System analysis and design 251 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

System analysis and design 251 - Essay Example Due to the disadvantages of this system, Helen McPherson seeks information systems that are crucial to the achievement of modern business organizations. Information systems are the hardware and software applications that sustain data-intensive functions. They involve  an integrated set of mechanisms for gathering, storing, and handling data and for provision of information, facts, and electronic products (Stair and Reynolds 2013, 120). Business corporations (OT included) and other institutions depend on information systems to implement and manage their functions, interrelate with their consumers and suppliers, and contend in the marketplace to gain competitive advantage. With this system in place OT will be able to serve their customers efficiently and accurately. This Functional Requirements Report provides information system fundamentals that will facilitate the Customer Booking system including accommodation booking of OT (Stair and Reynolds 2013, 156-200). This Functional Requirements Report identifies the required system capabilities that would enhance OT customer booking and accommodation facilities to improve general performance of OT (Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication 2006, 264). The capability of incorporating IT efforts with business activities and purposes. This potential is to administer organizational preparations, structure procedures and staffing tacking any predicaments in OT booking arrangements Functional Requirements Report provides new information system’s scope through context Data Flow diagram. It is easy to analyze the scope through the diagram. This Functional Requirements Report identifies the below procedures as critical information system that would enhance OT’s customer booking system. OT novel customer booking system allows integrate OT management, accommodation department, customer request, departures, marketing, and

Conflict Prevention, Development, And Peace-Building Assignment

Conflict Prevention, Development, And Peace-Building - Assignment Example   In saying this, the author generalized his assertions, insinuating that all Secretary-General’s successes have been predetermined by the performance of their predecessors. Research shows that Secretary Generals, like Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Dag Hammarskjold, introduced new approaches to the UN’s operation and were largely successful in terms of changes made and the resources available to them at the time.   The author provides a comprehensive and critical examination of the issues highlighted at the beginning of the article. Although some of the claims are misplaced, there is no ambiguity in his approach to the discussion.   I have learned that peaceful settlements and conflict resolution are multidimensional concepts that require good interplay between multiple entities.   For example, from a superficial point of view, it often seems like the UN is at fault for most of the conflicts witnessed thus far. However, the author takes time to inform the reader tha t the UN is just a proxy for member states; it does what it is told, not the other way round.   People are often quick to ask, "where is the UN?" and "what is the UN doing?", when in actual sense it is the member countries that determine its course of action.   Countries that sit on the UN Security Council are especially guilty of micromanaging the organization because of their influence.   For example, in the Korean War, the United States was primarily responsible for the UN's decision to enter the conflict.

Technological Environment Essay Example for Free

Technological Environment Essay When a relatively primitive technology is used in the production process, the technology is usually referred to as labor-intensive. A highly advanced technology, on the other hand, is generally termed capital-intensive. Business Perspective: The way that businesses function both in and out of the office has changed drastically. Thanks to advances in computer, information and communication technology. Companies now use a variety of mobile devices, software and various applications that employees can use for marketing and networking, as well as research and development, for their goods and services. Internet- the Internet, perhaps more than any other factor, has changed the way that companies do business. Most companies have websites, which allow them to reach a larger audience and attract customers and employees from all over the world. In addition, businesses are now utilizing social-networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, enabling them to communicate directly with customers with news and updates. These websites are interactive, which means that companies can also receive immediate feedback on new products from customers, speeding the process of research and development. Email, video conferencing and online chat rooms have also made it easier for businesses to become more globalized, communicating quickly and easily with clients and co-workers regardless of their location. * Mobile Devices- The Internet resources listed above are not just available on an office computer. Many companies provide their employees with other mobile devices such as laptops, tablet computers, PDAs and smart phones. These devices are portable and enable workers to stay constantly connected and updated with their work. They also make it more possible for employees to have a mobile office, working from any location and allowing them to travel or live in an area other than where the business is actually located. Most mobile devices also have an enormous number of applications available such as productivity tools, locators that utilize GPS functions and other organizational applications that help employees download, type, share and even print documents remotely from their device. * Software- Depending on the type of business, the software used by companies will vary. However, many companies can benefit from several types of software and applications.

Why Developing Your Own Leadership Skills Is Important

Why Developing Your Own Leadership Skills Is Important Developing leadership skills is important for me because given the circumstances that I have shifted to the field of Business Administration from a technical background that does not require having control over some one or to manage or interact extensively with others. Now I seek the future prospects of becoming a manager in an organization and therefore during my tenure of Masters Degree I need to develop leadership skills that would allow me to be a successful in my future endeavors. Not all leaders are managers but all effective managers have to be leaders. It is my self assessment that I am not a born leader and if you are not a born leader then there is only one option for you to develop your skills to become one. My personal values, vision and mission My mission is to develop a good balance between different skills that would help me become an effective leader i.e. problem solving skills, decision Making, planning, and managing my power and influence. Having a strong influence; in my opinion is very essential. If you have the ability to convince others with their manner of speech and action, then the possibilities of success are limitless. I want to be successful and professional. I believe in being authentic, words should match with actions and building trust with others. I believe is having success by hard work, even though most of the times I do not feel like it but it is under my conscious that without hard work there is a thin chance of success. Challenges/problems I want to address Being a leader involves an extensive interaction with people and developing essential skills to have an influence over them which is something that I have never been through so it is a primary challenge for me. I am used to solving problems haphazardly which seems to work for me but in the broader aspect I have to streamline the process and learn to deal with complex situations in a professional manner. Another challenge for me is to make decision under emotional stress; I always have to cope with the after effects of such decisions. I also need to figure out a leader icon that I should follow or maybe develop myself into one for the fact that I believe that what works for someone else might probably NOT work for me, every individual is unique and there is only the hit and trial method available to find the best fit. Measures of success My measures of success will ultimately be the fact of achievement of my goal of becoming an effective manager. But there needs to be milestones set to reach my final goal which would be how much my belief, morals and ethics match with my practices. I will measure my success with how satisfied I am with my performance at work and how satisfied I am with my actions with other people around me. Current assessment of yourself as a leader My current strengths and weaknesses as a leader My current strengths include good technical skills that come as a part of my current experience. If we talk about emotional intelligence, Self-Awareness is something I am quite confident about. In any situation I have a full understanding of my mood, emotions and I have the habit of visualizing scenarios prior to my actions. Self-Regulation is something I am not so proud about because my emotional grip becomes lose at times of anger, consciously I am fully aware of my situation but I`ll just do it anywaysà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ So this would count as my weakness. I have the habit of solving problems with my analytical instincts mostly that comes with experience. I am only hoping that I am correct which a weakness is in fact but at the same time I am never without a reason for my actions which is a plus. I am motivated by the fact of wanting to be someone who is known and not someone who is an unknown entity. I like to remain social and have a sense of empathy for the people around me, I have good listening skills for that matter that allows me to understand the emotional makeup of other people and I am able to treat people accordingly. Building networks with others is something I find hard to do as I normally do not find a common ground; I cannot persuade others nor have a very strong influence unless I am closely related. My greatest weakness by far is that I do not feel confident enough of myself for tasks that are new or have potentially high level of difficulty. The feeling of what if I`m not able to also haunts me in situations or tasks known to me. May be because I am a little too much aware of my weaknesses. I dont like to take initiatives unless I am very much sure of what I am standing up for. In a team I am rather willing to take part as a supportive entity rather than a leading one. Insights from my Management Behavior Traits Influence Behavior wise I see myself as both as Job centered and Consideration. As said in my strengths I am friendly and I want people to trust me and respecting. Although it is only my self assessment as I have never been in the scenario of practicing my leadership, I see myself as both. When it comes to work, I would want the job to be done, it makes me uneasy to have a task at my hand and it is not complete or seems like it might not be completed in time. The factor of weakness here about my self confidence comes into play. If I am able to counter this weakness, I can take my part as a leading entity in a team. Challenges and opportunities for improvement Challenges and opportunities for improvement are my weaknesses themselves. Coming over your weakness is itself a challenge and eliminating your weakness or figuring out an encounter for the weakness is an opportunity for ones betterment and growth with an increased chance of success. I would consider my weakness of confidence to be the greatest of all because once I am past that point they only task ahead would be to stretch my arm and grab my milestones for success. Feedback I have had from the class, work and other arenas I am not very sure about the signals I get from work, class or other arenas that would help me evaluate myself of being a potential leader. People seem to trust me once I have proven my abilities to them like for example being a multimedia artist; I had to prove my skills at various occasions. Once I had performed the task people would give allot of attention to what I had to say and would follow my advice. But this I think is pretty obvious because once I have proved then there is no point of thinking that I was influential or maybe I do not consider it very influential. I am considered opinion leader in the areas where my expertise lie. I have been given feedback may times about being trustworthy and helpful by my colleagues and this helps me a little with my confidence problem but becomes a problem again as I feel a sense of responsibility on my shoulders bearing the trust of others that I would not want to break. Leadership Development Plan Objectives of my plan Following are the key objectives of my Leadership Development Plan Identify critical areas of my personal characteristics that are required for grooming and essential to work on for becoming an effective leader. Identifying main obstacles in the way to achieve my ultimate goal and defining a plan to encounter those obstacles. Determining what traits and behavior specific actions needed to be worked upon for an effective execution of plan Defining what methods will be used for learning and improving my skills. Outlining a guideline that would act as a source of evaluation for every step I take towards my goal and letting me know how much distance I have covered and what is still there to cover. What inspires me about my plan/why am I willing to change My source of inspiration is that I want to be successful as an effective leader and this plan will help me define what needs to be done to reach my desired state. It is of great importance to me because I have decided to take a turn in my life; from a technical field limited to a narrow scope to the field of management that would open up a new horizon for me. I was determined to make this change with better prospects in the long run. It was a big decision for me and almost a blind leap, but if I do not develop the essential skills and train myself to be effective in the field of management, it will be of no good and I will only regret having to take a sharp turn from a fast moving lane. Behavior-specific actions I plan to take I will strengthen my communication and behavior according to values. I believe that there is nothing compared to an authentic leader, people admire and are inspired by leaders that behave consistently according to values, and in particular, the value of integrity. Opening myself up to others and influence people through my ideas and my behavior, rather than through the use of my position power or simply by the demonstration of my skill. I will show trust in the people and work on the consideration factor even further. I am not very good at showing enthusiasm for individual and group accomplishment. So I will try to learn how to react and praise positively. To supplement my employee centered behavior I have to learn to step aside and let others do their jobs, make people feel needed, important, and powerful so they can accomplish their objectives. Ensure that I have the right people in the right jobs to match their abilities and maximize success. Opening myself to accept changes and also learning to identify positive and productive changes and involve people at all levels of the organization in implementing a change initiative. I would help people around me to find a perfect fit between their skills and satisfaction level and giving them the authority to make the changes they need to be successful. Actively engage my role in teaching others and devote time to coach others to develop and improve performance. Anticipated resistance from self and others Bringing a change always attracts a sufficient amount of resistance from within self and people around. The behavior specific actions I plan to take highlight three factors clearly that I am looking forward to bring changes, autonomy and delegation, mentoring. Following my idea for behavior development, given a mechanistic situation I will have to face a lot of resistance for the first two. Even in a different scenario people are not always willing for changes and being delegated. Personally I would not feel any resistance with mentoring, I always like to share my knowledge with others and it helps build rapport. But when it comes to delegation and bringing about changes I feel resistance because at the moment I am not able to be much of an influence and not open to ideas I feel attached with. Developing a delegation skill will require to fight with my nature of getting the job done even if I have to get my own hands dirty. How I will monitor and evaluate results I will monitor my result based on the feedback from the people around me and keeping my plan as a reference checklist for what milestones I have covered and which ones still remain. And ultimately it comes down to how satisfied I am with my performance regardless of what stages I have checked out with respect to my behavior, traits and skill. Satisfaction will most definitely come along with these aspects but unless I am not satisfied, it will not really matter. Sources for learning Development of leaders tends either to be purely conceptual or purely applied. Little academic work connects the theory of leadership development to the interventions used in leadership development programs and initiatives. For a starting point I will first need to grab hold of concept of leadership and its implications and dependencies. I will have to study about successful leaders lifestyle, their values and ideas; match them with my own to see where I stand and what steps to take myself further. Another important source of learning would be the results of my actions and choices I make during my tenure of leadership development.

Huntingtons Disease Essay example -- Disease/Disorders

Huntington’s disease is a degenerative neurological disorder affecting movement, cognition, and emotional state (Schoenstadt). There are two forms of Huntington’s disease (Sheth). The most common is adult-onset Huntington’s disease, with persons usually developing symptoms in their middle 30s and 40s (Sheth). There is an early onset form of Huntington’s disease, beginning in childhood or adolescence, and makes up a small percentage of the Huntington’s population (Sheth). Huntington’s disease is a genetic disorder with a short history, a plethora of symptoms, and devastating consequences, with no current cure in sight. Cases of Huntington’s disease date back to the early seventeenth century, but those records are basic, with no convincing descriptions (Folstein). George Huntington’s paper was the best and first to describe Huntington’s disease, which was presented at a meeting of â€Å"Meigs and Mason Academy of Medicine at Middleport, Ohio, in 1872,† (Folstein). Shortly after 1900, papers on Huntington’s disease gradually began appearing in case reports and psychiatric literature (Folstein). In 1936, Huntington’s disease appeared twice in two different letters to an editor about eugenics, which is defined as â€Å"improving the species by regulating human reproduction,† (Bakalar). These letters named Huntington's disease as one of five diseases that should be considered for voluntary sterilization (Bakalar). In 1967, the first symposium devoted to Huntington’s disease was held inside of a larger conference on neurogenetics in 1967 (Folstein). By 1968, George Willem Bruyn had published the first complete review of all of the Huntington’s disease literature that had been published up until that point in time (Folstein). In normal circumstan... ...ml?res=9E06EFDF123FF93BA35751C1A96F9C8B63#> Folstein, Susan E. Huntington’s Disease. Baltimore: The John’s Hopkins University Press, 1989. Print. 3 April 2012. Genetic Science Learning Center. "Huntington's Disease." Learn. Genetics. Web. 23 March 2012. Miller, Marsha L. â€Å"HD Research – Past and Future.† Huntington’s Disease Society of America. 2011. Web. 23 March 2012. Schoenstadt, Arthur M.D. â€Å"Huntington’s Disease Statistics.† eMedTV. Last reviewed 30 November, 2006. Web. 25 April 2012. Sheth, Kevin. â€Å"Huntington’s disease.† PubMed Health. Last reviewed 30 April 2011. Web. 20 March 2012.

World Economy :: Consumer Confidence

Matsusaka & Sbordone (1995) used quarterly data from 1953 to 1988 to empirically investigate the relationship between consumer confidence and Gross National Product in the United States. Using vector auto regressions Matsusaka ( 1995) & Afshar, Arabian, Zomorrodian (2007) examined the effect of pure confidence on GNP by implementing control variables such as the Index of leading indicators & Consumer price index respectively; finding that confidence granger caused GNP for 1, 2, 3 & 4 quarter lag models. Through forecast error variance decompositions they concluded that 12%-26% & 8-23% of the variation in GNP can be attributed to consumer confidence. The slight variations in the decompositions can b accounted for by variable orderings and differing time periods. Similarly Utaka (2003) applied the same methodology used by Matsusaka & Sbordone(1995) to empirically investigate this relationship in the case of Japan. By using not only quarterly data, but monthly and semi annual data from 1980q1- 2000q3 they reconfirmed the consumer confidence- GDP relationship for Japan and found that it accounted for 9%-11% of variation in GNP. This showed smaller variation for Japan illustrating that confidence indicators influence on GDP movements are country dependent making it unwise to assume uniform relationship strength across countries. Golinelli & Parigi (2004) investigated this matter by analysing the consumer confidence relationship in eight country’s from 1970-2002. They modelled the CCI-GDP relationship using a co-integrated vector auto regression using a common set of macroeconomic variables that were country specific to control for correlation being driven by other variables; therefore avoiding the limits of the single equation approach found in previous literature. They tested the forecasting power by comparing the RMSE for unrestricted and restricted models for 1, 2 & 4 steps horizons. Golinelli (2004), Mourougane & Roma (2002), Taylor & Mcnab (2007) find that RMSE was generally lower in the unrestricted model at short term horizons (1-2 steps) for EU countries, illustrating its importance in short term forecasting. Much of previous literature has aimed at establishing whether consumer confidence indexes provide additional information in comparison to macroeconomic variables and not its forecasting power. However, these have received mixed results in most cases, yet it is acknowledged they maintained an autonomous role in forecasting, (see â€Å"Mueller 1963, Adams 1964, Suits &sparks 1965, fair 1971 a & 1971b, Adams & Klein 1972†). Opinion now acknowledges that the index can help predict economic activity (see â€Å"Garner 1991, Fuhrer 1993; Carol et al 1994, Kumar et al 1995, Bran & Ludvigson 1998, Eppright et al 1998†)

Communication in a Maternity Ward Essay

Interpersonal communication is the process of sending and receiving information between two or more people but it has to be visual for example, a conversation with between a midwife and a patient. Whereas written communication is where you send and receive information but it has to be non visual for example typing up a patients details or sending an email as reference. When using nonverbal communication you should: Use gestures to help to clarify messages to the patients as differences in body language can cause a misunderstanding * Make sure to use the correct grammar and be clear as all documents are official When using verbal communication you should: * Listen carefully and patiently * Speak slowly, clearly and avoid slang * Be respectful, assertive, empathetic, clear, attentive, honest and non-judgmental. These are key things that shall keep your patient at ease and help to create a bond with your patient. * Remember that body language is still part of the communication we are al ways communicating, whether we’re speaking or not. Only 7% of communication is verbal, 55% comes from facial expressions and 38% comes from the way the words were said. So make sure you’re relaxed and clam then the patient shall feel this way and feel like they are in safe hands. There are many different audiences in communication varying on: age, culture and social and educational differences. Some examples of these audiences can be a business woman or young teenager. The type of communication will differ between them as will the way you communicate the message. You can adapt the way you communicate to suit the situation your patient is going through such as helping a first time mum who is scared by reassuring them and explain things calmly and clearly or someone who’s had more than one child by listening to them clearly. You can change your voice, language and body language to suit the different situations and how each patient feels. From using verbal communication the nurse comes to know the patient as a unique individual, this means that the patient come to trust the nurse which would put them at ease. Many techniques can be used to keep your patient calm. Such as asking questions or telling a story to distract and explain the situation easily and clearly. By using these techniques you shall keep your patient at ease throughout labour. Written communication is vital within the nursing industry as anything that is documented such as patients record/chart is a legal document which could be relied on in court if anything went wrong. If something isn’t documented then legally it didn’t happen. Other things that a midwife would need to document are a patient’s assessment, plan of care, change in status, health care and how the nurse left the patient. A report should be clear and concise.