From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy Essay Example

From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy Essay From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy By Michael E. Porter Corporate strategy, the overall plan for a diversified company, is both the darling and the stepchild of contemporary management practice—the darling because CEOs have been obsessed with diversification since the early 1960s, the stepchild because almost no consensus exists about what corporate strategy is, much less about how a company should formulate it. A diversified company has two levels of strategy: business unit strategy and corporate strategy. Competitive strategy concerns how to create competitive advantage in each of the businesses in which a company competes. Corporate strategy concerns two different questions: what businesses the corporation should be in and how the corporate office should manage the array of business units. Corporate strategy is what makes the corporate whole add up to more than the sum of its business unit parts. The track record of corporate strategies has been dismal. I studied the diversification records of 33 large, prestigious U. S. companies over the 1950-1986 period and found that most of them had divested many more acquisitions than they had kept. The corporate strategies of most companies have dissipated instead of created shareholder value. The need to rethink corporate strategy could hardly be more urgent. By taking over companies and breaking them up, corporate raiders thrive on failed corporate strategy. Fueled by junk bond financing and growing acceptability, raiders can expose any company to takeover, no matter how large or blue chip. Recognizing past diversification mistakes, some companies have initiated large-scale restructuring programs. Others have done nothing at all. Whatever the response, the strategic questions persist. Those who have restructured must decide what to do next to avoid repeating the past; those ho have done nothing must awake to their vulnerability. To survive, companies must understand what good corporate strategy is. Concepts of Corporate Strategy My study has helped me identify four concepts of corporate strategy that have been put into practice-portfolio management, restructuring, transferring skills, and sharing activities. While the concepts are not always mutually exclusive, each rest s on a different mechanism by which the corporation creates shareholder value and each requires the diversified company to manage and organize itself in a different way. The first two require no connections among business units; the second two depend on them. While all four concepts of strategy have succeeded under the right circumstances, today some make more sense than others. Ignoring any of the concepts is perhaps the quickest road to failure. PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT The concept of corporate strategy most in use is portfolio management, which is based primarily on diversification through acquisition. The corporation acquires sound, attractive companies with competent managers who agree to stay on. We will write a custom essay sample on From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer While acquired units do not have to be in the same industries as existing units, the best portfolio managers generally limit their range of businesses in some way, in part to limit the specific expertise needed by top management. The acquired units are autonomous, and the teams that run them are compensated according to unit results. The corporation supplies capital and works with each to infuse it with professional management techniques. At the same time, top management provides objective and dispassionate review of business unit results. Portfolio managers categorize units by potential and regularly transfer resources from units that generate cash to those with high potential and cash needs. In a portfolio strategy, the corporation seeks to create shareholder value in a number of ways. It uses its expertise and analytical resources to spot attractive acquisition candidates that the individual shareholder could not. The company provides capital on favorable terms that reflect corporate wide fund-raising ability. It introduces professional management skills and discipline. Finally, it provides high-quality review and coaching, unencumbered by conventional wisdom or emotional attachments to the business. The logic of the portfolio management concept rests on a number of vital assumptions. If a company’s diversification plan is to meet the attractiveness and cost-of-entry tests, it must find good but undervalued companies. Acquired companies must be truly undervalued because the parent does little for the new unit once it is acquired. To meet the better-off test, the benefits the corporation provides must yield a significant competitive advantage to acquired units. The style of operating through highly autonomous business units must both develop sound business strategies and motivate managers. In most countries, the days when portfolio management was a valid concept of corporate strategy are past. In the face of increasingly well-developed capital markets, attractive companies with good managements show up on everyone’s computer screen and attract top dollar in terms of acquisition premium. Simply contributing capital isn’t contributing much. A sound strategy can easily be funded; small to medium-size companies don’t need a munificent parent. Other benefits have also eroded. Large companies no longer corner the market for professional management skills; in fact, more and more observers believe managers cannot necessarily run anything in the absence of industry-specific knowledge and experience. Another supposed advantage of the portfolio management concept—dispassionate review—rests on similarly shaky ground since the added value of review alone is questionable in a portfolio of sound companies. The benefit of giving business units complete autonomy is also questionable. Increasingly, a company’s business units are interrelated, drawn together by ew technology, broadening distribution channels, and changing regulations. Setting strategies of units independently may well undermine unit performance. The companies in my sample that have succeeded in diversification have recognized the value of interrelationships and understood that a strong sense of corporate identity is as important as slavish adherence to parochial business unit financial results. But it is the sheer complexity of the management task that has ultimately defeated even the best portfolio managers. As the size of the company grows, portfolio managers need to find more and more deals just to maintain growth. Supervising dozens or even hundreds of disparate units and under chain-letter pressures to add more, management begins to make mistakes. At the same time, the inevitable costs of being part of a diversified company take their toll and unit performance slides while the whole company’s ROI turns downward. Eventually, a new management team is in-stalled that initiates wholesale divestments and pares down the company to its core businesses. The experiences of Gulf Western, Consolidated Foods (now Sara Lee), and ITT are just a few comparatively recent examples. Reflecting these realities, the U. S. apital markets today reward companies that follow the portfolio management model with a â€Å"conglomerate discount†; they value the whole less than the sum of the parts. In developing countries, where large companies are few, capital markets are undeveloped, and professional management is scarce, portfolio management still works. But it is no longer a valid model for corporate s trategy m advanced economies. Nevertheless, the technique is in the limelight today in the United Kingdom, where it is supported so far by a newly energized stock market eager for excitement. But this enthusiasm will wane, as well it should. Portfolio management is no way to conduct corporate strategy. RESTRUCTURING Unlike its passive role as a portfolio manager, when it serves as banker and reviewer, a company that bases its strategy on restructuring becomes an active restructurer of business units. The new businesses are not necessarily related to existing units. All that is necessary is unrealized potential. The restructuring strategy seeks out undeveloped, sick, or threatened organizations or industries on the threshold of significant change. The parent intervenes, frequently changing the unit management team, shifting strategy, or infusing the company with new technology. Then it may make follow-up acquisitions to build . a critical mass and sell off unneeded or unconnected parts and thereby reduce the effective acquisition cost. The result is a strengthened company or a transformed industry. As a coda, the parent sells off the stronger unit once results are clear because the parent is no longer adding value and top management decides that its attention should be directed elsewhere. When well implemented, the restructuring concept is sound, for it passes the three tests of successful diversification. The restructurer meets the cost-of-entry test through the types of company it acquires. It limits acquisition premiums by buying companies with problems and lackluster images or by buying into industries with as yet unforeseen potential. Intervention by the corporation clearly meets the better-off test. Provided that the target industries are structurally attractive, the restructuring model can create enormous shareholder value. Some restructuring companies are Loew’s, BTR, and General Cinema. Ironically, many of today’s restructurers are profiting from yesterday’s portfolio management strategies. To work, the restructuring strategy requires a corporate management team with the insight to spot undervalued companies or positions in industries ripe for transformation. The same insight is necessary to actually turn the units around even though they are in new and unfamiliar businesses. These requirements expose the restructurer to considerable risk and usually limit the time in which the company can succeed at the strategy. The most skillful proponents understand this problem, recognize their mistakes, and move decisively to dispose of them. The best companies realize they are not just acquiring companies but restructuring an industry. Unless they can integrate the acquisitions to create a whole new strategic position, they are just portfolio managers in disguise. Another important difficulty surfaces if so many other companies join the action that they deplete the pool of suitable candidates and bid their prices up. Perhaps the greatest pitfall, however, is that companies find it very hard to dispose of business units once they are restructured and performing well. Human nature fights economic rationale. Size supplants shareholder value as the corporate goal. The company does not sell a unit even though the company no longer adds value to the unit. While the transformed units would be better off in another company that had related businesses, the restructuring company instead retains them. Gradually, it becomes a portfolio manager. The parent company’s ROI declines as the need for reinvestment in the units and normal business risks eventually offset restructuring’s one-shot gain. The perceived need to keep growing intensifies the pace of acquisition; errors result and standards fall. The restructuring company turns into a conglomerate with returns that only equal the average of all industries at best. TRANSFERRING SKILLS The purpose of the first two concepts of corporate strategy is to create value through a company’s relationship with each autonomous unit. The corporation’s role is to be a selector, a banker, and an intervenor. The last two concepts exploit the interrelationships between businesses. In articulating them, however, one comes face-to-face with the often ill-defined concept of synergy. If you believe the text of the countless corporate annual reports, just about anything is related to just about anything else! But imagined synergy is much more common than real synergy. GM’s purchase of Hughes Aircraft simply because cars were going electronic and Hughes was an electronics concern demonstrates the folly of paper synergy. Such corporate relatedness is an ex post facto rationalization of a diversification undertaken for other reasons. Even synergy that is clearly defined often fails to materialize. Instead of cooperating, business units often compete. A company that can define the synergies it is pursuing still faces significant organizational impediments in achieving them. But the need to capture the benefits of relationships between businesses has never been more important. Technological and competitive developments already link many businesses and are creating new possibilities for competitive advantage. In such sectors as financial services, computing, office equipment, entertainment, and health care, interrelationships among previously distinct businesses are perhaps the central concern of strategy. To understand the role of relatedness in corporate strategy, we must give new meaning to this often ill-defined idea. I have identified a good way to start—the value chain. 5 Every business unit is a collection of discrete activities ranging from sales to accounting that allow it to compete. I call them value activities. It is at this level, not in the company as a whole, that the unit achieves competitive advantage. I group these activities in nine categories. Primary activities create the product or service, deliver and market it, and provide after-sale support. The categories of primary activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. Support activities provide the input and infrastructure that allow the primary activities to take place. The categories are company infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and procurement. The value chain defines the two types of interrelationships that may create synergy. The first is a company’s ability to transfer skills or expertise among similar value chains. The second is the ability to share activities. Two business units, for example, can share the same sales force or logistics network The value chain helps expose the last two (and most important) concepts of corporate strategy. The transfer of skills among business units in the diversified company is the basis for one concept. While each business unit has a separate value chain, knowledge about how to perform activities is transferred among the units. For example, a toiletries business unit, expert in the marketing of convenience products, transmits ideas on new positioning concepts, promotional techniques, and packaging possibilities to a newly acquired unit that sells cough syrup. Newly entered industries can benefit from the expertise of existing units and vice versa. These opportunities arise when business units have similar buyers or channels, similar value activities like government relations or procurement, similarities in the broad configuration of the value chain (for example, managing a multisite service organization), or the same strategic concept (for example, low cost). Even though the units operate separately, such similarities allow the sharing of knowledge. Of course, some similarities are common; one can imagine them at some level between almost any pair of businesses. Countless companies have fallen into the trap of diversifying too readily because of similarities; mere similarity is not enough. Transferring skills leads to competitive advantage only if the similarities among businesses meet three conditions: 1. The activities involved in the businesses are similar enough that sharing expertise is meaningful. Broad similarities (marketing intensiveness, for example, or a common core process technology such as bending metal) are not a sufficient basis for diversification. The resulting ability to transfer skills is likely to have little impact on competitive advantage. 2. The transfer of skills involves activities important to competitive advantage. Transferring skills in peripheral activities such as government relations or real estate in consumer goods units may be beneficial but is not a basis for diversification. 3. The skills transferred represent a significant source of competitive advantage for the receiving unit. The expertise or skills to be transferred are both advanced and proprietary enough to be beyond the capabilities of competitors. The transfer of skills is an active process that significantly changes the strategy or operations of the receiving unit. The prospect for change must be specific and identifiable. Almost guaranteeing that no shareholder value will be created, too many companies are satisfied with vague prospects or faint hopes that skills will transfer. The transfer of skills does not happen by accident or by osmosis. The company will have to reassign critical personnel, even on a permanent basis, and the participation and support of high-level management in skills transfer is essential. Many companies have been defeated at skills transfer because they have not provided their business units with any incentives to participate. Transferring skills meets the tests of diversification if the company truly mobilizes proprietary expertise across units. This makes certain the company can offset the acquisition premium or lower the cost of overcoming entry barriers. The industries the company chooses for diversification must pass the attractiveness test. Even a close fit that reflects opportunities to transfer skills may not overcome poor industry structure. Opportunities to transfer skills, however, may help the company transform the structures of newly entered industries and send them in favorable directions. The transfer of skills can be one-time or ongoing. If the company exhausts opportunities to infuse new expertise into a unit after the initial post-acquisition period, the unit should ultimately be sold. The corporation is no longer creating shareholder value. Few companies have grasped this point, however, and many gradually suffer mediocre returns. Yet a company diversified into well-chosen businesses can transfer skills eventually in many directions. If corporate management conceives of its role in this way and creates appropriate organizational mechanisms to facilitate cross-unit interchange, the opportunities to share expertise will be meaningful. By using both acquisitions and internal development, companies can build a transfer-of-skills strategy. The presence of a strong base of skills ometimes creates the possibility for internal entry instead of the acquisition of a going concern. Successful diversifiers that employ the concept of skills transfer may, however, often acquire a company in the target industry as a beachhead and then build on it with their internal expertise. By doing so, they can reduce some of the risks of internal entry and speed up the process. Two companie s that have diversified using the transfer-of-skills concept are 3M and Pepsico. SHARING ACTIVITIES The fourth concept of corporate strategy is based on sharing activities in the value chains among business units. Procter Gamble, for example, employs a common physical distribution system and sales force in both paper towels and disposable diapers. McKesson, a leading distribution company, will handle such diverse lines as pharmaceuticals and liquor through superwarehouses. The ability to share activities is a potent basis for corporate strategy because sharing often enhances competitive advantage by lowering cost or raising differentiation. But not all sharing leads to competitive advantage, and companies can encounter deep organizational resistance to even beneficial sharing possibilities. These hard truths have led many companies to reject synergy prematurely and retreat to the false simplicity of portfolio management. A cost-benefit analysis of prospective sharing opportunities can determine whether synergy is possible. Sharing can lower costs if it achieves economies of scale, boosts the efficiency of utilization, or helps a company move more rapidly down the learning curve. The costs of General Electric’s advertising, sales, and after-sales service activities in major appliances are low because they are spread over a wide range of appliance products. Sharing can also enhance the potential for differentiation. A shared order-processing system, for instance, may allow new features and services that a buyer will value. Sharing can also reduce the cost of differentiation. A shared service network, for example, may make more advanced, remote servicing technology economically feasible. Often, sharing will allow an activity to be wholly reconfigured in ways that can dramatically raise competitive advantage. Sharing must involve activities that are significant to competitive advantage, not just any activity. PG’s distribution system is such an instance in the diaper and paper towel business, where products are bulky and costly to ship. Conversely, diversification based on the opportunities to share only corporate overhead is rarely, if ever, appropriate. Sharing activities inevitably involves costs that the benefits must outweigh. One cost is the greater coordination required to manage a shared activity. More important is the need to compromise the design or performance of an activity so that it can be shared. A salesperson handling the products of two business units, for example, must operate in a way that is usually not what either unit would choose were it independent. And if compromise greatly erodes the unit’s effectiveness, then sharing may reduce rather than enhance competitive advantage. Many companies have only superficially identified their potential for sharing. Companies also merge activities without consideration of whether they are sensitive to economies of scale. When they are not, the coordination costs kill the benefits. Companies compound such errors by not identifying costs of sharing in advance, when steps can be taken to minimize them. Costs of compromise can frequently be mitigated by redesigning the activity for sharing. The shared salesperson, for example, can be provided with a remote computer terminal to boost productivity and provide more customer information. Jamming business units together without such thinking exacerbates the costs of sharing. Despite such pitfalls, opportunities to gain advantage from sharing activities have proliferated because of momentous developments in technology, deregulation, and competition. The infusion of electronics and information systems into many industries creates new opportunities to link businesses. The corporate strategy of sharing can involve both acquisition and internal development. Internal development is often possible because the corporation can bring to bear clear resources in launching a new unit. Start-ups are less difficult to integrate than acquisitions. Companies using the shared-activities concept can also make acquisitions as beachhead landings into a new industry and then integrate the units through sharing with other units. Prime examples of companies that have diversified via using shared activities include PG, Du Pont, and IBM. The fields into which each has diversified are a cluster of tightly related units. Marriott illustrates both successes and failures in sharing activities over time. Following the shared-activities model requires an organizational context in which business unit collaboration is encouraged and reinforced. Highly autonomous business units are inimical to such collaboration. The company must put into place a variety of what I call horizontal mechanisms—a strong sense of corporate identity, a clear corporate mission statement that emphasizes the importance of integrating business unit strategies, an incentive system that rewards more than just business unit results, cross-business-unit task forces, and other methods of integrating. A corporate strategy based on shared activities clearly meets the better-off test because business units gain ongoing tangible advantages from others within the corporation. It also meets the cost-of-entry test by reducing the expense of surmounting the barriers to internal entry. Other bids for acquisitions that do not share opportunities will have lower reservation prices. Even widespread opportunities for sharing activities do not allow a company to suspend the attractiveness test, however. Many diversifiers have made the critical mistake of equating the close fit of a target industry with attractive diversification. Target industries must pass the strict requirement test of having an attractive structure as well as a close fit in opportunities if diversification is to ultimately succeed. Choosing a Corporate Strategy Each concept of corporate strategy allows the diversified company to create shareholder value in a different way. Companies can succeed with any of the concepts if they clearly define the corporation’s role and objectives, have the skills necessary for meeting the concept’s prerequisites, organize themselves to manage diversity in a way that fits the strategy, and find themselves in an appropriate capital market environment. The caveat is that portfolio management is only sensible in limited circumstances. A company’s choice of corporate strategy is partly a legacy of its past. If its business units are in unattractive industries, the company must start from scratch. If the company has few truly proprietary skills or activities it can share in related diversification, then its initial diversification must rely on other concepts. Yet corporate strategy should not be a once-and-for-all choice but a vision that can evolve. A company should choose its long-term preferred concept and then proceed pragmatically toward it from its initial starting point. Both the strategic logic and the experience of the companies I studied over the last decade suggest that a company will create shareholder value through diversification to a greater and greater extent as its strategy moves from portfolio management toward sharing activities. Because they do not rely on superior insight or other questionable assumptions about the company’s capabilities, sharing activities and transferring skills offer the best avenues for value creation. Each concept of corporate strategy is not mutually exclusive of those that come before, a potent advantage of the third and fourth concepts. A company can employ a restructuring strategy at the same time it transfers skills or shares activities. A strategy based on shared activities becomes more powerful if business units can also exchange skills. A company can often pursue the two strategies together and even incorporate some of the principles of restructuring with them. When it chooses industries in which to transfer skills or share activities, the company can also investigate the possibility of transforming the industry structure. When a company bases its strategy on interrelationships, it has a broader basis on which to create shareholder value than if it rests its entire strategy on transforming companies in unfamiliar industries. My study supports the soundness of basing a corporate strategy on the transfer of skills or shared activities. The data on the sample companies’ diversification programs illustrate some important characteristics of successful diversifiers. They have made a disproportionately low percentage of unrelated acquisitions, unrelated being defined as having no clear opportunity to transfer skills or share important activities. Even successful diversifiers such as 3M, IBM, and TRW have terrible records when they have strayed into unrelated acquisitions. Successful acquirers diversify into fields, each of which is related to many others. Procter Gamble and IBM, for example, operate in 18 and 19 interrelated fields, respectively, and so enjoy numerous opportunities to transfer skills and share activities. Companies with the best acquisition records tend to make heavier-than-average use of start-ups and joint ventures. Most companies shy away from modes of entry besides acquisition. My results cast doubt on the conventional wisdom regarding start-ups. While joint ventures are about as risky as acquisitions, start-ups are not. Moreover, successful companies often have very good records with start-up units, as 3M, PG, Johnson Johnson, IBM, and United Technologies illustrate. When a company has the internal strength to start up a unit, it can be safer and less costly to launch a company than to rely solely on an acquisition and then have to deal with the problem of integration. Japanese diversification histories support the soundness of start-up as an entry alternative. My data also illustrate that none of the concepts of corporate strategy works when industry structure is poor or implementation is bad, no matter how related the industries are. Xerox acquired companies in related industries, but the businesses had poor structures and its skills were insufficient to provide enough competitive advantage to offset implementation problems. AN ACTION PROGRAM To translate the principles of corporate strategy into successful diversification, a company must first take an objective look at its existing businesses and the value added by the corporation. Only through such an assessment can an understanding of good corporate strategy grow. That understanding should guide future diversification as well as the development of skills and activities with which to select further new businesses. The following action program provides a concrete approach to conducting such a review. A company can choose a corporate strategy by: 1. Identifying the interrelationships among already existing business units. A company should begin to develop a corporate strategy by identifying all the opportunities it has to share activities or transfer skills in its existing portfolio of business units. The company will not only find ways to enhance the competitive advantage of existing units but also come upon several possible diversification avenues. The lack of meaningful interrelationships in the portfolio is an equally important finding, suggesting the need to justify the value added by the corporation or, alternately, a fundamental restructuring. 2. Selecting the core businesses that will be the foundation of the corporate strategy. Successful diversification starts with an understanding of the core businesses that will serve as the basis for corporate strategy. Core businesses are those that are in an attractive industry, have the potential to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, have important interrelationships with other business units, and provide skills or activities that represent a base from which to diversify. The company must first make certain its core businesses are on sound footing by upgrading management, internationalizing strategy, or improving technology. My study shows that geographic extensions of existing units, whether by acquisition, joint venture, From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy Essay Example From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy Essay From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy By Michael E. Porter Corporate strategy, the overall plan for a diversified company, is both the darling and the stepchild of contemporary management practice—the darling because CEOs have been obsessed with diversification since the early 1960s, the stepchild because almost no consensus exists about what corporate strategy is, much less about how a company should formulate it. A diversified company has two levels of strategy: business unit strategy and corporate strategy. Competitive strategy concerns how to create competitive advantage in each of the businesses in which a company competes. Corporate strategy concerns two different questions: what businesses the corporation should be in and how the corporate office should manage the array of business units. Corporate strategy is what makes the corporate whole add up to more than the sum of its business unit parts. The track record of corporate strategies has been dismal. I studied the diversification records of 33 large, prestigious U. S. companies over the 1950-1986 period and found that most of them had divested many more acquisitions than they had kept. The corporate strategies of most companies have dissipated instead of created shareholder value. The need to rethink corporate strategy could hardly be more urgent. By taking over companies and breaking them up, corporate raiders thrive on failed corporate strategy. Fueled by junk bond financing and growing acceptability, raiders can expose any company to takeover, no matter how large or blue chip. Recognizing past diversification mistakes, some companies have initiated large-scale restructuring programs. Others have done nothing at all. Whatever the response, the strategic questions persist. Those who have restructured must decide what to do next to avoid repeating the past; those ho have done nothing must awake to their vulnerability. To survive, companies must understand what good corporate strategy is. Concepts of Corporate Strategy My study has helped me identify four concepts of corporate strategy that have been put into practice-portfolio management, restructuring, transferring skills, and sharing activities. While the concepts are not always mutually exclusive, each rest s on a different mechanism by which the corporation creates shareholder value and each requires the diversified company to manage and organize itself in a different way. The first two require no connections among business units; the second two depend on them. While all four concepts of strategy have succeeded under the right circumstances, today some make more sense than others. Ignoring any of the concepts is perhaps the quickest road to failure. PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT The concept of corporate strategy most in use is portfolio management, which is based primarily on diversification through acquisition. The corporation acquires sound, attractive companies with competent managers who agree to stay on. We will write a custom essay sample on From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer While acquired units do not have to be in the same industries as existing units, the best portfolio managers generally limit their range of businesses in some way, in part to limit the specific expertise needed by top management. The acquired units are autonomous, and the teams that run them are compensated according to unit results. The corporation supplies capital and works with each to infuse it with professional management techniques. At the same time, top management provides objective and dispassionate review of business unit results. Portfolio managers categorize units by potential and regularly transfer resources from units that generate cash to those with high potential and cash needs. In a portfolio strategy, the corporation seeks to create shareholder value in a number of ways. It uses its expertise and analytical resources to spot attractive acquisition candidates that the individual shareholder could not. The company provides capital on favorable terms that reflect corporate wide fund-raising ability. It introduces professional management skills and discipline. Finally, it provides high-quality review and coaching, unencumbered by conventional wisdom or emotional attachments to the business. The logic of the portfolio management concept rests on a number of vital assumptions. If a company’s diversification plan is to meet the attractiveness and cost-of-entry tests, it must find good but undervalued companies. Acquired companies must be truly undervalued because the parent does little for the new unit once it is acquired. To meet the better-off test, the benefits the corporation provides must yield a significant competitive advantage to acquired units. The style of operating through highly autonomous business units must both develop sound business strategies and motivate managers. In most countries, the days when portfolio management was a valid concept of corporate strategy are past. In the face of increasingly well-developed capital markets, attractive companies with good managements show up on everyone’s computer screen and attract top dollar in terms of acquisition premium. Simply contributing capital isn’t contributing much. A sound strategy can easily be funded; small to medium-size companies don’t need a munificent parent. Other benefits have also eroded. Large companies no longer corner the market for professional management skills; in fact, more and more observers believe managers cannot necessarily run anything in the absence of industry-specific knowledge and experience. Another supposed advantage of the portfolio management concept—dispassionate review—rests on similarly shaky ground since the added value of review alone is questionable in a portfolio of sound companies. The benefit of giving business units complete autonomy is also questionable. Increasingly, a company’s business units are interrelated, drawn together by ew technology, broadening distribution channels, and changing regulations. Setting strategies of units independently may well undermine unit performance. The companies in my sample that have succeeded in diversification have recognized the value of interrelationships and understood that a strong sense of corporate identity is as important as slavish adherence to parochial business unit financial results. But it is the sheer complexity of the management task that has ultimately defeated even the best portfolio managers. As the size of the company grows, portfolio managers need to find more and more deals just to maintain growth. Supervising dozens or even hundreds of disparate units and under chain-letter pressures to add more, management begins to make mistakes. At the same time, the inevitable costs of being part of a diversified company take their toll and unit performance slides while the whole company’s ROI turns downward. Eventually, a new management team is in-stalled that initiates wholesale divestments and pares down the company to its core businesses. The experiences of Gulf Western, Consolidated Foods (now Sara Lee), and ITT are just a few comparatively recent examples. Reflecting these realities, the U. S. apital markets today reward companies that follow the portfolio management model with a â€Å"conglomerate discount†; they value the whole less than the sum of the parts. In developing countries, where large companies are few, capital markets are undeveloped, and professional management is scarce, portfolio management still works. But it is no longer a valid model for corporate s trategy m advanced economies. Nevertheless, the technique is in the limelight today in the United Kingdom, where it is supported so far by a newly energized stock market eager for excitement. But this enthusiasm will wane, as well it should. Portfolio management is no way to conduct corporate strategy. RESTRUCTURING Unlike its passive role as a portfolio manager, when it serves as banker and reviewer, a company that bases its strategy on restructuring becomes an active restructurer of business units. The new businesses are not necessarily related to existing units. All that is necessary is unrealized potential. The restructuring strategy seeks out undeveloped, sick, or threatened organizations or industries on the threshold of significant change. The parent intervenes, frequently changing the unit management team, shifting strategy, or infusing the company with new technology. Then it may make follow-up acquisitions to build . a critical mass and sell off unneeded or unconnected parts and thereby reduce the effective acquisition cost. The result is a strengthened company or a transformed industry. As a coda, the parent sells off the stronger unit once results are clear because the parent is no longer adding value and top management decides that its attention should be directed elsewhere. When well implemented, the restructuring concept is sound, for it passes the three tests of successful diversification. The restructurer meets the cost-of-entry test through the types of company it acquires. It limits acquisition premiums by buying companies with problems and lackluster images or by buying into industries with as yet unforeseen potential. Intervention by the corporation clearly meets the better-off test. Provided that the target industries are structurally attractive, the restructuring model can create enormous shareholder value. Some restructuring companies are Loew’s, BTR, and General Cinema. Ironically, many of today’s restructurers are profiting from yesterday’s portfolio management strategies. To work, the restructuring strategy requires a corporate management team with the insight to spot undervalued companies or positions in industries ripe for transformation. The same insight is necessary to actually turn the units around even though they are in new and unfamiliar businesses. These requirements expose the restructurer to considerable risk and usually limit the time in which the company can succeed at the strategy. The most skillful proponents understand this problem, recognize their mistakes, and move decisively to dispose of them. The best companies realize they are not just acquiring companies but restructuring an industry. Unless they can integrate the acquisitions to create a whole new strategic position, they are just portfolio managers in disguise. Another important difficulty surfaces if so many other companies join the action that they deplete the pool of suitable candidates and bid their prices up. Perhaps the greatest pitfall, however, is that companies find it very hard to dispose of business units once they are restructured and performing well. Human nature fights economic rationale. Size supplants shareholder value as the corporate goal. The company does not sell a unit even though the company no longer adds value to the unit. While the transformed units would be better off in another company that had related businesses, the restructuring company instead retains them. Gradually, it becomes a portfolio manager. The parent company’s ROI declines as the need for reinvestment in the units and normal business risks eventually offset restructuring’s one-shot gain. The perceived need to keep growing intensifies the pace of acquisition; errors result and standards fall. The restructuring company turns into a conglomerate with returns that only equal the average of all industries at best. TRANSFERRING SKILLS The purpose of the first two concepts of corporate strategy is to create value through a company’s relationship with each autonomous unit. The corporation’s role is to be a selector, a banker, and an intervenor. The last two concepts exploit the interrelationships between businesses. In articulating them, however, one comes face-to-face with the often ill-defined concept of synergy. If you believe the text of the countless corporate annual reports, just about anything is related to just about anything else! But imagined synergy is much more common than real synergy. GM’s purchase of Hughes Aircraft simply because cars were going electronic and Hughes was an electronics concern demonstrates the folly of paper synergy. Such corporate relatedness is an ex post facto rationalization of a diversification undertaken for other reasons. Even synergy that is clearly defined often fails to materialize. Instead of cooperating, business units often compete. A company that can define the synergies it is pursuing still faces significant organizational impediments in achieving them. But the need to capture the benefits of relationships between businesses has never been more important. Technological and competitive developments already link many businesses and are creating new possibilities for competitive advantage. In such sectors as financial services, computing, office equipment, entertainment, and health care, interrelationships among previously distinct businesses are perhaps the central concern of strategy. To understand the role of relatedness in corporate strategy, we must give new meaning to this often ill-defined idea. I have identified a good way to start—the value chain. 5 Every business unit is a collection of discrete activities ranging from sales to accounting that allow it to compete. I call them value activities. It is at this level, not in the company as a whole, that the unit achieves competitive advantage. I group these activities in nine categories. Primary activities create the product or service, deliver and market it, and provide after-sale support. The categories of primary activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. Support activities provide the input and infrastructure that allow the primary activities to take place. The categories are company infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and procurement. The value chain defines the two types of interrelationships that may create synergy. The first is a company’s ability to transfer skills or expertise among similar value chains. The second is the ability to share activities. Two business units, for example, can share the same sales force or logistics network The value chain helps expose the last two (and most important) concepts of corporate strategy. The transfer of skills among business units in the diversified company is the basis for one concept. While each business unit has a separate value chain, knowledge about how to perform activities is transferred among the units. For example, a toiletries business unit, expert in the marketing of convenience products, transmits ideas on new positioning concepts, promotional techniques, and packaging possibilities to a newly acquired unit that sells cough syrup. Newly entered industries can benefit from the expertise of existing units and vice versa. These opportunities arise when business units have similar buyers or channels, similar value activities like government relations or procurement, similarities in the broad configuration of the value chain (for example, managing a multisite service organization), or the same strategic concept (for example, low cost). Even though the units operate separately, such similarities allow the sharing of knowledge. Of course, some similarities are common; one can imagine them at some level between almost any pair of businesses. Countless companies have fallen into the trap of diversifying too readily because of similarities; mere similarity is not enough. Transferring skills leads to competitive advantage only if the similarities among businesses meet three conditions: 1. The activities involved in the businesses are similar enough that sharing expertise is meaningful. Broad similarities (marketing intensiveness, for example, or a common core process technology such as bending metal) are not a sufficient basis for diversification. The resulting ability to transfer skills is likely to have little impact on competitive advantage. 2. The transfer of skills involves activities important to competitive advantage. Transferring skills in peripheral activities such as government relations or real estate in consumer goods units may be beneficial but is not a basis for diversification. 3. The skills transferred represent a significant source of competitive advantage for the receiving unit. The expertise or skills to be transferred are both advanced and proprietary enough to be beyond the capabilities of competitors. The transfer of skills is an active process that significantly changes the strategy or operations of the receiving unit. The prospect for change must be specific and identifiable. Almost guaranteeing that no shareholder value will be created, too many companies are satisfied with vague prospects or faint hopes that skills will transfer. The transfer of skills does not happen by accident or by osmosis. The company will have to reassign critical personnel, even on a permanent basis, and the participation and support of high-level management in skills transfer is essential. Many companies have been defeated at skills transfer because they have not provided their business units with any incentives to participate. Transferring skills meets the tests of diversification if the company truly mobilizes proprietary expertise across units. This makes certain the company can offset the acquisition premium or lower the cost of overcoming entry barriers. The industries the company chooses for diversification must pass the attractiveness test. Even a close fit that reflects opportunities to transfer skills may not overcome poor industry structure. Opportunities to transfer skills, however, may help the company transform the structures of newly entered industries and send them in favorable directions. The transfer of skills can be one-time or ongoing. If the company exhausts opportunities to infuse new expertise into a unit after the initial post-acquisition period, the unit should ultimately be sold. The corporation is no longer creating shareholder value. Few companies have grasped this point, however, and many gradually suffer mediocre returns. Yet a company diversified into well-chosen businesses can transfer skills eventually in many directions. If corporate management conceives of its role in this way and creates appropriate organizational mechanisms to facilitate cross-unit interchange, the opportunities to share expertise will be meaningful. By using both acquisitions and internal development, companies can build a transfer-of-skills strategy. The presence of a strong base of skills ometimes creates the possibility for internal entry instead of the acquisition of a going concern. Successful diversifiers that employ the concept of skills transfer may, however, often acquire a company in the target industry as a beachhead and then build on it with their internal expertise. By doing so, they can reduce some of the risks of internal entry and speed up the process. Two companie s that have diversified using the transfer-of-skills concept are 3M and Pepsico. SHARING ACTIVITIES The fourth concept of corporate strategy is based on sharing activities in the value chains among business units. Procter Gamble, for example, employs a common physical distribution system and sales force in both paper towels and disposable diapers. McKesson, a leading distribution company, will handle such diverse lines as pharmaceuticals and liquor through superwarehouses. The ability to share activities is a potent basis for corporate strategy because sharing often enhances competitive advantage by lowering cost or raising differentiation. But not all sharing leads to competitive advantage, and companies can encounter deep organizational resistance to even beneficial sharing possibilities. These hard truths have led many companies to reject synergy prematurely and retreat to the false simplicity of portfolio management. A cost-benefit analysis of prospective sharing opportunities can determine whether synergy is possible. Sharing can lower costs if it achieves economies of scale, boosts the efficiency of utilization, or helps a company move more rapidly down the learning curve. The costs of General Electric’s advertising, sales, and after-sales service activities in major appliances are low because they are spread over a wide range of appliance products. Sharing can also enhance the potential for differentiation. A shared order-processing system, for instance, may allow new features and services that a buyer will value. Sharing can also reduce the cost of differentiation. A shared service network, for example, may make more advanced, remote servicing technology economically feasible. Often, sharing will allow an activity to be wholly reconfigured in ways that can dramatically raise competitive advantage. Sharing must involve activities that are significant to competitive advantage, not just any activity. PG’s distribution system is such an instance in the diaper and paper towel business, where products are bulky and costly to ship. Conversely, diversification based on the opportunities to share only corporate overhead is rarely, if ever, appropriate. Sharing activities inevitably involves costs that the benefits must outweigh. One cost is the greater coordination required to manage a shared activity. More important is the need to compromise the design or performance of an activity so that it can be shared. A salesperson handling the products of two business units, for example, must operate in a way that is usually not what either unit would choose were it independent. And if compromise greatly erodes the unit’s effectiveness, then sharing may reduce rather than enhance competitive advantage. Many companies have only superficially identified their potential for sharing. Companies also merge activities without consideration of whether they are sensitive to economies of scale. When they are not, the coordination costs kill the benefits. Companies compound such errors by not identifying costs of sharing in advance, when steps can be taken to minimize them. Costs of compromise can frequently be mitigated by redesigning the activity for sharing. The shared salesperson, for example, can be provided with a remote computer terminal to boost productivity and provide more customer information. Jamming business units together without such thinking exacerbates the costs of sharing. Despite such pitfalls, opportunities to gain advantage from sharing activities have proliferated because of momentous developments in technology, deregulation, and competition. The infusion of electronics and information systems into many industries creates new opportunities to link businesses. The corporate strategy of sharing can involve both acquisition and internal development. Internal development is often possible because the corporation can bring to bear clear resources in launching a new unit. Start-ups are less difficult to integrate than acquisitions. Companies using the shared-activities concept can also make acquisitions as beachhead landings into a new industry and then integrate the units through sharing with other units. Prime examples of companies that have diversified via using shared activities include PG, Du Pont, and IBM. The fields into which each has diversified are a cluster of tightly related units. Marriott illustrates both successes and failures in sharing activities over time. Following the shared-activities model requires an organizational context in which business unit collaboration is encouraged and reinforced. Highly autonomous business units are inimical to such collaboration. The company must put into place a variety of what I call horizontal mechanisms—a strong sense of corporate identity, a clear corporate mission statement that emphasizes the importance of integrating business unit strategies, an incentive system that rewards more than just business unit results, cross-business-unit task forces, and other methods of integrating. A corporate strategy based on shared activities clearly meets the better-off test because business units gain ongoing tangible advantages from others within the corporation. It also meets the cost-of-entry test by reducing the expense of surmounting the barriers to internal entry. Other bids for acquisitions that do not share opportunities will have lower reservation prices. Even widespread opportunities for sharing activities do not allow a company to suspend the attractiveness test, however. Many diversifiers have made the critical mistake of equating the close fit of a target industry with attractive diversification. Target industries must pass the strict requirement test of having an attractive structure as well as a close fit in opportunities if diversification is to ultimately succeed. Choosing a Corporate Strategy Each concept of corporate strategy allows the diversified company to create shareholder value in a different way. Companies can succeed with any of the concepts if they clearly define the corporation’s role and objectives, have the skills necessary for meeting the concept’s prerequisites, organize themselves to manage diversity in a way that fits the strategy, and find themselves in an appropriate capital market environment. The caveat is that portfolio management is only sensible in limited circumstances. A company’s choice of corporate strategy is partly a legacy of its past. If its business units are in unattractive industries, the company must start from scratch. If the company has few truly proprietary skills or activities it can share in related diversification, then its initial diversification must rely on other concepts. Yet corporate strategy should not be a once-and-for-all choice but a vision that can evolve. A company should choose its long-term preferred concept and then proceed pragmatically toward it from its initial starting point. Both the strategic logic and the experience of the companies I studied over the last decade suggest that a company will create shareholder value through diversification to a greater and greater extent as its strategy moves from portfolio management toward sharing activities. Because they do not rely on superior insight or other questionable assumptions about the company’s capabilities, sharing activities and transferring skills offer the best avenues for value creation. Each concept of corporate strategy is not mutually exclusive of those that come before, a potent advantage of the third and fourth concepts. A company can employ a restructuring strategy at the same time it transfers skills or shares activities. A strategy based on shared activities becomes more powerful if business units can also exchange skills. A company can often pursue the two strategies together and even incorporate some of the principles of restructuring with them. When it chooses industries in which to transfer skills or share activities, the company can also investigate the possibility of transforming the industry structure. When a company bases its strategy on interrelationships, it has a broader basis on which to create shareholder value than if it rests its entire strategy on transforming companies in unfamiliar industries. My study supports the soundness of basing a corporate strategy on the transfer of skills or shared activities. The data on the sample companies’ diversification programs illustrate some important characteristics of successful diversifiers. They have made a disproportionately low percentage of unrelated acquisitions, unrelated being defined as having no clear opportunity to transfer skills or share important activities. Even successful diversifiers such as 3M, IBM, and TRW have terrible records when they have strayed into unrelated acquisitions. Successful acquirers diversify into fields, each of which is related to many others. Procter Gamble and IBM, for example, operate in 18 and 19 interrelated fields, respectively, and so enjoy numerous opportunities to transfer skills and share activities. Companies with the best acquisition records tend to make heavier-than-average use of start-ups and joint ventures. Most companies shy away from modes of entry besides acquisition. My results cast doubt on the conventional wisdom regarding start-ups. While joint ventures are about as risky as acquisitions, start-ups are not. Moreover, successful companies often have very good records with start-up units, as 3M, PG, Johnson Johnson, IBM, and United Technologies illustrate. When a company has the internal strength to start up a unit, it can be safer and less costly to launch a company than to rely solely on an acquisition and then have to deal with the problem of integration. Japanese diversification histories support the soundness of start-up as an entry alternative. My data also illustrate that none of the concepts of corporate strategy works when industry structure is poor or implementation is bad, no matter how related the industries are. Xerox acquired companies in related industries, but the businesses had poor structures and its skills were insufficient to provide enough competitive advantage to offset implementation problems. AN ACTION PROGRAM To translate the principles of corporate strategy into successful diversification, a company must first take an objective look at its existing businesses and the value added by the corporation. Only through such an assessment can an understanding of good corporate strategy grow. That understanding should guide future diversification as well as the development of skills and activities with which to select further new businesses. The following action program provides a concrete approach to conducting such a review. A company can choose a corporate strategy by: 1. Identifying the interrelationships among already existing business units. A company should begin to develop a corporate strategy by identifying all the opportunities it has to share activities or transfer skills in its existing portfolio of business units. The company will not only find ways to enhance the competitive advantage of existing units but also come upon several possible diversification avenues. The lack of meaningful interrelationships in the portfolio is an equally important finding, suggesting the need to justify the value added by the corporation or, alternately, a fundamental restructuring. 2. Selecting the core businesses that will be the foundation of the corporate strategy. Successful diversification starts with an understanding of the core businesses that will serve as the basis for corporate strategy. Core businesses are those that are in an attractive industry, have the potential to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, have important interrelationships with other business units, and provide skills or activities that represent a base from which to diversify. The company must first make certain its core businesses are on sound footing by upgrading management, internationalizing strategy, or improving technology. My study shows that geographic extensions of existing units, whether by acquisition, joint venture,

The Last Night Analysis Essay Example

The Last Night Analysis Essay Example The Last Night Analysis Essay The Last Night Analysis Essay The Last Night At the beginning of the passage it is instantaneously established that the circumstances in which the two brothers, Andre and Jacob, are currently residing in are appalling. These would be the same conditions that most of the Jewish people would have been residing in prior to being taken to concentration camps. We are aware that the conditions are poor as Faulks tells us that ‘Andre was lying on the floor’ which implies that he has nowhere else to sleep, it also shows how exhausted he must have been as young boys would not normally be resting. We are also informed at the start of the passage that the boys are French-Jewish, by their names. As Andre lies on the floor a Jewish orderly comes round with postcards on which the deportees can write their final message. This shows us that a percentage of the Jewish people were collaborating with the Nazis, although the Jewish orderly would have been lower than the Germans they still had a sense of responsibility. This could have looked like a betrayal from the view of the rest of the Jewish people. Furthermore, even though the Jewish orderly has joined forces with the Nazis he is still sneaking postcards for the Jewish people to write their final messages on. This portrays a sense of loyalty from the Jewish orderly. Here Faulks calls the Jewish people ‘deportees’ which reminds us, after a pleasant picture of the Jewish orderly’s loyalty, that they are being deported by force. Following on from this we are told that they are to write their final messages on the postcards which again enables us to reminisce on the circumstances. Faulks does this by using the word ‘final’. This emphasises that this potentially could be the last thing that the Jewish people ever write which truly illustrates to us the reality of the situation. The ‘final message’ could also allude to Hitler’s final solution which would portray how the Jewish people were regarded and consequently the terrifying experience that they had to go through. However, the Jewish orderly does not take the postcards to send but instructs the Jewish people to ‘throw them from the train as camp orders forbade access to the post’. This not only shows us the collaboration from the Jewish orderly, as he would not help them any further. The Jewish people were told to throw their postcards from the train, this implies that they would throw the postcards from the train with the hope that a French person would find it and send it on. This reminds us that, although the French person may have sent the postcard on, there was still a great amount more of French people in France at that time rather than Germans. This shows us that the French people have subconsciously, or some consciously, collaborated with the Germans. Faulks then uses the same technique that he used earlier in the passage by creating a pleasant image for the reader followed by a glimpse of reality. He does this here by constructing a pleasing image of the Jewish people’s final messages being found and sent on to then remind the reader that they are in fact on their way to a death camp. As the Jewish people write their final messages we are informed that there are two or three pencils being passed around, pencils that had survived the barracks search. Yet again this gives us an idea about the type of environment that the brothers are in as Parisian buses can hold around four hundred people yet there are only two to three pencils. The fact that they are not even allowed to have pencils portrays how the Jewish people were treated. During this Faulks includes that the Jewish people had been through the barracks search which once more reminds us of their inevitable futures. How the Jewish people react while writing their postcards are really conveys their experience as ‘some wrote with sobbing passion, some with punctilious care’. The reader is immediately drawn to this as Faulks has used plosives within the sentence. This phrase shows us how people react differently in situations that they cannot control: one phrase is emotional and effective, the other clipped and precise. Furthermore they would have believed that this letter is how they would have been remembered and as we are later told they viewed that their safety almost depended on their letter. In addition the people writing with ‘punctilious care’ could refer to the novel for the reason that as Faulks writes he does so vigilantly because he has not experienced what he is writing about, therefore he needs to choose his language carefully, given the subject is a serious matter. A woman comes round giving sandwiches and water to the children. We are told that the children ‘clustered’ around the pail of water as they passed sardine cans from one to another. I think that you feel as though the woman is a caring person who would have made the children feel as comfortable as possible throughout; this conveys a pleasant image to the reader. Faulks uses the word pail instead of bucket which could allude to the loss of colour and furthermore loss of hope of the Jewish people. The children ‘clustered’ round the pail of water, while using sardine cans to drink from, once again presenting us with how the Jewish people were treated by the Germans. The sardine cans are passed from one to another which gives us the sense that they are suffering together and how the worst side of humanity can often bring out the best side of humanity. While the younger children are drinking the water an older boy embraced the woman ‘in his gratitude’ which shows us that he is so grateful that he feels as if physical contact was needed to get across his appreciation, which is very rare for a teenage boy. This shows us how this experience would have had a vast effect on peoples’ behaviour. Once again Faulks uses the same technique to remind the reader of reality, by leading on from the older boy showing his appreciation to telling us that the bucket was soon empty. The author now uses the word bucket instead of pail which could refer to the idea of a bucket list and the realisation that only a small percentage of the Jewish people would have made it out of the death camps alive. The phrase ‘the bucket was soon empty’ also seems to carry a resonance beyond its basic meaning. After the woman left we are told that the brothers fall asleep with ‘only the small hours of the night to go through’. This refers to how slowly the hours go when you are attempting to sleep; their lack of sleep also portrays the worry of the Jewish people. Faulks tells us that Andre was sleeping on the straw, ‘the soft bloom of his cheek laid, uncaring, in the dung. ’ The fact that Andre was sleeping in dung and on straw implies that the Jewish people were treated like animals as Faulks makes the comparison. Furthermore Faulks grants us with a pleasant image of the ‘soft bloom’ of Andre’s cheek which gives us a pleasing illustration within the unpleasant illustration of the dung in which Andre is lying. Additionally Andre’s limbs are intertwined with Jacob’s which also presents us with a pleasing image. These I believe show us that there is some hope, in terms of human contact, within a horrible circumstance. As the children slept, ‘the adults in the room sat slumped against the walls, wakeful and talking in lowered voices. Faulks describes how the adults sat as being ‘slumped against the walls’, I feel that this gives a sense of depression and also resignation which portrays the atmosphere within the room. The adults are talking with ‘lowered voices’ which demonstrates their thoughtfulness towards the children who have managed to sleep, the fact that the children are able to sleep reminds us of their innocence and therefo re the terrible circumstances that only a small percentage of the children will become adults. Such thoughts are inevitable, given the date of the novel (1999); Faulks only need to hint at such things. As the morning arrives water is passed around for anyone who is thirsty. We are told that anyone who did drink drank in ‘silence’ which I believe gives us a sense of the unknown as everyone is waiting and pondering as to what will happen next. As they drank there was ‘the noise of an engine – a familiar sound to many of them, the homely thudding of a Parisian bus. ’ Most of the Jewish people in the room would have taken these buses in their day to day lives, to go to the shops or to go to school; this shows us how something so familiar to them can change so rapidly to become something so unfamiliar. It is a ‘homely thudding’ they hear which is extremely ironic that they are being transported to be killed using Parisian buses; it once again gives us a sense of the collaboration between the French and the Germans. Before the Jewish people progress onto the buses there is a register taken. As the registration took place ‘five white-and-green municipal buses’ sat in the corner of the yard, ‘trembling’. The white-and-green municipal buses are not just normal French buses but the buses of the capital, you almost get the sense that the buses trembled as they were afraid of where they were going. The trembling could also represent the fear of the Jewish people. The word ‘municipal’ almost implies the buses are part of the collaboration in what was known as Vichy France. As a policeman called out names in alphabetical order the ‘commandant of the camp’ sat at a long table, not only does this again show us the collaboration between the French and Germans as it is a French ‘gendarme’ calling out the names but it also gives us an idea of what the Germans were like. It is almost as if because the Germans are calling their names in alphabetical order it makes the situation more respectable. It is bizarre how the Germans made mass murder organised. As the registrations takes place Andre’s name is called and he moves towards the bus with Jacob, this shows us the bond between the brothers and their instinct to stick together as Jacob’s name was not called. When Andre’s name is called it almost tells us that it was his destiny to be there, as if the register was a register of death that he could not have escaped from. While the brothers walked towards the bus we are told a woman was wailing from the other side of the courtyard and ‘from windows open on the dawn, a shower of food was thrown towards them. ’ Firstly Faulks portrays the awful side to human nature as it is ironic that it is now dawn which should mark a new day and new hope yet the Jewish people remain hopeless however Faulks then shows us the best side of human nature as a woman throws her own food to put the children’s needs before her own. As the woman calls the brothers name it shows us the loss of their identity as they would have no longer been called by their names but by numbers. Briefly after this Andre looked up and by ‘chance’ he saw a woman staring at a child, at first he believed that the woman was staring at the child with hatred however he soon realised she was attempting to fix a picture of the child so that she may have remembered forever. This shows us that, as Andre saw it by chance, there was luck within the awful circumstances however it also shows us how dreadful the circumstances were as a woman knows she would never see the child again and was trying to fix an image so that she could remember ‘forever’. As Andre ‘mounted the bus’ we are told that ‘he held on hard’ to Jacob, I believe that it is ironic that the Jewish people were mounting the bus which is a positive motion, yet they were being transported to their deaths. Furthermore Faulks uses alliteration as ‘he held on hard’, this phrase underlines the desperation of the brothers as you get the sense that they believe if they hold on tightly to one another it will protect them. Some children could not manage to get onto the buses as they were too small which highlights how young some of the Jewish people were and once again reminds us of the harsh reality that only a small percentage of these children would have become adults. Andre’s bus was momentarily delayed as a baby of a few months was being lifted into the back of the bus, this once again shows us how awful the situation was as the baby was so young yet the Germans would have not hesitated to kill it. The baby’s wooden crib was hung over the passenger rail; this is contradictory as the Jewish people are no longer passengers but prisoners. As the bus leaves the headlights lit up a ‘cafe opposite before the driver turned the wheel and headed for the station. ’ This shows us that all of this was done before the day began which shows us once again how organised the Germans were. Furthermore the headlights lit up a cafe which again shows great irony as cafes are a symbol of Paris, the city of love and hope, yet the Jewish people are hopeless. The driver turning the wheel could allude to the wheel of fortune as the wheel is headed for the cafe, an image of hope and joy, yet is turned the other way which will eventually lead to their deaths. I think that this passage was edited well, for the anthology, so that it leaves people wondering what happens next and also ends on the contradicting images of the Parisian cafe and the final destination.

Biceps Tendon Rupture With Post-operative Complications

Biceps Tendon Rupture With Post-operative Complications Locomotor PBL Experiment Writeup Introduction In this PBL, we observe a case of biceps tendon rupture with post-operative complication of heterotopic ossification. We will first go through the anatomy of the upper limb followed by a discussion of the ruptured biceps tendon, heterotopic ossification and finally mode of action of indomethacin. Learning Objectives 1. Osteology of the upper limb with emphasis on the elbow and wrist 2. The neurovascular supply to the upper limb 3. Movements possible at joints of upper limb and the range of movements possible with regards to the elbow and wrist and the muscles that bring about these actions. 4. Rupture of distal biceps tendon 5. Heterotopic ossification 6. Mode of action of Indomethacin 1. Osteology of the upper limb with emphasis on the elbow and wrist Arm The humerus is the largest and longest bone of the arm region connecting the shoulder to the forearm. Proximally, the head of the humerus articulates with the glenoid cavity of the sca pula forming the glenohumeral joint. Distally the humerus articulates with the two bones of the forearm, the ulna and radius. The humerus is shown in more detail in figure 1 below. Figure 1 Humerus (1) For Anil’s case we will focus several prominent features on the distal region of the humerus which forms part of the elbow. There are two projections on either side of the distal end of the humerus which are the medial and lateral epicondyle. The medial epicondyle protects the ulnar nerve which passes just posteriorly and also serves as the attachment site for the forearm superficial flexor muscles. The lateral epicondyle conversely is the attachment site for the forearm extensor muscles. Anteriorly in between these two epicondyles are two articular surfaces: the round surfaced lateral capitulum which articulates with the radius and the spool shaped medial trochlea which articulates with the ulna. Also anteriorly, the radial fossa directly above the capitulum accommodates the h ead of the radius during flexion of the elbow whereas the coronoid fossa directly above the trochlea accommodates the coronoid process of the ulna during flexion of the elbow. Both the radial and coronoid fossa limit flexion of the elbow. Posteriorly, the olecranon fossa accommodates the olecranon process of the ulna during extension of the elbow. The olecranon fossa prevents hyperextension of the elbow. Forearm The forearm is made up of two bones: ulna and radius. Proximally both of these bones articulate with the humerus whereas distally only the radius directly articulates with the carpals of the wrist thus connecting the arm to the wrist. The ulna and radius are shown in figure 2 below. Figure 2 Radius and Ulna (1) The ulna The ulna is the stabilizing bone of the forearm and is medial and longer of the two bones. There is a projection anteriorly at the proximal end called the coronoid process which fits into the coronoid fossa during elbow extension. Posteriorly on the proximal end of the ulna is the olecranon process (which forms the prominence of the elbow) which fits into the olecranon fossa during elbow extension. The articular surface between the olecranon and the coronoid articulates with the trochlear of the humerus and gives the movements of elbow extension and flexion.

Development and Advancement of Science Research Paper

Development and Advancement of Science - Research Paper Example Cloning is a form of asexual reproduction which involves creating genetically identical genes or cells, plants or animals. The procedure of cloning is done by taking a gene from the animal or human and then putting that gene in another animal or human organisms. Scientists found out that cloning can also make identical twins by using a method called embryo splitting. In July 1996, a team of Scottish scientists had the first cloning success. Dolly was the first ever cloned sheep. Therapeutic cloning is practised to clone things such as organs and tissues for patients in need of them. Reproductive cloning is practised for the purpose of actually producing a human that is genetically identical to somebody else. Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing, or previously existing human, by growing cloned tissues from that individual. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace . Human cloning is amongst the most controversial forms of practice. One of the most ethically questionable problems with human cloning is the farming of organs from clones. 1) Cloning has not been perfect yet. The cloning of sheep Dolly had 276 failures before successfully cloning a sheep. With these kinds of figures, we should not even go near trying to demonstrate cloning on humans. 2) Aldous Huxley in his book the â€Å"Brave New World† illustrates the future with people having a total loss of individuality, creativity, and freedom. This is because if humans are cloned then there would be a lot of the same people in the future.  Ã‚  

Case study of a company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Case study of a company - Essay Example The aim of this project is to examine Nike's branding strategy in order to identify the structure, challenges and recommendations for potential improvement. In order to attain this end, the following objectives will be explored: 1. A critical analysis of the strategy for success used by Nike over the past two decades. 2. An examination of the current challenges of the company. 3. Recommendations for the improvement of Nike's existing branding strategy 4. An identification of the branding model used by Nike which can be applicable to other companies. The report will involve a critique of the branding systems and strategies that Nike has used to attain results in its operations. It will analyse the dominant patterns and trends that are used by the company and the main approach which has resulted in the successes of Nike as a major global sports brand. The report will entail a review of the methods and approaches used by the company. The fundamental approach will be through a review of relevant literature. The review will cover the various internal dealings of the Nike and how it has paid off in the area of branding. 2.0 Literature Review This section will examine the important elements and components of the research and study. The section will critically evaluate different groundbreaking definitions and ideas that form the basic framework of the study. They will serve to define the core aspects and of the study and provide an understanding that will create the foundation for the fieldwork and actual research that will be conducted in this study. 2.1 Brand The question of what a â€Å"brand† is plays a significant role in this whole study. This is because the research provides a discussion brand-related matters in Nike, hence it is important to understand the concept of brand and its role in organisations' operations and activities. Kotler defines a brand as â€Å"a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of this intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors† (Knoweles et al, 2010, p91). This implies that a brand is a unique identity or a unique representation that defines a given company's product or offering. This makes the company's offering different from what other companies in the industry are presenting to companies in the industry. To this end, Nike's offering is the popular symbol which makes it different from other competitors like Adidas and Puma who have very different symbols. The idea is to get a unique representation that is protected by law which sets each of the sports manufacturers apart from the other manufacturers. A brand creates and identification for the products in a given entity and builds an emotional connection that acts as basis on which communication with consumers can proceed (Schultz, 2009). This implies that the brand creates a basic and simple representation that other consumers can easily build some kind of connection to. The fundamental position of branding is to provide a means through which easy communication can be conducted. In other words, a brand creates an all-encompassing image which the consumers can identify with through minimal efforts. Once a brand is created, various concepts and ideas of the product offerings are woven into the brand and advertising and other marketing communication ventures are

Marriage in Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice Essay Example for Free

Marriage in Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice Essay The intricate nexus of marriage, money and love in Jane Austens society is unfolded through the development of plots and characters of her novel Pride and Prejudice. In the nineteenth centurys rural England, marriage was a womans chief aim, both financially and socially. Financially because of womens dependent position marriage was the only honourable position, infinitely preferable to the dependence of precarious shabby-genteel spinsterhood. Money was, therefore, a very significant aspect of Austens society, especially when marriage was concerned. A single man of large fortune was naturally considered as a nice thing for the unmarried girls. Partners were chosen for what might now seem unemotional reasons: fortune and connections, similar to, but preferably better than ones own. By representing a series of marriages, Austen in this novel unearths and elucidates different aspects of the role of marriage, money and love in her society. Austen was a realist and painted her time as they were. In this novel, love and money-based Darcy-Elizabeth marriage is the most successful one whereas the marriage of Elizabeths parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, is one of the faulty ones. Mr. Bennet married his wife being captivated and tempted by her youth, beauty and physical appearance. He forgot that the first appeal of a pretty face does not last long unless serenity of mind and sweetness of temper provide more enduring powers of attraction. Moreover, Mrs. Bennet inherited no property. So, form every point of view, this marriage is a failure. Mr. Bennet, therefore, always has to endure her weak understanding, vulgarity to such and extreme degree that he has nothing to revel in except confining himself to his library all the day, and thus eluding the necessary rituals of family and society. Charlottes loveless matrimony for financial security with the pompous Collins is another interesting marriage. Being twenty-seven and plain looking and realizing that it is her last chance, she accepts the grotesque Mr. Collins, to whom the role of romance and love in life is beyond the reach. He only wants a wife, because in the eyes of the society it is time for him to settle and be married. Charlotte knows that apart from some kind of security and happiness, marriage gives a woman a position. She has few hopes of happiness in marriage beyond the material comfort it can give and so she marries Collins who is inferior in intelligence, only for the home and position he offers, as she believes Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. The marriage and money theme operates in a baffling way when Elizabeth herself comes to marry. When she sees Pemberly, her prejudice against Darcy begins to be subdued and later by accepting him she makes the most glorious match of and of Austens heroines. The fact that Darcy has then thousand pounds a year is not to be ignored; it emphasizes the perfect adjustment between personal and social ambition achieved by Elizabeth. [Actually Jane Austen understood better than any other of her contemporary English novelists the degree to which social and personal behaviors and even emotion depend on the economic framework of the society.] Moreover, in her marriage with Darcy, affection and understanding, financial security and social engagement are juxtaposed. But to achieve all these material things she has never turned herself into a husband-hunting butterfly despite her mothers inducement. Although she is aware of the fact that in her society a senile spinster, without any fortune, is faced with the prospect of a bleak future full of deprivation and humiliation, still she is the bold heroine who at first showed courage to refuse two marriage proposals. To Austen, sexuality was far less vital to relationships than its counterpart, affection. Therefore, Lydias ex-based marriage with the seductive but penniless Wickham later turns out to be an unsuccessful ones. Wickhams plausible appearance even overwhelmed Elizabeth once. His former interest in Miss King and her â‚ ¤ 10,000 dowry alludes to the role of money in marriage. He only takes Lydia to London only for physical enjoyment. As a consequence, their marriage ends in his going to enjoy himself in London and Lydias patent failure in managing her household financially despite Darcy and Elizabeths continuous help. The Bingley-Jane marriage is another example of good marriage, like the Darcy- Elizabeth marriage, where mutual understanding, romance and financial  stability are combined. Their affection-based marriage works as both are perfectly amiable, modest and gentle. The established marriage of the Gardiners is too shadowy to have a dramatic role. We are only dimly aware of it as a satisfactory relationship between two apparently similar type of persons. In Pride and Prejudice we experience different marriages in the light of one another. Austen presents all the material for an al-round understanding and view: Jane and Elizabeth, combing love and marriage, Charlotte marries for safety, Lydia repenting at leisure. The married couples are equally varied, from well-matched like the Gardiners to ill-suited like the Bennets. The novel says in effect that the real object of love and marriage is not only financial security or physical passion or romance, but also the self-development that true relationships bring about. A marriage can only become an institution when it provides for the fulfillment of both men and womens aspirations, sanctified by love and validated by prudence that both Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Collins can live on, the former drinking deep draughts of lifes fullness, the later continuing to sip its littleness. The richness of Pride and Prejudice lies in that exploration of life and marriage by Jane Austen.

Comparing Dictators Adolf Hitler versus Benito Mussolini versus Joseph

This essay will compare the three leaders who are famous for their dictatorship and totalitarianism during the 30's decade-Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. Totalitarianism is when a government gains absolute and total control over the country, including the freedom of thought and will as well as the citizen?s lifestyle, no other political parties are allowed and has the concept where the country is most important. The difference and similarity between their ideology, usage of propaganda & censorship and the method of improving the economy would be stated and explained through examples. Basically, their ultimate aim was the same, they all tried to make their country better. However, there was their own ambition wanting for power included in their ruling which was probably why they all ended up dictating their county. They all abolished the democracy idea and used similar methods to rule their country, they all had control over the media for example censoring media and books and editing them in order to favor their own image. There are major similarities and minor differences between the ways of these leaders?s ruling. There would be a bigger gap between Stalin and the rest because he claimed himself as a communist whilst Hitler and Mussolini were fascists. Firstly, the three leaders all had similar ideology-they rejected the democracy idea, this is because they all dictated and dictatorship is a complete opposite of democracy. In democracy, the leader of the country cannot possess complete control over the country and is very easy to loose their position because the public has power over the government, and Hitler believed that Germany could only become stronger under his dictatorship. So it is obvious why Hitl... ...e similar things to Hitler, he also tried to decrease the unemployment rate and the most magnificent achievement was that under his order the railroads were completed. Stalin was truly successful at improving their country?s economy state, whilst Hitler and Mussolini only managed exterior success. This is probably why Germany was eventually defeated by Russia. In conclusion, there were a lot of similarities and differences between the three leaders. The similarity can be seen most clearly in the propaganda and censorship section and the differences in the economy section. There seems to be more similarity comparing to differences. Overall, they had same basic concepts, they were affected by same issues and thought closely in big branches and each developed them into different ways, their ideologies all lead them into dictatorship no matter the minor differences.

Coffee Bean Essay

ST. GREGORY’S UNIVERSITY Coffee Bean, Inc. Managerial Accounting, BU2123, Research Project, Spring 2007 Coffee Bean, Inc. (CBI) is a processor and distributor of a variety of blends of coffee. The company buys coffee beans from around the world and roasts, blends and packages them for resale. CBI currently has 40 different coffees that it offers to gourmet shops in one-pound bags. The major cost of the coffee is the raw coffee beans. However, there is a substantial amount of manufacturing overhead in the company’s predominantly automated roasting, blending and packing process. The company uses relatively little direct labor. Some of the coffees are very popular and sell in large volumes, while a few of the newer blends have very low volumes. CBI prices its coffee at manufacturing cost plus a markup of 30%. If CBI’s coffee prices are significantly higher than the market, adjustments are made to bring CBI’s prices more into alignment with the market. The company competes primarily on the quality of its products, but customers are price conscious as well. For the coming year, CBI’s budget includes estimated manufacturing overhead cost of $3,000,000. CBI assigns manufacturing overhead to products based on direct labor-hours. The expected direct labor cost totals $600,000, which represents 50,000 hours of direct labor time. Based on the sales budget and expected raw materials costs, the company will purchase and use $6,000,000 of raw materials (mostly coffee beans) during the year. The expected costs for direct materials and direct labor for one-pound bags of two of the company’s many coffee products appear below: Mona Loa $4. 20 0. 30 Malaysian $3. 20 0. 30 Direct Materials Direct Labor (0.025 hours per bag) CBI’s president is very concerned about lowering profit margins. Several prices have had to be reduced to meet market pressures and other products are selling at good volumes without price adjustments. The president talked with CBI’s controller who believes that the company’s traditional costing system, which uses direct labor costs to allocate manufacturing overhead, may be providing misleading cost information. To determine whether or not this is correct, the controller has prepared an analysis of the year’s expected manufacturing overhead costs, as shown in the following table. Activity Center Cost Driver Purchasing Purchase Orders Materials handling Number of Setups Quality control Number of Batches Roasting Roasting Hours Blending Blending Hours Packaging Packaging Hours Total manufacturing overhead cost: Expected Activity 1,710 orders 1,800 setups 600 batches 96,100 hours 33,500 hours 26,000 hours Expected Cost $ 513,000 720,000 144,000 961,000 402,000 260,000 $3,000,000 Data regarding the expected production of two representative products, Mona Loa and  . Coffee Bean Malaysian coffee, are presented below. There will be no raw materials inventory for either of these coffees at the beginning of the year. Mona Loa Malaysian 100,000 2,000 Pounds 10,000 500 Pounds 3 3 Per batch 20,000 500 Pounds 1. 0 / 100 1. 0 /100 Hours per pound 0. 5 / 100 0. 5 /100 Hours per pound 0. 1 / 100 0. 1 /100 Hours per pound Expected sales Batch size Setups Purchase order size Roasting time Blending time Packaging time Step into the shoes of the controller and prepare a complete report for the president explaining the results of your research. Compare the two product-costing methods: (1) the currently-used, volume-based method, and (2) an activity-based method. The supporting tables should determine full costs and prices of both products using the two different cost allocation methods. Continue your detailed report to the president by justifying why the company should remain using their present overhead allocation method or to go activity-based costing. Go beyond the accounting issues in your report, mentioning the impact on pricing, volume, and marketing decisions. Support your recommendation with current articles (Use the online resources of the SGU James J. Kelly Library to locate articles within the last year that deal with cost allocation issues). Three to five supporting articles should be sufficient to support your findings. Since this is a formal report, it will require a transmittal memo summarizing your findings. This memo/summary should be supported by a detailed report including tables and references to business/accounting literature. Include a bibliography in APA format. Also, since presidents rarely have time to read the entire article, but are interested in their content, provide an abstract of each citation. Remember: appearance, spelling, grammar count. Adapted from Managerial Accounting, Eight Edition, Garrison & Noreen, Irwin, 1997. 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