Putting India to Work Legally Essay

In order to remain India’s largest employer, they had to keep up with the explosive growth and competition in the telecommunications, financial services, and retail sectors. 2. ) Going forward, TeamLease has faced a few challenges along the road. First, TeamLease decided to move from a decentralized to a centralized structure for operations, causing fear and resistance from clients who were afraid of the loss of personalized services and fear from TeamLease employees who disliked the idea of relocating. TeamLease also had a difficult time filling open positions. Many people were registered with the government-run employment exchanges and many of these people were not fully qualified for the job. TeamLease also tried to partner with training companies but there was no training company that would accept their concept of paying for their services only after their trainee has been placed with a job. They also took a big hit during the 2009 recession causing the open job market to drop dramatically and as well as a decrease in client support. . ) The competitors that worry me the most are Addeco and Randstad. Addeco seems to be the largest HR staffing service company followed by Randstad. Addeco is a major threat with over 33,000 employees and 5,500 branches, in over 60 countries. Randstad has 28,700 employees, 3,500 branches, in over 40 countries. TeamLease on the other hand has 75,000 employees in 600 branches. TeamLease may have more employees, but Randstad and Adecco seems to have mo re qualified employees and are more spread out worldwide. TeamLeast has the least amount of branches among its top competitors.I believe that TeamLease should put more money into staffing and training in order to have more suitable and a more experienced staff in order to maintain competitive advantage. They should also try to increase or spread out more of their branches to other countries. TeamLease should also put more effort into marketing and their advertising campaign. Last, they should consider offering employee incentives such as days off or bonuses’.

Porters Generic Strategies Essay

Strategy concerns two factors, deciding where you want a business to go, and deciding how to get there. According to Grant (2010) â€Å"A firm can achieve a higher rate of profit (or potential profit) over a rival in one of two ways: either it can supply an identical product or service at a lower cost, or it can supply a product or service that is differentiated in such a way that the customer is willing to pay a price premium that exceeds the additional cost of differentiation.† This provides the company with a different type of competitive advantage, either cost or differentiation. To attain cost advantage, a firm must aim to be a cost leader, and minimise expenses and outlays at every stage within the value chain. Porter (1985) wrote that to achieve differentiation advantage, a firm must â€Å"provide something unique that is valuable to buyers beyond simply offering a low price† These two strategies form half of Porter’s (1985) generic strategies model, which are contained within the ‘broad’ dimension. Cost leadership requires key strategy elements such as scale-efficient plants, outsourcing abroad (such as HP computers) and a design process that is heavily focused on the manufacturing of the products. Resources and capabilities should include access to capital, tight cost control and specialisation of jobs and functions, with incentives linked to quantitative targets. Alternatively differentiation requires emphasis on branding, advertising, quality, service and new product development. To accomplish this a firm needs superior marketing abilities, creativity, and strong research and development resources. The second, ‘narrow scope’, dimension presents the other generic strategies; cost focus and differentiation focus. Companies using focus strategies will target niche markets and, by understanding the dynamics of that market and the unique needs of the customers within it, develop uniquely low cost or well specified products within that market. Tailoring their products for customers tends to lead to a strong brand image, and companies can rely significantly upon their reputation to maintain sales. This can detract new entrants to niche markets with established suppliers. The key to succeed  within the focus dimension of Porter’s (1985) box diagram is to make sure the company is adding something of value as a result of serving only a niche market. Porter’s generic strategies do have various criticisms. Firstly, it is possible for a company to perform to two strategies and succeed, whilst avoiding becoming ‘stuck in the middle’. Nissan in China, for example, try to cater for the low cost and market whilst also offering automobiles for more elite customers. This has proved hugely successful, with high performance cars such as the GT-R (retailing for as much as  £120,000) selling just as consistently as the Micra ( £10,000). This directly contradicts Porter’s claim that â€Å"the firm stuck in the middle is almost guaranteed low profitability. In addition, many companies enter the market focusing on a particular niche, but then their initial success enables them to expand and utilise other generic strategies. A great example of this is McDonalds, who initially targeted children, with the Happy Meal and the character of Ronald McDonald. They realised they were missing out on a huge segment of the ma rket – adults, so each new advertising campaign became more sophisticated until it catered for all ages. Interestingly, the food that is sold has not changed significantly, just the marketing behind it. Another problem with Porter’s model is that the strategy alone does not guarantee success. For example, a firm cannot generate consistently high profits simply by offering the lowest price due to cost leadership. Low price does not sell products without any other strategy, people may believe that if a product is significantly cheaper, it is therefore of lower quality and not worth buying. The company needs a reputable brand to ensure customers know they are getting value for money and not just being ripped off. Strong marketing is needed to portray the image that the product is at least as good a standard as its competitors while stressing the difference in price. An additional factor is that of imitability. The knowledge provided in Porter’s texts is freely available, so no differential advantage can be gained from them, unless they are interpreted in idiosyncratic ways. Treacy & Wiersema (1995) put forward an alternative approach to attaining  market value advantage. The 3 basic routes were operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy. Alternatively Bowmans strategy clock looks at different combinations of price against perceived value of the product. This provides a powerful way of looking how to establish and sustain a competitive position in a market driven economy. However, in a more recent paper, Bowman (2008) argues that whilst Porters generic strategies are useful, they cannot provide all the answers. He claims that at best they are â€Å"food for thought†, and at worst they are â€Å"a substitute for thinking†.

European Settlers Essay

European settlers went through many changes after the discovery of New America because of Christopher Columbus voyage. The Europeans accidentally found the American land which was originally owned by Native American tribes. The Native American culture was very liberal and had very different lifestyles when it came to beliefs in religion, owning land, medicines, hunting farming and family. The Native Americans did not see people as enemies and believed that many people could be invited to join their tribes. The Natives taught the Europeans of their survival skills which included farming, hunting and tools. The Europeans later took advantage of the Native Americans benefits and weaknesses. The Europeans discovered that the Indians had lots of unclaimed land and saw their governing rules as weak. Europeans settlers disagreed with Native American religion, celebration, music, medicines and saw the male as weak. The reason the male Indians were looked at as weak was because they would constantly hunt and the woman would stay and handle all the labor at the tribes. In result, the European people began learning more of the culture and disagreeing with the lifestyles leaning more toward a governed political aspect. Europeans did benefit in many ways of the discovery of the â€Å"New America† since they came up with the idea of taking over the so called unclaimed lands, controlling the Indians and turning this into their very own. Soon the European settlers were all migrating to America in seek of farming and land ownership. Since the Europeans learned of all the work that needed to be done they then turned to slavery of people from Africa. The Europeans did not want to have to work constantly and put in infinite hours to the hard labor so this is why slavery became a great way for them to complete their projects. The European settler’s mindset was focused on riches and power. They did not care of the African slaves and their emotions. The Africans were looked at as showing less value than an animal and were a huge impact during the American migration era. The Europeans invested a lot in farming, human sale, and human trade. Their African slaves were to maintain rice, tobacco, sugar cane and cotton. The Africans did not have any rights and were contracted to work with belief in owning possible land and freedom. Unfortunately, this was a way to keep their slaves working with hopes of something in return which was a false hope. The slaves were treated very bad and had no rights. The men were not allowed to get married and were worked constantly. Not only were the men and woman slaves treated badly they had no authority to be educated. It was seen in Europeans eyes that slaves were not allowed to read and write.

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN BUSINESS Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN BUSINESS - Assignment Example However, the industrialization is an imperative need for England if the government is interested into fulfilling the basics of the country’s population. Taylor guided the managers to promote sameness and integrative objective setting in the organizations. The idea needed the companies to get highly trodden in order to facilitate effective communication. The SMEs have a smaller setup as compared to other larger forms of the organizational structures and therefore, they can provide the perfect venue for the execution Taylor’s philosophy towards organizational culture and structure. The main idea behind International Labor Organization’s definition of child labor is to give children an opportunity to experience growth, nourishment and development before becoming an active part of the workforce. The areas upon which the definition emphasizes are age, safety of children who work and it is strictly against the work that is taken without making appropriate compensation to the less-aged workers. Child labor does not encompass everything that is done by the children and ILO allows organizations to hire youngsters to do the jobs which do not strain them significantly. The current business, entrepreneurial and corporate mindset is looking to minimize the cost of production and they look to save each and every penny at their disposable. The child labor is the cheapest workforce available and the companies always seek cheap labor and therefore, businesses in all parts of the world are hiring children to do their dirty work. However, the developing economies and emergent nations have gotten the worst condition in this regard because of their poor legal infrastructure and framework. Nevertheless, the organizations such as UNO and WTO have to play their due roles in terms of causing the companies to implement modern labor laws until than they remain a set of dream-words. Additionally, the humanistic values are required to

Systematic Review Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Systematic Review - Research Paper Example The article acknowledges that nurses are often so busy and sometimes may lack the skills and tools necessary to make research findings that are clinically relevant and methodologically sound. This reality notwithstanding, the article states that the key to achieving this crucial goal in the nursing practice is through systematic review of literature. It goes further to provide examples of professional groups that have done reviews which have been very critical in attaining evidence-based practice. A good example is review done by the Cochrane Collaboration in evaluating the effects of medical therapeutics. The article explains that nursing practitioners should be motivated to use as well as produce systematic reviews in order to achieve evidence-based practice (Rew, 2011). The attributes of systematic reviews in the nursing practice have been described in the article. Based on the definition of Meadows-Oliver (2009), the article describes systematic review as a synthesis of literatur e aimed at answering a research question which has a clear target and can be replicated. Identifying clearly targeted and specific research questions helps the reviewer to critically analyze and search for published sources that respond to research questions. Systematic review also involves delineation of each step of review process in order to enable other reviewers to verify and replicate the findings. In describing the attributes of systematic review, the article has differentiated it from integrative review by stating that the latter’s approach is the only one that allows for the diverse methodologies combination. However, the process delineated from for systematic review is the same as the process for integrative review, and many of the former have included publications with diverse methodologies (Whittemore & Knafl, 2008). The article has extensively described the rationale for conducting systematic reviews. It states that even though most nurses in the clinical practic e do not get enough time to engage in original research, they ought to comb the existing relevant literature in order to find evidence regarding the kind of practice that can best work for a specific patient care situation. This method has proved to be appropriate in identifying evidence. However, its critics argue that it is often limited in scope, tends to reflect the bias that is inherent in journals that the nurses have employed or nurse’s bias, and it also lacks a clear focus (Coffman, et al, 2009). The article observes that systematic review corrects these limitations and gives nurses more confidence regarding the evidence that they have obtained from the process (Rew, 2011). A systematic review of available research literature gives the reader an efficient synthesis of research findings concerning a particular topic under study. The article further describes the systematic literature review process; it is worth noting that this process is the same to that of the descri ptive research design. The process begins with formulation of the problem that is aimed at describing, synthesizing, and summarizing published findings regarding a particular problem or phenomenon in practice, and presents these findings in ways that answer specific research

Cyprus bank crisis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Cyprus bank crisis - Essay Example In 2002, the late mortgage payments recorded the highest value in the recent history of Europe. The first sign of a financial crisis appeared in the EU zone alarmed the policy makers and called for an urgent European crisis management framework. Nevertheless even by the end of year 2009 formulating of such an effective crisis management framework had been inadequately progressed. The currently unfolding banking crisis in Cyprus can be considered as the latest stage of EU zone banking crisis. Fragility of the Cypriot Banking System: Situation before the Bailout The following chapter presents existing literature regarding the problems of banking system in Cyprus. Gunsel, 2007, defined bank failure as â€Å"a situation in which banks were closed because of financial difficulties.† Accordingly during the period of 1999-2002 the rate of banking failure in North Cyprus had been as high as 32.4 percentage proportion of the total banks in the country. The number of total banks in North Cyprus declined from 37 in 1999 to 25 towards end of 2002. Example: the Cyprus Credit Bank Ltd., Cyprus Liberal Bank Ltd., Everest Bank Ltd., Kibris Yurtbank Ltd. and Cyprus Finance Bank Ltd., were closed due to bankruptcy in 2001. Moreover, the Cyprus Commercial Bank Ltd., Yasa Bank Ltd., Tilmo Bank Ltd., Asia Bank Ltd., and Cyprus Industrial Bank Ltd. were taken over by the Saving Deposit Insurance Fund (SDIF) of the country during the same time period. Estimated cost of banking failure in year 2000, amounted approximately 200 trillion TL, (almost 50 percen tage proportion of the national GNP of previous year) in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Banking sector comprised of 6.3 percentage proportion (568.4 million TL, in 1977 prices) of the country’s GDP in 1999. It steadily declined reaching 4.8 percentage proportion (416.1 million TL, in 1977 prices) by 2002. The global economic crisis is recognized as the leading cause of this deteriorating. In 1999 the banking sector provided employments to approximately 3.5 percentage proportion of the total working population in Northern Cyprus. Contribution of the financial for providing employments to the Cypriot economy severely dropped after closing of the banks. In 2002 only 2.6 percentage proportion of the country’s employments were provided by the financial institutions. Further, the other sectors in the economy showed slight recovery from the economic crisis towards the end of year 2002 however, financial sector remained unrecovered. The failure of the system was evid ent in the revoking of banks from operation and taking over by other banks (Safakli, 2003). Failure of the Banking System: Root Causes Gunsel, 2007, revealed that inadequate capital, poor asset quality, high interest expenses, low profitability, low liquidity and small asset size are significant variables that determine the likelihood of bank failure in North Cyprus. Black, 1995, revealed that poor risk analysis by the banks especially during the expansion phase of the business cycle can trigger banking crises. Inefficient internal credit control systems may fail to monitor the amount and quality of bank loans. Hoenig, 1999, revealed that connected lending or lending to the companies or development projects connected with the bank owners or managers despite their limited profitability as a major cause of bankruptcy in the region. Banks which lack capital assets are more susceptible to the shock of an economic downturn. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) a mini mum of 8 percentage proportion capital to risk weighted assets ratio is required for all international banks. High leverage can affect

Modern Sculpture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Modern Sculpture - Essay Example These two notions are really very important for those who are going to comprehend the idea of art and the message of its authors. That is why space and time cannot be separated when one is going to analyze sculpture. The author of Passages in Modern Sculpture gives the analysis of several celebrated sculptures to demonstrate the development of art. It is also possible to find the information about the characteristics of neoclassical sculpture. Wanting to transcend the partial information that any single aspect or figure can convey, the neoclassical sculptor devises strategies to present the human body through multiple views. As for classicism, here the transcendence of the single point of view was often explicitly dealt with by using figures in pairs and threes. So, the writing contains many details about the history and peculiarities of art. It explains the difference between various centuries in art. For instance, throughout the nineteenth century, sculptors continually tried to provide the viewer about the information of unseen sides of all objects imbedded within the relief ground. The text is very useful for those whose study art. However, it would be better if the writer demonstrated the c onnection between modern sculptures and the ones from the

International business strategy Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

International business strategy - Case Study Example UK-based multinational telecommunications company with headquarters in London, is the world’s second largest mobile telecommunication organization in terms of subscribers and recent revenues. It owns and operates networks in over 20 countries as well as has operations through partner networks in over 40 countries. As part of its international strategy, Vodafone expanded its resources through mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures. When viewed from contrary perspective, Vodafone started building its resources, particularly its physical and technological resources in the form of network infrastructure, through the above-mentioned three modes and thereby strengthened its international strategy further. â€Å"By 2013, it had established a significant presence in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and the USA through mergers and acquisitions, international joint ventures, and other forms of foreign direct investment† (Case Study). As Vodafone mainly targeted successful or potential local players for acquisition, mergers, and JVs, during their foreign entries, they are able to garner optimal resources. For example, during its entry into India, Vodafone acquired Hutchinson Essar for a sizable sum and that led to the garnering of strong existing physical and technological resources, which it further optimized. The other key technological resource gained by Vodafone as part of its international strategy is wireless spectrums through auctions, which has increased its competitive advantage further. Normally, governments of various countries would auction 2G, 3G, and even 4G spectrums to telecommunication companies through a competitive bidding process thereby earning good revenue. In that direction, Vodafone has won many auctions in many countries and has got hold of sizable spectrums. After Vodafone has gained these spectrum allocations, they are able to introduce or provide more features to its customers in its foreign operations and that will natura lly lead to its

What are GMOs What is the controversy that sounds them Essay

What are GMOs What is the controversy that sounds them - Essay Example Today the term GMO is mainly being used to refer to the production of genetically modified food products. This is because with the assistance of genetic modification process, scientists have been able to produce agricultural products and these products have started replacing naturally grown agricultural products. Production of food products through the process of genetic modification is escalating day by day and it has already been recorded that crops that have been genetically modified are being planted over an area of more than 100 million hectares in various underdeveloped and developed regions (Pinstrup-Andersen 76). The reason for the increase in production of genetically modified crops is that these crops can be produced in a much effective and efficient manner and these crops are being considered as one of the solutions to the issue of world hunger and depleting resources. Even though there is an increase in the production and demand for genetically modified crops and food pro ducts, several controversies have surrounded the important segment of the society. These controversies include the public’s perception regarding GM foods, the impact of GM foods on human health and wellbeing and the labeling of these food products. The perception of the consumers is one of the major issues that are surrounding GMOs. The problem is that people are confused whether GMOs are healthy or they pose a threat to the lives of human beings. It has not yet been established that GMOs do not harm the health and wellbeing of human beings. Researchers have even ended up with contradictory research. Certain researchers have established that GMOs are healthy for human beings while certain have even proved that GMOs can negatively impact the health and wellbeing of human beings. The distributed and varying perception of the public is a major concern for the future and acceptability of GMOs. Magnusson conducted a research on the perception of the general public

Contextual design Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Contextual design - Coursework Example In natural environment customer and interviewer works together. Master/apprentice model has strong role of experience and habit that molds the action, if some things is based on experience there may some reason behind, to minimize effect of habit giving training to others plays a vital as the trainer explains the reasons of doing certain actions. The events and stories attached to a task also shared be master or trainer hence takes a learner to the event whose conclusions and teachings could help an individual in future works that he / she carries himself. Design team may learn same way through the experience of the customers by interviewing them. In experience they share important details and mistakes which become time saving and helpful information. This kind of work is based on observing ongoing working models rather rely on conceptual ideas. The designer not only learns to start like apprenticeship but also apply knowledge to integrate it with technology and take into account other people and concerned areas that comes under his domain. Through four principle guide, the apprenticeship model can be modified to meet design's team need. These are context, partnership, interpretation and focus. Context gives ongoing experience and concrete data.

The Perfect eProduct Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Perfect eProduct - Essay Example However, it is without question that with this drastic increase in available technology, the price of these devices have risen precipitously. Along with this price increase, so too as the consumption habits that the consumers display. Rather than changing a mobile device several times throughout the year, individuals are now encouraged, by simple force of economics, to retain their device longer, protect it, and seek to repair it in the off chance that it is somehow damaged. It is further estimated by experts that the industry responsible for the repair of mobile devices engenders an economy that is worth tens of millions of dollars annually. Whereas the repair of current mobile devices takes many shapes and forms, the most common repair that is engaged is repair of chipped, broken, or cracked glass screens. Whereas formerly mobile devices were put together with plastic LCD panels, the trend towards touch-screen devices has meant that more and more of these devices are now made with glass. As such, the product which will be promoted within this analysis for sale within the online market, will provide the consumer with an alternative to the exhorbitantly expensive screen replacements that can cost as much as 30% of the original phone’s cost. As such, the product which will herein be discussed and analyzed is a glass gel that has already been used in the automotive industry for decades which helps to seal and repair cracks, chips, or other imperfections on a glass surface. As such, the following section will engage the reader with a discussion and analysis of some of the key benefits that this particular product has to offer with regards to consumer utility and the ability of being sold online. The first of these is with regards the ultimate lightweight nature of the product itself. Comprising less than one fluid ounce, this particular product easily the ships; with little to no cost to the end consumer. Furthermore, it should also be understood that this particular product offers a tangential benefit of being a low-cost alternative the increasingly pricey cost of mobile phone screen repair; which was noted previously within this brief analysis (Wolf, 2012). As such, the gamble the individual consumer with regards to integrating person is your products are less than it would be if the product or service was closer in price to the alternative that face. A tertiary benefit is with regards to the fact that the existing supply of this glass gelling compound can easily be purchased in a litany of auto repair supply centers and repackaged at a significant markup (Moran, 2013). Fourthly, the high profit margin that could be denoted from this particular approach is clear and evident. Finally, it must be understood that there is ultimately no cost of research and development regards as the innovations are in place and the product provider is merely repackaging and reselling this product to the consumer for use in a different application that it was originally intended. Accordingly, the utility that can be gained from all of this, for the producer/seller, is that all of these facts help to directly translate to an increased level of money that can be saved on research and development, shipping costs, purchase of raw material in bulk, simplicity of product marketing, and a great many other

The Murders in the Rue Morgue †a Story with Many Firsts Essay Example for Free

The Murders in the Rue Morgue – a Story with Many Firsts Essay â€Å"The Murders in the Rue Morgue† is unquestionably the first detective fiction story. This without a doubt makes Edgar Allan Poe the father of detective crime. Poe was gifted at writing the genre of horror, perhaps because as some say, his life had been â€Å"marred by tragedy from an early age†(online literature). He certainly did have a knack for telling interesting and imaginative tales, which was highlighted by his obsession with death and violence in his stories. Poe was able to keep his readers interested in his stories by not only writing of death and violence but also giving them mystery and a puzzle to solve. Besides being the first detective story, â€Å"The Rue Morgue† is a story full of firsts; it tells the first locked room mystery in which the crime takes place inside a room that has been locked from the inside with no other way in or out and the main character is the first fictional detective. These types of mysteries are certain to keep a reader’s interest because it seems that there is no logical explanation. â€Å"The Rue Morgue† uses both the locked room mystery aspect and keeping the answers until the very end as interest keepers and blends them together to make one fine mystery. This story is just as much about a mystery as it is about deductive reasoning. The characters of C. Auguste Dupin and the narrator, who is his housemate, live very secluded lives. It appears that they do not go out at all during the day but do go and entertain themselves by walking the streets of Paris at night. At an early point in the story the two men are walking when Dupin breaks the silence by a single sentence commenting on the very thoughts of his partner. This small mystery intrigues Dupin’s companion and the reader. Dupin makes his rationalization seem â€Å"so simple that we all feel that we are capable of it. †(Watt, â€Å"Overview†). The reader is compelled to believe that Dupin has an extraordinary power of insight the way he reasons his way to conclusions. He is not unlike Sherlock Holmes in this respect. Holmes is known for his rationalizations and reasoning as well as his eclectic lifestyle and odd habits just as Dupin is. As a matter of fact it is said that Sir Arthur Canon Doyle was inspired by Poe and his Sherlock Holmes character is based on his detective, C.  Auguste Dupin (Mansfield-Kelly, Marchino, 82) Unlike Holmes, Dupin is not a detective by profession; rather he is an amateur detective. He takes on the case of the murders in the Rue Morgue not for money but for his own amusement after reading about it in the paper. He feels that he is more competent than the police and that he can solve the crime before they can. He uses his analytical skills to deduce the solution, which we are enlightened by at the end of the story. He is keenly observant taking in every little detail of the house on the inside and outside. Upon examining the windows in the bedroom Dupin had reasoned that the means of the murderers escape had to have been through either of the windows. As he examined more closely he discovered that they were nailed shut, or where they? One window had in fact had a nail in it, which would limit its usefulness as an escape. The other window however had been â€Å"fixed† so that it could be opened by a spring and when closed again the spring would catch and the window would look as though it was nailed shut as well. Dupin comes to the conclusion that the murdered is an orangutan because of his obsession with literature and books. He is familiar with the description of the orangutan from Baron Georges Cuvier who describes the animal and it’s strength. By knowing these characteristics he is then able to compare the devastation of the two bodies with the â€Å"wild ferocity† (76) of the beast. This all of course is just a wild guess on Dupin’s part until he places an advertisement in a paper calling for the owner of an orangutan to come and claim his beast and a sailor (as he suspected) does indeed come for him. The sailor reluctantly confirms Dupin’s observations to be correct as he describes the heinousness of the crimes in which this orangutan committed, which was a result of being frightened by the sight of his master’s whip. Poe adds a little bit of the grotesque as well. To go along with our class discussion about gore, this could arguably be a first detective story including gore in its pages. There are numerous examples throughout the story that are very descriptive and horrific in nature, especially for that time period. Poe was quite explicit when describing the state of the bodies of the murdered, just as the scenes of the bodies and murders are in CSI. Illustrating the body of Madame L’Espanaye, Poe describes it as â€Å"her throat so entirely cut that, upon attempt to move to raise her, the head fell off. † (62). Poe also gives a telling description of the act of slicing her throat, which is on page 80 in The Longman Anthology of Detective Fiction, â€Å"With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body. Another prime example of gore in this story is the description Dupin gives the narrator of the hair that was found on the hearth, â€Å"Their roots (a hideous site! ) were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp – sure token of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. † (74) These descriptions might not be something that we would consider to be gore by todayâ€℠¢s standards, but in 1841 when this story was written it very well could have made people faint just reading it. I may be simple in my analysis of this story, believing it to be about mystery and reasoning. I have read other people’s thoughts on the subject of this story, which include slavery. Though I don’t necessarily believe that Poe was disguising this story as an uprising against slavery, Edward Higgins White wrote a critical essay discussing that topic. His belief is that the true crime in this story is about slavery and that the orangutan is symbolic of this. He argues that the symbolism is mostly in the last section of the story in which the parallels to race and slavery are most notable. White states †Given the loaded connotations of key terms of the narrativeescaped, master, dreaded whip, fugitive, razor, and of course the Ourang-Outang itselfit would be nearly impossible to ignore the strong suggestions that the story is about slavery, and specifically about slave resistance. † Now I don’t totally disagree with those connotations but I don’t completely believe that Poe was trying to convey that particular message with this story. White questions why Poe feels the need to hide the slave rebel. I ask that same question. I just believe that he is reading too much into the story and is seeing things that are not really there. I do agree, however, that there are some strong parallels and that in reading his essay he makes a good argument. White also brings up the â€Å"Chantilly† passage. He summarizes the fifteen-minute walk in silence in which the detective and his companion take and how Dupin describes how he came to know what his friend was thinking about. He says, â€Å"The basic point of the Chantilly sequence concerns not Dupins intelligence but the narrators ignorance: he does not even understand his own thought processes, the associations made in his imagination. † It is this revelation that leads him to believe that Dupin’s subject is not necessarily the crime itself, but the process of assessing the crime, which reaffirms my belief that the story is about reasoning along with mystery. Edgar Allan Poe, the father of the American detective fiction story. Little did he know at the time the trend that he would be setting for all of literary fiction. The Murders in the Rue Morgue† set precedents for all detective fiction that would be written after it and it established the fundamentals of the detective story technique that are used today. Poe invented the locked room mystery and I believe the first to write descriptions that could be classified as gore. His unique writing style and characters keep readers coming back and keep authors on their toes trying to emulate his style of writing. After all, with out Dupin there would be no Sherlock Holmes and perhaps the genre of detective fiction would not be as we know it to be now.

Literature Review Of Load Shedding Methods

Literature Review Of Load Shedding Methods In chapter 1, a brief discussion about active distribution networks was presented. The importance of operation of islanded distribution networks was discussed. This chapter is intended to give the reader a better understanding of the load shedding methods currently applied and proposed over the years. However, it is assumed that the reader is familiar with basic power system engineering. In section 2.2, the area of probability of islanding and the need for load shedding is discussed. To achieve this objective, existing load shedding methods are reviewed to understand their working principle, requirements, advantages and limitations. The main categories identified are the following (i) Manual / SCADA Load Shedding (ii) Load Shedding using thresholds, (iii) Adaptive Load Shedding, (iv) Intelligent Load Shedding and (v) Load Shedding Based on Static Optimisation which are described and discussed in sections 2.2 through 2.7 respectively. Finally a summary is given in section 2.8 from which a new load shedding method for an islanded distribution network able to address the limitations of existing methods will be proposed. probability of islanding There is by now a considerable amount of literature on load shedding. That most of the literature however deals with large interconnected systems. For smaller systems when a loss of mains / grid event occurs the islanded distribution network have different operating characteristics and restrictions that require different load shedding guidelines. These are due to the low inertia of the distributed generators, the limited spinning reserve and limited communication systems [0] [0]. Load shedding is a practice used power system and serves as a function to try to arrest any frequency or voltage drop when a fault isolating part of the distribution network occurs. Faults in power systems are inevitable, for various reasons such as adverse weather conditions, ageing and failure of equipment, accident, and animal contact. In general, faults happen when an abnormal physical contact occurs between lines or on lines to earth that create a short-circuit path. If the system is not well protected, the high fault current due to the short-circuit path can cause damage to the equipment in the system. Faults also affect the reliability and quality of the power supply, leading to power interruption by frequency and voltage collapse and voltage sag events. Regardless of the interruption period, the losses are often enormous both to the customers and power utility companies. There are two types of fault, determined by the physical nature of the short-circuit path: temporary or permanent. Common causes of temporary faults on overhead lines are lightning strike resulting in a flashover of the insulator; bird or animal contact; and momentary contact due to wind or trees. Faults caused by these events exist for a very short period of time. On the other hand, a permanent fault remains in the system until the short-circuit path is removed. Common causes of permanent faults in power system networks are cable insulation failure, objects falling on the overhead lines, dirt on insulators and lines falling to the ground. When faults occur, a protection device operates to isolate the faulty line from the rest of the system (loss of mains / grid). The generators designated to provide voltage and frequency control will respond to control the island voltage and frequency. In order to achieve smooth transition to island operation, the generators must firstly ride through the fault or failure and secondly act to balance the active and reactive power in the islanded network. With a carefully designed load shedding method the operation of the islanded distribution network might be possible. It is important however that the design of the load shedding method is designed on the understanding of the characteristics of the system involved, including system topology and dynamic characteristics of its generation and load. A poorly design method may be ineffective and eventually lead to total customer interruption. Over the years, however, utility experience and extensive studies on a number of systems have resulted in different methods guidelines. In the following section, principles and guidelines for load shedding methods are reviewed. manual / SCada Load Shedding Manual or operator initiated load shedding [0] is not a reliable method to be used to avoid frequency deviation. However it can be used by some utilities to manually shed load or open ties (interconnectors) with adjacent areas at a frequencies below automatic underfrequency thresholds. This type of action might be necessary to prevent any further frequency deviation and to recover the frequency back to the nominal value. This load shedding scheme cannot be used for the islanded distribution network as it will be very slow as the frequency and voltage in the network will collapse within few seconds making it impossible for the operator to decide the correct defence action required for safe operation. automatic Load Shedding using thresholds An automatic load shedding for transmission system using different schemes such as underfrequency, undervoltage and combinations of the two can be employed to avoid frequency or voltage collapse during a significant imbalance between generation and load. These types of load shedding methods are very dependant on off line studies of the systems dynamic performance and only consider the greatest probable imbalance between generation and load. These methods have to be coordinated with the protections of the generating units, shunt capacitors and other automatic actions that occur in the system during frequency and voltage variations. Underfrequency load Shedding The underfrequency load shedding scheme as explained in the following papers [0] [0] uses relays detecting the systems frequency. These are designed to operate on the instantaneous frequency value where they trip when the frequency drops below the set point of the relay. The shedding is accomplished in the systems distribution or transmission stations where major load feeders can be controlled by tripping of the circuit breakers (CB) automatically. Different settings can be applied in these load shedding schemes. Multiple stages can be used in the scheme [0]. The substation loads can prioritised and grouped according to the importance of the load. The relays can be set to control one or more groups of loads and when there is a frequency drop these can be disconnected sequentially where the group with the highest probability being disconnected the last. Each group disconnected should contribute to the system rate of change of frequency decline. If the load to be disconnected is small compared to the overall imbalance then the contribution will be insignificant and would cause further problems to the systems frequency decline. Another setting usual for this type of scheme is the time delay [0]. The time may can be required and used usually to avoid any frequency transient dips that could arise in the system. The time delay also avoids unnecessary load shedding by allowing the load / frequency controls in the system to respond to the frequency deviation. However load shedding performed with long time delays should be set appropriately as it will make the system more vulnerable to system stability if eventually load shedding is required. This method will work adequate in a situation where the system frequency decline is slow. For example, as discussed in [0], in the UK as stated in the NationalGrids GridCode each transmission area has to disconnect a defined percentage of the peak Demand that each Network Operator whose system is connected to the GB Transmission System shall disconnect by low frequency relays at a range of frequencies. The defined frequencies and the amount of loads are given in Table 1 -1. Table 1à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ1: Load Shedding Scheme employed in the UK Frequency (Hz) % Demand disconnection for each Network Operator in Transmission Area NGET SPT SHETL 48.8 5 48.75 5 48.7 10 48.6 7.5 10 48.5 7.5 10 48.4 7.5 10 10 48.3 48.2 7.5 10 10 48.0 5 10 10 47.8 5 Total % Demand 60 40 40 The percentages in Table 1 -1 are cumulative such that, for example, should the frequency fall to 48.6 Hz in the NGET Transmission Area, 27.5% of the total Demand connected to the GB Transmission System in the NGET Transmission Area shall be disconnected by the action of low frequency relays. A significant drawback of this method is that the systems frequency must be already be low before the relay can operate which can delay the load shedding action and the frequency recovery of the system. Additionally these types of schemes usually shed more than the required amount of load. Undervoltage load Shedding Undrevoltage load shedding method has been successfully deployed in transmission systems to protect them from voltage collapse [0] [0]. System studies are required to determine which systems are potential candidates for suitable the undervoltage load shedding method. This method is most useful in slow decaying systems where the undervoltage load shedding relay time relays can coordinated accordingly and operate to alleviate the system from overload conditions and low voltages. Voltage collapse can be studied using steady state simulations for the identified areas using a power flow analysis. System planning engineers conduct numerous studies using P-V and Q-V as well as other analytical methods to determine the amount of load required to be shed to preserve voltage stability under different disturbances. Dynamic simulations can then determine the speed of the collapse and load shedding settings. An example as discussed in [0] in the US in the Puget Sound area, which is prone to voltage collapse has been studied. The voltage trip thresholds were determined from the results of steady state simulations of worst contingencies. The time delays for the relays were coordinated to address control actions of the automatic capacitor switching, generator limits, on load tap changing transformer using dynamic simulations. Table 1à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ2: Load Shedding Scheme employed in the US Voltage (pu) Time delay (s) % Demand disconnection for Network Operator in Transmission Area 0.90 3.5 5 0.92 5.0 5 0.92 8.0 5 When the monitored bus voltages fall to 0.90 pu or lower for a minimum of 3.5 s then 5% of the load is disconnected. Additionally another 5% of load disconnection should occur when the voltage falls to 0.92 pu or lower for 5.0 s. There limitation associated with proper application of undervoltage load shedding is the location of its application.to where the relaying may be appropriately applied. If it is placed on a distribution line the effects of auto tap changers mask a system overload condition from the relay, or alternatively a line switching operation or the startup of a large industrial plant on one feeder could fool the relay. The relay would not be appropriate at locations directly adjacent to generation powerful enough to control bus voltages even during severe overloads. The relay is best applied to locations with fairly stiff voltages under all normal conditions, so a low voltage condition will reliably indicate a severe overload condition, as may be assumed to be the case at large substations associated with bulk power transmission lines and therefore this method cannot be effectively applied in islanded distribution networks where DG unit power and load demand varies. combination load Shedding In order to increase the security of the above discussed methods for underfrequency load shedding the relay could be set up to supervise the voltage, the current or the rate of change of frequency. According to their combined settings, the relay could either be blocked or initiate tripping of the CB to avoid any misoperations. One combination load shedding scheme is to use an underfrequency load shedding relay with voltage supervision. Basically the operation procedure of load shedding is blocked from operating unless the voltage is below a given threshold. The underfrequency relay will be able to trip the CB as long as the bus voltage it is monitoring is lower than a set point. Another combination is to use current supervision instead of the voltage. The purpose of the current supervision is to select which feeders to trip. This can achieved by monitoring which feeders are loaded above a certain point and then the relay will initiate the load shedding signal. An alternative is to use the rate of change of frequency for supervision [0] [0]. During a disturbance the supervision of the rate of change of frequency can block the tripping for very fast frequency changes but would allow for typical frequency decay rates. Also instead of measuring the instantaneous rate of change of frequency supervision is to use the frequency change trend. In other words by monitoring the average rate of frequency change will provide a more secure decision for tripping during disturbances. The load shedding decision of the scheme is made by monitoring the frequency change over a specified amount of time usually few hundred milli seconds. Therefore making the operation of the relay slower than the ones employing the rate of change of frequency. automatic ADAPTIve Load Shedding Adaptive control involves updating the amount of load to shed used by the method to cope with the fact that the conditions such as the power imbalance between generation and load of the system are time-varying or uncertain. It is important in these circumstances to minimise consumer disruption through proper design of the load shedding arrangements. An adaptive load shedding, is based on the relays reacting to a disturbance either by being instructed the amount to shed or by having certain defined criteria based on the rate of change of frequency. Anderson and Mirteydar in [0] present an adaptive methodology for setting of underfrequency relays that is based on the initial rate of change of frequency at the relay. The frequency performance of the islanded is represented by a linear system frequency response as shown in Figure 1 -1 and presented in more detail in the literature in [0]. Figure 1à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ1: Simplified frequency response with disturbance input where: H = inertia constant (s) FH = fraction of total power generated by HP turbine TR = reheat time constant (s) Km = mechanical power gain factor R = droop characteristic (pu) D = damping factor Clearly the only observed quantity that gives any clue as to the size of the disturbance is the initial slope of frequency decline. The use of the initial slope to estimate the magnitude of the disturbance requires that every substation in the island will observe slightly different slopes and will therefore shed load based on different estimates of the disturbance. However on average the system as a whole will shed approximately the correct amount of load. To set the parameters for the relays as explained they are based on a simulation of the frequency response for the system. In the example given (H = 3.5 s, FH = 0.3, TR = 8.0 s, Km = 0.85, R = 0.06 and D = 1) the evaluation of the frequency and its slope against different amounts of disturbances are given in Table 1 -3. Table 1à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ3: Initial Slope and Maximum Deviation vs Upset (frequency nominal 60 Hz) Pstep df/df ΆÃƒ Ã¢â‚¬ °max fmin pu pu/s Hz/s Hz Hz -0.2 -0.0286 -1.7143 -1.6438 58.356 -0.3648 -0.0521 -3.1260 -3.0000 57.000 -0.4 -0.0571 -3.4286 -3.2876 56.712 -0.6 -0.0857 -5.1429 -4.9313 55.069 -0.8 -0.1143 -6.8571 -6.5751 53.425 -1.0 -0.1429 -8.5714 -8.2189 51.781 The lowest frequency permitted in the system is 57 Hz from the nominal 60 Hz. Therefore when a magnitude greater than -0.0521 pu/s is observed load shedding must be triggered. This method relies on the fact that the amount of load shedding is a function of only the inertia constant and the observed slope. The inertia constant is the rotating kinetic energy of all units in the island divided by the total connected volt ampere rating of the units. This parameter has to be estimated. Therefore, the initial slope is the only unknown. The load shedding amount is computed in per unit, which makes it easy to apply to every load and to every load shedding relay. A positive is that communication is not required between relays and the boundaries of the island are not required to be known. However the drawbacks are that if it is applied for the islanding application of islanded networks this might not be possible as the method needs good estimates of the inertia of the system D, R, TR, Km and FH. This can significantly change with the varying DG units and loads in the distribution network. Another adaptive load shedding method presented by Terzija in [0] uses similarly as the previous method a variation of the typical swing equation. Due to the dynamic responses of turbines, governors, other control actions, spinning reserve, loads are not taken in account in the calculation of the required amount of load to be shed as given in . Where H is the inertia constants and assumed to be known in advance to the disturbance. The adaptive approach is based on real time estimation of fc (frequency of equivalent inertial centre) which is proposed to be calculated centrally by measuring the local frequencies at each generator. The proposed method assumes that the time constants in the power system are large and with modern communication this method would be possible for big power systems. However in distribution networks communication is believed not to change drastically in the near future making this application difficult to implement. This is because the estimation and control information are evaluated after the disturbance occurred. Van Cutsem and Otomega proposed a method in [0] which relies on a set of load shedding controllers distributed over the region susceptible to voltage instability. Each controller monitors the bus voltage and act on a set of loads located at that bus. Each controller acts when its monitored voltage falls below some threshold and trips at different time according the severity of the drop. The action can be repeated until the voltage is above the threshold voltage. The principle of operation of the controller is described as follows. The delay à Ã¢â‚¬Å¾ depends on the time evolution of V as follows. A block of load is shed at a time t0 + à Ã¢â‚¬Å¾ such that: where C is a constant to be adjusted. This control law yields an inverse-time characteristic: the deeper the voltage drops, the less time it takes to reach the value C and, hence, the faster the shedding. The larger C, the more time it takes for the integral to reach this value and hence, the slower the action. Furthermore, the delay is lower bounded: to prevent the controller from reacting on a nearby fault. Indeed, in normal situations time must be left for the protections to clear the fault and the voltage to recover to normal values. Similarly, the amount ΆPsh of power shed at time t0 + à Ã¢â‚¬Å¾ depends on the time evolution of V through where K is another constant to be adjusted, and ΆVav is the average voltage drop over the [t0, t0 + à Ã¢â‚¬Å¾]interval, i.e., Moreover, the whole system will tend to shed first where voltages drop the most. This location changes with the disturbance. Hence, the proposed scheme automatically adjusts the shedding location to the disturbance it faces. Note that the above features are achieved without resorting to a dedicated communication network. The controllers do not exchange information, but are rather informed of their respective actions through the power system itself. The drawback for this method for distribution network is that the tuning which consists of choosing the best values for Vth, C and K. A C and K combination suitable can be identified by minimising the total load shedding over all disturbance scenarios. Clearly this method would shed more loads for some scenarios. An additional concern is that the dynamic performance of the DG units and loads is not taken in account when performing load shedding if applied to the islanded distribution network and by trying to shed in steps the frequency drop in the network might drop significantly. automatic Intelligent Load Shedding Applications of intelligent load shedding in power system engineering (e.g. genetic algorithms, artificial neural networks, MonteCarlo etc.) have been demonstrated in [0] [0]. The characteristics which are inherent to intelligent methods, such as the ability to learn and generalization make it feasible for applications such as load shedding. You et al. in [0] discuss of a method that uses the rate of change of frequency to load shed. The method uses the same approach to calculate the required amount of load as in [0] and at the same time, the conventional load shedding method with undefrequency thresholds is incorporated to form a new two level load shedding method. The conventional load shedding method has longer time delays and lower frequency thresholds which can be used to prevent unnecessary load shedding in response to small disturbances. If the disturbance is large, the second layer will be activated and a block signal to the first layer is enabled. The second layer based on the rate of change of frequency load shedding will shed more load quickly at the early stage of the disturbance. Similarly as to paper [0], this method will have the same limitations when applied to the islanded distribution network. In the paper [0] which follows this study, the explanation of the selection of the settings for the relays is discussed. Agent technology is to try to assure that the method will withstand all possible disturbances. Traditionally after a major disturbance, the system is revisited and settings of devices and control actions are changed so that the system will withstand the same disturbance in the future. This however due to analysis of the system significant time and cost will be required. For the autonomous and adaptive learning capability for the agents, the reinforcement learning technique is used. Reinforcement learning is learning by interaction. The agent tries actions on its environment and then, the tendencies of taking particular actions are reinforced by receiving scalar evaluations of its actions. Thus determining the amount of load to be shed required to avoid collapse. The paper does not discuss whether the technique is applied online or offline through simulation. Clearly for the online this would not be ideal as it will take a lot of number of failures until the agents are properly set for that particular disturbance. For the offline simulation a concern is that for islanded distribution networks the topology, DG unit power and load demand will change thus making the decision of the action of the agents is difficult to train. Another concern is communication between agents. Fast communication would be required for coordinated decisions. Another approach to load shedding is the use of fuzzy expert system and is described in [0]. In this paper Sallam and Khafaga described a method to control the voltage instability by load shedding using fuzzy technique as fuzzy controller. The operation of the method relies on the experts knowledge which is expressed by language containing ambiguous or fuzzy description. The aim of this study is to design and analyse a fuzzy controller for the study to control against load and voltage instability by calculating the optimum load shedding as output. Similarly in [0] the authors propose genetic algorithms for the optimum selection of load shedding. These techniques search and optimise the amount of load shedding using objectives and constrains required for a practical load shedding method. Also in [0] the authors introduce another technique using the artificial neural networks is presented. To prepare the training data set for the artificial neural network, transient stability analysis of the power system is required and to find the minimum load shedding for various scenarios. By selecting the total power generation, total load demand and frequency decay rate as the input neurons for the method, the minimum of load shedding is determined to maintain the stability of the power system. In paper [0] Thalassinakis and Dialynas introduce a computational method using MonteCarlo simulation approach for the calculation of the settings of the underfrequency load shedding relays is discussed. The frequency performance as previously discussed in section 1.5 is used here as well. The strategy for the relay settings will be determined against amount of load to shed, time delay, rate of change of frequency and underfrequency level. A new strategy is developed by changing these settings. The MonteCarlo then computes the system through reliability indices of generating units, the system frequency and load shedding indices. load shedding based on static optimisation The first theory of applying load shedding using an on line dynamic simulation of the power system network was introduced by La Scala et al. [0]. Followed by an improvement of the method combing a control action to ensure angle and voltage stability enhancement in [0]. The first paper that introduced the same concept applied for large power systems to the smaller distribution network is described in [0] by Nelson and Aponte. A more recent study using similar technique is also presented in [0]. The paper presented in [0] describes the philosophy and the implementation of a preventive load shedding control algorithm for the application in dynamic security assessment. The methodology is based on nonlinear programming techniques, for assessing control actions to guarantee the dynamic security of power systems. The basic idea is that the online dynamic preventive control can be seen as a static optimisation problem with minimising function and equality and inequality constrains. The equality constrains consist in the discretisation at each time step of the differential algebraic set of equations representing the power system. The inequality constrains define a domain where the system trajectories should be contained in order to satisfy the requirements for the system performance stability and steady state voltage dips. In [0] the formulation includes corrective actions based on load shedding. The proposed method assumes that the analysis is performed to detect particular disturbances threatening the dynamic security of the system. The analysis is based suing the n-1 rule which is performed in advanced and applying the results immediately after the detected contingency. Each analysis has its associated strategies consisting with the corresponding amount of load to be shed at a fixed number of controlled nodes. The optimisation however is evaluated based on the steady state values of angle, voltage and active power (generator and load). Load shedding based on static optimisation performs load flow to calculate the initial P, V for all the nodes in the system. Then the method performs a transient simulation assessment to ensure the system is stable against angle and voltage. Followed by an approach to the minimisation of a function in presence of equality and inequality constrains consist in incorpora ting the inequalities in the cost function by adopting the penalty factor method and treating the whole problem as a minimisation in presence of the sole equality constrains by the use of Lagrange multipliers. This method has been used for synchronous generators in transmission systems. However in distribution networks because of the diversity of the generators and their ride through capability this approach could result in conditions where optimised solutions do not meet the requirements as shown in Figure 1 -2 [0]. Figure 1à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ2: Ride through capability of Generating Unit, DC Converter or Power Park Modules. Explanation of graph required. Each Generating Unit, DC Converter or Power Park Module shall remain transiently stable and connected to the system without tripping. However for small generating units connected in the distribution network their transient behaviour could be as shown in Figure 1 -2 b and c where local protection and circuit breaker operation of generators or sensitive equipment will be disconnected after such a response. Similar to the voltage is for the frequency range. Therefore the load flow with corrective control for angle and voltage stability approach for the load shedding optimisation is not appropriate for distribution networks. In [0] and [0] describe of a method implemented in distribution networks where not only the amount of load shedding is optimised but also the time for the disconnection. The current trend is to apply the corrective measures as soon as possible or delayed for the sake of event discrimination. The study and results however show that when the corrective action is applied at the optimal time increased damping and enhanced response are observed. summary The use of load shedding as a tool to keep the network stable has been constantly evolving, and different approaches have been formulated. Relaying schemes like underfrequency and ROCOF [0] [0] are some examples of the mechanisms implemented to trigger a load shedding event. Typical load shedding schemes based on predefined threshold set points is quick, simple and reliable measure against system disturbance. When the frequency of the system reaches a specified threshold value, a time delay is inserted prior to the shedding action in order to avoid overshedding and assist the coordination of the next stage of load shedding action. This technique however when adopted for the islanded operation of small distribution networks would have several disadvantages. Too few frequency levels could lead to overshedding, but on the other hand, time delays between stages could add up and may not allow for enough load to be shed in time to re-establish nominal frequency. The implementation of ROCOF techniques mitigates some of these problems. The ROCOF value calculation is an immediate indicator of the power imbalance; but for the distribution network the variation of the DG units operation would make this measurement unreliable. Also the average ROCOF calculation may take too long and eventually make the load shedding method slow in operation. Even if accurate measure of the islanded distribution network ROCOF valu

Leadership Cultural Diversity and Global Mindset

Leadership Cultural Diversity and Global Mindset Extensive research has been undertaken over the past 50 years to identify and analyze leadership behavior. Leadership has been defined in many different ways, but most definitions assume that it involves an influence process concerned with facilitating the performance of a collective task. It involves a process whereby intentional influence is exerted by one person over other people to guide, structure, and facilitate activities and relationships in a group to achieve organizational effectiveness and success. Robins and Judge (2008) define leadership as the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals (p. 385). Along the ability to influence, intercultural, interpersonal and organizational communication skills are crucial for global leaders. For effective leadership in multicultural settings, a global mindset and diversity understanding are the most important skills required of leaders. There are several distinct theoretical bases for leadership. At first, leaders were felt to be born, not made. So-called great person theory of leadership, it implied that some individuals are born with certain traits that allowed them to emerge out of any situation or period of history to become leaders. The trait theories concentrate on the leaders themselves and have shown little promise for either the understanding of the leadership process or the relationship with effective leadership performance. Recent research findings show a significant relationship with the Big Five personality traits and effective leadership. According to Luthans (2008), there is emerging interest in positive organizational behavior capacities (i.e. hope, optimism, resiliency, emotional intelligence, and, especially, self-efficacy) and effective leaders, and there is continuing concern with leader skills and competences (pp. 413-416). Most researchers evaluate leadership effectiveness in terms of the consequences of the leaders actions for followers. Leadership is an exchange process between the leader and the followers. The group and exchange theories emphasize the importance of followers. Graen and Uhl Bien (1995) applied a multi-level and multi-domain perspective on leadership, distinguishing between leader-based, follower-based, and relationship-based leadership styles (p. 224). Leader-based style was found to include more structured tasks, strong leader position power, member acceptance of leader, and common understanding of leader and power. Follower-based became known for more unstructured tasks, weak position power, member non-acceptance of leader, and leaders absence from responsibilities. The relationship based style included situation favorability for leader between two extremes, accommodated differing needs of subordinates, and could elicit superior work from different types. Now known as Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory, it says the leaders treat individual followers differently; in particular, leaders and their associates develop two-person dyadic relationships that affect the behavior of both (Luthans, p. 417). This research continues to be relatively supportive despite some criticism it received over the years. LMX seems to be more descriptive of the typical process of role making by leaders, rather than prescribing the patterns of downward exchange relations optimal for leadership effectiveness. However, from the social cognitive perspective, it should be taken into account that leader-member exchanges are a reciprocal process, as leaders may be inclined to change follower self-concept in the short run to achieve performance goals and more enduring changes. Meanwhile, followers reciprocally shape leaders self-schemas through their responses, both as individuals and through collective reactions. The traditionally recognized theories of leadership tend to be more situation-based. In particular, Fiedlers contingency model made a significant contribution to leadership theory and potentially to the practice of human resource management. The situation in which an organization operates plays an influential role in designing and managing the organization effectively. The situational variables and contextual aspects of leadership affect leadership roles, skills, behavior, and followers performance and satisfaction. Effective group performance depends on the proper match between the leaders style and the degree to which the situation gives control to the leader. The theory suggests that a key factor to leadership success is the individuals fixed leadership style. Based on empirical research, Fiedler concluded that task-oriented leaders end to perform better in situations of high and low control, while relationship-oriented leaders perform best in moderate control situations. It is im portant to note that contingency theory emphasizes that leaders are not successful in all situations. In the 21st century workplace, this theory is still predictive and provides useful information about the type of leadership most likely to be successful. Data from this empirical research theory could be particularly useful to organizations in developing leadership profiles. However, the theory does not clearly explain why people with certain leadership style are more effective in particular situations than others, as well as what to do when the leader and the situation mismatch in the workplace. In addition, mush use of psychology and sociology has contributed to the development of five major contingency theories: Fiedlers least-preferred co-worker (LPC) theory (relationships, power, and tasks), Evanss path-goal theory (paths and rewards), Kerr and Jermiers leadership substitutes theory, multiple-linkage models (leadership and group effectiveness), and Fiedlers cognitive resource t heory (Robins and Judge, 2008, pp. 386-403). The studies have given a rise to a number of taxonomies which Yukl (2002) proposes might be refined into the three jointly inter-reacting categories of task-, relations-, and change-oriented behaviors. On looking at the fields of study covering participative (change-oriented) leadership, delegation and empowerment, Yukl more closely examined Vroom-Yetoons model of participative leadership to identify decision procedures in different situations. In his Leadership in Organizations book, he considers some detrimental success of collective participatory efforts by members of an organization to achieve meaningful tasks then gives the following definition of leadership: Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how it can be done effectively, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish the shared objectives (p. 7). One of the most important and difficult leadership responsibilities is leading change, especially the cultural change. The creation and establishment of a clear and compelling vision is useful to guide the organization through change, and guidelines are necessary for formulating a vision, as well as implementing change for political or organizational or people-oriented actions. Throughout the change process, the role of the leader is key. While traditional leadership theories focused on the leaders influential power over the followers, the contemporary leadership theories focus on the importance of the leader as a communicator. Contemporary organizations are constantly searching for leaders who can exhibit charismatic, authentic, and transformational leadership qualities. They want leaders who have clear vision and the right charisma to carry out the vision. Although exhibiting the right behaviors at the right time may be perceived as a result of true leadership effectiveness, the evidence strongly shows that people have a relatively uniform perception of what a leader should look like. They attribute true leadership to people who are smart, personable, verbally adept, and inspirational. The effectiveness of charismatic and transformational leadership crosses cultural boundaries. Effective leaders today must develop trusting relationships with the followers, because as organizations have become less stable and predict able, strong bonds of trust are likely to be replacing bureaucratic rules in defining expectations and relationships. Leaders who are not trusted are not likely to be effective. Yukl clearly explains, in chapter 9, why attributions of charisma are jointly determined by the leader, the followers, and the situation (pp. 240-267). Charismatic leaders arouse enthusiasm and commitment in followers by advocating a vision and increasing the followers confidence about achieving the vision. Attribution of charisma to the leader is more likely if the vision and strategy for attaining it are innovative, the leader takes personal risks to promote it, and the strategy appears to be succeeding. Self-confidence, strong convictions, speaking ability, and other leader traits or skills increase the likelihood of charisma. Ethical charismatic leaders use power to serve others, align vision with followers needs and aspirations, consider and learn from others, as well as stimulate followers to think independently and to question the leaders views. They prefer open, two-way communication, share recognition with others by coaching, developing, and supporting followers. They rely o n internal moral standards to satisfy organizational and societal interests (Howell and Avolio, 1992, p. 45). Robins and Judge (2008) defines charismatic leadership theory as a theory which states that followers make attributions of heroic or extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviors (p. 413). Charismatic leadership may affect some followers more than others. People are more receptive to charismatic leadership especially at times of crisis, stress, and negative outcomes. Charismatic leaders have idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Luthans, p. 435). However, as a group they are considered a subsection of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders make followers more aware of the importance and value of the work and induce followers to transcend self-interest for the sake of the organization. They empower organizations by developing follower skills and confidence to prepare followers for greater responsibilities. Under difficult conditions, resilient transformational leaders help followers to see threats as opportunities for advancement and responsibility for success (Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio, 2007, p. 126-127). They support and encourage followers to maintain enthusiasm and effort in the face of obstacles and difficulties. As a result of such influence, followers motivation and performance increases along with improved trust and respect toward the leader. The primary characteristic of transformational leadership is the idealized influence, as opposed to charisma, allowing people to differentiate between the two theories. The major difference is how followers are treated. While transformational lea ders seek to empower and elevate the followers to develop followers into leaders, charismatic leaders may seek to keep followers weak, loyal, and dependant on them. While transformational leaders increase follower motivation and performance to a greater degree, effective leaders typically use a combination of transformational and transactional leadership types (Yukl, pp. 253-254). Leadership effectiveness may not necessarily be enhanced by transactional leadership; however, contingent reward behavior is effective for recognizing accomplishments, as well as rewarding the efforts and good performance (Bass, 1990, p. 22). Global Mindset Cultural Diversity In todays rapidly changing global economy, it has become crucial for leaders to possess such intelligence that analyzes and employs the greatest possible emerging and challenging opportunities as well as observes and interprets the dynamic and culturally diverse world in which they lead humans the most valuable assets of any given organization. The success of the strategies multicultural organizations pursue is largely impacted by the leaders perceptions and interpretations of the global socioeconomic environment. With central focus in the field of cognitive psychology and organizational theory, global mindset has much to do with human beings and their sense in the world in which they encounter daily interaction with one another. We live in a world where do exit dynamic, ambiguous, and complex information that get our attention and absorption. Using cognitive filters, we are selective in our absorption and biased in our interpretation. There exists the likelihood that our mindset an d new information may, however, be engaged in an inconsistent correlation, under which circumstance the information becomes subject to rejection or the mindset becomes subject to change. The mindset of other members in an organization has an influence on and does indeed shape the mindset of the collectivity of individuals within the organization. The level of power, the status of people with whom being interacted, the purpose of interaction, etc, does play a crucial role in the shaping of ones mindset. New experiences, a change in the relative power of different individuals, and a change in the process of organizational and social interaction within members do result in a change of the organizational mindset. According to Gupta and Govindarajan (2002), the cognitive psychology has shown that mindset exists through knowledge structure primarily composed of differentiation and integration attributes. The latter first of two refers to the narrowness of knowledge the individual brings to a context, whereas the latter one refers to the level of integration of disparate knowledge elements in the knowledge structures. When differentiation is low, integration is not an issue; however, when it is high, integration becomes a critical attribute. Many of us are changeable and each time frequently swing towards the person we last met. This scenario where high differentiation is accompanied with low integration is known to be High D-Low I. Conversely, those who welcome diverse options and demonstrate integrative perspective are known as High D-High I which itself is the definition of global mindset. Gupta and Govindarajan define global mindset more precisely as one that combines openness to and awarene ss of diversity across cultures and markets with a propensity and ability to synthesize across this diversity The value of global mindset is best illustrated by the companys ability to combine speed with accurate response. The companys ability to grasp the needs in the local market and its ability to build cognitive bridges across the needs and between its own global experience and capabilities are manifested in such comparative advantages which identify the emerging opportunities, analyze the trade-off between the local adaptation and global standardization, smoothen the complimentary activity coordination across the borders, spread out the concept of new products and technologies, share best practices effectively and efficiently across subsidiaries. The value of global mindset becomes quite apparent when analyzing how its presence or absence might affect a companys strategy in a rapidly growing foreign market of extremely complex economy where public policy is unpredictable and preference is given to local companies as opposed to foreign. Modifying and reformulating strategies in order to achieve goals in the foreign market may still not be enough for success if there is a lack of understanding of changes in the foreign market and demand and lack of integrative global perspective towards the ongoing events in the foreign market. Awareness of changes in foreign market environments can therefore become a major source for valuing and upholding the global mindset and identifying and addressing its ever-existing challenges. Achieving global mindset occurs through cultivation, as prescribed by cognitive psychology and organization theory, and it is driven by curiosity and commitment to gaining knowledge about the world and its way of operation, by exposure to diversity, by unequivocal formulation of current mindsets, as well as by development of integrated perspective on diversity of standards in cultures and markets. Cultivating curiosity about the world is a reflection of attitudes, an element of individual personality makeup. Although the companies are capable of manipulating with adroitness to further produce curiosity among employees, their greatest freedom still lies on employee selection and in managing the demographic makeup of the companies. Companies cultivate knowledge regarding diverse cultures and markets through facilitating such knowledge at individual levels and through diversifying the company workforce itself which build cognitive diversity inside the mindset of individuals as well as b ring together a diverse knowledge base across the organization members. Formulating current mindset is heavily influenced by the process of interaction between people and the environment which shapes the interpretation of the surrounding world, hence affecting how the mindset changes or remains unchanged. Self-consciousness becomes a necessary and inseparable component when cultivating the current mindset which work best through asking managers to articulate own beliefs about the subject domain, as well as through drawing comparative analysis of how different managers would interpret the same reality. Getting formal education that builds on the awareness of diverse cultures and markets and participating in events and projects in foreign markets, and emerging oneself into more extensive cultural learning programs and trainings are all powerful ways of constructing a global mindset. Diversity is about differences, and humans do not easily negotiate differences. The human brains response to differences is typically arousal, alarm, and sometimes attacks, until such time as the differences are processed by exposure, reason, or mastery (Marsella, 2009, p. 121). The interactions between social diversity markers (i.e. ethnicity, race, age, sex, gender, social class, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental challenges, physique, etc) as well as between interpersonal and individual differences result in different conditions of acceptability. Differences become the source of problems in cultures and organization; however, diversity encounters occur under problematic perceptions. Leaders across the globe face the ever-increasing cultural challenges during their day-to-day interaction with humans within and outside the organization. In this global era, cultural diversity intelligence, competence, understanding, appreciation and embracement are required of effective global leaders. [Negotiate Diversity Immergance of Conflict (this is on a chart in the article)] Successful leadership of todays increasingly diverse workplace is among the most important global challenges. The problem of managing todays culturally diverse workforce is the unfortunate inability of the leaders and managers to fully comprehend the organizational, cultural, and global dynamics. The global economy has moved diversity to the top of any leaders agenda. There is a reason to believe that cultural issues in leadership should be studied to reveal both differences between cultures and specific within-country practices that would help expatriate leaders succeed. Organizational communication will differ across cultures. Todays global leaders need to recognize such differences. Most of the research on leadership theories has been conducted in English-speaking countries, limiting our knowledge about how culture might influence their validity, particularly in Eastern cultures. During the last decade, interest in cross-cultural leadership has increased dramatically for apparent reasons. Increasing globalization of organizations has made it more critical to learn about effective leadership in different cultures. Influencing and motivating culturally diverse workforce has become an increasing challenge for global leaders or leaders of cultural diversity on local levels. Successful influence requires a broad understanding of cultural differences and motivational factors in each culture. The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program has carried on a cross-cultural investigation of leadership and national culture, using data from 825 organizations in 62 countries to identify nine dimensions on which national cultures differ: power distance; individualism versus collectivism; masculinity versus femininity; uncertainty avoidance; long-term versus short-term orientation; and humane versus performance orientation (Robbins and Judge, 2008, p. 125). The GLOBE framework is primarily based on Geert Hofstedes Framework for Assessing Cultures one of the most referenced approaches for analyzing cultural variances since 1970s (p. 124). According to Yukl (2002), the results of the GLOBE research indicate that certain traits, skills, and behaviors are rated highly relevant for effective leaderships in all culture, for example, integrity (honest, trustworthy, just), visionary (has foresight, plans ahead), inspirational (positive, dynamic, encourages, motivates, builds confidence), decisive, diplomatic, achievement-oriented, and team-integrator, whereas some attributes varied widely in relevance across cultures, such as ambitious, cautious, compassionate, domineering, indirect, risk taker, self-sacrificing, sensitive, status conscious, etc. (p. 418). Examining the relationship among societal cultures, situational variables (such as strategy, culture, uncertainty, etc), leadership process, and organizational effectiveness, the GLOBE project has provided significant research results for leadership of cultural diversity in the rapid pace of globalization and economic development. To have a broader understanding of how leadership of cultural diversity and organizational communication with global mindset are applied in real world practices, I have decided to interview three individuals, who hold positions in public, non-profit, and private sectors, as well as to analyze and relate my findings to some leadership and diversity management research. My first interviewee, Miss. Hanying Li from Singapore, had started working in private sector but transitioned to the non-profit sector for most of her career life. She currently serves as senior program officer for Mangroves for the Future, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (AUCN) Asia Regional Office in Bangkok, Thailand. Mangroves for the Future (MFF) is a regional multi-partner initiative on coastal ecosystem rehabilitation and management. Her main responsibilities include program coordination with all stakeholders, including six partner agencies, two donors, eight focal countries, etc., as well as project management (84 small projects and 9 large projects in six countries), and day-to-day running of the regional Secretariat. She has unshakeable knowledge of diversity and enormous amount of professional experiences cross-culturally. She was a valuable asset for my research, as I was trying to particularly learn about cross-cultural leadership in Asian cultures. Wi th her strong background and knowledge of Singaporean culture and workforce, she was able to address the core culture values and beliefs of Singaporeans which facilitated my exploratory study of Hofstedes and Trampenaars cross-cultural dimensions and leadership. Singapore is a major success story. Its solid foundation leaves only the question of how to continue expanding in the face of increasing international competition. To date, however, Singapore has emerged as an urban planners ideal model and the leader and financial center of Southeast Asia. Li believes that leading an organization, motivating the workforce, and assuring organizational success in Singapore require a careful study of cultural values, traditions, and norms, as well as diversity training. In her opinion, not many people from western leading nations have been successful in Asian markets, primarily because of the inability to understand and accept the cultural differences and lead according to those differences. According to Li, Singaporeans treat special groups of people with special respect and courtesy. Honored guests, elders, parents, teachers, bosses and leaders must be treated differently. They strongly value and adhere to a hierarchical relationship in society, as a result of Confucian teaching thinking. They see the society as composed of people who are inherently unequal in rank and standing, and differences in rank are signaled and reinforced by the style of the interaction between the parties involved. Deference, respect and formality towards superiors are the norm. In addition, juniors are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves unless specifically and directly asked. Hence, subordinates in Singapore are unlikely to question authority and are less likely to initiate upward communication unless requested to do so because its culture values the importance of status differences and hierarchies. The complex authority and status relationships characterize Singaporeans as a hier archical culture which parallels with the idea of power distance in Hofstedes study. Luthans (2008) notes that power distance is the degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally (pg. 432). Singapore has a high rating on power distance which means that large inequalities of power and wealth exist and are tolerated in the culture. Li suggests that a societys level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders; furthermore, power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and anybody with some international experience will be aware that all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others. In Singapore, people feel less threatened by ambiguous situations, motions are shown less in public, younger people are trustworthy, and people are willing to take risks in life. The authorities are there to serve the citizens. Conflicts and competition can be contained on the level of fair play and are used constructively. Singapore has comparatively low uncertainty avoidance; it has organization settings with less structuring of activities, fewer written rules, less risk taking by managers, higher labor turnover, and more ambitious employees. The Organization encourages personnel to use their own initiative and assume responsibility for their actions. Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguous situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these. Luthans (2008) defines uncertainty avoidance as the extent a society, organization, or groups rely on norms, rules, and procedures to alleviate the unpredictability of future ev ents (p. 432). Li mentions that leaders from individualistic cultures might have hard time motivating Singaporean employees if there is no appreciation and respect for employees family members. Tasks are not usually distributed to individuals, but rather to a group. Traditional Asian value of family ties remains paramount to the average Singaporean. Hence, it is not surprising that it is the group rather than the individual that is emphasized in Singaporean society. In Singapore, children are raised to stay within the family. From early infancy on, children are conditioned to be a part of the group and to stay within the group. They are socialized to be dependent on the group, to make decisions that benefit the group, and to make choices for, and in support of, the group. Children are taught to assist and uphold the honor of the group, whether that group is the family, the school, the neighborhood, or the nation. The person who places individual needs ahead of the group needs is considered to be am oral, almost a misfit, or even a social deviant. To sum up, familys moral influences and kinship partners lead Singaporeans to be collectivistic, rather than individualistic. Group collectivism is the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, or cohesiveness in their organizations or families (Luthans, 2008, p. 432). In contrast, individualism is t he tendency of people to look after themselves and their immediate family. Lastly, towards the end of the interview, Li mentioned about the importance of cross-cultural human-relation intelligence for effective leadership. Some cultures like Singapore are emotionally neutral not showing their feelings in public or organizations, acting stoically, and maintaining their composure which does not necessarily mean disinterest. This notion of emotional intelligence has become increasingly important for culturally diverse leadership environments. Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio (2007) defined emotional intelligence (EI) as the ability to accurately perceive, express, understand, use, and manage emotions in oneself and others in order to facilitate cognitive, emotional, and social growth and development (p. 183). My second interviewee, Mr. Hovep Seferian, is the Vice Consul, Press and Trade Attachà © of the Brazilian Embassy in the Republic of Armenia. Throughout his life and career, he has lived and experienced major cultural differences and challenges in Syria, Lebanon, India, Egypt, France, Brazil, and Armenia. His multicultural experiences have immensely influenced his perspective on cultural differences. As an immigrant especially in India and Lebanon, he underwent major obstacles, hoping to integrate in the system without being discriminated. Life experiences have not only made him a transformational leader, but also a selfless public servant and administrator. Seferian emphasizes the importance of ethical and moral responsibilities public leaders should have when tensions and diversity challenges occur. They are to be perceived honorable in their field before they are trusted with public affairs and business. Once honor is gained by the followers, they are to follow personal morality, as well as professional, organizational, and social ethics. An ethical public leader would not use the position for personal or private gains in a democratic mechanism. Nations are democratic when public officials follow the rule of law to truthfully serve the citizens without selfish ambitions. Personal motivations, value-free neutrality, legitimacy, and social equity may heavily influence on public leaders role in the society and their commitment to ethical conduct in decision making and democratic service. Personal morality is closely related to personal motivations, since personal concerns, such as career advancement, financial security, or private gains, play a significant role in the professional workplace. The public service environment is quite complex, making it difficult to generalize about the nature of public service and identify the way public leaders can best serve the public. The organizational and social ethics hold the public leaders responsible for protecting individuals in the society and furthering the process of the group as a whole. Standards of conduct, formal guidelines for ethical behavior, and other norms have been created to hold public leaders accountable for their actions. Ethics and morality in government sector should be addressed more now than ever before with the emerging diversity challenges the system encounters, Seferian believes. Despite the cultural and diversity challenges, public/government officials have an obligation to be fair and just for all citizens. As representatives of the citizenry, they have the responsibility to bring social justice, equity, and economic efficiency. However, Safarian mentions that in certain countries, like those of the former Soviet Union, it has become increasingly difficult for public administrators to intervene in governmental decision-making and public policy to address diversity and equality issues. Although attempts towards democratization have been made, the cultural and polit