Riordan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Riordan - Essay Example In the case of Riordan Manufacturing, diversity is important since it will ensure that the firm creates a positive image on the eyes of the public as well governments (Douglas, 2007). In this way, it will benefit from the support of all the stakeholders. Fostering of ethical culture is another aspect that will significantly impact on RM. For example, the company management team will foster ethics that ensures ethical collaboration that entails holding themselves as well as other accountable. Similarly, the company will start executing its own resolutions to the problems they are facing. In this way, the sense of responsibility will be enacted in the firm thus enhancing the level of motivation among the employees. Through the expansion strategies that the Riordan Manufacturing will adopt, the firm will effectively reach its customers. This implies that the customers will not waste a lot of time travelling long distances to look for their brands. As a result, RM will benefit from strong positive customer brand relationship. The measurement helps in ensuring competitive advantage in various ways. Based on the stiff competition in the Northern America, it is imperative that companies come up with ways of addressing the competition. On the part of Riordan Manufacturing, reduction of lead times for example through the use of freight for small shipments and establishing outlets near the customers will ensure that the firm faces its competitors effectively. Additionally, by improving the transportation strategies, the business will eliminate the delays that are experienced by other customers who are loyal to the competitors. In this way, the company will enjoy strong positive relationship with its customers. Based on the fact that Riordan Manufacturing aims at entering Hermosillo, Mexico the company will employ new employees with a different racial background. This means that

Arrogant Attitude of Griffins Black Like Me Essay -- Black Like Me Ess

In The South John Howard Griffin’s chronicled experiences as a black man in his book, â€Å"Black Like Me† is an arrogant if well meaning book. It is arrogant because a 28 day experiment does not compare to the years (especially when learning right from wrong) of prolonged discrimination and racism suffered by African-Americans in the southern United States during the 1950’s. Consider being treated not as a 2nd class citizen, but as a 10th class citizen. Consider being in front of a washroom, but to be told it is for whites only and that you must go to the other side of town to use a â€Å"coloured† washroom. Consider not being allowed to do something just because a white man told you not to. Consider doing menial labor your entire life, even though you have a university education. Consider being an African-American. Those are just some of the hardships that African-Americans in (Specifically but not limited to) the Southern United States. Griffin had the opportunity to go to university and the theatre and all the finer things in life. He had a big house and a cushy job in the sub... Arrogant Attitude of Griffin's Black Like Me Essay -- Black Like Me Ess In The South John Howard Griffin’s chronicled experiences as a black man in his book, â€Å"Black Like Me† is an arrogant if well meaning book. It is arrogant because a 28 day experiment does not compare to the years (especially when learning right from wrong) of prolonged discrimination and racism suffered by African-Americans in the southern United States during the 1950’s. Consider being treated not as a 2nd class citizen, but as a 10th class citizen. Consider being in front of a washroom, but to be told it is for whites only and that you must go to the other side of town to use a â€Å"coloured† washroom. Consider not being allowed to do something just because a white man told you not to. Consider doing menial labor your entire life, even though you have a university education. Consider being an African-American. Those are just some of the hardships that African-Americans in (Specifically but not limited to) the Southern United States. Griffin had the opportunity to go to university and the theatre and all the finer things in life. He had a big house and a cushy job in the sub...

ACME and Omega case study Essay

1. Using the mechanistic and organic structure arguments develop in Chapter 2, compare and contrast the management styles at Acme and Omega. Acme’s managerial style consists of a mechanistic structure, while Omega’s managerial style is based on an organic structure. Acme’s vertical differentiation, which consists of four levels of control, constitutes the dispersion of authority between the organizational hierarchy levels and gears to give the organization more control over its projects and activities. Acme is highly centralized, managers of the top of the hierarchy have all the power to make most of the decisions for the company, and subordinates are expected to follow orders. Although, I think that Acme has established a high level of standardization and formalization, they experienced difficulty abiding to their own rules. Employees at Acme exercise individual specialization, where employees specialize in one specific area and work individually. 2. On the other hand, Omega is a decentralized organization,they appointed new president in that post. where managers and subordinates delegate important decisions about new organizational projects. Omega’s management believes in mutual adjustment, which is the practice of using judgment on problem solving and also creates an informal way of communicating with each other rather that using standardization or written rules. Joint specialization at Omega gives their employees and opportunity to work in teams and balance their actions to find the most effective and efficient way of accomplishing an assignment. Omega’s organic structure gives the employees more flexibility to innovative thinking, and creates a unity within the organization, where managers and employees share their knowledge and skills to achieve optimal performance. 3. Which firm should have won the final contract – Acme or Omega? Discuss. The paradoxical twins describes two organizations, Acme and Omega Electronics that are competing for the same contract for manufacturing a memory unit to be used in a photocopier. Omega, having an organic structure, wins the race because they are able to produce higher quality memory unit. On the other hand, Acme having mechanistic structure seems less competent and less reliable because of its low quality memory unit which they are unable to produce in time and some of its prototypes fail to work. Omega even corrects a design error in the original blueprint, which  improves product quality. But, both the company is given half the order, and they were encouraged to find the way to reduce the cost and Acme takes advantage of this opportunity to experiment to find ways to reduce its costs, whereas Omega does not. Finally Acme discovers the way to reduce the cost by 20% and they own the contract. Omega may have won the battle, but Acme has won the war because its mechanistic structure fosters a concern for technical efficiency and cost reduction in what is a routine manufacturing environment. In this particular case, Acme decides to run a â€Å"tight ship† (mechanistic structure) in order to increase productivity and efficiency, and to decrease costs. The advantage of this strategy is that they can undersell their competition (Omega) by selling at a lower cost. Omega, on the other hand, is nearly too opposite. They run a more organic structure, which relies heavily upon communication, delegation and teamwork. This strategy allows Omega to effectively compete with Acme by stressing reliability and by placing emphasis on quality. Omega’s decentralized, organic approach allowed for the building of prototypes 10 days faster than Acme, correction of errors, and a highly reliable prototype—much more reliable than Acme’s, which had a 10 percent failure rate. Omega was more effective when evaluated by these criteria, although Acme’s prices were lower than Omega’s because of that Acme won the competition and which was fair result in my opinion. Its mechanistic structure provided it with the management system and incentives needed to improve and reduce its manufacturing process, so that Acme won the final race over Omega. 4. What changes would you recommend to Acme and Omega if they are to survive in the future in this increasingly competitive industry? I wish to modify their organizational design. I think that in order for these two companies to survive they need to have a combination of organic and mechanistic structure. Once they do this change they will create a better organizational culture, which is the set of shared values and norms that controls organizational member’s interactions with each other . Although, Omega’s employees are working together, I think they have too much freedom. Therefore, I think that Omega’s management needs to be more formalize. Acme’s management are hightec pressure, they don’t give enough flexibility  to their employees. This is affecting Acme because there are missing some of the new ideas that their employees may have, and they are also forcing their workers to do the work which the top mangment as instructed. A combination of organic and mechanistic structure would give them better control and coordination of their employees and it will also motivate them and inspire a better behavior. Another recommendation for Acme Corporation would be to balance differentiation and integration For these two companies to survive and be successful I recommend that if they are going to combine organic and mechanistic structures then they should have a balance between centralization and decentralization. I think that all decision making shouldn’t be left entirely to employees or to management, rather it should be in between. Finally, these two companies should have a mixture of standardization and mutual understanding. Sometimes having too much of each may create an problem in corporate culture, therefore I would recommend to use a combination. Management needs pay close attention to make sure that their organizational design fits with the corporate culture and the organizational environment that they are trying to create.

Robert Frosts Acquainted With the Night

Robert Frost, the quintessential New England poet, was actually born thousands of miles away in San Francisco. When he was very young, his father died and his mother moved with him and his sister to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and it was there where his roots in New England were first planted. He went to school at Dartmouth and Harvard universities but did not earn a degree and then worked as a teacher and editor. He and his wife went to England in 1912, and there Frost connected with Ezra Pound, who helped Frost get his work published. In 1915 Frost  returned to the U.S. with two published volumes under his belt and an established following. The poet Daniel Hoffman wrote in 1970 in a review of The Poetry of Robert Frost:  Ã¢â‚¬Å"He became a national celebrity, our nearly official poet laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain.† Frost read his poem The Gift Outright at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in January 1961 at the request of Kennedy. A Terza Rima Sonnet Robert Frost wrote a number of  sonnets —examples include Mowing and â€Å"The Oven Bird.†   These poems are called sonnets because they have 14 lines of iambic pentameter and a rhyme scheme, but they do not exactly conform to the traditional octet-sestet structure of the Petrarchan sonnet or the three-quatrains-and-a-couplet shape of the Shakespearean sonnet. â€Å"Acquainted With the Night† is an interesting variation among Frost’s sonnet-type poems because it is written in terza rima—four three-line stanzas rhymed aba bcb cdc dad, with a closing couplet rhymed aa. Urban Loneliness Acquainted With the Night† stands out among Frost’s poems because it is a poem of city solitude. Unlike his pastoral poems, which speak to us through images of the natural world, this poem has an urban setting: â€Å"I have looked down the saddest city lane...... an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street...† Even the moon is described as if it were a part of the manmade city environment: â€Å"... at an unearthly height,One luminary clock against the sky...† And unlike his dramatic narratives, which tease out the meanings in encounters among multiple characters, this poem is a soliloquy, spoken by a single lonely voice, a man who is quite alone and encounters only the darkness of night. What Is the Night? You might say â€Å"the night† in this poem is the speaker’s loneliness and isolation. You might say it is depression. Or knowing that Frost often wrote of tramps or bums, you might say it represents their homelessness, like Frank Lentricchia, who called the poem â€Å" Frost’s quintessential dramatic lyric of homelessness.† The poem uses the two lines forward/one line back form of terza rima to realize the sad, aimless gait of the hobo who has â€Å"outwalked the furthest city light† into the lonely darkness.