Learning Team Reflection Essay

Introduction In business, quality refers measures of excellence and remaining free of defects, deficiencies, and significant variations. Quality products or services are brought about by the commitment to abide by certain standards. These standards are put in place to maintain customer or user satisfaction, (Business Dictionary.com, 2014). In this paper, Learning Team A will discuss total quality management, ISO standards, how these standards are used to improve an organization, benefits and challenges of these standards, and the role of the quality control department within an organization in relation to TQM and ISO standards. Total Quality Management and ISO Total quality management may be defined as managing the entire organization so that it excels on all dimensions of products and services that are important to the customer, (Jacobs, H., & Chase, R., 2011).† The two primary goals of total quality management (TQM) are to ensure that the product or service is carefully designed, and secondly, to ensure systems within the organization can consistently produce and design the product or service. TQM resembles Six Sigma to a great degree, but it is a different process. TQM focuses on ensuring standards and guidelines are actually reducing errors while Sigma looks to reduce defects, (Jacobs, H., & Chase, R., 2011).† ISO are a series of standards used to measure quality. These guidelines are international guidelines established by the Internal Organization for Standardization. To gain certification for these standards, the process takes greater than a year. ISO 9000 represents standards for the criteria that need to be met during manufacturing processes. ISO 14000 refers to rules or guidelines set for environmental management of industrial production. This standard simply promotes useful tools for businesses to help manage environmental impact, (Investopedia, 2014). Advantages of TQM and ISO in organizations Customer satisfaction is the main goal for every organization. Customers are satisfied if they get a product or service that meets their expectation and if it is of fair price. Total Quality management helps to provide this quality assurance for the customers. It helps the organization to make the needed corrections and improve production. Apart from satisfied customers, organizations also need to improve their efficiency and effectiveness of doing business. TQM places a focus on internal process that includes process alignment, consistent delivery and process productivity (CEBOS, 2012). With TQM, organizations will have a longer term competitive edge. TQM is a philosophy that empowers all the employees and it promotes continuous and sustained improvement. Its basic principle is that the cost of prevention is less than the cost of correction (Gharakhani, Rahmati, Farrokhi, & Farahmandian, 2013). Like TQM, ISO also provides benefits for a business. According to (ISO, 2014), when a company improves its operations, it saves cost. Having internationalized standards will improve operations and reduces operational expenses. Standards will help to enhance customer satisfaction and access new markets. It also helps companies to increase their productivity and stay in the competitive edge. ISO 9000, certification increases marketability and reduces product liability risks, because the quality of the product is enhanced. With the ISO 14000, organizations reduce their footprint in global environment. ISO14000 helps companies to save in energy consumption, reduce the cost of waste management, and improve corporate image among regulators, customers and the public (ISO, 2014). References Business Dictionary.com (2014). Quality. Retrieved from, Business Dictionary.com Web site: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/quality.html Investopedia (2014). ISO 9000. Retrieved from, Investopedia Web site: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/iso-9000.asp Investopedia (2014). ISO 14000. Retrieved from, Investopedia Web site: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/iso-14000.asp Jacobs, F., & Chase, R. (2011). Product and Service Design. In (Ed.), Operations and Supply Chain Management (13th ed., pp. 38-67). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin. CEBOS (2012). How Can TQM Make Your Business More Successful?. Retrieved from, CEBOS Web site: http://www.cebos.com/how-can-tqm-make-your-business-more-successful/ Gharakhani, D., Rahmati, H., Farrokhi, M. R., & Farahmandian, A. (2013). Total Quality Management and Organizational Performance. American Journal of Industrial Engineering, 1(3), pp. 45-50. ISO. (2014). Benefits of International Standards. Retrieved from http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/benefitsofstandards.htm ISO. (2014). ISO 14000 – Environmental management. Retrieved from http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/benefitsofstandards.htm

Balancing Control in Management

In any kind of organization, management control and management styles are core representatives of the way the organization works and how the people within the organization interact. To have a positive and healthy organizational environment, a suitable and balanced management style is very important. An organization has many plans and tasks that it takes care of either on a day to day business or time specific projects. The kind of management control over these projects and the involvement of the manager along with the employees also plays a crucial part in how successful these tasks and projects are.Management in a business environment comprises a combination of the different theories of management styles and the actual implementation or the practice. it is extremely important of a task for an organization to find the right kind of business management style which would be suitable to the kind of environment and personality your organization or business has and should be given a lot o f time and a lot should be invested in it.This is important because knowing your weaknesses and working on them to make them your strong points and also highlighting the strong points of your personality can help the organization grow and enable smooth process of communication with the employees and other people of concern. (Daud, 2008) If you consider the management style that exercises a lot of control and power over the employees and where the management has a lot of emphasis on what is being done on projects, it is basically known as an autocratic style of leadership.In this style the manager wants to take care of everything by enforcing a lot of power and sometimes misusing his or her power. Here more power and trust is given in the hands of the boss or the manager rather than the employees themselves. Rather than making the employees feel a part of the decision or the process, the management tends to take care of all the important decisions and creates a very cold and unconcer ned environment for the employees to work in. The problems that arise in this kind of leadership are that there is no employee manager relationship.People are not motivated to work because they feel like they are working under a dictatorship and they have no say in what the organization does. There is no employee loyalty or sense of belonging. This kind of style does manage to get the work done but at the expense of the morale of the employees. Employees in these kinds of culture are generally dissatisfied and there is a high employee turnover which refers to the amount of employees that leave the organization. (Beam, 2008)When we talk about the management style that has an open environment and complete freedom is given to the employees to make their own decisions and to build a casual and open environment where there are no rules or there is no one to answer to, you are basically describing a democratic style of management. Here the management has very little influence over what th e employees are doing and there is no form of formal control or guidance over the employees. The employees are given maximum freedom of input in projects and plans of the organization.Although the final decision is still taken by the management in this style of control, the employees are efficiently involved in the process before these decisions are made. The problem with this kind of management is that it completely ignores one of the core aspects of management that is control. The lack of control can have serious consequences on the kind of output the employees produce. With some kind of control, the management is able to keep the employees on their toes and is able to produce the outcome on time.In this kind of democratic leadership, the environment is such that employees are happy to come and there is a sort of comfort and the employees feel like they are a part of the organization, however, the relaxed environment can be misused by the employees to the extent that their work ho lds less importance than building and maintaining relationships. (Daud, 2008) Now we realize how important it is to create a balance between these two very diverse styles of management and management control. so one of these alternatives is known as â€Å"the laissez fair management style†.This style is one approach that aims to strike a balance between the two different approaches by using the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages of both the democratic and autocratic styles of leadership. This is a more accommodating style of management, This approach gives a balanced amount of power to the employees by allowing them to give their input in the decision making process while giving the management the control over making the decisions on both the project and how the employees are performing over projects and plans.Here the employees is not shunned and is given a fair chance to participate but also is under the control of the management so that he or she is answerable for a nything that they are doing or any task that they have been assigned to do so to the upper management. This way the balanced environment of work and healthy employee and management relationship is also maintained. References Beam, J. (2008).What is Employee turnover, Retrieved on September 3, 2008 from http://www. wisegeek. com/what-is-employee-turnover. htm Daud, Naz (2008), Different Management Styles, Retrieved on September 3, 2008 from http://www. articlesbase. com/management-articles/different-business-management-styles-432524. html Windmueller, J. (1996). Conflict analysis and resolution bookshelf, Retrieved on September 3, 2008 from http://www. spcomm. uiuc. edu/projects/vta/vta021. 401

Virtual and Real Communities Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Virtual and Real Communities - Assignment Example Unlike the traditional methods of learning, distance learning took a different form of teaching that allowed people in different locations around the world to learn in real time and without many barriers in their way. Other areas of life picked up this model of communicating over the World Wide Web to increase the communication rates around the world (Doheny-Farina, 1998). This saw to the birth of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus that virtually brought people from many locations around the world into a community with many similarities to a real and geographically located one. This paper shall concern itself with the comparing and contrasting of these two types of communities. The advantages and disadvantages of each type of community shall be discussed and expounded upon to give a true picture of each type of community. The first part of this paper shall argue in the favor of online communities and the benefits they bring to the human community. First of all, the term ‘virtual community’ is a direct derivation of a 1993 book by the same title written by Howard Rheingold. Rheingold is one of the most known proponents of virtual communities and is even dubbed the first citizen of the internet (Gauntlett, 2008). He points out several benefits he attributes to virtual communities found solely on the internet. ... These communities enable the members share information on the care they receive and ways of handling complex situations which other members may not be aware of (Horsley & Gauntlett, 2004). This group of communities, as Rheingold puts it, has been known to save many lives at a cheaper cost than real and geographically conscious ones would. One other advantage with these virtual communities is that, due to their virtual nature, they enable the members discuss issues they would otherwise find hard to discuss with other people on a face to face basis. Being virtual also enables the members seek the specific information required without being bothered with procedures that may not make sense to them in any way. Another evident advantage of being a member to a virtual community is it enables the members find ideas that they could not manage to get anywhere else without much of a hustle. Information has been of late flowing faster on social networks compared to other forms of media. Online p latforms have enabled youths especially to air their voices to the wider world without a need for seeking out a government form of media (Howard & Jones, 2013). This has also forced politicians into taking their campaigns online since there are larger communities there whose votes can be tapped at a cheaper and more satisfying rate compared to physical campaigns. Few ideas are thus hidden from the public when a majority of the citizens are online where information easily goes viral and gets to most social site users. A fourth point in favor of virtual communities is the freedom that comes with the use of the sites that host the virtual communities. While the geographical and real communities would

Journal of Korean Melodrama Peppermint Candy (1999) Movie Review

Journal of Korean Melodrama Peppermint Candy (1999) - Movie Review Example The movie shows that it was the manipulative and oppressive society that led Yongho to commit suicide out of the sufferings that the social system caused him. The movie opens up to show that Yongho was a young business and then he eventually loses his enterprise and his money due to the bankruptcy. He also goes through a failed marriage with a Honja who is a woman he used. He eventually loses his dreams of marrying Sunim, his true love, and becoming a photographer. The movie explores these events through the psychological exploration of Yongho. The viewers are clearly shown how these psychological issues are caused because of an oppressive society in which Yongho loved. The society killed his individuality and his innocence to make him a person with no hope and no love. The director also explores how the political, economic, and social crisis of Korea in the 1980s and 1990s affected Yongho. His character was such that the Korean audience could relate to easily as he was a symbol of degradation of the society. Thus the movie clearly showed how the repressive and manipulative social system could absolutely tear an individual apart. The society was a militarized and patriarchal society which was male oriented. The issues displayed in the film explore the masculine ideology that was present in the Korean society at that time. The most important element which showed the masculine ideology was the militarized society that shaped Yongho’s life. The military control over Korea influenced the masculine ideology which prevailed in the state. The elements that portrayed the masculinity were the organized use of violence and avoidance of the reproductive activities which are culturally feminine. Another element which clearly showed the masculine ideology in the movie was the marginalization of women. The movie was about a man’s life from a male perspective and it totally failed to portray the

Smart Objectives Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Smart Objectives - Essay Example The first and the foremost objective of the construction project manager is to deliver the project to the client within the deadline issued by the client to the contractor which is till the end of 2012, which can be achieved by keeping the workforce fully supplied with the required resources, boosting the workers’ productivity by keeping them motivated with rewards and emotional support, and getting the work approved by the consultant as soon as an activity finishes. The second objective of the construction project manager is to get the work done in the safest possible manner which can be achieved by developing the site safety system by hiring an experienced safety manager and his team immediately and providing them with full support and resources to help them develop and implement a site safety plan till the end of March, 2012. The third objective of the construction project manager is to make the workers produce quality work that exactly conforms to the standards of quality as stipulated in the contract documents which can be achieved by applying quality tests upon the material received on the site before it is approved for use, getting the work checked and approved by the consultant right after the completion of any activity, and developing and implementing a quality control system by hiring an experienced quality manager and his team to design and implement a quality plan till the end of March, 2012. The forth objective of the construction project manager is to keep the cost of project under control so that the cost of work can be minimized and the project can be made profitable for the contractor which can be achieved by purchasing all the required resources till the end of March, 2012 to avoid delays, and reducing the amount of rework by recruiting experienced and well trained workers till the end of March, 2012. The construction manager assumes myriad responsibilities on a construction project. Responsibilities of a construction project manager

The effect of reverberation and amplification on sound localisation Thesis

The effect of reverberation and amplification on sound localisation - Thesis Example In reverberant environments, most hearing impaired listeners are aware to the disturbance of the signals caused by the reverberation. However, when reverberation is minimum, the actual cause of disturbance is not clear to them and hence can be very frustrating. Localising a sound source in the horizontal plane relies mainly on two different sources of information: The differences in time of arrival of the sound at the two ears, and the level differences at the two ears. These time and level differences are called interaural time differences (ITD) cues and interaural level differences (ILD) cues. Recent improvements in hearing aids, such as compression and filtering, can significantly alter ITDs and ILDs. The digital processing to input signals tend to restrict the availability of fine timing cues, forcing the listener to rely on level cues. The effect of digital processing in hearing aids on the hearing aid wearers use of localisation cues in different listening environments is not well understood. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of reverberation on the localisation abilities of normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners. Moreover, to investigate the effect of Siemens Prisma 2M hearing aids utilizing the localisation cues. Two main sets of experiments were conducted, The first set (4 experiments) were performed on normal hearing listeners to study the effect of reverberation and signal onset/offset times on their localisation abilities for different stimuli signals (i.e. Speech, high-pass speech-low-pass speech, pink noise, 4 KHz pure tone, and 500 Hz pure tone and under different reverberant environments. The second set of experiments was conducted on twenty eight Bilateral Siemense Prisma 2M wearers. They were tested under both reverberant and anechoic conditions, with and without the hearing aids. Signals used were speech stimulus, pink noise, high-pass pink noise and low-pass pink

Socrates guilty or not Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Socrates guilty or not - Essay Example Socrates was convicted with four charges which stated that Socrates studied things up above in the heavens and below the earth, and was capable of making the worse of the arguments appear as the strongest ones owing to his eloquence, which he denies upfront. Furthermore, Socrates was accused of corrupting the mind of the youth of Athens, this charge was a consequence of the prior charges, and he was regarded as an evil doer, who made the youth follow in his evil plans; all this three charges culminated in the claim of the prosecutors that Socrates denied their gods and on the contrary had created gods of his own, and thus called him an atheist (Academic.mu, 2010, 1). Socrates defended himself and negated all these claims; however it is debatable as to whether he had managed to grasp the attention of the jurors, but even if he did, he angered them by proposing the alternate punishment for himself, which showed that he did not fear the jury or the prosecutors or death. Socrates respond ed to all these charges from the prosecutors in a detailed and complicated manner, which is rather confusing and leads the people away from the actual context, like other dialogues of Socrates narrated by Plato, such as ‘Euthyphro’ (Jowett 2008). The response of Socrates managed to make the prosecutors to agree to his denial, he rounded the argument in such a manner as to confuse others. He claimed that the charges against him were false, and levied by people who were personally angered by Socrates, and they were not knowledgeable and wise, and were careless of their people, and did not actually worry about the Athenians, but rather the reputation damage that Socrates caused them by calling them unwise. In order to take revenge from Socrates and teach him and other people who deviate from their orders that they would not be spared by them or the court, and therefore the trial of Socrates resulted in a death penalty which was approved by the majority of the jurors. Socrates