The Brandenburg Gate Speech

Speaker’s Relationship with the Audience: The Brandenburg Gate Speech Ronald Reagan, the former president of the United States from 1981 to 1989, spoke in the Brandenburg Gate. Ronald Reagan gave his famous â€Å"Tear Down this Wall† speech in Berlin. Many people in Germany were ready for freedom and others wanted it as well. Many people felt there should be peace within the city. Ronald Reagan wanted to persuade the Soviets and Communists that change and openness was a great thing. Ronald Reagan’s speech was a sort of challenge to Gorbachev, to tear it down as a symbol for increasing freedom. We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.President Ronal Reagan’ speech tried to persuade German people to believe that the unification of Berlin was possible, he achieved this through the use of one main rhetorical tool: the speaker’s re lationship to the audience. This tool used German quotes, the identification of shared ideas, the exaltation of cultural qualities, the distinction of political group, and the classification of groups into a political stream to persuade.Historical Background: The Brandenburg Gate The Brandenburg Gate, was built in 1791. It stands as Berlin’s arch of triumph. From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall blocked the Brandenburg Gate. The wall divided Germany into two zones of ideological contention and political distrust during a time known as the Cold Was. The United States and its allies administrated West Germany; East Germany was under the control of the USSR. West Berlin was administrated by a group of allies, but was closely aligned with West Germany, which had its own government. Easter and Western Germans were denied access through the gate.On the twenty-second of December 1989 after 28 years of division. East and West Berlin were reunified and the gate was reopened. Two years bef ore the Gate was reopened, Ronald Reagan spoke in front of the Brandenburg Gate. In his speech he tried to persuade the German people to believe that the unification of Berlin was possible. He used the â€Å"wall† as a metaphor in describing oppression. Speaker’s relationship with audience through German quotes Ronald Reagan was able to build a relationship with the audience, German people, through the use of German quotes.At the beginning of his speech he communicated how he felt welcomed in Berlin and how there was a connection between him and the place. He said, â€Å"You see, like so many Presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: â€Å"I still have a suitcase in Berlin†. Comment that he said the phrase in German alsoThe connection between the place and feelings made possible that the German audience felt that there was a relationship between them and the speaker.It made feel the audience that he could understand for what they were going through at that time. President Ronal Reagan made them feel important showing them by â€Å"I still have a suitcase in Berlin† that he was going to help them to overcome that oppression by tearing down the wall. he’s not going to Moreover, the mention of an important political position like being the president of the United States, demonstrated authority showing them that even though he was in a place where he was a foreigner in Berlin, he still could help them.The importance of Berlin as a place that had politically disputes, and later on, the attribution of some qualities to this place by a foreign actor gave importance to Berlin and encouraged empathy toward German people. Speaker’s relationship with the audience through the identification of shared ideas Having a feeling of unity and understanding, Ronald Reagan moved into a political idea that was well supported by German people given the previous feelings of agreement.He used his speaker re lationship with the audience to propose the concept of a unified Berlin, and then he highlighted this idea in German words: Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. Though the command, â€Å"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,† was to become the rally cry of western civilization, the wall actually had little to do with President Reagan's purpose. The President was there to market the American way of life.He may have put his vocal emphasis on this now famous demand, but it was the more subtle enticements that President Reagan held out to the unseen listeners, trapped behind that wall, that were the catalysts for its destruction. President Reagan says: â€Å"Today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orch estras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums.Where there was want, today there's abundance-food, clothing, automobiles-the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. † To those on the other side, the east side, it must have sounded like a beautiful world. Those behind the wall were caught in the endless cycle of poverty, and the hunger and anger it generates. Those behind the wall were controlled by a totalitarian government, and brutalized by suppression. It was to these people that President Reagan spoke. They were his targets. Then he continued speaking â€Å"in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history.In the Communist world, we see failure. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. † After he has described the affluence of West Berlin, the President shows a picture of life in the Soviet Union. And that is when he slips in the subtle suggestion that would, most assuredly, occupy the collective consciousness of the oppressed: â€Å"Freedom leads to prosperity. â€Å"Freedom is the product, prosperity the benefit†.Reagan made German people feel that the unification was a German idea; a hope that prevailed in the public opinion even while the political division existed. One Berlin was mainly a German desire, and something that foreign political friends supported. Thus, his ideas as a speaker were sustained because of this link with the audience. He also expressed the relationship through the media. Reagan maintained the German people from the East and West were linked through modern devices of communication and that in spite of ideological contention they were united in hope.All were gathered hoping to see the Brandenburg gate opened and Reagan’s ideas fulfilled. Speaker’s relationship with the audi ence through the exaltation of cultural qualities Emphasizing his relationship with the audience, Reagan asserted that despite the adverse political conditions there were chances to have a unified Berlin. Past political, economic, and cultural recovery opened opportunities to believe that a future unification was possible. He emphasized that the positive attitude of the German people forecasted better political conditions that ultimately would consolidate and unify Germany.From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth†¦ Now the Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets did not count on: â€Å"Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner Schnauze. † The specific mention of German characteristics, associated with cultural behaviors and ideas, like humor, made German people believe that there was a connection between the speaker and th e hopes that he had about Germany. Reagan’s audience saw a normal human being: They saw themselves and friends.The manner, in which he speaks, as friends do, gives the German people a sense of fraternity. President Reagan was the most powerful man on the planet. He was a man that could speak and declare this truth, and he was a man that could encompass genuine humanness: Intimidating and stern to the enemy; relatable, and redeeming to his friends. Although President Reagan was an American, he has the ability to relate to the German people almost by becoming one. His reasons for coming to Germany are not only to perform his job, but for other, more selfish and human reasons.Reagan remarked how Germany was a country that emerged from adverse political, economic, and social conditions and became a productive and competitive nation. In this way, not only did he create a connection between the audience and himself by recognizing their characteristics, he also used this relation to suggest that current present characteristics would change the political conditions of the future. He created a relationship between the audience and himself by suggesting that Germany would pass through unfavorable political conditions.The Conclusion: Evaluating Reagan’s Persuasive Achievement Ronald Reagan persuaded the Germans in 1987 using a principal rhetorical took: the speaker’s relationship with the audience. President Reagan’s speech was greatly successful. Establishing his purpose and duty, becoming the friend to the oppressed and free. He used German expressions that put him in a position of understanding and cooperation with the Germans. He exalted German cultural behaviors, like people’s willingness to work, in orders to gain common ground where political ideas about the unification would have been accepted.He explained how foreign countries supported a future where Eastern and Western Germany coexisted as one. This understanding created a de fined identification of one political group and the possibility of acceptance of the ideas of that group. This group was the West, and Reagan was its speaker; he persuaded people to believe that the unification of Germany was possible. It is difficult to evaluate the exact degree in which Reagan persuaded German people to believe that the Brandenburg Gate would be opened again.

Book and National Bookstore Essay

Goodwill bookstore is a 100 percent Filipino firm and is one of the Philippines’ first, having started in 1938, and currently one of its largest bookstores. For several decades now, Goodwill Bookstores has been consistently in the Philippines’ top 1000 corporations currently servicing over 5,000 regular outlets all over the country. Goodwill Bookstores lead all other bookstores especially in the field of medicine offering such books as Harper’s Biochemistry, Ganong Medical Physiology and Robbin’s Pathological Basis of Disease. Goodwill is the exclusive Philippine distributor of big foreign publishers such as Appleton and Lange, McGraw-Hill Book Co. , Lippincott-Raven. Although, there are a lot of bookstores in the Philippines like Merriam-Webster Bookstore, Goodwill Bookstore, and some other minor bookstores and booksale stores, National Bookstore will stand out. National Bookstore is the largest chain of bookstore in the country and one of the oldest. It was established in the 1930’s in Manila. The bookstore did not start as big as it is now. It is only a small stall selling textbooks and school supplies in the street of Escolta, Manila. The bookstore was destroyed twice, first, when the whole of Escolta was burned down during the Japanese era, and the second was caused by a typhoon in 1948. The most famous bookstore in the Philippines and also the largest with 92 branches and still growing. It is located mostly on shopping malls. They also sell school and office supplies. They also sell books online and delivery services. The bookstore called Bestsellers is also owned by NBS while National Bookstore is the largest bookstore chain in the Philippines with 92 branches in the country. It was set to open its first overseas branch, in Hong Kong, in September 2007. Through the hard work and powerful leadership of Socorro Cancio-Ramos and the late Jose Ramos with their family, the company has evolved from its humble beginnings into the biggest and strongest bookstore chain in the Philippines. 1. Over sixty five years of focused energy has brought National Book Store to where it is now: the pinnacle of the bookstore industry in the Philippines. More than that, the National Book Store family takes pride in its role as an institution that supports education and enhances lives by providing the best and widest selection of educational, professional, and social communication products. The values that took Mr. and Mrs. Ramos through adversity—hard work, shrewd business skills and a strong sense of social responsibility—remain the driving force for the whole Ramos family, their 2,500 employees in over 120 branches, and will keep National Book Store ahead in the next century. While fully bookstore our A2 Economics revision workshop at Fulham Broadway on Tuesday 30 November 2010 is now fully booked. Too many businesses mindlessly and lazily copy the market leader and each other, creating a blur of homogeneous, me-too offerings. That is why most businesses fail, because they are not able to stand out from the overcrowded marketplace. In this book, the authors share highly successful and practical strategies that they and other thriving entrepreneurs have used to great success. The book is co-written by Thomas Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of one of Singapore’s largest and most successful pests Control Company, and Sant Qiu, a highly sought-after Profit Strategist who has helped his clients radically increase their profits within a matter of months. Most other business books are either filled with complex textbook theories or inspirational success stories without revealing the truly critical information of how they actually did it. That’s where Secrets to Dominate Your Niche is different. It provides specific powerful differentiation strategies that the reader can immediately apply in their business today. These are supplemented with highly entertaining real-life case studies drawn from both authors’ experiences, keen observations of the behavior of the marketplace and actual big name entrepreneurs who have achieved success in their respective niches. For instance, in page 235 of the book Thomas reveals how he clinched a coveted major contract with a well-known 5-star hotel in Singapore, his company’s first major client, in spite of being the â€Å"unproven† newcomer in the pest control industry. He did this by using one of the strategies detailed in the book — offering a gutsy guarantee. The book also tells the reader how they can use this strategy in several different ways. And if the reader has the guts to put all the strategies to good use in their business, then one of the not-to-be-missed chapters shows you how to pit yourself against the market leader in your industry and come out tops. In the chapter Differentiate By Polarity Positioning, the authors explains why picking a fierce fight against the biggest competitor can be a smart move to quickly gain market share and establish your brand. (Hint: this is what made Apple Inc extremely successful.) The book contains specific, sometimes contrarian and radical strategies of how a business can differentiate itself in many ways, such as being a leader, being a specialist and even by charging premium prices. The authors show that these strategies really work in the real business world by citing proven examples of how these have been used successfully by other entrepreneurs as well. What’s most refreshing is the fact that they unselfishly share these â€Å"niche domination secrets† in detail and break them down into easy-to-follow steps. Readers will also find nuggets of business wisdom in the form of Success Keys in the second chapter, which details ways to develop the right entrepreneurial mindset to succeed; as well as management and R&D tips to grow their company in the last two chapters. Any businessman or aspiring entrepreneur would certainly benefit from these insightful â€Å"secrets† to gain market share and increase their profits. It is no wonder that well-known local entrepreneurs like Elim Chew, Douglas Foo, Adam Khoo and Lawrence Leow enthusiastically endorse this book. Even educators from prominent institutions such as SMU, Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management and Singapore Polytechnic have given the book rave reviews. It has even garnered international praise from business gurus such as Brain Tracy and Michael Weissman. They have hailed it as â€Å"a must read not only for entrepreneurs but for leaders of organisations† that will become â€Å"a bookshelf reference in our libraries†. Powerbooks opened its pages to the public on August 16, 1996. Amidst the drab and routine of ordinary bookstores, Powerbooks merged the passion of a literary salon and the sensibilities of a good bookstore. It provided ardent book lovers with a perfect mix of a cozy reading ambience, a coffee shop and an accessible good book to fulfill whatever fancy they may have. With a selection of almost 200,000 titles (and growing! ) from different genres, PowerBooks gives its patrons the most relevant selection of books at a competitive price. Book sale is increasing their market share tripled in the last six months because of the sales of the hardback book, and it has now topped the list as one of their bestselling products. Merriam & Webster Bookstore the two firms declined comment on the possibility of a sale, but Merriam-Webster’s market value was estimated in the business press between $20 million to $40 million. Sales performance Goodwill bookstore and/or other intangible assets are present in every business and they should not be discriminated against given their direct relationship to profitability and financial and operational performance. It is a feature of our modern service and information economy that hard assets are less and less important as time progresses. In fact, even those businesses considered to be hard asset heavy will feature goodwill values of at least 45% and often much higher (more profitable, more goodwill – get the idea). Actual statistics related to real world business acquisitions are provided next in order to document this fact. Goodwill’s workers certainly have no complaints, judging by their loyalty to the company. â€Å"We’re like one big family. The employees chose not to [join a union] because I think they’re satisfied and happy,† says Suplico, adding that the company has a low employee turnover. Goodwill management offers benefit schemes to employees based on competence. Depending on company and individual performance, the management provides financial perks and training while National Bookstore rapid growth and expansion can lay some tough demands on even the most successful enterprises. Such difficulties weren’t lost on National Bookstore, the Philippines’ biggest retailer of books and office supplies. As well-stocked branches of the store mushroomed around the country in the early 1990s, the resulting higher purchasing costs had to be addressed by integrating its entire supply chain. As an emerging retail giant, National had been aggressively launching new branches, and even new store concepts, such as PowerBooks and Office One Superstore. Such expansion begged for robust information systems that could provide critical decision support—from tracking company sales at a moment’s notice to monitoring inventory to the last item—delivered in time, of course. National thus undertook a strategic I. T. initiative in 1996 to streamline its retail operations and also improve the quality of in-store service. By aligning its I. T.  and business objectives, National was ultimately hoping to get a good return on its I. T. investment. The company initially hired international consultants who evaluated the stores’ needs and long-term goals, developed a technology roadmap and recommended appropriate applications software. Hardware selection was just as judicious in view of universal worries over runaway operating costs, including expenses for managing upgrades and maintenance. NBS chose to address the total-cost-of-ownership issue by standardizing its store automation platform on a single solution from a single vendor. Fully booked In business terminology, a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measurement for gauging business success. In Analysis Services, a KPI is a collection of calculations that are associated with a measure group in a cube that are used to evaluate business success. Typically, these calculations are a combination of Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) expressions or calculated members. KPIs also have additional metadata that provides information about how client applications should display the results of the KPI’s calculations. A KPI handles information about a goal set, the actual formula of the performance recorded in the cube, and measurement to show the trend and the status of the performance. AMO is used to define the formulas and other definitions about the values of a KPI. A query interface, such as ADOMD. NET, is used by the client application to retrieve and expose the KPI values to the end user. PowerBooks The sale performance is profitable if the sales funnel worked. The sales funnel describes the actual conversion of prospects into sales. It is called as such because it includes the conversion ratio at each stage of the sales cycle, which has a funneling effect. Also, it is profitable if the impact with high-level executives is strong. Getting valuable time with high-level executives, knowing what to do and say when you’re in the meeting to ensure the most impact at the executive level, and winning the approval of key executives at the end of the meeting. With telemarketing on the rise and an increasing number of people screening their incoming calls, phoning a prospect and hoping to get an appointment with him or her requires new techniques. It can cost four times as much to sell to a new customer compared to an existing one. By taking advantage of existing relationships and ongoing contact with customers, companies can sell more products and services, reduce the cost of sales, enhance customer loyalty, and drive revenue. PowerBooks transports beyond paragraphs and chapters. Reading is not merely a common action in PowerBooks; it has its reputation as we said awhile ago; it has an experience of enabling the limitless journey of the mind, which every book lover takes in the process of reading. As PowerBooks continues to expand, with volumes upon volumes of stores like its books, customers can be assured that PowerBooks will always be spearheading innovation as a part of its growth, catering to the constantly changing needs and interests of bibliophiles in every PowerBooks store. This only satisfies that their sale performance is profitable. A book sale sale performance of Book Sale is not too good because based on the graph their sales was become lower than the previous sales so, their profit was becoming lower. Merriam & Webster Bookstore It boasted a wealth of new words from the fields of education, social science, and sports, and in particular from the tremendous scientific and technological revolution the country was going through, from which inventions and concepts, such as the telephone, the automobile, the phonograph, and the light bulb, emerged almost daily. Collegiate sales would grow steadily through the 20th century until by 2004 Merriam-Webster had sold more than 55 million copies, making it one of the best-selling hardcover books in American publishing history, second only to the Bible. Service The excellent services of Goodwill bookstore can accommodate needs quickly, effectively with experienced workers, always come through with the best. Specifically, we allocate the fair value of the wireless reporting unit to all of the assets and liabilities of that unit, including any unrecognized intangible assets, in a hypothetical calculation that would yield the implied fair value of goodwill. If the implied fair value of goodwill is less than the goodwill recorded on our consolidated balance sheet, we record an impairment charge for the difference. The Goodwill Bookstore is well-organized bookstore with neat shelves of old books. Goodwill book store generally stock all the books and other materials required in all the courses offered at the institution. Goodwill book store has kind and gentle customer service. Goodwill bookstore offers a low price of books. Goodwill bookstore provides added convenience to everyone’s book shopping experience. Goodwill bookstore has fair discounts together with various participating companies in the book & publishing industry. Goodwill book store people can visit your web site to buy and download your book almost instantly while the service of National Bookstore has served countless generations with high-quality reading materials at the most competitive prices. It has been instrumental in shaping young minds by nurturing children with books rich in core values and providing a wide array of academic titles and reprints for their education. National Book Store also offers every imaginable product for school and office use. From ordinary supplies to creative novelties, students and professionals in search of a particular item seldom leave the stores disappointed. Fully booked providing excellent service, both to external and internal customers, is one of the toughest challenges faced by every organization. Investment in products, technology, and systems can be undermined with ineffective behavior by front-line staff. Disallow negative talk about customers within the workplace. Forbid employees from talking about your customers in a negative light; this will improve their overall perception about the importance of the customer to the company’s success. This positive attitude will subconsciously transfer to a positive interaction with the customers themselves. . Record customer service calls. Listen to customer service calls to help determine several quantitative measures by which to measure customer service. There are time measures such as time to solve a problem or the number of issues handled within a certain time frame. There is also the ability to determine how many situations an employee has resolved with respect to other employees in a certain time period. Though, time is not everything in customer service if they are not being treated cordially. Use recorded customer service calls to determine which employees need further training on dealing with customers based on their tone of voice and direct language. Fully booked are extremely easy to work with. Their staff is friendly and efficient. In terms of service and the caliber of their staff, Fully Booked is the best agency. PowerBooks Big discounts on bulk orders Depending on your total purchase get as much as 20% discount. Free delivery for a minimum purchase of PhP 5,000, we will deliver your books to your company, school, or organization. Read Now, Pay Later Get to read and review books for free. Pull out books from our stores for a maximum of two weeks to assess at your leisure. Book fairsencourage the love of reading through exclusive book fairs. We’ll bring the latest selections and bestsellers to your students and employees. Powerbooks book fairs- the perfect addition to your events/activities. Easy Payment Terms Special payment terms for your employees can be arranged if they purchase books during our scheduled book fairs. The books that they have chosen can be deducted from their salaries. Convenient Purchasing of Books Now, you can easily purchase titles from Powerbooks. You don’t have to go to our branches. Simply order via email, fax, or over the phone. Book sale Book Sales provides sales & marketing for publishers wishing to command a presence in the important book markets, they also work closely with agents and distributors worldwide in order to be able to offer global distribution for English language titles if required. They offer a range of bespoke services to suit individual requirements, ranging from sales representation & distribution to the book trade through to a comprehensive marketing & promotion strategy. They develop long term relationships with their clients, working as true partners to develop and realize the full potential of their lists. Merriam & Webster Bookstore This store offers all items needed for school, offering top quality brands and affordable alternatives, giving customers’ freedom of choice. M&W may not be the most popular school supplies store but with the same array of items, lower price and shorter check-out lines, school shopping is stress-free. What’s more, they deliver for free within the vicinity for purchases of P1, 000. Good news for those who can’t carry home huge boards for projects or heavy loads of items for school opening. Most valuable products For the last 30 years, Goodwill Bookstore has always been one of the major booksellers during this most awaited event. Traditionally each year, Goodwill showcases its widest array of textbooks, references, pocket books, trade & children`s books and other quality reading materials both from foreign and local publishers. These are sold with huge book fair discounts together with various participating companies in the book & publishing industry. Aside from the usual book trade, Goodwill Bookstore and its affiliate, KATHA Publishing Co. , Inc. will be featuring special events & book launches. Providing added convenience to everyone’s book shopping experience, Goodwill Bookstore and Bridges Bookstore announce the official launch of their respective websites, www. goodwillbookstore. com and www. bridgesbookstore. com on September 16, 2009, the first day of the 30th Manila International Book Fair at 5:00PM, Meeting Room 4 of the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City. The Great Recession has hurt many businesses in the past two years, but one benefactor appears to be Goodwill Books, the used bookstore operated by Goodwill Industries. The store at 6063 Park in Park Place Centre was launched in February 2008 and has experienced such strong success that it was expanded earlier this year. The bookstore recorded $78,000 in sales by the end of September. By comparison, the area’s only other Goodwill book store, on Goodman Road in Southaven and open since 2006, had sales of $101,000 in the same time frame. â€Å"The economy has helped the bookstore business where people who may not have shopped here before have tried it out and those who had shopped here may shop here more,† said Goodwill vice president of operations Dave Leutwyler. â€Å"It’s all about being in the right place with the right product. â€Å"Leutwyler expects the Park Avenue location to match the Goodman Road numbers as awareness of the store grows. â€Å"We think it’s a first-class operation and we’re pretty proud of it,† Leutwyler said. â€Å"It’s doing really well. â€Å"The location was first conceived as a much-needed donation center, although it became apparent that it was more room than was needed. â€Å"We wanted to generate revenue to offset the cost of the rent, and the bookstore was a good alternative to fill the space,† Leutwyler said. Customers are drawn from nearby restaurants, St. Francis Hospital and the Courtyard by Marriott next door. Many buyers grab and go, but there is also an area where browsers can sit and read. â€Å"We have a good product, terrific service and great customers,† Leutwyler said. â€Å"We get customers looking to get away from the hospital for a bit and travelers at the hotel. Sometimes, at the end of the week, a traveler will bring a book back that’s been bought to donate back to the store. â€Å"Eleanor Troutman has worked at the store since it opened, and said it now has 10,000 books on its shelves, including those in hardback fiction, trade paperback, history, biography, self help and, of course, Oprah’s book club. â€Å"The expansion gave us the chance to offer more of the categories our customers are interested in,† Troutman said. Each donation center is linked to a particular Goodwill retail store. For the Goodwill Books store, certain centers’ books — the cream of the crop — have been designated for sale at the bookstore. All of our stores still have a nice selection of books,† Leutwyler said. â€Å"Any rare or valuable books will go to the bookstore† while MANILA, Philippines – Dell Philippines broke out from the mold by being the first PC company to tap National Bookstore as a reseller. Traditionally, IT companies appoint seasoned computer distributors and dealers that operate computer shops in major malls to carry their products. Dell, however, believes computers are now undoubtedly considered office and school supplies that it is just right to be in the shelves of National Bookstore, the country’s oldest and biggest chain of bookstore Best Buy Pals was created specifically for the choosy and trend-seeking teens. This new product line ensures that teens have new and exciting designs of school supplies and accessories to choose from. The annual product calendar features books and school and office supplies available at the stores. Every year, new and exciting features are added to make the calendar a more useful and effective communication and marketing tool. Fully booked is one of the hippest and most visited bookstore chains in the Philippines. They not only sell the widest selection of books at reasonable prices, they care for the environment too. Fully Booked Gift Certificates allow your loved ones to choose the item that is perfect for them in any of our Fully Booked stores. Fully Booked Corporate Accounts aim to help your company meet its needs for books. Whether you’re looking for training and reference materials to stay ahead in a fast changing industry, building your company’s library or rewarding important employees or clients, we have the solutions for you. 10% discount on cash purchases and 5% discount on credit card purchases for all your company employees (once initial purchase has been made). Facility to order books not currently in stock. PowerBooks valuable products, Educational books, Children Books, Fiction Books, Dictionaries, Bibles, Magazines , Newspapers. PowerBooks Corporate accounts are comprised of valued schools, companies, and organizations that enjoy numerous benefits from PowerBooks. Depending on your total purchase, get as much as 20% discount. For a minimum purchase of PhP 5,000, we will deliver your books to your company, school, or organization. Special payment terms for your employees can be arranged if they purchase books during our scheduled book fairs. The books that they have chosen can be deducted from their salaries. Book sales through retailers fell in 2009, and overall bookstore sales have been treading water since 2003 according to the government (table below). The combined total for media sales (mainly books) of the Barnes&Noble and Borders chains plus Amazon North America and BN. com was $13. 5 billion, with all the gain comng from online sales. These sums include a couple billion dollars worth of DVD’s, CD’s, coffee and brownies that aren’t publicly broken out of the numbers. Barnes and Noble pointed out years ago in a conference call that â€Å"most† of their business is in stable backlist sales, and their most valuable asset is their real estate. They are trying to create new book selling realestate with their Nook eBook reader, and claim their share of the eBook market is now greater than their share of the printed book market. The decline in Borders North American sales accelerated in 2009, they opened no new superstores and closed many Waldens bookstores in malls. Amazon media sales grew at a healthy pace, thanks to Kindle and Prime. Merriam & Webster Bookstore They offer educational books, children books, fiction books, dictionaries, bibles, magazines, newspapers, periodicals, CD Center, Office Essentials, quality plastic covers of thick grades and branded pencils with sturdy lead that lasts the whole school year can be found here. M&W also carries textbooks from their own publication and selected publishers, art supplies and cutie character knick-knacks all covered in one stop. You can purchase Merriam-Webster’s high quality references through your favorite bookstore, office supply retailer, or software dealer. Choose from a wide selection of dictionaries, writers’ guides, readers’ references, and CD-ROMs. Moreover, the company was convinced that while dictionaries in various electronic formats, especially Web-based, might never fully replace print dictionaries, they would be an important means of dictionary use in the future. Finally, Merriam-Webster realized that to keep hold of its leadership in dictionary publishing, its dictionaries had to be accepted as the standard by which dictionaries were measured. M&W is saleable because this is not only impressive in terms of completeness, it’s definitely budget friendly. The best marketing strategy The month of July has been a dismal month for the bulls in the market. The downtrend occurred most of the time in the oversold condition. This makes it difficult to put on extensive short positions when the market is in that status. That is why having some short positions as well as longs is a prudent strategy. There will always be excellent short charts in an up-trending market and there will always be good bullish signals in a down-trending market. When the market conditions are such that the trend is not clearly definable, the use of candlestick signals can make a portfolio strategy easy to implement. Having the portfolio positioned with both long and shorts during indecisive periods in the market provides a format that will profit from being in some positions that benefit from the market direction with the possibility that the opposite positions may not move against the portfolio. At worst, the positions opposite the market direction should not move against the portfolio in the same magnitude as the positions profiting from the market direction. The signals indicate circumstances that move the prices in the direction indicated even though it is opposite the market direction, such as a short signal pushing a price down when the rest of the market is moving up. Is your business strategy targeting your best market segment? Let’s analyze how much the Top Market Strategy will multiply your sales and profit. You see, we are all created equal, but some prospects are more â€Å"equal† than others. If your business is typical, prospects in the top 20% will produce 16 times more sales and profit than other market segments. Do you want to predict who is in your top market segment? Learn how a universal principle governs your sales and profit. Salespeople readily see that many of their sales come from a few customers, but the most successful salespeople analyze how the 80:20 rule of thumb works with their customers. When sales people segment their market by sales, they discover that 80% of their sales come from customers in the top 20%, whereas 20% of sales come from customers in the bottom 80%. Does this seem true for customers of your business? If your business is typical, this result must be true since the 80:20 rule is an application of Pareto’s universal principle. Figure 1 analyzes the sales of two market segments of a typical business. Goodwill bookstore temporary Site First of its Kind in Nation; Partnership with the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative (TEEI) to Help Create Job Training and Employment Opportunities for Transgender Individuals. SAN FRANCISCO, CA, September 27, 2010 — Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties (â€Å"Goodwill†) is pleased to announce the Grand Opening of its new â€Å"pop up† store in San Francisco’s Castro District. A new concept for Goodwill, which currently operates 17 stores and 26 donation sites across three counties, the store is the first of its kind nationally to provide job training and employment opportunities for members of the transgender community. Part of this historic opening is Goodwill’s partnership with the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative (TEEI), which will work with Goodwill to encourage employment sustainability among transgender individuals. Goodwill offers job training and placement programs that help foster career development and employment sustainability for people who face challenges to finding employment. With an estimated 70% of transgender Californian’s facing workforce discrimination, with fewer than half employed full time, there is a growing need for job training and employment opportunities among the transgender population. * â€Å"Work with dignity is a basic human right. Anyone with the desire to work should be able to,† said Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez, President and CEO, Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties. â€Å"We’re proud to work with TEEI on leveraging the Castro pop up store as a place where transgender individuals can seek employment and receive on the job training in effort to fight workforce disparity among California’s transgender population. † TEEI, a unique collaborative program of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center (The Center), Jewish Vocational Service, and the Transgender Law Center, was designed to help transgender individuals find stable jobs that provide a living wage, benefits, and opportunities for advancement. Its partnership with Goodwill is an example of the continued collaboration it hopes to have among local government, neighborhoods, businesses, and philanthropies, to improve the lives of transgender individuals in the workforce. â€Å"Based on a recent California survey transgender respondents are twice as likely as the general population to hold a Bachelors degree, yet are also twice as likely to live below the poverty line,†* said Clair Farley, TEEI Economic Development. Coordinator. â€Å"It is our hope the Castro pop up store will serve as a model for future programs to help transgender individuals overcome the barriers they face to finding sustainable employment. † San Francisco District 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who was instrumental in helping bring Goodwill and TEEI together on the pop up store, agrees: â€Å"This promises to be a Goodwill store that is unique as the Castro, bringing new shoppers to the neighborhood, and jobs to those in need. † National Bookstore offers a wide range of products from the retail sale and distribution of books to the sale of various school supplies. National Bookstore’s products, specifically the school supplies, are mostly aimed for the students’ and office workers’ consumption and needs. However, the customers of National Bookstore are not limited to just students and office workers.

No Place to Hide

‘No place to hide’? The realities of leadership in UK supermarkets SKOPE Research Paper No. 91 May 2010 * Irena Grugulis, **Odul Bozkurt and ***Jeremy Clegg * Bradford University School of Management, **Lancaster University Management School, ***Leeds University Business School Editor’s Foreword SKOPE Publications This series publishes the work of the members and associates of SKOPE.A formal editorial process ensures that standards of quality and objectivity are maintained. Orders for publications should be addressed to the SKOPE Secretary, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT Research papers can be downloaded from the website: www. skope. ox. ac. uk ISSN 1466-1535 Abstract This article explores the realities of managerial work in two major British supermarket chains.While the prescriptive literature welcomes the displacement of bureaucratic management by rote with leadership, empirical account s of what managers actually do underscore how the purported tenets of leadership tend to disappear upon closer inspection, even at the discursive level. This study observes and discusses the discrepancy between the rhetoric of leadership articulated by executives at the corporate head offices and the actual roles and responsibilities of managers in stores.Work was tightly controlled and managers had little real freedom. We draw on empirical evidence to argue both that while leadership in practice secured only trivial freedoms such freedoms were highly valued and that academic analysis should follow these managers in their ability to distinguish between rhetorical flourishes and reallife job design. Leadership in practice is mundane and local. Keywords: leadership, leaders, managers, control, deskilling, supermarkets, retailIntroduction This article explores the realities of managerial work in two major British supermarkets chains. While the prescriptive literature welcomes the displ acement of bureaucratic management by rote with leadership (see for example Zaleznik 1992), empirical accounts of what managers and leaders actually do underscore how the purported tenets of ‘leadership’ tend to disappear upon closer inspection, even at the discursive level (Meindl et al. 1985, Alvesson and Sveningsson 2003a, 2003b, Tengblad 2004).Kelly (2008) has taken issue with the tendency in the leadership literature of discounting the ordinary everyday work activity of managers in lieu of a continued effort to theoretically pin down how leadership really ought to be conceptualised. He argues that the common terminology used by various writers conceals a wide diversity of practice and that leadership is locally produced. We join Kelly’s contention that ‘the apparently mundane practices that are made accountable and therefore observable remain unexplicated and actively ignored’ (2008:774) and that this is regrettable.We diverge from his emphasis on the reification of leadership through language games, however, and focus instead on the dissonance between the salience of leadership in the popular and practitioner representations of management jobs and the actual limits to the discretion, initiative and control that managers are able to exercise in the concrete, routine and core practices associated with their roles. This dissonance was actively exploited by the supermarkets’ business models.Celebratory accounts of leadership were cascaded down the managerial hierarchy, from the corporate head office to the departmental managers, to spur managerial staff to greater efforts in routine work. The empirical material we use to support these claims comes from a study of managers and managerial work in the stores of two of Britain’s largest supermarkets. In the four store sites where research was carried out, the work of managers was heavily prescribed, with ordering, product ranges, stock levels, store layouts, pricing , special offers and staffing policies all set out by respective functional divisions at head ffice. Their work was also closely monitored, and their personal performance assessed, through the constant and close inspection of the sales, profit and customer service performance scores of the stores and departments they were responsible for. In line with Hales’ (2005) observations, these managers were not entrepreneurial visionaries, but links in a chain with little real influence over policies and procedures. 1Their work was generally confined to striving to meet a range of very demanding performance targets over which they themselves had little, if any, control. In both supermarket chains, leadership by managers in stores was considered vital for company performance, with ‘the importance of people’ to competing with rival chains and ‘keeping customers satisfied’ repeatedly stressed by the full range of interviewees. Yet this leadership was to be exerc ised in specific and specified ways.Both managers in charge of stores and those in charge of departments had little power over most aspects of their work but were expected to lead, inspire, motivate and monitor staff on customer service (in the widest sense). Head office executives and store-level managers themselves in both chains repeatedly stressed the charismatic and inspirational elements of leadership. In particular, this depiction of leadership required managers to mediate between the dual pressures of much service sector work, to minimise costs but maximise customer service (Taylor and Bain 1999, Korczynski 2001, 2002).In this context, leadership appeared to be a euphemism for the demand that managers mobilise their personal physical, emotional and social resources to make up for the discrepancies between targets and resources and be ardent pursuers of the employer’s end of the wage-effort bargain. This type of contained leadership bears little resemblance to the cele bratory accounts but it is probably a far closer reflection of the realities of workplace practice. While the article stresses the mundane nature of managerial jobs in supermarket stores, it also highlights the way both individual managers and shopfloor workers use the leadership rhetoric.This rhetoric was valued by the managers largely because of its unreality; while they ostensibly ‘bought in’ to the rhetoric, in practice, most were adept at negotiating the dissonance between it and real work and none sought to put its wider tenets into practice. On the shopfloor, the dramatic language of leadership and transformation was used to legitimise managerial freedoms; these were trivial but they nevertheless proved an escape from scripting for people management and were deeply valued by the managers themselves.We elaborate on the constitutive parts of our arguments in the rest of this article. First, we provide a critical review of the popular ways of conceptualising leaders hip in the literature and the way these are problematic in relation to managerial work in practice. Then we introduce the specific context of retail work and of our study to highlight the significance of both to an inquiry into the discrepancy between leadership rhetoric and managerial practice. This is followed by a discussion of the contradictions inherent in 2 eadership on the supermarket shopfloor and the nature of the spaces that remain for initiative and freedom. Managers, Leaders and ‘Real Work’ It is popular to claim that managerial work is changing, that hidebound and bureaucratic managers who impede workplace performance are being (or should be) replaced with charismatic and visionary leaders who know when to subvert rules, inspire enthusiasm in their followers and contribute to corporate dynamism (Zaleznik 1992, Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe 2005). Such claims, clearly, need to be tempered with caution (Storey 2004a, 2004b).Students of business and manage ment have long suffered from those thrills of novelty, which set critical descriptions of the existing and unfashionable against enthusiastic predictions of what an ideal type of the latest fad might look like. An unfair but recurrent practice which, as Storey (2004a) notes, is being repeated for leadership. This advocacy is rendered possible, at least in part, by the paucity of empirical accounts of who leaders are and what it is they actually do (see for example Jackson and Parry 2008).When data is available, authors rarely write about transformational activities. Rather, they stress how ordinary leaders are and how mundane their work is (Carlson 1951, Meindl et al. 1985, Alvesson and Sveningsson 2003a, 2003b, Tengblad 2004). Even charismatic leaders are not unfettered (Robinson and Kerr 2009). Empirical enquiry strips leadership of its universal grandeur and helps depict a practice that is both contested (Collinson 2005) and locally defined (Kelly 2008). Bureaucratic forms of con trol are still going strong (Power 1997, Hales 2002, Protherough and Pick 002) and old-fashioned supervision rather than inspirational leadership is at the heart of most jobs (Delbridge and Lowe 1997, Hales 2005). Kelly (2008), in his analysis of the nature of leadership and the various discourses that surround it, has argued that leadership as a practice is locally defined and here we propose one example of such local definition:. In this study, the requirements of customer service did indeed shape the demand for leadership skills, but not quite in the way that the proponents of the spread of transformational leadership suggest.What was at stake was not an entrepreneurial transformation. On the contrary, managers’ actions were tightly controlled and those controls were increasing. As well as following orders from head office, store and department managers were simultaneously required to inspire, enthuse and motivate the front-line 3 staff they were responsible for. The posit ive connotations of the word leadership helped to motivate individual managers, as they in turn sought to motivate others (Etzioni 1961).Here the dissonance between the leadership rhetoric and workplace realities was not an analytical lacuna but an important part of the process since images of leaders needed to be inspirational rather than accurate. Retail Work Retail work accounts for a significant proportion of the working population, with 12 per cent of UK workers employed in retail (Burt and Sparks 2003). While this work can be skilled, from the glamour of the ‘style labour markets’ (Nickson et al. 2001), to the product knowledge of expert assistants in France (McGauran 2000, 2001), the wide-ranging skills of apprentice-trained workers in Germany (Kirsch et al. 000) or the impressive educational achievements of Chinese retail workers (Gamble 2006), most British jobs are not. For the majority of British supermarkets, the main skills policy pursued is one that is â₠¬Ëœtantamount to a personnel strategy based on zero competence’, zero qualifications, zero training and zero career (Gadrey 2000). Margins are tight and the extensive centralisation and standardisation of supply chains and products (Baron et al. 2001) extends to work and work processes (Felstead et al. 2009).Workers are valued for their presence and their temporal flexibility, not their skills, and presence and temporal flexibility are seldom highly paid. The retail sector accounts for 26 per cent of British low paid workers (Mason et al. 2008) with 75 per cent of sales assistants and 80 per cent of checkout operators compensated at rates below the low pay threshold (Mason and Osborne 2008). Part-time and women workers, who dominate the sector (Arrowsmith and Sisson 1999, Burt and Sparks 2003) are particularly badly affected. Some stores deploy sophisticated human resource anagement techniques such as psychometric tests (Freathy and Sparks 2000) and merit-based pay but these are set against generally low wage rates, rigid control mechanisms and limited discretion (Arrowsmith and Sisson 1999, Broadbridge 2002, Burt and Sparks 2003). Against this backdrop, recent writing on retail employment from a strategic perspective has increasingly emphasised the role of management and managers in the overall performance of companies (Booth and Hamer 2006, Hart et al. 2006). It argues that the link between managers’ work and store (or firm) performance is 4 hrough ‘lay’ workers, in one example, asserting that ‘without strong management and leadership skills, store and employee productivity suffers together with lower staff motivation, ultimately leading to lower profits’ (Hart et al. 2006:281-282). However, lists of actions such as ‘providing good pay and benefits, praise and encouragement and support and training, or even at the most basic level, ensuring employees receive their correct rest periods at work’ (Booth and H amer 2006:299) do not accurately depict the real remit of managers in large-scale retail organisations.Methods and Methodology This research was part of an EPSRC/AIM funded project on the organisation and experience of employment in retailing. Since our main interest was in the processual aspects of work, a multi-pronged, qualitative approach was adopted, as this was best suited to compare and contrast official organisational statements with real life practices and experiences. Research was conducted in two of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, here referred to as Retail 1 and Retail 2, respectively.Retail 1 had 356 stores and employed over 160,000 people. Retail 2’s portfolio of stores included the convenience store format, which brought its total number of stores to 823, but it had slightly fewer employees at around 150,000. By and large, their target clientele overlapped and they were direct competitors with similar market shares. In each supermarket, detailed in terviews were conducted with head office staff who were responsible for determining strategies, setting policies and designing business processes.We were able to review a large amount and range of company material pertaining to company strategy, business models, performance indicators, human resource policies, recruitment and training programmes and change initiatives. Interviews were carried out with top executives in strategy, human resources, training, marketing, accounting, customer services and profit/productivity/performance improvement departments. In addition to this, in each chain, two locations were selected for store-level research; store A and store B at Retail 1, store C and store D at Retail 2.In the stores interviews were conducted with the (general) store managers, who would be managing anywhere between 200 and 400 employees, the secondary tier of between three and five senior managers, who had store-wide responsibility and supervised and coordinated the work of depa rtment managers, and the managers of the 12 to 15 different departments such as produce, customer service, or bakery, as well as a number of shopfloor workers. All of the managers were salaried, while all 5 of the shopfloor workers were hourly-paid. Store interviews with hourly paid workers were the most challenging.Our informants were welcoming and supportive but, owing to the tight margins and pressure on staff, few had time for interviews. The length of interviews with managers ranged from half an hour to multiple sessions of several hours, typically averaging an hour and a half to two hours. Some of the interviews with workers also lasted over an hour, but a number of them had to be interrupted after less than half an hour. All formal interviews were recorded, professionally transcribed and coded using NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis software.In total, 86 interviews were carried out, 46 in Retail 1, 34 in Retail 2, and the rest with a range of outside key informants including a top level executive of a third supermarket chain, industry experts based at the Institute of Grocery Distributors (IGD) and trade union representatives. In addition to the interviews, participant and non-participant observation was carried out by one of the research team at the Retail 1 head office and, more extensively, at one of the two Retail 1 stores included in the study (store A).In addition to observing recruitment group interviews, new employee induction sessions and a range of daily activities in the store, the researcher also worked shifts of 10 to 15 hours a week for six weeks on the delicatessen, fish, rotisserie, pizza and ready-meal counters. A research diary was kept during this part of the fieldwork and transcribed. ‘No Place to Hide’ Leadership was a ‘quality’ that was extensively referenced in the public presentations of managerial career paths in both supermarket chains.Retail 1’s literature on career prospects described the traini ng programme for shopfloor workers who wished to become department managers as being ‘built upon’ their ‘current leadership skills’ through on-the-job training, while that for department managers with ambitions to be store managers or deputies was said to help them ‘perfect their leadership style’. Retail 2’s careers information on the company website directed those with some previous retail management experience and ‘looking to grow into a leadership role’ to the ‘fast-track to Store Manager Development Program’.Hitting the link, interested parties were informed that nobody played a more important role in the supermarket’s everyday operations (turnaround) than the managers in the stores, whose leadership ‘inspires our people to deliver a great everyday customer experience’. Retail 2’s recruitment process for senior managers included psychometric tests that were, among 6 other qualitie s, designed to pick up leadership skills and potential. Retail 1’s rogrammes for management development included selection hurdles such as roleplay sessions where future managers were expected to stand out from among their peers by displaying the desired abilities, with ‘leadership’ prominent among these. While leadership skills and qualities were presented as core to the work of everyone and as particularly central for progression into managerial roles, in stores almost every aspect of work for every kind of employee, from shopfloor workers during their training period all the way to the general store manager, was set out, standardised and occasionally scripted by the experts at head office.Buyers sourced goods and set prices at the head offices, with computer networks monitoring sales in stores and re-ordering supplies. The corporate human resources department set wages and provided clear targets for store managers in terms of staffing, leaving stores with a ba lancing act between resources and targets. Checkout tills used electronic scanning, shelf-stackers followed planograms that provided detailed layout plans for displays, price guns printed out price tags, including reductions, as decided by head office software depending on the time of day. According to long-serving informants, limits on discretion were increasing.The remaining specialist departments, such as the delicatessen counter (which included meats, cheeses and fish) and the bakery, were coming under increasing levels of central control. A trained butcher (now the manager of a non-food department) revealed that most meats were now cut and packaged before arrival in store. The same was true for cheeses. In the smaller stores bakeries worked entirely from deliveries of frozen goods which they re-heated, and in larger stores there was a mix of supplier-packed, frozen, ambient and chilled products and goods baked in store.But even breads baked in store arrived ready made up with i nstructions on times for mixing, proving and baking. The only formally accredited staff in stores were pharmacists employed in special stand-alone units on some sites. Such a policy of standardisation was deliberate and referred to with pride. The wageplanning manager in the Business Improvement Group at Retail 1 head office summarised the challenge as ‘how lazy we can make it†¦ make the process easy for them so it becomes a natural habit’.This close prescription and standardisation of work tasks was not a surprising observation to make of hourly-paid workers, or in the context of retail employment, traditionally known for its reliance on low skills and low wages. What was unusual was that the same restrictions applied to managers. In fact, the managers were under 7 far greater surveillance in terms of observable results. Because performance and productivity measurements were taken at both department and store level, which were then linked back and traceable to ind ividual managers, their performance evaluation was quantified and routinised.There was no comparable performance evaluation of individual shopfloor workers except for those at the tills, although Retail 2 had just introduced a new performance enhancement programme to track the performance of individual workers. Yet these practices, too, only increased the number of indicators by which managers’ performance could be monitored, as the ultimate responsibility for meeting unit-based targets, as well as ensuring that individual workers showed the head-office dictated levels of performance, still lay with the managers.An executive in the productivity improvement division of Retail 2’s head office operations, who had risen through the ranks, observed that the role of store managers had changed considerably over the last twenty years: I think what we probably lost was a bit of the entrepreneurial or tradesmanship of the store manager to say, ‘Oh next week that’s g oing on offer, I want 200 of them next week’. Because they were good traders and experienced. And they knew how they were going to present it. Honestly, when I joined†¦ he store manager where I trained was a bit of a wide boy I suppose, but he would do things like – well he made me do it – Saturday afternoon if we were overstocked, I remember him saying ‘We’re overstocked on lettuces. [Name] go to the front door and stand there and sell your lettuces! ’ And you’d do things like say ‘Come on, here’s your lettuce! Get one for the rabbit! Half price! ’ And you’d literally drop them in people’s baskets as they walked through the door so they almost got no choice but to have your lettuce. productivity improvement manager, Retail 2, Head Office) But in the current arrangements, because of the focus on what Pye (1968) terms the ‘workmanship of certainty’, the emphasis in store for both manag ers and workers was on obedience to instruction. In fact, much of a manager’s work was about ensuring such obedience. [The parent company] is very much about†¦ they use a word quite a lot called compliance and there is a lot of compliance and the phrase they used†¦ was ‘there is no place to hide’ [Was that like an official thing? No, it was kind of like – you know with all the systems, their systems monitor everything, they monitor everything. Every little thing is monitored so there is no place to hide. I am not saying in terms of hiding things that are wrong but they see everything. (senior manager, Retail 1, Store B) A policy backed up by the motto ‘comply then complain’, which had clear implications for the way work was conducted. 8 [I]f the company says to you 9am Monday morning stand on one leg in the oyer, I want you to do it, at 9am and if that’s all of you, I want you to do it but then you’ll all stand there th inking why on God’s earth are we doing this, then ask the question, why do we need to do this? What benefit am I getting from it? But do it in the first place before you even complain about it, because until you’ve tried it you don’t know what it’s going to do, but it’s driving that culture. (general store manager, Retail 1, Store A) This approach was generally greeted with enthusiasm. I love this comply and then complain.You know because you put it right, you do it the way they want you to do it and then if it is not right you feed back what is wrong with it so you complain after you have had a go at it at putting it right. And I think that is absolutely vital. You know we have a duty to feed back and give that feedback but you know we don’t have that right until we have had a go at it†¦ the right way first. (training manager, Retail 1, Training Store) Unsurprisingly, such an approach influenced the skills expected of both workers and managers as well as leaving little space for transformational leadership.Skill levels were low and product knowledge in particular was a welcome, but almost optional part of work. Several of our informants did possess expertise and boasted strong personal interests in electronics or fish or experience in bakeries, but while this might allow front-line workers to develop a personal pride in aspects of their work it was not a job requirement and was rarely shared by the senior management team in stores, whose career progression was based on obligatory movement between different departments.Head office executives spoke of promoting people with an interest in a particular area of work, a ‘passion about food’ or ‘a personal interest’, and management training did provide product information as part of the process, but the demand for and emphasis on specialist knowledge was limited.Mason and Osborne’s (2008) comparison of supermarkets with electrical retail ers reveals that the (often supplier provided) training in product knowledge that characterised electrical goods had few parallels in supermarkets, while Gamble’s (2006) research into Chinese retailers showed a well educated workforce and a highly demanding customer base not reflected in our study. In these supermarkets, workers could apply for entry-level managerial posts as soon as their twelve weeks of initial training were complete (although the graduate training schemes in both supermarkets were rather different).Graduates were more noticeable in the head offices and in certain specialisms (three of the four store-based human resource (HR) managers we spoke to were graduates, compared to three of the 23 managers in Retail 1 Store A). But while one 9 of the HR managers thought that having a degree was useful for ‘the analytical side of what (managers) need to do’, in general formal qualifications were not a significant criteria for managerial posts. The vast majority of managers had come up from the ranks of hourly-paid shopfloor workers.Interestingly, the non-graduate managers all spoke of the encouragement they had received from their managers to embark on management training. In the absence of a universal demand for specialist training or knowledge, leadership, both demonstrated and potential, was presented as the key element in selection decisions for such career progression: I mean, when I interview managers to join my team, I’m not necessarily looking for ‘Do they know what baked beans and yoghurts are? ’ and ‘Have they filled them before? ’ I’m looking for attitude, I’m looking for personal resilience and I’m looking for a track record.What have they done before? What have they done in the past? But it doesn’t necessarily mean that if I’ve got a grocery manager position I want a grocery manager from another store. Because it’s about managing people, itâ₠¬â„¢s about managing hearts and minds really. (general store manager, Retail 1, Store A) But while store language focused on obedience and hearts and minds, the structural features of promotion ensured that, in practice, most managers and leaders were men. Moving between departments was an integral part of career mobility in both supermarkets.Promotion, even for the first foray into managerial duties, involved a switch of departments, while subsequent expansions of responsibility meant managers would be moved to increasingly larger departments in the stores. For general store managers, and for the second tier of senior management, geographical mobility was required and managers were expected to move between different stores in the same ‘regional cluster’ (generally between 15 to 25 stores, depending on the region). Interestingly, managerial informants stressed how lenient their superiors were when imposing these travel requirements. Annual performance appraisals istingu ished between preferences for a 30-minute or a one-hour commute. Retail 2 store managers were told by their regional bosses to prioritise their families and the general manager of Store B asserted proudly that he would not be despatched to the other end of the country against his will. But, while all managers seemed to accept that mobility was required, for others the geographical differences between managerial and front-line worker posts discouraged progression and helped to account for the fact that, while the lower ranks of supermarket workers were dominated by women, the managers were predominately male. 0 Many of the workers we interviewed were attracted to retail by the fact that it was part-time: women with caring responsibilities, students, young people and older workers dominated the workforce. People worked in their local stores and their limited hours often suited their other responsibilities or desire for education. Managerial posts, by contrast, were almost universally full-time despite, given the length of opening hours (24 hours for Retail 1 and 8am to 10pm for Retail 2), no one manager would be able to control their store continually (see Dalton 1966, Moss-Kanter 1977).We did meet two women managers in shared posts but these were rare and had been specifically created to accommodate these informants’ demands for job-sharing (see also Mason and Osborne 2008). Small Freedoms Unlike the transformational visionaries of the leadership literature, the freedoms enjoyed by the supermarket managers in this study were generally minor and illicit. Despite the recurrent official emphasis on ‘comply then complain’, most created their own small discretionary spaces.The most commonly cited example was in store, counter or shelf layout. Detailed specifications were sent down from head office dictating the number and placement of products. But these were based on national averages of other stores in that category with little sensitivity for local geography, tastes or customer-base. Accordingly, in practice local knowledge, personal interest and the desire to personalise space often triumphed over the formal specifications. It was, of course, possible to protest against layouts officially.The general manager of Retail 1 Store A had done so when he wished to re-site the movie and video booth in his city centre store, taking it out of the foyer where it was vulnerable to repeated thefts and switching it with a sandwich booth which would have benefited from being more readily accessible. His request involved developing a detailed business case and visits from senior management but was eventually turned down (or indefinitely postponed pending a fuller refurbishment to include a pharmacy).Others were less regulation bound. I just did it, I got told to do it. They put trust in me to change the layout in the store of Home and Leisure, to move products around if I believed it would gain sales. And for example all the Home secti on wasn’t together, DIY and water was with pots and pans, party ranges weren’t with disposable paper tableware, so I put a new shopfloor plan together to move it all around and we did that†¦ [A]t [names other store] I’d gone through a couple of revamps where I’d actually 11 hanged over 200 bays in [other store] because we went through revamps to get bigger and better ranges in so I’d done a lot of work in the past on how a department should flow and how it should look and how we get the best out of the ranges and stuff like that so putting that experience into here and grouping the departments together†¦ [Did you have to negotiate with Head Office? ] No, we just did it. (senior manager, Retail 1, Store B) Occasionally re-siting compensated for inadequacies in the briefing documents.One manager liked to get experienced staff to adapt official shelving briefs to suit the store: They know if they’ve been doing that for a couple of yea rs, they know what will sell and what won’t. Now [if] it’s a novice then they wouldn’t, so I’d need them to do it in space flexing which will tell them the quantity. The plan would tell them how many facings so, say, it was like that it wanted a capacity of 70 on four facings but you can fit that 70 on two facings I would expect you to do it to two facings.And that’s where you gain space as well on the plan if you needed to open up on something else because it wasn’t lasting on the shop. [So you’ve got to play around quite a bit? ] Yes, you’ve got to play around with it, yes. Everything’s not as easy as black and white on paper. (general merchandise manager, Retail 1 Store B) Occasionally individuals also needed to over-ride the computer systems to over-come limitations.The demand for hot dog rolls on bonfire night, more salads and fresh vegetables for barbecues on unexpectedly hot days and ensuring that local tastes wer e provided for through particular fish or flavours of roast chicken were matters of relative individual discretion. But most of these practices were heavily discouraged officially and many were formally denied. One manager of a Retail 2 supermarket during a first interview and guided tour of his store was enthusiastic about the way Retail 2’s head office experts designed and laid out the shelf space.An enthusiasm which lasted until one of the researchers took out a camera to photograph the excellent layout. He was immediately asked not to take photographs, since the manager had exercised his own discretion and did not want news of this individuality to get back to head office. People and Leadership Amidst the widespread use of regulation, standardisation and constraint there was one area where managers were both encouraged and expected to use their own discretion and, in the rhetoric of their head offices, exercise ‘leadership’.This was in the area of people mana gement. The structural means for doing this was very limited. Wages, 12 staffing levels and worker tasks were all pre-set by head office, although some local adjustments were possible. Store managers who recruited staff would be told how many ‘hours’ they could hire, but it was up to them to decide how to divide this up, so, for example, twenty hours might translate into three new part-timers working distinctive shifts. This often proved difficult to implement, since computer staffing levels did not always translate into viable recruitment.The personnel manager, she cares a lot, but [for] the company [it’s] all about its process, [it’s] not really about the people. And so the process is sort of disguised as this ‘caring’ – but it’s not. So these people, they just expect you to do more and more, and we take more and more sales but we don’t necessarily get the hours. Produce was given 20 extra hours for quarter three in line with sales and things, but I can’t recruit for these 20 hours because all that’ll happen is they’ll get taken away after Christmas or the sales won’t be there so I’ll never see them anyway.You know they’re not tangible, I can’t take them and use them. (produce manager, Retail 1, Store A) Much of this was work intensification. Head office staff expected local managers to know who they could allocate to particular tasks to save a few hours on the timesheet and this was considered excellence in leadership. [S]o we’re looking for the managers to not be creative in the ways they do their processes, I want them to follow the processes exactly how the systems define them†¦I want them to lay the store out how the system devises and I want them to fill the shelves how it says on the tin, if you like, but then absolutely be as creative as possible in the way you service the customers. More the way we would be going. (business impro vement director, Retail 1, Head Office) This ‘creativity’ was also set down in systems and structures of the stores. The performance of their departments or stores in terms of customer service was assessed through monthly ‘mystery shopper’ visits, while regular staff meetings provided managers with an opportunity to motivate.The morning shifts in both supermarkets began with caucus-style meetings, held in a central location on the shopfloor in Retail 1 and in a staff area in Retail 2, between the store manager, the upper management team and all the departmental managers who were on shift. Department managers held the same sort of ‘getting the day started’ meetings with their respective department staff. News about how the store or unit was doing in terms of the performance criteria was often a major theme; good performance was usually emphasised as a reason to feel good and underperformance as grave and in need of immediate attention.In the bri efing templates handed down from the head offices, spots were allocated for events to note, improve or celebrate. Managers’ motivational 13 role (whether through generating pride or alarm) was possibly most necessary during these meetings, as announcements, for example about the roll-out of new uniforms could be rendered exciting, or a letter of appreciation from a customer as emotionally touching, through their performative skills. Performance related pay was extensively used.For general store managers it could amount to as much as 40 per cent of salary and even hourly paid workers might earn over ? 100. Individual performance was supposed to be assessed separately, as one informant noted: ‘sometimes you can have a department which hasn’t performed well on paper but what that manager’s contributed to that maybe it’s a total different story’. But in practice, greatest weight was placed on store and overall company performance in a given tradi ng year. Both supermarkets used some version of recognition schemes where small monetary awards from ? 10 to ? 0 could be given out, and this was largely at managers’ discretion to ‘celebrate success’, as there was ‘a lot of pressure on everybody to perform all the time’ (bakery manager, Retail 2). But managers appreciated that the effectiveness of such schemes was limited: [A] lot is spending time with them and motivating them. You know if you motivate them they work far better than – [How can you motivate them? What do you have at your disposal to motivate them? ] You don’t really have any financial really, apart from you’ve got the yearly bonus, you know colleagues get a yearly bonus.So you’ve got the bonus to aim for. I don’t know really†¦ I think everyone is motivated by doing a good job and job satisfaction and spending time with people and I think a lot of it as well is getting to know colleagues, I know just about everyone by their first name and things like that. (senior manager, Retail 1 Store A) The financial outcomes of managers’ work were assessed through daily checks and monitoring of sales, waste, loss of products and the profits their departments or stores generated. Many were factors over which they had little control.Describing her Key Result Areas, which included absences, sales, labour turnover, waste and the customer service score, the HR manager (Retail 1, Store A) commented, ‘[s]o all my key result areas are linked with everybody else’s, so it’s my influencing skills that are really being looked at for that†¦ As a manager, you’re paid to manage; you’re not paid to fill the shop necessarily’. This confidence was widespread. But as the store managers pointed out structural conditions, including local labour markets, might be ignored in head office plans but heavily influenced how effective such work intensification could be.One, who was responsible for staffing a city centre store in a University town, spoke with 14 envy of a friend who managed a rural outlet. If workers in the city centre felt unfairly treated, they had a choice of part-time service sector jobs to move to. Their rural counterparts, in the absence of other local job opportunities, stayed in post (many had been there since the store opened). Yet this was the area over which managers were deemed to have most control and many seemed to accept this. When our informants spoke about leadership, their most common reaction was to emphasise the difference that they, as individuals, could make.A graduate departmental manager in his early 20s noted that he needed to ‘work on leadership and people skills’. It was not that these managers did not appreciate the impact that computer breakdowns, local labour markets, employee turnover, stock levels and the weather could have. They did, and dealt with such problems every day. But they also saw them as excuses for a lack of leadership. It was the managers’ job to enthuse and inspire others, even when policies and practices had not been explained to them and even if they disagreed with head office decisions (see also Smith 1990, Watson 1994).According to three of our informants: The depot might have been short of people and deliveries haven’t turned up on time. That could throw things off. Or promotional stuff hasn’t turned up. But there’s nothing in a store that we can’t fix, and it’s all about driving the right attitude in the management teams. Because if you drive that attitude well, you can fix anything. (general store manager, Retail 1, Store A) At the end of the day we’ve got to be the leader†¦ I think there’s a difference between being a manager and being a leader and we have to become leaders and†¦ e need to keep a real positive approach, because if we turn round to staff and say yes, wh at we may think in our heart of hearts is one thing, but when we go out there we’re out on stage, we’ve got to perform and say, ‘OK, it’s tough, but however if we all do this that and the other and get stuck in, we’re going to win this’. And you’ve somehow got to inspire your people out there, you know, so you’ve got to leave that at the door, because we can’t do anything about that.Somehow, what you have got to do is deal with the colleagues you have got, to ensure that they’re motivated, trained, they’re quick to do the job, and hyped up, and they’re going to go out there and deliver it. (senior manager A, Retail 2, Store C) OK, if I’m in store today and we get the [mystery shopper] man and I get 90 per cent, then that’s on my watch so was I here, was I up in the office looking at the PC or was I downstairs driving the availability, saying, ‘Where are those cauliflowers, whereâ⠂¬â„¢s that, where’s that, where’s that? Or did I allow there to be nobody on produce because both the departments’ managers†¦ are on the same day off, and when they came in there was no cauliflower or lettuce because the person 15 down there was actually on the till and I didn’t actually know†¦ Yes, so if I’m going to be running a store tomorrow, for instance, I should really know who’s in what’s going on and any problems. (senior manager B, Retail 2, Store C) Leadership in these supermarkets was very specific and very detailed. Formal HR practices, meeting templates and detailed systems were in place.Informants gave examples that included monitoring work to ensure people were achieving their targets, retraining those who were not; monitoring stock levels; and being present on the shopfloor. However ultimately encounters with people, whether employees or customers, could not be scripted. The leadership rhetoric, because of its lack of links to the reality of daily work, was used as a motivational tool to persuade managers to work more intensively themselves and encourage others to extra effort. Discussion and Conclusions This article has presented an empirically based discussion of leadership in British supermarkets.The managers we observed were constrained by extensive regulation. Their experience of deskilling and discretion, consent and control bears little resemblance to the entrepreneurial visionaries described by writers on leadership. Yet despite that, most of our informants described aspects of what they did as leadership, maintaining proudly, and often in defiance of the evidence, the difference that they as individuals could make. Evidence from elsewhere confirms the impact that line managers have (Rainbird and Munro 2003) but this impact is not without limits.Here, head office systems, computerised schedules, pre-packaged and automatically ordered goods, design planograms and set hours and pay rates provided internal constraints just as location, labour market and the local economy supplied external ones. Our informants needed to accept the leadership rhetoric enough to assert that they could make a difference, but not so much that that difference was extended to questioning the constraints on them; a difference accepted in practice by most. This leads us to two conclusions. Firstly that leadership was a small freedom rather than a radical transformation (see also Rosenthal et al. 997, Edwards and Collinson 2002 on empowerment). It affected only the minutiae of the work but even this trivial level of discretion made a great deal of difference to the individual managers. The illicit freedoms of revising store layouts and adjusting stock orders, which managers engaged in to make their mark on work and improve store 16 performance, were matched by official and acceptable areas of freedom in the unscriptable areas of people management. These trivial freedoms lead us to ou r second conclusion on the implications for academic analysis. Leadership is, at least in part, what leaders do, how they do it and who they are.If, as here, mainly male managers worked to pre-set routines with tightly monitored targets then this needs to feature in our understanding of leadership. Yet to date, most accounts have neglected the mundane aspects of work, the very elements highlighted as core in this study. The leadership rhetoric, valued for its emotive qualities and its unreality, was used by managers and their superiors to value, inspire and intensify their input. Managers showed a sophistication missing from many academic writings in their ability to distinguish between rhetorical flourishes and real-world job design.Given this, we suggest that future research may wish to focus more clearly on the unexciting, hackneyed and everyday aspects of work and to consider the form the language of leadership really takes on the shopfloor. The unrealities of leadership are imp ortant but they have already absorbed too much academic attention and need to be clearly distinguished from the realities. Future studies, developed through empirical evidence, need to provide a nuanced, local and empirically based understanding of what really happens. 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RISK AND VULNERABILITY REPORT FOR JAPAN Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

RISK AND VULNERABILITY REPORT FOR JAPAN - Essay Example Figure 1: Key Themes The presentation and discussion of results shall be done around these four themes. There shall however be minor areas of consideration such as geography of Japan and vulnerability in Japan. Presentation and discussion of results on the themes shall all be done both qualitatively and quantitatively using figures, maps, tables and diagrams. 4.2 PRESENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS AND FINDINGS Geography of Japan According to JapanGuide.Com (2011), â€Å"Japan's closest neighbors are Korea, Russia and China. The Sea of Japan separates the Asian continent from the Japanese archipelago.† Japan is located in Eastern Asia and within the geographical coordinates, 36 00N, 138 00E (CIA Fact book, 2011). Japan’s total area is 377,835 sq km, 374,744 sq km of which is land and 3,091 sq km is water. Islands in Japan in Daito-shoto, Bonin Islands, Volcano Islands, Minami-Jima Ryukyu Islands and Okino-tori-shrima; out of which â€Å"Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku are the four largest† (JapanGuide.Com, 2011). Japan’s climate varies across the country however; there are four major seasons – winter, rainy season, summer and typhoons. ... â€Å"Environmental hazards are defined as extreme events or substances in the earth and its ecological system that may cause adverse effects to humans or things they value† (NRC, 1996). For the sake of this research, risk and hazards that have occurred from 1980 to 2010 are going to be reviewed. The graph below shows the number of natural disasters that have occurred in Japan from 1980 to 2010. Fig. 2: Natural Disasters in Japan from 1980 to 2010 It is worth mentioning that Japan’s earthquakes are accompanied with tsunamis (Prevention Web, 2011). The data above is translated into a yearly ratio as follows Table 1: Yearly Average of Occurrence of Natural Disasters in Japan Disaster Average Occurrence Wildfire Extreme Temperature Volcano Flood Earthquake Storm 0.03 0.10 0.26 0.71 1.00 2.48 Credit: (Prevention Web, 2011). Human Vulnerability in Japan The various risks and hazards that Japan experiences expose the country and her population to high rate of vulnerability. J apan has suffered both economic and human losses through natural disasters. The chart below gives a summary of such losses from 1980 to 2010. Fig. 3 Vulnerability to Humans per Event of a Disaster - Credit: (Prevention Web, 2011). The concept of Community and its Role in Disaster Most communities in Japan are prone to risks of volcanoes and earthquakes. â€Å"The reason for the high number of volcanic areas is because Japan is located along the circum-Pacific volcanic belt. Of the 840 active volcanoes in the world, Japan has almost 1/10 of them† (AsiaInfo.Net, 2010). For this reason, communities in Japan put in a lot of effort to play active roles in disaster management. In the view of Tatum (2011), â€Å"disaster management plans are often