Laws of England and Wales Essay

â€Å"The defendant who seeks to avoid criminal liability on the basis that s/he was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the alleged crime must have a defence that falls within one of the following, legally recognised, categories: Insanity, Diminished Responsibility or Automatism. While, at one level or another, these â€Å"mental disorder defences† share common characteristics, they each differ significantly. Unfortunately, this point does not appear to be fully appreciated in English Law.† Discuss the validity of this statement. Inherent in our legal system is an idea of culpability. The word itself embodies notions of moral responsibility and blame. There are two elements that will allow us to determine whether or not someone is to be considered culpable. The first is that the person on whom we wish to apportion blame is an actual agent of harm as opposed to a mere causer. That is to say that they are instrumental in an action and are not simply a victim of a spasm or similar associated condition. The second is that he/she has the capacity to understand the laws and moral order that exist within society. Hart’s principles of justice assert that ‘a moral license to punish is needed by society and unless a man has the capacity and fair opportunity or chance to adjust his behaviour to the law, its penalties ought not be applied to him.† Such deep-rooted notions of culpability have necessitated development in the area of defences to ensure that those who fall outside of the legally recognised parameters of accountability are afforded ‘protection’. Amongst such defences are Insanity, Automatism and Diminished responsibility. This essay will identify the similarities and differences of these defences by exploring their theoretical foundations and determine whether, in practice, they are sufficiently understood by the courts to achieve their desired end. The theoretical basis for an insanity defence is embedded in the notions of fair opportunity as discussed above. It is felt that the insane man is ‘too far removed from normality to make us angry with him’. The impetus of the law and its functions might well be considered outside of his comprehension and similarly, so too might the moral implications of his act. Therefore, it would not be either ‘efficacious or equitable’ to hold such a man criminally  responsible . As Duff remarks of the potential insane defendant â€Å"if she cannot understand what is being done to her, or why it is being done, or how it is related as a punishment to her past offence, her punishment becomes a travesty?†. Therefore, if a defence of insanity is successful the defendant will be given a ‘special verdict’ namely ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’. Although this special verdict may bring indefinite detention (a fact which is reconciled in theor y by ‘compelling considerations of public interest’ ) it still serves to reflect a lack of culpability and therefore, blame. The basis on which the non-insane automatism defence is founded is somewhat more fundamental than that of insanity. It was developed to exculpate those who had been the victim of events rather than those who had fallen foul to circumstance . A plea of automatism is ‘not merely a denial of fault, or of responsibility. It is more a denial of authorship’ in the sense that the automaton is in no way instrumental in any criminal act. Lord Dilhorne remarked in Alphacell that â€Å"an inadvertent and unintended act without negligence? might be said, not caused’. Others have described such acts as ‘acts of god’. It is with this class of act that the defence of automatism is concerned – acts which might be said seen as ‘inconsistent with the requirement of an actus reus’ . This lack-of-instrumentality concept is reflected by the fact that on a finding of automatism a defendant will be granted an unqualified acquittal by the courts. Detenti on is unnecessary for as well being blameless, the automaton presents no future threat to society. Whilst Insanity and Automatism serve as general defences in law, Diminished responsibility operates only as a defence to murder. It offers those ‘bordering on insanity’ the opportunity to argue that at the time of the killing they were ‘suffering from such abnormality of mind’ so as to ‘substantially impair their mental responsibility’. If such an argument is successful (all other things being equal) the potential murderer will be convicted of manslaughter and hence will escape the mandatory life sentence that a finding of murder brings. The defence’s existence is justified (much like insanity) by notions of responsibility and blame. The doctrine, it was felt, ‘was needed to reflect the view that where there was less responsibility there ought to be less punishment.† Despite some clear differences in the three defences’ theoretical foundations and intentions, it could be said that technically they have become somewhat confused in law. Discussion will now turn to the two automatism defences before then going on to examine diminished responsibility in context. Whilst both automatism defences are grounded in the idea that ‘where there is no responsibility there should be no blame,’ policy reasons have necessitated their independent development. Because of this, the person who seeks to raise automatism as a defence is subject to a very tight definitional distinction. This tight definitional distinction between automatism and insanity is highlighted by Glanville Williams when he describes non-insane automatism as ‘any abnormal state of consciousness†¦.while not amounting to insanity.’ Such statements offer little definitional worth, as to understand automatism we must first understand insanity and this, as will become clear, is no easy task. The contemporary framework of the insanity defence can be found in M’Naghten’s Case where Lord Tindal authoritatively ruled that?: â€Å"?to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.† Subsequent development of a non-insane automatism defence, for reasons discussed above, necessitated judicious refinement of these insanity parameters to insure that those who sought to invoke the former were deserving . Therefore, considerable onus was placed upon the meaning of the rules, especially the phrase ‘disease of the mind’. First, it was decided that ‘mind’ referred to the mental faculties of reason, memory and understanding and not simply the organic mass that is the brain. Then, in Sullivan, (the defendant was charged with assault which, he  claimed, was the result of the post-ictal stage of an epileptic seizure) the definition expanded to catch transient and intermittent impairment of the mind. It was held that the permanence of a disease ‘cannot on any rational ground be relevant to the application by the courts of the M’Naghten rules’. This finding ran contrary to contemporary medical definitions and began to impinge upon the design of the non-insane automatism defence: that being to catch one-off, faultless incidents of automatism. Perhaps more significantly, Sullivan continued to develop Quick on what is now thought to be the defining boundary between the two defences, that of internal and external causes. This distinction was cemented in Burgess where Lord Lane explicitly referred to the difference between internal and external causes as the point on which the ‘case depends, as others have depended in the past’ The defendant in Burgess was a sleepwalker who assaulted a friend whilst in a somnambulistic state. It was held that somnambulism was a disease of the mind under the M’Naghten rules largely because it was considered a ‘pathological’ (and therefore, internal) condition by expert witnesses in cross-examination. While, to some, this internal/external distinction ‘makes good sense,’ to others its effect is wholly inappropriate, as it fudges the boundaries between the theoretical rationales of insane and non-insane automatism. Irene Mackay, for example (as well as pointing to contradictory obiter ) attacks the distinction with reference to its effect. She contends that sleep ‘can hardly be called an illness, disorder or abnormal condition. It is a perfectly normal condition.’ Of interest here, Graham Virgo points to anecdotal evidence that cheese might cause sleepwalking. If such evidence could be substantiated, the somnambulist could potentially escape a special verdict by virtue of the fact that eating cheese would be considered an external cause. Such a consideration is far from easily reconcilable with the aforementioned notions of blame and responsibility as expounded by Hart’s principles of justice. Mackay continues to attack Burgess on a second defining point. She contends that the court failed to properly adopt the definition of ‘disease of the  mind’ as put forward by Lord Denning in Bratty – namely that it is â€Å"any mental disorder which has manifested itself in violence and is prone to recur.† Considering statistical evidence showing that no one had ever appeared before a court twice charged with somnambulistic violence, Mackay remarks ‘something which is prone to recur must be at least ‘inclined to recur or have a tendency to recur or be to some extent likely to recur.’ Despite such protestations, current medical opinion is that sleepwalking is caused by internal factors and may be likely to recur . Therefore it is suitable for M’Naghten insanity as defined. The result of these calculated distinctions between the two defences is that ‘epileptics, sleepwalkers, those suffering from arteriosclerosis and diabetics during a hyperglycaemic episode, may all now be regarded as insane.’ This is surely an unacceptable position. After all, such people appear to fit far more comfortably within the (theoretical) realms of automatism than insanity. They are rational people, capable of recognising rule following situations, who are (largely) the victims of one off incidents of involuntariness. If we are to label a diabetic insane because they neglected to take their medication, are we to do the same with one who gets a migraine from omitting to take aspirin? The difference of cause is the resultant harm and the need for the courts to protect society. Incidentally, close scrutiny of the M’Naghten rules leads us to conclude that where a defendant’s inability to recognise he was doing something wrong was due to something other than a defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind he would generally have no defence at all. Things do not get any clearer when the defence of Diminished Responsibility is brought into the frame. The statutory provision for the defence is found in Section 2(1) of the Homicide Act 1957 and provides that a person shall not be convicted of murder: â€Å"If he was suffering from such abnormality of mind (whether arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind or any inherent causes or induced by disease or injury) as substantially impaired his mental  responsibility for his acts or omissions in doing or being a party to the killing.† The problems begin with semantics and normative questions of degree: what qualifies as ‘abnormality of mind,’ how much is ‘substantially’ and what is ‘mental responsibility’? Even debates on the questions have offered little assistance. For example, the Government, in an attempt to explain the key term, said that ‘abnormality of mind’ referred to conditions ‘bordering on insanity’ while excluding ‘the mere outburst of rage or jealousy’. Such an explanation is obviously of little worth considering that ‘the response of judges and psychiatrists?[to the section]? have ranged from the very generous to the very strict’. In fact the courts it seems, have entertained ‘practically any ground where it was thought morally inappropriate to convict the defendant of murder’. For example, psychopaths, reactive depressives , alcoholics and those in ‘disassociated states’ or suffering from ‘irresistible impulses’ have all been brought within the protective scope of the section. Lord Parker in Byrne, also attempting to clarify the section’s ambit, said that it dealt with ‘partial insanity or being on the border line of insanity’. He went on to add that ‘Inability to exercise will-power to control physical acts? is? sufficient to entitle the accused to the benefit of this section; difficulty in controlling his acts? may be’. Confusions are evident here for, as Smith and Hogan note: ‘A man whose impulse is irresistible bears no moral responsibility for his act, for he has no choice; a man whose impulse is much more difficult to resist than that of an ordinary man bears a diminished degree of moral responsibility for his act’ It would appear then, that the former should be acquitted as insane rather than have his punishment mitigated. However, if the inability to control his acts is not caused by a ‘defect of reason’ or ‘disease of the mind’ then the defendant has no defence in insanity. In this respect therefore, the defence of diminished responsibility appears to be patching up the deficiencies of M’Naghten; acting as ‘a device for circumventing the embarrassments that flow from a mandatory sentence,’ or the stigma attached to a finding of insanity, by allowing judges to â€Å"follow in a common sense way their sense of  fairness.† Greiw, writing in 1988 comments on the section. He suggests that the section is not to be seen as a definitional aid rather it is ‘to be seen as legitimising an expression of the decision-maker’s personal sense of the proper boundaries between murder and manslaughter’. The result of the lax and open wording has allowed the defence of diminished responsibility to be used almost as a catch-all excuse, spanning, and adding to, the defences of insane and non-insane automatism. It has been able to accommodate states of mind and circumstance that would be insufficient for either automatism or insanity whilst at the same time justifying this accommodation by virtue of the increased severity of a murder charge. To some this position is considered entirely unacceptable and contrary to the theories of blame and responsibility discussed hereto. Sparks for example, comments ‘to say that we are less willing to blame?a man if he does something wrong, surely does not mean: we are willing to blame him less, if he does something wrong.’ It would seem however, that due to the inadequacies of M’Naghten and the acceptance that some states of mind falling short of insanity should be considered mitigatory, the courts had little choice but to develop the defence of diminished responsibility in this way. From the issues discussed in this essay it is clear that whilst, in theory, the three defences of Insanity, Automatism and Diminished Responsibility, do indeed exhibit differences, in practice they have become somewhat amalgamated. This is probably due to two factors: First, it must be accepted that ‘there is no sharp dividing line between sanity and insanity, but that the two extremes? shade into one another by imperceptible gradations.’ This proposition leads us to conclude that first, the problem is one of definition. Second, the courts are aware that ‘pleading a blackout is one of the first refuges of a guilty conscience and is a popular excuse’. Therefore, they have tended to view the problem of involuntariness ‘with great circumspection and have adopted a restrictive approach as to when there should be a complete exemption from liability’. In order to balance this definitional problem with the requirement of  certainty, whilst ensuring that only the deserving are completely acquitted, the law has had no alternative but to define distinct parameters. It is these parameters which have both caused the fudging of the two automatism defences and necessitated the creation of a diminished responsibility defe nce. Whilst, in some respects, this amalgamation is unacceptable, its effect has been to provide blanket coverage for those defendants suffering from either a mental disorder, disassociated condition or episode of sudden involuntariness. Far from saying that the law has failed to ‘fully appreciate’ the differences it appears that the courts, due to restrictions, have simply created ad hoc a range of defences whose purpose is to reflect, on a continuum, impeachable notions of culpability. Bibliography. Books 1. Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law (2nd ed., Oxford, 1995) 2. Clarkson. C.M.V. & Keating. H.M. Criminal Law. Text and Materials. (4th ed., 1998, Sweet & Maxwell) 3. Hart. H.L.A., Punishment and Responsibility, (1968, Oxford) 4. Smith , J.C. B. Hogan., Criminal Law (6th Edition, 1988, London, Butterworths.) 5. Williams. G., Textbook of Criminal Law (2nd ed., Stevens & Sons. 1983) Articles Dell, Diminished Responsibility Reconsidered. [1982] Crim.L.R. 809 Duff. R.A., Trial and Punishments J.L.S.S. 1986, 31(11), 433 Goldstein. A., The insanity Defense (1967) Griew. E., The future of Diminished Responsibility. Crim. L.R. 1988, Feb, 75-87 Laurie. G.T., Automatism and Insanity in the Laws of England and Scotland. Jur. Rev. 1995, 3, 253-265 Mackay. I., The Sleepwalker is Not Insane. M.L.R. 1992, 55(5), 714-720 Padfield. N.,Exploring a quagmire: insanity and automatism. C.L.J. 1989, 48(3), 354-357 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, Cmnd. 8932 (1949-1953) Smith. J.C., Case and Comment. R. v. Hennessy. (1989) 86(9) L.S.G. 41; (1989) 133 S.J. 263 (CA) Smith. K.J.M. & Wilson. W., Impaired Voluntariness and Criminal Responsibility: Reworking Hart’s Theory of Excuses ? The English Judicial Response. O.J.L.S. 1993, 13(1), 69-98 Sparks. Diminished Responsibility in theory and Practice (1964) 27 M.L.R 9 Virgo. G., Sanitising Insanity ? Sleepwalking and Statutory Reform C.L.J. 1991, 50(3), 386-388 Cases 1. Alphacell [1972] 2 All ER 475 2. Burgess [1991] 2 W.L.R. 106 C.O.A. (Criminal Division) 3. Byrne [1960] 3 All ER 1 4. Cooper v. McKenna [1960] Q.L.R 406 5. Hennessy (1989) 89 Cr.App.R 10, CA 6. Kemp [1956] 3 All ER 249; [1957] 1 Q.B.399 7. M’Naghten’s Case (1843) 10 C & F, 200, 8 Eng. Rep. 718. 8. Quick and Paddison [1973] Q.B. 910 9. Seers [1985] Crim.L.R, 315 10. Sullivan [1984] A.C. 156 (House of Lords) 11. Tandy [1988] Crim.L.R 308 12. Tolson (1889) Legislation 1. Homicide Act. 1957. 2. Trial of Lunatics Act 1883

Management Information Systems Essay

This paper will discuss the local business of Fascinations Beauty Salon, and the internet strategic model to help develop this company. This business will have to have a new strategy that set up for the viable benefits. Fascinations Beauty Salon will need to be equipped in order to benefit from creating a website. This paper will also discuss the functions of the business through the internet website. Management Information Systems Fascinations Beauty Salon has been in business for quite a long time, like fifty years. It is located in the residential area down the street from an Elementary school and a Baptist Church. The owner Mrs. B. has been doing hair for the majority of her life in the same place and she still has plenty of clients. These clients have been her business for quite some time, and she shares her salon with another beautician that only works certain days. Just recently, Mrs. B. had been trying to research into expanding her business services and was asking about having her business on the internet. Mrs. B. had just realized that she wanted to be in the race with her competitors in the Galveston County area. I spoke to Mrs. B. he other day informing her that Fascinations Beauty Salon could expand the products that she sells on a regularly basis and as well as her services. Between the women that work at this place and the students that have been in the business to get a feel, or trained with internships that she should have a website. So that when people want or need some sort of hairstyle or needs a clip or maybe even a product that only she carries that, they could send a quick electronic email out to the business or they could go to her place of business to receive such services and products. I explained to her that E-commerce is a way that patrons and businesses are getting fast admission to the internet global market. E-commerce is spreading like a wildfire, in the areas of exporting and advertising of manufactured goods and benefits by the usage of central processing units and systems. I advised her that she could triple her business and that I would set up her business with an electronic commerce with a certain type of internet industry example like (B2C) industry-to-customer: which means that ustomers can buy immediately with her company instead of trading with any liaisons. Mrs. B. inquired about the ways that a web site could assist her in benefitting, and I informed her that a web site could assist her company receive a viable gain with a planned effect on her business. With the planned effect on her business implemented as having the lowest assembly or in service expenses, offering distinctive commodities, aiming a definite section of the marketplace, increasing new ways of liability dealing, increasing commodities, or benefits, and starting collections that labor jointly. With electronic storefronts, consumers can shop on the virtual web site via electronic files and shopping pushcart replicas. Also by moving your stock franchise business on the internet, it can improve productivity and increase the buyer overhaul. Here the business can develop an electronic exchange with a combination to contenders and dealers with the benefit of supercomputers and Web sites to purchase and vend merchandise, exchange market statistics, and manage the rear organization procedures, such as monitoring the supplies. The Fascinations Beauty Salon serviceable qualifications for the use of the internet and the web could subsidy it with the physical address of business, telephone number, e-mail, hours of functions, beauty salon overhaul proposed, such as (extensive overhaul shop, loveliness merchandise, waxing, alterations, facials / make-up / skin-care, perms, spirals, haircuts). Also shows advertisements, present documentations, brands suggestions, (Rusk, Nexus, CHI, Matrix, Logics, Red- kens), with exclusive overhaul proposals ( appointments, walk-ins welcome, free parking, group bookings, and clientele performances (all ages, children, men, women, wedding parties). The technological specifications for the chosen business consist of the listed hardware as the following: the case to holds the computer, and a CPU or central processing unit, (also known as a tower) along with drives like CD and DVD drives that can transfer information onto the CD’s and the DVD’s. A monitor the shows the information on the screen along with a keyboard that is used to type information into the computer and a mouse device as a pointing cursor that shows on the monitor. A printer used to print the information as displayed on the monitor. The server domain that I suggest for Fascinations Beauty Salon is Go Daddy. Com, it can be very useful with an SSL Certificate, offers many templates for the business, and is user friendly for everything that pertains to this business. As far as the software, I would recommend that this business would try Hair-Max Salon Software that offers many different optional tabs to assist the business and make it more profitable.

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Consider how modern American drama presents the self as fragmented and Essay

Consider how modern American drama presents the self as fragmented and insecure in Death of a Salesman and Cat on a Hot Tin Roo - Essay Example Negative impacts of the depression era and the evil of capitalism have played a pivotal role in the life of American middleclass people. American dramatist Arthur Miller and his followers have often experienced the evil of depression and capitalism (Bryer & Hartig 2010, p. 363). Increasing insecurity in sexual relation among the people also provide contributory causes for insecure existence in modern world. Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman fails to understand the real pulse of the society. Therefore he does not find success both in his personal and professional life. He is a self possessed and self-contained man who fails in his personal life and the same failure directs him to his tragic death at the end of the play. Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof presents the conflict of a Southern family. Brick, the husband in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof lead a self possessed life and likes to continue his homosexual nature. At the s ame time, his wife Margaret leads a miserable life to catch her husband’s attention even in the midst of her husband’s negligence. As eminent figures of Modern American drama, Arthur Miller and Tennesse Williams successfully take up the theme of ‘fragmented self’ and ‘insecurity’ in their works Death of a Salesman and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Osgerby 2001, p. 71). ... The playwright portrays the failure of the American success myth and the insecure existence of the personal and financial life of an American middle class man through the character of Willy Loman in Miller’s play (This is just a close reading of the text and you do not need to provide a reference here!). Willy Loman, the central character of the play fails to understand the real pulse of the modern materialist society as well its people. He is a total failure in his personal life as well as in family life and it is this failure that leads him to his tragic death at the end of the play. It is his self-deceptiveness and his blindness to reality that leads him to a world of conflicts. Unable to cope with reality Loman convinces himself that he is successful and the same self acts as an obstacle in his way to reveal his mistake. Death of a Salesman exemplifies the theme of self and insecurity through the despondent life of the protagonist Willy Loman and the other members of his f amily. Each member of Willy’s family feels emotional frustration and insecurity. Willy Loman isolates and alienates himself from his wife, his sons, his fellow beings, and the society because of his conscious efforts to justify his self. In Death of a Salesman Willy’s wife Linda is portrayed as a completely accepting wife and a good mother. It is simply unintentional that Loman’s elder son Biff became the victims of Lawman’s illegal relationship with a prostitute. Biffs’ unhealthy appearance and self-destructive nature haunts Loman as a nightmare but at the same time his distinctive self prevents him to confess his fault. Michelle, in this

Lay-Off due to Economic Difficulties Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Lay-Off due to Economic Difficulties - Essay Example In this regard, as a human resource professional tasked to evaluate and propose recommendations for the situation, the following discourse would initially present a description of the facts, the relevant law, application of the law, and suggestions of handling the issue. Recommendations would be proposed in the form of a memo addressed to the supervisor. Description of Facts 1. Advance Notice of 60 calendar days Company ABC employs 100 employees and is therefore covered by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) in cases where lay-offs are being reflected on at least 33% of their work force. Supposedly, ABC must provide a 60-day notice to the employees being laid-off. But since ABC plans to lay-off only 25% and that the reason for laying off is economic difficulties, the 60-day required notice is thereby not required. In one of the frequently asked questions posted in the US Department of Labor, the exception to giving a 60-day notice is hereby addressed: â€Å" if an employer believes their situation is the result an economic crisis, it may apply the unforeseen business circumstance exception; however, there could be a burden on the employer to prove why it could not plan 90 days in advance† (U.S. Department of Labor, 2010). During the termination meeting, the only time period indicated was that the benefits of the employees would be terminated at the end of the month. Therefore, there was no stipulated number of days from the time the employees were informed up to the time their services would be terminated. This does not violate any labor law because as the Department of Labor disclosed, â€Å"the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has no requirements for notice to an employee prior to termination or lay-off. In certain cases, employers must give the workers advanced notice of mass layoffs or plant closure. The Warn Act provides specific information on advance notice, employer responsibility and workers rights during mass layoffs or plant closure† (U.S. Department of Labor, N.D.). 2. Severance Pay Company ABC will offer a severance package that depends on gender and members of the union. As indicated: â€Å"because men generally are the heads of households and support dependents, ABC is going to offer them more severance pay than women.   Some employees are union members and their CBA provides less severance than the Company plans to offer, so management is going to be nice and give them the higher severance amount† (Case Facts, N.D., par. 1). According to Employee Issues (2011), under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state equivalents, â€Å"severance pay is generally considered to be a matter of agreement between employers and workers or employers and unions† (Employee Issues.com, 2011). 3. Age of Employees being Laid-Off By suggesting the inverse seniority policy, ABC could face violations of wrongful termination due to Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission revealed that â€Å"the law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment† (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, N.D. ). Application of the Law Since ABC is planning to lay-off a lesser percentage of employees than the prescribed 33% threshold, it is not covered by the 60-calendar days notice for the employees due to be laid-off. However, their

How cultures use food Essay Example for Free

How cultures use food Essay 1. Outline the way different cultures use the value food? Out of the many different cultures present throughout the world, all value food in most similar ways. Most similarities can be struck between the availability of foods within their regions, specifically enviromental and seasonal ripening in the spring period. Food has become plentiful in Western civilisations over the past few decades, , due to the advances in agriculture allowing maximum growth and larger yields in the shortest amount of time (Chemgeneration 2011). This has also introduced interest into controversial genetically modified foods and the use of hybrid varieties of plants that have more desirable qualities. An example of this is Maize and certain potatoes that secrete a pesticide from the plant to ward of pests and insects, thus removing the need to use pesticides and chemicals (Chemgeneration 2011). Dr Rosalie McCauley (Development Office Department of Agriculture and Food WA, p1), obtained results that genetically modified foods haves been more increasingly used as the use of farmland increases exponentially at over 6% per year, seeing some 170.3 million hectares of GM foods being grown. In western society, there are a significant percentage of people either being overweight or obese, even Australia that has a population of approx 22 million (Australian Bureau of Statistics p1), with over 60% is considered over weight (ABS 2012, Australian Bureau of Statistics). Most overweight or obese individuals have and unhealthy relationship with food and it was theorised by Dr Carole Hungerford (Good Health in 21st Century) it can be considered ‘an addiction’. There is speculation as to why western society has such an addiction foods such as bread and milk, as we are the only species that drinks milk after weaning, especially that of another animal. Clinical studies and Medical Publications released by Dr J.L. Fortuna (PUBMED, 2010, p1) found clinical similarities for binge eating to that of drug dependences seeing a similar release of serotonin as with other drug dependencies. Though obesity is a prevalent condition around the world, numerous countries do not have the same obesity rates as western culture, some of this is likely to result in the way food is perceived by other cultures. Comparatively, in some cultures around the world, it is part of their culture to abstain from food for a short period of time. A more popularly known fasti ng is the Islamic undertaking of Ramadan where they fast during day light hours (Huda, 2009). Though in western cultures, people have a dislike to feel hungry, and can feel like they have fasted if they miss morning tea during a busy day at work. Numerous cultures throughout history have also used food as offering to their gods or deities to pray for health, or future harvests rain. Egyptian Pharaohs would be entombed with vast pots of food and spices to be used on their journey to the heavens. Some traditional practices continue even today such as the Korean Charye used to honour families ancestors, where special foods are prepared to during the Chuesoerk Ceremonies. The Chuesoerk (Korea.net, 2010) is a three day holiday to celebrate the good harvest received during the spring of that year. These cultural and religious uses for food are worldwide, and often not too distant from Christian practices of thanksgiving celebrated during the Christmas period. In conclusion, all cultures, no matter how distant or unique, have significant celebrations, events or relationships with a large role involving the use or lack of foods. The use of food to bring together communities and families is not dissimilar in almost all countries and demographics on earth; however the individuals use or overuse is not always healthy. References: 1. The Chemical Generation 2001, Viewed 14 January 2014 2. The Chemical Generation 2001, Viewed 14 January 2014 3. Dr Rosalie McCauley, Department of Agriculture and Food, WA, viewed 10 January 2014 4. ABS (2012) Australian health survey: First results, 2011–12. ABS cat. no. 4364.0.55.001. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Viewed 14 January 2014 5. Aust Government, National Health and Medical Research Council. Viewed 10 January 2014 6. Hungerford, Dr Carole, 2008, Good health in the 21st century, Revised Edition, Scribe, Victoria. 7. Fortuna, J. Department of Health Science, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, viewed 10 January 2014 8. Huda, About.com, 2009. Viewed 15 January 2014 9. Korea.net, 2010, viewed 11 January 2014 2. What general concepts guide the present western diet? The current concepts of the western diet are based in the influence of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and vitamins and minerals (Whitney and Rolfes, 2013). Although we have come a long way with the introduction of multiculturalism some decades ago, for many western diet is still based around the proteins consisting of meats, predominantly red meat and chicken, carbohydrates with starchy root vegetables. This is often referred to as the ‘meat and three veg’ diet and the previous generations would have grown up with this as their diet staples as they where the majority of foods available for purchase or even grown themselves. With exception to the last 200 years, mankind has been involved in the seasonal use of foods and their diets where restricted by what was available at those times. Today there are vast changes in the way foods are produced to permit year round availability and the creation of food products that have previously been unavailable. Researchers at Bates Collage (Lewiston, ME, USA, 2013) believe that in the last 150 years since the invention of stones mills, the refining process of grain to create white flour, is now a consistent staple within the western diet. It was noted that this is a considerable source of carbohydrates and the cultures that had not encountered this food type previously began to show Heart Disease, Type 2 diabetes and stroke. These are all ailments that had been previously unseen in those areas. Additionally, the belief of receiving good value for money has become one of the most influential concepts and reasoning behind the purchase of processed food in recent times. The perception to receive the best meal, to be filling, quickly and well priced has seen the fast food chain market turn into a billion dollar industry (B.A. Swinburne, 2004). Anna Hodgekiss (U.S. daily Mail editor) explains that the over indulgence of these highly fatty foods have been  linked to short life spans and arrays of health problems. Even with the warnings and proven heath problems that arise, some families can become dependent on foods that are considered â€Å"value for money†. In conclusion, the general concepts to achieve the main food groups are relevant and understood but poorly enacted. The ease and availability of cheap fast food and highly refined products, that arrive ready to eat, are becoming preferential over the more time consuming cooking of foods from the local supermarket. References: 1. Whitney, E and Rolfes, S. Understanding Nutrition 13th Edition, 2013, Wadsworth USA 2. BATES Collage 2014, 2 Andrews Road Lewiston, ME 04240. Viewed 14 January 2014 3. Online book extract B.A. Swinburne, Public Health Nutrition, Chap 7, pp132 (p10). Viewed 14 January 2014 4. Hodgekiss, Anna, U.S. Daily Mail, viewed 14 January 2014 3. Discuss the comparative issues between man and nature? Nature is the world surrounding us, and it is the term we use to describe anything that happens which is out of our control. Such as natural disasters like cyclones, floods and drought. So considering this nature can not only be seen as a friend, but also as an enemy. Man desires to control nature by synthetic, mechanic and industrial plans. Synthetic and Natural medicines desire the same outcomes, of long life and good heath, but the methods to achieve it could not be any more different. Whether it is derived by numerous chemical processes or used in the original form it is found, nature made and manmade are vastly different especially when it comes to health and healing. Some cultures rely almost completely on nature to provide their basic needs such as water, food, shelter and even medicine. Though considered bland and not in line with the â€Å"perfect diet† (Health Schools Australia notes), the health benefits and improved health conditions are  achieved without the use of synthetic medicine, where as Western Diet, requires supplement by manmade medicines. This reliance on the local flora and fauna to provide all essentials and life improving aspects is not a new belief and is understood worldwide, but has been partially replaced by Western perception of that health can only be achieved by Pharmaceutical (Crigger NJ). The perception that health and food are separate and not interrelated because ‘man’ has created medicines that are better than those extracted from the ‘nature’ like Tibetans and non western cultures. In contrast, Western society has adopted that the scientific basis behind the synthetic production of therapeutic medicines is the only medical way to treat disease and illness. Today, it appears the practice of non synthetic medicinal applications is mostly centric to non western cultures. The â€Å"Perfect Diet’’ is deemed as a one shoe fits all remedy for the correct eating and dietary requirements for modern people. Where if we look at the diets of other cultures, such as the Hunza diet or Mediterranean Diet, where the majority of the population has a life expectancy significantly higher than that of the Western counterparts may have something to do with the foods that differ to that of the â€Å"Perfect Western Diet†(Diet Choices, 2014 and Trichopoula, A). One key reason is believed to be the Hunza population in the Himalayas consume more than 200% (Dainca Collins, 2011) of the B17 (also known as Amygdalan) than their western counter parts. This is likely due to the Hunza eating the seeds of all fruits, which is something that is often discarded within western society. Christina Larner (Body and Soul) has identified that Apricot se eds contain the largest concentrations of B17, and has been used a cancer treatment in modern times. However the same seeds are alleged to have caused Cyanidic acid when consumed to excessive quantities, but cases of cyanide toxicity are rare (Christina Larner). In conclusion, man created medicines for health and longevity are proven to be available in the natural world around us. Public perception provides the strongest reasons why man made pharmaceuticals are the main stream choice for western society, where as the isolated communities use the world around them to treat their ailments. 1.Whitney, E and Rolfes, S. Understanding Nutrition 13th Edition, 2013, Wadsworth USA 2.Crigger, N.J. 2009, PUBMED, US National Library of Medicine, viewed 14 January 2014 3.Diet Choices, 2014, Diet Choices, Las Vegas NV, USA, viewed 15 January 2014 http://dietchoices.com/diet-plans/hunza-diet/ 4.Trichopoula, A. 2000, PUBMED, US National Library of Medicine, viewed 14 January 2014 5.Dainca Collins, 2011, UNDERGROUND HEALTH REPORTER, viewed 15 January 2014 6.Larner, Christina, Body and Soul, viewed 15 January 2014 4) Diversity of foods has been a benefit to the human race? Australia’s culinary heritage has expanded greatly over the last 100 years with numerous population demographics immigrating to Australia. We have observed cultural and culinary delights flood our markets, restaurants and kitchens with sights, smells and aromas from around the world. Many years ago these would have been deemed exotic and bizarre, but are now considered almost staple additions to the average household pantry. Fifty years ago, within our Grandmothers pantry, our available food selections were significantly limited in spices and rare/exotic foods that are now considered normal place. Meat and three veg meals of starchy root vegetables and heavy protein meats where the staple of the diet during those times. It is argued (Potatoes SA) that these staples popularity on Australian kitchen tables where due to the European based settlers focusing on farming practices for this produce over the last 100 years. Pliner and Hoden (cit. Evaluation of food choice behaviours, p 20) stated it was more to do with the neophobic attitude towards foreign foods due to the â€Å"unfamiliarity of foods† that limited the adventurous mindset to the evolving culinary scene. In either case, only since World War 2 did the appearance of multicultural foods and diets start to intermix. One of the most popular entries into our diets is the highly regarded Mediterranean diet consisting of uncooked fresh whole vegetables, whole grains and some fish and seafood but minimal meat. That compared to the past diets of root based vegetables that where often boiled or baked, and argued to lose most of its natural vitamins and minerals during the cooking process, especially seen with water soluble vitamins (Better Health Channel). The high use of tomatoes within the Mediterranean diet, which contain large amounts of the antioxidant lycopene and that is believed to have anti-tumour properties to relieve cancers  particularly in the prostate and multiple-myeloma (Tonia Reinhard, p44-45). Additionally, the vibrant coloured vegetables that contain high amounts of VIT A and C such as Capsicums, Spinach, green leafy vegetables. VIT A is required for vision, the immune system and as an antioxidant. Dr Carole Hungerford (Good health in 21st century, p160) identifies that night blindness is a symptom of VIT A deficiency. Even the fats used are considered healthier with the Olives and olive oil as the principle source of fat. Tonia Reinhard states that Olive oil contains the richest source of mono unsaturated fatty acids, being 77% mono-unsaturated and 14% saturated, this is attributed as to why it helps to prevent cardiovascular disease. In conclusion, the diversity of foods that have spread across the world is bring ing the many health benefits to many. As the world continues to expand and new ideas and foods are embraced, soon the healing and healthy properties of those unique diets will improve the health and well being across the globe. 1.Potatoes South Australia, 2013, Elder House, Adelaide, SA, viewed 15 January 2014 2.Online Thesis – Roininen, Katariina, 2001, Evaluation of food choice behaviour: Development and Validation of health and taste attitude scales, visited 15 January 2014 3.Better Health Channel, July 2013, Victorian Government, viewed 15 January 2014 4.Hungerford, Dr Carole, 2008, Good health in the 21st century, Revised Edition, Scribe, Victoria. 5.Reinhard, Tonia, (2010), SUPERFOODS The Healthiest Foods on the Planet, Cove Press, NSW 5) The future of nutrition In the past and even in some places still today, nutrition has not play a conscious role in conventional medicine, as the focus has and always seems to be about treating disease not the cause. Nutrition based medicine has been labelled with a stigma as ‘alternative’ or new age and not given the same attention as the newest drug on the market. Recently have we begun to see some changes within the health care system which offers clients a  natural alternative to pharmaceuticals. This has began a movement known as Integrative Medicine (OSHER, 2012), where the approach is about taking the best from conventional and alternative medicine and combining them. This combination of practices is reinforcing the tenants of prevention rather than cure, which follows the old adage that â€Å"an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure†. We are already seeing this revolutionary ideal take off with the emergence of integrative clinics now established in some major citi es, and where patients even seek further information from their GP on what additional alternative treatments are available for their ailments (Mike Adams, 2005). This wider social consciousness towards natural alternatives is perhaps due to the increased marketing of nutritional supplements within media (Mike Adams, 2005). These messages are making people more curious about their health and what they can do to improve it. In addition, we are seeing nutritional products such as ‘Inner Health Plus’ a pro-biotic supplement, is sometimes prescribed to patients following a course of antibiotics. This behaviour by GP’s is demonstrating a small but important step to the medical and health organisations towards the evolution of nutritional medicine. The popularity of supplements and their advertised health benefits has propelled the sale of many nutritional products, especially Omega 3 supplements derived from fish oil or krill oil (Lisa Schofield, 2013). Omega 3 that is naturally occurring within deep ocean fish species has been proven to be beneficial for arthritis suffers, for heart health, and general wellbeing (Whitney, 2013, pg 161.). Dr Hungerford (Hungerford, 2008) tells us that until recent times, animals who do not manufacture their own omega 3 would have had to eat plants which contain omega 3’s for protection against the cold and other health benefits. However, as we domesticated animals, kept them warm in barns, and fed them the food we grew; the animals did not require as much omega 3 in order to survive. This man made change is a potential reason is why fish still remains one of the best sources of omega 3, as the majority of fish that we consume are wild. (Hungerford, 2008 pg. 6-7). In summary, the stigma of nutritional based medicine is slowly being lifted as media, mainstream medicine and health care practitioners inculcate these practices into their professions. Today, more than ever, people have access to the information and products that can be utilised to improve their health, wellbeing and  diets. As the message becomes clearer and better understood, it is likely that the stigma will be removed completely and nutritionists will be given the same renowned as the doctors and medical professionals that share the same vision for long and healthy life for all. 1.Osher Centre for Integrative Medicine, University of California, 2012, CA, USA, viewed 17 Jan 2014 2.Adams, Mike, 24 July 2005, Natural News, viewed 17 Jan 2014 3.Hungerford, Dr Carole, 2008, Good health in the 21st century, Revised Edition, Scribe, Victoria 4.Schofield, Lisa, 09 Sep 2013, Nutraceuticals World, viewed 17 January 2014 5.Whitney, E and Rolfes, S. Understanding Nutrition 13th Edition, 2013, Wadsworth USA Bibliography ABS (2012) Australian health survey: First results, 2011–12. ABS cat. no. 4364.0.55.001. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Viewed 14 January 2014 Adams, Mike, 24 July 2005, Natural News, viewed 17 Jan 2014 Aust Government, National Health and Medical Research Council. Viewed 10 January 2014 B.A. Swinburne, Public Health Nutrition, Chap 7, pp132 (p10). Viewed 14 January 2014 BATES Collage 2014, 2 Andrews Road Lewiston, ME 04240. Viewed 14 January 2014 Better Health Channel, July 2013, Victorian Government, viewed 15 January 2014 Collins, Dainca, 2011, UNDERGROUND HEALTH REPORTER, viewed 15 January 2014 Crigger, N.J. 2009, PUBMED, US National Library of Medicine, viewed 14 January 2014 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19671650 Diet Choices, 2014, Diet Choices, Las Vegas NV, USA, viewed 15 January 2014 http://dietchoices.com/diet-plans/hunza-diet/ Dr Rosalie McCauley, Department of Agriculture and Food, WA, viewed 10 January 2014 Fortuna, J. Department of Health Science, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, viewed 10 January 2014 Hodgekiss, Anna, U.S. Daily Mail, viewed 14 January 2014 Huda, About.com, 2009. Viewed 15 January 2014 Hungerford, Dr Carole, 2008, Good health in the 21st century, Revised Edition, Scribe, Victoria Korea.net, 2010, viewed 11 January 2014 http://www.korea.net/Government/Current-Affairs/Others?affairId=168 Larner, Christina, Body and Soul, viewed 15 January 2014 Osher Centre for Integrative Medicine, University of California, 2012, CA, USA, viewed 17 Jan 2014 Potatoes South Australia, 2013, Elder House, Adelaide, SA, viewed 15 January 2014 Reinhard, Tonia, (2010), SUPERFOODS The Healthiest Foods on the Planet, Cove Press, NSW Roininen, Katariina, 2001, Evaluation of food choice behaviour: Development and Validation of health and taste attitude scales, visited 15 January 2014 Schofield, Lisa, 09 Sep 2013, Nutraceuticals World, viewed 17 January 2014 The Chemical Generation 2001, Viewed 14 January 2014 The Chemical Generation 2001, Viewed 14 January 2014 Trichopoula, A. 2000, PUBMED, US National Library of Medicine, viewed 14 January 2014 Whitney, E and Rolfes, S. Understanding Nutrition 13th Edition, 2013, Wadsworth USA

Holiday inn hotel brands in world

Holiday inn hotel brands in world Abstract Holiday inn is one of the best known family of hotel brands in the world. The experience, the quality, the service, the spirit etc, etc its all begins here. With over 2000 hotels on six continents of the world, Holiday Inn has spent the last seventy years welcoming people to a world of comfort, excellence service, quality accommodation and memorable experiences in the best locations on the planet. WHAT EXACTLY IS HOTEL INDUSTRY? Like other industries, the Hotel Industry also needs to explore the opportunities for innovation in order to achieve peripheral service and customer satisfaction. This industry is alone a multi-billion dollar and one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy of recent age. The hotel industry is diverse for people to work in different areas of interest and offer unlimited opportunities. According to the latest statistics of The Time Newspaper, there are approximately 120000 businesses within the commercial sector in Great Britain including hotels, restaurants, cafes, holiday camps, public houses, snack bars, and catering contractors. (Source: www.thetimes100.co.uk) Hotels are service industries. They provide a service to the customer rather than a product. The service consists of looking after people when they are away from home, by providing food, shelter, drink, sleeping accommodation, entertainment and leisure facilities. COMPANY OVERVIEW The Holiday Inn has more than 2,000 hotels in 56 countries worldwide. (Source: http://www.hoteldesigns.net/review/review_412_1.html) The first Holiday Inn Hotel was founded in 1952 by Wilson in USA, for inexpensive family accommodation travelers. The brand name Holiday Inn is now owned by IHG who in turn license it out to franchisees and third parties who operate hotels under management agreements. (Source: http://www.hoteldesigns.net/review/review_412_1.html) STANDARDS Holiday Inn has a history of standards, part of Wilsons original idea. Not meeting these standards may mean a lost franchise. Many of the older Holiday Inn hotels, especially the two-story ones with exterior corridors, have been removed from the Holiday Inn system as franchises expired and rebranded. Some old Holidomes have been rebranded as Best Westerns, Days Inns, and Quality Inns. Holiday Inns boasted air-conditioned rooms, restaurants, meeting rooms, pools, television, direct dial telephone service, piped music and radio, wall to wall carpeting, cocktail lounges, and the Holidex the computerized reservation system that put many Mom and Pop outfits out of business. Millions of road weary business travelers and harried families learned to organize their trips around the ritual of Holidex reservations, knowing that the same room, food, and night-lit pool awaited them down the road. (Source: http://www.hoteldesigns.net/review/review_412_1.html) IN WHAT AREAS THE ORGANISATION HAVE STRATEGIC PLANS AND WHAT ARE THE PLANS? Introduction Businesses are often worried about instantaneous issues and lose sight of their ultimate objectives and goals. Thats why a strategic plan is a virtual necessity for organisations. This may not be a recipe for success, but without it a business is much more likely to fail. A sound plan should: Explain the business to others in order to motivate, inform involve other people. Serve as a framework for decisions. Support performance monitoring and benchmarking. Motivate change, bring innovation and become a vital part for next plan. Strategic planning activities have become a significant source of competitiveness for hotel industry. Decision-makers must be able to integrate strategic initiatives to gain competitive advantage in the face of increasingly volatile technological innovation, customer expectations, and global competition. Strategy maker professionals must learn to integrate strategic and planning as well. While others (Walker, 1992; Schuler, 1990; and Ulrich, 1987) have detailed the models for changing strategies, less work has been done to identify the specific steps of linking strategic practices. Strategic Planning of Holiday Inn Strategic planning determines the major goals of the organization. It provides the foundation for the policies, procedures and strategies for obtaining and using resources to achieve those goals. Policies are broad guides to action and strategies determine the best way to use resources. At the strategic planning stage, the company decides which customers to serve, what products or services to sell and the geographic areas in which the firm will compete. There are more than 220,000 employees in Holiday Inn Corporation worldwide. While every hotelier is branding beds, redecorating and adding amenities, Holiday Inn and Hilton are onto the next hospitality marketing frontier: solicitous employees. Holiday Inn is trying to brand the guest experience by standardizing service with a program called People Notice. As part of the plan, the chain is implementing the new service culture by conducting a three-month hands-on training program that emphasizes going the extra mile for hotel guests. For example, if a housekeeper learns that a guest is missing a wedding anniversary while on the road, that employee can send flowers to the guests room with an anniversary card signed by the staff. If a guest requires medication to be refrigerated, a staffer can follow up by delivering the medicine at the appropriate time with a bottle of water and crackers. Incentives include recognition programs allowing guests and co-workers to laud an employee. Holiday Inn is also participating with internal branding gurus from Northwestern Universitys Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement in a multi-company study seeking to identify employee behaviors that result in customer loyalty. The Forum project intends to put a value on these actions so a company can develop a budget and invest in the behaviors that matter. An external branding campaign is also in the works. â€Å"Anybody can knock off anybody elses bed, do it better, cheaper and easier when it comes to products today,† said Bruce Bolger, the Forums executive director. â€Å"The difficult thing is changing employee behavior, and that is what separates the women from the girls.† Meanwhile, Hilton Hotelslast month took its internal â€Å"Be hospitable† campaign to TV, print and outdoor, via FCB, San Francisco. One objective of the umbrella effort is to communicate to the public that assurances of Hilton quality also apply to sister brands such as Embassy Suites. The efforts random kindness theme was augmented with DVDs, brochures, seminars and other materials provided to employees. Even company orientation packets, health benefit folders and recruiting booths are stamped with the â€Å"Be hospitable† look. â€Å"A lot of hotel advertising today is about the bed but frankly, I dont think people are surprised to find a bed when they check in to their room,† said Jeffrey Diskin, svp-Hilton Brand Performance. â€Å"We want to help you with why you went on a trip, and to do that, we need to focus on what the guest needs. A critical part of that is using our own people.† Kathy Sheehan, travel analyst and svp for Roper Reports, New York, said the idea has merit. â€Å"To differentiate, you have to establish a relationship with the consumer and that means using your people.† That practice, dubbed â€Å"internal branding† or â€Å"leveraging human capital,† is figuring more prominently in marketing plans, said Bolger. Indeed, agencies like Golin/Harris, Chicago; OgilvyOne, New York and human resources consultants like Hewitt and Mercer are establishing disciplines in people performance management for their clients. Draft, Chicago, has also long incorporated internal branding as part of its integrated marketing approach. â€Å"Companies are realizing it not all push-and-tell marketing,† said Tony Weisman, Drafts CMO. â€Å"Co-creation by inviting in the customers and the employees is part of the process.† WHAT DOES THE ORGANISATION DO TO IMPLEMENT THESE PLANS Implementation means more than simply exercising the plan. It means acting on recommendations made during the vulnerability analysis, integrating the plan into company operations, training employees and evaluating the plan. Where Do They Stand Right Now? Review Internal Plans and Policies Documents to look for include: Evacuation plan Fire protection plan Safety and health program Environmental policies Security procedures Insurance programs Finance and purchasing procedures Plant closing policy Employee manuals Hazardous materials plan Process safety assessment Risk management plan Capital improvement program Mutual aid agreements Identify Critical Products, Services and Operations Youll need this information to assess the impact of potential emergencies and to determine the need for backup systems. Areas to review include: Identify Internal Resources and Capabilities Resources and capabilities that could be needed in an emergency include: Personnel fire brigade, hazardous materials response team, emergency medical services, security, emergency management group, evacuation team, public information officer Equipment fire protection and suppression equipment, communications equipment, first aid supplies, emergency supplies, warning systems, emergency power equipment, decontamination equipment Facilities emergency operating center, media briefing area, shelter areas, first-aid stations, sanitation facilities Organizational capabilities training, evacuation plan, employee support system Identify External Resources There are many external resources that could be needed in an emergency. In some cases, formal agreements may be necessary to define the facilitys relationship with the following: Local emergency management office Fire Department Hazardous materials response organization Emergency medical services Hospitals Local and State police Community service organizations Utilities Contractors Suppliers of emergency equipment Insurance carriers WHAT FACTORS DO THEY APPEAR TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT WHEN DEVELOPING STRATEGY Physical What types of emergencies could result from the design or construction of the facility? Does the physical facility enhance safety? Consider: The physical construction of the facility Hazardous processes or byproducts Facilities for storing combustibles Layout of equipment Lighting Evacuation routes and exits Proximity of shelter areas Human Error What emergencies can be caused by employee error? Are employees trained to work safely? Do they know what to do in an emergency? Human error is the single largest cause of workplace emergencies and can result from: Poor training Poor maintenance Carelessness Misconduct Substance abuse Fatigue Regulatory What emergencies or hazards are you regulated to deal with? Analyze each potential emergency from beginning to end. Consider what could happen as a result of: Prohibited access to the facility Loss of electric power Communication lines down Ruptured gas mains Water damage Smoke damage Structural damage Air or water contamination Explosion Building collapse Trapped persons Chemical release Good salary: The employees expect a good salary from the hotel in return of the work they do. Good salary is the most important need of the internal customer and if this need is fulfilled they are satisfied. Good treatment from the management: Money is not the only need of the internal customer; they also need good treatment from the management. Trust from the management: The management should have faith in their employees; this will increase the confidence level of the employees and will have a positive effect on their work. Promotional opportunities: Most of the employees are ambitious, especially young employees. So they look for promotional opportunities. Promotional opportunities are also one of the essential needs of the internal customer. Various perks: Perks or fringe benefits in other words have an immense effect on the attitude of the staff. By providing special perks to the staff the hotel in a way provokes them to work with their heart, which proves beneficial for the hotel. Job security: Employees need a kind of job security for their future. If the job of the employees is secured then they can work tension free. Good working atmosphere: The working atmosphere of the organisation should be cool. There should be no pressure from anywhere so that the employees feel free to work. EXTERNALCUSTOMERS External customers are those who are the guests of the hotel. The pay the hotel for the services that are provided to them by the hotel. External customers should be provided with good and efficient service so that they become repeat customers of the hotel. NEEDS OF THE EXTERNAL CUSTOMERS Warm welcome from the hotel: First and foremost what external customer need is a warm welcome from the hotel. They should be greeted properly when they arrive in the hotel. Efficient service: Service is the most influential factor for the customers of the hotel. If the service provided by the hotel is efficient and effective it affects the reputation of the hotel in a positive way. The external customers can also recommend the hotel to other people. Friendly environment: The environment of the hotel should be friendly so that the customers feel like home. Some extra benefits if they are repeat customers: If the customers are repeat customers then they should be given some benefits like discounts or special rates, so they feel happy and remain the customers of the hotel for long time. Good facilities: The hotel should provide all the essential and also luxurious facilities for which they are paid for. Reasonable and affordable rates: The customers always expect affordable rates for their stay or meal in the hotel. This can result in making them repeat customers for the hotel. WHAT COULD BE THE POSSIBLE PROCESS Companies obviously need to improve strategy implementation activities, but the pace of these activities and the implementation itself have many problems. Primary objectives are somehow forgotten as the strategy moves into implementation, and the initial momentum is lost before the company realizes the expected benefits. The cause isnt easy to explain, but it can be attributed to a variety of problems. WAYS OF ATTRACTING CUSTOMERS: Advertising: It is a paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identifiable sponsor. Advertising is a purposive communication to external customers. Pricing: Reasonable pricing of the product and services can attract external customers to a certain extent. Channels of distribution: Like transport, stock holding and storage, local knowledge, promotion, display can attract external customers. Sales Promotions: These are marketing activities that stimulate consumer purchasing, and dealer effectiveness, such as displays, shows and exhibitions, demonstrations and various non-recurrent selling efforts not in the ordinary routine. Branding: A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design intended to identify the product of a seller and to differentiate it from those of competitors. Brand names like Hilton, Marriott can often attract external customers to a wide extent. Personal selling: The sales force is an important part of the communication mix. Personal selling is concerned with an individual selling his own ideas of the typical personal sales. Customer loyalty schemes: Customer loyalty schemes can also attract external customers. Customer loyalty schemes like offering a discount cards, offering extra facilities during parties etc are effective attracting the external customers to the hotel. Public relations: Public relations are important to attract external customers. Public relations are all about getting publicity for the product through skilful manipulation of the media. Direct marketing: It is the planned recording, analysis and tracking of customer behaviour to develop relational marketing strategies. CAN THE ORGANISATION PLAN BE IMPROVED OR DEVELOPED Simply put, strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next year or more, how its going to get there and how itll know if it got there or not. The focus of a strategic plan is usually on the entire organization, while the focus of a business plan is usually on a particular product, service or program. There are a variety of perspectives, models and approaches used in strategic planning. The way that a strategic plan is developed depends on the nature of the organizations leadership, culture of the organization, complexity of the organizations environment, size of the organization, expertise of planners, etc. For example, there are a variety of strategic planning models, including goals-based, issues-based, organic, scenario (some would assert that scenario planning is more a technique than model), etc. Goals-based planning is probably the most common and starts with focus on the organizations mission (and vision and/or values), goals to work toward the mission, strategies to achieve the goals, and action planning (who will do what and by when). Issues-based strategic planning often starts by examining issues facing the organization, strategies to address those issues, and action plans. Organic strategic planning might start by articulating the organizations vision and values and t hen action plans to achieve the vision while adhering to those values. Some planners prefer a particular approach to planning, eg, appreciative inquiry. Some plans are scoped to one year, many to three years, and some to five to ten years into the future. Some plans include only top-level information and no action plans. Some plans are five to eight pages long, while others can be considerably longer. Quite often, an organizations strategic planners already know much of what will go into a strategic plan (this is true for business planning, too). However, development of the strategic plan greatly helps to clarify the organizations plans and ensure that key leaders are all â€Å"on the same script†. Far more important than the strategic plan document, is the strategic planning process itself. REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHY Airey, D. and Johnson, S. (1999), â€Å"The content of tourism degree courses in the UK†, Tourism Management, Vol. 20, pp. 229-35. Higher Education Funding Council for England (2001), Getting Ahead: Graduate Careers in Hospitality Management (HEFCE 01/30 May Report), Council for Hospitality Management Education/HEFCE, Bristol. Impact Skills Network (2002), â€Å"An assessment of skills needs in tourism and cultural industries: Skills dialogues†, July, available at www.impactskillbase.org.uk Jameson, S.M. and Holden, R. (2000), â€Å"‘Graduateness who cares? Graduate identity in small hospitality firms†, Education and Training, Vol. 42 No. 4/5, pp. 264-71. http://www.businessballs.com/freenewbusinessplanstemplates.htm http://www.businessballs.com/freebusinessplansandmarketingtemplates.htm http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingplanandstrategy/Plan_Your_Marketing_Strategy.htm http://www.cambridgestrategy.com/content/business_strategy_audit.php http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/pc/1/en/c/2/content/dec/pc/0/en/cs.html?cm_re=pcr-_-hmpg-_-n4a=b http://www.largo.com/egov/docs/1253124205_499786.pdf http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/strategic-planning/ http://www.mybusinesstravel.com/strategies/hotel.php#strategys http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/str_plan/str_plan.htm http://www.hoteldesigns.net/review/review_412_1.html http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/branding-brand-development/4673624-1.html www.thetimes100.co.uk

Future Psychology Essay -- essays research papers

The Future Many time periods have been interesting to those who were living in them. Things aren’t going to change overnight, even if they change rapidly. Some issues are enormous, fundamental and long-term, such as male dominance, social victimization, or urban sprawl. Meanwhile other critical issues play a smaller part, such as disposable packaging, youth crime, family arguments that lead into gunfire and screeching tires. Some things definitely must go because they affect our survival prospects like military overkill, dangerous chemicals, or fast population growth. Many matters are debatable such as alcohol-abuse, risky scientific research or biased nationalism. We might say goodbye to such things as war, secrecy, faceless social disaffection, and public powerlessness. Soon enough it could be goodbye to dangerous stress, tobacco, burgers, serial killings, muggings, and smog. Times change. Many of today’s accepted virtues might one day be judged as crimes against humanity and natu re, which leads to the question: What kind of world do you want to live in? Our ancient habit is to stumble backwards into the future. We feel that we as individuals make little difference, as if history and the future just happen at us. Obscure plans, which have guided people forward in the past, have now rendered themselves useless. There are no known maps to show pathways into the future. We’ll need to consider back to our hearts, common sense and basic human capabilities. We’ll need to consider the deep issues at stake and make deep choices about them. This idea of disaster is actually an aide. It activates resourceful survival instincts. The human race needs to change course. There are so many causes of large-scale disaster that it would need whole libraries to contain it. While there is no way of knowing whether such possibilities could become real, it is valuable to consider options and to make ideal adjustments, without fear, to help structure research and planning and to consider worst-case effects. We need to make a list of likely models and dimensions of disaster, to value responses to them and also values helpful factors that are to our advantage. This is risky business, but no government likes entertaining out in the open. Yet, it has been done secretly in and governments. We witness inhumanity, abuse, and scandals in dail... ...gically is not going to happen. Logic and rationality have become part of the problem. Interestingly, we come to this element of perception just as we approach the Millennium. The coming century is likely to be portrayed by multiple revisions and radical changes in social structures, human values and beliefs. Tragedies from the past, cultural frictions, withdrawal-flashbacks and exhaustion are also on the agenda. It’s likely that different parts of the world will go through different scenarios. Some parts rising to the moment and others going horribly wrong, but there could be a center of breakthrough going on, a process of giving birth to a newly, sophisticated civilization. There could be much more happiness in coming times. Possibly that’s what many of the young being born today are coming for. The link of world change lies with us now in our current societies and situations. Whether or not it is because it is the turn of a millennium, this keen situation nevertheless exists. Our options are dynamic change or acquired crisis. Destruction is not really an option. It is a meaningless end met before our time. It doesn’t make sense of our history.

Gender Issues of Mesopotamia Essay -- Gilgamesh Gender Female Rights E

Gender Issues of Mesopotamia  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Throughout the history of our society, women have gained a certain respect and certain rights over time. Such simple aspects of life such as getting a job, voting, and even choosing who they would like to marry are things that women have fought for, for many years. At one point, these were all things that women in America and parts of Europe had no right to. Men as a whole had suppressed women and taken control of the society. Despite mass oppression in history, women have risen in society and now posses these natural rights.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Back in the days of Mesopotamia, things were quite different. Women were respected for who they were and did not have to fight to gain the rights they had. Hammurabi’s Code contained laws, which respected the rights of women. Society in general was formed around this sort of sexual equality. Many of the codes within Hammurabi’s Code favor the men of the society, though many of them spell out certain rights for the lives of the women. Certain laws lie within Hammurabi’s code in order to solve problems of the society. It spells out the punishment for certain acts eliminating any further complications. Code 136 for example, explains what is to happen to a women who’s husband runs off; â€Å"If any one leave his house, run away, and then his wife go to another house, if then he return, and wishes to take his wife back: because he fled from his home and ran away, the wife of this runaway shall not retur...

How the Sun Affects the Weather

ASTR 1020 August 31, 2011 â€Å"How the Sun Affects the Weather† Our sun is a massive nuclear fusion reactor that generates astonishing amounts of energy. The sun is the largest body in our solar system. It has a gravitational pull causing all other objects in the solar system to orbit it. Since the sun is in the neighborhood of the earth this gives the results of a greater gravitational effect on earth. â€Å"Warmth for the planet is provided primarily by the sun’s energy. The rate of energy coming from the sun changes from day to day.At an average distance from the sun 93 million miles† (Ahrens 4). The energy from the sun affects many things here on earth. One of the main things the sun does is warm our planet, including the atmosphere. This energy drives our weather we see daily. Temperature fluctuation the sun generates can be associated to every weather phenomenon on earth and can be traced back to the sun. All planets have an atmosphere, a layer of gases th at surrounds them. The Sun's atmosphere is made up of hydrogen, while Earth's is made up primarily of nitrogen and oxygen.Carbon dioxide, ozone, and other gases are also present. These gases keep our planet warm and protect us from the direct effects of the Sun's radiation. Without this regulation, Earth could not sustain life. To understand the weather you need to understand the layers of the atmosphere. The layers of the atmosphere from the surface rising upward are troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. We live in the troposphere layer, this is where the air temperature normally decreases with height, and contains all of the weather we are familiar with.Most of the clouds you see in the sky are found in the troposphere, and this is the layer of the atmosphere we associate with weather. Extending up to 10 miles above Earth's surface, the troposphere contains a variety of gases: water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and others. These gase s help retain heat, a portion of which is then radiated back to warm the surface of Earth. In the stratosphere is where most of the gas ozone is found. The coldest layer in the atmosphere is the mesosphere and the warmest atmospheric layer is the thermosphere.Then we get to the region where atoms and molecules shoot off into space in the exosphere, which signify the upper limits of our atmosphere. A greenhouse gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation withing the thermal infrared range. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Greenhouse gases greatly affect the temperature of the Earth; within them, Earth's surface would be on average of about 33 degrees Celsius or 59 degrees Fahrenheit colder than present temperature.The earth being tilted at 23. 5 degrees on its axis and revolving around the sun makes the earth’s heat unevenly giving us different climate and weather. â€Å"The ti lt causes annual variation in the amount of sunlight that strikes the surface as well as variations in the length of time the sun shines at each latitude† (Ahrens 73). The sun heats up the equatorial regions more than the poles, so the earth has to develop circulations to distribute the heat. This keeps the equator from getting hotter and the poles from getting colder.This is the way the earth balances out its unequal distribution of heat. With the earth’s rotation this causes the wind pattern to form east -to-west. Weather as a whole comes down to the universal circulation of cold and hot air. The sun has the greatest impact on the lower stratosphere with the impact of ultraviolet light from the sun assist in changing temperature. â€Å"Lower to mid stratosphere is heated greatly due to the ozone layer†¦ ozone absorbing large quantities of dangerous solar energy†¦ he absorption causes the warmup from 20km to 50k. The middle and upper troposphere is indeed ve ry important for stability processes. The hotter the surface temps and the colder the mid and upper tropospheric temps†¦ the more instability†¦ and the stronger updrafts and stronger storms† (Haywood). Here are several examples: The sun warms up air, the area encompassing this warm air creating a warm front. Many weather developments will occur when a warm front meets up with a cold front.Ocean’s, lakes, and soil surfaces are warmed by the sun causing warm air to rise in the atmosphere. The warm air meets up with colder air causing it to condense and produce clouds that could create hail, snow, or rain. Sun warm up air over the sea near the equator and this warm air will rise creating a cloud. Cold air will then replace the warm air that has lifted and collides creating spiraling turbulence known as a hurricanes. Sun produces warm air then it abruptly turns cold; this creates pressure and uproar which whips up a tornado.Sun warms up the earth’s surface and this warm air will expand and rise, as it rises the air will then cool and descend. This up and down cycle of rising warm air and descending cool air will generate wind. There are many factors when it comes to weather but the main key to the weather equation is the heating from the sun for weather to occur. The sun plays a vital role in our daily lives and weather. Works Cited Ahrens, C. Donald. Meterology Today. Belmont: Brooks/Cole, 2009. 9th ed. Haywood, Lee. Meterologist with WSAV/Instructor ASSU.

Beowulf Assessment

In the epic, Beowulf, the main character faces many antagonists who have the exact opposite of the virtues of Anglo-Saxon culture. Beowulf, the protagonist, obviously possesses all the virtues important to Anglo-Saxons. The first antagonist that Beowulf faces is named Unferth. Unferth is not loyal in that killed his brother slyly and that he offers Beowulf a sword to fight Grendel that shows that he is too cowardly to fight the monster himself. Loyalty and bravery are two of the most important virtues present in Anglo-Saxon literature. Unferth is also demeaning and cruel to his guest Beowulf. In most Anglo-Saxon literature, hospitality towards guests is very important and expected. The next antagonist is Grendel. He is very ambiguous and very monstrous in appearance although exhibiting many human emotion and impulses. Grendel exhibits aggression, loneliness, and jealously. He is somewhat cowardly in that he attacks at night when men are asleep and he runs back to his lair after his encounter with Beowulf. Grendel’s mother has the same virtues as her son except she fights out of anger. She really has no cause for fighting. The dragon is very grotesque and preys on the town. He is very selfish which is not part of an Anglo-Saxon protagonist like Beowulf in that he attacks the town after having one piece of treasure stolen. All three monsters are portrayed as evil, aggressive villains especially since they battle against the hero, Beowulf. Unferth is a human example of a protagonist lacking loyalty and bravery.

Pre and Post M&a Performance in Accounting Ratio Essay

There are loads of tools to measure the performance of a financial performance of an entity but financial ratios is probably the best known tool which is mainly to analyze the performance of an entity by comparing the present to the past relative figures taken or composed from the financial statement . The few categories of ratios are liquidity ratios, profitability ratios, efficiency ratios, debt ratios and market ratios which will be able to describe the entity’s characteristics. Ratios show the true performance and position of the entity. In order for investors to determine their choices of entity to invest in, financial ratios play an important role in providing sufficient information to users about the entity’s characteristic. We predict that companies are performing better after merger and acquisition and there will be an increase in profit of companies pre merger and acquisition compare to post merger and acquisition activities. However, the global merger and acquisition (M&A) market is expected to experience a modest increase this year following significant revisions in earnings expectation for 2009. Studies relatively prove that ratios are important but which ratios, among the loads of ratios which can be computed easily from the available financial statement, should be used to analyze to obtain a wise decision (Kung & Thomas, 1981); (Maretno & Howard, 1996). Problem statement Accounting ratios usage in merger & acquisition are not understood very well as to whether companies or investors are using accounting ratios to analyze performance pre and post decision making for M&A. Therefore, this study will try to find out as to whether merger and acquisition activities are caused by the use of accounting ratio when management tries to expand a company’s operation. Accounting ratios is wide in variety and is known for its diversities in calculating different ratios, which makes selecting the right ratio to do analysis on is difficult. Every company when making merger and acquisition decisions will have to go through different decision making process in their organization and not based solely on accounting ratios when taking actions. Things such as relationship of merging companies, financing matter or management efficiency are often overlooked in previous studies, therefore, apart from addressing the use of accounting ratio in making merger and acquisiti on, we will also address on other matters that are affecting merger and acquisition decision making. Companies that have made merger and acquisition in the few years will be analyzed whether merger and acquisition has benefitted the company. This analysis will have to be based on companies that have made merger and acquisition for few years so that analysis could be made to ascertain whether merger and acquisition has improved the company’s performance. The data that is collected could be redundant as the data collected could only be analyzed from the past. Apart from that, companies that are engaged in merger and acquisition will tend to keep their methods in acquiring companies as a secret; therefore, there is no information that will be disclosed to us when we are doing research. We will only be able to get information based on announcement on the Bursa Saham Malaysia and also annual report analysis on the companies that we will base our study on. Based solely on the annual report, we will have to analyze companies that have been engaged in merger and acquisition is perfor ming better as a company before merger and acquisition or after merger and acquisition. Studies that have addressed the problem Several past studies have shown several findings. There were significant improvements in the liquidity, leverage and profitability position of most studied companies. Normally, total assets consist of equity, debt and retained earnings to finance the corporation. In the study, it was found that total assets were always less than the debt plus equity for pre acquisition period, but after acquisition, it is positive. All the units selected for the study were sick, but after takeover five out of eight revived (Rao & Sanker, 1997). The acquiring firms had performed above the industry average and the acquired firms were below the industry average in term of size and profitability (Cosh et al., 1998). The firms recorded meaningful increase in their net earnings, and those with the successful merger of the firms, the return on capital employed and return on total assets, increased substantially with a significant percentage. The variability in the earnings (risk) of the pre-merger firms was significantly higher than that of post-merger firms (Agundu & Karibo, 1999). Pilloff (1996) finds no significant change in post merger ROE, however, when he utilizes operating income before provision instead of net income to calculate ROE, there is a significant increase in post-merger returns. Deficiencies in studies Unfortunately, most studies do not distinguish between healthy and troubled companies due to the relative scarcity of outright failures as an indicator of the latter. Data are not readily available to every person and critical data is only available to top level management, which causes analysis on company performance not accurate. Accounting ratios usage in studies are not standardized for number of ratios used and types of ratios used, making comparisons of this study to previous studies almost impossible. Some of the studies only find out accounting ratio performance before and after merger and acquisition, but they did not take into account the management performance improvement. Importance of the study Basically, the compelling reason for merger and acquisition is to make more money. This study analyses the pre and post performance in accounting ratio of various entities in Malaysia which involved in merger and acquisition. Therefore, it seeks to contribute to entities which look forward to expand their businesses by merging and acquiring entities in order to broaden their sources and to increase their performance as well as position of the entity. This study also justifies the importance of financial ratios as a tool in decision making for most users to merge and acquire entities. Besides that, this study further proves that financial ratios could be used to speculate and estimate the future of the entity’s development and growth by developing ratio values to be compared with the normal or regular value. Furthermore, the global merger and acquisition market is expected to experience a modest increase this year following significant revisions in earnings expectation for 2009. According to KPMG International’s Global merger and acquisition Predictor, modest increases are expected in both deal-making appetite and capacity globally. Therefore, it is hoped that the result of this study is valuable to entities for the purpose of merging and acquiring. Purpose statement The purpose of this study is to determine whether financial ratios contribute to the decision in merging and acquiring another entity. For this purpose, we analyze the performance of the entity before and after merging or acquisition of the holding or parent entity across industries to identify the status of the performance and position of the entity currently. We would have to identify the entity’s characteristics in terms of their operating and accounting performance by comparing to their values before the merger and acquisition. In our analysis, we also focus on the use financial ratios as a mechanism to compare the pre and post-acquisition performance. Furthermore, we also use financial ratio to predict the performance of the acquired entity as well as the growth of the entity. Organization of the study The rest of the research is organized into chapters as follows. Chapter 2 review about the literature regarding the accounting ratio performance before and after merger and acquisition would be provided. The topic and the arguments from researchers will be discussed. Justification of the research objectives would be provided with all the relevant literatures. Chapter 3 describes and provides detailed explanation on the method used in collecting the relevant data, the desired sample design, appropriate methodology employed in this study and also the data analysis method. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Introduction In this chapter, further discussion on the topic will be done based on prior empirical studies and a derivation of hypothesis will be done. To be able to evaluate the post and pre merger and acquisition deal by companies in Malaysia, a concept is to be conceived with prior literature that is related to the performance of firms that has been acquiring other firms. 2.1 Theory/Concept Foundation Shareholders of a corporation that is involved in Merger & Acquisition activity would like to see their value of stock in the acquiring corporation to rise post-M&A compared to pre-M&A. Therefore, it is important that an M&A transaction done with the shareholders in mind, this theory of maximizing shareholder value is fairly new as it is introduced by William Lazonick and Mary O’Sullivan in year 2000. Shareholder value should be used regularly when decisions are made to be able to regulate how a company operates for the sake of the shareholders. For a shareholder to have his value increased, all the activities from the factory workers to top level management should work together to find the best way to increase the value of the company. To increase shareholder value, restructuring of companies are needed to be able to sustain the changing economic climate according to time development. Evaluation of companies performance will be done to ensure shareholders value do increase po st-M&A. From the theory we could derive that performance of a company depends on the value that they would like to preserve for their shareholders. For every shareholder that would like to expand the company operation and size, they will have to be able to provide funds for the company in the form of investment. Apart from that, trend evolution plays a part in a merging or acquisition decision. An acquirer may look at the performance of the company that they are trying to takeover. The acquirers look at the financial feasibility of acquiring the company on the share price and value for money. If a value is low, they will be able to takeover the company at a lower price. And it is known that M&A deals are done so that a company could expand into a new market segment or improve their current segment. Apart from that, it should be noted that there are several types of mergers and acquisition. It should be noted that firms that are acquiring are larger if not significantly larger than the acquired firms. 2.2 Review of Prior Empirical Studies Life cycle of a firm will accelerate the need for M&A deals as firms grew older, they could be expanding their size and because of this, and M&A will be done to be able to involve themselves into different segments of businesses. According to (Sian Owen & Alfred Yawson, 2008), they propose that in certain life cycle of a company, they will engage in some kind of M&A activities. This is because there is a need to grow their company or to decrease the involvement of the owner by giving up the power of the company to another firm. Therefore, it should be noted that companies will go through M&A at different life cycle to develop their performance even further or simply to pull out of the company ownership. The data that they use to examine this is based in the US, therefore, it may be not practical to be used here, but this is an opportunity for us to examine the life cycle factor in the pre and post M&A performance figure. The main objective for merger and acquisition activities is to increase the return of the equity shareholders who are considered real owners of the company. Shareholders are also takes the responsibilities to bear maximum risk of the company. Different impact (positive, negative and mix) either success or failure will occur for different M&A deals. Since we cannot make any conclusion based on only one ratio. So, different ratio are using in this article to measure the company performance in term of liquidity position, operating efficiency, overall efficiency, return to equity shareholders and financial composition. By looking at single ratio, it is hard for researcher to determine whether acquirer company success or failure to make M&A deals? Because a high rate of return showed on acquiree company such as consulting firms doesn’t means they make a good investments, since they require no assets. There are more than half of the 74 merger and acquisition cases showed an improvement in the financial performance in post time period of this article. However, 15% out of these cases had increase their working capital and debt to equity, which means that the company suffer long term financial burden of current assets and long terms funds which use to finance current assets. Small sample size was used by this researcher. Although there are 200 deals of M&A in India but only 74 companies can provide the available financial data which require by researcher. So, there was reliable issue of this research outcome. Except ratio, there are many issues must be takes into consideration by making M&A decision such as by predicting future prospects, company past performance, law and regulations of the country which can help to reach a better conclusion. So researcher can’t make exact and absolute conclusion by only interpret financial ratio of company (Kumar and Bansal, 2008). Those are significant difference between merger and acquisition. Misleading conclusions may be made by those researchers who combined these two different terms. Acquisitions is a more successful way to bring positive effects to the company compared with mergers in term of generate greater profitability, return on investment or equity, increased in operating performance, etc. This might due to the way the merger or acquire. Acquirer may acquire a small division, patent or the company which use for the purpose of strategic alliances and value added to current business. In contrary, merges activities become less attractive to the potential shareholder due to reduce return or shareholder wealth or even negative return and decrease in profitability or even suffer losses of the company (Hassan, Patro, Tuckman & Wang, 2007). The theoretical models of liquidity stresses the degree of trading stock, adverse selection, stock volatility, and competitiveness of market making (Lipson & Mortal, 2007). According to the prior review, the degree of trading interest in a stock has a positive relationship with the level of trading activity. Therefore, the fixed trading costs can be spread out over a larger number of trades. The adverse selection cost incurs when negative action is taken to counter an adverse situation of trades. For example, if stock traders have relatively more information compare to the liquidity providers, liquidity providers will recover their losses from trading with better informed counterparts by increasing their average revenue. Stock volatility affects the trading cost positively as well. When stocks are more volatile, the holding cost of the stock would be relatively higher and the cost would be passed on to buyers when being traded. The competitiveness of market making affects the trading cost negatively. When the market makers are less competitive, the increase in competition will reduce the trading cost. Besides that, the firm’s characteristics also affect the accounting ratio after M&A. Prior studies noted that M&A increases the liquidity of firms on average but the improvements are fully explained by the accompanying changes in firm characteristics (Lipson & Mortal, 2007). Firm characteristics such as sizes of the firm, volume and number of shareholders are taken into consideration in prior studies. Relatively larger firms will have greater trading interest since more positions are offered in the firm. Benston and Hangerman (1974) also acknowledge the effect of firm size and volume to M&A. Therefore, the sizes of the firm are expected to affect the decision M&A of a firm. The increase in adverse selection can be seen in Heflin and Shaw (2000) where they argue that the effect of a blockholder ownership is a result of superior blockholder information. The results are consistent with the results in Lipson and Mortal (2007). Past studies document that larger firms tend to be followed by a greater number of market makers (Wahal, 1997), which he attributes to increased c ompetition among market makers. Also derived in Lipson and Mortal (2007), the increased in market making reduces order processing cost, hence reducing trading cost. According to (Arturo Bris, Neil Brisley, Christos Cabolis 2008), M&A is done following the corporate governance decision as legal rules or accounting standard. The countries difference in degree of investor protection as well as firm value, ownership structure. When we are merger and acquisition usually adopts the accounting standards. This implies that, the corporate in a country can adopt difference level of investor protect. If corporate governance have set the legal rules then the corporate follow it. Therefore, the corporate investments losses or change operation performance. The legal rule can protect shareholder and investors so that they will not have legal liabilities. The corporate governance quality is follow shareholder protection and accounting standard when we are merger and acquisition can test corporate worsening and preserving acquisitions. If we are test pre merger and acquisition performance not efficiency then corporate governance quality also will not good. The corporation will easy give large corporate takeover or the corporation will bankrupt. However, the corporation operation quality good will not let large corporate takeover the firm. The corporate governance quality well can enhance merger and acquisition value and good performance. According to Holger Breinlich (2008), merger and acquisition become industrial restructuring after trade liberalization. It is can increase merger and acquisition activities and merger and acquisition transferred resource from less to more productive firms. It is because pre corporation not efficiency performance source make it loss. Therefore, after merger and acquisition the corporate efficiency performance source make it earning profit and improvement the corporate. Merger and acquisition not just to transfer source, it is also can qualitatively difference from other adjust form. Before merger and acquisition is not well make the workers becoming unemployed and also will make economic recession. When new ownership takeover the corporate then worker has working already and economic also will slowly become good. However, the larger corporate takeovers corporate better the corporate bankrupt and as such no need face unnecessary legal restriction. From the past studies, Letho and Lehtoranta (2004) study that M&A synergies can be realized by owing unique technology and knowledge and then transferring these intangibles to the target firm. The industrial organization (IO) literature states that both horizaontal and industry-diversifying acquisitions might affect R&D. When firms are active in the line of business, economies of scale in R&D input can be occurred because of M&As. Besides, value can created also by M&As from uniting complementary know-how (Cassiman B, Colombo M, Garrone P, Veugelers R, 2003). Similarly, intangibles could matter in domestic as well as cross-border takeover (Kang and Johansson, 2000). The ratio of intangible assets (goodwill paid in earlier M&As has to be minus first) to total assets is used to examine these ideas. The financial synergies are realized by looking at the capital structure of potential acquirers. The idea is that when firms relying heavily on bank loans, it is risky to the firm and also acquirers will have less interest on the firm. Therefore, firms that relying heavily on bank loans will quickly seek to reduce their overall risk and recognize a lower cost of capital by engaging in industry-diversifying and in cross-border M&As. Indeed, cost of capital can be reduced when cash flows from target and bidders are not highly correlated. Besides, additional borrowing capacity post-M&A can be created and this is a good performance for a firm after M&A. If stock prices of a firm are down, the takeover of a firm can constitute a bargain relative to investing in new facilities in order to recover from scratch. Furthermore, the valuation of private targets is lower once stock market sentiment is down, through the use of a lower multiples or higher risk premium when valuing target stock. This under-valuation hypothesis suggests that stock prices and M&A decisions are negatively related. In contrast, soaring stock prices can facilitate the financing of M&As in which they using bidder stock to pay for these deals. When firms consider that their stock to be over-valued, they tend to issue new shares (Shleifer and Vishny, 2003). There will be positive relationship between stock prices and external growth. However, the positive relationship may be difficult to observe when a sample is dominated by private enterprises. This is also because of those non-listed bidder stock is unwilling to be accepted by target investors. The average market-wid e price earnings (P/E) ratio at the M&A announcement date is used to capture stock market conditions, given that private firms dominate the sample. 2.3 Hypothesis Development The first hypothesis comes from our own assumption to examine how does a company perform post-M&A compared to pre-M&A. The assumption is that a company could perform better in the form of ratios because their capital has increased due to increase in non current assets. If a company obtains another company through M&A, it is expected that they have certain amount of capital available to expand their firm size; therefore, there will be increase in capital in the form of ROE and ROA ratios once a firm is engaged in M&A activities. H º =After M&A, there will be increase in ratios of ROE and ROA H ¹=Before M&A, asset ROA and ROE are higher From previous study of (Moeller, Schlingemann & Stulz, 2004), it is known that they examined for the below hypothesis in their research. And this hypothesis will be tested in Malaysia context so that we will be able to measure the level of performance compared to the size of the firm. H º=Small firm perform better after M&A H ¹=Acquirer’s firm perform worse after M&A 2.4 Model/Framework Negative relationship Positive Relationship As proposed, the relationship between pre-M&A is a negative relationship to the ratio. And it should be lower than post-M&A ratio as after M&A activities, the ratio should increase and higher. Positive relationship Negative relationship As proposed, the larger firm will adapt less well after M&A compared to smaller firm. Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research Design The research will be carried out as an explanatory study. This study method is used for our research because this study will explain how M&A affects performance of a company. The design will be carried out by using pair sample T-Test testing the relationship of the variables of performance of the company and the pre and post M&A activities. The research will be carried out to test whether an M&A activity does increase the performance of a company or it does not accelerate the activity of the company. Archival research will be used thoroughly to understand the improvement or deterioration in the firms post-M&A compared to pre-M&A. 3.2 Population, Sample and Sampling Procedure For our research for M&A companies in Malaysia, a census will be conducted as it is expected that there are only several hundreds of companies that have conducted M&A locally. The census data will be collected by using the Bursa Malaysia website via manual search and the usage of Osiris database. Therefore, the data will be collected through these 2 ways. 3.3 Data Collection Method As it is said, the data to be used will be secondary data. Documentary secondary data will be collected and used throughout this research. The data will be consisted of written materials which are companies’ annual reports. 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