Marx Communist Manifesto Summary Essay Example for Free

Marx Communist Manifesto Summary Essay All throughout history, there has always been a sense of hierarchy in society such as the elites over the peasants, aristocrats over plebeians, etc. Although there was much societal change in the time of revolution, this subordination of classes did not. Sprouted from feudal society, bourgeois continues the division of societal classes: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The work of the Proletariats was to simply find jobs and work. They’d continue working so long as it increased the capital. However, Proletariats did not need any â€Å"individual character† to be working. They were simply an â€Å"appendage† to the machines in the factories. Not much skill or education was needed to work these machines, therefore, the cost of producing the materials was very limited. As work increased, their wages would decrease. As industry increased, so did the Proletariat. Factories were quickly becoming packed with more laborers. Conditions of living for them began to equalize, however their wages seemed to fluctuate in response to the competition between other factories. Technologically, the machines weren’t advancing due to their reliance on the workers to expedite production anyway. This began to tear down the Proletariats vivacious livelihood, so they began to create groups against the Bourgeoisie. Their banding together helped them keep better track on the stability of the wages and were more powerful in their occasional revolts. At times, they would be successful in these revolts. However, their real success stemmed from their lies. The contin ual oppressed behavior of the Proletariat was no longer compatible with society.

Artificial Bee Colony Algorithms And Software Testing Computer Science Essay

Artificial Bee Colony Algorithms And Software Testing Computer Science Essay The emerging area in the field of optimization is swarm intelligence. Various meta-heuristics algorithms based on swarm intelligence have been developed by many researchers. These algorithms have been developed by modeling the behaviors of swarm of animals and insects such as birds, bees, ants, fishes etc. The main focus of these algorithms is on the collective behavior which results from the local interactions between the individuals and with their environment. The Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm which has been recently introduced [1] is also a swarm based meta-heuristic algorithm. The algorithm models the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees and has been introduced for optimizing various numerical problems. This paper gives a brief introduction about Artificial Bee Colony algorithm and also presents a review of applications of Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm in the field of software testing. Keywords Swarm Intelligence, Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm, Software Testing. 1. INTRODUCTION Swarm intelligence as a discipline deals with the artificial and natural systems which are composed of many individuals and they coordinate using the decentralized control and self organization [2]. The main focus of the discipline is on the collective behavior. Local interaction amongst the individuals and with their environment results into collective behavior. Some of the swarm based meta-heuristics algorithms are Particle Swarm Optimization, Ant Colony Optimization, and Artificial Bee Colony Optimization. Dervis Karaboga [1] in 2005 defined the artificial bee colony algorithm, which is the most recently introduced swarm based meta-heuristics algorithm. Since its inception, artificial bee colony algorithm has been applied in various fields. It also finds application in the field of software testing, which is one of the most indispensible phase of the software development lifecycle. This paper is divided into five sections. The next section gives a brief introduction about the nature of bees. Section 3 describes the artificial bee colony algorithm. Section 4 presents a review of application of artificial bee colony algorithm in the field of software testing and the last section give the comparative analysis of the applications on different parameters. 2. BACKGROUND 2.1 Components of Bee Colony The bee (Apis Mellifera) native to Europe and Africa is a social and domestic animal. Bees feed on nectar and pollens, where nectar is the prime source of energy and pollens act as supplements of proteins and other nutrients. Pollen is mostly used as food for larvae [3]. Generally the bee colony consists of a single queen bee that is responsible for laying eggs, thousand of male bees called drones and thousands of worker bees, which are the sterile bees and the young bee larvae called broods. 2.2 Bees Dance Bees randomly searches for food source positions with good supply of nectar. Once a bee finds such a position, it goes back to the hive and communicates about the food source position by dancing in the comb. If the foraging bee finds the food source position close to hive, it performs a simple round dance and if the food source position is far from the hive, then it performs waggle dance. Waggle dance basically forms an eight like figure and the distance and the direction of the food source is indicated by this dance. The speed of the dance conveys the distance. The inclination of the dance (angle between the sun, relative to hive and the food source) indicates the direction of the food source [4]. 3. Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm The artificial bee colony algorithm consists of 3 types of bees- the employed bee, onlooker bee and the scout bee. Scout bee is responsible for carrying out random searches in the environment. A bee who visits the food source visited by it previously is called an employed bee and the bee that waits in the beehive for decision making is called the onlooker bee. Both exploration and exploitation processes are carried out by all the three bees. In the ABC algorithm it is assumed that the colony consists of equal number of employed bees and onlooker bees and for every food source there is an employed bee in the hive. The bee whose food source has been exhausted by other bees becomes a scout bee [5]. The bee has the capability of memorizing the location of the food source once it has been discovered and then immediately starts exploiting it. The foraging bee returns to the hive with load of nectar from the source and then unloads the nectar to a food store. The bee has the following three options after unloading the nectar [1]: It becomes an uncommitted follower once the food source has been abandoned. It dances and recruits other nest mates while returning to the same food source. Without recruiting other bees, it continues to forage at the food source. The search consist a cycle of three steps [1]. In the beginning, some food sources are randomly selected by the bees and the amount of nectar is also determined. Then these bees return to the hive and share this information by performing the waggle dance. In second stage, each employed bee goes to the food source visited by her in previous cycle and then by means of visual information, chooses a new food source in the neighborhood. In the third stage, an onlooker bee visits the food source position depending on the nectar information shared by the employed bees. The food source with maximum nectar quantity is selected by the onlooker bee. After arriving at the selected food source, the onlooker bee according to visual information chooses a new food source in the neighborhood of the selected food source. Once the food source is abandoned by the bee, a new food source is randomly selected by a scout and then the abandoned source is replaced by this new food source. Depending upon the probabilistic value onlooker bee selects a food source. This value pi is calculated as [5]: where SN is the number of food sources which is also equal to employed bees number (BN) and fiti is the fitness value of the solution i evaluated by its employed bee. The fitness value is proportional to the nectar amount of the food source. To produce a candidate food position from the old one, the algorithm uses the following expression [5]: Where the random chosen indexes are k â‚ ¬ {1, 2. . . BN} and j â‚ ¬ {1, 2. . . D} and k is different from i. φij is a random number between [−1, 1]. It controls the production of a neighbor food source position around xij and the modification represents the comparison of neighbor food positions visually by the bee [5]. 4. Application of Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm to Software Testing Software testing is a type of multi variable optimization problem where generation and selection of efficient test cases cannot be achieved within permissible time bounds. Hence for solving these types of problems, meta-heuristics search algorithms have been proposed [6]. These algorithms help in finding the near optimal solution in reasonable running time. The artificial bee colony algorithm, which is also a meta-heuristics search algorithm, is capable of locating efficient solutions. The algorithm models the food foraging behavior of honey bees. The main focus of software testing is on uncovering as many errors as possible in the given time, as this would help in conforming the product to the requirement specifications and also to validate the quality of the software produced [7]. The following paragraphs give the review of application of artificial bee colony algorithm in the field of software testing. Mala et al [6] applied artificial bee colony algorithm in the field of software test suite optimization. The approach is based on population based algorithm where every test case represents a possible solution for the optimization problem. A happiness value has been introduced for each test case corresponding to the fitness or quality of the associated solution. Here the three bees are replaced by search agent, selector agent and optimizer agent. Various properties of agents are autonomy, inter-operability and social ability [11]. These agents help in selecting efficient test cases from infinite number of test cases. The parallel behavior of the agents helps in generating the solution faster. Path coverage has been described as the test adequacy criteria. Initially random test cases are generated for all test paths or sequences. Along the path, as the search agent goes to an executable state, it monitors each test case and also determines a neighbor state. The happiness value is upda ted for every test case, along every test path. If a particular node is not covered by a particular test case, then that node gets eliminated. The selector agent starts a new search for locating the node with highest feasibility in that path. Only the test case with maximum happiness value is remembered and rests are removed from the memory. Based on the happiness value, the optimizer agent chooses one of the test cases and also selects a neighbor around that for evaluating its happiness value. Abandoned test cases are replaced with the new test cases as discovered by the selector agent and this is repeated until all the nodes have been visited once. This algorithm was implemented on few sample problems and the results were compared to the results of application of Ant colony Optimization for test suite optimization. It was observed that ABC algorithm provided consistent results and the problems faced in ACO such as pheromone updation, memory and time overheads were not faced by ABC algorithm. McCaffrey [8] applied simulated bee colony algorithm for generation of pair wise test sets. A pair wise test set is generally a collection of test vectors where all possible combination of pairs of values has been captured from different parameters. Here a bee has been modeled as a bee object with four types of data fields and the entire colony is represented as a hive object consisting of an array of bee objects [8]. An enumeration type which specifies the current role (active, scout and inactive) is the first field. The second field defines a 2-D array representing a bees memory, which in turn would represent a partial solution. An integer value representing the quality of food source associated with data in bees memory is the third field type and the fourth field is represented by the number of times a particular food source has been visited by the bee object without locating a neighbor source with higher quality value. The algorithm requires an initial seed value which can be any value equal or greater to number of test vectors which are representing a minimal solution. In the proposed algorithm, when the scout bee is in active role, then it leaves the hive and selects a random food location and compares the quality of food. If the quality of the food location is greater than the one in its memory, the memory gets updated with new food location. The simulated scout bee performs the waggle dance in hive and these dances are visible to all the inactive bees in the hive. In the algorithm, the number of times an active foraging bee visits a source has been fixed. Global counter variable helps in tracking the number of simulated bees in each role. Therefore when an active bee becomes inactive, then randomly an inactive bee is selected and gets transitioned to an active state. The algorithm was run against seven pairwise tests set generation benchmark problem. The approach yielded good result in terms of test set size but the performance of the algorithm was slower as compared to other deterministic algorithms. Mala et al [9] again proposed the use parallel behavior of the three bees for automated software test optimization. The main focus was to generate efficient test suite which can cover the software under test within time and less cost. The artificial bee colony algorithm system combines the local search conducted by the employed and onlooker bees with the global search carried out by scout bee. Hence it helps in attaining global or near-global optima. The test adequacy criteria applied here is ensuring the state coverage, path coverage and branch coverage. The cyclomatic complexity of the given program is known and it also indicates the number of independent paths. Three bees functionality gets extended to three agents- search agent, selector agent and replace agent. The algorithm in [6] was implemented on 10 benchmark problems and the results were compared to sequential ABC, random testing and Genetic Algorithm. It was found that the performance of parallel ABC algorithm is better th an the other approaches. In some cases random testing also produced better results as compared to genetics algorithm. For 100% coverage, the number of test cases needed was very less in parallel ABC as compared to other approaches. GA gave only 50% coverage due to strike up local optimal solution. Dahiya et al [10] presented an ABC algorithm based approach for automatic generation of structural software tests. The working of the honey bee is reported as robust and adaptive by [12].The paper applied artificial bee colony based search algorithm for generating test data using symbolic execution technique of static structural testing and therefore corresponding to every path a compound predicate was constructed by anding all the branch predicates of a path. The compound predicate should be evaluated to true by a candidate solution to become a valid test case. For test data generation, random population of candidate solution is generated. Solutions are represented by position of flower patches. The profitability related to each flower is also measured. This profitability is replaced by the fitness of the positions in computer modeling. It includes various parameters such as nectar content in the flower, distance of flower from the beehive and sugar content in nectar etc. In the first phase of the algorithm; the employed bees modify elite flower patches position w.r.t. neighborhood. In the second phase, the onlooker bees modify their patches position w.r.t. elite patches position. A greedy selection process is repeated after every phase where solution or flower patches compete among themselves for retention in the selected or elite flower patches, based on their fitness. Hence some solutions or flowers may migrate from one patch to another patch and some may get abandoned. These search phases of the bees are repeated until some termination criteria are met. The algorithm was implemented on ten real world problems. The output suggested that the proposed algorithm had performed satisfactorily for most of the programs except for the programs having large input domains and various equality based path constraints. 5. Analysis and Discussion Four different applications of Artificial Bee Colony algorithm in the field of software testing has been reviewed and based on the analysis a table has been formulated which compares all the applications on different parameters. Parameters Application by D Jeya Mala (2009)[6] Application by James D McCaffrey (2009)[8] Application by D Jeya Mala (2010)[9] Application by S S Dahiya (2010)[10] Main Objective Test suite optimization Generation of pairwise test sets Automated software test optimization Automatic generation of structural software tests. Output obtained Generated optimal results and it converges within less number of test runs. Good results in terms of test set size and suggests the use where test sets are intended to be reused. Generated global or near global optimal results and it converges within less number of test runs. Generated test cases for all paths. Tool used for implementation Java PICT in C++ QICT in C# Java MATLAB Output Comparison With Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm With published results of 7 benchmark problems. With Sequential ABC, Random Testing and Genetics Algorithm No Comparison made Behavior of Bees Parallel behavior of bees Sequential behavior Parallel behavior Sequential behavior Cyclomatic complexity YES NO YES YES Type of bees Search Agent, Selector Agent, Optimizer Agent Employed bee, Onlooker bee, Scout bee Search agent, Selector agent, Replace Agent Employed bee, Onlooker bee, Scout bee Test Adequacy Criteria Path Coverage Not Mentioned Path coverage, Branch Coverage, State coverage Path coverage Drawbacks Not Mentioned Longer generation time Not mentioned Did not perform well on programs having large input domain and many equality based path constraints. Benchmark problem used 6 problems 7 benchmark problems Many 10 real world problems Table1. Comparison of various applications of ABC algorithm Mala et al [6] applied artificial bee colony algorithm for test suite optimization and the results obtained were better than the use of Ant Colony Optimization. McCaffrey [8] applied ABC algorithm for generation of pairwise test sets and suggested the use where test sets are intended to be reused. Mala et al [9] again applied ABC algorithm for automated software test optimization and compared the output with that of sequential ABC algorithm, Random Testing and Genetics Algorithm. For 100% coverage the number of test cases needed was very less in parallel ABC algorithm. Dahiya et al [10] used ABC algorithm for automatic generation of structural software tests. The algorithm performed satisfactorily except for programs with large input domains. 6. Conclusion In this research the artificial bee colony algorithm has been studied and a review based on application of the artificial bee colony algorithm in the field of software testing has been performed. Based on review a table has been formulated which compares all the applications on different parameters. It was also observed that the current application of artificial bee colony algorithm is in the field of structural testing and for test suite optimization only.

Power Hungry Leaders And Gullible Commoners History Essay

Power Hungry Leaders And Gullible Commoners History Essay In 1788, Louis XVIII of France summoned the Estates-General for the first time in 175 years to solve the countrys disastrous financial problems. Jacques Necker, who had recently become finance minister and put in charge of the matter, invited writers to propose how the Estates should be organized, and hundreds of pamphlets were published. Among them was What is the Third Estate?, by Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes.In this powerful work of rhetoric, Sieyes pointed out the following: What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it want? To become somethingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. The words gave hope to the weary commoners, and set off the bomb known as the French Revolution. The question we must ask ourselves here is this: what implications did the pamphlet actually have for the French Revolution? At first glance, this question appears to have very straightforward answers. The pamphlet, as a whole, serves as basic guidelines for a reform of social order. Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite are what it pursues, and the ideal society it calls for is based on these values. Sieyes dreamed of a world where it was not the laws that differentiate citizens among themselves but the assets and advantages of the individual citizens themselves.  [5]  Equal opportunities, laws to protect the common rights  [6]  of citizens, and the final neutralization of the privileged orders are what he demands.  [7]  The Third Estate, for all practical purposes, was the Nation-it held everything that was needed to form the Nation, with the exception of the clergy, which Sieyes believed to be a profession charged with a public service that had all of its offices usurped by the nobility.  [8]  These were indeed compelling arguments to the Third Estate, considering that most of them spent thei r lives in utter poverty, with no hope of redemption! What other answer could there be, other than that this pamphlet envisioned a Revolution that was carried through out of genuine care for the people? Before any more is said on the subject, it is crucial to review the society of the period. It was 1789, and the Estates-General was about to convene. The procedure of selecting the deputies representing each order was different from that of the Estates-General of 1614: the number of deputies from the Third Estate was doubled  [9]  , making their number the same as those of the First and Second Estate together, and any tax-paying male over 25 could vote for deputies of the Third Estate.  [10]  Interestingly, however, many of the elected deputies of the Third Estate were lawyers, and most others came from respected professions-unusual for the representatives of an order which was, by a vast majority, constituted by peasants.  [11]  The peasants had deemed themselves inferior and chosen the bourgeois deputies to represent them.  [12]  Sieyes became one of these newly elected deputies of the Third Estate.  [13]  Maximilien Robespierre and Jacques Danton, were two othe rs.  [14]  Soon afterwards, the Third Estate left the Estates-General to form the National Assembly.  [15]  Throughout the course of the Revolution, these three, among many others of the bourgeois, remained important figures; understanding their actions and motives will help answer the main question of this paper. These public speakers and writers continued with their enlightenment. Meanwhile, on July 14th, 1789, upon hearing news that the King had removed Necker from the position of finance minister, the people of Paris understood the Kings actions as a conspiracy to close the National Assembly, and after looking where to find weapons, they laid their eyes on Bastille, which was rumored to have a full supply of firearms and ammunition; Bastille went down that very day.  [16]  The fall of Bastille marked the start of the new social order that Sieyes had written about; the rights of citizens, were finally recognized in the August 4 decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,  [17]  and his theories of national sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and representation became, for the first time, legislation. Males were given universal suffrage; laws protecting property rights were established; no one was privileged.  [18]  19Although there were still many problems and is sues that needed to be solved, it appeared that the wishful thinking of What is the Third Estate? was coming true. This state of bliss did not last long. The constitutional monarchy proved to be a failure, and with the emergence of the National Convention, a republic was born. The National Convention was, as all assemblies that preceded it had been, far from united.  [20]  Political conflict was constant, and to add to the countrys problems, it was met with an outbreak of war with the counterrevolutionary countries of Europe, namely Prussia.  [21]  The war allowed the Committee of Public Safety, which had originally been established by the National Convention to formulat[e] policy and coordinat[e] the war effort, to rise to power, virtually acting as the executive government.  [22]  Under the control of Maximilien Robespierre,  [23]  it became the active government in the period known as the Reign of Terror.  [24]  Any person who supported the royalty, asked for more social reform, or spoke against the Terror was executed swiftly, without delays like trials.  [25]  Jacques Danton  [26]  was among those who tried to stop the Terror, and who was executed for it.  [27]  Eventually, Robespierre, in an effort to gain more power, accused fellow members of the Committee, and was beheaded, ending his life as well as the Terrors.  [28]   We could continue with the events that happened after the fall of the Terror until the end of the Revolution, but the information we have now is sufficient to answer the question. The political events that occurred between 1789-1795 have a certain pattern: the constant change of the ruling class. It is a cycle of men struggling to get their hands on power, justifying their causes as being for the people. What did the French Revolution-the title this cycle of power is given-achieve, as was stated by Sieyes in What is the Third Estate? It achieved, as stated previously, the following: universal male suffrage, laws protecting the common rights of citizens-a constitution, and a primitive form of democracy. Did it dispose of privileges? Members of the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror had the power to sentence someone to death with almost no evidence at all. Surely, is this not a privilege? Sieyes might argue that such privileges in post-revolutionary society was earned, not in herited, as it had been during the Ancient Regime. However, the only difference was the law; it was just as unlikely for a peasant of 1793 to become such officials as it was for a bourgeois to be admitted to high offices in 1788. They would both be exceptions. When seen from these principles, the French Revolution brought little change to the Nation; the entire period is merely a change of the ruling, or governing, order. The privileged clergy and nobility were replaced by the tier of leaders  [29]  of the Third Estate, and members of this tier had well been expecting it: they orchestrated it! This tier of leaders of the common population-let us call it the First Tier-spent their lives being ruled by, and usurped positions by, members of the higher Estates. Sieyes was one of them.  [30]  It is reasonable to argue, then, that this First Tier desired to replace the higher Estate as the new ruling Tier. They could not, however, do this alone. The First Tier was by nature, small in number compared to the rest of the Third Estate-for which we will now use the term Second Tier.  [31]  The First Tier required the help of the Second Tier if it were to succeed in becoming the ruling Tier; after all, the Tiers were, in Sieyess words, The Nation, and the Second Tier constituted most of it. How were they to achieve the task of persuading the Second Tier to join forces with them in overthrowing the government? Here, the First Tier had advantages. While the First Tier, as the elite and leaders of the Third Estate, enjoyed relatively prosperous lives, had the right to vote, and generally did not have property taken by the nobles, none of the members of the Second Tier had this luxury. This was the bait that the First Tier could use, and would use, to persuade the Second Tier of their cause. They promised a society in which the Second Tier could have all of these rights, and more. Of course, all of this was carefully written and spoken in a rhetorical fashion, so as to produce rage and a revolutionary air.  [32]  What were the results? The storming of the Bastille was the single largest incident, and it eventually took down the First and Second Estates, replacing the government with the First Tier, who now had the power they wanted-the power to lead the Nation. They gav e the Second Tier certain rights and benefits that had been promised beforehand in pamphlets like What is the Third Estate?, but that was where the fairy tale ended. Based on these observations, we arrive at the conclusion that the actual idea and concept of the French Revolution is not much more than the political protests of a frustrated First Tier that decided that the Nations rulers were not worthy, and its manipulation of the Second Tier to carry out the actual, physical overthrow of the government. In effect, the Marxist views of the French Revolution being a Revolution consisting of four smaller class revolutions  [33]  is a mere illusion, consequences of a historians foolish quest to find excessive class meaning in the incidents of history; in reality, what happened was simple. The people overthrew the government in 1789, and for the next ten years, citizens who were not satisfied with it succeeded in rebuilding it several times. In his famed book, The Technique of Revolution, Curzio Malaparte stated that the 18 Brumaire  [34]  was the first modern coup dà ©tat.  [35]  It was not. July 14th, 1789-the storming of the Bastille- was the first. What implications did What is the Third Estate? have for the French Revolution? The pamphlet was the first domino that triggered the chain reaction known as the Revolution, by no doubt. But the social order that it created was not that of which it spoke of. The Revolution did bring much social reform, the invention of citizenship  [36]  being one major change. However, ultimately it failed to create an equal society, because the First and Second Estates of the Ancient Regime were simply replaced by the First Tier, with the pre-existing privileges excluded. However, the governing First Tier had privileges of their own, one extreme example being the aforementioned privileges of the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror. The French Revolution may have started a movement that brought great change to the world, but we must all keep in mind that its original intentions were not quite as noble and philanthropic. The role the pamphlet What is the Third Estate? played during the Re volution was bait for the masses, or the Second Tier. Sieyes was an idealist. He likely believed that the world he dreamt of was possible, even with the First Tier merely replacing the First and Second Estates and taking control of the Nation, as long as those in high positions had correct motives. However, his comments on the Terror after it had deteriorated, I survived,  [37]  seem to suggest that he had lost faith in the idea. This appears to be not far from the truth, as in 1799, ten years after the publication of What is the Third Estate?, Sieyes assisted Napoleons successful coup dà ©tat, ending the Revolution, closing the door he had so enthusiastically opened a decade earlier.  [38]  

Chief Seattle Essay -- Biography History Indians Native American Essay

Chief Seattle When stories are told about the American Indian it is usually the Indians that are looked upon as the heathens. They are portrayed as savages who spent most of their time raiding wagon trains and scalping the white settlers just for fun. The media has lead us to believe that the American government was forced to take the land from these savage Indians. We should put the blame where it belongs, on the U.S. Government who lied, cheated, and stole from the Indians forcing many Indian leaders to surrender not only their tribes but their nation in order to save the lives of their people. Among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, perhaps the best known may be Chief Seattle. Chief Seattle (more correctly known as Seathl or Sealth) was born sometime between 1786-1790 on Blake Island at the campsite of his ancestors. Blake Island lies south and a little east of Bainbridge Island and west and a little south of Seattle. Seattle was the son of Suquamish leader named Schweabe and a Duwamish woman named Scholitza. He became Chief of the Suquamish, Duwamish, and allied Salish speaking tribes by proving his leadership qualities in a war that pitted his and other saltwater tribes against those of the Green and White Rivers. (1) He was considered to be Duwamish since his mother was the daughter of a Duwamish chief and the line of descent passed matrilineally. This was sometimes the case when fathers died while their son's were was still young and the mother would return to her tribe to raise the children. The Duwamish lived on the Duwamish River and various islands across the P uget Sound. Seattle was married twice, his first wife Ladaila, died after bearing one daughter, Kiksomlo, known as "Angeline". His second wife, Oiahl, had three daughters all of whom died young and two boys, George and Seeanumpkin. (2) In 1792, Captain George Vancouver anchored off Restoration Point on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. Seattle, according to the recollections of various old-timers, often spoke of seeing the ship and being impressed with the guns, steel, and other goods. Seattle was known for his courage, daring and leadership during his youth. Throughout the violent periods, Seattle remained a steadfast and loyal friend of the settlers and encouraged the Indians to remain peaceful. He gained control of six of the local tribes and continued the friendly relation... ... the two teams that didn't have any uniforms. Now I look back and for all I know maybe they couldn't afford any. While I was in high school I remember driving with my friends to the Indian reservations to buy illegal fireworks. I never really gave it much thought beyond the fact that they were places to get illegal fireworks. Anyway, like I wrote earlier "this is just two examples that I have experienced while growing up in Washington State". This class truly has been a learning experience. Works Cited (1) Ells, Myron. The Indians of Puget Sound. University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1985 (2) Jeffers, Susan. Brother Eagle, Sister Sky. Dial Books: New York, 1991 (3) Sturtevant, William. Handbook of North American Indians. Smithsonian Institution: Washington, 1990 (4) Dockstader, Frederick. Great North American Indians. Litton Educational Publishing: New York, 1977 (5) Ruby, Robert. Indians of the Pacific Northwest. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1981 (6) Deloria, Vine. Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Double Day And Company: New York, 1977 (7) Schwantes, Carlos. The Pacific Northwest. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 1989

Time and Cost Estimating Techniques Essays -- Project Management Obser

Time and Cost Estimating Techniques Estimating work times provides several benefits for the project manager. It gives an idea of the level of effort required to complete a project. This information then enables the project manager to produce a realistic plan based upon that effort. Estimating also helps the project manager anticipate the budget for the project. There are many formal techniques available to estimate time and cost for activities. Please refer to the Project Management Reference Section for more details on these techniques. Anyone reviewing these estimates should understand that they are approximations, not accuracies. Although the formal techniques are very specific, most of them have the following tasks in common: * Break activities down into small pieces for easier and more accurate estimation. (WBS) * Review historical information and compare to current activities. * Include a contingency buffer for potential risks. * Solicit advice from others that have previously completed similar activities. * Identify and document the assumptions and parameters used to derive the estimates. Microsoft Project Microsoft Project is project management software. Project management software assists project managers by providing a means for organizing project information. A project manager uses the software to enter and maintain a workplan that organizes activities and details. The software calculates the scheduled dates for tasks based on the time or work requirements of each task using a calendar of working days for the project and its resources. Microsoft Project is a tool to assist project managers in creating a WBS, PERT Charts, Gantt Charts, and resource histograms. Other reports and charts are also readily available for use and customization. AIS project team members and managers should use the latest version. PERT/CPM Network analysis techniques identify early and late start and finish dates for the uncompleted portions of project activities. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM) are examples of network analysis techniques. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is an event-oriented technique used to show all the project tasks, dependencies, and earliest and latest start times for each task in graphical form. It is used... ...y are achieving the task goals. This type of observation can also be useful if aspects of team performance are being investigated to understand how the team members are organised and perform their tasks. Communication and conversational analysis Investigation of the patterns in the organisation of people's interaction (it would be possible to use the principle of analysing a conversation between two travellers, or one traveller and one transport enquiry office operator in real situations, in order to identify the needs for the traveller in specific contexts, what are the difficulties encountered, how a system could resolve these difficulties,... ). One of these methods is the language / action approach which considers the language as a means by which people act. Advantage of this method : it provides a complete and logical conceptual frame in order to investigate all kinds of conversation. Disadvantage of this method : many situations are characterised by subtle communication processes not taken into account by the model. There is also a difficulty in labelling an interaction and a message especially if they do not fit into the request or promise categories.

A Stakeholder View of Strategic Management in Chinese Firms

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STUDIES VOL 15, NO1, JUNE 2007: pages 1 of 13 A STAKEHOLDER VIEW OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN CHINESE FIRMS Dr Xueli Huang1 Dr Scott Gardner2 Despite the fact that China has emerged as a driving force of the world economy over the last decade, little research has been undertaken into how Chinese firms strategically manage their businesses. This paper develops a theoretical framework of strategic management in the Chinese firms through reviewing and synthesising five strategic perspectives that are relevant to the Chinese context: the Industry Structure View (ISV), Resources-Based View (RBV), Institutional View (IV), Relational View (RV), and Stakeholder View (SHV). We elaborate the relevance of the SHV in the Chinese context and its relationships with other strategic perspectives. Finally, we offer several managerial and research implications based on the theoretical framework developed. Key Words: strategic management, Chinese firms, stakeholder perspective I. INTRODUCTION One of the most significant developments in the global economy is the re-emergence of China as a major driving force of the world economy. Since the implementation of the open-door, market-oriented policies in 1979, China has quadrupled its GDP and sustained a significant average growth rate of over 9 per cent. The foreign direct investment (FDI) in China in 2004 amounted to US$ 60 billions, making China the biggest FDI destination country over three consecutive years from 2002. Chinese organisations now compete fiercely in domestic markets, and the international trade arena, with the value of China’s international trade accounting for over 70 percent of its GDP in 2004. The Chinese have also expanded their business operations to other countries as illustrated by the recent examples such as the Levono, China’s largest Personal Computer (PC) manufacturing company, acquiring IBM’s PC division, and the unsuccessful bid of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China’s third largest oil company, for Unocal, the ninth largest oil company in the USA. Despite the important role played by the Chinese economy in general, and Chinese firms in particular, in the global economy, China has been considered as one of the most underresearched regions in the world (Tsui, Schoonhoven, Meyer, Lau, & Milkovich, 2004). Although interest from executives, academics and media on Chinese business matters has 1 Dr Xueli Huang is Senior Lecturer at the School of Management, Edith Cowan University. Email: x. [email  protected] edu. au 2 Dr Scott Gardner is Associate Professor at Murdoch University. Email: s. [email  protected] edu. au 1 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms increased dramatically over the past several years, little research effort has been devoted to studying the strategic management of Chinese organisations. This paper investigates strategic management in Chinese organisations. In doing so, an attempt is made to integrate the current literature on strategic management, focusing on the two dominant perspectives of the past twenty years: the Industry Structure View (ISV) (Porter, 1979) and the Resource Based View (RBV) (Barney, 1997; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990; Wernerfelt, 1984). It also examines Post, Preston and Sachs’ (2002) conceptual schema of complementary perspectives for strategic analysis of 21st century corporate environments – the Stakeholder View (SHV). In attempting to make sense of increased strategic complexity and the central role of networks of human relationships in shaping economic activity in Eastern (notably Chinese) and Western markets, our analysis will call upon the ISV, RBV and SHV with additional reference to other contemporary strategic perspectives including the Relational View (RV)(Dyer & Singh, 1998), and the Institution-Based View (IBV) (Peng, 2002). By focusing these lenses on how business is conducted in the cultural context and commercial environment of China, this paper aims to: 1) enhance understanding of why and how the strategic behaviours of Chinese managers differ from those of Western managers? 2) explain why the SHV is relevant to Chinese management practice; and 3) develop an integrated theoretical framework that can be used for guiding future research into the unique characteristics of strategic management in Chinese organizations. II. LITERATURE REVIEW The Industry-Structure and Resource Based Views How firms behave and what determines a firm’s performance in international competition are two of four fundamental issues in strategic management (Rumelt, Schendel, & Teece, 1994). Searching for sources of competitive advantage has been a key theme for strategy researchers and business managers over the past five decades. Consequently, a number of strategic management views or thoughts have emerged that explain either sources of competitive advantage or how firms form strategy (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 1998). The ISV and RBV are two prominent views that have endured in the literature and in practice despite significant reconfiguration of global market boundaries and technologies over the decade to 2006. The fundamental assumption of ISV proposed by Porter (1979) is that a firm’s performance is primarily determined by the environment, including both macro environment and industry environment within which it operates. These two broad sets of environmental factors heavily influence the attractiveness of a position for a firm to occupy. As such, a firm uses its market power, or in Williamson’s (1991) terms, ‘ strategizing’, as a primary means to generating supernormal returns or achieving competitive advantage. The second prominent perspective of strategic management is the RBV proposed by Wernerfelt (1984) and subsequently developed by strategic scholars, most notably by Barney (1986; 1997), Rumelt (1984) and Teece and his colleagues (1997). The RBV 2 International Journal of Business Studies argues that a firm’s competitive advantage is primarily based on the heterogeneity of the key resources and capabilities it owns or controls, particularly those that are difficult to mobilise. It is the heterogeneity and immobility of these unique resources and core competence that earn a firm’s supernormal rents. In Williamston’s term, firms adopting this approach are ‘economizing’ (Williamson, 1991). Although the RBV has been widely used in strategic literature, its contribution to the theoretical development has been recently challenged (Priem & Butler, 2001). The Relational and Institution-Based Views Although these two schools of strategic management mentioned above have contributed significantly to understanding of the firms’ strategic management practices and behaviours, the quest continues. Recent effort devoted to this area has resulted in several promising and interesting developments over the past decade which are relevant to the study of strategic management in Chinese organisations, including the Complex Response Process View (CRPV), (Stacey, 2003), Relational View (RV) (Dyer & Singh, 1998), Institution-Based View (IBV) (Peng, 2002) and, more recently, the Stakeholder View (SHV) by Post, Preston and Sachs (2002b). There are considerable overlaps across these views that attempt to balance the long standing use of high level and rational industry analysis to explain firms’ strategic behaviours, within a defined marketplace, with a more dynamic, processual, and ultimately political view of strategy. This is focused on human motives and interactions within inter-connected, local, national and global networks or constituencies. The Relational View (RV) (Dyer & Singh, 1998) proposes that firms can achieve abovenormal returns through profiling and actively managing their network of relationships with other business organisations, particularly with suppliers and users. Dyer and Singh (1998) also outline four mechanisms through which these inter-organizational relationships can generate competitive advantage. They are: 1) investing in relationspecific assets to gain productivity in the value chain; 2) substantial knowledge exchange, or sharing between participating organisations to enhance inter–firm organisational learning; 3) leveraging the complementary resources and capability of alliance partners to develop new products and services; and 4) using effective governance to reduce transaction costs. As Dyer and Singh (1998) argue, one of the major benefits of this view is that it extends the unit of analysis for sustainable competitive advantage from a single firm (RBV) or single industry (ISV) to a network of inter-organizational relationships. The RV can be regarded as a middle range theory as it only focuses on a limited number of concepts (Neuman, 2003). Another recently developed view that is relevant to the studies of strategic management in Chinese organizations is the institution-based view (IBV) (North 1990; Peng, 2002). This view attempts to explain why the strategic decisions of apparently similar firms in different countries vary, and considers institutions as a new set of independent factors, besides a firm’s resources and its industry structure, that influence its strategic choices. According to North (1990), institutions are â€Å"the rules of the game in the society†. More specifically, Scott (1995) refers to institutions as â€Å"cognitive, normative, and regulative 3 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behaviour†. Thus, institutions help identify what strategic choices are acceptable and supportable, reduce uncertainty, and provide consistency to firms. Based on this view, therefore, institutional factors constrain the choices a firm can make, and are often considered in the strategy literature as part of the environment under which organisations operate. Organisations in different countries behave differently because the political and legal systems, social norms and values vary from one country to another, and these are important elements which influence strategic decisions. In other words, the institutional framework, as defined by Davis and North (1970) as â€Å"the set of fundamental political, social and legal ground rules†, in different countries influences firms’ strategy and consequently their performance. The IBV has shed much light on our understanding of strategic behaviour of firms in different countries, and could be good platform for developing new theoretical perspectives that are pertinent to the emerging business culture of China. (Peng, 2005). The Stakeholder View A more recent development in strategic thinking is the stakeholder-based view (SHV) (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002b). In line with the institution-based view, the SHV recognizes the important role played by political and social arenas shaping organisational decision making and performance. Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) build on this broad position, arguing that organisations, and particularly powerful multinational corporations, need to actively develop, maintain and manage relationships with their key stakeholders, including governments and communities. This proactive cultivation and long term management of strategic relationships contrast to the IBV, which suggests passive conformance to the rules. It is however quite consistent with management as understood and practiced in Chinese business networks. It therefore deserves more detailed discussion and elaboration in this paper. According to Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) the stakeholder view holds that â€Å"the capability of a business enterprise to generate sustainable wealth, and hence long-term value, is determined by its relationships with critical stakeholders† (p. 1). There are two primary, but implicit, assumptions on which the SHV is based. First, a firms’ sustainable and long-term value is determined by three broad types of factors: industry structure, resource base, and social and political setting. It combines the external and internal environments of the firm, and human relationships within its immediate sphere of operations and broader constituency as lo ci for analysis. Second, within this broad constituency there are critical stakeholders whose relationships with the focal firm influence its performance either positively or negatively, (See Figure 1). Thus, the authors (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002a) argue that the SHV both integrates the industrystructure view and RBV into a broader analytical framework for understanding strategic decisions and actions, and complements them through a broader understanding of how the industry position, resources and firm performance are affected by social and political factors. International Journal of Business Studies Figure 1 The stakeholder view of the corporation (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002, p. 55) The theoretical foundation of the SHV can be traced back to the stakeholder theory popularised by Freeman’s seminal work on stakeholder management and its ethical implications (Freeman, 1984). Since then, the stakeholder concept as a significant element in strategic management theory and practice has been widely used in varied settings, including the public sector and not-for-profit organizations in the USA and various European contexts. Following Freeman’s discussion of the purpose and ethical considerations of stakeholder management, Donaldson and Preston (1995) proposed three types of stakeholder theory: descriptive, instrumental and normative. Descriptive stakeholder theory attempts to describe and explain specific characteristics and behaviours of business organisations, instrumental theory is used to identify the connections between stakeholder management and organizational performance often where profit motive or advantage over rivals are dominant considerations, whilst normative theory focuses on the interpretation of corporate functioning, including moral and philosophical guidelines for operations and management (Donaldson & Preston, 1995). Based on this typology of stakeholder theory, instrumental motives and the quest for competitive advantage through stakeholder management appear to have dominated in the literature over the past fifteen years. However this has been offset to a certain extent in recent years by an increased focus in the literature on the role of stakeholders and stakeholder management in the practice and adoption of corporate social responsibility by US and European multinationals (Laszlo, 2003; Sirgy, 2002; Vogel, 2005). In common with other major US based stakeholder theorists, Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) widely disseminated notion of the SHV has been developed primarily from observations of the characteristic management behaviours within a small number of large US and European based multinational corporations, which they refer to as â€Å"large, complex enterprises† (p. 9), citing examples such as Motorola, Shell, and Cummins Engine Co. The reasons for adopting this particular case-based research method is that it 5 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms equires an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the organisations under study, and that the development of the relationships with its critical stakeholders is often evolutionary and path-dependent. Summarising the strategy perspectives discussed above, an integrative framework can be proposed as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. An integrative model of strategic management in the Chinese organisation Is the SHV pers pective appropriate for understanding and explaining strategic management in Chinese organisations? Whilst the SHV ocuses on the relationships with key stakeholders and its impact on the long-term organisational wealth, many have observed that unique business relationships, or Guanxi, have been based on characteristic behaviour of Chinese managers. Thus, there is a coincidence between the SHV theory and Guanxi practice in China. Using the distinction provided by Argyris and Schon (1978) between theory and practice, one could wonder if the SHV is a theory espoused and consciously enacted by Western managers in recent years, but imbued in Chinese business practices for many centuries. As stated by Donaldson and Preston (1995), how stakeholder theory is understood varies from country to country, even in the highly developed market capitalist economies, of the USA, Europe, and Japan. The current Chinese context, in an economic, and more so, social and political sense, is vastly different from those of Western countries. Therefore, it is helpful at both a conceptual and practical level to examine how and why stakeholder management is practiced by Chinese firms. In the following section, we attempt to explain strategic behaviours of Chinese business practitioners, particularly the relationships between stakeholder management and other 6 International Journal of Business Studies dominant strategic views through examining the Chinese business settings and making use of the theoretical insights offered by the SHV. III. THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT AND OTHER STRATEGIC VIEWS IN THE CHINESE CONTEXT Although the five strategic views mentioned above have been largely developed independently, a close examination of these views reveals that overlaps exist between some of them. In the following subsections, we focus our discussion primarily on the relationship between the SHV and other views. Stakeholder management and resource-based view in the Chinese business setting Based on the RBV, an organisation can generate supernormal rents through the identification, acquisition, and use of its resources that are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991). Although human resources have been considered as one of the four major categories of resources within the firm, RBV has not looked beyond the properties of these resources. The focus of this view is primarily internal with little attention who, outside the firm, can influence the processes of resource access, acquisition and use. The relationship between organisational performance and external resources has been convincingly elaborated by the resource-dependence theory developed by Pfeffer (1978). According to the resource-dependence theory, the organisation relies heavily on its external stakeholders for key resource inputs to survive and prosper. For Chinese organizations, there is considerable dependence on external stakeholders for resource acquisition and use. Typically these external bodies or parties would be partly those with authority for either allocating resources, such as governments and banks, or influencing resource acquisition and use, such as taxation departments, or Bureau’s of Industrial and Commercial Administration, which can exercise considerable discretion within the broader legal and regulatory framework impacting Chinese business contexts. One particular point in case is the role of the Chinese government. Historically Chinese governments have controlled much of the national wealth and resources, and been heavily involved in making economic decisions. For example, most of major investment decisions in the state-owned enterprises have been directly influenced by the Chinese governments. Moreover, anecdotal evidence, either from public media or the word of mouth conventional wisdom in China, suggests that cultivation of relationships with Chinese banks, other business entities and their employees, are important to support financing, timely information sharing and sourcing critical materials for business enterprises. Stakeholder management and the market-based view Establishing a strong market position in China is very difficult because Chinese markets, even market segments, are usually big due to its large regional population bases. The well-established, and usually large, state-owned enterprises also make it harder to operate competitively for new comers in the Chinese markets. Although many new business 7 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms opportunities are continuously emerging, most of them are still heavily regulated by the Chinese governments. The governments can help and/or deter market position building through licensing (e. g. , taxi industry, iron ore importing), investment approvals (e. g. , steel mills), and issuing permits for key capital intensive activities such a commercial building and large scale infrastructure projects, whilst similar practices of these can also be observed in Western countries, the licensing and approval processes in China are often opaque and leave much room for discretion by government officials. Stakeholder management and institutional view As discussed above, the legal and political settings in China have profound influence on the strategies pursued by Chinese organisation. The legal systems in China have traditionally been loosely configured and left much room for interpretation. Chinese laws are usually not well codified and difficult to reinforce (Ahlstrorm & Bruton, 2001). Moreover jurisdictional boundaries between the governmental departments at the same level or governments at different levels often overlap. Therefore, favourable relationships with Chinese regulatory authorities can have a positive impact on the organisation’s performance. With regards to the political setting in China, the long history of feudalism in China from 221BC to 1912 has consistently shown a close link between political power and economic wealth. With the prevailing feudal system, political power was centrally controlled by the emperor and his royal family with business enterprises in China relying heavily on their government (emperor and royal families) for survival or prosperity. Coupled with the loose legal systems, favourable relationships with the Chinese government or royal family have traditionally been considered extremely important for business organisations to maintain their survival and growth. Modern Chinese history shows similar patterns of a close link between the government and business entities. Even after the Chinese communist party took over the power in 1949, the Chinese government controlled most of the country’s wealth. Many Chinese large enterprises are still state-owned. Therefore Chinese governments have been heavily involved in economic activities at both industry and firm levels over the past five decades. Developing a favourable relationship with various government departments and doing business under their authority or with their help, is still considered one of the most profitable courses for Chinese businesses to adopt in today’s global economy. It is good relationships with the government that help business organisations to grow and occupy a strong position in specific industries with provincial, national and international market penetration. This relational perspective on business and strategy has many historical and cultural precedents in China. Stakeholder management and relational view in the Chinese cultural setting Since the time of the Qin Dynasties Chinese culture has been dominated by Confucianism that stresses the importance of human relationships and harmony within a society. This requires that interpersonal relationships be appropriately arranged. The friendship (yi), which emphasized the mutually beneficial relationships between one and other, has been 8 International Journal of Business Studies egarded as one of the four characteristics of the fundamental tenet of Confucianism is humanity (ren). The central significance of these principles of friendship or egalitarianism has not waned in the Chinese recent history. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Party reinforced these ideas during the 1950s to 1960s, and more recently from the mid 1990’s to the present day, as a desirable social norm or virtue. At the business level, the Chinese governments have facilitated cooperation and collaboration among the state-owned enterprises in many business areas, such as new product development (Huang, Schroder, & Steffens, 1999). Frequent gatherings amongst businesses either through political meetings or economic activity among managers in China has also served to facilitate this collaboration and cooperation processes. Such institutional and cultural settings in China manifest in different behaviours including information sharing and informal governance, two of the four mechanisms suggested by Dyer and Singh (1998) which can be used by organisations to enhance their competitive advantage. It suggests that the strong cultural and institutional foundation that exists in Chinese business for developing reciprocal relationships. This can help improve organisation’s performance – a central principle for the Relational View. IV. THE STAKEHOLDER VIEW AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CHINESE MANAGERS AND RESEARCHERS This paper explored the relational basis on which the Chinese organisations compete in their domestic markets drawing comparisons with recent Western views of strategic behaviour. These were framed in a broader historical context of doing business in China. It is contended that the recent stakeholder view proposed by Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) provides much promise in terms of both theoretical and practical insights into how and why strategic management is practiced in Chinese organisations. However, clear differences in Chinese and Western social and political systems, and the stage of capitalist evolution need to be considered in applying the SHV to the Chinese settings. As stated by Donaldson and Preston (2005), how stakeholder theory is understood varies even in the market capitalist economies. This is more evident in the contemporary Chinese context, where social and political settings are vastly different from those of Western countries. A number of managerial and research implications are proposed from this paper. First, we have presented an integrated framework of strategic management that indicates the mechanisms linking relationships with key stakeholders and organisational performance. It is proposed that whilst developing and maintaining these relationships has been traditionally valued by Chinese as part of their culture, contemporary Western strategic management thinking would seek to equate effort spent on this area with measurable performance outcomes and long term competitive advantage. With this in view, the integrated framework presented could be used to provide Chinese managers with a more holistic and formalised view of strategic management to support the development clearly articulated objectives and productive long term interactions with key stakeholders. A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms Secondly, it is clear from the framework presented that the stakeholder view is only one of the approaches for creating organisational wealth. Several types of organisations are competing in the Chinese markets and each could be competing on different basis. Multinational corporations compete on their market position and resources, whilst stat eowned enterprises compete on the basis of being institutionalised within political and cultural settings, providing strong market influence and ready access to resources. Most local private firms may compete on the cultural settings, flexibility and speed of decisionmaking. As the Chinese governments gradually level the playing field for all business players, the political settings in China will be changed. Therefore, managers of Chinese organisations, particularly state-owned enterprises, need to develop relationships with other types of new era capitalist stakeholders who can help build strong market position and/or gain access to key resources. Thirdly, relationships with the stakeholders need to be considered as strategic (intangible) assets for business organisations in Western markets and as a powerful means to compete in China. As in the West, these relationships are located within a broader social and transactional knowledge networks (Kaplan & Norton, 2004; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), containing untapped strategic value for Chinese companies operating locally, regionally, and globally. Currently many Chinese managers spend much effort practicing a stakeholder theory in a fragmented way at a one – on – one, individual level. Whilst the compounding effect of the aggregation of these individual relationships is not clear, there is an argument with respect to the SHV to support a more strategically aligned, and systematic integration of these routinised interactions at the organisational level. This is one of the most challenging issues in implementing stakeholder theory in the Chinese organisations, as most of the relationships with key stakeholders are based on the trust between individuals, rather than between organizations. Looking to the future merging of Chinese and Western business practices organisational structure also needs to be redesigned to manage the relationships with key stakeholders. This is crucial. Although stakeholder orientation can be built into organisational culture, people need to be assigned to facilitate the ongoing integration and implementation of stakeholder management. There is no doubt that stakeholder management is both a science and an art. It requires intuition and human skills – more art than a science. However, it also requires systematic, rational, and analytical techniques. A number of stakeholder management techniques have been developed over the past decade, which may support the integration of stakeholder management into mainstream in to the strategy processes of Chinese businesses- most notably stakeholder mapping (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2005), and cognitive mapping (Eden & Ackermann, 1998) which help to tap into the social capital and relationships embedded in broader business networks. Finally, from a methodological point of view, the SHV points out the importance of a more holistic and integrated approach in understanding strategic management in Chinese organisations. So far, most of studies on Chinese management have used existing Western management theories to explain the Chinese business phenomena. In other 10 International Journal of Business Studies words, they exploit the existing theories, rather than exploring the Chinese management practice or behaviours to develop new theories from a Chinese perspective. Veteran researchers have called for a better balance between exploration and exploitation in conducting business research in China (Tsui et al. , 2004). Given that the stakeholder view is still in the developmental stage in the US and European corporate domain, empirical studies, including rigorously researched case studies, are urgently needed to empirically test the approach, and by extension, its potential application to strategic management theory building and practice in a Chinese context. REFERENCES Ahlstrorm, D. , & Bruton, G. D. (2001). Learning from successful local private firms in China: Establishing legitimacy. The Academy of Management Executive, 15(4), 72-83. Argyris, C. , & Schon, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. 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Leadership characteristics of a successful entrepreneur Essay

Successful entrepreneurs are specialized types of leaders that have a definite set of leadership characteristics that make them good at what they do–motivate people. Successful entrepreneurs are usually very focused in their vision and are immersed in making their venture successful. A good entrepreneur uses a dynamic and charismatic approach to motivate their employees to feel the same sort of feelings of success that he or she feels towards the ultimate success of the business. Howard Shultz, the founder of Starbucks Corporation, uses a dynamic leadership style, charismatic personality and vision to propel Starbucks as the premiere specialty coffee house in America, and is well on the way to becoming the global name for specialty coffee houses. Entrepreneurs, by the very nature of the definition, are self-starters that are highly motivated to make their business successful. Most people that start their own business do so because they have the personal drive to put their own ideas into a business venture. It takes a very motivated individual with personal convictions to make a business become a profitable and successful business. Obviously, if a person has enough gumption to take the steps to start their own business, then they are, by nature, very motivated individuals that want to make their project succeed. People who are not highly motivated will not become entrepreneurs or will more than likely fail if they try to make a half-hearted attempt to start their own business. To make a business succeed requires a vision of where the company should be after a specific time period. All entrepreneurs know in their mind what they would like their business to be in one year or five years or ten years. Successful entrepreneurs have a focused vision of what steps need to be taken to make their business succeed. The very best entrepreneurs are not only motivated themselves, but are able to spread their motivation to others through a charismatic leadership approach. People that become successful entrepreneurs have the ability to make those around them get excited about the business, just like they are. If the people that work in a company are motivated to work towards making the company a success, then the company has a much better chance of becoming successful. All entrepreneurs are excited about their own business, but not  all of them can get the people that work for them just as excited. A dynamic entrepreneur is able to motivate others to want to produce a better product or service because they provide the employees with motivation and direction. Motivation is probably the single most important factor that an entrepreneur can provide to their employees, but creating a shared vision for all to work for is almost equally important. People will work harder for a company that has ideals and principles that they also believe in and share. Successful entrepreneurs are able to create a vision for the company; they provide a goal or ideal that employees and the public in general can relate to. By having a vision or ideal that the company is striving for, each employee feels that they are performing a vital function that eventually leads to the final goal. Employees will work hard to achieve a goal if they feel that a goal is worthwhile or somehow makes the world a better place. Companies usually state these in mission statements, with variations for whatever the company holds as an ideal, such as environmentalism or community service. Howard Shultz, founder of Starbucks, is a very motivated individual that has a vision of what he would like Starbucks to become. The fact that Shultz coordinated 150 new Starbucks openings between 1987 and 1992 shows that he was very motivated to make Starbucks a national and eventually international success. Shultz’s vision for Starbucks has facilitated the opening of over 3,300 stores worldwide and Starbucks continues to grow at an extremely rapid pace. Along with charisma and motivation, Howard Shultz possesses many leadership attributes, which make him a very successful leader and motivator. Shultz knows how to make people feel like they are doing something important. Selling coffee is not a vital function that is needed for life, but Shultz has made selling coffee seem important to those that work for Starbucks. Shultz created a policy that Starbucks will only purchase organically grown coffee beans. This one policy makes Starbucks seem like they are performing a service to the world by creating a market for coffee beans that aren’t responsible for damaging the environment. Environmentalists and even non-environmentalists agree that this is a good thing–even noble. The  people that sell the Starbucks product feel a sense of pride for doing something for the environment. Starbucks also does other things that have the same effect, but on different populations. Starbucks has a program that builds schools, community centers, etc, in the communities that Starbucks buys its coffee beans from. This type of activity appeals especially to socially conscious people that get reward from knowing that Starbucks is ‘giving something back to the community’ from which the coffee beans are taken. Another program, called the Urban Coffee Opportunities, offers inner city entrepreneurs an opportunity to bring a Starbucks to an inner city neighborhood in the hopes that a Starbucks business can spark financial growth and future business opportunities for inner city areas. This program also appeals to the socially conscious and creates a sense that Starbucks really cares about people and their communities. These programs are definitely good ideas and greatly enrich the lives of the people that they touch, but also serve as a basis to motivate employees as well as customers of Starbucks, which creates a better product and more sales for Starbucks. References http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/customer_stories/starbucks.html; Accessed 10 Feb. 2004 http://www.starbucks.com/; Accessed 10 Feb. 2004