Analysis Of Kafka s The Metamorphosis - 989 Words

Ralph Freedman’s critical essay titled â€Å"Kafka’s Obscurity† on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis delves into the idea that from changes in the protagonist’s physical limitations, familial bonds, and his being â€Å"[he] is finally reduced to a mere speck of self-awareness which is ultimately extinguished† (Freedman 131). General questions of â€Å"why† and â€Å"how† are almost immediately dismissed due to the calm and monotonous tone that Kafka implements throughout the novel. Instead, the reader is encouraged to ponder the consequences of separating one’s mind from their body, in particular, how long can their humanity stay intact when the rest of them is replaced. Freedman reveals the â€Å"paradoxical† (Freedman 131) nature of The Metamorphosis in which the demise of one’s life may also be blissful release, especially when the individual in question was arguably inhuman to begin with. The transformatio n itself is emphasising the character’s current dejection and is highlighted by the transformations mirrored in the family as well. From the first moment that Gregor Samsa became an abomination to his last seconds on Earth, a struggle for him to retain his essential self was known. He had always been so considerate of his family and even as a bug would hide himself under the couch for their sanity. As the story progresses, Gregor becomes resentful of the way everyone treats him, especially with his sister, Grete Samsa, who stopped cleaning his room and forbade anyone from taking theShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis 3979 Words   |  16 PagesAustin Day Professor Imali Abala English 357 18 February 2015 The Theme of Alienation in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis The Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka in 1915 is said to be one of the greatest literary works of all time and is seen as one of Kafka’s best and most popular works of literature. A relatively short novel; the story explains how the protagonist, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a vermin which completely estranges him from the world even moreRead MoreAnalysis Of Kafka s The Metamorphosis 1166 Words   |  5 PagesKafka is ranked among the most important writers of the twentieth century for works that express modern humanity s loss of personal and collective order. His writing describes the situations of psychological, social, political, and physical instability and confusion that defy logical explanation and which typify Kafka s conception of humanity s absurd relationship with the universe (Kafka, 2013). Although Kafka s work has elicited various critical interpretations, he himself characterized hisRead MoreAnalysis Of Kafka s The Metamorphosis 2407 Words   |  10 Pagesbe fair to conclude that the society we live in undergoes a social metamorphosis into some states, conditions and status that cannot be possibly fathomed by a rational and neutral human being, in comparison to what is perceived as normal. This change is normally brought about as a result of various factors and environments that we interact with in our life. Whereas Kafka’s novella starts off with a sudden â€Å"physical metamorphosis†, plenty of accompanying psychological and sociological changes areRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis 1711 Words   |  7 Pagestheme that most readers can relate to. Franz Kafka, a renowned German-speaking fiction writer of the 20th century, uses a unique style of writing that many people believe is a telling of his own life story. In his well-known short story, â€Å"The Metamorphosis†, many similarities and connections can be seen between the main character, Gregor Samsa, and the author himself, Franz Kafka. A major comparison that can be made is the fact that both Samsa and Kafka died slow, lonesome deaths after being in aRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis1873 Words   |  8 Pageswriters take their creative control to emphasize the current state of the freedom and control of the individual. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, various World War I poems, and Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich show the lack of individual freedom and control that people had over their lives during the destruction that occurred in the 20th century. Published in 1915, Franz Kafka wasted no time in starting his discussion about freedom and control through the life of Gregor. After he awakes and realizesRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis 1087 Words   |  5 Pagesdictator that he ever go to. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, is about a young man that wakes up one day and is a vermin and has to maneuver around his home and come to terms with his six itchy legs. It probably sounds like a load of fictitious ramblings that somehow became a classical novel. Wrong! Look a little closer and the secret message Franz Kafka wrote for his father will slowly emerge from in between the lines. In his secret message, Kafka evinces that a dictator will be a person’s end ifRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis1500 Words   |  6 Pagesâ€Å"In the morning†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ verminous bug.† In Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, the opening sentence introduces the main character, event and the setting. Gregor Samsa is one of the only two characters who are addressed by name, this reflects his importance in the story because he is the protagonist and he plays a central role in the lives of his family and friends. Besides introducing the central character, this opening line has a dramatic impact on readers. It draws the reader straight to Gregor Samsa’sRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis 948 Words   |  4 PagesFreud says one way humans express their hidden feeling is through dreams. This idea is the foundation for the dream interpretation of â€Å"The Metamorphosis.† Dreams have the capacity to encapture events that never happen in reality. They connect with how people reflect their true feelings about a situation or themselves. Throughout â€Å"The Metamorphosis†, the author, Kafka, uses Gregor’s repressed feelings inc orporated with the dull setting and Gregor’s transformation to support the idea that Gregor is dreamingRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s Metamorphosis1985 Words   |  8 PagesDoes one view one’s external self, or do they see a reflection of past experience? Not many have the value of altruism, but some do. Sometimes altruism can turn extremist though, to the point where it can be a negative thing. In Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the main character Gregor Samsa is a workaholic that randomly one day awakens as a bug. Initially, Gregor sees himself with a condition, and then slowly tries to adapt to his bug transformation. Gregor did not put himself first when he was inRead MoreAnalysis Of Kafka s The Metamorphosis And The Women s Swimming Pool 1109 Words   |  5 Pagesyou a man? Are you a woman? What is your gender? Concept of gender and sex are very important matter for us in living in the society. In the stories, â€Å"The Metamorphosis† and  "The Women’s Swimming Pool†, it is mentioned that what the role of men and women, and what it means living as a men and women in society. In Kafka’s work â€Å"The Metamorphosis†, after Gregor Samsa was transformed into bug, he lost his own figure, his family, his job, and even himself. Before that happened, he really tried hard to

The Secret Military Installation On The Planet - 1663 Words

Cover ups, whether of the government actions or secret plans or personal grudges most certainly end up being revealed in time. Conspiracy on any level seeks to hide actions on the part of individuals who perceive their importance greater than that of others. Historically, conspiracies associated with the United States government cause citizens to question their elected leaders. Broken trust requires many months and years to rebuild, if ever it can be. â€Å"Less than one hundred miles from Las Vegas, Nevada is the most famous secret military installation on the planet† (â€Å"Area†). â€Å"The actual area cannot be found on most maps, at least not those accessible to the public† (â€Å"Brannan†). â€Å"There are several theories about how Area 51 got its†¦show more content†¦Robert Lazar said the government has possession of at least nine alien spacecraft at a base called S-4, which is not far from Groom Lake† (â€Å"Area†). â€Å"Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, several burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C.† (â€Å"Watergate Scandal†). â€Å"The first White House reaction was to publicly downplay the whole affair† (Cohen 33). â€Å"â€Å"...The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents† (â€Å"Watergate Scandal†). â€Å"While historians are not sure whether Nixon knew about the Watergate espionage operation before it happened, he took steps to cover it up afterwards, raising â€Å"hush money† for the burglars trying to stop the FBI from investigating the crime, destroying evidence and firing uncooperative staff members† (â€Å"Watergate Scandal†). â€Å"He [Nixon] went on national television and declared he had done nothing wrong† (Cohen 17-18). â€Å"The seven men charged with the Watergate burglary went on trial January 8, 1973† (Cohen 35). â€Å" McCord - one of the seven men - stated that members of his family had expressed fear for his life if he told what he knew and that he did not feel confident talking to the FBI† (Cohen 37). â€Å"There was,

Assumptions of Others Samples for Students †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Assumptions of Others Answer: In this essay, I am discussing about the assumptions we make about others. According to me, it is the basic nature of human beings to make assumptions about others and thereby place a judgment. No matter how much we try, we seem to be helpless about being judgmental. In this essay, I have given an overview about similar experiences encountered and my views on the video given for referral. Most of us are hardly aware of the assumptions we make because to us they seem very real. Assumptions made depend on our experience, observation of others behavior and our perceptibility about others (Wilson, 2012). We possess certain limited filters depending on which we tag a person. Through the labels put, we create mindset regarding the person. Therefore, somewhere down the subconscious mind what we look for is the evidence to support our thoughts. Thus in reality we see things the way we want it to be and hear what we want to thereby blocking things away that negates our thought process (Zipf, 2016). In one of my personal experience while trying to explain the new marketing strategy, my boss started interrupting me that forced me to draw conclusions regarding the interruptions. I kept thinking that the presentation was not going right and he is thereby thinking me to be a less capable. Therefore based on my assumptions I kept trying to find evidences that supported my viewpoint rather that finding out whether it was true. It could have been other way round but my assumptions filtered those thoughts away. In this context, let me explain the film given for reference. The film shows a Korean woman out for her morning exercise routine meets a US citizen who questions her about her fluency in English. In reply, she said San Diego is the place where she has grown up but the man still was too inquisitive about her origin. This is because the man has assumed from the look of the women that she is either a Korean or Japanese and cannot converse in English. The fluency in her English astonished him. To the man his limited thoughts have not allowed him to think beyond the fact where a Korean can speak good English (youtube, 2017). Therefore here the assumption of the man led to miscommunication and misunderstanding at the same time. In this context, I believe understanding the Situation, Behavior and Impact model is important as it enables delivery of more effective feedback (Claiborne Sirgy, 2015). The model focuses on situation specific personal behavior and comments thereby helping us to understand this behavioral impact on others. According to this model, the first step includes giving the feedback based on where and when of the situation. The next step includes addressing the specific behavior that I prefer to address while the last step is the description of how his actions are affecting me. The essay however concludes on the note that we as human beings make assumptions. Here I have also shared personal example as well as discussed my views on film shared. One can also understand how making assumptions without knowing the actual person can lead to misunderstanding. The essay also discuss about a model that interpret situation and motives. References: Claiborne, C. B., Sirgy, M. J. (2015). Self-image congruence as a model of consumer attitude formation and behavior: A conceptual review and guide for future research. In Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 1-7). Springer, Cham. youtube. (2017). What kind of Asian are you?. YouTube. Retrieved 29 July 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWynJkN5HbQ Zipf, G. K. (2016). Human behavior and the principle of least effort: An introduction to human ecology. Ravenio Books.

William BlakeS Relevance To The Modern World Essays -

William Blake'S Relevance To The Modern World William Blake's Relevance to the Modern World William Blake, who lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, was a profoundly stirring poet who was, in large part, responsible for bringing about the Romantic movement in poetry; was able to achieve remarkable results with the simplest means; and was one of several poets of the time who restored rich musicality to the language (Appelbaum v). His research and introspection into the human mind and soul has resulted in his being called the Columbus of the psyche, and because no language existed at the time to describe what he discovered on his voyages, he created his own mythology to describe what he found there (Damon ix). He was an accomplished poet, painter, and engraver. Blake scholars disagree on whether or not Blake was a mystic. In the Norton Anthology, he is described as an acknowledged mystic, [who] saw visions from the age of four (Mack 783). Frye, however, who seems to be one of the most influential Blake scholars, disagrees, saying that Blake was a visionary rather than a mystic. 'Mysticism' . . . means a certain kind of religious techniques difficult to reconcile with anyone's poetry, says Frye (Frye 8). He next says that visionary is a word that Blake uses, and uses constantly and cites the example of Plotinus, the mystic, who experienced a direct apprehension of God four times in his life, and then only with great effort and relentless discipline. He finally cites Blake's poem I rose up at the dawn of day, in which Blake states, I am in God's presence night & day, And he never turns his face away (Frye 9). Besides all of these achievements, Blake was a social critic of his own time and considered himself a prophet of times to come. Frye says that all his poetry was written as though it were about to have the immediate social impact of a new play (Frye 4). His social criticism is not only representative of his own country and era, but strikes profound chords in our own time as well. As Appelbaum said in the introduction to his anthology English Romantic Poetry, [Blake] was not fully rediscovered and rehabilitated until a full century after his death (Appelbaum v). For Blake was not truly appreciated during his life, except by small cliques of individuals, and was not well-known during the rest of the nineteenth century (Appelbaum v). Blake lived during a time of intense social change. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution all happened during his lifetime. These changes gave Blake a chance to see one of the most dramatic stages in the transformation of the Western world from a somewhat feudal, agricultural society to an industrial society where philosophers and political thinkers such as Locke, Franklin, and Paine championed the rights of the individual. Some of these changes had Blake's approval; others did not. One example of Blake's disapproval of changes that happened in his time comes in his poem London, from his work Songs of Experience. In London, which has been described as summing up many implications of Songs of Experience, Blake describes the woes that the Industrial Revolution and the breaking of the common man's ties to the land have brought upon him (Mack 785). For instance, the narrator in London describes both the Thames and the city streets as chartered, or controlled by commercial interests; he refers to mind-forged manacles; he relates that every man's face contains Marks of weakness, marks of woe; and he discusses the every cry of every Man and every Infant's cry of fear. He connects marriage and death by referring to a marriage hearse and describes it as blighted with plague. He also talks about the hapless Soldier's sigh and the youthful Harlot's curse and describes blackening Churches and palaces running with blood (London). London and many of Blake's other works dealing with a similar theme, particularly those from the Songs of Experience, strike a particular nerve for those who are living in a society where the cost of living compared with income is steadily increasing, where AIDS, Ebola, and

People and Leadership

People and Leadership Abstract During the development of youth employment programs as a pilot project, the Department of Employment faced an issue associated with the ineffective leadership. The project failed because of problems with the work of the team. Several employees quitted participating in the project development after six weeks because of the overwork and exhaustion.Advertising We will write a custom case study sample on People and Leadership specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The analysis of the case demonstrates that the leader set unrealistic deadlines for the project completion, and the schedule was organized inefficiently. Moreover, there were no clear goals communicated to the employees to coordinate their work. The necessity to replace the employees who rejected to participate in the team made the leadership decide on shifting responsibilities, and employees spent much time for adapting to the work for which they did not have enough experien ce. In addition, they did not receive the necessary training. The informal leader of the team became to act as a manager, and his tasks contradicted the previously set objectives. As a result, the project was frozen. To address the leadership and management problems, it is planned to reorganize the project team with the focus on the scope of tasks and concrete goals. Thus, the number of high-skilled employees in the team needs to be increased. The followed leadership style should be improved with the focus on supportive or inspirational leadership. The proposed schedule and deadlines should be set depending on concrete objectives and the working potential of the staff. These actions are necessary to overcome the problematic situation and predict failures in the future. People and Leadership Case Study The development of new programs and policies is typical for such agencies as the Department of Employment. However, there are cases when the development and implementation of the progr am can fail because of the inappropriate leadership and management. The team working on the youth employment program faced a problem of completing the pilot project because the leader invited the unreasonable number of employees (6 individuals) for the 12-week project. The scope of the tasks was considerable, but there were only weekly meetings, and the final goal was not communicated appropriately. The leader avoided any additional discussions of the projects, but he encouraged the overwork. As a result, two employees quitted the team because of unclear tasks and the increased stress levels. This situation made the leader re-distribute the duties among new team members, but they were expected to demonstrate high results in a week to fit in the schedule. The productivity decreased because they had no enough skills, and no additional training was provided. The lack of communication and motivation from the leader made team members choose the informal leader and insist on freezing the project.Advertising Looking for case study on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The discussed issues are important because they indicate how the ineffective planning and communication strategies selected by the leader can affect the success of the whole project because employees are stressed and not aware of the goals (Van Wart, 2014; Yukl, 2014).  The problem was in the fact that the pilot project developed by the team failed because of the leader’s impossibility to make effective decisions regarding the distribution of tasks among employees, planning, setting deadlines, and communicating. Therefore, it is important to propose improvements in the sphere of organizing the teamwork, planning tasks, appointing responsible persons, communicating with employees and motivating them. In addition to summarizing the issues in the case, this paper aims to present the analysis of the situation with the focus on the MORETOOLS framework and the leadership role in the project failure. In addition, the solution is proposed, and conclusions are made regarding the case importance for the future practice. The Analysis of the Case Mission and Purpose of the Agency The mission of the Department of Employment is to develop policies and implement programs that are effective to address the employment questions in Australia while creating the advantageous environments for employees. The purpose of the Department’s activities is to improve the current policies and develop new ones to address unemployment issues and protect the vulnerable categories of the population in terms of employment. As a result, the mission is to create the secure and socially friendly workplaces for the Australians (Australian Government Department of Employment, 2015). The mission and purpose are followed while planning and implementing any project oriented to reforming the current policy or proposing a new one. Objectives of the Manager Guided by the main agency’s mission, each unit of the department has its own management team, and it is responsible for developing concrete projects with specific objectives. The objective of a manager responsible for introducing new employment campaigns for the youth in Australia is to develop programs addressing the mission regarding the secure and advantageous environment and launch them within the fixed period of time. In the near future, the aim is to organize the work of a project team. Therefore, in the critical situation of the project failure, the leader of the unit and team is responsible for completing such short-term objectives as the reorganization of the team and the implementation of the new working strategy to achieve higher results and improve productivity (Felà ­cio, Gonà §alves, da Conceià §o Gonà §alves, 2013, p. 2140). The team reorganization is necessary to respond to such problems as the exhaustion, impossibility to a ddress the deadline, and low-quality outcomes of the project work. The manager’s long-term objective in this case is to create the single unit in the agency formed of experts in the area of the youth and employment.Advertising We will write a custom case study sample on People and Leadership specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Risks and Problems Focusing on the discussed project failure and such manager’s objectives as the organization of the team’s work to address schedules and high productivity, it is possible to prioritize identified leadership risks and problems in the following manner: The absence of the clearly communicated goal and adequate training sessions, team meetings, and discussions of the progress. Ineffective distribution of roles and tasks among the team members that leads to the employees’ exhaustion. The lack of the progress monitoring and coordination according to the observed success. Th e inappropriateness of the fixed schedule in relation to the scope of the project and tasks that lead to the inability to address deadlines. The performance of the leadership role by more than one team member. The failure of first pilot projects in relation to proposing the effective program in the sphere of youth employment within the fixed deadlines depends on the absence of clearly communicated goal of the project to guide the team members’ activities. Thus, the leader used only the formal approach to informing the team about the project goal. The ideas were shared and discussed during weekly meetings, the additional training was not provided, and the discussion of the progress was limited and irregular. Focusing on the theory of ethical and motivating leadership, the leader failed to demonstrate the supportive communication style to inspire employees to achieve higher results (Schyns Schilling, 2013). The employees lacked the opportunity to be informed of the short-term goals and progress, as well as to receive the additional consultation or guidelines.  In addition, the leader distributed the tasks and roles within the project team without referring to the employees’ position responsibilities. Certain team members were not skilled enough to adapt their knowledge to the new area and perform successfully. According to De Vries, Bakker-Pieper, and Oostenveld (2010), such persons experience much stress while adapting to new conditions and cannot demonstrate high results within the short period of time. The leader did not motivate employees to perform better in the new area because of failing to provide opportunities for training and adaptation (Schyns Schilling, 2013, p. 139). In this situation, the schedule was proposed without focusing on such risks as the inability to employees to complete tasks before starting the other project stage. As a result, the lack of the necessary monitoring and coordination led to failures in addressing the pr oject deadlines. The other important problem is the appearance of another informal leader as a result of the lack of the main leader’s communication with the team (De Vries, Bakker-Pieper, Oostenveld, 2010, p. 369). The absence of trust in the leader’s competence and success led to delegating some leadership responsibilities to the informal team leader at the final period of the project development. The reason is that feeling the constant stress, employees need support, and the informal participative leadership works better than the task-oriented formal leadership in this case.Advertising Looking for case study on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More External and Internal Actors and the Environment While focusing on the approaches to reorganize the teamwork to complete the primary project effectively in contrast to the pilot ones, it is necessary to analyze the role of stakeholders in the process. The most influential actors are the staff of the Department of Employment. To address the problem and predict further failures, it is necessary to organize the collaboration of the team leader and the agency’s human resources coordinators who can provide the additional training for the team members in the context of the project (Yukl, 2014). In addition, the reorganization of the current team leads to inviting other professionals working in the Department to complete set tasks with the focus on their expertise and skills. The external stakeholders include the youth because the project is developed to address their needs and the social organizations working with the young people. It is important to plan more time for analyzing th e statistical information regarding the situation in the sphere of youth employment and collaborate with the Bureau of Statistics. Tools and Constraints The observed project failure can be analyzed in terms of contributing tools and determined constraints. One of the most important tools contributing to the project success is the skilled employees (Van Wart, 2014). The employees were skilled enough in their particular areas, but they needed the additional experience to work in the areas determined by the leader. As a result, the potential tool became discussed as a constraint. At the current stage, the available tools include the required number of the high-quality employees, the availability of the skilled workforce, and the increased funds for the project completion. However, barriers to the project improvement and the reorganization of the team are still significant. The observed constraints include strict deadlines, lack of the training, lack of the set time for employees meetin gs, and underdeveloped communication channels. If a leader fails to overcome barriers with the focus on the available tools, the primary projects can also fail. Opportunities In spite of being associated with a crisis in the leadership, the discussed situation provides many opportunities for the manager to develop the new model of the work in the agency. The reorganization of the teamwork associated with projects in the concrete sphere leads to the development of the specific working model or pattern that improves the performance and increases the productivity of the staff. If a new proposed strategy for managing the project is effective enough, the small number of the skilled employees can complete the larger number of tasks within the limited period of time (Felà ­cio et al., 2013). The leader needs to organize the work of the team in such a way that this team can serve as the expert team for providing consultancy in further similar projects to decrease the time and costs associa ted with the training of other employees. Outcomes and Elements of a Stable Solution To achieve the efficient solution to the determined problem associated with the project failure in the agency, it is necessary to focus on the outcomes of the proposed solution to discuss it as stable and sustainable: The team working on the development of programs comprises out of the adequate number of employees that is correlated with the scope of the project. 80% of assigned tasks are completed at the high-quality level. The productivity of the team increases by 25%. The team works according to the stated schedule, and delays decrease by 30%. The leadership is effective, and the monitoring of the project progress is regular. The degree of cooperation between employees representing different project teams and units of the Department increases by 20%. The level of the stress in employees decreases by 25%. These outcomes of the solution are identified as important because the discussed aspects le d to the failure of pilot projects, and the planned reorganization is aimed to address these issues. Long-Term Improvement The improved approach to organizing the team regarding its size and responsibilities will lead to optimizing the work of the staff and reducing associated costs. Thus, the increases in funds can be required only for the additional training of employees and their compensation. The other long-term benefits include the changes in the approach to the leadership in the organization. It is important to focus on developing the role model of a leader who is flexible, emotionally involved, motivating, communicable, and decisive (Yukl, 2014, p. 121). The currently followed task-oriented leadership style is not appropriate, and the reorganization of the teamwork can also lead to shifting to the supportive and even inspirational leadership styles (Van Wart, 2014). In addition, the long-term improvement involves the enhancement of the work with external stakeholders with the focus on building partnerships with social organizations oriented to the youth well-being and development. Strategies for Actions To solve the identified problems and address the future risks in leadership and management of projects on the subject of youth employment, it is necessary to formulate the clear steps for the solution implementation. The first step is contacting the HRM team, unit leaders, and project coordinators for forming the working team that will include the increased number of skilled employees with the expertise in the sphere of youth and employment programs development. It is also necessary to discuss the opportunities for the training sessions.  The second step is the actual formation of the working group. Those persons who worked on the pilot projects need to be invited to work further. Those employees who experienced the stress and problems in communicating with the leader needs to be replaced with the representatives of other units to increase the workforc e potential. Only high-quality professionals are expected to be invited for the work. This approach guarantees the reasonable distribution of tasks among team members. The third step is the identification of the communication channels to share ideas, visions, tasks, and feedbacks. It is necessary to plan not only weekly meetings but also face-to-face sessions and e-mail reports, as well as training sessions. The next step is the development of the realistic schedule for achieving the goal and completing concrete tasks. It is important to take into account the time for training, meetings, completing tasks, coordinating tasks, revising, and addressing possible barriers while planning the schedule and setting the deadline. The tough deadline is one of the main constraints for this project. Thus, the effective leader needs to develop the schedule while addressing the objectives and responding to the real work potential of the team without leading them to the burnout (Schyns Schilling, 2013). Another point is the correlation of the available workforce and deadlines with the proposed funds. The distribution of resources should depend on the project goals and the number of involved employees. When the communication channels are determined, and the schedule is set, it is important to motivate employees to work at completing tasks for achieving the concrete goal. Therefore, the next step is the building of the cooperating team during the first weeks of the project through the effective communication and supportive leadership. This step also includes the building of partnerships with social organizations and the Bureau of Statistics to receive the outdated information on changes in the sphere.  Ã‚  It is also important to address such constraints as the set short deadlines for projects and destructive leadership. The deadlines need to be set with the focus on the scope of tasks and its priority for the Department. The manager demonstrating the destructive leadership techniques needs to be replaced with the other person, who was discussed as the informal leader during the development of pilot projects (Schyns Schilling, 2013, p. 139). The range of tasks can be delegated according to the partnerships agreement with social organizations and the Bureau of Statistics. Assessment of the Potential for Success The effectiveness of the proposed strategy needs to be assessed in order to guarantee the completion of long-term goals. In this context, the assessment should include the following steps: the weekly monitoring of changes in the team workers’ quality of work and stress levels; the weekly monitoring of the achievements within the set schedule; the monthly monitoring of the performance and progress of the project implementation; evaluations of the individuals’ work with the focus on personal performance assessments. It is important for a leader to evaluate the employees’ attitudes to the work regularly in order to predict po ssible risky situations. Conclusion The Department of Employment faced a problem of developing the effective youth employment programs because the first pilot project failed to be appropriately developed and implemented by the project team. The analysis of the case demonstrated that the problem was in the destructive leadership techniques followed by the manager. As the result of the ineffective leadership, employees had to share responsibilities for which they did not have enough experience; they was not properly informed of the project goal and trained; they suffered from the tension to complete the unrealistic deadlines; and they chose the informal leader among them to address the stressful situation. In order to address similar problematic cases, it is necessary to reorganize the working team according to the project scope and goals. In addition, the selected project leader should follow the supportive or even inspirational leadership style to build a team that can effectively w ork to address the agency’s mission and develop secure and advantageous employment programs for the population, including your people. This case study analysis is important to refer to while discussing similar issues associated with the ineffective leadership, when a leader ignores interaction with the team, cannot communicate the objectives, cannot analyze the project scope, and determine what resources are required to achieve the goal. Moreover, this case study is an example of the leadership that cannot motivate employees, leading to their dissatisfaction. References Australian Government Department of Employment. (2015). De Vries, R. E., Bakker-Pieper, A., Oostenveld, W. (2010). Leadership = communication? The relations of leaders’ communication styles with leadership styles, knowledge sharing and leadership outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(3), 367-380. Felà ­cio, J. A., Gonà §alves, H. M., da Conceià §o Gonà §alves, V. (2013). Social value an d organizational performance in non-profit social organizations: Social entrepreneurship, leadership, and socioeconomic context effects. Journal of Business Research, 66(10), 2139-2146. Schyns, B., Schilling, J. (2013). How bad are the effects of bad leaders? A meta-analysis of destructive leadership and its outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 138-158. Van Wart, M. (2014). Leadership in public organizations: An introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Yukl, G. (2014). Leadership in organizations. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.

Alphonse Capone essays

Alphonse Capone essays Alphonse Capone a.k.a. Al Capone was born on January 17, 1899 in Brooklyn, New York. Alphonse Capone which parents were baptizes grew up in a rough district and he was a member of two kid gangs, the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors. Although Al Capone was a bright young man, he quit school in the sixth grade at age fourteen. Although Al Capone was a criminal he had normal jobs on the side e.g. he was a clerk in a candy store, an assistant in a bowling alley and a cutter in a book bindery. Soon he became part of the notorious Five Points gang in Manhattan and now he worked in gangster Frankie Yales Brooklyn dive, Harvard In, which was an illegal gambling den. While working here he received his famous facial scars which resulted in the nickname Scarface. He had insulted a costumer and was attacked by her brother with a glass. In 1918 Capone met an Irish girl named Mary Mae Coughlin at a dance. On December 4, 1918 Mae gave birth to their son, Albert Sonny Francis. Capone a nd Mae married later that year on December 30. Capone was arrested for the first time while he was working for Yale because of a disorderly Conduct. He also murdered two men in his first years as a gangster, but nobody wanted to testimony against him, because they were either his friends or afraid of him. After Capone had sent a gang member from an Irish gang called Finnegan on the hospital, Yale sent him to Chicago because the Irish gangs where furious and threatened to kill him. So Capone now moved to Chicago with his family, were they moved into a house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue. After Capones move to Chicago he became member of the Four Deuces, a gang which were lead by his old friend from New York, John Torrio. The Year was now 1919 and a new kind of underground crime/business, illegal distribution of liquor was becoming attractive for the gangsters because...

Is it ethical for a company to produce genetically modified crops Essay

Is it ethical for a company to produce genetically modified crops - Essay Example Indeed, many of today’s crops have been modified so much that the modern people might have a hard time identifying the original crop, such as maize. However, with developing of modern technology, genetic modification of crops has become so sophisticated that many people find it hard to come to terms with the drastic changes made to organisms. The ethicalness of companies producing GMOs has consequently become subject of the extensive debate internationally, and the possibility that GMOs may comprise a substantial portion of the food produced in the USA and UK has elicited a barrage of reaction from different circles where disparate views are held on the issue. This paper aims at examining the ethical issues around mass production of genetically modified foods by considering different points of view on the subject to determine if a company is ethically justified to produce the same. The ethical issues surrounding genetically modified food are motivated by a multitude of factors , chief among these are health concerns since there is not enough research to determine the long-term effect of GMOs. Despite the fact that GMOs have been the part of the American diet since 1992 (soybeans, corn, and cottonseed), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed them because they had not found them to have any threat to the human life. It claimed they were not the subject of regulation since they did not differ from ordinary seeds (Smith, â€Å"Spilling the Beans†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ). Later experimentation has come to show that many genetically modified foods are downright harmful to virtually every organ of the human body. According the American Organic Consumers, GMOs have been linked to 1000s of livestock deaths, allergic reactions and even deaths of humans over the years (Smith, â€Å"Spilling the Beans†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ). The research by several other organizations has also come up with distressing results after using GMOs on rats that often suffered fatal consequences. A nother factor worth considering is that although we cannot explicitly prove they do not cause them, there is enough circumstantial evidence to require the reexamination of the corporate and federal positions on GMOs, consumption of which has coincided with increase prevalence in medical conditions, such as cancer and deadly allergy attacks. The companies producing GMOs are well aware of what they are doing; it is glaringly evident because of the fact that they continue to produce these products. This has consequently saturated the American market since the companies have no concern for the health of consumers and are driven by the bottom line. With this in mind, the ethical violations by any of the companies engaging in production of these products are unambiguous. The other ethical consideration is the fact that consumers are unaware of the effect and modifications done on the food they consume; hence, many eat such in full ignorance. To worsen matters, labeling is not allowed, so consumers have no hope of choosing whether they want to eat GMOs or not (Lendman, â€Å"Potential Health Hazards†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ). This way, the companies are literally forcing millions of consumers to use these products without giving them enough information. Therefore, such attitude can be viewed as quintessence of unethical business practice. Another pertinent consideration is who will gain and who will lose in all this: who are the principal beneficiaries, is it

Scientific literacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Scientific literacy - Essay Example 81). This paper explores some of the reasons why scientific literacy is not important in all subjects. My personal experience demonstrates that scientific literacy should not be incorporated in every subject of study, instead students should be allowed to study their areas of interest scientific or otherwise. For instance, I was hardly interested in the study of organic foods until I came across a recent feature on the news. The feature was scientific in nature and caught my attention owing to the fact that I found it interesting and educative. The feature focused on a Chinese based company known as "Bai Wei Yua" and specialized in agricultural trade. The company is involved in the sale of organic products and vegetables. However, recent reports have revealed that the company the company buys regular fruits and vegetables and packages them as organic products and sells them at inflated prices. This is ethically wrong as the company dupes the customers into thinking that they are buying organic products. "Bai Wei Yua" uses the appropriate procedures to produce and trade the organic products that is highly impressive. However, they are wrong in labeling regular foods as organic foods. I was stunned to realize that a legitimate company was packaging regular fruits and vegetables, packaging them as organic products, and selling them to the market at high prices. This issue aroused my curiosity in the topic of organic foods. I was more interested in government regulations and policies with regards to organic foods. This case study shows that individuals should be allowed to pursue the kind of scientific knowledge they are interested in pursuing. Mara, a thirty one year old woman who works as a technical worker holds a different view with regards problems of immunity. She has had a personal experience as she was a caregiver to a sick friend and all her college roommates died of AIDS. She was

Impact of Globalization Essay Example for Free

Impact of Globalization Essay It has gradually evolved from the 1970s after the advent of different forms of high speed transportation and communication to the age of information technologies around the millennium, to make a single unified community where all the major sources of various social conflicts have disappeared (Scheuerman, 2010 and World Regional Geography, 2009). There are several ways of defining Globalization. As defined by Dr. Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan (2006), â€Å"Globalization is a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities. The effects of Globalization are manifold. It influences industrial sector, financial sector, labour markets and consumers of a particular country. On one hand it gives rise to more jobs and industries, however, on the other hand, countries are becoming dependant on the other country for a specific product/raw material. Additionally, because of outsourcing jobs from developed economy are being transferred to the developing economy, which has a negative effect on the developed economy and positive on the developing economy. 2. 2 Consumer Packaged Goods and Globalization Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) are sold at relatively low price and are non durable goods like grocery items, soft drinks etc. Large CPG manufacturer has an advantage of strong brands, greater geographical coverage and having major retailers. CPG industry is affected by the change in fashion, fads and consumer preferences, which in turn effects the purchasing decision of a consumer. Therefore, I believe that in the fast and ever changing world of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) it is imperative to discuss the effects of globalization on this industry. Additionally, there is immense pressure and intense competition between the manufacturers globally to fulfill the demand of consumers. 2. 0 Impact of Globalization on CPG Industry 3. 3 Costs and Benefits of Globalization on CPG Industry There are diverse ways in which globalization impinge on CPG industry. Some are beneficial for the industry and some aren’t. The good side of globalization is explained as follows: a. Profits from emerging markets: Procter and Gamble in year 2006, showed a total sales of US $ 68 billion, out of which US $ 21 billion was from emerging markets. Additionally, from 1992 to 2006, globalization has boosted the American economy by US $ one trillion in Gross Domestic Product (Veiders, 9th July 2007, Supermarket news). b. Consumer’s advantage: The consumer gets the advantage of choosing from wide variety of goods, in addition to the comparative advantage. Additionally, the offshore markets are producing goods at a price which is lower than the domestic production of a particular country. Though this is an advantage to the consumer, this could hamper production and associated profits in some countries (Oline Thompson, 2006, CPG Manufacturing) c. Foreign capital access: Foreign capital access is the main driving force of globalization. This in turn increases the investment power of a particular country to produce better produce economically (13th February, 1996, WTO News (press releases). The other side of globalization illustrates some problems faced by CPG Industry: a. Cultural disparity: A product that might be a necessity in one country might not be even known or used in the other, which would have a negative effect on the CPG industry while trying to encourage its use in a particular country. To cite a salient example, Brazilians usually don’t have breakfast, because they sleep late at night and consumers in China for breakfast eat hot, soft and savoury, while the North Americans love cold, crunchy and sweet breakfast. This was the difference analyzed by Kellogg Company in 2007 (Veiders, 9th July 2007, Supermarket news). b. Global Competition: In this fast paced environment any CPG company have to constantly innovate and differentiate their product, to maintain or increase their market share. Every year large number of new products are being roduced and capture the shelve space of the existing labels and compete with them.

Conflict in the play A Rising in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry Essay

Conflict in the play A Rising in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry In "A Rising in the Sun" (Lorraine Hansberry) we find three main conflicts within the play. These conflicts are interrelated and emerge mainly from one primer issue – Racism. In this essay, I will highlight these three conflicts and explain their connection. First, I will explain the conflict of family. Second, I will explain the conflict of money. Third, I will explain the conflict of racism and how the first two could be seen as a "by-product" of it. Lena (Mama) recalls her late husband words. Family was the most important thing for Lena and him. However, there are conflicts around this issue which could be seen through three generations. First, present generation Vs past. For example, Walter Lee blames his failure in life partly on his mother's "lack of support". The conflict appears since the only person who could be blamed for the situation is Walter Lee himself. Second, present generation Vs present. For example, Beneatha and Walter Lee fight over the check and its utilization. The conflict appea... Conflict in the play A Rising in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry Essay Conflict in the play A Rising in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry In "A Rising in the Sun" (Lorraine Hansberry) we find three main conflicts within the play. These conflicts are interrelated and emerge mainly from one primer issue – Racism. In this essay, I will highlight these three conflicts and explain their connection. First, I will explain the conflict of family. Second, I will explain the conflict of money. Third, I will explain the conflict of racism and how the first two could be seen as a "by-product" of it. Lena (Mama) recalls her late husband words. Family was the most important thing for Lena and him. However, there are conflicts around this issue which could be seen through three generations. First, present generation Vs past. For example, Walter Lee blames his failure in life partly on his mother's "lack of support". The conflict appears since the only person who could be blamed for the situation is Walter Lee himself. Second, present generation Vs present. For example, Beneatha and Walter Lee fight over the check and its utilization. The conflict appea...

Heidi Roizen/ Building a Network Essay

In my opinion Heidi Roizen’s network is one of her greatest assets. â€Å"While other people use networks to build their business, Heidi’s business is networking. She’s very effective and uses her network to add real value.†, Randy Komisar commented on the article. Her networking skills are extremely efficient. She is really good at blending her professional with her personal networking. She always grabs the nucleus people of a network and then keeps in touch with all the people in that network. And another strength that makes Roizen’s networking successful is that she understands and pays more attention on the win-win relationship which is a core factor that differentiated her skills from others. Her style includes an unpretentious, down- to-earth, and positive personality which played an important role for her success. Additionally, as mentioned on the article by Royal Farros â€Å"Heidi is a pro at turning a brief conversation into one of substance, by contributing one or two unique ideas in a short period of time. That helps make the conversation memorable.† The downside of Roisen’s networking is that they are thousands of people that know her and in some cases people may feel they have a relationship with her, and therefore request her time for meetings. There are also some weaknesses in her networking. Her networking lacks more diversity. According to the article, she always invites the people to her party that have known half of any other people attend the party. That could potentially lead to a result that she can meet less people at one time, she could miss some important talents and opportunities. Also her networking really focuses on companies and people mostly bases in the Silicon Valley. In order to build her networking, Roizen has taken several steps. She begun building relationship with members of the press and she also attended several industry conferences and events. Later on she also decided to join the board of the Software Publishers Association (SPA). The article also mentioned that she gets motivation to get to know good-quality and talented people and be friends with then. She also knows that she is placing a bet by investing so much time in these people, but many of her bets paid off for her in the past. Additionally, she acknowledges that is easier to meet people when they are not famous, and off course it would be easier for her when they become famous because she would already have a relationship with them. And she spends a long-term effort on performance and consistency during and after each interaction to maintain a better and long living network. I think Heide should diversify more her network and try to create strong connections with leaders from other industries a besides technology and venture capital. Also because of the breath and depth of her network, she will constantly have people reaching out for her, so in my opinion she will have to be more selective of her time and people who she will interact with, and most important she will have to say no to some people. Additionally, she should probably balance more her life and reduce the number of industry events or gatherings hosted by her, which according to the article she already initiated this process. I would like to reinforce my arguments in this paragraph with something that Roizen mentioned in a news article, â€Å"At the close of my life, I’d like to look back and know that I got — and delivered — good value out of living. I’d like to know that I took advantage of the opportunities that I was blessed with for myself and my family. I want to know that I created good balance in my life, enjoyed it, lived well and enhanced the lives of others in the process.†

Past Paper

NSS MATHEMATICS IN ACTION HONG KONG DIPLOMA OF SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINATION MOCK PAPER MATHEMATICS Compulsory Part Paper 2 Time allowed: 1 hour 15 minutes 1. Read carefully the instructions on the Answer Sheet and insert the information required in the spaces provided. 2. There are 45 questions in this book. All questions carry equal marks. 3. Answer ALL Questions. You are advised to use an HB pencil to mark all the answers on the Answer Sheet. Wrong marks must be completely erased with a clean rubber. 4. You should mark only ONE answer for each question. If you mark more than one answer, you will receive NO MARKS for that question. . No marks will be deducted for wrong answers.  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 There are 30 questions in Section A and 15 questions in Section B. The diagrams in this paper are not necessarily drawn to scale. Choose the best answer for each question. Section A 1. If n is an integer, then 33 n = 9 n ? 1 6. Which of the following statements about the equation 3( x ? 2) 2 ? 6 x ? 2 is true? A. It has distinct, rational real roots. B. It has distinct, irrational real roots. C. It has equal real roots. D. It has no real roots. 7. It is known that a polynomial g(x) is ivisible by 2x + 3. Which of the following must be a factor of g(4x – 3)? 2 n ? 1 A. B. C. D. 2. x 2 ? y 2 ? 2 xy ? 4 ? A. B. C. D. 3. A. B. C. D. 8. 1. 5. 8049. 8053. a = 3, b = ? 2 . a = 3, b = ? 3 . a = ? 2, b = ? 2 . a = ? 2, b = ? 3 . B. C. D. 9. Let p be a constant. Solve the equation ( x ? p )( x ? p ? 1) ? x ? p . A. B. C. D.  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 –2– 1. 1 . 6 –1. –2. ? Peter sold a vase to Mary at a profit of 15 %. Later, Mary sold the vase to David for $ 6400 and gained $ 420. What was the cost price of the vase for Peter? A. B. C. D. x ? ?p x ? p ? 1 ? ? p or x ? p ? 1 x ? ? p or x ? p 2x ? 3 4x ? 3 8x ? 3 8x ? 9 If x is an integer satisfying 4x ? 1 , then the 2(1 ? x) ? 6 x and x ? ?2 greatest value of x is A. If 5a ? 2b ? a ? 4b ? 11 , then A. B. C. D. 5. ( x ? y ? 2)( x ? y ? 2) ( x ? y ? 2)( x ? y ? 2) ( x ? y ? 2)( x ? y ? 2) ( x ? y ? 2)( x ? y ? 2) If f ( x) ? x 2012 ? 2012 x ? 2012 , then 2 f (? 1) ? 3 = A. B. C. D. 4. ?1? . ?3? 3n ? 1 . 3n ? 2 . 35 n ? 2 . $ 5200 $ 5970 $ 6877 $ 7780 10. The scale of a map is 1: 250. If the area of a playground on the map is 20 cm2, what is the actual area of the playground? A. B. C. D. 11. 5000 cm2 125 m2 625 m2 5000 m2 A.B. C. D. Let an be the nth term of a sequence. If a1 ? ?2 , a2 ? 1 and a n ? 2 ? 4a n ? 1 ? a n for any positive integer n, then a5 = A. B. C. D. 14. The circumference of a circle is measured to be 10 cm, correct to the nearest 0. 5 cm. Which of the following is a possible area of the circle? 15. 86. 66. 46. 26. In the figure, CDE and BDF are straight lines. If DF = DE and AB // CE, find ?ABD. 12. It is given that s varies jointly as t2 and u. If t is increased by 15% and u is decreased by 20%, then s A. B. C. D. is decreased by 8 %. is decreased by 5. 8 %. is increased by 5. 8 %. is increased by 8 %. 13. If z ? y and y 2 ? 4. 2 cm2 8. 55 cm2 8. 14 cm2 7. 11 cm2 A. B. C. D. 76? 104? 116? 128? 16. In the figure, a = 1 , which of the x following is true? III. z2 ? y2 1 x? y 2 3xz is a non-zero constant. A. B. C. D. I and II only I and III only II and III only I, II and III I. II.  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 A. B. C. D. –3– 40?. 45?. 50?. 55?. 17. In the figure, ABCD is a rhombus and FBC is a triangle. If FA = 2 cm and BC = 3 cm, find ED. 19. In the figure, a circular cone is cut into two parts A and B by a plane parallel to the base. 4 that of the 9 original cone, find the ratio of the olumes of A and B. If the base area of A is A. B. C. D. A. B. C. D. 1 cm 1. 2 cm 1. 5 cm 1. 8 cm 18. The figure shows a right pyramid with a square base and a slant edge of length 17 cm. If the total length of the edges of the pyramid is 132 cm, find the total surface area of the pyramid. 2:3 8 : 19 8 : 27 19 : 27 20. Through which of the following transformations, would figure A be transformed to figure B? I. Translation II. Rotation III. Reflection A. B. C. D. A. B. C. D. 544 cm2 608 cm2 736 cm2 800 cm2 II III I and III only II and III only 21. If the point P(7, –1) is rotated clockwise about the origin through 90? o Q, what is the distance between P and Q? A. B. C. D.  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 –4– 5 units 72 units 10 units 128 units 22. If a > 0, b > 0 and c < 0, which of the following may represent the graph of the straight line ax ? by ? c ? 0 ? 23. In the figure, 2BC = 5AC. Find sin ? . A. 2 29 A. B. C. B. D. 24. 29 2 cos(180? ? ? ) 1 ? ? sin(180? ? ? ) tan(90? ? ? ) A. B. C. D. C. 2 5 5 2 tan 2 ? tan ? 1 †“1 25. In the figure, O is the centre of the circle ABCD. Find x. D. A. B. C. D. 36? 40? 42? 45? 26. What is the area of the circle x2 + y2 + 12x ? y + 9 = 0? A. B. C. D.  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 –5– 9? 43? 52? 61? 27. Two fair dice are thrown once. What is the probability of getting a sum of 4 or 6? A. B. C. D. 1 6 2 9 5 9 5 36 30. The pie chart below shows the distribution of the nationalities of 60 students randomly selected from an international school. It is given that 9 of them are American. 28. The box-and-whisker diagram below shows the distribution of the heights (in cm) of 40 students in a class. Find the number of students whose heights are between 145 cm and 150 cm. A. B. C. D. 5 10 20 30If there are 840 students in the international school, estimate the number of Australian students in the school. A. 196 B. 208 C. 216 D. 224 Section B 31. 29. {a , a, a + d, a + 3d and a + 6d} is a grou p of numbers. Which of the following must be true? A. B. I. The mean of the group of numbers is a + 2d. II. The median of the group of numbers is a + d. III. The mode of the group of numbers is 2. A. B. C. D. C. D. I and II only I and III only II and III only I, II and III  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 1? –6– ab b ? ? 2 a ? b b? a 2 1 a2 a2 ? b2 b2 a2 ? b2 a 2 ? 2ab ? b 2 a2 ? b2 32. Which of the following best represent the graph of y ? 2 log 3 x ? x 2 x ? 1 34. Solve 16 ? 2 ? A. A. B. C. D. B. 15 ? 0. 2 5 2 5 or –3 2 5 log 8 log 5 ? log 2 log 4 35. If a and k are real numbers and a ? 11i ? (2 ? 3i )(3 ? ki) , then A. B. C. D. C. D. NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 ? ? 1 . ? 1. ? ? 1 . ? 1. 36. Find the maximum value of P = 1 – x – 4y subject to the following constraints. 1 ? x ? 3 2 ? y ? 4 ? ? ?2 y ? x ? 2 ? x ? 2 ? ?2 y ? 33. If ? and ? are the roots of the quadratic equation 4 x 2 ? 5 x ? 3 ? 0 , find the value 1 1 + . of 2? 2? 3 A. ? 5 2 B. ? 5 5 C. 8 5D. 6  © Pearson Education Asia Limited a ? 3, k a ? 3, k a ? 9, k a ? 9, k A. B. C. D. –7– 3 4 6 7 37. It is given that three positive numbers x, y and z are in geometric sequence. Which of the following must be true? I. x3, y3, z3 are in geometric sequence. II. 3x, 3y, 3z are in geometric sequence. III. log x2, log y2, log z2 are in arithmetic sequence. A. B. C. D. 40. The figure shows a circle with centre O. BC and BA are the tangents to the circle at C and D respectively. If ? BAC = 42? , find ? BOC. I and II only I and III only II and III only I, II and III 38. Find x in the figure, correct to the nearest integer. A. B.C. D. 66? 72? 84? 90? 41. The figure shows a triangular prism ABCDEF, where both ? ABF and ?DCE are right-angled isosceles A. B. C. D. 12 13 14 15 triangles. If AB = 10 and BC = 5, find the angle between the line AE and the plane ABCD, correct to the nearest degree. 39. Solve 1 + sin? cos ? = 3sin2? for 0? ? ? ? 360?. A. B. C. D. ? = 45? or 225? ? = 135? , 207? or 225? ? = 45? , 153? , 225? or 333? ? = 135? , 153? , 315? or 333?  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 A. B. C. D. –8– 14? 17? 22? 45? 42. The figure shows a circle which is symmetrical about the y-axis. A(4, –1) nd B are two end points of a diameter of the circle. If the equation of the tangent to the circle at B is 4 x ? 3 y ? 31 ? 0 , find the coordinates of the centre of the circle. A. B. C. D. 3 (0, ) 2 (0, 2) 5 (0, ) 2 1 ( ? , 2) 2 44. A box contains 50 bulbs and 8 of them are defective. Two bulbs are drawn at random from the box without replacement. Given that at least one bulb drawn is defective, find the probability that exactly one bulb drawn is defective. 4 A. 13 3 B. 5 4 C. 5 12 D. 13 45. In a Chinese test, the standard scores of the marks obtained by John and Mary are †“1. 05 and 0. 8 respectively. Which of the following are true? I.II. III. 43. There are 2 different English books and 4 different Chinese books on a table. If all the books are put onto a shelf and the two books at the two ends must be of different languages, in how many ways can the books be arranged? A. B. C. D. A. B. C. D. 32 40 192 384  © Pearson Education Asia Limited NSS MIA 2012 Mock Paper (Compulsory Part) – Paper 2 Mary performs better than John in the test. Compared with John, the mark obtained by Mary is closer to the mean mark of the test. The mark obtained by John is below the 16th percentile of the marks in the test. I and II only I and III only II and III only I, II and III End of test –9–

Another Evening At The Club Essay Essay Example

Another Evening At The Club Essay Essay Example Another Evening At The Club Essay Paper Another Evening At The Club Essay Paper Essay Topic: The Joy Luck Club Alifa Rifaat’s story â€Å"Another evening at the club† gives a reflection of a woman’s perspective on life and marriage in a patriarchal society. It brings to light the unconventional reasons for a woman’s acceptance of marriage in a society such as material gain and power. Rifaat’s story is the protagonist Samia’s journey to realizing the true meaning of her place and authority in her marriage. Through various flashbacks the author attempts to bring a cohesive end to the protagonists realizations at the end of the story. The final passage of the story is the defining point of realization of her role in establishing the status quo of her marriage. The story reinforces the theme of materialism and societal influences on a person and their desires. Social norms and values play a significant role in shaping Samia’s perception of life and love. The final passage is the moment when Samia realizes that the idea of marriage that she had been taught to believe in was just an empty negotiated contract. In that moment she understands that the secondary position that she had accepted and the riches she had received was a form of payment. A price she paid for compromising a husband’s love and marrying an older man. Samia’s journey of realization to that moment begins when the terms of her marriage to Abboud Bey is negotiated. The author also shows how Samia’s mother and the patriarchal society have shaped her expectations and desires for materialistic pleasures. Her mother’s words in turn solidify her view that marriage should provide her with money, power and status: You’re a lucky girl he is a real find. Any girl would be happy to have him. He’s an inspector of irrigation though he is not yet forty. He earns a big salary and gets fully furnished government house wherever he’s posted, which will save us the expense of setting up a house – and I don’t have to tell you what our situation is and that’s beside the house he owns in Alexandria where you’ll be spending you’re holidays. (Rifaat 310) The basis of Samia decision may not only have been her family’s financial state but also the allure of being a member of higher society. Rafat exposes this human but materialistic side of Samia’s personality when she says, â€Å"in particular she noticed the well cut coat of English tweed and the silk shirt and the gold cuff links† (Rifaat 309). The emerald ring, the diamond bracelet, the lifestyle all symbolize the illusion of necessities that Samia now has. The author adds to this side of her personality when she contrasts how Samia felt when she saw Abboud Bey’s authority and feels â€Å"a guilty shame at her father’s inadequacy†(Rifaat 309). Samia associates money with power and poverty with inadequacy. The house and the money were all compensations she received for compromising who she was. Her husband asks her to tell people that her â€Å"father was a judge† (Rifaat 310), indicating a life started with a lie and based on image. Samia’s decision to marry him is only human, she wanted something that didn’t understand but needed. Her marriage to Abboud Bey was not only a chance for him to enhance his image in society but for her to become a member of high society. The physical gestures displayed by Abboud Bey impacts the way Samia see her position in her marriage. Abboud Bey’s simple gesture of â€Å"gently patting her cheeks in a fatherly reassuring gesture† (Rifaat 312), which initially made Samia feel safe completely changed meaning in the final passage of the story. This gesture triggers Samia’s realization that her husband slapping the maid or patting her cheeks were synonymous in displaying his authority and power over them. Samia reveals her realization of this authority: The gesture told her more eloquently than any words that he was the man and she was the woman, he the one who carried the responsibilities, made the decision, she was the whose role it was to be beautiful, happy, carefree. Now, though, for the first time in their life together the gesture came like a slap in the face. (Rifaat 312) Samia calls the gesture a slap in the face not because it was used to silence her but as a wake up call. It was like the slap had destroyed the illusion, which she has been living, and woken her up to a cruel reality. When he removes his hand the realization of her husband’s true authority over her rattles every fiber of being as â€Å"her whole body was seized with an uncontrollable trembling† (Rifaat 312). Samia understood that his every gesture had slowly taken over her autonomy was with her permission. When she tells Abboud Bey, â€Å"I thought I’d better leave it to you† (Rifaat 311) she was giving him more authority, as he was the man and she the woman. When she could have confronted the maid herself she hands it over to her husband and â€Å"took herself to the corner of the room† (Rifaat 311) avoiding any responsibility. This was a position that Samia had been taught to accept being brought up in a patriarchal society where the man has the authority. Upon finding the ring â€Å"she felt tempted to†¦throw it into the river so as to be rid of the unpleasantness that lay ahead† (Rifaat 312). Samia had enjoyed the benefits but could not endure the consequences of her decisions. Power had bought her swift action but also brought her guilt. The ‘slap’ begins the series of thoughts that act as her prequel to her ultimate realization in the final passage. The setting of the final moment supports the development of Samia’s thoughts to that realization point. The window, the boat and the lilies all exemplify and support Samia’s feelings. When she leans against the large window and â€Å"close [s] her eyes tightly† (Rifaat 313) she remembers that is what she had wanted all along. The large comforting window acts like a barrier to her thoughts and leads her to the point where she remembers her compromise. The image of â€Å"the dark shape of the boat had momentarily blocked out the cafà © scene† (Rifaat 313), as she had momentarily forgotten her place and now it was visible to her. It was not a realization; Samia had just forgotten for a moment that this is the reality of her life. The power and allure of society had blocked out her sense and logic, which a simple gesture had now let lose. As the boat cut through the â€Å"Nile water lilies that, rootless, are swept along the current† (Rifaat 313) every misconception that she had slowly swept away. When Samia opens her eyes she sees just another evening at the club with the â€Å"the cafà © lights strung between the trees on the opposite shore †¦ and the men seated under [the trees] and a waiter moving among the tables† (Rifaat 313). When she looks at the people playing chess and eating at the club through the comforting warmth of her window she sees her every desire. The waiters moving in between them shows the contrast in power and the life she may have had. When she opens her eyes it was like a curtain had been raised and the show was over and it was time to go back to the real world. This memory had brought with it a realization and its own questions. The decision lies in Samia’s hands to chose the life she lived from that moment onwards. Comfort, luxury and status were all waiting outside that window for her decision. Samia’s smile at the end symbolized her surrender to power and status. She was smiling as she had understood and made peace with her reality. Now it was time for her to go out to the club and join the society she wanted to part of. It was a smile of a mother and wife but most of all of a woman who knew what she wanted and how much she had given up for it. In conclusion the story explores the materialistic but humane characteristics of a woman in a patriarchal society. Through Samia’s point of view the author illustrates the influences of societal expectations and mans authority over women. The image of Samia leaning against the window and closing her eyes compels one to understand the true meaning of her compromise. It is difficult to understand a woman’s desires especially when she realizes that they aren’t completely hers.

The Launch of Toyota Prius in Domestic and International Market

The Launch of Toyota Prius in Domestic and International Market Toyota Motor Corporation is the world’s largest motor manufacturer and seller; it has its headquarters in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. According to the company’s accounts 2010, the company had a total of 317,734 people worldwide. With contemporary globalized world, the company’s operations are affected by internal and external factors. This report offers a recommendation on how the company can launch â€Å"Toyota Prius† in domestic and international market.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on The Launch of â€Å"Toyota Prius† in Domestic and International Market specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The world is recovering from global financial crisis of 2008; this has limited the growth in demand of motor vehicles by industries, governments, and private owners. Other than the crisis, Japan 2011earthquake has hindered transportation from the country thus the company is facing a challenge selling t o the global world. There are numerous players in the motor vehicle industry; they include Mitsubishi, Ford, and British Motor Works. The companies are offering substitutes to customers who get a wide selection of products. Other than using road transport, consumers are having the option of using rail and air transport. Consumers are offering pressure to the company; there are moves to environmentally friendly motor vehicles as people move to sustainable development. The pressures from the customers are keeping the company on its toes to develop customer focused products. Toyota has been in operation since 1936, during this time, the company has created a strong brand name for its products. The strong brand name for the company is a strength that the management dells on; when launching new products, the company is favoured by its brand strength. With a strong brand, the companies sales are high with comfortable profit margin; the margins give the company good financial strength that it can develop new product with ease. High sales have led to enjoyment of economies of scale making the products affordable. Toyota automobiles are known to be fuel-economical; getting original spare-parts for the products is easy thus people prefer the products. Opportunities for Toyota are many; the company has implemented the â€Å"blue-ocean† management whereby it’s focusing on areas other than japan where competition is lower. Economic development in different countries is offering potential market for the company. The main threat and risk that Toyota faces is competition and world economics operations; there are many players in the motor vehicle industry thus increasing the competition the company has to fight with. Internal structures of Toyota has been challenged of their inability to maintain human resources; with the structures, there are an increasing number of people who quit jobs and with them goes much wisdom to the disadvantage of the company. Some of t he strategies that the company should implement during implementation include integrated marketing management system and customer relation management schemes.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More When launching a product, Toyota needs to research on the target market and adopt such policies that will see the products sell more easily. â€Å"Toyota Pius† is a hybrid motor vehicle which can use both fossil fuels and bio-fuels; the product is an eco-friendly product by the company. When developing the product, the company aims at fulfilling the demand of customers and environment conservers on sustainable development. The strength of the product will be the selling point or the strength of the product. When marketing and selling the product, the company should emphasis on the benefits that the product will have on the customers and the world in general. For instanc e the marketing team should inform target customers that the product is fuel economical as well as it will protect the environment. Some of the strategies that the company should implement during implementation include integrated marketing management system and customer relation management schemes.

For two companies with which you are familiar, compare and contrast Essay

For two companies with which you are familiar, compare and contrast the main operations processes in terms of their volume, vari - Essay Example In simpler terms, operation management is the conversion of input into output using the resources available to the organization with an aim to meet the organizational objectives such as efficiency, consistency and effectiveness (Kumar and Suresh, 2009). This assignment will highlight the factors such as volume, variety, variation and visibility of two automobile organizations, i.e. BMW and Nissan. To further highlight the importance of operation management in company’s success, the performance objectives, i.e. speed, quality, dependability, flexibility and cost, would be analyzed in order to evaluate the respective operation strategies of both the companies. COMPARING AND CONTRASTING OPERATION MANAGEMENT To compare and contrast the operation management in automobile industry, two familiar and recognized organizations BMW and Nissan have been selected. Both companies would be analyzed and evaluated in terms of volume, variety, variation and visibility characteristics. NISSAN Ni ssan is the world’s fourth largest automobile manufacturer. The company is located in Japan. With its aim to enrich the lives of its customers by providing them with high quality cars, the company operates in a number of countries. With the use of technology, the company aims to provide its customers with innovative vehicles. In order to evaluate the company’s operation management and its processes, volume, variety, variation and visibility characteristics have been analyzed one by one. Volume In order to consistently meet the demands of the customers, the company manufactures vehicles in high volume. This repetition of the processes has made the workforce specialize in the operation processes which eventually lead to the low units cost. With the ability to manufacture vehicles at low cost, the company is capital intensive. Variety To effectively meet the needs of the customers, Nissan provides them with variety of vehicles. With extensive product line at Nissan, the c ompany is able to attract the customers in the market. The variety in product line at Nissan includes sports cars, minivans and vans, trucks and pickup trucks (Nissan, 2013). With such variety, the company is able to match the needs of the customers effectively. Variation The variation in demand for Nissan’s vehicle is low. This implicates that the demand is predictable and the variation in the vehicle is stable. With low variation in demand, the cost associated with the manufacturing of vehicle is also low. Visibility characteristics In operations management, visibility character indicates the level of activities that can be observed by the customer. In Nissan’s case, the visibility characteristics are low which indicates that the company utilizes its staff effectively. Since the time lag between the production and consumption is high, the visibility factor could be said as low. BMW BMW continuously strives to become the leader in the automobile industry and to do so, the company provide its customers with high quality vehicles to enrich their customer’s experience. The company is one of the top quality vehicle providers in the globe due to which the company charges premium price from its customers. Being the world’s leader of premium products, the company has its own unique identity and persona. The same way Nissan

The Architecture of Sleep and the Function of Dreams Essay

The Architecture of Sleep and the Function of Dreams - Essay Example This stage is called stage 1 or NREM sleep. Sleep spindles appear in Stage 2, as EEG further reduces; and it keeps on decreasing while the amplitude of slow waves increases during stage 3. This mixed pattern causes high amplitude delta waves in the deepest sleep or Stage 4; which is also called SWS. Shifts in posture occur; followed by REM. ‘At an interval of 90 minutes, REM/NREM phases alternate; while the NREM stages dominate the first third of the night and REM stages dominates the last third’. (McNamara, 2004, p.p 1-2) We dream during the REM phases of sleep. The dreams of the REM phase have the dream-like quality of emotional drama, fantasy, excitement, and liveliness. The dreams during the NREM phases are more like conceptual thinking and the scenes are usually taken or adapted from our everyday lives. Moreover, the dream intervals at the onset of sleep are short; and they increase in each subsequent REM-NREM cycle after every 90 minutes. The last dream could be of 30-40 minute duration. Freud believed in his Interpretation of Dreams (1911) that the basic function of dreams was wish-fulfillment. ‘We now see what this function is.

Constitutional Rights before and after Arrest Research Paper

Constitutional Rights before and after Arrest - Research Paper Example The sixth Amendment done to the Constitution of United States is the part of the Bill of Rights which put forward privileges associated to the prosecutions of the criminals. An arrest causes the withdrawal of an individual’s freedom by a police man or any individual with an officially authorized permission. Usually an arrest takes place when a person is alleged of carrying out a crime and therefore should be taken into custody. â€Å"Because an arrest is in effect a â€Å"seizure† it must conform to the probable cause and warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment†(Otis.H.Stephens). According to the author arrests are frequently made in accordance to warrants build on initial inquiries so it is given out by a judge on apparent grounds. A court permits the investigation of a criminal activity by issuing a court order also known as writ. Therefore any investigation or arrest without a legal warrant is unfair and unconstitutional. A person has the right to demand as to why he is being arrested and the kind of allegation against him. An individual must see the warrant to be certain that his name exists on it and to confirm the charges. Moreover the person has the right to be informed of his constitutional rights also known as â€Å"Miranda rights† before he is interrogated after the arrest. These include the right to remain silent and refuse to cooperate without the consultation of your attorney as the police can utilize those answers against the person seized in the court. If an individual doesn’t meet the expense of a lawyer, he has the privilege to get a public defender without any cost and discuss his case with the attorney before further proceeding with the investigation. A person can also say no to every physical or medical test such as breathalyzer, lie detector etc. he also has the permission to contact any relative or important person to inform them about his arrest and so is allowed to make telephone calls. A person ar rested with no warrant is required to be carried quickly before a court official for a credible hearing of the case. Most of the times suspects defend against arrest therefore the police might use physical force or violence to take them in custody. â€Å"The courts have generally recognized that the fourth amendment permits police to use only such force as is â€Å"reasonable† and â€Å"necessary† in effectuating an arrest† (Otis H.Stephens). Therefore the person being suspected should give in without much resistance and has the right to take legal action against the police if they violate this amendment. The fourth amendment has forbidden unfair investigations and seizures of individuals and their possessions without a legal warrant specifying the place to be explored or the person to be arrested. Now as discussed earlier the Fifth Amendment permits an individual to refuse giving a testimony that might convict himself both in judiciary and in answer to interrog ation by the police. It also contains the clause of â€Å"Double Jeopardy’ in which it is not allowed to condemn a person twice for the same allegation. The sixth amendment however points out rights that are relevant in every criminal trial such as the right to an immediate and open hearing by an neutral panel

Gainesboro Machine Tools Corporation Essay Example for Free

Gainesboro Machine Tools Corporation Essay Kendle International Inc. We looked at the competitive landscape and, based on what was happening, knew we were either going to sell Kendle, grow or disappear. It was May 1997, and Candace Kendle, the chairman and chief executive officer of Kendle International Inc. (Kendle), and her husband Christopher C. Bergen, the president and chief operating officer, were reviewing the strategic options for their Cincinnati, Ohio based company. Kendle, a business they had founded over 15 years previously, conducted clinical trials for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to test the safety and efficacy of their new drugs. The company had grown successfully to $13 million of sales and had attracted significant business from major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Kendle was competing, however, with several larger contract research organizations (CRO), many of which had an international presence that allowed them to do clinical studies outside the United States and gave them an advantage when competing for major projects. To compete more effectively, Candace and Chris had embarked on a plan to grow through acquisition, particularly internationally, and to finance this growth through a public offering of equity. Toward this end, by the spring of 1997 Kendle had lined up two potential European acquisitions—U-Gene, a CRO in the Netherlands with 1996 sales of $12.5 million, and gmi, a Germanbased CRO with $7 million in sales. To finance these acquisitions, Kendle had worked out possible debt financing with Nationsbank and was working with two investment banks on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that would repay the bank debt if successful and provide the equity base for future acquisitions. It was now time to decide whether to go ahead with the full program of two acquisitions, a large debt financing and an equity issue. Kendle History Candace and Chris met in 1979 while working at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Candace had received her doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Cincinnati, then taught in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Her scientific specialty was virology. At the Children’s Hospital, Candace was serving as the director of pharmacy, working as an investigator on a study of an antiviral drug for the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome. Chris, a Wharton MBA, was a senior administrator at the hospital. Research Associate Indra A. Reinbergs prepared this case under the supervision of Professors Dwight B. Crane and Paul W. Marshall as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright  © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 1 Looking for something new, Candace and Chris began to discuss the idea of going into business together. One day in early 1981 Candace received an unexpected visit from a new physician, replacing the usual medical monitor for her project with Burroughs Wellcome. This physician was a pioneer in the  contract clinical research business. As he described how his business worked, Candace became more and more intrigued. When he left that day, she immediately called Chris and said, â€Å"I’ve got a business idea!† The concept was to set up a small research consulting firm that would take on outsourced research and development (RD) work on a contract basis from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Based on the positive response she received from potential clients, Candace left her job at the hospital in June 1981 and Chris left his job in December 1981. Kendle International Inc. was incorporated in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1981, with Candace taking 55% of the shares, and Chris 45%. Candace had strong ties to the Cincinnati area. Her grandfather, a coal miner, had moved there from Appalachia, and the clan had grown to about 140 members, including Candace’s two sons from a previous marriage. By January 1982, Candace and Chris were working from Candace’s parents’ home. Kendle started as a small company with a few contracts, and business grew slowly through referrals from professional colleagues. Kendle suffered the usual bumps of a start-up business, particularly in the late 1980s when it suffered a loss for two years and ran up $1 million in bank debt on a $250,000 line of credit. Afraid that its bank would call the loan, the company went through a bankruptcy scare. Fortunately, Kendle succeeded in attracting business from a new client, the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle Co. (Searle). By the early 1990s, the company was turned around and it generated annual sales of about $2.5 million. Candace and Chris were married in 1991. The Pharmaceutical Lifecycle The clinical research process was influenced by government regulations that required drugs to pass through a series of steps before they could be marketed for public use. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated pharmaceuticals. To receive FDA approval, a drug had to meet safety and efficacy standards for a specific indication (medical diagnosis). A drug for hypertension, for example, would have to lower blood pressure by a certain statistically significant amount without  producing unacceptable side effects. The entire FDA approval process could take from 8 to 15 years and involve several thousand patients.1 After a pharmaceutical company discovered a new drug and completed pre-clinical testing on animals in the laboratory, an Investigational New Drug application was filed with the FDA. The drug then passed through three phases of clinical testing on humans. Before beginning each subsequent phase, the drug company had to submit additional regulatory information to the FDA. Phase I Phase I studies were primarily concerned with assessing the drugs safety. This initial phase of testing in humans was done in a small number of healthy volunteers (20 to 100), such as students, who were usually paid for participation. Phase II Once Phase I testing had proven the drug’s safety, Phase II tested its efficacy in a small number of patients (100 to 300) with the medical diagnosis. It was specifically designed to determine the likely effective dose in patients. Phase III In a Phase III study, the drug was tested on a larger patient population (1,000 to 3,000) at multiple clinical sites. The purpose was to provide a more thorough understanding of the drugs effectiveness, benefits, and the range of possible adverse reactions. Most Phase II and Phase III studies were blinded studies in which some patients received the experimental drug, while control groups received a placebo or an already approved drug. Once a Phase III study was successfully completed, a pharmaceutical company requested FDA approval for marketing the drug by filing a New Drug Application, which averaged about 100,000 pages. †¢ 200-033 Phase IV Post-marketing testing (of at least 300 patients per trial) was sometimes conducted for high-risk drugs to catch serious side effects (liver toxicity) and monitor them for long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. The pharmaceutical companies traditionally designed and conducted their own clinical trials. They selected the research sites and recruited investigators to conduct the trials of the new drug. Investigators were often medical school professors at teaching hospitals, but they could also be professional investigators who conducted clinical trials at dedicated centers or occasionally regular physicians who ran trials, particularly Phase IV trials, out of their private practices. These investigators then recruited patients, sometimes with the help of the pharmaceutical company, to participate in the study. After patients were recruited, there was a considerable amount of data collection by the investigators, monitoring of the process and data retrieval by the pharmaceutical company, and analysis of the data to determine whether the statistical criteria for safety and efficacy were met. Finally, there was the complicated process of compiling the data and preparing the long report for the FDA. The Contract Research Business In the 1970s, large pharmaceutical concerns in the United States began to look for ways to outsource their clinical testing work as their RD budgets grew. At the beginning, contract research was a small cottage industry and the work was awarded on a piecemeal basis. As Chris recalled, â€Å"For years, there had been companies conducting animal testing and Phase I, but there was no one managing the entire research and development process. The acronym ‘CRO’ (contract research organization) did not exist, pharmaceutical companies gave out only small contracts, and did not have much confidence in for-profit research managers.† The growth of the CRO industry was stimulated by pricing pressures on drug companies that led them to try to transfer the fixed costs of clinical research into a variable cost through outsourcing. As Chris described, The general problem that drug companies face is balancing a variable workload with a fixed workforce. The problem is that you don’t know when the guy in the white lab coat will come running down the hall, beaker in hand, shouting, ‘Eureka, I’ve got it, it’s going to cure disease X’. When he does that, you know your workload is going to spike. Your workload is impacted by the rate of discovery, the number of projects killed in vitro and, subsequent to that, how many studies get cancelled due to safety or efficacy problems in human testing. Pure CROs like Kendle derived their income solely from the outsourced portion of the RD budget of pharmaceutical clients. In theory, any part of the clinical testing process could be outsourced. While most pre-clinical discovery was conducted in-house by drug companies, the trend in the 1990s was for CROs to receive contracts to manage the entire clinical research piece, especially 3 Phases II and III. The whole process was an incredible race against time, as every day for which FDA approval was delayed could cost the pharmaceutical client over $1 million in lost revenues. Pharmaceutical contracts ranged in duration from a few months to several years. For multi-year contracts involving clinical trials, a portion of the contract fee was paid at the time the trial was initiated, with the balance of the contract fee payable in installments over the trial duration, as performance-based milestones (investigator recruitment, patient enrollment, delivery of databases) were completed. Contracts were bid by CROs on a fixed-price basis, and the research was a labor-intensive business. The contract bids depended on careful estimation of the hourly labor rates and the number of hours each activity would take. The estimation process involved statistical algorithms, which took into account the length of the study, frequency and length of site visits, the number of sites involved, the number of patients involved, and the number of pages per report form. A premium would be added for more complicated therapeutic testing. As the chief financial officer Tim Mooney described the business, The way that Kendle makes money is like any professional service firm—We focus on maximizing labor utilization, especially at the operational level. We assume a 65% to 70% utilization rate, so profit margins are higher if we have a higher utilization rate of personnel. We have the same assumed profit margin on all levels of people, but we can charge higher rates for contracts where we have specific therapeutic expertise that is in demand. Margins can also be higher on some large projects when we can share overhead costs across more sites. The business of contract research entailed several types of business risk. With contracts running at an average of $1 million for companies of Kendle’s size, client dependence was a major risk. Project cancellation by the client and â€Å"change orders† to reduce project costs were also increasingly frequent in the CRO industry, as healthcare cost pressures intensified. On the other hand, product liability for medical risks was borne by the pharmaceutical company. Competition in the 1990s By the mid-1990s, contract research had evolved into a full-service industry, recognized by both the pharmaceutical/biotech industries and the financial community. In 1995, worldwide spending on RD by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies was estimated at $35 billion, with $22 billion spent on the type of drug development work that CROs could do. Of the $22 billion, only $4.6 billion was outsourced to CROs in 1995. While RD spending by pharmaceutical companies was growing at 10% a year, CROs were growing at twice that rate.2 Specialized CROs could manage increasingly complex drug trials—in the previous decade, the number of procedures per trial and average number of patients per trial had doubled—far more efficiently than their pharmaceutical clients.3 Kendle participated in this growth in clinical research. Its net revenues grew 425% from $2.5 million in 1992 to $13 million in 1996. From a loss of $495,000 in 1992, its net income rose to $1.1 million by 1996. By 1996, Kendle had conducted clinical trials for 12 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies. Kendle’s three largest clients were G.D. Searle, Procter Gamble, and Amgen, which generated 48%, 19%, and 13% of Kendles 1996 revenues, respectively. (See Exhibits 1 and 2 for Kendle’s income statements and balance sheets.) 2 J.C. Bradford Co., analyst report, January 15, 1998, pp. 5-6. 3 The Economist, â€Å"Survey of the Pharmaceutical Industry,† February 21, 1998, p. 4.200-033 The contract research industry was very fragmented, with hundreds of CROs worldwide. In the 1990s, in response to the increased outsourcing of pharmaceutical RD, and a demand for global trials, consolidation among the CROs began. A few key players emerged and went public, creating a new industry for Wall Street to watch. Many CRO start-ups were founded by former drug company executives who decided to form their own operations. After a period of internal growth, some of the start-ups began growing through a financial â€Å"roll-up† strategy. An industry publication listed 18 top players in North America, with total contract research revenues of $1.7 billion. The top five public companies, ranked by 1996 revenues, were Quintiles Transnational Corp. ($537.6 million), Covance Inc. ($494.8 million), Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc ($152.3 million), ClinTrials Research Inc. ($93.5 million), and Parexel International Corp. ($88 million).4 (See Exhibit 3 for recent sales and pr ofit data on CROs.) With its talent pool of scientists at the Research Triangle and U.S. headquarters of the pharmaceutical giants Glaxo and Burroughs Wellcome (later merged as Glaxo Wellcome), the state of North Carolina quickly became the center of the burgeoning CRO industry. Two of the â€Å"big five† companies, Quintiles and Pharmaceutical Product Development, were started there by academic colleagues of Candace’s. Quintiles Transnational was considered to be the †gold standard of the industry.† Quintiles was founded in 1982 by Dennis Gillings, a British biostatistician who had worked at Hoechst and was a professor at the University of North Carolina, where Candace completed her postdoctoral work. After raising $39 million in a 1994 IPO, Quintiles went on an acquisition spree, adding other professional service businesses. For example, the firm provided sales and marketing services to support the launch of new drug products. By the end of 1996, Quintiles was the worldâ€⠄¢s largest CRO, with 7,000 employees in 56 offices in 20 countries. A typical clinical study managed by Quintiles was conducted at 160 sites in 12 countries, involving 10,000 patients. Quintiles was more diversified than many of its CRO competitors, with about 65% of revenues derived from the  core CRO business and 35% from other services.5 Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) was founded in 1989 by Fred Eshelman, a colleague of Candace’s from the postdoctoral program in pharmacy. Like the founder of Quintiles, Eshelman had worked in drug research for several pharmaceutical firms, including Glaxo and Beecham. PPD’s revenues jumped 500% between 1990 and 1994, based on such work as multi-year contracts for AIDS research for the National Institutes of Health. PPD conducted a successful IPO in March 1996, with its stock jumping from $18 per share to $25.50 per share on the first day of trading. PPD bought a U.K. Phase I facility in November 1995, and in September 19 96 merged with another leading CRO. Their combined net revenues exceeded $200 million. Kendle at the Crossroads To Candace and Chris, it was clear that certain competitive capabilities were necessary for companies of Kendle’s size to compete successfully with the major CROs: therapeutic expertise (in specific medical areas) broad range of services (pharmaceutical companies wanted to work with fewer CROs, with each offering a wide range of services across multiple phases of the RD process); integrated clinical data management (the ability to efficiently collect, edit and analyze data from thousands of patients with various clinical conditions from many geographically dispersed sites); 4 â€Å"Annual Report: Leading CROs,† RD Directions, September 1997, pp. 28+. 5 William Blair Co. LLC analyst report, Quintiles Transnational Corp., June 20, 1997, p. 3. international, multi-jurisdictional presence (to speed up drug approval, tests were being launched in several countries at once); With the exception of international presence, Candace and Chris felt comfortable with their ability to meet these criteria. Kendle’s staff had scientific expertise in multiple therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, immunology, oncology, respiratory, skeletal disease and inflammation. The company also had broad capabilities, including management of studies in Phases II through Phase IV. It did not consider the absence of Phase I capabilities to be an issue, since this activity was quite separate. (See Exhibit 4 for a comparison of CRO geographical locations.) To build an integrated clinical data management capability, Chris had directed the development of TrialWare ®, a proprietary software system that allowed global data collection and processing and the integration of clinical data with clients’ in-house data management systems. TrialWare ® consisted of several modules including a database management system that greatly reduced study start-up costs and time by standardizing database design and utilizing scanned image technology to facilitate the design of data entry screens, the point-and-click application of edits from a pre-programmed library, and workflow management (parallel processing). Other modules included a system that coded medical history, medication and adverse event data and a touch-tone telephone system that was used for patient  randomization, just-in-time drug supply and collection of real-time enrollment data. Against the backdrop of a changing industry, Candace and Chris felt the need to develop additional business skills and focus Kendle’s strategy. To clarify their management roles, Candace and Chris switched their existing responsibilities. Chris pointed out, â€Å"Candace became CEO as we realized that her focus was long-range and I took over as Chief Operating Officer to focus on the short-range. In addition, the marketing strength of our competitors was propelling them further and further ahead of Kendle. Candace brought her science background and entrepreneurial skills, while I brought my management. The problem was that we were relatively weak in sales and marketing.† To broaden their skills, Candace went off in 1991 to the Owner/President Management Program (OPM), an executive education program run by Harvard Business School for three weeks a year over three years. Chris followed her to OPM in 1994. After completing the OPM program, Candace assessed the situation, We have to be big enough relative to our competitors to take on large, international projects. When Searle was looking for CROs for international work, all we could do was possibly subcontract it out to small shops. In contrast, Quintiles had six overseas offices of its own. Furthermore, when Searle calls and says, ‘I just got off the phone, Quintiles will cut their price by a million dollars,’ if you’re too small, you’re not going to be able to respond to that. Candace and Chris realized that Kendle could not grow fast enough internally to keep up with its peers and did not have the cash for acquisitions. They entertained the thought of selling Kendle, and were approached several times about a sale. But by nature, they were a competitive, athletic couple. Chris got up to play squash every morning at 7 AM, and Candace was an avid rower, recently winning a gold medal in a Cincinnati regatta. Perhaps not surprisingly, Candace and Chris decided to grow the firm and take it public rather than sell. As Candace described their motivation, â€Å"We were not driven to be a public company as such, but primarily to be bigger, and for this, we  needed public financing to succeed in the new competitive landscape. The whole target was not to let the big guys get too far out ahead of us.† Preparations for Growth By 1994, Kendle had grown to $4.4 million in revenues. Candace, the driving force throughout the IPO process, sought advice from an old college friend, a well-known Cincinnati businessman. He advised her, â€Å"before you go public, practice being a public company.† Candace therefore formulated a plan for Kendle to go public in 1999. Kendle began hiring key managers to build up functional units. Between 1994 and February 1997, new directors of clinical data management, information technology, biostatistics, finance, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory affairs, and human resources were hired. As Chris described, â€Å"the plan was to put this infrastructure in place to look and act like a public company— communications, IT, finance. The idea was hire at the top and they’ll fill in their organization.† Many of these new managers had previously worked together at other companies. To prepare for Wall Street scrutiny, Kendle began issuing internal quarterly fi nancial statements and sharing them with employees in an open-book management style. Candace and Chris tried to make the growing number of employees feel like â€Å"part of the family† in other ways, too. The Kendle â€Å"photo gallery† displayed professional portraits of employees with their favorite hobbies. In 1995 Chris led the development of a corporate mission statement and a document on strategic plans that was shared with all employees. Kendle was organized in a matrix fashion (see Exhibit 5 for organizational chart). Each department was treated as a strategic business unit (SBU) with a director who established standards and carried profit responsibility. At the same time, each research contract was managed by a project manager who assembled a team from across the various SBUs. Clinical trials involved five functional SBUs at Kendle: 1. Regulatory Affairs recruited investigators, helped them with FDA registration forms, and obtained approval from ethics boards. Regulatory Affairs maintained a database of 5,000 investigators. 2. Clinical Monitoring sent clinical research associates (CRA) out to the testing sites (every 4 to 6 weeks) to enforce Good Clinical Practice regulations. The CRAs were typically young, single health care professionals who spent a significant amount of their time on the road. The CRA would collect data from investigators, resolve queries generated by Clinical Data Management, and promote patient enrollment. 3. Clinical Data Management produced a â€Å"locked† database that could be submitted to the FDA. Data from case report forms were input into a computer system and â€Å"cleaned† through a manual review of the forms and an automated check of the databases. The challenge was to lock a database quickly while maintaining data quality. 4. Biostatistics would â€Å"unblind† the locked database and analyze it to determine if the data confirmed that the test results met the criteria for safety and efficacy. Biostatistics also defined the scope of new studies. 5. Medical Writing generated â€Å"the truckload of paper submitted to the FDA† for a New Drug Application, including a statistical analysis, a clinical assessment, preclinical and clinical data, a description of the manufacturing process, and the supporting patient documentation. 1996: The Celebrexâ„ ¢ Study, Filing Preparations, and European acquisitions 1996 was a busy year for Candace, Chris, and Kendle’s new management team. They simultaneously began conducting a major drug study, working with underwriters on IPO preparations, and looking for overseas acquisition targets. In 1996 Kendle managed 62 clinical studies at 4,100 sites involving approximately 20,000 patients. Celebrexâ„ ¢ Study In January 1996, Kendle began working on a major drug called Celebrexâ„ ¢ (celecoxib). Its client Searle was engaged in a neck-and-neck race with Merck, the largest U.S. drug company, to be the first to market a COX-2 inhibitor. A COX-2 inhibitor was a new type of anti-inflammatory drug that promised low incidence of bleeding ulcers in long-term, high-dosage users such as arthritis patients. The Searle-Merck race was closely followed in the business press. Searle awarded the international portion of the Celebrexâ„ ¢ contract to another CRO, since Kendle only had facilities for testing in the United States. However, Kendle did win the contract to conduct all the U.S. Phase II and III trials. The Celebrexâ„ ¢ contract was a â€Å"huge feather in our cap,† recalled the chief financial officer. â€Å"In order to beat Merck, we worked very hard and kept compressing the timelines.† To head the Celebrexâ„ ¢ project, Kendle hired Bill Sietsema, PhD, as assistant director of clinical research. A therapeutic expert in skeletal diseases and inflammation, Sietsema had worked at Proctor Gamble for 12 years. While Sietsema served as overall program director, Chris acted as the operational project manager, meeting with his Searle counterpart in Chicago on a monthly basis. In early 1997, Kendle also set up a new regional office in Chicago, close to Searle headquarters. For Kendle, the Celebrexâ„ ¢ project was a chance to â€Å"show what we could do and to develop a reputation as a leader in the field of skeletal disease and inflammation.† Kendle actively helped investigators recruit arthritis patients, running television advertisements, directing interested volunteers to a call center. Three hundred  investigators enrolled over 10,000 patients, producing over one million pages of case report forms. Most importantly, through close integration of information systems with Searle, Kendle was able to beat an industry standard. Instead of taking the typical six months to one year, the time span between the last patient in Phase II and the first in Phase III, which began in June 1996, was only 22 days. Preparation for SEC Filing By the time the Celebrexâ„ ¢ program rolled around, Candace and Chris felt that they might have to go public earlier than intended because of the competitive landscape. The new chief financial officer, Tim Mooney, took a leading role in the preparations. Prior to joining Kendle in May 1996, Mooney had worked as CFO at The Future Now, Inc., a computer reseller and Hook-SupeRx, a retail drugstore chain. At Kendle, Mooney replaced the controller with an audit manager from Coopers Lybrand to beef up his staff. Mooney also led the building of many of the other financially related departments at Kendle. To act as the lead underwriters on the IPO, in August 1996 Mooney chose two regional investment banks, Chicago-based William Blair Company, L.L.C., which had handled the 1995 IPO of Kendle’s competitor Parexel, and Wessels, Arnold Henderson from Minneapolis. William Blair began putting Kendle through the paces of preparing to file a preliminary prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The process of going public generally took from 60 to 180 days. One of the key steps in the process was the conversion of Kendle from a subchapter corporation to a C corporation at the time of the IPO. (Subchapter S corporations were entities with 35 or fewer shareholders that were treated like partnerships for tax purposes. Corporate income tax was passed through tax-free to the owners who then paid personal income taxes due.) U-Gene In October 1996 Mooney hired Tony Forcellini, a former colleague, as director of mergers and acquisitions (MA). Tony had worked at Arthur Andersen in the tax department, and then as a treasurer at Hook-SupeRx with Mooney. The search for European acquisition targets was mainly conducted by Candace and Tony Forcellini, with back-up support by Tim Mooney and Chris. All the while, Chris and Bill Sietsema were working away on the Celebrexâ„ ¢ program. Forcellini’s first decision was easy—whether to pursue an offering memorandum that landed on his desk shortly after he arrived. The company for sale was U-Gene Research B.V. (U-Gene), a CRO based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. U-Gene was represented by Technomark Consulting Services Ltd. (Technomark), a London-based consulting firm uniquely specializing in the healthcare industry. Technomark had an extensive database on European CROs and was primarily in the business of matching its pharmaceutical company clients’ trial s with appropriate European CROs, but it also had a small investment banking division. U-Gene, a full-service CRO, was an attractive target for Kendle. The venture capitalist owners were actively looking for buyers. With a 38-bed Phase I facility in Utrecht and regional offices in the United Kingdom and Italy, U-Gene could increase both Kendle’s service offering and geographic presence. Since its founding in 1986, U-Gene had served more than 100 clients, including 19 of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies. In 1996, U-Gene participated in 115 studies at approximately 500 sites involving approximately 4,700 patients and recorded net revenues of $12.5 million, a 37% increase over the prior year, and operating profit of $1.3 million, a 47% increase over the prior year. Because of its U.K. and Italian offices, U-Gene viewed itself as on the way to becoming a pan-European CRO.  (See Exhibit 6 for U-Gene financial statements.) With momentum building, in November 1996, Forcellini seized upon U-Gene as Kendle’s possible entry into Europe and submitted a bid, offering cash and private stock. Unfortunately, Kendle lost out on this bid to a competitor, Collaborative Clinical Research, Inc, as U-Gene’s owners either wanted a full cash deal or stock from a public company. Collaborative was a competitor slightly larger than Kendle ($25.7 million in revenues) that had gone public in June 1996 and had established a software partnership with IBM. Although it had access to investigators outside the United States, Collaborative also viewed U-Gene as the establishment of a European presence. On February 12, 1997 Collaborative announced that it had signed a letter of intent to acquire U-Gene in exchange for 1.75 million newly issued shares. While this put Kendle out of the picture, the prospects of a deal were not completely killed. On the same day, February 12, 1997, Collaborative also announced that its first-quarter 1997 earnings would be significantly below expectations. On the next day, on analyst speculation that a major client contract had been lost, their stock fell by 27.3%, closing at $9.00.6 This put Collaborative’s UGene deal in jeopardy. Underwriter Concerns About two weeks after Collaborative’s announcement, on February 25, 1997, another CRO, ClinTrials, also suffered a drop in stock price. ClinTrials’ stock lost more than half its market value,  dropping 59%, to $9.50 per share. The fall began when an analyst from Wessels Arnold downgraded the ClinTrials stock to â€Å"hold† from â€Å"buy,† citing a number of key management departures, and continued after ClinTrials announced that its first-quarter earnings would be half its year-earlier profit. The reason for the unexpected earnings decline was the cancellation of five projects totaling $37 million, with the possibility of even lower earnings due to an unresolved project dispute with a client.7 ClinTrials’ negative performance began to affect other CRO stocks, including that of Quintiles.8 With client concentration an issue in ClinTrials’ stock performance, William Blair developed doubts about the timing of Kendle’s IPO. Although Kendle was close to filing its preliminary prospectus, on the day after ClinTrial’s stock dropped, William Blair analysts had a meeting with Kendle’s management and told them that they had decided to withdraw as lead underwriters in the IPO. Candace was resolved to keep going. She said, â€Å"There’s no way out of the concentration issue. We can’t buy our way out of it, because we can’t do MA deals until we have a public currency, and every day Searle is bringing us more work, we won’t tell them no.† She then asked Mooney to find new investment bankers, and he thought, â€Å"what am I going to do now?† Hoping for a lead, Mooney called up a former security analyst from Wessels Arnold who had gone to work at Lehman Bros. Although Kendle was smaller than Lehman’s usual clients, Lehman agreed to underwrite Kendle’s IPO, with the reassurance that â€Å"we think we can sell through the client concentration issue.† After an agreement with New York-based Lehman was reached, Mooney searched for a regional firm because, as he decided, â€Å"I didn’t want two New York-size egos. J.C. Bradford, based in Nashville, Tennessee, had a good reputation in the industry, and struck us as a nice regional bank. They were more retail-oriented than institutional-oriented, so they wouldn’t directly be competing with Lehman in types of clientele.† Bradford had managed the IPO of the first large CRO to go public (ClinTrials, in 1993) and Lehman had led the IPO of PPD in January 1996. Gmi and U-Gene revisited At the same time, Forcellini was moving ahead on the acquisition search. In January 1997 he tasked Technomark with using its CRO database to generate a list of possible European acquisition targets that met the following criteria: â€Å"ideally a CRO with United Kingdom headquarters; $5 million to $7 million in revenues; no Searle business; certain types of therapeutic expertise; strong in phases II through IV; and certain country locations.† The initial list had 50 European CROs, which Kendle narrowed down to 14 prospects. Technomark then contacted these 14 prospects to sound out their willingness to sell, bringing the number down to five candidates: three CROs in Germany, two in the United Kingdom, and one in the Netherlands (not U-Gene). To assess the prospects, Kendle used information from Technomark on comparable MA deals. Candace and Tony Forcellini then traveled around Europe for a week visiting the five companies. They decided to further pursue two companies: a small, 15-person monitoring organization in the United Kingdom and one in Germany. The U.K. prospect was quickly discarded because of an aggressive asking price and accounting problems. Kendle then moved on to the German target, a company named gmi. Its full name was GMI Gesellschaft fur Angewandte Mathematik und Informatik mbH. Founded in 1983, gmi provided a full range of Phase II to IV services. gmi had conducted trials in Austria, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, among other countries, and had experience in health economic studies and 7 â€Å"ClinTrials Predicts Sharply Lower Profit: Shares Plunge 59%†, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 1997, p. B3. 8 David Ranii, â€Å"Investors avoiding Quintiles,† The News Observer, Raleigh, NC, February 27, 1997, p. C8. professional training programs. In 1996, gmi participated in 119 studies at multiple sites and recorded net revenues of $7 million, a 32% increase over the prior year, and operating profit of $1.4 million, a 16% increase over the prior year. At March 31, 1997, gmis backlog was approximately $9.6 million. gmi considered itself to be especially good at Phase III trials. (See Exhibit 7 for gmi financial statements.) While Candace and Forcellini were narrowing down European targets, Mooney was hunting for cash. In February 1997 Kendle met at a special lunch with its existing bankers, Star Bank (later renamed Firstar), in Cincinnati. Mooney recalled the conversation vividly: â€Å"After Candace and Chris described their plans, Star Bank’s CEO made a proposal, ‘If you keep Kendle a private company and avoid the hassles of being public, we’ll lend you the money you need for acquisitions.’† With the financing in hand, Candace and Forcellini visited gmi in Munich. While gmi’s owners were willing to talk, they did not have much interest in selling. As Mooney described it, â€Å"gmi was a classic case of having grown to a certain size, had a comfortable level of income, but weren’t interested in putting in the professional systems to grow beyond that level.† After several conversations in March, it was not clear that Kendle and gmi’s owners w ould be able to reach a mutually agreeable price. At this point in early April 1997, the possibility of U-Gene as an acquisition candidate heated up. After the U-Gene deal with Collaborative Research began to collapse, Kendle had initiated a carefully structured inquiry about U-Gene’s interest in renewed discussions. This inquiry led to further discussions and a request in April for Kendle to meet in Frankfurt to try to reach an agreement. With the gmi deal in doubt, Kendle agreed to try to reach closure with U-Gene. After some discussion, both sides agreed on a price of 30 million Dutch guilders, or about US$15.6 million, $14 million of which would be paid in cash, and the remaining $1.6 million would be in the form of a promissory note payable to the selling shareholders.  U-Gene wanted to complete the transaction within the next several weeks, so it would have to be financed at least initially by borrowings. Even if Kendle went ahead with an IPO, the equity financing would not be completed until the end of the summer. Discussions with gmi continued through this period since Kendle was confident about its ability to obtain financing from Star Bank. Ultimately, Kendle’s team was able to agree upon a price with gmi. The owners were willing to accept a price of 19.5 million Deutsche marks, or about US$12.3 million, with at least $9.5 million in cash. They would accept shares for the remaining $2.8 million, if Kendle successfully completed an IPO. The owners were willing to hold off the deal until the IPO issue was resolved. Closing the Deals and IPO Decision To complete both the U-Gene and gmi deals, Kendle would need to borrow about $25 million to $28 million, so financing became critical. Mooney went back to Star Bank to take the bankers up on their promise. He described their reaction: â€Å"Star Bank said they couldn’t lend $28 million to a company that only has $1 million in equity. Nobody did that. They might be willing to finance one acquisition, with the help of other banks, but there was no way that they would provide $28 million.† Mooney was quite angry, but had no choice but to look for other sources of financing. He first tried to get bridge financing from Lehman and Bradford, but they refused, saying that they had â€Å"gotten killed on such deals in the 1980s.† There was also a possibility of financing from First Chicago Bank, but this did not materialize. Finally, in late April 1997, Mooney contacted NationsBank, N.A., which was headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and provided banking services to the CRO industry. Nationsbank expressed interest, but only in a large deal. Even $28 million was a small amount to Nationsbank. In 11  a few short weeks, Nationsbank ended up structuring a $30 million credit for Kendle, consisting of a $20 million, three-year revolving credit line and $10 million in five-year, subordinated notes. The interest rate on the credit line was tied to a money market base rate plus 0.50% (currently totaling 6.2%), and the subordinated debt carried a 12% rate. †So NationsBank stepped up in a pretty big way. They could have ended up with Kendle as a private company, with $30 million in debt.† Because of the risk, Nationsbank would also take warrants giving the bank the right to purchase 4% of Kendle’s equity, or up to 10% if the IPO was delayed and Kendle had to borrow the full amount to do both acquisitions. Lehman Brothers was confident about an IPO. The underwriters felt Kendle could raise $39 million to $40 million at a price between $12 and $14 per share, and that Candace and Chris could sell some of their shares as well. Premier Research Worldwide Ltd., a CRO with $15.2 million in 1996 revenues, had raised $46.75 million from its recent IPO in February 1997. Kendle felt they had a much better track record than Premier. Kendle now faced some difficult decisions. It could do the full program, including both acquisitions, taking the $30 million Nationsbank deal, and planning for an IPO in late summer. The successful acquisitions of gmi and U-Gene would establish Kendle as the sixth largest CRO in Europe, based on total revenues, and one of only four large CROs able to offer clients the full range of Phase I through Phase IV clinical trials in Europe. The pricing on the two acquisitions of 8 to 10 times EBITDA seemed in line with recent CRO deals (see Exhibit 8). And, once the IPO was completed, Kendle would have both a cash cushion and stock as a currency to help finance future growth and acquisitions. Assuming an IPO of 3 million new shares at a price of $13.00, Kendle would have a cash position of about $14 million and no debt in the capital structure. (See Exhibits 9 and 10 for pro forma  income statements and balance sheets showing the impact of the acquisitions and the IPO.) A related issue was how many of their shares Candace and Chris should sell if an IPO were done. Their current thinking was to sell 600,000 shares. Thus, a total of 3.6 million shares would be for sale at the time of the IPO, including a primary offering of 3 million shares and a secondary offering of 600,000 shares. This sale would reduce holdings controlled by Candace and Chris from 3.65 million shares (83.1% of the shares currently outstanding) to 3.05 million shares (43.4% of the new total outstanding). Doing the full IPO and acquisition program, however, was unprecedented among Kendle’s peers. â€Å"Nobody does this combination all at once—an IPO, senior- and sub-debt financing, and MA deals,† as Mooney described the situation. Furthermore, the stock prices of public CROs had been falling since last February (see Exhibits 11 and 12 for stock market valuation and price information). If Kendle bought into the full program and the market crashed or the IPO was unsuccessful, the company would have almost $30 million of debt on its books with a very modest equity base. Perhaps it would be better to do just the U-Gene acquisition and use Star Bank to finance it. After completing this acquisition, it could then pursue the IPO. This approach was safer, but of course Kendle might miss the IPO window and miss the opportunity to acquire the second company. Indeed, instead of discouraging Kendle from doing an IPO, the fall in CRO stock prices might be taken as a signal tha t Kendle should forge ahead before the window closed completely.