The Modern Era Essay Example for Free

The Modern Era Essay Early Modern World Historians sometimes refer to the era between the premodern (or medieval) and late modern eras as the â€Å"early modern world.† The world during this era was increasingly united by the projection of European power abroad, especially in the Americas. Although early modern Europeans still had little knowledge of, let alone hegemony (influence) over, the inland regions of Africa and Asia, the links created and dominated by Europeans made the entire world a stage for fundamental historical processes. Historians debate, or pass over in silence, the problem of determining the precise starting and ending dates of the early modern world and have produced only the vaguest consensus. Roughly, the era of the early modern world began during the fifteenth century with the Timurid (relating to the Turkic conqueror Timur) and Italian cultural renaissances. The year 1405 serves as a convenient starting date because it marks not only the death of Timur, the last great central Asian conqueror to join farmers and nomads into a single empire, but also the first of the Chinese admiral Zheng He’s (c. 1371–1435) naval expeditions to the â€Å"Western Oceans.† The era might be taken to end in the late eighteenth century with the French and Industrial revolutions, both European events of global consequence in the late modern world. The uncertainty of this periodization derives in part from the concept of an early modern Europe, with its own uncertain chronological boundaries, and in part from the unconsidered way in which both phrases entered historical scholarship. Origins of the Concept Although conceptually the phrase early modern world is an extension of the phrase early modern Europe, the initial histories of both phrases have some surprises. The earliest known appearance of the phrase early modern world occurs in Willard Fisher’s â€Å"Money and Credit Paper in the Modern Market†Ã‚  from The Journal of Political Economy (1895). Although Fisher writes, â€Å"We all know that the system of bank credits and bank money, which was introduced into the great commercial centers of the early modern world, has now attained a quite marvelous development† (1895, 391), the geographical sense of his statement is strictly, if implicitly, European. On the other hand, the phrase early modern Europe first shows up twenty years later, in Dixon Ryan Fox’s â€Å"Foundations of West India Policy† in Political Science Quarterly (1915). Fox remarks, â€Å"It was now realized by students of colonial history that in the Caribbean [the â€Å"West India† of the article’s title] might best be traced the application of those principles which formed the working basis for the old empires of early modern Europe† (1915, 663). Ironically, the phrase early modern Europe first appeared in the Caribbean, in the global context of colonialism, in an article advocating trans-Atlantic history. In their debu ts each phrase bore something of the other’s sense. Fox’s usage was an anomaly, and when the phrase early modern Europe arrived in Europe, it had come to stay. The phrase early modern world, however, for decades would imply world to mean, in an indefinite way, immediate rather than global surroundings; because this historical scholarship dealt with European subjects, the â€Å"early modern world† was in fact â€Å"early modern Europe.† The early modern world became global only with C. F. Strong’s grammar school textbook The Early Modern World (1955) and S. Harrison Thomson’s 1964 review of J. H. Parry’s The Age of Reconnaissance, in which Thomson uses the phrase to describe the â€Å"story of the successive expansion of European venture, from Africa to the reaches of the Indian Ocean by Arabs and Portuguese by sea, the movement westward to the Americas and the early transition from discovery to fishing, trading, and exploitation†(1964, 188). The first considered analysis of the early mo dern world came after the posthumous publication of Joseph Fletcher’s article â€Å"Integrative History† in 1985. Such analysis has tended to adopt either a deductive or an inductive approach. Deductive Approach A deductive approach to the early modern world compares premodernity and late modernity, devises the characteristics necessary to bridge the two stages, and only then seeks confirmation in the historical record. This approach assumes the existence of a modernizing trajectory, which the early modern world shared with (and perhaps inherited from) early modern Europe. Informed by a Marxist perspective, the essentials of the early modern world would highlight transitions from feudal to bourgeois, from serfdom to wage-earning proletariat, and from local subsistence to regional market economies. A functionalist understanding of modernity, of the sort theorized by the German sociologist Max Weber, the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons, or the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, explains social phenomena in terms of their ability to fulfill social needs and broadens this base beyond the mode of production. Here the critical shifts would be from belief in miracles to belief in science, from household-based craft production powered by muscle, dung, water, and wood to factory-based mass production powered by electricity and fossil fuels, and from government justified by tradition to government consciously invented. Even in the context of early modern Europe critics challenge the effectiveness of a deductive approach by condemning its implication of an inevitable progress from premodernity to modernity. A deductive approach takes little cognizance of the possibilities of various starting points, different destinations, and particular paths. In some twentieth-century cases the transition to modernity was less a progression than a violently dramatic change. When expanded to a global context this approach becomes not only teleological (assuming a design or purpose in history), but also artificially Eurocentric. Inductive Approach Rather than specify theoretical factors to be sought in the time period, an inductive approach examines what happened in different places and extracts from what happened a set of common features. Although such an approach removes the theoretical obstacle of a modernizing trajectory, the historian is left with the Herculean task of specifying processes that united all,  most, or many of the world’s peoples. Such an approach need not focus on Europe, nor need it measure the success of various regions in terms of their progress along Europe’s path. How closely do the rough chronological parameters suggested here match the conventional historiographies (the writings of history) of the various regions outside Europe?  Traditional periodizations in African and American history are directly linked to European expansion. Marked by a European presence that could not yet dominate the continent, an early modern Africa might last from the Portuguese capture of Ceuta, a port on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar (1415), until the development of quinine and steamships in the nineteenth century. The first Niger steamship expedition returned without casualties in 1854. An early modern America might stretch from the encounters of 1492 until the period of independence movements, from 1776 to the independence of Brazil in 1822. An early modern India might begin with the fifth generation descendant of Timur, Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, whose ancestry inspired him to conquer northern India. The Mughal dynasty he founded (1526) would rule effectively for two centuries; the British would take charge of its Delhi nucleus in 1803. An early modern Japan stretches from the unification efforts of Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) to the end of the Tokugawa shogunate (the dictatorship of a Japanese military governor) in 1867. Other regional historiographies fit less naturally. Although the Ottomans’ 1453 conquest of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) was timely, the Chinese Ming dynasty began too early (1368) and ended inconveniently in the middle of our early modern period (1644). Worse, key modernizing revolutions came late relative to the western European timetable the Chinese Revolution in 1911, the Russian Bolshevik revolution in 1917, and the Kemalist (relating to the Turkish soldier and statesman Kemal Ataturk) revolution in Turkey in 1923. The actual use of the phrase early modern in the periodization of regional histories varies. Outside of Europe, it is most commonly used in Asia, especially in works on China, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, India. Historians of China sometimes extend the period into the twentieth century. Far fewer historians write of an â€Å"early modern Africa† or an â€Å"early modern Brazil.† This fact is due in part to the power of the word colonial to identify these time periods. Latin American periodization is so consistently divided into pre-Columbian, colonial, and national periods that there is no need for the phrase early  modern, which should correspond to the middle, colonial period. In fact, the phrase early modern Mexico sometimes refers to the period immediately after independence. The divergence of these traditional periodizations of regional histories, so often linked to high-level political history, should not surprise. The global historian in search of an early modern world can look beyond these periodizations to seek processes that enveloped wide swaths of the planet. Development of Global Sea Passages Nothing is more characteristic of the early modern world than the creation of truly global sea passages. Before 1492 the Americas remained essentially isolated from Eurasia. In 1788 the last key sea passage was completed by the first permanent settlement of Europeans in Australia. This passage also concluded the integration of the Pacific Ocean as a geographical concept, a process that began when the Spanish explorer Vasco Nuà ±ez de Balboa became the first European to see the Pacific from America in 1513. During the early fifteenth century the Europeans were unlikely candidates to fill the key role in this process of exploration. Portuguese exploration of the African coast was declining, and mariners were reluctant to sail out of sight of land. Even the overland excursions undertaken by Europeans had become more modest. Muslims still controlled southern Iberia, and in 1453 the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. Smart money would have looked rather at the Chinese admiral Zheng He, whose seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433  reached even the shores of eastern Africa. A change in Chinese imperial policy halted these expeditions, and the voyages that finally connected the world were directed by Europeans. In 1522 the survivors of the expedition of the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. During the following centuries a skilled captain and crew could navigate a ship from any port to any port and reasonably expect to arrive. In 1570 the Flemish cartographer Ortelius published what has been described as the first modern atlas, the Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theater of the World); this comprehensive yet handy and inexpensive work enjoyed immediate success. By the end of the period the best mapped region of the world would be China. Global Demographic Interconnections The world’s population doubled during the early modern period, from approximately 374 million (1400) to 968 million people (1800). Although demographic data are limited, some patterns emerge. Rapid growth was punctuated by a seventeenthcentury decline in Europe, Russia, Iran, Central Asia, China, and Korea and recovery from this decline occurred globally, even in the Americas. The more populous regions tended to grow more rapidly. The new global sea passages set the stage for a transatlantic â€Å"Columbian exchange† (the biological and cultural exchange between the New World and the Old World that began with the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus) and for a transpacific â€Å"Magellan exchange† of crops and disease pathogens that put the peoples of the world in a more direct demographic relationship than ever before. The arrival of American maize and potatoes in Eurasia, and later in Africa, facilitated an intensive agricultural, and thus demographic, growth, and the appearance of tomatoes in Italy and chili peppers in India had important dietary and culinary consequences. Disease also became a global phenomenon. First appearing in Europe in 1494, venereal syphilis reached India four years later, and by 1505 it had  outraced the Portuguese to China. The New World’s isolation and limited biodiversity (biological diversity as indicated by numbers of species of plants and animals) did not afford its indigenous peoples the same immunities enjoyed by Europeans, who as children were exposed to a multiplicity of infections. Measles, smallpox, and other diseases brought by Europeans triggered a long-term demographic catastrophe. The indigenous population of central Mexico declined from 30 million in 1518 to 1.6 million in 1620 a genocide unintended, misunderstood, and undesired by the Spanish who sought souls for salvation and laborers for their mines. Contact with the wider world wrought similar demographic calamities on other isolated peoples, including Pacific Islanders, Siberian tribes, and the Khoikhoi of southern Africa. Increased contacts distributed pathogens more evenly throughout the world and generally reduced susceptibility to epidemic disease. Development of a Global Economy The development of global sea passages integrated America into a truly global economy. Rapidly growing long distance commerce linked expanding economies on every continent. Dutch merchants in Amsterdam could purchase commodities anywhere in the world, bring them to Amsterdam, store them safely, add value through processing and packaging, and sell them for profit. Intensive production fueled by the commercialism of an increasingly global market gave new importance to cash crops and sparked an unprecedented expansion in the slave trade. The movement of manufactured goods from eastern Asia toward Europe and America created a chain of balance-of-trade deficits, which funneled silver from American mines to China. Regular transpacific trade developed during the decades after the founding of Manila in the Philippines in 1571 and followed the same pattern: Exports of porcelain and silks from China created a trade imbalance that sucked silver from the Americas and from Japan. Through military-commercial giants such as the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602), European merchants disrupted traditional trading  conditions in Africa and Asia to muscle into regional â€Å"country trade.† The expansion of settled populations, as well as the new ocean trade route alternatives to the Silk Road that linked China to the West, contributed to the decline of nomadism. The agriculture of settled peoples supported large populations and tax bases that an efficient state could translate into permanent military strength. Development of Large and Efficient States The global trade in firearms and similar weapons contributed to the growth of large and efficient states, known as â€Å"gunpowder empires.† Expensive and complex, the most advanced weapons became a monopoly of centralized states, which employed them to weaken local opposition. During the mid-fifteenth century the king of France used artillery to reduce some sixty castles annually. Administrative procedures also became increasingly routinized and efficient. Ever more abstract notions of state authority accompanied the evolution of new  sources of legitimacy. From the Irrawaddy River in Asia to the Seine River in Europe, religious uniformity served to reinforce and confirm centralized rule. The ideal of universal empire was native to America, Africa, and Eurasia. The early modern unification of England with Scotland and Ireland was paralleled throughout Europe. If in 1450 Europe contained six hundred independent political units (or more, depending on the criteria), in the nineteenth century it contained around twentyfive. About thirty independent city-states, khanates (state governed by a ruler with the Mongol title â€Å"khan†), and princedoms were absorbed into the Russian empire. By 1600 the Tokugawa shogunate had unified Japan. Fourteenth century southeastern Asia had two dozen independent states that evolved into Vietnam, Siam (Thailand), and Burma (Myanmar) by 1825. The Mughals unified India north of the Deccan Plateau for the first time since the Mauryan empire (c. 321–185 BCE). Unification was also an overture to expansion. In addition to an increasing European presence worldwide, Qing China (1644–1912) invaded Xinjiang,  Mongolia, Nepal, Burma, and Formosa, and during the seventeenth century Romanov Russia stretched out to the Pacific. The new unities led relentlessly to new fragmentations and hierarchies, and resistance to such centralizing political forces was equally universal. During the century between 1575 and 1675, for example, uprisings occurred in China, Japan, India, Armenia, Georgia, Kurdistan, Ukraine, the Balkans, the German lands, Switzerland, France, Catalonia, Portugal, England, Ireland, and Mexico. At the end of the period, the French Revolution (1789) would enjoy global influence as the first revolution modern in its progressive, absolute, and sudden nature. Intensification of Land Use The concurrence of population growth, global markets, and aggressive states led to wider and more intensive use of land. Displacing or subordinating indigenous peoples, pioneers backed by aggressive states drained wetlands and cleared forests to create new lands for intensive commercial, agricultural, and pastoral regimes. (Similarly, commercial hunters pursued various species of flora and fauna to extinction for sale on a global market.) Oblivious to any land claims held by indigenous peoples, states would offer pioneers low taxes in exchange for settlement and land rights. For example, the Mughal Empire provided land grants, Hindu merchants provided capital, and Sufi (Muslim mystic) brotherhoods provided leadership for the communities of Muslim pioneers who transformed the Bengal wetlands into a key rice-producing region. These efforts compensated for the extended disobliging weather patterns that plagued temperate zones throughout the Northern Hemisphere a â€Å"little ice age† affecting climate throughout the early modern world. Religious Revival The most distinctive religious characteristic of this era was the global  expansion of Christianity. Indeed, the impetus driving the creation of global sea passages was religious as well as commercial. The efforts of Catholic religious orders predominated the great Protestant missionary societies would be founded only in the 1790s. Sufi brotherhoods such as the Naqshibandiyah expanded Islam in Africa, India, China, and southeastern Asia.Tibetan Buddhism pushed into northwestern China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Buryatia, and to Kalmikya, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, which remains today the only Buddhist republic in Europe. The increased emphasis on orthodox and textual conventions of Latin Christendom’s Reformation had a parallel in the Raskol schism of the Russian Orthodox Church during the 1650s. Elsewhere, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703–1792) founded the Wahabbi movement to reform Sunni Islam under strict Quranic interpretation. Many people believed that the era that historians call â€Å"early modern† would be the last. Franciscan apocalyptic thought inspired Columbus, and the belief that the god Quetzalcoatl would return from the East in a One Reed year led the Aztec sovereign Montezuma II to regard the Spanish conqueror Hernà ¡n Cortà ©s and his comrades as divine envoys. A Jesuit at the court of Akbar in 1581 found the Mughal ruler open to the idea of the imminent end because that year was eleven years from the thousandth anniversary of the Hijra, which was the journey the Prophet Muhammad took from Mecca to Medina in  622 CE. The Jewish Sabbatian movement expected the end of the world in 1666. In late eighteenth-century central China the White Lotus Society awaited the return of the Buddha to put an end to suffering. All these developments might best be understood in the context of notions of history in which significant change was either absent or sudden and awesome. Outlook Neither a deductive nor an inductive approach to the early modern world is  entirely satisfactory. A deductive approach expects to see the entire world following a Eurocentric roadmap to modernization (one that Europe itself might not have followed). An inductive approach respects the diversity of historical experience, but this diversity itself can frustrate attempts to delineate a discrete list of unifying features. If historians can tolerate the inconveniences of regional exceptions to every â€Å"global† process, the idea of an early modern world has its attractions. Although a perspective that twists the world around a European center is unproductive, the regions of the early modern world were increasingly named (in America) and mapped (as in China) by Europeans. Nevertheless, in its application beyond Europe the idea of an early modern world redresses the distortions of the Orientalist assumption of parochial, timeless, and conservative inertias unaltered by European expansion. It recognizes that peoples of the early modern era in some ways had more in common with each other than with their own ancestors and descendents that time unites just as powerfully as place. It facilitates comparative analysis and abets inquiry that trespasses across national boundaries. It sees the entire world as a stage, not only for comparative study, but also for the broadest possible analysis for a historian’s scrutiny. Further Reading Benton, L. (2002). Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400– 1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Black, J. (Ed.). (1999).War in The Early Modern World, 1450–1815. London: UCL Press. Fisher,W. (1895). Money and Credit Paper in the Modern Market. The Journal of Political Economy, 3, 391–413. Fletcher, J. (1985). Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800. Journal of Turkish Studies, 9, 37–57. Flynn, D. O., Giraldez, A. (1995). Born with a Silver Spoon: World Trade’s Origins in 1571. Journal of World History, 6(2), 201–221. Fox, D. R. (1915). Foundations of West India Policy. Political Science Quarterly, 30, 661–672. Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goldstone, J. A. (1991). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goldstone, J. A. (1998). The Problem of the â€Å"Early Modern† World. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 41, 249–284. Huff,T. E. (1993). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lieberman,V. (1997). Transcending East-West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas. Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 463–546. Mousnier, R. (1970). Peasant Uprisings in Seventeenth-Century France, Russia, and China (B. Pearce,Trans.). New York: Harper and Row. Parker,G. (1996). The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pomeranz, K.(2001).The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Richards, J. F. (1997). Early Modern India and World History. Journal of World History, 8, 197–209. Richards, J. F. (2003). The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Starn, R. (2002). The Early Modern Muddle. Journal of Early Modern History, 6(3), 296–307. Strong, C. F. (1955). The Early Modern World. London: University of London Press. Subrahmanyam, S. (1997). Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia. Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 735– 762. Thomson, S. H. (1964). The Age of Reconnaissance, by J. H. Parry. The Journal of Modern History, 36(2), 187–188. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System. New York: Academic. Wiesner-Hanks, M. (2000). Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating desire, reforming practice. London: Routledge. Wills, J. E., Jr. (2001). 1688: A Global History. New York: Norton. The Modern Era The modern era is the briefest and most turbulent of the three main eras of human history. Whereas the era of foragers lasted more than 200,000 years and the agrarian era about 10,000 years, the modern era has lasted just 250 years. Yet, during this brief era change has been more rapid and more fundamental than ever before; indeed, populations have grown so fast that 20 percent of all humans may have lived during these two and a half centuries. The modern era is also the most interconnected of the three eras. Whereas new ideas and technologies once took thousands of years to circle the globe, today people from different continents can converse as easily as if they lived in a single global village. History has become world history in the most literal sense. For our purposes the modern era is assumed to begin about 1750.Yet, its roots lay deep in the agrarian era, and we could make a good case for a starting date of 1500 or even earlier. Determining the end date of the modern era is even trickier. Some scholars have argued that it ended during the twentieth century and that we now live in a postmodern era. Yet, many features of the modern era persist today and will persist for some time into the future; thus, it makes more sense to see our contemporary period as part of the modern era. This fact means that we do not know when the modern era will end, nor can we see its overall shape as clearly as we might wish. The fact that we cannot see the modern era as a whole makes it difficult to specify its main features, and justifies using the deliberately vague label â€Å"modern.† At present the diagnostic feature of the modern era seems to be a sharp increase in rates of innovation. New technologies enhanced human control over natural resources and stimulated rapid population growth. In their turn, technological and demographic changes transformed lifeways, cultural and religious traditions, patterns of  health and aging, and social and political relationships. For world historians the modern era poses distinctive challenges. We are too close to see it clearly and objectively; we have so much information that we have difficulty distinguishing trends from details; and change has occurred faster than ever before and embraced all parts of the world. What follows is one attempt to construct a coherent overview, based on generalizations that have achieved broad acceptance among world historians. Major Features and Trends of the Modern Era The modern era is the first to have generated a large body of statistical evidence; thus, it is also the first in which we can quantify many of the larger changes. Increases in Population and Productivity Human populations have increased faster than ever before during the modern era, although growth rates slowed during the late twentieth century. Between 1750 and 2000 the number of men and women in the world rose from approximately 770 million to almost 6 billion, close to an eightfold increase in just 250 years. This increase is the equivalent of a growth rate of about 0.8 percent per annum and represents a doubling  time of about eighty-five years. (Compare this with estimated doubling times of fourteen hundred years during the agrarian era and eight thousand to nine thousand years during the era of foragers.) An eightfold increase in human numbers was possible only because productivity rose even faster. The estimates of the economist Angus Maddison suggest that global gross domestic product rose more than ninety fold during three hundred years, whereas production per person rose nine fold. These astonishing increases in productivity lie behind all the most significant changes of the modern era. Productivity rose in part because new technologies were introduced. In agriculture, for example, food production  kept pace with population growth because of improved crop rotations, increased use of irrigation, widespread application of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and the use of genetically modified crops. However, productivity also rose because humans learned to exploit new sources of energy. During the agrarian era each human controlled, on average, 12,000 kilocalories a day (about four times the energy needed to sustain a human body), and the most powerful prime movers available were domestic animals or wind-driven ships. During the modern era humans have learned to harvest the huge reserves of energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas and even to exploit the power lurking within atomic nuclei. Today each person controls, on average, 230,000 kilocalories a day—twenty times as much as during the agrarian era. A world of planes, rockets, and nuclear power has replaced a world of horses, oxen, and wood fires. City Sprawl As populations have increased, so has the average size of human communities. In 1500 about fifty cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, and none had more than a million. By 2000 several thousand cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, about 411 had more than a million, and 41 had more than 5 million. During the agrarian era most people lived and worked in villages; by the end of the twentieth century almost 50 percent of the world’s population lived in communities of at least five thousand people. The rapid decline of villages marked a fundamental transformation in the lives of most people on Earth. As during the agrarian era, the increasing size of communities  transformed lifeways, beginning with patterns of employment: Whereas most people during the agrarian world were small farmers, today most people support themselves by wage work in a huge variety of occupations. Innovations in transportation and communications have transformed relations between communities and regions. Before the nineteenth century no one  traveled faster than the pace of a horse (or a fast sailing ship), and the fastest way to transmit written messages was by state-sponsored courier systems that used relays of horses. Today messages can cross the world instantaneously, and even perishable goods can be transported from one end of the world to another in just a few hours or days. Increasingly Complex and Powerful Governments As populations have grown and people’s lives have become more intertwined, more complex forms of regulation have become necessary, which is why the business of government has been revolutionized. Most premodern governments were content to manage war and taxes, leaving their subjects to get on with their livelihoods more or less unhindered, but the managerial tasks facing modern states are much more complex, and they have to spend more effort in mobilizing and regulating the lives of those they rule. The huge bureaucracies of modern states are one of the most important byproducts of the modern revolution. So, too, are the structures of democracy, which allow governments to align their policies more closely with the needs and capabilities of the large and varied populations they rule. Nationalism—the close emotional and intellectual identification of citizens with their governments—is another by-product of these new relationships between governments and those they rule. The presence of democracy and nationalism may suggest that modern governments are more reluctant to impose their will by force, but, in fact, they have much more administrative and coercive power than did rulers of the agrarian era. No government of the agrarian era tried to track the births, deaths, and incomes of all the people it ruled or to impose compulsory schooling; yet, many modern governments handle these colossal tasks routinely. Modern states can also inflict violence more effectively and on a larger scale than even the greatest empires of the agrarian era. Whereas an eighteenth century cannon could destroy a house or kill a closely packed group of soldiers, modern nuclear weapons can destroy entire cities  and millions of people, and the concerted launch of many nuclear weapons could end human history within just a few hours. A subtler change in the nature of power is the increased dependence of modern states on commercial success rather than raw coercion. Their power depends so much on the economic productivity of the societies they rule that modern governments have to be effective economic managers. The creation of more democratic systems of government, the declining importance of slavery, the ending of European imperial power during the twentieth century, the collapse of the Soviet command economy in 1991, and the ending of apartheid (racial segregation) in South Africa in 1990 and 1991 all reflected a growing awareness that successful economic management is more effective than crudely coercive forms of rule.

Can Feelings Have An Rational Basis Philosophy Essay

Can Feelings Have An Rational Basis Philosophy Essay Emotions are part of our everyday life, every moment of our life we are feeling an emotion, whether its happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, or disgust. Emotions are expressed in three ways: 1. Emotions as an obstacle to knowledge, 2. Emotions as a source of knowledge and, 3. Intuition. Our emotions are very powerful and do have a rational basis. Emotional intelligence is not an oxymoron because with emotions we wouldnt have any intelligence. I agree with what Robert Solomon stated. He is completely correct by claiming that virtually all sense perception, and reasoning, must involve emotion. Emotions are an integral part of us and when strong enough they can sometimes distort the three other ways of knowing. Our perception of things can be colored by strong emotions, and there is doubtless some truth in sayings like love is blind and fear has many eyes. ( van de Lagemaat pg.151). This emotional coloring makes us aware of aspects of reality to the exclusion of others. For example when we love a person we think they are perfect and have no flaws as to when you loathe them you see only their faults. Our emotions can also negatively affect our reasoning causing to not have open minds. A person with powerful emotions is likely to use more emotive language. Our emotions also serve as a source of knowledge; it is difficult to live life without emotion. Our emotions help us reason through things. For example if you look down a cliff you know not to jump because you are scared and your fear helps you reason to not jump because you will die. So with what was mentioned previously w e can conclude that our feelings do have a rational basis because they help reason through things that go on during our everyday lives. Reason and emotion although are usually thought of as opposite things they are more on a continuum of some sort. Most of the time were somewhere along the middle of the continuum with our thoughts and feeling floating around our mind. For example if we are doing mathematical problems we will use less of our emotions and steer more to the other side of the continuum. Another way to think of reason and emotion is to think of our emotions being more or less rational. (van de lagemaat pg.156). The main problem with the previously mentioned idea is that sometimes our emotions are irrational such as fear and disgust. Although we know that it is safer to fly in a plane than to drive in a car most of us are terrified to get on planes. The last way emotion is a way of knowing is through intuition. The word intuition is typically associated with the aha momen t of insight when you suddenly see the solution to a problem without going through any conscious process of reasoning. (van de lagemaat pg.158) There are three types of intuition; core intuitions, subject-specific intuitions, and social intuitions. Core intuitions are our most fundamental intuitions about life, the universe and everything. For although reason and perception are usually said to give us knowledge they ultimately depend on intuition. According to core intuitions, the laws of logic are the starting point for all our reasoning, but we cannot prove them in terms of any more fundamental laws. If asked to justify them, most people would say that they are intuitively obvious. (van de lagemaat pg. 158). As for perception, it is an important source of knowledge, but we cannot be sure on the evidence of our senses alon that life is not a dream. Yet we have an overwhelmingly strong intuition that the dream hypothesis is false and that what we are experiencing is reality. A good way to explain why our knowledge is intuitive is by playing the why? game. If you were to ask a friend to claim something that she knows and then ask her why she believes that this is true and then ask her again why she believes that what she explained is true eventually she will say that it is intuitively obvious. We cant take these intuitions for granted but we cant just reject them either. As for subject specific intuition we sometimes appeal to intuition to justify our knowledge claims in various areas of knowledge. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that our uneducated intuitions in subjects as logic, mathematics, physics, biology, history, economics and ethics are at best confused and at worst false. As for social intuitions we tend to be over confident about our own intuitions.( van de lagemaat pg 162). For example men always think they know it all and never need help in anything, we think we can fix anything and that we know how to get anywhere. The reason for this is our pride so we intuitively believe that what we think is right. As for emotional intelligence it is definitely not an oxymoron in some cases taking into account what was mentioned before. With our emotions we acquire much knowledge. Although in some cases we tend to put our pride before everything else and stop ourselves from acquiring any knowledge. Our intelligence of the world helps manipulate our emotions. We know that a cliff is tall and that jumping from heights hurts so our fear kicks in stopping us from ever attempting to jump off a cliff unless one day we find out that nothing harmful comes from jumping off a cliff. When Robert Solomon says that emotions are systems of judgments and that virtually all of our experiences is to some degree affective, and even our most dispassionate judgmentsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ can be adequately understood only within some larger emotional context he basically claims that all sense perception, and reasoning, must involve emotion. I agree with this statement because everything that we do has a emotional reaction. For example if someone dies youll feel sad, if you win the lottery youll be happy, if you see a scary movie you will have fear. In other words all incoming sensory perception will have an emotional reaction. As for reason as mentioned before reason and emotion are closely related and are on the same continuum. A persons reasoning and emotions are close together but may vary depending on the task you are doing. To sum up what was previously mentioned, emotions as a way of knowing is explained in three ways: 1 as an obstacle to knowledge, 2 as a source of knowledge and, 3 as intuition. Emotions and reason are usually thought of as opposing forces when in fact they go together. Emotion and reason are on the same continuum. Without emotions we cant reason and with reason we can block emotions. It may be confusing but for example without fear how can we reason that jumping off a cliff is bad. Another thing is that with enough reason we can block emotion or come to our senses for example after we watch a scary movie we might be scared but with reason we can stop ourselves and conclude that it is impossible for what occurred in the movie to happen in real life. Emotional intelligence is not an oxymoron because with intelligence with have emotions. Finally what Robert Solomon stated makes perfect sense because without emotion how can we interpret what we perceive or how could we reason? Work cited Van de Lagemaat, Richard. Theory of knowledge: for the ib diploma. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge university Press, 2005.

The threat of globalization for smaller firms

The threat of globalization for smaller firms Globalization has costs and benefits. There are examples of poorly managed economies. (eg when countries opened their economic borders before they had the capacity to respond well) but there are also examples of well managed countries thatengage well with international community. Many governments and supranational authorities have committed themselves to encouraging trade in the world economy and further reducing poverty through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and are cooperating together to work out smart ways to manage globalization for their smaller firms /countries success in the world economy. Through the evaluation of the strategic management in the global competitive enviroment. The purpose of this report is to evaluate the process of the strategic management of smaller firms by governments and supranationals in the global competitive environment. Introduction and Background What is globalisation? Globalisation can be defined as the greater movement of people, goods, capital and ideas due to increased economic integration which in turn is propelled by increased trade and investment. It is like moving towards living in a borderless world. There has always been a sharing of goods, services, knowledge and cultures between people and countries, but in recent years improved technologies and a reduction of barriers means the speed of exchange is much faster. Globalisation provides opportunities and challenges. Bigger markets can mean bigger profits which leads to greater wealth for investing in development and reducing poverty in many countries. Weak domestic policies, institutions and infrastructure and trade barriers can restrict a countrys ability to take advantage of the changes. Each country makes decisions and policies that position them to maximise the benefits and minimise the challenges presented by globalisation. ( www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au) In a world economy, characterized by a high level of changes over the past few years, we can say that the world does not appear any more like it was in the past. Indeed so many transformations have been done in terms of government regulations, business, telecommunications, technology, research and development, customers needs and tastes, reduction in barriers to free trade and the world with all these factors have led to a great convergence. All these transformations are leading our national economies into a global system or a global economy, i.e. an independent, integrated global economic system therefore a process that we can refer to as globalization. Hence, in the era of the globalization, it has been inevitable for national enterprises to globalize in order to gain for instance some competitive advantage, economies of scales, more market share, better skills. Indeed, nowadays, wherever a company operates, theses products or services would find some foreign competitors. ( Hill, 2006), The impact of globalization on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has received a lot of attention in international markets in the past few years. Today, globalization is a major driver that has impact on nearly every business. One of the reasons for the international focus on SMEs is that these firms make significant contributions to the economy of both developed and under-developed countries. SMEs contribute over 55 percent of GDP and over 65 percent of total employment in high-income countries (UNCTAD, 2004). In Middle and East Asia for example, SMEs are major players in their countries economy; accounting for a higher percent than what it represents in the developing countries. Globalization has that much impact on business forces which have added more drivers to Porters five Forces. One of these new drivers in business life was discussed in an article by Larry Downes in Beyond Porter says that technological progress in logistics and distribution enables nearly every business to buy, sell and cooperate on a global scale. Similarly, customers have the chance to compare prices globally in order to find the best offer. Many SMEs are now looking to go global. The markets are more accessible than ever before. However, most SMEs are finding it difficult to master the art of market entry, resulting in heavy losses. Globalization has increased competitive pressures on firms. Together with rapid technological change it has altered the environment in which SMEs operate. The bottom line is that, in an open and liberalized world, increasing SMEs competitiveness has become a major challenge. Globalization has also expanded competition both geographically and to new areas. Competition between companies was mainly on products and services, at least to the extent that markets were protected from foreign competition. There is a wealth of economic evidence that demonstrates that globalization brings great benefits as well as costs. It offers the opportunity for a higher rate of sustainable growth- growth that translates into longer, healthier lives and improved living standards. But, if we look at another side of picture then it has been proven that some of the competitive obstacles often faced by the little fish in the big ocean. Compared to larger firms, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are generally less well-equipped to face increases in international trade. As a result of their lower productivity, many have found it difficult to compete. Also, given their limited resources, they have found it more difficult to take advantage of the removal of tariff barriers. Global markets are more integrated with more free flow of information, goods and services and migration. As a consequence of globalization we have seen the rise of the influence of large multi nationals, to the detriment of Small and Medium Enterprises. In response to this threat governments and supranational authorities have designed programs to protect and support these small firms to allow for their survival. Threat of globalization The increasing interdependence of countries in a globalised world makes them more vulnerable to economic problems for smaller firms like the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. (J.O Ajiboye, Adeyunke Tella University of Botswana) Smaller firms will find it difficult to compete on the global level as they lack the financial and technical resources that multinationals have. In addition they lack the economies of scale which results in lower cost per unit for the multi nationals. Pricing could be a challenge since the smaller firms are likely to have high costs per unit. Larger firms have the capacity to undercut the smaller firms prices as a consequence of this competition between smaller and large firm would erode margins of smaller firms and some of them would end up making loses and winding up. It would be difficult for smaller firms to attract a highly skilled work force because multi nationals have the capacity to pay better packages as they will have more financial resources. This would pose a challenge for smaller firms to operate efficiently and effectively. High promotional, advertising and branding costs are a barrier to entry for small firms Cultural and religious factors can also affect competitiveness of small firms. For instance, in countries where Islam is a dominant religion in which strict adherence to halaal standards is a requirement, small firms may find it difficult to penetrate the market or to survive in such markets. Import restrictions can also affect small firm competitiveness. For example, in some countries such as Egypt, where there is an import ban on raw materials small firms may find it difficult to penetrate in such markets without a diversified global market base. Smaller firms may find it a challenge on the global market in terms of meeting certain international standards imposed by certain markets. Export restrictions may also pose a problem. In some markets there are restrictive export regulations which, smaller firms find difficult to comply with e.g, small firms in Africa exporting agricultural produce into European markets such as honey or paprika. Membership of a Trading blocs such Common Market For Eastern and Southern Africa COMESA, Southern African Development Community SADC and the European Union EU, inter alia, could be another source of hindrance to smaller firms. Countries that are not members of such trading blocs may find it difficult to trade with member countries. Further other government policies such as high taxes are a disincentive to investment. Small firms are likely to be affected by such taxes. Unlike multinationals, small firms are likely to suffer currency exchange losses. This is because small firms may not have capacity to hedge against such losses. Multinationals, operate in different markets and can easily cushion such effects. Multinationals have the capacity to produce better and cheaper goods as a result of the superior resource endowments such as modern technology and have larger budgets for research and development as compared to smaller firms. Purchase Power Parity is another factor to consider e.g, multinationals can procure inputs in countries where the currency has a higher PPP. Globalization poses new challenges for SMEs by leading them to at least partially integrate the consequent idea of global change in their strategy. The expansion of markets does not mean that only large businesses will be able to profit fully from this trend. There is no correlation between large market and large business. Whatever the cost, to encourage the competitiveness of large national businesses. A fish that has become bigger and bigger in its pond will be eaten when it reaches the sea; it is better to teach it how to fight when it is small so that it can deal with the competition, wherever it is. On the other hand, the internal factors constraining the globalization of SMEs are lack of experience on their part, insufficient resources and an excessive perception of risk. The major external factors are national information networks that are inadequate or poorly connected internationally, deficient complementary regional resources and assistance programs that are maladapted to SME requirements. In a number of countries, the positive factors appear to be gaining ascendance over the negative. The recently completed (1996) OECD study on market globalization and SMEs shows, on the one hand, that the major factors sustaining or accelerating SME globalization are as much a result of the internal dynamics of small businesses as of environmental support. In the first instance, searching for diversified growth, specific innovation-based production, and open-minded management capable of engaging the appropriate specialized resources, go a long way toward explaining the behavior of internationally open SMEs. The case of the environment presumes effective regional consulting, funding and logistical resources to support exports. (Pierre-Andrà © Julien Università © du Quà ©bec à   Trois-Rivià ¨res ) How Governments and other supranational authorities support small firms In order to support the small firms from the threats of globalization governments and other supranational have designed programmes to protect them as stated below. Examples of Supranational institutions that manage such programs are: Governments, COMESA, WTO, World Bank, AU, SADC,UN, ECOWAS, EU etc. Government support: Some of the different programs that must be designed include: Favorable bilateral and multilateral trade agreements which, support positive trade balances must be instituted by governments. This will ensure the growth of small firms thereby contributing to overall country growth. Governments should use their political influence to lobby for relaxed trade. Providing loan guarantees to small firms. Some of these guarantees involve partnerships with private banks or multilaterals such as the World Bank. Such policies help the smaller firm have access to finance. Governments also offer incentives and subsidies to allow the smaller firms compete on the international markets e.g. the Government of South Africa made deals with the Government of Zambia to allow a tax rebate of about five years also the EU also subsidies small scale farmers in the EU. Governments should introduce tax rebates on certain sectors of the industry e.g. in Zambia agricultural inputs are have zero tax to bring into the country to encourage more people engage in to agriculture and overall boost the economy for exports . Governments may devalue its currency to increase export volumes by allowing its exports to be cheaper e.g. China and Japan are practicing this. This should however be done carefully recognizing that it can be inflationary. Government should institute policies that encourage domestic trade through relevant monetary and fiscal policies. Government should encourage policies that support reduction of borrowing costs. Legal enactment of credit acts must be encouraged to protect the consumer. Government should provide grants to economic agents for capital injection. Government should encourage agencies such as the Zambia Development Agency which to provide support to help small and medium businesses become more innovative, efficient and competitive through a national network of services and support for eligible SMEs to access expert, practical advice and support tailored to their individual firms. 4.2 Supranational Support includes: Supranational authorities should introduce grants, loans and funding for small economies to encourage production and trade among countries. Supranational should endeavor to help less developed countries by exposing entrepreneurs to the international markets. Supranationals should facilitate trade expos to stimulate trade. eg traditional indigenous artifacts have found their way to the international markets. Fair trade policies play a bigger role in protecting trade, fair and stable price and institutes like the WTO should encourage this. Forums are another platform that these institutions have introduced to give a voice to the voiceless on issues of economic development e.g. G8 are encouraging world trade by adopting certain polices. Examples of supranational and their impact on globalization: 4.2.1. a International Monetary Fund (IMF) The IMF is a sister institution to the World Bank in the United Nations system. It shares the same international membership and the same goal of raising living standards in its member countries. It works to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty. 4.2.1. b World Bank(WB) The World Bank Groups mission is to fight poverty and improve the living standards of people in the developing world. It is a development bank which provides low-interest loans, interest-free credit, grants, policy advice, technical assistance and knowledge sharing services to low and middle-income countries to reduce poverty. The Bank promotes growth to create jobs, and to empower poor people to take advantage of economic opportunities. The Bank is strongly committed to the Millennium Development Goals which target poverty. (www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/.) 4.2.1. c World Social Forum (WSF) The World Social Forum (WSF) is an amalgamation of many political/social movements from around the world. It was created to openly discuss alternatives to the model for globalisation formulated by the World Economic Forum, large multinational corporations, National Governments, IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. It is working to demonstrate that the path to sustainable development, social and economic justice lies in alternative models for people-centered and self-reliant progress, rather than in neo-liberal globalisation. (www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/.) 4.2.1. d World Trade Organisation (WTO) The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a global international organisation dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the worlds trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. (www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/.) 5.0 Conclusion More and more SMEs are availing themselves of new material and immaterial technologies to increase their productivity. They are innovating to prolong the useful life of their products or to change these products. They are associating with large businesses or working in networks to boost their strike forces. These networks also provide them with international information to prevent them from being outpaced by change. But given the limitations of globalization, some Governments and supranational can have SMEs break away from increased competition by positioning them in specific niches. Globalization can offer as many opportunities for dynamic SMEs as obstacles for those that lag behind in modernizing their production processes or developing these niches which can give them at least temporary shelter from the pressures of new competition. There are social and economic costs to globalisation. Trade liberalisation rewards competitive industries and penalises uncompetitive ones, and it requires participating countries to undertake economic restructuring and reform to help smaller firms. Some countries have been unable to take advantage of globalisation and their standards of living are dropping further behind the richest countries. The gap in incomes between the 20% of the richest and the poorest countries has grown from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 82 to 1 in 1995 (www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/.). The major economic powers have a major influence in the institutions of globalisation, like the WTO, and this can work against the interests of the developing world. The level of agricultural protection by rich countries has also been estimated to be around five times what they provide in aid to poor countries. Trade liberalization and technological improvements change the economy of a country, destroying the traditional agricultural communities and allowing cheap imports of manufactured goods. (www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/.) References and Biography www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au www.worldbank.org/ www.forumsocialmundial.org. www.wto.org/ www.ausaid.gov.au/ Michael Porter Johnson and Scholes, 1993

Roberts Frosty Woods - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening :: Stopping Woods Snowy Evening

Robert's Frosty Woods The mood of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is artfully set by saying "the only other sound's the sweep / of easy wind and downy flake" (11-12). These lines convey they beautiful tranquillity of solitude. Many critics argue that the dark woods of the poem symbolize death. It is equally as valid to say that the poet is describing the joy experiencing a peaceful moment to him; the relaxing mood of the poem as well as the realization that the traveler must move on provide evidence contrary to the interpretation that the woods symbolize death. A relaxing calming mood prevails in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". The only reference to sound is "the sweep / of easy wind and downy flake" (11-12). There is complete silence with the exception of this beautiful sound; there is no loud cacophony to imply the violence of death. The prevailing visual imagery is of a lovely wintry scene; at one point the woods are described as "lovely, dark, and deep" (16). This visual scene further contributes to the restful feel of the poem. The persona's only companion is his horse; this adds a solitary feel to the poem which when combined with the vivid imagery show the peacefulness of a moment alone. The title "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" implies that this is a visit to the woods as opposed to a final resting-place. If this were the final destination, the title "Stopping in the Woods" or "Stopping at the Woods" would be more appropriate. Because the "horse must think it queer / to stop without a farmhouse near," (5-6) there must be some continuation to the journey; otherwise it would not seem odd to the horse to stop. The final lines "and miles to go before I sleep, / and miles to go before I sleep" (18-19) provide further evidence that there will be more to this journey; the depicted scene is only a resting-place. Poetry interpretation in inherently personal due to the abstract nature of poetic language; what may be a valid interpretation for one reader might be completely meaningless to another.

Preventing Bioterrorism Essay -- Biodefense, Biological Attack

September 11, 2001, signifies the most pivotal moment in United States history. It marks a great paradigm shift in the attitude of United States towards terrorism. Prior to September 11, policies to protect against terrorism were perforated with in fighting between government agencies, a lack of centralized intelligence sharing, and general surprise. This event marks the beginning of the largest growth in the United States intelligence community. The United States increased security all around the board, opened up and centralized its agencies, and began to prepare for new kinds of terrorist attacks. The country never experienced a bio-terrorist attack, and yet the threat is very real. From the Cold War, the United States fully understood the harm biological weapons can inflict. The attacks of September 11 demonstrate the preparation against domestic terrorist attacks and the damage terrorist can cause. As the United States continue to increase its security against terrorism, it is imperative it understands and prepares for a potential bio-terrorist attack. There are many events throughout which demonstrate the potential catastrophe a calculated bio-terrorist attack can create. The Black Death of the 14th century illustrates how quickly and how deadly a disease can spread. The plague originated in China and arrived via trade routes to Europe by the mid-14th century. By the end of the 14th century, the disease killed more than half the world’s population. The world witnessed its first case of biological warfare during the French and Indian Wars. British commander of the North America forces, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, ordered his troops to donate to Native Americans blankets infested with smallpox. As result, Native Ame... ...emonstrated the silent nature of such attacks and the damages they can exact on large populations. The plagues of the 14th century, the use of smallpox against the Indians, and the intentional Salmonella poisoning in the 1980’s exemplify this fact. The fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s along with other political events, resulted in vast amounts of bio-agents disappearing and falling into the wrong hands. Opponents claim it is too complex and requires too many resources to carry out large scale attacks; however, with biological weapons, a few infected people can spread the disease to thousands. The modern tactics of terrorism are unconventional, unexpected, and able to kill thousands. As terrorists become more organized and funded, it is essential that the United States increase its capabilities at preventing and defending against bio-terrorist attacks.

Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them Essay

How can customer dissatisfaction lead to higher profits for the company? Companies have found out that ill-informed customers can be beneficial for them in terms of profits. Some companies have abused their customers intentionally, however others unwittingly exploited and took advantage of them. The Slippery slope: There are two major ways in which companies make profits by misleading their customers: * Offering the customers a broad variety of services or products, which can be very confusing, especially when there is lack of transparency. Moreover, if even the information is complete for the customers, the companies can take advantages of consumers’ difficulties in predicting their needs. * Using fees and penalties for offsetting costs and discouraging undesirable customer behavior. These hostile strategies are common from banking and hotel industries to video stores and car rentals. Here particularly 3 industries will be discussed in details: cell phone industry, retail- banking industry and health club industry. Cell phone industry: When a customer signs up for a service plan, he chooses a certain pricing option with different ranges of minutes. These plans can have various restrictions and allowances. However, these varied plans are not a result of customer-centric strategy. They are rather ways to take advantage of customer’s unawareness of which plan to choose, in the result of which customers can be penalized either for using too much time or for not using enough. However, such strategies cannot always guarantee profits for the company. They can increase the dissatisfaction among customers, the proof of which can be thousands of complaints that the U. S. Federal Communications Commission gets annually. These complaints should be worrisome to companies because customers can switch toward a transparent and friendly alternative. Retail-banking industry: Another sphere in which the company-centric strategy is used is retail-banking industry. For signing up in the checking accounts people are offered dozens of alternatives. If the customers cannot precisely predict their needs, they can have losses. Here are some examples of situations when the banks take advantage over the customers’ ignorance * The customers receive less interest when the consumers’ balances are above the minimum of the balance bucket and if the alances fall below the minimum level, they have to pay some penalties. * Banks usually debit the consumers’ checks in the order of size, rather than in a chronological order, for the rest of the checks to bounce and to cause multiple overdrafts, consequently penalties. The company-centric strategy of banks led to the customers’ dissatisfaction and it became so pervasive that New York congresswoman Carolyn Maloney reintroduced the Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act to forbid banks charging overdraft protection fees, unless the customers explicitly are informed about the service. Health club industry: Health clubs tempt customers to sign long-term contracts, knowing that they will rarely visit the club. They realize that all their customers will not completely use the facility and therefore sell more memberships than they have the floor space to accommodate. Moreover, an investigation conducted by the New York City Council concluded that 41% of clubs didn’t explain their fees in writing, 81% didn’t give potential members a contract to read at home and 96% didn’t inform customers of all the ways they could legally cancel a contract. In New Jersey a lot of complaints have brought litigation against almost two dozen health clubs that provided fraudulent contracts. Health clubs require to spend more time to attract new customers because their existing ones try to find a way out. Moreover they even encourage ways to retain customers with reward points for members who work out regularly. The warning signs: According to the research most of the executives are acknowledging the negative effects of the functions described above but they mention that those actions do not represent an intentional strategy. The executives know that because of these negative practices the companies slid down the slippery slope and have difficulties for purchasing on the way back up thus becoming vulnerable for the competitors. For avoiding this practice the executives should ask themselves the questions mentioned bellow. * Are our most profitable customers those who have reasons to be dissatisfied with us? * Do we have rules we want customers to break because doing so generates profits? Do we make it difficult for customers to understand or abide by our rules, and do we actually help customers break them? * Do we depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting? Climbing back into favor: Effective CEOs are able to recognize the opportunities and eliminate the negative effects which make the company vulnerable. The company centric strategies can cause loss of the target market and profitability in a long-term period, thus many companies prefer being economically sustainable.

Discussion Questions Essay

2. How do data from qualitative research differ from data in quantitative research? A quantitative research question is an interrogative sentence that asks a question about the relation that exists between two or more variables. Its purpose is to identify the variables being investigated and to specify the type of relationship, descriptive, predictive, or causal, being investigated. A qualitative research question asks a question about some process, issue, or phenomenon that is to be explored. 5. Assume you are a manufacturer of small kitchen electrics, like Hamilton Beach/Proctor Silex, and you want to determine if some innovative designs with unusual shapes and colors developed for the European market could be successfully marketed in the U.S. market. What qualitative research would you recommend, and why? The US market is very complex and extremely different than the European markets. I would employ a combination of interviews and focus groups. The interviews would allow the researches the opportunity to go deeper in the causes and effects of the choices that the consumers choose. This will enhance the data and information to allow the engineers to review the surveys in order to see if the concepts are true. 7. What dilemma does HealthPlus face, and why has the company turned to focus groups for insights? From the readings, I read that Healthplus had a dilemma that was like well  positioned given the growing concern over rampant obesity, especially among youth. .HealthPlus was right when it surmised that consumers are skeptical that something healthy can taste good. They also learned that there are some triggers they can use for their advertising to get people to eat healthy. The company turned to focus groups to get information on preliminary analysis on the focus group transcript content so that they can get their survey’s back quicker to see what they can fix before sending out to consumers. Chapter 8 1. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of the survey to those of observation. Under which circumstances could you make a case for using observation? The primary advantage to a survey over that of an observation study deals with the actual collection of data. With a survey the data collected is normally known and often is directed to specific answers due to the survey format where observational studies collect data in a haphazard way. However, observation can be a useful tool in certain situations. Observation is a very useful tool when the study must be concealed from the participants. In this manner someone can observe and the participants do not know they are involved in a study. This does present an ethical dilemma but often is required for successful data collection and study. 2. What ethical risks are involved in observation? In the use of unobtrusive measures? Any observations that involve individuals who are unaware present ethical concerns. Individuals in observation studies that use unobtrusive measures can be sneaky. Meaning the study can be concealed from those involved without their approval. For example, studies that make use of one way mirrors, hidden cameras, hidden microphones, etc. 5. The observer–participant relationship is an important consideration in the  design of observation studies. What kind of relationship would you recommend in each of the following cases? a. Observations of professional conduct in the classroom by the student author of a course evaluation guide. Direct b. Observation of retail shoppers by a researcher who is interested in determining customer purchase time by type of goods purchased. Concealment c. Observation of a focus group interview by a client. Indirect d. Effectiveness of individual farm worker organizers in their efforts to organize employees of grape growers. Participation