...different strategy. H&M produces cheap via outsourcing, ahead of time taking advantage of economies of scale. Zara is currently at the frontier of quick fashion, so it will be challenging for competitors to imitate it. 2. Substitution –Zara faces LOW threat from substitutes, because there are literally no substitutes for clothes. There should always be demand for clothes, because clothes do not have infinite lifetime and fashion changes each season helping creating high demand. WTP is thus not endangered, 3. Slack - Zara faces a MEDIUM threat from holdup. Due to being part of large conglomerate: Inditex it may become a victim of inefficient management. Also, as Zara continue to grow, it will not be able to benefit from its advantages: the central logistics and vertically integrated supply may lead to increase in costs: shipments from Spain to other continents may increase costs and lower WTP. 4. Holdup – Zara faces a LOW threat from holdup because it would be difficult for suppliers to extract value from Zara (there are many suppliers from which Zara can choose from). Furthermore, Zara owns most of it supply chain so it does not need to rely on external players extracting value from it. Due to Zara’s fast inventory turnover, items can be bought for a short period of time, therefore buyers feel pressure to purchase Zara right away. This reduces bargaining power of buyers and allows for maintaining high WTP. Overall, Zara should maintain...
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...Fördjupningsuppgift 1 Vi har valt att titta närmare på ett case som rör Sveriges sjukvårdsregioner och dess relationer och samarbeten med leverantörer av ambulanssjukvård. I vårt fall har vi valt att använda Gotlands landsting som exempel. Upphandlingen trädde i kraft 2007 där Falck som är nordens största privata räddningstjänstentreprenör, kom med det vinnande budet. Avtalet innebar att Falck tillhandahåller alla komponenter för att bedriva ambulansverksamhet, d.v.s. fordon, förare och sköterskor. KÄLLA 1. Hur illustrerar caset den roll relationsspecifika tillgångar spelar i make/buy situationer? Under upphandlingen av ambulanssjukvården på Gotland inkom tre anbud, varav ett från den regionalt finansierade räddningstjänsten. Om räddningstjänsten hade vunnit upphandlingen hade man alltså valt att själva producera tjänsten(make) istället för att köpa in den från marknaden(buy). Vi anser att denna process även går att applicera på andra situationer av upphandlingar inom ambulanssjukvården då samma premisser existerar. Relationsspecifika tillgångar skapas om någon eller flera av fyra följande mål är uppnådda: * En tillgång lokaliseras på en geografiskt fördelaktig plats för att minimera transport- och lagerkostnader * En tillgång vars fysiska eller tekniska egenskaper speciellt är framtagna för en viss transaktion * En tillgång som är inköpt specifikt för att tillfredsställa en speciell köpare och inte hade varit lika lönsam i ett annat företag ...
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...Introduction: In this essay, the discussion will focus on the vertical chain of a major pharmaceutical company as well as TCE and its effect on make or buy decision. The vertical chain is ‘’ the process that begins with the acquisition of raw materials and ends with the distribution and sale of finished goods and service.’’ (Besanko et al, 2010, p119) The term vertical integration is used to describe firms that produce and sell their goods without relying on external co-ordination. Firm’s vertical boundaries can identify what to make (internally inside the organization) and what to buy (externally by using the market). Some of the pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have strong vertical chains. So as to market its drugs in 150 countries, it gives high importance for production that starts by acquiring active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and shifting them to manufacturing sites all across the globe. These manufacturing sites are either approved under the stringent laws of FDA or EMEA (2 important bodies responsible in monitoring the quality of registered products across the globe). Sometimes Pfizer also uses loan-licensing companies as external manufacturers when in-house facilities are not available or feasible. Once the product is manufactured, it is sent for quality control release and then packed and shipped to the first point of distribution (global hubs). From these locations; depending on the demand from each region; packed products (formulated products) move...
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...The importance of trust in states and firms Name: Han Xu CPR no.: 231092-3616 Date of submission: 11 January 2014 Study programme: BSc. Business Administration and Sociology Integrated assignment Supervisors: Jacob Lyngsie, Benedikte Brincker STU Count: 8102 This essay will focus determining if trust is indeed fundamental, or necessary to every organisation. Since trust usually suggests a relationship between 2 or more parties, the essay will look into how trust is established between organisation and define trust. Later on, the economic benefits of trust will be explained and lastly, the importance of trust will be evaluated. Trust and the state The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is an The CPI is an example of measuring a state’s economic legitimacy based on an empirical understanding, seeking to shed light on the economic and political legitimacy of a regime by reviewing international institutions’ perception on the transparency and corruption of the state. Every year, Transparency International releases a CPI report on countries around the globe. The annual report (Transparency International 2013) measures countries according to the perceived level of corruption, reflecting the level of trust in the accountability of each state. In this section of the essay, we point our attention to the state and trust is defined as the ‘belief in legitimacy’ (Rostboll 2013). Such formalised documentation of trust between neutral international institutions and...
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...9-708-497 REV: JULY 6, 2011 DAVID COLLIS JAN W. RIVKIN Strategic Decline Great strategies can, on occasion, produce exceptional performance that lasts for many years. We have seen several examples of companies that held to essentially the same strategy over a long period of time and continued to outperform the competition. Wal-Mart had 99 quarters of EPS growth, much of it greater than 20% per annum, until a slowdown in the 1990s. Edward Jones has pursued the same strategy since the early 1970s, during which time it has grown nearly a hundredfold while maintaining a return on capital about 10% higher than competitors. Unfortunately, these stellar examples of sustained competitive advantage are the exception rather than the rule. The harsh truth is that changes in the external environment and competitive pressures cause the profitability of the typical superior performer to revert to the mean very rapidly.1 This fact challenges the strategist not only to craft robust strategies whose advantages last as long as possible, but also to design a strategy-making process that is capable of appropriate strategic change and effective strategic renewal. Failing to achieve this goal has led many formerly great companies, such as Sears, AT&T, and Westinghouse, into disaster. This note first shares facts about the sustainability of competitive advantage. It then observes that the demise of a previously successful strategy typically involves some change in the external environment. It...
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...COMPANY BACKGROUND Warby Parker is an American eyewear company that was launched in February, 2010 as part of the Venture Initiation Program by four students from the University of Pennsylvania. The company’s initiative was to sell cheap eyewear online combined with a good cause. Warby Parker believes that “everyone has the right to see” this idea lead to forming partnership with renowned non-profits – e.g. RestoringVision.org – to give a pair away to someone in need for every pair sold. However, it was not just the company’s generous intentions that made Warby Parker so successful for a start-up firm. Warby Parker’s brand is both trendy and classic providing high quality frames with best in class polarized lenses. As a way of cutting costs, Warby Parker decided to avoid middlemen and go directly to the manufacturers in China, circumventing traditional channels. The company is considered a made-on-the-internet brand: it has a huge presence of the internet and most of its advertising campaigns take place there, which constitutes an advantage, given the growing popularity of e-commerce and social network advertising. They started off as an online company however, in the past years they have also opened stores and showrooms in 15 location across the US with their headquarter in New York. BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS ARCHETYPE Warby Parker’s business is based on the low price and high quality of the products, the solidarity branch of their program and also on their online shop. To...
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...American Political Science Review Vol. 105, No. 1 February 2011 doi:10.1017/S0003055410000523 Bribes, Lobbying, and Development BARD HARSTAD Northwestern University JAKOB SVENSSON Stockholm University hen faced with a regulatory constraint, firms can either comply, bribe the regulator to get around the rule, or lobby the government to relax it. We analyze this choice, and its consequences, in a simple dynamic model. In equilibrium, when the level of development is low, firms are more inclined to bend the rule through bribery but they tend to switch to lobbying when the level of development is sufficiently high. Bribery, however, is associated with holdup problems, which discourage firms from investing. If the holdup problems are severe, firms will never invest enough to make lobbying worthwhile. The country may then be stuck in a poverty trap with bribery forever. The model can account for the common perception that bribery is relatively more common in poor countries, whereas lobbying is relatively more common in rich ones. In India, as elsewhere in the developing world, the old business of corruption is meeting a new rival: the Washington-style business of persuasion — –International Herald Tribune, May 31, 2006 ◦ W L obbying and corruption have been the subject of tremendous public interest and research. Surprisingly, these two means of influencing regulation have either been studied separately or viewed as basically being one and the same. The question of...
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...simple, Strategies fail so that other strategies can become successful. One prominent reason in a societal belief of strategic failure is the lack of initial creation of any strategy; however, most companies do not create a formal plan before starting their endeavor. Whether they created a plan or not, the lack of creation of a strategic plan is not indicative of failure. The things in which places an obstacle in the effective and efficient implementation of a strategy is a companies’ external threats, inability to response to the threats, uncertainty about the market segmentation in which they are striving to appease, and lack of any congruency within the managerial team. Companies notice signs of failure such as, imitation, substitution, holdup and slack, but many time ignore them because of there overtly confident in the companies success; on the contrary, they may notice that the cost to maintaining the business in the current manner is a lot more cost efficient than changing the strategy to sustain competitive advantage, which is more cost effective. Because the companies didn’t derive a strategy for failure, the response is inevitably more difficult to construct. If a response were to be constructed it wouldn’t suffice; the...
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...Apple Outsourcing: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/12/apple-vs-samsung-back-in-court/ http://www.isuppli.com/Manufacturing-and-Pricing/News/Pages/Fast-Facts-on-Apples-PC-Outsourcing.aspx http://towardfreedom.com/globalism/2713-the-apple-connection-globalization-and-outsourcing http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/14/apple_looking_to_quadruple_software_development_outsourcing_to_india___report http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/aapl http://quotes.morningstar.com/stock/s?t=AAPL https://www.google.com/finance?cid=22144 Strategic outsourcing involves separating out some of a company’s value creation activities within a business and letting them be performed by an independent entity. Indeed, Apple has outsourced various functions in terms of manufacturing, assembly and logistics as its contract manufacturers and outsourcing companies can perform several value-creation functions at a lower cost due to low-cost location and other competitive advantages. We are living in a globalized economy in which overhead and production costs are the single most important financial factor that can determine a product’s success or failure. Apple produces most of its products such as iPods, iPod minis and iPhone in China, thus ensuring a very low production cost and an increased US market attractiveness (Scribd, 2011).The single most important reason for outsourcing iPod and iPhone production to China is that the manufacturing...
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...Kyle Peschken has been a manager for the discount store, Zelmart, for the past two year. It’s time for his annual performance review and Kyle would like to make a big impression on the corporate staff. Walking through the store, he make a mental note of which departments need to be straightened, which one need to be reorganized, and which employed he’d like to schedule during the week of his review. And then he sees it blocking the aisles, creating commotion and looking very unprofessional – the long line in the electronic department. it’s time to confront Chris, the sales clerk. “Chris what’s the holdup here” “I’m waiting for a manager to approve this $120 check. And then I have to show this lady a digital camera from the display cabinet. She’s been waiting half an hour and then……” Alright Chris I can help you out for a little while…..” two hours later, Kyle exited the electronics department disheartened. That’s no way for a store manager to spend his afternoon. There’s got to be a logical way to solve this, thought Kyle. He walked back to his office and wrote down the facts as he knew them. 6. Store policy allows customers to check out other items at the electronics counter if they are making purchases in that department. {This makes sense especially if the customer wants to write a check for the entire purchase.} Sebenarnya pelanggan layak membuat pemeriksaan sebelum dan selepas membeli. Ini kerana pelanggan mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan barang dan perkhidmatan yang...
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...friendship network, and brings that math together in a manner tweaked specifically for investigating crime. Described in a paper posted March 7 at arXiv.org, LogAnalysis is being tested with some criminal cases in Italy, although the researchers will divulge little about the real world cases. To begin, investigators import all the call data into the program, which transforms the information into a diagram of people connected by phone calls. There are features that make it easy to see who called whom the most and to identify clans and go-betweens. Investigators can also trim people and calls out of the visualized network when deemed irrelevant to a case. But it was a temporal analysis feature that helped alert investigators to the supermarket holdup crew’s nefarious doings, says police detective and study coauthor Salvatore Catanese. The gang was in rapid communication leading...
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...Get Your Team to Do What It Says It’s Going to Do by Heidi Grant Halvorson Say you’re in the early stages of planning your department’s budget for the next fiscal year. Your management team meets to establish short-term priorities and starts to think about longer-term resource allocation. You identify next steps and decide to reconvene in a week—but when you do, you find that very little progress has been made. What’s the holdup? Your to-dos probably look something like this: Step 1: Develop a tentative budget for continuing operations. Step 2: Clarify the department’s role in upcoming corporate initiatives. Those steps may be logical, but they’re ineffective because they omit essential details. Even the first one, which is relatively straightforward, raises more questions than it answers. What data must the team gather to estimate requirements for continuing operations? Who will run the reports, and when? Which managers can shed additional light on resource needs? Who will talk to them and reconcile their feedback with what the numbers say? When will that happen? Who will assess competing priorities and decide which trade-offs to make? When? Creating goals that teams and organizations will actually accomplish isn’t just a matter of defining what needs doing; you also have to spell out the specifics of getting it done, because you can’t assume that everyone involved will know how to move from concept to delivery. By using what motivational scientists call if-then planning...
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...system might do no mistake and the two criminals remained guilty as charged, had been impartially tried and they believe that the Sacco and Vanzetti deserved the maximum verdict. The chance of Sacco and Vanzetti was not decided on the based of the public view. It was based on eight motions for a new trial in agreement with Massachusetts decree succumbed to the prosecution judge. Attached to perjured statement by trial witnesses and to a conspiracy between local law enforcement officers and justice department agents. Additional addressed a jailhouse admission that was found guilty of a bank robbery, Celestino Madieros, who revealed that he and other members of the Morelli gang are professional offenders that committed the South Braintree holdup, robbery and murders. All motion was denied and dismissed. Massachusetts Highest Court held that no mistake of law or manipulation of discretion had been committed. On April 9, 1927, they sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to death. On June 1, 1927, Massachusetts Governor Alvan. T. Fullerto reviews the case and advises him on the problem of leniency. In the face of increasing criticism of legal proceedings and imminent death sentences. The Lowell committee overlooked exculpatory evidence the defense had revealed since trial while legalizing the trial’s every single step. At the end, they agree with governor’s opinion not to spare the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. On August 23, 1927, they were electrocuted at Charlestown State Prison. The Sacco...
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...priority 1(i.e. pr1), priority 2 (i.e. pr2), priority 3(i.e. pr3) queues. Pr1 set off real-time data packets, the maximum priority queue, and pr3 queue non-real-time local data pr2 queue non-real time remote data pr1 queue real-time data processed using FCFS. Non-real-time data packets that land from sensor nodes at minor levels go to pr2, the second maximum priority queue. Lastly, non-real time data packets that are sensed at a local node go to pr3, the lowest priority queue. The probable reasons for choosing highest 3 queues are to progression (i) real-time pr1 work with the maximum priority to achieve the generally goal of WSNs, (ii) non real-time pr2 works to get the minimum average work waiting time and also to balance the end-to-end holdup by giving maximum priority to remote data packets, (iii) non-real-time pr3 works with lower priority to get equality by preempting pr2 works if pr3 works wait a number of successive timeslots. Proposed system, queue sizes differ based on the application requirements....
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...2014年4月14日 Strategic outsourcing of apple computers inc - Term Papers - Addsweetie « Study and create flashcards for free at Cram.com Upgrade | Hi cbccabc Get Access to over 1,668,827 More Essays. Upgrade Your Account Now. Essays Book Notes AP Notes Citation Generator More Search essays Home » Business & Economy Strategic outsourcing of apple computers inc By addsweetie, feb. 2012 | 2 Pages (465 Words) | 9 Views| (1) | | Upgrade to access full essay This is a Premium essay for upgraded members Strategic outsourcing involves separating out some of a company’s value creation activities within a business and letting them be performed by an independent entity. Indeed, Apple has outsourced various functions in terms of manufacturing, assembly and logistics as its contract manufacturers and outsourcing companies can perform several value-creation functions at a lower cost due to low-cost location and other competitive advantages. We are living in a globalized economy in which overhead and production costs are the single most important financial factor that can determine a product’s success or failure. Apple produces most of its products such as iPods, iPod minis and iPhone in China, thus ensuring a very low production cost and an increased US market attractiveness (Scribd, 2011).The single most important reason for outsourcing iPod and iPhone production to China is that the manufacturing costs are significantly lower than what...
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