Web 2.0 and web 1.0 Applications

Web 2.0 and web 1.0 Applications 1. WEB 2.0 1.1 THE SOCIAL READ/WRITE WEB AN INTRODUCTION We live in age of information where flow of information is constant and internet plays an important role in this flow of information sharing and exchange. The world is on figure tips due to the advancement in technologies. All this become possible due to World Wide Web which cause to made globe as community. Technology and information become obsolete so quickly. Now we are in era of web 2.0 According to Tim Orielly Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an architecture of participation, and going beyond the page metaphor of Web1.0 to deliver rich user experiences (Orielly, 2004). According to Alan smith 2.0 does not show any specific increment in web version its only the way the use of web change (Smith, 2009). Murugesan define Web 2.0 as second phase in the Webs evolution, which attract IT professionals, businesses, and Web users. Further more he writes that Web 2.0 is wisdom Web, people-centric Web, participative Web, and read/write Web (Murugesan, 2007). Web 2.0 is people Power web shows the blogging success, user review, photo sharing (Anderson, 2006) and observe called it gift culture due to users contribution as participation (Mason Rennie, 2007). In learning and teaching process effective evolution of technology, importance of active participation, critical thinking, social presence, collaboration and two way communications are also important (Beldarrin, 2006). Web2.0 provides more effective interaction and collaboration, investigation for the ways of using blogs effectively, wikis, podcasts and social network which also used in education. The main characteristic of these tools called Web 2.0, which shows active participation from user in the content of creation process (Usluel Mazman, 2009). Web 2.0 social networking applications, allows users not only to find out information about others, but also to connect with others through linking to their profiles, joining and creating group, and ability to send public and private messages to their friends for example Face book, MySpace, and sharing with them their happy moments as on Picasa and flicker. It has changed the static information to more active, dynamic and responsive participation, creation and sharing of contents. On the biases of Orielly definition Markus Angermeier created a mind map for web 2.0 which explain the key concepts. These important concepts of Web 2.0 include Usability, Standardization, Design, Remixability, Economy, participation and convergence. Usability is one of the key factors of web 2.0. According to Lewis Web 2.0 applications tend to look more like desktop applications than Web pages: they have simple interfaces with plain colours and no busy patterns, logos, or animation. They provide a richness of Interaction previously found only in desktop applications (Lewis, 2006). He further write about the dynamic content of web 2.0 and information gathering and assembling of information on a single page. The source of information is blogs which are like online diaries, resource sharing which allow users to share their favourite web links and other resource like tags (Lewis, 2006). Example systems include del.icio.us and bibsonomy.org. Web 2.0 fulfils the standardization requirements of (W3C) for applications development and content generation. Design provide rich look and feel with practical user-interface, eye catching appearance and ease of use. Remixability is the facility that Web 2.0 offers where an application can be remixed with different set of other minor applications together to form a new and more interactive application. The introduction of Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX breaks this fixed page based model in several ways. Traditional web sites depend on a page update model where each interaction results in an entire page refresh Web 2.0 applications allow part page updates (Pilgrim, 2008). For example, Google Maps do not require an entire page to be refreshed when the user selects a preferred view. Google system gets the data that lies outside of the edge of the map in frame with out refreshing whole page and allow user to grab the map and drag it without any interruption (Zucker, 2007). Gmail also uses AJAX technology in similar fashion to update the little portion of page when new email arrives (Pilgrim, 2008). 1.2 WEB 1.0 VS WEB 2.0 According to Musser and OReilly (2006) Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internetà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬a more mature, distinctive medium characterised by user participation, openness, and network effects. The main difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is creation and presentation of content. In Web 1.0 the majority of users acting as consumers of content, while in Web 2.0 user can actively participate in content creation and sharing and there are various technologies available to create the content to its maximum potential. The free nature of Web 2.0 allow users to create exchange and share contents of any kind (text, audio, video) and tag, comment, and link Pages within group or outside the group. A popular improvement in Web 2.0 is mashups, which combine or make content in fresh forms (Cormode Krishnamurthy, 2008). For example, street addresses are linked with a map Web site to visualize the locations. This type of site linkage provides facility to create additional link between records of any database with other database. In web 1.0 people implicitly put links of interesting resources to their personal home pages. HTML form tags spread across entire web with no facility of tag base browsing, search engines were using this text as source of web page to improve the quality of search, it limits the tagging in web 1.0 and which restrict collaborative interaction and collective intelligence of community (Brine Page, 1998). While web 2.0 every one can participate in tagging as it become very easy task and become the key characteristic of portals. Due to the large scale of the tagging community, portals like del.icio.us have accumulated decent annotations in the form of tags for numerous resources. These tags are used for search and navigation and Google AdSenseform easy-to-read summaries for the described resources (Kinsella, et al., 2008) Tim OReilly in his Article What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, 2005 describe the difference of web1.0 and web2.0 as follows: Web1.0 Web2.0 DoubleClick Google AdSense Ofoto Flickr Akamai BitTorrent mp3.com Napster Britannica Online Wikipedia personal websites blogging Evite upcoming.org and EVDB domain name speculatio search engine optimization page views cost per click screen scraping Web services publishing participation content management systems wikis directories (taxonomy) tagging (folksonomy) stickiness syndication (Table 1.0 What is Web 2.0: OReilly, 2005) According to Gibson dynamic updates is one of the important characteristic of web2.0 and this is adopted through AJAX technology (Gibson, 2007). Web2.0 websites respond user request such as email checking or instant chatting. Web2.0 applications also provide automatic updates such as stock quotes, sports scores and other information (Gibson, 2007). Mostly news sites like BBC, Sky Newsetc. continuously updating providing instant information. Web2.0 encourages the active participation from the users to access content and interaction with each other on the Web (Pilgrim, 2008). The content of Web 1.0 was read-only and static. Whereas the transformation of web to changed the read-only web to read-write web enabled user active and collaborative participation. The above graph shows that how persistent growth in internet usage according to the facts provided by Internet World Stats with in a decade its usage rise from 361 million to 1650 million users world wide. At the early stages content of web were static in their nature and they are publish for reading purpose there were no interaction between users and user generated content are at ignorable scale. As the number of users raise it change the way of content presentation and publication on internet and users start active participation and involvement in the content and collective intelligence increased through this social read/write web. The change brought by Web 2.0 in content publishing and consumption evidently shows the divergence between static web (web1.0) and dynamic web (web2.0). Web 2.0 provides pages with dynamic content which not only can be read by browsers or readers but with the capability of writing, collaborating and sharing knowledge at the same time. 1.3 WEB 2.0 ACTIVITIES AND SERVICES There are a number of Web 2.0 services and applications available which provide the foundation of Read/Write web. These tools allow users to create, edit and modify the content of information with collaboration. Web 2.0-based communities occupy virtual spaces that are open, self-organizing, adaptive, agile, readily accessible, and easy to use (Sabina Leone, 2009). A Web 2.0 platform has shared design of services to support a collaborative and distributed environment in which users can connect, share, comment and create new content or software tools (Sabina Leone, 2009). Services offered within the Web 2.0 framework offers evolutionary services of the Internet history. To be active on internet firms have no choice but to find out an appropriate role using web2.0. Most major firms, including BMW, IBM, Google, and many others, are positioning them-selves to find their strategic place, appropriate place and fit within these developments (Wigand, Benjamin Birkland, 2008). In todays web we find different type of content. According to Paul Anderson (2007) These include blogs, wikis, multimedia sharing services, content syndication, podcasting and content tagging services. Many of these applications of Web technology are relatively mature, having been in use for a number of years, although new features and capabilities are being added on a regular basis It is worth noting that many of these newer technologies are concatenations, i.e. they make use of existing services. In this section I will discusses about some of the important activities Web 2.0 activities, these are Blogging, Folksonomy and Social Bookmarking, Multimedia Sharing, Social Networking, Podcasting. 1.3.1 BLOGGING The term web-log, or blog, was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997 and refers to a simple webpage consisting of brief paragraphs of opinion, information, personal diary entries, or links, called posts, arranged chronologically with the most recent first, in the style of an online journal (Doctorow et al., 2002). Blogs are also called online diaries which enable users, without requirement of any technical skill, to create, publish and organize their own web pages that contain dated content, entries, comments, discussion etc. in sequential order (Alexander, 2006; Castenade, 2007). People can publish information which they collect from various resources and establish relation between them in blogs. Additionally RSS and the possibility to post comments make blogs also a collaborative and social-interactive software application (Petter et al., 2005). San Murugesan defines blogs a two- way web-base communication tool. Simply it is a website which is used to share thoughts and ideas to leave suggestions and comments. An entry in blog might contain text, image, or link to other blogs and web pages, and possibly the other media related to the topic. Blogs have ability to generate machine readable RSS and Atom feeds it means they could be use to distribute machine readable summaries of contents and provide the facility of searching similar information from different sources (Cayzer, 2004), (Anderson, 2007). Huge number of internet users involved in blogging and they are operating in their own environment. As technology has become more sophisticated, bloggers have begun to incorporate multimedia into their blogs and there are now photo-blogs, video blogs (vlogs), and, increasingly, bloggers can upload material directly from their mobile phones (Anderson, 2007).There are different types and categories of blogs. Such as Arts, Business, Computers and Technology, Education, Entertainment, Food, History, Law, Libraries, Music, Personal, Political, Regional, Sports and finally Web. Blogging software allows three levels of privacy password-protected most private blog; users blog service listed blog most public blog and will be easily found by search engines. An unlisted blog neither fully private nor fully public. Unlisted blog cannot be found without knowing the URL. It could be public only if it contain a link and someone eventually click that link this way these blogs picked by search engines. Since most blogs contain links that anyone might click on, unlisted blogs are not secure, although they may remain relatively invisible if they link to sites that few people access and if the links are not activated (Nardi et al., 2004). Blogging is well known activity which used for online debate and discussions, shared editing, personal communication and networking. In terms of groups, it allows various authors or writers to communicate with others to present their views, opinions and to write for teams, groups and group work. 1.3.2 FOLKSONOMY/TAGGING AND SOCIAL BOOKMARKING A tag is a keyword that is added to a digital object (e.g. a website, picture or video clip) to describe it, but not as part of a formal classification system. One of the first large-scale applications of tagging was seen with the introduction of Joshua Schacters del.icio.us website, which launched the social bookmarking phenomenon (Anderson, 2007). In web 2.0 Folksonomy as a social web service provide facility to users to save and organise online their bookmarks with social annotations or tags. These are high quality descriptors of web pages topics and good indicators of web users interests (Xu, et al., 2004). Social book marking systems share number of common features (Millen et al., 2005), they also provide the facility of tagging these bookmarks and unlike traditional browser-base bookmarks they can be belong more that one category. Tagging is far more beyond then web site bookmarking. Services like Flicker (photos), YouTube (video) and Odeo (podcasts) allow a variety of digital artefacts to be socially tagged (Anderson, 2007). Users contribute not only in posts and articles but also in from of tags which form the metadata of the content which provide valuable information in content search. It also brings benefits of semantic web to current websites which create collaborative tagging or Folksonomy. Del.icio.us is good example of widely accepted and collaboratively created tags, contend creation and blogging (Subramanya Liu, 2008). Social bookmarking systems provide a clear incentive for users to participate (Farrell et al., 2007). The idea of tagging has been expanded to include what are called tag clouds: groups of tags (tag sets) from a number of different users of a tagging service, which collates information about the frequency with which particular tags are used (Anderson, 2007). 1.3.3 MULTIMEDIA SHARING According to Paul Anderson (2007) multimedia sharing is one of the biggest growth areas amongst services. Well known examples are YouTube which provide video storage and sharing Flicker for photographs and Odeo for Podcasts. These services provide writable facility which at the same time makes users as a consumers and initiate active participation and production of web contents. There are million of people participating in sharing and exchange of these types of media by producing their own podcasts, videos and photos. This development was made possible thorough widespread adoption of high quality and low cost media technology. Such as mobile devices which provide high quality video capturing and photography facility, camcorders with huge storage capability. Refrences 1 Usluel, Y.K. Mazman, S.G. 2009, Adoption of Web 2.0 tools in distance education, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 818-823. 2 Mason, R. Rennie, F. 2007, Using Web 2.0 for learning in the community, The Internet and Higher Education, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 196-203. 3 Beldarrain, Y. 2006, Distance Education Trends. Distance Education 27(2), 139-153. 4 Murugesan, S. 2007, Understanding Web 2.0. IT Pro. Vol. July/August 2007. P. 34-41. 5 Usluel, Y.K. Mazman, S.G. 2009, Adoption of Web 2.0 tools in distance education, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 818-823. 6 OReilly, T. 2005, Web 2.0: Compact Definition? Published by OReilly Radar Author: Tim O Reilly: Available online at: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html 7 Smith, A. 2009, Web 2.0 and Official Statistics: The UK Perspective: Available online at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/ScientificProgramme/IPMS/0146.pdf 8 Lewis, D. 2006, What is web 2.0?. Crossroads 13, 1 (Sep. 2006), 3-3. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1217666.1217669 9 Zucker, D. F. 2007, What Does AJAX Mean for You?, ACM Interactions, Sept-Oct, 2007, pp: 10-12. 10 Pilgrim, C. J. 2008, Improving the usability of web 2.0 applications. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (Pittsburgh, PA, USA, June 19 21, 2008). HT 08. ACM, New York, NY, 239-240. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1379092.1379144 11 Cormode, G. Krishnamurthy, B. 2008, Key Differences between Web1.0 and Web2.0: Available online at: http://www2.research.att.com/~bala/papers/web1v2.pdf 12 Brin, S. Page, L.1998, The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine. Comput. Netw. ISDN Syst., 30(1-7):107-117. 13 Kinsella, S., Budura, A., Skobeltsyn, G., Michel, S., Breslin, J. G., and Aberer, K. 2008, From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and back -: how did your grandma use to tag?. In Proceeding of the 10th ACM Workshop on Web information and Data Management (Napa Valley, California, USA, October 30 30, 2008). WIDM 08. ACM, New York, NY, 79-86. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1458502.1458516 14 Gibson, B. 2007. Enabling an accessible web 2.0. In Proceedings of the 2007 international Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4a) (Banff, Canada, May 07 08, 2007). W4A 07, vol. 225. ACM, New York, NY, 1-6. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1243441.1243442 15 Adebanjo, D. Michaelides, R. 2009. Analysis of Web 2.0 enabled e-clusters: A case study, Technovation, vol. In Press, Corrected Proof. 16 Sabin, M. and Leone, J. 2009. IT education 2.0. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Sig-information Technology Education (Fairfax, Virginia, USA, October 22 24, 2009). SIGITE 09. ACM, New York, NY, 91-99. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1631728.1631756 17 Wigand, R. T., Benjamin, R. I., and Birkland, J. L. 2008. Web 2.0 and beyond: implications for electronic commerce. In Proceedings of the 10th international Conference on Electronic Commerce (Innsbruck, Austria, August 19 22, 2008). ICEC 08, vol. 342. ACM, New York, NY, 1-5. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1409540.1409550 18 CAYZER, S. 2004. Semantic Blogging and Decentralized knowledge Management. Communications of the ACM. Vol. 47, No. 12, Dec 2004, pp. 47-52. ACM Press. 19 Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., and Gumbrecht, M. 2004. Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary?. In Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Chicago, Illinois, USA, November 06 10, 2004). CSCW 04. ACM, New York, NY, 222-231. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1031607.1031643 20 Anderson 21 Murugesan 22 Xu, S., Bao, S., Fei, B., Su, Z., and Yu, Y. 2008. Exploring folksonomy for personalized search. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual international ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in information Retrieval (Singapore, Singapore, July 20 24, 2008). SIGIR 08. ACM, New York, NY, 155-162. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1390334.1390363 23 Subramanya, S. B. and Liu, H. 2008. Socialtagger collaborative tagging for blogs in the long tail. In Proceeding of the 2008 ACM Workshop on Search in Social Media (Napa Valley, California, USA, October 30 30, 2008). SSM 08. ACM, New York, NY, 19-26. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1458583.1458588 24 Farrell, S., Lau, T., Nusser, S., Wilcox, E., and Muller, M. 2007. Socially augmenting employee profiles with people-tagging. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on User interface Software and Technology (Newport, Rhode Island, USA, October 07 10, 2007). UIST 07. ACM, New York, NY, 91-100. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1294211.1294228 25 Siersdorfer, S. and Sizov, S. 2009. Social recommender systems for web 2.0 folksonomies. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (Torino, Italy, June 29 July 01, 2009). HT 09. ACM, New York, NY, 261-270. Available online at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1557914.1557959 26 MILLEN, D., FEINBERG, J., KERR, B. 2005. Social Bookmarking in the enterprise. ACM Queue, Nov 2005. Available online at: http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Contentpa=showpagepid=344 [last accessed 2/02/10]. Apendix 1.0 DATE NUMBER OF USERS % WORLD POPULATION INFORMATION SOURCE December, 1995 16 millions 0.40% IDC December, 1996 36 millions 0.90% IDC December, 1997 70 millions 1.70% IDC December, 1998 147 millions 3.60% C.I.Almanac December, 1999 248 millions 4.10% Nua Ltd. March, 2000 304 millions 5.00% Nua Ltd. July, 2000 359 millions 5.90% Nua Ltd. December, 2000 361 millions 5.80% Internet World Stats March, 2001 458 millions 7.60% Nua Ltd. June, 2001 479 millions 7.90% Nua Ltd. August, 2001 513 millions 8.60% Nua Ltd. April, 2002 558 millions 8.60% Internet World Stats July, 2002 569 millions 9.10% Internet World Stats September, 2002 587 millions 9.40% Internet World Stats March, 2003 608 millions 9.70% Internet World Stats September, 2003 677 millions 10.60% Internet World Stats October, 2003 682 millions 10.70% Internet World Stats December, 2003 719 millions 11.10% Internet World Stats February, 2004 745 millions 11.50% Internet World Stats May, 2004 757 millions 11.70% Internet World Stats October, 2004 812 millions 12.70% Internet World Stats December, 2004 817 millions 12.70% Internet World Stats March, 2005 888 millions 13.90% Internet World Stats July, 2005 939 millions 14.60% Internet World Stats September, 2005 957 millions 14.90% Internet World Stats November, 2005 972 millions 15.20% Internet World Stats December, 2005 1,018 millions 15.70% Internet World Stats March, 2006 1,022 millions 15.70% Internet World Stats June, 2006 1,043 millions 16.00% Internet World Stats September, 2006 1,066 millions 16.40% Internet World Stats December, 2006 1,093 millions 16.70% Internet World Stats March, 2007 1,129 millions 17.20% Internet World Stats June, 2007 1,173 millions 17.80% Internet World Stats Sept, 2007 1,245 millions 18.90% Internet World Stats Dec, 2007 1,319 millions 20.00% Internet World Stats March, 2008 1,407 millions 21.10% Internet World Stats June, 2008 1,463 millions 21.90% Internet World Stats December, 2008 1,574 millions 23.50% Internet World Stats March, 2009 1,596 millions 23.80% Internet World Stats June, 2009

Evolution of Management Thought

Corporate situation analysis 1. Overview of sales management(Group-1) Q. Assume that you are a regional sales manager of Bajaj Auto limited. And you are asked by your General a manager(Sales and Marketing) to submit your sales force strategy and tactics to achieve an increase in sales volume by 20% for the next financial year( make assumption if required) 2. ? Sales territories and sales Quota(Group-2) Q.Assume you are appointed as head of marketing of Saragam Aluminium Company, which is a new company, manufacturing and marketing aluminium extruded products, such as door, window and partition aluminium frames, heat sinks and control panels. Customers include household and business organisation. The factory is located in Hosur district of Tamil Nadu, and 38 kilometres from Bangalore. You are discussed with your CEO to initially focus sales and distribution efforts in southern regions, consisting of Karnataka, TN, AP, and Kerala. You are required to design sales territories to cover th e four southern states.Describe how do you go about your task? 3. Distribution in sales management(Group-3) Q. M/SMalhotra is a company making razorblades. They want to enter the market in Hyderabad and AP. Mr. Ramesh Kumar, their marketing manager, is one of the opinions that razor blades need selective distribution by a direct company distribution network. Discuss the merits of the suggestion and give right direction to Ramesh 4. Sales organising and staffing function Q. What kind of organisational specialisation within sales department do you recommended for each of the following companies? Group-4) a) The textile machinery manufacturing company diversifying into a consumer durable product such as auniquely designed table fan that can be used by household consumers and commercial firms initially in western India b) A SBU or business Unitof large company selling airconditioning and refrigeration products to households, cold storage and factories, commercial establishments like hot el, theatres, hospitals, and government organisation all over the nation, with wide range of products, such as room-air-conditioners, packaged-air-conditioner, Central air –conditioning plants, water –cooler, efrigerators, and cold storage plants (Group-5) Q. Some nationalised banks recruit only experienced persons or promote people from, within the organisation. Some other like ICICI banks and IDBI recruit extensively from management institute. Explain the difference in sources used by these financial organisations selling essentially the same kind of find of financial services and products 5. Sales force motivation and training(Group-6) Q. If you were an area sales manager, how would you motivate the following sales person? ) A high performing sales person, whose morale is down because he did not get an expected promotion as a marketing executive, although he has been consistently exceeding his sales target (or quotas) for the past four years. The main responsibiliti es of marketing executives are selling to a few key accounts, and coaching some sales trainees on the job b) An older sales person whose performance has been below expectation for past few years, although he had performed well in the past. He seems to have lost enthusiasm; although he has developed excellent relationship with a few key accounts from whom the company get good sales volume.

Musculinity and drinking

1.   Does the study meet the scientific requirements?It cannot be denied that scientific study has become of great importance to any profession.   Everyone is aware of the fact that knowledge is increased through study and that critique of that study can also provide a basis for improving the study practices.  This study, â€Å"The Glass Phallus Pub (lic) Masculinity and Drinking in Rural New Zealand by Hugh Campbell meet the scientific requirements as it involved an intensive analysis of a particular site.2.   Is it a research study?Moreover, it is a scientific study utilizing the ethnographic fieldwork research methods.   Ethnographic research or fieldwork is considered an essential part of the training towards becoming a social scientist such that it is said to play a role in â€Å"consciousness raising† by extending one’s view of the world and challenging one’s assumptions about the nature of things (Robson, 1993).   Through ethnographic research the fieldworker gains an appreciation of the diversity and complexity of the human social condition and, at the same time, of the ultimate unity of human-kind.3.   Is it a quantitative study?No, it is not a quantitative study since it did not use any notation system. It must be noted that quantitative researchers assign numbers to observations and produce data by counting and measuring things.   Further, this study did not use any counting and measuring of things.4. Is it a qualitative study?Yes, this is a qualitative study since the researcher did not make counts or assign numbers to his observations. But rather, the researcher gain access into the â€Å"life-world† of his subjects and male groups; that is, to discover their motivations, their sources of meaning, their emotions and other subjective aspects of their lives because it is only in doing so that a researcher will be able to see, to describe, and to understand human behavior and social phenomena with greater d epth.   In addition, the researcher employed a qualitative research method which is participatory ethnographic fieldwork (p.262)5.   Is it clearly written?Yes, it is clearly written as the researcher used the first person and based on his experiences and analysis6.   Assess the title.The title is somewhat vague though as the author used a metaphor and one may not be totally familiar with â€Å"The Glass Phallus.†   So, one has to read the article thoroughly first before understanding the meaning behind the title.7.   Assess the authors` affiliations.Not much of the authors` affiliations were included in the study except that he has lived in the research area or community for five years as this is a participatory ethnographic fieldwork (p.262)8.   Assess the abstract.The abstract is clearly stated and includes the necessary things to include in an abstract such as the subjects and locale of the study, design of the study, the results, and the conclusion.9.   Asse ss the references.The references used were comprehensive and suited to the given study.10.   Is there a centrality of purpose between the introduction, method, and results?Yes, more or less there’s a centrality of purpose between the introduction, method, and results. But lesser centrality between introduction and method as the introduction is more of a myth about the rural pub, a nostalgic fiction of yesteryears as described in the introduction.   The method and results has more centrality as the author was able to connect the method used which is ethnographic fieldwork to the results of the study which is more qualitative.   The results of the study presented are ethnographic data which are the product of systematic and sustained observation.11.   Critique the introduction according to:– the literature reviewThe authors’ review of literature was conducted and integrated in the discussion part of the article although previous studies were not referred t o by specific articles, the names of authors and publication years were given. Moreover, the literature reported supported the selected qualitative method used in the study.–      study purposeThis study, â€Å"The Glass Phallus Pub (lic) Masculinity and Drinking in Rural New Zealand† by Hugh Campbell, examined the various ways in which pubs operate as a social site, where male power is constructed in rural communities.   Another is to examine the way in which symbolic notions of rurality are integral to the construction of gendered power in rural space.12.   Critiques the Method according to– the sample selectionThe sample of the study population was large (150-200) men who worked in farm service industries, were farm workers, owned or managed small farm service firms, or (a minority) were bachelor farmers.   Manual laborers on farms and in the farm service industries constituted the majority, but men from the agricultural petite bourgeoisie also were presented consistently.The participant sample selected basically on their performance known as the after-work drinking session.   The temporal parameters of after-work drinking strongly influenced which local men could join the pub (lic) performance of masculinity.   In addition to the fact that this study was the result of two periods of fieldwork within 5 years of ethnographic research, all the above mentioned criteria achieved the data saturation required.– the study designA participatory ethnographic study using formal and informal interviews was conducted to frame the design of the study (p.262). The method used was appropriate for this study as it sought to examine the various ways in which pubs operate as a social site, where male power is constructed in rural communities.   Also to examine the way in which symbolic notions of rurality are integral to the construction of gendered power in rural space.In addition, the qualitative interviews were undertaken to und erstand the experiences and all that they entail.– data collection proceduresData collection procedure used which was formal and informal interviews and were consistent with the purpose of the study since the study was a qualitative.   Moreover, 200 hours of participatory ethnographic fieldwork (in the pubs), made an even greater abundance of informal discussion and dialogue with members of the community.– researcher’s roleThe researcher’s role is to conduct interviews (formal or informal) using the participatory ethnographic fieldwork.– the issue of timeThis study was done for approximately 5 years of living in the community. The researcher has done interviews and discussions not just in the pubs but also in various locales such as sports clubs, churches, and voluntary organizations, and in the subjects` workplace.– materials/instruments usedThe strategies and tools involved in data collection includes ethnographic audiotaped interviews w hich includes open-ended, broad â€Å"grand tour† questions followed by more focused and in-depth discussions; participant observations were conducted in a variety of places; photography was extensive.13.   Critique the Results according to– findingsAnalysis from data obtained revealed two major characteristics of pub drinking performance, which are the conversational cockfighting and the disciplines of drinking. These two combine to ensure that a particular version of masculinity, here called pub(lic) masculinity reproduce itself.   A further finding is that masculinity in this kind of performative situation develops a degree of invisibility.– tables, graphs or chartsNo tables, graphs, or charts were included in the study.– statistical data and tests usedNo statistical data or tests were used as this is a qualitative study. So no sample data were given.   Only some conversation or descriptive data were presented.-discussionThe discussion of the res ult was done comprehensively and thus thoroughly-limitationsThe researcher realized the difficulties of analyzing an invisible masculinity and argues that rendering masculinity is an important task for any sociological analysis of both public leisure sites in rural society.-implications– The significant implication of this study is that rural sociologists must move quickly beyond viewing rural pub as just another aspect of the rural idyll but it is more of the operation of gendered power in rural communities, and as a site where rural masculinities are enacted and defended.ReferenceRobson, C. (1993) Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists andPractitioner-Researchers. Blackwell.

General Motors Foreign Exchange Risk Management Policy Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1069 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Argumentative essay Did you like this example? General Motors was the worlds largest automaker and since 1931, the worlds sales leader. In 2000, it had a net income of $4.4 billion on revenues of $184.6 billion. North America represented the majority of sales to end customers but international operations were also growing and international sales had reached 18% of overall sales. The key objectives of GMs foreign exchange risk management policy was to reduce cash flow and earnings volatility, minimize management time and costs dedicated to FX management and align FX management in a manner consistent with how GM operated its automotive business. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "General Motors Foreign Exchange Risk Management Policy Finance Essay" essay for you Create order GM hedged only cash flows (transaction exposures) and ignored balance sheet exposures (translation exposures). A passive hedging policy of hedging 50% of all significant foreign exchange exposures arising from receivables and payables was adopted. Forward contracts were used to hedge exposures arising within six months and options used to hedge exposures arising within seven to twelve months. GMs overall yen exposure included a commercial exposure based on forecasted receivables and payables of $900 million, an investment exposure resulting from equity stakes in Japanese companies and financing exposure through a yen-denominated loan. GMS COMPETITIVE EXPOSURE GMs competitive exposure to the yen arose because of competing against Japanese automakers who had large parts of their cost structure denominated in yen.Any fluctuation in the dollar/yen exchange rate affected the operating profits of Japanese automakers significantly, since they derived 43% of their revenue from the US markets (as of 2000). The yen appreciation from 117 to 107 during the first half of 2000 had reduced their combined global operating profit by nearly $4 billion. In the second half, the yen had begun appreciating. GM needed to quantify this competitive exposure and effectively hedge it. Depreciation of the yen would lead to reduced costs for Japanese automakers (since 20% to 40% content was sourced from Japan). 15% to 45% of this cost saving would be passed on to the customer. Customer sales elasticity as measured by GM indicated that a 5% price decrease would increase unit sales by around 10%. This market share gain by Japanese automakers would be shared equally and entirely by the Big Three in Detroit. QUANTIFYING GMS COMPETITIVE EXPOSURE Assumptions: ÂÂ ·Japanese car makers source 40% content from Japan (worst case scenario). ÂÂ ·45% of cost savings is passed on by Japanese carmakers to customers (worst case scenario). ÂÂ ·Yen devaluates by 20% compared to the dollar(worst case scenario). ÂÂ ·Total cost per car is $20000 (assumed). The margin obtained by GM is approximately $5900 ($1969 * 3) on the cost. Due to competition, Japanese carmakers would also need to price their vehicles similarly. Hence the same price is assumed for Japanese carmakers as well. ÂÂ ·Loss is valued as a perpetuity at 20% discount rate. Japanese carmakers General Motors Cost of Car $20,000 Price of car $25,900 Component cost (of Japanese component) at old exchange rate of $1=100 (40% components sourced from Japan) 800,000 = $8000 Component cost at new exchange rate of $1=120 800,000 = $6,666.67 Change in profit margin $1,333.33 Addl. Margin passed on to customers ( = 45% of change in profit margin) $600.00 New price of car $25,300 Price decrease 2.32% Increased sales (elasticity = 2) 4.63% Sales in 2000 4100000 Increase in sales in 2001 (Gain by Japanese carmakers shared by Big Three) 189962 -63321 Income loss for 2001 -$249,358,098 Income loss for perpetuity (Discounting at 20%) -$1,246,790,490 Thus the loss due to competitive exposure to GM is around $1.24 billion, which GM cannot afford to ignore. The above calculations have not taken into account any growth of the market or other variables. Also assuming that GM would not respond to a 20% change in exchange rates also may not be realistic. SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS A sensitivity analysis has been carried out, by varying the Yen/Dollar exchange rate from $1 = 120 yen to $1 = 80 yen. Also the content sourced from Japan has been varied from 20% to 40%. Varying these parameters, we get the values for income loss/gain for 2001. These values are discounted at 20% to find out the loss/gain to perpetuity. In this analysis, the margin passed on by Japanese carmakers has been fixed at 45%. Income loss/gain to perpetuity for GM with changes in exchange rate and Japanese content in Japanese carmakers automobiles: Exchange Rate: $1= 120 100 90 80 Japanese content 20% -$623,405,090 0 $415,596,830 $935,097,790 30% -$935,097,790 0 $623,405,090 $1,402,636,840 40% -$1,246,790,490 0 $831,193,660 $1,870,175,890 Another sensitivity analysis has been carried out, wherein the Japanese content in the automobiles is varied from 20% to 40% and the margin passed on by Japanese carmakers to customers has been varied from 15% to 45%. Here the exchange rate has been kept constant at $1 = 120 Income loss/gain to perpetuity for GM with varying Japanese content and margin passed on by Japanese automakers to customers: Japanese content 20% 30% 40% Margin passed on by Japanese carmakers to customers 15% -$207,808,260 -$311,712,390 -$415,596,830 30% -$415,596,830 -$623,405,090 -$831,193,660 45% -$623,405,090 -$935,097,790 -$1,246,790,490 In this case, value erosion ranges from -$208 million to -$1.25 billion REGRESSION ANALYSIS To calculate the effect of fluctuating yen-dollar exchange rate on the value of GM, a regression analysis can also be carried out. The coefficient of the exchange rate will indicate how much the value of GM changes. For example, if the coefficient is negative, it indicates that GMs value will decline as the yen depreciates relative to the dollar. However due to insufficient data in the case, this exercise has not been carried out. HEDGING POLICIES FOR COMPETITIVE EXPOSURE To hedge the competitive exposure to Japanese yen, GM can try the following strategies: ÂÂ ·Shift some of its production to Japan ÂÂ ·Source some parts from Japan However, these are long term strategies and need to be evaluated carefully taking into account market considerations. These decisions cannot be taken just for hedging purposes. GM currently follows a passive hedging policy which does not include guidelines on managing competitive exposure. All deviations from its current policy had to be approved by senior executives. An easier approach to manage the competitive exposure to the Japanese yen would be for GM to increase its yen borrowings (currently around $500 million worth of yen bonds are outstanding). This would serve as a natural hedge to any depreciation in the yen and would also not require the use of complex derivatives.