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Description of the Organization General Electric is a multi-unit international business that manufacturers and sells appliances and other financial and/or healthcare products. It undertook a major change strategy in the early 200s to "go green" and thereby capture new market share. Led by charismatic executive Jeffrey Inmelt, GE has developed a Six Sigma change strategy. Situation Requiring Change GE undertook a change in response to external and environmental influences, including those focused on "green product" development. It sought to become more competitive internationally, developing new alliances. As a mature firm in a rater static stage of the corporate life cycle, GE needed to restructure and re-envision its role to increase market share. Goals for the Change GE has developed a range of large appliances (refrigerators, stoves, freezers, microwaves, dishwashers, and so forth) that are designed to be "green" in several key areas. These areas include the u

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Most people who examine the effects of globalization recognize that it is having both cultural and economic impacts everywhere its forces are manifested (Appiah 379). In fact, as Franklin Foer (124) has suggested, even within the world of sports one finds that globalization confers both advantages and disadvantages, shrinking and then expanding the world as disparate cultures come into contact with one another. Yet another voice speaking to the question of culture is heard in an article by Robert Lieber and Ruth Weisberg (273) who argue that until very recently, "analyses of globalization have emphasized economics and politics rather than culture." While no one denies the significance of economic globalization impacts, it may well be that the cultural effects of this process ultimately exert a far greater impact on the world. Lieber and Weisberg (274) seek to probe "the intersection of culture and politics" by looking at both folk and high culture as well as popular culture.

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Part I: Moral Relativism Moral relativism has the unusual distinction - both within philosophy and outside it - of being attributed to others, almost always as a criticism, far more often than it is explicitly professed by anyone. /http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/ 2004) Relativism is a philosophical position in which one asserts that there are no absolute truths. Moral relativism refines this to say that one's moral viewpoint is dependent on one's cultural worldview. In theory its opposite is absolutism, but in the United States to take a non-relative moral position is to be ethnocentric, which is abhorrent in our multicultural community. Relativism, like nearly any philosophical position, is rarely ever found in its pure state. "The self-proclaimed moral relativist does not and cannot maintain his or her commitment to the "philosophy" of moral relativism. In fact, the record clearly shows that these "moral relativists" are not relativists at al

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Introduction In Ralph Ellison (10) account of oppression and racism directed at African Americans in U.S. society in Invisible Man, the author tells us in an opening dream sequence, "I too have become acquainted with ambivalence," but in the epilogue he concludes he will "denounce and defends...condemn and affirmed, say no and say yes, say yes and say no...and hate and love" (579-580). The invisible man narrator adopts an ambivalent attitude toward many aspects of society, from separatism and communism to racism and institutes for blacks. The driving force of the narrator's ambivalence is that as a black man in a dominant white and racist culture, he remains a non-entity to most, including blacks and whites. As the narrator explains, "I am an invisible man" (Ellison 3). Living in a society that promotes equality and freedom during the Jim Crow era and other social hypocrisies leads to the narrator's ambivalent attitude toward everything from religion to protest.

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1) What has been the impact of e-commerce on your shopping habits? Since I've started shopping online, I rarely go into an actual bricks-and-boards store anymore. I've discovered that even with shipping and handling, this saves me money, because I am not "just looking" through merchandise and finding things I don't need and didn't intend to get. In addition, it saves me an enormous amount of time that I can use to make more money. It saves wear and tear on my car, as well. I believe I find more interesting and suitable items online, since in the stores, I am limited to a much smaller selection. I used to spend a lot of time shopping in stores, and now I spend only a tiny fraction of that time there. On the other hand, I spend more time browsing for products online, but I also find better deals online and am more likely to find exactly what I want instead of whatever the local stores have in stock. Overall, online shopping has saved me time and money and has changed my old habit of "window shopping," which wasted both.

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Current Trends Auto industry trends for 2008 include a drop in the car and light truck market from 16.1 million units sold per year to 14.1 million units (Plunkett Research, Ltd., 2008). The high price of fuel for most of the year has resulted in a demand for hybrid autos that is outpacing the number of hybrids available for sale by a margin of 10:1 and a trend toward smaller cars and Chinese and Indian imports (Winslow, 2008). To address the lagging economy, GM and Ford are offering longer leasing periods, but auto financing is problematic because the SUV leases coming back on the lot are not selling, and most dealerships will not even take them as trade-ins (Winslow, 2008). GM and Ford have seen steadily decreasing market share in 2008 as well as lower car sales; people are keeping their cars longer (Winslow, 2008). Although new materials and technologies are on the way, they will arrive too late to

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An evaluation of an organization's strengths and weaknesses with respect to environmental threats and opportunities is called a SWOT analysis, capturing the notion that organizations have "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats" ("What Is SWOT Analysis," 1). SWOT has a long history as a tool of strategic and marketing analysis that has been featured in strategy textbooks since the early 1970s. Its advocates "say that it can be used to gauge the degree of 'fit' between the organization's strategies and its environment, and to suggest ways in which the organization can profit from strengths and opportunities and shield itself against weaknesses and threats" ("What Is SWOT Analysis," 1). Though this approach to analyzing a company's competencies and opportunities has been used for some time and is recommended by many analysts, SWOT is increasingly being criticized by those who regard it as overly simplistic. It is this criticism that will be explored and supported here

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Deakins' and Freel's (2003, p. 60) statement "Converting an idea into a business opportunity is the key element of the process of business creation" is an apt expression of the fact that most small businesses start with a bright idea that the entrepreneur then finds a way to make happen. The idea can be for a product, a service, or just a different way of serving an ordinary product, but it is that idea that is key, because it is the differentiating factor that makes the idea business's products and services stand out from the sea of other products and services already available. The idea is the perception of a need that the proposed business will fill. For this pivotal idea to become a successful reality, however, "The economic environment has to be conducive, there must be an appropriate culture supportive of risk-taking and you, the nascent entrepreneur, must have the confidence to ensure that the idea fulfills its potential" (University of Surrey, 2003, p. 11.1).

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I can benefit from and contribute to the Rutgers community in a variety of ways. One of the greatest benefits for me is that the diverse, multi-ethnic Rutgers community feels like home to me. I have lived in the Rutgers area for many years, and I am a multi-ethnic individual with Puerto Rican, Irish, Scottish, and German heritage. At Rutgers multi-ethnicity is leveraged, valued, and put to work rather than just acquired as a means of checking a box. This assures me that I will be challenged rather than just accommodated for my heritage and that I will have the opportunity to grow and achieve commensurate with my abilities and hard work. Rutgers is the optimum environment for me to acquire superlative knowledge and sk

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In Mowat's story "Walk Well My Brother," Charlie Lavery undergoes a profound change in character as a result of the circumstances that he and Konala undergo in their attempt to survive the harsh and frigid Arctic wasteland. In the beginning of the story, Lavery is brash and rude, focused on his own survival and viewing Konala as "a bloody albatross around his neck" (Mowat 134). He is annoyed by her attempts to feed and help him and finally-assaulted by fear that he would not survive following the wreck of his plane-starts off across the frozen tundra without her, knowing that she was sick. This cold-blooded act, which might have been met by hostility or treachery on Konala's part, is instead greeted with solicitous care when she finds him downed and wounded days later. Despite her own illness, she nurses him back to health, seemingly immune to his rudeness and uncaring actions. When she encounters a bear shortly afterward, she cries out for Lavery's help, and for the first

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Modern Feminists (2009) Abstract Today's feminists continue to focus on services and informal service agencies to help advance social justice for all women that political activism does not achieve in and of itself. The Women's Resource and Research Center (WRCC) at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), represents such a services agency. The WRCC offers informal education, support, and referral information for diverse women from varied socioeconomic backgrounds. These broad categories cover a wide range of challenges and issues unique to college teens and young women, from self-esteem and body image to sexual health and academics. Research shows that where confidence, stress, and economics are concerned, college women lag behind men in confidence, are more stressed due to a number of issues, and make less than their male peers. A feminist analysis of the services offered to the community by WRCC shows that the agency is in keeping with current feminist ideo

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In Farley Mowat's "Walk Well, My Brother," he makes a great contrast of values between Lavery and Konala. Lavery is angry, resentful, and self-absorbed, thinking only of himself and not at all of Konala and her needs. Moreover, he is prejudiced against her based on her primitive culture, viewing her as beneath him. When she offers him raw fish after the plane crashes, he shouts at her, "Eat it yourself...you animal!" (Mowat 138). She then builds a fire and roasts the fish, sensing that he does not want it because it is raw, but Lavery is inflamed with stubborn pride and eats his own can of cold baked beans instead of her aromatic roasted fish. In this midst of the disasters in the story-the plane crash, and his getting lost in the tundra-Lavery is fearful. Konala poses an excellent contrast to Lavery in terms of values. Instead of his anger, she demonstrates placidity, even in the face of his provocative and insensitive behavio

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Three pressing issues on a global level are not on the syllabus but need immediate corrective action to resolve, these being (1) Child Trafficking; (2) Biotechnology Rules; and (3) E-Commerce Rules. 1) Child Trafficking Child trafficking is a widespread and pervasive practice in many parts of the world, including South Asia, Latin America, and even the United States. Millions of young girls and boys have been kidnapped, sold by their parents, or lured into prostitution. The problem is growing and targets the most vulnerable citizens of the world, young children, many of them not even teens when they are sold or kidnapped. Poverty

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As a clinical nurse manager for the acute rehab department and the department of psychiatry at my hospital whose theorist of choice is Virginia Henderson, I hold a complex of values and beliefs, as well as a code of ethics, concerning what nursing is and what my personal world view of nursing care looks like. Like Henderson, I see my function as a nurse as being to help patients recover just as they would if they had the physical strength to do so on their own and the requisite knowledge required to effect their recovery. This standard exerts a potent impact on what I can and cannot do from an ethical standpoint. At the core of my values is a belief in maintaining a culture of life rather than the culture of death that is becoming more prevalent in American society. American culture is becoming increasi

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My intended major is business administration or business economics. Interestingly, my attraction to the major developed not by working in the business world but through my volunteer work with the Boy Scouts. I obtained my Eagle Scout designation in 2005 and subsequently managed a Boy Scout troop, which required me to manage the troop's financial and other resources as well as teaching the scouts how to operate their troop somewhat like a business. This was both challenging and fun, and in the process I realized how much I enjoyed operating a business and meeting the tests involved. Teaching business concepts to the scouts made them clearer to me as well, and I found that I

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The Dubai Mall is indeed the latest in a century-long series of attempts to use centralized planning to create vibrant and dynamic environments. It brings together mixed uses in an economically rich atmosphere with the design of offering a community center much as planners such as Howard and Le Corbusier envisioned. It builds on the widespread use of malls in the United States and elsewhere, and combines the mall concept with the even larger concept of urban planning. In this way, the Dubai Mall becomes not just a mall, but an urban environment where shopping is mixed with other everyday activities. Indeed, the mall has distinct "mini malls" within its confines that stretch Gruen's vision to its limit-if a mall is the size of a small city, can it still function as a community social gathering place? The Dubai mall is in keeping with other developments in the UAE which seek to provide the federation wit

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Phillip Curtin's The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex contextualizes the plantation by seeing it not just as a mode of life but as an institution, a complex that originated in one place and then migrated to various other places, picking up adaptations as it went. As such, Curtin's book is tremendously enlightening, going far beyond most other works on the subject in terms of its perspective, which couples the high-level view of the broad historian that explains paradigm shifts with the detailed view of the specialist that adds rich detail and deeper understanding. Curtin does a masterful job of describing the beginnings of the plantation complex and the forces that operated to move it from place to place. Most importantly, the reasons for developments in the plantation complex are explained in the manner of the old PBS series Connections, which shows how events fit together to promote the plantation concept. From his explanation of how sugar production was carried out

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Water Water Everywhere! I. Water better than soft drinks or other liquids II. Water needed to provide proper blood flow and oxygen III. For outdoor workers, there are laws requiring water Availability IV. In short, water - bottled or tap- is healthier than other fluids Despite the best efforts of the soft drink industry, more and more people are drinking....water! Why? Because it is far healthier. As Americans become more health conscious, they are drinking more water. Especially bottled water for which they are willing to pay premium prices. "High-end premium wa

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British colonial America in the late seventeenth century was very responsive to social, political, and economic events taking place in England. As this essay will demonstrate, between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Great Awakening, which occurred in the early 1700s, the colonies grew in terms of their own economic power, political concerns, and social integration. Eric Foner (2009) suggests that early in this era, Britain solidified its control over the colonies but as the period progressed, this control was diminished in part by the determination of the colonies to achieve a greater degree of autonomy and self-governance. This essay will consider the most significant changes occurring in colonial British America during this period and the response engendered by the Great Awakening to these transformations. The Glorious Revolution "exposed fault lines in colonial society and offered local elites an opportunity to regain authority that had recently been challenged" (

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Introduction The operating system is the heart of any computer system. It controls input/output, peripherals, and provides the platform on which all applications and processes run. Operating systems form the basis for the security of systems, and are the interface between the user and the computer. Today, most operating systems use graphic user interfaces (GUIs) for that interface, and seamlessly manage multiple processes simultaneously. This research considers some operating systems that are commonly used on the Internet, and evaluates their suitability to that purpose. Analysis Three operating systems are in common use on the Internet: Windows, OS X and Linux. These operating systems are also the dominant systems used both in business and for personal use, with Microsoft Windows-in its many variations-dominating the marketplace. Both Windows and OS X, which is the operating system of Apple computers, are proprietary systems. This means that they are developed and maintained by

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It is impossible to exclude David Hume from the list of significant philosophers of the Enlightenment. It was during the 17th and 18th centuries in particular that Enlightenment thought grew up in the wake of the centuries of religious warfare that devastated Europe and that flared up periodically even after the Peace of Westphalia legitimated sectarian Christianity. It was characterized by interrogation of traditional conceptions of many facets of human experience, and by the middle of the 18th century secular interrogation of religion was routine. Hume's place in this scheme of intellectual history has been characterized as "advanc[ing] theories on the origin of popular religious beliefs, grounding such notions in human psychology rather than in rational argument or divine revelation" (Feiser, 2006). That is important because of Hume's frequent recourse to man as the measure of all things, including God. The big picture of Hume's view of morality and religion is that they were soci

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Introduction Christians have often wrestled with questions of unanswered prayer. Most Christians have had at least one prayer that was never answered or have witnessed the illnesses or deaths of people that they believed to be devout Christians in rightstanding with God. How can the concept of a loving God who longs to help His children be reconciled with unanswered prayer? Gregory A. Boyd's book Is God To Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil purports to provide answers to that burning question. Boyd's book explains God's will from the perspective of open theism, which asserts that "insofar as God gives freedom to agents, the future is composed of possibilities that are known by God as such," a view that "conflicts with the traditional view that God is eternally certain of all that will come to pass, including the decisions of free agents" (202). In other words, much of the future is "open" for God in the sense that He does not yet know what it hol

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Introduction This paper explores the relationship between general systems theory and world-systems analysis. General systems theory was developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1950). The concept and application of world-systems analysis were developed by Immanuel Wallerstein (1979). The findings of the exploration of the relationship between general systems theory and world-systems analysis are presented in four discussions. The initial discussion reviews general systems theory. The following two discussions review world-systems analysis (a) as conceived by Wallerstein (2005) and (b) as interpreted by Taylor (1993). The final discussion provides concluding remarks concerning the relationship between general systems theory and world-systems analysis. General Systems Theory: von Bertalanffy In relation to general systems theory, Juarrero and Rubino (2008) noted that, "Bertalanffy explicitly acknowledges the role that interactions among components p

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As the granddaughter of immigrants, I understand the difficulties that can plague the non-English-speaking foreign-born. My childhood was filled with warm memories of my grandparents, but I also remember struggling to understand their broken English. My grandmother had her own pronunciation for everyday words, such as "ween-doors" for windows and "harr" for heart. I generally understood these, but sometimes she would use a new word that I could not figure out. Weeks went by one year before I deduced that "pineys" was peonies. The problems on the immigrants' side of the language barrier are even greater. My grandmother was arrested and taken to the police station one day for jaywalking because she did not understand what the policeman directing traffic was saying to her. Neither she nor my gra

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As James W. Loewen pointed out, there is a great deal wrong with the way that American history textbooks have traditionally presented history (332). Loewen also makes the case that many teachers of American history have failed to incorporate multiple perspectives on major events and issues thereby cheating their students of opportunities to gain an in-depth understanding of the forces, people, and situations that have impacted upon their world (352). Building on this concept, this essay looks specifically at the case of Christopher Columbus, certainly one of the most widely known and largely misunderstood figures involved in the post-Conquest of the Americas. Drawing upon two scholarly studies focused on Columbus, his accomplishments, and his significance in terms of American history and the way it has been taught, this essay will expand the conversation about history and education begun earlier in this series of reports. The thesis to be discussed herein is that the case o

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