Experiential Leadership Project Progress Report Essay

This paper is an experiential leadership project whose subject is, Sandra Ussery, my direct supervisor at work. Sandra’s title is Pricing Systems Supervisor, under FedEx National LTL. At present she oversees nine direct employees. Sandra’s boss is Diane Lia, the Pricing Systems Manager for FedEx National LTL. Diane has two direct employees and nine indirect employees. The main reason I have chosen to focus on Sandra is because she is in a newly created position. Good supervisors are people who, even when they must correct someone, can â€Å"step on your toes without messing up your shine. They give people a shot in the arm without letting them feel the needle. People seem to need encouragement most when they sense that they have really failed. Perhaps they failed the boss, or the organization or just failed themselves. In any case, it is at that moment that the leader needs to show her character—how she is able to help them along with the healing process. My supervisor, Sandra Ussery, is that kind of a boss and many more. This paper aims to gather an evaluation of her from those people under her. It shall also provide a copy of the questionnaire which I used in gauging the kind of leadership she implements with her staff. The process of evaluating an individual’s performance contains elements of positive and negative reinforcement. How well people perform is largely determined by whether their performance is evaluated or rewarded. Many organizations, especially smaller ones, do not have formal evaluation programs because they have survived without them in the past and they see no benefit for them in the future. Yet, performance management is essential even among supervisors because they upgrade the level of the human performance of organizations. They identify problem areas in the workplace when it comes to human resources. Although the situation does not appear to be in need of full attention right now, the implications will be felt later on by organization if they do not act consciously on the issue. There are adjustments that include minimum and accessorial charges, including additional adjustments in select lanes and service areas. The FedEx Freight Segment accumulated annual revenues of $3. 6 billion in fiscal year 2006. This includes FedEx Freight, a leading U. S. provider of regional next-day and second-day and interregional LTL freight services. The company is known for its high performance and exceptional service and reliability. FedEx Freight extends its service to all U. S. ZIP codes. It is supported by its principle of no-fee- money-back guarantee on all eligible continental U. S. shipments. It gives service to Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Holding corporate office in Memphis, Tennessee, the FedEx Freight Segment also includes FedEx National LTL, a leading provider of long-haul LTL services throughout North America. Looking at this description, this paper maintains that every organization needs to start where it should be rightly so—the individual. The FedEx National LTL, is a leading U. S. provider of long-haul LTL freight services. Federal Express purchased original employer, Watkins Motor Lines last June. Prior to this purchase, the pricing systems department, which was called the auto rate department under Watkins, had no supervisor. The supervisor position was created to have someone to train new employees as they were added to that department. Prior to four others and myself moving to the department in the span of a year, there had been no new additions to that department for seven years. After the acquisition, the supervisor job was created so that the manager of that department could focus on working with managers of other departments at our location and at other operating companies to integrate our systems together. FedEx National LTL, which is the operating company that I work for, specializes in providing low-cost transportation to our customers with slower turn around times. Our partner freight company, FedEx Freight, specializes on one to two day turnaround times at a higher cost. The main reason we were purchased was to add the long haul, low cost service to FedEx’s already quick turnaround customers. FedEx National LTL operates in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, but we can transport a shipment through the various operating companies anywhere in the world. The main factors affecting the companies operation at this time is the integration of our system into theirs. Our department takes pricing that is negotiated with our customers and we input it into our automated rating system. This system is designed to automatically apply pricing to freight bills so that no one has to manually rate them. This process is a huge cost saver to the company and is a highly focused on at FedEx. Federal Express has a mandate to input all pricing into this system, this way they have to pay few people to rate the bills. The problem we are facing is to integrate our automated rating program with theirs. Also, their operating systems are different than ours, but based on the same platform, so all the managers of the IT, IS, and Pricing Application departments are focused on integrating these systems. There is a comprehensive network of nearly 330 service centers and advanced information systems, FedEx Freight provides service to virtually all U. S. ZIP codes, including Alaska and Hawaii. The carrier’s regional and interregional LTL service is supported by a no-fee money-back guarantee on all eligible continental U. S. shipments. It gives service to Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Holding corporate office in Memphis, Tennessee, the FedEx Freight Segment also includes FedEx National LTL, a leading provider of long-haul LTL services throughout North America. In general, the company offers customers and businesses worldwide with services in transportation, e-commerce and business services. The annual revenue is a staggering $34 billion. It is known worldwide as having trustworthy and admired employers. It has more than 275,000 employees. Contractors employ positive safety with a high ethical and professional standard. As I said before, what I want to do with my project is collect feedback from my fellow coworkers, some of which have been there less than a year and others who have been there ten years or more. I have already discussed this project with my manager, supervisor, and coworkers and all of them have agreed to provide information and feedback, as I need it. Since, most of the senior people have worked with Sandra for at least five years, I will be able to get their impression of her and her leadership abilities. Sandra did not train many of the seasoned people, so I will discuss with the four new people how effective they feel she was as a trainer. I also plan to evaluate her based on the leadership styles I learned in the course. I want to see if Sandra tends to focus on one style or varies in styles and approaches depending on the employee and the situation. She has agreed to let me observe her a few times a week during the course of this project so that I may see her leadership style at work. I believe the best way to determine a particular style is to observe her actions towards me and other members of the department. I have contacted Human Resources to see if I can get a Job Description for her position in order to see what is required from her and her assigned tasks. While I am observing her I will use these criteria to see if she is confident in completing these tasks. I will use these criteria to evaluate her leadership ability and her ability to meet the needs of the company. I plan to be as objective as I can with this report, especially since I have only been with the company for two years, and in this department for about seven months. I plan to use the leadership styles outlined in the book as a guide to determining her style or styles of leadership. I want to gather as much data from coworkers and my manager on Sandra, since I have spent little time working with her. I want to see how the perceptions of those employee’s that have worked with her for a long time differ from those of us that are new. I believe that using the information outlined in our book, the job description qualifications and expectations, and the observations and information collected from coworkers and myself will help to determine if she is an effective leader. According to Dennie Carey, senior vice president, marketing, FedEx Freight, â€Å"Whether operating fast cycle logistics or planned distribution, shippers have told us they require a high degree of certainty, shipment integrity and actionable information. † The company meets customer needs by continuing to invest in their people, equipment, facilities and technologies. FedEx Freight has improved service in 3,000 lanes. Add to this is the safety features to its tractors and this ushered the easy access to its regional and long-haul service via the internet. It has also taken over the operations of Watkins Motor Lines in September, FedEx National LTL. It now focuses on the market with a highly engineered network. Sandra Ussery is a manager with faith in her staff. Part of any working day is given over to tracking and checking the progress that has been delegated throughout her staff. This is not about looking over the shoulders of her staff, but about monitoring the progress of the given program of the moment. Most people need reminders and her staff finds her as the ultimate â€Å"reminderer† in the organization. The people who most enjoy working with her are those who are self-starters, self-disciplined individuals who bring her the results of their projects before she ever has a chance to check on their progress. After a while, she learns whom she needs to remind and whom she can count on to follow through without reminders. She is able to encourage empowerment of all staff since she recognizes that this is very important in making changes more effective. The more involved people are in the process of change, the more effective the change will be and the more lasting it will be for the company (Coyle and Kossek, 2000). Definitely, Ussery enhances her staff’s ability to influence other subordinates in order to facilitate efficient decision making process within the organization. Those directly under her like and who worked with her within a year or so like Jessica, Jane, David, Daniel, Jerri, Sheila find that she exercises authoritative leadership ith them. This may be so because she trained them directly and she knows that these people would understand her when she wants things done perfectly. Authoritative leadership is the most effective in terms of generating changes for the company. Authoritative leaders as she is, she is very clear on what she wants to accomplish. She also has the ability to invoke to her staff the significance of their job in the accomplishment of the company’s goals. This means therefore, that employees or the team knows their roles in the grand goal of the company. Through the strategic positioning of a vision, an Ussery provides standard on which the results of the team can be evaluated. The other staff like Scot, Cathie, Penny, and Diane, who is also Sandra’s manager, find her diversifying her leadership style to ensure that they are applied appropriately to certain situations. These people say that Sandra balances her authority and democracy in her leadership styles. They evaluate her as having the sensitivity and emotional capacity to recognize what would be the most appropriate leadership strategy that is being called for by the situation. In many cases using just one strategy cannot generate effective results. One of the important components in leadership is also recognizing the potential of an assigned leader. Characteristics of the leader have been known to be very important in the achievement of goals. This is very important in the context of the FedEx where implementations of projects are assigned to specific leadership and utmost excellence is needed. According to many psychological studies, which aim to recognize the character behind some of the effective leaders in successful organizations, emotional intelligence is very important for many leaders (Goleman, 2000). This has been widely reviewed in many literatures. According to Goleman (2000) this emotional intelligence can be reflected on the ability of leaders to have the necessary social skills. This means that they must be able work well with their people under different circumstances to ensure that there are no barriers to communication. This would help the problem to be resolved immediately and for improvements of the programs be initiated efficiently. They must also have high levels of motivation, which would allow them to do things through initiative and exceed the expected results. These are all seen in Sandra, as evaluated by her people and they especially find that she is really flexible as well to the call of the times and the moment. Finally she knows her limitations and admit that she cannot possibly do everything without the able help of her staff likewise. Ms. Sandra Ussery is a good manager because she taught me through her example how to get the job done. I started taking notes and wondering what I would do if I were in charge. I looked and listened and collected a catalog of what people liked and disliked and collected a catalog of what people liked and disliked about management. She would often come up to me and say, â€Å"Here’s what we are going to do,† and made us believe we could do it. From that moment on, I was ready. Are you ready? You’ve got to take stock and honestly answer the question. It requires huge amounts of time and effort. Not everyone is willing to make the commitment and the sacrifices. She often would say that she gets a high watching people succeed. Making people’s actions visible by publicizing and recognizing their work strengthens others. It opens doors to potential new relationships because people are more aware of one another’s contributions. Success is an attractive magnet for pulling people together and increasing their attachment to the project. Ms. Ussery points out that building stable political coalitions is often based on making certain that participants’ involvement is publicized. She notes that good press is an essential political currency. While publicizing other people’s actions heightens people’s sense of personal power. It builds commitment because it makes it more difficult for people to dissociate themselves from the actions and activities that they were recognized for. There is also a rising literature today on leadership that emphasizes the need to inspire collaboration. This is the emerging mainstream form of leadership where power in the process of decision making is more decentralized. There is now a present emphasis on the ability of group collaboration to actually facilitate the achievement of the goals. Collaborative leadership is practiced by Sandra as an effective means of communication that could actually imbibe greater productivity and greater creativity for the achievement of the goals of the department she is in.

Impact of Leather Waste

1. 1. 1. Leather industrial waste: Prominent effectiveness of leather industry is amplified by high input and expenditure but on other side it causes huge waste of resource, incredible environmental pollution and biological chain destruction [17]. Streams of gaseous, liquid and solid waste are resulted by environmental blow of tanneries. Global leather industry generates 4 million tones of solid waste per year [18]. People use products of the leather-processing industry on a daily basis. These include especially shoes, leather and textile goods; we normally encounter leather products even in both public and private transport. The primary raw material for final products is hide from animals from slaughter houses and hide from game—i. e. waste from the meat industry, which is processed in tanneries and turned into leather. Therefore, the tanning industry can be considered one of the first industries to use and recycle secondary raw materials. Although the tanning industry is environmentally important as a principal user of meat industry waste, the industry is perceived as a consumer of resources and a producer of pollutants. Processing one metric ton of raw hide generates 200 kg of final leather product (containing 3 kg of chromium), 250 kg of non-tanned solid waste, 200 kg of tanned waste (containing 3 kg of chromium), and 50,000 kg of wastewater (containing 5 kg of chromium) [1]. Thus, only 20% of the raw material is converted into leather, and more than 60% of the chromium is in the solid and liquid waste. During the production of leather goods, especially shoes, manipulation waste is produced, whichmakes about 15–20% of the entry material—leather. The last kinds ofwaste are used leather products which have lost their utility value. 1. 1. The possibility of oxidation of CrIII to CrVI The basic question is the possible oxidation reaction from chromium III to chromium VI. In basic solutions, the oxidation of CrIII to CrVI by oxidants such as peroxides and hypohalide occurs with ease [2]. Such strong oxidation conditions are realized in the process of the sterilization of drinking water. This is the first threat to human health and life. Rain (especially acid rain) can leach chromium III from waste dumps, and soluble salts can then reach sources of drinking water. During the sterilization process by ozone or hypochloride, chromium III is converted into chromium VI and reacts with magnesium and calcium ions occurring in drinking water to produce carcinogenic magnesium and calcium chromate or dichromate salts. Another problem concerns the possibility of oxidation of CrIII into CrVI in gentle conditions by air in the wide range of pH. Principally, oxidation can be realized after the following equations: According to the European Commission (EC) the quantities of solid waste produced by tanneries depend on the type of leather processed, the source of hides and skins, and the techniques applied [2]. On an average, at the end of the process, about 20% of the weight of the raw hides is (grain side) leather [2]. On the other hand, in Rio Grande do Sul, approximately 40% of the initial raw material is transformed into solid and liquid wastes [3]. In the tanning industry, raw skin is transformed into leather by means of a series of chemical and mechanical operations [4,5]. Chromium salts (in particular, chromium sulfate) are the most widely used tanning substances today. Hides that have been tanned with chromium salts have a good mechanical resistance, an extraordinary dyeing suitability and a better hydrothermal resistance in comparison with hides treated with plant substances. Chromium salts also have a high rate of penetration into the inter fibrillar spaces of the skin, what represents a saving in terms of production time and a better control of the process [6]. In Brazil, approximately 90% of the leather industry uses chromium in hide processing, resulting in hazardous The conventional tannery methods lead to discharge of solutions with chromium concentrations in the range of 1500–4000 mg/l. The specification for the discharge of chromium containing liquid wastes stipulates a range of 0. 3–2 mg/l [21]. The tanning treatments to produce the wet blue leather yield sludge containing approximately 3% (w/w) of chromium [9]. The method commonly used for this waste disposal presents high operational costs. The production of chromium containing leather wastes (including chrome shavings and tanned splits) in leather industry has been recognized as a real problem for many years [ref]. The chromium leather wastes are generated principally during mechanical treatments carried out after tanning process. In this latter, chromium is bound with the collagen matrix, by cross linking with collagen carboxylic groups through coordinate covalent linkage [6–10]. The final chemical structure of the waste illustrated in Eq. (1), is obtained through two chemical phenomena â€Å"olation and oxolation†. As reported by numerous authors [6–12], the olation phenomenon is observed gradually with the increase of the alkalinity of the tanning medium. The olified complex continues its evolution through time and an acid discharge takes place while the oxygen-chrome coordinate links are transformed into covalent links (oxolation bridges) Eq. The great stability of the collagen–chromium complex produced makes the waste a non-biodegradable and toxic material, due to the chromium and nitrogen content about 4. 3% and 14%, respectively [13,14]. A large amount of waste still goes into land disposal [15]. Incineration in air atmosphere generates other forms of residual pollutant (gaseous emission and ashes) more noxious [16–21] The solid wastes generated _presented in Table 1. from leather industry can be broadly classified as untanned collagenous, tanned collagenous and non-proteinous wastes. Among the tanned collagenous waste, the one resulting from the finishing operation called buffing dust draws the most attention from the public and pollution control authorities. Buffing dust appears in a considerable proportion with processing of raw hides skins _i. e. 2–6 kg per ton of raw hides skins.. Buffing dust is a micro fined solid particulate impregnated with chromium, synthetic fat, oil, tanning agents and dye chemicals. Buffing dust carries about 2. 7% chromium on dry weight basis. This is carcinogenic in nature and it causes clinical problems like respiratory tract ailments w1x, allergic dermatitis, ulcers, perforated nasal septum, kidney malfunctions w2x and lung cancer w3x in humans exposed to the environment containing buffing dust particulates. Hence, it is cautioned by pollution control authorities to collect the buffing dust for safety disposal. The current practice of disposing of buffing dust consists of: _i. incineration in incinerators, _ii. land co-disposal w4–12x. Incineration causes serious air pollution problems because of release of toxic So and No gases w13x, and it has been observed x x that at 8008C, about 40% of Cr_III. is converted into Cr_VI. during the incineration of Cr laden solid waste w14x. The tanning industry is familiar with its being a potentially pollution-intensive industry. The nvironmental impacts from tanneries result from liquid, solid and gaseous waste streams. It must be emphasized that 4million tones of solid waste per year is generated by the global tannery industry [6]. According to the estimation of Sreeram et al. , about 0. 8 million tons of chromium tanned shavings are generated per year globally [7]. The solid wastes from tannery industries may have significant Cr (III) conten t. Even though Cr (III) is viewed as not toxic, possible oxidation of Cr(III) to Cr(VI), due to the acid rains or incineration, threats the environment since Cr(VI) is a more toxic species. Therefore, the conventional disposal methods, land-filling and incineration, cannot be considered a solution to the disposal problem of tanned leather wastes in eco-friendly manner. In literature, there are many studies on the treatment of tanned leather wastes mainly including the extraction of chromium from wastes to re-use in the tanning process [8,9] and isolation of protein fractions [10,11]. The tanning industry generates a huge quantum of liquid and solid wastes while producing finished leather. Tanning is the main process followed in leather manufacturing that protects the leather against some environmental effects such as microbial degradation, heat, sweat or moisture, etc [1]. In tanning industry raw skins/hides are transformed into leather by means of a series of chemical and mechanical operations [2,3]. The tanning process is usually accomplished in three distinct phases, i. e. , preparation of the raw live stock to tan with tanning agents, tanning with mineral/vegetable tanning agents and post tanning to impart colour to finished leather. Basic chromium sulfate is the most widely used tanning agent for converting putrescible collagen fibres into non-putrescible leather matrix. Chrome tanned leathers have improved mechanical resistance, extraordinary dyeing suitability and better hydrothermal resistance in comparison with vegetable tanned leather. The solid wastes generated from leather industry can be broadly classified into untanned collagenous, tanned collagenous and non-proteinaceous wastes. Among the tanned collagenous waste, the one resulting from the finishing operation is called chrome buffing dust (CBD). CBD is a micro fined solid particulate impregnated with chromium, synthetic fat, oil, tanning agents and dye chemicals. About 2–6 kg of CBD is generated as a solid waste per ton of skin/hide processed. CBD contains chromium, it is carcinogenic in nature and it causes clinical problems like respiratory tract ailments, ulcers, perforated nasal septum, kidney malfunction [4] and lung cancer [5] in humans exposed to the environment containing buffing dust particulates. Hence, it is advised by pollution control authorities to collect the CBD for safe disposal. The current methods for disposing buffing dust are land codisposal and thermal incineration. Land co-disposal method is not preferred for the reasons such as overall high pollution emissions and low energy recovery. The leather industry generates a large amount of a Cr-containing solid waste (wet blue leather), with approximately 3% (w/w) of chromium. However, the leather industry has commonly been associated with high pollution due to the bad smell, organic wastes and high water consumption caused during traditional manufacturing processes [2]. Different forms of waste in quality and quantity, which emerge during the transformation of hides and skins into leathers in thousands of leather factories, from primitive to modern all around the world, have negative impacts on the environment. According to the data received from the studies of several researchers, approximately 200 kg of leather is manufactured from 1 tone of wet-salted hide [1-3]. This amount constitutes about 20% of rawhide weight. More than 600 kg of solid waste is generated during the transformation of Raw hide into leather. That is to say, solid wastes containing protein and fat that constitute more than 60% of rawhide weight are disposed to the environment by leather factories without turning them to good use In other words, besides the 30-35m3 waste water disposed to environment during the processing of every 1 ton of rawhide in world leather industry, the data from FAO reveals that approximately 8. 5 million tons of solid waste is generated during the production of 11 million tons of raw hide processed in the world [4]. Solid wastes generated by the leather industry in these stages of processes may be classified as follows: i. astes from untanned hides/skins (trimmings, fleshing wastes) ii. wastes from tanned leather (shaving wastes, buffing dust) iii. wastes from dyed and finished leather (trimmings from leather) Data obtained from research reveals that 80% of solid wastes are generated during pre-tanning processes, while 20% of the wastes are caused by post-tanning processes Due to the bad smell th ey produce during their putrefaction and their harmful chemical content, untanned hide/skin wastes have negative effects on the soil and/or water resources of the environment where they are discharged, in other words n the local plant flora and animal fauna. Therefore, uncontrolled discharge of such wastes should be prevented without taking adequate precautions. Legal arrangements gradually gaining speed all over the world enforce the leather industry to apply innovations in terms of reusing solid wastes generated during leather production processes such as fleshing, shaving, trimming and splits. Solid wastes create a major problem for leather industry in terms of both their variety and quantity. A high amount of reusable waste is generated in the leather industry. It is possible to recycle these products and even use them as raw materials for different industries [7]. The variety and quantity of solid wastes depends on animal species, breeding conditions, slaughterhouse practices, conservation conditions, leather process stages, mechanical operations, qualification of the personnel, and chemicals used in processes. Yet this fact causes uncertainties in reusing the generated wastes.

Colonial Language, Behavior and Identity Formation in Two Tempests

Colonial language, behavior and identity formation in Two Tempests Shakespeare in his last work, The Tempest tells the story of Proespero, the duke of Milan who is exiled to an island. The conflicts throughout the play arise from the desire of power over nature and people. Prospero overtakes the power from the native people on the land and is fighting for his title; that has been stolen by his brother. The influence of colonization is present in The Tempest, and is demonstrated in the characters Caliban and Ariel; who become Prospero’s servers in order to get free.Cesaire writes A Tempest, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, to help the reader understand its message better. The theme remains the same, but Cesaire emphasizes more deeply on the characters Caliban and Ariel. Cesaire presents them as people of the new world, who are under the influence of a foreign power, Prospero. Cesaire presents Caliban and Ariel with slightly different characteristics as Shakespeare, sh owing the important role of their language, behavior and actions.The very first change that Cesaire made in A Tempest we can see at the beginning of the play where the author mentions Ariel as a mulatto slave and Caliban as a black slave. Their change in color is significant because Cesaire expresses the post-colonial influence on the characters. The example of colonization is presented by a white conqueror, Prospero, who takes over the native people on the island, Caliban and Ariel. The two Characters, Caliban and Ariel are described differently in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Cesaire’s A Tempest.A Tempest is a post-colonial writing, and Cesaire forms his characters with stronger and more significant characteristics. Caliban’s personality becomes more important than in Shakespeare’s play. In The Tempest, Caliban is an insolent, uneducated slave who is controlled through magic by Prospero, while in A Tempest; he becomes an aggressive and defined black ma n. In The Tempest, we can see Caliban as a child of a witch, Sycorax, who is a poor judge of character, acting like an animal and willing to get free.In Cesaire’s play the way he enters the scene is already telling us that he becomes a strong and brave character with a personality. Caliban’s word to Prospero, â€Å"Uhuru† (Cesaire 1. 2. 10-11), shows his rebellious attitude towards his master, letting him know about his eagerness to become free and independent on his island again. â€Å"Uhuru† in Swahili means freedom and for Caliban means his life. With this word, Caliban is showing to Prospero his defiance towards the situation, in which he becomes a slave of his own land.Caliban is the one who introduced the island to Prospero, and he expects to be treated with respect. Caliban is a fighter who is ready to choose death over humiliation: â€Å"Call me X. That would be best. Like a man without a name. Or, to be more precise, a man whose name has been st olen. You talk about history and everyone knows it. † (Cesaire 18) With Prosepero’s arrival to the island, Caliban becomes a slave of its own land. In spite of difficulties and his situation, Caliban does not easily admit defeat.The fact that he wants to be called X rather than Caliban, shows his fight for his free will that he has as a person. In Cesaire’s play Caliban becomes aware of his situation and he knows that a person can be considered a person, if that has the right to take decisions over himself. Prospero has power over Caliban, gives him a new name, and with that Prospero steals his identity and his whole being as a human. This contrasts with Shakespeare’s play where Caliban’s fight for his personality is less important; he just exists and obeys as a slave.Caliban represents the suppressed category of people who are under foreign intruders’ power and forced to obey their commands. The language that Cesaire uses for his characters is more aggressive and eloquent than in Shakespeare’s play. Caliban is arguing furiously with Prospero, showing the injustice of Prospero’s power over him: â€Å"You lied to me so much, about the world, about myself, that you ended up by imposing on me an image of myself. † (Cesaire 3. 5. 22-24) The way Caliban talks to his master shows the tormented relationship that they have.Caliban uses the language that Prospero taught him in a way that expresses his anger and his suffering as a slave of his land. The way Prospero treats Caliban is an example of the colonized lands where the new rulers used the native people for their advantage. The colonizer’s influence on native people is presented by Shakespeare and Cesaire too, just in different languages. For Caliban, there is no importance in speaking Prospero’s language: â€Å"You taught me language, and /my profit on’t/Is, I know how to curse. † (Shakespeare 1. 2. -4); he is forced to do that in order to obey his commands. The colonization of the island took away Caliban’s own language, his name and his home that now he calls â€Å"ghetto†. (Cesaire 13) Shakespeare doesn’t focus as much as Cesaire on Caliban’s character. The language what he uses is from 1400s, and the characters are used mostly for their role in the play and not as a symbol of the colonized lands as in Cesaire’s play. Changing the character’s color and language, Cesaire shows the essence of the diversity in people and their important role in life according to their skin and language.Ariel’s change is substantial, too. He is presented as a mulatto slave, which is another character of colonized lands. His identity is totally different from Caliban’s; he is the naive and obedient slave and not the fighter like Caliban. Ariel is representing the category of people who are ready to obey the master’s command and waiting for changes to happen. Ariel knows that Prospero uses him for his own purpose, and despite of all that, he approaches his tasks with enthusiasm, reporting any activities that he observes.Even though Shakespeare describes Ariel as a sprite, he has human qualities; he is longing for his liberty. He is invisible, but his actions are important, and he reflects human emotions: â€Å"ARIEL. If you now behold them, your affections / would become tender. / PROSPERO. Dost thou think so, spirit? / ARIEL. Mine would, sir, were I human. † (Shakespeare 5. 1. 35-39) Throughout the play, Ariel, the mulatto slave, is described as a compliant server and is treated in a nice way comparative to Caliban, who is treated horribly and threatened.The different treatment of slaves shows us that even between slaves are classifications, and they all have their place in world according to their skin color. In contrast with Shakespeare, Cesaire represents the two characters on a deeper level and focuses more on their personal ities. Throughout the play, Cesaire describes Caliban and Ariel as two servants with different desires and places in the colonized land. Caliban is ready to fight for what belongs to him, including his identity, in contrast with Ariel, who accommodates to the situation and waits for a better future.

Culture studys neo-nazi music culture Assignment

Culture studys neo-nazi music culture - Assignment Example The emergence of the neo-Nazi music in England took place in the year 1970s with the concert which was titled as ‘Rock against Racism’. Followed by this concert, the array of racists who were involved with the neo-Nazi skinheads was identified to be ‘Rock against Communism’ (RAC). The musical concert was intimately involved with the encouragement of the nationalist neo-Nazis, racists and socially unrest themes with the intention to continue succession and thus imbibe such beliefs within the young generation (Jewish Virtual Library, 2012). The concepts of the music culture which intentionally generated as a moral panic had been considered with the obligation of the neo-Nazi culture that is currently being pursued by the young population. This moral panic involved with its categorisation of races, social groups and communities by the feeling of anxiety and emotional energy concerning the perceived values and beliefs that was typically focused during the music concert (Shayovitz, 2011). Hence, as the prime focus on the neo-Nazi music culture has been observed to imbibe the beliefs amid the young generation, it becomes quite apparent that the cultural movement is likely to have a strong impact on the young population. It also because of the increasing preferences for modern music amid the young generation, that neo-Nazi music culture can have a long lasting impression over this population. The formulation of the Neo-Nazi music culture took place with the consideration of the Jewish holocaust, as one of the utmost crimes during the Second World War era which was carried out by Adolf Hitler with the commitment to set up the Nazi despotism. The catastrophe of the Jewish holocaust is considered as one of the foremost reasons for the occurrence of such ascension of neo-Nazis in Germany in the Second World War. There

Criminal Justice Organizations- Assignment 4 Essay

Criminal Justice Organizations- Assignment 4 - Essay Example These techniques that are used have a positive effect when it comes to making and implementation of policing. For most policy makers, they know that implementing such mandatory sentencing laws ensure that repeat offenders are punished which leads to a decrease in the level of crime. The mandatory sentencing laws are effective, but this is dependent on a country or a state. When it comes to principles of organization effectiveness leaders have to motivate employees to change if they want change (Stojkovic, Kalinich & Klofas, 2014). Juries in courts in certain countries such a United States are not involved in determining the mandatory penalties that apply when there people who are convicted. The â€Å"get tough† approach and mandatory sentencing laws are largely not effective because they also lead to populated prisons because the minorities are always disproportionally targeted. As noted on page 425, of Stojkovic, Kalinich and Klofas’ book, there is problem of overcrowding in prisons due to these laws. For mandatory sentencing laws to be effective without leading to overpopulation in prisons, all people should be targeted for crimes and not only the minorities. The effect of these laws on the society is evident, not only in minority societies in United States. The public is now of these effects on families of the poor people, even when the accused they have committed non-violent offenses. Sadly, these are laws affect the poor communities in America and not the upper and middle class societies even when this group can easily change these laws. If I had the power and influence to change these laws I would first ensure that the public, whether these are people in poor, rich or middle-class communities are all educated. The public should be aware that the three-strike laws only contribute to increased rates of homicides and other problems. The rates at which the minority males are imprisoned are extremely high. In addition, there so many

EVALUATING MINIMUM WAGE AS A LEGAL PRICE Research Paper - 1

EVALUATING MINIMUM WAGE AS A LEGAL PRICE - Research Paper Example This could sometimes result to negative economic impacts. This paper discusses the issue of evaluating minimum wage as a legal price. In the paper, we present the arguments behind this issue as well as some of its assessments. Increase in unemployment is a factor of minimum wage as a legal price. The rate of increase in unemployment depends with whether the minimum wage set is for skilled laborers or unskilled laborers. According to OECD (2011), job opportunities in the labor market for young people and unskilled workers are reduced by increase in minimum wages. However, the impact is different for the case of skilled workers. Evaluating minimum wages as a legal price could enhance understanding of its affect in both the case of skilled labor and the case of unskilled labor. This assists in making the right decisions on when to increase the wage and how to increase it. Increasing minimum wages could hinder economic development. By resulting to increase in the rate of unemployment, high minimum wage would lower economic development since unemployed people will be having little or no contributions to the economy. However, according to Mankiw (2011), advocates of minimum wage show that it results to increase in the earnings of poor workers. This could lower poverty levels in a country thus resulting to an economic development. Therefore, evaluating minimum wage as a legal price is necessary to determine the positive effects of increasing it as well as its negative effects. A raise in minimum wage as a legal price result to an improved standard of living. Increase in minimum wage increase the amount earned by a worker for doing the same job. However, this can only happen with low-earning jobs since the employee lives within the maximum he can earn. For highly paying job, it can have little or no effect. Moreover, Folsom & Boulware (2009) shows that increasing minimum wage cannot improve the standards of living since the people working at minimum wage are not the

Workplace Romance in the Hospitality Industry Research Paper

Workplace Romance in the Hospitality Industry - Research Paper Example As a result of this constant sharing of working space there remains a high chance of the workers in the hospitality industry getting romantically involved with each other. Every worker spends a considerable amount of the day in his or her office. Above that the workers in the hospitality industry work under stressful conditions like round the day duties and living up to the demands of people of different kinds. As a result seeking supports from co-workers and consequent blooming of romance between them is prevalent trend in this industry. In any office environment the co-workers share a lot of feeling like experiences, interests, fears, setbacks and achievements with each other. Therefore it can be seen that the factors responsible for giving birth to romance are always present in the working environment. The constant sharing of emotions may lead to the development of emotional and romantic leanings on each other. The usual office romance varies from casual flings and affairs to the more serious relationships. In the hospitality industry there are also many instances of sexual harassment between co-workers and the scholars have distinguished the workplace romance from sexual advances. Workplaces romances in have been defined as relationship based on mutual desire and physical attraction between the workers of the same organization. It is also necessary that the people have found each other through the course of their work and the relationship is consensual. For romance between workers separated by hierarchy it is important that the romance spreads beyond the traditional employer employee relationship. Workers from all age group have been found to be associated with workplace romance. However the highest probability of romance between colleagues lies in the age group from 35 to 44. In a survey almost 44% of the interviewee in this age group has admitted to date their co-workers (Pearce, 2010). Some very important points of discussion about workplace romance have been the causes for the development of the romance, the effect of office romance on the peers and environment of the office as well as on the people involved directly and the managerial decision or attitude towards accepting the romance (Odgers, 2004, pp 221-222; Burke, Mattis, 2005 p 153; Sias, 2009, p 140). It will be relevant to mention that many of the organizations have a defined policy on workplace romance though no such references could be found directly for the hospitality industry. It has often been debated whether workplace romance leads to better performance of the employees and also the effect of romance on the other co-workers Reasons and the Consequences of Office Romance According to Fiona M. Wilson (2007) the study of romance in office as a sociological subject started 30 years ago. Such studies were of immense interest for the management who wanted to know the consequence on the organization as a result of romances between the workers. According to Peter Corser (20 11), a person spends a third of their day in their office. Under such a situation the author finds it natural for romance to brew between the co-workers. Moreover it can also be mentioned here that for people working in a team the skills, experiences and the knowledge are very similar. Therefore there is a high chance of people sharing common interests and therefore finding each other attractive. However he has also noted that many organizations have discouraging policies for such romances. The organization has

Moral and Ethical Principles in Public Policy Essay

Moral and Ethical Principles in Public Policy - Essay Example Public policy is what our individual representatives in Parliament choose to do, or not to do, about public problems that can have nationwide consequences. There are also public policy advocates that help bring public problems to the attention of Government on behalf of their clients and help Government made sound decisions or try to influence legislation in the favor of their client’s interests. Thus the actors or participants in public policy matters are primarily the Government functionaries, lobbyists and social pressure groups and other autonomous and semi-autonomous agencies. This paper will discuss the importance of public policy, actors in the policy macro-environment and their contributions, influences and value in shaping of public policy for a nation. The Importance of Public Policy A policy is a stated way of getting things done. It gives the procedures to effect a certain task in a given environment. It states rules and regulations under which business is to be co nducted or a course of action is to be pursued. Policies are guides to action. It may also happen that when a certain course of action has been adopted and is followed consistently by a number of people or groups with no adverse consequences noted for quite a while, that in time becomes public policy regarding that matter. Public policy is said to define a way of life for society, in terms of acceptable behavior and rules and norms that become codes of conduct in that particular culture. It reflects what society regards as important to uphold and preserve in its actions and codes of conduct in dealing with others as well as each other. Actors in the Public Policy Macro-Environment Politics, like diplomacy, is the art of the possible. It is the authority and power to do what is right, to follow the will of the mass of the people, in choosing our actions and their legislation. We are what we do, and the same is true of society, as its moral principles are enshrined in its code of cond uct and rules of law. Public policies reflect society’s most important matters and choices. There may also be a conflict of values, in which case a majority vote determines what is to be done or what receives priority over others. Actors in the public policy environment are the policy advocates, representatives at different levels of Government and in committees, commentators, lobbyists and others. At the highest level, it includes the President, the Governors of various States and members of the Legislature. At lower levels, it may involve school boards, the Mayor or the City Council. Of course, the type and number of actors involved in a particular public policy decision depend on its importance and reach- the number of people it is supposed to affect (Howlett, 1991). Do All the Actors Play Out the Roles They are Given Effectively? There has been considerable debate over whether the present procedures for enactment and consideration of public policy initiatives are sufficie nt to meet the purpose for which they were designed. Many a time it has been felt that we are proceeding at a snail’s pace when an important decision needs to be made.

Vietnam War 19641975 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Vietnam War 19641975 - Essay Example The Viet Minh finally came to total power in 1975, after thirty four years of struggle and war, when they unified Vietnam as a single independent communist country after driving out the Americans and the French. France ruled almost all of Indochina from late 1800s and World War II. Many French colonists who built their own plantations on peasant land for own gain, experienced growing unrest among Vietnamese peasants. France reacted brutally by further decreasing freedom of speech and assembly by arresting protestors. However, these actions were unsuccessful and unrest continued to increase. Many revolutionaries escaped to China. In 1924, the Vietnamese started to organize under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Minh created the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. Throughout the 30s, Minh led Vietnam's growing independence movement from exile in the Soviet Union and China. However, a new enemy became involved. In 1940, Vietnam was invaded by Japan. The next year, Vietminh was formed under the guidance of Minh. Its goal was to gain independence from foreign rule. After Japan was defeated by Allies in 1945, Minh's goal seemed to be fulfilled. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation. In 1956, a free elec... Thinking this could lead to trouble, South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem, a strong anti-Communist, refused to take part in the election. America thought Ho Chi Minh's popularity might result in a victory for him and also wanted the election to cancel. Eisenhower gave military aid to Diem for a stable reform government in the South. Diem, however, broke his promise. He crushed any opposition and distributed little land. Diem, a Catholic, also restricted Buddhist practices. Buddhist cleric were killed or imprisoned and temples destroyed. Many Buddhists protested by burning themselves to death. By 1957, a Communist rebel known as the Vietcong was organized. They attacked the Diem government by assassinating government officials. Supported by Minh, Vietcong received military arms via network of paths along borders of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. South Vietnam becomes less stabled, but Eisenhower administration did almost nothing. John Kennedy entered the White House in 1961. Criticized for being "soft" on Communism, Kennedy sent more financial aid to Diem's regime and military advisers to train South Vietnamese troops. Meanwhile, Diem's popularity dropped significantly because of corruption and failure to respond to calls for land reform. (Ang, 311) To fight the Vietcong, Diem initiated the strategic hamlet program by moving all villagers to protected areas. Yet, many Vietnamese resented being moved from their home village. In 1950, the United States officially recognized the Saigon government, and to help out, President Truman sent troops over to train the South Vietnamese on how to use U.S. weapons while the French and North Vietnamese were building up their forces. In the spring of 1954, the North Vietnamese attacked a

Alice and Wonderland Essay Example for Free

Alice and Wonderland Essay Title Alice and Wonderland 20120 Screen Writer Linda Woolverton Director Tim burton March 5, 2010 The Scene Scene Design Throughout the whole movie the scenes keep changing going from a reality to something what seems like a dream. The scenes are over the top and amazing and fit the film 100 percent of the time. Lighting Design Alice is transitioning from the dark forest to the bright but destroyed looking tea party as the two settings are a mix of contrast. At the same time the characters are contrasted to their surroundings as they are much brighter than their environment. The clashing of light and dark colors show that the creatures of Wonderland are at war. Sound Design The sound not only help move the story and convey the emotion everyone is looking for, but also to help give that Tim Burton feel. I feel like he wants his films to fit within the overall context of pop culture and film in general. This movie really try to keep a realism and timeless funkiness to the sound and resist the temptation to create sounds or design scenes to be too over the top or distracting. Costume Design The costume designer relied on extensive hair and makeup. I love the volume and rama in all of the costumes featured in the movie. I actually didnt mind Alice shrinking into a size of a pea and magnifying into a giant because her dresses would change into something beautiful every time it happened. Im a sucker for drama, colors, and volume. So of course my favorite was the costume design of Johnny Depps Mad Hatters costume was hauntingly beautiful, despite the tears and holes that gave Offa creepy but delicate look. 1 . Long/medium/close-ups Alice and Wonderland is a movie with many different camera shots. This film is shot in more of a wider viewing. With some minor close ups throughout the movie 2. Camera angle The visual effects are stunning, especially in 3D. When hurtling down the hole, the camera angles shoot from Alices perspective. The 3D enhances the swooping landscape shots and is for the atmospheric effect. It pulls the audience more into the world and the film is better for it. Throughout the movie camera angles enhance the experience. Shots filmed through keyholes and in different perspectives allows audiences to experience Wonderland for themselves. 3. Camera movement The camera movement in this movie combines a little bit of everything. But mostly the space between the two cameras that represent the human eyes and create the illusion of depth is a main factor taken into place during this movie The Story The Plot Alice is and unconfident and confused 19 year old girl who is being forced into marriage with an English man. At her engagement party she escapes the crowd to consider whether to go through with the marriage or not. She then sees a strange rabbit and falls into a rabbit hole. Arriving in a strange and surreal place called wonderland she find herself in a world that resembles a dream she had as a little girl. It was filled with talking plants, animals, an evil queen, knights and a ferocious beats. Alice realizes that she is there for a reason and that reason is to conquer the horrific Jabberwocky and restore the White Queens place on the throne But, at the same time she is there to find herself and become the woman she is meant to be. Initial situation Alice has been mourning the loss of her father. She is troubled by unremembered memories of the past in her dreams. Alice all of 19 attends a garden party where she is surprised by an unwanted marriage proposal and the expectations that society beholds upon her. Running off distraught and confused she chases after a white rabbit. Inciting moment this whirlwind of fascinating adventure. Alice is placed in a room with a door too small for her to fit through. She is told to indulge the drink to shrink and eat the bread to grow. She goes through the door and then her adventure really begins. Complication Alice encounters complications with every new character she interacts with. Alice herself is a big complication through the movie she has to try and understand the mysteries of wonderland. She must also undergo changes from a shy innocent girl to a warrior who can slay the red queens evil beast. Climax and resolution The red queen is throwing a trial that Alice must attend. The queen is accusing frog of eating all of her tarts. There is a great deal of evidence giving again the frog. The frog is sentenced to be beheaded and Alice stand up for the frog and said to be executed by the queen. She fghts off the queens guards and escapes. She then leads an army against to queen and her evil beast. She faces the beast in an extraordinary battle when she be heads the beast and the while queens restored to power in Wonderland. Denouement After Alice came back from Wonderland she returned as a new woman. As she urned down the wedding proposal and worked for a man opening trade up in China. She went to China at the end and sees the butterfly from wonderland. Alice never promised to come back to wonderland only to never forget. The Characters Major Characters Alice She is destined to slay the red queens killer beast. Alices experience in Wonderland is about reconnecting with herself and finding out that she has the strength to be more confident in figuring out what she wants. The Mad Hatter- He has been awaiting Alices arrival back to wonderland. Mad Hatter is Alices protector he would go to and length to help or protect her. He is her on true friend and believed in her even when no one else does. The Red Queen- She rules with and anger like no other always wanting to behead people at the slightest thing. She stole the crown and the throne from her sister the white queen. The Red Queen is also meant to stop the prophecy from becoming true and to stop Alice from defeating the her killer beast. The beast that gives her the rule over Wonderland. Minor Characters Absolem- He is the character in wonderland that people go to for answers. He is the keeper of the scroll and knows all of Wonderlands history. The White Rabbit- His Job as to make sure Alice made it to Wonderland and to keep her on her path through the movie. The White Queen- Her role in this movies is to help Alice gain her The Actors Mia Wasikowska played Alice who is a movie actor that was the perfect person to play the role of Alice. Johnny Depp played The Mad Hatter who is a theatrical movie actor and did an amazing Job in the roll. Anne Hathaway played the White Queen who is a Movie actress who I love her, she makes whatever roll she plays magnificent. Helena Bonham Carter plays the Red Queen. She is a movie actress and did perfect in this role and didnt go overboard. Matt Lucas played both TweedleDee and TweedleDum he is a great movie actor but I would have liked to see a little more from him in this movie. Michael Sheen plated the White Rabbit who is a movie actor and played a good roll he was very funny and to the point. Stephen Fry was great at playing the Cheshire Cat she is a new movie actress to most people. She played the character and the was role perfect for her. Alan Rickman played as the Blue Caterpillar he is a movie actor and the caterpillar has always been one of my favorite characters and he did a great Job bringing him to life. The Director Individual style, other major works, biographical context Tim Burton is one of the most unusual and unique directors of our time. He brings characters to life by putting them in a place they dont belong. Tim Burton points out the misfit character and shows how different they are. His use of camera angles, lighting, and sound give the viewers a different perspective on the movies, and help pick out the individual character. Some of his movies include Alice in Wonderland, Beetlejuice, The Addams Family, Dark Shadows The Corpse Bride, Charlie and the chocolate factory, and Edward Scissorhands.. Burton has directed 16 ilms and produced 12. Burton was born on August 25, 1958 in Burbank, California. He majoring in animation at the California Institute of Arts. He worked as a Disney animator for less than a year before going out on his own. He became known for creating visually striking films that blend themes of fantasy, horror, and comedy all into one film The Screenwriter Linda Woolverton is a born teacher. She has a gift for clarifying the underlined edge of storytelling. She is amazing at taking an idea and creating into something edge She has wrote works like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Alice in Wonderland, She also had a part in Aladdin, Mulan, and Arctic Tale. Linda Woolverton was born 1959 in Long Beach California. She wrote a couple screenplays for Disneys animated film Woolverton then went on to write some Broadway performances. She also co-wrote a book for Broadway and then she wrote her own book. The genre, type, and period tragedy _ drama _ comedy _ musical comedy _ musical drama Genre Type The genre type of Alice and wonderland is a Fantasy. Period other The period time of the movie would have been recorded and filmed in 2010, the Era of the movie would represent the nineteenth century. You can see this by the way they talk and the look they have bestowed upon them selfs. The Context Philosophical Historical The new Alice and Wonderland is inspired by Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland and served as a sequel to the original disney movie. The film was created when the Walt Disney Company handed over 250 million Social There is a lot in this movie about social rights. The red queen forced herself in charge and condemned anyone who opposed her to death. This could represent to social fght for power or freedom. This goes on and on through the movie you are told y some flowers that they are the lower social class. Religious I could not find a religious meaning behind Alice in Wonderland 2010 What you like I would watch this movie over and over again its comical, adventurous, and a little creepy the animation of the movie keeps me involved the whole time. What you think This movie to me was all around great from the beginning to the end. One of my favorite parts of the movie was when Alice meet the caterpillar and then again when she fought the Red queens killer beast. Although I do feel like they that could have gone a little move overboard with the overall movie.

Human Resources value proposition of GASCO

Human Resources value proposition of GASCO Introduction: The report presented here is regarding the HR value proposition of GASCO. GASCO is also known as Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd. The company was born in the year 1978, in the very heart of the UAE (United Arab Emirates) in its capital Abu Dhabi. Value proposition is best explained by Ulrichs model which shows the factors one should look for to check whether the HR system helps to realize any value to the organization. The report will find out the same with the help of questionnaire analysis from the HRs in the company. GASCO: GASCO is also known as Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd. The company was born in the year 1978, in the very heart of the UAE (United Arab Emirates) in its capital Abu Dhabi. Replying to a question about the vision of the founder of the company, late Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan he replied that he believed in the sound operation of the Emirates important gas assets. The amalgamation and establishment of Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd or GASCO as a combined venture among the ADNOC (known as Abu Dhabi National Oil Company), Total, Partex, and Shell, and the addition of a wholly owned ADNOC Company named ATHEER in the year 2001, supported GASCO in appreciating the vision to be among the one of the most inventive, caring and respected companies in the hydrocarbon and gas industry. (Author, 2010) GASCOs promise in meeting the prospect of its diverse stakeholders employees, community, shareholders, non governmental bodies and regulatory bodies, was freshly recognized through the restitution of the combined Venture contract originally signed in the year 1978. The new contract, which is now contracted to run until the year 2028, September 30th, will permit GASCO to grasp the peculiarity of being one of the chief players in the worldwide gas and hydrocarbons industry, conducting the transportation of liquid and gas products, onshore gas processing and contributing to the economys GDP of in a responsible and sustainable manner. (Author, 2010) Literature Review: A HR value proposition is a proposal that defines the measurable and quantifiable gains that an organizations or individuals making the proposal promise to deliver. The development procedure of a HR value proposition is based on the reviews and analysis results of the gains, prices and values to be delivered to the customers by an organization, potential customers, and other constitutive groups working within and outside of the organization. It can also be viewed as positioning of a value, where term Value can be defined as = Benefits / Costs (where costs include all the risks taken). (Becker, 2002) Value is said to be added to a HR proposition when the work done by the HR professionals helps people to accomplish their goals and targets. What matters most is the benefits a person receives from this work and not design or the way the program was made or the policies used in declaration. The actions which do not fulfill these goals are not pursued. Hence HR value proposition can be viewed as the exercises, professionals involved and departments which work to achieve this aim and work to obtain productive and positive results for all the stake-holders like people working, managers, etc. (Spickett-Jones, 2003) Regrettably, in some organizations HR proposition is not seen as a group of people brought together to build something productive, rather it is seen as a cost centre. As such many of such groups are closed down during cost cutting processes. In order safeguard their position in an organization; they should increase their influence over their customers and stakeholders. They should emphasize less on their procedure and processes and more on the results and benefits they are providing. They should be in line with the productivity and their stakeholders. (Tuominen, 2004) Nowadays HR personnel are becoming redundant and its ironic that the services that they deliver are more focused on business performance improvements from central goals. With the shift in societies from an old era of business to the new knowledge and service oriented business goals and economies, having a better HR deliverable at ones exposure would become an added advantage and necessity to combat the increasing competition for an organization. (Winfried Daun, 2005) Such HR proposition values are largely effected by intangibles and managing these intangible properties of an organization. These intangible properties include : research and developments, leadership, brand positioning and strength, quality of service, speed, governance, tacit knowledge, loyalty of customers and the employees, reputation, informal processes, innovation , plant flexibility, trusted networks. Managing these intangible is important because they have deep impact on the shareholder values and are necessary regarding the future growth and expectations of the investors from the organization. (Winfried Daun, 2005) A comprehensive study by Ulrich and Brochbank shows the necessary steps required so as to deliver the required competencies to the stakeholders in a new economy. The figure below shows the systematic display of what should be done and how it should be done. This is the mapping out of HR value proposition, showing how to deliver desired stakeholder values. (Becker, 2002) Figure 1: The Ulrich and Brochbank HR Value Proposition There are 14 HR transformation criteria which have been derived from HR value proposition transformation. These are listed below: HR value proposition element: Knowing the realities of external business world Criterion 1 An efficient and efficient HR function is one which one which HR professionals who can acknowledge the external business environments and realities and adapt measures in such a way to combat these situation, allocating HR resources and apply HR practices accordingly. (Becker, 2002) Serving both the internal as well as external stakeholders Criterion 1- an efficient HR function is generating market value for its investors by increasing intangibles. Criterion 2- A good HR function increases the customer share by connecting with its target customers. Criterion 3- An efficient HR function assists its line managers to deliver strategies by developing capabilities of an organization. Criterion 4: A good HR function elucidates and lays down base for employee value proposition and improves individual abilities. (Aughton, 2005) Creating efficient HR practices Criterion 1: A good HR function can manage people, processes and practices such that it adds value. Criterion 2: An efficient HR function can manage performance management process and practices such that it adds value. Criterion 3: An efficient HR function can manage information process and practices such that it adds value. (Aughton, 2005) Developing HR resources Criterion 1: An efficient HR function can manage work flow design and processes such that it adds value HR value proposition element: Developing HR resources HR transformation criteria. Criterion 2: An efficient HR function adjusts its organization in accordance with the strategies of the business. Criterion 3: An efficient HR function makes a clear strategic plan for coordinating the HR investments with the goals of business. (Aughton, 2005) Ensuring Professionalism of the HR environment Criterion 1: An efficient HR function consists of HR professionals who carry out their duties and responsibilities accurately. Criterion 2: An efficient HR function develops HR professionals who display HR competencies. Criterion 3: An efficient HR function would invest in training, development and growth of its HR professionals. Nowadays, HR professionals make use of systemic-based competencies in order to map defined set of the HR Value Proposition and hence enhance and improve the strategies delineated by Ulrich and Brockbank so as to deliver appropriate value to stakeholders. The efforts taken by the HR professional put in action the HR proposition model by having casual link between initiatives taken by the HRs and business results desired. Instead of having a line of sight with the key stakeholders expressed in words and tables, an orderly among the HR Value Propositions provide HR professionals a clear vision as to how they should actually act so as to deliver stakeholder values. (Stuart E Woodhead, 2000) Mapping out the HR Value Proposition model provides a clear vision and framework that formulates the role of HR professionals as the service key business driver that delivers the proper stakeholder value, going beyond just theoretical model and language. It provides a fabric that generates a shared interpretation of the business, significantly assisting the communication efforts. Hence with the proper programs and policies available, it facilitates a desired environment and culture. Thus by using relevant tools and techniques required to corroborate the systemic-based competencies, the HR professionals can link the fourteen criteria of HR Value Proposition model and incorporates them into well functioning systematic HR business model. (Becker, 2002) In order to understand the working and mapping of Ulrich and Brockbank 14 criteria can be mapped using application of 2 mapping techniques, which are: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ System Dynamics mapping à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Socio-ecological mapping. System Dynamics mapping is centre to the growth of stakeholders driver model which makes the visible connections between employee growths, capabilities of an organization, experience of customers and returns of the investor. (Tuominen, 2004) Socio-ecological mapping is needed to carry on strategic reviews and growth in the surroundings which have become unpredictable due to intangibles. It is required to represent social trends between and within an organization and its surroundings. Diagram below gives a perspective of a high level system of the HR Value Proposition and extent of these two mapping techniques. Figure 2: System viewpoint of HR Value Proposition System dynamic mapping: System Dynamics mapping gives a technique of describing the underlying structure which establishes a blueprint of events that can more often than not contemplate changes in the efficiency of intangibles like increasing waste, cyclic phenomena in supply chains, lack of innovation, declining sales, worker burnout, and so on. (Spickett-Jones, 2003) The uses of system dynamic mapping for a HR professional are as follows: 1. Modeling and mapping the delivery of the stakeholder values over a particular frame of time (productivity, profitability, customer share etc.) in accordance with the levels of availability of tangible and intangible resources (knowledge, customers, staff, relationship management, suppliers, innovation, reputation, etc.) 2. Exploring and researching new business options like, developing a business case for practicing a new learning and growth initiative by figuring the effects of top line i.e. revenue and bottom line i.e. cost on the business performance. 3. Researching and exploring methods to solve a given problem like, exploring different options for improving the falling service quality. Socio-ecological mapping: Socio ecological mapping refers to the people in the concerned environment. Socio-ecological mapping is necessary for understanding relationships between the people in the system through different time frames. From time to time, expectations and values of an organization change around the globe. They need to act through their plans in their environments. This leads to creation of an external environment which has discontinuous and dramatic shifts in its social values and expectations from the community. This leads to a situation when people continuously change their minds regarding the choices about certain services and products. HR professionals should be able to recognize any significant changes socially that can affect their organization because such unsettling and unpredictable surrounding acts upon their industry or concerned organization. Hence, they will need to direct their strategic planning process and plans in accordance with these changes and need to build an organizational environment around, which has continuous learning and information about the surroundings in case their organizations have to be successful for the long term. In order to understand which technique should be used in what environment let us consider two situations. The first situation considers the end results of HR personnel not following socio-ecological representation in an area thats part of the HR Value Proposition as the External Business Realities element. It has not been made explicit by Brochbank and Ulrich. Regardless, this area is necessary for survival of business in the new era of service or knowledge oriented economy. The second situation studies a position in which HR professionals use Systems Dynamics representation to display how their efforts add stakeholder value. Both situations involve System Dynamics mapping for the criteria titled as Serving external and internal stakeholder in the HR Value Proposition Model. In one case, the contribution was important and distinct while in other case was not so significant. Figure 3: Organization in framework with its surroundings Figure 4: Organization in situation with its Industry surroundings The term extended social field addresses to the area beyond the organizations industry environment. This is also in reference with the wider or global community as in contextual environment. According to criterion 1: An efficient and efficient HR function is one which one which HR professionals who can acknowledge the external business environments and realities and adapt measures in such a way to combat these situation, allocating HR resources and apply HR practices accordingly. It insists on the fact that organization should pay attention to its environment outside the firm. The HR professionals should be able to engage in conversation regarding the changes in external surroundings like changes in economy, rates technologies and so on. In order to keep them informed about the new information, HR professionals should conduct environmental scans using processes which have been transformed from OST (Open Systems Theory). OST is social science knowledge body that manages people and their organizations and should have an open, clear, adaptive and active relationship with their surroundings over time so as to ensure viability and good results. It also says that people can be seen as purposeful and informative open systems that can change and generate systems and their surroundings. Serving external and internal stakeholders other criteria are: Criterion 2- an efficient HR function is generating market value for its investors by increasing intangibles. Criterion 3- A good HR function increases the customer share by connecting with its target customers. Criterion 4- An efficient HR function assists its line managers to deliver strategies by developing capabilities of an organization. Criterion 5: A good HR function elucidates and lays down base for employee value proposition and improves individual abilities. These criteria are being depicted in Figure 4 which concerns the Organization in context with the industry environment. Hence we can see that representing the information in form a systematic form makes it easier for organization-industry interface to provide HR professionals with chances to make clear, significant and visible necessary contributions to performance of business forming a unique view; so as to adapt with increasingly significant and emerging new service or knowledge oriented economy. Research Questions The concern here is to verify the extent till which, GASCOs HR system delivers value proposition. For this purpose, we will use the Ulrich model as shown in literature review and will verify the 5 dimensions of the model in GASCO. In this report, we will check whether the five dimensions in Ulrich model are satisfied in GASCO and will comment on the value proposition of companys HR system. The concerned objectives would be as follows: Ulrichs Value proposition dimension Criterias to check for Knowing the external business realities Checking for HRMs efficiency in understanding realities of external business and thus adding value. Serving External and Internal Stakeholders Any increase in the value of investors money by HR system. HR capacity to increase customer share HRs capacity to motivate line mangers to participate in strategic issue. Enhancing individuals ability Creating HR practices Management of employees in such a way that add to value Managing performance of the employees Information is correctly managed and utilized Hr manages work flow design and adds value to the organization. Building HR resources HR alignment to strategic objectives of the business HRs clear strategic planning process and alignment of strategic business objectives with HR objectives Ensuring Professionalism To check the presence of a professional HR system Training and developments presence in the organization. Methodology The methodology involves conducing survey analysis to test the research questions in GASCO as presented in above section. The methodology is divided into two parts: Literature review and finding the factors we should look for finding the value proposition of GASCO Prepare separate questionnaire for every dimension (5 separate questionnaires) Analysis of the result using excel charts The questionnaires would be distributed to HRs in the company. With a small help from of one of our contact in GASCO, we distributed these instruments in the company in which 30 people from HR staff participated. The questionnaires are designed so that they address every aspect of research questions given above. Questionnaire: Knowing the external business realities Do you keep the track of competitors strategies and use the information in forming HR practices? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you keep the track of quality of Human resource existing in the market? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you conduct regular meeting (formal or informal) with the HRs of competitors so that you can get aware of the external environment of the HR system in the industry? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you aware yourself with the rules and regulation of the government that are existing and that can exit in future to make a better HR policy? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you choose employees taking into consideration the relations with the suppliers, contractors, clients etc? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you consider the cultural aspect of the employees in your HR systems? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Taking the example of the giant recession which the world recently faced, did you took any steps like shortening of work force, reduction of pay to respond to the situation and cut the cost? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree As GASCO is an exploration firm, do you intake scientist and other post of employees taking into mind the kind of work going on in the industry? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Technology keeps on changing, when you hire an employee, do you keep in mind the present and future techno skills which the employee should know? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you conduct regular training to bridge the gap between present skills and those required as according to recent external environment characteristics? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Questionnaire: Serving internal and external stakeholder Do you keep an eye on companys intangibles and try to increase these in GASCO? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you conduct regular training for the employees to increase their capabilities? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do your staff is in contact of the customers? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you keep an eye on the organizational suppliers and try to maintain and build strong relationships with the suppliers? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you take the feedback of your distributors and other stakeholders and then apply them in modifying your HR strategies? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you encourage your line managers to come up with a solution on their own and appreciate employee participation? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do your staff make regular visit at customer end and try their best to understand the need of the customers and deliver them on time? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree As GASCO is an exploration firm, do you intake scientist and other post of employees feedback in aligning the need of the organization with current trend in the market? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you keep an awareness of investors attitude towards the company? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you make changes in your policy as to consider the investors reaction? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Questionnaire: Creating HR practices Do you keep try to create policies that helps in building up a culture rather than making just a profitable entity? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you conduct performance appraisal of employees on regular basis so that possible value addition action can be taken? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you appreciate any value addition in employee by proving certifications or by rewarding the employees adding some value in the firm? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you manages the work flow so that every step, the value can be recognized? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you use value chain analysis in your system? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you encourage performance management techniques at the workplace? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do your ensure work life balance so that more satisfaction can be creating for employees and the job turnover rate can be enhances? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you take employee feedback and try to use these feedbacks in ways that ensure value addition to the organization? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you keep information about the employees, their skills, areas of expertise, potential etc? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you create a culture of learning and learning sharing? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Questionnaire: Building HR resources Are you aware of Strategic plans of the business? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you make adjustment in the organizational human resource, in terms of number of employees, posts in firm etc? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you make a periodic diagnosis of the firms requirement and then predict future requirements? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you enter into practices like Knowledge management or Learning Management system that can give you a strategic advantage? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you hire employees keeping in mind future need of the organization? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you take steps to store the knowledge of the present employees so that even in the case these employees do not remain the part of the firm, but still there best practices can be stores in a knowledge base? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you have a position like KMO or Knowledge management officer so look after the suture aspect of the company? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Are your plans for strategic Human Resource planning transparent and everyone is aware with the same? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you considered the case where GASCO enters into another strategic partnership with a new firm and to deal with issues like cross cultural management, work force diversification etc? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you have a clear strategic planning process? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Questionnaire: Ensuring HR professionalism Does HR system in the company have clear roles? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you have a clear documented HR policy which is well structured and is comparable to best practices in the industry? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree As the workforce is UAE is devised in terms of religion background, educational history, culture etc. do your policies are neutral for all of the employees and are you can equal opportunity employer? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you follow a well framed system for recruitment and selection? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you have a policy document for various aspect of Human Resource Management in the organization? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you keep the record of previous training and development of employees and make provision for future training according to that only? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you think that HR practices in GASCO helps employees to find their core competencies and which in turn, help the company to generate its own competencies? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you conduct training for recruiters and other HR staff regularly? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Are you connected to any professional HR practice organization which provides you regular guidelines to work and helps you to standardize your HR system and practices? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Do you have a clear strategic planning process? Strongly Agree Agree Dont know Disagree Strongly disagree Presentation of results Result for knowing the external business realities Do you keep the track of competitors strategies and use the information in forming HR practices? Do you keep the track of quality of Human resource existing in the market? Do you conduct regular meeting (formal or informal) with the HRs of competitors so that you can get aware of the external environment of the HR system in the industry? Do you aware yourself with the rules and regulation of the government that are existing and that can exit in future to make a better HR policy? Do you choose employees taking into consideration the relations with the suppliers, contractors, clients etc? Do you consider the cultural aspect of the employees in your HR systems? Taking the example of the giant recession which the world recently faced, did you took any steps like shortening of work force, reduction of pay to respond to the situation and cut the cost? As GASCO is an exploration firm, do you intake scientist and other post of employees taking into mind the kind of work going on in the industry? Technology keeps on changing, when you hire an employee, do you keep in mind the present and future techno skills which the employee should know? Do you conduct regular training to bridge the gap between present skills and those required as according to recent external environment characteristic

Literature review about data warehouse

Literature review about data warehouse CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION Chapter 2 provides literature review about data warehouse, OLAP MDDB and data mining concept. We reviewed concept, characteristics, design and implementation approach of each above mentioned technology to identify a suitable data warehouse framework. This framework will support integration of OLAP MDDB and data mining model. Section 2.2 discussed about the fundamental of data warehouse which includes data warehouse models and data processing techniques such as extract, transform and loading (ETL) processes. A comparative study was done on data warehouse models introduced by William Inmons (Inmon, 1999), Ralph Kimball (Kimball, 1996) and Matthias Nicola (Nicola, 2000) to identify suitable model, design and characteristics. Section 2.3 introduces about OLAP model and architecture. We also discussed concept of processing in OLAP based MDDB, MDDB schema design and implementation. Section 2.4 introduces data mining techniques, methods and processes for OLAP mining (OLAM) which is used to mine MDDB. Section 2.5 provides conclusion on literature review especially pointers on our decision to propose a new data warehouse model. Since we propose to use Microsoft  ® product to implement the propose model, we also discussed a product comparison to justify why Microsoft  ® product is selected. 2.2 DATA WAREHOUSE According to William Inmon, data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and non-volatile collection of data in support of the managements decision-making process (Inmon, 1999). Data warehouse is a database containing data that usually represents the business history of an organization. This historical data is used for analysis that supports business decisions at many levels, from strategic planning to performance evaluation of a discrete organizational unit. It provides an effective integration of operational databases into an environment that enables strategic use of data (Zhou, Hull, King and Franchitti, 1995). These technologies include relational and MDDB management systems, client/server architecture, meta-data modelling and repositories, graphical user interface and much more (Hammer, Garcia-Molina, Labio, Widom, and Zhuge, 1995; Harinarayan, Rajaraman, and Ullman, 1996). The emergence of cross discipline domain such as knowledge management in finance, health and e-commerce have proved that vast amount of data need to be analysed. The evolution of data in data warehouse can provide multiple dataset dimensions to solve various problems. Thus, critical decision making process of this dataset needs suitable data warehouse model (Barquin and Edelstein, 1996). The main proponents of data warehouse are William Inmon (Inmon, 1999) and Ralph Kimball (Kimball, 1996). But they have different perspectives on data warehouse in term of design and architecture. Inmon (Inmon, 1999) defined data warehouse as a dependent data mart structure while Kimball (Kimball, 1996) defined data warehouse as a bus based data mart structure. Table 2.1 discussed the differences in data warehouse structure between William Inmon and Ralph Kimball. A data warehouse is a read-only data source where end-users are not allowed to change the values or data elements. Inmons (Inmon, 1999) data warehouse architecture strategy is different from Kimballs (Kimball, 1996). Inmons data warehouse model splits data marts as a copy and distributed as an interface between data warehouse and end users. Kimballs views data warehouse as a unions of data marts. The data warehouse is the collections of data marts combine into one central repository. Figure 2.1 illustrates the differences between Inmons and Kimballs data warehouse architecture adopted from (Mailvaganam, 2007). Although Inmon and Kimball have a different design view of data warehouse, they do agree on successful implementation of data warehouse that depends on an effective collection of operational data and validation of data mart. The role of database staging and ETL processes on data are inevitable components in both researchers data warehouse design. Both believed that dependant data warehouse architecture is necessary to fulfil the requirement of enterprise end users in term of preciseness, timing and data relevancy 2.2.1 DATA WAREHOUSE ARCHITECTURE Although data warehouse architecture have wide research scope, and it can be viewed in many perspectives. (Thilini and Hugh, 2005) and (Eckerson, 2003) provide some meaningful way to view and analyse data warehouse architecture. Eckerson states that a successful data warehouse system depends on database staging process which derives data from different integrated Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) system. In this case, ETL process plays a crucial role to make database staging process workable. Survey on factors that influenced selection on data warehouse architecture by (Thilini, 2005) indentifies five data warehouse architecture that are common in use as shown in Table 2.2 Independent Data Marts Independent data marts also known as localized or small scale data warehouse. It is mainly used by departments, divisions of company to provide individual operational databases. This type of data mart is simple yet consists of different form that was derived from multiple design structures from various inconsistent database designs. Thus, it complicates cross data mart analysis. Since every organizational units tend to build their own database which operates as independent data mart (Thilini and Hugh, 2005) cited the work of (Winsberg, 1996) and (Hoss, 2002), it is best used as an ad-hoc data warehouse and also to be use as a prototype before building a real data warehouse. Data Mart Bus Architecture (Kimball, 1996) pioneered the design and architecture of data warehouse with unions of data marts which are known as the bus architecture or virtual data warehouse. Bus architecture allows data marts not only located in one server but it can be also being located on different server. This allows the data warehouse to functions more in virtual mode and combined all data marts and process as one data warehouse. Hub-and-spoke architecture (Inmon, 1999) developed hub and spoke architecture. The hub is the central server taking care of information exchange and the spoke handle data transformation for all regional operation data stores. Hub and spoke mainly focused on building a scalable and maintainable infrastructure for data warehouse. Centralized Data Warehouse Architecture Central data warehouse architecture build based on hub-and-spoke architecture but without the dependent data mart component. This architecture copies and stores heterogeneous operational and external data to a single and consistent data warehouse. This architecture has only one data model which are consistent and complete from all data sources. According to (Inmon, 1999) and (Kimball, 1996), central data warehouse should consist of database staging or known as operational data store as an intermediate stage for operational processing of data integration before transform into the data warehouse. Federated Architecture According to (Hackney, 2000), federated data warehouse is an integration of multiple heterogeneous data marts, database staging or operational data store, combination of analytical application and reporting systems. The concept of federated focus on integrated framework to make data warehouse more reliable. (Jindal, 2004) conclude that federated data warehouse are a practical approach as it focus on higher reliability and provide excellent value. (Thilini and Hugh, 2005) conclude that hub and spoke and centralized data warehouse architectures are similar. Hub and spoke is faster and easier to implement because no data mart are required. For centralized data warehouse architecture scored higher than hub and spoke as for urgency needs for relatively fast implementation approach. In this work, it is very important to identify which data warehouse architecture that is robust and scalable in terms of building and deploying enterprise wide systems. (Laney, 2000), states that selection of appropriate data warehouse architecture must incorporate successful characteristic of various data warehouse model. It is evident that two data warehouse architecture prove to be popular as shown by (Thilini and Hugh, 2005), (Eckerson, 2003) and (Mailvaganam, 2007). First hub-and-spoke proposed by (Inmon, 1999) as it is a data warehouse with dependant data marts and secondly is the data mart bus architecture with dimensional data marts proposed by (Kimball, 1996). The selection of the new proposed model will use hub-and-spoke data warehouse architecture which can be used for MDDB modelling. 2.2.2 DATA WAREHOUSE EXTRACT, TRANSFORM, LOADING Data warehouse architecture process begins with ETL process to ensure the data passes the quality threshold. According to Evin (2001), it is essential to have right dataset. ETL are an important component in data warehouse environment to ensure dataset in the data warehouse are cleansed from various OLTP systems. ETLs are also responsible for running scheduled tasks that extract data from OLTP systems. Typically, a data warehouse is populated with historical information from within a particular organization (Bunger, Colby, Cole, McKenna, Mulagund, and Wilhite, 2001). The complete process descriptions of ETL are discussed in table 2.3. Data warehouse database can be populated with a wide variety of data sources from different locations, thus collecting all the different dataset and storing it in one central location is an extremely challenging task (Calvanese, Giacomo, Lenzerini, Nardi, and Rosati, , 2001). However, ETL processes eliminate the complexity of data population via simplified process as depicts in figure 2.2. The ETL process begins with data extract from operational databases where data cleansing and scrubbing are done, to ensure all datas are validated. Then it is transformed to meet the data warehouse standards before it is loaded into data warehouse. (Zhou et al, 1995) states that during data integration process in data warehouse, ETL can assist in import and export of operational data between heterogeneous data sources using Object linking and embedding database (OLE-DB) based architecture where the data are transform to populate all validated data into data warehouse. In (Kimball, 1996) data warehouse architecture as depicted in figure 2.3 focuses on three important modules, which is the back room presentation server and the front room. ETL processes is implemented in the back room process, where the data staging services in charge of gathering all source systems operational databases to perform extraction of data from source systems from different file format from different systems and platforms. The second step is to run the transformation process to ensure all inconsistency is removed to ensure data integrity. Finally, it is loaded into data marts. The ETL processes are commonly executed from a job control via scheduling task. The presentation server is the data warehouse where data marts are stored and process here. Data stored in star schema consist of dimension and fact tables. This is where data are then process of in the front room where it is access by query services such as reporting tools, desktop tools, OLAP and data mining tools. Although ETL processes prove to be an essential component to ensure data integrity in data warehouse, the issue of complexity and scalability plays important role in deciding types of data warehouse architecture. One way to achieve a scalable, non-complex solution is to adopt a hub-and-spoke architecture for the ETL process. According to Evin (2001), ETL best operates in hub-and-spoke architecture because of its flexibility and efficiency. Centralized data warehouse design can influence the maintenance of full access control of ETL processes. ETL processes in hub and spoke data warehouse architecture is recommended in (Inmon, 1999) and (Kimball, 1996). The hub is the data warehouse after processing data from operational database to staging database and the spoke(s) are the data marts for distributing data. Sherman, R (2005) state that hub-and-spoke approach uses one-to-many interfaces from data warehouse to many data marts. One-to-many are simpler to implement, cost effective in a long run and ensure consistent dimensions. Compared to many-to-many approach it is more complicated and costly. 2.2.3 DATA WAREHOUSE FAILURE AND SUCCESS FACTORS Building a data warehouse is indeed a challenging task as data warehouse project inheriting a unique characteristics that may influence the overall reliability and robustness of data warehouse. These factors can be applied during the analysis, design and implementation phases which will ensure a successful data warehouse system. Section 2.2.3.1 focus on factors that influence data warehouse project failure. Section 2.2.3.2 discusses on the success factors which implementing the correct model to support a successful data warehouse project. 2.2.3.1 DATA WAREHOUSE FAILURE FACTORS (Hayen, Rutashobya, and Vetter, 2007) studies shows that implementing a data warehouse project is costly and risky as a data warehouse project can cost over $1 million in the first year. It is estimated that two-thirds of the effort of setting up the data warehouse projects attempt will fail eventually. (Hayen et al, 2007) cited on the work of (Briggs, 2002) and (Vassiliadis, 2004) noticed three factors for the failure of data warehouse project which is environment, project and technical factors as shown in table 2.4. Environment leads to organization changes in term of business, politics, mergers, takeovers and lack of top management support. These include human error, corporate culture, decision making process and poor change management (Watson, 2004) (Hayen et al, 2007). Poor technical knowledge on the requirements of data definitions and data quality from different organization units may cause data warehouse failure. Incompetent and insufficient knowledge on data integration, poor selection on data warehouse model and data warehouse analysis applications may cause huge failure. In spite of heavy investment on hardware, software and people, poor project management factors may lead data warehouse project failure. For example, assigning a project manager that lacks of knowledge and project experience in data warehouse, may cause impediment of quantifying the return on investment (ROI) and achievement of project triple constraint (cost, scope, time). Data ownership and accessibility is a potential factor that may cause data warehouse project failure. This is considered vulnerable issue within the organization that one must not share or acquire someone else data as this considered losing authority on the data (Vassiliadis, 2004). Thus, it emphasis restriction on any departments to declare total ownership of pure clean and error free data that might cause potential problem on ownership of data rights. 2.2.3.2 DATA WAREHOUSE SUCCESS FACTORS (Hwang M.I., 2007) stress that data warehouse implementations are an important area of research and industrial practices but only few researches made an assessment in the critical success factors for data warehouse implementations. He conducted a survey on six data warehouse researchers (Watson Haley, 1997; Chen et al., 2000; Wixom Watson, 2001; Watson et al., 2001; Hwang Cappel, 2002; Shin, 2003) on the success factors in a data warehouse project. He concluded his survey with a list of successful factors which influenced data warehouse implementation as depicted in figure 2.8. He shows eight implementation factors which will directly affect the six selected success variables The above mentioned data warehouse success factors provide an important guideline for implementing a successful data warehouse projects. (Hwang M.I., 2007) studies shows an integrated selection of various factors such as end user participation, top management support, acquisition of quality source data with profound and well-defined business needs plays crucial role in data warehouse implementation. Beside that, other factors that was highlighted by Hayen R.L. (2007) cited on the work of Briggs (2002) and Vassiliadis (2004), Watson (2004) such as project, environment and technical knowledge also influenced data warehouse implementation. Summary In this work on the new proposed model, hub-and-spoke architecture is use as Central repository service, as many scholars including Inmon, Kimball, Evin, Sherman and Nicola adopt to this data warehouse architecture. This approach allows locating the hub (data warehouse) and spokes (data marts) centrally and can be distributed across local or wide area network depending on business requirement. In designing the new proposed model, the hub-and-spoke architecture clearly identifies six important data warehouse components that a data warehouse should have, which includes ETL, Staging Database or operational database store, Data marts, MDDB, OLAP and data mining end users applications such as Data query, reporting, analysis, statistical tools. However, this process may differ from organization to organization. Depending on the ETL setup, some data warehouse may overwrite old data with new data and in some data warehouse may only maintain history and audit trial of all changes of the data. 2.3 ONLINE ANALYTICAL PROCESSING OLAP Council (1997) define OLAP as a group of decision support system that facilitate fast, consistent and interactive access of information that has been reformulate, transformed and summarized from relational dataset mainly from data warehouse into MDDB which allow optimal data retrieval and for performing trend analysis. According to Chaudhuri (1997), Burdick, D. et al. (2006) and Vassiladis, P. (1999), OLAP is important concept for strategic database analysis. OLAP have the ability to analyze large amount of data for the extraction of valuable information. Analytical development can be of business, education or medical sectors. The technologies of data warehouse, OLAP, and analyzing tools support that ability. OLAP enable discovering pattern and relationship contain in business activity by query tons of data from multiple database source systems at one time (Nigel. P., 2008). Processing database information using OLAP required an OLAP server to organize and transformed and builds MDDB. MDDB are then separated by cubes for client OLAP tools to perform data analysis which aim to discover new pattern relationship between the cubes. Some popular OLAP server software programs include Oracle (C), IBM (C) and Microsoft (C). Madeira (2003) supports the fact that OLAP and data warehouse are complementary technology which blends together. Data warehouse stores and manages data while OLAP transforms data warehouse datasets into strategic information. OLAP function ranges from basic navigation and browsing (often known as slice and dice), to calculations and also serious analysis such as time series and complex modelling. As decision-makers implement more advanced OLAP capabilities, they move from basic data access to creation of information and to discovering of new knowledge. 2.3.4 OLAP ARCHITECTURE In comparison to data warehouse which usually based on relational technology, OLAP uses a multidimensional view to aggregate data to provide rapid access to strategic information for analysis. There are three type of OLAP architecture based on the method in which they store multi-dimensional data and perform analysis operations on that dataset (Nigel, P., 2008). The categories are multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP), relational OLAP (ROLAP) and hybrid OLAP (HOLAP). In MOLAP as depicted in Diagram 2.11, datasets are stored and summarized in a multidimensional cube. The MOLAP architecture can perform faster than ROLAP and HOLAP (C). MOLAP cubes designed and build for rapid data retrieval to enhance efficient slicing and dicing operations. MOLAP can perform complex calculations which have been pre-generated after cube creation. MOLAP processing is restricted to initial cube that was created and are not bound to any additional replication of cube. In ROLAP as depict in Diagram 2.12, data and aggregations are stored in relational database tables to provide the OLAP slicing and dicing functionalities. ROLAP are the slowest among the OLAP flavours. ROLAP relies on data manipulating directly in the relational database to give the manifestation of conventional OLAPs slicing and dicing functionality. Basically, each slicing and dicing action is equivalent to adding a WHERE clause in the SQL statement. (C) ROLAP can manage large amounts of data and ROLAP do not have any limitations for data size. ROLAP can influence the intrinsic functionality in a relational database. ROLAP are slow in performance because each ROLAP activity are essentially a SQL query or multiple SQL queries in the relational database. The query time and number of SQL statements executed measures by its complexity of the SQL statements and can be a bottleneck if the underlying dataset size is large. ROLAP essentially depends on SQL statements generation to query the relational database and do not cater all needs which make ROLAP technology conventionally limited by what SQL functionality can offer. (C) HOLAP as depict in Diagram 2.13, combine the technologies of MOLAP and ROLAP. Data are stored in ROLAP relational database tables and the aggregations are stored in MOLAP cube. HOLAP can drill down from multidimensional cube into the underlying relational database data. To acquire summary type of information, HOLAP leverages cube technology for faster performance. Whereas to retrieve detail type of information, HOLAP can drill down from the cube into the underlying relational data. (C) In OLAP architectures (MOLAP, ROLAP and HOLAP), the datasets are stored in a multidimensional format as it involves the creation of multidimensional blocks called data cubes (Harinarayan, 1996). The cube in OLAP architecture may have three axes (dimensions), or more. Each axis (dimension) represents a logical category of data. One axis may for example represent the geographic location of the data, while others may indicate a state of time or a specific school. Each of the categories, which will be described in the following section, can be broken down into successive levels and it is possible to drill up or down between the levels. Cabibo (1997) states that OLAP partitions are normally stored in an OLAP server, with the relational database frequently stored on a separate server from OLAP server. OLAP server must query across the network whenever it needs to access the relational tables to resolve a query. The impact of querying across the network depends on the performance characteristics of the network itself. Even when the relational database is placed on the same server as OLAP server, inter-process calls and the associated context switching are required to retrieve relational data. With a OLAP partition, calls to the relational database, whether local or over the network, do not occur during querying. 2.3.3 OLAP FUNCTIONALITY OLAP functionality offers dynamic multidimensional analysis supporting end users with analytical activities includes calculations and modelling applied across dimensions, trend analysis over time periods, slicing subsets for on-screen viewing, drilling to deeper levels of records (OLAP Council, 1997) OLAP is implemented in a multi-user client/server environment and provide reliably fast response to queries, in spite of database size and complexity. OLAP facilitate the end user integrate enterprise information through relative, customized viewing, analysis of historical and present data in various what-if data model scenario. This is achieved through use of an OLAP Server as depicted in diagram 2.9. OLAP functionality is provided by an OLAP server. OLAP server design and data structure are optimized for fast information retrieval in any course and flexible calculation and transformation of unprocessed data. The OLAP server may either actually carry out the processed multidimensional information to distribute consistent and fast response times to end users, or it may fill its data structures in real time from relational databases, or offer a choice of both. Essentially, OLAP create information in cube form which allows more composite analysis compares to relational database. OLAP analysis techniques employ slice and dice and drilling methods to segregate data into loads of information depending on given parameters. Slice is identifying a single value for one or more variable which is non-subset of multidimensional array. Whereas dice function is application of slice function on more than two dimensions of multidimensional cubes. Drilling function allows end user to traverse between condensed data to most precise data unit as depict in Diagram 2.10. 2.3.5 MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATABASE SCHEMA The base of every data warehouse system is a relational database build using a dimensional model. Dimensional model consists of fact and dimension tables which are described as star schema or snowflake schema (Kimball, 1999). A schema is a collection of database objects, tables, views and indexes (Inmon, 1996). To understand dimensional data modelling, Table 2.10 defines some of the terms commonly used in this type of modelling: In designing data models for data warehouse, the most commonly used schema types are star schema and snowflake schema. In the star schema design, fact table sits in the middle and is connected to other surrounding dimension tables like a star. A star schema can be simple or complex. A simple star consists of one fact table; a complex star can have more than one fact table. Most data warehouses use a star schema to represent the multidimensional data model. The database consists of a single fact table and a single table for each dimension. Each tuple in the fact table consists of a pointer or foreign key to each of the dimensions that provide its multidimensional coordinates, and stores the numeric measures for those coordinates. A tuple consist of a unit of data extracted from cube in a range of member from one or more dimension tables. (C, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa216769%28SQL.80%29.aspx). Each dimension table consists of columns that correspond to attributes of the dimension. Diagram 2.14 shows an example of a star schema For Medical Informatics System. Star schemas do not explicitly provide support for attribute hierarchies which are not suitable for architecture such as MOLAP which require lots of hierarchies of dimension tables for efficient drilling of datasets. Snowflake schemas provide a refinement of star schemas where the dimensional hierarchy is explicitly represented by normalizing the dimension tables, as shown in Diagram 2.15. The main advantage of the snowflake schema is the improvement in query performance due to minimized disk storage requirements and joining smaller lookup tables. The main disadvantage of the snowflake schema is the additional maintenance efforts needed due to the increase number of lookup tables. (C) Levene. M (2003) stresses that in addition to the fact and dimension tables, data warehouses store selected summary tables containing pre-aggregated data. In the simplest cases, the pre-aggregated data corresponds to aggregating the fact table on one or more selected dimensions. Such pre-aggregated summary data can be represented in the database in at least two ways. Whether to use star or a snowflake mainly depends on business needs. 2.3.2 OLAP Evaluation As OLAP technology taking prominent place in data warehouse industry, there should be a suitable assessment tool to evaluate it. E.F. Codd not only invented OLAP but also provided a set of procedures which are known as the Twelve Rules for OLAP product ability assessment which include data manipulation, unlimited dimensions and aggregation levels and flexible reporting as shown in Table 2.8 (Codd, 1993): Codd twelve rules of OLAP provide us an essential tool to verify the OLAP functions and OLAP models used are able to produce desired result. Berson, A. (2001) stressed that a good OLAP system should also support a complete database management tools as a utility for integrated centralized tool to permit database management to perform distribution of databases within the enterprise. OLAP ability to perform drilling mechanism within the MDDB allows the functionality of drill down right to the source or root of the detail record level. This implies that OLAP tool permit a smooth changeover from the MDDB to the detail record level of the source relational database. OLAP systems also must support incremental database refreshes. This is an important feature as to prevent stability issues on operations and usability problems when the size of the database increases. 2.3.1 OLTP and OLAP The design of OLAP for multidimensional cube is entirely different compare to OLTP for database. OLTP is implemented into relational database to support daily processing in an organization. OLTP system main function is to capture data into computers. OLTP allow effective data manipulation and storage of data for daily operational resulting in huge quantity of transactional data. Organisations build multiple OLTP systems to handle huge quantities of daily operations transactional data can in short period of time. OLAP is designed for data access and analysis to support managerial user strategic decision making process. OLAP technology focuses on aggregating datasets into multidimensional view without hindering the system performance. According to Han, J. (2001), states OLTP systems as Customer oriented and OLAP is a market oriented. He summarized major differences between OLTP and OLAP system based on 17 key criteria as shown in table 2.7. It is complicated to merge OLAP and OLTP into one centralized database system. The dimensional data design model used in OLAP is much more effective for querying than the relational database query used in OLTP system. OLAP may use one central database as data source and OLTP used different data source from different database sites. The dimensional design of OLAP is not suitable for OLTP system, mainly due to redundancy and the loss of referential integrity of the data. Organization chooses to have two separate information systems, one OLTP and one OLAP system (Poe, V., 1997). We can conclude that the purpose of OLTP systems is to get data into computers, whereas the purpose of OLAP is to get data or information out of computers. 2.4 DATA MINING Many data mining scholars (Fayyad, 1998; Freitas, 2002; Han, J. et. al., 1996; Frawley, 1992) have defined data mining as discovering hidden patterns from historical datasets by using pattern recognition as it involves searching for specific, unknown information in a database. Chung, H. (1999) and Fayyad et al (1996) referred data mining as a step of knowledge discovery in database and it is the process of analyzing data and extracts knowledge from a large database also known as data warehouse (Han, J., 2000) and making it into useful information. Freitas (2002) and Fayyad (1996) have recognized the advantageous tool of data mining for extracting knowledge from a da