Elagabalus - Roman Emperor

Immigration And Assimilation Among The Hispanic Population

Immigrating to a new country is difficult. One of the largest groups of immigrants that migrate to the United States are the Hispanics. There are approximately 11.7 million immigrants in the United States as of January 2010, and the amount continues to increase at a rapid rate (Warren, 2013). On average there are approximately 300,000 Hispanic immigrants entering the United States each year (Warren, 2013). Hispanics come from all Latin America including Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Central and South America (Warren, 2013). The United States has represented liberty and freedom to these individuals, and they often make critical decisions and take chances in the hope of a better future. Individuals often, leave their home country in hopes of a new beginning. The aim of this paper is to provide an extensive research on the current literature on immigration and acculturation among the Hispanic population. These immigrants at times may be undocumented and go to extreme lengths to get into the United States. For instance, some Mexicans risk their lives crossing the border. In many occasions, these individuals specifically the men get shot, and the women get raped. All Hispanic immigrants go to some extreme lengths to get into the country. For instance, Cubans are only ninety miles away from Florida and go to some desperate measures to get into the country. They get on raft and sail for days without food or water in the deep sea to make it aliveShow MoreRelatedAmerican Culture And Its Impact On American Society1599 Words   |  7 Pageshave Hispanics began to enter American Society and how have they assimilated or integrated to become part of it? Hispanics are a minority group who have overcome many struggles and stereotypes throughout history. It is important to know how it all started and how they managed to become such a huge part of todays society.  Hispanics Americans constitute more than 15% of the U.S population, and the number is still growing. It is the country’s largest ethnic minority group. When Hispanics enterRead MoreThe Issue Of Immigration Has Been On The Forefront Major Debates1684 Words   |  7 PagesThroughout America’s history, the issue of immigration has been on the forefront major debates. Immigration is among one of the most stimulating topics of discussion. Often when discussing immigration the question of assimilation also arises and whether or not immigrants are truly doing so. Since the beginning of this country, immigrants and even natives of the land have been pressured to assimilate to â€Å"American† Culture and to commit to its standards. When a group of people fail to assimilate toRead MoreThe Unsuspected Success Of Donald Trump s Campaign For President Essay1632 Words   |  7 PagesThe unsuspected success of Donald Trump’s campaign for president has proved to be the spark of a new nativist moment in the United States. Open hostility and opposition to immigration has moved into mainstream culture, as Americans become i ncreasingly intolerant of migrants as a result of their financial and cultural woes. Nativist sentiments are not a novel fixture of American political culture, however, as throughout history there have been countless crusades against migratory movements of theRead MorePast, Present, Future: American Indians and Latino Americans1480 Words   |  6 Pageshave gone through a lot of hardship in this country and continue to struggle with modern day America as they try to uphold their proud traditions. On the other hand Latinos deal with assimilation and mass in group segregation as the group continues to grow at a steady level, and changing the way people think about Hispanics as a whole. It would be hard to discuss how much American Indians are expected to shed their cultural heritage to truly be a part of contemporary society without first reviewing howRead MoreArticle Analysis: The Hispanic Challenge by Samuel Huntington1018 Words   |  4 PagesHispanic Challenge The United States is called a melting pot because in this one country, cultures and people from all over the world have converged to unify under one flag. Author Samuel Huntington writes in his article The Hispanic Challenge, that unlike other populations who have changed their identity when immigrating to the United States, many of the Mexican and other Latinos who have come to the country are not assimilating or modifying in order to fit in with the majority culture. FurtherRead MoreAssimilation: the Latino Experience Essay1924 Words   |  8 PagesImmigration has always been an issue in the United States, which is often portrayed as harmful and as major threat to American culture. As a result, various anti immigration policies have been aimed against immigrants in order to prevent and preserve the miscegenation of American culture, such as English only policies. Among the largest minority groups in the U.S, are Latinos who currently compose of 15% of the U.S population (Delgado and Stefancic 3). Unfortunately, Latinos have been accused ofRead MoreMy Family As A Multi Cultural Community1290 Words   |  6 Pagescommunity sent us into a culture shock and was quite challenging. Our family was not accustomed to residing in an area where ethnic minorities was the lowest percentage of the population. My siblings and I had been exposed to diverse individuals when we were out in public with our parents however, we never interacted and lived among people of different cultures and ethnicities. As to no surprise the educational institution that we attended was mainly comprised of the residents in our local district.Read MoreThe Legalization Of Legalizing Immigration Reform1488 Words   |  6 PagesGabby Punzalan Mrs. Schmidt Speech Debate 25 May 2014 Legalizing Immigration Reforms I. Introduction A. America, to everyone around the world – even to those who have not stepped on its land, is acknowledged as the Land of Opportunity, a place applauded and revered for its allocation of freedom and equality among its inhabitants. Because of this, those seeking to flee poverty and lack of resources to sustain their lives come this country to experience the American Dream. One might ask, howeverRead MoreThe For Multiracial Marriages And Multiracial Individual Identity1661 Words   |  7 Pagesblended populations in future generations. As this trend continues, it will blur the racial fault lines of the last half of the twentieth century. The nation is not there yet. But the evidence for multiracial marriages and multiracial individual identity shows an unmistakable softening of boundaries that should lead to new ways of thinking about racial populations and race-related issues. Sociologists have viewed multiracial marriage as a benchmark for the ultimate stage of assimilation of a particularRead MoreMulticultural Vs. Pluralistic Theory Essay1749 Words   |  7 Pagesincorporates their values, beliefs and traditions and integrates them on to a bigger cultural scale such as subcultures like Hispanics and African Americans. Steets (2014) explains each human child experiences a pluralism of significant others â€Å"in essential socialization and grows as a self in discovering a method for coordinating the diverse parts allotted to him or her. Hispanics and African Americans are two different and unique subgroups in the American society. Yet separately both groups have experienced

Complexity of Poetry Free Essays

Allison Gilpin Dr. Jones English 102 20 July, 2012 Complexity of Poetry Poetry is a way for the reader to openly interpret a poem in almost any way they see fit. Because there is so much freedom of interpretation with poetry, there leaves a lot of room for discussion and opposition. We will write a custom essay sample on Complexity of Poetry or any similar topic only for you Order Now Billy Collin’s poem, â€Å"Introduction to Poetry†, breaks down the basic ways for interpreting and understanding a poem. In summary, he explains that the reader cannot focus on trying to figure out one specific meaning of a poem, but instead, try to piece together small parts to understand a deeper meaning. Collin’s rules on how to interpret a poem can be applied to Hughes’s poem about a young student writing a poem for homework. Instead of looking at Hughes’s poem as a whole, the reader can better understand it by breaking it down and figuring out why each line is important and how it ties together with the poem as a whole. Understanding Collins rules to interpret a poem, help the reader decipher Hughes poem on a deeper, more academic level. Langston Hughes’s poem explains how a black, twenty two year old man and the rest of his white classmates are given an assignment to write a paper. The narrator, who is also the student, explains his thoughts about the assignment and how him being the only colored one in his class might be reflected on his grade on the assignment. At the beginning of the poem, he explains how he has to get to class everyday by traveling across some of the â€Å"better† parts of town. The student goes on to explain how even though he is colored, he likes the same things and has the same wants as everyone else. He states that he is no different than the rest of his class and that he too has knowledge to share. By stating this, the student is expressing to the reader how he thinks him and the instructor are equal. In the last few lines the student writes, â€Å"As I learn from you, / I guess you learn from me† (37-38). This explains how even though their skin color and age is different they are still able to learn from each other. The student has a somewhat optimistic and confident tone throughout the poem. He is aware of his capabilities and knows that he can be just as successful as anyone else. Billy Collins â€Å"Introduction to Poetry† explains how whenever people analyze a poem they do not try to find the true message of it. By writing, â€Å"But all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it,† explains how the majority of people are lazy and want everything handed to them effortlessly (12-14). This last stanza explains how some people look at poems from one point of view and expect the meaning of the poem to be written out for them. The author is stating that people should look at the poem from different angles just as one would look at the world from a color slide. He tries to explain to the reader that if one were to interpret the poem from a whole new approach, then they could find a deeper meaning than just the surface meaning. After reading Collins â€Å"Introduction to Poetry†, the reader should have a better sense of how to interpret Hughes’s poem. Throughout the first part of Hughes’s poem the reader may think all of the characters background information including his address, age, and hometown is pointless. After reading an entire stanza about this â€Å"pointless† information the reader may try to stop understanding the poem before they even finish it. If the reader uses Collins instructions about analyzing a poem, they may find that all of this â€Å"pointless† information is actually important and helps contribute to the characters feelings of insecurity. Collins poem explains that not all poems have one specific answer or meaning the writer is trying to get across. Keeping this idea in mind, the reader may realize that Hughes’s poem, in fact, does not state an answer or solution to the characters mixed feelings. Although both of these poems leave room the readers own special interpretation, there is a basic meaning and idea to each one. Both of these poems fit well together because Collin’s thoughts and ideas can be directly applied when reading Hughes’s poem. The poems are an effective example of how even though a poem may seem short and simple, there is usually a deeper and greater meaning beneath the surface. How to cite Complexity of Poetry, Essay examples

Operator and Application to Business †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Operator and Application to Business. Answer: Introduction There are different kinds of difficulties included in the organizational decision making procedure. Within the organizational decision making procedure, all the stakeholders are involved whereas the impact of the decision making is widespread. In other words, the organizational decision making process is the procedure of making the comparatively favorable choice amongst the other alternatives. Zsambok (2014) agree to that fact that the decision making within the organizations is one of the most significant management activities. Also, it is important to note that, only the managers are not responsible for the decision making process, but at every level the employees also contribute in the process of the decision making. Even though most of the cases, it is believed that the senior management make the decision, in the contemporary organizations, most of the decisions are made by the teams or the groups at the initial stage (Pettigrew 2014). This essay will trigger the decision making activities at both the strategic and operational level along with the problems being dealt at each of the levels. Pearls Boheme is a mid-sized jewelry retail business which is operated by a sole owner, Brigitte. The organization has employees such as sales managers, sales assistants as other stakeholders, but Brigitte is the only one who has been responsible for all the past decisions that have been taken so far. Brigitte is also responsible for creating and designing the jewelry other than handling the other aspects of the business such as advertizing, finance and sales. This issue has been a major problem in the organization as there is no other person involved while taking any significant decision. Even though there are several advantages of being a sole owner of any business such as making fast decisions or lower cost of employee management, sole ownership also comes with several disadvantages. Brigitte is the only one who should take the entire financial liability, therefore if there is any kind of business failure or other issues such as property damage or injured client, there is no one to make major decisions to manage the further consequences. In addition to that, the business can stop if Brigitte falls sick or not capable to work for any other reasons. Therefore the organization needs to stop doing business for a while. Therefore Pearls Boheme requires to review its decision making process for the further strategic and operational decisions. Organizational decision making is a procedure which can be of different types on the basis of the issues that arise. At the very first stage, the management requires to identify the specific issue because evaluating the issue would help the owner to judge all the aspects. After that, the manager should analyze the issue by utilizing the multiple perspective analysis as this will make the management to think out of their own perspective (Hartman, DesJardins and MacDonald 2014). According to the size and nature of the business, the decision making process of every organization tends to change. As the vision of Pearl Boheme is to make profit through doing what Pearls Boheme is best at, the organization aims to gain the competitive advantage by making distinctly different products than the other businesses in the market. While making any decision, the goal should be focused with utmost priority. Employee involvement In Pearls Boheme, there is no such formal meeting for the strategic decision making held. As it is a company for sole partnership, most of the decisions are taken by Brigitte on the basis of her years of experience and practice in the business world. Therefore, she utilizes her knowledge on the environmental factors and her business judgment for identifying the problem. However, it is significant for Pearls Boheme that there are two part time employees who are responsible for putting inputs at the strategic and operational decision making process. Even though Brigitte is the last word in the organization, she prefers consulting with others before taking any final decision. On an operational level, customer participation is most important for Pearls Boheme for creating long-term customer relationships. Therefore, the organization can introduce few customer loyalty programs which will help them to retail more clients in the long run. Along with that, past experiences in the business filed allow Brigitte recognizing the issue along with the cause, and therefore she makes the rational or intuitive decision after analyzing all the aspects of the issue. Brigitte takes all the major decisions by herself, therefore in most of the situations there is no meeting before taking any strategic or operational decisions. As explained by (), the organization follows the rule of taking steps immediately when known what is to be done. Therefore Brigitte takes immediate decisions and takes actions. The below figure demonstrates the way of making decisions for the business. Operational decisions are the ones which are made for managing the daily business within any organization. Mostly, these decisions are taken care of by the floor manager or the operations manager. It may sound easy; however there are thousands of decisions in the business on a regular basis (Shouzhen et al. 2014). The most significant thing about the day to day operational decisions is that, if it is not taken properly, it can destroy the regular service for the customers. As Pearls Bohemes is a sole partnership, Brigitte has to deal with all the regular issues by herself. She is often confronted with repetitive issues which involves different objectives such as deciding the material for a particular design, choosing the supplier for the business purpose or employee selection. Along with that, customer service is one of the major decision making procedure in the organization. It is also to be decided that a jewellery has been finished or fixing the pricing strategy (Solomon 2014). B eing a sole owner, Brigitte has to do the entire job on her own. Pearls Boheme also faced customer negotiations and the decisions that are related to the creation and designing of the jewellery where the decisions regarding creation of jewellery and the price of the piece requires to be decided. Strategic Decisions Strategic decision making is an ongoing procedure. This process includes creating new strategies for achieving the objectives and goals on the basis of the experiential outcome. For this reason the management has to work together towards its mission and vision statement. An analysis of the external and internal factors such as SWOT analysis can help the managers to achieve the objectives of the organization. If the management has a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, it is easier for them to make a decision where they can exploit the strengths while minimizing the weakness for avoiding the threats (Goetsch and Davis 2014). In Pearls Bohemes, the main objective of the brand is to become one of the leading jewelry businesses in Australia, therefore the organization always work together in fulfilling the expectations of the customers providing them unique and innovative jewelry. Therefore the organization works harder to provide more artistic and unique designs to the customers. The decision of relocation of the business has been taken recently. This decision has made the organization bigger and the better location has proven it to be a successful strategic decision. Nature of the problems There are different kinds of problems for Pearls Bohemes on a daily basis. The owner of the organization has to face several issues everyday and these problems are quite difficult to analyze and solve as most of the times, they are contradictory, incomplete and keep on changing the previous requirements. Mostly these issues are interdependent as while solving one issue at a time can create or reveal issues from another aspect (Rittel and Webber 1973). There are two kinds of problems faced by the organization, tame and wicked. It has a relatively well-defined and stable problem statement. It has a definite stopping point, i.e. we know when a solution is reached. It has a solution which can be objectively evaluated as being right or wrong. It belongs to a class of similar problems which can be solved in a similar manner. It has solutions which can be tried and abandoned. The characteristics of wicked problems are: There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem Have no stopping rule Solutions not true or false but good or bad No immediate and no ultimate test of a solution Every solution is a one shot no opportunity to learn by trial and error Enumerable potential solutions Essentially unique Can be considered a symptom of another problem Existence of discrepancy explained in numerous ways Planner has no right to be wrong For example, last month the organization has faced an issue with a customer who has been changing the requirements continuously, therefore it was difficult for the employees to follow her and provide her the kind of jewelry that pleases her. However when the design matched, she started complaining about the material that has been used. Therefore the manager has faced complicated issues with her as she kept on pointing out different issues with the piece of jewelry. Also there was another internal problem to it, as the employees were not willing to do the entire job on free of cost as they have already put adequate effort for this piece of jewelry. Therefore, Brigitte has to talk to the customer and after a long period of discussions, the customer has agreed on a decision and was ready to pay extra for the further changes. Therefore, it can be said that the even if the problems are difficult thee organization has to come to a solution which does not harm neither the employees nor the customers. Decision making Approach There are two different kinds of decision making approaches by the organizations all over the world, qualitative and quantitative. As a sole owner of the organization, Brigitte has to take the final decision after ensuring that all the aspects of the issue have been addressed. There are few basic differences in both the methods. In terms of qualitative method, the inputs are mostly non-measurable, however, with qualitative method the managers have to deal with the gathered data. Qualitative method also includes a profound insight on the information; however the quantitative data is mostly mechanical and only provides the statistical analysis of the gathered data (Anderson et al. 2015). The manager can calculate the rate of facing issues with a particular product but they cannot judge how much the customers are pleased with the product. Along with that, the researchers have also observed that the results of the qualitative analysis may be ambiguous sometimes, but the results of the quantitative analysis can be decisive. In this organization, the owner mostly makes qualitative decision making approach to reach to a solution (Goodwin and Wright 2014). First, the problem needs to be identified reviewing various aspects. After that the criteria of suitable judgment needs to be decided. After a detailed evaluation and judgment procedure, the solution should be implemented immediately. Criteria before making any decision (regarding products) Weigh (1-10) Price of the product 8 User friendly 9 Cost effectiveness 8 Structural description 8 Criteria (customer service) Weight (1-10) Delivery timing 10 Attitude of the employee 8 Flexibility of exchanging the product 6 CSR 9 Williams Rational Problem Solving Approach At the first stage the specific problem has to be defined in an unambiguous way. After that the decision criteria can be decided. The third stage is to weight the criteria which will eventually generate the alternatives after the alternatives for the solution. After rating each of the alternatives on the criteria, the management has to come to an optimal decision (Goetsch and Davis 2014). This tool helps to accommodate all the potential aspects which is related to the decision making approach. The assumptions are: Problem is clear and unambiguous Single and well-defined goals can be identified Alternatives (and consequences) are all known Preferences and needs are clear, recognised, and unchanging Time and resources are abundant accessible Decision will be implemented willingly and supported by all Conclusion In recommendation, it can be said that, in Pearls Bohemes, the owner should get another members in the management which will make her job easier. Till now, she has been the only one who has been responsible for the decisions. This also includes taking fast and prompt decisions, whereas on the other hand it comes with several problems such as if she falls sick, there is no one to take care of the business. Therefore the organization should appoint other members in the senior management as well. Reference list Anderson, D.R., Sweeney, D.J., Williams, T.A., Camm, J.D. and Cochran, J.J., 2015.An introduction to management science: quantitative approaches to decision making. Cengage learning. Ferrell, O.C. and Fraedrich, J., 2015.Business ethics: Ethical decision making cases. Nelson Education. Frey, D., Schulz-Hardt, S. and Stahlberg, D., 2013. Information seeking among individuals and groups and possible consequences for decision-making in business and politics.Understanding group behavior,2, pp.211-225. Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014.Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson. Goodwin, P., Wright, G. 2014, Decision Analysis for Management Judgement, 5th edition, Chichester UK, Wiley. Hartman, L.P., DesJardins, J.R. and MacDonald, C., 2014.Business ethics: Decision making for personal integrity and social responsibility. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pettigrew, A.M., 2014.The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge. Richey T 2005, Wicked Problems: structuring social messes with morphological analysis, Swedish Morphological Society (www.swemorph.com) Rittel H, and Webber M, 1973, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning in Policy Sciences, Vol 4, pp155-169, Elservier Scientific Publishing Co Inc: Amsterdam Schmoldt, D., Kangas, J., Mendoza, G.A. and Pesonen, M. eds., 2013.The analytic hierarchy process in natural resource and environmental decision making(Vol. 3). Springer Science Business Media. Sguera, F., Sekerka, L.E. and Bagozzi, R., 2017, January. Self-Conscious Emotions and Moral Decision Making in Business. InAcademy of Management Proceedings(Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 13728). Academy of Management. Shouzhen, Z., Qifeng, W., Merig, J.M. and Tiejun, P., 2014. Induced intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted averaging: Weighted average operator and its application to business decision-making.Computer Science and Information Systems,11(2), pp.839-857. Solomon, M.R., 2014.Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being(Vol. 10). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Sutherland, L.A. and Holstead, K.L., 2014. Future-proofing the farm: on-farm wind turbine development in farm business decision-making.Land Use Policy,36, pp.102-112. Williams, S.W. 2002, Making better Business Decisions: understanding and improving critical thinking and problem-solving skills, Thousand Oaks California, Sage Publications Chapter 1. Williams, S.W. 2002, Making better Business Decisions: understanding and improving critical thinking and problem-solving skills, Thousand Oaks California, Sage Publications Chapter 1. Zsambok, C.E., 2014.Naturalistic decision making. Psychology Press.

Worship and the Sacraments

Holy Baptism The Bible teaches Christians about the importance of Holy Baptism. Matthew 3 explores the issue of baptism in details. The chapter encourages Christians to embrace this rite. John baptized Jesus Christ in order to show people the way. Christians should â€Å"be baptized in an attempt to see God’s kingdom† (Yancey, 2002, p. 49). This is the same â€Å"case when the heavens opened after John baptized Christ† (Welker, 2010, p. 9).Advertising We will write a custom coursework sample on Worship and the Sacraments specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The Holy Spirit also descended to bless Jesus Christ. Matthew 28: 19-20 explains how Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to baptize all men in the name of God. Jesus encouraged all people to obey their God. Jesus also explained how he would remain with his people forever. The Book of Romans 6: 1-10 is a powerful text that explores the importance of baptism. Th ese verses give a comparison between Christ’s resurrection, burial, and death. The verses also explain why baptism remains a critical part of salvation. Colossians 2: 11-15 and 3: 1-17 gives useful verses about Baptism. The practice also makes Christians holy in Christ’s name. These verses also explain how Baptism becomes a guiding principle for all Christians. Holy Communion Another unique aspect of Christian worship is the Lord’s Supper. Several passages and verses in the Holy Bible support the practice. Matthew 26: 17-30 explains how â€Å"Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Passover on the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread† (Welker, 2010, p. 11). Jesus encouraged his followers to embrace the practice. The supper symbolized Christ’s body and blood. Luke 24: 13-35 explains how Jesus revealed himself to his disciples after resurrection. Christ appeared to his disciples and took the bread. He blessed and distributed it to his discipl es. He repeated the same act that characterized the Last Supper. The early believers viewed the Lord’s Supper as the best way to come closer to their creator. They wanted to worship God and repent (Corinthians 10: 14 and 11: 1). The practice became the Holy Communion. The book of Corinthians 11: 17-34 identifies some of the problems and misuses associated with the Lord’s Supper. Some people â€Å"failed to wait for one another during the Holy Communion† (Welker, 2010, p. 19). Some people also despised God’s Church. Some individuals humiliated their neighbors since they nothing to eat. Some individuals decided to celebrate without honoring Christ’s body. Acts 2: 42-47 explains how every Christian called the Last Supper â€Å"the Fellowship of Believers† (Yancey, 2002, p. 62).Advertising Looking for coursework on religion theology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The Lord’s Suppe r was a moment of remembrance. It encouraged believers to embrace new practices. It was the time to support the poor in the community. The Last Supper was a uniting factor that encouraged more people to enjoy God’s favor. Why God Connects His Word of Grace with Water, Wine, and Bread Christians equate water, oil, wine, and water to God’s teachings. These things are readily available. They make it easier for individuals to remember their God. It is also agreeable that God created man and gave him a physical body. Christ used physical substances such as oil, water, and bread to teach new ideas. This approach makes these things holy and symbolic (Yancey, 2002). Believers should sanctify and bless such things in order to represent Christ’s body on earth. Such physical things play a major role towards passing the message of salvation to different believers. Every Christian should embrace such things because they support his or her faith. Such â€Å"physical objects remind mankind about Christ’s promises† (Yancey, 2002, p. 98). Reference List Welker, M. (2010). What Happens in Holy Communion? New York, NY: Eerdmans Publishing. Yancey, P. (2002). What’s So Amazing About Grace. New York, NY: Zondervan. This coursework on Worship and the Sacraments was written and submitted by user Tristin Mcintyre to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

5 Other Online Dictionaries

5 Other Online Dictionaries 5 Other Online Dictionaries 5 Other Online Dictionaries By Mark Nichol Regular Daily Writing Tips readers know that I often extol Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the dictionary of record for the American publishing industry. Despite its apparent casual acceptance of nonstandard spellings, it’s an authoritative resource as is its Internet version, Merriam-Webster Online. But plenty of alternatives exist; here are five interesting and helpful variations on the lexicographical theme. 1. The Alpha Dictionary This portal features links to hundreds of foreign-language dictionaries and glossaries, as well as numerous specialty dictionaries and glossaries covering specific subjects like chocolate, jewelry, and weather, and more resources like thesauruses and collections of quotations. 2. The Free Dictionary Enter a word at The Free Dictionary, and you’ll get not only definitions from various dictionaries but also citations of the word in quotations, a translation tool to find the word’s foreign-language equivalents, and lists of related terms. The site also has starts-with and ends-with search functions and an option to call up a list of terms in which a particular word appears in the definition. In addition, you can look up acronyms and idioms and search encyclopedias, foreign-language dictionaries, and specialized dictionaries. 3. OneLook.com This dictionary offers more than just definitions of words you type in; it also enables a variety of tip-of-the-tongue searches: To return words and phrases beginning or ending in a certain word, type in that word followed by or preceding an asterisk, or type the first couple of letters of a word followed by a colon and any complete word to produce a list of words and phrases starting with those letters that pertain to that word. (For example, at:air brings up not only atmosphere but also â€Å"attic fan† and atomization.) Or, precede an acronym or initialism with expand: to find phrases these abbreviations stand for, and more. 4. Wordnik Wordnik collects definitions from numerous other dictionary websites, as well as displaying online citations of the word to provide context. 5. YourDictionary This plain-English resource provides easy-to-understand definitions. For example, the meaning of atmosphere, rendered at Merriam-Webster Online as â€Å"the gaseous envelope of a celestial body (as a planet), the whole mass of air surrounding the earth, the air of a locality, a surrounding influence or environment, the overall aesthetic effect of a work of art, an intriguing or singular tone, effect, or appeal† here is explained as follows: â€Å"the area of air and gas enveloping objects in space, like stars and planets, or the air around any location,† or â€Å"an overall feeling and/or effect of a place, specially if it is an environment of pleasure or interest.† This site also provides links to other dictionaries as well as other resources. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Book Reviews category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Great Opening Lines to Inspire the Start of Your Story50 Latin Phrases You Should KnowHow Do You Pronounce "Often"?

Heathrow Airport - Terminal 5 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Heathrow Airport - Terminal 5 - Assignment Example The operations are a special department in an organization that deals with the scrutiny of the activities to be done in the company. The strategies to be adopted by an organization are guided, planned and crafted by the higher executive officers in the organization. The strategies adopted in business are actually the long term planning of the business firms. A business strategy can be adopted by a company for a period of 3 to 5 years, or sometimes even longer than that (Honda Motor Company, 2007). The major resource issues related to an organization are also solved by a business strategy like, the issue of raising funds for a new manufacturing plant. The resource allocation to be adopted in an organization is also decided according to its business strategies. The business strategies are majorly of two types. These are generic and competitive in nature (Dale, 2003). The generic strategies adopted by a business organization deals with its growth opportunities. Decisions related to new acquisitions or purchases made by a business firm are taken according to the established generic business strategies of the firm. After the emergence of globalization, most of the corporate firms have turned out to be multinational firms. However, the decisions of internationalization of the firms are also undertaken according to the generic strategies adopted by the organization. The retrenchment activities of a business firm are also carried out as per the generic strategies. Thus, it can be analyzed that the generic strategies adopted by a business firm are the factors that ultimately influence the growth of the firms (Alkhafaji, 2003). In the contemporary business world, the degree of competition among the firms is excessively high. Thus, following the views of David Ricardo, the firms try to focus on their competitive advantages. The competitive strategy helps a business firm to operate as per its core competences. For example, the strategy of differentiation (in terms of price or qualitative aspects of products), adopted by the corporate firms is a type of competitive business strategy. The modern firms take the decision to produce on the basis of economies of scale in production. This is also a form of the competitive strategy adopted by the business firms. In short, a business strategy explains the manner through which a company would be approaching the marketplaces. There lies a strategic link between the business strategies and operational strategies. Operational strategies are the ones that are mainly concerned with the process through which a corporate organization can translate its business strategies into a form of practical and cohesive implementation plan (Porter, 1998). The operational strategies adopted by a business firm enumerate the technology to be used in the organization. These strategies also assure that a company possesses the desired manpower. The operational strategy adopted in a business firm also observes and takes active initiati ves to improve certain departments that are not well developed. According to the views of some scholars, operational strategy is actually an extended form of business strategy. For instance, a firm must have an objective to augment its gross operating income by 10% in every three years. This is a kind of a business strategy that is adopted by the firm. Suppose in order to assure the above

FEA program Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 4

FEA program - Assignment Example In the past, primitive models were used to come up with models with some having to exemplify on and model using hands. In as much as this is relatively good, the time spent and the accuracy of these models varied tremendously leading to errors. However, with an increase in technological aspects of the engineering environment, it is imperative to connote the ease in simulation that is made possible by improved technology. Many simulation programs exist depending on the field of application. For example, when dealing with simulation of circuits a program like Circuit Maker or in animation, Autodesk are just a few examples. In this assignment, the learner utilizes Ansys Workbench as the Computer Aided Engineering simulation program. The main reason for utilization of this software program is such that it will be possible to show divergent aspects of a simulation including loading, constraints, and cosmos to analysis and component performance. The beauty of this exemplification is in the fact that all the simulation is done in the context of engineering thus it becomes possible to understand various aspects of a component. All these elements and considerations tend to rely on finite element methods. It is good to note that when dealing with finite elements, a complex problem is subdivided into smaller actual problems such that the complexity of the problem is consistently eliminated by dealing with the problem in piecemeal form. History suggests that the source of finite simulation approach is in the fact that ancient scientists found it hard to deal with complex elasticity as well as structural analysis challenges that are inherent in the world of civil engineering as well as aeronautic engineering (Mori, Osakada & Takaoka 1996). To be able to solve these challenges, engineers came up with a five-step process that allows them to break the challenge into manageable pieces that are easier to deal with at every stage. The first aspect that has to

Has advertising helped to make men more self conscious about their Essay

Has advertising helped to make men more self conscious about their appearance Evaluate whether this might be a good or a bad thing - Essay Example The main reason for this is the amount of influence advertisements have on the society. There is no scope for doubt in the fact ‘advertising helped to make men more self conscious about their appearance’. When we go through the sales data of male oriented products world wide, we find a rapid shoot up in the business in the recent years. â€Å"In the United States, sales of male-specific cosmetics and toiletries went up 37.3 percent between 1998 and 2003, according to Euro monitor’s 2004 study, with total sales of such products hitting $3.8 billion in 2003†(as cited in http://www.naturalnews.com/005132.html). These sales would have multiplied many times by now. Many developing countries like India where men were least concerned about beauty matters have a men’s beauty parlor in every nook and corner offering the most modern beauty treatments. Metrosexuals are seen on all four sides and at least for some, feminity is substituting his macho man appearance. All pinks and bright oranges on a man are seen awkward though the guys are least co ncerned. He is too much conscious of how he looks and he is in front of the mirror whenever he can. It is still a debate if it is fair for the man to behave like a typical woman in his personal appearance matters. Not only does he takes care of his looks too much but also spends a huge amount of his earning on the same. For instance, let us check the sale details of Loreal Paris, the international cosmetic brand. â€Å"Together male perfumes and deodorant made up about two thirds of LOreals male cosmetic sales in 2007. The usage of male cosmetics has grown considerably over the last two decades. From 1990 to 2001, mens skincare usage increased from 4.5% to 21%. In addition, men skincare usage in Western Europe has increased about 28% between 2001 and 2005. Cosmetics companies have even began to penetrate the over-40 market, which is not as saturated as the

Current business situation of H and M

Current business situation of H and M Hennes and Maurits was founded in first 1947 by Erling Persson and later acquired Mauritz Widfoss in 1968. It is a Stockholm- based fashion company. After the business success at home, in 1964, Hennes launched its first overseas store in Norway, and 3 years later HM entered the UK market and started her expansion strategies. By the mean time, HM has more than 1600 stores in 32 countries and had become the 3rd largest clothing retailer in the world. Hennes Mauritz (HM), the probably most legendary fashion retailing firm in recent years, has spared out branches all over the world. In Europe, North America, Asia and even Middle East you can find HMs stores. After achieved successful sales goal and fame, HM has entered a very challenging market, Japan, by launching its first shop in Ginza, Tokyo. Although at the beginning HM has seemed to get great response and do a good work, Japan has long been struggled with economic recession and continues sales drop. Could HM keep its unbeatable records in Japan? The followings should analyse and recommend the retail strategies in Japan market HM should take. Fashion and Quality at the best price is the model of hers. HM produces Women, men, youngster and children wear. Besides garments, HM also has its own line in accessories, footwear and cosmetics. The King of Fast Fashion has its own production offices in Asia and Europe in order to keep the price down. Business situation is always critical for a companys success or failure. Both the global situation and Japans market, there are factors that favor or discourage business sales. In the global level, the mode of fashion retailing has been changing in recent years. Firstly, the influences of new brand or store chain are growing in the international market. For examples, store chains like Zara and Gap, they make hugh profits and arouse publicity in international level. They gained reputations and captured high percentage of market shares. Despite the past fashion industry that mostly the high fashion retailers could gain their influences, nowadays chain stores that sell street fashion for middle or lower classes can get their plaes in the fashion market. And it shows different fashion firms can gain market shares and impacts in the fashion industry. Secondly, the changed life style of the customers of the fashion companies also gives opportunities. Nowadays fast fashion is prevailing and people are getting more conscious and paying more attention to fashion. The market for fashion industry is growing. More important is that customers want fashionable items with lower price rather than expensive high couture, as they would like to change their wardrobe less than one month. That is why fast fashion is getting popular. Thirdly, e-market is one of the fields that fashion retailing firms paying affords in. The sale in e-market is growing, as the sales in internet has no geographic boundaries. Also internet is a good media to promote its company and products. On the other hand, business of fashion companies also faces a very serious problem economic tsunami. The economics tsunami affects customers confidence in buying and purchasing. Also customers tend to save rather than spend. The sales volume of many firms dropped significantly within 1 or few months. More than that, the sales volume predicted to drop continuously in next 1 or few years. Facing the economic difficulties and negative information about the markets future, it further discourages the customers buying behavior also the business sales. In Japan, the business situation is beginning described as challenging and advent HM. Japan is a fashion capital in Asia and even the world. People especially youngster group paid much attention in trends and fashion. They tend to spend much on clothing and other relatives item to fashion. Due to the great fashion awareness, fashion firms and chains can get ideal sales in Japan usually. Besides, Japan is the model and trends for the neighboring in countries, for example Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. Success in Japan means easier entry into the markets in these Asian markets. Moreover, statistics show that the mens wear market in Japan is great. In the past years, mens wear sales were comparable with womens wear. In 2007, mens wear sales were over the sales of womens wear. It shows that the mens wear market is in great potential for firms to enter and provides great opportunities. Although Japan seems ideal for fashion companies to get in, therere also shortcomings of Japan market. Japan faces economic downturns in recent years. In the past 10 years were the recessions of Japans economy. The sales volumes dropped and market for clothing and footwear declined. In the past 2 years things had been once better, however unfortunately there are global economic tsunami. International predicts that in future years Japans economy will remain in its downturn. Secondly the competition between firms in Japan is ardent. As mentioned above, Japans market is a paradise for old and new fashion brands. It attracts many international brands for examples the high brands like Marc Jacobs, Gucci, Hermes and also bringing like Zara, Gap that operates stores in modes that similar to HM. The competition between brands is keen. Also the local brands in Japan like Uniqlo abstract high market shares. For the entering of new brand, its important that one can stand for the harsh competiti ons. In additions, the aging problem is another concern for the market. As fashion is always viewed as the interest of younger people, the aging problems directly affect the sales of fashion firms. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS Company HM Zara Gap Uniqlo Start from Sweden, 1947 Spain, 1975 America,1969 Japan,1984 employees 68,000 150,000 Target market few middlemen buying in large numbers having in depth knowledge and understanding of textiles few middlemen buying in large numbers having in depth knowledge and understanding of textiles few middlemen buying in large numbers having in depth knowledge and understanding of textiles few middlemen buying in large numbers having in depth knowledge and understanding of textiles price Low middle low low Growth strategy Fashion and quality at the best price with own design increase the number of stores zero advertisement Increase the number of stores Design a new style every two week A lot of brand inside Low advertisement Fashion and quality at the best price with own design Cooperate with design and other brand Sponsor some ball game team Total stores 1,600 3,100 3,139 800 The number of Japan stores 4 30 130 750 (99in Tokyo) Start in Japan 9.2008 1998 1995 1984 Stores size 1,000 square meters 1,500 square meters 1,000 square meters Figure 1 Refer to Figure 1, analysis is below. As we know, HM is a huge brand in the world. It started at 1947 in Sweden. It has 1,600 stores in 32 countries HMs major competitors are Zara, Uniqlo, and GAP in Japan. They are the entire well-known brand in the world. Although HMs history is longer than them, it not mean HM is much better than them. Zara and Gap have more stores than HM, but their target market is very similar., They also target for a few middlemen, people who can buy in large numbers and having in depth knowledge and understanding of textiles, so that HM have a big challenge. Their price range also between middle to low, it can make more people afford it. HMs missing is that fashion and quality at the best price and increase the number of stores. However, Uniqlo also have the same missing, it want to provide a good customer service at the best price and own design. Moreover, Zara can design a new thing every two weeks. It can design 10,000 produce every year, it much fast than HM. Their stores also increase very fast. HM only have 4 shops in japan, but Zara, Gap and Uniqlo have much more stores in japan, especially Uniqlo. Moreover, they have a long history in Japan, but HM just enter Japan market in 2008. It is a big problem for HM, its competitor have more stores and stable customer. ANALYSIS ON HM EXISTING MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE HM has a clear hierarchy structure as shown in Figure 2 The Annual General Meeting (ACG) is the highest decision-making body where shareholders exercise their rights to make decisions for the company. Board of directors manages the company on behalf of the shareholders. The board gives directions and instructions to the managing director. Hence, the managing director performs daily management as directed by the board. Underneath, the executive managing team and country managers are responsible for central functions and sales countries respectively. Figure 2.1 In most cases, large organization generally has a complex structure. Here, HM has a matrix organization which is a mixed form of functional and divisional structure. Typically, matrix organization structure has two axes. On one axis of the matrix is a range of functional groups and on the other are the products or projects with a manager responsible for each. (Boddy, D., p246, 2005) In the case of HM, the project is organized by regions and each region has a number of stores. There is a manager in each country and he/she is responsible for profitability in their country and thereby has an overall responsibility for all the functions within the region. (refer to Figure 2.1) On the other hand, HM also organize and work on their tasks in project and team bases. By using these methods, managements not only organize their work more flexible with lower costs, but also giving out a faster response for their project or task. (Boddy, D., 2005) Here the executive management teams of HM responsible for each function are responsible for the results of work within their function in each country. What is more, specialists from various departments also brought together to form a project team and work on different projects. Figure 2.1 Regarding the matrix structure adopted by HM, some benefits are summarized as follows: simplifying the creation of appropriate routines and control systems, smaller units enable closer supervision, higher flexibility, faster response, enabling comparisons between the different companies within HM. However, this may lead to a significant drawback, which is low uniformity. Since there is high division of departments and regions, it is often hard for the central management to control the management and operation of different units. To enhance uniformity throughout the whole company, management documents like guidelines and manuals are delivered within the company. Moreover, the code of ethics permeated the entire company, describing the way employees should act in relation to the company and the outside world. For store operations, detailed instructions have also been given to store staffs in order to control daily work in the stores. Though guidelines and manuals are written by central departments, in 2006, inventory of the guidelines was carried out within each department so as to check any guidelines should be updated or created. This showed respect towards each units opinions. Evaluation and modification of guidelines and manuals result in better efficiency of work. To further explain HMs management structure, the degree of centralization could be examined. The code of ethics, internal policies, and manuals are created by central management. Important decisions that are strongly related to the companys profits are also made by the top management. Purchasing is centrally organized by the head office in Sweden as well. From the above, we could see high degree of centralization is exercised in HM. Nevertheless, HM has a decentralized system. There are 20 production offices dealing with 800 suppliers, and 20 country offices within 33 sales countries, handling all business affairs for the region it responsible for. Planning and organizing, such as store operation, advertising are carried out by managers. There are certain advantages and disadvantages of HMs decentralized system with centralized management. From the good side, uniformity can be enforced through clear and strict regulations and guidelines. Besides, this enables higher flexibility in tackling small problems in each department and region. On the contrary, higher risk of unsuitable merchandise for the sales countries may be resulted due to centralized buying decision in Sweden. In Japan, consumers are quite different and demanding on quality clothing which usual HM products may not satisfy them enough. To avoid such problems, more intense research and country-oriented approaches are needed. It is suggested that research or buying teams located in the respective sales regions could be set up to perform closer watch on trends and social affairs that could alter sales greatly and too quick before response come from the head office. ANALYSIS ON HM EXISTING RETAIL STRATEGIES HM is a very successful and expansive Swedish fashion group and also a famous company in Japan. HMs retail strategy has been developing in different aspects. The Best Price Strategy HM aims to give the customer unbeatable value by offering fashion and quality at the best price. It has been developing the Best Price Strategy. It maintains the best price by limiting the number of middlemen, buying in large volumes ,relying on our in-depth, extensive expertise within the design, fashion, and textile industries, buying the right merchandise from the right production markets, being cost-conscious at all levels and having efficient distribution systems. In Japan, the product price of HM is lower than others. Most foreign brands come to Japan and charge more than at home. HM is aiming to match global pricing. So now HM is one-half the price of Zara in Japan, thereby making most other Japanese retailers look relatively expensive. If Japanese consumer spending continues to decline, this will play into an even stronger position for HM. Main Collection Sub-Collection The buying function focuses on customers, fashion and composition of the range. HMs clothing collections are created in Sweden by around 100 internal designers, 50 pattern designers and around 100 buyers. It operates with two main collections per year, one in spring and one in autumn. Within each season, however, there are a number of sub-collections so that customers can always find new goods in stores. The aim of the company is to find the optimal time to order each item. Fashion For Everyone HM offers a wide range of fashion using many different concept, from updated classics and basics to clothes that reflect the very latest international trends. In addition, they sell clothes, accessories and cosmetics. The wearing range consists of everyday clothes to partywear. To make things clearer for the customers, it has divided up a range into a number of different concepts for women, men, teenagers and children. The clothes also have a high fashion content within each collection, so that customers can easily combine different garments and find their own personal style. Online Shopping Service HM have three sales channels, stores, the Internet and catalogues. In 1998, HM began its shopping online service which has since been continuously improved. A considerable expansion of mail order and online sales is being prepared to complement the stores in the existing markets. Stores continue, however, to be the main distribution channel. The strategy behind the owning of it is that HM can maintain control of the expansion strategy and of business locations. But Japan does not provide online shopping service, the sales channel is narrow. The Best Location Strategy The Best business location has been a firm principle of HM since 1947 and is less important nowadays. The HM store is now a well-established presence in most prominent shopping streets with considerable customer flows around Europe. In London, for example, they are located on Oxford Street. HM opened the store in Japan in Ginza, Shibuya and Harajuku. Before establishing stores in a new market they conduct a thorough analysis of demographics and purchasing behaviour. They also carry out a local survey of the shopping areas and shopping centres, document their size and where their competitors stores are located. Product Quality Control In order to maintain the fine quality of merchandise, they carry out quality controls. They strive to ensure that garments have been manufactured with the least possible impact on the environment and under satisfactory working conditions. HM is known as the king of fast fashion and spots emerging fashion trends, quickly creates knock-off designs and variation using 100 in-house designers. In Japan, the customers are nit-picking and require an extremely high quality fashion. HM may not satisfy their needs. OVERALL SWOT ANALYSIS OF HM The SWOT analysis is the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a company. A SWOT analysis actually has two parts and both are equally significant. Strengths and weaknesses are the internal analysis; the opportunities and threats focus on the external environment. Internal is regarding the information about companys market segments, their competitors relative weaknesses and strengths as well as the industry as a whole. When conducting an external situational analysis, the business customers, market and competitors are analysed. The overall SWOT analysis included the global situation and Japan environment of HM. Firstly, strengths and weakness of HM is discussed as below. Strengths HM was established in Sweden in 1947; it has a long history and is around 62 years. The past 62 years, HM did a great expansion worldwide. In 2009, there are 1,700 stores spread over 33 different countries and markets, and employ over 73,000 people. HM offer each country exclusive preferences and needs. Also there is exclusive clothing designs for online stores, and this system is provided in some of the European countries, such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Informational website is also one of the strengths of HM, everything about HM shown in the official website. It is convenient for customers to get the newest issues of HM, and also provides useful and updated information to all types of users. HM Magazine provides a good idea of how HM views fashion. It offers readers a mix of fashion, inspiration and the latest lifestyle trends. It is issued four times a year and is aimed equally at customers and staff. Like all HMs communication, the mag azine can be seen as an invitation to HM. It is important for building the brand in the long term and is also available on the HM website. Besides of the exclusive online shopping, HM also collaborated with fashion designers, designer labels, fashion models and celebrities to offer customers the exclusive collection, such as Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Viktor Rolf, Kate Moss and Madonna. On 20 September 2005, HM announced they have dropped Moss for the advertising campaign of their autumn clothing collection, stating that her image was inconsistent with HMs clear dissociation of drugs in light of recent drug allegations. HM did concerned about the society. In November 2008, Comme Des Garà §ons, a significant figure in modern fashion Japanese designer, exclusive collection for HM sold in 200 stores worldwide, including Japan, Hong Kong, US and UK. One of the most significant figures in modern fashion, Kawakubo has created a full mens and womens collection for HM, complete with accessories and a unisex fragrance. HM provides variety in fashion, different kinds of clothing and accessories that could easy for customers to match up with. The stores are refreshed daily with new fashion items. As with HMs clothing heritage, the idea across the Home collection is that consumers mix and match items and add to their existing dà ©cor and colour schemes. The first home collection will be available from February 2009 in the markets: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Cushion cover and bed linen sets are the key pieces. The materials are mostly cottons, linens, viscose-cotton mixes and organic cotton. The long-term investment in organic cotton is continuing at HM, aims to increase the use of organic cotton and the development of new green materials such as recycled cotton, wool and polyester. HM offering garments that are both fashionable and environmentally compatible. HM had a fantastic response to their eco-fashion, which shows that the customers care about both the environment and design. Weaknesses HM business concept is to give the customer unbeatable value by offering fashion and quality at the best price. When comparing with competitors, the garment quality of HM is doesnt at high level. Since all stock is displayed on floor, there is no backup stock for customers. The customer service is relatively low if the customer could not get any help from the salesperson. For the garment production, HM does not own any factories, but instead buys its goods from around 800 independent suppliers, primarily in Asia and Europe. The problem is that HM cannot get tightly controlled to the distribution network to get new product to the stores. The online shopping store is only provides in European countries, such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The online store could not gain worldwide customers attention. In Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria HM offers fashion by Internet and catalogue sales. For the employees, ther e is not a fundamental respect for the individual, which applies to everything from fair pay, reasonable working hours and freedom of association to the opportunity to grow and develop within the company. Opportunities It is the positive towards future expansion of HM and the companys business opportunities. In the past few years HM has been experimenting with new fascias including market company, which it debuted on Londons Regent Street in March 2007. A second company store will open this week in Westfield and the retailer believes there are further opportunities for the offer in the UK. The 14th store in Europe will open next spring in Paris. Since HM has signed a contract for its first store in Japan in end of 2006. The store is opened in 2008 November. It has been HMs dream to open in Japan. says Rolf Eriksen, CEO HM. There will be more stores in Japan in the future. HM has entered into franchise agreement with Match Retail Ltd. for store openings in Israel. The first HM store is planned to open during 2010. HM provides online shopping in a few European countries, but still hasnt announced plans to do so in Asia, North America and Middle East. It is a large market for HM. There is an opportunity to set up online store in those countries. The designer cooperation is the most significant for HM. The crossover series with the famous designer have made a stir in fashion industry. Many designers are willing to cooperate with HM, see it as a stage for showing their new design. It brings the new concept to the HM product and enhances their product competitive. HM crossover with Matthew Williamson do a spring collection for 2009. As the Japanese has a strong interest in fashion and Japan is a big fashion market. Japan fashion market is maturing, with competition between global companies intensifying in the Japanese market and with consumers becoming more and more selective about merchandise that they purchased. There is growing presence of shopping centers and fashion malls in and around cities giving consumers increasing choices of locations for shopping. This is causing change in the structure of the Japanese fashion market as well as consumers buying patterns. Threats There will be a keen competition between the similar style competitors, such as Zara, Gap Inc., and Uniqlo in Japan. And, the changes in consumer behaviors are also the threat of fast fashion. End of fast fashion as shoppers allegedly switches to less throwaway items. Weak holiday sales, economic downpour sales will be conducted in HM stores. There also will be frantic battles over products, the poor quality compete with the luxury goods; fast fashion compete with high fashion. Exchange rate fluctuations are strongly related to the export quantities of firms. Since there are a lot of stores all over the world, the rate changes is a big issue of the company. Internationally, HM has experienced some sales declines in recent months and sales across the business were two per cent down year on year at established stores in September. However, refuses to admit any serious threat to HMs success, stressing again its solid offer. It is not about value, but value for money and HM think they are unique when it comes to combining price, quality and fashion. It is the feedback that HM get from customer and it is their success factor. 3 RECOMMENDATIONS In order to raise the competitiveness of HM in Japanese fashion market, some retail strategies are recommended. We provide some suggestions based on 4Ps. Place For place aspect, it is suggested that HM should offer various distribute channels for increase the sale and enhance its competitiveness. First, providing On-line-shop is a good way to sell HM products. According to Mark Hogan , GM Group vice president said, Japan is the Internet giant of Asia. There are 47.08 million Internet users. 62 percent of them use e-commerce. It can prove that online shopping is a popular shopping method in Japan. Besides, there are no limitations of online shops locations. It means that even there is only 1 HM shop in Tokyo, people who live outside Tokyo can still buy its products though the online shop. Thus, On-line-shop can help HM broaden its demographic market to boosting its sales. Second, providing Automatic Vending Machine (AVM) can help HM to be successful. Japanese demand for automation. According to the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association report , there are 5.51 million machines in Japan in 2007, Japanese spend nearly 7 trillion yen (around US$ 58 billion) a year by shopping though AVM. It is a popular buying behavior in Japan. Third, it is suggested that HM should allocate AVM at Railway stations. According to a survey about Japanese Commuting conducted by japan-guide.com , train (JR) is the most commonly used of transportation for commuting in Japan. 53% of students and 48% of company workers indicated to commute to school/work by train or subway. Students and workers is the main target of HM. Thus, the suggestion is a fabulous idea for HM undoubtedly. Product For product aspect, release family-set outfit is a potential product for increase the sales. Most Japanese love wearing family-set outfit. Providing family-set outfit can attract those family targets. Besides, family-set outfit is complementary merchandise product. It means that if parents select and decide to buy an outfit, they should but another one to their child. The sale can increase doubly. Second, HM should improve its quality of products in order to succeed in Japan. The cloth of HM is not top notch quality. Japanese are known notoriously for rejecting products for minute reasons such as poor stitching, loose button, and inferior fabrics and the like. Moreover, manufacturing standards are so uniformly high in Japan that a business modal cannot succeed on design and bargain pricing alone. However, Uniqlo, one of the HM competitors, provide high quality products with a reasonable price. If HM thirst for success in Japan, it is important for it to improve the quality of its products. Promotion For promotion aspect, effective promotion is needed. Promotion can introduce merchandizes to customers and also attract them to come to the shop.There are so many ways to promote the merchandizes. Choosing suitable ways are very important because it affect the effectiveness of the promotion. First, mobile phone is a good media for promotion. Nowadays, nearly everyone have one mobile phone. Through mobile phone, messages can be easily and successfully transfer to many different people. SMS (Short Message Service) is one common method. In Japan, lots of people like to use SMS to communicate with each other, especially for the youngsters. Recently, Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology surveyed over 10 thousand students. In 5 secondary school students, there is one sending at least 50 messages by mobile phone every day. 7% of them even said that they sent about 100 messages every day. This shows that most of the teenagers like using SMS. Therefore, SMS is really a good method to send messages in order to promote products. Another common method for promotion is using matrix code (2D barcode). 2D barcode is a two-dimensional way of representing information. It is similar to a linear (one-dimensional) barcode, but has more data representation capability. 2D barcodes are in patterns of squares, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns. QR Code becomes the most popular type of 2D barcodes in Japan recently. The QR is derived from Quick Response. QR Codes are commonly found in the Internet and magazines. Most current Japanese mobile phones can read this code with their camera of the mobile phone conveniently. QR Code can encode Japanese Kanji and Kana characters, music, images, URLs, emails. Through this kind of barcode, information can be easily stored and attract people to get it. The QR Code Price Apart From using mobile phone, some programs can be launched in order to promote the merchandizes. Price deal is an example. Price deal is a temporary reduction in the price in a short period of time. It is very effective because low price can attract customer to go into the shop and pay more. Price deal is suitable for short period promotion. Another good example is loyal reward program. Consumers can collect points, miles, or credits for purchases and redeem them for rewards. In order to get the rewards, customers would like to come more frequently and buy more products. This program can last for longer period, usually a month. Launching different kinds of programs can increase sales effectively. Not only promotion, a good pricing is also very important to strengthen HM in Japanese fashion market. Low price should be maintained. HM have already set low price for the goods. Most of the products are affordable. This can attract customers, especially youngsters who cannot afford high price. The products are already at a best price and it is also one of the competitive advantages. Therefore, low price should be maintained. Another suggestion for pricing is that there should be a price cut for the last seasons fashion. Last seasons product have less attractiveness than the new products. In order to sell them more

Free Essays - Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange :: Clockwork Orange Essays

Banned for social reasons in many conditions and in many school systems, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange first seems to pierce the mind with its bizarre linguistic orgy of debauchery, brutality, and sex, and for some, refuses to affect them above the level of pure voyeurism and bloodlust (either for reveling in it or despising it). Sadism seems to twist the male protagonist; his mind becomes alive with brutal fantasies whilst listening to seemingly innocuous classical music ( â€Å"There were vecks and ptitsas, both young and starry, lying on the ground screaming for mercy, and I was smecking all over my rot and grinding my boot in their litsos.†). Many arguments have been made about the censorship of this novella which â€Å"glorifies sex and violence;† however, these elements are clearly manipulated for plot development and character development, and ultimately, the story does pose a moral lesson. By psychological definition, people affected with anti-social disorder (also known as â€Å"sociopaths† or â€Å"psychopaths†) have incredible manipulation skills; they also fail to â€Å"conform to social norms,† are deceitful and aggressive, and seek to destroy with little remorse. Sex, cruelty, and dominance define parts of anti-social behavior, and the odd near-antithesis of a hero, Alex, exists as the beloved psychopath in this cult story. He vigorously goes on nightly rampages with his band of â€Å"droogs† after consuming spiked â€Å"moloko,† tearing down what society has morally built and ripping holes into the reasoning of random citizens. Here, Burgess utilizes a unique method of writing by making the readers realize their affection for this teenage criminal, even in the midst of his violent perversions. As stated in many other summaries and analogies of the book, the ethics derived from the book revolve around the topic of choice. Is a person truly moral if their â€Å"benevolence† comes from forced conditioning as opposed to their personal choice for compassion? Does programmed decency towards people ultimately possess superiority over a natural psychosis? It can be argued that programmed decency protects the happiness of the main population, but natural psychosis comes from the choice of the individual, and protects their happiness (if the psychosis served as a source of joy for the individual to begin with, not insanity that brings about manic-depression and whatnot). Building the character of Alex to fully express the story and the questions the book will eventually pose doubtlessly requires the use of savage raping, theft, and the vicious, bloody beatings administered to many common people; these portions of A

Best Day Essay

Have you ever felt the emotion when you are going to see your favorite band or singer alive in a concert. This happened to me when I went to Sofia last year to see one of my favorite singers Enrique Iglesias. It was fantastic experience that I will never forget. The day was near, it was ten days befor the concert, and every day I asked my father for permission and money. One day he finally said â€Å"yes†, and he gave me the money. He told me that it was the gift for my birthday. I was so happy and immediately called my friend to tell her about the news. The next day we bought our tickets and we were waiting for the big day.We couldn’t believe that we would be in the most waited concert on September 29th , we never thought that in few hours, we would sing all the song of our favorite singer. When we arrived,we sat in the chairs, and we were waiting for Enrique. The lights turned off and all the auditory screamed like they were crazy. The orchestra began to play one of my favorite songs. The best singer appeared in the scene. That moment was so awesome and exciting for me, and everyone was all of the songs. In conclusion, I will tell tha, the concert was a big experience for me and I was so happy. At the end, we bought some souvenirs from the concert, like a shirt, some posters and a cup. The concert finished at 12 p.m. and we came back to our town with an experience that I will never forget. I will remember this moment as if it had been yesterday.

Explore Shakespeares presentation of Claudius Essay Example

Explore Shakespeares presentation of Claudius Essay Example Explore Shakespeares presentation of Claudius Paper Explore Shakespeares presentation of Claudius Paper Claudius is not presented as a typical villain. As always, Shakespeares characters are complex with many facets to their personality. Claudius is not a conventional villain as he has redeeming qualities, which make it impossible to categorise him as merely a damned, smiling villain. However, he certainly has been condemned to hell according to a Jacobean audience as he has potentially broken three of the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not commit adultery. By breaking the divine law, he is definitely damned and corrupt from the start, as he has killed his own brother for his crown and wife. It is shocking he committed such deeds, as the threat of hell and eternal damnation was more sharply felt in the Jacobean era, than it is today. This shows extreme greed, lust for power, and no concern for others, which are typical qualities of villains. However, what sets him apart from archetypal villains is that he has a conscience. Most villains are lacking in this and this makes Claudius a man of contradictions. In my essay I will investigate the complexities of Claudiuss character and look at how Shakespeare has presented him to prove he is more than a damned, smiling villain. Shakespeare presents the image of Claudius being a damned, smiling villain through Hamlet. As Hamlet may be mad, we cannot be sure whether his judgement can be trusted. A madmans view may not be credible, and Shakespeare always leaves an element of doubt over all his characters. We do not know if Hamlet really is mad, and therefore his view of Claudius is biased and unreliable. This essay will consider how Claudius is presented by Shakespeare and analyse his actions to form an opinion of whether or not he is a damned, smiling villain. Claudius is not morally upright, as is immediately evident from Act I: Scene II our sometime sister, now our queen. A Jacobean audience would consider marrying your brothers wife as incest. He shows lack of consideration and apparent indifference to his brothers death by marrying her with Oh most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets. By using the word Oh, Hamlet is appealing to the divine and imploring to the audience. This reminds us of the religious implications of Claudiuss actions and proves that he is indeed damned. Claudius proves to have quite a selfish and predatory nature, wisest sorrow think on him, together with remembrance of ourselves. At a time like this, he encourages his nation to think of themselves. Another example of his selfishness is at the end of the play in Act VI: Scene II. He doesnt do very much to prevent Gertrude from drinking the poisoned glass of wine, as he cannot admit his crime to save her life. This is extremely inconsiderate and selfish. He is supposedly in love with her, but he loves himself more. He shares qualities with the Devil, as the Devil is considered to make alliances with weak people with the promise of enjoyment and pleasure. However, in the end, the devil is only interested in hurting God through you, and brings about your downfall, according to a Jacobean audience. Claudius is similar to the devil, as he uses Gertrude to satisfy his lust, and gain the crown. If he loved her, he would sacrifice all his gained power and reputation to save her life. Claudius is an extremely ambiguous character, and he is full of contradictions. This is evident immediately in the play, as he is caught between two emotions, mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage. There is an ambivalent feeling with Claudius as you cannot tell if he is happy or sad. However, these paradoxes do not cast him as a villain, as it is possible to be happy and sad simultaneously. He contradicts himself a lot, and this keeps us guessing whether he is a villain or not, defeated joy. This could show he is the type who is insensitive to other peoples sadness, and only considers himself and his own happiness. However, as it is possible to be happy and sad at the same time, it does not necessarily make him a villain for feeling like that. He has a predatory nature as he moved in to become king as soon as his brother died, whilst Hamlet was abroad and unable to defend his position. However, the court wanted him to become king and this proves he has redeeming qualities, your better wisdoms, which have freely gone with this affair along. He did not have to seize power, he was asked by the people to become king, so he cannot be blamed for giving the people inadequate time to mourn the previous king as they wished for Claudius to rule them. This shows that he must have some qualities that make a good king, such as experience, leadership qualities, and his expertise must have shone out to the people. The King is patriotic, lets drink to Denmark. As he is the state, he must be patriotic. There is a symbiosis between the King and Denmark: they are one, our dear brothers death. With the use of the word our, it shows how he regards himself as the state. He asserts himself as King and this makes him popular. He is a seasoned warrior and very experienced. He makes a good king practically, but not morally, to gather so much as from occasion you may glean, whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus. He is very fraudulent as he employs spies on his son. He is a wise, shrewd politician as he averts war with Norway. He is level headed as he doesnt rush into battle straight away to prove his leadership qualities. This could, however, be interpreted as cowardice which is a villains trait. He is an extremely good orator and a talented diplomat which enables him to deal with public relations effectively, giving to you no further personal power to business with the king, more than the scope of these dilated articles allow. He deals with the threat of war extremely effectively as he does his injudicious marriage to Gertrude. However, his talents are lost on Hamlet, who is set against him, no more like my father than I to Hercules. Another trait which makes us suspect he is a villain is that he has trouble trusting people, as he judges them by his own standards. Polonius is his only confidante. He is crafty, sly and devious as he uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him. He also uses Laertes to eliminate Hamlet without involving himself and getting blood on his hands. He is very manipulative and clever in a cunning way. He is very cool, calm and collected, which makes his reaction to the play all the more dramatic, as it is unlike him. The performance traps Claudius into admitting his guilty conscience, Give me some light. Away! he abruptly leaves the play calling for light, and a fiction discovers the truth of the ghosts story. He is a man of many contradictions, as running from the play and betraying his emotions so easily is uncharacteristic of him. His craftiness is contradicted by his honesty during the prayer scene in Act III: Scene III. He is honest enough to admit he has committed a crime and struggle with his conscience, my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent. He is a man of conflict; God and the Devil are struggling with his soul. Unlike customary villains, he feels remorseful and he has a conscience, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven. The irony involved in the prayer scene is that Claudius realises he is guilty of vast amounts of sin, but he cannot repent. The villain in him prevails and he is not prepared to give up the life he acquired by committing his crimes, my crown, my own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardoned and retain thoffence? This shows he wants life the easy way, he is not prepared to make sacrifices, which is selfish and narrow minded, qualities possessed by a villain. Only his fear drove him to pray, as Hamlets play made him realise the adversity of his crime. He had chosen to ignore the consequences of murder beforehand, but now he can no longer ignore it. Claudius is an extremely contradictory character. It is almost as if he is schizophrenic. First, and foremost, he was asked by the people to become king, and yet he is corrupt. He feels no qualms about employing spies, committing incest and murder. However, he has qualities which make him a popular choice as king. He can deal with a crisis effectively as he remains calm and level headed. He has the appearance of action, as he is a soldier, but he physically does little. He does not stab King Hamlet, like a man of action, but did pour the leperous distilment this also shows cleverness. However, cleverness is not necessarily a good thing. It can be used in a sly and cunning way, to help you manipulate people, they find us touched, we will our kingdom give, our crown, our life but if not, b you content to lend your patience to us, and we shall jointly labour with your soul to give it due content. He faced down Laertes when he tried to attack him for Poloniuss murder. As well as talking him out of stabbing him, he managed to use him and turn the situation around to his own advantage. This is true cunning and adeptness. He manipulates Laertes and yet he is a talented diplomat. I feel that Claudius has virtuous and redeeming qualities as well as traits possessed by damned, smiling villains. I believe Claudius is more than that, as he has proved he is an able and capable ruler. However, he is unable to repent and that is his downfall. He is a talented diplomat, which he uses to his advantage to manipulate people. This is ironic as he was asked to be king due to his redeeming qualities, yet he uses he good qualities in unscrupulous ways. There are other facets to Claudiuss character as he is very complex. He makes a good King practically, not morally as he was extremely efficient when the Fortinbras crisis arose, and talking down Laertes from his rage. This supports the view that Claudius is a potentially good King. It is too simplistic to view him as a damned, smiling villain. We feel almost sympathetic towards him whilst he is repenting, as he is genuinely remorseful. However, he is too greedy to sacrifice anything, which will bring about his downfall. He is set apart from other villains as he has a conscience. He is not cold blooded and calculating which is usually the case. He betrays emotions and shows hes human. Some would agree that although he has redeeming qualities, he is essentially a bad person and cannot be trusted, although he is capable of ruling a country. I believe that there is more bad than good in him and the villain prevails in his split personality.

Financial Institutions and Economic Growth Essays

Financial Institutions and Economic Growth Essays Financial Institutions and Economic Growth Essay Financial Institutions and Economic Growth Essay 2000). Other things being equal, better-off and more dynamic societies have not only a larger amount of available resources out of which to save but also a higher propensity to do so. Throughout these years, the Scandinavian countries would appear to have been at an advantage in both respects relative to southern Europe. Before we analyse this relationship, however, we must deal with two potential distortions. The first concerns the probability that not all the financial resources considered in the preceding sections originated domestically. At a time of great international factor mobility, a poorer economy might well have a weaker domestic supply of savings to fuel its financial development, but be able to compensate this by attracting foreign-owned capital. On the other hand, more developed financial systems might reinforce their advantage by drawing in, additionally, large amounts of funds from abroad. Table 7 shows that at the end of our perio such net inflows were indeed contributing significantly to the growth of all financial systems but far more in the Scandinavian case. The latter’s superiority in attracting domestic resources was thus matched by a similar strength in the international sphere, a fact that has been noted before (Rousseau and Sylla, 2001). On the other hand, this did not alter much our previous ranking of these countries and still leaves to be explained the considerable gap between the two groups of countries in terms of financial liabilities per capita. table 7 about here] A second potential source of distortion was the effect of hoarding on financial activity. Given the alleged inclination of southern Europeans towards this form of storing wealth, as might befit traditional peasant societies, it seems fair to ask how much of the region’s weaker institutional savings performance was due to this. For the sake of argument, we suppose that Scandinav ian countries were too advanced, socially and culturally, to engage in such practices. We further assume that in southern Europe this concealed wealth would have taken the form mainly of gold coin silver would have been too bulky – and therefore the stock of this type of specie would have been its upper limit. In the late 19th century, this varied between ? 1. 4 and ? 2. 4 per capita, for Italy and Portugal respectively, with Spain somewhere in between (Zamagni, 1993; Reis, 1992; Tortella, 1974). Even if we admit that as much as half of this was hoarded, this would have entailed only a small correction of the figures in table 7, of about ? per capita, thus leaving its essential findings untouched. [15] Recent evidence based on more than seventy developed and less developed economies, between 1960 and 1995, have established a strong correlation between indicators of private savings and financial development. More importantly, they also provide us with regression estimates that quantify the positive influence of per capita GDP on the savings rate (Beck et al. , 2 000). The lack of any comparable evidence for earlier times prevents us from replicating this exercise here but we can follow another, less exact approach. This rests on the assumption of linearity in the relationship between the two variables, which is suggested by the behaviour of the underdeveloped economies that comprise this sample. Using the data in Prados (2000), we find that average differences, between Scandinavia and southern Europe, of income per capita were respectively 12 % in 1880 and 25% in 1913, and we shall presume that the gap between gross savings must have been similar. The differential in domestic per capita savings absorbed by the financial systems was, however, much greater, respectively of the order of 30 and 100%. This strongly suggests that besides the effect on financial development of levels of income and savings, other factors, mainly of an exogenous nature, must have played an important part too by causing economic agents to channel different shares of their spare resources to the financial systems of their respective countries. Three features of any financial system are bound to affect the inclination of savers to enter into lasting relationships with its institutions and markets and, in particular, to entrust them with funds. One is accessibility to users, another is suitability to their specific needs, a third is trust. In what follows we shall concentrate exclusively on the corporate financial sector because, in contrast, differences among countries in the development of their respective stock markets appear relatively minor. In the Scandinavian countries, the volume of private securities was considerably greater than that of state bonds, whereas in Spain, Portugal and Italy the opposite prevailed. Yet when we put all of these financial instruments together, the aggregate volume per capita is relatively uniform throughout the sample. Moreover, the information regarding national stock markets suggests that inter-country regulatory divergences were not substantial at this time and where they existed, this would not have made much difference to global outcomes (Fohlin, 2002). [16] Recent research on the post 1960 period has argued that cross country differences in legal and accounting systems help account for differences in financial development (Levine et al, 2000: 31) and similar claims have been made in a far broader historical perspective (Sandberg, 1978; Sylla, Tilly and Tortella, 1999). An overview of the legislation governing corporate financial activity does not suggest, however, that this was a major cause of the divergence we have been examining here. This is not to say that there was absolute regulatory uniformity within the sample or that the legal framework had no impact on other aspects of the financial history of these countries. Rather, there could and was an influence but the effect was not necessarily important in the present context. The Norwegian-Swedish comparison illustrates this. Regulation restricted the lending policies of savings banks in the latter country while it was quite liberal in the former. As a result, the Norwegian savings sector flourished and even took on the functions of commercial banks. In Sweden, on the other hand, it did only half as well and was overshadowed by the commercial sector, which in Norway was comparatively weak (Egge, 1983; Nordvik, 1993). Globally, however, the two countries achieved very similar results in terms of the assets gathered by the financial corporate sector as a whole, only through different structures. There are three ways in which the time-path of regulation could have influenced the evolution of commercial banking, yet in all of them a surprising degree of international uniformity is encountered. Barriers to entry is one of them. After a highly restrictive first half of the nineteenth century, which was dominated by specially chartered national privileged banks of issue created to deal with pressing monetary and fiscal problems, in the 1850s and 1860s it became relatively easy to found joint stock commercial banks with limited liability. This new ease of incorporation opened the system to competition, vastly increased the number of institutions and allowed them the freedom to open branches, which in some countries proliferated and in others not. The second area is that of the limits placed on the scope and type of business banks might undertake. Typically, rules defining lending policies were few and on the whole were quite liberal. In some cases, banks were simply governed by the general law on joint stock companies, while in others they were placed under a specific banking code (Grossman, 2001). Towards the end of the 19th century, however, and as a consequence of various crises, regulation was tightened in some countries, but it is unclear whether this entailed much change. The evidence is that the enforcement of bank legislation was on the whole lenient, in the spirit of Liberalism, and the institutions dealt with were often allowed to evade it when this was found expedient (Fritz, 1988). The ease with which Norwegian banks overcame the strictures of usury laws is an eloquent illustration of this (Knutsen, 2003). 17] Finally, a fully centralised note issuing regime does not appear to have produced results that were inferior, in terms of financial development, to those where multiple issue was in place. Despite the contemporary belief that commercial banks that had a right of issue enjoyed a business advantage over deposit banks, one finds instances of both regimes both in Scandinavia and southern Europe with no obvious impact on global financial performance. [18] Mortgage banking based on the issue of bonds, which was for profit in some countries, but not in others, displayed the most significant degree of regulatory variety. In Spain and Portugal, national monopolies were established from the start, while Italy experimented with regional ones and went over to a national one in 1890. They therefore tended all towards large loans and large denomination bonds. In Scandinavia, Sweden and Denmark were very liberal on this score, but Norway had a state mortgage bank. Table 5 reveals that in the long run, however, this mattered less to the respective shares of this sector than might be expected. In Denmark, mortgage bonds were very important but Sweden was on the level of the monopolistic countries, while Spain, with a similar set of rules, did frankly worse than all others, including Portugal,. When it comes to non-commercial, small scale, local and often cooperative banking, it is essential to remember first that this was a era in which two quite different types of saver supplied the resources of financial institutions and arguably constituted quite separate segments of the market (Verdier, 1996)[19]. The well-to-do deposited with or bought the shares of commercial banks, while middle and low income people prefered to entrust their savings to local savings banks, credit co-operatives and the like (Vittas, 1997). This being so, in societies where both kinds of institution had a significant presence, as happened in Scandinavia, the financial system was likely to collect a larger portion of savings. In Spain and Portugal, the weakness of the savings sector was such that it meant that a majority of the population in effect had little access to the system as a whole. Consequently, the volume of savings per capita gathered was smaller. Italy was able to do better than the Iberian peninsula because of a considerable and varied movement of thrift organisations prevalently in the northern half of the country that tapped, the savings of the humble and middle class people, whether rural or urban. It is far from evident, however, that national dissimilarities in legislative framework were responsible for this kind of institution to evolve to such contrasting extents. In all countries considered, thrift institutions were supported by local or national authorities in a variety of ways, with deposit guarantees and, perhaps most important of all, with tax exemptions. Arguably though, on the assumption that there was market segmentation, this would hardly have diverted funds from the commercial joint stock sector, which was the principal alternative. Until the 1880s, the general norm was absence of legislation, complete ease of entry, an enormous multiplicity of statutory arrangements and only slight restriction on the uses to which savings could be applied. Full and proper regulation had to await the 1880s 1875 in Sweden but, in the event, was of a very mild nature. [20] Supervision, accounting rules and some operating limits were introduced, against the solid resistance of the thrift institutions themselves, but by most accounts this barely influenced the sector’s level of activity (Bruck et al. , 1995; Hansen, 2001). One of the principal aims of regulation was to stimulate trust in the system by deterring irregularities and imposing transparency on its operations. As we have just seen, Scandinavias superiority in mobilising resources does not seem to have owed much to a better set of rules and regulations. From the publics point of view, a more reassuring indicator of trustworthiness was how a system performed, not its rules, and here stability of markets and institutions was doubtless the factor that would affect the inflow of savings. Whilst all countries were prone to turbulence and its savers and investors suffered losses as a result, between 1860 and the First World War, the southern European record seems to have been by far theworst. One instructive sign of this is the mortality of commercial banks. Complete data are only available for Spain, Italy and Denmark but are highly revealing. In Spain, aside from the earlier devastation wrought by the crisis of 1864-6, of the 117 banks founded after 1874, only 60 were still open in 1914 (Tortella, 1974). The losses to Italian commercial banking during three critical periods were similarly substantial: 42 out of the 143 in existence, in 1873-9; 21 out of the 161, in 1888-93; and 11 out of the 163, in 1902-4 (Mattia, 1967). In Denmark, of the 160 banks created between 1845 and 1914, only 20 failed. A second measure is the variance around the trend of a global systemic indicator such as total assets. Available information covers only the same three countries but the result, now comprehending all types of banks, fully confirms the earlier finding. [21] The stability of the Danish financial system was significantly greater than that of the Italian one, with the Spanish one a long way behind. If a stable financial environment meant anything to savers, then Scandinavia appears to have enjoyed a considerable from this point of view. Several factors can explain this contrast but two especially should command our attention. One is structure, the other is policy. As regards the first, Scandinavian economies enjoyed the benefit which, in southern Europe, Italy had over Portugal and Spain – of a relatively larger not-for-profit financial sector, which was less crisis prone than commercial banks. 22] This was due to several characteristics inherent in such institutions. They had better and cheaper information on the risks posed by clients, lower costs of administration and greater ease in enforcing repayments. Moreover they were less likely to suffer runs by depositors, who knew them well. In addition, they often enjoyed some form of group deposit-insurance, and normally enjoyed deposit guarantees from governments, local authorities or simply groups of local notables. Lastly, because unlike commercial banks they were not under pressure from shareholders to produce high dividends, they did not have to lend to projects with higher returns but also higher risks. Their image of conservatism more often than not was matched by reality even though they had to contend with the instability that is usually associated with a small scale. [23] Given how frequent and severe national bouts of financial instability could be, one has to ask whether domestic counter cyclical policies might not have influenced the attractiveness of these financial systems. As regards government intervention, the low priority given at the time to such policies rules out a significant role for this factor. On the other hand, national banks of issue were just beginning to play the part, informally, of money market regulators, something that would only be enshrined in their charters after the First World War. The timing of their assumption of lender of last resort status matches poorly the way in which these economies responded to financial shocks. In Denmark and Sweden, two highly stable systems, came to this early, between the 1860s and the 1870s, but so did in Portugal and Italy the Banca Nazionale, the Bank of Italy’s predecessor was already behaving as a bankers’ bank in the 1860s (Hansen, 1991; Lindgren and Sjogren, 2002; Reis, 1999; Polsi, 1996). On the other hand, Norway and Spain were both latecomers to this field, respectively in the late 1890s and just before the War and yet were at opposite ends of the league table for financial stability (Egge, 1983; Tortella, 1974). 24] While proto-central banking may not have been a major determinant of the closeness between savers and financial institutions, accessibility clearly was. The ease with which economic agents could approach the system mattered a great deal in establishing a relationship with it. One dimension was physical location, distance, ease of travel – and this was an important reason for the success of the Danish ‘parish savings ban ks’ (Guinnane and Henriksen, 1998). Another was the suitability for those involved of the institutions available to them. Savers would more readily supply an institution with funds if, other things being equal, they felt welcome, understood the procedures, knew the people they had to deal with and could easily satisfy burocratic requirements, e. g. minimum size of deposit. In other words, not all institutions and markets served equally well for everyone and this must have had an impact on the propensity to accept the liabilities offered by the system. As Table 8 shows, a considerable disparity existed during these years in the supply of outlets that each system offered. This is one more spect of the enormous distance that separated our two groups of countries, in this case the number of inhabitants per financial outlet, and also brings to light a ranking that matches exactly the ranking presented in table 1. In particular, Italy, which had a density five to eight times that of Portugal and Spain but was five times below the levels of Denmark, Norway or Sweden, had the financial system that managed to at tract the greatest volume of savings of southern Europe. Besides the number, the spatial distribution of these outlets also seems relevant. In Spain and Portugal, financial institutions were an urban phenomenon and were concentrated in the major centres. In Scandinavia, the opposite was the case. A large proportion of financial outlets was in small towns and hamlets. They were therefore close to country people, who were the majority of the country’s population. Thrift institutions were ‘local organizations, formed and run by local people to further what they saw as local goals’ (Guinnane and Henriksen, 1998: 52). . [table 8 about here] Altogether then, perhaps the most important factor in explaining differences in financial development lay in each society’s propensity to accept non-commercial banking in its midst. Scandinavia’s greater overall capacity to mobilise funds mainly derived from the strength of its thrift sector in all its forms, and this arose because so many people there were prepared to join these movements. Since this cannot be ascribed to major income dissimilarities, nor to diversity in regulation, nor even to the rise of central banking, only two explanations seem to remain available. Verdier’s (1996) standpoint is that it was political struggles that lay at the heart of the matter. In Denmark, Sweden and Norway, centrifugal political forces were important and prevented the state’s wish to centralize banking, thereby absorbing the resources of the periphery in order to finance central public expenditure. As a result decentralized thrift banking flourished. In the south of Europe, the opposite happened and consequently non-profit banking was suffocated by the pressure from a centralizing state intent on draining the financial resources of the periphery. There are two objections to this. The first is that what the state wanted these resources for was to finance the public debt, not central public expenditure, and here the contrast between the two regions could not have been greater. As we saw earlier, southern European countries were indeed voracious consumers in this respect. Secondly, we must also not ignore that in these countries finance for the public debt typically does not seem to have come from their peripheries, nor from provincial banks. Rather, it tended to be held personally and was accumulated at the centre, where saving propensities were apparently higher. This would explain why provincial commercial banking was able to expand in Portugal, Spain and Italy during this period, in spite of their huge public debt commitments (Reis, 2003). Perhaps a more fruitful enquiry should ask why, in the latter countries, except for a small group of wealthy and educated citizens, most of the provincial population appeared remote from institutional saving. For this we have to try and understand the roots of the stronger impulses in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to create small thrift organisations in terms of the stronger presence of certain social and cultural conditions in these countries (Guinnane, 1994; Galassi, 2000). A basic ingredient was trust, a form of social capital that involved a readiness to accept peer control and to enter into common ventures with other economic agents beyond one’s immediate social circle, which required that direct monitoring and control was left to others. Societies, like in Scandinavia, founded on a prosperous middle sized peasantry, that experienced successful agrarian reform at the end of the Ancien Regime, and where a more even distribution of income was present, seem to have provided an environment in which such attitudes could flourish. In contrast, apparently this was not the situation in Portugal and Spain, or Italy s south. In Italy, where in some regions only limited liability credit cooperatives (banche popolare) were common, by the 1880s clearly those in the south had much greater difficulty in attracting members’ and their deposits. As a result, they relied much more on share capital and rediscounts at large banks, and tended therefore to have to hide defaults in their accounts. This in turn exacerbated the problem of trust between members and management, the latter usually from a higher social stratum, and fostered a low-trust equilibrium (Ahearn, 2000). A second element in this approach emerges from the analysis of the early development of modern financial intermediaries, which appeared in Scandinavia already in the first half of the nineteenth century and which very much depended on the degree of human capital endowment present. Nilsson, Pettersen and Svensson (1999) have shown how literacy in the Swedish countryside before 1850 was associated with the rise in the use of sophisticated credit instruments and probably created a fertile seed-bed for the activity of localised credit institutions. Again, southern Europe was woefully behind in this field, with rates of illiteracy that were still 50 per cent or more in 1900 compared to negligible figures in their northern counterparts. A greater readiness on the part of Danes, Norwegians and Swedes to accept contract money, particularly in small denominations, may be another expression of this cultural dimension. 25] Finally, one should not neglect the influence of the strength of local sentiment in this matter. Its importance has been remarked upon a propos of Denmark (Hansen, 1982), as it has in the case of Italy, the only southern economy where local thrift organizations developed to a significant degree (Polsi, 1996). 5. Why Scandinavian systems recycled liabil ities better In comparing national differences in financial intermediation, the second major question of this paper has to do with the efficiency with which the funds gathered by each system were transformed into credits to the private sector. From this point of view, three circumstances help us understand the efficiency loss of about one half the measures the distance in this respect between the two groups of countries. Possibly the most important one was the more or less chronic difficulty associated with public finance in southern Europe, in contrast to its generally healthy condition in Scandinavia. For the former, this meant a crushing weight of Public Debt holdings and a scant application of these resources to growth inducing purposes. For the second group, not only was this burden far lighter but the resources thus absorbed were also used more effectively for investment. A further implication, of a more structural nature, was that the problem of an oversized public debt stimulated the emergence in Italy, Spain and Portugal of oversized national banks of issue, which dominated their respective commercial banking sectors, as we saw in section 3, and were the least efficient of all corporate institutions at recycling funds into credits. Why Italy, Spain and Portugal should have been consistently unable to break the grip of budget deficits and of a pyramiding Public Debt is an issue which plunges its roots deeply into the 19th century political, social and military histories of these countries. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do justice here to such a complex problem. One should note, however, that unstable political institutions, a weak public administration and an excessively powerful military were present in the region throughout the period, unlike what happened in the Scandinavian periphery. As a result, southern European governments found it hard to discipline expenditure, whilst the revenue-to-GDP elasticity tended to be very low as a result of the public administration’s incapacity to increase revenue sufficiently and diversify its sources. A strong military tended to embroil the country in occasional internal or external costly conflicts that had to be paid for mostly by means of fiscal and monetary unorthodoxy, and was an ever present factor of political instability. Public borrowing in itself was not the difficulty, since the Scandinavians engaged in it without harm. What was dammaging about it to the southern Europeans was its scale, which dwarfed other efforts at mobilising resources, and its use largely to pay off earlier borrowing and maintain a costly ineffective machinery of government. Negative structural effects on southern Europe were not confined to the politically motivated â€Å"excessive† development of their national banks of issue. The socio-cultural reasons that explained the greater prevalence in Scandinavian financial systems of thrift institutions can also be invoked here in explaining their higher global transformation ratios encountered in table 6 above. Less clear, on the other hand, is whether these factors also help explain the fact that, in every type of institution, this region unmistakably led southern Europe in terms of capacity to recycle its liabilities into credit. Two features of the financial environment appear more helpful in this respect. The first is the difference in the degree of risk that financial institutions had to face. This made it possible for the Scnadinavian ones to immobilise smaller proportions of total assets as reserves, or to avoid tying up resources in safe state bonds. The goals and the quality of management is the second circumstnace to account for differences in the proportion of idle assets in the portfolios of corporate financial institutions. Possibly, southern European managers were simply reacting reasonably to a riskier investment climate by allocating funds with greater prudence and conservatism than Scandinavian ones needed to. On the other hand, it has been hypothesized (Berthelemy and Varoudakis, 1996: 301) that ‘the technical efficiency of the financial sector is an increasing function of the collected volume of savings [and] that learning-by-doing effects also exist in intermediation activities’. Poor management has been claimed for both Portugal and Spain (Reis, n. d. ; Sudria, 1994) though comparisons with Scandinavia have yet to be carried out and the case therefore remains open. As regards Portugal in particular, it has been shown, following Hinderlitter and Rockoff (19.. ), that, after taking risk differences into account, the share of unused funds in the balance sheet of commercial banks was greater than could be justified by reference to practices in contemporary major financial centres. Finally, the high returns on government issued liabilities in southern European caused resources to be diverted away from private credit operations in contrast to Scandinavia where the yield of such holdings was comparatively less attractive and better alternative investment opportunities seem to have been more numerous. 6. Conclusion During the course of the long second half of the 19th century, the southern and the northern peripheries of Europe followed contrasting paths of financial development. This led to quite disparate results in the supply of credit to the non-state non-bank part of their economies and justifies perhaps speaking of a â€Å"Scandinavian†, as opposed to a â€Å"southern European† type of financial system. Having quantified these differences, this paper argues that the gap is large enough to justify the view that finance contributed to the divergence in economic growth between the two regions. To address the reasons for the substantial efficiency differential between southern European and Scandinavian financial systems, it was necessary to break this down into the two basic functions that financial systems carry out. One concerned the mobilization of savings as financial liabilities of these systems. The second revolved around the conversion of these liabilities into credits to the non-financial private sector. Southern European countries were losers in both instances. The analysis of the first of these brought to light that Scandinavian institutions were capable of mobilizing comparatively more resources than their southern counterparts, the exception being in state bonds, where the latter led by a clear margin. The second dimension of this study revealed that Scandinavian institutions were also capable, type by type but equally in toto, of extracting a larger quantity of credit from their laibilities in order to make them available to the productive sectors of the economy. To some extent these contrasts were caused by endogenous conditions. The simple fact is that Italy, Portugal and Spain were consistently poorer and were becoming increasingly so. This affected their volume of savings but also probably lessened the demand for the financial outlets that enabled savers to recycle these funds as institutional financial liabilities. On the other hand, exogenous factors probably also played an important part in helping to understand fully the process of financial development in these two regions. Essentially, three aspects are involved here. Regulatory conditions have loomed large in many analyses of this type but do not appear to have had a significant impact on the global outcomes picked up here, although they probably shaped some of the structural differences observed. A much stronger case can be made instead for the part of political, social and cultural factors in driving a wedge between the financial development paths that we have observed above. The last two were instrumental in leading to a greater development in Scandinavia of the non-commercial bank sector. This was responsible for diversifying the supply of financial outlets, attracting an much greater volume of savings per capita and then ensuring that a larger proportion of such funds became available for investment purposes. In all their complexity, political factors probably mattered most of all because they translated savings into a huge mass of state issued liabilities that stifled the expansion of the other parts of the system in the southern countries. At the same time, having helped to mobilize these funds, politics then became responsible for their sterilisation as financial instruments. When all is taken into account, it is this which perhaps explains the best part of the great financial divide between our two sets of countries. Of politics it can always be said that it might have been otherwise and this may seem a trivial conclusion. To claim this, however, would be to ignore the fact politics and institutions have long histories too and that path dependency is not solely the preserve of economic phenomena. References A’Hearn, B. (2000). Could southern Italians cooperate? Banche Popolari in the Mezzogiorno. Journal of Economic History 60, pp. 67-93. Aleotti, A. (1990). Borsa e Industria. 1869-1989: Cento Anni di Rapporti Difficili. : Edizioni di Comunita. Beck, T. , Levine, R. and Loayza, N. (2000). Finance and the sources of growth. Journal of Financial Economics 58, pp. 261-300. Berthelemy, J. C. and Varoudakis, A. (1996). Economic growth, convergence clubs and the role of financial development. Oxford Economic Papers 48, pp. 300-28. Broder, A. (1976). Les investissements etrangers en Espagne au XIXe siecle: methodologie et quantification. Revue d’Histoire Economique et Sociale 54, pp. 29-63. Bruck, C. (ed. ). (1995). Les Caisses dEpargne en Europe. Paris: Editions de l’Epargne, 2 vols. Calomiris, C. (1995). The Costs of Rejecting Universal Banking: American Finance in the German Mirror, 1870-1914 in N. Lamoureaux and D. M. Graff (eds), The Coordination of Activity within and between Firms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Cameron, R. (1967). Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press. Cameron, R. (ed. ). (1992). Fina