Integration Theory And Policy Development In The EU Essay

Integration Theory And Policy Development In The EU - Essay Example The EU ozone policy grew from scientific research conducted on the ozone layer in the 70’s which showed that industrial pollutants including those produced by certain home appliances and household sprays were having great and far-reaching effects on the ozone layer surrounding the Earth. To minimize potential hazards and set international standards, the EU together with its executive body the European Commission partook in the framing of multilateral environmental agreements. Since the EU was the biggest exporter of CFC’s due to surplus production, its involvement in developing an ozone policy was crucial. However, the EU is dependent on the effectiveness of the EC and the subsequent participation of the member states into agreeing with the policy. In implementing this EU policy, the two grand theories of integration, neo-functionalism, and intergovernmental work in different ways. One of the earliest policies that illustrated the theory of neo-functionalism was the Com mon Agricultural Policy in the 1960s (Lindberg 1963). A neo-functionalistic approach uses the technical and scientific knowledge of ozone depletion data and the substances causing the effect, to allow technocrats in the EC to draw out schemes that curtail or eliminate the use of ozone depletion substances (ODS). Integration using the neo-functionalistic method permits a sharing of scientific knowledge among similar sectors in the various member states, enabling manufacturing and technology companies in those states to implement a common strategy.... Integration also causes a natural spill over of knowledge and activities into other associated sectors (EPSnet). A functional-spill over occurs when certain processes are functionally connected to each other due to the intermeshing of the economy (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970: 117). The common goal of eliminating ODS needs no mandate and thus the populace of the EU is left out. The formation and implementation of an agreement relating to regional issues compels the various states to adopt the common policy (Schmitter 1969). A few public interest and environmental groups may be involved in the process and together a common strategy may be formulated but by and large the institutions of the EU are on their own in the decision making process. The problem that may arise is when a state is slow to implement the policy thus stalling the integration process. On the other hand, an intergovernmental approach would elevate discretionary powers of the EU member states rather than the supranational institutions. Since the states themselves remain the principal arbiters of integration, they possess decision making powers as to whether or not the EU ozone policy should be implemented locally. Here too more powers rest with the national executives of the states and their advisory boards. Their decision to accept or reject the EU ozone policy can override the power of the supranational institutions of the EU such as the European Commission. The consequence is that unequal implementation in the entire EU with some states applying the ozone policy while others rejecting it or delaying its implementation. With the intergovernmental approach the main issue of ozone depletion is never truly addressed by common consensus. Various

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood :: essays research papers fc

James Fils-Aime The Handmaid’s Tale Fact or Fiction The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire race, these things all seem like fiction. However Atwood's novel is closer to fact than fiction; all the events which take place in the story have a base in the real world as well as a historical precedent. Atwood establishes the world of Gilead on historical events as well as the social and political trends which were taking place during her life time in the 1980's. Atwood shows her audience through political and historical reference that Gilead was and is closer than most people realize. Atwood closely scrutinizes Colonial America, back in the 1700's it was a society founded on religion and ran as a theocratic order. Puritans who had just fled Europe for religions freedom settled in the Americas where they could run their society in the way they saw fit. Especially in New England, religious freedom was not allowed, and people were punished by the courts for failing to uphold the common religions requirements. Those who were not of a specific type of Christianity were considered heathens. Men who controlled the society enforced rules on others based on their interpretations of the bible. They believed that "as God's elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to God's will as revealed in the Bible." (3) Later on puritanical control faded but in the South there was the enslavement and resulting racism toward blacks. Again so called male leaders of society promote injustice and oppression in order to benefit themselves. Atwood also uses her novel to comment briefly on the issues of race, those not of a specific type of Christianity or skin color were sent away to the colonies, or killed. The "children of Ham", which in the bible represent the descendants of the black race, are relocated outside of Gilead. Even the location in which she places Gilead is reminiscent of early American for Boston, Massachusetts was a puritan center. The world of Gilead which Atwood is a society controlled by power hungry men who use religion as a means of control. Atwood also references the oppression of Jew's during the holocaust in her novel. Under Hitler's rule 6 million Jews were killed, and many more sent to concentration camps where they were mistreated by their captors.

“A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne”

The book entitled â€Å"Framework for Understanding Poverty† is a famous book of a former school teacher Ruby K. Payne. I learnt that Ruby Payne is an expert of poverty. She also talks about her understanding of mentality of middle class and wealth.he book has become a text book for poverty workers, teachers and managers of schools to know about the three categories of poverty; generational (for two or more generations) poverty, situational poverty (because of a sad event like disease, death of earning member of family or divorce).The definitions of three poverty types that Ruby Payne gives make sense. The reason of split behaviors, ethics, individuality of three poverty types is stated in financial aspects, she explains   as clearly visible among poverty stricken and is she also covered this identification among wealthy. This approach, that it is not money alone but a lot of other factors have an influence over people, is quite holistic.The book on Poverty written by Ruby P ayne advises that every one in education field from teachers to administrators at all levels of education ‘must read’ the Payne book, which is a boisterous advise. An author of a finance and poverty book can not be so demanding and dogmatic.It could be useful for some having congruent ideas with Ruby Payne but not all will think in her way. It is very useful to understanding the point of view of Dr. Ruby Payne on socio economic reasons and characteristics of poverty.  The good part of her scientific discussion is her suggesting the details of support systems. She suggests focusing on coping techniques, knowing about the various emotional and financial factors that put limitations, and complexities of relationships they hold with similar background social fraternity and then she suggests that the procedural communication and habit of positive talk should be taught to the poverty background students, and how it would help the poor students learn and perform better than their present performance.The Theme of the BookThe book makes us realize the poverty in vivid detail and its entire backdrop of why the cycle of poverty is difficult to break. She emphasizes that poverty is not merely a situation of having less money than they need, but it is struggling in a domain of definite rules, separate feelings, and poor information that prevails over the methods of making   relations and creating a life among poor. The book gives us a useful quiz about survival on its page fifty seventh, which helps understanding contours of poverty.The objective of the book that runs through all chapters of the book is demystifying the myths of poverty with an intension to make us know how to break the poverty cycle.The aim of Ruby Payne appears to be educating all the stakeholders in School education system and education establishments, to make them focus on poor child that they learn in a better way after knowing their social and cultural background and most importantly their emotional mind makeup. This truly helps the teacher and administrators to do a better job in becoming mentors and role models for poor students who emulate them.The process of poverty should be tackled scientifically by training the students certain needed soft skills that poor parents could not teach to their children.The examples given in the book are fantastic such as, for poor, how they learn to look for safety of your clothes at Laundromat, how they engage and entertain their friends and close people by telling stories, and for a middle class person, the knowledge of use of a credit card or library card, earning loyalty from a household employee and creating a veil of seclusion and reserve around for the wealthy.

Creating customer value in the not-for-profit sector a case study of the British library - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1187 Downloads: 3 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Marketing Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? CREATING CUSTOMER VALUE IN THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT SECTOR: A CASE STUDY OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY The modern marketing concept can be expressed as: The achievement of corporate goals through meeting and exceeding customer needs and expectations better than the competition (Doyle, 2002; Jobber, 2004; Palmer, 2004). To apply this concept, three conditions should be met (Jobber, 2004). First, company activities should be focused upon providing customer satisfaction. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Creating customer value in the not-for-profit sector: a case study of the British library" essay for you Create order Second, the achievement of customer satisfaction relies on integrated effort. Finally, for integrated effort to come about, management must believe that corporate goals can be achieved through satisfied customers. The marketing department alone is not responsible for the implementation of the concept but all the departments of the company viz. the production, finance, research and development, engineering and other departments should also be. Market orientation involves the following activities: identifying the changing customer needs, identifying accordingly the present and future potential market, and marketing the products and services according to the demands of the market. A market driven company features to be a set of beliefs that puts customerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s interest first, ability to generate and use information about customers and competitors, and the ability to coordinate resources for customer value creation. According to Shapiro (1998) the terms à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"market and marketing orientationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ are often used interchangeably. Lambin (2000) states that marketing orientation focuses on marketingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s functional role in co-ordinating and managing the elements of the marketing mix to make a firm more responsive to meeting the needs of its customers, whereas a market orientation highlights the role of all members of the organisation in developing customer relations and enhancing customer value. Hollensen (2003) defines customer value as the differences between the benefits customers realize from using the product and the costs they incur in finding, acquiring and using it (p. 40. Original emphasis). Market orientation and libraries (British Library) According to Rowley (2001), the information suppliers, including libraries, should know how to apply marketing concepts, approaches and tactics. The marketing or promotional activities are used primarily to encourage the public to utilise the collection of the librarie s. British Library is the national library of the UK. Its collection includes manuscripts, patents, journal titles, maps, newspapers, prints, drawings, music scores, millions of stamps and other philatelic items and a sound archive, with recordings dating from the 19th century, and every publication produced in the UK and Ireland. According to Lanning and Michaels (1988) and Kotler (2003), value creation and delivery sequence comprise the following three stages: Choose the value à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" segment the market, select appropriate market target(s), and developing the offerings value positioning Provide the value determine of the various elements of the marketing mix to deliver the value positioning Communicate the value à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" communicate the offer to the target markets This process in the specific context of the British Library: Choosing the value Five different market sectors for the BL were identifiedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ researchers, business users, education (schools), the general public and the UK library network (both public and higher education libraries). For each of the five sectors, research into awareness of the British Library among target customers was implemented, and a specific strategy for each target sector was prepared. Interbrand, a brand consultancy, undertook extensive research programmes on perception among internal and external stakeholders of the British Library. It was found as the results of this research that three key organisational values were deemed to be incorporated innovation, relevance and pride. Based on this result, the mission of the BL was articulated in terms of helping people advance knowledge to enrich lives. And five core competences of the BL were identified by which this mission was to be achieved : open, consultative management staff who feel valued and recognised an empowered, flexible and diverse workforce non-hierarchical, agile decision making strong performance measurement BL moved to demand- driven strategy and focused on the targeted market sectors. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"World class collections and value added servicesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ which is the value proposition of British Library and skilled and expertise staff provided a competitive advantage. The British Library adopted electronic communications as the new strategy and thus its website offers online catalogues, information and exhibitions, and changes to the Document Supply Service at Boston Spa have enabled digital delivery of research material on a far greater scale. Providing the value The BL Annual Report (British Library, 2004c) gives an indication of the scale of activities and their usage for each of the target market sectors. Researchers Over, 400,000 visits are made to the BL each year by members of the research community. Even more use the remote information supply service. The customer alerting services offer access to over 20 million articles from academic journals and conferences. Business users Key targets were identified as high research and development oriented industries, professional services, creative industries publishing industries, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 80% of the highest spending UKà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s RD companies use BL services. Education In 2003, 8173 children and their teachers took part in workshops based at St. Pancras and visits to the learning pages of the BL website increased fourfold. It provides 2000 pages of online material to enable learners to develop investigative and creative research skills in support of the National Curriculum for schools. Libraries Links with the UK library network promote collaboration between institutions at both regional and local levels. Touring exhibitions and online resources help to improve access to BL material across the country, as befitting the librarys national remit. The BL also supports digitisation projects with the aim of reuniting material of regional importance that has been dispersed around the country. General public The BL stages many public events and also free exhibitions both real and virtual. It publishes books, audio CDs and interactive CD-ROMs targeted to both general and specialised markets. Communicating the value The previous logo was traditional, even old-fashioned. In order to communicate the key values of the organisation to the business and professional audience, a new identity system was needed to be created. The theme of à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"advancing knowledgeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ became the focus for external communications to develop consistency of approach. Marketing communications, at each of the targeted market sectors, demonstrated the organisations value proposition; i.e., the key theme was adding value underlying all of the BL communications activities. The future Combining both market-oriented and resource based approaches, the BL is constantly seeking to maintain and enhance its value proposition to its identified customer segments in a dynamic information marketplace. A key task is capitalising on the resources of the BL, which can be classified as both tangible and intangible. The BL is actively developing its digital capabilities, so that as much of the collections as possible is available on the world-wide-web, with the ultimate goal being for the entire BL collection to be available online on demand. Conclusion Two of Days (1994a) features of market orientation the development of a set of beliefs that puts the customers interests first, and the coordinated application of interfunctional resources are being developed and implemented through the process of value creation and delivery (Kotler, 2003) outlined in this paper. Public sectors and not for profit organisations will have to adopt marketing concept to remain competitive in turbulent market places.