Decision questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Decision questions - Assignment Example A  fall  in sales volume may be because of poor advertising, competition, or reduced  production. Therefore, a  manager  who  is not committed  may be slow in identifying any  possible  problem that is causing the change in sales volume compared to a committed manager. Also, managers who are unable to combine analytical and creative thinking may not be able to handle complex, ambiguous operations, which require sophisticated techniques to identify any arising problems. The fundamental differences between Delphi process and nominal group are as listed below. In nominal group technique, members of the group form a list of ideas privately, then one member of the group present one item from the list and they are recorded publicly. Conversely, Delphi process is a process of decision-making which depends on a panel of experts who make decisions while in different locations. In nominal, decisions are made by a group which has a group leader who will present the ideas while in Delphi, every group member give ideas independently. In nominal, the ideas are exchanged verbally while in Delphi, the ideas are conveyed via electronic bulletin board, fax or in online discussion rooms (Whetten & Cameron, 1998). Finally, in nominal criticism of the presented ideas is not allowed while in Delphi it is allowed. Delphi would be better situated than nominal in the cases whereby the ideas needs expertise, while nominal would be better situated over Delphi in the situations exchange of the ideas verbally for convenience (Whetten & Cameron, 1998). The two processes would be controlled by consistent appraisals so as to get fruitful outcomes and get the best

The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdin Essay Example for Free

The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdin Essay A good book for me is something that you don’t want to stop reading. Something that would keep you up late at night and make you try so hard to keep those eyes from closing. The book is over 300 pages long and I figured out that this book by Robert Cialdini might be a little boring so I decided to read colorful magazines in between chapters just to get me through it. It is a classical book published years ago and there are examples of commercials that Im not familiar with. No big deal though, it’s not his fault. I have to admit that on the overall, the book is quite amazing. This classic book on persuasion explains the psychology of why people say â€Å"yes† when they could have said â€Å"no†. It purports why people comply with requests that do not necessarily benefit them. This book talks about the ways salesmen use social conditioning to influence us to buy. Robet Cialdini, a psychologist at Arizona State University, brings evidence from his field to bear on the techniques used by salesmen, politicians, and others to gain compliance. The major techniques advertisers use to manufacture desire are all discussed. These include: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. . They may seem a bit unethical at some points but each chapter ends with ways to defend against each type of influence. Each social tactic is explained thoroughly and the author uses a lot of stories, anecdotes as well as his own experiments to back it up. Dr. Cialdinis research and stories detailed in this book were interesting, applicable in real life situation, and often humorous. I was flabbergasted to read about the powerful, yet restrained and cunning tactics used by many organizations and the media to influence our thoughts, behaviors and opinions. Most folks will recognize these principles in some way from personal experience such as salespersons, telemarketers, advertisements and the like. One of the great points that I find in this book is that, even after just reading the first few pages, you become very aware and realize that indeed those tactics have been used by people using these psychological tools around you. The approaches which I have experienced are on reciprocation, commitment and consistency and liking. In my own personal experiences, some individuals whom I’ve accidentally met would insist on paying for my meals in the restaurant and in return would be asking for favors which they think I can perform in my capacity. That’s just fine though; it is creating an obligation and expecting something in return. This is to trigger an innate response for me to give back. Like they say â€Å"there’s no such thing as a free lunch†. Now, that is clearly applying reciprocation. On my part, I have to do what the other person requests me to do with the idea of paying off the free payments on my meals just to get even and call it quits; you’ve paid for several meals and now I’m doing you a favor; it’s as if I’ve paid for those meals myself although I should have said ‘no’ on the first place. On commitment and consistency; making a commitment and upholding to that commitment even if something goes against what is expected is quite difficult to do. However, it is a proven fact that people who have sworn to do something will do his best to be consistent enough and adhere to that commitment. A politician in one of the local polls in my place committed to help his constituents whether he wins or loses. He lost in the local polls but he sustained what he said. He offered livelihood programs to individuals whom he assesses to be in dire need even if it meant getting the funds out of his own pocket. Cialdini’s book covers six weapons of influence. This book opens people’s eyes to all the psychological tools that people use to influence them. The book tells many stories to illustrate the tools of persuasion, and while reading it you will be thinking of the personal experiences when someone has persuaded you or when you unknowingly used one of these tools to persuade another. Cialdini did not only explain to readers the many ways that these, 6 weapons of influence are used against us, he also explains how we can avoid falling prey to them, and even turn them against the marketers and individuals who use them. It is nice to note that securing compliance from people can be greatly increased by doing them a favor, whether they ask for it, like it, or not; the simple act of a gift creates an obligation to comply with the gift givers request. Public verbal or written commitments drive intense desires to comply; people tend to determine what is correct, or not, by what other people think is correct; we are inclined to say yes to people we like; people tend to comply to authority figures; and other things seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited. This book may be classical but most folks will recognize these principles in some way from personal experiences. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cognitive science and applied psychology. It is applicable to our daily lives. Readers can use it to defend themselves from marketers or they can use it to influence others as well.

The Relationship Between Katherine and Zebra in Anchee Mins Novel, Katherine :: Katherine

The Relationship Between Katherine and Zebra in Anchee Min's Novel, Katherine Anchee Min, a Chinese novelist, has written many books about life in China revolving around the Cultural Revolution, including her autobiography Red Azalea. In her novel Katherine (1995), readers are exposed to life after the Cultural Revolution. The story focuses on two bold characters—Katherine and Zebra. Katherine, an American schoolteacher, comes to China to teach English to the younger generation. Her western ideology—free spirit, free will, and her stylish appearance--influences her students to think differently about the ways they live. Zebra, a student, has aspiring goals to be like Katherine in every way possible. Min portrays these two characters as very close friends, lost souls with only each other to turn to and rely on. During the Cultural Revolution, Zebra was sent to work in a mine where she used dynamite. She was raped by her party boss and became pregnant. Zebra confides in Katherine that she took a drug to kill the baby and at work she felt a stream of blood run down her leg (101). Zebra has never before told anybody what has happened to her in this mine. After Katherine hears the story, Zebra cries in her arms. The only reason she tells Katherine this horrible story is because she trusts her. But before Zebra actually tells Katherine what happens she comments: â€Å"I don’t know how it happened, but all at that moment, my heart felt a sudden tenderness† (97). Katherine also confides in Zebra when telling her about her childhood. Katherine’s biological mother was mute, and it was very hard for the two to communicate. Katherine says that she struggled to have a normal childhood. â€Å"Because my biological mother was deaf and blind I thought that I might become deaf and blind at any moment† (102). Zebra is there for her and can relate, Zebra having a rough family life as well. Her mother is not blind and deaf, but the communication between the two is not there. Zebra spends little time with any of her family members, and hardly ever speaks to them. Zebra and Katherine’s lives merge because of the things they share in common—similar ages, having rough pasts, and having nobody to rely and confide in. Zebra also turns to Katherine when she has a relationship with Lion Head, a classmate of Zebra’s.

Assignment IKEA Case Study Essay

IKEA is a Swedish-owned global business founded in 1943. The business generates annual revenues of 27 billion euros and employs 139,000 people in 298 stores and 26 countries. The values and design philosophy of the founder continue to underpin the brand. These values might be summed up as frugal, democratic, environmentally aware, and design oriented. IKEA has become synonymous with Swedish lifestyle. The stores are virtually identical across the globe and sell a range of globally sourced flat-packed furniture products as well as a range of related furnishings for the home—the stores offer customers a Swedish experience by incorporating restaurants and a variety of customer services intended to simplify the shopping process (e.g., childcare). What is interesting about IKEA is that customers have become a significant part of the value creating process—customers play a key role in terms of logistics and in production. By performing the assembly of the flat-packed furniture, customers complete the final stages in the production process. In terms of logistics, the customer â€Å"moves† goods from warehouse-style storage through the checkout, and then transports the goods home. The trade-off for the consumer is lower prices and immediate gratification—furniture is typically sold using just in time (JIT) inventory management, which means that once a customer has placed an order, the furniture then goes into production and is delivered to the customer’s home some 3–4 months later. IKEA’s senior management has in the past pursued an aggressive expansion policy, but management is currently changing direction, adopting a slower rate of expansion and investing in existing stores. The company plans to increase sales by 10% a year to 2020, thereby doubling annual sales revenues. Management is concerned about how expansion in the BRIC countries, particularly India and China, is pursued. There are fears about preserving the company’s culture in these huge markets (Milne, 2013). Sources: http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/this-is-ikea/company-information/index.html Milne, R. (2013, September 1). Ikea signals slower expansion. Financial Times. What do you think? What would you do? What problems do you foresee and how will this impact IKEA’s Swedish concept? Please recommend a marketing solution that will help IKEA achieve growth in either India or China based on your understanding of the place P and how delivering the value is evolving. Please use the case study guidelines below to perform a brief analysis, identify the problem, suggest alternative solutions, and make recommendations for the implementation of the solution that you believe is the best fit. Case Study Guidelines 1. Analysis of the Current Situation—The proper context must be established for the case analysis. Please provide a SWOT analysis in a SWOT box. Research: Identify the key environmental factors such as industry trends, level of competitiveness, customer perceptions, legal considerations, and evolving technology at the outset of the analysis. Summarize the key aspects of the internal environment of the firm in terms of strengths and weaknesses and the external environment in terms of opportunities and threats to the firm in your SWOT box. 2. The Target Market—Identify your target market: Who is your target customer? In terms of demographics and lifestyle, what aspects of consumer behavior provide insights into this group of customers? 3. The Problem—Identification of key problem(s). It is easy to identify symptoms of problems while failing to identify the real problems. For example, declining sales may be identified as a problem, when the decline is only symptomatic of more complex problems that are harder to observe. Make a  clear distinction between what is identified as the problem and the symptoms of the problems. 4. Alternative Solutions—Identify and evaluate alternatives. Develop reasonable alternatives and evaluate them in terms of feasibility, projected costs advantages, disadvantages, and potential short-term and long-term consequences. 5. Recommended Course of Action—Select a course of action and provide the appropriate strategies and tactics to accomplish the chosen course. Justify your choice in terms of your analysis. As most practitioners know, charting a course of action can be a difficult job, but implementation is the true challenge. Produce a workable action plan that would have a reasonable probability of success in the implementation phase. Develop a minimum of five slides to present the findings of your analysis. Some additional research is expected. The IKEA website is highly informative. Use APA format and include an additional slide with your sources. Assume that your analysis will be presented to the IKEA senior management team and that your job depends on it!

Book Review “Thinking, Fast and Slow” Essay

I read the international bestseller â€Å"Thinking, Fast and Slow† of Daniel Kahneman (Winner of the Nobel Prize) over the last 3-4 weeks. I think it is a very interesting book and it is describing very critically the human brain and mind, which gave me many insights into decision-making and errors we are doing automatically without noticing it every day. He is very often talking about â€Å"System 1† and â€Å"System 2†. System 1 is fast; it’s intuitive, associative, metaphorical, automatic, impressionistic, and it can’t be switched off. Its operations involve no sense of intentional control, but it’s the â€Å"secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make† and it’s the hero of Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow. System 2 is slow, deliberate, effortful. Its operations require attention. System 2 takes over, rather unwillingly, when things get difficult. It’s â€Å"the conscious being you call ‘I'†, and one of Kahneman’s main points is that this is a mistake. You’re wrong to identify with System 2, for you are also and equally and profoundly System 1. Kahneman compares System 2 to a supporting character who believes herself to be the lead actor and often has little idea of what’s going on. System 2 is slothful, and tires easily – so it usually accepts what System 1 tells it. It’s often right to do so, because System 1 is for the most part pretty good at what it does; it’s highly sensitive to subtle environmental cues, signs of danger, and so on. It does, however, pay a high price for speed. It loves to simplify, to assume WYSIATI (â€Å"what you see is all there is†), even as it gossips and embroiders and confabulates. It’s hopelessly bad at the kind of statistical thinking often required for good decisions, it jumps wildly to conclusions and it’s subject to a fantastic suite of irrational biases and interference effects (the halo effect, the â€Å"Florida effect†, framing effects, anchoring effects, the confirmation bias, outcome bias, hindsight bias, availability bias, the focusing illusion, and so on). Thousands of experiments have been conducted, right across the broad board of human life, all to the same general effect. We don’t know who we are or what we’re like, we don’t know what we’re really doing and we don’t know why we’re doing it. That’s a System 1 exaggeration, for sure, but there’s more truth in it than you can easily imagine. Judges think they make considered decisions about parole based strictly on the facts of the case. It turns out (to simplify only slightly) that it is their blood-sugar levels really sitting in judgment. We also hugely underestimate the role of chance in life (this is again System 1’s work). Analysis of the performance of fund managers over the longer term proves conclusively that you’d do just as well if you entrusted your financial decisions to a monkey throwing darts at a board. There is a tremendously powerful illusion that sustains managers in their belief their results, when good, are the result of skill; Kahneman explains how the illusion works. The fact remains that â€Å"performance bonuses† are awarded for luck, not skill. They might as well be handed out on the roll of a die: they’re completely unjustified. This may be why some banks now speak of â€Å"retention bonuses† rather than performance bonuses, but the idea that retention bonuses are needed depends on the shared myth of skill, and since the myth is known to be a myth, the system is profoundly dishonest – unless the dart-throwing monkeys are going to be cut in. In an experi ment designed to test the â€Å"anchoring effect†, highly experienced judges were given a description of a shoplifting offence. They were then â€Å"anchored† to different numbers by being asked to roll a pair of dice that had been secretly loaded to produce only two totals – three or nine. Finally, they were asked whether the prison sentence for the shoplifting offence should be greater or fewer, in months, than the total showing on the dice. Normally the judges would have made extremely similar judgments, but those who had just rolled nine proposed an average of eight months while those who had rolled three proposed an average of only five months. All were unaware of the anchoring effect. The same goes for all of us, almost all the time. We think we’re smart; we’re confident we won’t be unconsciously swayed by the high list price of a house. We’re wrong. (Kahneman admits his own inability to counter some of these effects.) We’re also hopelessly subject to the â€Å"focusing illusion†, which can be conveyed in one sentence: â€Å"Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you’re thinking about it.† Whatever we focus on, it bulges in the heat of our attention until we assume its role in our life as a whole is greater than it is. Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize for economics in 2002 and much of his time he’s working together with Amos Tversky. Thinking, Fast and Slow has its roots in their joint work. It is an outstanding book, distinguished by beauty and clarity of detail, precision of presentation and gentleness of manner.

JFK History essays

JFK History essays John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the 35th president of the United States. He was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency. Rich, handsome, elegant, and articulate, he aroused great admiration at home and abroad. His term of office as president was too short, however, to say what his place in history might have been Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy was a businessman who became a multimillionaire, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and ambassador to Great Britain. Kennedy graduated from Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He then briefly attended Princeton University, and then entered Harvard University in 1936. At Harvard he wrote an honors thesis on British foreign policies in the 1930s. It was published in 1940, the year he graduated, under the title Why In 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy. He attended a school to learn about the Patrol Torpedo boat. Kennedy was sent to the islands of the South Pacific Ocean where he was in charge of a Torpedo boat, everybody called him Skipper John Kennedy, the boat was called PT 109. The boat had been in battle and and it was dirty. The engines were in need of repair. J.F.K went to work, and soon the PT 109 was ready for war. J.F.K said, "the torpedos would sink any ship on the sea". Near an old pier the PT boats waited every day. When night came, they were ready for war. They drifted out into the ocean and listened for the sound of engines of enemy ships, for three or more nights they did that but they didn't find anything. One night in early autumm four enemy ships had been spotted near an island. The PT boats waited for dark so they wouldn't be seen. Slowly the PT 109 rode the black waves and every man of the crew listened. The crew could here the sou ...

How to Make Blueprint Paper

How to Make Blueprint Paper Blueprint paper is a specially-coated paper that turns blue where it is exposed to light, while areas kept in the dark remain white. Blueprints were one of the first ways to make copies of plans or drawings. Heres how to make blueprint paper yourself. Blueprint Paper Materials 15 mL of 10% potassium hexacyanoferrate(III) (potassium ferricyanide)15 mL of 10% iron(III) ammonium citrate solutionPetri dishWhitepaperTongs or small paintbrushSmall opaque object (e.g., coin, leaf, key) Make Blueprint Paper In a very dim room or in the dark: pour the potassium ferricyanide and iron(III) ammonium citrate solutions together into a petri dish. Stir the solution to mix it.Use tongs to drag a sheet of paper across the top of the mixture or else paint the solution onto the paper using a paintbrush.Allow the sheet of blueprint paper to dry, coated side up, in the dark. To keep the paper from being exposed to light and to keep it flat as it dries, it may help to set the wet sheet of paper on a larger piece of cardboard and cover it with another piece of cardboard.When you are ready to capture the image, uncover the top of the paper and overlay an ink drawing on clear plastic or tracing paper or else simply set an opaque object on the blueprint paper, such as a coin or key.Now expose the blueprint paper to direct sunlight. Remember: for this to work the paper must have remained in the dark until this point! If its windy you may need to weigh down the paper to keep the object in place.Allow the p aper to develop in the sunlight for about 20 minutes, then cover the paper and return to the darkened room. Thoroughly rinse the blueprint paper under cold running water. Its fine to have the lights on. If you do not rinse away any unreacted chemicals, the paper will darken over time and ruin the image. However, if all the excess chemicals are rinsed away, youll be left with a permanent colorfast image of your object or design.Allow the paper to dry. Cleanup and Safety The materials for making a blueprint (cyanotype) paper are safe to work with, but its a good idea to wear gloves since youll be working in the dark and might otherwise cyanotype your hands (turn them temporarily blue). Also, dont drink the chemicals. They are not particularly toxic, but they are not food. Wash your hands when you are done with this project.