The Impact of Stalin on Russia and the Russian People Essay -- Papers

The Impact of Stalin on Russia and the Russian People Joseph Stalin was born to a poor family in the province of Georgia in 1879. Stalin's real surname was Djugasvili; he adopted the name 'Stalin' whilst in prison as he felt the translation 'Man of Steel' would help his image. Stalin joined the Bolshevik party as a young man and soon became an active member organizing bank raids to gain money for party funds; this led to Stalin's imprisonment a number of times. Stalin first met Lenin in December 1905 in Finland and was quite surprised to see him as an ordinary man unlike the person he had imagined. In 1918 Stalin was made Commissar for Nationalities of the Bolshevik party, then in 1922 he became General Secretary. This made Stalin very powerful, particularly when soon after his appointment Lenin was hospitalised to have 'Dora Kaplan's bullet' removed. The operation was unsuccessful and left Lenin paralysed down his right side. Joseph Stalin then became Lenin's mouthpiece. The initial effects of this was the rise of Stalin to become the leader of the Communist party in Russia, this then resulted in Stalin going down in History as a brutal dictator and mass murderer. In 1924 Lenin died and most people presumed Trotsky who had formed the Red Army and who had been Lenin's right hand man would become Lenin's successor. If Stalin had not been around Trotsky probably would have become the leader of the Communist party. Stalin was seen as dull by the intellectual elite of the Communist party and probably not very intelligent or well educated, however, they all made a fatal mistake in assuming that he was stupid. Stalin outmanoeuvred Trot... ... modernised Russia. The workers who did not offend the state were better off than under the reign of the tsar. Russia's military forces were benefiting from her industrial growth and whilst Stalin retained power there was a stable government. People gained better access to education and medical care. However millions had died in the famine after the failed experiment of Collectivisation. Stalin did make Russia into a great power but there was an enormous price to pay for it. Millions of people were starved or murdered under Stalin's brutal rule. Stalin led Russia with an iron fist. The long-term effects of this were the only reason people idolised Stalin was because they were too frightened to do anything else and Stalin's influence lived on through Krushtov and Brezhnev, they too would not allow any senior opposition.

Customer Value and Superior Performance Essay

Market Orientation, Customer Value, and Superior Performance Stanley F. Slater and John C Narver Thinking in terms of the market (not marketing) is essential in the highiy competitive arenas of today, o achieve superior performance, a business must develop and sustain competitive advantage. But where competitive advantage was once based on structural characteristics such as market power, economies of scale, or a broad product line, the emphasis today has shifted to capabilities that enable a business to consistently deliver superior value to its customers. This, after all, is the meaning of competitive advantage. Our recent research shows that a market-oriented culture provides a solid foundation for these value-creating capabilities. A business is market-oriented when its culture is systematically and entirely committed to the continuous creation of superior customer value. Specifically, this entails collecting and coordinating information on customers, competitors, and other significant market influencers (such as regulators and suppliers) to use in building that value (see Figure 1). The three major components of market orientation+ustomer orientation, competitor focus, and cross-functional coordination-are long-term in vision and profit-driven. Based on extensive interviews with managers and executives, Kohli and Jaworski (1990) conclude that market orientation provides â€Å"a unifying focus for the efforts and projects of individuals, thereby leading to superior performance. † A developing stream of empirical research has found a strong relation- T ship between market orientation and several measures of business performance, including profitability. customer retention, sales growth, and new product success. Customer Orientation The heart of a market orientation is its customer focus. To create superior value for buyers continuously requires that a seller understand a buyer’s entire value chain, not only as it is today but also as it evolves over time. Buyer value can be created at any point in the chain by making the buyer either more effective in its markets or more efficient in its operations. A market-oriented business understands the cost and revenue dynamics not only of its immediate target buyers but also of all markets beyond, for demand in the immediate and â€Å"upstream† markets is derived from the demand in the original â€Å"downstream† markets. Therefore, a market-driven business develops a comprehensive understanding of its customers’ business and how customers in the immediate and downstream markets perceive value. Employees of market-oriented businesses spend considerable time with their customers. Managers and employees throughout the business call on their customers or bring them into their own facilities in a constant search for new ways to satisfy their needs. For example, Ih Pont has developed a program called â€Å"Adopt a Customer† that encourages a blue-collar worker to visit a customer once a month, learn the customer’s needs, and be the customer representative on the factory floor. Market-driven businesses continuously monitor their customer commitment by making im- proved customer satisfaction an ongoing objective. To maintain the relationships that are critical to delivering superior customer value, they pay close attention to service, both before and after sales. Because of the importance of employees in this effort, these businesses take great care to recruit and retain the best people available and provide them with regular training. Some businesses even involve their customers in hiring, training, and developing contact people as well as in making motivation and reward system decisions. Involving customers in these key areas forges strong customer loyalty. ogy development. Top managers frequently discuss competitors’ strategies to develop a shared perspective on probable sources of competitive threats. A reason for the success of many Japanese companies is that they train managers to understand that competitive intelligence is part of everyone’s job. Using this information, marketdriven businesses often target opportunities for competitive advantage based on competitors’ weaknesses. In any case, they keep competitors from developing an advantage by responding rapidly or anticipating their actions. Interfunctionai Coordination Competitor Focus The third of the three core components of a marCreating superior customer value requires more ket orientation is the coordination of personnel than just focusing on customers. The key quesand other resources from throughout the comtions are which competitors, and what technolopany to create value for buyers. Any point in the gies, and whether target customers perceive them buyer’s value chain is an opportunity for a seller as alternate satisfiers. Superior value requires that to create value for the buyer firm. This means the seller identify and understand the principal that any individual in any function in a seller firm competitors’ short-term strengths and weaknesses can potentially contribute to value creation. As and long-term capabilities and strategies. For Michael Porter (1985) explains: example, a team of Marriott employees traveled the country for six months, staying in economy Every department, facility, branch office, hotels and collecting information about their and other organizational unit has a role facilities and services. Armed with this informathat must be defined and understood. All tion about potential competitors’ strengths and employees, regardless of their distance weaknesses, Marriott invested $500 million in a from the strategy formulation process, new hotel chain. Fairfield Inn, its budget market must recognize their role in helping a entry, achieved an occupancy rate 10 points firm achieve and sustain competitive higher than the industry average in one year. advantage. A seller should adopt a chess-game perspective of its current and principal potential competiTo accomplish this, effective companies have tors. Moreover, it should continuously examine developed horizontal structures that focus on the competitive threats they pose, inferring these building value, such as time-to-market for new threats from intent and value-creation capabilities. This is crucial information to a seller in developFigure 1 ing its contingency competitive Market Orientation strategies. In one case, HewlettPackard decided to accelerate the Interfunctional announcement of a new computer Information Assessment Acquisition peripheral after discovering through its travel agency that a rival had booked conference rooms around the country for a specific date. Knowing that this rival had a similar product in development, H-I-’ rushed its announcement and beat the competition to the market. In market-driven businesses, employees from all functions share information concerning competitors. For example, it is crucial for R&D to receive information acquired by the sales group about the pace of a competitor’s technol- Customer InformationCompetitor Information d Coordinated Superior Customer Value Other Market Information Market Orientation. Customer Value, and Superior Performance 23 products. They manage projects through small multifunctional teams that can move more quickly and easily than businesses that use the tradtional function-by-function, sequential approach. For example, cross-functional teams call on customers to identify additional opportunities for value creation. Engineering becomes involved during preliminary market research to help marketers understand what is feasible. Production is involved during product design to ensure that the product can be manufactured at a reasonable cost. Engineers and production people constantly discuss their capabilities and limitations with sales and marketing so capabilities can be leveraged and limitations avoided when promoting products or sewices. When all functions contribute to creating buyer value this way, more creativity is brought to bear on increasing effectiveness and efficiency for customers. Does This Mean the Marketing Department Is in Charge? Shapiro (1988) tells the anecdote of a company CEO explaining to top managers that because of increasing competition, the business needed to become more market-oriented. With that encouragement the marketing vice president jumped in, â€Å"I’ve been saying all along we need to be more marketing-oriented. Marketing has to be more involved in everything Ixcause we represent the customer and we have an integrated view of the company. † At that point the CEO snarled. â€Å"I said more ma&et-oriented. not 177arketin~-oriented. † That story is very epresentative of our experience with marketing orientation as well. A marketing orientation implies an emphasis on the marketing function that may not be appropriate. Customer value is created by core capabilities throughout the entire organization. Whereas Procter and Gamble’s competitive advantage may be based on :I core marketing capability, 3M’s advantag e is innovation: Canon’s is technology. This does not make 3M or Canon any less market-oriented than Procter and Gaml~le. Because market-driven behavior permeates multiple functions at 3M and Canon, they may be more market-oriented and less marketing-oriented. In our view, lvhen a business achieves the objective of developing a pervasive market orientation, the marketing function may become lessnot more-important, because all functions are dedicated to creating and delivering customer value. This is consistent with Regis McKenna’s (1991) notion that â€Å"Marketing is everything and everything is marketing. † Webster (1992) foresees a time when marketing specialists will become increasingly rare while marketing as a general management function becomes more important. This is the result of a general focus on cross- unctional cooperation, which causes internal functional boundaries to lose meaning. GE’s 1990 Annual Report puts it this way: In a boundary-less company, internal functions begin to blur. Engineering doesn’t design a product, then â€Å"hand it off† to manufacturing. They form a team, along with marketing and sales, finance, and the rest. Customer service? It’s not somebody’s job. It’s everybody’s job. However, for businesses that currently have an internal orientation on production or research and development, the marketing department may have to take the lead role in encouraging marketoriented thinking throughout the firm. As the primary boundary between the business and its markets, marketing is â€Å"management’s window on the world† (Holver and Garda 1985). Because it is dependent on other functional areas for the timely and efficient development, production, and delivery of the product, marketing is likely to be the first function that fully appreciates the benefits of market orientation. To maximize its effectiveness. marketing must demonstrate the benefits of market-driven behavior to top management and to other functions. Marketing may have a key role in the development and maintenance of a culture that is truly arket-oriented The crux is that the responsibility for superior buyer value is beyond that of any one function. Creating value for buyers is analogous to a symphony orchestra in which all members contribute according to a general plan and in which the contribution of each subgroup is tailored and integrated by a conductor-with a synergistic effect. A seller must draw upon a nd integrate effectively all of its human and other resources in an ongoing effort to create superior ,alue for buyers at a profit. This coordinated integration of company resources builds directly on both customer and competitor analysis.

Is Africa Overpopulated

Is Africa overpopulated? The answer by most measures is no. As of mid-2015, the continent as a whole had only 40 people per square mile. Asia, by comparison, had 142 people per square mile; Northern Europe had 60. Critics also point to the how many fewer resources Africas population consumes versus that of many Western countries and the United States in particular. Why then are so many organizations and governments worried about Africas growing population? Extremely Uneven Distribution As with so many things, one of the problems with discussions about Africa’s population problems is that people are citing facts about an incredibly diverse continent.  A 2010 study showed that 90% of Africa’s population was concentrated on 21% of the land. Much of that 90% are living in crowded urban cities and densely populated countries, like Rwanda, which has a population density of 471 people per square mile. The island countries of Mauritius and Mayotte are much higher than that with 627 and 640 respectively. This means that the other 10% of Africa’s population is spread across the remaining 79% of Africa’s land mass. Of course, not all of that 79% is suitable or desirable for habitation. The Sahara, for instance, covers millions of acres, and the lack of water and extreme temperatures makes the vast majority of it uninhabitable, which is part of why Western Sahara has two  people per square mile, and Libya and Mauritania have 4 people per square mile. In the southern part of the continent, Namibia and Botswana, which share the Kalahari desert, also have extremely low populations for their area. Low Rural Populations Even a low population might constitute overpopulation in a desert environment with scarce resources, but many of the people in Africa who are in areas of low population live in more moderate environments. These are the rural farmers, and their population density is very low as well. When the Zika  virus spread rapidly across South America and was linked to severe birth defects, many asked why the same effects had not already been noted in Africa, where the Zika virus had long been endemic. Researchers are still investigating the question, but one potential answer is that whereas the mosquito carrying it in South America preferred urban areas, the African mosquito vector was prevalent in rural areas. Even if the Zika virus in Africa had produced a significant rise in the birth defect microcephaly, it may have gone unnoticed in Africa’s rural districts because the low population density means that very few babies are born in these areas in comparison with South Americas populo us cities. Even a significant rise in the percent of children born in microcephaly in a rural area would produce too few cases to attract notice. Rapid Growth, Strained Infrastructures The real concern, though, is not Africas population densities, but the fact that it has the fastest growing population of the seven continents. In 2014, it had a population growth of 2.6%, and it has the highest percentage of people under 15 years (41%).    And this growth is most evident in those areas that are the most populated. The rapid growth strains African countries’ urban infrastructures – their transportation, housing, and public services - which in many cities are already underfunded and over-capacity. Climate Change   Another concern is the impact of this growth on resources. Africans do consume far fewer resources at present than Western countries, but development could change that. More to the point, Africas population growth and its reliance on agriculture and timber are compounding the enormous soil erosion problems facing many countries. Desertification and climate change are also forecasted to increase and they are compounding the food management issues created by urbanization and rapid population growth. In sum, Africa is not overpopulated, but it does have high population growth rates in comparison to other continents, and that growth is straining urban infrastructures and producing environmental problems that are compounded by climate change.   Sources Linard C, Gilbert M, Snow RW, Noor AM, Tatem AJ (2012) â€Å"Population Distribution, Settlement Patterns and Accessibility across Africa in 2010.† PLoS ONE 7(2): e31743. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031743