Macy's Department Stores - The Competency Research Paper

Macy's Department Stores - A Competency - Research Paper Example This pattern of choice must start with the individual; there cannot be a group ethic that is in agreement without individual ethics. At Macy’s as in any organizational environment, an individual is a person who must make choices regarding how to behave. This behavior can be broken down into two categories: the choice as it affects the society around the person making the decision, and the decision as it affects the person making the choice. An individual who is making an ethical decision must think of how the behavior will affect others in terms of positive and negative repercussions, and they must also think how the decision will affect themselves in terms Part of the ethics of Macy’s includes what the company sees as its duty, and its employees’ duty, to give back to the community. Individual ethics, after all, is just an extension of the ethics of the community and society. â€Å"Support for our communities comes through gifts from the company, the Macys Foundation, and our employees. We've also made it possible for our customers to join us in "giving back" through our programs such as Thanks for Sharing, Shop for a Cause, and Go Red, the American Heart Associations women's heart health program† (Diversity, 2009). A company can install a program that benefits them personally; however, it might not benefit the rest of society, because it represents them cutting corners to get ahead, or seeking credentials in a way that is fraudulent, and will make them ultimately feel bad. Ethics can be a personal decision that can also be reflected by an external group or group philosophy, and although some would argue against ab solutism in ethics, this absolutism is definitely strong in rational theory portrayals.  

Cross-cultural Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Cross-cultural Management - Essay Example d by non-occupied markets, cheap labor force, tax exemptions, convenient locations and they are positioning themselves to the new territories to increase their value (Konecena, 2006). All these factors contribute to the new area of management; cross cultural management. The concept of cross-cultural team management was emphasized on when western countries recognized a huge inflow of expatriates. As a result the composition of workforce over there became more diverse in nature. Since the managers were still using the western way of team management, it was not considered the best way of handling individuals who arrived from different parts of the world. This sparked the interest of researchers to focus on cross cultural issues in management literature (Taras & Rowney, 2006). This paper focuses on the particular aspect of cross cultural management; team building and their management. Teams are a core characteristic of every organization and they are formed and nurtured to achieve organizational goals and objectives. The emerging trend towards cross cultural teams has attracted the attention of many managers as these teams are considered as more innovative and creative than ordinary teams. However there are contentious issues and challenges underlying the above concept. If managers comprehend on these issues thoroughly then only they can derive substantial benefits from it and can enhance organizational effectiveness. This document also focuses on difference in working styles of diverse range of cultures and how they affect team performance. According to Kreitner & Kinicki (2004), â€Å"Cross cultural management explains the behavior of people in organizations around the world and shows people how to work in organizations with employee and client populations from many different cultures†. Cross cultural team management encompasses the word â€Å"team† in above definition. Multicultural workgroups and teams are now no longer described as a voluntary practice but

Personal Finance Plan Worksheet Essay Example for Free

Personal Finance Plan Worksheet Essay The process of creating a detailed plan to meet your financial needs and prepare for the future is called b. personal financial planning. 2. Which of the following is not one of the five major steps of the financial planning process? c. collect and organize your financial information 3. Which phase in life is commonly associated with focus on marriage, family, purchasing a home, and career development? c. ate 20’s through your 40’s 4. Which of the following is a benefit of having a college degree that can affect your financial planning? d. all the above 5. Which of the following elements of a comprehensive financial plan involves analyzing future needs, such as saving for retirement or college funding for dependents? d. protecting wealth and dependents Directions Respond to the following short-answer questions in 50-to 100-words: 6. People have different styles when it comes to handling their money. List the two things that affect your personal beliefs and opinions about financial planning. How well do you feel you manage your money? Can you spot areas for improvement in your money management style, and if so, where/how? a. Two things that affect my personal beliefs about financial planning are: my family composition and values. I want my family to be comfortable and I also save but not as much and often as I should. Making sure I save for hard time and my family stability is a must. Setting up a budget is a main topic in my household. b. I can do better and stop tapping into my savings. I do have a savings account that is linked to my account. Everytime I spend something a dollar is sent to my savings, so that also help me balance my account as well. I also need to focus on our needs and not what we want. c. Yes I could stop spending more money and save more which is hard because we just moved and we are buying the house we are renting. Im putting money into the house but bills still have to be paid. We are starting to do a budget to eliminate the how, who, when, and where. 7. Which element of the comprehensive financial plan focuses on your housing needs, setting aside money for emergencies, and establishing a career path? Consider your own finances. Do currectly own a vehicle and/or home? If yes, how well do you manage monthly home and auto expenses? How well do you save for unforeseen expenses? a. Securing basic needs b. I own two vehicles and purchasing a home. We pay our mortgage at the beginning of the month in which we split, we pay the bills as soon as we get the bills and we split those as well, then the car notes are split up, and at the end of the month our car insurance is due. c. We have a savings account that pulls money from our checking whenever we spend money nd then we literally have what I call a piggy bank and we save change as well. There is nothing wrong about saving change because it does add up. 8. The economy is unpredictable and can affect your personal financial planning. List one factor in economic conditions that may affect your financial future. How could you reduce the impact of that factor on your finances? a. Inflation b. To reduce the affect of inflation is to save and go on a budget. You can also shop smarter by shopping cheaper, like generic brands. Also using coupons and your rewards card to reduce the cost of groceries and gas. You can shop around for the cheapest prices and most of the time if you buy in bulk its cheaper. 9. Which step in the five-step financial planning process requires you to organize your financial information, create personal financial statements, and evaluate your current financial position? Have you ever completed this step? If so, is it still applicable to your current financial situation? If not, do you plan to do this soon? Why or why not? a. Step1: Analyze your current financial position. b. Yes I have done it before, but now we just moved and we are now creating a new budget. Since the bills have changed we have to do a new budget and gather our bank statements, bills, and calculater our income to be more financially stable and save more money. We are currently going over a new budget as we speak. 10. Step Five in the five-step financial planning process discusses the importance of regularly reevaluating and revising your plan because personal circumstances often change. List two life changes that may require you to update your financial plan. Have you recently experienced a change that requires you to reevaluate your financial plan? If so, what was it and how have you accommodated it? (Please share only what you are comfortable sharing) a. Marriage and children b. I just recently got married and we’re just purchasing a home. My husband just received social security and 100% in military disability and I work. This make it a little easier for us to make it. I do have children and one is disabled so its tough but we make it. We split everything down the middle so no one person would be overwhelmed with paying all the bills on their own. We try to do a budget and stick to it. We do bargin shop and try to limit where we go due to high gas prices. We also put money to the side for different things we want to do whether its go out to eat, go to the movies, or date night. We also put money back for food and gas. We include everything we do and everything that can happen in our budget and daily life.

The Suppression of the Nineteenth-Century Catholics :: European History Essays

The Suppression of the Nineteenth-Century Catholics Missing Works Cited    During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, vicars were under direct authority from Rome, and controlled the Roman Catholic Church of England. It was not until the early nineteenth century, under Pope Pius IX, that the Church decided to split England into several smaller districts, each headed by a bishop. London papers began following the growth and leadership change of the Roman Church in England. One article in The Times stated that "Rome had mistaken the High Church renewal, the Oxford Movement, within the Church of England for a Romeward move" (qtd. in Bowen 148). Several bishops tried to explain to The Times and its readers that the new hierarchy was simply a matter of church government and had nothing to do with politics or national life in England. The Roman Catholic Church thought that it would be better for their congregations to have a local bishop they could rely on, rather than having nearly all of the control in Rome. As the Roman Catholic Church began its restructuring, Parliament passed a proviso that enabled them to control the public acts of Catholics. According to Bowen the proviso banned Roman Catholics from: performing rites in public, no officer of the law was allowed to wear his robe in public, no monk was able to wear his habit, no processions were allowed in the streets and no funerals were allowed to be conducted at grave sites. Every male member of the Catholic religious order was forced to register with the clerk of the peace, and no new members were allowed once the proviso passed. (19) The only Catholics left undisturbed by the new proviso were cloisters of nuns. Despite the new proviso, the number of Catholics began to grow. This increasing number is attributed to the immigrating Irish who were coming to England to escape over-population and the beginnings of a famine. The English were already anti-Irish, and they heightened their prejudice by attaching the anti-Catholic prejudice onto the immigrating Irish. The majority of the immigrating Irish were tenant farmers, who were unable to support and feed their families. This was caused by the decreasing size of farms and an increase in agriculture inefficiency (McCaffrey 16). The British landowners who controlled the barren property did nothing to help the starving Irish. The farmers felt dehumanized and demoralized, possessing neither the hope of progress nor the desire for improvement (McCaffrey 15).

Mapping Compensation

Wall-Mart has a lot of these things in common with Microsoft, although Wall-Mart tries to soften the low at times by cushioning their employment strategy with a discount card or special privileges. Most of the employees at Wall-Mart start at around $8. 80 an hour, but that is just the base pay. If an employee does well within the company, over time, Wall-Mart will steadily increase the employee's paycheck, depending on his or her performance of their duties that year. That is where the performance-based pay that is similar to Microsoft's strategy comes into play. If an employee does well, he or she will get a raise.If not, then the raise will not happen. A lot of people who try to work at places like Wall-Mart expect instant gratification for their accomplishments, but they will not receive it. An employee must work hard to earn the raise given to him or her at their time of the year. In Figure 2. 8 in the text, Microsoft and AS are compared and contrasted in a compensation map. On M icrosoft's side, there seems to be a very low focus on work/life balance, and the same can be said for Wall-Mart. If an employee accepts a shift at Wall- Mart, he or she had better show up, or risk being fired.Wall-Mart is very strict in this area and does not accept a lot of excuses as far as frequent â€Å"family emergencies† or problems. From personal experience, if there is a death in the immediate family, Wall-Mart will ask for a copy of the death certificate as proof that the employee is not lying. This is a bit disturbing and could be considered offensive to some. Another mapping point from Figure 2. 8 is that Microsoft puts heavy emphasis on hierarchy. Wall-Mart and Microsoft share this part of their strategy. Wall-Mart believes that the basic employees receive Asia pay, while the managers and those on salary receive higher pay.However, there is a â€Å"price† to being on salary versus being an hourly employee. As an hourly employee, the shift is worked within the hours specified, and the job is done. There are no established hours for salaried managers at Wall-Mart. Some have even worked 80 hour weeks in the busy season just to try to keep up with customer satisfaction. One thing that does differ between the two compensation strategies is that Microsoft puts a medium importance to sharing group success, while Wall-Marts strategy is more about the individual.There are really no â€Å"groups† per SE within Wall- Mart's hierarchy, just groups of employees who perform the same job. There is no focus on group success, or group incentives. There are the occasional pep talks in which the managers try to get their employees motivated, but really, the employees would rather be working than sitting in a meeting. It seems that Microsoft values group success, but it also values the individual as well, offering incentives for jobs performed. These companies seem very different from the outside, but when an inside look is taken, there are more molarities than can be seen from the outside.

English coursework Essay

The creature not only has beautiful thoughts in this quotation but uses sensitive language: attracted, lovely, delight. However later on the creature explains that rage grasped hold of him as he realised that he would never enjoy her company. This explains that the creature is desperate to love someone, but because everyone treats him as if he is sub-human he is filled with fury, which is a natural human reaction. This is a reoccurring theme throughout the novel, and it becomes blatantly obvious that if humans treated him with respect and admiration, the creature would have never caused desolation. The above quote is far from the only example of this reoccurring theme in the novel. When the creature studies the cottagers we realise that love and desire are an element of his personality; ‘The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. ‘ The creature clearly desperately craves for their admiration but when the cottagers encounter him, they scorn and beat him. It is clear that in this situation it is the cottagers who are the monster and the creature that is human, as the creature is reaching out for love and friendship, but the cottages dismiss him and beat him with malicious intent. At the time of the creation of this novel, a revolution was in progress in France. Throughout the novel there is an underlying connection between its story and the French revolution that became apparent. In France the radical reform was causing a severe amount of controversy and violence. Some believed the reform to be a positive movement as it would create a more democratic country, however there were others who believed that the reform would damage traditions and make several workers redundant. Therefore, despite the reformists’ intentions being good, the result caused violence and destruction. This theme is paralleled in the novel as Frankenstein intended to defeat death thus helping humanity; however the consequences of his actions resulted in violence and destruction. Another correlation between the two is that Frankenstein playing God (as he is defeating death) threatens religion as it insinuates that humans have the power and not God, and in the revolution the Church was under threat as the reform deprived them of power and encouraged liberal thinking. However the most important theme is the debate; is it the reform that causes destruction and devastation or is it peoples inability to accept something different? Is it the creature that causes destruction and devastation or is it peoples inability to accept something different? I believe the answer to both of these questions is peoples inability to accept something different, because if people were not afraid of change then they would have accepted the revolution and not created a reign of terror, and if people were not afraid of something alien and different then people would have treated the creature with some form of courtesy and consideration, thus avoiding infuriating the creature. Evidence from the text on this point is when a young boy free of prejudice and discrimination is confronted by the creature; ‘monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me, and tear me to pieces – You are an ogre – let me go, or I will tell my papa. ‘ The creature had already explained that he had no intentions to hurt or harm the boy, but because the creature is different and alien, he is immediately associated with evil, and must be avoided. Mary Shelley creates a variety of interesting points throughout the novel; that we should except death and take solace in the fact that we will hopefully be reunited one day in heaven. Therefore we should not be saddened and try to control the natural process of life, but enjoy experience. Mary Shelley also warned the reader about the dangers of unknown science, and that even an experiment designed to help humanity can have disastrous consequences. However, the most inspiring point created was the connection between the French revolution and the novel. It opened the readers mind to the prejudice and discrimination that the human race evilly portray. Anything alien or different must be associated with evil, which is a fundamental flaw of society that is near impossible to eliminate. We are, as a race, extremely narrow minded. In the novel we failed to overlook the creature’s repulsive appearance and treated him with complete contempt and disdain. This story illustrates the intolerant and callous society, and no matter how considerate and selfless a person is, we will still torment and ridicule them if they are in any way different to ourselves. Therefore, I disagree that the creature is a fiend as although he is cursed with a grotesque appearance that does not make him a monster, and although he committed several fiendish acts he is not accountable for this as it is merely a consequence of humans disgraceful behaviour, however as the creature endures feelings of both compassion and rage, as he can distinguish between good and evil, and as he desires more than the basic necessities of hunger, shelter and thirst, I believe that the creature must be described as essentially human. Â  

Abortion Crtical Analysis misc essays

Abortion Crtical Analysis misc essays Ellen Willis has written this article based on personal views, opinions and experiences. She openly expresses that the issue of abortion is a womans issue and should therefore be discussed with the woman in mind. She accepts the fact that others consider abortion to be a life issue and understands their feelings as to why they argue this point. It is recognized very early on that Ms. Willis is a feminist arguing the fact the fetus occupies a womans body to become a human being. She is trying to emphasize that in the pursuit to save a fetus that the womans feelings, body and life are being forgotten. The article continues on arguing the point that the fetus should not be the sole consideration when arguing this issue. The subject of the responsibility of having sex with contraception was briefly discussed. Whether the responsibility is that of the mans or that of the womans could easily be the discussion of another article. Ms. Willis mentions this topic only to remind the reader that accidents do occur. Using the argument that if a person does not want to get pregnant in the first place that they should just use birth control. Unfortunately, the article reminds us that it is not that easy. This does not encourage that abortion should be used as birth control. She is reminding the reader that a woman should not be forced to have a child because the birth control method failed. Extremists seem to be of great concern in this article. Ms. Willis argues that one can not fight for life by destroying another. She wants people to understand that it is fine to have opinions. It is the actions of the extremist that are of concern. The article discusses that to put the life of a developing fetus as higher priority as a living human being is inconceivable. Ms. Willis then personalizes the issue by discussing the birth of her own child. She explains that she knows first hand what a t ...