Wal-Mart Essay Example for Free

Wal-Mart Essay Wal-mart is the world’s largest retailer. The company employs some 1. 8million people,operates3,900 stores in the united states and 2,700 in the rest of the world, and generated sales of $345 billion in the fiscal year ending january31,2007. some $77billion of these sales wrer generated in 15 nations out side of the united states. Facing a slowdown in growth in the united states, wal-mart began its international expansion in the early 1900s when it entered mexico, teaming up in a joint venture with cifra, mexico’s largest retailer, to open series of super-centers that sell both groceris and general merchandise. Initially the retailer hit some headwinds in mexico. It quickly discovered that shopping habits wewe different. Most people prefered to buy fresh produce at local stores, particularly items like meat, tortillas , and pan dulce, which didn’t keep well overnight. Many consumers also lacked cars, and did not buy in large volumes as in the united states. Wal-mart adjusted its strategy to meet the local conditions, hiring local managers who understood mexican culture, letting those managers control merchandising strategy, building smaller stores that people could walk to, and offering more fresh produce, at the same time, the company beliveed that it could gradually change the shopping culture in mexico, educating consumers by showing them the benefits of its american merchandising culture. After all, wal-mart’s managers reasoned, people once shopped at small stores in the united states, but starting in the 1950s they increasingly gravidistribution systems in mexico, wal-mart was able to lower its own costes, which it passed on to mexico’s largest retailer, and the country is widely considered to be the companys most successful foreign venture.

My Personal Identity Essay -- Personal Narrative, Identity Essay

A person’s identity is shaped by many different aspects. Family, culture, friends, personal interests and surrounding environments are all factors that tend to help shape a person’s identity. Some factors may have more of an influence than others and some may not have any influence at all. As a person grows up in a family, they are influenced by many aspects of their life. Family and culture may influence a person’s sense of responsibilities, ethics and morals, tastes in music, humor and sports, and many other aspects of life. Friends and surrounding environments may influence a person’s taste in clothing, music, speech, and social activities. Personal interests are what truly set individuals apart. An individual is not a puppet on the string of their puppet-master, nor a chess piece on their master’s game board, individuals choose their own paths in life. They accomplish, or strive to accomplish, goals that they have set for themselves thro ughout their lifetime. Individuals are different from any other individual in the world because they live their own life rather than following a crowd of puppets. A person’s identity is defined by what shaped it in the first place, why they chose to be who they are, and what makes them different from everybody else in the world. I feel that I have developed most of my identity from my own dreams, fantasies, friends, and idols. I am who I am partly because of my family, but mostly because of who I want myself to be. I will never be exactly what I want to be because of my family upbringing, but I can provide myself with opportunities to live a somewhat similar life. I would have loved to be brought up in a family that was into off-road racing, such as trucks, snowmobiles, an... ...far, education has had no real impact on the person that I am, but hopefully by the time I finish college, it will. I am very proud of the person that I have become. I have followed my own dreams, fantasies, friends, and idols to become the person that I am today. My family has influenced me as far as morals and values, my friends have influenced me in social activities, speech, and clothing, and my fantasies and idols have given me something to strive for in my life. Once a person takes the time to truly get to know me, they tend to see me as one of the greatest guys that they have ever met. I will continue to live my life for individual that I am while taking into other people and not doing anything that may negatively affect another person’s life. I am currently very happy with the person that I am and will continue keep myself happy until the day I die.

Can We Know When to Trust Our Emotions in the Pursuit of Knowledge? Essay

The question advocates that we can from time to time trust our emotions in the pursuit of knowledge. And generally we presume that it may be possible to know when to trust emotions and that emotions can help us in the acquisition of knowledge. And you may challenge these presumptions. Maybe it is not possible to know when to trust our emotions, and maybe our emotions have a limited value in the pursuit of knowledge, but to what I aim to analyse is to what extent do our emotions play a role in the pursuit of knowledge. After being elected as the captain of my house, a post which came armed with heavy responsibilities, my luck struck out in getting the ideal vice captain to assist me. Hence, I was forced to consider replacing my vice captain. Be that as it may, it just so happened that this replacement happens to be a good friend of mine, which led me to question whether or not I was doing the right thing. Am I choosing to replace my current vice captain out of whats best for my house or am I simply replacing him out of the emotional attachment for my good friend. Taking my emotions into consideration, my judgment is affected to some extent, but at the same time it doesn’t mean that it prevents me form making the right decision. While I did want my friend as my new vice captain, there were also facts to support the way I felt about why my current vice captain had to be replaced. Having said that even if my friend turned out to be even worse than his predecessor then I would on some level act rationally and replace my friend as well with someone else. Maybe that someone else might be chosen on the basis of my liking of that person but nevertheless the fact that I was willing to strip that post from him for the good of my house shows that it isn’t always down to our emotions which affect our judgement and how that judgement affects our pursuit of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge in this case discusses knowing what is truly fair and right, and while I did what I thought was best for my house, I was also simultaneously fulfilling my own personal 1interests by choosing a close friend. The way I look at it, there is no harm in killing two birds with one stone. Then again when I say I did what I did because it was best for my house then the only reason I did what was best for my house was because of the emotional attachment I had towards my house itself and if changing my house captain was what I had to do then either way which ever decision I took was because my of emotions. So how do our emotions pave our path in our understanding of the decisions we make and weather those decisions are ethical or not? And how do those decisions in turn affect the way we pursue knowledge? Decision making requires a very cognitive thinking and conditional to the situation we are in we can classify our decisions as emotional or logical decisions. Making a logical decision requires us to exclude our emotions and seek to use only rational methods in arriving at a resolution. Such a situation could involve solving a simple maths problem. Considering my real life situation where is was supposed reach a verdict by using my emotional and logical thinking, making a choice in my houses best interest was on the basis of my logical thinking which was fueled my emotional attachment towards my house. Essentially to a large extent reason and emotions do go in conjunction with each other. Its been widely proven that the reasoning and emotional centers of our brains are inclined to work together in many situations from choosing which movie to watch to solving mathematical equations, to making ethical choices. In an experiment conducted by Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, a group of subjects who had sustained brain injuries in the part of the brain where emotions were generated were studied. Everything about them remained the same except for the fact that they lost the ability to feel emotions. In his observations he found that their ability to make decisions was severely impaired. They could logically illustrate what they were doing but in practice found it very difficult to make decisions about what to eat, where to live, etc. Subjects like mathematics through which we use deductive logic to gain certain knowledge and state a valid argument on the basis of a true axiom or premise might seem rather emotionless compared to subjects to like the arts which involve terms like inspiration and expression of oneself through his/her emotions but as different as they seem, they both go hand in hand. When you tell a person he/she is horrible at a particular subject, he/she looses the motivation to push himself/herself to excel in that subject, however if you told that same person that he/she has a lot of potential to transcend in a certain subject, he/she feels obligated to unlock this talent he/she has for this subject that other people claim he/she has. By simply manipulating that persons emotions, you can essentially affect the way that person pursues that particular subject. An ground breaking event in history which incorporates biology and religion would be the time when Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution. While various religions have to come to reconcile their beliefs in this theory, there are religions that raise various objections to the concept of evolution. The religion of Christianity for example talks about how the world was created by its god in seven days, and this ideology had stayed strong and had been passed down generations for thousands of years. Even till today young children are acquainted with this story until the eight grade when they learn of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This sudden revelation of the truth can instigate people to deeply question their faith and its teachings which can deeply affect them on an emotional platform. Christianity like all religions give its followers a sense of belonging. They take pride in being a Christian and strictly follow its principals and values which were imbibed into them by their parents and their church, and to a large extent their faith plays a big role in defining their integrity and character. That being the case when they learn that all those years being followers of Christianity could well be a lie, it can cause them to fear and question their values and virtues. Due to the fact that their religion gave them so much happiness and joy, they would come to blindly accept it without casting any aspersions about it. As a result those positive emotions led them to could their reasoning and prevented them from thinking clearly therefore predominantly affecting their way of learning and how they accepted different truths. From the above example people are now forced to fight emotions with reasoning, and instead of blindly accepting any theories or prophecies told to them, people take a larger initiative to believe in these unknown theories only after personally witnessing it or understanding that respective phenomenon from studying rational facts. And yet from this whole phenomenon of evolution which changed the face of the world, millions of people are still strong believers of Christianity. And while they have simultaneously come to terms with the numerous theories which defy their religion, they continue living life by balancing their beliefs with what science throws at them. The fact of the matter is that believing in a greater power gives people a sense of comfort during a time of difficulty, it gives them this sense of safety that they have something or someone they can turn to, to help keep themselves and their emotions sound and under control. And maybe at the cost of escaping the actual truth they may give into their emotions to keep themselves convinced and satisfied in the fantasies which they feel protect them from the harshness of reality. And for that reason yes I do feel that our emotions affect our pursuit of knowledge and not in a way that we can trust them for the fact that our emotions strongly dilute reality to help us humans cope with life’s obstacles. 2 Emotions play a big role in the one of the ways of knowing. In fact emotions can be so powerful that it can sometime change our other ways of knowing, such as the way we perceive the world. It can drive us away from logic and even change the way we use language. In the end I have analysed how our emotions can give rise to us escaping the truth, and notwithstanding the fact that at the same time our emotions are also key to helping us make logical decisions.

Project Management Paper - 3364 Words

1. A ________________ is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. a) b) c) d) Program Process Project Portfolio 2. Which of the following is not a potential advantage of using good project management? a) b) c) d) Shorter development times Higher worker morale Lower cost of capital Higher profit margins 3. Which of the following is not an attribute of a project? a) b) c) d) Projects are unique Projects are developed using progressive elaboration Projects have a primary customer or sponsor Projects involve little uncertainty 4. Which of the following is not part of the triple constraint of project management? a) b) c) d) Meeting scope goals Meeting time goals Meeting communications goals Meeting cost†¦show more content†¦Many people use ________________ to have a standard format for preparing various project management documents. a) Methodologies b) Templates c) Project management software d) Standards 23. What is the last step in the four – stage planning process for selecting information technology projects? a) b) c) d) Information technology strategy planning Business area analysis Project planning Resource allocation 24. A new government law requires an organization to report data in anew way. Under which category would a new information system project to provide this data fall? a) b) c) d) Problem Opportunity Directive Regulation 25. A __________________ is a document that formally recognizes the existence of a project and provides direction on the project’s objectives and management. a) b) c) d) Project charter Preliminary scope statement Business case Project management plan 4 IIBM Institute of Business Management Examination Paper – Project Management 26. ICOM model, which is one of the major roles of project manager, stand for a) b) c) d) Integrated Constraint of Mechanism Inputs, Outputs, Constraints Mechanism Inputs, Outputs, Constraints Money None 27. A _______________ often includes sensitive information, so it should not be part of the overall project plan for anyone to see. a) b) c) d) Business case Project charter Personnel chart Stakeholder analysis 28. Which of the following is not a suggestion for performing integrated change control? a) b)Show MoreRelatedProject Management Structure Paper862 Words   |  4 PagesRunning head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE PAPER Project Management Organizational Structures Paper University of Phoenix MGT 437- Project Management Roy Chuang December 2, 2012 Project Management Organizational Structures Paper A project organization is a framework of rules and regulations that companies use to facilitate the harmony and finishing point of project activities. 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