RESEARCH METHODS FOR MANAGERS Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

RESEARCH METHODS FOR MANAGERS - Assignment Example The ability to form teams virtually that will operate across the limitations of time, distance and organizational boundaries have proven to be the successful for the organizations. These teams use electronic collaboration technologies and other techniques to lower facility and travelling costs, reduce project schedules and improve decision making communication and time. Since companies are more focused on foreign markets for expanding their base of customer, they are also looking at lowering costs or exacting effectiveness by tapping the foreign labor pool. For this purpose, outsourcing and off- shoring have become very prevalent. The result is that firms are able to achieve substantial cost saving and decrease their time to market when building software solutions, offering services, manufacturing products since additional risks are managed effectively (Gruhn, Volker, Schope & Lothar, 2002, P. 254). Today the management desires to establish international presence by exacting operatin g efficiencies and reducing costs of distributed teams created by mergers, acquisitions, technical specialization and downsizing. Organizations that do not use virtual teams effectively have difficulty in competing in the global, competitive and rapidly changing markets. Those organizations that will succeed in finding ways of working across boundaries like systems, technologies, people and procedure. Literature Review Managing virtual teams can be more complex than managing traditional teams, however. First, virtual teams primarily communicate and collaborate by using technology such as e-mail, groupware, etc. Virtual teams exclusively depend on software and technology tools to collaborate and communication, whereas the teams that are traditional can always abandon technology and software tools in favor of face-to-face communication and collaboration. Secondly, boundaries were crossed by virtual teams in relation to organization, distance, and time. This raises the need of attentio n towards the issues of collaboration and communication

Annotated Bibliography on Mark Twain's The War Prayer

On Mark Twain's The War Prayer - Annotated Bibliography Example John Trombold is a multiple contributor, and uses this essay to attack the American concepts of Manifest Destiny. The work is a public plea calling for Americans to educate themselves as to the reasoning behind constant war waging. The source is recent, published in 2006, and poignantly reviews historical facts from the American World Wars up to and including our current military occupation in Iraq, and Afghanistan. This resource would not be a significant contributor to an essay on Mark Twains work, "The War Prayer." The majority of the content is given to out of date American political policy as it was created by Theodore Roosevelt. Trombold attacks Roosevelt for openly lying to the public about the need for a war and for using the American peoples trust to futher his own financial gains. The source neither supports nor weakens Mark Twain's "The War Prayer." The essay asks the American reader of 2008 to think instead how our foreign policies should differ from that of Roosevelt's traditional war hungry America. In this critical analysis of Mark Twain essays, author David Zmijeski details how Twain was commissioned by the American Government as a political, and literary advocate in favor of America's attempts to annex and acquire the Sandwich Islands. The article gives a detailed account of exactly how/why/when Mark Twain openly supported the idea of increasing trade and acquiring land from Hawaii, and mainland China. This article is scholarly in nature, written exclusively for the Hawaiian Journal of History, and republished with permission in 2007. The Journal began in 1967 and publishes articles and essays exclusively about the history and legacy of the Pacific Islands. Zmijewski bases his essay on factual correspondence written by Mark Twain to the American government about the Polynesian and Sandwich Islands. Mark Twain is quoted often as adamantly advocating for less military and political American presence around the world, yet Zmijewski displays for the reader multiple correspondences in which Twain supports the opening of free trade with the Hawaiian Islands and calls for an American Military presence of some sort. The Hawaiian Journal releases the records and Zmijewski uses Twain's own writing to contradict his longtime opposition of American foreign involvement. This particular article would be of great interest and support to a paper on Mark Twain's the War Prayer. It is one of the few works that documenting the hidden dichotomy between what Twain privately believes in and what he asks the American public to believe. The great American master is caught denouncing Westward Expansion on one hand while simultaneously calling for financial and military support to acquire Hawaii on the other. Caplan, David. "That Grotesque and Laughable Word": Rethinking Patriotism in Time of War." Virginia Quarterly Review 83 (2007): 139-51. November 20th 2008. This journal article by David Caplan