Zulu African Tribe views on death and afterlife Term Paper

Zulu African Tribe views on death and afterlife - Term Paper Example It is believed that in the 16th century the Zulu migrated and settled in the south of the African continent. This paper is to examine the practices, customs, belief and views of the Zulu, a tribe found in South Africa regarding death and the afterlife. The Zulu tribe views on death and the afterlife The Zulu belief in gods, for instance, Inkosi Yezulu means ‘Chief of the Sky’. This is a male god of the sky and is considered as the maker of all humans (Magesa, 187). However, despite him being the maker of everything, he is associated with lightening, thunder and rain clouds. This male god has a twin god called mother earth (Krige 46). The Zulu as well believe people who die go to the twin god. The Zulu also identify their ancestral spirits by names like amalozi, amathonga and amakhosi. This ancestral spirits are souls of the recently dead people and are normally considered effective contacts between the Zulu and their gods and therefore responsible for positive, construct ive and creative results among the Zulu. At the same time these ancestral spirits can also work for the ill of the tribe (Krige, 47). For this reason the Zulu hold these ancestors in high esteem so as to bring good will to the region. Umsamo is a particular place identified in the Zulu hut of Zulu chiefs’ jurisdiction where religious action is done.... Besides, their bodies are quietly unceremoniously buried. Ceremonies and rituals associated with death and the afterlife Immediately after death, one is considered to be in an "in-between" region which is some kind of limbo. The Zulu believe that the dead person stays in this ‘in-between’ situation for a period that could be between one month and a year. However, being in this limbo position is necessitated by three things. One of the reasons for this is that after a person’s death, the village’s chief herbalist will be devoted with finding out the cause of the departed’s death. These search periods will last for about one month, besides; if the person was not married he would be in limbo for that period of time until the cause of his demise is traced. In the event that he was married, the widow would mourn for a period of twelve months since the death occurred. A ritual is carried out which involves taking of medicine and praying to prior to beseech ing the current Chief to perform what is known as Ukubuyisa Idlozi. This is normally done as an initiation to "bring home the ancestor"(Lawson 32). They believe that this act makes it possible for the recently deceased person to join his ancestors in the Umsamo. Once the deceased person has been brought to the Umsamo, his position in this place will determine where he goes after here. In the event that a chief dies, the Zulu believe that his spirit will remain within the living world so as to oversee the happenings his homestead even in death. Except for Chiefs, it is believed that all those who die go to the underworld, which is located deep inside mother earth (Tempels 38). Ethical responsibilities and obligations to achieve the afterlife When a family member dies, the remaining family

Cost method november Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Cost method november - Essay Example It is crucial for managers to comprehend the merits and demerits of the two systems to satisfy the needs of their business operations. The budget presented entails schedules that raise various concerns leading to the recommendation that the company should switch to the activity-based costing system of accounting. The first concern is the quarterly budget that in my opinion requires further subdivision to generate quarters. Mainly, cycling takes place in temperate weather conditions. Buying materials for bicycle production for the start of sales hikes demand therefore, requires the producer to incur a quarter before the demand. Another concern regards accounts that remain uncollectable. The master budget for the company is not specific it its cash budget line. It closely refers to the uncollectable receivables. Variable factors in this context emanate from economic features among them limited sponsorship and thus resulting in wrong accounts (Gazely & Lambert, 2006). From the budget, the company is setting aside a budget for 140 bikes inclusive of labour costs. It is appropriate to cut down on the level of production of extra parts in the inventory. The viability of any business can be measured by how the company effectively utilizes its resources while plummeting unnecessary costs hence Competition Bikes Inc. should strive to avert extra discretionary costs. The method of distributing manufacturing overhead by activity-based costing (ABC) to products is efficient compared to the traditional method of costing. Precisely, activity-based costing assigns the right percentage of resources to particular products. While monitoring and allocating organizational costs to products and objects, activity-based costing remains a more sophisticated and logical method as opposed to the traditional costing system (Bragg, 2001). It is possible to distribute

How Animation Affects Children Film Studies Essay

How Animation Affects Children Film Studies Essay In today advancement of technology, television is a big part in the role of delivering information to the society. The influence of this form of media has no exception to children. Nowadays, children are growing up with television. They learn from television and trying to make sense of this system of communication. To understand what they are learning from it, the use of television and how they absorb the information are important areas to learn further about this issue. Animation as a part of television programs plays an important role to children development since animation often related to children as its target audiences. The use of cognitive skills and how they relate to many aspects inside the animation such as narrative, character, and many more influence what knowledge and skills that they acquire from watching animation. It influences their cognitive and social development with things that they are not obtained from their parents and teachers at school. This issue raises que stions such as what can children learn from watching animation, or how children with different ages and cultures make sense of it in their development process. Chapter 1: Children Learning Process 1.1 Children Cognitive Development Before talking further about content of animation that influences children learning process, it is important to study the learning process of the children itself. Jean Piaget theory about cognitive development is a good first step to understand how children get their knowledge, construct it and use it. According to Piaget, a newborn baby enters the world without basic cognitive skills and through the development as a child, he consistently trying to adapt the world around him. Constructing such an understanding is basically what cognitive development is all about. Piaget defines it as the properties of intelligence that explains why certain behaviours happened. According to Piaget there are three components that exist in cognitive development, which are function, content, and structure. Function in this case refers to broad characteristics of intellectual activity; on the other hand, content refers to what do children know, which is about raw behavioural data that is observable. In between function and content, Piaget mentioned about the existence of cognitive structure, which is the properties of intelligence that causing particular behaviours to occurs. When a child watching animation, they use their existing knowledge to make sense of the animation that they are watching, they are trying to understand what is happening in front of their eyes at the moment. Different age group has different way of seeing and perceived things because cognitive structure keep evolving as a human grow up and obtaining information through their experiences. To explore further about the age group of children and what can they absorb during those periods of time, Piaget further divided cognitive development process into four stages: Sensory-motor stage / Infancy (0-2 years) In this stage of development, a child is trying many things that he can feel, taste, see, smell, and hear. Through this repetitive process, he starts to build images in his brain about his surroundings. He is learning to identify things based on the interaction between the object and his five senses. He slowly learns about the existence of an object and learning to use symbolic abilities such as language. At this stage, he is still learning about object permanence. He is still unaware about the existence of an object when it is out of his sight, for example is a child who has his candy taken away from him and simply hide it will make him think that the candy is gone therefore he started crying. Pre-operational stage / toddler and early childhood (2-7 years) This stage of development a child started to learn to use symbolic images to define things and developing language ability. This is the stage where a child started to imitate other people behaviour while still having an egocentric thought. He needs a concrete physical situation to understand what is going on around him as he is not able to conceptualize abstractly in his brain. At this stage, a child is able to define an object based on one characteristic, for example is how a child at this stage will group his toys based on a type of the toys (grouping a car toys regardless of the colour of the toy or the size of it) or based on colour (grouping all red toys regardless the shape of them). Concrete-operational period (7-11 years) At this stage, a child start to lose their egocentric thought. He is able to conceptualize things and formed his logic based on his experiences to grasp the situation around him. He is able to use logic appropriately to manipulate symbols related to concrete objects, classifies objects based on their features and dimensions, and able to do abstract problem solving based on their concrete experiences. Formal-operational period (11-15 years) This last stage involves a child ability to use abstract thinking rather than concrete experiences. He is able to explain his problem solving process, able to use logical reasoning, and start to thinking about his future. Another important analysis done by Piaget is the analysis of how well a child performs on different task between each stage. These tasks analysis involves four areas of study, which are: Hidden Object This area involves object permanence as it was mentioned at the sensory-motor stage before. The term object that Piaget mentioned in his theory refers to things that an individual believed that it exist in this world and able to interact with. At the first stage, which is sensory-motor stage, an infant do not see an object as something that is exist in this world, he only perceived it as a thing that drives his reflexive action. Piaget made an experiment by putting a cloth over a toy which made the child not interested anymore to the object that being covered. A child will slowly grasp the concept of object permanence after leaving the sensory-motor stage. Conservation Regardless the space that objects stayed, the quantity of it will stay the same. This is what Piaget means by conservation in this matter. He made an experiment by presenting water inside containers to a child. He poured water into two containers with the same size and asked the child which one has more water and the child think that they have the same amount of water. When Piaget take one container and poured the water inside into a different container that is thinner and taller and presented it again to the child, the child said that the thinner and taller containers have more water compared to the one before. This example shows that a child still do not have the logic to think about the volume of an object and deceived by the physical appearance of it. As a child grow up, his logic of conservation will be developed until age 11-12 when he reached the peak of concrete operational-period, when he is able to define volume in an object. Transitive Inference Also known as Seriation, Transitive Inference is the skill to logically arrange things based on particular criteria. In this case, Piaget made an experiment by presenting wooden sticks with different length to a child and asked him to arrange them. In the end, the child was not able to arrange them based on the height of each stick and just put them randomly next to each other. Transitive Inference will evolve as a child Conservation skill evolving. By grasping the understanding of each measurement unit, a child will form logic of Transitive Inference in his head as well. Balance-Scale Task Balance scale task involves systematic understanding of physics related area. For this area of study, Piaget made an experiment by placing a bar on top of a small object and adding different weight for each end of the bar. Without considering that the length between the small object and two weights are different, child at pre-operational stage said that the side with more weight will go down. Child at concrete-operational stage struggled to use his logic to combine the two elements, distance and weight. Child at formal-operational period has the logic to decide which side will go down. Piaget uses these four areas of study to explain further about his stages of childs cognitive development. He presented relevant experiments for each category to give a clear example of childs learning process at different stages. 1.2 Knowledge Representation Children and adults have a different way of seeing things. Compared to adults who see things more abstractly and conceptually, the way children seeing things are more imaginary. If both adult and children were given a brown coloured dog, different image representation will be formed in their mind. If adults will try to remember why the dog is brown by thinking what breed is the dog, children will simply remember it as a dog with brown colour. After they fully grasp the idea of object permanence when they entering pre-operational stage, they can form a mental representation inside their mind. Arietta Slade in her book Children at Play defines mental representation as ..an ability with enormous adaptive value. Out of sight no longer means out of mind, an achievement that involves a new capacity for organized psychological experiences. (1994, pp.6) She took an example of a mother and her child by saying that the mental representation of a mother can be stored in the childs mind and during the mother absent, the child will use his mental representation to take out the memory of his mothers basic visual appearance, such as the voice, the smell, or the touch. Piaget in his book defines mental representation as an ability to hold an image in a childs mind for a period beyond the immediate experience. Piaget mentioned that a child is able to form a mental representation after a year and a half during sensory-motor stage. At the later stage, which is pre-operational stage, a child takes the mental representation one step further and started to use symbols as a representation of his knowledge. A symbol can take a form of picture, written word, or spoken word. Due to their egocentric thought a child may use symbols as a representation only for their point of view. For example is an experiment called three mountain task done by Piaget and Barbel Inhelder to study the perspective view of a child. The experiment was done by laying down three models of a mountains and a child facing a direction of those models. On the other side, a doll was placed with a different point of view at those models. Then Piaget asked the child to describe the overlappi ng of those models from the dolls perspective. The existence of egocentrism was proven when a child at pre-operational period cannot differentiate their view and the doll view. At the concrete operational period, children take their symbol representation ability one step above from just using symbols as a representation, to be able to manipulate symbols with their logic. They are not seeing things only from their perspective anymore, but they still need a concrete situation to be able to use their logic to manipulate the symbol. Lastly, when they enter formal-operational stage, concrete situation is no longer needed to put logic to manipulate a symbol. They can think logically to adapt in a abstract situation. By exploring further about how children evolved in their knowledge representation as they grow up, one should have a better understanding of how they perceived things around them. Chapter 2: Children and Animation 2.1 Animation and Archetypes Before talking about archetypes in animation, it is important to get an understanding about the basic of animation. According to Paul Wells in his book Understanding Animation, animation derived from the latin verb, animare, which means to give life to and he further said that ..within the context of the animated film, this largely means the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in inanimate lines and forms. (1998, pp.10) Animation provides us with things that cannot be achieved in real life as Paul Wells further explained in his book, Animation can defy the laws of gravity, challenge our perceived view of space and time, and endow lifeless things with dynamic and vibrant properties. (1998, pp.11) Therefore, animation provides us with imagination that we cannot get from live action movie. Imagination is an important aspect in children development. When children watch an animation, they will relate themselves with the character in the animation. By putting themselves in the shoes of one of the character in the animation, their personalities are being influenced by the archetype of the character in the story. Psychologist Carl Gustave Jung defines archetypes as a result of collective unconscious, which he defines as a knowledge we are all born with, yet we are not conscious of it. Jung divided archetypes into four main forms, which are: The Shadow: The Shadow, embodies chaos and wildness of character, It is an archetype that reflects deeper elements of our mind. The Anima (male)/Animus (female): The Anima/Animus is the route of communication with collective unconscious. It represents our true self, without the mask that we use everyday. The Self: The Self is a process where all aspects are brought together as one. It unifies conscious and unconscious. Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces defines seven archetypes in storytelling: Hero: The Hero is basically the protagonist or main character. His journey is a path from the ego, often consist of seperation from his family to a new places before going back to the hometown. Mentor: The Mentor is a character who trains the hero, represents wise quality within us Threshold Guardian: The Threshold Guardian is the heros first obstacle in his journey. Its role is to test the worthiness of the hero to start a journey. Herald: The Herald is not necessarily to be a person. Its role is to delivers a challenge to the hero to begin his journey. Shapeshifter: Often is the opposite sex of the hero, The Shapeshifters role is to delivers suspense to the story by questioning beliefs and assumptions. Shadow: The Shadow often take a role as an antagonist in the story, representing things we do not like that we want to eliminate. Trickster: The Trickster provides comedy to the story to balance its tension. The trickster often is a companion of the hero. 2.2 Narrative in Animation According to dictionary, narrative has a meaning of a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious. According to Seymour Chatman in his book Story and Discourse, Narratives are communications, thus easily envisaged as the movement of arrows from left to right, from author to audience. (1978, pp.71) So, it can be said that narrative is a form of communication from the author as a guide to the audience. Chatman tried to draw connections between narrative and how it affecting the audience by breaking down the elements in the narrative. Chatman made an analysis of narrative by detailing the clear distinction between story and discourse. Defining story and discourse is a matter of asking what and how. Story is what the animation trying to communicate, which is the content of the animation, and discourse is how the animation being communicated, which is the form of the animation. Chatman further divides story into two parts which are events and existents. Events exist because there are existents, and vice versa. Events are things that happened in the story and existents are the one who make it happen. Regarding of events, Chatman mention about naturalizing in story which is a way in which audiences come to recognize and interpret convention (1978, pp.49) An author often use Naturalizing to make the audience have a better understanding of what is happening in the event of a story. For example is when a character open and read his diary or a letter, there is background voice that highlighting what is written in it. By connecting the image and the voice, it gives the audience better understanding about that particular event in the story. While Events deal with time in the narrative, on the other hand, existents deal with space. Existents contain settings and characters in the narrative. According to Chatman, setting is the place or collection of objects in movie space that interacting in some way with the character. 2.3 Character in Animation According to Aristotle, characters in narratives have the second place in importance. It exists to fulfill the role that the event requires him or her to perform. This kind of character usually has a very specific trait assigned to them in the story. The meaning of traits according to dictionary is a distinguishing characteristic or quality, especially of ones personal nature. According to Chatman, traits are actions that becoming the label of the character in the story. According to him, character can have more than 1 trait which will creates self conflict in the story; therefore bring out the uniqueness to the character. Chatman definition of character in the narrative can be associated with Carl Jungs archetypes. Carl Jung describes archetypes as repeating patterns of thoughts and actions that re-appear again and again across people. Jung main archetypes are not in a way that each person may be classified as one, but rather we have all the basic archetypes inside us, which is the shadow that embodies chaos and wildness of character, the anima/animus which represents our true self, and the self where all aspects are brought together as one. An example of Jungs archetype can be seen in Lotso, the pink teddy bear from Toy Story 3. He has the anima archetypes at the beginning of the movie when he guiding the hero in his journey. Then as the movie progress, he started to show the shadow archetypes inside of him. 2.4 What Can Children Learn from Animation In their first year, a child is unable to grasp the concept and narrative of the animation that he watches. According to Jean Ann Wright in her book Animation Writing and Development, while an infant still unable to sits by themselves, they enjoying watching television just by paying attention to the changing patterns of light colours and sounds. Therefore, at this sensory-motor stage, animation for them is just the same as other forms of entertainment as they just paying attention to the basic forms, movement and colours. Their lacking of object permanence ability not allows them to understand the existence of a character in the movie. As they move to different stages, they start to explore the world around them. They begin to learn about language and symbols as a representation of actions. They will start to interact with things that they watch until finally they are able to grasp the content of the animation that they watch. As they enter the pre-operational stage, narratives and characters in animation start to have influences on their development. Although they still see things very literally, they start to pay attention at the setting of the event, and as they developing language ability, they will start to imitate the movement and dialog of the character in the animation, although they still unaware of the traits that the particular character possess. They are still relating the character in the animation to them limited to what is literally shown in the movie. Their egocentric thought allows them to relate at the character in the animation in a very narrow point of view. During the Concrete operational stage, a child is now able to relate the characteristic of the character to him to an extent of what a character is being portrayed in the animation. Without his egocentric thought he is able to see the character from other point of view. For example if he watches a Aladdin, he is not only seeing Jasmine as a beautiful princess but also taking the point of view of Aladdin as a princess that want to be free and his lover. But he still need a concrete situation in the movie to help him understand the character from other point of view. And lastly during the formal operational stage, a child is now able to fully relate himself to the character in the animation. He also begins to grasp the concept and morale behind it rather than using an image representation to relate to the character. He is now able to relate himself to the character abstractly using his logic. He is now able to think what possibilities that the character might behave in the movie even i f it is not shown in any scene. Animation has the most impact at this stage, where a child can relate himself to many things from the character other than what the animation showed in the narrative. He will memorize lots of symbols regarding his surroundings. Lets take an example of how a child in formal-operational period can relate himself to violence aspect in animation. Does watching too much violence in animation will leads a child into a violent teenager? For example, a child at this stage will see a gun as a symbol of killing. But at the same time it does not necessarily cause a child to act more violently. As a gun can also symbolize justice where in the movie a hero use it to shoot the villain. It can promote a view that violence is common in everyday life, which will make them think that the world around them is a mean and dangerous place. Therefore it will create fears in their minds. Or it can create the opposite effect that having a gun will make a child feel safe. The ability of abstract thinking that a child at formal-operational period possessed will make a child have a different point of view compared to others. Conclusion By studying children learning process and how they can relate to the narrative and character in animation, it can be said that animation affects children differently according to their cognitive development level. At pre-operational and concrete-operational period, a child started to relate himself to the character in the animation limited to what is being showed in the animation. At formal-operational period, a child is no longer use image representation as much as before and able to fully relate himself to the character in the animation.

gender issues in jails :: essays research papers

The article I chose is titled Gender Issues in the New Generation Jail, by Patrick G. Jackson, and Cindy A. Stearns. The source for this article is the Prison Journal. The article explains how men and women in the new jails have adapted. The definition of the new jail is a fifty-person pod style jail. The old jail was considered to be inhumane, disgusting, and have many blind spots. The problems in the old jails were growing year by year. The new jail comes furnished with televisions, separate showers, a phone, and other recreations. The inmates used in the study were all surveyed six months before and six months after the jail was opened. The men and women both showed significant differences in each other.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There have been studies that show that inmate attitude and behavior improves in the different management style jail. An example of this is the recent study showed a reduction in assaults, graffiti, and contraband. (Jackson, P. & Stearns, C. 1995) This survey was compiled to get opinions from the inmates to help aid in jail research. The surveys were broken up into eight different categories to   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Darcey 2 show their perceptions of the old and new jails. Privacy, safety, structure, support, emotional feedback, social simulation, activity, and freedom were the eight categories used. Privacy was defined as peace, quiet, and absence from environmental irritants such as noise and crowding. Safety was a preference for settings that provided a protection that minimized the chances of being attacked. Structure can be described as a preference for consistency in the rules, scheduled event, and impingement. Support is defined as the assistance from persons and services that facilitate self-advancement and self-improvement. Emotional feedback is the concern about being loved, appreciated, and cared for. Social stimulation is the preference for settings that provide an opportunity for social interaction and companionship. Activity is a distraction that fills time. Lastly freedom was the need for minimal restriction but maximum opportunity to govern ones own conduct. (Jackson, P. & Stearns, C. 199 5) I believe these categories chosen were very good and very well defined. This was a good method of research.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Of the inmates used in the survey most of them have prior arrests. Almost fifty percent of the inmates have   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Darcey 3 been in jail six or more times. Both the males and the females share this characteristic. The severity of the crime is higher in the males however.

Enterprise-Level Strategic Uses of Technology At Baderman Islands

The advent of information technology and other technological products has lead to a more competitive market environment for different organization. In this regard, more and more companies and institutions are trying to invest on innovative and technology-specific products, and Baderman Islands is never an exemption. Accordingly, technological innovation for products and servers is known as integrated principle of technology and development to be able to meet current demands of the target market. In various ways, technological innovation is said to have specific use in enterprise-level of an organisation.The alignment of technology with the business strategy of the company is important. Primarily, the main goal of this paper is to determine the enterprise-level strategic use of technology at Baderman Islands. Overview of Baderman Islands Baderman Island is known as an independent, all inclusive resort destination with various features from hotels, restaurants, convention centre and ot her leisure activities that a tourist is looking for. It is an island resort community with vast essentialities to give innovative services to sustain their competitive advantage.The management of the company aims on providing quality tourisms services for their target market. In doing so, the company is pursuing technological innovations to be more distinctive and add to the entire experience of their target market. Enterprise-Level Strategic Use of Technology In order to sustain competitive position in the marketplace, the company has adapted technological innovation which specifically focuses on the Dolphin Boat by Innerspace Technology. The alignment of this technology has enterprise-strategic use for Baderman Island’ includes the following.The first strategic use of this technology is to meet and satisfy customer demands. Since tourists in this generation are seeking for an island retreat which provides business, leisure and other escapades and extraordinary experiences, the company considers technological alignment to provide the needs of the customer for an island-getaway. This technological innovation can help the company to provide distinctive and effective service provision. It is said that the successful and effective alignment of the company’ management, staff and technology, is important for attaining customer satisfaction.Such alignment begins with the purposeful alignments of the company’s operations employed by Baderman Island’s management (Johnston & Clarke, 2001). Another enterprise-level strategic use of technology with Baderman Islands is with regards to the enhancement of the management system of the company. By considering technologically innovated products such that of the Dolphin Boat, the company will be able to enhanced their differentiation strategy, and business strategy of the company which include the management skills and resources.In addition, the company will be able to improve their creative flair, product engineering, strong marketing abilities and strong capability in basic research. Furthermore, as part of the enhancement of management system of the company through the alignment of technology, their corporate reputation is also improving to attract more tourists in choosing their tourism services among other competitors (Nickols 2000). Such mentioned skills and capabilities brought by the alignment of technology and business strategy are very important for the company to retain or attract internal and external stakeholders.In addition, strategic alignment of technology and business strategy is associated with the satisfaction of the customers in a way that providing unique services mostly satisfy tourists or clients (Duffy & Ketchand, 2002). Another important enterprise-level strategic use of aligning technological innovation in Baderman is with regards to the improvement and of the service quality of their tourism services. The use of new technology can be able to guide th e company towards the expansion strategy of the company.Accordingly, the central attribute of technological innovation, specifically for the products and services provides by organizations like Baderman Island, is the interaction between the marketing management and the company itself. Things like labour intensiveness, high consumer contact are some of the mitigating features of the alignment of technological expansion and service quality alignment. Hence, technological innovation can provide sensual benefit for the company (Watt, 2007). Part of the business approach of the tourism service industries is their adherence to the context of service quality.Consequently, the context of service quality is considered as the outcome of the strategic alignment of new and technologically improved products and services and service delivery system (Ghobadian, Speller & Jones, 1994), specifically in the case of service industries like Baderman Island. By and large, the underlying principle of bu siness strategy and technological alignment aims to determine and provide the needs of the clients. Through this alignment, the company has been able to have a unifying theme which aligns their service provision, marketing strategy and management system to satisfy stakeholders.The alignment of the technology and business strategy has different enterprise-level strategic uses to sustain competitive advantage of the organization. It is said that the alignment of these aspects should see to it that the company would be consistent in providing high quality among their tourist clients. Reference Duffy, JA & Ketchund, AA 2002, â€Å"Examining the Role of Service Quality in Overall Service Satisfaction†, Journal of Managerial Issues, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 240+. Ghobadian, A, Speller, S. and Jones, M. (1994). Service Quality: Concepts and Models.International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 11(9): 43-66. Johnston, R. & Clark, G. (2001). Service Operation Management. 1st Ed ition. London: Prentice Hall. Nickols, F 2000, Distance Consulting, viewed October 11, 2008 . Watt, P. (2007) â€Å"I Need People that are Happy, Always Smiling: Guest Interaction and Emotional Labour in a Canadian Downtown Hotel† Just Labour, Vol 10, Spring: 45-59 (http://www. justlabour. yorku. ca/volume10/pdfs/04WattPress. pdf) retrieve October 11, 2008 .

Porcini’s Pronto

Porcini's Pronto: â€Å"Great Italian cuisine without the wait! † Porcini was opened in 1969 as a family-owned restaurant chain and its business was successful with 4% profit margin. Porcini’s was renowned with its attention to quality and price premium was relatively small compared to its quality and artful presentation. Porcini’s was able to maintain its high product and service quality mainly because it was a family-owned restaurant chain which gave considerable amount of control and of its safe approach on company expansion decisions.However, the management was also viewed as go-slow and comparing to its competitors like Olive Garden and other full-service chain restaurants like Denny's, Porcini’s brand recognition was much lower. The U. S. restaurants industry had three major segments: fast food, single location full-service restaurants, and full-service chain restaurants. Porcini's senior management came up with a Pronto concept which could possibly open up a new area which no one has entered yet.Key features of the Pronto concept included locations at interstate highway exits, Porcini's quality food and service with faster turnover of tables, and limited beer and wine selection. Main competitors would be fast food chain which has been operating along the interstate systems for decades and specifically targeting for travelers, and also full-service chain restaurants like Denny's. It will be critical to come up with a clear differentiator to its competitors, on both quality and service, and position itself against them.Chef Molise was taking it very serious on developing a special Pronto menu which would be less extensive with slightly lower price than Porcini’s traditional menu. Also, Halloran, who was Porcini’s HR director, put significant amount of effort onto recruiting the right people and form a â€Å"Pathfinder Team† with 3 or 4 outstanding Porcini’s employees at each new Pronto’s locati on. One full week of training and indoctrination in the rapid, quality service strategy and its implementation elements would be given.On the hiring side, it was a serious one. Pronto job applicants would have to pass several screens which include interviews with HR, then Pathfinder Team, and the manager. And a personality assessment test was given. It would seem logical and make sense to put focus on creating a customized menu, hiring the right people, and form a team with existing outstanding employees to bring current best practices to the new restaurants. However, it might be in the wrong direction or overkill sometimes.For the customized menu for Pronto, it was basically a stripped-down version of traditional Porcini’s menu, so what differentiated it from Porcini’s? And why customers should come to Pronto which had less menu choices, and not Porcini’s? Even though it’s a faster service didn’t mean customers would accept lower food quality, eve n just a slight one. And most importantly, Porcini’s didn’t ask if it mattered to them. On getting the right people for Pronto restaurants, was it actually a good idea to form a team with existing employees, while the business nature was much different?Porcini’s focused heavily on food and service quality, where Pronto focus on quick service experience without sacrificing much food and service quality. It would be doubtful if employees could switch their practice so easily and quickly. If they could not, imagine how it might impact the new hires in the team. In order to make sure Porcini's Pronto could maintain the same level of quality of food and service, a customer questionnaire system was created to collect information on customer satisfaction.The idea was great and it offered a discount card to customers who took the questionnaire, in order to bring up questionnaire completion rate and encourage repeat visits. However, the entire questionnaire focused only on food and service quality like meal quality, courtesy and efficiency of server, restaurant cleanliness etc. , with almost no questions around the time for taking orders, food serving, and pay bills etc. Also, questions like â€Å"are you traveling or live in the neighborhood? † could give a sense of what were the customer segments and did it align with the targeting customers originally.In addition, it should ask the customer to rank the importance of the factors, or simply ask the most important thing mattered to them e. g. Food, service, time, place etc. Without customers telling the importance of each factor, Porcini would have no clue on what to be focused on. Another set of metrics to be collected would be metrics around internal operations e. g. how long to seat a customer and take her order, to prepare a typical entree, and so forth. This could be done by having secret shoppers for instance, and it would be valuable information.After all, the Pronto concept was to of fer â€Å"Great Italian cuisine without the wait†, if Porcini could not guarantee acceptable table turnover time, success could not be claimed. In order to grow the business, there were three options: company-owned, franchising, and syndication. First of all, what do we want to focus on? At the very beginning, Pronto should not be expanded too quickly before it could find out and establish the winning strategy. The first few restaurants were crucial and steps should take slow.Also, full control should be obtained otherwise it could easily go out of track. Also, the failure rate of franchising was pretty big. Porcini’s could not afford to have restaurants closed down and affected its brand name. Syndication could give Porcini’s full control on restaurant operations. It would also be easier to get a good location as prime undeveloped locations were mostly owned by investors. However, upfront costs were high. At this point like a testing phase, it would be better t o take a slower and less costly approach before Pronto concept proved itself to be success.Company-owned would be the best option to start with and Porcini’s should consider franchising and syndication after seeing profits from the Pronto restaurants and also a reliable standards could be come up which could be applied quick to many restaurants. To conclude, the Pronto concept was aimed at a market space where no one had entered before and Porcini’s wanted to claim this space. However, an important question to ask would be why no one entered this space in the first place? Or did anyone entered but failed?It seems that in order to deliver good quality of food and service while making it a â€Å"Pronto† service is a big challenge itself. Not to mention the target customers are along the interstate highways, are they looking for good quality of food, fast service, or a nice place to chill? Seems that Pronto concept consists of all these elements, however, none of t hem is a real differentiator. Porcini’s management will definitely need to think about positioning and competitive advantage which Pronto could bring to the table.