Hale In the Crucible Conforms Outwardly and Questions Inwardly Essay

The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory written about the Salem witch trials in 1692. It includes a number of characters who fully conform to the trials and their consequences, it also contains the opposite, those who do not conform and fight it. Of course, as in any story there are characters in the middle that are not sure which side to take. They go along with it, not willing to stand up, but in their minds they are not completely sure whether or not what they’re doing is right. Reverend Hale is the best example of outward conformity and inward questioning. Hale does not start out as such however. In fact he is the reason the witch hunts are started. In the beginning of the play Hale is called to Salem to determine whether or not witchcraft is afoot. Witchcraft is expertise, and Hale, eager and naà ¯ve, wants to determine whether or not the devil is in Salem. His analysis is that Tituba is controlling the girls’ souls, leading the girls, starting with Abigail of course, to shout out various people they saw convening with the devil while they were under the control of Tituba. Hale, blindly and unquestioningly conforms to the rest of the town and believes the girls. In fact he leads the way, resulting in fourteen arrests. He is completely unphased by this, and wholly believes that they are all witches and that by arresting them he is doing God’s work. In Act II Hale, in his true moral values which do not change throughout the course of the play, goes to each house questioning the inhabitants on their loyalty to Christianity. He winds up at the Proctor home, where he questions both John and Elizabeth, who are angry at the reasoning of the questioning. They find out that he has questioned Rebecca Nurse as well and this anger... ...tension was picked up by Proctor sooner than most realized that Hale in fact did not believe what he was saying about the court. This aided proctor in doing what he knew was right. It was certainly not the main factor in Proctor’s quest for the defeat of the courts, but it undoubtedly contributed to his reasoning. Hale’s tensions also made Parris, Danforth, and the rest of the folks down at the old courthouse very nervous, which made them encourage the witch hunts even more, pressing the girls for more accusations. Hale’s radical change takes place throughout the play in three stages and throughout the play contributes greatly. He is the model by which the townspeople follow, though they are behind him they do eventually take his stance on the trials. His conformity and inward questioning are quintessential examples of what every story needs: the unsure character.

Greg Critser and Obesity Arguementative Essay

He believes that stigmatizing overeating in children will be a feasible solution to end the increasing epidemic of childhood obesity. However, Critser has several problems linked to his simple solution to a very complex problem. First, Critser doesn’t talk about the discrimination and the rude treatment that people struggling with obesity face. Second, he claims American families are to blame for this epidemic, but really parents are the ones who are held responsible for their children’s eating behaviors in the first place. Third, by enforcing children to avoid overeating will only cause mental problems associated with the tension and stress on when and how to eat their food. Fourth, parents should set an example on how they eat their food, because a child will act the same way as how they see their parents eating. Lastly, by stigmatizing the unhealthy behaviors due to obesity, in accordance to, trying not to stigmatize the person or people, really is stigmatizing the children who are suffering from being obese. There are many variables involved in the epidemic of childhood obesity that Critser does not recognize, for example the diseases or genetics that are involved with obesity. The feasible solution Critser argues might help in the short run with a decrease in childhood obesity, but in the long run his solution will not solve the overall epidemic to end childhood obesity. To begin with, Critser never mentions the discriminating effects and rude treatment that obese people deal with the minute they step out in society. Mary Ray Worley begins in her article â€Å"Fat and Happy: In Defense of Fat Acceptance† explaining what fat people go through day to day, and involved are all the emotions and feelings fat people go through when other people see them. If you’ve grown up in the twentieth-century American society, you probably believe that being fat is a serious personal, social, and medical liability. Many Americans would rather die or cut off a limb than be fat, many believe that fatness is a serious health risk, and many are convinced that is a simple matter to reduce one’s body size and are so offended by body fat that they believe it is acceptable to shun fat people and make them the butt of cruel jokes. Those who are fat quickly learn to be deeply ashamed of their bodies and spend their lives trying to become what they are not and hide what can’t be hidden. Our society believes that thinness signals self-discipline and self-respect, whereas fatness signals self-contempt and lack of resolve. 66) Worley goes into depth on some of the thoughts that are running through obese peoples’ mind when going out in society. This is including all adults and children. The discrimination that obese children suffer from is long lasting detrimental effects. These feelings and emotions that are developed as a child can play a vital role in one’s self-esteem along wit h their confidence and how they will conduct themselves day by day. Nowhere is the article Critser talks about the discrimination an obese person has to deal with. Critser would mention two things in his article that would affect the feelings of obese children and one of them was the feeling that obese children deal with is that â€Å"pressure causes tension† (1). The other thing was his solution he thinks that will end the epidemic of obesity, which was, to stigmatize the behavior of overeating while yet not to stigmatize the person engaged in the behavior. Critser was all wrong in thinking this would actually work around the world and not just the Westernized countries. In addition, Critser says, â€Å"No one should be stigmatized for being overweight. But stigmatizing the unhealthful behaviors that cause obesity would conform with what we know about effective health messages† (1). He then goes on to add a false analogy with the campaigns against unprotected sex and smoking. He first is wrong when trying to link obesity with smoking. The two problems are irrelevant to each other besides the fact that both are bad for your health. His focus on unprotected sex and homosexuals in one of his analogies takes offense to anyone who is bigoted, because heterosexuals and homosexuals are the same kind of people with different interests. People who are bigoted go onto discriminate them. That is a false analogy because what does unprotected sex and also homosexuals have to do with obesity in children. Next, Critser’s solution in ways of stigmatizing the unhealthy behaviors associated with obesity and overeating is not the overall solution to conquer this growing epidemic worldwide. The solution is one that may help slow down obesity, but his solution is such a simple solution to such a complex problem. There are many problems associated with obesity; along with there are many solutions to help conquer childhood obesity. Critser is wrong that society can stigmatize overeating without stigmatizing the person engaging in the behavior. â€Å"Food for thought: Children’s views on the psychological aspects of childhood obesity† in Educational and Child Psychology, Debbie Mansfield and Georgina Doutre discuss the â€Å"psychological aspects of childhood obesity† along with the â€Å"children’s views† and â€Å"how to protect obese children from stigmatizing effects† (23). Children are being stigmatized for being obese. The children are subject to â€Å"negative stereotyping and discrimination by their peers,† and â€Å"self-esteem issues, negative body image, depressive symptoms† (Braet, Calamaro and Waite, Hesketh, Koplan, Miller and Downey 24). This proves that Critser’s solution is not going to work. His solution won’t work because, when one is trying to stigmatize the behavior of overeating, then the person who is obese is also subject to the stigmatization. Furthermore, the parents also play a vital role when their child is obese. Children learn through what they see especially when they are at a young age. The â€Å"foot soldiers against obesity† is the American family and are needed to put their children on a â€Å"dietary restraint† to avoid â€Å"gluttony† (1). According to Critser, this saying that the American family is a problem to childhood obesity but later says parents aren’t to blame. Critser uses a strawman tactic saying pressure causes tension by Diamonds. This is true in a sense, but the way Critser uses this saying is that he leaves it at that. He says no more. He doesn’t mention anything else about pressure causing tension. He just quotes Diamonds and what they have to say. The tactic works well in his article, because this is true but it is not linked to his primary solution. â€Å"Childhood obesity could be related to the ignorance or denial of the negative consequences from an individual or family perspective† (Davidson and Birch 24). Critser may agree with this. â€Å"On the other hand, parental acceptance and lack of concern regarding weight issues can be a protective factor for the self-esteem of overweight children† (Stradmeijer 24). A study on obese children concluded that participants are â€Å"accepting attitudes and mpathy towards obese children,† obese children make their own choices over their own â€Å"destiny† (Mansfield and Doutre 27). There were also negative consequences linked to obesity. Being obese caused a lack of friends for children, more bullying occurred, limited to different sporting activities, and serious health consequences (Mansfield and Doutre 28). Parents can help their children in ways to avo id all these emotional consequences their obese children have to deal with along with the psychological effects it has. Mansfield and Doutre provide a table of children’s views of supportive mechanisms for obesity. Some parental discipline and encouragement could be for their children to stop lounging around and do more exercise and eat more fruits and veggies instead of snacks (Mansfield and Doutre 29). A few coping strategies would be to ignore it, their personal choice, and avoidance, accordance to that children think it’s not anybody else’s life to choose who you want to be and rather skinny or fat it is what you want to be (Mansfield and Doutre 29). Critser thinks that kids don’t know much, when really they seem to have an understanding and knowing about the problems associated with obesity. The school systems try to promote exercise to prevent obesity from occurring. It is healthy for children to make their own positive choices. Instead of stigmatizing the behavior of overeating, schools can provide a real good background to children. Moreover, Critser’s article shows weakness in some parts of the article. Critser included a Pennsylvania state university scholar Barbara Rolls that talked about a study she conducted. Her study noticed that the three years old children stopped eating when they were full no matter what the portion size was, but the five year old children devoured everything that was in front of them. Earlier in the article Critser stated that â€Å"kids don’t know when they are full† (1). Another weakness that Critser wrote was when he mocked the experts saying that kids have the right to make bad nutritional choices. This doesn’t have much support in his paper or evidence along with Critser is comparing two different eras. â€Å"Nutrition, Health, and Schoolchildren† written by Judy Butriss states alternative dietary suggestions whether it refers to healthy snacks to the decrease of food intake in a child. the dietary suggestions include; A balanced, varied diet for the whole family, avoiding grazing and TV snacks, healthy snacks (fruits) as alternatives to sweets, chocolate, biscuits, whole food that take time to eat, and grill or boil food instead of frying† (Butriss 294). Finally, in Critser’s article he uses loaded language and unfair argumentation with words like gluttony, foot soldiers, and infantry. Critser uses the term foot soldi ers in a way against obesity that we are pushing for obesity and not seem to care as much. In a way that foot soldiers can be like foot soldiers that just are taught to march and march and nothing else. Critser sounded bias with this term. He also uses the term infantry. Infantry is referring to the American family along with the term foot soldiers. The two terms go together and act as if the American family just keeps encouraging obesity rather than preventing it. This is unfair argumentation because this is not necessarily true. Critser is being bias in the terms he uses. The last piece of loaded language Critser uses is gluttony where he uses the term twice. The term gluttony can be defined as greedy or excessive indulgence, and many children with obesity are labeled as gluttonous. In the beginning of the essay Critser says, â€Å"needs to promulgate [. . . ] dietary restraint, something our ancestors knew simply as avoiding gluttony† (1). Critser says that no person should be stigmatized for being overweight, but his idea is to stigmatize the unhealthy behaviors associate with obesity (Critser 1). This is an unfair argumentation because Critser uses the inconsiderable word gluttony a few times and is also bias to the idea of anti-fat. This is a mistake by using the fully loaded word gluttony, because obese people have enough on their plate and don’t need any more judgments that obesity implies. In conclusion, Critser’s simple solution to such a complex problem is just not going to work. His claims that stigmatizing the behavior of overeating due to obesity, American families cause obesity, portion control and dietary restraint needs to be enforced, and even never to put a kid on a diet seems to not be supportive enough to back his simple solution. His loaded language use of gluttony causes a problem due to the judgmental attitude it implies. Instead, this causes the many social, physical and even economical problems to rise. When one is obese this does raise the thought of a shortened life span and risks to mental diseases, due to the seclusion, one may receive just for seeing themselves as obese. The parents and school teachers come up with ways children can cope a lot easier with being obese. For example, the ways of exercise, change the behavior in how a child will eat snacks (healthy alternatives), and the knowledge that obese children can gain without the loss of self-esteem and confidence. In the end of it all, Critser’s solution to stigmatize the behavior of overeating in a child is the complete reverse approach.

A Non Indigenous Social Worker - 1389 Words

I really enjoyed this week’s readings as I was able to gain a better understand of topics that I have never discussed before. As a non-Indigenous social worker, it is necessary to understand the aboriginal people’s history and the impacts faced from the residential school era. According to Walmsley (2009) â€Å"although the last residential school closed in 1996, their influence is omnipresent in Indigenous communities today† (p. 98). This really struck out to me, not much has been done to address all of the issues. I had no previous knowledge of the discriminatory provisions of the liquor policies. These readings really helped in furthering my understandings of impaired health. My volunteer experiences involved working with aboriginal women†¦show more content†¦By being honest in saying, â€Å"I am sorry, I do not understand this† or â€Å"could you please tell more about this† can really help in building trust worthy relationships. Like W almsley (2009) said â€Å"one way to optimize learning is to choose a â€Å"cultural guide,† someone who is respected by all, knowledgeable about the community and with whom a non-Indigenous social worker can develop an open trusting relationship† (p. 104). This could be a band social worker, band councillor, or Elder. They are able to provide more insight and knowledge then what I would generally expect to gain from academics. Just as it is important to understand other cultures, it is as important to know my own culture. It helps in understanding why I believe the things I do and recognize the concepts that have shaped my own thinking. In a sense, these are my feelings and thoughts about how I was raised or the things I liked or didn’t like about parenting. These values are based on my own experiences of what I believe is effective childcare and ways in which children should be taught, guided, supported and disciplined (Walmsley, 2009, p. 104). For instance, I relate this to something we discussed in class about hitting your child. I have been slapped as a child; it was a form of discipline at times which I think is justifiable (like the times I would refuse to not take medication which was going to help me feel better). Hence, as a social worker the term â€Å"slapped†

If Research in the Management Area Cannot Be 100 Percent...

INTRODUCTION The performance of an enterprise is considerably affected by its location The degree of significance for the selection of location for any enterprise mainly depends on its size and nature. Sometimes the nature of the product itself suggests some suitable location like a small scale industry mainly selects the site where in accordance with its capacity the local market. for the product is available DEFINATION OF FACILITY LOCATION AND LAYOUT Facility location, also known as location analysis, is a branch of operations research concerning itself with mathematical modeling and solution of problems concerning optimal placement of facilities in order to minimize transportation costs, avoid placing hazardous materials near housing†¦show more content†¦DEFINATIONS OF PLANT LAYOUT A plant layout can be defined as follows: Plant layout refers to the arrangement of physical facilities such as machinery, equipment, furniture etc. with in the factory building in such a manner so as to have quickest flow of material at the lowest cost and with the least amount of handling in processing the product from the receipt of material to the shipment of the finished product. According to Riggs, â€Å"the overall objective of plant layout is to design a physical arrangement that most economically meets the required output – quantity and quality.† According to J. L. Zundi, â€Å"Plant layout ideally involves allocation of space and arrangement of equipment in such a manner that overall operating costs are minimized OBJECTIVES OF LAYOUT 1Economies in materials, facilitate manufacturing process and handling of semi-finished goods. 2. Proper and efficient utilization of available floor space . 3.To ensure that work proceeds from one point to another point inside the plant w/o any delay. 4.control of Provision of better supervision and ctrl of operations, 5.Careful planning to avoid frequent changes in layout which may result in undue increase in cost of production 6.To provide adequate safety to the workers from accidents 7. To meet the quality and capacity require in the most economical manner 8. 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Do Teens Get Enough Sleep - 1407 Words

Chelsea Reed Jerie Smith Composition One 19 November 2014 Do Teenagers get Enough Sleep? According to the National Sleep Foundation, fifty percent of American teenagers are not getting the sleep needed to have a healthy, and productive school year. Although, going to sleep at a proper time is a personal choice, there are many factors that can play a role in preventing teenagers from getting the suggested nine and a half hours of sleep every single night, including weekends. In my opinion too many teens resort to, hanging out with friends, working or staying up late to do school work, instead of going to sleep at a proper time. Natural physical body changes are also reasons of lost sleep in adolescents. This essay will discuss what sleep is, the many reasons why teenagers lose sleep, and ways to get better sleep. (NSF) Sleep is defined by researchers as two different things. 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Investing in the It That Makes a Competitive Difference Free Essays

string(58) " for digitized products like computer software and music\." www. hbr. org Studies of corporate performance reveal a growing link between certain kinds of technology investments and intensifying competitiveness. We will write a custom essay sample on Investing in the It That Makes a Competitive Difference or any similar topic only for you Order Now Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article: 1 Article Summary The Idea in Brief—the core idea The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work 2 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference 11 Further Reading A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications Reprint R0807J Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference The Idea in Brief It’s not just you. It really is getting harder to outpace the other guys. Since the mid1990s, competition in the U. S. economy has accelerated to unprecedented levels. The engine behind this hypercompetition: IT. Thanks to powerful tools like ERP and CRM, backed by cheap networks, companies are swiftly replicating business-process innovations throughout their organizations. The firm with the best processes (order fulfillment, field installation, job closing) wins, but not for long. Rivals are striking back with their own IT-based process innovations. To gain—and keep—a competitive edge in this environment, McAfee and Brynjolfsson recommend a three-step strategy: †¢ Deploy a consistent technology platform, rather than stitching together a jumble of legacy systems. †¢ Innovate better ways of working. †¢ Propagate those process innovations widely throughout your company. By taking these steps, elevator-systems maker Otis realized not only dramatically shorter sales-cycle times but higher revenues and operating profit. The Idea in Practice The authors recommend these steps for staying ahead of rivals through IT-enabled process innovation: Deploy. Adopt a uniform technology platform to be used throughout your company. Example: Before deploying a consistent platform, Cisco’s various units had nine different tools for checking an order’s status. Each pulled information from different repositories and defined key terms differently, leading to circulation of conflicting order-status reports around the company. The company reconfigured its IT systems for consistent execution of key business processes including market to sell, lead to order, quote to cash, issue to resolution, forecast to build, idea to product, and hire to retire. The payoff? Strong performance over the past few years. Innovate. Design better ways of doing work in your company. The best candidates for innovation are processes that: †¢ Apply across a large swatch of your company (such as all your stores, factories, or delivery teams) †¢ Produce results as soon as your new IT system goes live †¢ Require precise instructions (such as order taking or delivery) †¢ Can be executed the same way everywhere and every time in your organization †¢ Can be tracked in real time so you can immediately spot and address any backsliding to older versions of the process Example: U. K. grocery chain Tesco has long used customer-rewards cards to collect detailed data on individual purchases, to categorize customers, and to tailor offers. But it went one step further: tracking redemption rates for direct-marketing initiatives and tweaking its processes to get better responses from customers. Its process innovation drove its redemption rate to 20%— far above the industry’s average of 2%. Propagate. Use IT to replicate process innovations throughout your company. Example: At CVS pharmacies, customer satisfaction was declining. The reason: Prescription orders were delayed during the insurance check, which was performed after customers had left the store. So customers weren’t immediately available to answer common questions such as â€Å"Have you changed jobs? † The company decided to move the insurance check forward in the prescriptionfulfillment process, before the drug-safety review, so customers would still be around to answer questions. The process change was embedded in the information systems that supported operations at all 4,000 CVS pharmacies in the United States. Performance improved across all the pharmacies, and customer satisfaction scores rose from 86% to 91%— a dramatic difference in the aggressive pharmacy market. COPYRIGHT  © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. page 1 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 Studies of corporate performance reveal a growing link between certain kinds of technology investments and intensifying competitiveness. Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson COPYRIGHT  © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. It’s not just you. It really is getting harder to outpace the other guys. Our recent research ? ds that since the middle of the 1990s, which marked the mainstream adoption of the internet and commercial enterprise software, competition within the U. S. economy has accelerated to unprecedented levels. There are a number of possible reasons for this quickening, including MA activity, the opening up of global markets, and companies’ continuing RD efforts. However, we found that a central c atalyst in this shift is the massive increase in the power of IT investments. To better understand when and where IT confers competitive advantage in today’s economy, we studied all publicly traded U. S. companies in all industries from the 1960s through 2005, looking at relevant performance indicators from each (including sales, earnings, pro? tability, and market capitalization) and found some striking patterns: Since the mid-1990s, a new competitive dynamic has emerged—greater gaps between the leaders and laggards in an industry, more concen- trated and winner-take-all markets, and more churn among rivals in a sector. Strikingly, this pattern closely matches the turbulent â€Å"creative destruction† mode of capitalism that was ? rst predicted over 60 years ago by economist Joseph Schumpeter. This accelerated competition has coincided with a sharp increase in the quantity and quality of IT investments, as more organizations have moved to bolster (or altogether replace) their existing operating models using the internet and enterprise software. Tellingly, the changes in competitive dynamics are most apparent in precisely those sectors that have spent the most on information technology, even when we controlled for other factors. This pattern is a familiar one in markets for digitized products like computer software and music. You read "Investing in the It That Makes a Competitive Difference" in category "Essay examples" Those industries have long been dominated by both a winner-take-all dynamic and high turbulence, as each group of dominant innovators is threatened by succeeding waves of innovation. Consider how quickly Google supplanted Yahoo, which harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 2 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference Andrew McAfee (amcafee@hbs. edu) is an associate professor at Harvard Business School in Boston. He is the author of â€Å"Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology† (HBR November 2006) and has a blog at andrewmcafee. rg/blog. Erik Brynjolfsson (erikb@mit. edu) is the Schussel Family Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the director of MIT’s Center for Digital Business in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More of the author’s research is available at digital. mit. edu/erik. supplanted AltaVista and others that created the s earch engine market from nothing. Or the relative speed with which new recording artists can dominate sales in a category. Most industries have historically been fairly immune from this kind of Schumpeterian competition. However, our ? dings show that the internet and enterprise IT are now accelerating competition within traditional industries in the broader U. S. economy. Why? Not because more products are becoming digital but because more processes are: Just as a digital photo or a web-search algorithm can be endlessly replicated quickly and accurately by copying the underlying bits, a company’s unique business processes can now be propagated with much higher ? delity across the organization by embedding it in enterprise information technology. As a result, an innovator with a better way of doing things can scale up with unprecedented speed to dominate an industry. In response, a rival can roll out further process innovations throughout its product lines and geographic markets to recapture market share. Winners can win big and fast, but not necessarily for very long. CVS, Cisco, and Otis Elevator are among the many companies we’ve observed gaining a market edge by competing on technologyenabled processes—carefully examining their working methods, revamping them in interesting ways, and using readily available enterprise software and networking technologies to spread these process changes to far-? ng locations so they’re executed the same way every time. In the following pages, we’ll explore why the link between technology and competition has become much stronger and tighter since the mid-1990s, and we’ll clarify the roles that business leaders and enterprise technologies should play in this new environment. Competing at such high speeds isn’t easy, and not everyone will be able to keep up. The senior ex ecutives who do may realize not only greatly improved business processes but also higher market share and increased market value. How Technology Has Changed Competition The mid-1990s marked a clear discontinuity in competitive dynamics and the start of a period of innovation in corporate IT, when the inter- net and enterprise software applications— like enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise content management (ECM)—became practical tools for business. Corporate investments in IT surged during this time—from about $3,500 spent per worker in 1994 to about $8,000 in 2005, according the U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). (See the exhibit â€Å"The IT Surge. †) At the same time, annual productivity growth in U. S. companies roughly doubled, after plodding along at about 1. 4% for nearly 20 years. Much attention has been paid to the connection between productivity growth and the increase in IT investment. But hardly any has been directed to the nature of the link between IT and competitiveness. That’s why, with help from Harvard Business School researcher Michael Sorell and Feng Zhu, who’s now an assistant professor at USC, we set out two years ago to compare the increase in IT spending with various measures of competition, focusing on three quanti? ble indicators: concentration, turbulence, and performance spread. In a concentrated or winner-take-all industry, just a few companies account for the bulk of the market share. For our study, we focused on the degree to which each industry became more or less concentrated over time. A sector is turbulent if the sales leaders in it are frequently leapfrogging one another in rank order. And ? nally the performance spread in an industr y is large when the leaders and laggards differ greatly on standard performance measures such as return on assets, pro? margins, and market capitalization per dollar of revenue—the kinds of numbers that matter a lot to senior managers and investors. Were there economywide changes in these three measures after the mid-1990s, when IT spending accelerated? If so, were the changes more pronounced in industries that were more IT intensive—that is, where IT made up a larger share of all ? xed assets within an industry? In a word, yes. We analyzed industry data from the BEA, as well as from annual company reports, and found that average turbulence within U. S. industries rose sharply starting in the mid1990s. Furthermore, after declining in previous decades, industry concentration reversed course and began increasing around the same time. Finally, the spread between the highest harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 3 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference and lowest performers also increased. These changes coincided with the surge in IT investment and the concurrent productivity rise, suggesting a fundamental change in the underlying economics of competition. (See the exhibit â€Å"Competitive Dynamics: Several Ways to Slice IT. †) Looking more losely at the data, we found that the changes in dynamics were indeed greatest in those industries that were more IT intensive—for instance, consumer electronics and auto parts manufacturers. Further, we considered the role of MA activity, globalization, and RD spending in our analysis of the competitive landscape and fo und some minor correlations—but none strong enough to override our measures (see the sidebar â€Å"Is IT the Only Factor That Matters? †). One interpretation of our ? ndings might be that IT is, indeed, inducing the intensi? ed competition we’ve documented—but that the change in dynamics is only temporary. According to this argument, the years since the mid-1990s have seen a onetime burst of innovation from IT producers, and it’s simply taking IT-consuming companies a while to absorb them all. Businesses will eventually ? gure out how to internalize all the new tools, proponents of this theory say, and then all industries will revert to their previous The IT Surge The total real stock of IT hardware and software in the United States began to rise dramatically in the mid-1990s. Dollar value of total U. S. corporate IT stock Spending compared to 1995 level Triple Double Baseline 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 Source: U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis competitive patterns. While it’s true that the tool kit of corporate IT has expanded a great deal in recent years, we believe that an overabundance of new technologies is not the fundamental driver of the change in dynamics we’ve documented. Instead, our ? eld research suggests that businesses entered a new era of increased competitiveness in the mid-1990s not because they had so many IT innovations to choose from but because some of these new technologies enabled improvements to companies’ operating models and then made it possible to replicate those improvements much more widely. CVS offers a great example. There’s no shortage of people looking to ? ll prescriptions—or of outlets ready to handle those orders. So CVS works hard to maintain a high level of customer service. Imagine senior management’s concern, then, when surveys conducted in 2002 revealed that customer satisfaction was declining. Further analysis uncovered a key problem: Some 17% of the prescription orders were being delayed during the insurance check, which was often performed after customers had already left the store. The team decided to move the insurance check forward in the prescription ful? llment process, before the drug safety review, so all customers would still be around to answer common questions such as, â€Å"Have you changed jobs? † This two-step process change was embedded in the information systems that supported pharmacy operations, thereby ensuring 100% compliance. The transaction screen for the drug safety review now appeared on pharmacists’ computers only after all the ? elds in the insurance-check screen had been completed; it was simply no longer possible to do the safety review ? st. The redesigned protocol helped boost customer satisfaction scores without compromising safety—and not just in one store but in all of them. CVS used its enterprise information technology to replicate the new process throughout its 4,000plus retail pharmacies nationwide within a year. Performance increased sharply, and overall customer satisfaction scores rose from 86% to 91%â €”a dramatic difference within the aggressive pharmacy market. The enterprise IT underlying this initiative served two key roles. It helped the process changes stick: Clerks and pharmacists couldn’t fall back on their old habits once the new harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 4 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference Competitive Dynamics: Several Ways to Slice IT How does IT spending affect the nature of competition and the relative performance of companies within an industry? To answer those questions, we focused on three indicators—industry concentration, turbulence, and performance spread. When we aggregated data from all companies in all industries between 1965 and 2005, we noticed a consistent pattern: All indicators rose markedly in the mid-1990s for high-IT industries (those in which IT accounts for a comparatively large percentage of all ? xed assets), coinciding with the surge in IT spending. Market share held by top 20 largest ? rms 100% Low-IT Industries High-IT Industries 80 60 Industry Concentration: After decades of decline in all industries, industry concentration began to rise in the mid-1990s. Though the absolute level is lower, the rate of rise is faster in high-IT industries than it is for low-IT industries. 0 20 0 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 Average jump in number of places up or down the rankings from previous year 20 16 12 8 4 Turbulence: In turbulent markets, the top-selling company one year may not dominate the next. Today’s 10th place company, for instance, might catapult to number one the following year. In less turbulent markets the same com panies dominate year after year and there’s very little movement up and down in rank order. By this measure, we found consistently more sales turbulence in high-IT industries—and a marked increase in the mid-1990s. 0 P e r c e n t a g e g ap between top and bottom quartiles 60% 40 Performance Spread: The spread in gross pro? t margin between the company performing at the 25th percentile in its industry and the company performing at the 75th percentile—an indication of the spread between winners and losers—has grown dramatically in high-IT industries since the mid-1990s. 20 0 harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 5 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference protocol was embedded in the company’s information systems. More important, it also allowed for quick and easy propagation of the new process to all 4,000 sites—radically amplifying the economic value of the initial innovation. Without enterprise IT, CVS could still have tried to implement this process innovation, but it would have been much more cumbersome. Updated procedure manuals might have been sent to all CVS locations, or managers may have been rotated in for training sessions and then periodically surveyed to monitor compliance. But propagating the new process digitally accelerated and magni? d its competitive impact by vastly increasing the consistency of its execution throughout the organization. Although modern commercial enterprise systems are relatively recent—SAP’s ERP platform, for example, was introduced in 1992— by now, companies in virtually every industry have adopted them. According to one estimate, spending on these complex platforms already accounted for 75% of all U. S. corporate IT investmen t in 2001. More recently, IT consultancy Gartner Group projected that worldwide enterprise software revenue would approach $190 billion in 2008. To understand how this profusion of enterprise IT is changing the broader competitive landscape, imagine that a drugstore chain like CVS has a number of rivals, most of which Is IT the Only Factor That Matters? Previous research suggests that the changes we’ve observed in the competitive environment are not primarily driven by shifts in MA activity, globalization, or RD spending. New York University’s Lawrence White, in a paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2002, contended that MA activity explained neither the decline in concentration in the ? st half of the 1990s nor its rise in the second half. In a 2006 research paper published in Industrial and Corporate Change, Harvard Business School’s Pankaj Ghemawat and his colleagues found that industry concentration tends to decrease as globalization rises, implying that concentration has increased since the mid-1990s not because of more global competition but despite it. On the other hand, Harva rd professor Diego Comin and his colleagues, in their 2005 working paper, â€Å"The Rise in Firm-Level Volatility,† did ? nd a correlation between companies’ spending on RD and changes in industry turbulence. So we reexamined our ? ndings, including RD spending in our assessments, and found that it does not detract from the signi? cance of our IT measures. In fact, IT appears to be much more strongly correlated with the changes in competitive dynamics than RD does. also have multiple stores. Before the advent of enterprise IT, a successful innovation by a manager at one store could lead to dominance in that manager’s local market. But because no ? rm had a monopoly on good managers, other ? rms might win the competitive battle in other local markets, re? cting the relative talent at these other locations. Sharing and replication of innovations (via analog technologies like corporate memos, procedures manuals, and training sessions) would be relatively slow and imperfect, and overall market share would change little from year to year. With the advent of enterprise IT, however, not just CVS, but its competitors have the option to deploy technology to improve their processes. Some may not exercise this option because they don’t believe in the power of IT. Others will try and fail. Some will succeed, and effective innovations will spread rapidly. The ? rm with the best processes will win in most or all markets. At the same time, competitors will be able to strike back much more quickly: Instead of simply copying the ? rst mover, they will introduce further IT-based innovations, perhaps instituting digitally mediated outsourcing or CRM software that identi? es cross- and up-selling opportunities. These innovations will also propagate widely, rapidly, and accurately because they are embedded in the IT system. Success will prompt these companies to make bolder and more frequent competitive moves, and ustomers will switch from one company to another in response to them. As a result, performance spread will rise, as the most successful IT exploiters pull away from the pack. Concentration will increase, as the losers fall by the wayside. And yet turbulence will actually intensify, as the remaining rivals use successive IT-enabled operatingmodel changes to leapfrog one another over time. Thus, despite the shakeout, rivalry in the in dustry will continue to become more fast-paced, intense, and dynamic than it was prior to the advent of enterprise technology. These are exactly the changes we see re? cted in the data. In this Schumpeterian environment, the value of process innovations greatly multiplies. This puts the onus on managers to be strategic about innovating and then propagating new ways of working. harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 6 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference Competing on Digital Processes To survive, or better yet thrive, in this more competitive environment, the mantra for any CEO should be, â€Å"Deploy, innovate, and propagate†: First, deploy a consistent technology platform. Then separate yourself from the pack by coming up with better ways of working. Finally, use the platform to propagate these business innovations widely and reliably. In this regard, deploying IT serves two distinct roles—as a catalyst for innovative ideas and as an engine for delivering them. Each of the three steps in the mantra presents different and critical management challenges, not least of which have to do with questions of centralization and autonomy. Deployment: the management challenge. Since the mid-1990s, the commercial availability of enterprise software packages has added a new item to the list of senior management’s responsibilities: Determining which aspects of their companies’ operating models should be globally (or at least widely) consistent, then using technology to replicate them with high ? delity. Some top teams have pounced on the opportunity. Many more, however, have embraced this responsibility only reluctantly, unwilling to tackle two formidable barriers to deployment: fragmentation and autonomy. Historically, regional, product, and function managers have been given a great deal of leeway to purchase, install, and customize IT systems as they see ? t. But bitter experience has shown that it’s prohibitively time-consuming and expensive to stitch together a jumble of legacy systems so they can all use common data, and support and enforce standardized processes. Even if a company invests heavily in standardized enterprise software for the entire organization, it may not remain standard for long, as the software is deployed in ways other than it was originally intended in dozens, or even hundreds, of separate instances. When that happens, it’s almost certain that data, processes, customer interfaces, and operating models will become inconsistent—thus defeating the whole competitive purpose of purchasing the package in the ? rst place. That’s what initially happened at networking giant Cisco. In the mid-1990s, Cisco successfully implemented a single ERP platform throughout the company. Managers were then given the green light to purchase and install as many applications as they wanted, to sit on that platform. Cisco’s IT department The Elements of a Successful IT-Enabled Process Given the costs of enterprise IT and the risks inherent in deploying it poorly, it’s especially important that the change projects you select capitalize on IT’s strengths. Consider the following hypothetical example of a company that did just that. A U. S. furniture maker sells both standard and custom pieces out of its 100 showrooms nationwide. Because salespeople in each of the showrooms have very little direct interaction with or information about the company’s three factories, they all quote long lead times for custom furniture, just to be on the safe side. To rectify this situation, the company develops software to integrate the activities of manufacturing and sales, and tests it at one location. Now salespeople can enter the speci? cations of a custom order and instantly receive an accurate delivery date. The company also decides to use the software to manage customer deliveries. The delivery team for the test showroom is required to call back to the dispatch center immediately after leaving a customer’s house. That enables the center to contact the customer to verify his or her satisfaction and address any concerns. The software tracks delivery times and satisfaction levels and ? ds the former is decreasing while the latter ticks upward. Recognizing its success, the company quickly embeds the new process in its enterprise software and rolls it out to the other 99 locations. Because customers value these process innovations, the company’s market share grows nationwide. Successful IT-enabled business process improvements like this one generally have a number of important characteristics: They cover a wide span. The new ways of working apply across a very large swath of a company—in this case, all stores, factories, and delivery teams. They produce results immediately. As soon as the new enterprise system goes live, so do the process changes it enables. They are precise, rather than general guidelines, suggesting highly scripted instructions for business activities (furniture order taking and delivery). They are consistent—executed the same way everywhere, every time. Every furniture store uses the same method to quote lead times, and deliveries are closed out the same way day after day. They make monitoring easy. Activities and events can be observed and tracked in real time, providing unprecedented opportunities for testing and feedback. They build in enforceability. The designers of a new process that’s embedded in IT can have great con? dence that it will be executed as intended. It is often simply impossible to execute the process the old way, and even when backsliding is possible it can be recognized and addressed. The furniture company could easily use the data collected during the delivery process to determine if all teams were calling in properly. page 7 harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference helped the various functions, technology groups, and product lines throughout the world get their desired programs up and running without attempting to constrain or second-guess their decisions. When newly arrived CIO Brad Boston assessed Cisco’s IT environment in 2001, he found that system, data, and process fragmentation was an unintended consequence of the company’s enthusiasm for technology. There were, for example, nine different tools for checking the status of a customer order. Each pulled information from different repositories and de? ed key terms in different ways. The multiple databases and fuzzy terms resulted in the circulation of con? icting orderstatus reports around the company. Boston’s assessment also revealed that there were over 50 different customer-survey tools, 15 different business-intelligence applications, and more than 200 additional IT projects in progress. Deployment efforts heig hten the tensions— present in every sizable company—between global consistency and local autonomy. As the Cisco example shows, however, this con? ict often exists by default rather than by design. Ultimately, the top team’s focused efforts to manage this tension reaped tremendous bene? ts. Responding to the CIO’s assessment, senior managers decided to upgrade Cisco’s original ERP system and other key applications to support standardized data and processes. The upgrade was budgeted at $200 million over three years. Cisco identi? ed several key business processes—market to sell, lead to order, quote to cash, issue to resolution, forecast to build, idea to product, and hire to retire—and con? gured its systems to support the subprocesses involved in each stage. The software updates and the strategy discussions the technology engendered eventually resulted in greater consistency throughout the organization and contributed to Cisco’s strong performance over the past few years. At about the same time that Cisco was untangling its legacy spaghetti, the leader of a much older and more traditional company was also reimagining the kinds of information systems his ? rm would need to compete more successfully. When Ari Bousbib became president of Otis in 2002, the information systems of the 149-year-old company were not so much fragmented as virtually nonexistent. As Harvard Business School’s F. Warren McFarlan and Brian J. DeLacey recounted in a 2005 case study, the software applications in place were largely antiquated for implementing the critical processes of gathering customer requests to install a new elevator system, specifying the exact con? guration of the order, and creating a ? nal proposal. In many regions, in fact, the processes were still being done entirely on paper. Like Cisco, Otis took a hard look at its core processes and ended up replacing old software with a new enterprise technology platform the company called e*Logistics. It was designed to connect sales, factory, and ? eld operations worldwide through the internet. Otis de? ned four processes—sales, order ful? llment, ? eld installation, and job closing— and designed e*Logistics to ensure that improvements in the way each process was carried out occurred uniformly, every time, everywhere. Eventually, Otis realized not only signi? cantly shorter sales-cycle times but higher revenues and operating pro? t. Innovation: IT-enabled opportunities. Data analytics drawn from enterprise IT applications, along with collective intelligence and other Web 2. technologies, can be important aides not just in propagating ideas but also in generating them. They are certainly no replacement for brilliant insights from a line manager or a eureka moment during a meeting, but they can complement and speed the search for business process innovations. UK grocery chain Tesco is one company that employs enterprise IT’s aggregation and analysis capabilitie s in this way. Like many retailers around the world, it uses customerrewards cards to collect detailed data about individuals’ purchases, to categorize customers, and to tailor offers accordingly. But the grocer goes a step further, tracking redemption rates in great detail and performing experiments to tweak its processes to get a better response from customers. In an industry where the average redemption rate for direct-marketing initiatives is about 2%, Babson professor Tom Davenport has noted, Tesco’s data analytics help drive its rate to approximately 20%. Web 2. 0 applications that bring collective wisdom to the fore can also uncover potential business innovations. Jim Lavoie, CEO of the technology ? rm Rite-Solutions, built some- harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. arvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 8 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference thing called a â€Å"Mutual Fun† market within the company’s intranet that has three indices employees can invest in—Savings Bonds for ideas on saving costs, Bow Jones for ideas on extending existing products, and Spazdaq for new product concepts. Any Rite-Solutions employee can suggest a new idea in any of these markets. Workers can also view the â€Å"prospectus of ideas,† invest play money in them, and even sign up to complete any tasks necessary to make those concepts reality. As Lavoie said in a recent online interview with the nonpro? Business Innovation Factory: â€Å"We believe the next brilliant idea is going to come from somebody other than senior management, and unless you’re trying to harvest those ideas, you’re not going to get them†¦. That’s why we give everybody an equal voice, and a game to provoke their intellectual curiosity. † Propagation: top down and bottom up. Part of the attraction of enterprise systems has been the opportunity for management to impose best practices and standardized procedures universally, as CVS did to great advantage, and so eliminate the chaos of inconsistent homegrown practices. There’s really no competitive advantage in having each department develop and use its own idiosyncratic process for inventory control, for instance, especially when best practices already exist. While an ERP system is an obvious tool for propagation, other technologies are also important, and they show that innovations do not necessarily emanate from headquarters. For instance, Web 2. 0 applications can help process changes emerge organically from lower levels in an organization. Within Cisco, for instance, a community of about 10,000 Macintosh users was dissatis? d with the level of support they were receiving from the company’s central IT group. But instead of complaining, they created a wiki to share ideas about how to use their Macs more effectively. They posted information, ? les, links, and applications that could be edited by any user—tips and tricks that ultimately became huge productivity enhancers. In this case, process innovations ? owed through the co mpany to its great bene? t without central management direction. The role of decision rights. At ? rst glance, the Cisco and Otis examples seem to support he view that propagating processes using enterprise IT necessarily leads to more centralized companies—ones in which most of the important decisions are made at the top and the rest of the business exists only to execute them. Many of the choices about core business processes and the systems that support them were taken out of the hands of businessunit leaders and regional managers, and the companies’ change efforts appeared to lead to higher levels of centralization than had previously existed. But the reality is more complicated. Even as some decisions become centralized and standardized, others are pushed outward from headquarters. Senior executives do play a primary role in identifying and propagating critical business processes, but line managers and employees often end up with more discretion within these processes to serve customer needs and to apply tacit, idiosyncratic, or relationship-speci? c information that only they have. To appreciate how important this distinction is, consider an analogy from government. The process of writing a constitution is inherently a highly centralized activity—a small group of framers makes decisions on behalf of an entire population. It’s perfectly possible, and in fact common, however, for that constitution to de? e a highly decentralized government. At both Cisco and Otis, local managers and frontline employees retained critical responsibilities in their companies’ IT-enabled operating models—and often gained new ones. After e*Logistics was put in place at Otis, for example, ? eld installation supervisors became responsible for the ? rst time for certifying that a site was ready to install an elevator before it would be shipped. (In the old operating model, the equipment was simply shipped as soon as it was manufactured. ) The new business practice was standardized throughout the world, but it was not centralized. It actually placed more responsibility in the hands of frontline employees. Consider, too, the Spanish clothing company Zara. It has more than 1,000 stores worldwide, and they all order clothes exactly the same way, using the same digital form, following a rigid weekly timetable for placing orders. Most other large apparel retailers rely on sophisticated forecasting algorithms, executed by computers at headquarters, to harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 9 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference etermine which clothes will sell in each location and in what quantities. Headquarters pushes these clothes down to stores with virtually no input from their managers. Zara’s store managers, however, have almost complete discretion over which clothes to order; they choose them based on local tastes and immediate demand. This sharp difference between Zara’s and oth er retailers’ approaches to the same challenge highlights a critically important point: We don’t expect that enterprise IT will inevitably lead to one best way to execute core processes. In fact, it can prompt a great deal of experimentation and variation, as companies try to understand who has the most relevant knowledge to make decisions and where, ultimately, to site decision rights. leverage the talents of a high-performing manager at one location to maximize results in thousands of sites worldwide. †¢Ã¢â‚¬ ¢Ã¢â‚¬ ¢ The arrival of powerful new information technologies does not render obsolete all previous assumptions and insights about how to do business, but it does open up new opportunities to executives. Our research has led us to three conclusions: First of all, the data show that IT has sharpened differences among companies instead of reducing them. This re? ects the fact that while companies have always varied widely in their ability to select, adopt, and exploit innovations, technology has accelerated and ampli? ed these differences. Second, line executives matter: Highly quali? ed vendors, consultants, and IT departments might be necessary for the successful implementation of enterprise technologies themselves, but the real value comes from the process innovations that can now be delivered on those platforms. Fostering the right innovations and propagating them widely are both executive responsibilities— ones that can’t be delegated. Finally, the competitive shakeup brought on by IT is not nearly complete, even in the IT-intensive U. S. economy. We expect to see these altered competitive dynamics in other countries, as well, as their IT investments grow. It is not easy for most companies to deploy enterprise IT successfully. The technologies themselves are complicated to con? gure and test, and changing people’s behavior and attitudes toward technology is even more challenging. Enterprise IT typically changes many jobs in major ways; this is never an easy sell to either employees or line managers. As the performance spread, concentration, and churn increase, management becomes a distinctly less comfortable profession—more unforgiving of mistakes, faster to weed out low performers. Even those executives who are prepared will not necessarily survive the inevitable turbulence. But those who do can expect outsize rewards—at least until another player comes along and uses IT to propagate a business innovation that’s even better. Reprint R0807J To order, see the next page or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500 or go to www. hbr. org Maximizing Return on Talent As corporate IT facilitates the implementation and monitoring of processes, the value of simply carrying out rote instructions will fall while the value of inventing better methods will rise. In some cases, this may even lead to a â€Å"superstar† effect, as disproportionate rewards accrue to the very best knowledge workers. Human resource policies and corporate culture will need to evolve to support this type of worker. An effective leader and a well-designed organization will need not only to aggressively seek out and identify such individuals and the innovations they generate but also to develop and reward them appropriately. An analysis of 400 U. S. companies that Erik Brynjolfsson published with Wharton professor Lorin Hitt in 2005, found that organizations successfully using IT were signi? cantly more aggressive in vetting new hires: They considered more applicants. They scrutinized each one more intensively. They involved senior management (not just HR) early and often in the interview process. After identifying top talent, these ? ms invested substantially more time and money on both internal and external training and education. Furthermore, they gave their employees more discretion in how to do their jobs while linking their compensation and rewards—including promotions—more tightly to performance using a suite of metrics that was more detailed than competitors’. The cos ts of managing talent in this way may be high, but the payoff increases exponentially if you can harvard business review †¢ july–august 2008 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 page 10 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference Further Reading ARTICLES Radically Simple IT by David Upton and Bradley R. Staats Harvard Business Review March 2008 Product no. R0803J The authors focus on the â€Å"Deploy† principle for driving IT-enabled process innovations. Their advice? Build a low-cost, efficient IT system that runs your existing business and supports new growth fueled by process innovations. Develop your system over time, using these principles: 1) Forge your business and IT strategies together—so your IT platform supports your strategic objectives. 2) Strive for simplicity—so you can reuse elements of your system and save money. ) Invite users’ input—so they’ll quickly embrace the new system. Using these principles, Japan’s Shinsei Bank created an enterprise system that supported its strategy of providing new retail services. Its customer base jumped from 50,000 in 2001 to 2+ million in 2007. The Next Revolution in Productivity by Ric Merri? eld, Jack Calhoun, and Dennis Stevens Harvard Business Review June 2008 Product no. R0806D This article sheds further light on the â€Å"Propagate† principle. The authors recommend using service-oriented architecture (SOA)—a way of designing business-process technology built on Web-based services. SOA makes it vastly easier to share processes with other units. To take advantage of SOA, identify processes that give you a strategic edge. Then automate these processes through Web-based services anyone (different business units, customers, suppliers) can access. Airlines did this by enabling passengers to check in for flights on their home computers, at airport kiosks, or through customer-service representatives. COLLECTION Wringing Real Value from IT, 2nd Edition by Nicholas G. Carr, Michael E. Porter, and Diana Farrell HBR Article Collection October 2008 Product no. 135 This collection provides additional insights for maximizing the value of your IT investments. In â€Å"IT Doesn’t Matter,† Nicholas Carr recommends ways to save money on your investments. For example, explore cheaper alternatives, such as open-source systems and barebones PCs. In â€Å"Strategy and the Internet,† Michael Porter advises using IT to integrate your virtual and physical business processes. For instance, employ your Web site to attract customers and draw them to flesh-and-blood salespeople, who provide personalized advice and aftersales service. In â€Å"The Real New Economy,† Diana Farrell suggests figuring out what drives productivity most in your company (labor efficiency? asset utilization? cost reduction? ), and sequencing your IT investments so they build on each other. To Order For Harvard Business Review reprints and subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500. Go to www. hbr. org For customized and quantity orders of Harvard Business Review article reprints, call 617-783-7626, or e-mail customizations@hbsp. harvard. edu page 11 Purchased by Steven Stillman (sstillm@post. harvard. edu) on March 13, 2013 How to cite Investing in the It That Makes a Competitive Difference, Essay examples

Integrated Project Management for Quasar Company-myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theIntegrated Project Management for Quasar Company. Answer: In the given case study, the case scenario of Quasar Communication company which is the leading communication organization at the international level. The company is working hard for the betterment of the society from last 35 years. The changes are required in the working curriculum of the enterprise. In this paper, we are going to examine and discuss the changes required for the smooth functioning of the enterprise. The modification and manipulation is required in the project life cycle development plan and undergoing processes. Tremendous growth has been seen in the company till the year of 1996. Later on, the project owner has appointed the consultant for implementing project management fundamentals in the proper functioning of the system. The inclusion of information administrative system helps in dividing the roles and responsibilities of the employees. The company is looking forward to expand their association with 20 big companies and 40 small companies. The new association of the company required to manage the team at all levels of the project. The process undertaken by the project has been changed according to the skills and talent of the process group appointed for completing the required tasks (Passenheim, 2015). The request of the client should be managed by the project administrator at top priority. The projects are categorised into different categories like small project, large project, research and development project, capital investment project, and others. The group of team and associated project manager is appointed for managing the particular project category. The administrative process of the QCI project has to be changed according to the new project domains specified for the continuation of business functionality (Kerzner, H., Kerzner, H. R., 2013). The project manager should have the capability of resolving the grievances of the team members which helps in motivating the participants towards the achievement of the goal. Periodically meetings should be arranged with the project team for anticipating the phases and processes required for completing the required task. The diversification in the project activities and areas help in enhancing the skills and talent of the project manager by going through the program of research and development. The scheduling plan of project activities should comprised of marketing and manufacturing operations because marketing analysis helps in gathering the clear requirement specification plan of the customers which helps in developing the product of customer choice (Hall, 2012). The profitability of the company can be measured through the inclusion of return on investment technique. The competitive advantage and minimization of the risks can be done with the deployment of marketing analysis operations. The priorities should be associated with the handling of small and large project by the project manager. It helps in difference out the high and low priorities activities (Morris, 2013). The technical requirement of the client should be taken under-consideration for improvement. It is recommended that the completion and delivery date of the project should be kept on time. The quality project should be provided to the client on time helps in raising the confidence level of them which helps in increasing profitability ration of the organization. The requirement specification plan should be discussed with the clients periodically to minimize the chance of obscure in the final project. References: Hall, N. (2012). Project management: Recent development and research opportunities. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11518-012-5190-5 Kerzner, H., Kerzner, H. R. (2013). Project management case studies on Quasar. Morris, P. (2013). Research and the future of project management. Retrieved from https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/17538371011014080 Passenheim, O. (2015). Project management. Retrieved from https://home.hit.no/~hansha/documents/theses/projectmanagement.pdf