Inventing a Writing Technology :: Invention Writing Technological Papers

When I first started thinking about this assignment, lots of different ideas ran through my head from sticks and sand to pond muck to baking, but I kept running into the fact that almost everything that I thought of utilized some sort of manufactured tool. Ultimately, since I have a soft spot for anything edible, and since fruit is a ready resource in nature, I went to the produce section of the grocery store for some berries and a surface. My problem then though was the fact that paper and traditional writing surfaces are also a technology. It was actually much more difficult for me to come up with an appropriate surface than to find a way to make letters. Letters are essentially stains or scratches or rubbings, which can be created by a wide array of different natural resources, but finding a surface that has some permanent qualities as well as allowing for the writing to be legible is tough. I ended up with a honeydew melon because the surface was smooth and pale so that the berry juice would show up clearly. Another characteristic of a successful writing surface is that it absorbs or retains the writing, and that was the problem with my melon. The surface wasn’t porous enough to receive the berry ink, and I was compelled to use a knife to make the project successful. I rationalized the knife by thinking that it is one of the simplest tools that humans use, since it is essentially a sharp wedge. Also, it is po ssible to make a knife if one wants to take the time to do so by scraping a stick with a rock or a softer rock on a harder one. With the use of a precise tool like a knife, I was able to create very clear and legible letters that became even more pronounced with the blueberry dye. Ong states that â€Å"writing is a technology, calling for the use of tools and other equipment,† (Tribble 321) and my difficulty in writing with crude rocks and sticks only made this point more resonant for me. I did try to carve the melon with a sharp stick, but it was a frustrating and painstaking process that I quickly abandoned in favor of the tried and true knife. Without this tool, I do not believe that my writing sample would have looked as â€Å"normal† as it did, and it probably would have been very difficult to read. Inventing a Writing Technology :: Invention Writing Technological Papers When I first started thinking about this assignment, lots of different ideas ran through my head from sticks and sand to pond muck to baking, but I kept running into the fact that almost everything that I thought of utilized some sort of manufactured tool. Ultimately, since I have a soft spot for anything edible, and since fruit is a ready resource in nature, I went to the produce section of the grocery store for some berries and a surface. My problem then though was the fact that paper and traditional writing surfaces are also a technology. It was actually much more difficult for me to come up with an appropriate surface than to find a way to make letters. Letters are essentially stains or scratches or rubbings, which can be created by a wide array of different natural resources, but finding a surface that has some permanent qualities as well as allowing for the writing to be legible is tough. I ended up with a honeydew melon because the surface was smooth and pale so that the berry juice would show up clearly. Another characteristic of a successful writing surface is that it absorbs or retains the writing, and that was the problem with my melon. The surface wasn’t porous enough to receive the berry ink, and I was compelled to use a knife to make the project successful. I rationalized the knife by thinking that it is one of the simplest tools that humans use, since it is essentially a sharp wedge. Also, it is po ssible to make a knife if one wants to take the time to do so by scraping a stick with a rock or a softer rock on a harder one. With the use of a precise tool like a knife, I was able to create very clear and legible letters that became even more pronounced with the blueberry dye. Ong states that â€Å"writing is a technology, calling for the use of tools and other equipment,† (Tribble 321) and my difficulty in writing with crude rocks and sticks only made this point more resonant for me. I did try to carve the melon with a sharp stick, but it was a frustrating and painstaking process that I quickly abandoned in favor of the tried and true knife. Without this tool, I do not believe that my writing sample would have looked as â€Å"normal† as it did, and it probably would have been very difficult to read.

The current business environment is characterized

The current business environment is characterized by intense competitive rivalry and businesses have to undertake aggressive marketing initiatives in order to counter this threat. The importance of marketing in ensuring that a business organization can develop and maintain a competitive edge is growing exponentially.Corporations are now pouring millions into their promotional campaigns in order to create an image for themselves in the customer mindset. This trend of massive financial resources being thrown into marketing is particularly evident in the area of sports marketing. In this area, massive opportunities exist in terms of public relations events which have global reach.Thus any corporation that can have its logo associated with events like the Olympics which are broadcast throughout the world stand to gain substantially out of investing in the rights to have its logo associated with the event. This is called corporate sponsorship. However the benefits of corporate sponsorship have led to the rise of unethical marketing practices called ambush marketing.Ambush marketing is defined to have taken place when a marketer has its products associated with a sports event without having paid for any of the rights to association (cited in Ironside, 2007). Thus the ambush marketer enjoys all the benefits of being a legitimate corporate sponsor without paying a cent.The trend of ambush marketing has been growing steadily in the last few years as shown in figure 1. As shown in the figure, sports organizers have been experiencing massive revenue losses as result of the phenomenon of ambush marketing which keeps going strong despite efforts to counter the threat.The threat is particularly detrimental because the actual corporate sponsors have hardly anything to gain by seeking recourse to legal means because courts usually rule in favor of ambush marketers.This happens because ambush marketers never engage in any activities that could be defined as infringement of inte llectual property rights (cited in Meenaghan, 1996). Ambush marketers operate through hints and allusions which do not qualify as infringement of rights in legal vernacular.As a result corporate sponsors have to devise pre-emptive strategies on their own and this adds to the cost of buying rights to the sponsorship (cited in Uphoff, 2006).The process of devising counter strategies requires an understanding of the ways and means by which ambush marketers take advantage of their opportunities. However there are so many ways and means in this regard that it is difficult to develop contingency plans for all of them.There are at least six recognized opportunities which ambushers take advantage of from time to time such as purchasing broadcasting rights to an event or broadcasting time around the time of the event broadcast, sponsoring an event other than the organizing body, purchasing advertising space, thematic advertising and counter attraction (cited in Crompton, 2004).What all of th is means is that if the trend of ambush marketing is allowed to go on unmitigated, it will discourage corporate sponsors from sponsorship spending and major sports events will lose an important source of revenue. Therefore sports property owners have the duty of making ambush marketing difficult and expensive for the competitors of official corporate sponsors.ReferencesAaker, David A. (2004). Strategic Market Management. McGraw Hill/Irwin.Crompton, John L. (2004). Sponsorship Ambushing in Sport. Managing Leisure, 9, 1-12.Ironside, Sue. (2007). Combating Ambush Marketing. NZ Marketing Magazine, 26, 26-27.Retrieved March 15, 2008 from Business Source Elite database.Kolah, Ardi. (2005). Essential Law for Marketers. Prentice Hall.Kotler, Philip., and Gary Armstrong. (2005). Principles of Marketing. Prentice Hall.Meenaghan, T. (1996). Ambush Marketing – A Threat to Corporate Sponsorship. SloanManagement Review, 38, 103-13. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from Business SourceElite databas e.Uphoff, Boris., et al. (2006). Kick-off to Ambush Marketing at World Cup. ManagingIntellectual Property, 156, 91-92. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from Business Source The current business environment is characterized The current business environment is characterized by a considerable level of uncertainty and therefore businesses have to continuously reengineer their internal processes in order to build and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.In this respect, the critical success factor is to build an organizational culture that is built to change. This is a critical consideration because, given the high level of uncertainty, the management in a business organization is no longer in a position to forecast future changes meaningfully.Therefore the organizational structure must be flexible enough to absorb unexpected changes. The question that should be answered is how this flexibility can be built into the organizational structure. In this respect, it is the duty of the management to build the right performance management system.Through this system the management can communicate with the employees regarding which aspects of their work are vital to the strategic focus of the organization. T he right performance management system is a critical consideration in terms of addressing issues related to employee motivation and empowerment.Capital One is empowering its employees through dissemination of information and by maximizing the surface area. This enables the employees to link their work to the strategic focus of the organization (cited in Zairi, 2005).The fact of the matter is that the management at all levels in Capital One is implementing strategic human resource management. In this manner it is addressing the issues of motivation and empowerment. According to the post-modern theory, business organizations need to maintain the continuous improvement process in order to build a sustainable competitive advantage (cited in Hill & Jones, 2007).However the development of a sustainable competitive advantage depends on access to human capital. Capital One has devised its human resource management policies in order to develop human capital. Even through it is not directly a ddressing the issues of motivation and empowerment, its policies are designed to make these issues the top priorities on the management agenda. Job rotation is one of the examples.According to post-modernism, job descriptions are no longer effective because they create a static organizational structure and therefore do not equip the organization with the abilities to adapt to fast-paced change in the external environment (cited in Besterfield, 2002).According to the post-modern theory, employees have to be groomed to assume a wide variety of positions so that changing organizational structures will not be a problem for them. We see Capital One addressing this issue through creating leadership capabilities throughout the organization. The company’s recruitment and selection strategies are implemented accordingly.For example, during the recruitment process, the most important qualification for the candidate is considered to be his ability to lead a change effort. Because of car efully implemented recruitment and selection strategies, the company minimizes the costs associated with training and development (cited in Ross & Perry, 2002).However the management does communicate with the employees in terms of the extent to which formal training and development programs can be arranged for the employees.A built-to-change organizational structure cannot be built without addressing the issues of motivation and empowerment. According to post-modernism, employees must be involved in the change management process (cited in Brigham & Ehrhardt, 2007). This facilitates the process of addressing employee resistance to change. The management at Capital One addresses this issue through building an effective communications structure which facilitates the dissemination of mission-critical information.As mentioned before, this maximizes the level of surface area. Strategy implementation in this regard has been facilitated through the creation of a flat management structure wh ich enables most employees to work in direct touch with the customers. This enables the employees to make the link between their work and the strategic focus of the company because working in direct touch with the customers means that the employees can see in which direction the organization should proceed in terms of customer relationship management (cited in Dess, 2007).Employee motivation and empowerment is the most critical factor in the post-modernist theory. This is because post-modernism as associated with a sustainable competitive advantage in business emphasizes employee motivation and empowerment.According to Michael Porter’s theory for strategy formulation, a business organization has three strategies at its disposal in building a competitive advantage: differentiation, cost minimization and quick response (cited in Baschab, 2005).However, according to the post-modernist theory none of these strategies will lead to the development of a sustainable competitive advan tage because they can be easily copied by competitor organizations in a fast-changing external environment.Therefore, post-modernism in business focuses on the building of a strategically aligned organizational culture as the source of a sustainable competitive advantage. A strategically aligned organizational culture cannot be built without effectively addressing the issues of employee motivation and empowerment.Employees must be involved in the change management process. In this organizational structure, the issues of employee motivation and empowerment are addressed effectively because they are directly involved in building the strategic focus of the company. This is an example of what we see in Capital One.This is one of the few American companies to have been able to weather the current crisis because of its focus on the built-to-change organizational structure based in employee motivation and empowerment. The company is not consciously addressing these issues as such.However b ecause of its strategies in recruitment, selection, job rotation and training and development, it has been able to involve the employees in the constant process of managing change. This has only maximized their productivity as employees are motivated to work for the company because they are empowered to act on behalf of the company.This has created an organizational structure based in motivation and empowerment which aligns employee interests to organizational interests. This is an example of post-modernism in business.ReferencesBaschab, John., et al. (2005). The Executive Guide to Information Technology. McGraw Hill/Irwin.Besterfield, Dale H., et al. (2002). Total Quality Management. McGraw Hill/Irwin.Brigham, Eugene F., and Michael C. Ehrhardt. (2007). Financial Management: Theory & Practice. South western college pub.Dess, Gregory G., et al. (2007). Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantage.McGraw Hill/Irwin. Hill, Charles., and Gareth Jones. (2007). Strategic Manageme nt Theory: An Integrated Approach. McGraw Hill/Irwin.Ross, Joel E. and Susan Perry. (2002). Total Quality Management: Text, Cases, Readings. Wiley.Zairi, Mohamed. (2005). Excellence Toolkit: Delivering Sustainable Performance. eTQM College Publishing House. The current business environment is characterized The current business environment is characterized by a considerable level of competitive rivalry and as a result, businesses have to maintain a continuous improvement process in order to build and maintain a competitive advantage. In this respect, the development of a sustainable competitive advantage is the critical success factor.However sustainability cannot be achieved unless the company determines the strategic focus.This is why developing a system for adopting goals becomes a critical consideration. In this respect, the management has to build the right organizational culture in which group dynamics can become facilitated.Employees are the most important assets of an organization and therefore the management has to create the right working conditions which maximize employee satisfaction. For this reason, the management might have to manage change on a continuous basis. In managing change, alignment with the strategic focus has to be maintained. In this respect adopting the righ t goals becomes the critical consideration.The question whether group dynamics are better at adopting goals than individual decision making can be answered depending on the situation that the company is in. There is no doubt that when it comes to managing change a cross-functional project management team must be built in order to adopt the right goals.This is because all the departments that are going to be affected by the change must be represented in the project management team. However the problem with group dynamics is that the process delays decision making (http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/old/15703015.htm).One of the reasons for this delay can be groupthink in which the participants withhold views that may not conform in order to maintain membership (cited in Robbins & DeCenzo, 2003). Outside of change management, in the situation in which the decision making process has to be fast, individual decision making is undoubtedly the better option. Individually, the decision maker can speed up the process of decision making because fewer issues are considered.The problem with facilitating group dynamics in decision making is that the decision making process has to be based upon consensus. This has the advantage that the suggestions that are taken into consideration are diverse. As a result, the same problem is viewed from many different perspectives.The result is a process of brainstorming that can generate a lot of valuable ideas. However, in the situation in which the question is one of adopting goals, diversity of ideas can be a hindrance because it delays the process of decision making in adopting goals. In the event that the complexity of the situation is high then group decision making can be advantageous because too many issues will be considered, thus delaying the process.Therefore in the situation in which adopting goals does not have to take too many issues into consideration, group decision making may be the best option. However in the event that the situation is complex, then the individual decision maker will be in a position to do a better job because he can exercise intuition in arriving at a decision.From the above, it is made clear that there is no specific answer as to whether group dynamics or the individual decision maker will do a better job. The effectiveness of either of the tools depends on the complexity of the situation. The current business environment is characterized by a fast state of change.Therefore the decision making process has to be speeded up. In this respect, even in the situation which calls for many issues to be taken into consideration, the individual decision maker can do the best job. However in the event that the management of the company can afford to spend time on considering all the relevant issues, then group dynamics create the best infrastructure in which to conduct the decision making process (http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/pdf/efop/efo38561.pdf).However when facilitating group dynamics, the management must ensure that the decision making process is not affected by the need to reach a consensus. In such a situation, the participants are afraid of creating a conflict and therefore all the relevant issues are not taken into consideration.ReferencesSchwartz, Andrew E. (1994, August). Group decision-making. The CPA Journal Online.Retrieved February 19, 2009 from http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/old/15703015.htm.Barlow, Jeff. (2005, October). Strategic planning for the Bloomington, Indiana, firedepartment. Retrieved February 19, 2009 from http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/pdf/efop/efo38561.pdf.Robbins, Stephen P., and DeCenzo, David. (2003). Fundamentals of Management. Prentice Hall. Â  

Incarceration Of Prison And Prisoners - 869 Words

For many years, people with knowledge and statistical results and data, drew to logical conclusion that prison has become a revolving door and the ones who study how prison and prisoners acted that prisons were replacing mental hospitals. â€Å"On any indictment or presentment for a misdemeanor, process shall be issued immediately. If the accused appear and plead to the charge, the trial shall proceed without delay, unless good cause for continuance be shown. If, in any misdemeanor case the accused fails to appear and plead, when required the court may either award a capias or proceed to trial in the same manner as if the accused had appeared, plead not guilty and waived trial by jury, provided, that the court shall not in any such case enforce a jail sentence. Ruffin v Commonwealth, the Commonwealth had no right. Once an individual has been found guilty and sentenced to prison, many people assume that he or she has, or should have, no rights. Until the 1960s, this was true to some extent. Before the 1960s, federal and state courts refused to hear prisoners’ rights cases or decided those cases in such a way that made it clear that prisoners had few, if any, or the rights of free people. This era was cal led the â€Å"hands-off† era, meaning that the courts rarely became involved in prisoners’ rights, renew overcrowded prisons are largely the result of historical efforts to humanize the treatment of offenders. Prior to the development of prisons, early punishments were oftenShow MoreRelatedEssay on Cost of Incarceration1308 Words   |  6 PagesWhat is incarceration? Incarceration is the act of placing someone in prison. Incarceration serves as a punishment for criminals due to their actions against the law. It is a solution for keeping the public safe. Prisoners follow a strict rules and schedules while following the culture within the walls among other prisoners. 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According to Tyjen Tsai and Paola Scommegna, writers for the PopulationRead MoreThe Problem Of Prison Overcrowding1598 Words   |  7 Pagesthe major problem of prison overcrowding and argue that the problem of prison overcrowding would not be ending anytime soon, due to the inadequate attempts by state governments to deal with the inhumane living conditions in overcrowded prisons. This article relates to the topic because the authors analyze how the federal government and some individual states, such as California and Florida, respond to the constrained resources causing unsuitable conditions in overfilled prisons. This source illuminates