O’Grady Apparel Company Essay

Analyzing Risk and Return on Chargers Products’ Investments Junior Sayou, a financial analyst for Chargers Products, a manufacturer of stadium benches, must evaluate the risk and return of two assets, X and Y. The firm is considering addng these assets to its diversified asset portfolio. To assess the return and risk of each asset, Junior gathered data on the annual cash flow and beginning-and end-of-year values of each asset over the immediately preceding 10 years, 1997-2006. These data are summarized in the table below. Junior’s investigation suggests that both assets, on average, will tend to perform in the future just as they have during the past 10 years. He therefore believes that the expected annual return can be estimated by finding the average annual return for each asset over the past 10 years. Junior believes that each asset’s risk can be assessed in two ways: in isolation and as part of the firm’s diversified portfolio of assets. The risk of the assets in isolation can be found by using the standard deviation and coefficient of variation of returns over the past 10 years. The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) can be used to assess the asset’s risk as part of the firm’s portfolio of assets. Applying some sophisticated quantitative techniques, Junior estimated betas for assets X and Y of 1.60 and 1.10, respectively. In addition, he found that the risk-free rate is currently 7% and that the market return is 10%.

Animal Farm By George Orwell

Animal Farm By George Orwell Essay Animal Farm by George OrwellCharacters, items, and events found in George Orwells book, Animal Farm, can be compared to similar characters, items, and events found in Marxism and the 1917 Russian Revolution. This comparison will be shown by using the symbolism that is in the book with similarities found in the Russian Revolution. Old Major was a prized-boar that belonged to Farmer Jones. The fact that Old Major is himself a boar was to signify that radical change and revolution are, themselves, boring in the eyes of the proletariat (represented by the other barnyard animals), who are more prone to worrying about work and survival in their everyday life. Old Major gave many speeches to the farm animals about hope and the future. He is the main animal who got the rebellion started even though he died before it actually began. Old Majors role compares to Lenin and Marx whose ideas were to lead to the communist revolution. Animal Farm is a criticism of Karl Marx, as well as a novel perpe tuating his convictions of democratic Socialism. (Zwerdling, 20). Lenin became leader and teacher of the working class in Russia, and their determination to struggle against capitalism. Like Old Major, Lenin and Marx wrote essays and gave speeches to the working class poor. The working class in Russia, as compared with the barnyard animals in Animal Farm, were a laboring class of people that received low wages for their work. Like the animals in the farm yard, the people is Russia thought there would be no oppression in a new society because the working class people (or animals) would own all the riches and hold all the power. (Golubeva and Gellerstein 168). Another character represented in the book is Farmer Jones. He represents the symbol of the Czar Nicholas in Russia who treated his people like Farmer Jones treated his animals. The animal rebellion on the farm was started because Farmer Jones was a drunk who never took care of the animals and who came home one night, left the ga te open and the animals rebelled. Czar Nicholas was a very weak man who treated his people similar to how Farmer Jones treated his animals. The Czar made his working class people very mad with the way he wielded his authority and preached all the time, and the people suffered and finally demanded reform by rebelling. The Czar said ?The law will henceforward be respected and obeyed not only by the nation but also the authority that rules it and that the law would stand above the changing views of the individual instruments of the supreme power.? (Pares 420). The animal Napoleon can be compared as a character representing Stalin in Russia. Both were very mean looking, didnt talk very much but always got what they wanted through force. In one part of the book Napoleon charged the dogs on Snowball, another animal. Stalin became the Soviet Leader after the death of Lenin. He was underestimated by his opponents who always became his victims, and he had one of the most ruthless, regimes i n history. In was not till very many years later that the world found out about the many deaths that Stalin created in Russia during the Revolution. For almost 50 years the world thought that the Nazis had done the killing in Russia, when in fact it was Stalin. (Imse 2). The last characters that are symbolic of each other are the animal Snowball with the Russian leader Trotsky. Snowball was very enthusiastic and was a leader who organized the defense of the farm. He gave speeches and instructions but was not very beneficial. All the other animals liked him, but he was outsmarted by Napoleon. Trotsky and Stalins relationship was very much like Snowballs and Napoleons. Trotsky organized the Red Army and gave speeches and everyone in Russia thought he would win power over Stalin. After Lenins death Trotsky lost all his power to Stalin and was expelled from the communist party. He was at one time considered the second most powerful man in Russia. (Trotsky? Comptons 290). Besides charact ers there are many items that can be compared as symbols in the book and in Russia. The whip that Napoleon used in the farmyard to wield power can be compared to the power that Stalin used on the Russians. Napoleon carried a whip in his trotter. Stalin used his power to starve the Russian people and to have Lenin arrested. Stalins main goal was to maximize his personal power. (?Stalin,? Britannia 576). Stalin ?whipped? his people into shape by collectivizing agriculture, by police terror, and by destroying remnants of individual prosperity. He also led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age (Clarkson 442). Propaganda is another item that was used in the Russian revolution. It can be compared to Squealer in Animal Farm. Squealer brainwashed (a form of propaganda) the barnyard animals into believing that they did not like apples and milk, while he and Napoleon were stealing the food for themselves. In Russia, the Bolsheviks carried out propaganda on the people by passing out leaflets a nd putting stories in the newspapers that were not true. They told workers, soldiers, and peasants to not trust their own hands and to take away land from the landowners. (Golubeva and Gellerstein 80). Another item that is similar in both Animal Farm and Russia are the dogs and the secret police. Napoleon trained his dogs when they were puppies to guard him and to obey his every command. They chased Snowball away. Stalin trained his secret police to do his bidding whenever he issued an order. Stalin had his secret police kill between 60,000 to 70,000 people. These police were called the Checka and the graves filled with bodies stacked upon each other with bullets in each skull were found many years later. (Imse, C2). Another symbolism that exists in the book and in Russia is a similarity to events that took place. The windmill that is present in Animal Farm can be compared with the growth of industry in Russia or the Industrial Revolution. Snowball first introduced the windmill conc ept to the farm but Napoleon disagreed with him and had the dogs chase him away. Napoleon then presented the windmill as a good idea and the animals were presented with hope that things would get better on the farm. When it blew down, Napoleon blamed it on Snowball. Napoleon thought that if he could keep the barnyard animals busy all the time replacing the windmill that they would not realize how bad their living conditions were, and he could blame the destruction all the time on Snowball. The windmill is the only thing that was holding the animals together as a unit. In Russia the growth of factory and industry was very depressing but depended on the obligatory labor of serfs. Russia hoped that by keeping the serfs working all the time and promising them a better world that they would not realize how bad their living conditions were. The Industrialists were pressing their own constitutional demands. (Clarkson 352). None of the social classes were fighting each other because there w ere no classes left. What Russia got working was to make the people think that the prospect of loss of potential improvements in conditions of life of the here and now, could only be attained by stimulating labor to unprecedented efforts. The last event that was similar in the book and in Russia was the animal rebellion on the farm and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Farmer Jones was drunk a lot and would forget to feed the animals on the farm. The withholding of this food is what finally forced the animals on the farm to rebel against Farmer Jones. In Russia, there were many food shortages which caused the people to demonstrate and then the Russian soldiers refused to suppress them and the leaders demanded that Nicholas transfer his power to parliamentary government because everything was getting out of control. Soviet workers and soldiers formed a special committee and established a government. The same day the emperor abdicated. (?Russian Revolution,? Grolier npa). This actually backfired in Russia and the war continued and the people still starved. Many lessons can be learned by reading Animal Farm that can help countries and governments around the world from making mistakes in wielding their power against their people. If a population is suppressed and not allowed to accumulate things for themselves then an overthrow of the government that is suppressing them will be the result. WORKS CITEDClarkson, Jesse. A History of Russia. New York: Random House, 1969. Golubeva, T. and L. Gellerstein. Early Russia The Russie. Moscos, Press Agency Publishing House, 1976. Imse, Ann. Mass Grave Seen as Evidence of Massecure by Stalins Police. ?Hunstsville Times, 13, August. 1990. Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Signet 50th Anniversary Edition, Harcourt Brace Company, 1996. Pares, Sir Bernard. The Fall of the Russian Monarchy. New York: A division of Random House, 1939. ?Russian Revolution of 1917.? Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc. 1992 ed. ?Stalin, Joseph.? Encyclopedi a Britannica. 1917 ed. READ: Mahatma gandhi Essay

Discussion for online Healthcare HRM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Discussion for online Healthcare HRM - Essay Example 2) Although these EQ tests are designed to test the personality traits of the incumbent with accuracy but there are always chances of error and misstatement, how do you deal with situations when an employee (who previously appeared a team player) turns out to be a difficult person to handle and holds the whole team back? Ans: In situations where an employee becomes difficult to deal with, the role of manager/ supervisor as a team lead is very important. It’s mainly dependent on the manager’s leadership style and also the personality of that particular employee which helps in deciding the way forward. But in case, where an employee turns out to be a lone player, managers/ supervisors conduct meetings with them and make them aware of their lacking and also the desired behavior. Secondly, we also have a mechanism of appraisals every second month, which also helps us in analyzing the overall behavior of the employee and views of team members about them. Peer evaluations highlight different attributes of the employees and incase of a need counseling sessions are conducted. Where an employee appears to create problem time and again, issuing, letter of displeasure, warning and show causes notices are the primary steps of severe nature that we take after frequent communication of displeasure by the supervisors and managers or department heads. In case, where we receive constant negative feedback, we put such personnel under probation restricting his ability to see patients or play a role in hospital operations. HR department and the department head looks into the subject matter and then decide if the employee can be retained or not. In case of termination, all the hospital policies and state regulations are followed during separation phase. Ans: We encourage and hold teamwork activities every week, these activities not only include outbreaks such

Methodologies and Methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Methodologies and Methods - Essay Example Research design defined generally is the form or framework the experimenter uses to get the results of the study. There are many different kinds of research designs, both qualitative and quantitative, and flexible designs represent qualitative for the most part, whereas fixed designs represent quantitative type studies. There are also mixed designs. Quantitative research designs such as the one proposed for the current research serve the purpose of showing causal motivations, observing present conditions and longitudinal comparisons, and establishing relationships with evidence from a sample size that is generally large or, in some cases, deferred to a larger statistical research body (Robson, 2002). Qualitative The key theories behind qualitative research involve the development of research questions, rather than the formulation of absolutes through testable hypotheses. The research instrument is definitely qualitative in nature if it represents a standardized measurement test that is predetermined before the research has even taken place, through measurements taken in other studies using the same survey instrument. This is not the type of measurement tool that is necessarily malleable to researcher interaction with the survey group or the addition of new research questions as they come up, which also makes it a less strong methodology in terms of qualitative features. The qualitative approach is perhaps less appropriate for this research because the author is assumedly examining a survey group of more than twenty individuals, and needs a standardized sort of quantitative test to keep data collection simple. In the case of the research experiment, the qualitative study will seek to find common themes and areas of possibility for further study. The descriptive phase follows, in which the demographic and statistical information on the target population and target program emulations are determined in respective forms of their completeness and efficiency as repres entative statistics and program models. Quantitative Quantitative methods are suitable for studies into social issues, despite their scientific background and trappings, because they provide demonstrable measurements which can be attributed to larger populations. Even with a relatively small sample size, quantitative research can present results and findings in a way that is verifiable, reliable, and has a degree of repeatability. In other words, a small survey can be reused with a larger population. Overall there are many different facets of methodology that can be applied to an experimental design. This is a generalization that can be made about these different types of designs, which have their respective advantages and disadvantages. Surveys and experiments are examples of fixed research designs, which are more quantitative than qualitative and have more aspects of this type of theory. Quantitative studies such as the one outlined in the current report’s proposed methodol ogy tend to rely on hard data and statistics that can provide generalizable results about a population, whereas qualitative studies could be more of a case example or subjective viewpoint. As the extant literature states about the difference between fixed and flexible designs, â€Å"Flexible research designs are much more difficult to pin down than fixed designs. This is in part because it is only in recent

Stamp Act Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Stamp Act - Term Paper Example Today, Americans may have forgotten this important period on their journey to freedom, but the fact remains that without Stamp Act, the American Sons of Liberty and other freedom-fighters may not have gotten an opportunity to launch attacks against their colonist. The British claimed victory in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) that was fought against the European powers of those days. It was a typical polarizing war that pitted Great Britain, Prussia and a group of German states (small in size) against nations like Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony that formed a staunch military alliance during that period (Morgan et al. 1995, 20-28). However, Britain has spent a lot on this war which seemed to have taken a huge toll on the colonist’s finances. Reportedly, British national debts had doubled by the time the war was concluded (Morgan et al.1995, 21). Apart from this issue, Britain also worried about how to source finances to keep so many soldiers that had fought in the war, many of whom have political links to the parliament. The fears of not wishing to see the soldiers become jobless and not knowing how to fund their continued engagement had forced Britain to come up with a strange method of financial The British Parliament, in 1765 eventually came up with the Stamp Act to source funds to finance the continued existence of its military contingent in North America by imposing taxes on printed materials, which include but not limited to newspapers, legal documents, magazines, and several other papers used in the colonies (Morgan et al. 1995, 80-95). The general acceptance given to this Act by British two arms of Parliament (House of Lords and House of Commons) revealed that Great Britain had seen this Act as the solution to its crippling financial situation at that time (Murrin et al. 2007, 187). The Parliament did not perceive anything wrong in this approach as it deemed it the appropriate way to find the money to solve its

Chinese and Filipino American History in America Essay

Chinese and Filipino American History in America - Essay Example Both Chinese and Filipino immigrants followed different paths but faced similar hardships when coming to America. They also had their own unique experiences. Chinese sailors arrived in Hawaii in 1778 where many settled and married Hawaiian women. Immigration continued into the 19th and 20th century as additional Chinese and Filipino workers were brought in to work on the sugar and pineapple plantations. The mid-1800s saw a surge in Asian immigration as many were brought in to work in California. Along with this surge in Asian immigration came a growing discrimination, anti-Chinese activism, and a fear called yellow peril. A relatively large group of Chinese came to the United States beginning in 1849, the start of the California gold rush. They stayed on and increased in numbers to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. Their work ethic is best described by Mary Cone writing in 1876 when she says they were, "[...] far more earnest and faithful than any other miners. [...] [T]hey enjoy the universal reputation of conscientious fidelity" (as cited in Mary Cone, 2003). However, when the economy faltered in 1870 the loss of jobs and competition for scarce jobs brought, "dislike and even racial suspicion and hatred. Such feelings were accompanied by anti-Chinese riots and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States" (Chinese immigration, 2004). During this period, a political party called The Workingman's Party was started in San Francisco with the slogan, "The Chinese Must Go" (The workingmen's party). This political pressure resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which virtually ended Chinese immigration for over a century. With the loss of employment and mounting discrimination, the Chinese moved to a safe sanctuary in San Francisco that would later become known as Chinatown. In this neighborhood, they were able to provide a close knit social structure and offer community support to families and each other. It also allowed them to organize into a political faction that opposed anti-Chinese laws. Here, the Chinese community has maintained the Chinese values and cultural traditions and has developed a thriving Asian-American community inside San Francisco. Though the Filipinos took a different route to their American destination, their experiences and challenges were similar to the Chinese. The first permanent settlement of Filipinos was in the marshlands of Louisiana in 1763 as sailors escaped Spanish ships to escape their brutal treatment (Claudio-Perez, 1998). Steady immigration continued into the west coast throughout the 19th century, but the largest wave came between 1924 and 1935 when more than 100,000 Filipinos flooded into America to work in the booming agricultural business (Asian Pacific American studies, 2005). Filipinos settled mostly in large West Coast cities such as San Francisco and Seattle where the ships from Manila would land (Bautista, 2002). Most of them worked in the fields of California and Washington harvesting seasonal crops. In general, they were a migrant group that followed the crops through the seasons, and only settled for short periods in near ghetto conditions of 'Little Manilas". During the season, the population of the Little Manila in Seattle would shrink to a few hundred people, but in the winter it would be home for 3,500 occupants (Bautista, 2002). Here they would be located near the center of vice and entertainment. Because

Business Policy Concepts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Business Policy Concepts - Essay Example A good corporate strategy should integrate an organization's goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole. The success of Japanese companies revealed implementation policies which appeared to be unique but have now been shown to be valid in many business environments, for example management by walking around (MBWA) proved to be a successful technique for Honda. Senior management's contacts with key people resulted in appropriate choice of policies and to the success of the company philosophy. This shows that corporate choice of strategy and implementation of that strategy involves many different concepts, theories and frameworks. An understanding of major choices of corporate policies and their advantages and disadvantages is critical to the understanding of business policy process {Johnson et al, 2005]. In a perfect world a strategy planned by the management will proceed according to plan and be implemented. Unfortunately any belief that strategy can be formulated on the basis of intended and deliberate actions to result in commercial success is far from the truth. This concept rules out any opportunity to adapt to a changing market situation. In a number of cases a situation may develop where incremental changes in the strategy may result in a more advantageous position for the company. This is a positive example of strategic drift. A preplanned and formulated strategy also assumes an organization to be homogeneous where management decisions from the top can be implemented in full. In practice the decisions are effected by power behavior, cultural and political factors. Quinn [cited in Peppard et al, 1996] argued that strategy develops incrementally as a result of decision made due to developing market situations and other organizational experiences. This strategic drift results in a course which is often significantly different from formal planning. Drift in strategic planning is a fact of organizational strategy. It does not mean that strategic policy making is a useless process as it will eventually drift into something new. It only recognizes that changes often become necessary due to extraneous factors and require adjustments to the strategy to keep the broader strategy on course. Porter's 5 Forces Porter's five forces is a useful tool for analyzing the factors impacting on strategy formulation. [Porter, 1980] identified forces that impact every business. The objective of the strategy is to use these competing forces to result in a positive impact on the business. These forces identified by Porter are the driving forces of the industry. The strategy analysis thus analyses the impact of these forces on a particular business and how to minimize the impact of the negative forces and maximize the benefits of the positive forces. The five forces are: 1. The threat of new entrants 2. Bargaining power of suppliers 3. Bargaining power