Ignorance and Demand for Liability Insurance

Question: Discuss about the Ignorance and Demand for Liability Insurance. Answer: Introduction: A shop that welcomes people to buy their products has a duty to ensure they are reasonably safe. If a customer falls in the store due to an unreasonable condition, he or she can claim for injury against the store. In the case of Tamara and Aldi Supermarket, for example, Tamara is a loyal customer to the store. However, one Saturday morning as Tamara was running towards the far end of the confectionary aisle, she slips on a melted ice cream and falls, upon which she breaks her back. As a result of this, Tamara spends several months recovering in hospital with general damages alone in excess of $700,000. Now, she wants to sue Aldi Supermarket for the negligence of her losses, but Aldi Supermarket can prove that it has a member who cleans the aisle after every 40 minutes. Therefore, what follows in this discussion is the legal requirement on negligence misrepresentation and further an analysis of what Tamara should do in her situation. Legal Requirement in a Negligent Misrepresentation Action In cases of negligent misrepresentation, the ordinary laws of negligence apply. However, the plaintiff, in this case, Tamara, must prove three things in the action: the defendant owes her a duty of care; she faced damage or economic loss; the defendant went below the necessary standard of care. The Duty of Care According to Fleming, the duty of care is an obligation, recognized by law, to avoid conduct fraught with unreasonable risk of danger to others (Sadler, 2009, p.19). When the plaintiff faces pure economic loss, it becomes quite difficult for him or her (Velasco, 2015, p.648). This is where the arguments based on indeterminacy get played out. The duty of care concept shows that the courts envisaged that the two parties the plaintiff and the defendant (Tamara and Aldi Supermarket respectively) must be in a closeness or nearness (Kangoh, 2016, p.273). According to Lord Atkin, in his speech Donoghue v Stevenson, this relationship is called a neighbor." Atkin says that You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbor (Sadler, 2009, p.19). A neighbor, in this case, is the person who is closely and directly affected by the other persons acts. If the plaintiff suffered personal injury, then the court has no trouble in finding that the duty of care exists (Greiner, 2014, p.530). The nature of the damage, therefore, shows that at one time there was a physical closeness between the two parties. However, if the damage has a purely economic loss, it becomes hard for the court to demonstrate that there was a sufficient relationship between the parties for the establishment of the duty of care. Standard of Care Standard of care is also called the scope of duty. It is the negligence part of a negligence action. A defendant is expected to demonstrate a reasonable standard of care, and so is Aldi Supermarket. According to the objective standards, the appropriate standard of reasonable care is the standard which should have been reached according to the law, and not according to the defendant. If the accused does not reach the professional standards, it implies that he or she has not reached the required standard of care (Sadler, 2009, p.23). However, compliance with the accepted standards does not necessarily imply that the defendant becomes exonerated from liability. Damage Another element that Tamara has to prove to the court is that she suffered damage from the negligent action of Aldi Supermarket. Based on causation in common law, Tamara must show that Aldi Supermarket contributed to her loss. Nonetheless, negligence of the defendant may not be the only cause of loss (Hamer, 2014, p.162; Pagura, 2015, p.255). The loss could also occur if the defendant is not negligent. In this regard, then the defendant is not held liable for the plaintiffs losses. The but for test is used to determine such situations (Sadler, 2009, p.24). The practical limitations of this test are that: (1) the test holds that there was no cause of the injury despite having independent and sufficient causes of the accident that resulted in injury. (2) In the case of a superseding event between the negligent action of the defendant and the injury to the plaintiff, the court resolves this judicially by combining the but for and the common sense test. If the defendants negligence caused injury to the plaintiff, the plaintiff gets only compensated where the damage was reasonably foreseeable. According to the Civil Liability Act, on the Scope of Liability,' the consequences to a defendant are reasonably foreseeable if they lead to real risk which a reasonable man would prevent (Bajtelsmit Thistle, 2009, p.110). Analysis It is a fact that Tamara slipped, fell and got injured in Aldi Supermarket. This is enough to allow her to have a valid claim against the business. The reason for this is as mentioned earlier: businesses have a duty to ensure their customers are reasonably safe (Zipursky, 2015, p.2142). However, having a valid legal claim is not always smooth because the plaintiff has an obligation to prove to the Court that the slip and fall were as a result of unsafe conditions in the store. Besides that, the store will only have a responsibility to compensate the customer depending on pfarticular facts about the accident, but not based on the common conditions that may cause slip and fall in such stores. Therefore, the legal responsibility of the business depends on whether it should have reasonably noticed the unsafe condition but failed to take the required action to fix it. However, being that Aldi can prove to the Court that it has a member who inspects and cleans the aisle after every forty minutes, then it is evident that the store demonstrates a reasonable standard of care. Besides, according to causation, the but for and the common sense tests, Tamaras injury could not be as a result of Aldis negligence. There is a high chance that she could still get injured even without the issue of negligence because it was morning and she was running fast to get the remaining chocolate bar. Therefore, in the case of Tamara v Aldi Supermarket, Aldi is not liable for Tamaras losses. As such, Tamara should not carry on with the case. Reference List Bajtelsmit, V, Thistle, P 2009, 'Negligence, Ignorance and the Demand for Liability Insurance,' Geneva Risk Insurance Review, 34, 2, pp. 105-116. Greiner, R 2014, 'Environmental Duty of Care: From Ethical Principle Towards a Code of Practice for the Grazing Industry in Queensland (Australia),' Journal of Agricultural Environmental Ethics, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 527-547. Hamer, D 2014, ''Factual causation' and 'scope of liability': What's the difference?', Modern Law Review, vol. 77, no. 2, pp. 155-188. Kangoh, L 2016, 'Risk Aversion, the Hand Rule, and Comparison between Strict Liability and the Negligence Rule,' Review Of Law Economics, 12, 2, pp. 261-274. Pagura, I 2015, 'Negligence: What you need to know,' Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 254-256. Sadler, P 2009, Liability for Negligent Misrepresentation in the Finance Industry.' 1st ed. [ebook] School of Business Law and Taxation, pp.17-25. Available at: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/LegIssBus/2009/3.pdf [Accessed 17 Jan. 2017]. Velasco, J 2015, 'A Defense of the Corporate Law Duty of Care,' Journal of Corporation Law, 40, 3, pp. 647-703. Zipursky, BC 2015, 'Reasonableness In And Out Of Negligence Law,' University Of Pennsylvania Law Review, 163, 7, pp. 2131-2170.

Foreign Exchange Market free essay sample

Globally, operations in the foreign exchange market started in a major way after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, which also marked the beginning of floating exchange rate regimes in several countries. Over the years, the foreign exchange market has emerged as the largest market in the world. The decade of the 1990s witnessed a perceptible policy shift in many emerging markets towards reorientation of their financial markets in terms of new products and instruments, development of institutional and mar ket infrastr ucture and realignment of regulatory structure consistent with the liberalised operational framework. The changing contours were mirrored in a rapid expansion of foreign exchange market in terms of participants, transaction volumes, decline in transaction costs and more efficient mechanisms of risk transfer. 6. The origin of the foreign exchange market in India could be traced to the year 1978 when banks in India were permitted to undertake intra-day trade in foreign exchange. We will write a custom essay sample on Foreign Exchange Market or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, it was in the 1990s that the Indian foreign exchange market witnessed far reaching changes along with the shifts in the currency regime in India. The exchange rate of the rupee, that was pegged earlier was floated partially in March 1992 and fully in March 1993 following the recommendations of the Report of the High Level Committee on Balance of Payments (Chairman: Dr. C. Rangarajan). The unification of the exchange rate was instrumental in developing a market-determined exchange rate of the rupee and an important step in the progress towards current account convertibility, which was achieved in August 1994. 6. 3 A further impetus to the development of the foreign exchange market in India was provided with the setting up of an Exper t Group on Foreign Exchange Markets in India (Chairman: Shri O. P. Sodhani), which submitted its report in June 1995. The Group made several recommendations for deepening and widening of the Indian foreign exchange market. Consequently, beginning from January 1996, wide-ranging reforms have been undertaken in the Indian foreign exchange market. After almost a decade, an Internal Technical Group on the Foreign Exchange Mar ket (2005) was constituted to undertake a comprehensive review of the measures initiated by the Reserve Bank and identify areas for further liberalisation or relaxation of restrictions in a medium-term framework. 6. 4 The momentous developments over the past few years are reflected in the enhanced risk-bearing capacity of banks along with rising foreign exchange trading volumes and finer margins. The foreign exchange market has acquired depth (Reddy, 2005). The conditions in the foreign exchange market have also generally remained orderly (Reddy, 2006c). While it is not possible for any country to remain completely unaffected by developments in international markets, India was able to keep the spillover effect of the Asian crisis to a minimum through constant monitoring and timely action, including recourse to strong monetary measures, when necessary, to prevent emergence of selffulfilling speculative activities (Mohan, 2006a). . 5 Against the above background, this chapter attempts to analyse the role of the central bank in developing the foreign exchange market. Section I provides a brief review of different exchange rate regimes being followed in emerging mar ket economies (EMEs). Section II traces the evolution of India’s foreign exchange market in line with the shifts in India’s exchange rate policies in the postindependence period from the pegged to the ma rket determined regime. Various regulatory and policy initiatives taken by the Reser ve Bank and the Government of India for developing the foreign exchange market in the market determined set up have also been highlighted. Section III presents a detailed overview of the current foreign exchange market structure in India. It also analyses the available market infrastructure in terms of market players, trading platfor m, instr uments and settlement mechanisms. Section IV assesses the performance of the Indian foreign exchange market in terms of liquidity and efficiency.

Free Essays on Willis Reed

â€Å"Willis Reed† As a Hall of Famer, Willis Reed was born on June 25, 1942 in Bernice Louisiana. As a youngster, Willis Reed began to play basketball and that’s when he began to make a name for himself. By the time, Willis got into high school in Lillie Louisiana from 1956-1960. While playing basketball at West Side High, Willis Reed had achieved many accomplished and honors. He was named All-State in 1956-1960, and All Conference. After his many accomplishments in High School, Reed went to Grambling State University, in Grambling Louisiana from 1960-1964. With his many skills in basketball, Reed moved up to receiving much college highlights much like his highschool accomplishments. To name only a few, Willis Reed led Grambling to the NAIA national championship as a freshman in 1961, led Grambling to the 1963 and 1964 NAIA Final Four, led Grambling to three Southwest Conference titles. While receiving all his nominations, he also received the All-NAIA Tournament Team in 1963-1964, All-America in 1963-1964. In addition, while casting his many skills on the Basketball Court, Reed scored 2,280 pts. (18.7) in 122 games, including 26.6 ppg. as a senior. Reed was later enshrined in NAIA Basketball Hall of Fame in 1970. Willis Reeds journey did not stop in college, he was later entered into the pros in 1964-1974 years, playing with the New York Knicks. As a professional player, Reed’s outstanding performance advanced while in the National Basketball Association Family. In 1965, Willis Reed was named Rookie of the Year. As a rookie into the professions, Reed averaged 14.7 rpg. Willis Reed continued to receive honors for his outstanding skills on the basketball court. With all his many talents as a player, upon retirement in 1974, Willis Reed furthered his career as a college and professional coach from 1977-1989. While being a pro-coach, Reed was nominated with hi ghlights for having a 82-124 record as a NBA head coach and in his... Free Essays on Willis Reed Free Essays on Willis Reed â€Å"Willis Reed† As a Hall of Famer, Willis Reed was born on June 25, 1942 in Bernice Louisiana. As a youngster, Willis Reed began to play basketball and that’s when he began to make a name for himself. By the time, Willis got into high school in Lillie Louisiana from 1956-1960. While playing basketball at West Side High, Willis Reed had achieved many accomplished and honors. He was named All-State in 1956-1960, and All Conference. After his many accomplishments in High School, Reed went to Grambling State University, in Grambling Louisiana from 1960-1964. With his many skills in basketball, Reed moved up to receiving much college highlights much like his highschool accomplishments. To name only a few, Willis Reed led Grambling to the NAIA national championship as a freshman in 1961, led Grambling to the 1963 and 1964 NAIA Final Four, led Grambling to three Southwest Conference titles. While receiving all his nominations, he also received the All-NAIA Tournament Team in 1963-1964, All-America in 1963-1964. In addition, while casting his many skills on the Basketball Court, Reed scored 2,280 pts. (18.7) in 122 games, including 26.6 ppg. as a senior. Reed was later enshrined in NAIA Basketball Hall of Fame in 1970. Willis Reeds journey did not stop in college, he was later entered into the pros in 1964-1974 years, playing with the New York Knicks. As a professional player, Reed’s outstanding performance advanced while in the National Basketball Association Family. In 1965, Willis Reed was named Rookie of the Year. As a rookie into the professions, Reed averaged 14.7 rpg. Willis Reed continued to receive honors for his outstanding skills on the basketball court. With all his many talents as a player, upon retirement in 1974, Willis Reed furthered his career as a college and professional coach from 1977-1989. While being a pro-coach, Reed was nominated with hi ghlights for having a 82-124 record as a NBA head coach and in his...

Antiperspirants and Deodorant Market and Evolution Research Paper

Antiperspirants and Deodorant Market and Evolution - Research Paper Example As the paper stresses it is natural for a healthy human being to sweat. Amount of perspiration depends on weather conditions, personal health, hygiene and physical activity level. Sweat is wet and odorless in its pure form. It only stinks after reacting with the bacteria on human skin .Sweat regulates body temperature irrespective of the outside weather conditions. Be it topical or below zero outside, human body temperature remains constant. While exposed to extreme heat, sweat glands excrete a watery substance that cools down the body. It is a thermoregulatory mechanism which makes the body capable of adapting to hottest climates. This discussion declares that the apocrine glands are comparatively large but only in size as in number they are few. These glands end in the follicles of body hair and become active after puberty. Apocrine glands respond to hormonal secretions and get triggered by emotional factors, for instance, stress and sexual excitement. Sweat produced from both types of glands is odorless. The main culprits for odor are bacteria which ferment on sweat. By products of this activity generate odor, therefore, daily shower is suggested to be a natural way to avoid odor. However, despite the fact that both eccrine sweat and apocrine sweat are nearly 99 per cent water, apocrine sweat contains some oil which is more favorable for bacterial growth. Therefore, apocrine sweat is prime reason for sweat odor while eccrine sweat makes us wet. (Blumenthal). External Factors Other than sweat glands, some external factors also contribute to sweating, such as hot weather, some particular food, smoking or drug use. According to studies by the Gillette Co, foods including garlic, onions, hot spices and beer have been detected to contribute in more body odor. Contrary to yesteryears’ belief about fighting sweat, regular bathing and killing or inhibiting bacterial growth by deodorants and antiperspirants is frequently suggested today. The approach is far improved and effective as compared to masking the odor by perfumes in past (Blumenthal). Deodorants and antiperspirants Antiperspirants are available in sprays, creams, pads, powders,

Chinese Cinema Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Chinese Cinema - Case Study Example Yimou began his career by making films thate looked at the past, present, and the future through a futuristic eye. He emphasized a lot on the resilience, even the stubbornness, of Chinese people in the face of hardships and adversities. The films dared to deconstruct China and reform the culture. His earlier films appear to be influenced a lot by his background and the life struggle. However, it is quite surprising to observe that Yimou has changed his track completely to make some morality fables and period martial art movies. The message from these movies also was quite confusing, considering his previous reputation as a dissident filmmaker (Salazar). Zhang Yimou was born in 1952 in the Xi'an province of China. He grew up in socialist China where class struggle dominated life and literature. His father and brother were associated with the Kuomintang (Nationalist party). So, as a child, Yimou suffered stigmatization and ridicules. The Cultural Revolution of 1966 forced him to quit studying and start working as a farm hand and laborer. Meanwhile, Yimou developed interest in painting and amateur still photography. He used his portfolio of photographs to gain admission to the cinematography department of the Beijing Film Academy in 1978. In the film academy, Yimou was exposed to art films by various European, Japanese, Chinese, and American directors, including Fei Mu, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Scorsese, and Truffaut. He graduated from the film academy in 1982 along with stalwarts such as, Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang. The influence of these art films and such compatriots can be seen in all of Yimou's early films. Yimou started his cinematic career as a director of photography (One and Eight, 1984). In this very first venture, his unique talent was highly visible. He shot his pictures from obscure angles and captured the color stock as though it were black and white. He positioned the actors at the side, rather than at the center to improve the dramatic effect. He also used unique visual styles, based on the asymmetrical and unbalanced composition of the shots. Earlier Films - Theme and the Cinematic Vision In 1987, Zhang Yimou embarked on his directorial debut, Red Sorghum. The movie brought Yimou a lot of critical acclaim and catapulted him into the forefront of the world's art directors. The film had a lot of lush images, though the plot was simple and short. It told the story of Jiu'er, a poor girl who is sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with a much older man. Thereafter, the tale revolves around the life and struggle of Jiu'er and finally her tragic end. The movie is very different from the faster and cheaper forms of Hollywood color films, primarily because of its strong melodrama and the overwhelming visual quality. The cinematography splashes its passionate colors all over the screen with abandon. The visual impact of the film is voluptuous. Yimou has used the red color as a symbol to represent passion. For Jiu'er, the red of masculinity dominates the wedding sedan, the wild sorghum, the sorghum wine, and the fire that consumes her at the end. Red Sorghum breaks cultural taboos against representing female orgasm, ecstasy, and reproductive continuity onscreen. Bold close-ups of the heroine's face, such as in the wild-sorghum abduction scene were new in mainland Chinese cinema. However, Yimou showcases female desire as

HP Introduction

HP Introduction Hewlett Packard popularly called HP is a company that provides technology solutions to consumers, businesses and all forms of institutions worldwide. The company later expands its operations to IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing services. The company is known throughout the world by operating in more than 170 countries around the world. The mission of the company is to facilitate how technology and services can assist individuals and institutions in addressing their problems and challenges so as to realize their dreams. The company applies new thinking and ideas come out with basic and valuable experiences with the technology with her IT corporation headquarter in Palo, Alto, California, USA. The company has been maintaining a lead among her contemporaries due to the effective strategic planning of the company and this has been jealously guided by the company in virtually all her businesses. Background of HP Company The initiators of HP Company are Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard who were classmates at Stanford Universities. They established the company in 1993, seventeen years ago. The first product of the company is called audio oscillators, an electronic testing instrument used by sound engineers. The product is developed in Palo Alto garage. Walt Disney studios were the first HP customers that bought a number of the audio oscillators for testing a new sound system. The company has gained enough popularity in so many countries of the world to have become the No 1 infrastructure support services revenue in 2003 among many world top support services providers. HP as a company always rise to challenges when it comes to IT-related issues, this is manifested in so many ways, the company offers one of the tech worlds most comprehensive portfolios of hardware, software, and services. The products range from personal computers, servers, and sophisticated storage devices, variety of printers and series of networking equipments. Asides this, the service unit of HP still offers series of IT and business outsourcing, software application development, IT consulting, and other IT-related services. The company has produces series of software such as carrier-grade communications applications, information management business intelligence and enterprise IT management among others. The coverage of her business are covered in consumers, business, government agencies and educational organization and such has been spread to more than 170 countries of the world. HP as a company believes so much in working towards achieving her set objectives and that has been the corporate values shared by all the employee within the organization. This is confirmed by the quotation of Dave Packard, co-founder of HP as follow: It is necessary that people work together in unison toward common objectives and avoid working at cross purposes at all levels if the ultimate in efficiency and achievement is to be obtained. Dave Packard The company has always been careful in following the pathways to achieving its set objectives based on the organizational values.Table 1 below summarizes the HPs corporate shared values and corporate objectives. Table 1: HPs Corporate values and objectives HPs Corporate Shared Values HPs Corporate Objectives Passion for customers Customer loyality Trust and respect for individuals Profit Achievement and contribution Growth Results through teamwork Market leadership Speed and agility Commitment to employees Meaningful innovation Leadership capability Uncompromising integrity Global citizenship Information Technology in HP HP company has been maintaining a lead in Information Technology (IT) which is evidenced as contained in the following discussions. To start with, it is revealed from the analyst firms report that HP recorded a tremendous increase in the infrastructure support services revenue from $7.889 billion to $8.028 billion between 2002 and 2003. This accounts for over 6% of the world infrastructure support service market. This marks the second year of the company (HP) leading the IT industry in support service revenue. Among the identified 450 IT service providers which is finally categorized in to the following four categories: Major service (Hardware maintenance and support, software support) Platform (Computing and connectivity) Industry Major geographical region and country HP maintains the lead in all the categories. HP is identified as one of the largest IT companies that operate in nearly every country. HP specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, networking and its hardware infrastructure, software design and rendering support services. The impact of Information Technology (IT) on the achievement of HP is not limited to the technological aspects but also the soft skills and expertise which are unique to HP software crew. Malan, Coleman Letsinger (1995) in their study conducted to explore the current state of object-oriented practice. The findings of the study revealed that the best practice is derived from lesson learnt from HP. This means that HP is maintaining a lead in this regard. Object oriented programming approach is the most competing approach and any organization with required expertise in this area will make its ways in the competitive environment. This part of what strengthens the IT proficiency of HP company . Therefore, the success of HP cannot be a surprise since IT is now considered as the hub of every business. HP as an IT-based company has always been ready to assist serious-minded organizations in solving their IT-relate problems and such has been a plus to the company. A good scenario in this regard is how HP came to the aid of St. Peters Anglican Primary School with 560 students in both the K-6 and pre-kindergarten classes. The leadership of the school so much believe that the creating a computer-assisted learning environment for the children will serve as a good motivation for them to learn, in their quest to achieve this, the school can only afford desktop PCs due to budget constraints. The desktop PCs were found to be very slow in network operation and some were even too old to work which affects the realization of the schools goals. An introduction to HPs channel partner Somerville, and HPs Consolidated Client Infrastructure (CCI), made St Peters to begin a complete overhaul of its IT infrastructure that would bring a new flexibility and efficiency to its entire computing platform. In doing this, HP plays a significant role in addressing this problem. HP implemented a Consolidated Client Infrastructure based on a series of blade PCs for St Peters. This system meant that when a blade PC went down, another would pick up the active session, immediately minimizing disruptions to users. In a Consolidated Client Infrastructure, desktop PCs are replaced by thin client terminals, which are then virtually connected to HP blade PCs stored on a blade rack enclosure in a remote and centralised location. Each blade PC has its own CPU, RAM and hard disk. A HP blade enclosure can contain up to 20 blade PCs in a 3U rack enclosure, allowing up to 280 blade PCs per 42U rack. Blade PCs are then accessed via the Microsoft RDP, Citrix ICA or HP RGS protocols and displayed on thin client devices. Only screen updates, keyboard strokes, mouse actions, audio and peripheral data travel over the network, all the processing happens on the blade PCs. Users are connected to blade PCs either statically or through a broker such as HPs Session Allocation Manager, thus allowing the creation of a concurrent pool of resources and lowering the amount of IT administration required. This among others repositioned HP within organizations in terms of IT support. Information System in HP The company does not limit herself to only the IT aspects but also doing well in information system. A good testimony to this is the HP being announced as the as the support company for the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) with the company tapping from the HPs software for optimizing the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to deliver a reliable kind of interoperability capable of servicing all US defense departments. SOA is a technique of delivering IT services in a secured and manageable manner by using flexible, reusable and standard technology that can easily be adjusted to take care of any unplanned changes that occur in the business plan. The HP systinet SOA (HP business technology) is very good in this regard as it assist business organization in building a kind of information system (record) to manage the services rendered throughout the cycle of that service. This is to explain how far HP as a company has gone in terms of information systems to have provided DISA which is solely used for planning, engineering, acquiring, fielding and supporting IT solutions capable of serving the U.S president, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and all departments of US defense. This has earn HP series of awards from 2005 to date. HP offers SOA services to help customers at any point along the SOA lifecycle, including the design, build, integration, management and evolution of their SOA environment. HP Services also collaborates with technology partners such as BEA Systems, JBoss, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP to offer customers choice and flexibility. Competitive Advantage Introduction about Competitive Advantage First of all, it is important to briefly define what is competitive advantage? Competitive advantage is a feature exhibited at the expense of the firms rivals or competitors. It is a state where a firm sustains profits that is more than the industrial set average profit. Primarily, it is the dream of every business organization to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. According to Michael Porter, cost advantage and differentiation advantage are identified as the two basic types of competitive advantage. Cost competitive advantage A business firm/organization is considered to achieve cost competitive advantage if she is able to offer a better service or products to customers at a relatively reduced cost compared to her competitors. For example, HP has achieved sustainable cost competitive advantage over all her competitors by being able to produce highly quality laptops at a cheaper rate. Differentiation competitive advantage Differentiation competitive advantage is gained or achieved by a firm or an organization if she is able to deliver services or products of better values compared to those offered by her rivals or competitors. With the explanation of the two types of competitive advantage, it can be described as a way of getting more values for the customers and getting more profits for the company. Figure 1 below describes a competitive advantage model. As can be seen from the model combination of the organizational resources (human and material) and capabilities forms the distinctive competencies that makes the organization to be able to make a difference with respect to either cost advantage of differentiation advantage which eventually creates values for both the organization and the customers. This is in line with the resource-based theory that for a firm to attain a sustainable competitive advantage, such a firm must have superior resources and capabilities compared to her competitors. How Competitive Advantage helps HP Company HP Company being one of the world largest IT companies with a quarterly revenue of approximately $97.1 billion is able to maintain such a wonderful record through the sustainable competitive advantage over the competitors. The sustainable competitive advantage has benefited the company in so many ways that she has no other choice other than sustaining such record. The gained competitive advantage has increased the companys revenue tremendously. In year 2006, HP recorded a much better revenue of $91.7 billion against the rival, IBM with $91.4 billion. In year 2007, the annual revenue of the company was jacked up to $104 billion to become the first IT company reported to have a revenue of more than $ 100 billion, it doesnt stop there, acquisition of the EDS in 2008, also jacked up the revenue to $118.4 billion. All these achievements in terms of boosting in the revenue are products of the gained competitive advantage. The competitive advantage gained and sustained ever since by HP can be also attributed to her leadership position in the world technology with groups strategically assigned to drive industry leadership in main technology areas. The Personal Systems group are responsible for the lead in the business and consumer PCs, mobile computing equipments and work station. In the same manner, the imaging and printing group is responsible for the successes recorded in all forms of printing devices (personal and commercial printing), printing supplies and the enterprise business group is in charge of all business products. The performance of each of these groups among others is what makes HP what it is today among her equal. In addition HP became the largest world seller of personal computers as a result of her competitive advantage. In January 2010 a report from Gartner and IDC (Market Research Firms) shows that there is a wide gap between HP and Dell with HP taking 8.3% market share lead at the end of 2009. It was equally reported that HP is the 6th largest world software company. HP Company is equally reported in year 2008, to have retained the global leadership position in Jacket, laser, large format and multifunction printers market and at the same time the second IT service provider throughout the world. All these benefits/achievements do not come by chance it is as a result of being able to maintain some degree of superiority over the competitors. This results in to competitive advantage and the benefits being discusses the created values based on the competitive advantage. Analysis of Competitive Advantage in HP Company HP is able to achieve and sustain competitive advantage with her distinctive competencies. First of all, the company is committed to simplifying technology experiences for all its customers. This is applicable to all the services rendered ranging from printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. This is very important since it assists in making virtually all the HP products usable by the intended users by putting the customers first. There is no way one can analyze HP competitive advantage without discussing the HP values; HP values is associated with the complete adherence to the ways or paths set out by the founding HP leaders. These unique ways account for the decision-making and the firms advancement since it is just like a roadmap. Also, HP pioneers based the corporate culture on the integration and reinforcement of critical opposites. This is achieved by simultaneously creating an environment that both celebrates individualism and at the same time supports the team work. The beauty of it is that such a practice will allow the company to tap from the benefits of both approaches as the case may be and also to neutralize their associated risks. Another way by which the competitive advantage of HP Company is sought is through her concept of developing cross functional individuals. Unlike other companies that just hire staffs and train them for a specific job requirement to be assigned to such staffs throughout their stay in the organization, HP makes sure that all her employees move more than 4 to six functional areas within the company to allow them to work in more than one departments of the company and thereby effectively managing the organizational knowledge through effective sharing among her staffs. It has been widely agreed that in this knowledge era, effective knowledge management will surely lead to achievement of competitive advantage. The quest for developing employee has always been the strength of HP company in attaining competitive advantage since this makes the company to achieve effective organizational change considering the rampant changes in the business organizations. Miller (2004) revealed that since 1980, HP has been engaged in extensive employee retraining program called Software Job Skills (SJS). Personnel who might ordinarily be laid-off underwent serious retraining the complex set of required skills and techniques. This makes the company to be able to sustain her competitive advantage since the employees always continue to be relevant and compliant with the new trend organizational need and employee are considered important in the performance of every organization. Organizational competitiveness is derived by the implementation of knowledge management and its associated benefits. Knowledge management helps in reducing the production cost as a result of the possibility of reusability. This allows the organization to be able to offer services of the same quality or even better than that of its competitive at a relatively low cost. This is an important way of gaining competitive advantage. In addition, the implementation of knowledge management brought about enhanced employee productivity and coordination which has a resulting positive effect on organizational performance. Another important factor is early delivery or ubiquitous service deliver powered by the real time communication facility. It is a wise saying of HP as quoted as follow If only HP know what HP knows! It means that the required knowledge and skills for solving your problem resides somewhere within the company. This means that the company has achieved a lot through effective communication. All these account for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. There have been series of academic evidences responsible for the early delivery experienced in the company due to regular improvement and enhancement of the supply chain. According to Lava, Feyhl and Kakourus (2005),full optimization of the business supply chain cannot be achieved using only the Operation Research (OR) approach in this demanding fast-paced ubiquitous business environment of the globalized era. Using OR alone will require a lot of time which might result in to delay in the service delivery and thereby negatively affect customer satisfaction. HP strategic planning and modeling (SPaM) came out with a more efficient approach which combines the optimization ability of OR and scenario analysis of the expert knowledge to arrive at an effective supply chain approach capable of solving complex supply chain decision problem for HPs imaging and printing group of company. the earlier the customers can get the required service the more satisfied they are, the efficient supply chain of HP has been of the secretes of the companys sustainable competitive advantage. It ha equally been argued that the risk associated with supply chain are related to product demand, component cost and availability uncertainties and they all affect the companys revenues and profits. According to Ngali, Hwang, Sanghera, Gaskins, Pridgan, Thuvston, Mackenvoth, Branvold, Scholler and Shoemaker (2008), procurement management group is formed in HP and they developed and implemented a mathematical model, business process and software to estimate and manage risks associated with supply chain. This has brought a lot of benefits to the company. To the extent that in year 2006, HP was able to manage $7 billion of her spending by saving only material cost of not less than $128 million. This really maximizes the companys profits and contributes to the sustainable competitive advantage of the company. The products of HP are always better than that of her competitors and such are refined and rebranded from time to time to meet the changing technological needs of the customers. Just in November 2009, HP StorageWorks X9000 was introduced as the new network storage system which is primarily designed to meet the emerging trend of the explosive data growth and to enhance the performance of the file-based applications using scale-out network storage that has the ability to manage information efficiently using a single namespace. This has fetched the company more popularity in the networking society since such an innovation is needed in virtually all organizations that deal with large data. The StorageWorks is very efficient in storing data and it is known for relatively low down time. Conclusion From the discussion so far, it can be seen that organizational success cannot be easily achieved without adequately set certain outstanding objectives with pathways to achieve those objectives. From all the sources it can be deduced that the leading position maintained by HP company can be largely attributed to the aggressive ways of achieving the organizational objectives and that is only possible because of the shared corporate values among all members of the organization. No doubt such shared corporate values will make all members of the organization to have almost equal motivation to contribute to the overall organizational performance. Also, one value must always be guided to avoid being eroded and same holds for organizations. It will be difficult for any organization to beat the HP record as long as the corporate value is maintained.

Rabbit Proof Fence Speech Essay

Assessment Task- ) Good morning class, today I will tell you why it is extremely important for students to study texts that represent a variety of cultures. The films I have deconstructed to convey my points are â€Å"Bend it like Beckham†, directed by Gurinder Chadha and â€Å"Rabbit Proof Fence†, directed by Phillip Noyce. The cultural concepts explained in these movies are the early 1900s British culture and how dominant and cruel they were, the aboriginal Australians and how they were treated badly, the Indian culture and how much their traditions matter to them and the modern British culture which is carefree. These texts are important to study as they give us a better rounded, less biased education as students can be taught to understand and accept people are different and learn how different cultures were treated throughout history. It is important that we study films from a variety of cultures because students nowadays need to understand and accept that people are different. This is shown in a scene in the Rabbit Proof Fence where Mise en scene, there is the aboriginal tracker on the horse approaching the English man in the car when they had attempted to flank the girls. Technology defines this world and the huge step up from animal to machine shows a great difference in culture and should be noted. The film technique of aerial helicopter views greatly shows how much the aboriginal spirit birds mean to them and their culture as this signalled the bird watching over them and protecting. This is in contrast to most shots of the â€Å"dominant white males† being angled up at them to show their power and how their desire is to be the dominant race. This is a terrible attitude and students must learn that all people are equal and studying films designed to give empathy to the victims is a good way to teach that. Another difference in culture that is shown in a film is in Bend it Like Beckham when all the soccer girls are in the change room and one of the girls questions jess on â€Å"how she can stand getting married to someone just cause you are told to by your parents†. Jess responds with â€Å"it’s just culture†. Students need to learn that people and their cultures are different and I believe that watching films with people with cultures that are ever so different, living side by side, will better students and give them a sounder less biased education. Films that show a variety of cultures, I believe should be taught to students because i t help  students to have a better historical understanding of how people have been treated. This is important as student must learn from the mistakes of our elders who in the past have treated some cultures with total disrespect. The movie rabbit proof gives us a good insight into the way the aboriginal culture was poorly treated in the early 1900s. The film technique of a shot angled up at the protector, as he is talking to Molly when the two first meet, portrays the emotions of fear, hatred and hopelessness as there isn’t much Molly can do to him. This film techniques shows the fear and helpless ness of the aboriginals who in the past were treated very horribly by the British. Students should study films like this because it helps open their eyes to how people were treated in the past, These two reasons is why I believe that students must be taught films that represent a variety of cultures. Using the films Bend it Like Beckham and Rabbit Proof Fence I have provided examples as to how they can be useful. These movies can teach students to be more accepting of other cultures and teach them how some cultures were treated in the past. Thank you everyone for listening and I hope you’ve considered what I’ve said.