's, then at every place they'd ever been together. Not only was Amy gone, but no one had seen her mother either. Nate slept fitfully, tortured by the notion of what the Colonel might have done to Amy because of his own stubbornness. In the morning he went searching for her again, asking everyone he encountered, including the whaley boys by the bakery, but no one had seen her. On the second day he went back through the corridors to the Colonel's mother-of-pearl amphitheater and pounded on the giant black iris until his fists were bruised. There was no response but a dull thud that echoed in the huge empty chamber. â€Å"I'll do what you want, Ryder!† Nate screamed. â€Å"Don't hurt her, you crazy fuck! I'll do what you want. I'll bring the navy down on this place and sterilize it, if that's what you want – just give her back.† When at last he gave up, he turned and slid down the iris facing the amphitheater. There were six killer-whale-colored whaley boys standing in the passageway opposite him, watching. They weren't grinning or snickering for once – just watching him. The largest of them, a female, let loose a quick whistle, and they crossed the amphitheater, walking in a crescent-shaped hunting formation toward him. Short of being a professional surfer or a bong test pilot for the Rastafarian air force, Kona thought he had found the perfect job. He sat in a comfortable chair watching sound spectrograms scroll across one computer monitor, while on another a program picked out the digital sequence in the subsonic signal and broke it into text. All Kona had to do was watch for something meaningful to come across the screen. Strange thing was, he really had started to learn about spectrographs and waveforms and all manner of whale behavior, and he was meeting the day feeling as if he was really doing something. He ran his hand over his scalp and shuddered as he read the nonsense text that was scrolling across the window. Auntie Clair had bought him four forties of Old English 800 malt liquor, then waited until he'd drunk them, before persuading him to let her cut his dreads down so they matched on both sides (because his true natural state should be one of balance, she said. She was tricky, Auntie Clair). The problem was, in jail his dreads had been almost completely torn off on one side, so by the time she finished evening things out, he was pretty much bald. Out of deference to his religious beliefs (to allow him a reservoir for his abundant strength in Jah, mon), Clair had left him a single dread anchored low on the back of his head, which made it look as if a fat worm was exiting his skull after a hearty meal of brain cells in ganja sauce. And speaking of the sacred herb, Kona was just on the verge of sparking up a bubbling smoky scuba snack of the dankest and skunkingish nugs when the text scrolling across the screen ceased being nonsense and started being important. He took a quick sip of bong water to steady his nerves, placed the sacred vessel on the floor at his feet, then hit the key that sent the streaming text to the printer. He stood and waited, bouncing on the balls of his feet for the printer to expectorate three sheets of text, then snatched the pages and dashed out the door to Clay's cabin. â€Å"I must be out of my mind,† Clay said. His suitcase was on the bed, and he was taking clothes out of the drawers and putting them into the case, while Clair was taking clothes out of the case, grouping them by a precise system he would never understand, and replacing them in the suitcase so that he would never find anything until he returned home and she helped him unpack. They had done this a lot. â€Å"I must be nuts,† Clay said. â€Å"I can't just go wandering around the oceans randomly looking for a lost friend. I'll look like that little bird in the book, the one that walks around asking everyone, ‘Are you my mother? ; â€Å"Sartre's Being and Nothingness?† Clair offered. â€Å"Right. That's the one. It's ridiculous to even leave port until we have something to go on – steaming around, burning up fifty gallons of fuel an hour. The Old Broad may have money stashed, but she doesn't have that kind of money.† â€Å"Well, maybe something will turn up in the whale calls.† â€Å"I hope. Libby and Margaret have a lot of sonic data streaming in from Newport, but it's still like looking for a needle in a haystack. Clair, she saw guys climbing into a whale –  » â€Å"So, baby, what's the worst that happens? You go to sea and do your best to find Nate and you fail? How many people ever did their best at anything? You can always sell the ship later. Where is it now anyway?† Just then the screen door fired back on its hinges and smacked against the outside wall with the report of a rifle shot. Kona came tumbling through the door waving pages of copy paper as if they were white flags and he was surrendering to everyone in the general Maui area. â€Å"Bwana Clay!† Kona threw the pages down on Clay's suitcase. â€Å"It's the Snowy Biscuit!† Clay picked up the pages, looked at them quickly, and handed one to Clair. Over and over the message was repeated: 41.93625S__76.17328W__-623__CLAY U R NOT NUTS__AMY Clay looked at Kona. â€Å"This was imbedded in the whale song.† â€Å"Yah, mon. Blue whale, I think. Just came in.† â€Å"Go back and see if there's more. And find the big world map. It's in the storeroom somewhere.† â€Å"Aye, aye,† said Kona, who had begun to speak much more nautically since Clay had purchased the ship, making his bid to go along on the voyage to search for Nate. He ran back to the office. â€Å"You think it's from Amy?† Clair said. â€Å"I think it's either from Amy or from someone who knows everything about what we're doing, which means it would have to be someone Amy talked to.† â€Å"What are the numbers?† â€Å"A longitude and a latitude. I'll have to look at the map, but it's somewhere in the South Pacific.† â€Å"I know it's a longitude and a latitude, Clay, but what's the minus six hundred and some?† â€Å"It's where pilots usually express altitude.† â€Å"But it's a minus.† â€Å"Yep.† Clay snatched the phone off of his night table and dialed the Old Broad as Clair looked quizzically at him. â€Å"Equipment change,† he whispered to Clair, covering the receiver with his hand. â€Å"Hello, Elizabeth, yes, things are going really well. Yes, they've picked up considerably. Yes. Look, I hate to ask this – I know you've done so much – but I may need one other little thing before we go to look for Nate and your James.† Clair shook her head at Clay's blatant playing of the missing-husband-shoved-up-a-whale's-bum card. â€Å"Yes, well, it may be a little expensive,† Clay continued. â€Å"But I'm going to need a submarine. No, a small submarine will be fine. If you want it to be yellow, Elizabeth, we'll paint it yellow.† After fifteen minutes of cajoling and consoling the Old Broad, making calls to Libby Quinn and the ship broker in Singapore (who offered him a quantity discount if he bought more than three ships in one month), Clay stood over a world map that was roughly the size of a Ping-Pong table, which Kona had spread out over the office floor, pinning the corners down with coffee cups. â€Å"It's right there, off the coast of Chile,† Clair said. She taught fourth-graders, and therefore basic world geography, so she could read a map like nobody's business. Kona placed a bottle cap on the spot where Clair was pointing. â€Å"We'll need nautical charts and the ship's GPS to be exact, but, basically, yep, that's where it is.† He looked at Kona. â€Å"Nothing else since that message?† â€Å"Same thing for five minutes, then just normal whale gibberish. You think the Snowy Biscuit is with Nate?† â€Å"I think she knew me well enough to know that I'd be thinking I was crazy to be looking. I also think that even if I believe the Old Broad's story about her husband, that doesn't explain how Amy was able to stay down for an hour on fifteen minutes' worth of air, so there was something going on with her that could be connected to this weirdness. She obviously knows more than we know, but – most important – we have nowhere else to look.† Kona looked at Clair, as if maybe she would answer his question. She nodded, and he resumed drinking his beer. Clay got down on his hands and knees on the map. â€Å"The ship broker says there's a deepwater three-man sub here, in Chuuk, Micronesia, that's about to finish up with some filming they're doing of deep shipwrecks.† Kona put a bottle cap on the atoll of Chuuk, Micronesia. â€Å"The owners will let me lease it for up to two months, but then a research team has it reserved for a deepwater survey in the Indian Ocean. The Clair is here, just north of Samoa.† Clay pointed. Kona put a third bottle cap just north of Samoa and did his best to drink off that beer while balancing the other two that he'd opened to get the caps. â€Å"So the Clair can probably be in Chuuk in three days. I'll fly in and meet them, pick up the sub, and then we can probably steam to these co-ordinates in four or five days if we cruise at top speed,† Clay said. â€Å"Now we're here –  » â€Å"We can't be, we can't be there,† said Kona. â€Å"Why not?† â€Å"Out of beers.† â€Å"So you get to that spot. Then what?† Clair asked. â€Å"Then I get in a submarine and see what there is to see six hundred and twenty-three feet down.† â€Å"So we're sure it's feet, not meters?† â€Å"No. I'm not sure.† â€Å"Well, I just want you to know that I am not comfortable with you doing this sort of thing, Clay.† â€Å"But I've always done this sort of thing. I sort of do this sort of thing for a living.† â€Å"So what's your point?† Clair asked. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Black and White and Red All Over Once, off the coast of California, Nate had followed a pod of killer whales as they attacked a mother gray whale and her calf. They first approached in formation to separate the calf from the mother, and then, as one group broke from the pod to keep the mother busy, the others took turns leaping upon the calf's back to drown it – even as the mother thrashed her great tail and circled back, trying to protect her calf. The whole hunt had taken more than six hours, and when it ended, finally, the killer whales took turns hitting the exhausted calf, keeping in a perfect formation even as they ripped great chunks of flesh from its still-living body. Now, in the amphitheater, as the killer whaley boys approached – their teeth flashing, the breath from their blowholes puffing like steam engines – the biologist thought that he was probably experiencing exactly what that gray-whale calf had during that gruesome hunt. Except, of course, that Nate was wearing sneakers , and gray whales almost never did. It was a big room. He had space to move. He just had to get around them. His sneakers squeaked on the floor as he came down the steps, faked right, then went left at a full sprint. The whaley boys, while amazingly agile in the water, were somewhat clumsy on land. Half of them fell for the fake so badly that they'd need a postcard to tell them how it all came out. They stooged into a whaley pile near the steps. The remaining three pursuers tried to fan out into a new formation, the alpha female coming the closest to getting between Nate and the exit. Nate was running in a wide arc around the amphitheater now, and by virtue of sheer speed he could tell he'd beat at least two of the remaining killers, but the alpha female was going to intersect with him before he got clear. She probably weighed three times what he did, so there was no going though her with a vicious body check. Maybe if he'd been on skates, he'd have tried it: pit his pure, innate Canadian skating force against her paltry cetacean hunting instinct and drive that bitch to the mother of pearl. But there were no skates, no ice, so at the very last second, as the female was about to slam him in a bone-breaking crunch against one of the benches that lined the walls, Nate pulled a spin fake, a move that was much more Boitano than Gretzky but nevertheless sent the big female tumbling over a bench in a tangle of black-and-white and i vory – like a flaccid piano botching the vaulting horse. Nate high-stepped the last twenty yards to the door, thinking, Yeah, three million years of walking upright not for nothing. Rookie. Meat. About the third step into his jubilation, Nate heard the sound of a great expulsion of air from his right, then a wet splat. Suddenly he saw his sneakers waving before his face. He felt the freedom of weightlessness, the exhilaration of flight, and then it was all gone as he slammed to the floor, knocking the wind out of himself. He slid to a stop in the huge loogie of whale spit that one of the trailing males had expectorated at his feet. Had he been able to breathe, he might have called a foul, but instead he struggled to get to his feet as the two males closed on him, showing dagger-toothed grins as they approached. Oh, my God, they're going to eat me! he thought, but then he saw that they both had unsheathed their long pink penises and were leading with a sort of a pelvic thrust. Oh, my God, they're going to fuck me! he thought. But when they got to him, one picked him up by the arms and bent him over forward, and he felt the great teeth scraping his scalp as his head slipped int o the whaley boy's mouth. No, they're definitely going to eat me, Nate thought. And in that suspension of time, right before the final crunch, amid the slow motion of an infinite last moment, clarity came to him, even as he screamed, and he thought, This is probably not going to go as well as the last time I was eaten. There's probably not going to be a girl at the end of this one. And then the female whistled shrilly, and the male stopped biting down just as his teeth were starting to cut into Nate's cheeks. The biting male pulled back and apologetically wiped saliva and blood from Nate's face, then propped him up and fluffed him a little, as if to show that he was good as new. Nate was still being held fast by the other male, but the biter was grinning sheepishly at the alpha female and making a squeaking noise that Nate, even with his limited understanding of whaleyspeak, understood as meaning â€Å"oops.† A half hour later they threw him into his apartment, and the alpha female grinned at him as she tore the stainless-steel doorknob out of the wall. The wall bled for a while after she left, then clotted over and rapidly began to heal. Nate stumbled into his bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. There were bloody gashes down his forehead and cheeks. In another place and time, he realized, he would have gone to the emergency room to get stitched up. His hair was matted with blood, and he could feel at least four deep dents in his scalp where the whaley boy's teeth had broken the skin. There was a large knot at the back of his head where he'd hit the floor when he fell, and evidently he'd hit an elbow, too, because every time he bent his right arm, a sharp, biting pain shot all the way down to his fingertips. He pulled off his bloodstained clothes and climbed into the shower. Then, ignoring the strange fixtures that usually gave him pause, he leaned against the shower walls and let the water run over him until the bloody crust was gone from his hair and his fingers had shriveled with the moisture. He dried himself, then collapsed into his bed, wishing for a last time before he fell asleep that Amy was there, safe, next to him. He slept deeply and dreamed of a time when all the oceans were filled with a single living organism, wrapped like a cocoon around a single huge land mass. And in his dream he could feel the texture of every shore as if it were pressed against his skin. Nate awoke in the early hours before light came up in the grotto. He went into his living room and sat in the dark by the big oval picture window that looked out over the street and, ultimately, the Gooville harbor. There were shapes out there moving in the dark. Every now and then he'd catch the reflection of some dim light on a whaley boy's skin, but mostly he could tell they were out there by the sonar clicks that echoed around the grotto and by the low, trilling whistles of whaley-boy conversation. After an hour sitting there in the dark, he padded to the door and tried to open it. There was nothing but a smooth scar where the doorknob had been. The seal around the door was so tight it might have been part of the walls that framed it. In trying to work his fingers into the doorjamb, he realized that his elbow wasn't grating as it had been when he went to bed. He reached up to touch the gashes across his forehead and felt the scab flake away as easily and painlessly as dry skin. He immediately went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror under the bright yellow bioluminescence. The gashes were healed. Completely healed. He brushed away the dried blood that had seeped after his shower to find new, healthy skin. It was the same with the dents in his scalp and the great goose egg at the base of his skull. He didn't even have a sore spot. He returned to the living room, fell into the chair by the window, and watched the light come up in the grotto. Outside, there was a lot of movement in the street and the harbor, and, watching it, Nate started to feel sick to his stomach, despite his miraculous healing. All the movement outside was that of whaley boys. There wasn't a single human out there anywhere. For two days he didn't see any other humans in Gooville, and even when he had screwed up his courage to use the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing on the wall, he realized that he had no idea how to make it connect. By noon on the third day, he decided that he had to get out of the apartment. Not only couldn't he find Amy or do anything else while in here, but he was rapidly running out of food. He reasoned that the best time to make a break for it was in the middle of the day, when it seemed that the number of whaley boys out on the street was sparsest, because so many of them went down to the water at that time to swim. He dressed in long pants and sleeves for protection, then made the first attempt at the window. He tore one of the bone chairs from the floor in the kitchen, wiggling it first, as if loosening a baby tooth. He cast the chair at the center of the window with all his strength, preparing as he did to make the ten-foot leap to the street when it went though. But it didn't. It bounced back into the room. Next he looked for something sharp to try to puncture the window, but the only thing he could come up with were shards of the mirror in the bathroom, and although the mirror spider-webbed when he struck it, his fist wrapped in a towel, the shards stayed adhered to the bathroom wall, so all he'd really done was create a shiny mosaic. Finally, frustrated after three hours of ineffective attacks on the big window, he decided to hit it with the heaviest thing in the apartment: his body. He backed into the bedroom, sped through the living room, leaped into the air about halfway across, curled into a ball, and braced for impact. The window bulged out about three feet, until it appeared to the whaley boys outside that someone inside was trying to blow a giant bubble, and then it sprang back, trampolining Nate across the room into the far wall. At the bottom of the wall someone had installed a couch for just such an emergency, and Nate slid neatly into it with his newly flattened side down. â€Å"Well, that was just stupid,† he said aloud. â€Å"Boy, that was stupid,† Cielle Nuà ±ez said. She came into the living room and sat in a chair across from where Nate was piled onto the couch. â€Å"You want to tell me what in the hell you started?† â€Å"How did you get in? The knob is gone.† â€Å"Not on the outside. Come on, Nate, what did you do? Every human in Gooville has been locked down for the last three days. If I weren't the captain of a whale ship, I wouldn't have been able to come here either.† â€Å"I didn't do anything, Cielle, honestly. Where's Amy?† â€Å"No one knows. Believe me, that was the first place they went.† â€Å"Who?† â€Å"Who do you think? The whaley boys. They've taken over everything. Humans aren't even allowed near the ships. Ever since some of them heard you yelling about bringing the navy down here.† â€Å"I was. He has Amy, Cielle. I was just trying to get her back.† â€Å"Him? The Colonel? Why would he take Amy? She's one of the few who've ever even seen him. She's a favorite.† â€Å"Yeah, well no one is his favorite now.† Right then Nate made a decision. He wasn't going to get out of this place on his own, and the only person he could even consider an ally was sitting right there in front of him. â€Å"Cielle, the reason the Colonel called your ships back, the reason no one is allowed to leave the harbor, is that he wants you all here when the place comes down. He's got some plan to get the U.S. Navy, or somebody's navy, to attack Gooville with a nuclear torpedo. He thinks that the Goo is going to destroy the human race if he doesn't destroy it first. He wanted me to go to the navy. He thought I could convince them of the threat because of my scientific credibility, but I said no. That's when he took Amy.† â€Å"So all that yelling I heard you doing in the amphitheater – that wasn't you talking about bringing the navy here, that was just you trying to get Amy back?† â€Å"Yes. He's a loon, Cielle. I don't have any interest in bringing this place down. He thinks that there's some grand war going on between memes and genes, and that humans and the Goo are on opposite sides of it.† The whale-ship captain stood and nodded as if confirming something to herself. â€Å"Okay, then. That's what I needed to know. That's why he sent me here. I'll try to get them to send you some food.† â€Å"What? Help me get out of here.† Nate suddenly had a very bad feeling about this whole exchange. â€Å"I'm sorry, Nate. They have Cal. The whaley boys have him. You know how that feels. They told me I had to find out if you were plotting against the Colonel. Thank you for telling me. I think they'll let him go now.† She walked to the door, and Nate followed her. â€Å"Get me out of here, Cielle, at least –  » â€Å"Nate, there's nowhere to go. The only way out of here is a whale ship, and whaley-boy pilots are the only ones who can run them. They've been on notice not to let you on since we got here. Right now I couldn't leave if I wanted to.† She pounded on the door. â€Å"Open!† The door clicked open, and two all-black whaley boys stood outside waiting. They caught Nate by the shoulders and threw him back into the apartment as he tried to rush by them. â€Å"My own crew, Nate,† Cielle said. â€Å"See what you've done.† â€Å"He's going to kill you all, Cielle. Don't you see that? He's crazy.† â€Å"I don't believe you, Nate. I think you're the crazy one.† The door slammed shut. Back at Papa Lani, Clay was doing a final check on the equipment he was taking with him to meet his new ship. Diving and camera equipment lay spread out across the office floor. Kona was going through the checklist on the clipboard with a felt-tip pen. â€Å"So you tink the Snowy Biscuit going to be there?† â€Å"I'm going. I just wish that we could answer her. Tell her I'm on my way.† â€Å"You mean, like, put the digital in the whale sound and send it?† â€Å"Yeah, I know, we can't do it. Did you find a canister of soda lime for the rebreather's CO2 scrubbers?† â€Å"I can do that.† Kona held up the canister Clay was looking for and checked it off the list. â€Å"You can?† â€Å"I been looking at it long time. She not that hard to put that message back in the call. But how you going to send it? You need some gi-grandious big speakers under the water, mon. We don't have nothing like dat.† Clay stopped his inventory and pulled Kona's clipboard down so he could see his eyes. â€Å"You can put a message into the waveform so it would come out the same way we've been taking it out?† Kona nodded. â€Å"Show me,† Clay said. He went to the computer. Kona took the chair and pulled up a low-frequency waveform that looked like a jagged comb, and then he hit a button that took a small section and expanded it, which smoothed out the jags. â€Å"See, this part here. We know this a letter B, right? We just cut it and paste with other letters, make a goofy whale call. I got the all the letters but a Q and a Z figured.† â€Å"Don't explain, just do it. Here.† Clay scribbled a short message in the margin of Kona's checklist. â€Å"Then play it for me.† â€Å"I can play, but you won't hear it. It's subsonic, brah. Like I say, you going need some thumpin' speakers to send it. You know where we can steal some?† â€Å"We might not have to steal them.† While Kona pieced together the message, Clay grabbed the phone off his desk and dialed Cliff Hyland. The biologist answered on the second ring. â€Å"Cliff, Clay Demodocus. I need a favor from you. That big sonar rig of yours, will it broadcast subsonic frequencies?†¦ Good, I need you to take us out on your boat tonight, with your rig.† Kona looked at Clay. Clay grinned and raised his eyebrows. â€Å"No, it has to be tonight. I'm flying out for Chuuk in the morning. If I need to send out a signal, what can I plug in to it? Tape, disk recorder, what? Anything with a pre-amp?† Clay covered the receiver with his hand. â€Å"Can you put it on an audio disk?† â€Å"No problems,† Kona said. â€Å"No problem,† Clay said into the phone. â€Å"We'll meet you at the harbor at ten, okay?† Clay waited. He was listening, pacing in a little circle behind the surfer. â€Å"Yeah, well, we were just talking about that, Cliff, and we figured that if you said no, we'd just have to steal your boat and your rig. I could probably figure out how the rig works, right?† There was another pause and Clay held the phone away from his ear. Kona could hear an irritated voice coming out of the earpiece. â€Å"Because we're friends, Cliff, that's why I'd tell you in advance that I was going to steal your boat. Jeez, you think I'd just steal it like some stranger? All right, then, we'll see you at ten o'clock.† He hung up the phone. â€Å"Okay, kid, get this right. We have to have it ready and to the harbor by ten.† â€Å"But what you gonna do the bad guys get it?† â€Å"Even if they do, only Amy will know what it means,† Clay said. â€Å"Cool runnings, brah.† Kona was concentrating on putting the message together, his tongue curled out the corner of his mouth as an antenna for focus. Clay leaned over his shoulder and watched the waveform come together on the screen. â€Å"How did you figure this out, kid? I mean, it doesn't seem like you.† â€Å"How's a man supposed to work his science dub wid you yammerin' like a rummed-up monkey?† â€Å"Sorry,† Clay said, making a mental note to give the kid a raise if any of this actually worked.

Behaviorism, Its Origin, Purpose and Main Definitions.

Behaviorism, Its Origin, Purpose and Main Definitions. Behaviorism For as long as history can date back, humans have always had a certain interest in what makes up an individual; who they are, and what aspects of there being, have set them apart from others within there species. As behaviorist see it, these questions are answered by nothing more than the world in which you were brought up in. Behaviorism, focuses on variables we can observe, measure, manipulate; and avoid whatever is subjective, internal, and unavailable i.e. mental (1998, C. George Boeree). Behaviorism is a very old theory of personality. One of the oldest theories dates back to Rene Descartes. He introduced the idea of substance dualism, and called the person a machine dependent on external events whose soul was the ghost in the machine (substance dualism). Meaning that what is mental, and things that are physical are completely separate. Modern behaviorism however changes this theory in refusing to acknowledge any internal workings of the mind. Behaviorist believe that, persons are nothing more than mediators between behavior and environment (Skinner, 1993). Because the inner workings or the human mind are ignored, opponents to the theory make a strong case against it. Behaviorism is unable to explain human language, and memory. Although these criticisms indicate a failure in this theory. It isnt denied that behaviorism can teach the world a lot about human behaviors. Behaviorism as it is known today was founded on the ideas of John B. Watson. Watson claimed that behavior should be examined, rather than describe how the mind was working. He contended that it was possible to condition humans and animals. In his famous study, Watson conditioned a young child named Albert to fear a white rat. He did so by creating a loud noise whenever Albert touched the rat. Frightened by the loud noise, the child associated the rat to this feeling, and feared the rat the same way he feared the noise. Watsons work was backed by the most noted behaviorist B.F. Skinner. Skinners entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of operating on the environment (Skinner, 1993). While operating, the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. Operant conditioning is: the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future (Behaviorism, 1997). Skinner ran experiments to prove this by placing a rat in a cage called a Skinner Box. His cage would have a bar or pedal on one wall that, when pressed, causes a little mechanism to release a foot pellet. The rat would then bounce around the cage, doing whatever it is rats do, when he accidentally presses the bar, a food pellet falls out. The operant is the behavior just prior to the reinforcer, which is the food pellet. In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at the bar. A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future (Stacy Breslau, 2003 ). What if you dont give the rat any more pellets? After a few attempts, the rat will stop pressing the bar. This is called extinction of the operant behavior. A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future. (Stacy Breslau, 2003 ) Now, if you were to turn the pellet machine back on, so that pressing the bar again provides the rat with pellets, the behavior of bar-pushing will pop right back into existence, much more quickly than it took for the rat to learn the behavior the first time. This is because the return of the reinforcer takes place in the context of a reinforcement history that goes all the way back to the very first time the rat w as reinforced for pushing on the bar. A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or the method of successive approximations. Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have an animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some extraordinary things. Beyond fairly simple examples, shaping also accounts for the most complex of behaviors. You dont, for example, become a brain surgeon by stumbling into an operating room, cutting open someones head, removing a tumor, and receive a reward. Instead, you are gently shaped by your environment to enjoy certain things, do well in school, take a certain class, see a movie, and so on. This could be something your parents were carefully doing to you, but much more likely, this is something that was more or less uni ntentional. Another type of reinforcement is aversive stimulus. It is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus, something unpleasant or painful. A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased probability of the behavior occurring in the future (Stacy Breslau, 2003 ). This both defines an aversive stimulus and describes the form of conditioning known as punishment. If you shock a rat for doing something, it wont do what ever it is it got shocked for. If you spank Johnny for throwing his toys he will throw his toys less and less (maybe). If you remove an already active aversive stimulus after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative reinforcement. If you turn off the electricity when the rat stands on his hind legs, hell stand a lot more. Notice how difficult it can be to distinguish some forms of negative reinforcement from positive reinforcement. If I starve you, is the food I give you when you do what I want a positive? Or is it the removal of a negative, the aversive stimulus of hunger? (1998, C. George Boeree) Skinner doesnt approve of the use of aversive stimuli, because they dont work well. Earlier I said that Johnny will maybe stop throwing his toys? Thats because whatever was reinforcing the bad behaviors hasnt been removed. This hidden reinforcer has just been hidden with an aversive stimulus. So, sometimes the child will behave, but it still feels good to throw those toys. All this boils down to a theory of personality that says that ones environment causes ones behavior. A man named Albert Bandura found this a bit too simplistic for the phenomena he was observing, aggression in adolescents, and decided to add a little to it, environment causes behavior, but behavior causes environment as well(Bandura, 2000). He labeled this concept reciprocal determinism. He then went a step further. Bandura began to look at personality as an interaction among three things the environment, behavior, and the persons psychological processes. Adding imagery and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize much more effectively than someone like, B. F. Skinner, about two things that many people would consider the humans strong point, observational learning or modeling, and self-regulation. Of the hundreds of studies Bandura was responsible for, one group stands out above the others. The bobo doll studies. Bandura made of film of one of his students, a young woman, beating up a bobo doll. In case you dont know, a bobo doll is an inflatable, balloon creature with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock him down. The woman punched the clown, shouting sockeroo! She kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer, and so on, shouting aggressive phrases. Bandura then showed his film to groups of kindergartners. The children then were let out to play. In the play room, were several observers with pens and clipboards, a bobo doll, and a few little hammers. The observers recorded: A lot of little kids beating on the bobo doll. They punched it and shouted sockeroo, kicked it, sat on it, hit it with the little hammers, and so on. In other words, they imitated the young lady in the film. This might seem like a worthless experiment at first, but the children changed their behavior without first being rewarded for that behavior. While that may not seem extraordinary to the average person, it didnt work well with standard behaviorist learning theories. He called the phenomenon observational learning or modeling, and Banduras theory is usually called the social learning theory. Bandura did a large number of variations in his study. All these variations allowed Bandura to establish that there were certain steps involved in the modeling process. If you are going to learn anything, you have to be paying attention. Likewise, anything that doesnt allow you to pay attention is going to decrease learning. If, for example, you are sleepy, groggy, drugged, sick, or nervous, you will learn less. Second, you must be able to remember what you have paid attention to. This is where imagery and language come in. We store what we have seen the model doing in the form of mental images, or verbal descriptions. When stored, you can later bring up the image or description, so that you can reproduce it with your own behavior. At this point, youre just sitting there daydreaming. You have to translate the images or descriptions into actual behavior. So you have to have the ability to reproduce the behavior in the first place. For example, I can watch Olympic swimmers all day long, and not be able to reproduce their times, because I may not even know how to swim. But if I can swim, my performance would in fact improve if I watch swimmers who are better than I am. Our abilities improve even when we just imagine ourselves performing. Many athletes, imagine their performance in their mind prior to actually performing. With all this, youre still not going to do anything unless you are motivated to imitate. Bandura says there are many motives, past reinforcement, promised reinforcements, vicarious reinforcement. These are, considered to be the things that cause learning. Bandura is saying that they dont cause learning but, only cause us to demonstrate what we have learned. He sees them as motives. The negative motivations are there too, giving you reasons not to imitate someone such as past punishment, promised punishment (threats), vicarious punishment. Like most traditional behaviorists, Bandura says that punishment in whatever form does not work as well as reinforcement and, in fact, has a tendency to backfire on us.

Building Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Building Design - Essay Example Rondeau et al. suggests this formula for computing payback period as: (2006, p. 145). For example, an individual decides to purchase a condominium unit in Central London as an investment for  £245,000. He further invests around  £25,000 to furnish the unit and make it easily leasable. Thus his total investment is  £270,000. He then is able to rent it out for  £1,900 while spending about  £100 in maintenance, thus is able to generate a net profit of  £1,800 a month. Using the above formula, it will take a 12  ½ years for the owner to recover the condominium’s purchase price through the net profit of the lease. Rate of return is a financial measure of the profitability of an investment or a project. It is â€Å"what you get, minus what you started out with, expressed as a percentage of what you started with† (Getlner, et al., 2007, p. 176). Using the above example in the payback period concept, let us examine the rate of return of the condominium unit investment as several periods of time. At 12  ½ years, the owner would have made  £270,000 of rental profits, equal to the initial investment on the unit. Therefore, the rate of return on the 12.5th year would have been 0%. However if he waited 2  ½ more years to assess his investment, he would realize a 20% rate of return or  £54,000. There are two types of returns, one that is time-based, called periodic returns and one that is dollar-weighted (or in this case, pounds-weighted) called internal rate of return (Getlner, et al., 2007, p. 174). Internal rate of return, commonly referred to as IRR is applicable to real estate investments because it can compute investment performance over long periods of time which is the usual case in owning a property. One need not know the yearly value of the asset, the important information is the value of the capital investment at

Marketing segmentation of Chef boyardee Assignment

Marketing segmentation of Chef boyardee - Assignment Example They have a ready market. The other factor that would be considered while segmenting the market is the target clients’ lifestyle. The information on lifestyle and the demographics would help in accurately sub-dividing the market and supplying them with the appropriate brand and quality of Spaghetti Sauce, Spaghetti Meatballs, Macaroni, Lasagna, Pizza Maker or Pizza Sauce. In fact, the supply of these commodities would be purely pegged on the above factors because the company is still small and can not sufficiently serve the entire market. Each segment has its own uniqueness that need to be addressed when segmenting them. Upon identifying the diverse needs, tastes and preferences for each of the segment, high quality products would be sold to them at fairly cheaper and reasonable prices. On the other hand, in order to appeal to the company’s market segments, distributor outlets would be established in each place so as to supply them with the products in a steady and reliable manner. Even distribution would be maintained to ensure that none of the segments is discriminated

Segmentation targeting positioning (stp) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Segmentation targeting positioning (stp) - Essay Example If we talk about positioning, it is the marketing concept, which is related to the creation of product image in target market segments. â€Å"Positioning is what the customer believes about your products value, features, and benefits† (Jackson, 2007). John Williams, who is the author of this article, focuses on the ideas of marketing segmentation along with the concepts of targeting and positioning. He believes that market segmentation means to recognize the diversity of a market and a company can get success in the market if it becomes successful in satisfying the customers by recognizing the needs and demands of each of the target markets. â€Å"The correct way is to segment the market on the basis of the differing desires† (Williams, 2006). He believes segmentation to be the key towards success of the marketing strategy. About targeting, the author believes that it is the process of targeting those market subdivisions where the demand of any specific product or service is high. The author’s stance regarding positioning is that it is the difference between a company’s product and the ongoing competition in the minds of the consumers. The article is a well-written document, which highlights different issues related to market segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Williams, J. (2006). Marketing GNOME Part Two: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. Retrieved October 09, 2011 from

Reaction Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 7

Reaction Paper - Essay Example I did not expect this result and therefore, he scored lowly in this context. However, there was a strong point from the Fall Risk Assessment tool, which gave me expected results. Indeed, the participant remained at high risk of falling even with assistance on his legs. In carrying out the social assessment, I encountered a weakness where despite his quietness and lack of many friends, Mr. Vega seems to live a happy life when he tells stories about his kids and his younger life. I also encountered a strong point where the participant got good support from his family that was educated. They knew how to use available resources to keep the patient away from the hospital. In relation to Community Resource Utilization, I realized a strong point in that the patient and family had enough knowledge on how to use community resources. On health promotion activities, I received recommendations from senior medical practitioners that had detailed knowledge on heart failure. I validated that the pa rticipant got the recommendations by the fact that they came in a language he would understand and the fact that his memory was equally sharp. In my line of collecting data and doing interviews, I used an understandable language, polite language, and asked question that were easy to generate a response. Indeed, I was so comfortable with the reception I got, the response from the participant, and the collected data. However, I would recommend the time of collecting data to be long to capture the attention of the old participants wholly. Health promotion is important to the group in that it derives a better understanding on heart failure and its variance with

Business Skills & Employability Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words - 1

Business Skills & Employability - Case Study Example The company has been effective in the market as a complete company with diversified products leading to positive rating in the FTSE market. Sainsbury offers online platform for the sale of the various product and services. Its clothing brand is the seventh largest in the TU clothing sector with over 3000 products sold in its stores country wide and internationally (Daugherty, et al., 2009, p. 69). SWOT analysis involves the evaluation of the performance of the company in relation to the prevailing market. The analysis of the strength, opportunities, weakness and threats of the organization will help the manager to establish the position of the company. The understanding of the position of the company ensures that the marketing and communication strategy is developed to improve the performance of the business. For instance, if the competitors have ventured on the elderly population, the company may resort to developing products for the youths thus increasing organization performance. SWOT analysis of the company reveals strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with the current and future status of the company (Crawford, 2000, p. 53). For Sainsbury, it is vital to understand the weakness of the business and develop strategies to counter the weaknesses and threats associated with the company. ... it is successful because of the strengths associated with is as a brand which are diverse because of the diverse nature of the company. It has diversified its operation to cover various sectors of the business environment. The strengths of the company are as follows; Diversified investments The company has diversified its operations of the individual business units that are not related. The diversification of the business platform ensures reduced risks. In case of business unit failure, the different sector can support the other area. However, diversification alone cannot minimize risks and thus must be conducted carefully (Hollensen, 2007, p. 56). Over diversification leads to increased capital expenditure leading losses. The organization approach has ensured they invest in areas with the potential of success. The diversification approach has facilitated the development of the different units of the business organization. IT infrastructure The company uses the online platform simila r to the Amazon.com, but the focus of the organization is on sports and other sports related accessory. The competitive edge offered by the company includes offering variety in the sports sector, direct linkage with the manufacturing companies thereby developing brand loyalty (Preston, 2012, p. 12). The reduced focus for specific sport equipment and regime makes the company unique giving it an edge over the all-purpose online services offered by Amazon and other platforms. However, the challenge is on developing a market niche and retention of customers. The major competitive factors in the whole process are dependent on the situation analysis of the organization. The current situation indicates brand visibility, loyalty,

Positioning Manufacturing Plants Away from US States Essay

Positioning Manufacturing Plants Away from US States - Essay Example 4 Discussion†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 6 Conclusion †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 10 References †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 11 Abstract Several states in America, specifically the state of California, practice strict environmental compliance policies that become a burden to most manufacturing companies. The costs attributed to the improvement of environmental management and production process are very high, adding up the labor costs in the US. This theme case will explore the complexiti es of the given scenario and examine the possible management strategies by functioning as the company’s CEO. The causes and reason why American companies move their manufacturing operations to an offshore location will be determined, as well as its implication in the American work force and community. Product liability will also be the foundation of the discussion, focusing on the quality of the products to reduce product recalls and product liability lawsuits. Methods in improving the production process will also be tackled. ... This aspect is known as product liability. Heizer and Render (2011), the authors of the Operations Management book, describe this quality implication as a legislation that is implied to organizations that â€Å". . . design, produce or distribute faulty goods and services†. The organization is held liable to any form of damages or injuries that may be incurred with the use of faulty products. According to Polinsky and Shavell (2010), thousands of product liability cases are filed each year in different states in the US, as well as in federal courts. These cases include class or mass tort actions that involve thousands or millions of individuals as plaintiffs (Polinsky & Shavell, 2010). Product liability suits attract the attention of the media, especially in cases where the product being sued is a widely sold commodity that can affect a large number of consumers. This situation will also be detrimental to the company since it will create doubts from consumers and result to an abrupt decrease in product sales. In 1982, the market share of Tylenol greatly fell from 35% to 5% after incidents of death associated with ingestion of Tylenol contaminated capsules. Audi car sales were also affected during the mid-80s when reports spread that the automobile has a risk of suddenly accelerating which can cause accidents (Polinsky & Shavell, 2010). Significant effects of product liability and the strategy of outsourcing the production of goods and services will be discussed in this paper by analyzing a given theme case. The case provides a scenario wherein a CEO is faced with a challenge to suppress the effects of a product liability case associated with the allegation that one of their manufacturing plants had been involved in the improper

Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Marketing - Essay Example Marketers have to pay close attention to different aspects of marketing both in real and digital marketing techniques; therefore their key responsibility is to develop an integrated linkage between the psychological images of product portrayed through various marketing techniques. In summary, customer should be provided with a realistic view of the product through marketing, so that he does not feel betrayed while utilizing the product for the first time, thus nullifying the possibility of overpromising. 2.0 Literature Review However, this concept is ill-defined according to the present literature of marketing (Cornelisson, 2003), so more empirical study is warranted for concerning this important topic. IMC is reported to have a positive impact on the brand image of the product (Reid, Luxton, & Movondo, 2005), through this technique products can be advertised worldwide in minimal financial implications. Another study is of the view that marketing combines, historical evidence, presen t development and future implications of a product upon customer’s quality of life. But conventional advertisement methodologies were not able to communicate these aspects of the product (Finne & Gronroos, 2009). Therefore, the promotional activities focused on the present development of the product, in this way customer could not relate the past, present and future with the product, this caused the impact of marketing to drop in the past. However, the availability of electronic media, such as internet streaming video technology, provides a ground for marketers to integrate the three times of a product in front of customers and prospects. IMC is also believed to be highly flexible in nature and could be used to market wide range of products and services. (Luck & Moffatt, 2009). Hence this method for marketing is based on the concept of highlighting abstractive qualities of the product, such as good looks in case of clothing and ease of access for a website. The phenomenon und er study is also designed to build customer linkages on personal level, because advertisements appear touchy and very moving on internet and social sites (Smith, 2010). Thus help in building a customer base for a product. But at the same time the product which is advertised through IMC, must be available in the market, so that customer could be facilitated while making purchase decision. Advertisers are compelled to use various marketing channels to cater for various types of customers; however the intactness of message’s meaningfulness is a significant challenge for business professionals (Zavrsnik & Jerman). IMC is vastly accepted in the advertising of hotels and other services (Comm, Saura, & Rijeci, 2009) . This paper turns its focus towards analyzing the famous cases of implementing IMC in a real world setting by The See-board Energy and Ice hotel AB. These organizations belong to very different businesses, but the applicability of IMC could be highlighted by the analysi s of these two campaigns. First of all, this

Student Absenteeism Results to Dropping Out of School Essay Example for Free

Student Absenteeism Results to Dropping Out of School Essay

Europe On The Eve Of World War I Essay Example for Free

Europe On The Eve Of World War I Essay World War I, or The Great War, actually started on June 28, 1914 upon the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Serbian national. This led to a series of battles upon the eventual formation of the Central Powers made up of Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, and they fought against the Entente Powers made up of Russia, France and Great Britain. However, since â€Å"Europe stumbled unexpectedly into war in the summer of 1914,†1 the question remains as to which of the major countries that fought the First World War were most prepared in terms of economy and military strength and which were not. Britain Among the Entente Powers during WWI, Britain was actually considered â€Å"the greatest colonial power [and] maintained the greatest navy. †2 However, it is also a fact that during that time Britain â€Å"was being increasingly challenged by France and Russia†3 and Germany. The British in fact â€Å"increased their warship production with the  William R. Griffiths and Thomas E. Griess, The Great War (2003): 1. 2. Ian Westwell, World War I Day by Day (1999): 7 3. Ibid. 4. Spencer Tucker, The Great War 1914-18 (1998): 3 intention of war†5 and in fact had a series of wars with Africa in 1899. Britain, along with the other great European powers, â€Å"embarked on an arms race that ran in tandem with the scramble for colonies,†6 which simply means that the reason they improved their armies and navies was because â€Å"they needed to protect far-flung colonies and maintain a balance of military power with their neighbors in Europe. †7 During the early 20th century, Britain launched â€Å"HMS Dreadnought, a Battleship incorporating several new technologies that was far superior to any vessel afloat in 1906†8 This was somehow the reason why other European powers especially Germany began improving and â€Å"building their own dreadnought-type battleships†9 because they saw â€Å"a sudden vulnerability of their costly fleets. †10 However, one rumor was that â€Å"the British recognized the naval competition from Germany as a threat to their existence,†11 though â€Å"the naval arms race between these two powers would continue until the eve of the war. 5. Westwell, 7. 6. Ibid, 8. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid, 9. 10. Ibid. 11. Griffiths and Greis, 5. 12. Ibid. It is said that naval arms race between these two powers would continue until the eve of the war. †13 Nevertheless, â€Å"by 1914, Germany had a navy second only to England’s. †14 Economically, it is said that Britain, along with France and Germany, was ready for the Great War. The most important influence upon British and the rest of the European military during those times was in fact â€Å"the largess bestowed upon European societies by the Industrial Revolution. †15 It is said that â€Å"a wealth of goods, rising productivity, and material well-being†16 were brought about by the factories of the latter half of the 19th century. This period of economic growth all over Europe led to â€Å"the greater availability of education for the lower classes† and that â€Å"better and more widespread educational opportunities enabled citizens to comprehend more readily the†¦military affairs of the state. †17 This perhaps encouraged nationalism among the people of the various European nations. Consequently such feelings may have similarly encouraged rivalries with other nations. Thus, the soil for the war was fertile and all it needed was the seed – which was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. 13. Griffiths and Greis, 5. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid, 6 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. France As early as 1870, â€Å"France had considered itself – and had been considered by others – the leading military power of Europe. †18 It was defeated by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 but it was not stated whether this war was really a showcase of the French military but rather it â€Å"meant a lasting antagonism†19 with Germany. Nevertheless, despite being a military power in the late 9th century, France had its â€Å"entire†¦province of Alsace [seized as well as] part of a second province, Lorraine. †20 Germany Since the empire became united in 1871, â€Å"imperial Germany had rapidly emerged as the dominant industrial and military power†21 in Europe and such â€Å"created a potentially explosive situation. It was also believed that â€Å"by the start of the twentieth century, Germany was creating a first-class navy,† which was in fact considered â€Å"the most obvious and dramatic illustration of Germany’s surging power in many spheres. †23 Such was the 18. Neil M. Heyman, World War I (1997): 5. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. greatness of the military strength of Germany in the early 20th century. In addition to that, Germany also had an economy that was emerging as one of the strongest in the whole of Europe. Since 1870, Germany’s â€Å"industry had grown so rapidly that this part of Europe, which had supplied immigrants to the Western Hemisphere for more than a century, now imported labor from Poland. †24 Twentieth century Germany was actually home to â€Å"higher education and scientific research [and] a system of social insurance for its working class† and in fact, the country â€Å"could pride itself on being a world leader. † Germany also prided itself with a great leader during that time. The ruler of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was often considered as â€Å"the embodiment and often the director of [Germany’s] restless energies. †25 By the late 19th century, Kaiser Wilhelm II earned the respect and friendship of a few ambitious military leaders who were against Britain and who would want to challenge it to war. One of these military leaders was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the Secretary of State of the Imperial Naval Office of Germany at that time. Moreover, Kaiser Wilhelm II also had his own imperialist ambitions as well for he considered the German navy â€Å"a tool of external power†26 and even declared it to Prime Minister Arthur Balfour of Britain in 1902, many years before the outbreak of WWI. In fact â€Å"the Kaiser sought to play   24. Heyman, 5. 25. Ibid, 6. 26. Ibid. politics, and repeatedly declared that he was determined to make Germany not just dominant in European affairs but in the world† and had a â€Å"desire for a German-dominated central Europe. †27 Such was the measure of Wilhelm II’s ambition and resolve. The Kaiser’s biographer even wrote, â€Å"Only with a fleet could Germany be able to elicit from the British the esteem Wilhelm II believed to be his due. †28 Germany was indeed already a strong power in the early 20th century many years before the outbreak of the Great War. It is said that â€Å"the security of Austria-Hungary, the weaker of the Central Powers, was [even] guaranteed by Kaiser Wilhelm II [since] late 1912. †29 Such was the strength of Germany at that time that they could even guarantee the protection of the territory of another country in addition to their own. Conclusion On the eve of World War I, Britain, France and Germany were all ready for the war that was to ensue. However, among the three, Germany seemed to be the most prepared especially when it came to the military, specifically the development and advancement of its naval warships as well as powerful leadership in the person of Kaiser Wilhelm II. On the other hand, France, although a leading military power of Europe at that time, was in fact torn apart by Germany during the 1871 Franco-Prussian War, hence was not impressively strong compared to Britain and Germany. 27. Tucker, 3. 28. Heyman, 6. 29. Westwell, 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY Griffiths, Williams R. and Griess, Thomas E. The Great War. New York: Square One Publishers, Inc. , 2003. Heyman, Neil M. World War I. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. , 1997. Tucker, Spencer. The Great War 1914-18. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998. Westwell, Ian. World War I Day by Day. New York: The Brown Reference Group, Plc. , 1999.

Chinese and Western International Relations Theories

Chinese and Western International Relations Theories Chinese ancient school of thoughts[1] and Western International Relations theories: A comparative study Introduction Background of the study The study of international relations has classically focused on the cause of war and the conditions of peace. With China’s overwhelming economic growth and active diplomacy engaging in international affairs, numerous concerns of China’s emerging power have become priorities on international political agendas, which also lead to many academic researches on the manner in which China rises. The increasing attentions are drawn to Chinese perspectives of inter-states relations, because there are remarkable different perspectives and actions between China and western countries, for example, China’s outspoken opposition to international action against Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Iran. China’s no-string attached foreign aid policy on African countries has been frequently accused as support to corrupt and brutal dictators and a barricade of democratic progress, while most of western countries impose reform conditions when providing aid. As such, the rise of Chin a has not simply challenged the international status quo, but also challenged the conventional wisdom on international relations.[2] (Deng, 2008) As a consequence, debates are centered around questions on whether China’s rise will be a threat to the regional peace and world security. Over the past three decades, many western scholars have speculated that China will overthrow the current western-oriented international order and reshape the rules of the world in order to service its interests; can China peacefully replace U.S as a superpower; will China’s rise result in military conflict with its neighbor countries? Statement of the problem There has been no shortage of research on China’s potential to become a superpower. However, the western experience and thoughts usually conclude that China’s emerging power will be highly problematic and dangerous to the rest of world. It is hard to obtain a holistic explanation of the aforementioned differences from the obvious economic and geopolitical point of view alone. One needs an understanding of the Chinese core values and worldview which stems from Chinese philosophy. Although contemporary China has incorporated foreign thoughts including Marxism and Capitalism into its political and social system, ancient philosophy still plays a considerable role in its policy-making and in the international relations. As Rosita Dellios pointed out, for western politicians and scholars, any country whose actions have enormous impact on the â€Å"high politics† on the international stage, is worth studying at a deeper theoretical level, in particular its philosophy and perspective on the world order. The importance of the Chinese schools’ teachings on inter-state relations cannot be overestimated. It shapes policy-makers’ ideas, which in turn influence China’s foreign policy and behavior. A proper understanding of China’s philosophy concerning International relations and the view of the world affairs will help to increase the understanding, the causes of conflict and the condition for peace with regard to the rise of China. More over, the importance of culture and philosophical thoughts in IR theory has recently been highlighted by the publication of a book titled â€Å"The return of culture and identity in IR theory†, which pointed out that the question of culture, philosophical thought and identity have always been part of our analysis of the social world, even if often times underestimated. The return of culture and philosophical thoughts has been brought about partly by the failure of the traditional, positivist, neo-realist school to predict events associated with the ending of the Cold War. IR scholars are now reclaiming culture and identity in response to their mounting difficulties with exponential increase in global heterogeneity and diversity. (Chan,1999) Aims and objective The objectives of this study are two-fold. Firstly, it seeks analogies and dis-analogies between major Western International Relations theories and the philosophical traditions of China’s Spring Autumn and Warring states period. This is performed with the question of commensurability in mind. Secondly, it will examine the influence of ancient Chinese philosophical thoughts on contemporary Chinese policy-maker’s conception of international relations in approaching global affairs. These two objectives are closely related. As Dr. Henry Kissinger was cited in Yan Xue Tong’s book: If China became a strong world power, the Chinese government would adopt ancient Chinese philosophy rather than Marxism or Liberalism to guide its foreign policy and the people outside China would be eager to learn about these ancient Chinese philosophical thoughts. (Yan, 2013) This research aims to bridge the gap between Western studies of the Chinese interstate relations and China’ s own perception of its rise in world politics. My concern is not only to explore the commonality but also to induce the recurrence of a wide variety of philosophical practice in contemporary world politics. Limits of the Study There is sufficient research on various ancient Chinese schools of philosophy on moral notions and domestic governance. This study will only discuss classical Chinese thought on inter-state relations, interstate order, transfer of hegemonic power and world leadership. The aim of this research is to lay a foundation for genuine dialogue of civilizations between East and West in terms of perspectives of international relations. This is expected to be conductive to a mutual learning process and has potential to enrich modern IR theory by casting Chinese thoughts. Research Questions Is there any commonality between Western IR theories and ancient Chinese schools of thought, where does it arise and what form does it take? Does ancient Chinese school of thought of interstate relations still have implications on contemporary Chinese foreign policy? Methodology This research will horizontally juxtapose Western IR theories and major ancient Chinese schools of philosophy (Legalism, Confucianism, Daoism and Guan Zi’s thoughts) by comparing their analytic methodology, main arguments, views on hegemony, and their empirical implications for China’s rise. Analogies and dis-analogies in those philosophical practices will be traced out between Chinese and Western thinking. Vertically, comparison among thoughts of Chinese philosophers will also be employed. According to Waltz’s three levels of analysis of international relations (Individual, State, and System), Confucius analyzed interstate relations based on individual moral values. Guan Zi and Han Fei Zi’s analyses however, emphasize the level of the state. Lao Zi (Daoism) conducts his analyses at the system level, from the perspective of the abrstract world. Comparisons between Chinese classical schools of philosophy and western IR theory will be employed as follows: Legalism (Xun Zi and Han Fei Zi) VS. Realism Briefly speaking, Xun Zi (313-238 BC) and his students, such as Han Fei Zi, have a dark notion of the human-nature just as realism. This is not unlike Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’s state of nature, which they described as a condition where men are engaged in a war of all against all, constantly struggling for survival. According to Classic realism scholar Morgenthau, the human nature is rational, egoistic and constantly seeking to maximize power. These anthropologic premises can be transferred to the behavior of a state in an international system. Xun Zi and Han Fei Zi also described human nature are vicious, constantly pursuing self-interest and benefit. Xun Zi believed that the ideas of a state’s leader have a determining role on its nature. The stability of the international system depends on the nature of the state. Xun Zi listed basic moral principals, such as credibility and trust among allies as necessary for a leader to gain world leadership. If an issued de cree turns out to incur loss for the government but benefit the people, the leadership should uphold it rather than lose the trust of his people by abandoning it; if a ratified treaty between allies is in conflict with a state’s self-interests, the state should not withdraw from it as to not lose the trust of his allies. A recent example for this is the protocol of Kyoto; the US, typically assuming the role of the world leader, shirked its responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emission and has been blamed for this by other nations. Xun Zi emphasizes the importance of credibility among allies to gain hegemonial power, rather than employing tricks to cheat its allies. In addition, the comparison not only reveals parallels between Machiavelli’s and Han Fei Zi’s thoughts about the politic reality and morality, but also display subtle differences between them. Guanzi’s thoughts VS. Neoliberalism Guan Zhong (d. 645 B.C.) was a prime minister of the State of Qi in the Spring and Autumn period, the Guan Zi is one of theà £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬collections of Guan Zhong’s thoughts concerning statesmanship. Guan Zhong’s domestic policies and diplomatic strategy helped the Qi state to become the leading state and hegemon in the Spring and Autumn Period. Guan Zhong believed that the economic well-being was the foundation of a state. â€Å"When the granaries are full, the people will know propriety and moderation. When their food and clothing is adequate, they will know the honor and shame†[3]. This reflects the underlying notion of the rational individual. People with sufficient wealth would be easily cultivated with decency and etiquette, and be more like to obey the regulation. Then, a rational individual can enjoy their freedom and pursue their interest. Guan Zhong’s reform motivates farmers, handcraft men, and businesses by lowering tax and reducing government interference in order to promote production and free economy mechanism. Meanwhile, due to beneficial trade policies, the Qi state became the busiest trade center in ancient China. Guan Zi’s perspective has commonality with contemporary liberal assumptions associated with John Locke and Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, the rational quality of the indivi dual, despite their self-interest, will lead individuals to cooperate and construct a peaceful world. Moreover, Guan Zhong also recognized the anarchical world order is a reason for world’s instability. He called for all states to honor the king of Zhou and to set up international norms, to avoid anarchy and restore the hierarchy of the Zhou dynasty, which would reduce the likelihood of war. In addition, he proposed a confederation. Its member remained sovereign, linked only by partially federal institutions and by collective security alliances against barbarian in the northern China as in Europe today. In contrast to most liberals’ perspectives of the equality of state sovereignty, Guan Zi believed that there was hierarchical structure between members of a confederation. States are not equal, powerful states should take greater responsibility. Perhaps, the account of Guan Zhong may better explain reality of the international system. We can notice that the features of hierarchical structure and power relationships among members of the main international organizations today: Permanent members of United Nations, voting structure of World Bank and International Monetary Fund[4]. The aim of Guan Zhong’s reforms were to build a justified hegemony status for Qi, similar to Charles P. Kindleberger[5] and Robert Keohane’s hegemonic stability theory, which argues that to maintain the stability of the international system, a single dominant world power is needed to enforce and develop the rules of the system. Confucianism VS. Idealism Confucianism has been an essential element in Chinese society, politics and international relations. Confucianism highlights the role of virtue for harmony and peace (à ¥Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ã…’). Moral standards of â€Å"ren† (benevolence)à £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬and â€Å"li† (rituals, moral standards)à £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬will be able to maintain harmony in family, stability in a nation, and peace in the whole world. Confucius emphasized that good government and internal peace and prosperity of a nation would play a significant role in the world and serve as a universal paradigm for other nations. Confucius’s scholar, Kang You Wei, advocates moral reforms to extend Chinese benevolence to the Westerners to avoid direct conflict (Feng, 2007). To some extent, Confucianism perspectives parallel classical liberalism, which rests upon the normative premise: although liberals accept that different societies have different values and norms, they believe in peace as the one common interest of all societies. Daoism Daoism is brought about by Lao Zi and developed by Zhuang Zi and Sun Zi. Dao means the universal objective laws. Lao Zi summarized the law of universe by observing regular patterns of nature and human beings. This can best be understood by observing the parallel to the modern notion of the laws of nature. According to modern understanding, the universe and all beings and objects within it, rely on a small set of universal objective laws. Everything that evolves within the universe can be derived from these laws, even if enormous complexity can obscure this fact. Indeed, it is widely believed that a final, single law (GUT) can be found from which everything else can be derived. In this spirit, one should understand Lao Zi’s sentence â€Å"The dao bears one, one bears†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (â€Å"à ©Ã‚ Ã¢â‚¬Å"à §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ ¼Ã…’à ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ºÃ…’à ¯Ã‚ ¼Ã…’à ¤Ã‚ ºÃ…’à §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â‚¬ °Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ ¼Ã…’à ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â‚¬ °Ãƒ §Ã¢ € Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â‚¬ ¡Ãƒ §Ã¢â‚¬ °Ã‚ ©Ã¢â‚¬ ). This principle is reflected in the principle of the scientific method. The outset is the scientific mind observing its environment and recognizing a pattern (à ©Ã‚ Ã¢â‚¬Å"à §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â€š ¬), by continued research, the pattern can be refined into a law (à ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ºÃ…’), which itself is the starting point for further refinement (à ¤Ã‚ ºÃ…’à §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â‚¬ °). This chain bears the potential to create a whole universe (à ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â‚¬ °Ãƒ §Ã¢â‚¬ Ã… ¸Ãƒ ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã¢â‚¬ ¡Ãƒ §Ã¢â‚¬ °Ã‚ ©). There is an incisive exposition in regard to international relations in Chapter 61 of â€Å"Dao De Jing†, which reads as follows: The great country may be compared to a low-lying lake where many rivers converge;à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨it is the mixing place of the world, the reservoir of all under heaven, t is said that by practice of quiescence and humility the great can absorb and conquer the small witho ut effort,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨and the small and insignificant can gain riches and treasure by submitting to the great.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨The great state wishes to keep and nourish its people, and help others.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨The small state wishes to help its people by joining with the peace and strength of the larger state.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨Both states get what they wish by submitting.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨Greatness lies in placing oneself below.à £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬(Translated by John Dicus, 2002).à £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬Lao Zi emphasized stillness and humbleness in inter-states relations.à £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬The legacy of Daoism has influenced contemporary Chinese foreign policies and has been well laid out in the five principles of Deng Xiao Ping’s foreign policy guidelines. The essence of Deng’s foreign policy is to keep a low key in international affairs and strengthen domestic affairs. According to Daoism, staying in neutral (à ¤Ã‚ ¸Ã‚ ­Ãƒ ¥Ã‚ ºÃ‚ ¸) is safest and yields the most sustainable p rofit. â€Å"Don’t stick your head out† entirely discourage a state to pursue hegemony. This can be understood in terms of the western IR concept Balance of Power, which states that the power of a hegemon will always be counterbalanced by a strategic alliance of rivals in order to secure their interests. Conclusion In the course of this work we will compare major ancient Chinese philosophies to western theories and concepts in International Relations. We will pick a subset of each group and draw direct one-to-one comparisons in horizontal pairs. The choice of pairs is guided by the rough degree of similarity in the general framework. In particular we will compare Confucianism to Idealism, Guan Zi to Neoliberalism and Legalism to Realism, with the Chinese and the western part respectively. Complementarily, we will draw vertical comparisons among the ideas of the Chinese schools of philosophy. Preliminary Bibliography Acharya, A. (2011). Dialogue and discovery: in search of international relations theories beyond the West. Millennium-Journal of International Studies, 39(3), 619-637. Chad Hansen, (1992), A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation, Oxford University Press Gerald Chan,(1999), Chinese Perspectives on International relations: A Framework for Analysis, London, Macmillan Press LTD. Feng Huiyun (2007)Chinese Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Decision-making: Confucianism, leadership and war, London, Routedge Yan Xuetong,(2011) Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power,Edited by Daniel A. Bell Sun Zhe. Translated by Edmund Ryden. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press Zhang, C. (2013). Understanding China’s attitude toward international order: from general delegitimization to selective embeddedness. Jeffrey W. Legro, (2007) What China Will Want: The Future Intentions of a Rising Power, Perspectives on Politics, American Political Science Association http://www.chinaguanzi.com/newsview.asp?id=790 Jack Snyder, ‘Some Good and Bad Reasons for a Distinctively Chinese Approach to International Relations Theory’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APSA, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts, 28 August 2008, 9, 10. [1] The tradition Chinese philosophy on inter-state relations originated from the Spring and Autumn Period ( 770bc-476bc) and the Warring States era (475bc-221bc). During these periods, the competition for territory and hegemony status among princely states forced states seek to balance of power and develop relationship among them. [2] Yong Deng, 2008, China’s Struggle for Status: the Realignment of International Relations, Cambridge University Press [3] à §Ã‚ ®Ã‚ ¡Ãƒ ¥Ã‚ ­Ã‚ Ãƒ £Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ §Ã¢â‚¬ °Ã‚ §Ãƒ ¦Ã‚ °Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ [4] Daniel A. Belll, p11 Introduction, [5] Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-39, Chapter 14, An Explanation of the 1929 Depression, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 291-308