Strategy Vs.Tactics Essay Example for Free

Strategy Vs.Tactics Essay â€Å"One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority â€Å" –Napoleon Bonaparte We’ve been asked what comes first, Strategy or mission/vision?-a question rather bit confusing. Every company or an LGU for that matter has its own mission/vision for its entity. It is where the tip of the iceberg begins, it is where the head or main point that branches down to different types of planning and more so with strategic or courses of action to fulfill its goals flow. It is always associated with planning now, would this strategy be successful if no result is achieved? Obviously, it will only and merely be planning. With a fix goal/mission/vision, the SWOT follows and targets the basic questions that spreads into analysis (internal or external) and subsequent formulation of strategies. There are of course the intended strategies wherein a planning team tries to foresee eventualities that may arise in the future. It would be nice if these planners can craft a strategy but it would be fulfilling if they achieve the goal with what they strategized. Along these areas of different strategies may come an emergent strategy- not included in the planning process but emerged from what is at hand at that time. The case of Honda, a Japanese company with an intended strategy of selling big bikes in the US hit big when their small motor bikes was seen by Americans being used by Japanese executives doing errands, coupled with problems with machine imperfection of Honda big bikes, the Honda small bikes entered an untouched market of Americans who never owned motorbikes. The intended strategy was a near disaster for Honda but the emergent strategy was a huge hit. It can only show that some strategies can emerged without prior planning-sometimes in response to unforeseen circumstances. Strategy therefore can be said that, is more than what the organization intends or plans to do, it is also what is actually does. It can be born out from a group of decisions or even SM can be of interest when it comes to their planning and strategies. Foremost on business radar is the presence of competition, competition takes a bite of intended profits, so eliminating or minimizing competitions will ensure profits. Individual branded companies may be found in stalls of SM malls but these branded products can also be found within its department store and thereby no exclusivity of sale or retail. An adidas shoes can also be found on the department store shoe section- buyers looking for this brand of shoes can find it along with other brands, the mere presence of the buyer inside the department store will enhance the possibility of the costumer buying other products. So it is a win-win situation because the shoe brand pays rent to SM and SM having a chance to show other products (not necessarily shoes). Other obvious example is the price of chicken in the supermarkets- it is obvious from the big tags and â€Å"Bonus† price of the lowest amount. Costumers tend to flock the wet area of the supermarket just to buy chicken. You will be enticed to buy other items which obviously are more expensive than the average prices prevailing in the market. Enticing costumers to have the convenience of having all necessities and needs in one mall capture the commerce or economy in an area. Any â€Å"disadvantage† of low prices can be compensated or balanced in other forms. Maybe, even the parking should be free but exhorbitantly charged just to balance some â€Å"losses†. So, strategy can be adjusted or regularly updated or even changed. But it can also be done in following a goal. Shell have it big in the 80’s when they correctly anticipated the fall of oil prices. They planned on the â€Å"what if† and when other oil companies ventured into expansions, they started cost cutting, looking new drilling areas etc. when oil prices fell down. They were the only one who was not hit by it. Again, all types of strategies begin with a goal, a vision, or mission. It can be compared to a toothache- The first thing or goal would be to ease the pain- Now you can strategize what approach you can do- but a unified attack to the problem- it can be pain relievers, soothing agents, extraction and other approaches- but whatever approach you planned and executed that achieved the goal of eliminating discomfort of the patient is success enough of what you planned or strategize to do.

Psych. Essays :: essays research papers

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If I were to design a study to examine the effects of taking an online course, I would do a case study. I would find a subject and record their behavioral patterns during attendance at a university. I would observe course load, study habits, length of study time, quality of assignments and overall grades. I would then do the same with an online course, studying the same patterns and behaviors. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Life is good. I am doing one of the activities that I most enjoy. I am taking a nice long walk in the woods. All of the sudden, a HUGE bear appears out of nowhere. This scary creature is standing 10 feet in front of me. He stops, glances at me as if debating whether to come close to me or not, and continues on. I should feel better with his departure. But fear has already taken hold. It must be some kind of spinal reflex. My sensory nerves kick in. They see the scary bear, and send the message of fear to my spinal cord, where they are then transmitted to my brain. Next, my motor nerves carry orders to my muscles, glands and other internal organs to actually react to what my sensory nerves say. This all happens in a matter of seconds†¦..and I flee, to scared to even look back. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  According to Wade and Tarvis (Pg. 17-19) Psychology has five major theoretical perspectives that each makes their own altruistic contributions to psychology. The biological perspective, which studies the biological explanations of motivation, personality, social interaction, memory and psychological disorders. This approach is important in helping us understand the biological explanations of psychology. The learning perspective stresses that people are unique and complex organisms and that each person is affected by their environments and experiences. The learning approach is elemental in helping us understand the fields of personality, psychotherapy and motivation. The third theoretical perspective, or approach, is the psychodynamic approach, which was greatly influenced by the works of Sigmund Freud. It emphasizes unconscious motivation and the influence of sexual and aggressive drive on behavior. It also impacts the fields of understanding personality and psy chological disorders. Cognitive psychology is the approach that inclides the study of mental process, such as thinking, perception, memory and problem solving. Cognitive psychology is very important because it influences virtually every field of psychology. The fifth perspective is the sociocultural approach, which emphasizes the importance of culture, gender and ethnicity in understanding how we think, feel and act.

Gsci

DERIVATIVE CASES An Investment Linked to Commodity Futures Professor Richard Spurgin FIN 5310 – 1 Group 1 Zhongyi Qian Hao Cheng Yue Zhao Liuyang Gao Motivation for issuing the security Prior to the Swedish Export Credit Co. issued the security, the performance of the GSCI showed that this index was clearly attractive. First, the increasing-trend cumulative total returns were higher than the returns on S&P 500 and the Treasury bonds, and then it became more diversified with more futures contracts introduced after 1980.Besides, another attractive feature of the GSCI was its ability to act as a hedge against inflation because it had a strong positive correlation with the two most widely used measures of inflation: CPI and PPI. In addition, the investment on the GSCI had the potential to decrease the risk of a portfolio because its returns were negatively correlated with returns on stocks and bonds. We could examine the index performance more specifically. The total returns on th e GSCI consisted of three components, the yield from the collateral Treasury bill, the spot return and the roll yield from the futures.According to the total return of the GSCI prior to 1990, we could find that the contribution of the T-bill yield was substantial and relatively stable while that of the spot return was small on average and extremely volatile and that of the roll yield was positive though somewhat volatile. The primary source of return changed based on different period with different financial environment and weighting strategy. Spot return contributed a lot in the inflationary period while the roll yield contributed more in the isinflationary period. As for the returns after 1991, we consider it reasonable to assume that the GSCI would continue to generate hefty returns. Since the prices of crude oil futures included in the GSCI had been in backwardation 80% to 85%, GSCI generated high roll yield that significantly contribute to the total return during 1981-1990. The refore, we can say that in 1991-1993, with substantial contribution of T-bill yield and relatively high roll yield, the total return of the GSCI would continue to be hefty in short term.As a consequence, the GSCI would get more attractive and hence popularizing securities exclusively tied to it such as notes issued by Swedish Export. In addition, it was true that GSCI was particularly attractive because it had negative correlation with the US stock market. From Exhibit 4, we can obviously find returns of GSCI had negative correlation (actually -0. 32) with returns of S&P 500 and in the meanwhile, generated relatively higher returns than those of S&P prior to 1991. As far as we concerned, it make a lot of sense since it’s a fully collateralized portfolio of commodity futures.As we know, in theory, commodities futures perform well when financial assets perform worse , that is to say, GSCI has a negative correlation with stock markets. Structure of the security It is possible to replicate the GSCI by making a portfolio, which contains the future contracts of the commodities that includes in the GSCI and the futures of each individual commodity can be weighed approximately the same percentage as they are in the current GSCI. When the future reaches to its maturity, the future contract will be rolled over into the next nearest contract just like the way the GSCI was calculated.In this way we can replicate the GSCI index and the return should be also approximately equal to it. As for the tradeoff between buying the structured note and the replicating portfolio, one should compare them in different aspects. Although the nominal return maybe theoretically the same, the actual return of the structured note should be higher than the replicating portfolio because the transaction fees and charges will be charged in the progress of making and keeping the portfolio. To replicate the payoffs of the GSCI, the investor also needs to put a certain amount of money as the frequent margin and/or collateral postings.Besides, if the investor wants to sell what he has for cash, then he will find the liquidity for the structured note is much higher than the replicating portfolio. However, the investors would only get paid 95. 57% of the increase rate of GSCI index from the structure note while they did not have such limitation on the replicating portfolio. On this transaction, Goldman Sachs earned commission fee as 0. 35% of the total amount of the note, which was $350,000, but they got far more than this for creating the index. In addition to the notes described in this case, Goldman Sachs offered a number of other products related to the index.Each of these products would generate a huge amount of commission. For Swedish Export Corp. , they could finance with no fix interest paid and the possibility that the cost of financing was even cheaper than that of issuing company bond directly definitely existed. Investors would like to have this structure note in portfolios not only because the advantages illustrated above, but also because it had a negative correlation with the stock market, so it could hedge the portfolio risk to some extent. How the deal performed over timeTo calculate the total return, we first need to calculate the cash flows (Table 1) by using the formula, Par*[0. 9557 *GSCI End / GSCI Begin], and when at maturity the value investors could redeem is $78781. 54. Thus the total return of security is as below: (78781. 54/100000)^(1/3)-1=-7. 64%; 39390. 77/50000)^(1/3)-1=7. 64% Compared with other alternatives such as Managed Futures Funds, Swap Transaction and CRB Futures Index, it seemed that GSCI was a good investment since all these three alternatives had relatively lower return than GSCI and still in the decreasing trend.However, the total return of GSCI was declining from 1991 to 1994. Besides, the T- bill yield was higher than the GSCI return, which made this investment meaningless. Additionally, we calculated th e yearly return of GSCI and downloaded the return of S&P and Treasury of these four years. Correlations between GSCI return and S&P and Treasury return is showed in Table 2. It was obviously that there were positive correlation between the GSCI return and S&P and also positive between GSCI and Treasury, which meant that this future contract could not decrease risk effectively.Therefore, in retrospect from 1991 to 1994, the GSCI futures contract decreased the overall return and at the same time failed to diversify the risk of the investment portfolio. It was not a good investment for investors. Table 1 Year| Par=100000| Par=50000| 11/1/91| 95570. 00| 47785. 00| 11/30/94| 78781. 54| 39390. 77| Table 2 Year| Return| S&P| Treasury| 91| -5. 46%| 30. 23%| 5. 61%| 92| -4. 09%| 7. 49%| 3. 41%| 93| -8. 20%| 9. 97%| 2. 98%| 94| -7. 64%| 1. 33%| 3. 99%| | | | | S&P and return| 0. 327556756| T and return| 0. 302031481|

Difference Between Atomic Weight and Atomic Mass

Atomic weight and atomic mass are two important concepts in chemistry and physics. Many people use the terms interchangeably, but they dont actually mean the same thing. Take a look at the difference between atomic weight and atomic mass and understand why most people are confused or dont care about the distinction. (If youre taking a chemistry class, it could show up on a test, so pay attention!) Atomic Mass Versus Atomic Weight Uranium has two primordial isotopes (uranium-238 and uranium-235). Uranium-238 has 92 protons plus 146 neutrons and uranium-235 92 protons and 143 neutrons. Â  Pallava Bagla/Getty Images Atomic mass (ma) is the mass of an atom. A single atom has a set number of protons and neutrons, so the mass is unequivocal (wont change) and is the sum of the number of protons and neutrons in the atom. Electrons contribute so little mass that they arent counted. Atomic weight is a weighted average of the mass of all the atoms of an element, based on the abundance of isotopes. The atomic weight can change because it depends on our understanding of how much of each isotope of an element exists. Both atomic mass and atomic weight rely on the atomic mass unit (amu), which is 1/12th the mass of an atom of carbon-12 in its ​ground state. Can Atomic Mass and Atomic Weight Ever Be the Same? If you find an element that exists as only one isotope, then the atomic mass and the atomic weight will be the same. Atomic mass and atomic weight may equal each other whenever you are working with a single isotope of an element, too. In this case, you use the atomic mass in calculations rather than the atomic weight of the element from the periodic table. Weight Versus Mass: Atoms and More Mass is a measure of the quantity of a substance, while weight is a measure of how a mass acts in a gravitational field. On Earth, where we are exposed to a fairly constant acceleration due to gravity, we dont pay much attention to the difference between the terms. After all, our definitions of mass were pretty much made with Earth gravity in mind, so if you say a weight has a mass of 1 kilogram and a 1 weight of 1 kilogram, youre right. Now, if you take that 1 kg mass to the Moon, its weight will be less. So, when the term atomic weight was coined back in 1808, isotopes were unknown and Earth gravity was the norm. The difference between atomic weight and atomic mass became known when F.W. Aston, the inventor of the mass spectrometer (1927) used his new device to study neon. At that time, the atomic weight of neon was believed to be 20.2 amu, yet Aston observed two peaks in the mass spectrum of neon, at relative masses 20.0 amu and 22.0 amu. Aston suggested there two actually two types of neon atoms in his sample: 90% of the atoms having a mass of 20 amu and 10% with a mass of 22 amu. This ratio gave a weighted average mass of 20.2 amu. He called the different forms of the neon atoms isotopes. Frederick Soddy had proposed the term isotopes in 1911 to describe atoms that occupy the same position in the periodic table, yet are different. Even though atomic weight is not a good description, the phrase has stuck around for historical reasons. The correct term today is relative atomic mass — the only weight part of the atomic weight is that it is based on a weighted average of isotope abundance.