Thursday, October 31, 2019

The Essence of Memorable Tourism Experiences Essay

The Essence of Memorable Tourism Experiences - Essay Example The study attempts to show that there is a direct relationship between memorable tourism experiences and the number of tourists who visit a destination. This is through an exploration of the experiences of tourists and the elements of the visits that they make that ensure that they not only choose to return to a destination but also their ability to either recommend destinations through word of mouth to their friends and acquaintances. The study makes an examination of the experiences that are likely to have a positive effect on the memory and how this effect can be studied in a bid to develop information that can be useful to the tourism industry. Among the research questions that are being asked in this study is concerning the elements that can be considered to be the building blocks of memories. Furthermore, there is a question concerning what the triggers of memory are and what types of experiences ensure that these memories are retained. Another question that is asked is based on the methodical challenges that might be encountered when making a study of memories. Finally, the study attempts to develop an understanding of how practitioners in the tourism industry can work towards the development of memorable experiences for tourists. The main method of study that was put into use in the gathering of information was through interviews that were based on open-ended questions designed to ensure that the various dimensions of memory experiences were captured. Furthermore, it was found to be essential for the interviewer to ask questions in a predetermined order so that it could be determined whether the answer to a previous question could influence the one of the next. The data was collected from a Canadian University and it was based on the grounded theory in order to increase its efficiency and credibility.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Paper Star Trek Essay Example for Free

Paper Star Trek Essay As a result, not only could he process information at lightning speed and arrive at rational conclusions, he also seemed to have desires, interests, and inclinations. He could formulate relationships and make free choices. In this episode, Commander Bruce Maddox, a member of the scientific research division of Starfleet, arrives on board the Enterprise with orders for Data to be transferred to him for the purpose of being disassembled with the goal of learning more about â€Å"it† (Maddox refers to Data as â€Å"it†, not â€Å"him†, throughout the entire episode). His ultimate goal is to create an army of androids like Data which can serve the needs of Starfleet in space exploration. When Data learns that Maddox may not be able to reassemble him, he refuses to submit to the orders and is supported by Captain Picard, captain of the Enterprise and Data’s commanding officer. Picard argues that, as an officer on the Enterprise, Data has rights—among them the right to refuse to undergo an experimental procedure such as this. However, Picard is unsuccessful in getting the transfer orders rescinded and so Data resigns from Starfleet. Maddox takes legal action with the local JAG (Judge Advocate General) officer challenging Data’s resignation and arguing that Data is not a person with a right to resign, but, being a machine, â€Å"it† is the property of Starfleet. He argues â€Å"Would you permit the computer of the Enterprise to refuse a refit? † going on to claim that Picard’s reaction is, â€Å"emotional and irrational. You are endowing Data with human characteristics because it looks human, but it is not. If it were a box on wheels I would not be facing this opposition. The JAG officer concurs with Maddox and rules that Data is the property of Starfleet and cannot resign or refuse to co-operate. Picard requests a hearing to challenge the ruling and is placed in the position of being the defending attorney for Data while his senior officer, Commander Riker, is given the unenviable job of prosecuting attorney. Riker opens his case by having Data define android which Data defines as â €Å"an automaton made to resemble a human being. † Riker emphasizes â€Å"automaton† and â€Å"resembles. After demonstrating Data’s abilities as a machine, Riker summarizes his argument: The commander is a physical representation of a dream; an idea conceived of by the mind of a man. Its purpose: to serve human needs and interests. It’s a collection of neural nets and heuristic algorithms. It’s response dictated by elaborate software written by a man. It’s hardware built by a man. And now a man will shut it off. With that Riker reaches behind Data and turns the switch that shuts him down say â€Å"Pinocchio is broken. His strings have been cut. During a recess in the proceedings, Picard consults with Guinan, a wise alien on board the Enterprise and becomes convinced that the real issue in this case is the creation of a race of Data’s to be enslaved to do man’s bidding. He believes this issue has been obscured â€Å"behind a comfortable, easy euphemism—property† and is determined to challenge that thinking. In his opening defense Picard acknowledges that Data is a machine but comments that this is irrelevant, â€Å"We too are machines, just machines of a different type. He also acknowledges that, as Data was created by a human, so are we, â€Å"Children are created from the building blocks of their parents DNA. Are they property? † He then asks Data a series of questions demonstrating that, like any person, he has wants and desires, values things, and forms deep personal relationships. Picard then calls Maddox to the stand and asks for the definition of a sentien t being. Maddox offers three criteria: â€Å"Intelligence, self-awareness and consciousness. † Picard goes on to ask Maddox to â€Å"prove to the court that I am sentient. When Maddox claims that Picard’s sentience is obvious, Picard asks what the difference between himself and Data is. Maddox replies that Picard is self-aware (he acknowledges the first criteria of Data’s intelligence) and defines self-aware as â€Å"Conscious of your existence and actions. You are aware of yourself and your own ego. † Picard turns to Data and asks him what he is currently doing. Data replies, â€Å"I am taking part in a legal hearing to determine my rights and status: am I a person or property. When asked what is at stake, he replies, â€Å"My right to choose. Perhaps my very life. † Picard points out how often Data refers to himself in his reply, â€Å"My rights, my status, my right to choose, my life. He seems reasonably self-aware to me. † He then asks Maddox, â€Å"What if Data can fulfill the last criteria, consciousness, in even the smallest degree? What is he then? Do you know? † He asks the same question of Riker and the JAG officer and goes on to say, â€Å"Starfleet was founded to seek out new life, well there it sits. Picard argues that if we create an army of Datas to do man’s bidding, then â€Å"Thousands of Datas become a race. Won’t we be judged by how we treat that race? † After considering the arguments, the JAG officer makes her final ruling: It sits there looking at me and I don’t know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. But I’ve got to make a ruling to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have been dancing around the basic issue: Does Data have a soul? I don’t know that he has. I don’t know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lt. Commander Data has the right to choose. Data exercises his right to refuse to undergo the procedure encouraging Maddox to continue his research. Maddox agrees to rescind his request for transfer, commenting about Data that â€Å"He’s remarkable. †

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Relationship Between Rubber Hand Illusion And Interoceptive Awareness

Relationship Between Rubber Hand Illusion And Interoceptive Awareness When and artificial hand is placed in a position compatible with the participants own posture, i.e. a position that is plausible anatomically with regard to the participants body, then the combination of visual input from the rubber hand and tactile stimulation to the participants hidden hand produces the feeling that the rubber hand is part of the body in around half of participants. The incidence of the illusion as well as its intensity is substantially reduced when the visual and tactile stimuli are applied asynchronously, so that the feeling on the hand is not matched by what the participant sees on the rubber hand. This reduction also occurs when the rubber hand is put in a posture that is anatomically implausible(e.g. Tsakiris Haggard, 2005). The term interoception was coined by Charles Sherrington (1907) in the same paper that he introduces the terms proprioception and exteroception. in the original definition, the term referred solely to visceral sensations. However, now it has come to encompass the physiological state of the body as a whole, and the mechanism by which afferent information reaches conscious awareness and affects behaviour, which can occur both indirectly and directly. Interoception relates to the way in which people perceive feelings from their bodies that affect mood, the sense of well-being and even emotions (Cameron, 2002). The field of interoception has been aided greatly by the advent of functional imaging. Thus far, research has been limited in its scope to contribute to the understanding of self-awareness and, by extension, consciousness. The rubber hand illusion has important implications for interoception because it implies that information from proprioceptors- the mechanoreceptors in the hand and arm- can be overridden fairly easily by visual information. However, it is important to remember that it is not visual information alone that the participant is subject to; they are also receiving proprioceptive input to their unseen hand. Ramachandran (2005) suggests that rather than the more cognitive Helmholtzian unconscious inference explanation posited by others (e.g. Lackner, 1988), the rubber hand illusion can be explained from a Bayesian perspective. Several (e.g. Alais Burr, 2004; Ernst Banks, 2002) have shown that adults are able to integrate information both within and between senses in what appears to be a statistically optimal (Bayes-optimal) fashion. The fact that Bayesian models fit human behavioural results so well fits with the evidence that synchronous stimulation in two modalities can bring about chang es in interoception. In a more natural environment, the probability of seeing something in the outside world being stimulated and feeling identical stimulation on a consistent body part is vanishingly unlikely and so it seems unsurprising that the neural machinery that fuses information between the senses is subject to this illusion. A more recent experiment has shown that both the afferent and efferent elements of the body in motion are able to influence the feeling of ownership (Tsakiris, Prabhu Haggard, 2006). The authors found that the rubber hand illusion could be elicited solely on the basis of hand movements. In a variation on the methodology, participants had a virtual hand projected to the front of them while their own hand was hidden. Both the participants index finger and the same finger of the virtual hand underwent up and down motions, which could be done either actively or passively. When movements were in synchrony, participants reported that they felt as if their own hand was nearer the virtual hand than when motion was asynchronous as in the classic illusion. Under the passive condition, as in the classic condition, the illusion is a result of integration of visual and proprioceptive information. Conversely, there is also efferent information signalling that the finger is moving in the active co ndition. One difference between the conditions was that the proprioceptive drift only affected the index finger in the passive condition. The rest of the fingers were not perceived as being closer to the virtual hand. However, in the active condition, proprioceptive drift affected the whole hand. Therefore, the effect was more local when afferent information alone was available, but more global when there was efferent information as well. Tsakiris et al came to the conclusion that efferent information can influence interoception and the sense of bodily ownership by unifying the body into a coherent whole. One possible argument against the view that the rubber hand illusion shows that visual information can override proprioceptive information is that the participant may simply be speaking metaphorically when they say that they feel as if the rubber hand is part of their body. This problem arises from the fact that measures of the extent of the elusion are based on self report. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) studies have examined whether the rubber hand is truly incorporated into the participants body image. Evolutionarily, it is necessary to protect the body from physical harm, and so threat to they body elicits feelings of anxiety, the withdrawal tendency, and increased autonomic arousal (e.g. Cooke Graziano, 2003; Kalisch et al, 2005). Therefore, it seems fair to say that for something to qualify as being part of the body, the brains homeostatic mechanisms should react as if it is when it is under threat. This hypothesis has received support from the fact that hitting the table near t he false hand with a hammer leads to increased GSR during the rubber hand illusion (Armel Ramachandran, 2003). There was no change in GSR during the control condition in which the rubber and real hands were stimulated asynchronously. Ehrsson et al (2007) have gone even further than this and shown using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging that areas of the brain associated with interoception, i.e. the anterior cingulate cortex and insula are active during the rubber hand illusion. The convexity cortex of the anterior cingulate and cingulate cortex have been shown to become active during both the experience of pain and anticipation of it (e.g. Craig et al, 1996; Wager et al, 2004). The anterior insular cortex has also been shown to become active during pain anticipation, the experience of pain and also pain empathy (e.g. Singer et al, 2004). Furthermore, coactivation of these regions during experiments has been linked to interoceptive awareness and emotional processing (Farrell, Laird Egan, 2005; Craig, 2003). The authors suggested that the activity they found in response to threat to the rubber hand most likely reflected participants anxiety as they were elevated more when the participant felt ownership of the rubber hand than when they did not. Significantly, this activity was specific to threats to the body and was not seen in response to empathy for pain or looking at the syringe (which was used to threaten the rubber hand). This is strong evidence that the rubber hand illusion leads to changes in the participants interoception. Tsakaris (2010) describes the rubber hand illusion as a model example of how the normal sense of embodiment works, and argues that it can be used to examine how the experience of the body as belonging to the individual comes about, is maintained, and perhaps even how it can be disturbed. He puts forward a neurocognitive model in which body ownership is the result of interactions between current information from all of the senses and internal models regarding the body. This model begins with pre-existing models of the body that are stored in the right temporo-parietal junction. These allow distinction between objects that may be embodied and those that may not. Subsequently, on-line postural and anatomical representations of the body (in the secondary somatosensory cortex) allow modulation of this multisensory information. This in turn allows the visual and haptic co-ordinate systems to be recalibrated in order to respond to current demands of the environment. This is done by the vent ral premotor and posterior parietal cortices, which contain neurons that code for recalibration of the hand-centred co-ordinate system. This results in referral of haptic sensation that leads to subjective experiences of body ownership, which arises in the right posterior insula. Some similar ideas are expressed by de Vignemont. She argues that bodily sensations are experience through a multimodal spatial representation of ones body. This view leads directly to the prediction that the sense of ownership of the body should be influenced by information in the visual modality, as in the rubber hand illusion. She also points out that proprioceptive information decays very quickly while the hand is stationary, and that it is often vision that dominates the other sensory modalities (e.g. Welch and Warren, 1986). This provides further support for the idea that the spatial content of haptic sensations should rely more on the visual modality than proprioception. This can account for the fact that when Botvinick and Cohen asked their participants to reach towards the hand that had been stimulated (using their other hand), this motion was displaced toward the rubber hand rather than their unseen hand. This distortion of proprioception and the sense of the location of th e body comes from the emphasis on information in the visual modality, which can also account for the subjective feeling of ownership of the hand. This results from the localisation of the haptic information within a representation of the body that has been constructed from the information available to the participant. In the illusion, the descriptive aspect of the haptic sensation is accurate, however, the spatial aspect has been shifted. Craig (2009) examines the role of the insula in interoceptive awareness in areas as diverse as gastric distension, heartbeat and pain. He identifies awareness of bodily movements (rather than the sense of agency regarding movements) as a possible role for the insular cortex, as well as speech, self recognition and various emotions, describing an emotional salience network in which insular cortical areas feature. He also suggests that the anterior insular cortex plays a role in performance maintenance in which it is put at the heart of the switch to self reflective networks from central executive functioning. The insula is argued to contain representations of the self at every moment in time and to provide comparison between representations at different points in time. The predictive role that this implies may explain the role of the insula in emotions such as anxiety. He also examines the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in interoception and self awareness, noting its numerous c onnections with the insular cortex. He also posits an evolutionary theory, wherein the anterior cingulate and anterior insular cortex developed independently, but subsequently came to have more integrated functioning that performed the role of interoception, specifically managing autonomic activity. He argues that this explains the close relationship of the two areas in various neuroimaging studies. In conclusion, the rubber hand illusion has provided much insight into human interoception. It has revealed the different kinds of information involved in this process by showing how it can be tricked, as well as the flexibility inherent in the system. Neuroimaging studies using the illusion have revealed the mediating brain areas, which in turn leads to tantalising hints about how the conscious sense of the body arises. The experience of ownership of the body may be a significant aspect of self-specificity. This illustrated by the different ways that multisensory integration and internal models of the body are able to manipulate important psychological and even physical elements of the self, the prime example being the rubber hand illusion. Interoception has important implications for some groups of patients, in particular amputees. The rubber hand illusion has shown how outside objects can fairly easily be integrated into the body image. The withdrawal reactions that are elicited f rom participants are the same in kind to those that arise when replacement limbs are under threat.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Schizophrenia :: Schizophrenics Psychiatry Disorder

Schizophrenia is not a single disease, but a broad category of mental illnesses. Schizophrenia is a psychiatry disorder where several structural disturbances occur in the brain. It normally takes place in the temporal and frontal lobes, changing the neural systems and affecting the neurotransmitters in charge of controlling the functioning that takes place in these areas. It is not a structural brain disease that shows up early on X-rays CAT scans, or EEGs. Schizophrenics also have defects in the handling of amino acids. Schizophrenia usually affects men while they are young and women later in their lives. Schizophrenia often starts out very slowly and progresses to a severely disabling mental illness. Early Schizophrenics tend to experience spontaneous dream like episodes with material that resembles art, myth poetry, and B-movies. Many Patients also show negative symptoms, such as decreased emotional arousal, mental activity, and social drive. Schizophrenia is often confused with split personality, but it is not the same, Though in reality schizophrenia means â€Å"split mind†. Many scientists believe there are four types of schizophrenia. First of all there is the simple or â€Å"undifferentiated† type, which is characterized by a gradual reduction in the external relations and interests. Next there is the â€Å"hebephrenic† or disorganized type, it is characterized by delusions and false perceptions. Then there is the â€Å"catatonic† type in which there is a state of inactivity and striking motor skills. Last there is the â€Å"paranoid† type which usually arises later in life, which is associated with illogical thinking, delusions of persecution ,or of grandeur. While these four specific types have not been universally accepted, it is the approach most commonly accepted by most psychiatrists. Schizophrenia crosses all socioeconomic, cultural, and racial boundaries. Different theories of the beginning of schizophrenia have centered on anatomical, biochemical, psychological, social, genetic, and environmental cause. The general view is that the schizophrenic types of reaction result from faulty adjustments to a variety of underlying conditions that may be either physical or psychological, or both. Treatments for schizophrenia may include replacing food with ENF, fortified with higher than usual intake of vitamins such as B1, B3, B6, B12, and mineral intake.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Hbr Article

www. hbr. org Even as companies are being told that the future lies in globalization, some are severely punished for their international moves. A simple test can help you decide what makes strategic sense for your organization. When You Shouldn’t Go Global by Marcus Alexander and Harry Korine Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article: 1 Article Summary The Idea in Brief—the core idea The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work 2 When You Shouldn’t Go Global 8 Further Reading A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applicationsReprint R0812E This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. When You Shouldn’t Go Global The Idea in Brief Globalization promises substantial advantages like new growth and scale. For some companies, itâ €™s paid off handsomely. But global mania has also blinded many firms to a hard truth: global strategies are devilishly tough to execute. The landscape has become littered with some of these unfortunates’ remains.DaimlerChrysler and ABN Amro— dismembered and bought up by activist shareowners—are particularly painful examples. To escape this fate, don’t assume you should go global, say Alexander and Korine. Instead, determine whether a global move makes sense for your firm. Ask: †¢ Could the move generate substantial benefits? †¢ Do we have the capabilities (for example, experience in postmerger integration) required to realize those benefits? †¢ Will the benefits outweigh the costs (such as the complexity that comes with coordinating far-flung international operations)? A yes to these questions suggests globalizing may be right for you.The Idea in Practice THREE QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE GOING GLOBAL Could the strategy generate substantia l benefits for our firm? The global race can lead you to overestimate the size of the prize. Example: Redland, a UK manufacturer of concrete roof tiles, expanded around the world to leverage its technical know-how beyond its home market. But it often sought opportunities in countries (such as Japan) where local building practices provided little demand for concrete roof tiles. Thus, there was no value in transferring its technology to such markets. Do we have the capabilities needed to achieve those benefits?Companies often lack the skills needed to unlock the coffer holding the prize. Example: Taiwanese consumer electronics company BenQ’s acquisition of Siemens’s mobiledevices business failed because BenQ lacked integration skills. It couldn’t reconcile the two companies’ incompatible cultures or integrate R&D activities across the two entities. BenQ’s German unit filed for bankruptcy in 2006. Will the benefits outweigh the costs? The full costs o f going global can dwarf even a sizable prize. Example: TCL, a Chinese maker of TVs and mobile phones, has expanded rapidly into the United States and Europe through acquisitions and joint ventures.It now has numerous R&D headquarters, R&D centers, manufacturing bases, and sales organizations. The cost of managing this complex infrastructure has outweighed the benefits of increased scale—creating large losses for TCL and several of its joint-venture partners. THREE INDUSTRIES WITH PARTICULAR GLOBALIZATION CHALLENGES †¢ Deregulated industries. Formerly stateowned industries (telecommunications, utilities) have globalized after deregulation to spur growth and escape stiffened competition at home.They assume they can use their existing competencies in new markets to achieve cross-border economies. But it’s been difficult, for example, for utilities to optimize electricity flows over uncoordinated grids. †¢ Service industries. Many service businesses (retailing, insurance) go global to generate growth beyond home markets threatened by foreign rivals. Their strategies hinge on coordination of people or processes—no easy feat. Wal-Mart, for instance, has struggled to get its partner firms and employees abroad to adopt its work methods. †¢ Manufacturing industries.For automobile and communications equipment makers, for example, global mergers and partnerships seem to offer the size needed to compete against consolidating rivals. But the complexities of integration can cause delays in achieving those gains. These companies thus have become vulnerable to economic slowdowns, which constrain their ability to pay for expansion and consolidation. COPYRIGHT  © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. page 1 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine.Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. Even as companies a re being told that the future lies in globalization, some are severely punished for their international moves. A simple test can help you decide what makes strategic sense for your organization. When You Shouldn’t Go Global by Marcus Alexander and Harry Korine COPYRIGHT  © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Economic globalization is viewed by some as the best hope for world stability, by others as the greatest threat.But almost everyone accepts that businesses of all types must embrace it. Even smaller enterprises—urged on by the ? nancial markets, by investment bankers and consultants, by the media, and by the moves they see rivals making—feel the strategic imperative to go global in one form or another. Although the current ? nancial crisis is putting a damper on such activity, the pressure on companies to globalize is likely to persist. With this sense of inevitability, it’s easy to forget the serious mistakes s ome companies have made because of their global strategies. Dutch ? ancial-services ? rm ABN Amro, for example, acquired banks in numerous countries but wasn’t able to achieve the integration needed to generate value with its international network. AES, a U. S. -based energy ? rm that operates 124 generation plants in 29 countries on ? ve continents, has in recent years struggled to show that it is worth more than the sum of its individual geographic units. Daimler-Benz merged with Chrysler in 1998 in order to create a Welt AG—a world corporation—but never attained the power over markets and suppliers that this global position was supposed to deliver.And these days, companies can’t always chalk their mistakes up to experience and move on. Industry rivals and activist share owners are increasingly forcing ? rms to undo their international investments—despite, in many cases, early endorsement by analysts and the market—and even to ? re the sen ior management teams that made them. ABN Amro was dismembered last year by the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis, and Banco Santander, largely along geographic lines. AES’s share price has tumbled since investors’ initial enthusiasm for its globalization strategy, and some investment advisers are calling for the ? m to be split into three or more parts. The architect of the DaimlerChrysler deal, CEO Jurgen Schrempp, ? nally yielded to share-owner pressure and resigned, freeing up his successor to sell harvard business review †¢ december 2008 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. page 2 When You Shouldn’t Go Global Chrysler to the private-equity giant Cerberus in 2007.Indeed, we believe that businesses with illconsidered globalization strategies are poised to become the next targets for breakup or corporate overhaul by activist share owners, just as companies with poorly thought-out business diversi? cation strategies were targets in the past. Today’s activists include private-equity ? rms, hedge funds, and traditional pension funds, and they wield in? uence through a variety of means, from vocal use of the platform offered by a minority stake to all-out takeover and sell-off. All right, even the best executive teams are going to make mistakes in a business environment as complex as today’s.And no one would deny that the forces driving globalization are powerful and that the business bene? ts of becoming a global player can be tremendous. What concerns us is that so many companies seem to share unquestioned assumptions about the need to go global and are lulled by apparent safety in numbers as they move toward potential disaster. We highlight in this article several industries where this mind-set has been prevalent and a number of companies that have paid a high price for adopting it . Avoiding Ill-Fated StrategiesBusinesses have had international ambitions at least since the founding of the British East India and Hudson’s Bay companies in the seventeenth century. Truly global corporations began appearing early in the last century, and their number has grown—with both successes and failures along the way—ever since. But the accelerated removal of political and regulatory barriers to cross-border trading and investment over the past 15 years, along with the advent of technology that enables companies to conduct business around the world 24 hours a day, has made a global presence a generally accepted requisite in many industries.From the late 1990s onward, with a brief pause during the 2001–2003 bear market, we have witnessed a head-over-heels rush by companies to globalize: Foreign direct investments are at record levels, cross-border partnerships and acquisitions are burgeoning, worldwide sourcing continues to increase, and the pursui t of customers in emerging economies grows ever more heated. Marcus Alexander is an adjunct professor of strategic and international management at London Business School, a director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London, and a coauthor, with Andrew Campbell, of â€Å"What’s Wrong with Strategy? (HBR November–December 1997). Harry Korine ([email  protected] edu) is a teaching fellow in strategic and international management at London Business School and a senior research fellow at IFGE in Lyon, France. He is a coauthor, with Pierre-Yves Gomez, of The Leap to Globalization (Jossey-Bass, 2002) and Entrepreneurs and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Both authors have worked with some of the companies mentioned in this article. Although such moves have bene? ted—or at least not irreparably damaged—many companies, we’re beginning to see fallout. Sometimes ? ms have failed because their global strategies were deeply misguide d, other times because execution was more dif? cult than anticipated. We think that many failures could have been prevented—and would be avoided in the future—if companies seriously addressed three seemingly simple questions. 1. Are there potential bene? ts for our company? Just because a move makes sense for a rival or for companies in other industries doesn’t mean it makes sense for your own company or industry. The race to globalize sometimes leads people to overestimate the size of the prize.UK-based roof tile maker Redland, for example, expanded aggressively around the world beginning in the 1970s with the aim of leveraging its technical know-how beyond its home market. The problem: It often sought opportunities in countries, such as the United States and Japan, where local building practices provided very little demand for concrete roof tiles. Although the company was fully able to transfer the relevant technology, there was no value in doing so in such ma rkets. 2. Do we have the necessary management skills? Even if potential bene? ts do exist for your company, you may not be in a position to realize them.The theoretical advantages of globalizing—economies of scale, for example— are devilishly dif? cult to achieve in practice, and companies often lack the management key needed to unlock the coffer holding the prize. By the late 1990s, industrial conglomerate BTR had developed a presence in many countries. However, each business unit was run as a largely autonomous entity, with stringent pro? t accountability and little encouragement to work with others. This approach made sense in a fragmented world, but as BTR’s customers globalized, they came to expect coordinated supply and support across borders.Although the opportunity was clear and BTR seemed well positioned to seize it, the company found it impossible to implement an approach so alien to its traditions. Even after a change of CEO and other senior staffers, the company culture blocked attempts at global integration, and the 1999 merger with Siebe was seen by many analysts as an admission that BTR simply could not make the changes needed. harvard business review †¢ december 2008 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement.To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. page 3 When You Shouldn’t Go Global 3. Will the costs outweigh the bene? ts? Even if you are able to realize the bene? ts of a global move, unanticipated collateral damage to your business may make the endeavor counterproductive. Too often, companies fail to see that the full costs of going global may dwarf even a sizable prize—for example, when an effort to harmonize the practices of national business units drives away customers or distracts national management teams from the needs of their markets.The increased complexity of managing international operations is a lso a threat. TCL, a Chinese maker of electronics and home appliances, has expanded rapidly into the United States and Europe through a series of acquisitions and joint ventures. As a result of deals in the past few years with Thomson and Alcatel, TCL has found itself with four R&D headquarters, 18 R&D centers, 20 manufacturing bases, and sales organizations in 45 countries. The cost of managing this infrastructure has outweighed the bene? ts of increased scale and resulted in large losses for both joint ventures.Globalization’s Siren Song Companies neglect to ask themselves these seemingly obvious questions because of their complacent assumptions about the virtues of going global—assumptions that are reinforced by seductive messages from, among other places, the stock market. Although the siren song of globalization has lured companies of all kinds into this risky strategic space, recently the call has been particularly insidious in certain industry contexts, three of which we describe here. (For a description of how a management imperative such as â€Å"Become more global† can rapidly spread, see the sidebar â€Å"TheSusceptibility to Managerial Fads. †) The Susceptibility to Managerial Fads The belief that companies must become more global is the latest in a long line of widely held and generally unquestioned assumptions that can undermine the rational behavior of companies or entire industries. The management trends—you might even call them fads—that grow out of these assumptions can be dangerous because they often lead to sloppy thinking. For example, the label used to describe a trend may get stretched far beyond its original meaning. â€Å"Reengineering† has come to mean nearly any corporate reorganization; â€Å"related diversi? ation† is used today to justify acquisitions within categories, such as â€Å"communications media† and â€Å"? nancial services,† that are so broad as to be almost meaningless. More troubling, the stampede by companies to join peers in mindlessly embracing such trends can cloud managers’ judgment about what is worthwhile and achievable in their particular case. The pathology of management fads has an underlying dynamic that is worth exploring: Company X, with talented people at the helm, pioneers a new management approach. The ? rm does well, and others take notice. Maybe one or two experiment with similar innovations.Then stock market analysts and journalists spot the new approach. They view it as part of a broader pattern, and someone comes up with a clever-sounding label. The word â€Å"paradigm† may even get tossed around. As the phenomenon gains visibility—often in publications like this one—academics develop â€Å"frameworks† to help companies understand it. Their codi? cation, intended simply to explain the phenomenon, further validates it. (Consultants also develop frameworks, though usually w ith the aim of selling the trend as a product. ) Over time, people use the now-familiar label more and more loosely.They group all manner of activities under the heading. Despite its ambiguity, there is a growing sense that activities under the rubric are worthwhile. Investment bankers cite the concept as a reason for companies to make acquisitions or other moves, and in the enthusiasm of deal making everyone glosses over the dif? culties of integration and implementation. Financial markets sometimes reward companies just for announcing that they have adopted the new approach. Sadly, the original insight, not to mention an appreciation of the context that gave rise to it, soon gets lost as ompanies scramble to become part of the trend. Before long, they are copying all sorts of elements and manifestations that are at best tangential and often irrelevant to the sought-after bene? t. By the time a few books have come out on the topic, managers are embarrassed if they can’t poin t to examples within their own organizations. As the herd piles in, smart managers are already scanning the horizon for a new idea that will give them a competitive advantage. But others continue to give little thought to whether the trend has played out—or was never likely to bene? a company in their situation. There is always a lag before misapplications of the concept start to affect companies’ numbers. Even when they do, many corporate managers, with stacks of statements and presentations extolling the virtues of the approach, are reluctant to abandon it. The stubborn ones carry on regardless of mounting costs— thereby setting the stage for activist share owners to step in and force a change. This discouraging scenario doesn’t unfold because the original concept was wrong. (Globalizing isn’t necessarily bad; not globalizing isn’t necessarily good. It plays out because embracing a trend often precludes careful examination of the pros and cons of the speci? c choices made by a single company in a particular context. harvard business review †¢ december 2008 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. page 4 When You Shouldn’t Go Global Deregulated industries. Many businesses in formerly state-owned industries, such as telecommunications, postal services, and utilities, have responded to deregulation with aggressive global moves.Faced with limited growth opportunities and often increasing competition in their home markets, companies have accepted that geographic expansion is the best way to exercise their new strategic freedom. These companies, the argument goes, can apply existing competencies—providing voice and data communication, delivering letters and parcels, distributing electricity and water, even dealing with the deregulation process itself—in new m arkets. They will enjoy signi? cant savings by sharing resources across their international operations while â€Å"sticking to their knitting. The latter point—the importance of focusing on what they know how to do—is a key part of the argument, since unrelated diversi? cation, itself once a widely touted strategy, has been largely discredited. This apparently sound logic has turned out in many cases to be oversold by investment bankers or to be just plain ? imsy. Companies frequently pay far too much to enter foreign markets. Furthermore, many of the deregulated industries are â€Å"glocal†Ã¢â‚¬â€that is, customer expectations, operating environments, and management practices for what seem to be globally standard services can vary greatly depending on location.Water distribution, for instance, may not in fact be the same industry in the regulatory settings of two different countries. In addition, cross-border economies, if they exist at all, may be hard to ac hieve. It is dif? cult, for example, to optimize electricity ? ows over uncoordinated grids. Faced with such challenges, a number of companies have struggled with or reversed their global moves. Kelda, a UK water utility, sold its U. S. business six years after acquiring it because differences in pricing, environmental regulations, and distribution proved so great that the business could be run only on a stand-alone basis.Partly because of national differences in customer behavior, Deutsche Telekom has ended up running its U. S. unit, T-Mobile USA, as a completely independent business that could be sold off at any time. Rival telecom operator Vodafone has been forced by dissatis? ed share owners to unload its Japanese subsidiary, J-Phone. Deutsche Post, in assembling an international network of mail, express, and logistics services, overpaid signi? cantly for the U. S. express-delivery services DHL and Airborne. Germany’s former state-owned monopoly has also had great dif? ul ty integrating DHL’s entrepreneurial management culture with its own. Some analysts value the sum of Deutsche Post’s separate businesses as 25% greater than the market value of the company—an assessment that is likely to increase pressure to spin off some of those businesses. Service industries. Companies in traditionally national and fragmented service industries, such as retailing, consumer banking, and insurance, have viewed globalization as a way to realize scale economies and to generate growth beyond home markets themselves facing an incursion of foreign competition.In some cases, globalization seems to make sense because customers and suppliers are also becoming more global. As in deregulated industries, however, the â€Å"global† customer may be more national than anticipated. And obtaining scale economies across borders requires management skills and experience that many companies lack. For example, serving a customer that is truly global in a co nsistent way from multiple national of? ces is no easy task. Service businesses seeking to capture the bene? ts of a globalization strategy must, like ? rms in deregulated industries, pay attention to a mix of global and local factors.Purchasing can bene? t from careful coordination across borders, but marketing and sales may suffer from too much standardization. Certain services travel much better than others that seem remarkably similar. In shoe retailing, for instance, offerings targeted at the wealthy or the young are far more global than those aimed at the middle market, which remains doggedly local. In service businesses, many of the implementation challenges of a global strategy involve the coordination of people or processes. Wal-Mart, for instance, has struggled to get its partner ? ms and employees abroad to adopt its work routines. ABN Amro’s global empire was dismantled by predators because the international business was a collection of mostly unrelated operations in countries ranging from Brazil to Monaco. The company achieved few economies of scale: In marketing, harvard business review †¢ december 2008 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. page 5 When You Shouldn’t Go Global for example, it didn’t enjoy the ef? iencies resulting from a single global brand, because local banks mostly kept their original names. Furthermore, its attempts at sharing information systems, management processes, and other bits of infrastructure were repeatedly delayed and then implemented haphazardly, creating few savings. The outcomes of some other service companies’ global strategies have not been so dire—but they have still fallen short of expectations. Starbucks has pursued international growth at a breakneck pace, even though margins abroad have been only about half those of the compa ny’s U. S. operations.Axa, the global French insurance group, has enjoyed satisfactory ? nancial performance from its many units around the world but has so far been unable to reduce its global cost base or convincingly roll out innovations, such as its U. S. variable-annuity program, internationally. Thus, although the globalization strategy hasn’t destroyed value, it also hasn’t added as much as originally envisioned. Manufacturing industries. Over the past decade, companies in manufacturing indus- tries, such as automobiles and communications equipment, have viewed rapid crossborder consolidation as necessary for survival.Global mergers and partnerships seem to be the only way for companies to obtain the size needed to compete against consolidating rivals, to reduce their reliance on home markets, and to gain manufacturing economies of scale. These bene? ts, though arguably easier to achieve than those sought by service companies (because local differences se em less problematic), are often outweighed by operational and organizational challenges. The complexities of integrating organizations and operations can cause costly delays or failures. And companies haven’t had the luxury of much time to realize the bene? s of integration. Counting on the bene? ts of size and scale to drop quickly to the bottom line, many manufacturers have become particularly vulnerable to economic slowdowns, which constrain their ability to pay for expansion and consolidation before an increasing debt-to-equity ratio forces their executive teams to cede control to ? nanciers or new management. Royal Ahold’s Downfall Dutch supermarket operator Royal Ahold is best known in recent years for an accounting scandal that led to the resignation of its CEO and its CFO in 2003. The ? nancial irregularities must be seen in light of the company’s mbitious, and ultimately unsuccessful, globalization strategy. Royal Ahold began its international expansion in the 1970s and accelerated it in the 1990s, eventually acquiring businesses throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, to become the fourthlargest retailer in the world. But the bene? ts of owning this network of stores were hard to realize or didn’t exist in the ? rst place. Global economies of scale are one of the main rationales for international expansion. However, such economies, dif? cult to attain in many businesses, are particularly elusive in food retailing.Purchasing economies can be achieved only with items furnished by global suppliers to all markets—and these typically represent at most 20% of all supermarket items, because of cultural differences and the frequent need to source fresh food locally. Even apparently â€Å"international† products, such as hummus, must be adapted to different countries’ distinct tastes. Additionally, realizing synergies across a far-? ung network requires common information systems and mana gement processes, and Ahold made little effort to integrate its acquired businesses into the existing organization.Different information systems thus continued to coexist across the company, sometimes even within the same country. Ironically, the lack of integrated systems and processes needed to secure global bene? ts helped conceal the company’s ? nancial irregularities. And the failure to attain those bene? ts undoubtedly put pressure on top managers to produce favorable—if false— ? nancial results. When the new executive team ? nally introduced common management processes in the wake of the scandal, those processes did little to improve such activities as common purchasing across markets.As recently as last year, key suppliers were charging Ahold different prices in different countries. Ahold’s 2007 sale of most of its U. S. operations to private equity ? rms highlighted the nearly complete abandonment, under pressure from dissatis? ed minority share owners, of its once ambitious globalization strategy. The dissidents were concerned not about the usual over-diversi? cation of business types— after all, Royal Ahold remained focused on retailing—but about the over-diversi? cation of geographic locations. (Tests for suitable business diversi? ation are discussed in â€Å"Corporate Strategy: The Quest for Parenting Advantage,† by Andrew Campbell, Michael Goold, and Marcus Alexander, in the March– April 1995 issue of HBR. ) With the focus on governance at Ahold, the underlying story of failed globalization did not receive adequate attention until activist share owners jumped on it. harvard business review †¢ december 2008 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. page 6When You Shouldn’t Go Global The merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler is a poster child fo r this problem: The German and U. S. automakers were different in almost every respect, from company cultures to purchasing practices, and they were never able to attain such bene? ts as the promised billions of dollars in savings from common supply management. Taiwanese consumer electronics company BenQ’s acquisition of Siemens’s mobile-device business followed a similar story line, including incompatibility of cultures and processes, as well as dif? culties in integrating R&D activities.In a haunting echo of the scramble by Daimler-Benz and Chrysler to merge, BenQ didn’t visit Siemens workshops and production lines before inking the deal, relying only on due diligence documents. Although BenQ continues to be active in mobile equipment, its German unit was declared bankrupt in 2007. In both of these cases—and in numerous others—the strategic logic for globalization was tenuous, and the skills needed to implement a globalization strategy effectivel y were in short supply. A Continuing Danger We aren’t saying that all globalization strategies are ? awed.Telefonica, Spain’s former telephone monopoly, has successfully expanded throughout much of the Spanish-speaking world. The past ? ve years have seen General Electric’s Commercial Finance business move rapidly and effectively into dozens of non-U. S. markets. Renault’s pathbreaking alliance with Nissan has to this point proved bene? cial for the French and Japanese automakers. But focusing on such success stories only reinforces the conventional wisdom that a globalization strategy is a blanket requirement for doing business—which in turn leads many companies to insuf? iently scrutinize their proposed global initiatives. (For a discussion of one of the gravest cases of failed globalization, see the sidebar â€Å"Royal Ahold’s Downfall. †) We expect this trend to continue, as ? rms in various industries recklessly pursue global str ategies. Take the emerging renewableenergy industry—companies developing technologies for biofuel, solar energy, and wind energy. We have talked with executives who, racing to establish a global position in this booming ? eld, are planning rapid expansion over the next few years in Africa, Asia, nd Latin America—and completely underestimating the management challenges involved. Many will, after initial applause from the ? nancial markets, ? nd their hastily conceived strategies challenged after the fact by activists. We also anticipate that problems will recur in industries that earlier rushed to adopt globalization strategies, with activist share owners ready to pounce on companies as evidence of poor management choices surfaces. Activist share owners have already taken signi? cant positions in some companies mentioned in this article.Other target companies, perhaps not quite ripe for direct intervention—and temporarily shielded from attack by the current credi t crisis and turbulent equity markets—are nonetheless being discussed in the boardrooms of rivals and by the investment committees of pension funds and private equity ? rms. Ironically, some predators, having spotted the weaknesses of other companies’ global strategies, may be poised to fall into the same trap. For example, the Royal Bank of Scotland is known for its highly successful 2000 acquisition of NatWest, a much larger UK rival, and for the subsequent overhaul of its target’s culture.But RBS may ? nd it dif? cult to achieve similar results with the disparate banking assets—spread across more than 50 countries— that it acquired from ABN Amro. And though the recent government bailouts of RBS and Fortis aren’t a direct result of the ? rms’ international strategies, the acquisition of ABN Amro assets stretched their balance sheets and made the companies more vulnerable to the ? nancial crisis. We also worry that activist share own ers and private equity ? rms may reproduce ? awed globalization strategies in their own portfolios. The largest of these players are now more diversi? ed, both in ype of business and in international footprint, than many of the giant conglomerates of 30 years ago that were subsequently broken up and sold off. Indeed, as you look out on a landscape littered with the remains of dismembered companies weakened by failed globalization strategies, you have to wonder: Could today’s predators be tomorrow’s prey? Reprint R0812E To order, see the next page or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500 or go to www. hbr. org harvard business review †¢ december 2008 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement.To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. page 7 When You Shouldn’t Go Global Further Reading ARTICLES Managing Differences: The Central Challenge of Global Strategy by Pankaj Gh emawat Harvard Business Review March 2007 Product no. R0703C The main goal of any international strategy should be to manage the large differences that arise at the borders of markets. Yet executives often fail to exploit market and production discrepancies, focusing instead on the tensions between standardization and localization. Ghemawat presents a new framework that encompasses all three effective responses to the challenges of globalization.He calls it the AAA Triangle, with the As standing for the three distinct types of international strategy. Through adaptation, companies seek to boost revenues and market share by maximizing their local relevance. Through aggregation, they attempt to deliver economies of scale by creating regional, or sometimes global, operations. And through arbitrage, they exploit disparities between national or regional markets, often by locating different parts of the supply chain in different places— for instance, call centers in India, factories in China, and retail shops in Western Europe.Ghemawat draws on several examples that illustrate how organizations use and balance these strategies and describes the trade-offs they make as they do so when trying to build competitive advantage. Emerging Giants: Building World-Class Companies in Developing Countries by Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu Harvard Business Review October 2006 Product no. R0610C As established multinational corporations stormed into emerging markets, many local companies lost market share or sold off businesses—but some fought back.India’s Mahindra & Mahindra, China’s Haier Group, and many other corporations in developing countries have held their own against the onslaught, restructured their businesses, exploited new opportunities, and built worldclass companies that are today giving their global rivals a run for their money. The authors describe three strategies these businesses used to become effective global competitors despite f acing financial and bureaucratic disadvantages in their home markets. Some capitalized on their knowledge of local product markets.Some have exploited their knowledge of local talent and capital markets, thereby serving customers both at home and abroad in a cost-effective manner. And some emerging giants have exploited institutional voids to create profitable businesses. Getting Offshoring Right by Ravi Aron and Jitendra V. Singh Harvard Business Review December 2005 Product no. R0512J Recently a rising number of companies in North America and Europe have experimented with offshoring and outsourcing business processes, hoping to reduce costs and gain strategic advantage—with mixed results.According to several studies, half the organizations that have shifted processes offshore have failed to generate the expected financial benefits. What’s more, many of them have faced employee resistance and consumer dissatisfaction. A three-part methodology can help companies reform ulate their offshoring strategies. First, prioritize company processes according to two criteria: the value these processes create for customers and the degree to which the company can capture some of that value. Then keep highest-priority processes in-house and consider outsourcing low-priority ones. Second, analyze the risks that accompany offshoring.Finally, determine possible locations for offshore efforts, as well as the organizational forms—such as joint ventures—that those efforts might take. page 8 This article is made available to you with compliments of Harry Korine. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www. hbr. org. To Order For Harvard Business Review reprints and subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500. Go to www. hbr. org For customized and quantity orders of Harvard Business Review article reprints, call 617-783-7626, or e-mail [email  protected] harvard. edu

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Detterence Essay

Most are articles written by different intellectual scholars in the criminal justice field all weighing in on what they believe the theory of â€Å"Deterrence† is and how it relates to the ability to deflect and or inhibit crime during war time, peace time and stately situations. In particular I found one article to be an astounding work done by a man named Stephen Quackenbush with an article titled General Deterrence and International Conflict: Testing Perfect Deterrence Theory (2006). Although this article deals with deterrence theory of international conflict it still involves the basic roots of deterrence. I would like to show that through Mr. Quackenbush’s work one can come very close to a â€Å"Perfect Theory of Deterrence â€Å" by simply following the logic of the article. Deterrence 3 When searching for the topic it was my goal to find the meaning of deterrence and or the application behind the theory. I wanted something with close ties to the relationship of the text we are using in the classroom. The text we are using Vold’s Theoretical Criminology, 6th ed (Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, 2010). I found in the article what I needed to relate different aspects of the text to the fundamentals behind what S. Quackebush (2006) had theorized about the levels behind deterrence. Not only does his research provide information on when and how to implement deterrence it can use simple math to determine the victor in every situation based on fundamentals of push and shove and force on force comparisons. In order to understand what deterrence was I wanted to find a source to provide a little more input than data from the 1800’s, as we have learned from Cesare Bonesana (1738-1794) statement concerning the implementation of keeping punishments proportional to the seriousness of the crime so that the cost always exceeds the reward (Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, pg. 14). This is all well and good to understand how to set its boundary of punishment to the crime but I needed a better understanding of how it worked and what other factors besides crime helped to determine severity and what types of deterrence we see in our world today. By looking into Quackenbush’s (2006) theory I can gain a better understanding of the levels of deterrence and the players in the game. By understanding it better myself and can readily adapt it better in my of life and have a better understanding of why and how it is used not only on the global level but on every street corner in America. I order to locate the information I was searching for I followed the link provided in module one under the paper one resource provided by the course administrator. After following the link to the Excelsior Library’s resource search page I entered deterrence into the search box and began to look for articles that appealed to me over those that were easier for lack of a better term. Deterrence 4 I did find an article prior to the one by Mr. Quackenbush (2006) but after careful review I found the course required the article to be from 2000 and up. My article was from the 1930’s so that got quickly recycled and I found the article mentioned above. When I have used the library resource in the past I find it is always best to find your specific subject of study go to that portion of the library and search using specific terms within the requirements you have for the research to be done. In this case it was easy I had one word to describe my intent to the search box and in return it pulled up many documents. I knew that since mine needed to be a specific format â€Å"Article† I then eliminated all but the required information such as periodicals and journals. Of course a wide variety of useful and some not so useful articles, journals and periodicals popped up. I simply perused through them until I found a few that grabbed my attention. I would then open the journal and briefly read through it to see if it contained the content I wanted or was interested in. Once I found the writing that best fit the work I wanted to explore my time was done in the Excelsior Library. While looking through the many choices that were made available to me I quickly looked at content for information that one, intrigued me and two had some rational sense in which I could then understand and use. What is the point of using information that you have no Comprehension of? Once these guidelines were established I look at the list of references and crossed checked these and the original author through the internet to find any additional information that may have been useful to me. The trick to this as well is to find a resource that has the intent of the message being interpreted and received by the viewer. If I am to do a paper on deterrence what benefit would I gain from a paper on crime rates in Kalamazoo, MI? At this point relevance to the meaning of the research is a factor. Another key thing to look for in an article is what amount of evidence is backed up by fact and how much of it is based on opinion or hearsay? Deterrent 5 A good resource needs to be based on as much proven fact and be backed by additional works to allow for the best use of the material in which you are going to use for your paper. Anyone can find a story on their topic but is it a story or is there hard evidence to back it up? I believe my methods of evaluation are probably a bit more stringent than those described in the library resource. I tend to be a stickler for what I want to use for any form of writing in order to try to get my point across as best as possible. The library resources are abundant with useful information though. Do not think I am discrediting then because that would be far from the truth. As a new student when I first started my Undergraduates Degree I used all the resources available to me especially the library. The article I chose to introduce to compliment Chapter two’s lesson on deterrence is an article called General Deterrence and International Conflict: Testing Perfect Deterrence Theory, by Stephen L. Quackenbush (2006). When I first began to read the article it intrigue my because it deals not just with the cause and effect of deterrence but the quantative measure of it as if it is and has always been a scientific fact of life. It begins by stating deterrence is the use of a threat (explicit or not) by one party in attempt to convince another party not to upset the status quo (Quackenbush, S. L. 2006). It breaks it down into two purposes which are direct and extended deterrence. One is immediate and used primarily as a means of prevention or attack on a defender, while the other is meant to deter a general population. Along with this are two types of situations that are created by deterrence. The first is immediate and is targeted toward a specific challenger and general which is all encompassing of a group (Quackenbush, S. L. 2006). Deterrent 6 Inside these purposes are different categories to describe different events of deterrence to include direct immediate deterrence, direct general deterrence, extended immediate deterrence and extended general deterrence (Quackenbush, S. L. 2006). These are considered different strategies based on your position. In this article the author chose to focus primarily on direct general deterrence to prove his theory of the â€Å"perfect deterrence†. At many times Dr. Quackenbush (2006) speaks in term of deterrence being that of a game. I will describe the way that I understand his game based n the article as it delves deep into mathematical equations that do make sense but are a long way to describe it how I will. As discussed before there are and have to always be two sides when we speak of deterrence. In the case of the article they are known as Challenger and Defender. In this game there are choices to be made and depending on the choice each side makes will determine whether you are the defender or the challenger. Think of it if you will like a national game of chess depending on how you chose to play your piece will either make you the aggressor or leave you making defensive moves to get out of harm’s way. Earlier it was discussed that deterrence is simply used to bring one party back to the status quo or the normal. Being the defender or challenger and based on the decisions you make will put you into one of two places. You will either be the defender, come back to the status quo or you will retaliate (becoming the challenger) and move into conflict and vice versa. Based on this Dr. Quackenbush (2006) has established that no matter where we are even in peace times there will always be a direct general deterrence. The shift from this happens when one side moves their piece one way or another. The understanding of deterrence in this article is based on a state to state or nation to nation offensive and defensive. We typically are discussing criminal activities of general population during this course but I do have a way to show just how much it looks like the national scale of deterrence within our precincts and our cities. Deterrence 7 One of the ways it can be shown that Dr. Quackenbush’s (2006) Theory of the perfect deterrence being present in our text is to compare just a few similarities in which he based his work on. One of the first few terms that come to mind is deterrence decay and residual deterrence. If compared to the though t of a continual deterrence as suggested by Dr. Quackenbush then you can consider these the effects of a deterrent being put into place. This would happen in three stages the initial deterrent, the deterrent decay and what would be left would be the residual deterrence. By showing that there are different levels and or stages of deterrence at any given ime then we can validate the Theory of Perfect Deterrence as proposed by Dr. Quackenbush (2006). By knowing the challenger to defender relationship it can compare to local law enforcement against drugs, crime, gangs and the list goes on. At times the law enforcement agencies are the challenger and the criminals are the defender. Those roles do reverse and local authori ties have come under attack many times before. By understanding that there is always some type of ongoing deterrence whether perceived or intentional the challenger and or the defender will plan accordingly. The threat of going to jail for a crime is a constant deterrent for most. At times though there are those that weigh the benefit to the loss and chose to defy the deterrent sometimes they get away with it and sometimes they don’t. It is knowing that there is a consequence for your action that keeps most on the straight and narrow. A perceived deterrent would be a shining star in proof of constant deterrence theory. Based on past experiences people will build a perceived notion of punishment for an offense. The deterrent had been initiated long ago yet the residual effect of it remains.