Organizational Design, Growth and Challenges Research Paper

Organizational Design, Growth and Challenges - Research Paper Example This is an acronym used to depict the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of an organization. The four components are separate yet integrated; in this regard, the best way to carry out SWOT analysis entails identifying the strengths and weaknesses of any organization prior to tackling the opportunities and strengths. This paper analyses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Wal-Mart Stores. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is a renowned American multinational retailer corporation operating chains of large discount warehouse and departmental stores. It is currently the biggest private employer in the world with slightly over 2 Million employees. Wal-Mart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton. It was incorporated in 1969 and began to publicly trade in the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Wal-Mart’s headquarters is based in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA. It has eminently expanded over the years. Currently, Wal-Mart runs 8,416 stores located in 15 different countries. With the view of understanding the entire environment of Wal-Mart, it is important to critically analyze its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (Oldham, 1980). As evidenced by its incredible success, Wal-Mart has abundance of strength. For instance, Wal-Mart offers a wide variety of merchandise at very competitive prices. Due to their large purchases they receive exorbitant discounts from their suppliers, which is passed down to the customers. Strength of Wal-Mart is in fact that they manufacture their own brands and supply goods from local suppliers to retailers. Wal-Mart’s large size and high purchasing power is also strength on its own. It has an incredible team of executives who form its leadership. This has equipped Wal-Mart with a management of high caliber. The company spends its resources carefully with the aim of maximizing their margins (Burton, 2012). With regards to weaknesses, Wal-Mart, being a large multinational company, has a large pool of employ ees. Managing all these employees is never an easy task. It, therefore, poses a major challenge to Wal-Mart’s management. Quality of goods sold is another major concern. Owing to its low prices, customers sometimes question the quality of goods. Customer satisfaction is, therefore, not guaranteed. As with opportunities, Wal-Mart has been able to expand into other countries and has formed partnerships with other companies. However, there are still some markets that are yet to be reached by Wal-Mart. Another opportunity is that of taking over some overseas companies, such as ASDA in the United Kingdom. With the escalated trend of internet shopping, Wal-Mart has the opportunity to develop strategies that will enhance home delivery of goods whose orders are placed via the internet. Another opportunity is that of creating convenience stores. This could enable Wal-Mart to overcome local restrictions, as well as travel costs. The most prevalent threat facing Wal-Mart is competition. Local, as well as international competition, has posed a major threat to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has been vulnerable to attacks regarding ethical issues as well. In this purview, they have been accused in providing low pay and poor working conditions to its workers. Environmental issues also threaten Wal-Mart’s success. Company/Organization Name: Wal-Mart Stores STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES Large market share Discounts by suppliers Price leader Large variety of

Mobile Banking and Crowdsourcing and Networking Research Paper

Mobile Banking and Crowdsourcing and Networking - Research Paper Example Experts suggest that success rates can be relatively high in the case of smishing attacks. In case of vishing, voice communication is used to obtain unauthorized access to an individual’s account information. In cloning, identity of one mobile phone is copied to another and this practice gives the hacker access to user’s bank account details (Mobile banking overview 2009). Finally, a stolen or lost smartphone may give the victim’s account details to outsiders. In all these cases, the reliability of mobile banking transactions is challenged. B. Admittedly, the development of PDAs, iPads, e-Readers has drastic effects on items like newspapers, paper books, music CDs, and game DVDs. According to a report, the circulation of print newspapers has been alarmingly declining since early turn of the 21st century (The State of the News Media). The same trend is reported in the case of paper books too. Compared to printed newspapers and books, online books and news media are more convenient and cheaper to users today. To illustrate, many of the online books and news channels are available absolutely for free of cost and a user can obtain required information quickly using search options. Similarly, the sale of music CDs and game DVDs has been significantly dropped with the innovation of devices like PDAs and iPads. People can easily and freely download music and game products directly from the internet using those devices. A. While comparing with the traditional marketing, advertising, product testing, and product design with corresponding crowdsourcing based methods, it seems that crowdsourcing constitutes the future of content marketing. â€Å"Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributors from a large group of people and especially the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers† (  Kimbrough, 2013). Since the major aim of every business is to design

Food Production Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Food Production - Research Paper Example The problem with these technological approaches to increasing harvests is they have created a system of food production that looks to productivity as the only measure of success. Our current system of â€Å"factory farms† is highly productive but we are ignoring the environmental damage, the loss of nutrition and quality of our foodstuffs and the ethical concerns raised by the current feedlot method of raising animals for food. The true cost of our current industrialized method of food production can only be realized when we factor in all of these variables. The â€Å"Green Revolution† of the 1960’s was truly a historic turning point for global agriculture. For the first time, populous nations such as India and China could feed themselves with the use of new farming techniques such as no-till planting and the administering of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers to the land. More food was being produced than ever, but at what cost? Globally, farmers needed to raise more crops than ever because they needed to use fertilizer to compete with corporate farms. The abundance created by the â€Å"Green Revolution† suppressed commodity prices. ... We have learned much about how to limit the damage caused by these powerful chemicals over the decades, but that does not change the fact that entire ecosystems, such as the Chesapeake Bay estuary, are constantly under stress as a result of out current agricultural practices. A final negative consequence that our current mechanized method of farming creates is an over-dependence on fossil fuels. Massive tractors and harvesters are employed to such an extent that a rise in gasoline prices now equates a rise in food prices. We have found ourselves in a precarious situation once again. Before the â€Å"Green Revolution† we had hunger due to a lack of productivity. Now our factory farming system is creating a situation where the costs of production are putting the cost of food out of reach of many people. We have hunger because of a lack of money, not a lack of productive capacity. Another problem that our current method of industrialized food production is causing is a drop in th e nutrition found in the foods we eat. Many diseases and ailments have been linked to eating highly processed food that contain dyes and large amounts of refined sugar. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables is less common than in the past for several reasons. Processed foods are often more convenient to eat. They are packaged and often require a minimum of effort (or no effort at all) to prepare them for consumption. Fewer families sit down to eat meals together than they did in the past as well. Society has changed and the pace of life has increased for many people. As a result, processed foods of convenience such as fast food, has replaced more healthy foods such as vegetables and whole grains. But the

Unit 4 Individual Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Unit 4 Individual Project - Essay Example Euthanasia is a word derived from the Greek, simply means a â€Å"gentle and easy death† (Oxford English Dictionary, 2004). Obviously, supporters of the decriminalization of euthanasia are not using the word in this uncontroversial sense. They are not simply supporting the expansion of hospices and improvements in medical services. Rather, they are arguing that doctors should in certain circumstances be allowed to ensure an easy death not just by killing the pain but by killing the patient. Often the decision to practice euthanasia is more of a decision between letting the person die now or later, rather than a choice between life and death. Thus, it could be deemed that the movement in favor of euthanasia may be rooted in our fear of facing death, and that euthanasia is used to hasten death so that we will not have to cope with the consequences associated with the actual process of dying. In fact, according to U.S. surveys, there is greater support for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia among patients and the general public than among physicians (Kashima and Braun, 15 October 2001). More Caucasians support these practices than members of ethnic minority groups (Braun, et al., February 2001). This is a very sorry situation wherein people would like to have complete control of their lives. In reality, humans have limited control but, ultimately, are forced to accept phenomena which they cannot change. Sickness and death fall into this category. The humane response to a dying person is to keep him company and alleviate his discomfort. There is no medical or ethical reason to deprive a person of all the pain medication needed to keep him comfortable and, for most people, a regimen of comfort care can be established in either a health care facility or at home. To be sure, keeping company with the dying and caring for their physical needs is a demanding task, but it is not a task

Popularity of Java Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Popularity of Java - Research Paper Example The popularity of Java is not without a reason, but it stems from several attributes that make developers choose this programming language. Java remains popular because it is robust, secure, easy to use, and portable. Java is robust Java has several attributes that make it a robust programming language as compared to other alternatives such as Visual Basic or C++. Firstly, the creators of Java created this program with network operations in mind. There are a few programing language that can handle communication between networks like Java does. With the popularity of using the internet to deliver distributed applications, Java became the popular choice of many developers interested in exploiting network functionalities. The success of Java to boost the development of distributed system rests on the fact that Java is portable (Birkland, 2003). In java, programmers have access to libraries that allows them build scalable applications that communicate through the network using protocols such as TCP/IP. In addition, Java allows the use of HTTP and FTP protocols making the java program popular. It’s the ability of Java applications to work across networks that made the language popular among many developers targeting the internet as their medium of distribution. Java is also robust because it provides programmers with powerful exception handling, a feature absent in other programming languages. The choice of Java among many programmers stems from the fact that Java is out of box programming language that enforces strict type checking. This implies that developers have the ability to detect and make correction of issues while still developing applications. This characteristic allows java developers to worry less that their programmers will not work after they are compiled (Birland, 2003). Moreover, when java programs encounter errors, the error handling feature allows them to handle the errors and prevent the application from crashing. This trait of Java is a p ull factor that makes programmers builds robust application. With the development of applications using Java less error prone, many developers prefer using java. Automatic memory management in Java makes this programming language a robust platform for developer to build enterprise class applications that have high performance. When an application is running, memory management is one of the fundamental processes that assure programmers of correct applications that run with no errors (Manuel, David, Katzalin, 2012). With java, the process of tracking used and unused memory is a function of Java and not the programmer. This implies that Java programming give developers that assurance that their software will handle memory efficiency and avoid runtime errors that could crash the application. Without an automatic memory management process, programmers have the duty to allocate memory to processes and reallocate the memory once they are in use. With memory management in java being an auto matic process, many developers prefer using Java as their programs are less prone to memory management issues. Java is a secure programming language The develop community tout java as a secure language that allows secure transaction across networks. The structure of java programs ensures that java programs execute within the java runtime environment and not outside this scope. This feature of java ensures that

The Rebel by Charlie Nguyens Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Rebel by Charlie Nguyens - Essay Example Before 2002, foreign films were not allowed screening in movie theatres. The government revised its policy in 2002 and the private movie studios were given the green signal to carry out their work. This policy change brought new opportunities for independent movie producers to become commercially successful. By 2005, the private studios were seeing success in terms of production and distribution of movies but the commercial and independent moviemakers received no funding. The policy change seemed to lure for the expatriates who saw an opportunity in making films in Vietnam. Low-budget movie makers and technicians found the business profitable in the wake of increasing domestic disposable income. The expatriates especially jumped on the bandwagon. However, the moviemakers did not enjoy complete autonomy because the state policy determined the overall film production. The taste of the audience also governed the theme and movie genre. Betrayal and loyalty have turned out to be the two major themes in the Vietnamese film production history. The Rebel also portrays these themes, which are really relevant in the today’s Vietnam. Vietnam had remained at war for such a long time that it drained its economy and the much-needed liquidity. The country has either fought off invasions or engaged in wars with France, China, Japan, Cambodia and the US (Narkunas, p. 149). In 1979 Vietnam was fighting 1 million Chinese troops. The battle depleted Vietnamese economic resources and left it as one of the poorest countries in the world. It is inevitable that the theme of patriotism manifests itself in the Vietnamese film industry. The themes of betrayal and loyalty always almost always find its place in the screenplay of successful Vietnamese movies. The Rebel is based on the struggles of fighting the French occupation in Vietnam. The protagonists of the movie converse with his father about loyalty to the country.  Ã‚  

Unit_10_TAEASS403B Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Unit_10_TAEASS403B - Essay Example This would also ensure that the assessment that are in relation to the standards of the industry are consistent with the learning outcomes that are relevant and the specific criteria of performance for the qualifications, training fields, units of competency and the levels of qualification. In addition to this, this action would give the assessor knowledge concerning the effectiveness and appropriateness of the system of assessment in their work. It would also help in evaluating the assessment objectives process that would be used, and in confirming the decisions that they would make in relation to the assessment competency. The information regarding the assessment benchmarks could be gathered from a number of sources. This includes other RTOs, industrial associations, professional associations, networks, and the relevant ITABS. In order to prepare, Jeremy and other assessor would need to identify the person to be involved in validation; agree and determine the focus and purpose of validation; identify the particular tools, instruments, methods, situations of assessment, and results of assessment that may come under scrutiny; identify the required standards and benchmarks; identifying the head of the process of validation; finding out the functions and activities of other individuals that would be involved in the process of validation, and agreeing on the approach and method of validation. The rule of evidence shows out that all the evidence must be sufficient, authentic, and current. The assessor needs to gather enough evidence so as to ensure that the assessment candidate would be competent in all the elements of the criteria of performance. The collected evidence needs to be recent to ensure the assessment of current competency thus validity. Additionally the assessors should also make sure that the gathered evidence belonged to the candidate. On the other hand, the