Analysis of ‘Icarus’ by Christine Hemp Essay

In the poem â€Å"Icarus,† Christine Hemp uses literary devices to convey that a father-son relationship can be problematic. Hemp pulls a twist on the original myth, and retells it in Icarus’ point of view. Her version of the myth shows that Icarus wasn’t very fond of his father Daedalus; however Daedalus didn’t realize that Icarus wanted to be free. â€Å"bound by the string†¦for years to untie TO I didn’t know†¦to return† (#14 and 15 TO 16 and 17) This quote portrays the emotion Icarus feels towards his father by the use of irony. At this point, the reader understands that Icarus had to deal with Daedalus with only the hope of exiting the prison, but once free he longs to be away from his father. Christine Hemp threw a new strand of emotion into the mix by showing that Icarus wanted to be free; as doing so, he caused a catastrophe. â€Å"Poor Daedalus, his mouth an O below, his hands outstretched to catch the rain†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (#18 and 19) This excerpt shows diction, which illustrates Daedalus’ innocence with the words ‘poor’ and ‘O below’. Hemp also tried to show the difference between Icarus and Daedalus by using asyndeton. â€Å"my clumsiness with figures, father’s calm impatience, cool logic, interminable devising.† (#8 and 9) This shows Icarus’ reasons as to why he doesn’t like Daedalus, and why he tries to be better than his father. Since Daedalus is clueless, he couldn’t prevent Icarus’ death; now the reader can infer that Daedalus will have a life of sorrow and regret, without knowing the truth. Hemp’s use of the devices diction, irony, and asyndeton help the reader further understand the myth in a way the original myth couldn’t.

Homer Simpson and Contemporary American Values of Fatherhood Essay

The Simpsons is one of the many television shows in the United States of America which features a full length cartoon narrating the everyday lives of a family. The show makes us confront the absurdities of how some Americans live through the jovial portrayals and behaviors of the characters in the animated show. While each of the members of the Simpson’s family represent a several prevalent attitudes of Americans—some bordering on the obscene and some bordering on the good—the viewer’s perceptions not only about the American society in which he or she lives in but also about his or her self is challenged. The show seems to attempt to push its viewers to reexamine their lives, reflecting on each character in the Simpson’s family and the rest of the characters in the show. In general, the Simpson household is a dysfunctional family, never aging through the course of the show in years and often ends the show portraying the family members still loving one another despite the odds. For the most part, the Simpson’s family both reinforce and subvert contemporary American values in a number of ways. Each episode highlights the struggles of the family members of the Simpson household and the neighborhood, sometimes reaffirming several social stereotypes and sometimes challenging our comfort zones and our accepted beliefs. In any case, it is important to note that even the seemingly absurd gestures and encounters of every character in the animated show point to contemporary American values that may be either subverted or reinforced, depending on the interpretation of the viewer in most cases. Homer Simpson, the father of the household, embodies the typical American dad. He is a father who enjoys drinking his beer—specifically called â€Å"Duff†Ã¢â‚¬â€who is physically overweight and who is protective of his family. He works at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant despite his careless characteristic, thereby suggesting that he has this potential to bring chaos to the rest of the community with his slightest mistakes while at work. Apparently, Homer’s characteristics reflect the typical American father who has the responsibility to raise his kids and secure the welfare of his family. His character subverts the contemporary American perception that divorce oftentimes results from a family that is dysfunctional. Despite his failures to provide for several needs of the Simpson household, he has never resorted to divorcing his wife, Marge. At the end of the day, Homer finds himself at home together with his wife in bed looking forward to the coming day ahead. Moreover, Homer has been shown to have a strong regard for the welfare of his family in difficult times, such as in â€Å"Lisa the Beauty Queen† (1992) where he sold his prized car in order to enter her daughter, Lisa, into a beauty pageant to make her feel better and in â€Å"A Millhouse Divided† (1996) where he arranged for a second wedding for his wife, Marge, to compensate for their unsatisfactory first wedding ceremony. On the other hand, some of Homer’s characteristics also reinforce some contemporary American values. One of these values is the thinking that typical American fathers spend their time drinking beer and submitting themselves to their weaknesses quite easily. Some of Homer’s weaknesses are his strong craving for doughnuts, his aggressive behavior in difficult times or in times when he is not able to complete his tasks and his low intelligence. In general, these things reinforce the stereotype of the American dad, reflecting the cultural struggle of the American father in the American landscape, losing his intellectual edge along the way. Looking at the ways in which Homer Simpson handles himself before his family, it can be said that his character implies the binary opposition between depth and superficial, centering and dispersal, and distance and participation. For one, the character portrayal of Homer suggests the depth of his personality, one that can be easily interpreted as the typical American father at first glance but one that can also be interpreted as an unusual American dad on closer inspection. Despite raising a dysfunctional family on a daily basis, Homer has not given up on his task as a father although there are times when he seems to be on the verge on giving up on things. While he is considered to be a borderline alcoholic, he does not end up entirely succumbing to his habit. On the contrary, he is able to maintain his fatherly figure and image and goes on to raise his family even when it meant attending to several jobs on many occasions. There is both the depth and the superficial qualities in Homer Simpson that represent American fathers in contemporary society. While at that, Homer’s character is also able to create distance and participation among the viewers. It is not surprising at all if the viewers of the show are able to relate to the experiences of the Simpson household because the experiences of Homer’s family might just as well be the same daily experiences that other households experience. By focusing on the typical experiences of American families, the animated show is able to draw the attention of the viewing public and, in a way, to allow them to â€Å"participate† in the show at least in terms of being able to relate to and find a part of themselves in the show. However, the animated show is also able to distance the viewer from the characters. In the sense that the nature of the show—meaning, its â€Å"animated† structure—makes the characters open to seemingly absurd situations, it is not always the case that the viewers are able to expect an exact representation of their daily experiences. That is, the cartoon characters can perform unrealistic behaviors that the real-life viewers can hardly imitate. The binary opposition between distance and participation in the show is also reflected in terms of how the show portrays the stereotypes prevalent in American society and, in the process, causes its viewers to identify themselves first with the show’s characters and eventually causing them to redefine themselves. The fact that The Simpsons explores the negative stereotypes in contemporary American society suggests that its viewers may or may not be able to fully relate to these stereotypes. Those who are able to relate to these stereotypes are more or less likely expected to distance themselves from these stereotypes or, more specifically, from Elizabeth Traube calls as â€Å"the fictional self that it (stereotype) constructs† (Traube, p. 129). Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson further suggest that popular culture has not only been the offspring of society’s â€Å"beliefs, practices and objects generated from political and commercial centers† but has also become â€Å"an entity on its own† (Mukerji and Schudson, p. 53). Thus, it is not surprising to say that there will be so-called â€Å"popular culture† so long as there are conduits for expressing the generally observed patterns of behavior among people. The Simpsons is just one of the many social elements that showcase such patterns. The assumption here is that some television shows such The Simpsons do not only serve the purpose of highlighting parts of the generally observed behaviors of people—behaviors that are parts of stereotypes—but also reinforce and subvert such observations at the same time. The very presence of these kinds of television shows help people realize what they have become. They aid the human civilization to notice the things that have become so familiar they no longer strike the vein of our senses and sensibilities. In â€Å"The Visible Evidence of Cultural Producers†, Maureen Mahon suggests that forms of popular culture serve as â€Å"arenas in which social actors struggle over social meanings and as visible evidence of social processes and social relations† (Mahon, p. 467). Apparently, Homer Simpson’s character in the animated series struggles over social meanings within the context of the show. The context of the show, however, is anchored on the realities happening in the society. That, in turn, suggests that, indeed, the character of Homer is a visible evidence of several social processes and social relations in real life, from his struggles to raise his family and his role as a father. Jerry Herron also suggests that Homer Simpson is not only a â€Å"reminder† of how much of contemporary America has declined but is also a symbol for challenging our attitude towards the social stereotypes. In particular, Homer Simpson is â€Å"an appeal to the sensibility of the public towards popular culture to redefine themselves from the negative to the positive† (Herron, p. 12). But what exactly are these positive and negative aspects and how are we able to identify them without confusing one over the other? The answers do not seem to be as clear and as simple as they seem. Based on Jerry Herron’s article â€Å"Homer Simpson’s Eyes and the Culture of Late Nostalgia†, it appears that Homer Simpson is both a criticism to society’s stereotypes and, at the same time, as an embodiment of those stereotypes. Homer plays the role of an intellectually challenged but loving father. He takes the role of the typical American dad who loves to drink his favorite beer and yet his is a character that challenges the contemporary attitude towards dysfunctional marriages and families. He directs the viewer’s attention to his character while making them reflect on their own lives and society at the same time. He shows some of life’s worse obscenities and yet allows the viewers to realize the stark contrasts between a life worth living and a life that is worthless. In essence, Homer Simpson subverts and reinforces contemporary American values. In â€Å"Stereotypes and Registers of Honorific Language†, Asif Agha argues that stereotypes â€Å"are consciously grasped† and are, hence, â€Å"reportable, discussable, open to dispute† and that â€Å"they serve as models for some individuals and counter-models for others† (Agha, p. 152). Following Agha’s interpretation of stereotypes, the social perception towards the stereotype American father is still open to dispute and can in turn serve as the â€Å"counter-model† for what the American should be. Using Homer Simpson as an example, our notion of the â€Å"right† American dad can be derived from some of the qualities of Homer Simpson. The conscious exposure of the viewing public towards The Simpsons can be an eye-opener for reassessing our standing perception of the stereotype American father. While the image portrayed by Homer is â€Å"an entity on its own†, it is nevertheless still created from the social realities that persist in contemporary America. It is only through a radical change in the contemporary American value system can the American society be lifted from its status quo. But that is not to say that the task of removing the binary opposition between depth and superficial, centering and dispersal and distance and participation begins at the stage where the American public is able to realize the stereotypes and recognize the â€Å"counter-models†. Rather, it begins right at the criticism of such stereotypes prevalent in popular culture. The creation of the character of Homer Simpson is perhaps the first stage in bringing the things that â€Å"dumb down† America into the public awareness. Of course, it is not enough to have shows such as The Simpsons, among others, to emphasize the cultural problems of America and to compel people to address these problems. However, it is only necessary to first bring elements of popular culture into the surface, elements that both reinforce and subvert contemporary American values in order to proceed with the tasks of criticizing what has become of this nation and its people and of resolving what needs to be resolved.

Art and culture in China Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Art and culture in China - Assignment Example 6. In western countries, children are brought up to be self-dependent capable and are motivated to be egocentric. On the other hand, the Asian raise their children to do what is expected of them and the children are taught to be modest and obedient to rule. In other words, Westerners teach their children to be action-oriented (noun) while Asian teaches their children to the receptor-oriented (verb). 7. Asian refuse to see things staying the same, they believe in change. For instance, the can name one thing using different names like a mountain, just to satisfy the curiosity that things the â€Å"being† is changing. 8. Westerners believe in seeing and believing while Asians believe that seeing is a result of the object showing up. In other words, the marble appears blue because one has seen and believed it is blue and the marble appears blue because that is how it wants to appear. 10. The word â€Å"atom† came as a result of analyzing matter up to the point it could not be divided any longer, in the process the word â€Å"analyze† came into existence. This Greek word was used to mean splitting up something into parts that could easily be understood. In order to gain better understanding of someone’s character, one must analyze them until the point they can’t be analyzed (Leung, 6). Westerners ask someone what they should do for them, this differ with what Asian do. Asian goes to the extent of going further and doing what they think others want for instance being kind to others. 11. According to Western approaches, the different contexts have no great impact so long as the pot rat is of a similar thing. However, to the Asian, who value change, they see the different contexts as an opportunity for revealing new traits of the portrait. 1. Ego-centric projection when learning languages like English is a problem because the observer and the object must be one for them to understand. In the case of a

CASE STUDY OF TIME WARNER (LOCATED NEAR END OF TEXT BOOK) Assignment

CASE STUDY OF TIME WARNER (LOCATED NEAR END OF TEXT BOOK) - Assignment Example Upon looking at the tables given, demand is apparently elastic, with a lot of competitor networks around. One thing that makes a demand elastic is the presence of many substitutes, meaning competitors which can be easily availed by the potential customers. Network competitors include ABC, ESPN and Disney from Disney Company; CBS, MTV and UPN from Viacom and Fox from News Corp. Given that the promotional decline in price is only given to STARZ's current and future subscribers, and would not affect its big network businesses such as HBO and Showtime, it will be worthwhile to lower the price for the purpose of attracting subscribers. The decline in revenue from existing subscribers is deemed smaller than the potential revenue, given the larger market that it has to cater. Also, the popularity of STARZ, as it would be well advertised given the promotion is also worth the price. Since the current revenue of STARZ is just .5% of the total revenue from subscription (excluding advertisements and content), meaning there are a lot of room to grow in the current market, revenue can double or triple with the promotions. The revenue growth rate figure for News Corp's Fox News is really admirable, standing at 67.8%, compared to last year. This is superior to CNN's 12.5%.

Journal 1 Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Journal 1 - Article Example They are identified by their wisdom, sincerity, authority and courage. They usually have human quality and strong commitment to their own ideologies and to those of their servants (Lopez, n.d). The first leadership I ever experienced in my life is the one that came from both my parents. All through my growth and development stages, my parents have been the core pillar of my understanding of what servant-leadership is. Looking up to them for being the first leaders I experienced in my life, they taught me how one could make a servant and a leader at the same time. In my teenage period when I ignored all that happened around me, never did they go wrong in ensuring that I remained respectful. They ensured that I was liable to my actions without compromising the love I had for them. That was wisdom, authority and courage they showed me. Being the first born in a family of six, I try frequently to emulating their leadership skill of sincerity, authority and courage down to my younger sibl ings. In my school life, I also met other leaders: Teachers and student leaders who showed love, provided good direction, made personal sacrifices and encouraged healthy competition among the people they led. My teachers ensured that order, justice and equality for all people could be best achieved through dialogue. Servant leaders develop logical and analytical skills taught in learning institutions. In schools we are taught on how to express unlimited liability for others. These include knowing one self, developing communities and use of power accordingly which make us become servant leaders (Lopez, n.d). I HAVE A DREAM Leaders make great personal sacrifice for the good of their servants. Wise leadership never depends on luck. Rather, it trusts its future to positive attitude, hard work, determination and endurance. There is no easy way to develop leaders. They must learn continually throughout their lives. It is in this context that Martin Luther’s dream of a country which is free of injustices and oppression came to be fulfilled. Martin Luther had a dream of his children living in a nation not judged by their skin color but by their character. True to his words, America is now a great nation and this is clearly depicted by their status as superpower country under a black president (King, n.d). As elaborated in the previous paragraph, self-knowledge enhances genuineness since being honest and open with others is difficult. Such individual qualities reinforce group quality and that is what leadership is all about. In a broader sense, we see the purpose of leadership embraces different values. These include creating a supportive environment where people can grow, live in peace and harmony with one another, promoting harmony with the Mother Nature thus sustainability for future generations, creating communities of shared responsibilities where all people, irrespective of color, age, race and social status matter. Ultimately, each person’s welfare and dignity is supported and valued. I was once a drama club leader in my school. When I sit back and reflect on how I led the drama group I come to realize that it is with such characters as self-knowledge, described by Martin Luther above, that I successfully managed reinforcing group quality that made the drama club a success. By the time I quit drama for other things, we already had like three trophies for our school. All these are characteristics

Electronic Commerce (Frank Sissons LTD) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Electronic Commerce (Frank Sissons LTD) - Essay Example At Franke-Sissons Ltd, the company has fully integrated internet technologies as a business strategy by adding the latest ICT architecture to develop a full-fledged website that has an online E-commerce facility enabling online transactions and marketing facilities. The Franke-Sissons Ltd website has also started an online order tracking system that enables clients keep abreast of the movement of their purchases (Franke Sissons, 2009). Franke Sissons Ltd is a UK based European stainless steel sanitary and catering equipment manufacturer. It was started in Sheffield, UK in 1784 as the W & G Sissons Ltd dealing exclusively in sanitary equipment [see Appendix Figure:7]; it merged with Swiss Franke WSS family group in 2002 to becoming Franke Sissons Ltd (2007) adding catering ware to its catalogue [see Appendix Figure:8]. The company employs over 100 staff with most of them engaged within the production division the firm specialising in complimentary sanitary and catering products that are retailed internationally (Franke Sissons, 2009). The term E-commerce has been simply defined as ‘doing business electronically’ (Timmers, 1998). Andam (2005) however defines electronic commerce as ‘The transformation of an organization’s processes to deliver additional customer value through the application of technologies, philosophies and computing paradigm of the new economy’ (Pg. 7). Andam (2005, Pg.5) argues that electronic commerce has levelled the playing field in marketing for goods and services whereby with skilful careful approach, small and medium scale enterprises are able to compete efficiently with the larger more established enterprises. According to a Forrester Research estimate, global e-commerce trade for 2008 stood at $204 billion with a projected growth of up to $335 billion by 2012 [see Appendix Figure: 6]. Within

The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance Essay

The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance - Essay Example 3.4 Data collection instruments Questionnaires and interview guides were used in the study. Questionnaires were distributed to the participants and some of the respondents were also interviewed. One of the methods used in distributing the research questions was by email. This method had some limitations; like ensuring that the data were correctly filled and understanding how body language may have influenced the results. However, the use of email confined the researcher to have a one to one response to his respondents. Three managers were interviewed. This is because the researcher aimed at soliciting information about employee engagement on performance. Interviews were also used so as to obtain first hand information. Lastly, managers were interviewed to ensure uniformity in the means of data collection. The research was designed so that all employees filled their responses through questionnaires while managers’ responses were through interviews. The questionnaires were caref ully designed in a structured way which still allowed participants to express their views on the subject. The questions asked were selected on the basis of how other authors like the CIPD have conducted a similar research that measures the link between employee engagement and performance. The researcher also interviewed two managers and one training manager in Etisalat for the purpose of the research. 3.5 Reliability Reliability refers to measure or degree to which a researcher’s instruments yield consistent results or data after repeated trials (Nachiamis and Nachiamis, 2006). They define reliability using its synonyms such as dependability, stability, consistence, predictability and... The most important aim of this study, however, was to carry out a detailed research to find out the major implications of employee engagement on performance. From the research conducted, with the support of the theories and literature by various researchers support the fact that, an improvement has been indicated in many organizations as a result of employee engagement in the workplace. Employee engagement strategies have been credited their ability to mobilize employee towards performance oriented abilities. In an attempt to understand the abilities of employees to improve their skills in terms of commitment to their jobs, research was conducted on some respondents on their views regarding health, safety, recognitions and rewards. In response, a great percentage of the employees attested to the fact that rewards and recognition have contributed positively to their full participation and commitment in their job. It is also through, rewards and recognition that, employees have managed to steer the company towards attaining goals of the organization, in terms of the need to be more conversant with the products that are offered by the company, so as to serve the clients in a better way. Improved performance is linked to proper customer relations between employees and employers. On the other hand, from the above research, it is warranted to argue that, employee engagement practices play a part in the advancement of the place of the employees in the organization.

Data Communication & the Cloud Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Data Communication & the Cloud - Research Paper Example The components of data communication include the message i.e. the information or data to be communicated and popular forms include text, numbers, pictures, audio and video. The sender is an important component as it is the device that sends the data message as it can be computer work station, telephone handset or a video camera as the receiver is the device on the other end receiving the information as the transmission medium is the physical path by which a message travels from the sender to receiver e.g. twisted pair wire, coaxial cable, fiber optic cable and radio waves. Data communication and other aspects such as networking are changing the way business is done and the lifestyle of people in the world today. Business decisions have to be made even more quickly and the decision makers required access to accurate information relevant to the subject at hand. Computer data communication models in the world today enable the transfer of information through long distances and the inform ation appears almost instantaneous through computer networks2. Businesses today rely on computer networks and internet works in relaying the information across varied distances in modes that enable the efficient communication of data and the development of personal computers brought about tremendous changes for business, industry, science and education as a similar revolution is occurring in data communication and networking. Technological advances are making it possible for communication links to carry more and faster signals and as a result services are evolving to allow the use of this expanded capacity. An example is the establishment of the telephone services such as conference calls, call waiting, voice mail and caller ID has been extended as research in data communication and networking too resulted in new technologies. Data communication in the form of text, audio and video from all points of the world has been made possible due to the access of internet to download and uplo ad information quickly and accurately at any time. As the information is being sent and received, there is need for the security of the message as to avoid distortion and third party interference. On the other hand the storage and speed has led to the invention and introduction of a cloud computing concept. Cloud computing is a new key discipline of high performance computing sophisticated information technologies in order to treat some of the major high performance computing challenges enabling trusted technical computing solutions for the 21st century customers. It is a technology that allows consumers and businesses – generally the users - to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with internet access and also allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth as well as provide information techn

On the Importance of the Educational Experience Essay Example for Free

On the Importance of the Educational Experience Essay In Democracy and Education Dewey presents his views regarding the three functions of education. He gives the main function of education, these being: (1) Education should simplify and order the factors of the dispositions it wants to develop, (2) Education should purify and idealize existing social customs, and (3) Education should create a wider and better balanced environment which will influence the young (Dewey 37). He notes that these stand as a requirement for enabling the development of a progressive and democratic society wherein he defines a progressive society as one in which â€Å"individual variations are considered precious†¦ (thereby) allowing for intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its educational measure† (Dewey 451). Dewey’s views thereby relate the importance of the experience within educational institutions to that of ensuring democracy within a particular community. Since the foundations of democracy are that of liberty and equality, Dewey places emphasis on the necessity of ensuring that intellectual freedom may be practiced within the context of an institution that allows diversity. Within educational systems, an example of this can be seen in the practice of coeducation. As opposed to this view, however, Link Byfield, in his article â€Å"If Girls Can Succeed Only at the Expense of Boys, Maybe We Need Segregated Schools† claims that the implementation of coeducational systems leads to the development of sexism within the system which proves detrimental to the non-privileged sex. In line with this, the tasks of this paper are the following: (1) It seeks to present the views presented by Byfield in his article above and (2) It aims to present an analysis of his argument in line with how coeducation has helped in the presentation of more views in the different subjects within the educational institution and how these views enable the expansion of the educational process. Byfield (2008) argues that increase in the scores of high school girls in the School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) in Canada shows that there is ‘regress’ in the educational system. The bases for his claim are the following. He claims that low proficiency of high school boys in language skills and low number of high school boys who have graduated within the time-frame of the survey. He thereby opposes the view presented by the SAIP that school systems within favor the members of both sexes. The bases for SAIP’s conclusion are the following views. First, â€Å"high school girls on average are matching boys in the technology related subjects of math and science, and are far ahead in language skills† and second the ratio of the number of graduates shows that more girls are graduating as opposed to boys. In line with this, Byfield notes, given that a change in the system [from male-oriented to female-oriented] led to the ‘regress’ in the educational achievement of male students, the author argues that it is necessary to segregate students in terms of sex. The basis for his claim is the view that sexism continues to be practiced within educational institutions. He notes that this is apparent in the shift of power from the boys to the girls. He says, â€Å"Now girls seem to run everything the boys’ just tune out†. In addition to this, he says that the adaptation of a segregated system will allow the individual to be socialized in a natural environment which will allow him to be prepared for the ‘real life’. He further argues that this will not â€Å"offend the ‘social imperative’† in the sense that it will create a society â€Å"driven by misunderstanding, ignorance, selfishness, and distrust†, on the other hand, such a setting will free the individual from an environment characterized by â€Å"moshpits of vulgarity where youth is free to run itself according to the values it has absorbed from MachMusic and 12 years of automatic passing and parent-free sex instruction†.

War Poetry Essay Example for Free

War Poetry Essay A popular theme for poets in the last century was war. Many famous poems were written about the two world wars, as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars. For my report I have chosen six poems, three by Wilfred Owen and three by Australian poets. ?Anthem for Doomed Youth, ? The Send Off and ? Insensibility (1) were written by Owen during the first world war to express his anti-war attitude. ?Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor, ? Homecoming by Bruce Dawe and ? Letter XV by Bruce Beaver are famous Australian poems about war. The poems have many similarities, especially in content, but also have their differences. The subject matter of the poems is obviously generally the same. Most are about soldiers dying/dead because of a war. ?Beach Burial is specifically about the WW2 battle at El Alamein, and ? Homecoming is concerned with the effect of the Vietnam War, but the rest are about war in general. The purpose of the poems is to convey the poets own beliefs against war, for example Wilfred Owen was an avid anti-war activist, despite or maybe because of the fact that he fought in WW1. The emotion portrayed is mostly depressive, somber and bitter. ?Anthem for Doomed Youth seems slightly accusatory; this is because the poet asks questions of the reader, almost daring the reader to disagree. ?Letter XV emits a confused mood, as if the poet doesnt understand why war exists. All the poems could probably be described as elegies, considering they are all laments for the dead. ?Anthem for Doomed Youth is almost a Shakespearean sonnet, but the rhyming is wrong, so technically it is a Petrarchan sonnet (divided into an octave and sestet). The other poems are either separated into regular stanzas ? like ? Beach Burial- or have no real structure, such as ? Homecoming. There is plenty of imagery in most of the poems. ?The Send Off used the oxymoron ? faces grimly gay to describe the men, indicating that they seem happy but they shouldnt, since they are going to war. The poet also describes the men as ? dead while they are alive, because he is so sure of their fate. Imagery is used in ? Homecoming to describe the different types of men -? curly-heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts and their homes ? ridiculous curvatures of earth the knuckled hills this paints a vivid picture in the readers mind. In Beach Burial dead bodies are given attributes of live men, such as ?  they sway and wander. As well as this, the phrase ? words choke is used to describe the lack of names for the dead soldiers. Personification is also used in ? Anthem for Doomed Youth, where guns are ? angry and the sound of shells is described as ? shrill, demented choirs. ?Alleys cobbled with their brothers is used in ? Insensibility to describe a trench with dead bodies strewn around; this is an unpleasant image, used intentionally to disturb the reader. These techniques are used to give life to the poems, to portray the thoughts of the poet and to make the poems interesting. Sound and Rhythm are important in a poem to make it audibly aesthetic and to make it flow. Two of the poems have no rhyme (blank verse) ? Letter XV is staccato and abrupt but ? Homecoming uses repetition of ? bringing them home to help flow, and an amphora of ? theyre. ?The Send Off has four stanzas of five lines each with a rhyming structure of a,b,a,a,b for each stanza. ?Anthem for Doomed Youth has the structure- a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d, e,f,f,e,g,g. This, as I mentioned, is almost a Shakespearean sonnet (a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d, e,f,e,f,g,g). These rhymes improve the sound and rhythm of the poem. ?Insensibility and ? Beach Burial each contain a slant rhyme. ?Insensibility uses consonance, with rhyming couplets i. e. Killed/cold, brothers/withers. The second and fourth lines of ? Beach Burial have a slant rhyme, i. e. come/foam, men/begin, while the third line has an internal rhyme, such as wander/ under in ? At night they sway and wander in the waters far under Although ? Insensibility and ? Beach Burial dont have ? true rhyme; the fake rhyme still creates rhythm. The two main components of a poem are the content, meaning the subject and emotion, and the technique which is things like structure, rhythm and imagery. The six war poems I chose have a very similar content because the topic is common to all of them. Large differences come in the technique, because this defines the way a poem is written, not what it is about. Owen s poems, ? Anthem for Doomed Youth ? The Send Off and Insensibility (1) were all structured poems with at least partial rhyme, and had similarities because of the poets technique. The three Australian poems, ? Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor, Bruce Dawes ? Homecoming and ? Letter XV by Bruce Beaver differ greatly, from the regular rhyming ? Beach Burial to the staccato, unstructured ? Letter XV The technique part of the poem, as it can be seen with these examples, is completely detached from the content, and varies between poets, rather than themes. I prefer the rhythm and consistency of Owens poems and ? Beach Burial to the style of ? Homecoming or ? Letter XV. I like the rhymes, as they tend to bring the poem together, they unify it. Obviously I agree with the message in all these poems, or I wouldnt have chosen the theme of war / anti-war poetry. All of the poems depressed me (apart from Letter XV, which confused me) so the poets must have done a good job at portraying emotions.

Winds of Change: From Vendor Lock-in to the Meta Cloud

Winds of Change: From Vendor Lock-in to the Meta Cloud Introduction: A software requirement specification is a complete explanation of the system that is to be created. Software requirement specification includes non-functional and functional requirements. Use case technique can be used in prepared to identify the functional requirements of the software inventions. Non-functional requirements are requirements which force constraints on the implementation and design. As systems grew more complex, it becomes more apparent that the goal of the entire system can’t be easily included. The software requirement specification consists of two important activities. Problem/Requirement investigation Product Function summary Security is one of the most important points in wireless communication studies because it is an essential challenge since wireless messages are transmitted in the air so there is a chance that hackers can read out the messages and see what all the contents are there in the message. Purpose of Software Requirement Specification: A software requirement specification personifies the requirements of a system IEEE standard and is a organized collection of information. A business analyst (BA), sometimes called system analyst is important for examining the business needs of their clients and for the persons having interest and concern in solving the problems and finding solution for the problems. BA typically performs a communication between the business side of an enterprise and the information technology department. To list the user requirement in a specified manner is the main purpose of software requirement specification. It defines requirements for the software and restrictions needed to this application and document. 4.2 Performance Requirements Portability: It is easy for the user to understand and respond as the Graphical User Interface of this application is user-friendly. Response time: It is the time taken to complete a work by the system by the user is found to be very less. Reliability: This system helps us to deliver the need for queries with high possibility and the functionalities that are available in the application. Scalability: To improve the quality of the product, the system can be extended to combine the changes that are done in the present application. Scalability is meant for the future works that is to be done on the application. 4.3 Functional Requirements: Functional requirements are the statements of services the system should supply, how the system should behave in particular condition and how it behaves to certain inputs. Also the functional requirements define what the system should not do in some cases. The functional requirements is based on the kind of software being evolved, when writing requirements the general approach taken by the organization and the anticipate users of the software. These requirements for a system report what the system should do. The requirements are normally describes in a fairly abstract way when it is exhibited as user requirements. Functional requirements may be exhibited in numerous ways for a software system and it describes the irregularity, its inputs and outputs and functions of system in detail. Some of the typical functional requirements are: 1. Transaction corrections, adjustments, cancellations: Here uploading the data on cloud by data owners are by the transactions which is done online. The end users upload the files to each cloud servers can be downloaded and viewed and these end users have to register to cloud service providers. 2. Authentication: Here the users authentication is required to enter any of the modules implemented in the proposed system and is used to login into the cloud service providers servers. 3. Authorization- functions user is assigned to perform: Here the users are allowed to login by registering and paying into cloud servers if the cloud services are to be used by paying. User has the right to upload the files to respective cloud servers and track the details which are uploaded after logging into the cloud by registering. 4. Audit Tracking: An audit trail which is also called as audit log provides documentary proof of the series of activities that have elaborated at any time a particular operation, procedure or event and is a security-applicable chronological record, set of records, and/or at the end of line and source of records. Scientific research and health care data transactions, financial transactions, or communications by individual people, systems, components, accounts or other entities are the activities in which the audit records typically result from. The procedure that generates an audit trail can enter and administer all actions from all users; a standard user is not authorized to stop or change it and is typically required to always run in a prosperous mode. Additionally, database table with a string or trail file is not reachable to normal users in some cases. The use of a role-based security model in the software is another way of dealing with this issue. When using audit trail functionality, the softwar e is required by many companies and it can also work as a ‘closed system’ or with closed-looped controls. 5. Historical Data: Historical data is the data which is a collection of old records and it should always be present in database. Historical data should not be deleted by the cloud service provider from the database except the data owners are asking to delete the historical data. 4.4 Non-Functional Requirements: Non-functional requirements are the requirements that are often called the qualities of the system. It can be used to form the operation of the system, rather than specific behaviors. Reliability (accuracy), response time and store occupancy are the emergent system properties that non-functional requirements deal with. Alternatively, they may define the constraints on the data representations used in system interfaces and the system capabilities of I/O devices. Non-functional requirements are constraints, quality attributes i.e. it provide the method for designing the fitness and suitability of the product, quality goals, non-behavioral requirements i.e. it achieves its job such as reliability(accuracy) and defines the attributes of the system, efficiency(planning), timing constraints etc.. Non-functional requirements are divided into two main classes: Security and usability are execution qualities. Testability, maintainability, extensibility and scalability are evolution qualities. Some of the non-functional requirements are: Accessibility Accessibility is the one in which a device, service, product or environment is available to many people as possible. Accessibility advantage from some system or organization and it can be observed as the â€Å"ability to access†. The cloud computing system is distributed software so it can be reached from any point of the world through internet without interfering. Availability Availability is the degree to which a system, subsystem, constituent or equipment is in a detailed operable and occurring state at the start of a mission, when the mission is called for as an unknown i.e. a non-specific time. The cloud computing system is distributed software so it can be reached from any point of the world without interference. Reliability Software reliability is the accuracy that has possibility that software will work properly in an identified environment and for a given time. The possibility of failure is calculated by testing a sample of all available input states using the following formula. Probability = Number of failing cases/ Total number of cases under consideration. System Reliability Specification: Hardware reliability Possibility a hardware component fails. Software reliability Possibility a software component will produce an incorrect output Even though a bad result will occur, software can continue to operate in that condition Operator reliability Possibility a system user will make an error Dept. of CSE,STJIT,RANEBENNURPage 1 Underpricing in Turkey: a Comparison of the IPO Methods Underpricing in Turkey: a Comparison of the IPO Methods Abstract This paper addresses the question of what kind of selling and underwriting procedure might be preferred for controlling the amount and volatility of underpricing in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). Using 1993-2005 firm and issue data, we compare the three substantially different IPO methods available in the ISE. One is very similar to the book building mechanism used in the U.S., another is the fixed price offer, and the third one is the sale through the stock exchange method. The empirical analysis reveals significant first day underpricing of 7.01% in fixed price offer, 11.47% in book building mechanism, and 15.68% in sale through the stock exchange method. Finally, we also show that fixed price offers can better control the impact of market information on underpricing than sale through the stock exchange method. 1. Introduction Extensive amount of research from a variety of different markets have documented the presence of first-day underpricing upon the listing of initial public offerings. The evidence is well documented by Loughran, Ritter, and Rydqvist (1994) and Ritter1 (1998), (2003) in many developed and emerging markets. In developed markets, in the absence of restrictions on intra-day price movements, first-day underpricing is observed in broad price bands. However, in emerging markets, in the presence of daily volatility limits, first-day underpricing is observed in narrow price bands. In contrast to the daily price limits, significant positive short run returns are observed in a number of emerging markets and substantial amount of money is â€Å"left on the table by issuers. Besides empirical evidence, most of the theoretical models explaining IPO underpricing are grouped under four broad headings by Ljungqvist (2005), these are (i) information asymmetry between the investors, the issuing firm an d the underwriter, these models assume that one of these parties knows more than the others, (ii) institutional reasons, institutional theories focus on three features of the marketplace: litigation, banks price stabilizing activities once trading starts, and taxes, (iii) control considerations, control theories argue that underpricing helps shape the shareholder base so as to reduce intervention by outside investors once the company is public, (iv) behavioral approaches, behavioral theories assume either the presence of irrational investors who bid up the price of IPO shares beyond true value, or that issuers suffer from behavioral biases causing them to put insufficient pressure on the underwriting banks to have underpricing reduced. These theoretical models almost always end with the conclusion that the average IPO is undervalued at the offer price, where the initial investors, in most cases, benefit from possessing information by receiving allocations of shares in IPOs and earn the largest first-day returns. The expectations of issuing firms, investors and underwriters in IPO pricing are considerably different. In an offering, the issuer generally wants to receive the highest possible price to maximize cash flows to the firm. Investors like to purchase shares at a deep discount so that they can realize positive returns *Baskent University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Baglica Kampusu, Ankara, 06530, Turkey, + 90 (312) 234 10 10 /1728, [emailprotected] 1 Ritter (1998), (2003) provides an update on the compilation of Loughran, Ritter, and Rydqvist (1994) in a short investment period. Underwriters, acting as an intermediary between investors and issuing firms, suffer from a dilemma, if an underwriter determines IPO prices too low, where the foreseen amount of money left on the table will be huge, the issuing firm may withdraw or switch to another underwriter. On the other hand, if an underwriter determines IPO prices relatively high, investors will hesitate to buy new issues, which would result in low commissions and an unwanted effort in aftermarket stabilization activities. Underwriters, however, have an incentive to underprice the shares to ensure that they can sell the offering, and, unsurprisingly, there is extensive evidence that IPOs are, on average, underpriced. Hence, pricing of stocks in IPOs may be the most critical stage of the IPO process. More recently, the literature on IPOs, both theoretical and empirical, focuses on the efficiency mechanisms of the following methods for pricing initial public offerings. At the center of this literature, book building, auctions and fixed price offers differ mainly in price-discovery and share allocation process. Book Building in which the underwriters do road shows and take non-binding orders from Auctions in which the company sets a price range to be used as a non-restrictive guideline for investors, than accepts bids, each specifying a number of shares and a price the investor is willing to pay for them, finally, the market-clearing price set by the investors approximates the real price the shares will command in the market. Fixed Price Offer in which the issue price is set first and than orders are taken from investors who typically pay in advance for part or all of the shares that are ordered. Sale through the Stock Exchange in which the sale is initially conducted in the primary market of the stock exchange by a designated underwriter. Those investors who buy the shares in the primary market must wait until the shares trade in the secondary market in order to sell their shares. The price designated at the time of registration with the securities exchange commissions is set as the opening price. Hybrid Offerings in which the underwriters combine the preceding IPO methods, and design auction/fixed price, auction/book building and book building/fixed price hybrids. For most hybrids, the most common combination is the book building/fixed price offer, where the underwriter uses the book building method to set the price and allocate shares to institutional and foreign investors, and retain the fixed price offer to the domestic retail investors who do not participate in the price-setting process. This paper addresses the question of what kind of selling and underwriting procedure might be preferred for controlling the amount and volatility of underpricing in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). In this regard, we first compare the three IPO methods available in Turkey. One is very similar to the book building mechanism used in the U.S., another is the fixed price offer, and the third one is the sale through the stock exchange method. Then, we estimate a binary probit on the issuers choice between fixed price offer and sale through the stock exchange method, however, because of the declining importance of the book building mechanism in Turkey, we excluded the book build IPO sample from our binary probit estimations. Finally, we determine the factors that are expected to have an effect on the IPO returns. Our results indicate that, the comparison of the two mechanisms yield that for certain values, namely first day underpricing, IPO amount and fractions of equity sold, fixed pric e offer outperforms the sale through the stock exchange method. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study on the comparison between fixed price offer and sale through the stock exchange method in the IPO literature. The uniqueness of the data and the availability of the sale through the stock exchange method in the ISE make it possible to conduct a study on the comparison between these two methods. The remaining part of this paper is organized in six sections. In the next section, we provide a comparison of the theoretical and empirical research conducted on IPO methods across many countries around the world. In section 3, we describe the three important Turkish IPO market selling procedures. In section 4, we describe the data and the methodology we used in our empirical tests. Section 5 documents the relationship between market conditions and underpricing of IPOs in different time series and the last section concludes. 2. Comparison of the IPO methods in the literature: Theory and Evidence The efficiency of the IPO methods has been the subject of an academic research over a decade, both empirical studies and theoretical models have tried to explain the advantages of one method over another. The argument that is often made in favor of IPO methods is often empirical as well as theoretical. Researchers studying on the efficiency of the IPO methods try to answer the most challenging question, â€Å"Which one of the IPO mechanism is the most efficient?2. However, according to our comprehensive literature research, both empirical studies and theoretical models listed in Table have some mixed answers. 1. Book Building vs. Fixed Price Offer and/or Auctions Comparison of the IPO methods in the literature goes back to Benveniste and Spindt3 (1988), (1989) and Spatt and Srivastava (1991), they suggest that the American bookbuilding procedure is efficient since it encourages investors to reveal their beliefs about the issues value at a cost of initial underpricing. Book building allows investors to collect information about the value of the stock and price the issue more accurately. To compensate the investors who reveal information, underwriter will favor them when allocating shares. However, fixed price mechanism does not utilize any information about realized buyer valuationsin setting the issue price and is generally inefficient. Loughran, Ritter and Rydqvist (1994) present the first international evidence on the short-run and long-run performance of companies going public in many stock markets around the world. They document that the fixed price method is associated with greater underpricing because of the greater probability of the issue failing and the increased uncertainty associated with the longer time delay between offer and issuance time. Chowdhry and Sherman (1996) point out that two features of fixed price offers tend to lead to greater underpricing, relative to the book building method. The first one is the length of the bidding process, as the time gap between the offer and first day market price widens â€Å"price information leakage occurs, the second one is the common requirement that investors pay in advance for their entire order. Benveniste and Busaba (1997), extend Welchs4 (1992), model of information cascades in investment decisions and present a theoretical comparison of the fixed-price and book-building mechanisms. They exhibit that issuers with a greater concern for risk will prefer a fixed-price offer, because book- building might generate higher expected proceeds, and exclusively provides an opportunity to sell additional shares at full value but it also exposes them to higher risk. Ritter (1998) demonstrates that countries that use bookbuilding typically have less underpricing than countries using f ixed-price offerings, more underpricing under fixed-price offering procedures can be attributed to informational cascades. However, Loughran, Ritter and Rydqvist (1994) and Ritter (1998) point out that IPOs with discretionary allocation (Fixed Price Offering and Book-building) are underpriced more than those with non-discretionary allocation (Offer for sale and Auctions), especially in Auctions. Under discretionary allocation, the first day price increase averaged 37% in fixed price offerings, 12% in book building. Under non-discretionary allocation, the first day price increase averaged of 27% in Offer for sale and 9% in Auctions. 2 In terms of controlling the amout and volatility of underpricing, share allocation and pricing. 3 The literature on underpricing in initial public offerings goes back to Logue (1973), Ibbotson (1975), Chalk and Peavy (1987), Miller and Reilly (1987), Ritter (1984), Rock (1986), Allen and Faulhaber (1989), Benveniste and Spindt (1988, 1989), Grinblatt an d Hwang (1989), and Welch (1989). However, the mechanism by which initial issues are sold has largely been ignored until Benveniste and Spindt (1988), (1989). 4 Welch (1992) focuses on the fixed-price procedure used in some non-US countries, and shows that this procedure can cause informational cascades: investors who observe the investment choice made by previous investors can update their beliefs about the value of the issued shares. Sherman (2000), (2002) shows that fixed price offer, can lead to higher underpricing than book building. Contrary to the fixed price offer and the auction method, in book building underwriters discriminate investors in the allocation of shares to establish long-run relationship with intermediates. Book building gives the underwriter greater flexibility in designing a solution that reflects the individual issuers preferences. By controlling investor access to IPO shares, book building controls both the winners curse problem that affects discriminatory auctions and the free rider problem that affects uniform price auctions. Book building also reduces uncertainty for both issuers and investors. In a study that covers 47 countries, Sherman (2002) has found that in all countries in which the bookbuilding mechanism has been introduced, pre-existing auction systems have decreased in popularity or disappeared altogether. Ljungqvist, Jenkinson and Wilhelm (2000) use a unique dataset containing information on 2,051 initial public offerings in 61 stock markets around the world, during the period of 1992-1999. The authors examine the relative direct and indirect costs of offerings carried out by book building and fixed-price methods. They find that, the direct costs of book building are typically twice as large as direct costs for fixed-price offers. Compared to fixed price offerings, book building efforts though more expensive produce far less underpricing. Nevertheless, fixed price offering is still an extremely common method that is not likely to be abandoned by the underwriters completely. Compared to book building efforts, fixed price offering is an efficient, low cost way to distribute shares to retail investors, avoiding the high fixed costs of road shows. Aorsio, Giudici and Paleari (2000), Guidici and Paleari (2001) present an empirical study conducted on the Milan Stock Exchange companies bet ween 1985 and 1999. Authors distinguish between fixed- price offers and open-price offers with bookbuilding and find different underpricing levels and statistically significant determinants. They state that if the offering is preceded by book building, the underpricing is significantly lower (8.32 % vs. 28.33% in fixed-price offerings), this method allows the issuing parties to collect information from the institutions and to signal good news or bad news to retailers through the revision of the prospectus price range. Therefore, the cost of raising private information is reduced and the requested underpricing is lower. The evolution of the placing procedure, from fixed price to book building, has considerably improved the efficiency of Italian IPO market. Biais and Faugeron-Crouzet (2002) analyze and compare the performance of book building, fixed price offering, uniform price auction, internet-based Open IPO mechanism, and an auction like mechanism called the Mise en Vente in France. Conclusions emerging from their analysis are; Fixed price offerings lead to inefficient pricing and winners curse. Dutch auctions can also lead to inefficiencies, to the extent that they are conductive to tacit collusions by investors. The book building and an auction like mechanism Mise en Vente can lead to optimal information elicitation and price discovery. Chahine (2002) investigates the relationship between underpricing and the investors interest prior to and after the IPO day on 305 French issues. Empirical results show that book-built issues have a lower underpricing, on median, but a higher variance level, than the auction-like and fixed-price offerings. Despite the high initial underpricing of some book-built issues, book-building procedure appears to better control the information gathering from investors participating in the offering, and to be a more efficient pricing system than the auction-like procedure. Paney (2004) examines the initial returns, characteristics of issuers and long run performance of Indian IPOs on a sample of 84 Indian IPOs between 1999 and 2002. In terms of initial returns or underpricing, Paney (2004) finds that fixed price offering yields higher initial returns on average, as compared to book building. In terms of issuer characteristics, Paney (2004) finds that fixed price offering are used by issuers of fering large proportion of their capital by raising a small amount of money. In contrast, book building is opted for by issuers, offering small portion of their stocks and mobilizing larger sums of money. Kutsuna and Smith (2004) present an empirical study conducted on the Japanese IPOs between 1995 and 1999. Using a sample of 163 book-built and 321 auctioned IPOs by JASDAQ companies, authors document that average total issue cost, measured as a percent of aftermarket price, was significantly higher in the book-building regime than in the earlier auction regime. However, when results are weighted by issue size, the estimated aggregate costs of auctioning and book building are similar. This outcome favors book building over auctions for two reasons. First, auction-method estimates do not reflect opportunity costs related to underinvestment. Second, issue cost estimates ignore other benefits of the more-accurate pricing that book building affords. Anand (2005) examines the differences between book building and Dutch-auction, and shows that the bookbuilding method of offering securities is superior to the Dutch-auction IPOs. Stated by Anand (2005), while the Dutch-auction may seem to lea d to efficient price discovery based on investor demand, recent transactions suggest that price discovery is not always accurate and that, indeed, underpricing occurs even in the Dutch auction. Further, even if the Dutch auction is more fair than the bookbuilt process in terms of allocating securities, the Dutch auction can lead to less capital market efficiency overall and can therefore be questioned as a basis for promoting this type of offering. Jagannathan and Shermans (2005) research on the efficiency of IPO mechanism show that hybrid bookbuildings5, unlike auctions, have proved effective in many different countries, cultures, time periods, and market conditions. Jagannathan and Sherman (2005) propose a new IPO mechanism that could overcome the problems with standard auctions. A method that retains the advantages of bookbuilding, while modifying it to increase transparency. Although not a direct comparison between book building, auctions and fixed-price offers, Cornelli and Gol dreich6 (2001), (2003) examine a unique data set of international book building allocations and find that the underwriter favors both regular investors and investors that supply information on the value of the issue. Degeorge, Derrien and Womack (2005) have presented empirical evidence from Frances IPO market that underwriters employing the bookbuilding process implicitly committed to providing more favorable coverage to the companies they took public in the aftermarket. Authors find convincing empirical evidence that in addition to placing the IPO shares with investors, underwriters employing book-building implicitly commit to providing more favorable coverage to the companies they take public in the aftermarket. Specifically, analysts, affiliated with the lead underwriter of the offering, issue more favorable recommendations for recent book-built IPOs than for auctioned offerings. 2.2. Fixed Price Offer vs. Book Building and/or Auctions The pricing of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the short-run has been analyzed by several theoretical and empirical studies referring to the major international stock markets. Extensive research has revealed that the fixed-price offering all over the world suffer from IPO underpricing especially in these major markets. However, studies conducted by Busaba and Cheng (2001), Bierbaum and Grimm (2003), Chemmanur and Liu (2003), Hsu and Hung (2005) present some evidence on the efficiency of fixed price offering over book building and auctions. Busaba and Cheng (2001) show that the bookbuilding process elicits much information from informed traders at the IPO stage by promising larger allocation of valuable stocks to investors who truthfully reveal their information, and therefore reduce the impact that such informed traders have in the after- 5 In the hybrid bookbuilding offers, all retail investors are allowed to place orders in a public offer tranche, and all have an equal chance of getting shares. The prices, however, are set by professional investors who are given incentives to attend the road show. Jenkinson and Jones (2004), cast some doubts about the findings of Cornelli and Goldreich (2001) upon the extent of information production during the bookbuilding period. market trading. In contrast, the fixed price method, that does not elicits such private information at the IPO stage, enables informed traders to use such information in the after-market at the expense of the uninformed traders. In this regard, if the underwriter building a book can not successfully target a subset of the informed investors, a simple fixed price strategy that involves allocating the issue to retail investors produces higher proceeds on average. The comparatively high adverse selection problems associated with the fixed-price method will spill over from the IPO stage to the after-market. This in turn means that liquidity will be relatively more important for IPOs carried out via a fixed- price method than via bookbuilding. Authors show that, compared with a fixed-price offering, the bookbuilding process elicits more information from informed traders at the IPO stage, and therefore reduce adverse selection problems in the after-market trading. However, by the same toke n bookbuilding may require larger informational rents to be paid at the IPO stage. This suggests that underpricing should be larger for IPOs carried out via bookbuilding than via a fixed-price method. Bierbaum and Grimm (2003) compare the fixed price and the uniform auction in a game theoretic framework. The comparison of the two mechanisms yields that for certain parameter values, namely a low variance of the asset and, at the same time, a sufficiently high probability of low demand, fixed price method outperforms the auction in terms of revenue. Moreover, the revenue in the fixed price mechanism is typically less volatile than the revenue in the auction. Chemmanur and Liu (2003) model the effect of costly information production on issuers choice of a fixed-price offer or a uniform-price auction with exogenous entry of bidders. Their model predicts that IPO auctions will exhibit a significantly lower mean and variance of underpricing compared to fixed- price offerings. This is due to the fact that the offering price in an IPO auction aggregates the information produced by outsiders to a significant degree, so that this offering price is greater for higher intrinsic-value firms and lower for lower intrinsic-value firms in IPO auctions than in fixed- price offerings. At the same time, there is less information production in IPO auctions compared to fixed-price offerings where the offering price is set by insiders to induce the optimal degree of information production, so that a lower amount of information is reflected in the opening price of the shares listed in the stock market. Thus, Chemmanur and Liu (2003) demonstrated that, in many situations, firms will prefer to go public using fixed-price offerings rather than IPO auctions in equilibrium, since such offerings allow the firm to induce the optimal extent of information production. Hsu and Hung (2005) present an empirical study conducted on the Taiwanese companies between 1996 and 2000. Using a sample of 280 pure fixed-price offers and 84 hybrid auctioned, authors find that, Taiwanese hybrid auctions are associated with less under-pricing and with a lower variance of under-pricing than versus the pure fixed-price offers, but these differences are not statistically different. On the other hand, we find that the market index returns prior to the IPO pricing date have a strong influence on the under-pricing of Taiwanese IPO auctions and of the pure fixed-price offers. Authors provide empirical evidence of how Taiwanese issuers make the choice of IPO method. Taiwanese issuers that float large IPOs, or which have a pricing conflict with underwriters, will likely use a hybrid auction to distribute shares. On the other hand, when the relative risk level of IPO auctions to fixed-price offers has increased, the issuers will likely avoid an IPO auction. Empirical evidenc e also explains why Taiwanese IPO auctions have lost market share to fixed-price offers. Further results reveal that Taiwanese IPO auctions are not associated with less under-pricing and with a lower variance of under-pricing, nor are they better at incorporating recent market information into the IPO price than the pure fixed-price offers. Authors examination on issuers choice of hybrid auctions or fixed-price offers indicates that Taiwanese issuers condition their choice of IPO method not only on firm characteristics, but also on IPO size and on market conditions. This is why Taiwanese issuers prefer a pure fixed-price offer to a hybrid auction are based on market volatility and the pricing conflict. In doing so, under a volatile market where Taiwanese hybrid auctions have become much riskier relative to the pure fixed-price offers, issuers will prefer a pure fixed-price offer to a hybrid auction, resulting in a lower popularity of Taiwanese hybrid auctions. As listed in Table 1, Fixed Price Offering seems to be the less favorable method comparing to Book building and Auction Methods. It is a fact that, the worldwide introduction of book building method during the 90s has promoted efficiency in the major equity markets. However, Sherman (2002) states that stock markets listing few IPOs each year, fixed price offering is still be the optimal method. 2.3. Auctions vs. Book Building and/or Fixed Price Offer Using a sample of 108 French firms marketed on the Second Marchà © between 1984 and 1991, Leleux and Paliard (1995) show that initial returns are significantly higher for firms issuing through the fixed- price procedure than for firms using auction-like procedures. Leleux and Paliard (1995) state that the auction mechanism is associated with less underpricing and thus more efficient, since this procedure is able to incorporate more information from recent market momentum into the pricing of the IPO. Beierlein (2000) compares the book-bu ilding method to two commonly used auction mechanisms, the discriminatory price auction and the uniform price auction in terms of underpricing and the long run performance of IPOs relative to the market. Using data from Japan, Israel and the U.S., author finds evidence that the U.S. book building is less efficient than the auction mechanisms are. Specifically, underpricing is significantly higher in the U.S. than it is in Japan or Israel and bookbuilding appears to incorporate less demand information into the offer price than the auction mechanisms do. Bennouri and Falconieri (2001) suggest that auction mechanisms are the optimal way to sell new shares because auction procedures are more informationally efficient than bookbuilding. Assuming ex ante uncertainty about the firm true value, then auction mechanisms are able to elicit and incorporate more information from the market as well as from investors into the pricing of IPOs. Draho (2001) suggests that underpricing in bookbuilt IPOs is due to the uncertainty about the price on the secondary market rather than about the firm value, as most of the literature assume. Nonetheless, his results indicate auction-like mechanisms as the most efficient ones, since they are open to all investors who are moreover required to submit price-quantity bids. McDonald (2001) examines the efficiency mechanisms of the sealed-bid uniform-price auctions over book building method in a theoretical framework and concludes that the uniform-price auction, due to its generalized Vickrey auction properties, is indeed an efficient auction mechanism especially for the sale of IPOs over the Internet. Biais, Bossaert, and Rochet, (2002) study the optimal IPO mechanism by which the seller can extract private information to maximize the expected net IPO proceeds. They find that the optimal mechanism they characterize is similar to auction-like IPO procedures used in the U.K. and in France. Kaneko and Pettway (2003) examine the Japanese initial returns before and after the introduction of book building, and find that underpricing in book building method is significantly higher than auctions, especially during hot markets. Results suggest that the move from auction-priced to underwriter-priced IPOs using book building in Japan has significantly reduced the wealth of issuing companies while increasing the wealth of underwriter-selected investors. Derrien and Womack (2003), use the French IPO data for the 1992-1998 period and compare the three underwriting/selling mechanisms available on the French market. One is very similar to the book building mechanism used in the United States. Another is a fixed price procedure. The third one is an auction-like procedure. Authors show that the auction procedure is better than the others at controlling underpricing in general as well as the variance of underpricing of the issued shares in â€Å"hot versus â€Å"cold markets. Fixed price offering method is indeed inefficient and leads to greater underpricing compared to IPOs sold through book-building and auctions. However, the main empirical comparison in this paper is between the two main procedures auction and book building. Authors find evidence that during hot markets auctioning is associated with less underpricing than book building. They attribute the result to the auction methods ability to incorporate more information about recent market performance into the offer price. This result provides empirical support for the theoretical work by Biais, Bossaerts, and Rochet (2002) who suggests the auction procedure is optimal. In line with the evidence of Derrien and Womack (2003) that an auction procedure is more efficient in incorporating recent market momentum in the offer price compared to fixed price procedure, Vandemaele (2003) uses the French IPO data for the 1984-1995 period and points out the factors that may influence issue procedure choice. Results indicate that, firms facing relatively high valuation uncertainty are high likely to opt for an auction-like procedure and the likelihood of opting for an auction increases as the investment bank reputation associated with the issue decreases. Although not a direct comparison between auctions, book building and fixed-price offers, studies in Pettway and Kanekos (1996) examination on Japanese auctions, Kandel, Sarig and Wohls, (1999) examination on Israeli auctions, and Liu, Wei and Liaws (2003) examination on Taiwanese auctions seem to suggest that IPO auctions lead to less under-pricing. Biais and Faugeron-Crouzet (2001) show that a uniform price auction can prevent tacit collusion among bidders and can truthfully elicit information from investors in much the same way as book building. Bulow and Klemperer (1998) also show that it can be optimal in an auction to set a price at which there is excess demand. 2.4. Research on IPOs in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) Firms in Turkey may offer their shares to the public through, book building, fixed price offer and sale through the stock exchange method, however, they are mainly underwritten and sold using the fixed- price offering method; a method which is very common world w ide is becoming much less common, particularly for more active markets. Recent empirical studies, focused mainly on the initial returns and under pricing, condu Email Protocol: SMTP, POP, and MIME Email Protocol: SMTP, POP, and MIME Email protocol governs the interactions between email clients and servers. An Email protocol is a standard method which is used at each end of a communication channel either server side or client side, in order to transmit information properly. User is required to use a mail client to access to the mail server, by using variety of email protocols, the mail client and server can only exchange their information with each other. Three examples of Email protocol are: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Post Office Protocol(POP) Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) transmits electronic mail (email) within different hosts in the Department of Defense Internet protocol suite. Email servers and other mail transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive messages, while SMTP usually used by client side’s email application to send messages to the email server for relaying only. For receiving messages, client side would mostly use POP protocol which will be introduced at the next part. Examples of email client that used SMTP to send messages are webmail systems: Hotmail, Gmail and also Outlook, Microsoft Exchange and so on. SMTP listens on TCP protocol well-known port 25. Functions of SMTP: To enable the client side to send email message to a receiver (an email address which already exist), SMTP would perform the following functions: User authentication To verify the sender who is using SMTP server to send an email message has the right to do so. User notification After delivering the message to the destination, SMTP will check whether the message has been successfully delivered. If the message does not delivered successfully, SMTP notifies sender by using an error messages and the message that was not successfully delivered will be delivered back to the sender. Advantages of SMTP: Simplicity SMTP is the simplest way to send an electronic mail between various computers in a particular network. As long as there is a receiver destination and a sender who send the message, the message will be send to the destination. The message will pass through a simple process from SMTP server to an exchange server for the receiver’s computer. Quick Email Delivery As we known SMTP is the simplest way to transmit a message, email messages can be sent quickly and easily by using SMTP. As long as the condition of the mail server is good, the messages that are sent will reach to the recipients as quick as possible. Reliability When the message has failed to deliver, an error message will be sent to inform the sender and the message that failed to deliver will be sent back to the sender. In this case, sender doesn’t have to worry that the message send will failed to delivered, because when the message is failed to delivered, sender can choose to resend the message until the message is finally delivered to the recipient successfully. Limitation of SMTP: Additional administrative overhead Original SMTP identifies clients by using the IP addresses, but it is only available when the email services are provided by the same Internet server provider that supplied the connection. Therefore, an extension named† SMTP-AUTH† is required to verify the senders of the messages. Required to set up security Required expertise Post Office Protocol(POP) Post Office Protocol (POP) is a Internet standard protocol in the application layer which allows email clients to retrieve email messages from a remote mail server. Out of the versions of POP that has been developed, current standard which used in most of the client and server email communication architecture is version 3 of POP also written as POP3. POP3 server listens on TCP protocol well-known port 110. It uses the TCP/IP protocol stack for network connection and works with SMTP for end-to-end email communication. In this case, POP is responsible to â€Å"pull† the messages from the server and SMTP will â€Å"push† the messages to the server. Function of POP: Retrieve message from an ISP and whether to delete or not to delete it on the server, depends on users’ decision. Detect whether new message has arrived but not retrieving it from the server, meaning the messages will be stored at the server until the user choose to retrieve it from the server. To see whether the message is worth retrieving, POP will peek at the few sentences of the message before retrieving it. Advantages of POP: Once the messages have been retrieved to the client computer, it is visible with or without the internet connection including the attachment along with the message. User can choose whether to delete or not to delete the messages that already retrieved from the server. User can choose to save a copy of some of the important messages by choosing not to delete the messages from the POP server. Disadvantages of POP: Occupied a lot of hard disk spaces in computer as the email retrieved from the server are all store into the hard disk storage. Not accessible from other machine. Nowadays, people uses multiple devices to access to one email account, but not with POP, all messages are downloaded into one and only one PC. In order to read that specify message, user can only use the PC which used to download the messages to view it. Messages stored at local disk drive are vulnerable to data loss or even security threats. As those messages stored at local disk are deleted from the server and stored at only one PC at a time, it is more dangerous when the PC suffered virus attack or data corrupted. Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension(MIME) MIME is an extension which allows users to use the protocol to send different kinds of data files on the Internet, for example: audio file, image file (PNG, GIF, JPEG), video or even application programs. SMTP protocol only handled ASCII text, which means, only ASCII texts can be send through the protocol. Media type of content in email is described by MIME type, some of the examples for MIME types are: Plain text: txt/plain Java applets: application/x-java-applet Adobe PDF documents: application/ pdf Advantages of MIME: Allows mail messages consists not only ASCII text. Old version of Internet email standard allows only ASCII characters messages, messages not exceed 1000 characters and so on. But with MIME, it allows additional fields for mail message by using the MIME headers that describe new types of content and organization for messages. MIME allows mail messages to consist of the following: Multiple objects in a single message. Unlimited length text messages. Other than ASCII characters, it also allows non-English messages. Message that consist multiple types of font. Application specify or even binary files. Audio, Image, Video and other multimedia attachment in the mail message. MIME header can help client PC to search for the suitable application software to open the attachment or file include in the mail messages. Disadvantages of MIME: Some compound formats are considered as an application when they are nor for example â€Å"application/pdf†. Diagrams below show how client and server send and retrieve messages via SMTP and POP protocols, also how the multipurpose internet mail extension works: How to apply the following email protocols (SMTP, POP, MIME) with ASP.NET? One way to apply the mentioned email protocols with asp.net is using System.Net namespaces. It consists of classes that provide simple programming interface for several number of network protocols, compose Email and send it, it also consist of representation of multipurpose internet mail exchange (MIME) headers. Besides, it also can access to network traffic data and peer-to-peer networking function. SMTP Inside System.Net, there is a namespace called System.Net.Mail, it contains classes that we needed which is to send email messages to a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) server for it to be delivered. Classes include in this namespaces are for example: an Attachment class which allowed user to add an attachment into the email, MailMessage class represents the email message that can be sent by using the SmtpClient class, while there is also a class which allowed user to send an email by using the SMTP. List of all the classes in System.Net.Mail namespace will be included in Appendix A. To actually send an email using SMTP, we will require these following items: The SMTP host server that we use to send email. A port number, which usually we use port number25. User name and password for authentication purpose. An email address of sender and recipients. The message content. Once we have accessible SMTP server, it is time to send our email message! Firstly we will need to create an empty page which consists of the example coding shown: Next we can choose to send the email to more than one person at a time, by adding email address to the â€Å"To† collection as shown below: After that we can set the name of the sender, this will be shown along with the sender email address to the recipient once the email has been received. For instance, we can do this: Next, we can use the CC and BCC fields in the email messages, for example: Other than that, we can also set priority of an email message, by using one of the method provided in the System.Net.Mail class: POP To log in to a POP server, we need to use System.Net.Sockets namespace. Classes that we can use from the System.Net.Sockets namespace are for example TcpClient and NetworkStream. Firstly, we will need a simple aspx page which consists of several textfields that allow user to enter the username and password. To initiate the connection to POP3 server, we will use the System.Net.Sockets. For example, after user enter their username and password, and then there is a on click event of the button as shown in the following header: Next, we will send the username and password to the server, and the server response will be displayed: If the username and password are valid and successfully verified by the POP server, we will get a response and then start to retrieve a list of messages from the server. We will request for using the LIST command and display each message that we loop through: At last, we need to close the connection to the server. In this case, QUIT command has come to use, and then server response will be display: MIME Similar with implementing SMTP into asp.net, we can use the classes within System.Net.Mail namespace to apply MIME into asp.net. There is one namespace called System.Net.Mime which holds the types that used to represent MIME headers. These types are use along with the types in System.Net.Mail namespace when a SmtpClient class send an email with attachment. Data of MIME is represented by Attachment class which we just mentioned in the System.Net.Mail part. Here are some example of classes included in the System.Net.Mime: For the full list of classes included in System.Net.Mime, please refer to Appendix B.

Architectural Realism Essay -- Urban Planning, Otto Wagner

As a proponent of Architectural Realism, Otto Wagner was interested in urban planning. Although Wagner began as a traditional architect, he promoted the transition from historicism to the idea of an architecture that spoke to its time. As an architect, Wagner began his career with buildings that were designed in the conventional Baroque and neo-classical styles. Wagner attempted to turn away from the accepted traditional forms of architecture by bringing together structural rationalism and technology. However, he retained a sense of historicism and eclecticism. (Wagner 21). Wagner’s architectural style embraced and clearly manifested a distinct change in traditional and the emergence of purpose built buildings. The church at Vienna’s Steinhoff sanitarium, the Postal savings Bank and several entrances for Vienna’s city railway are some of Wagner’s most memorable buildings. (100) . The belief of art having purpose was expressed when he stated, â€Å" The practical element in man, which is particularly pronounced, is evidently here to stay and every architect is going to have to come to grips with the postulate, a thing that is unpractical cannot be beautiful† (100). In the exploration of the idea of modernity in architecture, he used the designs of his own buildings, where he used new technology, materials and simpler ornamentation. The Postal Savings Bank is seen as an important early work of modern architecture. This represented Wagner’s move from Neoclassicism. The building was constructed using reinforced concrete. Square marble plates cover the faà §ade attached to the man brick structure with mortar and ornamented with iron bolts with aluminum caps. The picture below shows the exterior of the main faà §ade of the Postal Savings Ban... ...s considered modern at that time, it still contained references to Classicism and neo-Renaissance. This resulted in his modern architecture arguments not to be completely distinct and leave the traditional architecture of the past. John Ruskin decried the type of restorations employed by Viollet-le-Duc stating that it is â€Å"a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered, a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed† (Viollet-le-Duc 35). Because Viollet-le-Duc refuted the challenge of his own ideas, he continued to design buildings in eclectic styles. Both Wagner and Viollet-le-Duc did not succeed to completely avoid using traditional architecture as reference to modern architecture. The preservation movement widely rejected Viollet’s methods because it threatened the autonomy of the observed historical past.

Corporate Development During The Industrial Revolution :: essays research papers fc

Corporate Development During the Industrial Revolution The Standard Oil Company founded by John D. Rockefeller and the U.S. Steel Company founded by Andrew Carnegie. The Standard Oil Company and U.S. Steel Company were made successful in different ways due to the actions of their different owners. The companies differed in their labor relations, market control, and structural organization. In the steel industry, Carnegie developed a system known as vertical integration. This means that he cut out the middle man. Carnegie bought his own iron and coal mines because using independent companies cost too much and were inefficient. By doing this he was able to undersell his competetors because they had to pay the competitors they went through to get the raw materials. Unlike Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller integrated his oil business from top to bottom, his distinctive innovation in movement of American industry was horizontal. This meant he followed one product through all its stages. For example, rockrfeller controlled the oil when it was drilled, through the refining stage, and he maintained control over the refining process turning it into gasoline. Although these two powerful men used two different methods of management their businesses were still very successful (Conlin, 425-426). Tycoons like Andrew Carnegie, "the steel king," and John D. Rockefeller, "the oil baron," exercised their genius in devising ways to circument competition. Although, Carnegie inclined to be tough-fisted in business, he was not a monopolist and disliked monopolistic trusts. John D. Rockefeller came to dominate the oil industry. With one upward stride after another he organized the Standard Oil Company, which was the nucleus of the great trust that was formed. Rockefeller showed little mercy. He believed primitive savagery prevailed in the jungle world of business, where only the fittest survived. He persued the policy of "ruin or rule." Rockefeller's oil monopoly did turn out a superior product at a relatively cheap price. Rockefeller belived in ruthless business, Carnegie didn't, yet they both had the most successful companies in their industries. (The American Pageant, pages 515-518) Rockefeller treated his customers in the same manner that Andrew Carnegie treated his workers: cruel and harsh. The Standard Oil Company desperately wanted every possible company to buy their products. Standard Oil used ruthless tactics when Rockefeller threatenedto start his own chain of grocery stores and put local merchants out of business if they did not buy oil from Standard Oil Company. Carnegie dealt with his workers with the same cold lack of diplomacy and consideration. Carnegie would encourage an unfriendly competition between two of his workers and he goaded them into outdoing one another. Some of his employees found working under Carnegie unbearable.

A Thesis in Institutional Management

1. To identify the major theories that is usually taught in most of the universities specializing Hotel and Restaurant Management Major in Institutional Management. 2. How do they implement theories in their companies and the way it is being practiced? 3. To come up with a framework in practices as implemented by selected companies in Malate. Institutional management is often associated with hotel and restaurant management since it is one of the two major courses that can be chosen in taking up Hotel and Restaurant Management. Consistently ranked in the ten top hospitality programs, the Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management (HRIM) program prepares students for careers in the hospitality industry. The four year program leads to a B.S. degree, with a curriculum founded in academic disciplines which include the liberal arts, business, science, and specialized courses in theoretical as well as managerial components for the hotel and restaurant industry (www. udel.edu/CSC/hrim.html). At this present time, Hotel and restaurant management major in Institutional Management and Culinary Arts is very in demand in the Philippines. Related essay: Problems Encountered in Ojt in Hotel In 1890, it was Ellen Richards of New England Kitchen who influenced the home economists to work in food service and in other aspects of managing a variety of institutions, including schools, colleges, orphanages, hospitals, prisons, military facilities, hotels, and restaurants. In 1910, the American Home Economics Association formed the Institution Economics section, and matters related to institutional management-especially school lunches-were popular topics of discussion at conferences and in periodicals. The American Dietetic Association was formed in 1917 as an offshoot of the AHEA, and by the 1920s programs in institutional management were being established in many schools of home economics in land-grant and other universities. In addition, at some universities, schools of hotel and restaurant management were affiliated with schools of home economics and trained students for a wide variety of careers in the hospitality industry. (www.hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/inst_mgt.html). Degree programs in hospitality management studies like Institutional Management is very important to learn for those who would like to work as managers or supervisors in a restaurant or hotel. It gives details in managing and operating hotels and restaurants and business side of running a hotel or restaurant. It will also provide them with a strong management and service orientation as well as a global perspective of hotel and restaurant operations. In the Philippines, there are a lot of universities, especially in metro manila offers Hotel and Restaurant Management courses because of the development and progress of hospitality industry in the Philippines and outside the country. Many students decide to take this course for they believe it will give them good work and salary in the country or abroad.

Glass Ceiling Topic

INTRODUCTION: The research team has selected the topic of â€Å"Glass ceiling† for the research project. It has been observed that during the last few years a lot of women are going in management field but not a lot of them are getting an opportunity to get into the top management positions. This has got nothing to do with their abilities and dedication to their work, it is clear that glass ceiling is affecting and stopping the women from reaching the top management positions. The problem of glass ceiling persists in the other countries of the world as is clear from the previous researches but this problem is more evident in Pakistan. This is because despite the boom in education sector, the society still remains conservative and negative feelings and stereotypes do exist against women employees. As a result of the glass ceiling, the performance of women employees is also being affected. This is a cause of concern and it is happening because women managers feel that they are not being treated equally. They develop the feelings that their efforts are not being properly rewarded. Due to the presence of pre-defined rules and regulation for promotions women working in public sector are not being affected a great deal by glass ceiling. Thus it is the private sector where the women are facing glass ceiling the most. The significance of this study is that the research team looked into the main problems which are prohibiting the women from going into the top management positions. By identifying the factors causing the problems, the team will be able to judge the reasons and help eradicate them. It is important to look in the organizational factors that would help the women to reach to top management positions as early as they deserve. This study is an effort to not only identify the factors responsible for affecting the performance of women managers through glass ceiling but also to give solutions to over come from this problems. LITERATURE REVIEW The term ‘glass ceiling’ refers to the transparent but real and strong barrier which prevents women from moving up in the management hierarchy in an organization (Morrison & Glinow, 1990). The minority of women in senior management has led many researchers to investigate whether glass ceiling barriers such as sexual discrimination, gender wage gap, gender stereotype, harassment and lack of family-friendly workplace policies in the organizations are at play and how these barriers affect the performance of female employees in the organizations (Jeavons & Sevastos, 2002). The existence of glass ceiling in different organizations, cultures and time span has been confirmed by many researchers. In 1997, Tokunaga & Graham looked at employees in the technical division at one large Fortune 500 corporation and found that female engineers could not advance as far up the corporate hierarchy as did the male engineers, thereby providing evidence for the existence of a â€Å"glass ceiling† against women. A research conducted by Veale & Gold (1998) in Metropolitan District Council situated in Yorkshire, UK also confirmed that a glass ceiling did exist within the council and this inhibited women’s progression into senior management. This existence of a strong glass ceiling effect prevents women to progress in the organizations. A study controlled for previous job experience, education, age, tenure, initial job level and gender showed that even levels of promotions existed for men and women. However, qualitative data showed that women were employed by the organization at a level that was lower than their qualifications, or lower than men doing the same job. Therefore, even with equal rates of promotion, women will not progress as far as men (Jeavons & Sevastos, 2002). There a number of factors that keeps the glass ceiling in effect. One of them is the gender stereotype. Over the last three decades, Schein (2007) found that gender stereotyping of the managerial position has continued to be the major barrier to women’s progress in management, worldwide. He also shown that on international level, the view of women as less likely than men to possess requisite management characteristics is a commonly held belief among male management students in the USA, the UK, Germany, China and Japan. Apart from gender stereotyping, gender wage gap also plays its role in the organizations. Across a sample of eleven European Union countries in 1995–2001 Booth & Bryan (2007) found that women were paid less than men and this wage gap typically widened toward the top of the wage distribution (the â€Å"glass ceiling† effect), and in a few cases it also widened at the bottom (the â€Å"sticky floor† effect). In recent studies of promotion to partner process, Kumra & Vinnicombe (2008) concluded that the disadvantages women face in organizations in relation to the promotion to partner process arise from a combination of firm-based and societal based factors. Discussing the relationship between discrimination, harassment and glass ceiling (Bell, McLaughlin & Sequeira, 2002), glass ceiling was referred as one of the form of sex discrimination. In the study it was concluded that because all three have some common antecedents, steps to reduce one of them will likely affect the others. Apart from that they suggested that measures designed to increase numbers of women in higher level positions will reduce sexual harassment. As a result of this glass ceiling there is an inclination of women to entrepreneurship as a result of barriers to women’s advancements in corporation (Mattis, 2004). Mattis showed that lack of flexibility continued to be a feature of the corporate culture that lead to the attrition of high potential women and contributed to the dramatic increase in entrepreneurship among women in the US Glass ceiling affects the performance of women at managerial posts. Some of the â€Å"masculine† organizational barriers that severely hinder women’s ability to be effective in their role as strategic decision makers include reluctance of male subordinates towards female managers; isolation by male colleagues; exclusion from male-dominated informal networks and the lack of mentorship (Okanlawon, 1994). Exploration of a model of decision making (Large & Saunders, 1995) explains how a combination of both individual choices (employees’ own perceptions, requirements and priorities like family, social life) and organizational blockages (organizational structure, policies and culture) maintains the glass ceiling. Gender related attributes also play their role. An appropriate theoretical foundation for explaining differences between male and female service providers originates in the sociology literature and is referred to as feminist theory. This theory proffers two perspectives regarding gender-related differences in performance. One argues that there are a wide variety of issues that are impacted by society’s attitudes towards women (Hooks, 2000). These attitudes are based in the history and institutional structure of society. As a result, women are treated differently than men, so that the performance of businesses owned by women suffers. Another stream of literature argues that there are innate differences between male and female approaches to issues. These differences lead women to take different actions than males in similar situations (Buttner, 2001; Fletcher, 1998). There is an alternative theoretical perspective that would not accept the arguments advanced by feminist theory. The foundation for most of this research is the rational economic model (Ferber & Nelson, 1993). This theory argues that individuals make rational economic choices and seek to maximize economic benefit to themselves or the firm. Most of these models assume that customers are economically rational and will make their choices based on the benefits gained from the transaction, and not the gender of the service provider. Prior research on whether gender as an impact on the financial performance of professional service providers has not provided clear insights on whether feminist theory or the rational economic model is more valid. Some researchers find that women achieve lower financial performance than men (Hisrich & Brush, 1984; Loscocco, Robinson, Hall, & Allen, 1991; Lustgarten, 1995; Chaganti & Prasuraman, 1997; Fasci & Valdez, 1998), while others argue that there is no performance difference between male & female owned enterprises (Fischer, Reuber & Dyke, 1993; Kalleberg & Leicht, 1991). Davidson & Cooper (1983) found that managerial women experience greater strain and feel more isolated at work than males which in turn affect their performance. There is gender difference in leadership because of negative perception and evaluation of women in leadership (Stelter 2002). Sex role orientation and the stereotype of manager role as masculine construct, along with lack of career planning among women are predominant theme that explains why so few women progress to leadership position (Chugh & Sehgal 2007). Women are not advancing in work place because they did not receive training to perform job moreover manager do not appreciate achievements of their women employee as compare to men (Asplund 1988). RESEARCH QUESTION How glass ceiling affect the job performance of managerial women? THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK There are three variables which are under study. Job performance is dependent variable and it is the variable of primary interest and changes or variations in job performance will be explained by two independent variables (1) gender stereotyping (2) cooperation among colleagues. Gender stereotyping has negative relation with job performance i. e. if there is less gender stereotyping among the members of organization then greater will be the job performance. Cooperation has positive relation with job performance i. e. if there is more cooperation among the employees the greater will be the job performance. Review of past researches shows if there is gender stereotyping female manager can not get the equal opportunities, males are only favoring the males so ultimately it affect the job performance of female employees that’s why there is a negative relation between job performance and gender stereotype. Past researches also shows that the cooperation plays a very important role in increasing the job performance because if there is a cooperation among employees then they can motivate each other and it leads towards increase in job performance. Independent Variable Dependent variable [pic] Independent Variable HYPOTHESES ? If cooperation among the colleagues at work place is increased then the job performance of managerial women will be increased. ? If gender stereotyping is reduced at work place then the job performance of managerial women will be increased. METHODOLOGY Study design In this cross-sectional co-relational field study data on two independent variables (gender stereotype, cooperation among colleagues) and dependent variable(job performance) were collected from both males and females at management level working in private organizations( PIFRA(Project to Improve Financial Reporting and Auditing) World bank, Ittehad airlines,IBM Pakistan) in Islamabad through personally administered questionnaires. Population and Sample Population for the study comprised all men and women at managerial level working in private organizations in Islamabad. Quota sampling method was used to draw sample out of population because it was deemed fit by the researchers on the basis of cost and time considerations. Subjects were chosen in predetermined numbers. The total sample size was n=34 which comprised 14 (41. 2%) males and 20(58. 8%) females. 40 questionnaires were given to both gender and they all were received back within a time period of 2 weeks, resulting in 100% response rate because questionnaires were personally administered and researchers clarify research topic, doubts and assist some of the respondents in understanding some questions. The units of analysis were individuals who responded to the survey. Out of females 8 (40 %) were at low and 12 (60 %) were at middle level management. Out of males 8 (57. 1 %) were at low and 6 (42. 9 %) were at middle level management. During data filtration patterns were observed in 6 out of 40 questionnaires of which 3 were filled by males and rest by females, such questionnaires were set a side and remaining 34 were used for analysis. 7 questionnaires include missing items ranging from 1 to 2 so middle value on the interval scale i. e. 3(unsure) was assigned to them. Variables and Measures Questionnaires include two demographic variables (gender & managerial level), they were tapped by direct single questions. ? Job performance: This dependent variable indicates the extent to which employees of the organization are expected to acquire job knowledge, achieve assigned goals and maintain better work related relations with members of organization at workplace. Researchers develop 5 point interval scale containing 6 items to measure the relationship of this variable with cooperation among colleagues (independent variable). An example item is â€Å"A friendly atmosphere among colleagues at work place leads to better job performance† Reliability of these items checked via SPSS SOFTWARE gave alpha= . 56 Means reliable. Researchers used 8 items scale to measure the relationship of job performance with gender stereotype (independent variable). An example item is â€Å"I feel additional pressure to perform because I am women†. Reliability of these items checked via SPSS SOFTWARE gave alpha= . 6334 ? Gender stereotype: Stereotypes of men and women commonly reflect the distinction made in implicit personality theory between agency and communion (e. . , Rosenberg, Nelson, & Vivekananthan, 1968). This independent variable was measured using 5 point interval scale containing 14 items. An example item is â€Å"a woman’s place is in home† Reliability of these items checked via SPSS SOFTWARE gave alpha= . 636 ? Cooperation among colleagues: †cooperation is a process by which individ uals, groups and organizations come together, interact and form psychological relationships for mutual gain or benefit (Smith et al. , 1995)†. This independent variable was measured using 5 point interval scale containing 10 items. An example item is â€Å"open communication of relevant information occurs between male and female colleagues† Reliability of these items checked via SPSS SOFTWARE gave alpha= . 634 Data collection method Data was collected through personally administered questionnaires because the survey was confined to local area i. e. Islamabad. Moreover, this method was deemed fit in Pakistan as compared to mailed and electronic questionnaires. Method of personally administered questionnaires was adopted to introduce research topic, clarify doubts of respondents and collect all the completed responses within a short span of time. All questionnaires were received back within 2 weeks. 5 point interval scale was used for data collection containing range from â€Å"strongly disagree to strongly agree† RESULTS In order to test the formulated hypotheses, statistical analysis of the responses of the questionnaires was done. The reliability of the four scales is given below: Reliability of Cooperation among colleagues (CAC) scale Table 1 Alpha Reliability Coefficient of CAC for the Main Study (N=34) Scale No. of items Alpha coefficient CAC 10 0. 34 Table 1 shows the alpha reliability (r=0. 634) for the CAC scale. The results in table 1 show that scale has satisfactory reliability. Reliability of Gender stereotyping (GS) scale Table 2 Alpha Reliability Coefficient of SRS for the Main Study (N=34) Scale No. of items Alpha coefficient GS 14 0. 636 Table 2 shows the alpha reliability (r=0. 636) for the SRS scale. The results in table 2 show that scale has satisfactory reliability. Reliability of Cooperation effect on Performance (CEP) scale Table 3 Alpha Reliability Coefficient of CEP for the Main Study (N=34) Scale No. of items Alpha coefficient CEP 6 0. 56 Table 3 shows the alpha reliability (r=0. 56) for the PER scale. The results in table 3 show that scale has satisfactory reliability. Reliability of Stereotyping effect on Performance (SEP) scale Table 4 Alpha Reliability Coefficient of SEP for the Main Study (N=34) Scale No. of items Alpha coefficient SEP 6 0. 633 Table 4 shows the alpha reliability (r=0. 633) for the PER scale. The results in table 4 show that scale has satisfactory reliability. The results are organized under five main headings: 1) Cooperation among colleagues 2) Sex-role stereotype 3) Perception about female managers 4) Effect of cooperation on performance of female managers 5) Effect of stereotyping on performance of female managers Cooperation among colleagues Table 5 GenderMeanNSD Male 3. 45140. 63 Female 3. 39200. 43 Note: Scale: strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) The male respondents think that cooperation does exist in private organizations among male and female colleagues (3. 45). Female respondents also think that cooperation exist between male and female colleagues (3. 39). Sex-role stereotype Table 6 GenderMeanNSD Male 3. 10140. 92 Female 2. 76200. 813 Note: Scale: strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) Sex role stereotyping does exist in male respondents but its very less (3. 1). However it does not exist in female respondents (2. 76). Perception about female managers Table 7 GenderMeanNSD Male 2. 67140. 83 Female 3. 51200. 51 Note: Scale: strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) The male respondents do not think that female managers have to be more competent than males and behave in a typically ‘masculine way’ in order to be noticed and promoted (2. 67). However female respondents think that they are required to be more competent in order to be taken seriously (3. 39). Effect of cooperation on performance of female managers Table 8 Correlation between Cooperation among colleagues and performance of female managers (N=34) Correlation r Correlation between . 286 cooperation among colleagues nd performance of female managers ____________________________________________________________ ____________ p=0. 101 Table 8 shows that the hypothesis assuming that there is a relationship between cooperation among colleagues and performance of female managers is accepted as there is non-significant relationship between these two. Results indicate a weak relationship between cooperation among colleagues a nd performance of female managers. Results also show that only 8% of job performance of female managers is affected by cooperation among colleagues. Effect of stereotyping on performance of female managers Table 9 Correlation between stereotyping and performance of female managers (N=34) Correlation r Correlation between . 117 stereotyping and performance of female managers ____________________________________________________________ ____________ p=0. 510 Table 9 shows that the hypothesis assuming that there is a relationship between stereotyping and performance of female managers is rejected as there is non-significant relationship between these two. Results indicate a weak relationship between stereotyping and performance of female managers. Results also show that only 1% of job performance of female managers is affected by stereotyping. DISCUSSION The purpose of this study was to see the level of cooperation among colleagues and the gender stereotyping in private organizations and then to determine the impact of these two on the performance of female managers in the private organizations. The statistical analysis of the data acquired from the filled questionnaires revealed that both male and female managers at the low and middle level of organization think that there exists a friendly atmosphere among male and female colleagues at work place. They help each other in time of need and in performing work related tasks. Though both male and female agree that cooperation does exist but the interesting finding is that male employees perceive that there is cooperation among colleagues more then female employees do. Another interesting finding is that male employees think that a woman’s place is in home and they are not suited for work outside of the home. According to their point of view traditional husband/wife roles are the best and that it is the job of women to manage the home and men to go out to work. Also, they think that women lack the skills and abilities needed at work. This finding is supported by a study conducted by Schein (2007) who found that on international level, the view of women as less likely than men to possess requisite management characteristics is a commonly held belief among male management students in the USA, the UK, Germany, China and Japan. However, female employees do not think that women lack the managerial skills and that they are not suited for work outside the home. Female employees think that compared to male managers, female managers must continually prove themselves in order to be taken seriously and get promoted. Whereas male managers think that male and female managers are treated equally and in the same fashion as those of male managers. These results are supported by (Jeavons & Sevastos, 2002) who found out that the existence of a strong glass ceiling effect prevents women to progress in the organizations. The researchers also showed that women were employed by the organization at a level that was lower than their qualifications, or lower than men doing the same job It was hypothesized that if the cooperation among colleagues is increased then the performance of female managers will be enhanced. The study results show that there exist a relationship between cooperation among colleagues and the performance of female managers. So the study results show that if the cooperation among colleagues is increased there will be an improvement in the performance of female managers. This finding is also proved by a previous study conducted by (Okanlawon, 1994) that glass ceiling affects the performance of women at managerial posts and a friendly atmosphere among male and female colleagues contributes in the better and improved performance of female managers. Another hypothesis that was formulated was that the reduction in gender stereotyping will result in an improved performance of female managers. This hypothesis has been proved wrong. The study shows that there is a very weak relationship between stereotyping and the performance of female managers. Also these two are weakly correlated in a positive way. The conclusion drawn is that in the private organizations of Pakistan, female employees do not bother about what male think of females as managers. Female managers do not feel discouraged due to stereotyping. Their work activities, abilities and morale is not affected by the stereotyping of male colleagues. CONCLUSION The study aimed at finding either male and female colleagues in organizations cooperate with each other and either gender stereotyping exists among male and female managers. The findings show that both male and female employees at managerial posts of private organizations agree that cooperation does exist but the degree of agreement is higher in male then in female managers. The study was also aimed to see if there exist a relationship between cooperation among colleagues and job performance of female managers. A moderate relationship does exist between cooperation and female managers’ job performance. Hence if the level of comfort and cooperation among male and female colleagues at work is enhanced, female managers’ performance will improve. It is evident from the findings of the study that female managers’ performance is not affected by the gender stereotyping of their male peers. RECOMMENDATIONS Since it has been found that a friendly atmosphere among male and female employees at workplace plays a vital role in the better performance of female managers, the private organizations in Pakistan should figure out ways and make policies to make sure that female employees feel at ease with their male peers and both male and female employees work together and coordinate with each other in order to enhance employees’ performance. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH The generalizability of the results of this study is low since a non-probability sampling technique was used due to lack of time and resources. The sample size is also very small (n=34) which is not suitable for such kind of research. For future research, work which look more directly at these issues taking a larger sample size will be encouraged. Also it is required to see that though gender stereotyping is not affecting the performance of female managers but it is probable that gender stereotyping that is being found in Pakistani organization might be affecting the hiring or/and promotion criterion of female managers. REFERENCES Virginia E. Schein (2007). Women in management: reflections and projections. Women in Management Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6-18. Camilla Veale, & Jeff Gold (1998). Smashing into the glass ceiling for women managers. Journal of Management Development, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 17-26. Author, Howard Tokunaga & Tracy Graham (1997). 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