Best Buy Failure in China (International Business) Essay

In the world today, there are many companies getting involved in international business, and developing to become a multinational company. Why do these firms want to take the multinational route? One of the dominant frameworks to explain the existence of these multinational companies is the Ownership-Location-Internalisation (OLI) paradigm (Dunning & Lundan 2008). Running an international business is different from running a domestic business. International business requires you to recognise and understand the cultural differences between countries. Failing to recognise and understand this difference could possibly lead to many difficulties, or worse still, failure. In this essay, I will be discussing the difficulties that Best Buy Co. Inc. faced, and its eventual failure due to the lack of understanding of the cultural differences in its host country, China. The rise of China has matured into hope for the entire consumer electronics industry. The country’s 1.3 billion consumers and their fast increasing buying power have transformed China into the world’s largest consumer electronics market, a market opportunity that multinational giants cannot afford to neglect (Chen & He 2005). As such, Best Buy was just one of the many multinational companies that tried to enter the Chinese market. Best Buy Co. Inc. Best Buy is a multinational retailer of consumer electronics from the United States and operates in the United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Mexico, China as well as its home country. Started as the Sound of Music in 1966 as an audio specialty store by Richard M. Schulze, it was later changed to Best Buy Co., Inc. by the board of directors in 1983 and is now the leading consumer electronics retailer in the United States (Pederson 2004). Best Buy sells consumer electronics as well as a wide selection of related merchandise such as music, mobile phones, computers, computer software, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, video games, digital cameras, video cameras as well as home appliances. The multinational used a two-track approach to enter the Chinese market. The consumer electronics giant first opened a sourcing office in Shanghai in 2005 and began its efforts to expand into the Chinese market in May 2006 by foreign acquisition. The multinational invested $108 million to obtain a majority stake in China’s fourth largest consumer electronics retailer, Jiangsu Five Star Appliance (Bloomberg 2006). Soon after in December 2006, the company used the greenfield mode of entry and opened its first â€Å"Best Buy† store that followed their own US business model, in Shanghai’s busy Xujiahui shopping district. By imposing a US business model, Best Buy intended to convince fastidious Chinese customers with helpful and dependable service in clean, pleasant outlets. The chairman and general manager of Best Buy China, Lu Weiming declared that they were confident with the store model they had, which will differentiate them from competitors and consequently help them win the consumers’ heart (Kurtenbach 2006). The company later opened another eight stores, which increased the total number of â€Å"Best Buy† stores in China to nine. Problem Identification According to the China Daily on March 21, 2011, Jiangsu Five Star Appliance continued to expand. However, Best Buy’s expansion was slow and was not running as smoothly as anticipated. â€Å"The multinational brought in a Western business model and it failed to sufficiently attract the Chinese clients and customers,† said Chen Can, a senior analyst from Analysys International (China Daily 2011). Best Buy’s business model in the US, where the brand markets itself as delivering a better service than competitors, did not go well in China. After being in the Chinese market for five years, the company only managed to open nine stores, capturing less than one per cent of the Chinese market as according to analysts. Failing to catch on in the Asian country, the company decided in February, 2011, to close its headquarters along with all its nine stores (Birchall, Strauss & Waldmeir 2011). Causes of the problem Even though the company opened a sourcing office in 2005, the multinational still had a lot to learn about the Chinese and the way they did business. â€Å"The lesson we learned is that we got too far ahead of the Chinese consumer in how business is done in China,† said Brian Dunn, Best Buy’s Chief Executive (Groth 2011). He said the company’s mistake had been to open big box stores with fixed prices that were staffed entirely by Best Buy’s blue-shirted employees (Jopson & Waldmeir 2011). Clearly, Best Buy entered the Chinese market in 2006 with a lack of knowledge of the local consumer’s culture. International strategy is a strategy where the firm uses the core competency, which it developed at home, as its main competitive weapon in the foreign market (Sumantra & Nitin 1993). This is the strategy which Best Buy used. The company did not enter China with the intention to hire local talent who knew how to be successful in China. Rather, it entered the country intending to create talent that knew how to be successful in the United States (Adam 2011). When the multinational first entered the Chinese market, many people hoped that it would successfully replace the prevailing, yet widely criticised Chinese business model that focused on price-centred competition (Ni 2011). Imposing their core competency in the US model, the company offered â€Å"a concept ahead of the consumer,† said retail analyst Paul French of Access Asia which was based in Shanghai (Macleod 2011). Best Buy provides a premium shopping experience for its consumers, to which the Chinese consumers were ultimately not willing to pay for (Jopson 2011). Consumers in China are generally different from consumers in the United States. Wei and Salil (2010) stated that the Chinese consumers have a higher cognitive age perception, lower levels of physical health status and lower life satisfaction levels as compared to their American counterparts. Eastman et. al. (1997) conducted a study and found that there were statistically significant differences between the two, such that Chinese consumers were more materialistic than those in the United States. Eastman’s research was later backed up by Schmitt’s (1999) studies. In addition, Schmitt found that the Chinese consumers were more brand conscious and would go shopping with brands as a key influencing factor. The cross-cultural study above is just one of the reasons as to why Best Buy failed to attract consumers in China. For instance, the company’s store in China generally divides up electronics and other large-ticket items by category (Birchall, Strauss & Waldmeir 2011). However, the Chinese are inclined to put more faith in brand names than consumers in the US do. Due to this reliance on brands as a deciding factor, the Chinese consumer would generally prefer items in the store to be categorised according to their make rather than function. Another cause of the company’s failure in attracting Chinese customers lies in the fact that all sales staff in the store were the company’s direct employees who donned the ubiquitous blue Best Buy uniform. This was a stark difference to the scene in typical Chinese outlets, where consumers were accustomed to subsections of electronics stores being manned by the manufacturer’s own employees, who were also able to offer specialist knowledge (Jopson 2011). At the same time, Best Buy’s market research showed that Chinese consumers liked to try out new products. While this was true, what eventually happened was that the Chinese shoppers would first go to Best Buy to try out products, before promptly marching across the street to one of the other Chinese retailers and buying the said product for less (Adam 2011). This was partly due to the pricing in Best Buy stores, which was based on a fixed-price policy (Jopson 2011) and only served to push the Chinese consumer even further away. As stated by Montlake (2006), bargaining is a way of life in China. Chinese consumers like bargaining and they are used to negotiating with the salesperson to get a discount, which was not an option in Best Buy. Not only is bargaining not an option, the prices at Best Buy were also set at a premium as it followed the company’s US model of offering high-quality service and a better shopping experience to consumers, such as the opportunity to try products before making a purchase. However, that did not seem to suit the immature Chinese market very well (Ni 2011). Purchasing decisions made by Chinese consumers are determined by price and not service (Birchall, Strauss & Waldmeir 2011). At the same time, Chinese consumers had the perception that Gome and Suning, two of Best Buy’s biggest competitors, were able to under cut Best Buy’s prices significantly (Adam 2011). Chinese consumers care more about price than service (D’Altorio 2011). The Chinese do not penny-pinch and save because they like to, but because they have to. They voluntarily tax themselves so as to protect against the absence of a welfare safety net. If a Chinese consumer gets old, he will need that money to survive, since state pensions remain inadequate. As his parents age, he will need to support his elders, especially since he is likely to be their only child, a result of the country’s one child policy. This reality is what perpetuates and engenders the low-cost, bargain basement Chinese retail environment (French 2007). To top it off, Best Buy’s choice of a Chinese name left many consumers pondering over its decision. A country steeped in traditions and superstitions, many Chinese consumers commented that the company’s Chinese name, â€Å"Bai Si Mai†, was a bad one as it literally meant â€Å"to buy after thinking 100 times† (Ni 2011). Overall, the company’s business model, like its Chinese name, showed a lack of understanding for the Chinese culture. It tried too hard to educate Chinese consumers about high-end service value when lower prices were typically the only value that motivated them to make quick decisions. The consumer electronics giant’s overconfidence in transforming the Chinese consumer philosophy finally hurt its performance in the Chinese market. Maintaining only a small market presence in China, Best Buy not only failed to please its consumers, but its suppliers too, who did not receive many orders from the company (Ni 2011). Proposed Solutions There are huge cross-cultural differences between the US and China. Therefore, one change I will make if I was Best Buy is to take up a multi-domestic strategy instead of the international strategy adopted by the company. Multi-domestic strategies involve a high degree of customisation to the local market place (Hout, Porter & Rudden 1982). This is important, noting the huge cultural gap between the China and the US. Hill, Hwang and Chan (1990) also stated that a multi-domestic strategy is based on the belief that national markets differ widely with regard to consumer preferences and taste, competitive conditions, operating conditions and social structures. According to organisational capabilities theory, in order to leverage its competitive advantages in the foreign market, an enterprise must understand its business environments and adapt its operation modes to the host country (Xu, Hu & Fan 2011). This is also in line with the multi-domestic strategy, to which Anne-Wil (2002) has highlighted the need of multi-domestic companies to deal with markets where products tailored to local circumstances are required; and to be able to do so, companies need to be well aware of the local market and be well-integrated into it. This can be easier achieved by acquiring an existing company that possesses a knowledgeable work force and good connections in the local market. As such, the mode of entry decided upon by a multinational is a critical and strategic decision. To support the multi-domestic strategy and aligning with conditions in China, I will still first enter the Chinese market using foreign acquisition. Foreign acquisition involves having to invest in a local firm and in this case, I will be investing in Jiangsu Five Star Appliance. Acquiring Jiangsu Five Star Appliance will create access to local resources as well as knowledge of the Chinese retail environment within a much shorter span of time (Cristina & Garcia-Canal 2004). Acquisition is also a more effective way of exploiting foreign resources and markets as compared to joint ventures or licensing, as supported by the transaction cost theory (Hennart 2010). Tapping on the knowledge and expertise of Jiangsu Five Star Appliance, I will then use the greenfield method, which is the setting up of a new company legally independent from parents, to set up a Best Buy store in China (Cristina & Garcia-Canal 2004). By using a multi-domestic strategy, the management seen in the greenfield approach will be more similar to that of acquisitions (Anne-Wil 2002). The consequent Best Buy outlets will then be managed and accustomed to the Chinese market. For instance, as most Chinese consumers shop by brands, the store will therefore be segregated by brands rather than product category. Sections of the store will also be rented out to brand manufacturers and their designated areas will be staffed with their own sales team, so that consumers can receive specialised knowledge as well as bargain for a lower price. The store will not be carpeted or provide services like allowing consumers to test out the product before purchase. This is to prevent the Chinese consumers from having the perception that the store is pricier as compared to competitors, especially since China is a highly price-conscious market. As French (2007) aptly stated, â€Å"win on price and you win, period†. It is therefore of utmost importance to have a lower price as compared to competitors. In order to provide lower prices, I will acquire the real estate, instead of renting or leasing the property like my two biggest competitors Gome and Suning do. This will provide me with a great advantage as I can lower rental prices for the manufacturers, who can then pass the accumulated savings down to the Chinese consumers. Noting the Chinese aversion to inauspicious names, I will also conduct sufficient research and preparation into choosing a Chinese name for the store before its opening. Instead of using a direct sound conversion of the brand name like â€Å"Bai Si Mai†, I will translate the brand name by meaning instead, such as â€Å"Zui Hao Mai†. This literally means â€Å"best buy†, and doubles up as a call that encourages consumers not to miss out on a deal. Conclusion In conclusion, China is a huge and growing market with tonnes of opportunities that multinationals cannot afford to neglect. However, there is a huge cultural divide between China and countries from the west like the United States. Entering the Chinese market will require multinationals to recognise and understand the cultural difference between their homeland and the Chinese market. Best Buy failed in China due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of cross-cultural differences. Although the company chose the correct mode of entry by first using foreign acquisition followed by the greenfield approach, it failed because it adopted an international strategy thinking that Chinese consumers will welcome the same offerings that reflect its core competency in the US — value-added service. Thinking it could import its success in the US to China by focusing on the same areas, Best Buy’s targeted service approach failed to take off in a climate governed by financial sensitivity. While focusing on providing consumers with a great shopping experience, the company failed to consider a fundamental portion of the retail environment — price, which affects Chinese consumers much more than service. To improve on this situation, I would first enter the Chinese market through foreign acquisition, so that I may gain access to knowledge about the culture in China before starting on the greenfield route. However, instead of using an international strategy, I will opt for the multi-domestic strategy by adapting my operations towards the needs of Chinese consumers. This would circumvent the issues that led to the company’s downfall in China. Due to the country’s rich traditions, its people are habitual and tend to shy away from the unfamiliar. Should Best Buy have chosen to use a multi-domestic strategy, it would have realised the need to customise its offerings in accordance to local tastes and might have gone on to capture a larger share of China’s consumer electronics market. Reference List Adam, M. 2011, ‘Bye-Bye, Best Buy (China): You had it coming’, Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap, 22 February, Viewed 22 August 2012, Anne-Wil, H. 2002, â€Å"Acquisitions versus Greenfield investments: International strategy and management of entry modes†, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 211-227. Birchall, J., Strauss, D. & Waldmeir, P. 2011, Best Buy brand shuts up shop in China and Turkey, London (UK), United Kingdom, London (UK). Bloomberg 2006, Best Buy chain on road to China, Tulsa, Okla., Tulsa, Okla. Chen, X. & He, Z. 2005, ‘Understanding the Structure of China’s Consumer Electronics Market: An Empirical Investigation of Its Consumer Segments’, Multinational Business Review, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 43-61, viewed 15 August 2012, Proquest database. China Daily 2011, ‘Best Buy seeks the best way to survive’, China Daily, 21 March, (Business section), Viewed 20 August 2012, Cristina, L.D. & Garcia-Canal, E. 2004, â€Å"The Choice Between Joint Ventures and Acquisitions in Foreign Direct Investments: The Role of Partial Acquisitions and Accrued Experience†, Thunderbird International Business Review, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 39-58. D’Altorio, T. 2011, ‘How the Chinese Consumer Defeated Best Buy’, Investment U Research, 10 March, Viewed 22 August 2012, Reference List Dunning, J.H. & Lundan, S.M. 2008, â€Å"Institutions and the OLI paradigm of the multinational enterprise†, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 573-593. Eastman, J.K., Fredenberger, B., Campbell, D. & Calvert, S., ‘The Relationship Between Status Consumption and Materialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Chinese, Mexican, And American Students.’, Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice, Winter97, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 52. French, P. 2007, ‘When the Best Buy Is No Buy’, The Wall Street Journal Asia, 07 August, United States, Hong Kong. Groth, A. 2011, ‘Why Best Buy’s Overseas Strategy is Failing’, Business Insider, 04 November, Viewed 22 August 2012. . Hennart, J. 2010, â€Å"Transaction Cost Theory and International Business†, Journal of Retailing, vol. 86, no. 3, pp. 257-269. Hill, C.W., Hwang, P. & Chan, K.W. 1990, â€Å"An Eclectic Theory of the Choice of International Entry Mode†, Strategic Management Journal (1986-1998), vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 117-117. Hout, T., Porter, M. E., Rudden, E. 1982, ‘How Global Companies Win Out’, Harvard Business Review, viewed 25 August 2012, . Jopson, B. 2011, ‘Best Buy seeks ways to return brand to China’, FT.com Jopson, B. & Waldmeir, P., 2011, Best Buy seeks ways to return brand to China, London (UK), United Kingdom, London (UK) Reference List Kurtenbach, E. 2006, Best Buy opens store in China — Top U.S. electronics retailer to offer wide array, better service, Memphis, Tenn., United States, Memphis, Tenn. MacLeod, C. 2011, Best Buy, Home Depot find China market a tough sell, McLean, Va., United States, McLean, Va. Montlake S. 2006, ‘China’s newest shopping craze: ‘team buying’ ; More and more consumers meet online before banding together at stores to bargain down prices’, The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Mass., United States. Ni, V. 2011, Best Buy’s Withdrawal: American Morals Fail to Transcend Chinese Consumer Market, Asia Briefing Ltd., viewed 20 August 201. < http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2011/03/02/best-buys-withdrawal-american-morals-fail-to-transcend-chinese-consumer-market.html>. Pederson, J.P. 2004, International directory of company histories, St. James Press. Schmitt, B. H. 1999, ‘Consumer Segmentation in China’, In Marketing Issues in Transitional Economies, Rajeev Batra eds. Norwood, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Sumantra, G. & Nitin, N., ‘Horses for courses: Organizational forms for multicultural corporations’, Sloan Management Review, pp. 27, 31. Wei, Y. & Salil, T., 2010, ‘Materialism of Mature Consumers in China and USA: A Cross-Cultural Study’, Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, pp. 1-14, viewed 15 August 2012, ProQuest Central. Xu, Y., Hu, S. & Fan, X. 2011, â€Å"Entry mode choice of Chinese enterprises: The impacts of country risk, cultural distance and their interactions†, Frontiers of Business Research in China, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 63-78.

Book Review on Imagining India Essay

Monday morning, it is chaos. Despite its pristine new metro and expanding highways, the city can barely contain the morning hubbub, the swarm of people all trying to get somewhere. By the time I reach Kaushik Basu’s home—set a little apart from the highway, on a quiet street that is empty except for a single, lazy cow who stops in front of the car, in no hurry to move—I am very late, a little grimy, but exhilarated. Kaushik and I chat about how the crowds in the city look completely different compared to, say, two decades ago. Then, you would see people lounging near tea shops, reading the morning paper late into the afternoon, puffing languorously at their beedis and generally shooting the breeze. But as India has changed— bursting forth as one of the world’s fastest-growing countries—so has the scene on the street. And as Kaushik points out, it is this new restlessness, the hum and thrum of its people, that is the sound of India’s economic engine today. Kaushik is the author of a number of books on India and teaches economics at Cornell, and his take on India’s growth—of a country driven by human capital—is now well accepted. India’s position as the world’s go-to destination for talent is hardly surprising; we may have been short on various things at various times, but we have always had plenty of people. The crowded tumult of our cities is something I experience every day as I navigate my way to our Bangalore office through a dense crowd that overflows from the footpaths and on to the road—of software engineers waiting at bus stops, groups of women in colourful saris, on their way to their jobs 38 at the garment factories that line the road, men in construction hats heading towards the semi-completed highway. And then there are the people millin g around the cars, hawking magazines and pirated versions of the latest best-sellers. * Looking around, I think that if people are the engine of India’s growth, our economy has only just begun to rev up. But to the demographic experts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, India’s population made the country quite simply a disaster of epic proportions. Paul Ehlrich’s visit to Delhi in 1966 forms the opening of his book The Population Bomb, and his shock as he describes India’s crowds is palpable: ‘People eating, people washing, people sleeping . . . people visiting, arguing and screaming . . . people clinging to buses . . . people, people, people’. But in the last two decades, this depressing vision of India’s population as an ‘overwhelming burden’ has been turned on its head. With growth, our human capital has emerged as a vibrant source of workers and consumers not just for India, but also for the global economy. But this change in our attitudes has not come easily. Since independence, India struggled for decades with policies that tried to put the lid on its surging population. It is only recently that the country has been able to look its billion in the eye and consider its advantages. ‘MILLIONS ON AN ANTHILL’ For most of the twentieth century, people both within and outside India viewed us through a lens that was distinctly Malthusian. As a poor and extremely crowded part of the world, we seemed to vindicate Thomas Malthus’s uniquely despondent vision—that great population growth inevitably led to great famine and despair. The time that Thomas Malthus, writer, amateur economist and clergyman (the enduring term history gave him would be ‘the gloomy parson’), lived in may have greatly influenced his theory on population. Nineteenth-century England was seeing very high birth rates, with families having children by the baker’s dozen. Malthus— who, as the second of eight children, was himself part of the population explosion he bemoaned—predicted in his An Essay on *Tbe Alchemist, Liar’s Poker and (Tom Friedman would be delighted) The World Is Flat have been perennial favourites for Indian pirates. the Principle of Population that the unprecedented increases in population would lead to a cycle of famines, of ‘epidemics, and sickly seasons’. India in particular seemed to be speedily bearing down the path that Malthus predicted. On our shores, famine was a regular visitor. We endured thirty hunger famines* between 1770 and 1950— plagues during which entire provinces saw a third of their population disappear, and the countryside was covered ‘with the bleached bones of the millions dead’.1 By the mid twentieth century, neo-Malthusian prophets were sounding the alarm on the ‘disastrous’ population growth in India and China, and predicted that the impact of such growth would be felt around the world. Their apocalyptic scenarios helped justify draconian approaches to birth control. Policies recommending ‘sterilization of the unfit and the disabled’, and the killing of ‘defective’ babies gained the air of respectab le theory. 2 India’s increasing dependence on food aid from the developed world due to domestic shortages also fuelled the panic around its population growth—in 1960 India had consumed one-eighth of the United States’ total wheat production, and by 1966 this had grown to onefourth. Consequently, if you were an adult in the 1950s and 1960s and followed the news, it was entirely plausible to believe that the endgame for humanity was just round the corner; you may also have believed that this catastrophe was the making of some overly fecund Indians. Nehru, observing the hand-wringing, remarked that the Western world was ‘getting frightened at the prospect of the masses of Asia becoming vaster and vaster, and swarming all over the place’. And it is true that Indians of this generation had a cultural affinity for big families, even among the middle class—every long holiday during my childhood was spent at my grandparents’ house with my cousins, and a family photo from that time has a hundred people crammed into the frame. Indian families were big enough to be your *Amartya Sen and others have pointed out, however, that while these famines may have seemed to be the consequence of a country that was both poor and overpopulated, they were in fact triggered partly by trade policies and the lack of infrastructure. Lord Lytton exported wheat from India at the height of the 1876-78 famine, and the lack of connectivity across the country affected transportation of grain to affected areas. Main social circle—most people did not mingle extensively outside family weddings, celebrations and visits to each other’s homes. The growing global worries around our population growth created immense pressure on India to impose some sort of control on our birth rates, and we became the first developing country to initiate a family planning programme. But our early family planning policies had an unusual emphasis on ‘self-control’.3 In part this was influenced by leaders such as Gandhi, who preached abstinence; in an interesting departure from his usual policy of non-violence, he had said, ‘Wives should fight off their husbands with force, if necessary.’ This focus on abstinence and self-restraint continued with independent India’s first health minister, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who was in the odd position of being at the helm of a family planning programme while opposing family planning ‘in principle’.4 As a result Indian policy during this decade emphasized the rhythm method. Rural India was targeted for raising awareness of the method, and one villager remarked of its success, ‘They talked of the rhythm method to people who didn’t know the calendar. Then they gave us rosaries of coloured beads . . . at night, people couldn’t tell the red bead for â€Å"don’t† from the green for â€Å"go ahead†.’ 5 Not surprisingly, India’s population continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s, as fertility remained stubbornly high even while infant mortality and death rates fell rapidly. This was despite the massive awareness-building efforts around family planning that the government undertook. I still remember the ‘small family’ songs on the radio and the walls of our cities, the sides of buses and trucks were papered with posters that featured happy (and small) cartoon families, and slogans like ‘Us Two, Ours Two’. And yet, each census release made it clear that our population numbers continued to relentlessly soar, and we despaired over a graph that was climbing too high, too fast. SNIP, SNIP As the global panic around population growth surged, the Indian and Chinese governments began executing white-knuckle measures of family planning in the 1960s. ‘Our house is on fire,’ Dr S. Chandrasekhar, minister of health and family planning, said in 1968. If we focused more on sterilization, he added, ‘We can get the blaze under control.’ By the 1970s, programmes and targets for sterilization of citizens were set up for Indian states. There was even a vasectomy clinic set up at the Victoria Terminus rail station in Bombay, to cater to the passenger traffic flowing through. 7 But no matter how Indian governments tried to promote sterilization with incentives and sops, the number of people willing to undergo the procedure did not go up. India’s poor wanted children—and especially sons—as economic security. State efforts to persuade citizens into sterilization backfired in unexpected ways—as when many people across rural India refused to have the anti-tuberculosis BCG, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, injections because of a rumour that BCG stood for ‘birth control government’.8 In 1975, however, Indira Gandhi announced the Emergency, which suspended democratic rights and elections and endowed her with new powers of persuasion, so to speak. The Indian government morphed into a frighteningly sycophantic group, there to do the bidding of the prime minister and her son Sanjay—the same hotheaded young man who had described the Cabinet ministers as ‘ignorant buffoons’, thought his mother a ‘ditherer’ and regarded the Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos his role model.9 In the winter of 1976, I, along with some of my fellow IIT Bombay students, had arrived on the ‘festival circuit’ in Delhi to participate in the student debates and quizzes (yes, I was an inveterate nerd). It meant going from college to college for competitions, from Hindu to St Stephen’s to Miranda House to IIT Delhi. Most of us from the sylvan, secluded campus of IIT Bombay were not as politically aware as the Delhi students—the only elections we followed were those for the ITT hostels and student body. But in the Delhi of the Emergency years, sitting around campfires, one heard the whispered tale s of Emergency-era atrocities, and of one particular outrage—’nasbandi’. Sanjay, who had discovered a taste and talent for authoritarianism with the Emergency, had made sterilization—specifically male sterilization or nasbandi— his pet project. The sterilization measures that were introduced came to be known as the ‘Sanjay Effect’—a combination, as the demographer Ashish Bose put it to me, of ‘coercion, cruelty, corruption and cooked figures’. Ashish notes that ‘incentives’ to undergo the sterilization procedure included laws that required a sterilization certificate before government permits and rural credit could be granted. Children of parents with more than three children found that schools refused them admission, and prisoners did not get parole until they went under the knife. And some government departments ‘persuaded’ their more reluctant employees to undergo the procedure by threatening them with charges of embezzlement.* The steep sterilization targets for state governments meant that people were often rounded up like sheep and taken to ‘family planning’ clinics. For instance, one journalist witnessed municipal police in the small town of Barsi, Maharashtra, ‘dragging several hundred peasants visiting Barsi on market day off the streets’. They drove these men in two garbage trucks to the local family planning clinic, where beefy orderlies held them down while they were given vasectomies.10 This scene repeated itself time and again, across the country. It was difficult to trust the sterlization figures the government released since there was so much pressure on the states for results. Nevertheless, the Emergency-era sterilization programme, Ashish notes, may have achieved nearly two-thirds of its target—eight million sterilizations. But democracy soon hit back with a stunning blow. When Indira Gandhi called for elections in 1977—ignoring Sanjay’s protests, ‘much to his ire’11—the Congress was immediately tossed out of power. The nasbandi programme was the last gasp of coercive family planning in India on a large scale, and it became political suicide to implement similar policies. The Janata Party government that followed Indira even changed the label of the programme to avoid the stigma it carried, and ‘family planning’ became ‘family welfare’. While sterilization programmes have occasionally reappeared across states, they have been mostly voluntary, with the focus on incentives to undergo the procedure, f *Asoka Bandarage describes the target fever in India’s sterilization programmes, which gave rise to ‘speed doctors’ who competed against each other to perform the most number of operations every day, often under ghastly, unhygienic conditions. One celebrated figure was the Indian gynaecologist P.V. Mehta, who entered the Guinness Book of World Records for sterilizing more than 350,000 people in a decade—he claimed that he could perform forty sterilizations in an hour. tThese sweeteners for the procedure have at times been very strange and a little suspect, such as Uttar Pradesh’s ‘guns for sterilisation’ policy in 2004, under which scheme Indians purchasing firearms or seeking gun licences were told they would be fast-tracked if they could round up volunteers for sterilization. A district in Madhya Pradesh also made a similar ‘guns for vasectomies’ offer to its residents in 2008.

A Study Of How Puberty And Peer Pressure Affects Adolescents

A Study Of How Puberty And Peer Pressure Affects Adolescents The tweens of today are having things on their mind, at a young age it was cupcakes, glitter, hot wheels and dinosaurs. Now at the tween years have more things on their mind than just rainbows and trains. This has to deal with peer pressure, puberty, also with trying to be popular. Which will be the cause of ten year olds wanting to become a teenager already? There are issues that an everyday child deals with on a daily basis. What is Peer pressure? Peer Pressure is the influence of people do try to. When you were a little kid, your parents usually chose your friends, putting you in play groups or arranging play dates with certain children they knew or liked. Now that youre older, you decide who your friends are and what groups you spend time with whether your parents like them or not. Parents may think their child is to be sweet, innocent, and always doing the right thing. When peer pressure comes along that goes downhill, it is a perception that changes when the parent is away from the child. Puberty is the physical change from a child to mature into a mature adult. With female tweens, they can develop breast, hair growth or many other physical changes. With males it is mainly voice changes or height changes. Puberty varies with the tween and can be a good thing or a bad thing for a tween to deal with. According to Steven Dowshewn of www.kidshealth.org, He states â€Å"Sometimes it can be hard to deal with all these new emotions. Its important to know that while your body is adjusting to the new hormones, so is your mind.† This will affect teens for years and years to come. Popularity shows tweens are can be either be two ways: Your either sweet person with a good personality or the meanest person some people ever came in contact with. People use their popularity for good things for instance running for class president, or wanting a to win votes. Using your popularity of evil, can be like â€Å"I run this entire school I am going to get it if I have to drop you off the face of the planet.† Lots of popularity shows what type of person you are or if you want to be popular. In other words, Tweens have many things to worry about in elementary, middle and high school. From peer pressure tweens into drugs, sex, drinking alcohol or may other situations. Puberty in males and females for tweens at a young age, females in particular. Popularity at school which can be used for good and evil, or for votes to win an election. Tween days will come and go, it shows that you cannot always stay that way forever.

What are the major barriers to effective global governance in the Essay

What are the major barriers to effective global governance in the international system Explain your answer by using at least two analytical approaches introduced in the block and at least one case study - Essay Example To this end, The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was initiated in 2007. This paper examines two approaches the global community has resorted to in the fight against nuclear weapons and the challenges faced thereof. Today, nine countries are in possession of over 16,000 nuclear weapons (Adamsk, 2014, p. 91-134). These are the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia among others. The United States and Russia alone have about 1,800 of their nuclear weapons on high alert. This means that that the weapons are ready for launching within few minutes of the declaration of war. Many of these weapons are several times more powerful than the atomic bombs America detonated on Japan in 1945. The most certain way of eliminating the dangers nuclear weapons pose to humanity is for the world’s nuclear powers to disarm(Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, n.d, p.51-80.). The leaders of some nuclear powers have uttered their support for the eradication of nuclear weapons. However, none of them has unveiled an elaborate plan for the elimination of their arsenals. Instead, they are in the process of modernizing them. Nuclear weapons possess massive power to destroy human life and the environment(Tannenwald, 2006, p. 677). When detonated, they release colossal amounts of energy in the forms of radiation, heat and blast. No amount of humanitarian assistance would be sufficient to handle the damage caused by a nuclear weapon. A regional war in which about a hundred nuclear weapons the size of the Hiroshima atomic bomb were used would result in the immediate death of tens of millions of people. Moreover, the war would alter the global climate so grossly that over a billion people would starve. Based on these facts, the international community swung into action to eliminate these lethal weapons. This paper examines two approaches that have been employed for this purpose and the challenges encountered in each. There are two broad approaches to

Analysis of Korean Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 6

Analysis of Korean Culture - Essay Example The beer was given a look of a woman while tiger never succeeded due to lack of patience. The background of the story was to give the origin of the leadership of Korea. The book Samguk Yusa: legends and history of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea is a collection of various histories of the three monarchies of Korea who were Silla, Paekche, and Koguryo. The author is a fresh fiction writer. One of his most famous books is â€Å"The Great Divorce.† She lives in New York. She is also a holder of B.A.in humanities from Yale College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. In this story, the Korean leader is believed to have descended from heaven. The gods from the place of sunrise were responsible for the leadership choice. This choice was through a test of patience where the beer was more tolerant and patient than the tiger. The gods required fair leadership so the whole process of leadership choice was necessary. Considering the evolution of the human leader nature of origin, the leader was godly given. The whole of these steps of attaining leadership made the leader acceptable. The book is a fairy tale collection of the beliefs concerning leadership in Korea in relation to other regions in the east including China. These stories were made to help the children have a positive view of the leaders. On the other hand, it is a religious book in that it tells more on prayer and its effect. The power of prayer in this story helps in attaining the desired status. This book is also historical to some extent. It teaches on the history of the leadership and the entire eastern regional religion, as the gods were believed to be in the Chinese Mountains (Ilyon 2006). The composer of the story is well versed with the child’s psychology. The composer puts the story down in a chronological order thus making it easy to understand. Viewing of leadership as a divine provision is a character that makes the story more acceptable and interesting.  Ã‚  

Philosophy Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Philosophy Ethics - Essay Example The paper also describes the methods to keep ethical code in priority in order to maintain rule of morality and law in society in general and within the organization in particular. I have been working as CEO of ABC Tobacco Company for the last five years, and maintain the credit of multiplying the business volume of my company to almost three fold from the time I assumed the position afore-mentioned. We prepare high quality tobacco for the cigars and cigarettes that produce alluring aroma, and hence, captivates the attraction of smokers and even non-smokers too to some extent. Thus, refined high quality, bewitching fragrance, delicate presentation, stylish packing and economical cost make our product as a very popular brand at regional level. It is therefore the sales volume of our cigarettes is in constant increase, and our company has also brought the characteristics of the product in limelight through advertising campaign at print and electronic media. Somehow, arrival of new brands at low prices has affected our sales, and profit volume may also witness downfall. Consequently, our marketing and advertising department has proposed the advertising of our pro duct outside schools, colleges, universities and health clubs, so that it could fascinate the youth and thus they start buying and consuming the product both secretly and openly. It is a fact beyond suspicion that youth serves as the most emotional and thrilling stratum of society, which appears to be ready to enter into adventures and create excitement in one way or the other. Additionally, harmful, destructive and risky adventures particularly capture their attention, and they are determined to violate the law and thus get involved into the activities the norms, values, mores, traditions and statutes of prevailing law of their society prohibits them to do the

Platos Republic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Platos Republic - Essay Example It is a political work not in the conventional sense, but in the sense as Socrates makes it understandable. However, the huge educational truth, which is clearly represented in the Republic - is a strong correlation of the image of man and space where the person is placed. It is not only an artistic principle, but it is also a moral law. The main thesis is that a perfect man can be formed only in a perfect state, and vice versa: the creation of the perfect state is the problem of a man forming. This is the reason for the interdependence of the inner structure of the man and the state, the interdependence of human types and types of state. Thus, exactly this perspective allows understanding why Plato attached great importance to the influence of the social atmosphere on the formation of any person. At the beginning of this paper, it is necessary to mention that Plato is interested in various notions and he tries to demonstrate the own views on political and public life through Socrates’ understanding of reality. Into the acknowledgement of these words it is possible to use the following quotation: â€Å"It is obvious from the Republic that Plato shares Socrates preoccupation with ethics and with definitions, but it also seems obvious that he soon abandons or significantly modifies Socrates’ method of inquiry, as well as some of his specific doctrines† (Plato X). It gives a good explanation to the fact that Plato chose his favourite way of writing: he wrote the treatise the Republic in the form of a dialogue of his teacher Socrates with other Greeks. The above-mentioned way of writing allowed Plato to achieve two aims: firstly, it has made the treatise more interesting, giving it a tinge of artistry; and secondly, it has introduced a number of characters at once, allowing the possibility to express not one opinion, but many of them. The dialogue is made in the form of a dispute, the agony, which reveals the truth. Plato leads the discussion on whether the equity power is the ability to the same extent as the ability to medicine or navigation at the beginning of the Republic.     

Practice Problems for Elasticity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Practice Problems for Elasticity - Essay Example Price elasticity is always negative for complements. Forth and last, income, a change in income causes a shift in demand. Income elasticity f demand is calculated as the percent change in demand divided by the percent change in income. This change determines the magnitude f the shift. Demand can increase or decrease with the increase or decrease in income. Along any straight-line demand curve, elasticity decreases from infinity to zero. In the range f the demand curve where elasticity is more than one, decreasing price increases revenue. In the rage where elasticity is less than one, however, decreasing price decreases revenue. My service selection is Pet Day Care and I have found it to price elastic...meaning that there are several substitutes. Low-end services like dog walking are good substitutes for drop-off pet day care centers. A fall in the price for someone to come to your home and let your dog out or walk or dog may likely decrease the demand for you take your pet to an "All-Day" daycare facility. The lower price f the "In-Home" service induces consumers to purchases these services versus those f a drop-off or "All-Day" facility. The cross-price elasticity f Pet Day Care with respect to drop-off or in-home service determines the magnitude f shift in the demand curve. Lowering the price f drop-off service would likely increase demand and revenue. Immediate substitutes or replacements f... Where as a walking service averages about $25 per week for 2 ten-minute daily walks Monday through Friday and in home services averaging $25 - $30 per day. Price adjustments have increased demand in the drop-off sector as having space resources readily available i.e. -warehouse space or open land have become increasingly available and by market standards, very cheap to acquire and maintain. This project was able to focus on the market structure f a Pet Day Care service. Each division represents a different market structure. I learned about perfect competition part day care, full day care, and in home pet day care. The changes depended on the type f pet care the pet owner went with. It was interesting to see how the changes and decisions that are made in the different types f care can affect the results f the prices and the cost/profits for the service. Microeconomics Price Elasticity f Demand 1.) If the price elasticity f demand for heroin is estimated to be about 0.4 this means that the demand is mostly inelastic because the elasticity demand is less than one. Being mostly inelastic means a percent change in price leads to a less than proportional percent change in quantity demanded. So if there is a 10% increase in price, it will lead to a 4% decrease in quantity demanded. 2.) If the price f heroin increases, given its inelastic demand, the suppliers' income will increase. This is proved to be true because mostly inelastic demand and total revenue are directly related. When the price is raised on heroin the percentage changed f quantity demanded is less than the percentage changed for the price in turn raising the total revenue f the heroin dealers. This policy has

I will update the topic on the files, and you need choose it in a Research Paper

I will update the topic on the files, and you need choose it in a files "choose a sub" - Research Paper Example This led to the enforcement of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act which allows those physicians who have valid licenses to prescribe lethal doses to those patients who under reasonable medical judgment have only six months to live. There is, however, a series of safeguards which are in place to help in avoiding abuse cases. One of the necessities is that the doctor must ensure that the request by the patient is voluntary and one which is well informed. When Attorney General John Ashford took office in 2001, he led efforts meant to overrule the ODWDA by giving and interpretive rule on the issue (Durke 78). In the rule, he declared that the use of controlled substances in assisted suicide was contrary to CSA and thus practitioners who practiced it would be held responsible under the law. In the ruling made, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision which had been made by the 9th Circuit Court ruling. In the ruling, it was conclude that despite the fact that CSA gave the power of rulemaking to the attorney general; the same law prohibits the federal government from declaring a medical standard illegitimate including those standards which are authorized by the state laws. In making the decision, the court analyzed the constitutional scope of the powers of the federal government under CSA in enforcing standards. It established that there was no provision in the Act which gave the Attorney general the power to give a definition on what is considered to be the agreed or legalized medical practice. The Supreme Court judges concluded that the attorney general had the power to revoke and suspend the DEA registration of any physician if doing so will be in accordance with the interest of the public. This can happen when they are abusing prescriptions or using it in a way that is not consistent with state and federal laws. Moreover, they stated that the federal laws do not allows any

Islamic Banking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Islamic Banking - Essay Example Some recent developments, however, is presenting opportunities for Islamic banks. It should be noted that the Islamic finance market has already matured to $200 billion in assets. Therefore, companies should employ the accurate strategies to capture these markets. The operation of Islamic banks rests on two important tenets: no interest and socially responsible investing (Islamic Banking in UK 2006). These principles practiced by Islamic banks are dictated by the Quran. Usury or the process of lending funds at exorbitant interest rates is strictly prohibited. Also, money or financing acquired from banks can only be used for worthy cause. Financial resources should never be used to fund activities such as illegal drugs, weapons, alcohol, pornography, and terrorism. Analysing this system, we can see that Islamic banks will be more preferred by borrowers than depositors. As these financial institutions do not promise interest on the funds deposited by customers, non-Moslem investors will see it more profitable to utilize the services of conventional commercial banks. This type of product can only be targeted to the adherents of Islam which advocates this type of banking practice. The use of these principles in Islamic banking could have motivated businesses and entrepreneurs to use these financial services. It can be seen that the financing products and services offered by Islamic banks operates on profit and loss sharing (PLS). ... Islamic Mortgage Finance One of the products of Islamic bank which has gained wide acceptance and popularity in the United Kingdom is mortgage finance. As opposed to the conventional mortgage financing, Islamic banks buy and own the commodity for the client. The client then purchases the product from the bank at a markup within a specified period of time. After full payment has been made, the ownership of the property will be transferred from the bank to the client. The success of Islamic banking in the United Kingdom is indicated by t he report of Research and Markets. According to the agency, the market for Islamic banking now reached $164 million. The segment also shows fast paced growth at an average annual rate of 68.1%. This is over and above the industry average of 16.2%. If this trend will continue, the total value of Islamic mortgage banking will be equivalent to over $1billion in 2010 while conventional banking will suffer from intense rivalry. It should also be noted that currently, the profitability of Islamic banking is indicated by the participation of commercial banks like HSBC and Lloyds TSB in the market. It was found out that in 2003, there is only one Islamic lender in UK. Currently, this number has already increased to five. However, it should be recognized that the Islamic banking, specifically Islamic mortgages command only a small portion of the market in UK. One of the hindrance of mortgage finance is the stamp tax duty. Recommendations The success of Islamic banking in the United Kingdom together with the acceptance of the non-Moslem population implies that this type of financial intermediation can be embraced by other clients in the global market. After the above analysis, this report

The Stereotype of Intolerance Essay Example for Free

The Stereotype of Intolerance Essay I have many international friends in my area, with whom I have shared good times and bad.   I have slept in their homes, and even been considered by their parents a genuine part of their families.   Yet I disliked the fact that Indian families may often act only the basis of emotions.   I blamed their emotionally charged natures on the Indian soap operas they watched day after day.   I disliked those Indian shows even though I had watched only two of them in my entire life.    Still, I knew that it was best not to feel negative emotions in myself.   I had to stop being stereotypically intolerant, after all, and love my friends as I loved my own family.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Indian dramas that my friends’ families loved to watch daily were just slow motion pictures in my opinion.   Each moment of each drama focused on lethargic and unreal adventures in emotions.   Nothing went very far.   Crying; getting offensive about everything under the bright blue sky; and blaming one another were the themes of the shows.   I disliked them with all my heart.   And, whenever it was time for my friends’ families to watch those Indian shows, I found myself leaving their homes.   I was even uncomfortable leaving in those moments, given that my own negative emotions were obnoxious enough to seem to strangle me because I did not understand them at all.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In order to understand my emotions, in the face of the fact that I loved my Indian â€Å"families,† I made an effort to watch â€Å"Kyunke Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thee† (2006) with my friends another time.   While watching the show this time, I was observant of my own reactions and feelings.   At the same time, I observed the others in the TV lounge watching the show with me.   Two of Vijay’s aunts sobbed during the show.   To my surprise, Vijay, his mom, and his dad also started to laugh during the show soon after I had witnessed the sobbing aunts.   I relaxed there and then, and from that point on, the show was a breeze.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Even though â€Å"Kyunke Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thee† lasts only thirty minutes each time, five days a week, I disliked it the first two times I watched it.   I believed that it was the TV drama that had taught my Indian friends to overreact to certain emotional issues in the past.   I also believed that the emotional drama was a bad influence on me. Obviously, I was being oversensitive at the same time as I blamed the drama for teaching oversensitivity to its viewers.   Besides, I was not thinking that it is the individual himself with the prerogative to allow conditioning of any sort.   Nobody can force us to be influenced by anything.   Thus, being stereotypically intolerant is nobody’s problem except our own.   The good news is that it is possible for us to get rid of our stereotypes by analyzing them like I did.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Now I have stopped detesting the Indian shows that I previously could not digest.   I can stay in my friends’ homes as long as I please.   Apart from this, I have understood that my Indian â€Å"families† have a right to feel and believe whatever they do.   Choosing emotions over the intellect many a times is their choice and responsibility.   And if I love them, I must do so regardless of the different perspectives we have about dealing with ourselves and others. While I imagine that I am granting my Indian friends this â€Å"space to breathe,† in actuality this space is mine to occupy.   I give up my stereotypical intolerance today – and for ever – but only after realizing that I had adopted this stereotype subconsciously, or perhaps just by observing it in society.   After analyzing this stereotype, I feel like a different, freer person altogether.   For sure, it was difficult to breathe in negativity. References â€Å"Kyunke Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thee.† Star Plus (30 December 2006). TV Series.

The Importance of Measuring Enterprise Impact Essay Example for Free

The Importance of Measuring Enterprise Impact Essay One of the key assets of an enterprise is information. Huge amounts of raw data are produced during every operational transaction in the company. Processing raw data into valuable information allows an enterprise to take more accurate decisions into action. Information technologies give support in big business systems like (ERP) Enterprise Resource Planning, utilized in recognizing, extracting and analyzing business data, such as, sales revenue by product and/or department. Measuring data is difficult, and companies have to have complex systems for tracking ERP. Outsourcing Data With changing times, systems need to have data energy uses calculated into the core processes to retain more accurate data. Measuring impact is the recognized way in which you show the value your organization is delivering to its recipients and the general public as a whole. Often, companies feel the need to cut internal energy use; therefore, they outsource data processing duties. Businesses must be cautious when outsourcing data. This outsourcing can cause serious issues if the outsourced work is inaccurate or worse, manipulated to cause intentional damage to the company. It is difficult to have patience with outsourced companies that produce inaccurate work, as that is the main objective: they were hired to do the job proficiently and accurately. Having internal processes in place for data formulas can cut down significantly on misuse and incorrect data entry, as well as cut back on security breaches. Making sure that the data is properly reduced and not just passed on to another person. Data accuracy is essential, we must heed caution when reviewing others data, how do we know the information is accurate and correct. Unfortunately, there are unethical practices within data processing, and there are companies who are more into financial gain rather than upholding moral responsibilities. Conclusion In today’s competing business environment, companies should consider the competitive advantages of business information tools that provide more advanced analysis options for organizational data. Furthermore, organizations need to overcome the technical and organizational challenges of implementing more advanced information technologies in order to achieve  efficient utilization of it.

Impact of Taxation on Dividends

Impact of Taxation on Dividends Abstract: This research paper attempts to analyze the different tax systems and their impact on the dividend distributions. It is explained that the dividend payout is monotonically distributed across tax regimes as the firms in double taxation (classical) system have significantly lower payouts than companies in the partial-imputation system, while companies in the full imputation system pay the highest payouts. Our results hold when the other fundamental determinants of dividends are held through Lintnerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s model and the actual payout ratio. Overall, it is reported that the type of dividend tax system affect the dividend payout. Introduction: The tax burden on dividends depends on corporate and personal income tax systems. In a classical system, the total tax is the sum of the corporation tax, the effective capital gains tax and the tax on dividends. Typically the tax on dividends exceeds the gains tax creating an incentive to reduce dividends. In an imputation system on the other hand, the total tax is given by the corporation tax plus the effective gains tax plus the reduced dividend tax. If the reduction in the tax on dividend is large enough to make reduced tax dividend lower than the effective capital gains tax, an incentive to increase dividends is created. Understanding the impact of taxes on dividend policy is important for both academicians and practitioners. From academic perspective, the relevance of taxation will highlight the extent to which companies consider the after tax return of their shareholders and how any tax reform will affect the firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s dividend payouts. For practitioners, knowing how taxation affects dividends is also of considerable interest. Since shareholders are taxed differently, if stock prices reflect the tax status of one particular group of investors, other groups can take advantage of these differences by, namely trading around the ex-dividend dates to capture/avoid dividends. Moreover, understanding the impact of dividend taxation will be important for fund managers and analysts as changes in tax codes could affect the net returns and the relative pricing of securities. Most countries around the world adopt different systems of taxing dividends. Some follow a classical tax system where corporate income is treated differently from personal income in terms of statutory tax rate and deduction rules, others use some level of integration between corporate and personal income. The important distinction between these two different systems is the taxation of dividends. Countries that follow the classical system separate shareholders income from the income of their corporations. As a result the same unit of earning in the company is taxed twice when it is paid as dividend: first at the corporate level and then at the personal level; a disadvantage known as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“double taxationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. In contrast, countries that follow a more integrated system usually have a full or partial relieve from dividend tax in consideration of the fact that the same unit of earning has been taxed at the corporate level. In Pakistan, the system of double taxation (cla ssical system) is implemented i.e. the dividends are taxed on corporate level and then the same unit of earning is taxed at shareholder level. Background More than forty years ago, Miller and Modigliani (1961) showed that, after some assumptions, such as complete and perfect capital markets, a firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s dividend policy does not affect its value. While this theory has highlighted the five main factors that could affect dividends, namely signalling, agency costs, behavioral (catering and mental accounting) and taxation, the empirical evidence provided to-date on such effects is mixed, (Allen and Michaely (2006) and Graham (2003). In particular, while in theory taxation is expected to prevent companies from paying dividends, most previous empirical studies have shown that taxation plays a minor role in dividend decision (e.g. Brav et al., (2005), Fama and French (2001), Julio and Ikenberry (2005). Therefore it is not clear why companies still pay dividends despite their heavy tax burden. In this paper, the dividend tax systems is analyzed and test the hypotheses that, in countries where the tax burden on dividends is high, companies pay low dividends. Although dividends may have a tax disadvantage, previous studies show that shareholders react positively to dividend increases and negatively to dividend decreases (e.g. Michealy, Thaley and Womack (1995). Long (1978) provides evidence that in dual class shares, investors favor cash dividend over stock dividend stocks. The tax disadvantage of dividends and yet their popularity challenges the traditional policy of payout policy. Blackà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s (1976) dividend puzzle discusses the weaknesses of the finance theory in answering the simple question, why firms subject to a classical tax system to pay dividends? Some studies explain dividends away from taxes. For example Lintner (1956) in his classical study, shows that firms adopt a subjective target payout policy by decreasing dividends very slowly and hardly ever cut them. Models based on information asymmetry suggest that dividend changes provide information about the firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s future cash flows (Bhattacharya (19 79) and Miller and Rock (1985) or about the firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s cost of capital and/or maturity stage (Grullon, Michaely and Swaminathon (2002), Grullon and Michaely (2000). From the agency theory perspective, dividends provide a disciplining tool to reduce agency costs (Easterbrook (1984) and Jensen (1986). Behavioral finance theory suggests that dividends are paid in part to accommodate certain biases in individuals such as market sentiment (Baker and Wurgler (2004) or self control, mental accounting and regret avoidance (Shefrin and Statman (1984). Taxation moel suggests that if dividends are taxed at a higher rate than capital gains, firms should prefer to retain earnings or buy back shares (e.g. Auerbach (1979), Bradford (1981) , Auerbach and Hasset (2003), Lasfer (1996). Literature Review: To assess the impact of dividend tax on investment and financial policy of the firm, the literature has followed three basic approaches. The first approach is to examine the relation between the risk-adjusted pretax rate of return and dividend yield. If dividend tax is relevant and if dividends are taxed at a higher rate than capital gain, than pretax return should increase in proportion to dividend yield to compensate for dividend tax disadvantage. Black and Scholes (1974), Gordon and Bradford (1980), and Miller and Scholes (1982) did not find evidence that the tax differential between dividends and capital gain have an impact on pretax returns, while Lintzenburger and Ramaswamy (1979) find evidence to the contrary. The second approach is to examine the ex-dividend behavior of stock prices. Absent dividend tax, the value of a stock should fall by the full amount of the dividend on the ex-dividend day. Elton and Gruber (1970) provide evidence that US stock prices fall by less than th e full amount of the dividends on the ex-dividend day. Poterba and Summers (1985) and Lasfer (1996) show similar results. Other studies did not find evidence that the tax differential between dividends and capital gains have an impact on the ex-dividend behavior, for example, Hearth and Rimbey (1993), Lakonishok and Vermaelen (1983). The third approach is to employ event study analysis. Changes in tax laws provide a natural experiment for investigating the impact of dividend tax on investment and financial decision. Poterba and Summers (1985) show that higher dividend tax is associated with lower investment and dividends. Poterba (2004) study shows that the tax disadvantage relative to capital gains has a negative effect on dividend payment. Blouin et al. (2004) study the impact of the 2003 tax reduction in the US and find dramatic increase in the regular dividends and the special dividends after enactment and a decline in the share repurchases. Chetty and Saez (2004) report on incr ease in the fraction of dividend payers following the 2003 dividend tax reduction. In Pakistan the system of double taxation is implemented on dividends, its comparison with countries implying other system of taxations is studied. Objectives: The objectives of this research paper are to find out the impact of taxation on dividend policy and its impact on the financial and investment decision of the firms. Research Question: Is the dividend payout ratio of firms in full or partial integration system higher than the dividend payout ratio of firms in double taxation system? Theoretical Framework: Dividend Payout Taxation (Independent Variable) (Independent Variable) (Dependent Variable) Hypotheses: H1: Dividend payout ratio is higher in full and partial integration systems than in classical system of taxation. H2: Dividend payout ratio is NOT higher in full and partial integration systems than in classical system of taxation. Hypotheses Testing: Unlike the full integration system, the classical system carries with it a disadvantage of double taxation. If tax on dividends has an impact on the financial policy of the firm, then firms in classical system will lower or avoid dividends as much as they can, while firms in full integration systems will not have to lower their dividends. Thus the hypothesis H1 is expected to be true. System No. of Firm Observations Net Tax Rate on Dividend (%)* Payout Ratio =DPS/EPS* Classical System 18 50% 0.32 Partial 15 42% 0.45 Full 17 35% 0.47 * = Subject to 10% level of significance Research Methodology: Population: Population includes observations that have been collected randomly from firms in 6 countries representing all the three types of taxation systems. Sample: It includes 50 observations, i.e. data has been collected randomly from 50 firms representing all the three taxation systems. Sources of Data Collection: The annual OECD tax database Corporate and Individual Taxes, A Worldwide Summary, Price Waterhouse Conclusions: The dividend payout policy of companies was analyzed that applies different tax systems with regard to dividends. It is found that companies located in countries that apply double taxation system (classical tax system) to have less dividend payout than do companies located in countries that try to partially avoid double taxation. In general, tax effect measured by the type of dividend tax treatment has a strong effect on the size of dividend payout.

Essay --

â€Å"There is a way to be good again† (2). This thought repeats through Amir's mind over and over throughout Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. This is the story of a boy who struggles to find redemption. The author illustrates the story of Amir and how it is not possible to make wrongs completely right again because it is too late to change the past. In this novel, Hosseini shows that redemption is obtainable. Hosseini shows that guilt is the primary motivation for someone who seeks redemption. In this novel, redemption is not when things are justified, but when the wrong has been done and cannot change to be right. As defined in a letter to Amir by an old family friend, Rahim Khan, redemption is when the guilt from something wrong leads to something good (302). Because of events that Amir is faced with, Hosseini illustrates a story where a big part of guilt plays in the desire for redemption. Guilt is a strong incentive in a quest for redemption. Rahim Khan says to Amir â€Å"there is a way to be good again† in the beginning of the novel, insinuating that there was hope and that there was a way for Amir to have peace with himself. This phrase was something that continuously repeated in Amir’s mind throughout the novel which was a reminder that there was a way to be rid of the guilt; a way to be good again. Amir begins his story by saying â€Å"I became what I am today at the age of 12† (1). It is noticed that he says â€Å"what I am today† rather than â€Å"who† and finishes the chapter leaving the reader with a slightly bitter feeling that the narrator has a dark past that he can not forget. He gives the idea that he is not happy with who he has become, and it was his wrongdoing that made it that way it was. Amir basis his guilt through his mem... ...his needs and his lack of standing up for himself. Another character who was searching for redemption in this novel was Amir's wife Soraya. Before they got married, she confesses to him about the time she ran away with someone as a teenager and clears up her past which had also haunted her (164). Even after she confessed to Amir, people still talked down about her because of her past (178). Amir, like Baba, Rahim Khan and Soraya, sinned by what he had done wrong, or rather what he didn’t do right. This caused guilt that he attempted to hide, but the memories and the past continued to haunt him, nag at him, and remind him of the person who had loved him so much. This guilt of betrayal weighs on Amir throughout the story, and pushes him to seek out redemption. He longs to â€Å"be good again† and get rid of the guilt that he has carried since he was just twelve years old.

Apple iPod from Business Perspective Essay examples -- mp3 digital mus

Technology has changed in the terms of portable music and with the invention of the Apple iPod in 2001, the ease and accessibility to download and listen to music has never been easier. Apple has developed a device that weighs no more than 6.2 ounces (and as few as 3.6 ounces) and can hold up to 10,000 songs. Despite the weak market overall, the market for digital media is undeniably hot and barring a consumer spending meltdown, it should stay that way. In light of current computer market conditions, Apple is wise to leverage a moderately priced consumer product like iPod to generate revenue. The iPod is an excellent opportunity to drive an additional revenue stream. Despite current global economic conditions, information technology is forecast to grow significantly over the next several years. Importantly, many experts believe that IT innovations like the iPod will particularly help drive consumers to electronic stores to purchase ground-breaking technologies due to the cost. Being in business for almost 30 years, Apple Computers started with two friends in high school; considered outsiders because of their love of electronics. Steven Wozniak â€Å"had been dabbling in computer-design for some time when, in 1976, he designed what would become the Apple I.† His friend, Steven Jobs, â€Å"who had an eye for the future, insisted that he and Wozniak try to sell the machine, and on April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was born.† (http://www.apple-history.com/frames/). It was not until the Apple II was introduced at a tradeshow in 1977 that the business started to take off. One of the most recent products developed by Apple which has become very successful has been the iPod. The iPod is a slick, tiny device that allows users to download songs from a specific website and this unit â€Å"holds† the songs in which they can be played at any time. The iPod is thought of as a handheld jukebox. It has not been any easy success ride for this product. First launched in October 2001, at a cost of $399, many skeptics were uncertain that this product would become an item that would be found in homes. The concern was the fact was that â€Å"only Macintosh users, less than a twentieth of the marketplace, could use it.† (www.msnbc.mcn.com/id/5457472/site/newsweek/). Strictly for personal entertainment, this product has recently been remodeled to allow holding more songs and now is facing stric... ... when a consumer's income goes up, consumers will buy a great deal more of that good. Very low price elasticity implies just the opposite, that changes in a consumer’s income have little influence on demand. The demand for the iPod continues to grow despite consumer’s income and selling price. This is a hot product that is receiving great word of mouth exposure and sales will continue to sky rocket. References http://www.apple-history.com/frames/ http://www.conference-board.org/economics/stalk.cfm http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1094/is_n2_v24/ai_7544055 http://www.hometoys.com/releases/jan03/cea_01.htm http://www.imagingnetwork.com/article.asp?id=645&Issue=July/August%202004 www.indiana.edu/~ipe/glossry.html www.msnbc.mcn.com/id/5457472/site/newsweek/ http://news.com.com http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/hist-c.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001912647_paul26.html http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/sv/20040807/tc_sv/takingontheipod www.technewsworld.com/story/35313.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/hitachi_storage_plant

A Persuasive Essay Against School Uniforms :: School Uniforms Argumentative

High school is typically a time when kids begin to distinguish themselves from one another. Students begin to develop their own sense of personal style, desperately trying to both fit in and stand out simultaneously. Being self-conscious and often lacking the confidence needed to assert themselves, teens are forced to use clothing and outward appearance as the means to manifest this individuality. Thus, students should not be forced to wear uniforms to school. Standard uniforms are unproven deterrents to student violence; are a "Band-Aid" to cover up the real problems faced by children and teens; and they violate students' right of self-expression, depriving them of their search for identity. There is something comforting about school children and teenagers dressed in pleats and plaid. Maybe it is a reminder of past times, or conjures up thoughts of order and safety. Whatever the reason, school uniforms are getting a lot of ?wear? these days, yet remain an unproven deterrent to school violence. No long-term, formal studies have been done with regards to the effectiveness of school uniforms, but many schools have kept their own informal statistics, such as the Long Beach School District. These statistics offered by Long Beach are often most cited as a proven deterrent to school violence, after adopting a mandatory uniform policy in 1994. According to Richard Van Der Laan, school crime has dropped over seventy-five percent, while attendance has reached an all-time high. One question we must ask ourselves is this, ?Is it the uniforms, or the induction of them that is solving the problem?? Maybe it is the school and parents showing some ?back-bone? which is affecting t he students, not the clothing. If you are a skeptic, get in line. There is no concrete evidence proving uniforms alone cause such dramatic reductions in crime, but rather, these policies appear to act as nothing more that a ?Band-Aid? that fails to address the real causes of youth violence. Although this violence, including sexual assault, can be linked to ?free-dress?, it is not dependent upon it, and points to deeper, more significant problems within the youth community. Violence is not learned by clothing, but rather through unfit home situations, negative friendships, and even popular culture (including emulation of television, media, music, and movies). A simple change in dress will not abolish these problems, but merely hide them for a time.

Assess the Impact of the Suez Crisis on the Conservative

Assess the impact of the Suez crisis on the conservative party 1955-1959 The conservative party managed to recuperate after the Suez crisis, which was a major low point in the party’s history. But how could the party bounce back after such a major event? The conservative’s policies changed to cater of everyone with re-established the conservatives as a strong party. The Suez crisis greatly affected the conservative party as a whole. For an example the lack of trust with the party.Eden secretly colluded with the Israelis, even when this want known by the public the war between the Israelis and the Egyptians looked like a convenient excuse to seize the canal. However aside from this inconvenience the conservative’s social policies had changed increasing the party’s popularity. Such as the economic prosperity at the time. Things such as TVs were becoming increasingly common in people homes. White good such as fridges and washing machines were too becoming inc reasingly common this prosperity ment people didn’t want change because the quality of life was getting better and there was no need for a change in government.And, as a result of perhaps the most distinctive Conservative policy of these years, home ownership rose from some 30 per cent to nearly 50 per cent, as the famous pledge given in 1950 to build 300, 000 new homes a year was redeemed by Macmillan as Housing Minister after 1951 – giving substance to the great Tory ideal of a property-owning democracy popularised by Anthony Eden after the war, as did the increase in personal savings from under ? 200 million to nearly ? 2, 000 million.Welfarism was also a policy of the conservative party, it ment that the poor were looked after by the government more than before by being provided council houses and of course the free healthcare provided by the NHS. The post-war „baby boom? meant that there was in any case a need for more schools and teachers, but a series of r eports arguably both highlighted the importance of education and influenced policy development. The Education Act 1944 had laid the foundations for a system of secondary education grounded in the idea of selection through the „11-plus? xamination, with some children progressing to grammar schools and others to secondary moderns, and in some places technical schools. However, during the 1950s a number of local authorities began to introduce an alternative model, comprehensive schools, but the Conservative Party, including in its general election manifestos in 1955 and 1959 manifestos promised to defend and develop grammar schools. Following the White Paper Secondary education for all a major school building programme took place, albeit mainly of secondary moderns.Within higher education, university colleges such as Sheffield and Southampton were upgraded to university status, and even before the publication of the Robbins report approval was given for seven new universities, in cluding East Anglia, Lancaster, Warwick and York. The economic policy of the Conservative Party is to help create the conditions in which the British people can steadily improve their standard of living. By the end of the decade, things were not going well.Staying in the Middle East had led step-by-step to the confrontation with President Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, and the disastrous decision to seek his overthrow by force in collusion with Israel. The 1956 Suez Crisis was a savage revelation of Britain's financial and military weakness and destroyed much of what remained of Britain's influence in the Middle East. In the colonial territories, more active interference in social and economic matters, with a view to speeding the pace of development, had aroused wide opposition and strengthened nationalist movements.The economic policies of the conservative party were unconventional, such as using Keynesian economics, which was more on the socialist side. But sorting out unemployment was one of the reasons the party survived; it made them more popular with the working class. Keynes stated that Unemployment was due to a deficiency in the demand for goods and services. Governments could, by adjusting their own spending, overcome that deficiency. Control of the money supply and interest rates could also influence investment. Macmillan was convinced that this would solve the unemployment.The intervention in Suez was a disaster. US President Dwight Eisenhower was incensed. World opinion, especially that of the United States, together with the threat of Soviet intervention, forced Britain, France and Israel to withdraw their troops from Egypt. In Britain too there had been widespread outrage. A United Nations peacekeeping force was sent in to supervise the ceasefire and to restore order. The Suez Canal was cleared and reopened, but Britain in particular found it’s standing with the US weakened and its influence ‘east of Suez' diminished by the incident.Th e Suez Crisis strained Anglo-American relations, but as Cold War Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) they continued to cooperate, and by 1962 Britain had adopted the US Polaris missile system. During the period of opposition between the conservsatives and labour, the feud between the Gaitskellites and Bevanites continued. In 1954 Gaitskell and Bevan ran against each other for the position of Treasurer of the Labour Party, which was seen as a stepping-stone to the position of Party Leader.Gaitskell defeated Bevan. Following Labour's defeat in the 1955 election, Attlee announced his retirement as Party Leader. In the leadership election, the Labour left rallied around Bevan, while the Labour right was split between Gaitskell and Herbert Morrison. Gaitskell defeated both, gaining almost sixty percent of the vote, and on December 14, 1955, became both Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition. Harold Macmillan took over as Prime Minister after Eden had resigned over the Suez crises.Soon after his appointment, Macmillan took part in a Ministerial broadcast so he could introduce himself to the British people. After seeing his performance, Macmillan commented that he had the â€Å"appearance of a corpse looking out of a window† and decided to learn television techniques. With his government losing by-elections and behind in the polls, Macmillan was confident enough to create events for television. During 1959 he visited the Soviet Union and made brief tours of most European countries.In August 1959 he invited the BBC to No 10 Downing Street so a live informal discussion with the American President Eisenhower could be shown on television. Afterwards both leaders went on to a dinner party held in No 10. The broadcast gave the impression of a statesman like Macmillan who was above politics. The following week, Macmillan announced the date of a General Election, which he would win by a landslide victory. Macmillan knew that televi sion was an important part of politics.The conservative party’s reputation declined after the Suez crisis. However the conservative party managed to recover quickly, from foreign policy to housing the party changed radically, incorporating socialist policies such as Keynesian economics and increasing spending on the welfare state. Altogether the socialist side of the party played to their advantage and the party stayed in power for 13 years. The Suez crisis was handled badly by Eden but after his resignation everything improved from housing to the economy.

African Plants Used in Medicine

pic Pelargonium sidoides (Umckaloabo) Introduction For hundreds of historic period the Zulu, Basuto, Xhosa and Mfengi cultures have intentionPelargonium sidoidesas a curative for coughs, upper respiratory tract irritations and gastrointestinal concerns. Today, with the advantages of modern intuition and clinical research, we are able to stop at a lower placestand what makes this tralatitious remediate melt so effectively.Pelargonium sidoides has been successfully utilize for the give-and-take of Respiratory infections like bronchitis, sinusitis, and pneumonia, tonsillitis and rhinopharyngitis It is often personad as an alternative to antibiotics Acute and degenerative ear, nose and pharynx infections Rapid intakefulness in the symptoms associated with dust-covereds and flu Analgesic (absence of pain) make Pelargonium sidoides is withal rich inphotochemical, vitamins, minerals and amino acidsthat enhance the consistences functioning and protects it against dis eases.Treatment withPelargonium sidoidesrapidly improves the exemplary symptoms associated with infections such as cough, fever, sore pharynx, weariness and weakness. pic Hibiscus sp. Introduction Recorded Medicinal uses The Shangaan use theHibiscus sp. leaves in the form of teatime for the give-and-take of hypertension, profuse menstruation and PMS. In ginzo the imbed is regarded as mucilaginous and restorative to heart and stomach. The seed is aromatic and has a musk-like odour utilise in perfumery under the nameAmbretta. In South the States and West Indies, the seed is a snakebite remedy. The flicker gives a very fair govern of inhibition, when tested for its antibacterial effect. The leaf ofHibiscus sp. s utilise by the Xhosa as a dressing for septic wounds and is said to obtain Mucilage. In the East Indies and Senegal the seed has been used as a remedy for fondness diseases and dysentery. The seed oil contains 55. 9% of stearic acid, 9. 1% of palmitic, 32. 6% of ol eic and 2. 4% of linoleic. The roseola yields a pigment canna hibiscetin. The Swati use a decoction of the root and flower in pneumonia. A hydrochloric acid extract of the leaf and basis has given positive alkaloid tests. A broken piece of the root ofHibiscus malacospermus Harv. is chewed by the Europeans in Lydenburg (South Africa) to relieve heartburn. The Southern Sotho use the plant as a griping remedy.The Southern Sotho, also use theHibiscus malacospermus E. Mey ex Harv. as a remedy for headaches and new(prenominal) ailments. The root ofHibiscus pusillus Thumb. is used by the Zulu as an emetic in the treatment of blue dreams and by men as dispel of the preparation for courting. The Zulu use a applications programme of the leaf and stem ofHibiscus surattensis L. for the treatment of penile irritation of any sort, including venereal sores and urethritis. It is sometimes applied as an ointment for the aforesaid(prenominal) purposes. An infusion is also used as an injectio n into the urethra and vagina for gonorrhoea and other(a) inflammations. pic African powdered ginger Siphonochilus aethiopicus elite chemotype IntroductionThis sublime southernAfrican plant, is an ancient traditional herbaceous plant regarded as Africas beat out natural anti-inflammatory remedy, and it has many other uses Headaches Influenza Mild asthma Sinusitis and throat infections PMS, Menstrual cramps Candida albicans, trush Mild sedative predilection swings and hysteria Colds, flu & coughs Other in effect(p) uses Ginger is an excellent remedy for digestive complaints (indigestion, nausea, gas, colic and congestion) Gingers antiseptic qualities make it exceedingly beneficial for gastro-intestinal infections Circulatory stimulant stimulates the circulation make it an important remedy for chilblains and worthless circulation.By improving the circulation, ginger helps reducing amply blood pressure Ginger also increases sweating and helps reduce body t emperature in fevers Ginger helps to thin the blood as well as to lower cholesterol Ginger is useful as a supplement for heartburn & halitosis (bad breath) This herb is cognize to relieve vomiting and to sooth the stomach and irascibility in the process Ginger is a warm vascular stimulant and body cleanser.It encourages the removal of toxins through the contend, and through increase kidney filtration Ginger relieves motion sickness and morn sickness General Information This herb has a long history of use in African traditional medicine for a range of conditions including headaches, Influenza, mild asthma, sinusitis, throat infections, thrush, candida, premenstrual syndrome and menstrual cramps. The root or rhizome is the part used, and comes to market in jointed branches called races or hands. The smell of ginger is aromatic and penetrating, the taste spicy, pungent, hot and biting. African Gingeris a deciduous plant with large, hairless leaves, developing annually f rom a small, distinctive cone-shaped rhizome.The spectacular flowers get along at ground level in early summer. Because of its medicinal uses it has been over-harvested and has a dependent distribution in Mpumalanga and the Northern responsibility and has become extinct in Kwa Zulu Natal. Ginger has a exhilarating effect on the heart and circulation, creating a feeling of fanaticism and well-being and restoring vitality, especially for those feeling the cold in winter. Hot ginger tea promotes perspiration, brings down a fever and helps to earn catarrh. Ginger has a stimulating and expectorator action in the lungs, expelling stoicism and relieving catarrhal coughs and chest infections. Ginger is a wonderful aid to digestion.It invigorates the stomach and intestines, stimulating the appetite and enhancing digestion by encouraging secernment of digestive enzymes. It moves stagnation of food and succeeding accumulation of toxins, which has a far-reaching effect end-to-end the body, increasing general health, vitality and enhancing immunity. ALOE VERA pic pic aloe was used topically to heal wounds and for various skin conditions, and orally as a laxative. Today, in addition to these uses, aloe is used as a folk or traditional remedy for a variety of conditions, including diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, and osteoarthritis. It is also used topically for osteoarthritis, burns, sunburns, and psoriasis.

Machiavellian Monkeys, James Shreeve, Discover, June 1991 Essay

The sneaky skills of our prelate cousins suggest that we may oweour expectant experience to an inherited need to deceive.Machiavellian Monkeys, James Shreeve, Discover, June 1991.Fraud. Deception. Infidelity. Theft. When these oral communication be spoken, or read, the first thought is of humane traits. Not once would someone think of wildcats as macrocosm cap equal of such actions, save mickle for cleave that humans are animals, and that the human animal evolved from a creature that had common ancestry with the massive apes. Is it surprising then that these seemingly humanistic traits are found in prelates? James Shreeve discusses the findings of hundreds of primatologists, which make the notion of Machiavellian intelligence in pri couples. He studied Machiavellian Intelligence in baboons, chimps, lemurs and lorises, and think that friendly primates presentation this intelligence and those that represent in small groups or in seclusion do not.First, lets examine t he term Machiavellian. The dictionary definition is characterized by subtle or unscrupulous cunning, deception, expediency, or dishonesty. By suggesting Machiavellian intelligence, Shreeve implies that these types of doings are not simply conditioned responses to stimuli, entirely conscious thought. This might not be blatantly obvious as important to physical anthropology, but it does suggest a number of important ideas as to the development of man.Lesser primates, such as lemurs and lorises, do not exhibit any type of deceptive traits, but when more advanced primates are examined, it can be seen that as the size of the read/write head increases, there are increasingly more modify tactics used to deceive others of their own species. It is enkindle to note that humans have brains roughly threesome times spectacularr thanwould be expected, and also exhibit the most complex Machiavellian deportments.An important bill that Shreeve points out is that primates such as the oran g-utan, who claim solitary lives and have no need for social skills, do not exhibit any signs of Machiavellian traits. This observation, together with the observation of brain size and primate order, suggests that Machiavellian behavior may not be a result of intelligence, but was, actually, an important incidentor out in the development of it. For example, a creature that is able to consciously deceive others in order to get food or breed has a clean-cut emolument over those who do not.When considered with the need for large social groups, this ability of deception and trickery becomes hitherto more important which can help formulate why humans have evolved with their huge brains. human being could not have become as palmy as they have without incredible social skills, including those skills considered Machiavellian. Shreeve notes that this is also consistent with chimpanzees, who have a great advantage with these abilities. The advantage is a result of their social coor dinate (large groups that constantly vary) meaning that there would be no advantage if chimpanzees lived solitary lives.If there is any dubiety that Machiavellian intelligence gives an individual a greater chance of surviving and reproducing, the case of concealment, as spy with stump-tailed macaques and hamadryas baboons leaves no doubt. By concealing their relationship with, stimulation by, or physical nearness to the potential mate from the dominant male(s), an individual finds breeding is possible without this intelligence, it would be far less likely, if not impossible.Although Machiavellian behaviour is somewhat controversial in terms of it being human nature, it does seem to indicate intelligence not so different than that found in the great apes. Perhaps this is why people tend to hold up the idea that humans are fundamentally Machiavellian in nature it is behaviour that seems too animalistic. It does seem, though, that the preciseopposite could be true Machiavellian beh aviour is humanistic behaviour evident in the animals we wish primates. No matter how we look at it, the fact remains that the observation of this type of behaviour in primates is significant to physical anthropology.