Analyzing Pro Forma Statements Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Analyzing Pro Forma Statements - Assignment Example The essay "Analyzing Pro-forma Statement" talks about the financial forecasting methods that can be applicable for ABC Ltd to significantly reduce wastage of financial resources. The new initiative would be to market another product of the company. This would lead to an increase in the company’s sales over the forecasted period. Due to increased number of sales, the net fixed assets by the acquisition of new machinery to increase production will also increase. For current assets, an increase in sales will be as a result of increased stock of raw materials, work in progress and finished goods. An increase in credit sales will also increase debtors while more cash will be required to buy more inventories in cash. The retained earnings will also increase with sales if the firm is operating at a profit. The current liabilities will increase because the increased sales will lead to the purchase of more inventories. Long term capital items such as common stock and additional paid-in capital will not change or increase because they are not directly impacted by an increase in sales as they are always used to finance long-term projects. For ABC Ltd, the assumption of marketing of a new product will result in an increase in sales by 20%. The other items affected will also increase by the same percentage. The property, plant and equipment will increase due to the increased capacity and hence will use up capital. The sources of capital will the increase in accounts receivables and other liabilities and the cash.

Howard Gardner -Theory Essay Example for Free

Howard Gardner -Theory Essay Most learning institutions generally focus education on the linguistic and mathematical intelligence. Children in pre-school are first taught to know their ABCs and to count from one to ten. Those who can recite the alphabet well are considered bright students. Learners who can do addition at an early age are placed on the honors list. It had been that intelligence is measured using IQ tests. The higher the IQ is the smarter the person is. But the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, proposed by Howard Gardner in the year 1983, states otherwise. The theory basically implies that other than linguistic and mathematical competence, there are other or multiple aspects of the learning that should be considered as intelligence also. Likewise, the theory points out that standardized IQ tests is not a sufficient measurement of smartness or dumbness of a person. Gardners theory stirred the psychological and educational communities. It received varied reactions. Some were impressed and readily accepted the theory as it explains the differences of each students. Yet, some raised their eyebrows and issues sprouted as questions of validity and empirical evidences of the theory may not sustain the claims of the theory. There have been a lot of debates pertaining to multiple intelligences. Several writers have also expressed their varied opinions regarding the topic. Indeed the theory   proves to be an interesting milestone in the study of human learning and cognitive sciences. It also gives a lot of insight on how education in the future would affect the different abilities of each person. The theory, which is more than 20 years old, is already accepted and even integrated in some school but at the same time still in the middle of scrutiny. Howard Gardner was born in 1943 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents   were originally from N rnberg, Germany. They went to the US in 1938 with their three-year old son Eric. Before Gardner was born, Eric died in a sleighing accident. These were not known to Howard during his childhood but have a fairly significant impact upon his thinking and development. He was discouraged from trying risky physical activities and was rather   encouraged to develop his creative and intellectual abilities. As he began to find out his family history, he realized that he was different from his parents and friends. For his education , he went to a preparatory school in Kingston , Pennsylvania against his parents wish to send him to Phillips Academy in Andover , Massachusetts . After that, Gardner attended Harvard University and took up a course in history in preparation for a career in law. In Harvard he was able to study under scholars like Eric Erickson, sociologists David Riesman and cognitive psychologist Jerome Burner. Howard Gardners theory on multiple intelligences attempts to provide a comprehensive view of intelligence. In the psychological era where the single theory prevailed, Gardner broke away and stopped from settling with just a single factor to be held responsible for intelligence. He rejected the idea of measuring intelligence through IQ tests. According to Howard Gardner, human beings have nine different kinds of intelligence that reflect different ways of interacting with the world. Gardner developed the well-known theory of eight multiple intelligences, consisting of verbal/linguistic, musical, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist intelligences. For Gardner, a person must satisfy a range of these criteria in order to quality as a person possessing intelligence. This is a much better theory, because it does not limit itself to a single entity. Compared to a single theory of intelligence where the theorist must restrict himself into choosing one that would provide the answer to measuring a persons knowledge and abilities, Gardners theory opens itself to the possibility that there could be many areas where a person could demonstrate his skills and knowledge. The advantage of Gardners theory of multiple intelligences lies in its being an â€Å"account of human cognition in its fullness†. It takes into account that man is equipped with a basic set of intelligences and that each man is unique with respect to which different components of the set of intelligences he may possess. This leads to the notion that man has the opportunity of taking advantage of his uniqueness by tailoring his education in accordance with his strengths and weaknesses. Howard Gardner introduced his theory of multiple intelligences in 1983. Multiple Intelligences is a theory about the brain that says human beings are born with a single intelligence, that cannot be changed, and is measurable by a psychologist. Gardner believes that that there is eight different intelligences in humans. Most intelligence tests only one or two intelligences, usually language and logic. Six others according to Gardner are musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Gardner believes that everyone acquires all eight of these intelligences, and through environment, genetics, and different experiences no two people have the same make up of intelligences. Because of these differences we need to look at educating students differently. We can either overlook these differences in our students and teach them all the same way, or realize that all students have different intellectual strengths and weaknesses, and factor these differences into the way we teach our students. Unfortunately in our schools if a student has an understanding of the intelligences language, and logic, than they will have no problem passing the kind of tests that are given in school, which in turn will make them feel that they are very smart. But another student who may have weaker language, and logic intelligences but is altogether just as intelligent as the other student, will never is able to pass the tests required in our schools. And in turn these students will grow up feeling as if they are not smart, when in fact they can be extremely intelligent. Some students may have a better understanding of subjects if only they were taught to use any other of their intelligences to understand a particular subject. Students and educators need to figure out how a particular mind works, for them to better learn and understand. If a student at an early age feels that they are not as smart as the other students, it will affect them for their whole lives. They will feel differently about themselves, and school. This will also cause a low self-esteem which will hurt them, and keep them from reaching their full potential. Gardner believes that a student first needs to try to improve their language, and logic intelligences, but if they can’t they should know that they still have the ability to learn, and should try using many of their other intelligences. Basically educators and students need to realize that no two people think the same way, and need to modify the curriculum to help every student learn and understand. Gardner believes that elementary school should not be a time of strict, disciplined learning, but a time to teach the joy of learning. Young children need to learn the differences between, opinions, beliefs, and evidence, and this will carry them throughout the later education years.   I think that in our schools we have some a few programs like classes for gifted students, and classes for slower students. But when it comes down to it everyone is taught the same material in the same way, and is everyone is expected to pass the same test. I think that seeing what Gardner believes in our classrooms today would be encouraging, and wonderful. But I also think that realistically it would be very difficult to be carried out in all of our schools. But when it comes down to it we as a nation needs to realize that our children are the future of our country. Resources: Website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html July 19, 2010 http://www.thelearningweb.net/chapter10/page365.html

Internet Memes and Political Participation

Internet Memes and Political Participation Internet memes: As a new form of political participation 1. Introduction The term â€Å"meme† has been emerged in various spheres in a few studies, and it has been discussed with some applied research and cultural research (Hofstadter, 1985; Dawkins, 1976; Blackmore, 1999; Chesterman, 1997). As the basic unit of culture, meme plays an extremely important role in the reproduction of culture. Given this orientation, some researchers started to address and explore the relationship between meme and politics, argue that meme has a positive effect on the development of political. (Shifman, 2013, Milner, 2013). In the 21st century, the rise of digital media has changed the information dissemination ecological, as well as the way of thinking of people. With the advance of social media and digital technology, meme theory also need to adapt the new environment and focus on the present convergence for new field. Accordingly, the new branch of meme study has come out, which is internet meme. In this Internet age, a memes ability to reproduce and spread is grad ually expanding, thus highlighted increasingly as the dominant force in transmission media, and playing an increasingly important role in the public domain in terms of the news public opinion and political communication. What’s more, websites like Know Your Meme, 4chan, Reddit and Tumblr are meme manufactures which have helped people produce thousands of memes. The internet meme has raised the pace of social political awareness and community building in cyberspace. Shifman (2013) defines that internet meme has three functions in terms of political participation: as forms of persuasion or political advocacy, as grassroots action and as modes of expression and public discussion. This paper builds on existing knowledge in the fields of internet meme, based on Shifman’s work and combines with other’s studies to demonstrate that internet meme is a new form of political participation. At the same time, this paper will illustrate it from three aspects: as a persuasion way in election, as a resistance of people (collection action) and as a public discourse of political issues. Body What is a meme? The definition of meme in The Oxford English Dictionary is: an element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, especially imitation. The term â€Å"meme† was created by Dawkins in his book â€Å"The selfish Gene† in 1976, when he tried to explain the culture evolution. He defined it as â€Å"small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation† (Dawkins, 1989). In addition, he analogized meme with biological gene, considered that meme also evolved through coping(imitating), variating and selecting, like gene transmits its genetic information to the next generation. A clear difference between these two is that genes are the genetic factors of biology, while meme is the derivative of culture. Besides, gene propagates through heredity, a physical process to replicate but meme through imitating, which is a mental process. In his work, he indicated that meme has three characters: 1) Heredity, the process of meme’s diffusion is heredity. For example, when one religion or belief is propagating to others, the religion as a meme is acquired by people and copied to their mind and continuing passed along to believers. 2) Variation, the contents of meme by imitated are not the same, they could be changed. For instance, when people telling a story to others they will add or delete some details, which results in variation. 3) Selection, the ability of diffusion is varying from different memes, some are easy to spread while some are not, they are competing when being propagating, which is like the natural selection in biologic theory (Dawkins, 1989). Despite some researchers criticized that Dawkins has limited the culture in the sphere of biologic and simplified human behavior later, it cannot be ignored that his efforts on the research of meme, which accentuates the realization of cultural gene. Next, Douglas Hofstadter put forwarded a new interdisciplinary subject â€Å"Memetics† in 1985. This subject is based on the perspective of Darwinian evolution to study the content of the mind, aiming to explore the social evolution model of cultural information transmission (Hofstadter, 1985). Since then, the meme concept has been discussed and accepted by various of subject: phycology, physiology, anthropology,  linguistics and so on. For instance, Daniel Dennett, an American philosophy who agreed with the concept of meme, and applied it into his book â€Å"Consciousness Explained† and â€Å"Darwins Dangerous Idea† to interpret the mechanism of spiritual evolution (Vasiliki, 2014). Furthermore, Finland linguists and translation theorists Andrew Chesterman, combined meme with the British philosopher Karl Popper’s idea about the schema of knowledge evolution, established the translation theory framework of the system by a descriptive study on the translation standard and strategies (Chesterman, 1997). In 1999, Susan Blackmore (1999) considered meme as an independent replication factor in her book â€Å"The Meme Machine†, suggested that whatever the form of memetic information is, it could be regarded as meme when it can be copied by imitate.   Based on the previous studies, this paper adopts Shifman’s (2013) idea and apply it to the analyze. She describes the meme constituted with two principles: 1) looking at diffused units as incorporating several memetic dimensions namely, several aspects that people may imitate; 2) understanding memes not as single entities that propagate well, but as groups of content units with common characteristics. 2.2 What is an internet meme? Meme has been widely accepted and applied to several subjects which has mentioned before, but it only gets attentions of mass media researchers until 21 centuries (Davison, 2012). According to Shifman (2013), she defines an Internet meme as: 1) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance; 2) that were created with awareness of each other; and 3) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users. Generally, in the digital media era, the advancement of Internet and social networks enable people to acquire more information and accelerate the information exchange. With the advent of web2.0 and platformlization, meme is actively involved in the process of information dissemination, in terms of longevity, fecundity, and copy fidelity have been enhanced through internet, which regard as the three basic properties that help meme to spread successfully. For longevity, it is attributed to numerous archives, which can store data indefinitely not rely on memory. For copy fidelity, it mainly because the digitization allows lossless information transfer compared to traditional media. For fecundity, due to the infrastructure, it can achieve the swift diffusion of any given message to numerous nodes. These facilitates the creation and exchange of user-generate-consent, which emerges participation (Shifman, 2013). Apart from this, easier access to the Internet enables people to receive mounts of information every day, in comparison to the limited information acquiring approaches in the past. Also, the speed of transmission is no longer limited by the movement of individuals. Hence, it is necessary to pay more attention on internet meme, exploring its role on constructing shared values in contemporary digital cultures. As Shifman (2013) claimed, the internet meme has three properties in the web2.0: 1) A gradual propagation from individuals to society. In other words, memes could shape the mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups. People can easier sharing and communicating in digital era, which facilitates the process of spreading memes from person to society; 2) Reproduction via copying and imitation. In the digital world, people can spread content by forwarding, linking, or copying, they can use some software like Photoshop and application like Snapseed to imitate and remixing instead of reproducing as well; and 3) Diffusion through competition and selection. The internet magnifies the competition and selection of meme. On the one hand, it allows researchers collect data and track the process of meme evolution. On the other hand, it offers users an opportunity to understanding and knowing the preference of choice relating to meme diffusion (Davison, 2012). It is always mentions viral when talks about internet memes, their differences and similarities are the major parts of meme research. This paper does not go in further with details about this, but indicates the mainly difference between viral and internet meme is that viral is consisted of single units while internet meme is a collection of text. In order to better analyzing, this paper focus on the images form of internet memes, takes some images as example to illustrates the idea. Based on the studies of Knobel, Lankshear (2007) and Kuipers (2005), internet memes can be divided into two categories: recycled images and macros images. Recycled images have a template which build by numerous imitations and stable images which include original content and are passed along with transformation or not, as presented in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Macros images usually constitute with a single image overlaid with a white text written in capitals and express the humorous note, as presented in Figure1.3 and Figure1.4. Figure.1 and Figure.2 Figure.3 and Figure. 4 2.3 Internet memes as a new form of political participation In recent years, internet meme has been constantly evolving into the political participation. This appeared to be attributed to the digital media. First it offers the opportunities for people to become the subject of expression, and then reducing the cost of political participation, especially for the young generation who are less likely to engaged in political activities (Anduiza, 2012). Second, public and political events are more likely to be exaggerated than in the past with rapid spread in the internet. Last, the so-called image politics according to Wilson (2000), image symbols have more vitality and tension than words. Since the visual impact has more strong effects on emotion and could save the time for reading too much words, it is extremely easy to be used to participate in discussing political issues, especially in sensitive areas. For this reason, the exaggerated effects and interesting composition of meme makes its transmission have powerful appeal, which makes the combination of both of them play the role of two-way gain. Therefore, internet meme has built the bridge between citizens and political, as a new way to deconstruct by the form of image with humor to gains serious political, build a unique participate system (Hristova, 2014). This paper classified this political participation into three sub-items in terms of facilitates political participation according to Shifman’s work: 1) As a persuasion way in election; 2) As a resistance of people (collection action); and 3) As a public discourse. Following will combining cases to analyze these three functions (Shifman, 2013). 2.2.1 As a persuasive way in election Social media allows users to publish their opinions or ideas so that their friends, family, and strangers can read these posts and comments back. And it is has been demonstrated that people are more likely to believe in their friends and family, which makes the online ideas become more convincible (Shifman, 2013). As a consequence, internet meme through social media could influence people for their psychological cognition, behavior patterns and guide their recognition (Tay, 2015). As politics move to the Internet where more and more voters get their news and information with the trend of digital technology. The politicians and their companies start to consider taking advantage of internet meme to create great political profile with their personalities and campaign slogans. In this way, enabled mobilizing voters outside of official political discourses. A few studies consider politicians who appear â€Å"cool† in the eyes of ordinary citizens to be rare successes (Tay, 2015) The 2008 American Presidential election is known for being the first modern Internet campaign, Shifman (2013) chooses the â€Å"Obama Girl† video as an example of memes as political persuasion, explains that the video become widely popular due to it just focus on a praise of Obama not talks about specific political issues. Here, this paper uses The Hope Meme in 2008 American election as an example to analyze. This meme is the depiction of Barack Obama by artist Shepard Fairey (Figure 5), it has thousands of replications and then a vast number of users participated in creating their own replications (Figure 6 and Figure 7). This meme portrayed Obama as the ideal candidate and introducing a vision for the country, which triggered peoples approval (Foster, 2014). Subsequently, Obama’s supporters enjoying creating new versions of the Hope Meme itself to show their stance (Seiffert, 2017). With the propagation of the hope meme, a climbing mount of people acknowledge the appearance of Obama even they do not participate in, they can see the images in social media through their friends or families. Moreover, Obama’s campaign posted a LOLcat a few days before the 2012 election (Figure 8) to call on people to vote. This meme combing with the internet culture, the lol culture and cute cat, make people perceived as Obama is proximity to the ordinary people. The fact is, Obama is a popular figure referred to in Internet memes, involved discussions and supportive commentaries (Tay, 2015). Figure.5 and Figure. 6 Figure.7 and Figure. 8 To give another example is the 2012 American election, between Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. On April 4, a meme containing President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted on a Tumblr blog. It imagines an exchange between them, and Obama asking â€Å"whatchu doing?†, she responds, â€Å"Running the world† (Figure 9). In this image, Obama is lying down while reading, and seems relaxed, Clinton has a solemn expression, and is busy with work. The post got a lot of attention and received thousands of notes. Clinton becomes a synonym of respectability, and a representation of female empowerment. Since then, her supporters involving into this internet meme and imitate their own picture by change the text or content. (Figure 10 and Figure 11). The meme became a major part of Hillary Clintons positive cultural revival as a political figure, which was already seen as particularly powerful in the 2016 presidential campaign. This has made her a viable candidate (Tay, 2015). Figures 9, 10 and 111 These examples have illustrated the use of internet memes as a persuasion way referred to political participation. As an active social software, internet memes have a place in the political expression of new media with the linking, forwarding and imitating, which increased the exposure of political figures. In the presidential election, candidates in the media show the image of appearance, and in the narration part is partly deciding the success or failure of his election (Foster, 2014). Politics in the media society is becoming more and more a performance, an act of creating an image. 2.3.2 As a resistance of people (collection action) Indeed, most of political memes are generally resistant to nature, and as weve seen, resistance itself is a critical mass mobilization. Shifman (2013) defines one function of memes is as grass-roots action with the example Occupy Wall Street online movement. The â€Å"Pepper Spray Cop† which shows a police officer spraying protesters with pepper spray. The â€Å"We are the 99%†, becomes one of the main visual markers of the on-the-ground Occupy Movement after it spread quickly online. They serve as a call to action for the protest to continue. Shifman indicates that the power of organization is declining, instead being replaced by massive, mobile social networks, which is collective action (Milnerï ¼Å'2013). The background of the developing collective action cannot be separated from the remarkable rise of internet memes. First, the threshold is low and there is no need for technological skill to express and participate. Besides, image meme helps these protests go deepe r with the visual effects. The most important thing is that internet meme allows the citizens to participate in collective action and at the same time can retain their individuality, since one of the character of meme is alter (Anduiza, 2012). There are several studies has worked on the Occupy Wall Street, this paper will apply the collective action in Facebook between China mainland and Taiwan in 2016 as a case study. This is the first internet meme and political participation refer to collective action have been combined in public view in China. In January, Ziyu Zhou, a member of the south Korean womens group, was accused by the artist An Huang about Taiwans independence on Weibo, leading to a wave of public opinion against Ziyu Zhou. As the incident continued to heat up, then Ziyu Zhou issued a video on Facebook to apologize for the previous uproar. Celebrity Gengxin Lin forwarded the apology to video, and said apologized too suddenly and didnt have time to memorize the manuscript, which caused Taiwanese netizens and Chinese netizens started a debate in Lins Facebook. A few days after, it is said that 20 million Chinese young people have started a collective action to Facebook of Taiwan’s three media homepage. Noncitizens take internet meme as main expression, showed a high degree of organization, to resist the independence of Taiwan (Tang, 2016).   As showed in Figure 12, Figure 13 and Figure 14, these memes are from the China mainland, people try to use the beautiful scenes from China mainland and some ironic words to resist the supportive of independence of Taiwan. The contents of these meme are from traditional Chinese slogans, events with Chinese characteristics and political propaganda themes. On the one hand, it evokes the value recognition of people. On the other hand, they combined with familiar things of public, which will have a greater influence on transmission. The most important thing is, there are millions of people participate in this action, and post millions of images on Facebook, the homepage was full of images which is powerful and spectacular. Figure.12 â€Å"invite Taiwan people to enjoy the beautiful China mainland scene.† Figure.13 â€Å"Follow me: Taiwan has been Chinas territory since ancient times. You dont know its okay. Figure. 14   Ã¢â‚¬Å"Dont talk with a picture† These internet memes from the mass production by organizing, and hide the emotional expression in the images, aim to use it to gain the attention occupation and presents people’s political stance of resist. According to sharing and remixing, transfer it into collective action, reflects the ability to participate in narrative construction and civic organization. Therefore, memes can be used as a tool of political participation in terms of turn the public opinion fragmentation into collective action (Tang, 2016). 2.3.3 As a public discourse of political issues Social media is considered to be more effective in terms of information diffusion comparison to traditional media, it expands the source of information and knowledge for people. People not only are the receiver of the political information in network environment, they also are a political message of reproducing and disseminator, which means everyone is likely to be the news publishers, and likely to be receiving information. The advantages of digital media including openness, virtualization, interactivity and timeliness build a great environment for the public discourse, and helping people freely communicate and express their opinions. Therefore, net citizens are keen on discuss politic issues through digital media. The richness, floating and uncertainty of meme allow everyone revolve around the image to construct the legal qualification and compete for their statements, thus it is easy to be used to participate in discuss sensitive political issues (Hristova, 2014). They are now been a part of our internet culture, participating in a larger media and material ecosystem that helps shape the political identity and political union. Meme could be a catalyst for political discussion (Shifman, 2013). Compared to the past people have to talk or write articles to show their political stance while now they just can use an image. Like the Pepe the Frog, it becomes a Nazi Trump supporter and Alt-Right symbol (Figure 15). It attracts not only people’s attention, but also political discussions by its powerful visual impact. Some notable examples are: The 2015 General election of United Kingdom, the image of eating of candidate Miliband, which is different from his appearance on newspapers, evokes a vast number of imitation of people with parody and ridicule (Figure 16). After that, many politicians actively to follow the trend, post out their own eating images to get attention and discussion. This meme is similar to the Sihao Bai in 2014, the mayor of New York city. He used a knife and fork in an undisciplined manner in an image (Figure 17), which made people questioned his ability to govern because he has a more powerful appearance in newspaper than this image. Back to the Occupy Wall Street case, the We are the 99% meme. It is widely popular in Facebook and has numerous replicators. At first, most of them are from the 99% people to support with fixed images, annotation or remix (Figure 18). Gradually, the 1% people participate in and post their own images with the text â€Å"tax me† or â€Å"redistribute† (Figure 19). At the same time, they got mounted of comments along with (Milner, 2013). This meme engages in multiple discussions and arguments on Facebook. Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17 Figure 18 Figure 19 With the propagation characteristics of memes, public discourse is totally different than the past. The increasing of complex hotspot issues duration, degree of attention and transformation mechanism, a serial of crisis involved in, the more complex issues appear at the same time including and the increase of average time of the single issue are catalyzing the public discourse with political issues in digital era. In another way, internet memes as a political catharsis, it represents a strong demand of citizens for political participation. Significantly, when people engaged in this discussion rather than sharing or forwarding, it has more powerful since it empowers citizens to share their opinions of political stances (Shifman, 2013). 3. Conclusion In the era of media, the process of political participation can be well deserved to internet meme, which from the bottom to top, allows people to have the chance to get involved in political activities. The three basic characters of meme including heredity, variation and selection have been enhanced in digital media, and that is the major reason why the internet meme could leave a great influence on political participation. From one hand, internet meme as the persuasion way mainly reflected on the political elections, help politicians to build positive image thus get voter’s approval. From another hand, it allows ordinary people to resist through mastery of dominance on the spread of images, not only can modify the content of the meme, also can undertake production and innovation. Besides, it offers a new way for net citizens to seek affirmation and self-expression in political communities. The future study of internet meme could focus on the effects, like how to measure the effects of internet memes on elections or collective action. As a new way to participate in politics, internet meme has its own advantages and it is deserved to study in the future. References Anduiza, E., Jensen, M.J. and Jorba L., eds. (2012). Digital Media and Political Engagement Worldwide: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blackmore, S. (1999).The Meme Machine, New York: Oxford University Press Inc. Chesterman, A. (1997).  Memes of translation. 1st ed. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Davison, P. (2012).  The Language of Internet Memes. Dawkins, R. (1976).  The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.189-202. Foster, B. J. (2014). Its all in a meme: a content analysis of memes posted to 2012 presidential election facebook pages.  Dissertations & Theses Gradworks. Hofstadter, D. (1985).  Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. Hristova, S. (2014). Visual memes as neutralizers of political dissent.  TripleC (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation): Open Access Jo,12(1). Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. In A new literacies sampler (pp. 199-227). New York: Peter Lang. Kuipers, G. (2005). Where was King Kong when we needed him? Public discourse, digital disaster jokes, and the functions of laughter after 9/11. The Journal of American Culture, 28(1), 70-84. Milner, R. M. (2013). Pop polyvocality: internet memes, public participation, and the occupy wall street movement.  International Journal of Communication,  7(1), 2357-2390. Seiffert-Brockmann, J., Diehl, T., & Dobusch, L. (2017). Memes as games: the evolution of a digital discourse online.  New Media & Society (2), 14614448177Tay.G (2015). Binders full of LOLitics: Political humour, internet memes, and play in the 2012 US Presidential Election (and beyond). European Journal of Humour Research 2 (4) 46-73. Shifman, L. (2013).  Memes in Digital Culture. The MIT Press. Tang,J.T (2016).The political participation and collective action of the online community in the case of Facebook. University of News (3),96-101 Vasiliki, P. (2014).  Satirical User-Generated Memes as an Elective Source of Political Criticism, Extending Debate and Enhancing Civic Engagement. University of Warwick. Wilson, K. (2000). Image politics: the new rhetoric of environmental activism.  Journalism & Mass Communication Educator,  55.

The Identify :: Business and Management Studies

The Identify The problem The End User The Company is called Vesco and has 13 stores round the UK. The manager from one of their London stores has asked me to do the following for his supermarket only. The Problem A company called food on the go are their home delivery company. The manager of Vesco has asked me to make invoices for the â€Å"food on the go† company and their customers. The manager of Vesco called Dean Smith said that their old way of billing people was very slow. What they did was they would send an employee around the supermarket to get each item that has been ordered and would have to add up the prices at the end. He wants me to make it so that when his employees are doing this all they have to do is type in the serial numbers of the items and the computer will add up the prices and add VAT on its own. Also he would like the individual items and the subtotal to come up on the computer. So when the delivery company is delivering the foods to the houses, people will easily and quickly be able to pay because they will easily see what they ordered. Some people may pay by cash or some may have previously paid by credit card on their internet website. People order their food by filling out and order form saying what items they would like or they would fill out a form on the internet. An additional 10% charge will be added to their bill for this service. Possible Solutions to the Problem Manual Solution As they get their orders in they could write what is ordered onto a piece of paper and put them up on a notice board, and at the end of the week one person could go round the shop and get all the items from every list. ICT Solution They could enter the items in a spreadsheet, this would be good because a spreadsheet could add up the subtotal and add the VAT. After adding the VAT it can automatically add up the final total. My Solution Is†¦.. I will use the spreadsheet solution as the data incorporated in the spreadsheet can be put into a formula and therefore can be manipulatededhat time - consuming. ta i - consuming have fast access times. I suggest that they use a CD-RW. by the computer, it can also be presented in a good professional fashion. I will use an ICT solution because of the following reasons: The Advantages of Using the ICT Solution are:  · It is easier to edit the data and add up the data eg.

Research for Human Resource Management Activities Essay

With increasing globalization, most multinational corporations can not avoid cross-culture management issues. Especially, cross-cultural human resource management (HRM) has becoming one of the critical operating strategies. And in this paper, we will mainly analyze the current situation of human resource management activities that include selection and recruitment, training and development, and performance management in the Chinese and Australian cultural background. We aimed to find out the differences of human resource management activities between Chinese and Australian human resource department, and look forward to helping a Sino-Australia joint venture (JV) enterprise which is poor at cross-cultural human resource management. Culture forms values, creates attitudes, and influences behavior (Luthans & Jonathan, 2009). Due to national traits and region of culture, the interaction between different cultures is considered as cross-culture. And under the cross cultural background, international human resource management should carry out the activities of human resource management based on characteristics and differences of culture (Ramamoorthy et al. , 2005), which could increase the efficiency of human resource distribution and utilization. According to the Hofstede’s theory, we have got five cultural dimensions which as power distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus feminism, and long term orientation versus short term orientation (Hofstede, 1984). China and Australia have obvious differences in the cultural dimensions, which are showed as follows. Comparison of China and Australia on cultural dimensions cultural dimensions |China |Australia | |power distance |high |low | |individualism |low(collectivism) |high | |uncertainty avoidance |low |high | |masculinity |balanced |above the average(masculinity) | |long-term |high |low(short-term) | Source: From Hofstede and Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. And then we will analyze the activities of human resource management as selection and recruitment, training and development and performance management under their respective cultural backgrounds. Firstly, in selection and recruitment human resource activities, there is a large difference between HRM of Chinese enterprises and Australian enterprises. In Australia, the labor pool is relatively mature and developed (Dobbie & MacMillan, 2012). Because of Australia is supposed to value individualism, the HRM of Australian companies used to selecting and recruiting much people depend on market mechanism. Labors change their job and joined choice making with the need of market and the HRM think the person is wanted by them can be got through the mobility of trained personnel and market competition. They do not think this kind of person is disloyal to a company in their mind. But China emphasizes socialist collectivism as the value of the times. And in the case of collectivism, the HRM of Chinese enterprises tends to select and recruit the talents in the range of their favorable groups, they think the groups of graduates from famous colleges that should have the inherent abilities. So the degrees from domestic-famous such as Tsinghua and Peking University would be preferred by HRM. Furthermore, the HRM of Chinese enterprises attach great importance to ‘Guanxi’ (relationship) in the selection and recruitment of employee (Wang & Cindy, 2008). And by the impacts of ‘Guanxi’, the HRM of Chinese enterprises trend to create a job in order to accommodate a person, without considering person’s ability. So these situations have been a contrast with fair competition rules of Australian HRM. On the other hand, Australia is a short-term oriented country, the relationship between HR managers and staff is simple which is similar to a buyer-seller relation in short term. The manager of human resource department generally prefers candidates who have strong capacity to work and innovative consciousness. On the contrast, the long-term oriented Chinese HRM focuses on employee royalty, and try to reduce the rate of staff turnover. They expect employees to work steadily in long term, instead of frequent turnover behaviors in the workplace. Furthermore, because of the high power distance, in the standard of personnel selection in Chinese HRM, they mainly focus on personal background and seniority (Zhang, 2003). There is an obvious top-down hierarchy; the higher position is decided often by strong background and seniority. However, in the Australian HRM, the first is that personal ability to work and communicate. The job is offered to the person who is capable, and the manager of human resource department offered the qualified person an opportunity to move ahead quickly. Secondly, in the parts of training and development, there are also some differences between Australian and Chinese HRM because of the impact of different cultural dimensions. Under the influence of collectivism culture, what contents the Chinese enterprises use to train their employees generally have to meet the organization’s development goals . Most employees accept their superiors’ arrangement of the job training ,which mainly provides them with the skills training aiming at the skills that their job needs (Xiao et. al, 2011). This kind of job training is only beneficial to employment needed skills. Furthermore, being influenced by the high power distance, in the training process, the employees who are being trained are under high pressure from their superiors and have to accept the arrangement of training. Because most of the trainings are passively accepted, obviously it doesn’t work to take the ways of high participation training in China. Under the influence of individualism culture, the HRM of Australian enterprise lays stress on the career training and continuous education. The training was provided by HRM for their employees usually can help the employees to achieve their personal goals, but may be far away from the whole organization development vision, but beneficial to the employees’ personal future careers. And in such a low power distance country like Australia, the employees who are being trained appear more active in the training process. They are more willing to show themselves, and actively express their ideas; meanwhile, they are good at communicating with the coach. Thirdly, in the part of performance management, there are also some differences between Australian and Chinese HRM. Being influenced by the high power distance, in Chinese enterprise, the performance management system is usually built by the top manager, so the top manager decides the performance standards and evaluation criteria. There is a low involvement of employees. However, with the lower power distance, employee could participate in the performance system building, the employee and HR manger could come together to develop a performance management system. Australian advocate individualism, and emphasize personal achievements and rights. But in a country emphasizing collectivism culture as China, the values of pursuing the harmonious atmosphere makes the interpersonal relations in the collective obviously more important than individual achievements. When it comes to the performance evaluation, Australian emphasize standardized and quantified performance evaluation system, hoping that they can objectively measure individual contribution and value, while Chinese prefer the traditional way of evaluation which usually depends on experience because they don’t want to destroy the harmonious unity of their collective (Rajendar ; Ma, 2005) . And on the other hand, in Australian enterprise, the compensation system depends on the staff function and ability with low power distance. In this system, it is not unusual that employee with special skills or talents could get more compensation and bonus than manager in higher position. But in Chinese enterprise, the compensation system mainly focuses on job grade and employment level. There is a clear rank in the compensation system. In conclusion,  it’s very easy to find that main differences in the activities of human resource management between Chinese and Australian enterprises from what has been mentioned above. So far, for a Sino-Australia joint venture enterprise, it is necessary to combine comprehensive considerations cultural background of China and Australia for carrying out the human resource management activities. Furthermore, the joint venture enterprise should place great emphasis on building of enterprise culture and foster cohesion and centripetal force enterprises. Usually successful enterprise has excellent enterprise culture which enables employees to establish common values and standard of behaviors (Deem, 2009), it built a great channel between the parent-country nationals and host-country nationals to communicate more smoothly, that is helpful to minimize any culture clash. And in order to achieve optimal allocation of human resources under the context of international, Of course, there will be also many challenges and hardships along the way.

An Interdisciplinary Approach Prof: Karney Platt Rose Essay

1.Using quotes from your interviews, describe how each of your three respondents understand the Cold War. 2.Explain to what extent their definition/understanding of the Cold War differs from the definition above (see the bold typeface in the Overview section above). 3.If your respondents’ understanding of the Cold War is different from the way the Cold War is defined in this course, explain why that might be the case. (Also, if their definition of the Cold War is very similar, explain this as well!) I interviewed my aunt Julia, my step mom, and my husband. The way they have described their understanding of the cold war is Iron Curtain. US and USSR conflict. Here are some things they said about the Iron curtain. After World War 2 the Soviet Union created the Iron curtain. The time collapse of the Iron curtain was symbolized in 1989 by the opening of the Berlin wall on November 9th. In the presses of the Cold War the general policy of the west toward the communist states was to contain them with the hope of internal division, failure or evolution just may end their threat. The Soviet Union challenged the west by instituting a blockade of the western sectors of the Berlin; little did they know the United States could airlift supplies into the city until the blockade was withdrawn in 1948. All three of the people that I interview said the same thing about who was involved in the cold war it was the U.S. and the USSR. My husband also added that the USSR was in a conflict with the west for more than 40 years. That conflict was never open to warfare (hot war). This is because the existence of the nuclear weapons made the war mad. This is why the conflict stayed a cold war. My step mom added the only thing that held the allies together was the extreme need to destroy Hitler’s Nazis. In 1945 Hitler was defeated and the cold war was inevitable. The USSR was a communist dictatorship and the U.S. was the capitalist of democracy. Both the U.S. and the USSR thought they held the key to the future happiness of the human race. My aunt Julia said that with the result of the cold war the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s. Most people say it was because of their system could not keep people happy because it did not give them the rights or material wealth they thought they would have. 1949 the countries on the side of the USA formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) oppose the USSR. 1949 the USSR set up the council for Mutual Economic Assistance to unite the communist ruled states. For my aunt Julia it had been more than 30 years since she had even thought about the cold war so answering the questions was kind of hard and for my step mom she had got her GED in the 10th grade so she could remember much. As for my husband he really didn’t tell me much about how he learned about the cold war. I do know that he was sent to boarding school at the age of 16 I don’t know if he learned about it there he don’t like to talk about it. Major events that occurred during the cold war are as follows 1)Winning the space race by landing man on the moon in 1969