The Book Is Dead! Essay Example

The Book Is Dead! Essay Example The Book Is Dead! Essay The Book Is Dead! Essay Is this the death knell of one technology, that is Traditional Printing, and the subsequent rise of the next, Digital Media etc? Electronic books, or E-Books, are reportedly currently outselling traditional paper based books generally and newspaper circulation figures are in a long gradual decline. The standard Phone Book is already dead, as British Telecom no longer produce it in a printed format. Is print the place where words go to die? And yet last year the renowned online retailer Amazon announced that for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and, here is something that does not get quoted quite so often, sales of print books were still increasing.[ CITATION Jen15 l 2057 ] Recent statistics seem to point to a decline in reading conventional books and other printed material and that technology is taking over in terms of encyclopaedias, dictionarys etc. In fact the renowned Oxford English Dictionary is now only available in print to special order, either in it’s full 20 volume set or as the compact single volume edition. The economics of traditional printing requires thousands of units to be sold in order to see a potential profit for the publishers. They are generally expensive to produce, take up a lot of space, they are not easily searchable, and they are not easily linkable. E-books and pdf ( Adobes Portable Document Format) versions of documents on the other hand are quite the opposite. They are generally very inexpensive to produce, usually in the few hundreds of pounds or less, they can be very quick to produce, and unlike traditional paper based books, they can be quickly searched through and items can be linked between one source and ano ther. In future will the printed book simply live on as art objects and as collectors items? Sherman young in his book entitled ‘The Book Is Dead : Long Live the Book’ states â€Å"that physical books may one day become the

Human Resources Administration - Week 7 Scenario Assignment

Human Resources Administration - Week 7 Scenario - Assignment Example The main elements in a workplace include the human resources and other aspects of production like time and efficiency in duties (Jagdev 67). In this context, John is skilled and knowledgeable in his area of expertise. However, he has a weakness in articulating his expertise skills with other aspects of production in the workplace. The main problems are concerning his relationship with team members and the efficiency of documenting company data in an orderly manner. Some of the opportunities that can help John develop his competence include administering training programs to subordinates, leading and directing projects and attending workplace-competence related seminars ( Jagdev 72). Administering training to company subordinates will enable John to integrate his teachings into his workplace practices. John will be expected by the trainees to lead by example; hence, he will have the responsibility of upholding his teachings. In addition, attending workplace-competence seminars like those concerning teamwork will facilitate his understanding on the principles of workplace competence. Lastly, the opportunity of leading proj ects will improve his skills on data collection and documentation of the resulting information. This will help him to become organized (Jagdev

Public policy administration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Public policy administration - Essay Example The opponents of the bill are the republicans who state that the passage of the bill would add to the budget deficit of the US government. The Democrats counter this by stating that the overall budget gap would be lesser by $100 Billion if the bill is passed and hence they are asking for support in pushing the bill through. Both sides of the debate on reforming healthcare as well as continuing the status quo are vocal and vehement in their stance. The PBS (2009) website gives further evidence of this, while the proponents of Health Care reform call for the state to play a more proactive role and the insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and make the process of claims easier, the opponents are adamant that this would erode the competitiveness of the service providers. This is akin to the debate on patents for new drugs that is on similar lines with one side insisting that drug costs be lowered and the other side touting the benefits of research and development essential for the discovery of new drugs. (Pbs.org, 2009) After considering the various options, it is my personal opinion that the Health Care reform bill must be passed. In order to stem the rising tide of medical expense related bankruptcies and the increase in the number of people not covered under the existing system, the proposed legislation must be passed. As a US Citizen, I want to ensure that I am taken care of when ill and would also like the same for others as well. If we consider the issue from an ethical perspective, it makes it clear that we should not deny medical care to the needy for whatever reason that the health care system currently does. The Huffington Post (2009) states that 1 in every 5 bankruptcies in the US are because of reasons to do with medical expenses being too much for the families to take (Huffington Post, 2009). Further, the data from the OECD website (2009) also talks about how a million people are pushed into the ranks of the uninsured every year as

Service Improvement Essay Example for Free

Service Improvement Essay Abstract As the competition in the restaurant industry become more. Service quality becomes important to achieve the success restaurant. Service Blueprint is one of the methods that use to apply to improve the service system. The process of blueprint is a necessary tool that the restaurant can view all of process of the restaurant’s operation between the customer and providers. The paper aims to examine and apply to improve in the service processes of the restaurant by using the Service Blueprint to be the technique that used to understand customer service experiences. For the service blueprint design, an in-depth interview and a quantitative research method was used based on a customer expectation on the target customer who always to dining-out in the restaurant. The providing emphasize on value co-creation and design characteristics of service systems, and identifying the most important service system characteristics perceived by the customer, is the important way to improve the service. Keywords: blueprint, service, improvement, restaurant Introduction The trend of food and beverage industries in Thailand is growing in the positive direction because the customer behavior on eating out (Thansettakij Newspaper, 2012). Many reasons, hungry, social business and personal reason, affect guests to visit the restaurant. Whatever the reason, customers expect their dining experience to be positive (Ninemeier and Hayes, 2006). Developing high-quality dining experience (Rong and Jun, 2012) is the better way to create value of service to attraction (Sandstrà ¶m et al, 2008). Increasing market competition and growing customer service demands influence the organization to improve efficiency the service processes (Mascio, 2007). The good service process is the first for the restaurant to gain competitive advantage, to marketing success and to growing (Hee and Young, 2001). Restaurants that use the delivery of high service quality have the stronger competitive position (Kit and Ka, 2001). Customer Satisfaction and Customer Expectation The outcome of customers’ evaluation of a service is the satisfaction that based on a comparison of the recognition of service delivery with their previous expectations. (Johnston and Clark, 2005). Thus restaurant need to understand the customers’ service expectations (Johnston and Clark, 2001:2005; Ford and Heaton, 2000), that is an essential for delivering greater service because they represent implicit performance standards that customers use in assessing service quality (Andronikidis et al, 2009). Understanding customer expectations performed an importance part for delivering the customer satisfaction. Customer expectations include two levels are desired expectation and adequate expectation. Desired expectations represented the customer wanted the service to perform that the service â€Å"should be†. While adequate expectations are the satisfactory performance that the service â€Å"will be† (Yen and Soe, 2010). Customer Experience and Service Process Services are the experience that depends on human and delivery system. Because of the growing of Service Business, the organization should move into the customer experience management that is importance to creating customer loyalty by creating meaningful and memorable. (Bitner et al., 2007). Experience can be determined as the aggregate and increasing customer awareness created during the process of learning about, obtaining and using a product or service (Jiang, 2008). Customer experience has been treated as embedded in service quality. It is also measured by comparing expectations before, and perceptions after the experience, or perceptions only, through different predetermined service attributes (Walter et al, 2010). Service process is the part of the customer’s experience creation. (Johnston and Clark, 2001:2005) That includes the human element (the people who interacting with customers) and the material production process (Ford and Heaton, 2000). The service process is a collection of activities that represents all of the steps over a period of time (Bitner et al., 2007). Service Blueprint There are a lot of techniques that used to develop the service delivery system for the guest experience. One of them is the service blueprint that is the method of process modeling that use to visualize, analyze, organize, control and develop service processes for improving the internal and external of organization (Gersch et al., 2011). Service Blueprint helps the organization to see the key operational, human resources, and marketing issues that offering the service experience for the customer, easily (Bitner et al., 2007). Dong and Shiang (2010) suggested the service system bird’s eyeview that shows all of the steps in the service process can guarantee the customer satisfaction. The workflow description helps the organization to watch out all of service parts that can provide to improve the failure points. Service Blueprinting is the process of creating the delivering service standard that shows the personnel and equipment required (Mascio, 2007). This method adapts for service innovation, quality improvement, customer experience design, and strategic change focused around customers as a highly effective (Bitner et al., 2007) and effectiveness (Hummel and Murphy, 2011). Drucker (1977) mentions the effectiveness as â€Å"doing the right things† and the efficiency as â€Å"doing things right†. Moreover this technique involves a description of the different process steps visually and in continuity, helping to define the steps at which the customer uses the core service and to identify the additional benefits that make up the increased product (Pires et al., 2004). Components of Service Blueprint Coenen et al. (2011) defines a service blueprint as â€Å"†¦visually displays activities by simultaneously depicting the process of service delivery, the points of customer contact, the roles of customers and employees, and the physical surrounding of the perceived process†. A typical service blueprint consists of five components (Bitner et al., 2007): (1) Customer actions: All of steps that show the customers’ activity. (2) Onstage/visible contact employee actions: Face-to-face actions between the customers and employees (3) Backstage/invisible contact employee actions: All of the employee actions, but the customer can’t see. (4) Support processes: All the tangibles that customers are exposed to that can influence their quality perceptions. (5) Physical evidence: All the activities carried out by individuals and units within the company who are not contact employees. Moreover, there are the actions that separated by diverse â€Å"lines† (Coenen et al., 2011; Gersch et al., 2011). The â€Å"line of interaction† separates the customer activity from the provider action, showing the direct interactions between customer and provider. Above the â€Å"line of interaction†, there are the activities, choices, and interactions performed by the customer. The â€Å"line of visibility† differentiates between the visible (onstage) and invisible (backstage) to the customer. Above the â€Å"line of visibility†, there are the actions and decisions carried out by front office employees. The â€Å"line of internal interaction† distinguishes between front office and back office activities. Support processes which are necessary to aid front office employees in delivering the service are carried out below the â€Å"line of internal interaction†. Research Method Regarding to the aim of this paper the research must examine and apply to improve the service process for service experience. For the collection of comprehensive and detail information about customer’s expectation in the service delivery process. First of all, In-depth interview was used to be the method to help on creating the questionnaire. The questionnaire was devised to measure customer expectations in term of quality of service of the restaurant. References Andronikidis, A., Georgiou, A.C., Gotzamani, K., Kamvysi, K. The application of quality function deployment in service quality management. The TQM Journal, 21/4(2009), pp. 319-333 Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L., and Morgan, F. N., 2007. Service Blueprint: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation. Center for Service Leadership, Arizona State University. Coenen, C., Felten, D.V., and Schmid, M., 2011. Managing effectiveness and efficiency through FM blueprinting. Facilities, Vol. 29 Iss: 9/10, pp.422 436 Dong, S.C. and Shiang, L.Y., Combining Kano model and service blueprint for adult day care service — A case study in Taiwan, Service Systems and Service Management (ICSSSM), 2010 7th Drucker, P. (1977), An Introductory View of Management, Harper College Press, New York, NY. Ford, R. C., and Heaton, C. P., 2000. Managing the Guest Experience in Hospitality. Delmar Thomson Learning. Gersch, M., Hewing, M., and Schà ¶ler B., Business Process Blueprinting – an enhanced vi ew on process performance. Business Process Management Journal, 17/5(2011), pp.732-747 Hee, W.K., Young, G.K., Rationalizing the customer service process. Business Process Management Journal, 7 /2(2001), pp. 139-156 Hummel, E. and Murphy, K.S., Using Service Blueprint to Analyze Restaurant Service Efficiency. Cornall Hospitalty Quarterly, 52/3(2011). Jiang, K., New Service Development for Interactive Experience. Service Operations and Logistics and Informatics 2008 International Conference on (2008) G

Mediations of First Philosophy by Descartes Essay -- Philosophy Philos

Mediations of First Philosophy by Descartes In the â€Å"Mediations of First Philosophy† Descartes tries to prove the existence of God in the third meditation. He does this by coming up with several premises that eventually add up to a solid argument. First, I will explain why Descartes ask the question, does god exist? And why does Descartes think he needs such and argument at this point in the text. Secondly, I will explain, in detail, the arguments that Descartes makes and how he comes to the conclusion that God does exist. Next, I will debate some of Descartes premises that make his argument an unsound one, including circular reasoning. Finally, I will see if his unsound argument has diminished and undermined his principal goals and the incorrigible foundation of knowledge.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In earlier meditations Descartes proved that he existed through the Cogito argument. Descartes must now move on to examine and explore questions about the world around him, but instead of doing this he first stop to examine the question of whether or not God exists. Descartes wants to know that he was created by an all knowing, perfect creator that is good and wants to make sure that he was not created by an evil spirit or demon. If Descartes can prove that he was created by a perfect all knowing creator then his ideas must carry some semblance of truth, because God is not a deceiver and he must of placed these ideas in Descartes. Descartes has good reasons for searching for the answer to the question of God’s existence, now he has to come up with a good sound argument to prove it.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout the â€Å"Meditations on First Philosophy† Descartes gives a couple of major arguments about the existences of god, he gives one argument in the third meditation and on in the fifth meditation. The argument in meditation three and the one we will focus on is known as the â€Å"Trademark Argument†. This argument comes from the fact claimed by Descartes that inside of everyone is a supreme being, which is placed there by whatever created us. From this statement Descartes can say that a mark from a God has been place inside of every one of us. This argument involves the acknowledgement of such an idea is within ourselves, this idea that God is a being who is eternal and infinite and a creator of all things. This is Descartes first premise. His second premise is the â€Å"Causal Adequacy Principle.† The p... ... like Descartes ever has any real concrete arguments for the existence or God or himself existing or any of his theories.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In conclusion, Descartes made an argument to prove God’s existence and seemed to be able to prove that he existed, but after a taking a closer look and revaluating his theories you see that he uses a lot of circular reasoning. It is really tough to believe any of what Descartes is saying. After reading his meditations you are left confused, mostly because you are trying to decipher what he is saying and you end up going around and around because of the circular reasoning. Even without the circular reasoning the argument just doesn’t make any sense, especially in today’s world, without any data. To be able to fathom a sound argument for the existence of God just sounds too preposterous to believe. To believe that God exists based of faith and religion is what people today and in Descartes time, as well, believed. To say that God exists because there must have been some superior creator that put this idea in my head is very far fetched. People d on’t need to be told that God exists because most people already believe and most of them know that he does.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  

Big Five Personality Theory Essay

Psychology refers to study of human mind and behavior. The main aim of psychology is to gain an intricate understanding of all and why individuals behave the way they do and what are the causes of their behavior. The ultimate aim is to understand a man in order to benefit society at large. There are many theories that discuss and try to explore different aspects of human behavior. The big five personality theory has been revolutionary and is currently the most accepted model in the scientific community. It consists of five traits – Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability, and openness and can be remembered by acronym – Ocean. One of the best ways to access a trait is to directly ask a person about the trait ( self report ) and then get an observer to confirm the trait ( observer report ). Me and my husband scored me on various traits as detailed above separately. We scored the answers, the scores and details of each trait are as below: Extroversion: My extroversion scores were (41- 41). This suggests I am talkative, outgoing, seek adventure, and excitement. Introverted people are quiet and reserved, though some researchers have shown that introverts can be as gregarious in social situations as extroverts but the key is in the source of energy. Extroverts gain energy from social interactions where as introverts from solitude. This is so true in my case. I have never been comfortable being alone. Openness: I scored (78-65) in openness, which is characterized by imagination, broadmindedness, originality. People low in this trait traditional, stick to familiarity, follow tested paths. It’s true in my case. I love challenges, trying new things adds new dimension and meaning to my life. In fact I would go ahead and say not doing different things disappoints me. It is this trait that got me my boyfriend who is now my husband. I guess this need comes because I lived 22years of ritualistic and traditional life. Thanks to a strict father. Conscientious : I scored (33-36) on conscientious which is characterized by dependability, efficiency and persistence. I love order in anything. Be it my wardrobe, gym routine, doing my laundry on Saturday or cleanliness of the house. Being on time to appointments, keeping order in life, I believe speaks volumes about a person and I intend to have a positive one. Guess, I get that trait from my father. He was always prompt with bills, early for appointments even informal ones. I did not know one could live any other way. Agreeableness: I scored 30(me)-43(husband) in agreeableness. It is characterized by less negative emotions, like jealousy, revenge and more empathy. People low in this trait look to win arguments not people, lean more towards excitement and dominance. I guess my husband sees me as being as agreeable because he himself is a agreeable person and sees positive in others always whereas I am more critical of myself. I am supportive of friends and family and empathize a lot with people to an extent that I feel angry if my close ones are insulted. But at the same time if someone does something wrong even if it is my mother I will not stop myself from confronting her. So, I must say I agree with my score of 30. Emotional stability: I Scored 16(me)-29(husband) in Emotional stability. It is characterized by stability in emotions in various situations in life and they are calm, free from persistent negative feelings. People rating low on this trait show negative emotions like anger, anxiety, depression, low tolerance to stress, mood swings and pessimism, Both me and my husband have scored me low on this scale. The reason is I do get stressed easily. Exams, major decisions in life get me on my nerves. At those times I am a different person – angry, not approachable and irritable. But once I find solution to the problem in my mind, I immediately get back to being myself. I guess, I need to work on being more stable. The big 5 theory helps shed light towards formation of human personalities and why different individuals exhibit different emotions and reactions when dealing with different social situations. Human behavior just like psychology itself is a broad specialty and having all the answers is virtually i mpossible. However having different theories give innumerable details that helps form a bigger picture of causes and variables that shape a human. Anju Priyadarshini

Women s Role During The Pre Colonial Nigeria - 1310 Words

Women have played an essential role in the pre-colonial Nigeria. Chinua Achebe exemplifies this argument in his book, Things Fall Apart. Also, he emphasizes that British colonization in Nigeria has expelled women from political, economic and other cherished roles. Before the British colonization women took part in most of the aspects of life in Nigeria. Although women’s role in the pre-colonial Nigeria was not the same as the role of men, women were highly respected and valued. Without women, Nigeria would never been able to survive because women played an important role in Nigeria’s future. Their roles were equally important and honored as the men’s roles. British colonization in Nigeria brought an irreversible change to the role of woman, leading them to lose their value and power. Women’s role was vital in pre-colonial Nigeria because it was harmonizing with the role of men in teaching their children. Sylvia Leith-Ross, the author of African Women: A St udy of the Ibo of Nigeria, explains that â€Å"Culturally, African women were the transmitters of the language, the history and the oral culture, the music, the dance, the habits and the artisanal knowledge. They were the teachers and were responsible for instilling traditional values and knowledge in children. Men were also essential in the transmission of knowledge to the youth because they had a different type of knowledge of the earth and environment, and also of ceremonies and traditions that were performed exclusively byShow MoreRelatedThe Evolution of Women in Nigeria1310 Words   |  6 Pages Throughout the centuries, the roles of Nigerian women have continuously evolved. During the pre- colonial era, women in Nigerian tribes were not only child bearers and wives, but also free adults. They played critical roles in food preparation, weaving, pottery, and the economy. 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From â€Å"The Second Coming† , the title is derived directly from the poem itself. â€Å"Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosedRead MoreEffect of Ict on the Academic Performance of Students8894 Words   |  36 PagesInformation and communication technology (ICT) is an instructional technology to enhance teaching and learning in pre schools, it is the application of organized or scientific knowledge to practical tasks of teaching and learning in pre-schools. According to Akinola and Aremu, (2000) instructional technologies incorporate the tools and making present support to reinforce teaching and learning on pre schools pupils. Technology is this respect involves broad based technology including it methods, management