social science

Imagine that Peerless Products, Inc., a well-known manufacturer of consumer electronics, decides to expand its manufacturing in China. ? e CEO assigns the task to the vice president of manufacturing, and within two years, the company has a plant up and running in Guangdong. Unfortunately, however, Peerless has no overall end-to-end supply chain capability to account for the fact that its lead times have increased by four weeks. ? is, in turn, has an impact on how the company sells its products, takes orders, plans distribution, sizes warehousing, and manages inbound and outbound logistics throughout the global markets being served by the Chinese plant. In short, although the company has lowered its product costs, it has increased its supply chain risk and possibly raised its total cost of ownership—taking into account the impact on lost sales. According to Accenture, Inc., risk in the context of global operations may be placed into three buckets: uncontrollable (such as geopolitical instability or natural disasters), somewhat controllable (e.g., the volatility of fuel prices), and controllable (for instance, forecasting accuracy or the performance of supply chain partners). Based on a study of 300 companies, however, Accenture found that the more controllable factors constitute the greatest sources of disruption. Up to 35 per cent of respondents reported being impacted by natural disasters and 20 per cent by geopolitical turmoil. But 38 per cent indicated they felt the effects of their supply chain partners’ poor performance, and 33 per cent had been hurt by logistics complexity, for instance. ? e consequences of failing to manage those risks are costly indeed, as negative impacts may be experienced in metrics such as sales, return on sales, operating income, return on assets, and inventories. Although few companies have mastered the management of risk in global operations, many are trying. For example, more than 60 per cent of the executives who participated in the study of the global operation conducted by Accenture indicated that their organizations were manufacturing locally and globally and that they are using contingent suppliers and/or logistics providers. Half said they are intentionally establishing a geographically distributed supply base, and more than half cited increases in inventories and safety stock. Furthermore, 49 per cent claimed to have a formal supply chain risk management program in place already. CASE QUESTIONS: Assume you are the CEO of Peerless Products and that you are aware of your company’s lack of overall end-to-end supply chain capability. What are some of the high-level, adverse impacts on your business that may occur?  What steps would you recommend be taken to help avoid the types of adverse impacts identified above? As CEO, what would be your expectations of the company’s vice president of the supply chain with respect to the potential problems at hand? How would you compare and contrast expectations of the vice president of the supply chain with those of the vice president of manufacturing? Source: Adapted from Jaume Ferrer, Johan Karlbert, and Jamie Hintlian, “Integration: The Key to Global Success,” Supply Chain Management Review (March 2007): 26–27. Copyright © 2007 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier. Reproduced by permission.

God and Evil Discussion – If evil presents a philosophical problem for the idea of God, why do people believe in both God and evil?

racial identity development stages

You will complete a paper describing the details of a specific area of counselling. You should include references to the textbook and outside readings; references to lecture and class activities may be included. Information from interviews with practitioners and other media may also be included. However, the main objective of the paper is for you to express your conceptualization of what a targeted area of counselling is and the counsellor’s role in it. The student may choose to focus on any of the following: Mental Health and Community Counseling, Marriage and Family Counseling, Career Counseling, Substance Abuse Counseling, Geriatric Counseling, School Counseling, or Counseling in Colleges and Universities. Other speciality areas in counselling may be considered, but the student must obtain permission from the instructor to cover any subject not listed. This paper should include: Description of the setting (specific elementary school, community agency such as the Exchange Club Family Center, etc.) including the client population served (adolescents with drug problems, homeless, elderly, etc.) and include at least two community resources. Discussion of the necessary education and additional training, including unique knowledge of the clients (i.e. stages of development, issues of the aged, etc.) and personal qualities which a typical counsellor working in the setting with these clients should have. The typical problems of your clients and the appropriate change processes gave the above information (theories, techniques, treatment strategies employed). The paper should have 4-5 pages of content. 

In your reading for this week, you meet Jose and Iris, two individuals who are in situations that require assistance and guidance from a professional social worker and policy advocate. In this Discussion, create a policy proposal that will impact the situations faced by either Iris. Describe the trade-offs you used to develop your proposal. To prepare: In your text, review “Trade-Offs: Systematically Comparing Policy Options in Step 3” in Chapter 8. Post a brief summary of the policy proposal and its purpose that you created based on Iris’s situation and the trade-offs you used to develop your proposal. Be sure to support your post with specific references to this week’s resources. If you are using additional articles, be sure to provide full APA-formatted citations for your references.

Social workers strive to make informed decisions about the interventions they implement. These decisions should be driven by what the research data say. As a result, social workers have been called to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions they implement. A common way to evaluate interventions is to use a single-subject design. This involves monitoring an outcome for an intervention implemented for one client. After a social worker works with the client to determine the outcome to be measured, the following steps to the evaluation might look like this: Administer the instrument before the intervention is implemented, Implement the intervention, Administer the same instrument, after a specified time period, Monitor to determine if there have been any changes in the outcome. In this Discussion, you use the lens of resiliency theory when reflecting on a case from your fieldwork, and then you consider how to measure the effectiveness of a possible intervention. To prepare, read this article listed in the Learning Resources: Smith-Osborne, A., & Whitehill Bolton K. (2013). Assessing resilience: A review of measures across the life course. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 10(2), 111–126. doi:10.1080/15433714.2011.597305. Post: Reflect on your fieldwork experience, and identify a case where it would have been beneficial to employ resiliency theory. Describe the case in 2 sentences. Describe the presenting problem in one concise sentence. Describe an intervention you would implement to promote resiliency. Identify an instrument from the Smith-Osborne and Whitehill Bolton’s article that would be appropriate when employing a single-subject design to evaluate how effective the intervention is in increasing the client’s level of resiliency. Explain why you selected the instrument. In other words, why would the instrument be appropriate? (Consider the age of the client and for whom the instrument was designed, how feasible it would be to administer the instrument such as cost, time to administer it, etc.).

What would you do if you had a ring-like Gyges had? On what would you base your morality if given the opportunity to act under a cloak of invisibility? Read and respond to two classmates’ posts. Let them know if you would trust them with such a ring, and why or why not. 

Read The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity 203 and in a 250-word response, consider the following: What do these accounts tell us about Christianity during this time? Does the fact that Perpetua is a woman change how you see this piece of literature in history? How is this a significant work?

Write a 175- to 265-word response to the following: What are the best and worst traits of leaders you have worked with? How did these traits affect your productivity and engagement? Regarding leadership traits, what is more, important for leading people: hard knowledge of the area you are running or soft people skills?

Analyze and explain Epicurus’ famous proclamation: “Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessarily easy to supply, and what is not easy unnecessary…The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the soul’s freedom from disturbance since this is the aim of the life of blessedness.” Do you agree or disagree with this assessment of the good life, and why? In support of your argument, please refer to specific passages from the video (Alain de Botton’s “Epicurus on Happiness—Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness,” available on YouTube via the link below) as well as to the Epicurus reading assignment, and your own life experiences and observations. DO NOT USE SECONDARY SOURCES OTHER THAN THE VIDEO. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irornIAQzQY