Bridging Academic and Career Competencies Essay

The university learning goals are essential skills that hiring managers look for when reviewing applications. Knowing how to incorporate the learning goals into your career competencies can help you in the application and career-search process. Fill in the following table with 100-word summaries of how each university learning goal can help you with career preparedness. University learning goal How each goal prepares you for success in the workplace Professional Competence and Values Professional Competence and Values prepares me for success in the workplace by giving me the classes that I need to be successful in a future career and my personal life. The university providing these courses, which give the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful, is helpful to me since I am not being put into classes that I have nothing to do with my career field. This goal also encourages lifelong learning, which encourages me to take more classes once I graduate from my current program and strive to learn more when I enter my career field post-graduation. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Critical thinking and Problem Solving prepares me for success in the workplace by giving me the skills to be better with how I think about and address problems. While in the workplace, this will help me and has helped me so far to take my thoughts from just a yes or no answer, to answers that I have reflected on more. This goal will also help give me the skills to come up with a more reasoned and detailed solution when solving a problem. With that knowledge, I can explain to my employer the solution I chose for a problem and why I chose it. Communication Communication helps me prepare for success in the workplace by giving me the knowledge I need to be a better formal communicator. Learning how to better use grammar, punctuation, and tone in how I write will help when I need to  send memos to colleagues in my career field. Having that information will help me better communicate to them professionally, and not how I would talk to my friends on a daily basis. Communication will also help with how I present my ideas to others, so that they are easy to understand and respectful of colleagues both in the tone and words that I use. Information Utilization Information Utilization helps me prepare for success in the workplace by helping me to improve my research skills and how I use the information that I find. Having classes where I have to locate answers using the research skills that I already have, causes me to better refine what I am already doing so that when I enter a career field, I will not need assistance if I am looking for information that I may need. This goal also will help me to use the proper information, so that whatever I am working on can be right the first time and negate the need to have to go back and research again. Collaboration Collaboration helps me prepare for success in the workplace by allowing me to work in groups with other students on projects. Collaborating will give the ability to hear and see things from multiple points of view that I do not possess, something that will help me when I get to a career. Collaboration will help me with the ability to trust team members, and not be quick to judge or try to do things on my own, as in my chosen career field, that is not something I will be able to do, and will have to work with others on solutions.

Latitude and Type Your Response

Mapping The Lesson Activities will help you meet these educational goals: Science Inquiry? You will conduct online research, collect information, and communicate your findings In written form. STEM?You will apply scientific tools and knowledge to solve real- world problems in order to grow in your understanding of science as a creative human activity. 21st Century Skills?You will employ online tools for research and analysis, use critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and communicate effectively in order to solve real-world problems. DirectionsWrite a response for each of the following activities. When you have finished, submit your work to your teacher. Check the rubric at the end of this document to make sure your work is meeting the expected criteria. Task 1: Coaching In adventure books and movies, the hero sometimes has to follow a map to find a burled treasure. Today, a new sort of adventure sport has become popular In which people use technology to â€Å"find† tre asures. Coaching involves global positioning satellites, maps, and participants' sense of adventure to locate specific geographic spots.These could be situated in a local area and tracked down In â€Å"real time† or located anywhere on Earth and identified virtually. As you know. Every point on Earth can be Identified by latitude and longitude. In this lesson, you studied how to read points on a map in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude. For example, the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, is located at approximately 470 37†² 14†³ N. 1220 20†² 57†³ W. Use your map reading, Internet searching, and reasoning skills to find the following locations and answer the three questions for each.

No Place to Hide

‘No place to hide’? The realities of leadership in UK supermarkets SKOPE Research Paper No. 91 May 2010 * Irena Grugulis, **Odul Bozkurt and ***Jeremy Clegg * Bradford University School of Management, **Lancaster University Management School, ***Leeds University Business School Editor’s Foreword SKOPE Publications This series publishes the work of the members and associates of SKOPE.A formal editorial process ensures that standards of quality and objectivity are maintained. Orders for publications should be addressed to the SKOPE Secretary, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT Research papers can be downloaded from the website: www. skope. ox. ac. uk ISSN 1466-1535 Abstract This article explores the realities of managerial work in two major British supermarket chains.While the prescriptive literature welcomes the displacement of bureaucratic management by rote with leadership, empirical account s of what managers actually do underscore how the purported tenets of leadership tend to disappear upon closer inspection, even at the discursive level. This study observes and discusses the discrepancy between the rhetoric of leadership articulated by executives at the corporate head offices and the actual roles and responsibilities of managers in stores.Work was tightly controlled and managers had little real freedom. We draw on empirical evidence to argue both that while leadership in practice secured only trivial freedoms such freedoms were highly valued and that academic analysis should follow these managers in their ability to distinguish between rhetorical flourishes and reallife job design. Leadership in practice is mundane and local. Keywords: leadership, leaders, managers, control, deskilling, supermarkets, retailIntroduction This article explores the realities of managerial work in two major British supermarkets chains. While the prescriptive literature welcomes the displ acement of bureaucratic management by rote with leadership (see for example Zaleznik 1992), empirical accounts of what managers and leaders actually do underscore how the purported tenets of ‘leadership’ tend to disappear upon closer inspection, even at the discursive level (Meindl et al. 1985, Alvesson and Sveningsson 2003a, 2003b, Tengblad 2004).Kelly (2008) has taken issue with the tendency in the leadership literature of discounting the ordinary everyday work activity of managers in lieu of a continued effort to theoretically pin down how leadership really ought to be conceptualised. He argues that the common terminology used by various writers conceals a wide diversity of practice and that leadership is locally produced. We join Kelly’s contention that ‘the apparently mundane practices that are made accountable and therefore observable remain unexplicated and actively ignored’ (2008:774) and that this is regrettable.We diverge from his emphasis on the reification of leadership through language games, however, and focus instead on the dissonance between the salience of leadership in the popular and practitioner representations of management jobs and the actual limits to the discretion, initiative and control that managers are able to exercise in the concrete, routine and core practices associated with their roles. This dissonance was actively exploited by the supermarkets’ business models.Celebratory accounts of leadership were cascaded down the managerial hierarchy, from the corporate head office to the departmental managers, to spur managerial staff to greater efforts in routine work. The empirical material we use to support these claims comes from a study of managers and managerial work in the stores of two of Britain’s largest supermarkets. In the four store sites where research was carried out, the work of managers was heavily prescribed, with ordering, product ranges, stock levels, store layouts, pricing , special offers and staffing policies all set out by respective functional divisions at head ffice. Their work was also closely monitored, and their personal performance assessed, through the constant and close inspection of the sales, profit and customer service performance scores of the stores and departments they were responsible for. In line with Hales’ (2005) observations, these managers were not entrepreneurial visionaries, but links in a chain with little real influence over policies and procedures. 1Their work was generally confined to striving to meet a range of very demanding performance targets over which they themselves had little, if any, control. In both supermarket chains, leadership by managers in stores was considered vital for company performance, with ‘the importance of people’ to competing with rival chains and ‘keeping customers satisfied’ repeatedly stressed by the full range of interviewees. Yet this leadership was to be exerc ised in specific and specified ways.Both managers in charge of stores and those in charge of departments had little power over most aspects of their work but were expected to lead, inspire, motivate and monitor staff on customer service (in the widest sense). Head office executives and store-level managers themselves in both chains repeatedly stressed the charismatic and inspirational elements of leadership. In particular, this depiction of leadership required managers to mediate between the dual pressures of much service sector work, to minimise costs but maximise customer service (Taylor and Bain 1999, Korczynski 2001, 2002).In this context, leadership appeared to be a euphemism for the demand that managers mobilise their personal physical, emotional and social resources to make up for the discrepancies between targets and resources and be ardent pursuers of the employer’s end of the wage-effort bargain. This type of contained leadership bears little resemblance to the cele bratory accounts but it is probably a far closer reflection of the realities of workplace practice. While the article stresses the mundane nature of managerial jobs in supermarket stores, it also highlights the way both individual managers and shopfloor workers use the leadership rhetoric.This rhetoric was valued by the managers largely because of its unreality; while they ostensibly ‘bought in’ to the rhetoric, in practice, most were adept at negotiating the dissonance between it and real work and none sought to put its wider tenets into practice. On the shopfloor, the dramatic language of leadership and transformation was used to legitimise managerial freedoms; these were trivial but they nevertheless proved an escape from scripting for people management and were deeply valued by the managers themselves.We elaborate on the constitutive parts of our arguments in the rest of this article. First, we provide a critical review of the popular ways of conceptualising leaders hip in the literature and the way these are problematic in relation to managerial work in practice. Then we introduce the specific context of retail work and of our study to highlight the significance of both to an inquiry into the discrepancy between leadership rhetoric and managerial practice. This is followed by a discussion of the contradictions inherent in 2 eadership on the supermarket shopfloor and the nature of the spaces that remain for initiative and freedom. Managers, Leaders and ‘Real Work’ It is popular to claim that managerial work is changing, that hidebound and bureaucratic managers who impede workplace performance are being (or should be) replaced with charismatic and visionary leaders who know when to subvert rules, inspire enthusiasm in their followers and contribute to corporate dynamism (Zaleznik 1992, Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe 2005). Such claims, clearly, need to be tempered with caution (Storey 2004a, 2004b).Students of business and manage ment have long suffered from those thrills of novelty, which set critical descriptions of the existing and unfashionable against enthusiastic predictions of what an ideal type of the latest fad might look like. An unfair but recurrent practice which, as Storey (2004a) notes, is being repeated for leadership. This advocacy is rendered possible, at least in part, by the paucity of empirical accounts of who leaders are and what it is they actually do (see for example Jackson and Parry 2008).When data is available, authors rarely write about transformational activities. Rather, they stress how ordinary leaders are and how mundane their work is (Carlson 1951, Meindl et al. 1985, Alvesson and Sveningsson 2003a, 2003b, Tengblad 2004). Even charismatic leaders are not unfettered (Robinson and Kerr 2009). Empirical enquiry strips leadership of its universal grandeur and helps depict a practice that is both contested (Collinson 2005) and locally defined (Kelly 2008). Bureaucratic forms of con trol are still going strong (Power 1997, Hales 2002, Protherough and Pick 002) and old-fashioned supervision rather than inspirational leadership is at the heart of most jobs (Delbridge and Lowe 1997, Hales 2005). Kelly (2008), in his analysis of the nature of leadership and the various discourses that surround it, has argued that leadership as a practice is locally defined and here we propose one example of such local definition:. In this study, the requirements of customer service did indeed shape the demand for leadership skills, but not quite in the way that the proponents of the spread of transformational leadership suggest.What was at stake was not an entrepreneurial transformation. On the contrary, managers’ actions were tightly controlled and those controls were increasing. As well as following orders from head office, store and department managers were simultaneously required to inspire, enthuse and motivate the front-line 3 staff they were responsible for. The posit ive connotations of the word leadership helped to motivate individual managers, as they in turn sought to motivate others (Etzioni 1961).Here the dissonance between the leadership rhetoric and workplace realities was not an analytical lacuna but an important part of the process since images of leaders needed to be inspirational rather than accurate. Retail Work Retail work accounts for a significant proportion of the working population, with 12 per cent of UK workers employed in retail (Burt and Sparks 2003). While this work can be skilled, from the glamour of the ‘style labour markets’ (Nickson et al. 2001), to the product knowledge of expert assistants in France (McGauran 2000, 2001), the wide-ranging skills of apprentice-trained workers in Germany (Kirsch et al. 000) or the impressive educational achievements of Chinese retail workers (Gamble 2006), most British jobs are not. For the majority of British supermarkets, the main skills policy pursued is one that is â₠¬Ëœtantamount to a personnel strategy based on zero competence’, zero qualifications, zero training and zero career (Gadrey 2000). Margins are tight and the extensive centralisation and standardisation of supply chains and products (Baron et al. 2001) extends to work and work processes (Felstead et al. 2009).Workers are valued for their presence and their temporal flexibility, not their skills, and presence and temporal flexibility are seldom highly paid. The retail sector accounts for 26 per cent of British low paid workers (Mason et al. 2008) with 75 per cent of sales assistants and 80 per cent of checkout operators compensated at rates below the low pay threshold (Mason and Osborne 2008). Part-time and women workers, who dominate the sector (Arrowsmith and Sisson 1999, Burt and Sparks 2003) are particularly badly affected. Some stores deploy sophisticated human resource anagement techniques such as psychometric tests (Freathy and Sparks 2000) and merit-based pay but these are set against generally low wage rates, rigid control mechanisms and limited discretion (Arrowsmith and Sisson 1999, Broadbridge 2002, Burt and Sparks 2003). Against this backdrop, recent writing on retail employment from a strategic perspective has increasingly emphasised the role of management and managers in the overall performance of companies (Booth and Hamer 2006, Hart et al. 2006). It argues that the link between managers’ work and store (or firm) performance is 4 hrough ‘lay’ workers, in one example, asserting that ‘without strong management and leadership skills, store and employee productivity suffers together with lower staff motivation, ultimately leading to lower profits’ (Hart et al. 2006:281-282). However, lists of actions such as ‘providing good pay and benefits, praise and encouragement and support and training, or even at the most basic level, ensuring employees receive their correct rest periods at work’ (Booth and H amer 2006:299) do not accurately depict the real remit of managers in large-scale retail organisations.Methods and Methodology This research was part of an EPSRC/AIM funded project on the organisation and experience of employment in retailing. Since our main interest was in the processual aspects of work, a multi-pronged, qualitative approach was adopted, as this was best suited to compare and contrast official organisational statements with real life practices and experiences. Research was conducted in two of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, here referred to as Retail 1 and Retail 2, respectively.Retail 1 had 356 stores and employed over 160,000 people. Retail 2’s portfolio of stores included the convenience store format, which brought its total number of stores to 823, but it had slightly fewer employees at around 150,000. By and large, their target clientele overlapped and they were direct competitors with similar market shares. In each supermarket, detailed in terviews were conducted with head office staff who were responsible for determining strategies, setting policies and designing business processes.We were able to review a large amount and range of company material pertaining to company strategy, business models, performance indicators, human resource policies, recruitment and training programmes and change initiatives. Interviews were carried out with top executives in strategy, human resources, training, marketing, accounting, customer services and profit/productivity/performance improvement departments. In addition to this, in each chain, two locations were selected for store-level research; store A and store B at Retail 1, store C and store D at Retail 2.In the stores interviews were conducted with the (general) store managers, who would be managing anywhere between 200 and 400 employees, the secondary tier of between three and five senior managers, who had store-wide responsibility and supervised and coordinated the work of depa rtment managers, and the managers of the 12 to 15 different departments such as produce, customer service, or bakery, as well as a number of shopfloor workers. All of the managers were salaried, while all 5 of the shopfloor workers were hourly-paid. Store interviews with hourly paid workers were the most challenging.Our informants were welcoming and supportive but, owing to the tight margins and pressure on staff, few had time for interviews. The length of interviews with managers ranged from half an hour to multiple sessions of several hours, typically averaging an hour and a half to two hours. Some of the interviews with workers also lasted over an hour, but a number of them had to be interrupted after less than half an hour. All formal interviews were recorded, professionally transcribed and coded using NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis software.In total, 86 interviews were carried out, 46 in Retail 1, 34 in Retail 2, and the rest with a range of outside key informants including a top level executive of a third supermarket chain, industry experts based at the Institute of Grocery Distributors (IGD) and trade union representatives. In addition to the interviews, participant and non-participant observation was carried out by one of the research team at the Retail 1 head office and, more extensively, at one of the two Retail 1 stores included in the study (store A).In addition to observing recruitment group interviews, new employee induction sessions and a range of daily activities in the store, the researcher also worked shifts of 10 to 15 hours a week for six weeks on the delicatessen, fish, rotisserie, pizza and ready-meal counters. A research diary was kept during this part of the fieldwork and transcribed. ‘No Place to Hide’ Leadership was a ‘quality’ that was extensively referenced in the public presentations of managerial career paths in both supermarket chains.Retail 1’s literature on career prospects described the traini ng programme for shopfloor workers who wished to become department managers as being ‘built upon’ their ‘current leadership skills’ through on-the-job training, while that for department managers with ambitions to be store managers or deputies was said to help them ‘perfect their leadership style’. Retail 2’s careers information on the company website directed those with some previous retail management experience and ‘looking to grow into a leadership role’ to the ‘fast-track to Store Manager Development Program’.Hitting the link, interested parties were informed that nobody played a more important role in the supermarket’s everyday operations (turnaround) than the managers in the stores, whose leadership ‘inspires our people to deliver a great everyday customer experience’. Retail 2’s recruitment process for senior managers included psychometric tests that were, among 6 other qualitie s, designed to pick up leadership skills and potential. Retail 1’s rogrammes for management development included selection hurdles such as roleplay sessions where future managers were expected to stand out from among their peers by displaying the desired abilities, with ‘leadership’ prominent among these. While leadership skills and qualities were presented as core to the work of everyone and as particularly central for progression into managerial roles, in stores almost every aspect of work for every kind of employee, from shopfloor workers during their training period all the way to the general store manager, was set out, standardised and occasionally scripted by the experts at head office.Buyers sourced goods and set prices at the head offices, with computer networks monitoring sales in stores and re-ordering supplies. The corporate human resources department set wages and provided clear targets for store managers in terms of staffing, leaving stores with a ba lancing act between resources and targets. Checkout tills used electronic scanning, shelf-stackers followed planograms that provided detailed layout plans for displays, price guns printed out price tags, including reductions, as decided by head office software depending on the time of day. According to long-serving informants, limits on discretion were increasing.The remaining specialist departments, such as the delicatessen counter (which included meats, cheeses and fish) and the bakery, were coming under increasing levels of central control. A trained butcher (now the manager of a non-food department) revealed that most meats were now cut and packaged before arrival in store. The same was true for cheeses. In the smaller stores bakeries worked entirely from deliveries of frozen goods which they re-heated, and in larger stores there was a mix of supplier-packed, frozen, ambient and chilled products and goods baked in store.But even breads baked in store arrived ready made up with i nstructions on times for mixing, proving and baking. The only formally accredited staff in stores were pharmacists employed in special stand-alone units on some sites. Such a policy of standardisation was deliberate and referred to with pride. The wageplanning manager in the Business Improvement Group at Retail 1 head office summarised the challenge as ‘how lazy we can make it†¦ make the process easy for them so it becomes a natural habit’.This close prescription and standardisation of work tasks was not a surprising observation to make of hourly-paid workers, or in the context of retail employment, traditionally known for its reliance on low skills and low wages. What was unusual was that the same restrictions applied to managers. In fact, the managers were under 7 far greater surveillance in terms of observable results. Because performance and productivity measurements were taken at both department and store level, which were then linked back and traceable to ind ividual managers, their performance evaluation was quantified and routinised.There was no comparable performance evaluation of individual shopfloor workers except for those at the tills, although Retail 2 had just introduced a new performance enhancement programme to track the performance of individual workers. Yet these practices, too, only increased the number of indicators by which managers’ performance could be monitored, as the ultimate responsibility for meeting unit-based targets, as well as ensuring that individual workers showed the head-office dictated levels of performance, still lay with the managers.An executive in the productivity improvement division of Retail 2’s head office operations, who had risen through the ranks, observed that the role of store managers had changed considerably over the last twenty years: I think what we probably lost was a bit of the entrepreneurial or tradesmanship of the store manager to say, ‘Oh next week that’s g oing on offer, I want 200 of them next week’. Because they were good traders and experienced. And they knew how they were going to present it. Honestly, when I joined†¦ he store manager where I trained was a bit of a wide boy I suppose, but he would do things like – well he made me do it – Saturday afternoon if we were overstocked, I remember him saying ‘We’re overstocked on lettuces. [Name] go to the front door and stand there and sell your lettuces! ’ And you’d do things like say ‘Come on, here’s your lettuce! Get one for the rabbit! Half price! ’ And you’d literally drop them in people’s baskets as they walked through the door so they almost got no choice but to have your lettuce. productivity improvement manager, Retail 2, Head Office) But in the current arrangements, because of the focus on what Pye (1968) terms the ‘workmanship of certainty’, the emphasis in store for both manag ers and workers was on obedience to instruction. In fact, much of a manager’s work was about ensuring such obedience. [The parent company] is very much about†¦ they use a word quite a lot called compliance and there is a lot of compliance and the phrase they used†¦ was ‘there is no place to hide’ [Was that like an official thing? No, it was kind of like – you know with all the systems, their systems monitor everything, they monitor everything. Every little thing is monitored so there is no place to hide. I am not saying in terms of hiding things that are wrong but they see everything. (senior manager, Retail 1, Store B) A policy backed up by the motto ‘comply then complain’, which had clear implications for the way work was conducted. 8 [I]f the company says to you 9am Monday morning stand on one leg in the oyer, I want you to do it, at 9am and if that’s all of you, I want you to do it but then you’ll all stand there th inking why on God’s earth are we doing this, then ask the question, why do we need to do this? What benefit am I getting from it? But do it in the first place before you even complain about it, because until you’ve tried it you don’t know what it’s going to do, but it’s driving that culture. (general store manager, Retail 1, Store A) This approach was generally greeted with enthusiasm. I love this comply and then complain.You know because you put it right, you do it the way they want you to do it and then if it is not right you feed back what is wrong with it so you complain after you have had a go at it at putting it right. And I think that is absolutely vital. You know we have a duty to feed back and give that feedback but you know we don’t have that right until we have had a go at it†¦ the right way first. (training manager, Retail 1, Training Store) Unsurprisingly, such an approach influenced the skills expected of both workers and managers as well as leaving little space for transformational leadership.Skill levels were low and product knowledge in particular was a welcome, but almost optional part of work. Several of our informants did possess expertise and boasted strong personal interests in electronics or fish or experience in bakeries, but while this might allow front-line workers to develop a personal pride in aspects of their work it was not a job requirement and was rarely shared by the senior management team in stores, whose career progression was based on obligatory movement between different departments.Head office executives spoke of promoting people with an interest in a particular area of work, a ‘passion about food’ or ‘a personal interest’, and management training did provide product information as part of the process, but the demand for and emphasis on specialist knowledge was limited.Mason and Osborne’s (2008) comparison of supermarkets with electrical retail ers reveals that the (often supplier provided) training in product knowledge that characterised electrical goods had few parallels in supermarkets, while Gamble’s (2006) research into Chinese retailers showed a well educated workforce and a highly demanding customer base not reflected in our study. In these supermarkets, workers could apply for entry-level managerial posts as soon as their twelve weeks of initial training were complete (although the graduate training schemes in both supermarkets were rather different).Graduates were more noticeable in the head offices and in certain specialisms (three of the four store-based human resource (HR) managers we spoke to were graduates, compared to three of the 23 managers in Retail 1 Store A). But while one 9 of the HR managers thought that having a degree was useful for ‘the analytical side of what (managers) need to do’, in general formal qualifications were not a significant criteria for managerial posts. The vast majority of managers had come up from the ranks of hourly-paid shopfloor workers.Interestingly, the non-graduate managers all spoke of the encouragement they had received from their managers to embark on management training. In the absence of a universal demand for specialist training or knowledge, leadership, both demonstrated and potential, was presented as the key element in selection decisions for such career progression: I mean, when I interview managers to join my team, I’m not necessarily looking for ‘Do they know what baked beans and yoghurts are? ’ and ‘Have they filled them before? ’ I’m looking for attitude, I’m looking for personal resilience and I’m looking for a track record.What have they done before? What have they done in the past? But it doesn’t necessarily mean that if I’ve got a grocery manager position I want a grocery manager from another store. Because it’s about managing people, itâ₠¬â„¢s about managing hearts and minds really. (general store manager, Retail 1, Store A) But while store language focused on obedience and hearts and minds, the structural features of promotion ensured that, in practice, most managers and leaders were men. Moving between departments was an integral part of career mobility in both supermarkets.Promotion, even for the first foray into managerial duties, involved a switch of departments, while subsequent expansions of responsibility meant managers would be moved to increasingly larger departments in the stores. For general store managers, and for the second tier of senior management, geographical mobility was required and managers were expected to move between different stores in the same ‘regional cluster’ (generally between 15 to 25 stores, depending on the region). Interestingly, managerial informants stressed how lenient their superiors were when imposing these travel requirements. Annual performance appraisals istingu ished between preferences for a 30-minute or a one-hour commute. Retail 2 store managers were told by their regional bosses to prioritise their families and the general manager of Store B asserted proudly that he would not be despatched to the other end of the country against his will. But, while all managers seemed to accept that mobility was required, for others the geographical differences between managerial and front-line worker posts discouraged progression and helped to account for the fact that, while the lower ranks of supermarket workers were dominated by women, the managers were predominately male. 0 Many of the workers we interviewed were attracted to retail by the fact that it was part-time: women with caring responsibilities, students, young people and older workers dominated the workforce. People worked in their local stores and their limited hours often suited their other responsibilities or desire for education. Managerial posts, by contrast, were almost universally full-time despite, given the length of opening hours (24 hours for Retail 1 and 8am to 10pm for Retail 2), no one manager would be able to control their store continually (see Dalton 1966, Moss-Kanter 1977).We did meet two women managers in shared posts but these were rare and had been specifically created to accommodate these informants’ demands for job-sharing (see also Mason and Osborne 2008). Small Freedoms Unlike the transformational visionaries of the leadership literature, the freedoms enjoyed by the supermarket managers in this study were generally minor and illicit. Despite the recurrent official emphasis on ‘comply then complain’, most created their own small discretionary spaces.The most commonly cited example was in store, counter or shelf layout. Detailed specifications were sent down from head office dictating the number and placement of products. But these were based on national averages of other stores in that category with little sensitivity for local geography, tastes or customer-base. Accordingly, in practice local knowledge, personal interest and the desire to personalise space often triumphed over the formal specifications. It was, of course, possible to protest against layouts officially.The general manager of Retail 1 Store A had done so when he wished to re-site the movie and video booth in his city centre store, taking it out of the foyer where it was vulnerable to repeated thefts and switching it with a sandwich booth which would have benefited from being more readily accessible. His request involved developing a detailed business case and visits from senior management but was eventually turned down (or indefinitely postponed pending a fuller refurbishment to include a pharmacy).Others were less regulation bound. I just did it, I got told to do it. They put trust in me to change the layout in the store of Home and Leisure, to move products around if I believed it would gain sales. And for example all the Home secti on wasn’t together, DIY and water was with pots and pans, party ranges weren’t with disposable paper tableware, so I put a new shopfloor plan together to move it all around and we did that†¦ [A]t [names other store] I’d gone through a couple of revamps where I’d actually 11 hanged over 200 bays in [other store] because we went through revamps to get bigger and better ranges in so I’d done a lot of work in the past on how a department should flow and how it should look and how we get the best out of the ranges and stuff like that so putting that experience into here and grouping the departments together†¦ [Did you have to negotiate with Head Office? ] No, we just did it. (senior manager, Retail 1, Store B) Occasionally re-siting compensated for inadequacies in the briefing documents.One manager liked to get experienced staff to adapt official shelving briefs to suit the store: They know if they’ve been doing that for a couple of yea rs, they know what will sell and what won’t. Now [if] it’s a novice then they wouldn’t, so I’d need them to do it in space flexing which will tell them the quantity. The plan would tell them how many facings so, say, it was like that it wanted a capacity of 70 on four facings but you can fit that 70 on two facings I would expect you to do it to two facings.And that’s where you gain space as well on the plan if you needed to open up on something else because it wasn’t lasting on the shop. [So you’ve got to play around quite a bit? ] Yes, you’ve got to play around with it, yes. Everything’s not as easy as black and white on paper. (general merchandise manager, Retail 1 Store B) Occasionally individuals also needed to over-ride the computer systems to over-come limitations.The demand for hot dog rolls on bonfire night, more salads and fresh vegetables for barbecues on unexpectedly hot days and ensuring that local tastes wer e provided for through particular fish or flavours of roast chicken were matters of relative individual discretion. But most of these practices were heavily discouraged officially and many were formally denied. One manager of a Retail 2 supermarket during a first interview and guided tour of his store was enthusiastic about the way Retail 2’s head office experts designed and laid out the shelf space.An enthusiasm which lasted until one of the researchers took out a camera to photograph the excellent layout. He was immediately asked not to take photographs, since the manager had exercised his own discretion and did not want news of this individuality to get back to head office. People and Leadership Amidst the widespread use of regulation, standardisation and constraint there was one area where managers were both encouraged and expected to use their own discretion and, in the rhetoric of their head offices, exercise ‘leadership’.This was in the area of people mana gement. The structural means for doing this was very limited. Wages, 12 staffing levels and worker tasks were all pre-set by head office, although some local adjustments were possible. Store managers who recruited staff would be told how many ‘hours’ they could hire, but it was up to them to decide how to divide this up, so, for example, twenty hours might translate into three new part-timers working distinctive shifts. This often proved difficult to implement, since computer staffing levels did not always translate into viable recruitment.The personnel manager, she cares a lot, but [for] the company [it’s] all about its process, [it’s] not really about the people. And so the process is sort of disguised as this ‘caring’ – but it’s not. So these people, they just expect you to do more and more, and we take more and more sales but we don’t necessarily get the hours. Produce was given 20 extra hours for quarter three in line with sales and things, but I can’t recruit for these 20 hours because all that’ll happen is they’ll get taken away after Christmas or the sales won’t be there so I’ll never see them anyway.You know they’re not tangible, I can’t take them and use them. (produce manager, Retail 1, Store A) Much of this was work intensification. Head office staff expected local managers to know who they could allocate to particular tasks to save a few hours on the timesheet and this was considered excellence in leadership. [S]o we’re looking for the managers to not be creative in the ways they do their processes, I want them to follow the processes exactly how the systems define them†¦I want them to lay the store out how the system devises and I want them to fill the shelves how it says on the tin, if you like, but then absolutely be as creative as possible in the way you service the customers. More the way we would be going. (business impro vement director, Retail 1, Head Office) This ‘creativity’ was also set down in systems and structures of the stores. The performance of their departments or stores in terms of customer service was assessed through monthly ‘mystery shopper’ visits, while regular staff meetings provided managers with an opportunity to motivate.The morning shifts in both supermarkets began with caucus-style meetings, held in a central location on the shopfloor in Retail 1 and in a staff area in Retail 2, between the store manager, the upper management team and all the departmental managers who were on shift. Department managers held the same sort of ‘getting the day started’ meetings with their respective department staff. News about how the store or unit was doing in terms of the performance criteria was often a major theme; good performance was usually emphasised as a reason to feel good and underperformance as grave and in need of immediate attention.In the bri efing templates handed down from the head offices, spots were allocated for events to note, improve or celebrate. Managers’ motivational 13 role (whether through generating pride or alarm) was possibly most necessary during these meetings, as announcements, for example about the roll-out of new uniforms could be rendered exciting, or a letter of appreciation from a customer as emotionally touching, through their performative skills. Performance related pay was extensively used.For general store managers it could amount to as much as 40 per cent of salary and even hourly paid workers might earn over ? 100. Individual performance was supposed to be assessed separately, as one informant noted: ‘sometimes you can have a department which hasn’t performed well on paper but what that manager’s contributed to that maybe it’s a total different story’. But in practice, greatest weight was placed on store and overall company performance in a given tradi ng year. Both supermarkets used some version of recognition schemes where small monetary awards from ? 10 to ? 0 could be given out, and this was largely at managers’ discretion to ‘celebrate success’, as there was ‘a lot of pressure on everybody to perform all the time’ (bakery manager, Retail 2). But managers appreciated that the effectiveness of such schemes was limited: [A] lot is spending time with them and motivating them. You know if you motivate them they work far better than – [How can you motivate them? What do you have at your disposal to motivate them? ] You don’t really have any financial really, apart from you’ve got the yearly bonus, you know colleagues get a yearly bonus.So you’ve got the bonus to aim for. I don’t know really†¦ I think everyone is motivated by doing a good job and job satisfaction and spending time with people and I think a lot of it as well is getting to know colleagues, I know just about everyone by their first name and things like that. (senior manager, Retail 1 Store A) The financial outcomes of managers’ work were assessed through daily checks and monitoring of sales, waste, loss of products and the profits their departments or stores generated. Many were factors over which they had little control.Describing her Key Result Areas, which included absences, sales, labour turnover, waste and the customer service score, the HR manager (Retail 1, Store A) commented, ‘[s]o all my key result areas are linked with everybody else’s, so it’s my influencing skills that are really being looked at for that†¦ As a manager, you’re paid to manage; you’re not paid to fill the shop necessarily’. This confidence was widespread. But as the store managers pointed out structural conditions, including local labour markets, might be ignored in head office plans but heavily influenced how effective such work intensification could be.One, who was responsible for staffing a city centre store in a University town, spoke with 14 envy of a friend who managed a rural outlet. If workers in the city centre felt unfairly treated, they had a choice of part-time service sector jobs to move to. Their rural counterparts, in the absence of other local job opportunities, stayed in post (many had been there since the store opened). Yet this was the area over which managers were deemed to have most control and many seemed to accept this. When our informants spoke about leadership, their most common reaction was to emphasise the difference that they, as individuals, could make.A graduate departmental manager in his early 20s noted that he needed to ‘work on leadership and people skills’. It was not that these managers did not appreciate the impact that computer breakdowns, local labour markets, employee turnover, stock levels and the weather could have. They did, and dealt with such problems every day. But they also saw them as excuses for a lack of leadership. It was the managers’ job to enthuse and inspire others, even when policies and practices had not been explained to them and even if they disagreed with head office decisions (see also Smith 1990, Watson 1994).According to three of our informants: The depot might have been short of people and deliveries haven’t turned up on time. That could throw things off. Or promotional stuff hasn’t turned up. But there’s nothing in a store that we can’t fix, and it’s all about driving the right attitude in the management teams. Because if you drive that attitude well, you can fix anything. (general store manager, Retail 1, Store A) At the end of the day we’ve got to be the leader†¦ I think there’s a difference between being a manager and being a leader and we have to become leaders and†¦ e need to keep a real positive approach, because if we turn round to staff and say yes, wh at we may think in our heart of hearts is one thing, but when we go out there we’re out on stage, we’ve got to perform and say, ‘OK, it’s tough, but however if we all do this that and the other and get stuck in, we’re going to win this’. And you’ve somehow got to inspire your people out there, you know, so you’ve got to leave that at the door, because we can’t do anything about that.Somehow, what you have got to do is deal with the colleagues you have got, to ensure that they’re motivated, trained, they’re quick to do the job, and hyped up, and they’re going to go out there and deliver it. (senior manager A, Retail 2, Store C) OK, if I’m in store today and we get the [mystery shopper] man and I get 90 per cent, then that’s on my watch so was I here, was I up in the office looking at the PC or was I downstairs driving the availability, saying, ‘Where are those cauliflowers, whereâ⠂¬â„¢s that, where’s that, where’s that? Or did I allow there to be nobody on produce because both the departments’ managers†¦ are on the same day off, and when they came in there was no cauliflower or lettuce because the person 15 down there was actually on the till and I didn’t actually know†¦ Yes, so if I’m going to be running a store tomorrow, for instance, I should really know who’s in what’s going on and any problems. (senior manager B, Retail 2, Store C) Leadership in these supermarkets was very specific and very detailed. Formal HR practices, meeting templates and detailed systems were in place.Informants gave examples that included monitoring work to ensure people were achieving their targets, retraining those who were not; monitoring stock levels; and being present on the shopfloor. However ultimately encounters with people, whether employees or customers, could not be scripted. The leadership rhetoric, because of its lack of links to the reality of daily work, was used as a motivational tool to persuade managers to work more intensively themselves and encourage others to extra effort. Discussion and Conclusions This article has presented an empirically based discussion of leadership in British supermarkets.The managers we observed were constrained by extensive regulation. Their experience of deskilling and discretion, consent and control bears little resemblance to the entrepreneurial visionaries described by writers on leadership. Yet despite that, most of our informants described aspects of what they did as leadership, maintaining proudly, and often in defiance of the evidence, the difference that they as individuals could make. Evidence from elsewhere confirms the impact that line managers have (Rainbird and Munro 2003) but this impact is not without limits.Here, head office systems, computerised schedules, pre-packaged and automatically ordered goods, design planograms and set hours and pay rates provided internal constraints just as location, labour market and the local economy supplied external ones. Our informants needed to accept the leadership rhetoric enough to assert that they could make a difference, but not so much that that difference was extended to questioning the constraints on them; a difference accepted in practice by most. This leads us to two conclusions. Firstly that leadership was a small freedom rather than a radical transformation (see also Rosenthal et al. 997, Edwards and Collinson 2002 on empowerment). It affected only the minutiae of the work but even this trivial level of discretion made a great deal of difference to the individual managers. The illicit freedoms of revising store layouts and adjusting stock orders, which managers engaged in to make their mark on work and improve store 16 performance, were matched by official and acceptable areas of freedom in the unscriptable areas of people management. These trivial freedoms lead us to ou r second conclusion on the implications for academic analysis. Leadership is, at least in part, what leaders do, how they do it and who they are.If, as here, mainly male managers worked to pre-set routines with tightly monitored targets then this needs to feature in our understanding of leadership. Yet to date, most accounts have neglected the mundane aspects of work, the very elements highlighted as core in this study. The leadership rhetoric, valued for its emotive qualities and its unreality, was used by managers and their superiors to value, inspire and intensify their input. Managers showed a sophistication missing from many academic writings in their ability to distinguish between rhetorical flourishes and real-world job design.Given this, we suggest that future research may wish to focus more clearly on the unexciting, hackneyed and everyday aspects of work and to consider the form the language of leadership really takes on the shopfloor. The unrealities of leadership are imp ortant but they have already absorbed too much academic attention and need to be clearly distinguished from the realities. Future studies, developed through empirical evidence, need to provide a nuanced, local and empirically based understanding of what really happens. 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The movies Salt of the Earth and The Battle of Algiers - Essay Example The strength of the women depicted in these films can only be said to be admirable because it shows that it is not only men who have the fortitude or capability of fighting for what they know to be their rights. It can be said that while women have increasingly taken up an active role in the societies that are depicted in the films, the bias and segregation against them is still an ongoing process, which need to be addressed. The roles that women lay in these films shows that they are an important part of the society, because they not only bring within it a different view of things, but they also bring the diversity needed to ensure that revolutions or social movements are successful. The films show that despite the fact that the men, who dominate the society, have denied these women the opportunity to take up their rightful position in society is quite unfortunate and that such discrimination should be remedied, to ensure that there is equality within the society. The films being analyzed provide a clear picture of how women are treated not only in the society as a whole but also in their personal lives as well. It is a fact that the films address instances concerning the gender differences and bias against women that take place within the society, and because of what can only be perceived as the men’s emotional distance, there seems to be nothing that is being done by the men, in the societies depicted, to remedy this situation. The films therefore show that the matter of the discrimination against women in their respective societies should be addressed because this is the only way through which the issues involved can be understood and addressed (Nunes 9 16). The films which have been analyzed provide a small picture of the biases that women underwent in the society and one would state that the issues that these films address are only some of the cases that existed in the societies depicted and still continue to do so today. It is most likely that future research will make more revelations concerning the treatment of women in the societies, depicted in both Salt of the Earth and The Battle of Algiers, to demonstrate the prominent roles that these women played in the social movements of the said societies. These films seem to have been developed in part with the intention of sparking a movement towards a change in the attitudes that put women in such different situations from their male counterparts. In addition, it can be said that these films seem to be a challenge to the men who view them to take up the responsibility of showing more concern and consideration towards the women in their lives. It can further be said that the men in society should stop using women in their societies merely for the sake of sexual fulfillment, and should instead treat them with the respect that they deserve, since they are equal participants in the development of their societies. The films being analysed depict societies dominated by men and this has created a situation where women are not treated as equals and are instead relegated to the background (Pfaelzer 120). In the films, it can be seen that women, have yet to establish themselves well within the society to ensure that they excel on an equal basis as their male counterparts. Instead, women face many challenges in order to find success in an environment which can only be considered to be extremely hostile to them.

Research paper on GMO's Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

On GMO's - Research Paper Example This is because more than 80% of the total global food requirements come from plants (WHO, 1987). As a topic, GMO’s not only concerns the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering but also a topic of economic, political, and social cultural interests. Each of this field has a stake or role to play in adoption of GMO’s. The future of the globe interims of food sustainability depends of effective research of GMO’s. Genetic modification results when there is an alteration in the configuration of genes in the cell of an organism. This alteration can result from delectation of insertion of new genes from the cells of another species. Genes are tiny strands found in the cells of all living organism and they are known to be the carriers DNA. All organisms have unique number of genes and any alteration of the genetic material result in creation of organisms that have different characteristics from those of their parents. The reality on GMO’s was realized in 1975 when the discussion about the new invention was launched at Asilomar conference. The meeting concluded that production of GMO’s should be carried out when scientist have done considerable research on the safety of GMO’s. However, production of GMO’s plants was first carried out in Canada and the US in 1982 when farmers were given genetically modified seeds for experimental purpose. In the recent history, there has been more progress in the production of genetically modified plants than genetically modified animals. Genetic modification can be applied to produce animals that have enhanced capabilities such as resistance to certain disease (Gary, 2005). In addition, genetic modification can result in physical modification of animals. Following the current developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering, there has been concern about economic application of GMO’s. It is obvious that the focus is the growing

Answers Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Answers - Coursework Example Partnership with several big brands and acquiring several potential outlets. Effective business expansion strategy. Effective employee strength. Significant reputation among the target customers. Weaknesses Major of the outlets are located only in UK, therefore, they are failing to capitalize on the potential global opportunities. Due to this, they are lacking to achieve the advantages of economies of scale. Only provide Italian style foods and major of the brand names are not known to people. Inadequate food sector than other existing competitors. Lack of change process adoption. Limited presence in global market place. Depending on one supplier. Opportunities Product diversification strategy and implementation of internet cafe in business process. Further 450-500 store expansion in both international and domestic market within 2015. Future international business expansion plan due to the economic development of several countries. Change of social trends to hang around in a coffee b ar for several purposes. Threats Huge competitive market place due to the presence of potential organizations, such as Costa, Starbucks, Subway, Greggs and Bakers Oven. Fluctuating currency exchange rate in global market. Economic downturn and low disposable income of middle class people and political instability. High bargaining power of suppliers and high price of coffee can affect the business output. If people change their trends in near future, such as from coffee consumption to tea, then it will affect the overall industry. Answer 2 UK coffee and sandwich market is significantly growing due to the presence of several leading branded coffee and sandwich chains. Caffe Nero Group Ltd. is one of the popular coffee chains in UK. The organization is popular for its high quality coffee and effective fresh food items. The organization has followed Italian style in its product differentiation strategy. However, in terms of segmentation strategy, the organization has implemented Demogra phic and Geographic segmentation. In terms of Geographic segmentation, the organization has majorly focused on the people of UK. It is the social trend of UK people to consume coffee products, such as cold coffee, regular coffee from the coffee chains. Moreover, the organization has, established their stores in major cities in UK in order to achieve potential target customer base. However, the organization has understood the geographical potentiality of places and established the stores according to the trends. In terms of demographic segmentation, the organization has classified its target customers in three groups, such as income, age and gender. It is evident that, women are the maximum users of coffee shop comparing to the male users. Therefore, the organization has targeted the ladies to achieve growth. The target customers are aged between 35 and 55. Busy office goers are the major target customers Caffe Nero. Finally, the organization has targeted people of high income group as they are the potential customers of coffee and sandwich shops. Answer 3 This part will propose a marketing mix strategy to Caffe Nero for further improvement. Marketing mix strategy consists of product, price, place and promotional marketing strategy. Product The major product of the organization is coffee. Due to this, everybody knows that, Caffe Nero is a coffee house and serves fresh foods, pasta, sandwiches and parties. In UK the organization

Innocent Love Leading to Madness Essay Example for Free

Innocent Love Leading to Madness Essay Within Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and in Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the authors show how the themes love and madness, as in good and evil, can intersect. Toni Morrison shows that through the relationship between Hagar and Milkman, while Shakespeare uses the innocent Ophelia, who is deeply in love with Hamlet. In the book Song of Solomon and the play Hamlet, Tony Morrison and Shakespeare respectively, portray the kind of love that eventually leads to madness. The love between Ophelia and Hamlet, as well as between Hagar and Milkman is from the beginning pure love. The letter, which Hamlet writes to Ophelia, shows that he really loves her: the most beautified Ophelia (II, iii). He used the word beautified to display a sincere tribute and it is obvious that he loves her. In Song of Solomon, feeling starts to arise between Milkman and Hagar very early. Already when Hagar was to take in two baskets from the porch, it seemed to Milkman that she was as pretty a girl as hed ever seen (p. 45). This attraction that later led to a relationship between them was one of the reason for Hagars incurable madness. As stated so far, the roots for madness was love. Although what it arose from, was the rejection from a beloved. In Hamlet, Hamlet himself rejects Ophelia as a result of his faked madness. This, together with happenings such as her fathers death, leads to a true madness. When Ophelia talks about Valentines Day, she is referring to the events of romance that she was denied. The madness caused by Hamlets faked rejection, lead to her suicide later in the play. In Song of Solomon, Milkman grows tired of Hagar, and puts an end to their relationship. It leads to insanity, here also caused by rejection from a beloved. When she realises that she will not get what she asks for, she makes several attempts of murdering him instead, with a frightened Milkman as a result. The authors characterise the devastating, but to the works important side effects that may arise when madness originates from love. In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison combines love and madness to form a single image in the figure of the jilted lover Hagar, who ritualistically attempts to murder the object of her adoration, Milkman. The enormous passion for Milkman is shown when Guitar tries to speak with Hagar: You think because he doesnt love you that you are worthless (p. 305), but with a taciturn response. Hagars death toward the end of the novel, caused by a fever symbolises and seems to stem from the heart that Milkman broke. In Hamlet, Shakespeare leaves Ophelia with her fatal madness caused by Hamlets rejection. Hamlet managed to rise above insanity and feelings of suicide, but Ophelias weaker spirit could not hold the burden. Conflicts between good and evil are often portrayed in literature, since the subject is so timeless. This conflict is a part of peoples lives constantly, no matter what century. It exists just as much in Hamlet, which was written in the 16th century, as it does in Song of Solomon, written in the 1970s. The conflict between good and evil, love and madness; who can really draw the lines? Good and evil, in this work portrayed by love and madness, are constantly reoccurring themes that affect the reader. The madness often is a result of rejection from a beloved. Hamlet and Ophelia in Hamlet portray the themes, where Ophelia later becomes mad, due to Hamlets rejection. In Song of Solomon, Milkmans rejection leads to the grave madness of Hagar. Both cases show how love can lead to something as terrible as death.

Carbon Footprint And Water Footprint Environmental Sciences Essay

Carbon Footprint And Water Footprint Environmental Sciences Essay The paper is written on Ecological Footprint and its two subsets: Carbon Footprint and Water Footprint. These different Footprints are accounting tools which are used to measure the impact of resource consumption on the environment. The tool helps in signifying that how deep human beings have penetrated to disturb the ecological balance. Ecological Footprint is a progress indicator which is used to achieve environmental sustainability. The paper starts with a small introduction on Ecological Footprint and is then followed by the relationship between Biocapacity (BC) and Ecological Footprint (EF). BC and EF share a supply and demand relationship. The BC and EF relationship is very important because it helps the analyst to determine a nations or regions natural capital and resource consumption in that bioproductive area. If the biocapacity of a bioproductive area is sufficient to satisfy the Ecological Footprint then its stated that the area has reserve resources. If the Biocapacity is not sufficient to fulfil the Ecological demand then there is deficit of resource. In this case, the nation or the region has to trade with others for natural resources. The deficit of resources states that the consumption rate is very fast than the Earths renewal rate. Carbon Footprint is another tool which is used to measure an individuals contribution towards green house gas emission (GHG).Carbon Footprint calculator helps an individual to find out his carbon footprint value. Higher the carbon Footprint the more contribution an individual is making towards Global Warming. Water Footprint is also a subset of Ecological Footprint and is a novel concept. Water Footprint is an accounting tool which helps in determining the volume of fresh water consumed by an individual, group or city. The paper suggests few ways by which Carbon and water Footprint can be reduced. The only purpose for reducing the footprint value is to progress towards sustainability and to gift a sufficient and liveable Earth to our future coming generations. CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION The Ecological Footprint is the measure to determine the extent to which human beings consume natures resources to the amount that can be regenerated by the earth. The Ecological Footprint (EF) is basically a young accounting tool for renewable resources that is used for determining the issues associated with sustainable consumption. Ecological Footprint represents the human demands for natures resources and how much bioproductive land and sea area is required to regenerate those resources to fulfil human demands under prevailing technology. The tool helps in determining how many Earths are required to support the current humanity practices and consumption. In 2006, it was stated by UN that the Humanitys Total Ecological Footprint was approximately 1.4 planet Earths; this estimate signifies that to humans consumes resources 1.4 times faster than the Earth to renew them. It takes nearly three years for UN to collect all the data from all the nations to estimate Humanitys total Ecologi cal Footprint. The Ecological Footprint tool is usually used in conjunction with Biocapacity (BC) and is expressed as EF/BC. Biocapacity refers to capacity of the area to provide natural resources and to accept or absorb waste. When the Ecological Footprint exceeds the Biocapacity mark it leads to un-sustainability. Thus the mathematical difference between EF and BC can be positive or negative, where positive means deficit and negative means surplus. The concept of EF/BC is a good analytical tool for creating awareness about resource consumption, depletion and regeneration. This tool is also very important for making the people realize the ability of Earth to regenerate consumed resources and to absorb the waste materials in a limited time frame. The Ecological Footprint value that is calculated at the end for assessment are categorized for goods, services, carbon emission, water usage, housing area, land used for work or any other purpose and also the number of earths that will be required to meet the worlds population and their levels of consumption. Ecological footprint is measured in terms of global hectares (gha). This accounting measure is very much similar to the life cycle analysis where the energy and resource consumption are converted into a normalized value which is the measure of land called the global hectares. HISTORY The concept of Ecological Footprint was first published in 1992 by William Rees. The concept was deeply explored by Mathis Wackernagel under Mr. Rees supervision at University of British Columbia in Canada from 1990-94. Originally the concept was named as Appropriate Carrying Capacity but was later changed to Ecological Footprint after getting inspired by a computer technician who appreciated the look of his new computer as a small footprint on the desk. A book was published in 1996 by Rees and Wackernagel called Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. NEED FOR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT Ecological Footprint is an accounting tool which is used to measure the consumption of Earths resources by individuals, territory, states, nations and world to their corresponding capacity of Earth to regenerate those resources and absorb the wastes. The tool can be used for: Analysing the lifestyle of the people and their daily resource consumption. Examining the extent to which a nation is utilising its biocapacity and then comparing the results with that of the other nations. Educating the people to make them realize about the biocapacity and the over consumption of natures resources with an idea to change their personal habits and resource utilization. Determining the actions and current lifestyles of the people and the nation which are not sustainable. Motivating the Multinational Companies to compute their own Ecological Footprint and take required measures to reduce the computed value. This can be done by taking initiatives towards environmental sustainability and by formulating corporate social responsibility policies. CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT FUNDAMENTALS The Ecological Footprint (EF) is used to measure how much renewable resources of the biosphere are consumed by human and how fast the Earth is able to renew those resources. The renewable resources include croplands, animal products, wood and timber, fish, etc. The consumption of resources and the use of built up bioproductive area is measured in terms of global hectares (gha). It is a measure of how much bioproductive land and sea has been used by individuals, territories, states and nations to produce the consumable renewable resources and then to absorb the waste. The global yield factor by type of consumption is a measure which translates the product into an area that is required to produce that product. The product to be consumed can be crops, timber, fisheries, pasture, etc. The productivity of the product depends upon the time selection, product selection (animal products, crops, fish) and the type of land associated with the products; croplands for crop, dairy farms for animal products, fisheries for fishes. The equivalence factor translates the land type into global hectares (in gha/ha). This factor determines the worlds average productivity of a given type of productive area to the worlds average productivity of all the areas. In general there are six ecological bioproductive area: Crop land: The land used for growing grains, vegetables, fruits and for feeding the livestock. From ecological perspective it is the most productive area. Pasture: The land that is used for grazing the livestock, to build poultry farms, to produce dairy products like cheese and butter. Forest: The land that is used for growing trees or natural forest which can in turn yield timber. They serve other ecological purposes also like preventing soil erosion, ecological balance, protecting biodiversity, climate stability and maintaining the hydrological cycles. Sea, Rivers and Oceans: They maintain the marine life and provide fishing facilities. They also help in maintaining and balancing temperatures, land and sea breeze, capturing the solar energy, etc. The coastal area provides the seas ecological production. Energy land: The land used to sequester carbon dioxide and for accumulating equivalent amount of usable energy. Built up land: The land that is used by humans for their settlements, building houses, roads and constructing high end infrastructures. It is noticed that human settlement is mostly concentrated in the fertile areas of the region. It is very important for every individual to calculate their Ecological Footprint to know their stand. Human beings are the only ones responsible for the depletion of natural resources. They have started consuming so many resources and so rapidly that it is not possible for the Earth to cope up with its rate and thus renewal of resources is delayed. Globalization is the current market trend. Everything is turning global, developing countries are utilising this opportunity to gain competitive advantage and to strengthen their economy by investing in infrastructure. To set up a new infrastructure land, money and resources are required where land comes from the reserved forest lands and resources from the surplus quota. The forest lands are for the animals, its their natural habitat. Using the forest land disturbs the biodiversity and thus leads to extinction of many species. Forest lands are also major areas for preventing soil erosion and balancing ecological cycles. The usage of resources should be such that the coming generations can also have access to these resources without compromising. The future generation also have the rights to use natural resources and if the current trend is followed where the rapid resource utilization is taking place then the very soon these resources will deplete and there will be nothing to use. There are many Ecological Footprint calculators available these days to calculate individuals, nations and world Ecological Footprint. The calculators measure the difference between the Ecological resource usage and the biocapacity which is used to determine per capita resource amount. The next section will explain the EF and BC accounting which is a tool to measure whether the bioproductive area has surplus or deficit resources. ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND BIOCAPACITY ACCOUNTING There is a steady rate at which the nature can restore the renewable resources which have been consumed. The idea behind Ecological Footprint is not to get a value for which resources are being used and how much resource consumption is done by an individual, territory, state or nation but instead how fast they being consumed. The current scenario states that the consumption rate is very high in comparison to the renewal rate of Earth. Ecological Footprint and biocapacity relationship is similar to the Demand-Supply relationship in economics. Ecological Footprint measures the bioproductive area (land or water) required by the population to consume renewable resources under the prevailing technology to produce waste which is to be absorbed. Biocapacity is the capacity of the area to produce renewable resources. Thus, Ecological Footprint is the demand for renewable resources and Biocapacity is the supply of renewable resources. When EF and BC are used together they are either referred to as EF/BC accounting or simply EF accounting. EF accounting is a tool to compare the supply with the demand. The difference between the EF and BC can either be positive or negative. The positive value refers to deficit of natures renewable resources and negative value refers to the surplus/reserve of natures renewable resources. EF-BC =Positive.. Deficit EF-BC =Negative.. Surplus Figure 1 A nations ecological deficit can be compensated by getting into trade agreements with other nations who have ecological reserves or by liquefying ecological assets. In case of global ecological deficit there is no compensation available and is thus equal to overshoot. The Ecological footprint can be decreased with: A small population per a given area Less consumption of resources per person High resource efficiency which can be quickly renewed. It is possible that the demand can exceed the biocapacity mark thereby leading to overshoot. This can occur when: The trees and crops are harvested faster than they can re-grow. Depletion in the fisheries before being restocked. Quick emission of CO2 into the atmosphere making it difficult for the ecosystem to sequester it. Overshoot is no longer a local phenomena but instead a global phenomena. It is not just that people have started using more resources but have also started invading natures principle. Some effects of overshoot are: Natural capital liquidation Accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere Deforestation Lack of biodiversity Scarcity of freshwater Figure 2 CALCULATING ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT The Ecological Footprint can be calculated by individually examining the amount of land used for: Crop cultivation Growing timber Grazing animals and livestock Fishing Transportation Building hi-tech infrastructure Energy production Electricity usage An individuals Ecological Footprint can be calculated by summing all these areas. The natural capital per person can be calculated by taking the total population and then dividing it by the number of hectares of bioproductive land. The current value for individual Ecological Footprint is 4.7 on the planet per person. The average productivity of different bioproductive area varies from other areas as they depend upon the weather conditions and the way the area is maintained. For example the average productivity of croplands is more than any other land types. Thus the areas productivity is converted into its corresponding equivalence factor so as to represent it in global hectares. The equivalence factor remains the same for all nations but it varies each year because of relative productivity and the land usage depending upon the environmental factors (weather). Figure 3 The average bioproductive area per person worldwide was 1.8 approximately in 2006. The World Wide Fund for Nature claims that the human ecological footprint has exceeded the planets biocapacity by 20%. Footprint per capita of: United States of America- 9.0 gha Switzerland- 5.6 gha China- 1.8 gha The average Ecological Shoe Size for different regions in global hectares can be seen below. North America leads the chart with the highest ecological footprint. Figure 4 Among the nations United States of America, India and China have the highest Ecological Footprint. While calculating the EF without knowing the population size of that country it cannot be stated what the population or each individual is demanding. Both India and China are highly populated countries but their resource usage is below the world average value. In case of US, the average footprint per person is five times that of the world average. Ecological Footprint of individuals residing in developing countries is less than the individuals residing in developed countries. Developed countries use advance technology and have modern infrastructure which require more resources for their working and maintenance thus making its individual Ecological Footprint above 4.7. In case of developing countries the value is low because of less industrialization and usually floats below 4.7. APPLICATION OF ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT The Ecological Footprint can be applied to organizations, individuals, territories, cities, states, nations and world as a whole. It helps in planning and to budget the natural capital. Thus the EF can be used in for different applications and it can be ensured that the EF remains as low as possible. This can be done by: Using resource efficient technologies that require minimal natural capital. Motivating people to maintain a clean environment by reducing the need of fossil fuel and by making the area pedestrian friendly. Encourage family planning and reduce family size so that per person consumption of resources is saved. SUBSETS OF ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT The Ecological Footprint can be further categorized into: Carbon Footprint Water Footprint Both the types of footprints are briefly taken up in following sections. CARBON FOOTPRINT The term Carbon Footprint refers to the total bunch of Green House Gases emissions caused by a person, product, community, organization or an activity. The Carbon Footprint is usually measured in terms of amount of carbon dioxide released; it can be either in percentage of carbon dioxide (gas) or in kilograms of carbon (solid particles). Carbon Footprint is a division of Ecological Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment. A Green House Gas Assessment can be taken up to calculate individuals, organizations and nations Carbon Footprint. Once the Carbon Footprint is known various strategies can be devised to reduce it. Few Strategies are: Adopting Cleaner Technology process Efficient product and process management Using green product; which are eco- friendly Using renewable sources of energy Procuring and using green raw materials Adopting waste management practices Practising Carbon offsetting programmes Carbon Offsetting is the reduction of Carbon footprint by the mitigation of Carbon Footprints through alternative project development like wind energy, solar energy, and reforestation. TWO PARTS OF CARBON FOOTPRINT A Carbon Footprint is made up of two parts: Primary footprint and Secondary footprint. Primary Footprint: Primary Footprint refers to the direct emission of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere. Direct emission can be by burning of fossil fuels, transportation, factory chimneys, burning of crops for crop rotation, etc. Secondary Footprint: Secondary Footprint refers to the indirect emission of Carbon Dioxide. Indirect emission refers to getting associated with the product or process which is directly emitting carbon dioxide. Example of Secondary Footprint is buying products wherein during the product lifecycle carbon dioxide emission had taken place. So the more you buy the more you will contribute towards secondary emission. The following questionnaire can be taken to check how much an individual contributes towards indirect carbon dioxide emission. Do you eat vegetarian food or non vegetarian food? Do you buy or grow organic food? Do you buy local food and goods? Do you buy new clothes or second hand clothes? Do you buy new appliances or second hand appliances? Do you use things that are recyclable? Do you try to use common vehicle while travelling? The chart below shows the amount of Carbon dioxide release in to the atmosphere: Primary Footprint Figure 5 WATER FOOTPRINT Water Footprint is an accounting tool to measure the total volume of fresh water used for goods and production manufacturing and consumed by individuals, groups or community. Water Footprint is measured in terms of volume consumed or water polluted per unit of time. Water Footprint can be calculated for consumers or producers. Consumers include an individual, community, family, society, village, province or a city. Producers include public or private organizations. Water Footprint is an indicator which not only measures the volume of water used or polluted but also the regions and locations. Water Footprint is a novel subset of Ecological Footprint and it does not provide any light on contribution of embedded water towards environmental impact or water stress. COMPONENTS OF WATER FOOTPRINT Water Footprint consists of 3 components: Blue Water Footprint: It accounts to the total volume of freshwater that has been used or evaporated from surface or ground water to produce products and services which are consumed by individual, groups or society. Green Water Footprint: It accounts to the total volume of water evaporated from the soil (moisture content of the soil because of rain water) Grey Water Footprint: It accounts to the volume of polluted water that is used for the production of goods and services for groups, society or individuals. It also refers to the amount of water required to dilute the pollutants such that the water remains above the acceptable standards for water quality. WATER FOOTPRINT OF INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS Water Footprint for individual consumers refers to the total amount of fresh water consumed either directly or indirectly by the them. Direct consumption is the water used at home for drinking, washing, cleaning and other purposes. Indirect consumption is the total volume of fresh water used for producing goods and other services which are then consumed by the consumers. The average Water Footprint worldwide is 1240 m3 water/person/year. Chinese: 700 m3 water/person/year United States of America: 2480 m3 water/person/year Finnish: 1730 m3 water/person/year United Kingdom: 1695 m3 water/person/year WATER FOOTPRINT OF BUSINESSES The corporate water footprint is the total volume of freshwater that is either directly or indirectly used for carrying out business activities. The Water Footprint for corporate organization consists of two components: the direct use of water by the producer for supporting activities and the indirect use of water during the supply chain process. WATER FOOTPRINTS OF NATIONS Water Footprint of Nations depicts the usage of water for producing the products and services which are to be consumed by the citizen of that nation. This Water Footprint has two components: the Internal Water Footprint and the External Water Footprint. Internal Water Footprint refers to the requisition of domestic water resources and external Water Footprint refers to requisition of water resources in some other countries. In Japan, 65% of total Water Footprint comes from other country. CONCLUSION Ecological Footprint, Carbon Footprint and Water Footprint are very important accounting tool to measure bioproductive areas capacity, carbon dioxide emission and the usage of fresh water. The consequence of increased Carbon Footprint means more emission of Green House gases which leads to Global Warming and climatic changes. There have been noticeable changes in the environment and the weather in the past two decades. Human activities has badly hampered the chemical composition of the atmosphere by practising and using products that emit Green House Gases (GHG). The consequence of GHG accumulation is that the atmosphere blanket will deplete and a blanket of GHG will form around the earth. This will lead to extremely high temperature resulting into melting of icebergs and snow. The sea level will rise tremendously and will destruct everything. The high temperatures may also expand the deserts thereby altering the countryside permanently. The early symptoms are already been seen such as change in the local climate, crop yields, human health, growing number of diseases, and water supplies. All individuals must take the Carbon Footprint test which is called the Carbon Calculator. The test will help in determining an individual attachment with carbon. Whatever be an individuals score it is every human beings responsibility to save the planet and to minimise the release of Green House Gases. At individual level various activities can be taken to reduce an individuals Carbon Footprint. At Corporate level the organization must adopt a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Policy to which it will always abide. A corporate must practice and use such products or materials which are eco friendly. The corporate must ensure that all its employees participate in CSR activities and work together towards environmental sustainability. The Corporate must also measure its Water Footprint and must always replenish the water source from where it has taken fresh water for its production of goods and services. Multinational Companies who can afford should build up rain water harvesting plants and sheds for social welfare. The Companies can themselves take initiatives to educate the people and improve the society and set a path towards environmental sustainability.