Implementing Core Tested Programs For Schools - 1396 Words

In order to revamp Core tested programs, schools have been shifting focus to those areas and changing instructional times for various classes, which prevents students from achieving their full potential in the affected classes. Instructional time is important, especially in the fine arts. In order to have an arts program with the tangible results and benefits previously explained, elementary students require to have at least 50 hours of instructional time in order to give them a solid base in art disciplines (Good, 374). The schools who would prefer to focus their resources on the Core tested programs will see improvement in the Core areas, but there are other subjects that leave a footprint along the beach of test scores that help improve†¦show more content†¦Those 20 minutes could be saved and utilized to work towards a plethora of options ranging from improving test scores to regular class work to more in depth lectures. Rearranging instructional times in favor of Core te sted programs prevents the affected classes from succeeding in teaching their students the best they can. They aren’t able to give the students what they need to succeed in a weakened instructional period, which prevents them from achieving to the best of their abilities and thus denies them from an equal education where all students have the same opportunities. Establishing new national fine arts standards and programs from previously attempted standards will give students equal opportunities to succeed and develop themselves to their full potential. These standards would be a refined and reshaped version of the 1992 and 1994 attempted national standards for fine arts, but would be integrated with Common Core values and lessons (National Association for Music Education). Refining the following standards to meet today’s technological standards would be beneficial for fine arts students because they would have applications to what they are learning and would be able to use Common Core’s goals to positively impact each student; three sections by grade level: K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 all with different but similar standards (6 in total) and benchmarks (44 in total) for each different fine arts

Ethics As A Code Of Conduct - 880 Words

Ethics, in politics, can be used as a ‘code of conduct’ – a set of rules or norms for diplomatic behaviour. When considering ethics as a constraint on states and political institutions, it can be argued to be powerful and influential. However, the question of whether politics can be improved by ethics is debatable. The aim of this essay is to highlight evidence for and against the notion of whether ethics can constrain and improve politics through the use of realism and cosmopolitanism, their arguments, and real world cases as examples. Cosmopolitans, such as Charles Beitz, view international politics not just as a society of states, but also a society of individuals (Nye Welch 2011). They argue that politics, especially at an international level, requires the use of ethics as a form of critique (questioning whether the existing code is ‘good’ or ‘right’) and reconstruction (where a new code is advocated following analytical deliberations) in order for politics to be improved. Improvement in politics can be achieved by taking into account more what ‘should’ be done as opposed to merely what ‘can’ be done in certain situations. Clear examples of how politics has been improved by ethical principles are the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which have been integrated into the national constitutions of numerous sates to protect the rights of their citizens; and the International Convention Against Genocide (ICAG), established to prevent theShow MoreRelatedEthics And Code Of Conduct900 Words   |  4 Pagesindividuals develop a code of ethics based on their personal values and beliefs it is important that we always act in a manner that is appropriate to our code of ethics. This paper will talk about what a code of conduct is, my personal code of conduct, Entergy’s code of con duct, and why ethics statement is so important. Code of conduct â€Å"A code of conduct explains an organizationsRead MoreCodes Of Conduct And Code Of Ethics925 Words   |  4 Pagesexpertise which meet registration standards. There are distinctive competency standards, code of conduct and code of ethics for enrolled nurses, registered nurses and nurse practitioners. In addition, notations on the nurses registration limit their practice to a specific specialty such as those solely qualified to mental health nursing or paediatric nursing. As specified in the National Board standards and codes, registration requirements, relevant legislation, educational preparation, and contextRead MoreCode Of Ethics And Conduct1261 Words   |  6 PagesSummary The code of ethics and conduct is a written set of rules and regulations that provides guidance to employees of an organization on how to conduct themselves and carry out their duties in line with the organization’s principles. The code of ethics and conduct is also be backed up by suitable disciplinary actions. A code of ethics and conducts helps employees deal with ethical issues and other gray areas that they face as they execute their daily activities. An effective code of ethics and conductRead MoreEthics Of A Code Of Conduct903 Words   |  4 Pageshas been working with a code of conduct. As we all know the Code of Conduct reflects upon the ethical culture of an organization, which is taken from the company mission statement. This meeting is in part to address this concern and to deliver the importance of having a Code of Conduct in place, which will be beneficial for both UWEAR and PALEDEMIN. This is not to imply that unethical conduct has been taking place in either company, by having code of conduct in place will help to ensureRead MoreCode Of Ethics And Conduct1564 Words   |  7 PagesEthics is defined in multiple ways. These are considered as rules or regulations which sense the right or wrong doing related to any individual. Ethics in professional life can be defined as the sense of a person with which is responsible for controlling that routine practice of a particular person with which he can distinguish between right and wrong (Resnik, 2011). In professional fields, the importance of ethics can’t be denied. Every profession makes use of certain guidelines on the basis ofRead MoreCode Of Ethics And Conduct1896 Words   |  8 PagesHEALTH OF A BUSINESS The Code of Ethics and Conduct of CheckPoint Software Technologies by Justice-Anyai June 2015 â€Æ' ABSTRACT The code of ethics and conduct is a written set of rules and regulations that provides guidance to employees of an organization on how to conduct themselves and carry out their duties in line with the organization’s principles. The code of ethics and conduct is also be backed up by suitable disciplinary actions. A code of ethics and conducts helps employees deal withRead MoreCode Of Ethics And Professional Conduct1274 Words   |  6 PagesReview of the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct of BIP The Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC) has been formulated on the basis of article 44, 45, 46, 47 of BIP constitution, to secure the rights and benefits of the Planners community in Bangladesh. CEPC not only provide guidance and support to the members of BIP on their lead in the professional field but also offers assurance to the client who avails the services of Planners. Members have the opportunity to express their opinionRead MoreEthics And Code Of Professional Conduct1598 Words   |  7 Pages(NMBA) Code of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct. Failure to provide care within these parameters could lead to serious consequences for the patient and nurse themselves. Enrolled Nurses must work within certain legal and ethical parameters to ensure appropriate care is provided to patients and also so the nursing profession itself is upheld in a respectful and trusting manner. In order to work ethically, nurses are required to adhere to the code of ethics and code of professional conduct setRead MoreCode Of Ethics And Professional Conduct Essay1919 Words   |  8 PagesCode of Ethics and Professional Conduct Introduction Ethics and professionalism are the centerpieces of any organization that wants to conduct business in today’s global environment. The Project Management Institute (PMI) is an organization that believes in the principles that governs professional behavior and ethics. By a consensus decree of many countries worldwide; the PMI formed the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC) for project management. The CEPC became the standard that all projectRead MoreCode Of Ethics And Moral Conduct2316 Words   |  10 PagesCode of Ethics and Moral Conduct By Tim Bowles OMM660 Business Ethics and Social Responsibility Instructor Prof. Andree Swanson June 27, 2015 Introduction Since morals and morality require conscious choices, man is the only animal who can be moral or immoral. Thus, man is the only animal who can consciously, or purposely make moral choices: to think or not to think, to produce or usurp, to benefit or hurt oneself or others. The meaning of moral is simple and direct (e.g., the productive

Sustainable Competitive Advantage free essay sample

Resources are the assets, capabilities, processes, information, and knowledge that an organization controls. Firms use their resources to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Resources are critical to organizational strategy because they can help companies create and sustain an advantage over competitors. 3 Organizations can achieve a competitive advantage by using their resources to provide greater value for customers than competitors can. For example, iTunes and iPod created competitive advantage for Apple and value for its customers by combining elements of design, price, and capability in a unique way. But the most important advantage was being the first company to make it easy to legally download music to digital devices. (Prior to the iTunes store, the only means of acquiring digital music was illegal file swapping. ) Apple negotiated agreements with virtually all of the major record labels to distribute their songs from a central online library, and iTunes quickly became the premier platform for music downloading. The easy-to-understand site came with free downloadable software customers could use to organize and manage their digital music library. 4 The goal of most organizational strategies is to create and then sustain a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage becomes a sustainable competitive advantage when other companies cannot duplicate the value a firm is providing to customers. Sustainable competitive advantage is not the same as a long-lasting competitive advantage, though companies obviously want a competitive advantage to last a long time. Instead, a competitive advantage is sustained if competitors have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate the advantage and have, for the moment, stopped trying to duplicate it. It’s the corporate equivalent of your competitors saying, â€Å"We give up. You win. We can’t do what you do, and we’re not even going to try to do it any more. † As Exhibit 5. 1 shows, four conditions must be met if a firm’s resources are to be used to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The resources must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and nonsubstitutable. Valuable resources allow companies to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Unfortunately, changes in customer demand and preferences, competitors’ actions, and technology can make once-valuable resources much less valuable. 5 For sustained competitive advantage, valuable resources must also be rare resources. Think about it: How can a company sustain a competitive advantage if all of its competitors have similar resources and capabilities? Consequently, rare resources, resources that are not controlled or possessed by many competing firms, are necessary to sustain a competitive advantage. When Apple introduced the iPod, no other portable music players on the market used existing hard-drive technology in their design. The iPod gained an immediate advantage over competitors because it was able to satisfy the desire of consumers to carry large numbers of songs in a portable device, something the newer MP3 systems and older individual CD players could not do. One of Apple’s truly rare resources is its ability to reconfigure existing technology into a package that is easy to use, elegantly designed, and therefore highly desired by customers. As the example shows, valuable and rare resources can create temporary competitive advantage. For sustained competitive advantage, however, other firms must be unable to imitate or find substitutes for those valuable, rare resources. Imperfectly imitable resources are those resources that are impossible or extremely costly or difficult to duplicate. For example, despite numerous attempts by competitors to imitate it, iTunes has retained its competitive lock on the music download business. In addition to its customer friendly software and its extensive media library, Apple has developed a closed system for its iTunes and iPod. iPod owners cannot download music from sources other than Apple’s iTunes store, but for many this is not a problem. Many devotees won’t even consider another brand. Kelly Moore, a sales representative for a Texas software company, says of her iPod mini, â€Å"Once I find something I like, I don’t switch brands. †6 She’s not alone: Since iTunes was launched, customers have downloaded over a billion songs. No other competitor comes close to those numbers. Valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable resources can produce sustainable competitive advantage only if they are also nonsubstitutable resources, meaning that no other resources can replace them and produce similar value or competitive advantage. To compete effectively against iTunes, competitors may need to change their business model. That is, competitors need to propose substitutes for iTunes that consumers will accept. For example, Napster founders Shawn Fanning and Wayne Rosso have created a subscription-based service called Mashboxx that charges $15 a month for unlimited downloads. Yahoo! Music uses a similar model but charges as little as $6 per month for complete access to its entire library of 2 million songs. 7 In addition to straight subscription models, some companies are experimenting with price. Where iTunes charges 99 cents per song, period, Amazon’s online store will allow the record companies to charge different amounts for different songs based upon popularity. At Amie Street, a newly posted track can be downloaded for free, but as the number of downloads increases, so does the song’s price, until it reaches the maximum of 98 cents. 8 In response to competitors’ experimentation, Apple has stated that its one-flat-price model has been both effective and lucrative and has no plans to change. It will take years to find out whether these new means of purchase will constitute an effective substitute to iTunes. 9 In summary, Apple has reaped the rewards of a first mover advantage from its interdependent iPod and iTunes. The company’s history of developing customer-friendly software, the innovative capabilities of the iPod, the simple 99-cent-pay-as-you-go sales model of iTunes, and the unmatched list of music and movies available for download provide customers with a service that has been valuable, rare, relatively nonsubstitutable, and, in the past, imperfectly imitable. Past success is, however, no guarantee of future success: Apple needs to continually change and develop its offerings or risk being unseated by a more nimble competitor whose products are more relevant and have higher perceived value to the consumer. Review 1 SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Firms can use their resources to create and sustain a competitive advantage, that is, to provide greater value for customers than competitors can. A competitive advantage becomes sustainable when other companies cannot duplicate the benefits it provides and have, for now, stopped trying. To provide a sustainable competitive advantage, the firm’s resources must be valuable (capable of improving efficiency and effectiveness), rare (not possessed by many competing firms), imperfectly imitable (extremely costly or difficult to duplicate), and nonsubstitutable (competitors cannot substitute other resources to produce similar value). 2Strategy-Making Process Companies use a strategy-making process to create strategies that produce sustainable competitive advantage. 10 Exhibit 5. 2 displays the three steps of the strategy-making process: 2. 1 assess the need for strategic change, 2. 2 conduct a situational analysis, and then 2. 3 choose strategic alternatives. Let’s examine each of these steps in more detail. Review 2 STRATEGY-MAKING PROCESS The first step in strategy making is determining whether a strategy needs to be changed to sustain a competitive advantage. Because uncertainty and competitive inertia make this difficult to determine, managers can improve the speed and accuracy of this step by looking for differences between top management’s intended strategy and the strategy actually implemented by lower-level managers (that is, looking for strategic dissonance). The second step is to conduct a situational analysis that examines internal strengths and weaknesses (distinctive competencies and core capabilities), as well as external threats and opportunities (environmental scanning, strategic groups, and shadow-strategy task forces). In the third step of strategy making, strategic reference point theory suggests that when companies are performing better than their strategic reference points, top management will typically choose a risk-averse strategy. When performance is below strategic reference points, risk-seeking strategies are more likely to be chosen. Importantly, however, managers can influence the choice of strategic alternatives by actively changing and adjusting the strategic reference points they use to judge strategic performance. Corporate-Level Strategies Corporate-level strategy is the over all organizational strategy that addresses the question â€Å"What business or businesses are we in or should we be in? † Exhibit 5. 4 shows the two major approaches to corporate-level strategy that companies use to decide which businesses they should be in: 3. 1 portfolio strategy33 and 3. 2 grand strategies. Review 3 CORPORATE-LEVEL STRATEGIES Corporate-level strategies, such as portfolio strategy and grand strategies, help managers determine what businesses they should be in. Portfolio strategy focuses on lowering business risk by being in multiple, unrelated businesses and by investing the cash flows from slow-growth businesses into faster-growing businesses. One portfolio strategy, the BCG matrix, suggests that cash flows from cash cows should be reinvested in stars and in carefully chosen question marks. Dogs should be sold or liquidated. Portfolio strategy has several problems, however. Acquiring unrelated businesses actually increases risk rather than lowering it. The BCG matrix is often wrong when predicting companies’ futures (as dogs or cash cows, for example). And redirecting cash flows can seriously weaken cash cows. The most successful way to use the portfolio approach to corporate strategy is to reduce risk through related diversification. The three kinds of grand strategies are growth, stability, and retrenchment/recovery. Companies can grow externally by merging with or acquiring other companies, or they can grow internally through direct expansion or creating new businesses. Companies choose a stability strategy—selling the same products or services to the same customers—when their external environment changes very little or after they have dealt with periods of explosive growth. Retrenchment strategy, shrinking the size or scope of a business, is used to turn around poor performance. If retrenchment works, it is often followed by a recovery strategy that focuses on growing the business again. 4Industry-Level Strategies Industry-level strategy addresses the question â€Å"How should we compete in this industry? † Let’s find out more about industry-level strategies by discussing 4. 1 the five industry forces that determine overall levels of competition in an industry and 4. 2 the positioning strategies and 4. 3 adaptive strategies that companies can use to achieve sustained competitive advantage and above-average profits. Review 4 INDUSTRY-LEVEL STRATEGIES Industry-level strategies focus on how companies choose to compete in their industry. Five industry forces determine an industry’s overall attractiveness to corporate investors and its potential for long-term profitability. Together, a high level of new entrants, substitute products or services, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and rivalry between competitors combine to increase competition and decrease profits. Three positioning strategies can help companies protect themselves from the negative effects of industry-wide competition. Under a cost leadership strategy, firms try to keep production costs low so that they can sell products at prices lower than competitors’. Differentiation is a strategy aimed at making a product or service sufficiently different from competitors’ that it can command a premium price. Using a focus strategy, firms seek to produce a specialized product or service for a limited, specially targeted group of customers. The four adaptive strategies help companies adapt to changes in the external environment. Defenders want to â€Å"defend† their current strategic positions. Prospectors look for new market opportunities by bringing innovative new products to market. Analyzers minimize risk by following the proven successes of prospectors. Reactors do not follow a consistent strategy, but instead react to changes in their external environment after they occur. 5Firm-Level Strategies Microsoft brings out its Xbox 360 video-game console; Sony counters with its PlayStation 3. Sprint Nextel drops prices and increases monthly cell phone minutes; Verizon strikes back with better reception and even lower prices and more minutes. Starbucks Coffee opens a store, and nearby locally run coffeehouses respond by improving service, increasing portions, and holding the line on prices. Attack and respond, respond and attack. Firm-level strategy addresses the question â€Å"How should we compete against a particular firm? † Let’s find out more about the firm-level strategies (direct competition between companies) by reading about 5. 1 the basics of direct competition and 5. 2 the strategic moves involved in direct competition between companies. Review 5 FIRM-LEVEL STRATEGIES Firm-level strategies are concerned with direct competition between firms. Market commonality and resource similarity determine whether firms are in direct competition and thus likely to attack each other or respond to each other’s attacks. In general, the more markets in which there is product, service, or customer overlap, and the greater the resource similarity between two firms, the more intense the direct competition between them. When firms are direct competitors in a large number of markets, attacks are less likely because responding firms are highly motivated to quickly and forcefully defend their profits and market share. By contrast, resource similarity affects response capability, meaning how quickly and forcefully a company responds to an attack. When resource similarity is strong, attacks are much less likely to produce a sustained advantage because the responding firm is capable of striking back with equal force.

Intrinsic and Rational Speculative Bubbles †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Intrinsic and Rational Speculative Bubbles. Answer: Introduction: The given statement is false. If government want to increase demand by $5 billion then it has to carry out government spending greater than $5 billion. The effect on aggregate demand because of fiscal policy expansion depends on the multiplier effect derived from the IS curve (Palley, 2015). For a closed economy the effect of change in government expenditure on aggregate demand depends on the multiplier given as The expansionary fiscal policy leads to an increase in interest rate, which affect investment and dampen the expansionary effect. This is called crowding out effect. In the open economy the additional leakage exits induced by imports. The open economy with a fixed exchange rate regime has a smaller crowding out effect than the closed economy. Once the economy move from fixed to flexible exchange rate regime the situation is reversed. With flexible exchange rate, the interest rate alters the net export and creates crowding out both in domestic and international market. In a restrictive monetary policy, the monetary authority reduces money supply in the economy. The reduced money supply increases the interest rate in the credit market. The economy contracts and so is the consumption and investment. With a higher interest rate, the cost of borrowing fund increases and people borrow less fund to invest in housing market (Calza, Monacelli Stracca, 2013). The reduced demand for housing property reduces housing price. Any exogenous factor that influences housing demand can counter the situation. The fiscal stimulus in form of concession of taxes because of investing in credit market can make housing investment more lucrative and boost prices. Another condition that can prevent housing price from falling a low level is the immigration in the nation. Growing demand for immigrant accommodation maintain a balanced in demand and price. In United State, housing bubble burst because of sudden fall in interest rate and leads to financial crisis. Australia is another example of nation facing crisis in the property market because of monetary policy and other external factors. In order to achieve targeted inflation rate and economic growth Bank of Canada reduces the overnight interest rate. The policy include prime lending rate and mortgage rate as well. The lower interest rate make ownership of home more affordable and benefits the homeowners by raising demand for properties and properties. The decreases in the mortgage rate affect homeownership to a broader population segment. It helps the homeowners to fulfill the ambition of home owning and buy expensive houses. The homeowners enjoy a wealth affect because of raising property price without taking any action (Allen et al., 2016). In Canada, tax concessions are provided to purchase new house or even to renovate the existing houses. Other programs in Canada provide benefit to homeowners. One example of the beneficiary program is Home Buyers Plan. It allows withdraw of fun amount up to $25,000 from the retirement saving plan to finance purchasing of new home or construction. Home accessibility tax credit is another tax policy that allows a claimed tax concession up to $10,000. The economic policy framework of the governing authorities of a country has immense implications on the overall economic welfare of the residents living in the country as well as the economic health of the country itself. Economic policies are mainly classified into two types, the fiscal policies, which collectively deal with taxing and government expenditure and productivity aspects and the monetary policies, which are primarily concerned with the regulation of the money supply and the interest rates prevailing in the country (Sterner, 2012). Therefore, a lot of the economic welfare of the country as well as its residents depend on how efficient the policy framework is and any faulty and inefficient policy, fiscal as well as monetary, can have immense negative implications on the country in an overall framework. The essay, tries to capture this aspect of a faulty policy framework on the overall economy, taking reference of the Global Economic Crisis of 2008, which started in the USA and percolated to almost all the other parts of the world with time (Rios, McConnell Brue, 2013). One of the most notable economic phenomena, in the global scenario, which had immense and long term implications (mostly negative) on almost all the major economies of the of the world, was the Global Financial Crisis, which occurred in 2008, which had its initiation in the United States of America. The primary reason behind the occurrence of the Global Financial Crisis, as asserted by many eminent economists, all over the world, was the bursting of the investment bubble in the housing sector of the country. This was fallout of shortsighted economic policy structure of the country and the wrong speculations of the investment side players involved (McDonald Stokes, 2013). Housing Bubble: Creation and Burst Before the period of occurrence of the Financial Crisis, the housing sector of the country was experiencing a boom in the real estate sector, especially the housing sector of the economy. The housing prices were steadily and impressively increasing in the country, in the decade preceding the crisis, which can be seen from the following figure: One of the primary contributing factors in this hike in the housing prices in the country was the speculation of the investors (which also included the households) in this sector, who took the residential properties as a type of asset. Thus, started investing more and more in this sector with the speculation the prices of these assets would never fall. The households also showed the similar investment pattern and were backed by the monetary policies of the then government, which in order to facilitate more investment in this sector, designed the loan and mortgage policies in the real sector accordingly. The interest rates prevailing in the country, in this aspect, were exceptionally low to encourage investment in the residential sector, by proving easy borrowing and financing facilities to the investors. The housing tax policies of the country were also designed in such a way which increased the risk taking behavior of both the investors as well as the banks and the financial institutions, the providers of the loans, extensively (Berkmen et al., 2012). This created a huge immense bubble in this sector with time and when the interest rates started rising in the succeeding periods, the housing bubble burst in the economy, which led to immense negative repercussions including one of the biggest bankruptcies in the world, of that of the Lehman Brothers, with which the Global Financial Crisis started. Conclusion From the above discussion of one of the biggest real case economic phenomena in the world, it is evident that much of the economic welfare of a country as well as its residents, both short term as well as long term, depend on the economic policy frameworks of the country as well as of the global economic scenario. Any dynamics in the same is expected to have significant implications on the economy itself. References Allen, J., Grieder, T., Peterson, B. M., Roberts, T. (2016). The impact of macroprudential housing finance tools in Canada: 2005-10. Berkmen, S. P., Gelos, G., Rennhack, R., Walsh, J. P. (2012). The global financial crisis: Explaining cross-country differences in the output impact.Journal of International Money and Finance,31(1), 42-59. Calza, A., Monacelli, T., Stracca, L. (2013). Housing finance and monetary policy.Journal of the European Economic Association,11(suppl_1), 101-122. McDonald, J. F., Stokes, H. H. (2013). Monetary policy and the housing bubble.The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics,46(3), 437-451. Nneji, O., Brooks, C., Ward, C. (2013). Intrinsic and rational speculative bubbles in the US housing market: 1960-2011.Journal of Real Estate Research,35(2), 121-151. Palley, T. I. (2015). Money, fiscal policy, and interest rates: A critique of Modern Monetary Theory.Review of Political Economy,27(1), 1-23. Rios, M. C., McConnell, C. R., Brue, S. L. (2013).Economics: Principles, problems, and policies. McGraw-Hill. Sterner, T. (Ed.). (2012).Economic policies for sustainable development(Vol. 7). Springer Science Business Media.