Literature Review - Business Schools Role in Society Essay Example for Free

Literature Review Business Schools Role in Society Essay Introduction Since 2007, the people of this planet have been living on 150 percent of its natural resource capacity (WWF, 2010). Increase in consumption does not show any signs of slowing down, as a consequence of emerging third world countries. The role that business schools play in this situation and its importance cannot be understated (Financial Times, 2010). In order to save this planet, we need to create a sustainable business environment, where corporations put ethics and social responsibility in front of profits. We need to switch the focus of all businesses from shareholders to stakeholders. Can this actually be taught? Or do governments need to legislate such actions? This topic is especially interesting because of the weight of our future that lies within this. If we do not change the way we teach students about core values of our society, the future of our planet may become very undesirable. These sources were acquired mainly from the EUR sEURch engine, as well as reading several articles from global news agencies in order to grasp a certain overview of this topic. * * * Literature Investigation * Addressing Concerns Raised by Critics of Business Schools by Teaching Multiple Approaches to Management (Dyck, B et al. 2011) 0 This article is a study about two ways of teaching management at classroom level. The article mentions concerns from other researchers about the way management is being taught in today’s universities. The authors argue that today’s students have a materialistic-individualistic point of view during their studies, and that these characteristics are consolidated during their time in the business study. These arguments are supported by an experiment. The authors indicate that there is flaws in the way business schools teach, and therefore actions should be taken. Others reject this and say management is an objective science. * This article might help to understand how business schools can change in order to make students more focused on stakeholders and ethics than shareholder profits. The article was published in a journal called Business and Society Review. It holds many references, where three of them are from Harvard Business Review. It was published 2011, therefore its currency cannot be questioned. Arguments are supported by an experiment. However, only one experiment was conducted which included a relatively small sample. The role of business schools in society (Cornuel, E 2005) The main subject of this article is very closely related to arguments stated in the introduction. It underlines the important role that business schools play to raise awareness of corporate social responsibility. It briefly mentions the need of humbleness in today’s business schools. Published in The Journal of Management Development in 2005, the importance and relevance of this article has become more of a current interest after it was published. Although the arguments are logical, this source does not provide sufficient support for its arguments. However, it does discuss interesting points and views within the subject. The author is Eric Cornuel, an Affiliate Professor at HEC, and Director General CEO of EFMD. The non-profit turn and its challenges for business schools (Cornuel, E Kletz, P 2011) Here, the researchers describe the challenges that business schools are facing today. Aiming towards the increase in demand for managers with an education in non-profit organizational management. The increase in large foundations (Bill Melinda Gates Foundation for example) is supposedly one of these demand shifters. The recent financial crisis is also argued to be one of the reasons for the movement towards education for non-profit and sustainability management at top business schools. There are two different models in how to change the curriculum in order to fill this need. The Double Standard Model, which argues that non-profit organizations should be managed differently than ordinary businesses, while the Business-Driven Model argues the opposite. Same author as in the previous source, Eric Cornuel, together with Pierre Kletz, Mandel Leadership Institution, Jerusalem, Israel. This research paper was published in the Journal of Management Development in 2011. This source gives meaningful insights to how and why business schools should make changes in their curriculum. Strategy Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility (Porter, M Kramer, M R 2006) This article was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2006. It is about how corporations can benefit from corporate social responsibility, instead of seeing it solely as a cost. One of the two authors is Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, one of the world’s most famous economists. This source is highly reliable because of two reasons. 1. Reputation of the author. 2. For the fact that it was published in one of the world’s most prestigious journals. It provides useful information for my future arguments, when it comes down to what business schools and businesses can gain from increasing CSR, and thereby improving global sustainability. Conclusion These articles all have one common argument. Business schools have to change. The disagreements lie in how this change should be executed, and what result that is to be expected from it (Financial Times, 2008). They all agree that business schools have a major impact on society, and therefore a great responsibility. Most researchers focus on how corporations must change, consequently leading to a change in demand for young managers with special skills in that area. Hence provoking the change of the business schools curriculum. This could be seen as delegating the responsibility of change to those corporations. As shown in the recent financial crisis, greed can make top executives act unethically, with no sense of corporate social responsibility. Should corporate social responsibility be legislated in order to achieve global sustainability? What role do business schools play in this? How can business schools act to ensure a positive future for our planet? Bibliography WWF 2010. Human demand outstrips natures supply, viewed 14 April 2012, http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/demands_on_our_planet/ Financial Times, 2010. Schools ignore sustainability revolution, viewed 17 April 2012, http://search.proquest.com/docview/756187538 Dyck, B et al., 2011, ‘Addressing Concerns Raised by Critics of Business Schools by Teaching Multiple Approaches to Management’, Business and Society Review, Volume 116, Issue 1, pp. 1 – 27, viewed 17 April 2012, retrieved from Wiley Online Library database. Cornuel, E 2005, ‘Role of Business Schools in Society’, The Journal of Management Development, Volume 24, Issue 9, p. 819, viewed at 17 April 2012, retrieved from ABI/INFORM Complete database. Cornuel, E Kletz, P 2011, ‘The non-profit turn and its challenges for business schools’ Journal of Management Development, Volume 30, Issue 5, pp. 483 – 491, viewed at 17 April 2012, retrieved from ABI/INFORM Complete database. Porter, M Kramer, M R 2006 ‘Strategy Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility’, Harvard business review, Volume 84, Issue 12, p. 78, viewed at 17 April 2012, retrieved from Business Source Premier database. Financial Times, 2008. The importance of sustainability, viewed 16 April 2012, http://search.proquest.com/docview/229149506 Self Reflection I approached the writing of this essay by and initial review if my previously submitted work, in order to grasp the full context, but also to see where I wanted to go and remind myself of the opinions I had while writing. I mostly free wrote for quite some time, and then later putting it all together with more approvable sentences in an academic sense. My biggest struggle was to get all the sources together to create some sort of an overview of the topic, since many of the articles were devoted to certain specific topics. I (hopefully) overcame this by reading a lot of different sources, and making connections to my own topic. I learned that starting an essay by free writing is the best approach for me personally, although a lot of time has to be dedicated to editing in the end, especially in the sense of making it all stick together as a whole piece. *

Essay --

â€Å"Demaryius Thomas is at the 20, the 10, TOUCHDOWN! The crowd goes wild! The Denver Broncos are going to the Super Bowl!† exclaimed, the newscaster. This wonderful image has been in the dreams of every Denver Broncos’ fans for over a decade. It has now become reality, for the Denver Broncos are participating in Super Bowl XLVIII. This paper’s main focus is to provide information on the Denver Broncos history, players, coaches, its super charged offense, and the Broncos’ road to the Super Bowl. According to Broncos history, the Denver Broncos first joined the National Football League (NFL) in 1960 with a dismal season winning only four out of the 14 games under the helm of Head Coach Frank Filchock. It took 17 years until the Denver Broncos made it to their first Super Bowl XII. Colorado embraced this team and nicknamed them the â€Å"Orange Crush† named after their perilous defense. Led by head coach Red Miller and quarterback Craig Morton, unfortunately they lost to the Dallas Cowboys in a 27 to 10 game. The Denver Broncos fans had to wait another 9 years for the next three Super Bowls under the direction of Head Coach Dan Reeves and with Colorado’s most iconic quarterback, John Elway in 1986, 87, and 89. Quite surprisingly, the Broncos lost all three Super Bowls (XXI, XXII, and XXIV) in the 80’s. Finally in the late 90’s John Elway near retirement led the 1997 and 1998 Broncos to their first two consecutive Super Bowl wins (XXXII and XXX III) under Head Coach Mike Shanahan. Presently, the Denver Broncos are the American Football Conference (AFC) Champions winning the game against the New England Patriots on January 19th, 2014. John Fox the 14th head coach of the Denver Broncos with a 24-year coaching career has won 112 gam... ...chdowns, nearly 4,000 receiving yards. This is his first Super Bowl appearance. Minnesotan, Eric Decker number 87 in his 4th year with the Denver Broncos scored 33 touchdowns, and 3,000 receiving yards. In week, 13 of the 2013-2014 season Decker earned the AFC Offensive Player of the Week award after scoring four touchdowns in a single game. To summarize, the Denver Broncos are on pace to becoming the best team in the history of the NFL. Consequently, on February 2nd, 2014 the Denver Broncos must face off against the Seattle Seahawks, the best team in the NFC at Super Bowl XLVIII. This highly anticipated game will decide the fate of which team can claim they are the World Champions. It will take the entire Denver Broncos team, coaches, players, and fans to conquer the mighty Seahawks and claim their prize in the history books as the best team in the world.

Marketing and Department

Project title: MUJI Introduction The head office of MUJI is from Japanese company, RTOHIN KEIKAU CO. , LTD. , and it is a new life style store and advocate simple, nature, texture life philosophy. Also, provide high quality and reasonable price product that related with life, and not waste the material to care about the product’s eco. Flowchart * Human resource department * Distribution department * Quality check department * Marketing department * Finance/ Accounting department * Information technology department * Administration department Japan head office * Engineering department Purchasing department * Productive department * Research & Development department * Creative department * * Human resource department * Distribution department * Quality check department * Marketing department * Finance/ Accounting department * Information technology department * Administration department Japan head office * Engineering department * Purchasing department * Productive departmen t * Research & Development department * Creative department * Front- stage Front- stage Back- stage Back- stage Service delivery system Service delivery system Other contact points Other contact pointsCashier center, Warehouse, Fitting room, Display area (window display), delivery team Cashier center, Warehouse, Fitting room, Display area (window display), delivery team Service operations system Service operations system Cabinet, Burglar alarm, Clothes chest & stand, Refrigerator, Showcase, Display rack, Spot light, Leaflet tray, Telephone, Computer system, Barcode, etc. Cabinet, Burglar alarm, Clothes chest & stand, Refrigerator, Showcase, Display rack, Spot light, Leaflet tray, Telephone, Computer system, Barcode, etc. Other customers Other customers The Customer The Customer Other customersOther customers Advertising Promotion sale MUJI card Miscellaneous e-mail, mamil, phone calls, etc. Websites Exposure product of seasons Advertising Promotion sale MUJI card Miscell aneous e-mail, mamil, phone calls, etc. Websites Exposure product of seasons Customer service associate, Cashier, Supervisor, Storekeeper, Security, Customer service hotline Customer service associate, Cashier, Supervisor, Storekeeper, Security, Customer service hotline Front stage Backstage Customer action Employee action Phone/ internet contact Make recommendation Arrived store Pay Delivery Recorded & follow upCustomer service CS associate, Security Cashier Enter data Register data Distribution Sent out Front stage Backstage Customer action Employee action Phone/ internet contact Make recommendation Arrived store Pay Delivery Recorded & follow up Customer service CS associate, Security Cashier Enter data Register data Distribution Sent out Most of the customer are having connect with company is they come to the store. But MUJI also provide a delivery ordering service to customers. When the total price over $3001 that the delivery charge will be free but if below $3000, it will take $120 for the charge.And have other three types of charge, like bridge/tunnel toll, labor charge, assembly charge, that will charge when different situation happened. And must remember that does the large packing furniture can be moved to the designated location or not so need to careful of this. Also, MUJI have cooperation with Hang Seng Bank that created a MUJI card that to attract consumers. Using MUJI card at MUJI can earn $5 MUJI dollars for every spending of $100 and can use the MUJI dollars when you use the MUJI card to buy at MUJI next time to enjoy double benefits.The responsibility range of each department Back stage department Human resource Staff is very importance of a company because if you don’t have any staff or they didn’t like the company, will make company’s quality down and nothing can do without staff. So that the most importance thing of human resource department has to do is how company keeps outstanding staff in company and recru it some outstanding people outside to join the company. And the mainly job of the department are including, compensation & benefits, staffing & selection, and training & development.Distribution Distribution department need to help picking and packing goods, delivery goods, physical storage planning, physical storage planning, may facilitate the movement of materials. And the department is being an important charter in the company because the company sales are directly related to the speed of delivery goods. Quality check When product finishes production and delivery to Hong Kong, will have a check in lab for testing its different kind of quality, like safety, health, practicability, etc.And they not only do the checking in lab, they also need to go to stores to have a random check to make sure the products have the high quality provide to customers. Marketing When the product start the production process, marketing department also need to start thinking about the compan y marketing strategy to defined the target market of the product, then find out the most suitable way for sell. Also, the marketing strategy must including promotion plan, like new product exhibition, advertising, sale, distribute leaflets to potential consumer, etc. AdministrationAdministration department is a department that sundry duties in a company. They need to arrange the appliances, like stationery, and buy the appliances, like water dispenser, keep in good repair of office, for example, clean the windows or rug, contact with the security of building, response company pantry and the document sending. Finance/ Accounting The mainly job of the department would be properly to help company manage the affair of finance, handle and calculate each department of company, defined the future development plan from the account, make sure the money enough to un the business and have great management system to manage and protect company’s asset. Information Technology Help to desig n and create company website, then need to manage the website, provide technology of computer science that to maintain or upgrade office computers or company system. Back-stage department (Japan head office) Purchasing Purchasing department is searching manufactory, material suppler, then inquire about price, negotiated price, makes contract with suppler, tracking warehousing, manage the inventory, processing the defective products, etc.They have to help the company to find out the cheapest price and have good quality company to be the suppler because the material cost may increase when contract higher price with supplier then the selling price will also follow to increase so it is very important to the production. Productive The job of the deportment is to manage, control the time to finish the product on time, control the cost of the production. They will subscribe guide line about the standard of product to let manufactory to follow, include following: quality, specifications, qu antity, deadline, method of using science.Creative Creative department’s staffs must have many creative ideas to help company design a new, useful and special product that can have good selling number. But their design still need keep company style and control the quality. Research & Development This department’s mainly job is collect data for research, basic research and applied research, then by the result to think about how to develop the products and fits to market. Front-stage department Sales The mainly job of sales department is make marketing department creates marketing strategy plan to operate.Also, the department staffs are selling products at retail store and answer customers inquire. They need to know all detail of the product that which in their response area. And they must have good communication and selling skills. Public relationship A good business image is rely on good public relationship department because it is a department that response to pro vide positive image to public, like send out declare when having any bad in that country or update the positive news to consumers, etc. Customer ServiceThe mainly work of the department is handle daily running of customer service, like receive customer order and follow up the order, and provide good service to customer, answer customer’s inquire or complaint. Security It’s a most important deportment of a company because it is related to safety problem. Their job is make sure all the staff and company’s safety, have temporary problem solving sills, for example, something have been stolen or company on fire, so they response to follow the timetable to make one’s rounds of inspection and general security’s job.Conclusion MUJI is one of the company that provide high quality service, and they are not only focus this way, they also focus on resource of Earth, environment, recycle problems and it’s store image of ‘sample style’ can at tract many different age group people to visit. But one of thing that MUJI need to improve is their Hong Kong MUJI website is too simple that not enough information to show consumers.

An Explanation of Unicode Character Encoding

For a computer to be able to store text and numbers that humans can understand, there needs to be a code that transforms characters into numbers. The Unicode standard defines such a code by using character encoding. The reason character encoding is so important is so that every device can display the same information. A custom character encoding scheme might work brilliantly on one computer, but problems will occur when if you send that same text to someone else. It wont know what youre talking about unless it understands the encoding scheme too. Character Encoding All character encoding does is assign a number to every character that can be used. You  could make a character encoding right now. For example, I could say that the letter A becomes the number 13, a14, 133, #123, and so on. This is where industry-wide standards come in. If the whole computer industry uses the same character encoding scheme, every computer can display the same characters. What Is Unicode? ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) became the first widespread encoding scheme. However, its limited to only 128 character definitions. This is fine for the most common English characters, numbers, and punctuation, but is a bit limiting for the rest of the world. Naturally, the rest of the world wants the same encoding scheme for their characters too. However, for a little, while depending on where you were, there might have been a different character displayed for the same ASCII code. In the end, the other parts of the world began creating their own encoding schemes, and things started to get a little bit confusing. Not only were the coding schemes of different lengths, programs needed to figure out which encoding scheme they were supposed to use. It became apparent that a new character encoding scheme was needed, which is when the Unicode standard was created. The objective of Unicode is to unify all the different encoding schemes so that the confusion between computers can be limited as much as possible. These days, the Unicode standard defines values for over 128,000 characters and can be seen at the Unicode Consortium. It has several character encoding forms: UTF-8: Only uses one byte (8 bits) to encode English characters. It can use a sequence of bytes to encode other characters. UTF-8 is widely used in email systems and on the internet.UTF-16: Uses two bytes (16 bits) to encode the most commonly used characters. If needed, the additional characters can be represented by a pair of 16-bit numbers.UTF-32: Uses four bytes (32 bits) to encode the characters. It became apparent that as the Unicode standard grew, a 16-bit number is too small to represent all the characters. UTF-32 is capable of representing every Unicode character as one number. Note: UTF means Unicode Transformation Unit. Code Points A code point is the value that a character is given in the Unicode standard. The values according to Unicode are written as hexadecimal numbers and have a prefix of U. For example, to encode the characters we looked at earlier: A is U0041a is U00611 is U0031# is U0023 These code points are split into 17 different sections called planes, identified by numbers 0 through 16. Each plane holds 65,536 code points. The first plane, 0, holds the most commonly used characters and is known as the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Code Units The encoding schemes are made up of code units, which are used to provide an index for where a character is positioned on a plane. Consider UTF-16 as an example. Each 16-bit number is a code unit. The code units can be transformed into code points. For instance, the flat note symbol â™ ­ has a code point of U1D160 and lives on the second plane of the Unicode standard (Supplementary Ideographic Plane). It would be encoded using the combination of the 16-bit code units UD834 and UDD60. For the BMP, the values of the code points and code units are identical. This allows a shortcut for UTF-16 that saves a lot of storage space. It only needs to use one 16-bit number to represent those characters. How Does Java Use Unicode? Java was created around the time when the Unicode standard had values defined for a much smaller set of characters. Back then, it was felt that 16-bits would be more than enough to encode all the characters that would ever be needed. With that in mind, Java was designed to use UTF-16. The char data type was originally used to represent a 16-bit Unicode code point. Since Java SE v5.0, the char represents a code unit. It makes little difference for representing characters that are in the Basic Multilingual Plane because the value of the code unit is the same as the code point. However, it does mean that for the characters on the other planes, two chars are needed. The important thing to remember is that a single char data type can no longer represent all the Unicode characters.