Strategy and Corporate Planning PowerGen Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Strategy and Corporate Planning PowerGen - Essay Example The report starts with analyzing the effect of the organizational change on corporate planning. It is found that PowerGen reorganized itself three times between 1990 and 1998. The changes in the organizational structure had to be supported with effective corporate plans which specified the roles and responsibilities of each function. Initially, PowerGen had a centralized structure which underwent a complete transformation to a decentralized operation with unit managers at each business level being given wider responsibilities. The next section tries to analyze the core competencies and capabilities which have helped PowerGen to maintain its market share. It has been found that PowerGen’s focus was to supply electricity at a low cost. It formed an effective supply chain across various geographical locations and by partnering with various companies which helped it to produce electricity at low cost. This section also analyzes the core competencies and capabilities of two other major players in the industry which are EDF and E.ON. The last section deals with understanding the effect of privatization and deregulation and PowerGen’s merger with Midland electricity which was a major strategic move and helped PowerGen immensely to stay ahead of the competition. The report ends with an analysis of the centralized system of planning adopted by CEGB in the context of Hofstede’s article titled â€Å"Cultural constraints in management theories†. It shows the importance of cultural aspects while dealing with employees. The end product of electricity industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The spiraling demand for energy is expected to rise considerably till 2030. The total value of the electricity market comprises of the total electricity sold to commercial, industrial, residential and other users. In 2007, the total value of the market increased by 14.5%.

Rome and Han Ccot Essay Example for Free

Rome and Han Ccot Essay Rome and Han China are different in the ways how their slaves were treated. Overall, they were ultimately more similar because of the importance of trade and family. Slaves in Ancient Rome were treated very harshly. They were put in gladiator fights to the death against fellow slaves and occasionally lions for the entertainment of the community, although it was against the law for a citizen to kill another citizen’s slave. Also, 10% of the populations of Rome were slaves, which means if one died, they could be easily replaced. In contrast, only 1% of Han China’s populations were slaves. They were much more valued and thus their owners treated them better. There were two kinds- Privately Owned and State Owned. These slaves could pay for freedom, or be freed by their master or the emperor. It was against the law to kill these slaves at all. Trade in Rome was thought to be beneath the occupation of landholding, although they continue to practice trade throughout Roman history. The Senate was not allowed to participate in commerce because they were too prestigious to be affiliating with it. Similar to Han China, agriculture was a much better occupation than trade. Merchants, however wealthy, were looked down on because they looked like they could surpass social boundaries because of their riches. In Ancient Rome, loyalty to family and state was highly important. The nobles of Rome were constantly reminded to be aware of their fathers and grandfathers successes. We know this because the term pietas; meaning â€Å"dutifulness†; depicts these values. Also, we know of these the importance of family because typically at a Roman funeral, they would exhibit masks’ of their ancestors and their deeds. This regard to ancestors resembles that of Confucianism, which was highly practiced in Han China. The core of Confucianism was known as â€Å"filial piety†, meaning the respect and obedience that children owed their parents.

In what kind of community does Arthur Miller root John Proctor? :: English Literature

In what kind of community does Arthur Miller root John Proctor? In Arthur Millers Salem the community is very religious and pious. They might be religious but their actions are bad. The community is a puritan community this means that they are keen on helping the church or making it better. The community is lead by the church so it is a theocracy. Only by one example you can see how religious the community is because the church leads it. The community is scared of other people coming and changing the whole way of their lives so they want to keep their way to themselves. In Arthur Millers Salem, Salem society is very repressive in other word it is controlled and strict. They want it strict so they can keep the community from falling to pieces. The society of Arthur Millers Salem is very strict and severe. For instance when Abigail and the other teenage girls were caught in the forest dancing by Parris. When Abigail was at home with Parris. Abigail says to Parris in Act 1 Page 7 "I think you best go down and deny it yourself." Parris replies back by saying "My daughter and my niece I discovered dancing like heathen in the forest?" You can see here now that Parris is calling Abigail heathen who means non-Christian. Parris is calling Abigail non-Christian only for dancing. It is so severe that Abigail said on Act 1 Page 7 "Uncle, we did dance: let you tell them I confessed it-and I'll be whipped if I must be. Then Mary says on Act 1 Page 14 "Abby we've got to tell. Witchery's an hanging error†¦you'll only be whipped for dancing and other things we must tell the truth." You only can see by this how strict and severe the community is, if you dace you get whipped sixty times. You can see the society is strict and only by the few examples I have given. They gave severe punishment to anyone who broke their rules. The beliefs of the people are strong and they stand up for their beliefs. Because the existence of witches etc are mentioned in the Bible. Proctor says in Act 2 Page 57 "I have no knowledge of it: the Bible speaks of witches and I Will not deny them." Proctor is saying that he does not know if witches exist, because the Bible mentions witches so he has full belief in them. All of the community is religious and they will have total belief in the Bible. They are very quick to call each other witches or that some one is bewitched.

Journal of Consumer Behavior Essay

Consumer complaints and recovery through guaranteeing self-service technology NICHOLA ROBERTSON1*, LISA MCQUILKEN1 and JAY KANDAMPULLY2 1 Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia 2 Ohio State University, 266 Campbell Hall, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA ABSTRACT Self-service technologies are shaping the future of consumer behaviour, yet consumers often experience service failure in this context. This conceptual paper focuses on self-service technology failure and recovery. A consumer perspective is taken. Recovering from self-service technology failure is fraught with difficulty, mainly because of the absence of service personnel. The aim of this paper is to present a theoretical framework and associated research propositions in respect to the positive role that service guarantees can play in the context of self-service technology failure and recovery. It contributes to the consumer behaviour domain by unifying the theory pertaining to consumer complaint behaviour, service recovery, specifically consumers’ perceptions of justice, and service guarantees, which are set in a distinctive self-service technology context. It is advanced that service guarantees, specifically multiple attribute-specific guarantees, are associated with consumer voice complaints following self-service technology failure, which is contingent on the attribution of blame in the light of consumers’ production role. Service guarantees are argued to be associated with consumers’ perceptions of just recovery in the selfservice technology context when they promise to fix the problem, compensate only when the problem cannot be remedied, offer a choice of compensation that is contingent on failure severity, afford ease of invocation and collection, and provide a personalised response to failures. Previous classifications of SSTs are used to highlight the applicability of guarantees for different types of SSTs. Managerial implications based on the theoretical framework are presented, along with future research directions. Copyright  © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION The growing application of technology in services has  transformed the way that organisations interact with consumers (Liljander et al., 2006). Self-service technologies (SSTs) are technological interfaces that enable consumers to generate benefits for themselves, without the presence of the organisation’s personnel (Meuter et al., 2000). They enable consumers to take an active role in the production of their service experience. As SSTs are a major force shaping consumer behaviour (Beatson et al., 2006), the implications for both consumers and organisations need to be considered. The failure of SSTs is commonplace (Forbes, 2008; Robertson and Shaw, 2009). SST failure, or consumers’ perception that one or more aspects of SST delivery have not met their expectations, is attributed to poor service and failing technology (Meuter et al., 2000). Failures are inevitable with all services, especially SSTs that introduce new types of failures, such as consumer failures (Forbes, 2008; Meuter et al., 2000). However, SST recovery, e.g., fixing the problem and providing compensation, is generally reported to be poor (Forbes, 2008). While consumers demand a superior response to SST failure, complaints are largely ineffectively handled in this context (Collier and Bienstock, 2006). This is despite the fact that SST failure intensifies the need for recovery because consumers are often remote from service personnel (Collier and Bienstock, 2006). SST providers have ignored consumers, denied responsibility for failure, blamed consumers for the problem, *Correspondence to: Nichola Robertson, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia. E-mail: nichola.robertson@deakin.edu.au  and provided a generic complaint response (Forbes, 2008; Holloway and Beatty, 2003). Unsurprisingly, consumers might not bother voicing because they believe that it will be useless (Holloway and Beatty, 2003; Snellman and Vihtkari, 2003). If consumers are dissatisfied with an SST encounter and service recovery is perceived to be inept, they will switch and/or spread negative word of mouth and/or mouse (Collier and Bienstock, 2006; Dong et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2006a). In the interpersonal service context, it has been argued, albeit rarely, that service guarantees, or explicit promises made by organisations to deliver a certain level of service to satisfy consumers and to remunerate them if the service fails (Hogreve and Gremler, 2009), are an effective recovery tool (Bjà ¶rlin-Lidà ©n and Skà ¥là ©n,  2003; Kashyap, 2001; McColl et al., 2005). In a recovery encounter, service guarantees have been found to provide benefits, such as reducing consumer dissatisfaction, negative word of mouth, and switching (Wirtz, 1998). We argue that in the context of SST failure, service guarantees could act as a surrogate for service personnel who, in the interpersonal service context, encourage consumer complaints and facilitate recovery. Following our extensive review of service guarantees employed in the SST context, it was revealed that guarantees are uncommon in practice for non-Internet SSTs, such as kiosks and interactive voice response (IVR). However, in the Internet context, they appear to be more widespread. For example, guarantees are often used in the context of online banking, where online security, in particular, is guaranteed. They are also prevalent in the hotel context, typically in the form of online price matching guarantees. Therefore, the ‘real-life’ examples of SST guarantees provided throughout this paper are skewed toward Internet SSTs. However, in  N. Robertson et al. guarantees also have the ability to enhance consumers’ perceptions of fairness following failure. SST guarantees indicate justice in a context that is mostly devoid of interpersonal and other external cues, thereby encouraging consumer voice, facilitating service recovery, and, ultimately, retaining the organ isation’s reputation and its consumers. Our paper contributes to the consumer behaviour domain by adding to the underdeveloped literature on consumer complaints, consumer recovery perceptions, and service guarantees in the SST context, in addition to bringing these independent streams of literature together. As SST recovery in practice is reported to be deficient from the consumer perspective, further exploration of this topic is warranted. The remainder of this paper justifies a conceptual framework that describes how guarantees applied to different types of SSTs can encourage consumers to voice following failure and enable organisations to provide just recovery for consumers. We close with theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and an agenda for  future research. developing our propositions, we apply the SST classification schemes developed by Dabholkar (1994) and Meuter et al. (2000) in respect to technology type, purpose, and location. These schemes will be used to highlight the SST contexts that best fit the application of guarantees, which is beyond Internet SSTs. There are two key types of guarantees commonly offered in interpersonal services, unconditional and attributespecific, that also appear to be relevant in the SST setting. An unconditional guarantee covers the core service offering, and consumers are free to invoke it whenever they are dissatisfied (Wirtz et al., 2000). The attribute-specific guarantee is narrower in breadth, covering either a single or multiple service attributes (Van Looy et al., 2003). It is directed to areas within an organisation where consumers perceive that the guarantee adds value (Hart et al., 1992). The attribute-specific guarantee is the type most common in interpersonal services (Van Looy et al., 2003 ). Our review revealed that this also applies to SSTs. For example, Hertz car rental offers its consumers online check-in for rentals. It guarantees that online check-in enables consumers to pick up a rental vehicle within 10 minutes or less. If it fails to fulfil this specific promise, consumers are credited $50. In another example, match.com, an online dating service, guarantees via its ‘Make Love Happen Guarantee’, that if consumers do not find someone special in six months of using its site, it will provide them with six months free service. In the interpersonal service context, consumers have been found to prefer attribute-specific guarantees when they consider invoking the guarantee, ‘. . . probably for their clarity and manifest nature’ (McDougall et al., 1998: 289). We further argue that in the SST context, generally devoid of service personnel and, therefore, with reduced opportunities for consumer monitoring, the clarity of an attribute-specific guara ntee is less likely to attract consumer abuse (McCollough and Gremler, 2004). Therefore, we advocate and assume for the remainder of this paper an attribute-specific guarantee. This can cover multiple SST attributes, which is referred to as a multiple attribute-specific guarantee. For example, BestPrintingOnline.com, an online printing service, guarantees both the quality of its product and on-time  delivery. This type of guarantee provides consumers with the opportunity to complain about several SST problems via guarantee invocation (Bjà ¶rlin-Lidà ©n and Skà ¥là ©n, 2003). In the context of service recovery, the examination of service guarantees has been scarce, and the use of service guarantees in the SST context has not been examined before. This is confirmed by Hogreve and Gremler (2009) in their review of the past 20years of service guarantee research. To begin to address these gaps, our paper conceptualises the role of service guarantees in the SST failure and recovery context from the consumer perspective. We consider different types of SSTs in developing our propositions. We argue that SST guarantees encourage consumers to voice their complaints via guarantee invocation in the absence of service personnel. In line with the call for research examining the justice dimensions (i.e., distributive, procedural, and interactional justice) of service recovery in the SST context (Forbes et al., 2005), we propose that SST Copyright  © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK The conceptual framework proposed (see Figure 1) is grounded in the theory pertaining to service guarantees, consumer voice, attribution theory, and justice theory. In justifying the framework, the distinctive characteristics of the SST context were considered, including the requirement of consumer co-production that is independent of service personnel, a lack of interpersonal interaction with service personnel, and consumers being obliged to interface and interact with technology (Robertson and Shaw, 2009). When studying SSTs, it is important to distinguish meaningfully between their types (Meuter et al., 2000). In terms of categorising SSTs, two key classification schemes can be drawn. The most cited classification scheme is that proposed by Dabholkar (1994). Her classification scheme considers the following variables: (i) who delivers the service (degree and level of consumer participation); (ii) where the service is delivered (location of the SST, i.e. remote, such as IVR or onsite, such as kiosks); and (iii) how the service is delivered (technology type, i.e. Internet and non-Internet, such as kiosks and IVR). More recently, Meuter et al. (2000) proposed a similar classification of SSTs. As per Dabholkar’s (1994) scheme, they included the different types of technologies that organisations use to interface with consumers (i.e.,  Internet and non-Internet) and the purpose of the technology from the viewpoint of consumers, that is, what consumers accomplish from using the technology (i.e., transactions and/or customer service).

Investment and Cost Savings Essay

Introduction The purpose of this report is to address the key strategic issues facing Coast4Life with the expected downturn ahead. Included is a financial analysis, identification of major issues, analysis of alternatives and a recommendation. Financial Analysis for the Year Ended 2012 (Appendix 1) * Current ratio of 1.6 indicates that the company can meet its short term obligations. There is a 46% improvement versus last year’s current ratio of 1.1. Quick ratio of 1.8 shows a 50% improvement. * Total debt- to-equity of 1.5 shows a 12% improvement over prior year’s ratio of 1.7 indicating that the firm is relying less on debt. Times interest earned ratio of 6.4 improved by 30%. * Profitability ratios indicate overall earnings growth. Net margin of 15.2% grew by 18% compared to 12.9% in 2011 while Return-on-Equity (ROE) of 27.4% grew by 16%. Return on Investments (ROI) of 11.2% shows a significant 28% growth from 8.7% and posted a 14% favourable variance compared to target. * Revenue and net income grew by 13.4% and 33.3%, respectively. Major Strategic Issues With the expected estimated 30%-35% decline in the overall booking, the expected impact is a decline in income by $7M (Appendix 2). The proposed alternatives to generate additional revenues and or/ cost savings are evaluated using a required after tax rate of return of 16%. Alternative 1 – Change Customer Mix Objectives: Maximize Repeat Customers from 20% to 40% Maximize Age Group 40-60 years old from 30% to 38% Pros: * Incremental Income of $721K in 2013; $2.1M for the 3 years ahead combined (Appendix 3) * Opportunity to expand extra-services * Maximizes capacity/resources Cons: * Marketing constraints to target customer mix * May require additional costs to achieve target This option addresses the incremental income requirement. It maximizes profitability and provides opportunities to expand business ( in line with the company’s mission). Alternative 2 – Implement a web-based booking system Pros: * Incremental savings of $24K in 2013; $226K for the 3-yrs ahead combined (Appendix 4) * Opportunity for additional costs reduction (i.e. advertising, promotion) * Provides information about passengers * Opportunity to target more customers * Meets demand for Internet-booking * Accounting module improves financial reporting Cons: * Loss of customer service * Technology must be up to date and well maintained * Security (i.e. financial data, customers) This option meets the cost savings requirement. It also addresses the immediate need of the company for market/customer information and addresses constraints in alternative 1 (customer mix). This is in line with the company’s mission to provide unique services. Alternative 3 – Hire Crew and Hospitality Workers from Underdeveloped Countries Pros: * Incremental cost savings of $883K; $2.1M for the 3 years ahead combined (Appendix 5) * Cheaper wages Cons: * May damage reputation (poor service quality) * May dampen employees’ morale This alternative meets the requirement for cost savings. To ensure quality service, the company must invest in training. The company should also keep key employees (pros: assists in training, promotion could keep morale high). Long-term cost savings is attractive. Alternative 4 – Divest the Fraser dry dock Pros: * Incremental Income of $3.1M in 2013; $2.5M for the 3-years ahead combined (Appendix 6) * Focus on core business Cons: * Incremental costs of $438K per year (maintenance and lost income from the dry dock operations (Appendix 6) * Decline in company-wide morale * Damage to reputation and local ties * Quality of third-party maintenance This alternative meets the incremental income required. This allows the company to focus on its core business. However, long-term, the negative impact on income, reputation and ties with the community are not desirable. It is recommended to change customer mix and implement a web-based booking system. Both alternatives achieve the income requirement (total $745K in 2013; $2.4M for the 3 years ahead). Both alternative have low risk and provide more opportunities to maximize the use of its resources and capacity and expand business. Hiring crew and staff from underdeveloped countries is recommended if the high risk is mitigated i.e. by retaining key employees. Divesting the drydock is not recommended due to the incremental expenses associated in future years. Conclusion The recommended alternatives meet the requirement to generate revenue and/or cost savings to counter the expected downturn in 2013.