Saturday, August 31, 2019

McDonald’s: An Iconic Chinese Restaurant

McDonald’s is an iconic figure in America, almost every household has eaten there at least once, but what about other countries around the world? In Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia, James Watson uses the logos rhetorical appeal to make his points about the iconic McDonald’s status in China throughout McDonald’s in Hong Kong. He does this most effectively via his many uses of evidence he gathered from talking to the Chinese people in Hong Kong that patronize the restaurant, evidence gathered from speaking with the management of the McDonald’s in Hong Kong and his own observations. James Watson’s McDonald’s in Hong Kong begins by showing the reader the importance of food to the Cantonese customer. Cantonese people are proud of their food and most of the older generations are able to describe a single meal in detail many years after eating it. The author goes on to describe how McDonald’s has incorporated themselves into the local culture by accepting and embracing local beliefs instead of trying to change them and by being adaptable in the running of the business. Watson also describes the emergence of a new culture springing out of the American based business by bringing former non-practices like celebrating birthdays into practice and providing areas safe for younger generations to form their own identities through group activities. Food is an integral part of human life all over the world, but in China food is also an integral part of human society. Older generations of Chinese people are frequently able to describe in exact detail a single meal from start to finish including where the food came from and what dishes were used in the serving of the meal. As evidenced within the text Mr. Man â€Å"recounted–in exacting detail–the flavor and texture of each dish, the sequence of spices, and the order of presentation† (77). This is worthy to note only because the meal, according to the author, took place fifty years prior (78). Clearly, Mr. Man is an older gentleman at the time this interview takes place, but other generations of Chinese people also place importance on food. Children did not celebrate birthdays in China until recently and the parties that are held are ranked by the type of fruit on the cake. Watson states, â€Å"the birthday cake is an infallible status marker among younger consumers; specifically, the type and quality of fruit used to decorate the cake is what matters most† (104). This is used as evidence to back up the previous statement that â€Å"Around the age of four, Hong Kong children begin to develop a fine-tuned sense of social distinction that is reflected in consumption patterns† (104). These observations and interviews clearly show the evidence to back up the claims and arguments made by the author. McDonald’s restaurants are not the first fast food restaurants to be introduced to Hong Kong although the franchise entered the country in 1975. â€Å"By the time McDonald's opened its first Hong Kong restaurant in 1975, the idea of fast food was already well established among local consumers† (80). There were fast-food places, operating since the 1950’s, that sold quick Chinese delicacies for the lunch crowds already in place and accepted by the culture. The author uses this information to begin effectively establishing how well McDonald’s restaurants are faring in Hong Kong. The reason for the success of the integration and subsequent popularity, according to the author, comes from many different areas. The manager took deliberate steps to make sure that the people knew that the restaurant was foreign, going so far as to keep the name of the restaurant in English for the first few years (82-83). Afterwards, when the manager had decided it was time, he decided to translate the name phonetically instead of literally. â€Å"Mr. Ng decided to capture the sound of â€Å"McDonald's,† in three homophonic characters, rather than create a name that would convey meaning–thus making the company appear to be a Chinese enterprise† (83). McDonald’s is not seen as a foreign institution, but is an accepted Chinese restaurant (107). The McDonald’s chain has succeeded in becoming an icon in China’s new popular culture (86). Children often are seen entering these restaurants after school to study or get together with their friends. They have birthday parties as young children and, according to the author, it is â€Å"the students, with their book bags and computers, who have claimed McDonald's as their own† (106). The author uses the argument that study space is limited in Hong Kong to help the reader visualize the reasons for the children and teens to go to McDonald’s in order to study for exams and meet with friends. Watson states, â€Å"Interviews with teenagers revealed that McDonald's is perceived as a place that offers more space, in the literal sense of distance between tables, than any other public eatery in Hong Kong (save for the more expensive restaurants)† (106). Clearly, McDonald’s is seen as a safe place for children and teens to gather and spend time without fear of violence and the author even states that McDonald's staff keep a sharp watch for possible fights or disruptions, but trouble of this nature rarely breaks out in fast food restaurants. Managers know by sight most of the gang members in their neighborhood and sometimes delegate a (large) male employee to shadow potential troublemakers-standing uncomfortably close to them, watching every move (105). It is for these reasons, among many others, that McDonald’s has the iconic status in China that it does. By setting themselves as the standard, based upon the evidence given by the author through observations, interviews with clientele and interviews with the management, McDonald’s restaurants have become an integral part of Chinese society. The arguments put forth by the author, as evidenced in this paper, make for an effective argument about the importance of McDonald’s on Chinese society. By using quotes from clientele and management alike, Watson backs up his statements and beliefs enough to make them wholly reliable. The inclusion of facts gleaned from the McDonald’s corporation also serves to support his conclusions he has reached that McDonald’s is part of a new cultural era in Hong Kong.

Friday, August 30, 2019

Guns, Germs and Steel Essay

The book Guns, Germs and Steel is an interesting impression of Jared Diamond to challenge and refresh our outlook towards the effect of politics to cultural and individual development as based from historical and theoretical concept. JD is a physiologist and evolutionary biologist and has made this work on a broader scope during his explorations in New Guinea to study the culture as well as the environment of the people. It started out in a prologue while Jared travels with his friend Yali, a New Guinean and questions the diminutive cargo of the locals against the bulk of cargos of the Eurasians. JD tried to explain to Yali by answering him with historical and theoretical views according to his research. JD said that while the natives own the land and the resources, the foreigners are capable of dominance because they are superior in technology as can be seen with their tools and machinery. But JD explained to Yali that what he sees is not proof of the superiority of the Eurasians over the natives but rather the opposite. JD said that Yali’s people are actually smarter and adaptable to any environment because they live in a world that has requires critical survival. Chapter 1 of the book discusses the origin of man and their discovery of tools and art as depicted from their paintings. JD theorizes that man made a great leap and used his intelligence 50,000 years ago as found on skeletons found in Australia and New Guinea. Accordingly, the Americans were probably colonized during 11,000 BC which correspond to the final stage of the Pleistocene Era and the melting of the ice in the last Ice Age. Chapter 2 details the war between the Maoris against the Morioris in Polynesia as early as 1835 in the Chatham islands and. Polynesia during that period has different set of climates, geography, resources and political and social conditions which lead to less diversification of human populations to be able to adapt in their environment. Chapter 3 details the conquest of European Francisco Pizarro and his men to capture Atahuallpa, the Inca emperor at Cajamarca, Peru in 1532. The superior weapons and their armor which were made of steel and the horses and cavalry pushes the natives out of their place while the Europeans brought along with them diseases such as smallpox and eventually infected and killed another native emperor of different tribe. JD pointed out that people of dominant culture has the foremost advantage over those who are less in technology and political organization as the Incas does not have. On Chapter 4 of the book, JD significantly emphasizes the importance of agriculture to propel the development of a fragile society because with the increase of food production there is a room for population to grow larger and stronger. Enough supply of food can sustain people to be more vigorous and organize themselves without resorting to violence to survive. An organized society can form political government to protect its people against conquest such as JD pointed out. In chapter 5, the author describes the technology of calibrating sites for food production by naming sites and crops suitable to grow in their environment while in chapter 6, 7 and 8 discusses his confidence the possibility of converting native hunters into agriculturist because of degeneration of wild games and animals in their environment. He said that there are already great varieties of plants and animals that can be domesticated and cultured and there is no need to hunt for food for a family to survive. JD gave an example in chapter 9 and 10 the success of the Indians in domesticating animals and prevents the extinction of wild animals in their forest. He said that breeding animals is one of the most accepted principles in domesticating animals that even wild species of animals can be bred in captivity. But this depends on the adaptability of animals with the climatic conditions on certain locality. Lack of animal adaptation means limited domestication and cultivation of animals and plants. The New World on the other hand is located on a tropical zone therefore people have more favorable climatic conditions as compared with the Eurasian countries. However, major infectious diseases or what JD calls â€Å"killers of humanity† mainly comes from animals men domesticates. He said that small pox originates from cowpox, flu from pigs and ducks and tuberculosis from cattle. These are only few of the negative impact on the cultivation of livestock by man that even people in the cities are not safe from certain diseases as they kept animals as pets. Industrialization gave man endemic diseases because he attracts germ carrying pests and we now have yellow fever, hookworm, bubonic plague and many other diseases transmitted by pests. Man also is a carrier of pest and diseases to his fellow human such as the body lice, sexually transmitted disease and other human infections. The following chapters introduced the origins of writings in early period of Mesoamerica and most part of Asia. JD significantly highlights necessity as the mother of invention and the invention of writings lead to the invention of the technology and then to arms for weapons and destruction. He said that the introduction of technology was also the beginning of civilizations to colonize other civilizations, destroying their population and their culture. The author also reviews the societal form of organization on a certain level which starts from the smaller faction or the band. The â€Å"band† is composed of people that are usually related by blood, nomadic in nature and have one ethnicity and language and no more than 5 to 80 people bonded together to be form a small society. The â€Å"tribe†, however has more people with fixed community, one ethnicity and language but being led by a leader in a societal form of government such as tribe in New Guinea and Australia . The â€Å"group† leads to chiefdoms and then to a larger extent which forms the state. The â€Å"state† have more than 50,000 people living in various villages, class and residence-based relationships. They also have more than one language, have centralized bureaucratic government levels and politicians to man the government, the law and the state. States have also their police and militaries to protect its citizenry against injustice. This was discussed on chapter 14. Chapter 15 to 16 depicts the Australian and New Guinean’ climate where Yali belongs. These two countries were formerly united as one large mass of land but separated because of the effect of large body of water 10,000 years ago. The following chapters discuss how China became the China of today which brought by forced unification of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Continuous fighting and dominance of Asian ethnicities in old China produces mixed races of different Asian origins but came up to have one traditional language which is the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Among these languages is the Mandarin. Chapter 17 is explained by JD on how the islands of the Pacific were able to be colonized by the Asians who arrived in New Guinea around 40,000 BC. This Asian group composes the ancestors of Philippine Negritos and formerly called the Austronesian. Their migrations began from China, reached Taiwan and then the Philippines at around 3000 BC. Those who came to Sumatra and Java became the Malayo-Polynesian while those who arrived in Northern New Guinea and Samoa became the Samoans. JD reviews on chapter 18 the factors which led to the European conquering Americas. The Europeans are better in food production, domestication of animals, producing metals and weapons, organization of armies, transportation and communication and solid political organization which the people of early America lacks. The people of the New World such as New Guinea, however are more primitive and backward and lacks capabilities to organize themselves. This was the reason why the Europeans or the Eurasians have been able to establish their colony in their nation without conflict and resistance. And finally chapter 19 discusses how the people of Africa came to be blacks. Accordingly, in the previous era, North Africans were whites who resemble Middle Eastern and Europeans and speak Afro-Asiatic languages. The pygmies or small black African people are mostly confined to Central Africa but were outnumbered by indigenous people. The blacks occupy only most of the Saharan Africa but extended their occupancy to the East coast to Cape town. From there they began to cultivate crops and domesticate animals and expand largely in numbers. The epilogue of this book answers Yali’s question on why whites have been so successful with their trades and always have larger cargos compared with the locals on a shipping trade comes to conclusion. The book answers his question by chapters and details. The effect of geographical formation and the environment clearly emphasizes the commencement of dominance by the Eurasian whites. Dominance factors illustrates the capability of the Eurasian to domesticate plant and animals better than the people of the New World, the speed of their technology which also sped up the rates of migration and their concrete population and size of their continents enable them to migrate and search for more opportunities to other continents. Furthermore, JD wants to search further with his study to come up with more variables that could defend his theory. He believes that he can only do this through natural historical experiments that need to be researched. These involve the history of human societies which are always intricate to understand than the lost dinosaurs of the old world (McGoodwin). Work Cited: McGoodwin, Michael. â€Å"Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel. † (2000). April 10, 2008 .

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Three Different Commercials Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Three Different Commercials - Essay Example I take pride that I have a 100% conviction rate for certain occasions when the cases that I have handled have gone to trial. Right now, I am interested to fill the Sheriff position which was recently vacated due to the retirement of our previous one. I would like to take bigger responsibilities and certainly contribute more to my community. I was promoted as a corporal last year and I maintain good relationships with my colleagues as well as the members of my community. My experience and the support that I get from people, inspires me. This, along with my desire to be of service, strengthens my purpose. I am Carrie Smith and I am here to tell you how I can be a valuable asset to your salon. I have three reasons why this is so and I know that these reasons are exactly what you have in mind in regard to how hair dressers can contribute to your company. Firstly, I do not merely have experience in hairdressing but I could also work as a makeup artist and spa attendant at the same time. I am experienced in all of these work although I enjoy hairdressing best. Secondly, I am a very sociable person and thus, could greatly contribute to the positive customer experience in the workplace. Finally, I am very committed to my craft. I do not see the job as menial but instead I consider it as my art. As a matter of fact, I have been a hair dresser for five years and I look forward to it as my lifelong career. Let me introduce myself. My name is Jean Hayes and I am working right now as a lead day care provider to a child care center which cares for an average of 200 kids. I love children, that is why I like my job very much. I have been doing this kind of work for a couple of years already and prior to that I graduated with a degree in elementary education. That being said, you can very well say that I can handle any amount of stress from teaching at least 25 children in a day. I constantly earn high ratings in periodic evaluations of all aspects of performance - from

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS - Essay Example xv). Organizations today need to focus on developing and implementing a comprehensive corporate communications plan in order to address and resolve the challenges posed by the highly dynamic external environment and the cope with the media pressures in this new corporate environment. McDonald’s Corporation: McDonald’s Corporation is a global multinational fast food restaurant chain touted to be the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois United States. As of 2013 the company boasts of over 34000 restaurants in more than 119 countries worldwide including Asia Pacific, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East, as well as Africa (McDonald’s, 2013a) serving over 69 million customers daily (McDonald’s Corporate Report, 2012). Values, mission & vision: The brand's mission is â€Å"to be our customers' favorite place and way to eat and drink†. In order to achieve this objective it follows its global strategy 'Plan to Win' which is centered on ensuring an exceptional experience for their customers (McDonald’s 2013b). Its vision is â€Å"to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile† (McDonald’s, 2013c). Corporate Communication Plan – McDonald’s Corporation McDonald’s has recently faced severe criticism from the mass media, as well as from the general public, for various reasons including - its aggressive marketing strategies which mainly targeted children and minority population selling them unhealthy food with low nutritional value; increased dissatisfaction among the workers for low pay; increased complaints from the customers for rude behavior by their employees; growing dissatisfaction among the franchisees for increased pressure to deliver etc., among others. Such events have res ulted in a chain of negative repercussions for the organization and in the absence of a proper strategy, might lead to disastrous consequences in the long run affecting their profitability and credibility. Effective corporate communication strategy

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Emotional Labour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Emotional Labour - Essay Example In addition, they also use environmental context in regards to relationships and physical location to prompt emotion. On the other hand, men depend on the internal physiological changes to access how they feel and determine the appropriate emotion.  Emotional labour is the management of feelings by employees when providing organizations service and is required to display some set of emotions which are either verbal or nonverbal with the sole purpose of inducing specific feelings and responses to those whom the service is being rendered. Therefore, employees are expected to use their emotions to influence the emotional state of others (Glomb &Tews, 2004). This concept came about in 1983 by a sociologist by the name Arlie Hochschild who created the term ‘emotional labour’. She described the activities that employees do that are beyond mental or physical duties (Hochschild, 1983). This means employees showing a genuine concern for the needs of customers. This includes smi ling, shaking customers’ hands while greeting customers as well as making a positive eye contact while providing services to clients ( Jansz & Timmers, 2002).  Organizations should always place strategic importance on service orientation to both the external customers, workmates and internal clients as well (J.A & Feidman, 1996). When employees face clients when they are angry or when they are unpleasant, emotional labour can be challenging because it is difficult to hide emotions and continue to smile even when getting negative feedback.

Monday, August 26, 2019

Importance of Corporate Diversity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Importance of Corporate Diversity - Essay Example Married households with children drove that drop as they went from 40% to 23%. What is most compelling about this change is the increase in Non-traditional households which have grown from 12% to 22%. This group is made up of all sorts of new family and household formations - mostly single parent households. Single-mother families grew from 3 million in 1970 to 10 million in 2003, while the number or single-father families grew from half a million to 2 million. Non-Traditional household formations also include gay and lesbian households and a newer phenomenon whereby older, single people (single parents are the drive) find long-term roommates to help alleviate the financial burdens that often come with living alone. As the number of combinations and permutations of how people lead their lives continues to grow, traditional demographics work less productively as proxies for attitudes. Therefore, truly understanding the needs and wants of consumers and building products that meet their unique circumstances becomes more and more challenging. A growing concept is that companies that incorporate diversity in their work force are more likely to innovative compared to those firms that do not. Therefore, it can be seen that diversity is now forcing firms to recruit, retain and develop employees from varying multicultural backgrounds, different ethnicities, minorities, and also from the socially disadvantageous groups in the society. This diversity affects businesses in several ways; firms can increase their product sales as efforts by executives having diverse background can bring and bring new ideas that enhance sales; a diverse work force brings in new customers because their diverse backgrounds help in serving the customers better according to their needs, a diverse workforce questions and challenges that they think might affect the customer base because of advertisements, slogans or product contents being offensive to a particular customer group; other issues such as globalization demands it; having a diverse work force also is supposed to increase the bottom line of the company since the company incorporating diversity is looked upon favorably by employees, customers and also by the legal and the regulatory authorities. Some of the benefits that organizations are experiencing as a result of work force diversity also include lower costs since firms now face lesser law suit costs by hiring the diverse workforce, which previously they tend to reject and faced lawsuits over it. The diverse work force strengthens and reinforces the culture that promotes creativity and innovation. As mentioned, diversity generally enhances the bottom line i.e. the profits, firms are also seen as favorable in stock markets thus trading at premium and are also seen as likely targets for mergers. Firms when growing in size are in dire need of new and more recruits, selecting from the diverse pool of human resources give them a broad base to select from. Diverse population has different and varying lifestyles, thus firm can use this to its own advantage by utilizing some at one time and some other when special circumstances occur. Diversity can

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Emerging Technology -Facebook's Timeline Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Emerging Technology -Facebook's Timeline - Essay Example Ever since this emerging technology was introduced, Facebook has made some significant improvements in its market orientation, which is largely focused on advertisement and marketing. Currently, the corporation attributes 85% of its revenues to advertisements, a situation that has shot the company’s revenues to an all time high in the high in the past five years. Facebook’s Timeline continues to bring the company profits because of the level of dedication that the company has for research and development, which makes it possible for it to provide user-centered service that accounts for the ever growing number of users of Facebook. Currently, there is a massive monthly active user base of 85 million people worldwide. This number, with the data collected through the Timeline makes the company the holder of most personal data than any other ad seller online can have access to. Keywords – advertisements; revenue; marketing; timeline; number game; Timeline; metadata; updates; information mining; research and development; cloud; social media network I. INTRODUCTION As technology advances and the internet become more and more useful, entrepreneurs, especially those whose business orientation is directed at information technology continues to take advantage, depending on their business strategies. More specifically, social media network has come to add up an entirely new paradigm to the concept of internet surfing (Arnould, Albert and Schau, 2009). Bickart, and Robert (2011) note that the total number of internet users have quadrupled since the introduction of social media networking. Clearly Facebook dominates when it comes to the concept of social media networking. But even so, the corporation continues to introduce very ideas and emerging technologies that ensures that it does not only become a global leader in the provision of social networking services but also well tailored advertising services to marketing departments of various multinationa l corporations. In its early days, no one really understood why Facebook will be so much committed to offering free social networking service that brought everyone on board from all over the world but now that the corporation has access to over 625,000 terabytes of compressed data on a daily basis and working hard as online ad sellers, much more sense is being made of the initial moves of the company to be committed to the provision of high quality social media networking service (Brown, Amanda and Nick, 2007). In this paper, there is a critical scrutiny at Facebook’s emerging technology in the form of Timeline to see how this emerging technology makes the corporation more competitive as an online ad seller. II. SURVEY FINDINGS A. Facebook’s Motivation No corporation undertakes a major business strategic program such as what Facebook did without having a core motivation that pushes it to do so (Shirky, 2008). In the case of the Facebook timeline, the motivation has bee n found as the need to have a better focus on advertisement as adverts account for as much as 85% of the corporation’s annual revenue (Surowiecki, 2012). In line with the need for companies to build competitive advantage for themselves in line with their market exposure and the search for customers, a lot more companies are putting emphasis on the 5P marketing mix (Terranova, 2000). But within the 5 strategic scenarios under the 5Ps, promotion has been found to be a very vital component because it has the power of directly targeting consumers or customers to get them to do business with

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Organizational Analysis Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Organizational Analysis Paper - Essay Example ts of current policy regarding cash ordering systems, an assigned project team at SARAH proposed a somewhat radical change to internal processes and the much-required implementation of web-based, convenient cash ordering technologies. Despite the triumphs associated and a series of positive outcomes, failure to identify discrepancies in the implementation (including lack of on-the-job training and a variety of system glitches) have caused tremendous problems with the adaptation of the new cash ordering system. This report identifies the nature of these oversights and further proposes a step-by-step action plan for implementing change associated with the new, integrated technologies. Through extensive analyses, it was determined that employee training, feedback, and the creation of a culture valuing continuous improvement were necessary to streamline the new project at SARAH bank so as to provide increasing value to the organization and its customers. SARAH Bank is a flexible and progressive organization, focusing on contemporary leadership practices and continuous improvements both in terms of internal processes and customer relationship management. The vision of SARAH Bank is to emerge as the â€Å"Customer’s First Choice Bank†, however in order to make this goal a tangible reality, SARAH required significant strategic change which involved restructuring the organizational hierarchy and the adoption of new business models and internal philosophies. The organization is now heavily engrossed in the process of streamlining business functions to best accomplish its vision, including new acquisitions and the development of new products and services. These aggressive objectives had created a significant business challenge, specifically involving the efforts in adopting new products and associated technologies. The organizational unit responsible for the overall supply of cash to its branches and corporate clients within the State determined the necessity for a

Friday, August 23, 2019

Graphic Design Industry and the Willingness to Foster Creativity for Dissertation

Graphic Design Industry and the Willingness to Foster Creativity for People with Fine Motor Skills Disability - Dissertation Example In the past, the design discipline belief for the traditional graphic design professionals was aligned to serve only able-bodied students and professionals. Evidently, this was due to the belief that all design starts from traditional drawing skills. The teaching strategies of the past were mostly structured in a way that favored physical exertion from a full bodied person while significantly ignorant on the needs of people with disabilities. However, in the contemporary world, there have been increased efforts and innovation to accommodate the needs of persons with disabilities.(Needs cited from original paper or from writers notes) In this regard, there have been an increased acceptance and adaption to suit the needs of people with disabilities in different sectors such as education, production, athletics and many more. For example, in the world of athletics, persons with disabilities have been able to compete on an equal footing with other full bodied athletes. A perfect example i s the former athletics champion with most medals, Heinz Frei from Sweden. former 200m paralympic champion, Oscar Pistorius, also known as the ‘blade runner’ for his use of prosthetic legs in racing (Edington, & Duffy, 1996). In order for learners to make an impact in the world, it is foremost the prerogative of the educators to teach and guide them in the correct process. In this regard, educators are the foundational block for students affording them the ability to go out and give voice to those who need it. (AIGA & Chap, 2006, p.1) Consequently, it creates a critical issue between education and complementing laws and policies such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.