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Smoking Smoking is an addicting habit on the rise worldwide. Smoking across the globe has many different forms from cigarettes and cigars to pipes and shisha’s. There are many different reasons for smoking whether it is for medicinal reasons or recreational use. Smoking has been around for a very long time and in this essay I will discuss the origins of smoking, the serious health risks, economical burdens, the addicting materials as well smoking among teenagers. Despite efforts from governments and organizations to bring awareness to people across the globe of the serious dangers and implications of smoking, the number of smokers worldwide generally remains on the rise. Brief History Of Smoking Smoking in one form dates back to as early as 5000 BC. It was used in shamanistic rituals to allow the users to achieve a state of trance and connect with the spirit world. Cannabis smoking quickly spread through Africa and the Middle East almost 3000 years ago. Smoking was sighted in England as far back as 1556 and then spread to France in 1560. Tobacco was then brought into Africa by French traders in the early 1600’s. Tobacco at that time was chewed or smoked. Around that time many religious leaders banned smoking and considered it immoral and even blasphemous. The first machine made to produce cigarettes was made by James Bonsack in 1881 after the civil war. The negative effects of smoking were brought to public attention in 1929 by the paper published linking cancer and smoking. During the Great Depression and in Nazi Germany, Hitler viewed smoking as unnecessary and a waste of money and also that woman who smoked as unsuitable to be mothers and wives. After the Second World War, anti-smoking groups lost popularity and smoking increas... ...lic places including universities, shopping centers, cafes and restaurants. This bans includes shisha’s (Kuwait Bans Smoking, 2012). Also many governments have set up a â€Å"quit smoking† number and website to assist in quitting smoking.                   Conclusion Smoking has been prevalent worldwide for thousands of years and according to the World Health Organization looks to increase even more. Currently over 1 out of 7 people are smokers. There are many health risks associated with smoking and deaths due to smoking are more than 5 million people every year and has a large economic impact globally. This is more than double the deaths due to natural causes. Smoking is more and more prevalent in teenagers in today’s world due to advertising through the internet and peer pressure. Many anti-smoking organizations were set up to help people quit smoking and to raise awareness.

Balanced Scorecard: Management Control System Essay

â€Å"Balanced scorecard† means different things to different people. At one extreme, measurement-based balanced scorecards are simple dashboards of performance measures grouped into categories that are of interest primarily to an organization’s managers and executives. Typical categories include financial measures, and customer, process, and organization capacity measures. Measurement-based scorecards almost always report on operational performance measures, and offer little strategic insight into the way an organization creates value for its customers and other stakeholders. At the other extreme, a strategic performance scorecard system is an organization-wide integrated strategic planning, management and measurement system. Strategy-based scorecards align the work people do with corporate vision and strategy, and communicate strategic intent throughout the organization. In other words, these systems incorporate the culture of the organization into the management system. In strategy-based scorecards, performance measures are only one of several important components, and the measures are used to better inform decision making at all levels in the rganization. In strategy-based balanced scorecard systems, performance measures are the result of thinking about business strategy first, to measure progress toward goals. In strategy-based systems, the first question to answer is the strategic question: â€Å"Are we doing the right things? † The operations, process, and tactical questions come later: â€Å"Are we doing things right†. Over the past decade balanced scorecards have evolved from systems that simply measure performance to holistic strategic planning and management systems that help manage and track strategy execution. Despite this evolution, the majority of balanced scorecards that we have seen over the past 10 years use a â€Å"just give me the measures† philosophy. These measure-centric dashboard scorecards are interesting, but not very robust and not nearly as helpful as they could be. These scorecards remind me of the old Wendy’s commercial: â€Å"Where’s the beef? † Strategy-based scorecard systems, on the other hand, create a â€Å"strategic thinking† mentality in an organization, and can help lift the organization and its workforce to a higher, more performance-oriented way to think and work. Each organization is unique, and there is no â€Å"one scorecard fits all† solution. This article describes how to develop a strategy-based balanced scorecard system for technology companies. We’ll share some lessons learned from developing strategic performance scorecard systems in dozens of businesses and industries over the past 10 years. The Balanced Scorecard as a Technology Company’s Strategic Planning and Management System Technology company management teams are challenged by: †¢ Rapidly shrinking product cycles †¢ Recruiting, retaining and rewarding technology talent Making and communicating critical product development decisions †¢ Tracking the evolution of customer feature demands and use models †¢ Disruptive, enabling technologies that can invalidate products or entire business models In addition, executives rarely communicate the strategic manner in which the business is being directed. The typical result is disagreement and misalignment in how these challenges are perceived and addressed throughout the company. Any technology company strategy needs to embrace these challenges. Strategy is a company’s approach to achieving its vision–it’s the organization’s â€Å"game plan† for success. One thing the technology company’s strategy needs to define is how it will measure product planning and development success. Strategy needs to define how ideas are advanced into opportunities. Passionate technology workers need to know why their ideas and views were embraced, delayed, or discarded. Strategy must describe the timing of such considerations, so that investments in programs underway are protected from an ill-timed innovation capturing the minds of employees. Similarly, programs that are off track need to sound alarms so that corrective action can be taken. Strategy needs to guide when and how to sound those alarms and ensure necessary corrections are taken. Strategy needs to dictate tracking customer feature evolution, and if the company wields the core technology its products need to be successful in the marketplace. Using a balanced scorecard as the strategic planning and management framework allows a company to deal with these and other issues that matter to creating value for customers and stakeholders, such as process efficiency, financial performance, and organizational capacity and readiness. Starting with a strategic view of how the organization creates value for customers, a scorecard system links strategy to what must be done operationally to be successful. Good scorecard systems focus on the critical few performance measures that provide real business intelligence and contribute to the achievement of operational excellence, employee excellence, and business success. But more important, these systems focus on the elements of strategy that can be made actionable – strategic objectives that are the building blocks of strategy. Developing a Technology Company Balanced Scorecard System The logic of building a scorecard system and using the system as the organization’s strategic planning and management framework starts with an understanding of the organization’s customers and stakeholders, and their needs. The management team then develops and validates the strategic components of the management system. The components include mission, vision, core values, strategic perspectives (i. e. , performance dimensions), strategic themes and desired strategic results, strategic objectives, an organization-wide strategy map, performance measures and targets, and strategic initiatives aligned with the objectives. Strategy is the common thread through the scorecard system and forms the basis for communicating the organization’s approach for gaining competitive advantage (for a business), or in the case of a public or non-profit organization, for improving mission effectiveness for stakeholders. The finished strategy-based balanced scorecard system translates customer needs, mission, and values into organization goals, strategy, objectives, performance measures, and new initiatives. In a strategy-based scorecard system, strategy is analyzed through four performance dimensions (perspectives): financial (stewardship for government and non-profits), customer/stakeholder, business processes, and organization capacity. A key strategy development step is the creation of several high-level strategies (i. e. , strategic themes), associated strategic results, and strategic objectives for each theme. Strategic themes are aligned with the organization’s vision and mission, and the theme’s strategic result describes a high-level outcome of successfully implementing the strategic theme. Usually three or four themes define the business strategy of the organization at a high level. Examples of strategic themes include Customer-Focused Operational Excellence, Market Driven Technological Excellence, Strategic Partnering, and Growth Through Innovation. Many other themes are possible, and the selection of vision and aligned strategic themes and results make for unique performance scorecard systems for different organizations. Another key development step is the creation of strategic objectives — the â€Å"DNA† of strategy. Objectives are expressed as continuous improvement actions that can be documented, measured, and made actionable through initiatives and projects. Once developed, objectives are linked to form a â€Å"strategy map. † A strategy map shows graphically how the organization creates value for customers, stakeholders, and employees. The strategy map is constructed by linking strategic objectives using cause and effect relationships. A strategy map is one of the most effective communication tools an organization can use to build transparency, alignment, and a focus on results.

Good Man Is Hard to Find Essay

According to Shakespere, â€Å"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players†. Some people, in their daily lives, do more intentional acting, or decieveing, than others. The terms â€Å"Friday Muslim† or â€Å"Sunday Christian† have been coined to describe people who appear to be devout to their religion when they attend their weekly religious gathering, but otherwise do not display any moral connections to it. These people put more importance on appearing as a good and richous person rather than actually thinkning, speaking, and acting according to the religious documents they claim to follow. Living this sort of life proved to be fatal for the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The Grandmother’s religious hypocracy caused her to corrupt the thoughts of her grandchildren, manipulate events onto a negative path, and ultimately cause the death of her and her family. Studies done by the National Child Study indicate that children’s views are larely shaped by â€Å"caregiver/child interactions throught childhood†(â€Å"Measuring†). John Wesley and June Star’s mother and father seem to be very passive and quiet with thier views. In comparison, the Grandmother is outspoken, opinionated, and presents herself as a religiously knowledgable, and there for trustworthy, person. The children seem to have picked up on her racist views as their normally argumentitive resopnses are absent when she makes condesending comments about an ovbiously poor â€Å"Negro child standing in the door of a shack†(O’connor) they pass on their trip. The impression of the grandmother’s views into the children is also aparent when, rather than being appalled at her racist story about a suitor bringing her watermelon, â€Å"this story tickled John Wesley’s funny bone and he giggled and giggled†(O’connor). Also, June Star shows signs of the same materialistic shelfishness of the Grandmother when she states that she â€Å"wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday†(O’connor). The grandmother replies that she wishes she would have married him because he â€Å"had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man† (O’connor), as if wealth is the most important factor in deciding whom to marry. Nearly everytime the chirdren speak their comments reak of the condescending, corrupt influence of their grandmother. Had the Grandmother put more emphasis on actually practicing Christian values than just appearing to be a godly person she would not have had the relaxed attitutte towards lying which led her to her death. Fearing her cat ,Pitty Sing , â€Å"might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself†(O’connor), she sneaks the cat into the car. She knows that her son Bailey has good reason for not wanting the cat to accompany them on the trip and would not allow it, but this does not stop her. The Grandmother later tells a story to the children about a plantation she used to visit when she was younger. She believes he house to be a little way down a dirt road they passed on the highway. She begins to have a burning, almost childish, desire to revisit this landmark and so lies to the children. Knowing it will manipulate the children into helping her persuade their parents to visit the house, she tells them â€Å"there was a secret:-panel in this house†(O’connor) which â€Å"all the family silver was hidden in†(O’connor). As expected, the children begin whining untill their father, Bailey, agrees to make a â€Å"one and only time†(O’connor) exception to the trip itenerary and visit the plantation. The Grandmother’s deception leads to Bailey wrecking the car. The cat becomes statled leaps onto his neck, causing him to jerk the wheel in firght and lead the car into a ditch. Due to the Grandmother’s lack of morals, the family is left helpless and injured on the side of a near abandoned road. As exzibited in devout priests, nuns, and missionaries, selflessness is highly valued in Christianity. The Grandmother would like for people to think of her as a selfless christian role model, but her actions prove her to be quite the opposite. Before the family sets out on the trip she attempts to manupulate them into going to Tennessee instead of Florida. She actually wants to go visit some old friends in her former home state, but she attempts to scare the family into changing their destionation. Had she not been so selfish, she would not have so clearly noted and remembered that â€Å"The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida†(O’connor), and therefor would not have clearly recognized him when he stops to help the family later in the story. The Misfit made the decision to kill the family in order to cover his tracks only after the grandmother verbalized that she identified him. Her selfish attitude kept her from realizing that it was likely not in her families best interest to blurt out this realizatioin. It clearly shows that even in the most dire of situatioins no one else’s well being was even close to the forfront of her toughts. The Gandmother’s pattern of selfishness is not cohearent with her claimed Christian ties, and unwittingly led her and her family to be massacred. The politition who claims everyone should be â€Å"green† in order to save the planet but continues to travel in a private jet, The religious leader who preaches meantal purity and is found to have a drug habit, or even the parent who tells their child â€Å"do as I say, not as I do†; hypocracy in all forms has its victims. O’Connor was known to be a devout Roman Cathloic and likely resented people who, like the Grandmother in this story, were good at pretending to be religious but had no actual commitment. Unfortuantly for the Grandmother her first selfless act came to late.