Group Working Skills Essay Example for Free

Group Working Skills Essay As it’s saying Two Heads Are Better Then One, what if there were more than two, people prefer working with their friends, or others in a group to achieve their goals easier, but nowadays even studies require a group work, and sometimes the member of it will be chosen randomly, so they would probably face so many problems that would affect achieving their goals, those problems can be developed with some strategies and dynamic that I’m going to provide and analyse it with an example. In my Business foundation year I have been required to work in a group to do a Business Plan that represent 40% from the final grade, the group was chosen randomly, I faced some problems during the work that affected our group working, the main ones are related to Organisation or structure the group more specifically on NORMs, and COHESIVENESS. Payne,E. and Whittaker,L (2000) argued that GROUP DYNAMIC is the name given to the way that a group deals with factors that affect it from within itself; there is some aspects to a group that can be identified such as, Norms, Goals, Roles, Size, Cohesiveness, and Structure of it. The aim of this essay is to discuss an example of my previous group work, and analyse it according to group dynamic concepts. As I mentioned being in a group required to do Business Plan, the group goal was to present a new idea of a product in the UK, and explain how to set it up, and count the expenses and market it as we learned, however it was important to us because the work was 40% value from the final mark. In the group there were 6 members, so the group was required to do a final presentation of the business plan, and we also was required to meet twice a week. First we faced Two main problems, this work was require some creativity and different ideas, and some of the members were too quiet and they don’t like to share their ideas with other members on the group specially in marketing the product part, so we had some problem in Organisation and Structure, mostly in structure which Payne, Whittaker(2000,p:60) defend it as â€Å"some type of a group structure will arise spontaneously because most student feel more comfortable given a framework within which to work. † Also Payne,E. nd Whittaker,L (2000) argued that whether if the members of the group consciously aware of some certain problems of structures aspect happens to some members of group or not, but the other will be influenced from their patterns behaviour, and in all groups this kind of behaviour are mainly unwritten, and majority of patterns accept it without realising it, these behaviour called Norms. To avoid such a problem and develop the work, according to Pyne, Whittaker,(2000,p:62) argued that â€Å"Norms always develop in groups and will control or inhibit the behaviour of individual members in a particular set of circumstance. In solving this kind of problems Payne,L. and Whittker,L(2000) belive that there are ways in norms to develop the work and group may come with a particular develop norm to encourage everyone to work and perform high quality of work, and norms always there exist even if the group was not aware of it. In solving and avoid this particular problem happened, in group is good to have Coordinator For example, Coordinator will join members ideas and suggestion together and coordinate the activities. Other problem that we faced was, because half of the member were holding same nationality, the other members find it difficult to deal with them or even to get knowing them more, because they were always together and prefer to speak in their own language, so the group faced a problem with COHESIVENESS, as it argued is a good dynamic to develop a group, Payne, Whittaker(2000,p:65) â€Å"Cohesiveness is generally used to refer to the degree to which members desire to stay in the group and express agreement with the group goals†. But there was also some disadvantages of Cohesiveness that related to the problems that we faced, Payne, Whittaker(2000,p:66) argued that â€Å"Too much similarity of the behaviour of group members leading to increased cohesiveness, can actually be detrimental to performance†. So Developmental Stages of group provide stages that would help solving Cohesiveness disadvantage mentioned above, which is in stage one GETTING TO KNOE YOU, Payne, Whittaker,(2000P:67) argued â€Å"Group member will attempt to discover which behaviour are acceptable and unacceptable. This is a period of getting to know each other, deciding on goals to pursue, and getting organised. † To conclude, I believe that working in group require so many dynamic that helps the members in achieving the group goal easier, while doing so each member will face less problems in working. As it mentioned in the essay about two dynamic that will develop the group unity was setting up some norms that will help and encourage other member to produce high quality of work, and the first stage in developmental stages of groups, which was Getting To Know You stages that argued how to accept and unaccepted members behaviour and decide the goals to peruse. On other hand each group must be aware of problem facing to avoid such problems affecting in their goal achievement.

History of Computing Essay -- Computers Technology Software Essays

History of Computing 1 General principles 1 2 Etymology (Where the word is from) 2 3 The exponential progress of computer development 2 4 Classification of computers 2 4.1 Classification by intended use 2 4.2 Classification by implementation technology 3 4.3 Classification by design features 3 4.3.1 Digital versus analog 3 4.3.2 Binary versus decimal 4 4.3.3 Programmability 4 4.3.4 Storage 4 4.4 Classification by capability 4 4.4.1 General-purpose computers 4 4.4.2 Special-purpose computers 6 4.4.3 Single-purpose computers 6 4.5 Classification by type of operation 6 5 Computer applications 6 5.1 The Internet 7 6 How computers work 7 6.1 Instructions 8 6.2 Memory 8 6.3 Processing (Processor) 8 6.4 Control (Control Unit) 9 6.5 Input and output 9 6.6 Architecture 9 6.7 Programs 9 6.7.1 Operating system 10 7 Sources: 10 A computer is a device or machine for making calculations or controlling operations that are expressible in numerical or logical terms. Computers are made from components that perform simple well-defined functions. The complex interactions of these components give computers the ability to process information. If correctly configured, a computer can be made to represent some aspect of a problem or part of a system. If a computer is configured in this way is given input data, then it can automatically solve the problem or predict the behavior of the system. 1 General principles Computers can work through the movement of mechanical parts, electrons, photons, quantum particles or any other well-understood physical phenomenon. Although computers have been built out of many different technologies, nearly all popular types of computers have electronic components. Computers may directly model the problem being solved, in the sense that the problem being solved is mapped as closely as possible onto the physical phenomena being exploited. For example, electron flows might be used to model the flow of water in a dam. Such analog computers were once common in the 1960s but are now rare. They are practically dead. In most computers today, the problem is first translated into mathematical terms by r... ...this time sharing. Newer generations of CPU’s really uses HT-technologie (e.g. Intel processors). But there are also processors with more than one processing unit on it. AMD calls them dual-core processors. 6.7.1 Operating system When a computer is running it needs a program, whether or not there is useful work to do. In a typical desktop computer, this program is the operating system (OS). The operating system decides which programs are run, when, and what resources (such as memory or input/output - I/O) the programs will get to use. The operating system also provides a layer of abstraction over the hardware, and gives access by providing services to other programs, such as code ("drivers") which allow programmers to write programs for a machine without needing to know the intimate details of all the attached electronic devices. Most operating systems that have hardware abstraction layers also provide a standardized user interface. The most popular OS remains the Windows family of operating systems. Most computers are very small, very inexpensive computers embedded in other machinery. These embedded systems have programs, but often lack a recognizable operating system.

Evaluation on Companies’ Social Accounting

Evaluation on companies’ social accounting Executive summary This report explains the concept of â€Å"social accounting† and analyzes the execution of social accounting in the two companies Corning incorporated and AM-PM Glass Company. The analysis is based on the â€Å"good† principles of social accounting and the accordance to the global standards.And the analysis shows that Corning’s sustainability has a better understanding and consideration about the requirement of social accounting and it makes its own evaluation system based on ISO 14001, and build up a series of standards, but the standards of EMS can not match with GRI on the completeness and concreteness. AM-PM begins well in the practicing of social accounting. But it is not that easy to do well in all aspects of the social accounting, so it has only considered four â€Å"good† principles.While AM-PM takes both AA1000 and GRI as the evaluation standards to assess its performance, and got clear and systematic report results and good reference to its development in the future. Contents Evaluation on companies’ social accounting1 1. Introduction3 2. Definition and explanation of the concept of Social Accounting3 2. 1 Definition and development of concept3 2. 2 Reasons for producing social accounting4 2. Principles of â€Å"Good† and global standards5 3. Critical evaluation on quality of social accounting of two glass companies5 3. 1 Corning Incorporated6 3. 2 AM-PM Glass & Mirror Company8 4. Conclusion10 Reference12 1. Introduction Social accounting is a voluntary process that organizations use to account for their environmental and social impacts. There are both pros and cons telling why organizations decide to engage with this concept of social accounting.The purpose of the report is to evaluate the two glass companies Corning and AM-PM’s social accounting according to the â€Å"good† principles and global standards of social accounting. 2. Definition and explanation of the concept of Social Accounting 2. 1 Definition and development of concept Social accounting refers to the process dealing with organizational assessment and communication of its impacts and activities on relevant issues related to ethics, society and the environment with their appropriate stakeholders (Yanovsky, 2006).It aims to address companies’ social and environmental impacts. Social accounting is also known as social and environmental accounting, corporate social responsibility reporting, or sustainability accounting, and different individual companies usually give different titles, like in Corning, it is called corporate social responsibility report, and in AM-PM Glass & Mirror, it is called sustainability report. The concept of social accounting has got more than 40 years’ development.Abt Associates is among the earliest social accounting practitioners, its social concerns included contribution to knowledge, environment and so on, but there is no specific definition for social accounting. In 1980s, the short book â€Å"Social Audit- A Management Tool for Co-operative Working† is the basis of the early private sector companies’ social responsibility reporting (Spreckley, 1981), and â€Å"Social responsibility reporting† is the early relative formal concept.And in this book, an internal organizational social accounting and audit model are designed to measure individual companies’ social and environmental performance. And with the development of economy and society, the concept of social accounting also gets to a broad and deep domain, which includes the evaluation about every aspect of companies’ social and environmental impacts (Rohinson, 2001; Schwartz and Carroll, 2003). 2. 2 Reasons for producing social accountingThe reasons that individual companies develop social accounting and related reports are as follows. On the negative aspect, employees’ internal pressur es in their urge of wanting to report the environmental and social impacts of the company (Crane and Matten, 2007) can make companies practice the social accounting; and external forces by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, consumers or investors as they seek the company to disclose its impacts of social accounting can also lead to the social accounting.On the positive aspect, social accounting can help individual companies identify and utilize opportunities for cost effectiveness, introduction of profitable eco-friendly products and services, energy saving and environmental protection (Defourny and Thorbecke, 1984). Also, both current and future concerns of stakeholders forewarn companies about any possible area of conflict. Yanovsky (2006) further claimed that companies become aware of the probable risk factors that are capable of affecting their business operations, which afford the chance for companies to prepare the coping mechanism. . 3 Principles of â€Å"G ood† and global standards â€Å"Good† accounts must accord a series of principles. In general, good principles of social accounting have to be inclusive, involving dialogue with stakeholders; to be complete, highlighting the key areas of the individual company’s activities; to be embedded within the organization; to be comparable, undergo external verification, and give room for continuous improvements.These principles should take both companies own management practices and the performance measurements comparison with other companies into consideration (Montgomery and Porter, 1991). Such principles have to be incorporated within the organizational structure, be verified by external auditors and be reviewed on regular basis in order in relation to the targets of its performance and cost effective business opportunities. There are some global standards that are available for companies’ social and environmental reports.For example, Social Accountability Inter national produced SA8000, and it provides workplace issues standards; AccountAblility developed the AA1000S Assurance Standard; The SAN framework, which is suitable for third-sector organisations; ISO1400, which are series of international standards that deal with issues related to environmental management (Porter, et. al. 2009) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is one of the most practiced standards across the globe and is in its third generation format (G3). 3.Critical evaluation on quality of social accounting of two glass companies This report provides a critical evaluation of two case studies of how the organizations have made use of social accounting concept. The Corning Glass and AM-PM Glass & Mirror Company will be used as examples of companies which have fully put into consideration the social accounting concept. It is a reflection of organizational values and evidence-based actions they undertake towards showing concern to their stakeholders in dealing with thes e issues.The evaluation about the two companies is mainly focus on analyzing the adoption of the â€Å"good† principles and their accordance to the global standards. 3. 1 Corning Incorporated Corning is a multinational company which has about 160 years’ history. Corning is among the best social responsibilities practitioners. The history practicing social responsibilities began before World War One. The chairman James Houghton laid out Corning’s seven Corporate Values: Quality, Integrity, Performance, Leadership, Independence, Innovation, and the Individual.Corning’s strategies are based on the attributes of collaboration, risk-taking, and long-term thinking and so on. According to Corning’s strategy and value system, the best form of corporate social responsibility is equal to â€Å"simple good business† or â€Å"enlightened self-interest† and the good business is constructed by a series of good behaviors including constant interacti on with customers, local communities and government. The social accounting in Corning is named sustainability report. 3. 1. 1 The adoption of â€Å"good† principlesFirst, Corning emphasizes the care and feeding of its major stakeholders, especially the care and feeding for its customers and employees, according to Houghton’s speech in 2004’s company strategy conference. Corning clearly obeys its seven values and takes a set of stakeholders into consideration. It puts attention to labor, women and minorities. Since 1970s, Corning began made efforts to employee women and minorities (Graham, 2010). Second, Corning has complete consideration on social accounting, and highlights impacts of the company’s producing activities to the society and environment.Corning put attention to working conditions, products safety and efficacy, and the environment. According to Corning’s sustainability report, the central elements of the companies’ operation exce llence are protection safety, health and environment (Graham, 2010). Specifically, in order to protect the air, Corning produces ceramic substrates for catalytic converters and tries to eliminating hazardous chemical materials. Third, Corning has a continuously improvement in practicing the social responsibility. Since 1970 to now, Corning consistently shows its care to its stakeholders and the environment.The recent sustainability report is also planed for a long period, and forms a completed environmental protection system, which is including mission, vision, strategy and specific action plans. In process of the energy management, Corning track and measure its greenhouse gas emission, and conducts its related inventory, also, corning launched a global energy management program to guarantee the energy productivity and environmental negative influence. Fourth, Corning has got verification from external organization.Corning reports its previous greenhouse gas emission and got the Reg istry from California Climate Action and the Registry can give a consistent supervision on the continuous execution of the environmental protection and energy management. Fifth, Corning emphasize find the potential improvement, especially those related to performance targets, cost-saving and profitable business opportunities. Corning commits to maintain a long period view of energy and the advanced view require its facilities to utilize energy in a cost-effective and environmentally responsible way.Sixth, corning has embedded professionals related to the social accounting in the process key to success. Corning’s approach embeds an environmental, health and safety professional in the designing group. This embedibility enhance the safety and facilitate the health management system in Corning. 3. 1. 2 Accordance to the global standards In the year of 2004, Corning developed and deployed an Environmental Management System, short for EMS, whose format and substance follows ISO 140 01(Corning Environmental Health & Saftey Brochure, 2007).ISO 14001 is a very series of recognized global standards, and it affords clear and specific requirement for the corporate environmental control group in Corning. Corning facilities have gained many benefits through instituting and adopting the management systems, and due to the rigorous execution, the bad influence to the environment has been reduced. Corning has a pyramid system about EMS, the ISO 14001 stands in the center of the pyramid. And the pyramid shows clear the social accounting procedures. 3. 2 AM-PM Glass & Mirror CompanyAM-PM Glass & Mirror is a residential and commercial glass company that provides exceptional craftsmanship, unsurpassed satisfaction to their customers and gives prompt service through their sustainable innovation and social accounting concept. The company recently outlined its values and objectives in the annual sustainability report, which encompass support to community trade of glass products and its internal judgments on environmental and social performance in relation to achieving its objectives (AM-PM, 2012). 3. 2. 1 The adoption of â€Å"good† principlesAM-PM Glass & Mirror Company follows the three principles of completeness, materiality and responsiveness. First, AM-PM’s sustainability report relates to complete contents of the social responsibilities. It has put attention to both inside and outside of the organization, for example the employee relationships, the sexual and racial ratio, the consideration of the disabled people inside of the organization; and the communication with communities, the campaigns to protect environment outside of the organization. Second, AM-PM’s emphasize the materiality of the action.It stresses that social responsibilities should not only be written in the sustainability report, it must be based on specific actions first, the real practice result and data of the protection, but not only the plans in the report. T hird, responsiveness is the main part that is stressed in the report, it means that AM-PM not only like to be the pioneer in the practice of environmental protection, but also would like follow other companies’ environmental steps. Forth, the values reported in the sustainability report have been externally verified by auditors and a panel of stakeholders.The customers, employees and the communities all give positive comments on the values and actions of AM-PM. 3. 1. 2 Accordance to the global standards AM-PM Glass & Mirror values follow the AA1000 standards of assurance. And its three principles are from these standards. Also, the company values are compliant with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Level A guidelines. And the third generation version of GRI gives a series of very clear standards for AM-PM to evaluate its performance comprehensively, which is with respect to specific assessment according laws, codes, norms, and voluntary initiatives.Specifically speaking, the compilation of AM-PM Glass & Mirror Company report was based on covering all the company activities that is vital as far as environmental and social impacts are concerned (AM-PM, 2012). Its social accounting also responds to issues that arise out of its previous reports. The wholesomeness of this report is also realized in that it covers all the areas that the company operates on as required by global reporting initiative which covers the company management approaches, overall company profile, and the categories for measuring performance. . Conclusion In summary, it can be deduced that social accounting is a voluntary process that organizations use to account for their environmental and social impacts. Both pros and cons exist why organizations decide to engage with this concept of social accounting. The analysis of Corning Glass Company and AM-PM Glass & Mirror gives a specific evaluation about their execution of social responsibilities. The result shows that the two organizati ons both have embraced the concept of social accounting.Corning incorporated is a big multinational which has long history of practicing social responsibility, and it has enough experiences to evaluate what kinds of actions would do well to both the company and the environment, and afford benefits to all the shareholders. So in the adoption of â€Å"good† principles, Corning’s sustainability report shows that it has a better understanding and consideration about the requirement of social accounting. In the accordance to the global standards, Corning makes its own evaluation system based on ISO 14001, and build up a series of standards.Corning has not used GRI as its standards to evaluate performance. To some extent, the standards of EMS can not match with GRI on the completeness and concreteness. AM-PM is also a glass company that has short history. It enters the glass industry in a new age that stresses environmental protection and the full communication with sharehol ders. So, it begins well in the practicing of social accounting. But to a new company, it is not that easy to do well in all aspects of the social accounting, so it has only considered four â€Å"good† principles.While AM-PM did well in the accordance to the global standards, it takes both AA1000 and GRI as the evaluation standards to assess its performance, and got clear and systematic report results and good reference to its development in the future. Reference 1. Spreckley, F. (1981). Social Audit: A Management Tool for Co-operative Working. Wales: Beechwood College. 2. Rohinson, S. et al. (2001). â€Å"Updating and Estimating a Social Accounting Matrix Using Cross Entropy Methods†. Economic Systems Research. Vol. 13, No1:47-64. 3. Schwartz, M. S. , Carroll, A. B. (2003). Corporate Social Responsibility: A Three-Domain Approach†. Business Ethics Quarterly. Vol. 13, No. 4:503-530 4. Defourny, J. , and Thorbecke, E. (1984). â€Å"Structural Path Analysis and Mu ltiplier Decomposition within a Social Accounting Matrix Framework†. The Economic Journey. Vol. 94, No 373:111-136 5. Graham, M. B. W (2010). â€Å"Corporate Responsibility at Corning. Incorporated†. History of Corporate Responsibility Project. No. 7 6. Crane, A. , and Matten, D. (2009). Business Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 9-286. 7. Montgomery, C. A. , and Porter, M. A. 1991). Strategy: Seeking and Securing Competitive Advantage. New York: Harvard Business Press. 8. Porter, M. E. , Kramer, M. R. , and Zadek, S. (2009). Corporate Social Responsibility (HBR Article Collection). New York: Harvard Business Press. 9. Yanovsky, M. (2006). Accounting Systems. London: Transaction Publishers. 10. Corning Environmental Health & Saftey Brochure, 2007. Available at http://www. socialfunds. com/csr/reports/Corning_Incorporated_2007_EHS. pdf [Accessed 10th JUNE 2012]. 11. AM-PM. , 2012. Available at http://www. ampmglass. com/ [Accessed 10th March 2012].

Same Sex Marriage Should Not Be Legalized - 1562 Words

~ Busse Same-Sex Debate Essay ~ Ever since the time when America studied family values and focused on healthy and important influences, marriage was considered to be between man and woman holding a physical and spiritual bond between each other, not between man and man and woman and woman. Some may see marriage as between two people of the same gender, or what is known as same-sex marriage. This form of marriage became popular in the U.S. during the 1960’s and 1970’s due to the urge of legalization coming from many American citizens at the time. (â€Å"The Long Road to Marriage Equality†) The topic creates controversy due to the fact that many believe this subject disagrees with most religions and because it defies the morals that our†¦show more content†¦Nowadays, much of the world population is influenced by much of what same-sex marriage portrays. Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote that, â€Å"Marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationsh ips between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and the major religions of the world. (â€Å"Should Gay Marriage Be Legal?†) This quote really goes along with what marriage should be seen as. Ever since same-sex marriage has been legalized, it has altered the true definition of marriage. To add on, the quote says that honest tradition has been recorded in large amounts of time, and now we are changing it to â€Å"change† our society, as a whole. This can show the next generation how normal this somewhat new transformation in our marriages and relationships looks like, leading them off of the course of supporting true marriage and teaching them to support a reversed, same-sex marriage. In this way, this influence can lure the next generation due to the wrong idea of same-sex marriages and relationships and turn their views to t he opposite stance. The thought of same-sex marriage poses an idea that some think is right and acceptable. Now, with our new generation sprouting, this can really show them what kind of marriage is right and what kind of marriage is wrong. With the big influence this subject can