John Locke V Thomas Hobbes Essay

Locke and Hobbes both had detailed accounts as to what the state of nature is. I will start with Hobbes and what he felt the state of nature is made up of. Hobbes believed in defining the state of nature as what it is instead of what it ought to be. So he focused in on the nature of people and came to a very descriptive conclusion as to how survive in this particular state of nature. He stated that man was equal in ambition, cruelty, and treachery, which in turn makes humans equal in the ability to kill each other. This is important because he believes that people can not live in peace in the state of nature because of those reasons. Also because of this he states that there are three principals of quarrels; competition, diffidence, and glory. Hobbes feels that because of human nature these three reasons to fight would take over and make the state of nature a state of war. Locke also has an opinion to the state of nature. He feels that men would respond to things and people around them with reason and rationality. Therefore he feels that a state of nature for the most part peaceful and pleasant. He also states that the natural law would guide humans in a state of nature. He thinks that people know right from wrong and are capable of doing both but it is upon the individual to carry out these values. In order to deal with the state of nature each of the two suggests a social contract. Whatever the contract is should be the obligations placed upon the people. They both believe in this particular agreement they just differ as to who it should be between. Hobbes speaks of the Leviathan and believes that the contract should be between the ruled and the ruler. He states that a strong ruler is the only way to enforce the social contract. He says that all me are born with three rights: the right to property, liberty, and life. He believes that the only important right is the right to life because without that right you cannot have a chance to enjoy the other two. So his contract consists of the subjects giving up the other two to the leviathan so that he can ensure the right to life. Locke’s social contract differs in many ways. One of them is Locke does not believe that individuals should not give up liberty, but instead give up the right to punish people who commit wrongdoings and leave that up to a overwhelming force, in this case the popular sovereignty. His belief of the state of nature which is that man would use their reasoning and be rational when dealing with other people. So his contract is between the elected and the people. Locke and Hobbes social contract may be different but in ways they are similar. They both believe in revolt if the contract is broken, but they state it differently. Hobbes believes in the monarch so the revolt against him would be different then Locke’s society of popular sovereignty, but in short it both of them called for persecution in such case. Still the case that called for persecution would naturally be different because of the different types of governments these men called for. For example Locke says it is time to revolt when a ruler tries to get absolute power of the people; but Hobbes states that the leviathan needs to have absolute power and the only time to revolt is if the monarch is not able to protect the people he rules over. Hobbes explains the relationship between the subjects and ruler as do what you told and you will not be killed. This means that these people could not say anything about the way the sovereign is running the kingdom or you are subject to death. This is so in the way Hobbes looked at it because the only way to control the people is a state strong enough to persecute someone for this particular reason. The monarch that Hobbes feels is the only way to govern should not be questioned by anyone as so long he is able to protect the people of the land. Locke’s view of the relationship is really different. Based on the concept of popular sovereignty the sovereign are the people; so the relationship is more give and take or democratic. This is a very important concept to Locke’s ideas because this is what differs him the most from Hobbes. His democracy is broken down into three branches; executive, legislative, and federal. The elected officials in these positions are an extension of the people so the people who make up the state serves the people until the people are tired of them. What Hobbes and Locke say about people moving into a political society from a state of nature is pretty similar and all most the same. Both say that contracts between people were necessary, but the dilemma in that is that in a state of nature there is no one to enforce the contracts between people. Both of them thought about this concept and figured that in order to move in to a political society someone was needed to enforce these contracts. Hobbes believes that the only one strong enough to force contracts is the monarch. Locke believes the same thing about someone being strong enough to force the contracts but he thinks it should be the elected doing so. Locke’s two treatises limited sovereignty more so than it has before. Locke called for a separation of powers. He broke it down into three sections and combined it with the popular sovereignty; therefore the many limitations were in place. I believe Locke included this idea into is first and second treatise because he wanted to not allow the abuse of power that is so evident in a monarchy. This is important because this is what our American system of democracy is based upon. Hobbes system of government there is very little limitation. The only limitation I can see is when the monarch does not provide for the security of the people and they revolt. Though that limitation is called upon by Hobbes the rest of the terms of the monarch have no limitations. The monarch is the ruler and no one can go against him because he is the divine and going against him is going against god. So the limitations of a monarch are pretty much is inexistent in Hobbes’s the Leviathan. The rights of the subjects according to Hobbes are the right to live and that is it. The other rights now belong to the Leviathan; this is needed according to Hobbes to ensure security. A monarch that gives too many rights to the people is too weak to defend them. This is so because if the monarch is questioned a lot it takes away the fear of the ruler. Hobbes says that fear is needed to keep the people in check. Therefore a sovereign must practice a policy known as shock and awe. Without this strategy someone would feel that they might be able to challenge the monarch. So rights that the subjects hold on the sovereign are limited to the right to revolt if the monarch fails to protect them. Locke thinks that people should hold more rights to the elected. The subjects have the right to put people in the state and take them out. Locke gives people the right to liberty and property. This is different from Hobbes because Hobbes said to give those rights up. Locke says that you can have rights that Hobbes said would not work in transforming into a political society. Hobbes says that subjects cannot ensure that the sovereign roles for the greater good. Because if they are alive it is the greater good according to Hobbes; so what can they do to ensure that the ruler is operating for the greater good? According to Hobbes nothing because you can not go against the Leviathan on how he is ruling, and to do so can result in you getting killed. So once again the subject has very little to say in the Hobbes ideology. Locke also has a conflicting view with Hobbes on this ability to check the sovereign to make sure he is operating for the good of the people. The main thing that allows them to ensure what the government doing is right is the ability bring charges against any wrongdoings. This is powerful because it does not only kick those people out of office but also brings persecution to them. Another powerful way to make sure government is doing the right thing is the ability to vote or not to vote for people who make up the state. Both Locke and Hobbes are modern political philosophers with different ways of reaching the same objective. Their objective is to transform a state of nature into a political society. Though they disagree on what a state of nature is and they disagree on which is the better political society, but both were apparently right. This is so because both of the philosophies can be applied to life today, which is in a whole different context of their time.

Computer Literacy Essay

The computer technology became a very important aspect in human lives that is greatly relied upon. Nowadays personal computers are made quite affordable and allow for easy and fast way to access information and solve problems in daily life. Life is a continuous information interchange and technological progress helps accelerate this exchange. However, people are so dependable on computers that they do not realize the impact it has on literacy. Computer literacy is essential in our modern society but with great advantages of this skill come disadvantages that can have a negative impact on the three basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Reading is a skill that is taught from a very young age that makes people more intellectual and formed in an everyday life. Technology made access to information very simple which is why many people turn to computers for news, books and others sources of information. A trip to a library or a newspaper shop is a thing of the past since everything is available at your fingertips in the comfort of your own home. However reading from a computer screen can be much slower and inefficient. In the following quote,â€Å"These differences in reading speed are assumed to be due to a declined sense of orientation when reading long lines of online text presented in single wide columns† it is evident that reading from a computer screen can affect the reading speed when comparing to reading from the book. A person can easily lose track of where they are when reading from a screen and as a result this can affect comprehension of the text. This is evident in the â€Å"Failure to Connect† by Jane Healy, â€Å"Reading from the screen is slower, more fatiguing, less accurate, and more subject to information overload than standard reading. In several studies, students tested for comprehension after reading from a screen demonstrated less understanding and poorer memory than those getting the same information from a book. They tended to get lost or flip too quickly through the screens without reading† . When reading of the computer screen people tend to stare and blink less causing static stare which increase chances in eye strain and headaches, while on the paper there is rapid and rhythmic eye movement which significantly causes less strain on the eyes. Reading printed text gives a reader time to reflect and imagine thus creating an overall different environment. Clifford Stoll also points out a negative effect of computer literacy on reading, he writes â€Å"As computers replace textbooks, students will become more computer literate and more book illiterate. They’ll be exploring virtual worlds, watching dancing triangles, downloading the latest Web sites. But they won’t be reading books† . When computers were invented there was an argument that this technology will sharpen intellectual skills and their development which in part is true through the use of various teaching software. However it seems that people spend more time on entertainment such as online chatting and playing games rather than taking an advantage of reading an intellectual book which is certainly intended to teach. Writing is another skill that produces human literacy. Writing on the computer changes the way of writing and the nature of the relationship between the writer and his writing. â€Å"Writing requires focused attention, and anything that diverts attention away from the process of writing (in particularly, thinking about what to write) is going to affect the quality of the work produced† . As mentioned by Armstrong and Casement writing requires focused attention and writing on the computer can be very distracting since online chatting software or other means of distractions are only a click away. Writing can be frustrating at times since organizing and expressing your thoughts is always difficult but it can be much harder to do using the computer due to distractions. Work written using the computer appears stilted and less considerable even though it is neater. However, the hand written work appears better organized, and has a better expression of thoughts as there is no distraction. There is an advantage to reviewing several pages at the same time when hand writing rather than on the computer where you can only see a page at once. People tend to focus more on how their work looks paying more attention to things such as font size and alignment instead of organizing their thoughts and what to write. Many people think that writing aids on the computer are good for their writing, but this is not true. As Jane Healy says, â€Å"Computers will not themselves teach writing skills† , computer ought to help in writing, but they will not teach those skills. Due to the word processing software a lot of students cannot write clearly and punctually nowadays. Clifford Stoll made a very good point about writing on the computer, he said â€Å"Instead, you type delete or undo. Your mistakes don’t teach you as well† . Since it is so easy to use spell-check that people tend to not pay attention to their mistakes and let word processing software do the job. Quite frequently the software automatically corrects mistakes while typing that a person does not realize he spelled the word incorrectly. The trend of online chatting and text messaging also has a huge impact on writing skills due to the use of short forms. Arithmetic is the third basic skill which develops human logic. Computer is not a way to develop logic because it only gives someone else’s logic. There are programs which solve problems and calculate answers, but they certainly teach nothing. Students find answers to problems online or in special software without understanding and manipulating the concepts. As the example of this problem, â€Å"The World Wide Web will tell me the volume of water behind Egypt’s Aswan Dam – a fact. Far more useful is to know how to calculate this number – a skill† . The use of calculators can greatly affect the understanding of numerical relationships since students go from numbers to answers skipping the fundamentals of understanding the concept. This is evident in â€Å"High Tech Heretic† by Clifford Stoll, â€Å"No surprise that students weaned on calculators can’t multiply in their heads. They can’t divide. They’re minimally cognizant of basic arithmetic† . Computer programs and calculators work against learning basic arithmetic and have a big effect on the arithmetic skills. Students are dependent on computer programs and calculators that without the use of this technology, their skills are very limited because they are taught on how to plug in the numbers to get answers without understanding the concept. As another example of a computer program Logo, â€Å"I see Logo as a means that can, in principle, be used by educators to support the development of new ways of thinking and learning. However, Logo does not in itself produce good learning anymore than paint produces good art. † . Logo does not fit in mathematical skills, because it is just a program that solves the problems. The program makes to believe that there is always answer to the problem-solving, where one click on the mouse will show you the answer. The very good point was in the book â€Å"The Cult of Information† by Theodore Roszak, he says â€Å"The problem that AI(Artificial Intelligence) has encountered in pursuing its inflated claim are illuminating, if for no other reason that they reveal the limitations of the mathematical mind when it strays beyond the boundaries of pure reason – or rather seeks to extend those boundaries into the real world† . Mathematics is a translation of problems into an abstract view where numerical solutions are converted into understanding which neither computer programs nor calculators can do. Nowadays, there is surprisingly a big amount of people that do not get the mathematical concepts and the logic of solutions. Computer literacy has a negative influence on the three basic skills. There is nothing taught using computers, except of a bad access of information, the manner of its presentation, manipulation, and the easy answers. Computer cannot impart information to a human. It can only changes human views to a life. â€Å"They dull the skills we use in everyday life† .

Nutrition Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Nutrition - Research Paper Example A sustainable food system needs to address unsuitable consumption as well as unsuitable production since both of them contributes toward negative environmental and healthy impact. Nutritional Challenges Affecting Current Food System Epidemic rise chronic disease Nutrition transition has occurred and has led to increase of cases of chronic disease which include diabetics, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. This is attributed to a large shift in both physical activity and food consumed. This shift is reflected in population by nutrition outcome such as stature and body composition changes (Kickbusch). The modern society has converged to â€Å"western diet† which is food with a high level content of sugar and saturated with fat also low in fibre content and this is the diet that is linked to chronic disease and degenerative effects (Ilona 14). Chapter four of the film highlights this scenario with a case of a family’s dilemma situation at the grocery store: due to father diabetic condition, the family is aware that a healthier diet with more fresh foods would be the most suitable for him, but they have choose from foods they can afford. As the film imply, people with low incomes are most likely to eat cheaper, processed foods, and thus more likely to suffer from obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and other diet-related health disease (Pollan). â€Å"We are taking risks with our health and the health of the natural world that are unprecedented.† Food shortage 70 percent of the poor in the world depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The current food system is not delivering enough food supply to world population. Pollan used a â€Å"plant’s eye view of the world† to explore how plants which is needed by human could be thought to have manipulated and domesticated us, rather than the other way around. Using the same hypothesis, he claims that corn has succeeded in â€Å"domesticating us† where the current food supply system has influenced destruction of their local system of farming through green house gas emission from strong economies, which contribute to, global warming ,which adversely affect, the farming system, though developed and developing countries are both victim of worsened food insecurity (Ilona16). Chapter nine of the film touches on some issues manifested by our current food system, including acute possibility of a world food shortage, the significant amount of energy that goes into food production, and the impacts of industrialized food on our health and the environment. The film points out that while the consumer may feel helpless in the face of these issues of the food system, the food system does not positively respond to consumer need. Food and water safety Through food and water, over 200 disease agent can be transmitted to various people in a population, but this food system safety issue does not receive priority it deserves compared to other infectious disease such as HIV/AIDs or tu berculosis. (Ilona 18) Chapter three of Food, Inc. focuses on one of the unexpected implication of our current food system: the occasional contamination of the food supply and the very real risks presented to the population. The film reflects on this problem by interviewing the mother of a child who died from E. coli contracted from eating a hamburger. At a global scale, there are about 1.8 million deaths caused by diarrhea

Survey on Security in Electronic Voting Systems Essay

Survey on Security in Electronic Voting Systems - Essay Example Due to this, the system provides uniqueness of votes ensuring that no voter can vote more than once. The receipt that the voter receives after casting a ballot cannot be used to prove to any third party that they cast a specific vote with the intention to coerce them. The system also allows for the verification of individual votes to assure the voters that their votes have been accurately recorded. This can be achieved by inspecting both sides of the ballot paper and checking to see if the unique random number on the voting receipt is on the bulletin board. It also provides accountability such that third parties can confirm that the voting process was valid. The results are only released after the official counting is complete to ensure fairness and to discourage malicious actions by observers. The end to end verification system which allows the detection of malicious behavior at various stages of the voting process also reduces chances of invalid votes. The disadvantages of the syst em: The main disadvantages of the system are the security issues involved in electronic voting. Data is susceptible to interruptions and alteration by the installation of viruses in online databases by operators with malicious intentions. There is also unequal access to the internet by voters due to unequal chances of acquiring equipment necessary for electronic voting. Due to the differences in salaries, some voters may be left out from the voting process. The system can be improved by several methods. The E-voting scheme is only applicable for general elections with several contending candidates which feature the majority and plurality style election styles. The scheme can be improved to function in proportional representation. The system is however vulnerable. Parties that are entrusted to execute the algorithm of scheme may compromise the system to work in an abnormal way. The installation of a virus onto the databases could also lead to discrepancies in the results of the votin g process. The article on a practical secret voting scheme for large scale elections proposes a secret voting system which involves voters, an administrator and a counter which can be replaced with a public board as the participants of the process. It is applicable for a large scale election where it protects the privacy of the voter and ensures the fairness of the voting process regardless of the actions of the administrator and counter. Every voter has a unique ordinary signature scheme while the administrator has a blind signature scheme. The counter is only tasked with the creation and publish of a list of ballots. The system has several advantages: It solves the fairness and privacy issues portrayed in the previous methods of the encryption of files and sending of ballots through secret means of communication. The security of the scheme is ensured by the correct counting of all valid votes. The process is clear, sound and accountable and promotes fairness to discourage dishones ty in voters that would affect the process. The votes are kept private. The voters have to provide their credentials which ensures that every voter is qualified and to prevent the casting

Read instructions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Read instructions - Essay Example According to (Journal star)â€Å"In order for America to reverse the dangerously unhealthy trend toward obesity, it’s going to take action on multiple fronts†. In this editorial, it is the message from the Institute of medicine of America that, in order to bring positive effect to the reduction of obesity rate among the Americans, there should be action from government on various levels. This can be educating the public about the negative aspects of fast food and unhealthy eating habits, taking strong action on fast food chains to promote natural food and implementing policies and strategies in schools to warn children on fast food negativity. In the (Journal star) it is stated that â€Å"Currently, 34 percent of Americans are obese. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that by 2030, 42 percent of Americans will be obese† It is clear known fact that, obesity leads to serious illnesses like diabetes and heart diseases, hence the editorial suggest that the obese people should try to control their eating and moving pattern. The editorial comments that one in five health care dollars goes in to the health care treatment of the public which increases their total health care cost. There is also concern among other countries , whether America will get a title of a â€Å"Nanny state † wherein every individual will be monitored by health care professional in order to get up to a title of an â€Å"healthy state†. Along with this, there was also talk among the media that the country is taking away the matter of personal responsibility from the public. However the IOM committee assured that â€Å"eat less and move more† will always be the slogan of their organization As per (Journal Star)â€Å"There’s already proof that some of the recommendations work. Schools in Kearney raised eyebrows across the nation by dropping the obesity rate of grade school kids by 13 percent since

Paper of Qualitative Methods course Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Paper of Qualitative Methods course - Essay Example One of the main elements and aspects of Omans economy was the quest to diversify the economy and enhance and promote different sectors, which included tourism as a means of generating foreign exchange (Daher, 2007). In order to enhance the nations tourism potential, there is the need for Omans human resource base to be improved significantly. To this end, there is the need for a structured and critical study to be conducted into the countrys human resource base in the tourism sector, identify issues and analyse the options available for improvement. The aim of this paper is to present a research-design on how "tourism education can be enhanced in order to promote human resource management in the tourism industry of Oman". In order to attain this end, the following objectives will be explored: In order to conduct a qualitative research, there is the need for the researcher to utilise various research methods and research processes. This will enable the researcher to undertake a critical review of the facts and circumstances and come up with a theory or explanation to a social matter or situation. The essence of qualitative research methods lie in the fact that researchers need to find ways and means of universally analysing issues in order to come up with generally accepted conclusions. Banks identifies that there can be differing way of looking at the same issues and that several viewers may have different opinions on the same thing in the social sciences (2013). Therefore there is the need for some kind of consensus and conceptual frameworks that will enable researchers to conduct research and study issues in order to come up with acceptable conclusions. Banks (2013) goes on to identify five sociological modalities through which qualitative research is conducted. They include compositional interpretation, content analysis, semitoic analysis, psychoanalytical analysis and discourse analysis (Banks, 2013). This paper will investigate elements and

Wannsee conference, was it the place where the final solution was Research Paper

Wannsee conference, was it the place where the final solution was decided - Research Paper Example Essentially, Hitler’s regime had decided to exterminate the entire global population of the Jews. This would be the second time the Jews were facing persecution in Europe. The first significant period of persecution has to be the period of the Black Deaths. This is the time when they were perceived to be the ones accountable for the extensive spread of the plague. Apparently, they achieved this by poisoning the water. During this period, the Jews were suffering the persecutions as the only victims of continental rage. However, during the Holocaust, aside from the Jews, the disabled, the homosexuals, gypsies and at times twins were the recipients of these persecutions. These cleansing expeditions by the Nazis resulted in approximately six million deaths. This is aside from the emotional torture that it subjected to those who were lucky enough not to die. The extensive damage to the human race attributed to the Holocaust is as a result of proper planning by a team of German inte llectuals. The meeting in which they designed and formulated the strategy of this genocide is referred to as the Wannsee Conference. It is the ambition of this paper to give an extensive view of this Conference. This will be realized through the study of seven texts that focus on this Conference. Analysis Gerlach, Christina. "The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews." The Journal Of Modern History, 1998: 759-812. The Wannsee Conference has been highlighted as the place where the decision of cleansing Europe of Jews took place. However, what has not been highlighted upon is the political pressure that had characterized Germany prior to the Holocaust. Gerlach illustrates this by stating the political pressure Hitler faced: â€Å" Hitler was reacting to political impulses and initiatives that originated from within the administration and within the party apparatus.†1 According to the author, the Conferen ce had not been mandated with the extermination of the entire Jewish population rather, the Conference had been purposed to decide on who to classify as a Jew. This is crucial given the fact that the Holocaust persecuted not only the Jews, but the homosexuals, the gypsies, the disabled and t extreme levels also twins. This is a rather astounding given the fact that the initial decision was only to cleanse Europe of Jews. The world has over time insinuated that Hitler acted alone in his narcissistic acts of dehumanization. However, Gerlach gives evidence that the political structure of Germany was all a long instrumental in the actions. She writes of the actions of Hitler in deporting the eastern Jews as being as direct urging by the political structure. Author cites documents that are believed to have originated from the Hitler administration showing aliasing of ideas on how to deal, best, with the Jewish community. In light of this, the fact that the idea of exterminating the was d irectly and only from the Hitler becomes suspect. The Conference proceedings were established with the primary motive of deliberating on vital political and economic issues that were pertinent to Germany at the time. To give additional evidence of the vital nature of the Conference, the author illustrates that Hitler approved the deportation of the Jews2. If he was the one who orchestrated all the terrors that were realized due to this continental discrimination, then he would have simply carried

Consumer Attitude Moulding for Korean car Imports in Australian Market Essay

Consumer Attitude Moulding for Korean car Imports in Australian Market - Essay Example ative characteristics, here the attitude hierarchy would be cognitive then affect, how the consumer feels or first chose emotional then rational, you will not act on it before you go through a cognitive and emotional process (Foxall, 2002). You will make sure that you look at as many features as possible and go through intense emotional processes, instead of depending on your mood while looking at a car. For example if you have a family you will consider a mini-van over a convertible because of the added benefits and features, you will then see if you will enjoy the car, how will your family like it is it giving you the satisfaction you want, and then you will finally decide on the connotation, whether you want to buy it or not. This goes for all products that require high involvement of the consumer. (Windham & Orton, 2000) As a strategic Marketing manager for a new line of South Korean cars in Australia I have to consider many things about the product. As a Strategic Marketing Manager I should have in-depth knowledge of competitive dynamics and how to integrate marketing strategy into the overall business strategy, I should be able to develop Frameworks for analyzing customer preferences and enhancing customer relationships and should be able to Build and manage brand equity with effective market communication. (Chernev, 2007) (Stanford, 2008) Hyundai and its auxiliary Kia are currently the 7th largest car group in the world, just after companies like GM, Ford, Toyota, Renault-Nissan, Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler. It is also one of the fastest rising companies and a formidable rival to Western car makers. With the benefits such as low labour and parts cost in Korea and the government’s policies that favour the car industry, Hyundai and Kia are able to price their cars much cheaper and at an affordable cost than Western and Japanese cars. At the same time, the company has been able to improve its engineering and quality standard swiftly in recent years,

Risks in Project Management Practice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Risks in Project Management Practice - Essay Example In reference to the given case study, this paper will dwell on the risks that the Emperor Phone Company stands a chance of facing during its product launch. Emperor is a renowned mobile handset manufacturing company, which competes on the global markets with key players like Samsung, Nokia among many others. It will also give a detailed approach to the necessary steps that it will need to undertake to ensure that the launch of its ‘myphone’ smart phone is a success. Lastly, it will highlight the impacts of its taken risks to ensure that it beats its bitter rival Apple in capturing the phones market before its rivals launch their ‘iPhone’. Risk identifier register As per the case study provided, the Company’s CEO acquired information that Emperor’s bitter rivals, Apple, were set to release a new phone product. With this kind of information at hand, Emperor decided that it was going to utilize it by developing a product that would correspond to w hat their rivals intend to roll out. The launch date of its products is set for February 1, 2013 just a month before Apple’s ‘iphone’ hits the market. Risk description In the project mandate issued, the first risk involved would be legal due the fact that the two products would seem as though one imitated the other. This is because ‘I’ and ‘my’ have almost the same meaning. ... Secondly, the Emperor ‘myPhone’ prior launch might also incur the threat risk of its secret leaking to its rivals. The management’s idea of having keynote addresses by relevant stakeholders is also a risky move. This would be because they do not know where their guest speaker’s loyalties lie. There in, the information at the speakers’ disposal might find its way to their rivals. In this regard, Apple might use the information acquired to their advantage by making final detail improvement on the ‘iPhone’ before its launch. which may overshadow the ‘myPhone’. Thirdly, the marketing department will be in charge of the complete marketing campaign process including the venue. The opportunistic risk here would involve the location of the conference set to engage the ‘myPhone’ target market. Probable date registered These risks were most probably likely to occur in the following sequence. The first and second risks wer e likely to occur after the ‘myPhone had been launched in to market. Their impact was to affect heavily their anticipated sales, as they will not be able to restore the image of their product in the event that its reputation is at stake. The third and most important risk that needed evaluation would be on the day of the product release. Therefore, its occurrence on the material day would translate to poor initial sale of the ‘myPhone’. This would set the bar in which the sales level would not be able to cross, as it the impact will be less. Probability, impact and expected value In trying to manage the risks above, the applications elaborated in Prince2 (OCG, 2009) would prove beneficial in eliminating the risks involved. This will involve critical understanding

Value of knowledge on science and belief Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Value of knowledge on science and belief - Essay Example   Scientific knowledge has contributed widely to the improvement of human living. It has made strides in the medical field in testing and discovery of new drugs to cure diseases. Over time many scientists have made groundbreaking discoveries in the medical field, for instance, Chinese scientist Youyou Tu developed a prizewinning anti-malarial drug which helped combat the debilitating disease that attacks hundreds of millions of people annually. It has also enabled human beings to adopt more healthy lifestyles by pointing out diseases caused by poor lifestyles, like blood pressure. The world of agriculture has also been revolutionized by new knowledge which farmers have greatly taken advantage of to improve their yield. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) for instance started the Green Revolution of rice and wheat in Asia which has raised the average yield of rice and wheat by a tremendous lot. Research in the science doctrine has enabled us to beco me aware of harmful activities that deteriorate Mother Nature and also harmful chemical substances to health. Human beings have directly impacted nature negatively by continuous pollution which makes irreversible damage to the environment. A good example is greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which are believed to lead to global warming. For instance the controversy of Genetically Modified Organisms which were discovered and developed by scientists in attempt to improve yield in harsh growth conditions.  

Lowering the Drinking Age Essay Example for Free

Lowering the Drinking Age Essay The legal drinking age has been a continuously debated subject in the United States since its establishment. The national legal drinking age of twenty-one years old was placed in 1984 and still holds to the present, but many have begun questioning whether twenty-one is still an appropriate age for our current society. Much of this debate starts with college campuses and binge drinking. As a senior in high school, and soon-to-be freshman in college, I began wondering if the drinking age is still suitable for present times, and if it should be altered. According to University of Michigan, approximately 80% of high school students have tried alcohol before graduating, and 60% have gotten drunk. With these statistics, it seems evident that the legal drinking age is not efficiently doing its job, and should be reviewed. So the question arises: Should the legal drinking age be changed? I started my research with â€Å"Repeal the Drinking Age,† by Jeffrey Tucker, Publisher and Executive Editor of Laissez Faire Books, from his own Mises Daily blog. In his article, Tucker begins his blog by discussing how most countries’ legal drinking ages are eighteen, but in the â€Å"land of the free,† the limit is set at twenty-one, even though the nation knows it is not working. Tucker relates the current drinking age to Prohibition, stating that the twenty-one age limit is rather liberal, and that putting restrictions on alcohol, like during Prohibition, only results in bigger problems. He then concludes that the drinking age is based on â€Å"one overarching argument: driving,† where we simply do not want drunken teens on the road. Read Also:  Easy Exploratory Essay Topics Tucker also states that the data on drunk driving â€Å"cannot be statistically attributed to the national minimum drinking-age law. † Tucker concludes by saying if we are serious about a â€Å"free society,† the nation needs to repeal the minimum drinking-age law. When exploring Tucker’s article, I have to agree that Prohibition was a terrible attempt by the United States to help fix social issues, but relating the drinking age to Prohibition is a bit of a stretch. I also agree that the decrease in fatalities involved with drunk driving definitely cannot be awarded solely to lowering the drinking age. Numerous other sources, such as a better understanding of risks with alcohol through schooling, much safer cars, and an increase in legal punishment, also play a major role in the decrease of drunk driving and fatalities. But relating the issue to what our founding fathers would say, and the ruining of a â€Å"free society† by not eliminating the drinking age, seems a little outlandish. Although the article did take the issue a little out of proportion, Tucker makes a good point about the current restriction obviously not working, colleges accepting this fact, and ignoring it. The article is a good base for an opinion about abolishing the drinking age completely, but I would also like to explore an opinion of simply lowering the drinking age. The next article I read was â€Å"Why the Drinking Age Should be Lowered,† an article in a scholarly journal written by Professor Ruth Engs associated with Indiana University. Professor Engs starts her article saying that the legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen or nineteen years old, and that she has come to this conclusion after over twenty years of researching college youth and the history of drinking. Engs continues by stating that people under the age of twenty-one are more likely to be binge drinkers, consuming over five drinks at least once a week, and that 22% of students under twenty-one are binge drinkers, compared to 18% of legal drinkers. Engs then goes on telling other statistics about an increase in problems related to irresponsible drinking. Such problems include excessive drinking, getting into fights, and missing class, blaming the issues on â€Å"underground drinking† by underage drinkers. The article is concluded by Engs saying that the drinking age â€Å"is not working, and is counterproductive,† and that the minimum age should be lowered to help teach responsible drinking and decrease alcohol abuse. Professor Engs makes a very compelling argument in her article by not only discussing why the drinking age should be lowered, but also the issues with having the current age limit. I agree with Professor Engs’ description of underage drinking as an â€Å"enticing forbidden fruit,† a â€Å"badge of rebellion against authority,† and a symbol of adulthood. These comparisons actually sound realistic and show how underage drinking is a problem in the first place. Engs also uses statistics to support her opinion, proving that underage drinking is a serious problem. In my opinion though, Engs fails to consider the possible issues that could arise from lowering the drinking age. It is difficult to expect eighteen year olds to learn responsible drinking from their parents and peers, when in reality the exact opposite could be happening from alcoholic parents or irresponsible friends. With this article I learned numerous statistics about binge drinking and problems associated with underage drinking. The source seems very valid, and serves as a great opinion supporting why the drinking age should be lowered. While the article creates a persuasive argument on lowering the drinking age, I would also like to explore ideas behind increasing the drinking age. My final article, â€Å"Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Raised to 25 to Eliminate Deadly College Partying? † is written by Stephenson Billings, an investigative journalist for christwire. com. Billings takes a very strong opinion on the subject of the drinking age, thinking that it should be raised immediately, along with the banning of all alcohol on college campuses. Billings writes of alcohol being a â€Å"foul liquid† that keeps students from maturing into adulthood, and corrupts their ethics. He also writes about alcohol turning women into â€Å"lusting wolves,† and compares underage drinking to the most extreme of alcoholics who only care about alcohol throughout their lives. The author mentions the problem of legal drinkers buying alcohol for minors, openly allowing them to drink illegally and irresponsibly. Billings ends with the â€Å"straightforward† resolution of ending illegal drinking by raising the drinking age to twenty-five years old and eliminating alcohol from educational premises. Even though the article is put to the extreme, Billings does make a few good points. Billings views on drinking in college are over exaggerated, but are accurate in some cases. Extreme binge drinking does take place among colleges in America, and such colleges need to create strict penalties for such occasions, possibly banning alcohol from certain fraternities or even the college altogether. Billings also makes a good point about older students turning younger ones â€Å"onto the party† by buying them alcohol illegally, allowing them to drink irresponsibly. But the rest of Billings’ article is sent so over the top that I felt almost annoyed by his constant attacking of alcohol in general. A great example, I have driven around town past midnight before, but definitely was not drinking or using drugs. The stereotypes he uses to describe those who drink illegally are overstated and outlandish. The article gave me a totally different aspect on the drinking age and added to my growing opinion that the current drinking age is not quite working. Although the article did create another aspect for me to consider, the extremeness of it made it unlikely for me to base any decisions upon it. As I sum up the research for my exploratory essay, I still have more articles to read, aspects to understand, and statistics to find, but I believe I have come up with a good conclusion to the drinking age debate. Clearly the twenty-one year old age limit is not effective, and is blatantly being broken. Underage drinking is happening more than ever, while taking place irresponsibly and encouraging binge drinking. With the rise in binge drinking comes the obvious rise of problems associated with it, such as drinking too much, skipping class, and starting fights. Although the drinking age has helped lower the number of fatalities from drunk driving, other factors have also assisted in the decrease. If we as a nation can emphasize alcohol education in our schools, teaching responsible drinking and wise decision making, I believe lowering the drinking age can help save lives, and even increase the maturity of current underage drinkers. A drinking age of nineteen seems more appropriate for teens maturing, hopefully creating safer drinking in college, while keeping it mainly out of high school. Before making any rash decisions though, and agreeing to make an actual constitutional change for the subject, I think I need to do more research and look into more aspects of the topic.

Public Library Essay Example for Free

Public Library Essay Library is something which has a lot of importance in everyone’s life. And specially in the life of school going children’s. It is responsible for teaching those children the moral values which are required a lot in further run of their life. Library is something whose importance cannot be neglected at any point of life. I consider myself to be very lucky as I was being provided with one of the best library by my school. My school had a big and efficient library. Almost all sorts of books required by student’s could be found in that library. And also there were many different types of magazines and newspapers in our library. We had a different room known as Reading Room adjacent to our library. It was the place where we used to take our books for reading them or making notes. No one was allowed to read books in library instead of teachers. Students till class 10th had two library period in a week. They had permission to issue books during those two periods only. Also they had to return the issued book within 15 days. No student till class 10th was allowed to keep books for more than 15 days. Keeping books with themselves for more than 15 days would require the student to pay a fine of Rs5 a day for each extra day. But this was not the case with senior students or students of class 11th-12th they were allowed to issue books whenever they wanted. There was no specific Library period for senior students. Also they had the permission to keep books with themselves till they want. They had to return books only during the time of examination. There were different sections in our library which were divided according to classes. The section for senior students mostly consisted of reference books. But they too had an option of issuing novels and other story books. Although due to study pressure there was hardly any student who issued novels or story books. Everyone issued references.

Implementation Of Cloud Computing Inside College Campus Information Technology Essay

Implementation Of Cloud Computing Inside College Campus Information Technology Essay CLOUD COMPUTING can represent a unique opportunity to  reduce the costs associated with infrastructure  and can help to accomplish achieve ever greater levels of efficiencies. With Cloud Computing users can access database resources via the Internet from anywhere, for as long as they need, without worrying about any maintenance or management of actual resources. Besides, databases in cloud are very dynamic and scalable.In this paper we discuss on implementing a cloud computing platform that enables Software as a Service (SaaS) to provide a closed box execution environment that guarantees remote execution of programs in a Local Area Network.Inside a college,students can make use of the cloud resources available online, through a simple web interface. INTRODUCTION: Cloud computing provides the facility to access shared resources and common infrastructure,offering services on demand over the network to perform operations that meet changing business needs. The location of physical resources and devices being accessed are typically not known to the end user. It also provides facilities for users to develop, deploy and manage their applications on the cloud, which entails virtualization of resources that maintains and manages itself. DEFINITION: A cloud is a pool of virtualized computer resources. A cloud can: Host a variety of different workloads, including batch-style back-end jobs and interactive, user-facing applications Allow workloads to be deployed and scaled-out quickly through the rapid provisioning of virtual machines or physical machines Support redundant, self-recovering, highly scalable programming models that allow workloads to recover from many unavoidable hardware/software failures Monitor resource use in real time to enable rebalancing of allocations when needed BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING: CLOUD COMPUTING can represent a unique opportunity to  reduce the costs associated with infrastructure  and can help to accomplish achieve ever greater levels of importantefficiencies. These efficiencies can include not only cost reduction, but also improved access to resources and essential data. The determination as to whether cloud computing services are a good match for your particular business will of course depend the  size of your enterprise, its general needs and your overall sales goals.   Cloud computing, typically entails: High scalability Cloud environments enable servicing of business requirements for larger audiences,through high scalability. Agility The cloud works in the distributed mode environment. It shares resources among users and tasks, while improving efficiency and agility (responsiveness). High availability and reliability Availability of servers is high and more reliable as the chances of infrastructure failure are minimal. Multi-sharing With the cloud working in a distributed and shared mode, multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with cost reductions by sharing common infrastructure. Virtual service Virtual servers seek to encapsulate the server software away from the hardware This includes the OS, the applications, and the storage for that server.Servers end up as mere files stored on a physical box, or in enterprise storage.A virtual server can be serviced by one or more hosts, and one host may house more than one virtual server. Virtual servers can be scaled out easily.If the administrators find that the resources supporting a virtual server are being taxed too much, they can adjust the amount of resources allocated to that virtual server.Server templates can be created in a virtual environment to be used to create multiple, identical virtual servers.Virtual servers themselves can be migrated from host to host almost at will. NEED FOR CLOUD: As an end user, cloud computing lets you run software applications and access data from any place and time, and from any computer; without the need to ever install, upgrade, troubleshoot software applications physically on a local desktop or server. This is one of the most important elements of cloud computing, and why it has become so popular today. In a sense, cloud computing outsources the technical hassles to someone else. It could bring hardware costs down. Cloud computing systems would reduce the need for advanced hardware on the client side You wouldnt need a large hard drive because youd store all your information on a remote computer. Cloud computing gives the option of storing data on someone elses hardware, removing the need for physical space on the front end. CLOUD COMPUTING CHARACTERISTICS: Because cloud computing is related to a number of other technologies, it is best defined by the presence of a number of characteristics. These represent ideals that people want for the applications that run on the cloud: Incremental Scalability: Cloud environments allow users to access additional compute resources on-demand in response to increased application loads. Agility: As a shared resource, the cloud provides flexible, automated management to distribute the computing resources among the clouds users. Reliability and Fault-Tolerance:Cloud environments take advantage of the built-in redundancy of the large numbers of servers that make them up by enabling high levels of availability and reliability for applications that can take advantage of this. Service-oriented: The cloud is a natural home for service-oriented applications, which need a way to easily scale as services get incorporated into other applications. Utility-based: Users only pay for the services they use, either by subscription or transaction-based models. Shared: By enabling IT resources to be consolidated, multiple users share a common infrastructure, allowing costs to be more effectively managed without sacrificing the security of each users data. SLA-driven: Clouds are managed dynamically based on service-level agreements that define policies like delivery parameters, costs, and other factors. APIs: Because clouds virtualize resources as a service they must have an application programming interface (API). TYPES OF CLOUD: Public Cloud A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model. The main benefits of using a public cloud service are: Easy and inexpensive set-up because hardware, application and bandwidth costs are covered by the provider. Scalability to meet needs. No wasted resources because you pay for what you use. The term public cloud arose to differentiate between the standard model and the private cloud, which is a proprietary network or data center that uses cloud computing technologies, such a virtualization. A private cloud is managed by the organization it serves. A third model, the hybrid cloud, is maintained by both internal and external providers. Examples of public clouds include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), IBMs Blue Cloud, Sun Cloud, Google AppEngine and Windows Azure Services Platform. Hybrid cloud A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. Although cloud computing is often said to be the future of the industry, the hybrid model is more prevalent for a number of reasons. Large enterprises often already have substantial investments in the infrastructure required to provide resources in-house. Furthermore, many organizations would prefer to keep sensitive data under their own control to ensure security. Private cloud This cloud computing environment resides within the boundaries of an organization and is used exclusively for the organizations benefits. These are also called internal clouds. They are built primarily by IT departments within enterprises who seek to optimize utilization of infrastructure resources within the enterprise by provisioning the infrastructure with applications using the concepts of grid and virtualization. Advantages They improve average server utilization, allow usage of low-cost servers and hardware while providing higher efficiencies; thus reducing the costs that a greater number of servers would otherwise entail High levels of automation, reducing operations costs and administrative overheads Common Services. Some products offer Internet-based services-such as storage, middleware, collaboration, and database capabilities-directly to users. SaaS. Software-as-a-service products provide a complete, turnkey application-including complex programs such as those for CRM or enterprise-resource management-via the Internet. PaaS. Platform-as-a-service products offer a full or partial development environment that users can access and utilize online, even in collaboration with others. IaaS. Infrastructure-as-a-service products deliver a full computer infrastructure via the Internet. CLOUD WITHIN CAMPUS: When the concept of cloud computing is applied to  web hosting, the result can be a technology that lets users scale resources on the fly, and make  changes according to usage and the particular needs  of the enterprise in real time. Thus, as your traffic fluctuates, the  hosting package  can be adjusted to ensure maximum efficiency and minimum waste. This flexibility allows  businesses  to reduce overhead by only investing in the hosting power they actually need, without incurring downtime or overage charges by driving servers beyond capacity.Instead of getting individual cluster for each and every deparment in our college ,We propose that cloud power can be utilised according to their need by hosting the service in local LAN of college SPECIFICATION: TYPE OF CLOUD: PRIVATE CLOUD Private cloud is implemented within college campus thereby enabling students to Execute complex jobs inside college. Reduce the cost of getting higher-end machines. Avoid wastage of resources through sharing of computing resources. Provide transparency to users. SERVICES PROVIDED: SaaS (Software as a Service) Our web interface application is hosted as a service provided to students belonging to various departments inside college. WORKING OF COMPONENTS: Figure : PHASES: Program submission. Upload program to database server. Processing inside cloud. Return result to client browser. PROGRAM SUBMISSION(FRONT END): The student can submit complex programs like MPI from anywhere inside the local area network through the browser.The programs are entered through the HTML front end on the client browser as shown in the screen shot below UPLOAD PROGRAM TO DATABASE SERVER: Tomcat can be used to implement a java servlet that uploads the program based on user input..Tomcat serves as a back-end which handles requests passed to it from a general purpose web server such as Apache. PROCESSING INSIDE CLOUD: The uploaded program is shared among the nodes.On the back end of the system are the various computers, servers and data storage systems that create the cloud of computing services. The MPI specification allows users to create portable libraries that can take advantage of multiple processors to provide high performance. An increasing number of implementations covering most common platforms are becoming available.MPI is well-suited to a range of environments and can function using multiple processors in a single high-performance computer as well as across a network of lower-powered machines. For complex programs like MPI programs, once the user submits the job, the user will be prompted to enter the number of nodes required by the user for the computation. Thus the user is given the priviledge to choose the number of nodes After job submission, the agent, starts running automatically.It is the component running on the worker nodes. Initially, it has to determine the local system parameters that are essential for job selection and execution.These are the installed memory, the CPU architecture, the availability of some runtime environments and the operating system. It starts the working loop with a query to the server for a job.If the server responds with the copy of the file to be executed, the agent downloads the specified files. The agent starts the job with low operating system process priority and waits for its completion.During the execution,it periodically contacts the server to submit the heartbeat. When the job is finished without any error, all result files and the standard/error out data are uploaded to the server. If all the files are transferred successfully, a final commit is sent to the server.Then and only then, the job is accepted as successfully done and the agent proceeds by waiting for the next job from the server. RETURN RESULT TO CLIENT BROWSER: The computed results are sent back to the client browser. Screenshot: IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS:    Programming language Used: Java    Web Server Used: Apache-tomcat 5.5    Automation of execution is done using: Shell script    Web interface Request Handler: Servlet      Front end: HTML    Database Connector: libmysql-java (jdbc driver for mysql)    Back-end: Mysql 5.0.51a-24 ADVANTAGES: Reduced Cost: Each department need not invest in buying separate servers.The cloud technology will supplement clusters at each department with a single powerful server for all purposes. Increased Storage Sutdents can store more data than on private computer systems.Thus individual computers need not be high-end powerful machines. Highly Automated  The work of compilation and execution will be completely automated. Flexibility Cloud computing offers much more flexibility than past computing methods because a number of services are provided to the user just with a machine and a browser. More Mobility   Students can access server resources wherever they are, rather than having to remain at their desks. CONCLUSION: Cloud computing is the big wave in computing. It has many benefits, such as better hardware management, since all the computers are the same and run the same hardware. It also provides for  better and easier management of data. Thus implementing cloud within a college campus will definitely help in all means.

air pollution :: essays research papers

Air Pollution   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The moment you step out of the house and are on the road you can actually see the air getting polluted. A cloud of exhaust from a truck, smoke filling the sky above a factory chimney, fly ash generated by thermal power plants, and even a cloud of dust behind a speeding car can pollute the air. Air pollution is aggravated because of four developments: increasing traffic, growing cities, rapid economic development, and industrialization. Natural phenomenon such as an erupting volcano or even someone smoking a cigarette can also cause air pollution. The major air pollutants are acid rain, smog, fly ash, and indoor air pollutants. Acid rain is caused by when exhaust from burning fossil fuels combine with water vapor in the atmosphere and falls as rain or snow. Acid rain causes extensive damage to water, forest, soil, resources, and even human health. Many lakes and streams have been contaminated by acid rain and this had lead to a diminished population of fish. Acid rain has lead to the international limitations of sulphur and nitrogen oxide. Smog is a combination of various gases (a large part of this gas is produced when fuels are burnt) with water vapor and dust. Smog forms when heat and sunlight react with these gases and fine particles in the air. Its occurrence is often liked to heavy traffic, high temperatures, and calm winds. Smog is seen as a yellowish fog over cities. Severe smog has been covering the city of Los Angeles California since the 1940’s.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Fly ash is produced at thermal power plants. Fly ash consists of silica, alumina, oxides of iron, calcium, and magnesium and toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cobalt, and copper. Disposal of fly ash is very hazardous to the land, creates health hazards, and creates environmental danger. When fly ash gets out into the natural draining system it results in siltation and clogs the system; it reduces the ph balance and portability of water. It also interferes with the process of photosynthesis in plants and thus disturbs the food chain. Today fly ash can be made into bricks and used as building material and was used in the construction of The American Embassy in India. Indoor air pollutants include tobacco smoke, hair sprays, perfume, glues, pesticides, parasites, fungi, formaldehyde, asbestos, and radon. All of these can be found in homes whether it’s under the sink or in the air.

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire - Ghosts of the Past :: A Streetcar Named Desire Essays

Ghosts of the Past Haunt A Streetcar Named Desire  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚      Our lives are consumed by the past. The past of what we once did, what we once accomplished, and what we once could call our own. As we look back on these past memories we seldom realize the impact these events have on our present lives. The loss of a past love mars are future relationships, the loss of our family influences the choices we make today, and the loss of our dignity can confuse the life we live in the present. These losses or deaths require healing from which you need to recover. The effects of not healing can cause devastation as apparent in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. The theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is death. We encounter this idea first with the death of Blanche and Stella's relationship as sisters. Blanche and Stella had a life together once in Bel Reve and when Stella decided to move on in her life and leave, Blanche never could forgive her. This apparent in the scene when Blanche first arrives in New Orleans and meets Stella at the bowling alley. Stell a and Blanche sit down for a drink and we immediately see Blanche's animosity towards Stella. Blanche blames Stella for abandoning her at Bel Reve, leaving Blanche to handle the division of the estate after their parents die. As result of Stella's lack of support, we see Blanche become dependent on alcohol and lose her mental state. Blanche comes to be a a terrible reck through out the play as we learn of the details of her life at Bel Reve. Her loss of the entire estate and her struggle to get through an affair with a seventeen year old student. This baggage that Blanche carries on her shoulders nips at Stella through out eventually causing the demise of her relationship. As Blanche's visit goes on with Stella, the nips become too great and with the help of Stanley, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental hospital, thus symbolizing the death of the realtionship they once had. The next death we encounter in the film is the death of Stella and Stanley's marriage. Our first view of S tanley is of an eccentric man, but decent husband who cares deeply for his wife. However, as as Blanche's visit wears on, we come to see the true Stanley, violent and abusive.

Prisoners Normative Reintegration into Society Essay -- Social Issues,

Normative reintegration into society and the resocialization of released prisoners has long been a prominent problem in society. With recidivism rates in the United States upwards of 69% it is quite clear that released prisoners are having difficulty readjusting and returning to normative lives in society (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2008). Prison aims to serve retribution, incapacitate, deter, and rehabilitate offenders, but much of the research on recidivism rates criticize the idea that â€Å"prison works† (Dhami, 2006). However, it seems with so many prisoners returning to prison within a year of being released, the prison system is not providing inmates with the rehabilitation and therapy needed to function once they return to society. In the past many studies have shown that inmates who take place in vocational and therapy based programs are more successful with reintegration into everyday life upon their release. Additionally, there have been numerous studies that h ave shown the healing and therapeutic abilities of animals when used in programs with deviant, sick, or mentally ill individual(Deaton, 2006) (Dell, 2011) (Field, 1951). So it would seem that the combination of vocational programs with the use of animals would be the next logical step in prison programs. While animal therapy programs are relatively new in the justice system, there are quite a few currently in use in prisons around the United States (Furst, 2006). The proposed study would be exploratory in nature and seeks to answer the following question; are prisoners that complete animal therapy programs while incarcerated more successful with normative reintegration into society when released? The researcher proposes that inmates who complete animal th... ...olees who experience homelessness are far more likely to return to prison than parolees that have a place to live (Visher, 2003). The emotional health, well being, and social comfort of a parolee is very important to reintegration into society as well. Many parolees have a difficult time controlling anger, relating to people, adapting to new situations, and maintaining friendships and family relationships. Programs with animals teach prisoners social and emotional skills that may help ease the transition for a parolee into society upon release. According to a study done on an animal therapy program in Virginia women’s correctional facility, in the last three years the prisoners that completed the program have a 0% recidivism rate and 100% employment rate, which is a far cry from the statistics of prisoners who did not participate in like programs (Deaton, 2005).

Toyota Car Crisis

Halmstad University School of Business and Engineering Master in Management of Innovation and Business Development Toyota Crisis: Management Ignorance? – A Swedish Case of Consumers Perceptions Master’s Dissertation in Management of Innovation and Business Development, 15 ECTS Final seminar 2010-05-27 Authors: Yuanyuan Feng Supervisor: Mike Danilovic Hamlstad University Feng(2010) TOYOTA CRISIS: MANAGEMENT IGNORANCE? – A SWEDISH CASE OF CONSUMERS PERCEPTIONS Yuanyuan Feng School of Business and Engineering, Halmstad University, Sweden AbstractSince the late 2009, the famous vehicle manufacture Toyota has suffered a severe crisis due to unintended quality problems in its cars which had triggered Toyota’s largest officially recalls of its cars around the world. This crisis threatens the company’s previous reputation of good quality cars, as well as the brand image built up over time. This study aims to elaborate on the Toyota crisis in order to unders tand why Toyota faces this crisis and how they deal with the crisis; and investigate consumers’ perceptions of Toyota brand as the outcome of the crisis, with a focus on Swedish market.A qualitative research along with a number of face-to-face interviews with Toyota Swedish dealer and Swedish vehicle consumers is conducted. The findings reveal that the impact of the Toyota crisis in Sweden is not as serious as that in America; there remain satisfied and loyal Toyota’s customers who are not swayed by the negative publicities; While Toyota should manage the crisis even in a better way in order to retain its good reputation. Crisis, Toyota, Corporate Reputation, crisis management, consumer perception Key Words INTRODUCTION We deeply regret the inconvenience and concern caused to our customers and others by our recent recalls of multiple vehicle models across multiple regions. † – Aki Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation1 (Toyota website). Since the abo ve apologetic speech was addressed by Aki Toyoda at a press conference in February 2010, it had been highlighted at the front page of Toyota’s official website for a few months. Beside the regretful expression we can learn from this public release, it also implies that the Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, is suffering in their recent recalls of millions of vehicles round the globe.Safety recalls are common issues occurring in automobile industry, few may have long run impact on the automakers involved if handled correctly. However, in this case, the disaster engulfing Toyota is of a different order (The Economist, Feb. 6, 2010). Toyota’s quality brand has been at a risk due to its sedans’ safety problems sequentially emerged recently. 1 Toyota Motor Corporation is the full name of the company, however, in this article the word â€Å"Toyota† will be used instead of Toyota Motor Corporation in order to make it short. Hamlstad University Feng(2010) In 2008 Toyota became the world’s largest carmaker when it successfully exceeded General Motors in sales and production. However, this leading position of Toyota had changed since the end of 2009. In United States, Toyota’s largest marketplace, a fatal crash of a Lexus ES 350 happening on August 28th 2009 was highly publicized, due to the gas pedal was stuck and the car was out of control (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 2009).Since then, Toyota’s vehicles have been largely exposed to a series of issues associated with unintended acceleration problems, which had triggered Toyota’s escalating crisis and its massive recalls of approximately 9 million vehicles globally within six months. For Toyota, this is indeed a tragedy not only related to heavy financial losses due to repairing costs, market share lost and production suspending, but also to Toyota’s reputation for matchless quality and management.The firm's reputation for quality cars, on which the business was built over time, is shattered. Problem Discussion Toyota has long been regarded as the pinnacle of Japanese innovation, manufacturing quality and industrial pioneer (The Economist, Feb 13, 2010). Its vehicles are well known for economy, reliability and fuel efficiency. Its ‘lean’ manufacturing techniques and culture of continuous improvement were the envy of the business world (ibid). It is absolutely astonishing that Toyota has been embroiled in such a serious quality issues with its vehicles.Just within six months, almost 9 million cars have to be taken back for modification under the potential problems with floor mat, acceleration pedals, and braking, all of which were related to unintended acceleration problems by publics. As we know, cars nowadays have become more complicated in features and functionality. The growing numbers of wires, sensors and computer chips embedded in auto electronics have profoundly changed the automobile in the last decade (Krisher, 2010).As more and more hi-tech systems are fitted to modern cars, it has become more and more perplexing in quality-control testing along with troublesome interferences and uncertainties. Any small electronic flaws randomly happened in the complicated machine, as well as the influence of environmental factors, can easily lead to a failure of a car. In the Toyota crisis, we would wonder if the massive recalls were simply as a result of mechanical problems that could happen in any automaker potentially, or were caused by other errors of the company that can be avoided in term of their technology and management.No matter how, the recalls stories made the headlines worldwide. Especially in United State, Toyota has received unprecedented attentions from mass media, most of which have published a lot of negative news related to this issue, questioning to the quality problems of Toyota’s car and its reputation. Negative events usually come unexpectedly with the pote ntial to bring an organization into reputational crises and thereby imperil its future profitability, growth, and survival (Greyser, 2009).Whether the negative impacts are immediate or sustained over months and years, crises would probably affect both internal and external stakeholders of the company (Weiner, 2006). Suffering in such disaster, Toyota has taken action to manage the crisis, in order to retrieve their reputation and rebuild trust from stakeholders, especially the most important groups – consumers. Toyota has been in the hot center of coverage in United State, where the crisis is originally initiated. While, other countries involved in Toyota recall issues seem to pay less attention to this event than that of North America.Since the recalls have been conducted across regions globally not only in North America, it would be interesting to see how vehicle consumers in non-American regions perceive the crisis and the Toyota brand. 2 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) Pur pose and Research Questions With the above problems in mind, this study aims to elaborate on the Toyota crisis in order to understand why Toyota faces this crisis and how they deal with the crisis. This can be achieved through a detailed overview on what have happen in Toyota related to the crisis on a general level, as the recalls had been released globally.Moreover, the purpose of this research is also to investigate consumers’ perceptions of Toyota brand as the outcome of the crisis. To be specific in this aspect, Swedish market will be the focus of the research where Swedish vehicle consumers are examined. Accordingly, the research questions can be set as following: What are the reasons that force Toyota coming to the troublesome crisis? How does Toyota handle this crisis in order to retrieve its reputation? What are the Swedish consumers’ perceptions of Toyota brand as the outcome of the crisis?Although this research is inspired by an empirical case, the findings would also help to develop our understanding on how an organization can more effectively respond to crises, as well as building new knowledge to the area of corporate reputation and crisis management. It can also draw practical implication for crisis managers in auto motor and other industries. RESEARCH METHOD This study is done in a way of focusing on the Toyota case, it is therefore a case study that has an emphasis on empirical finding.Through empirically studying the Toyota crisis, which typically represents organizational crisis, the intent of this research is to develop an understanding of organizational response to crises and brand images management in auto motor industry and other industries. An explorative research along with descriptive characteristic is thus employed, by raising open questions to illustrate the crisis phenomenon and try to explore relatively new knowledge for organizational crisis management. A qualitative strategy is selected for formulating questions, p urpose and gathering data.Characteristics of this approach are closeness to the respondents, to capture their values, attitudes and perceptions based on their own words and meanings (Bryman and Bell, 2007). According to the study purpose and the research questions placed above, this research is conducted from two perspectives: the Toyota itself on a general base and the vehicle consumers in a specific market. When formulating the purpose and research questions, here raise a problem with the selection of consumer respondents.Although the Toyota crisis occurs on a global level, it is impossible to conduct the research targeting consumers in all the markets around the world. Furthermore, compared to the United States where triggered the crisis and dominantly receive extensive coverage negatively related to Toyota’s stumble, other countries and regions that are involved in the recalls are less focused and could present more pertinent opinions toward this issue. Consequently, in o rder to gain more reasonable insights, I would like to look into a specific market instead of American market.Since I live in Halmstad city of Sweden, the sampling respondents – Toyota dealer and vehicle consumers – will be targeted within Halmstad city, for the purpose of convenient location to conduct the research. 3 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) In order to elaborate on the Toyota crisis, secondary data associating with Toyota crisis on global level is examined and collected initially through different sources, such as media coverage, official releases from government regulatory bodies, critics’ comments in journals, and Toyota official websites.This is done to provide an overview on what exactly happen in Toyota connected to the crisis basically. In addition, to be more specific, primary data collection is considered significantly critical since it is a more exploratory-oriented study. In this research, face-to face interview manner, which is one of the mos t important sources for a case study (Yin, 1994), is employed to investigate the reflections toward this crisis both from Toyota’s dealer and vehicle consumers in Halmstad city.Consequently, in Toyota dealer store which is named as Toyota Center in Halmstad, a face-to face Interview with the sales executive is conducted, lasting about 40 minutes by following a semi-structure interview guide (see Appendix I). On the other hand, the consumer respondents are randomly targeted by separating into two distinct groups: 1) Toyota customers, who own Toyota cars or have the intention to buy a Toyota car, are found when they are visiting in Toyota dealer store; 2) other consumers, who are using other rands’ car, are randomly selected in some gasoline stations or large parking places in Halmstad city. It might be interesting to make comparison between these two consumer groups for the possibility to draw valuable insights on consumers’ perception of Toyota brand and the cri sis. As a result, total 21 consumer respondents are interviewed (9 Toyota consumers and 12 other brands’ consumers). The interviews with consumer respondents last with a range of time from 3 to 6 minutes respectively.Although pre-designed interview guides are used as well (see Appendix II & III), questions for consumers are asked flexibly and may not follow on exactly in the way outlined on the schedule (Bryman and Bell, 2007). This is to allow the consumer interviewees to have a great deal of leeway in how to reply according to specific situations (ibid). Despite the collected numbers of consumer respondents are too small to cover the whole sampling population in terms of generalization, it’s important to note that this research is not aimed to simply generate a universalized outcome covering the whole Swedish vehicle consumers.Instead, it intends to capture consumer respondents’ cognitive and affective values, attitude and perception, to explore new insights b ased on their own words. Their responses collected on a face-to-face interviews basis are therefore considered as valid and reliable to achieve this inclination, as well as to some extent standing for what the Swedish vehicle consumers really perceive toward the Toyota crisis. LITERATURE REVIEW When facing a crisis the former and present reputation of a firm would be shaken, and it might be twisted in something unfavorable for the organization.How a firm communicatively responds to the crisis can influence its stakeholders’ perceptions of the corporate reputation, and in turn impact their future purchase intentions. In this part, theoretical literature regarding corporate brand and reputation, crisis management and consumer perception about the post-crisis outcomes are mainly reviewed in order to serve as pre-understanding knowledge for better analyzing the Toyota case later on. Corporate Branding and Reputation A brand can convey a numbers of facets, such as attributes, bene fits, values, ulture, personality, and user identity (Kotler, 2003). Through a set of symbols and characteristics a brand convey, consumers 4 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) can easily identify what a brand stand for, what value it represents, how it differentiate from others. Corporate branding draws on the traditions of product branding with the same objective of creating differentiation and preference to customers, while it involves more complex activities at organizational level, and requires to manage interactions with multiple stakeholder audiences (Knox and Bickerton, 2003).Branding on corporate agenda has been increasingly recognized as a strategic tool that leads to a dramatic extension of the applications and scope of branding (ibid). Urde (2003) emphasizes that the importance of core values created in corporate branding process, in which the core values are linked to organizational mission, vision, culture and organizational values, all of which affect the brand architectu re, product attributes, brand positioning and communication strategy.Consumers tend to identify with the personification of brands through the association of the companies or brands to traits such as values, characteristics, attitudes, and ideals. Therefore, to personify the corporate brand, the impressions that the communication creates must be consistent with the values that the company claims to stand for (Urde, 2003). In addition, Benefit associations provide a central reason for consumer’s choice of a specific brand over other in the category (Dawar and Lei, 2009).To gain customer-based brand equity the consumers must be aware of, and familiar with, the value offering (brand awareness), and hold brand associations that are strong, favorable and unique in comparison with other brands offered in the same category (brand image) (Petruzzellis, 2010). Corporate reputation is the cornerstone in corporate branding. It is of significant importance to all organizations, regardles s of being commercial, governmental, or not-for-profit organizations (Watson, 2007). Essentially, orporate reputation is an aggregate evaluation made by stakeholders of how well a company is meeting stakeholder’s expectations based on its past behaviors (Wartick, 1992). The value of a brand is determined by both its tangible and intangible assets, and brand image and reputation forms a critical part of the intangible assets (Wang, 2005). Fill (2006) suggests that reputations are developed over time from the image, and it is more embedded and stable; while image is more transient and can be instantaneous and reality superficial.Watson (2007) argues that reputation does not occur by chance, it relates to leadership, management, and organizational operations, the quality of products and services, relationships with stakeholders, and communication activities and feedback mechanisms. A favorable corporate reputation can convince the undecided to choose a certain product or service and dissuade existing customers from moving to a competitor; whereas a damaged reputation can be irreparable and, in extreme cases, lead to a company’s downfall (O’Rourke, 2004).Fombrun (1996) claims that in order to build a favorable reputation four attributes need to be developed: credibility, trustworthiness, reliability and responsibility. Everything an organization does, and does not do, has a direct impact on their reputation (Dolphin, 2004). Stakeholders will develop expectations as to how the firm will act in a given situation. When customer’s expectations are satisfied, they will feel safety, credibility, and security as perceived value in this relationship, which all together increase trust and then enhance customer’s loyalty (Ravald and Gronroos, 1996).However, failure to meet those expectations may cause a negative reputational impact. Furthermore, despite firms have achieved overall and continued marketing success, it would appear that the r eputation of corporate brands can be tarnished when facing crises (Fill, 2006). Therefore, reputation may offer both benefits and challenges to organizations. Nevertheless, the strength of the brand, as well as the management’s 5 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) flexibility and willingness to be open and transparent with questioning publics, can protect the organization’s reputation in the long run (ibid).Crisis Management In such business environment the need of a robust, corporation-wide plan to deal with unexpected crises is required. Crisis management researches investigate the essences of organizational crises and how appropriate organizational response influences post-crisis outcomes for the entity involved (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). Through crisis management planning and implementation, organizations can be better prepared to deal with unforeseen events that may cause serious or irreparable damage (Zhao and Fan, 2007).Threats of Crisis Crises are rare events tha t disrupt the normal operations of an organization, with knocks on the implications for its assets, its future relationships with a company’s stakeholders and which threaten the very survival of the organization (Carroll, 2009). Crises are seen as threats to the organizational reputation, and could harm an organization’s future profitability, growth and possibly its survival (Tucker and Melewar, 2005). The extent to which a crisis threaten corporate reputation is rather complex.Some crises can be sudden and unexpected while others can be the result of problems that festered over time (Greyser, 2009). A business might face local citizens, competitors, industry commentators, statutory bodies, pressure groups, the media and academics as influencers of its reputation (Tucker and Melewar, 2005). Greyser (2009) proposes some typical sources of corporate brand crises, which are caused by: product failure, social responsibility gap, corporate misbehavior, poor business results , executive misbehavior, poor business results, loss of public support, and controversial ownership, etc.Tucker and Melewar (2005) argue that news media and internet are certainly a substantial threat to any corporate reputation since the public are more sensitive to a corporate scandal. When a crisis emerges, a wide range of stakeholders are adversely affected by a crisis including community members, employees, customers, suppliers and stockholders (Coombs, 2007). Most stakeholders will learn about a crisis through news reports and online social media, therefore the news media and the internet play a critical role in affecting people’s perception in a crisis (ibid).The headline-hungry media has vicarious appetite for obtaining newsworthy material. Their claims often go unchallenged if there is a possibility to create a sensational story (Tucker and Melewar, 2005). There is also the temptation for journalists to sensationalize any ‘corporate gossip’ which they mi ght hear, in order to maximize their own revenues, especially in the powerful news (ibid). As a result, crises pose certain risks to an company – potentially affecting critical aspects like reputation, image, brand equity, credibility, publicity, financial viability, legitimacy, community standing, etc. Smudde, 2001). The more respected a firm’s reputation the more sensational a corporate scandal will be and so these firms are subjected to the most intense scrutiny (Tucker and Melewar, 2005). A corporate reputation needs to be stable and consistent, if it is to withstand the scrutiny of many factors influencing it (Greyser, 2009). If a reputation shift from favorable to unfavorable, stakeholders can change how they interact with a corporate, and they may even server 6 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) ties to the organization and/or spread negative word of mouth about the organization (Coombs, 2007).Crisis Communication Strategies When facing a crisis, how the company han dles the crisis and what the reputation of the company is viewed by stakeholders may imply whether the firm can survive/recover or not. It's critical for organizations to recognize what is the issues generating the reputational threats, who is/are involved, and figure out what and how to respond the crisis (Greyser, 2009). In crisis management, corporate communication is widely acknowledged to play the key role in overcoming crises and repairing reputation.Sturges et al. (1991) suggest that communication content as a component of crisis management must meet three needs depending on different objectives: 1) instructing information tells stakeholders how they should behave in a crisis context; 2) adjusting information allows affected stakeholders to cope with the emotional aspects of crisis; 3) internalizing information is absorbed by stakeholder members and forms the basis for long-term judgments about the organization’s image as it endures a crisis.This is supported by Coombs (2007), who argues that since a crisis causes uncertainty and stress for the stakeholders, companies need to be more open with sincere information to their stakeholders in order to helps them cope with the psychological threat from the crisis; furthermore, stakeholder want to know what corrective actions are being taken to protect them from similar crises in the future and thereby reduce their psychological stress.When examining the role of corporate communication in crisis situations, the theory of image restoration have become perhaps the most dominant paradigm in this field (Dardis and Haigh, 2009)). Based on image restoration theory, Benoit (1995, cited in Fortunato, 2008) identifies a typology of five main communication strategies that can be used to restore image and reputation in face of crises: (1) Denial strategy – the organization attempts to remove any connection between the organization and the crisis by claiming that there is no crisis and offers a simple denial that it did not perform the act in question. 2) Evasion of responsibility – the organization attempts to reduce responsibility for the crisis by claiming that it was either forced into the crisis by another culprit and its inability to prevent the crisis that causes a mistake, or there were good intentions in its act. (3) Reducing the offensiveness of the crisis – the organization attempts to minimize perceived damage caused by the crisis and reinforce the good traits of the organization by creating a more complete context with which the organization should be evaluated. 4) Corrective strategy – the organization implements steps to solve the problem and prevent a repeat of the crisis by taking corrective actions; (5) Mortification strategy – the organization takes full responsibility for the crisis and asks for forgiveness. Based on Benoit’s typology, Coombs (2007) characterizes crisis response strategies by their level of acceptance by critical s takeholders. He identifies a full apology as having very high acceptance, where the organization takes responsibility for the crisis and requests forgiveness from stakeholders.There is also high acceptance for corrective action, where the organization conveys a notion that actions are being taken to prevent a recurrence of the crisis; while a denial strategy has no 7 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) acceptance even when the crisis occurred or attacking the accuser (Fortunato, 2008). However, in rumor and challenge crises, managers need to deny and argue that there is no ‘real’ crisis (Coombs, 2007).To effectively implementing different kinds of response strategies, crisis management often has a strong focus on public relations to recover any damage to public image and assure stakeholders that recovery is on-going. Public relations is defined as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its publics (Huang, 2004). It enables the organization to expo se themselves to stakeholders by using topics of public interest and news items.It is usually conducted in communication activities including speaking at conferences, working with social media, interacting with stakeholders, etc. In public relations, researchers also argue the need to form en executive ‘crisis-handling team’ directing to crisis response. Because the crisis-handling team can provide access to detailed crisis plans, control knowledge in terms of tactics, empirically established relationships, propositional facts, and strategies for making use of factual and procedural knowledge (Nunamaker, Weber and Chen, 1989, cited in Hale, 1997).In addition, the role of CEO is recognized to be important spokesman in crisis communication, as corporate reputation and CEO reputation are increasingly intertwined and the CEO is inevitably cast in the role of chief communicator (Watson, 2007). Therefore, what an organization says and does during/after a crisis can affect a v ariety of important crisis communication outcomes including the organizational reputation, anger, negative word-of-mouth, and account acceptance (Coombs and Holladay, 2009).Choosing appropriate crisis communication responses mitigating negative consumers, public and stakeholders’ perceptions are critical to managing corporate reputation (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). Consumer Perception of the Post-Crisis Outcomes As mentioned above, how effectively a company deals with a crisis will influence the post-crisis outcomes related to its survival or recovery. The more acceptable the crisis communication strategies are to consumers, the less serious outcomes occur to the company.In addition, the post-crisis outcomes perceived by consumers are also determined by other factors, such as consumer attribution of crisis responsibility, and company’s prior image and reputation, which will be discussed as follows: Crisis Seriousness and Crisis Responsibility According to Coombs and Ho lladay (2002), the evaluation of a crisis situation and its reputational threat to a company is largely a function of consumers’ attributions of crisis responsibility, which implies how much consumers believe organizational actions caused the crisis, and whether the crisis was accidental (e. . , technical error) or intentional actions (e. g. , human errors) by the organization. They identify the relationship between attributions of crisis responsibility and the threat to reputation through a range of crisis types, which are classified into three clusters based on attribution of crisis responsibility: 1) the victim crises (e. g. , natural disaster, rumor, workplace violence and product tampering), in which the company is regarded as a victim of the crises and thus is attributed to have low level of crisis responsibility; 2) the accidental crises (e. g. technical-error accidents, technical error, product harms and challenges) are considered unintentional or 8 Hamlstad Universit y Feng(2010) uncontrollable by the organization, and thus cause moderate attributions of organizational responsibility; 3) the preventable crises (e. g. , human-error accident, human-error product harm and organizational misdeed) are viewed as intentional and inappropriate actions taken by organizations to place people at risk, or violate a law/regulation, thus lead to high attributions of crisis responsibility (Coombs and Holladay, 2002; Coombs, 2007).Crisis responsibility is negatively related to corporate reputation (Coombs, 2007). The more responsible an organization is held to be for a crisis, the more negative the perceptions and the greater the damage to brand, image and reputation (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). Hence, a preventable crisis which leads to greatest attributed crisis responsibility in turn results in the greatest harm to organizational reputation (ibid).Crisis responsibility triggers affective reactions as well as being a reputational threat, especially the intent ional crisis cluster (Coombs, 2007). Negative emotions can cause stakeholders to criticize a company (engage in negative word of mouth) or to cease interactions with the organization (ibid). The more serious a crisis is perceived to be, the more involved the public become, the more negative emotions are triggered and, subsequently, the greater damage posed to organizational reputation (De Blasio and Veale, 2009).The Effect of Favorable Prior Brand Image and Reputation Researchers have demonstrated that good prior brand image and reputation have the potential to protect a company from harm caused by crises (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000; Coombs and Holladay, 2006; Dawar and Lei, 2009). When encountering negative publicity, consumers differentially weight aspects of the crisis information, such as the dangers of the product and the firm’s responsiveness, depending on their prior expectations (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000).The informational basis and other strength-related characteristic s of a prior attitude will influence subsequent judgments and evaluations (Pullig, Netemeyer and Biswas, 2006). Dawar and Lei (2009) suggest that consumers perceive familiar brands to carry less â€Å"responsibility† for the crisis, because when a crisis occurs at a familiar brand, consumers’ direct or indirect experiences with the brand will allow them to easily retrieve he pro-attitudinal information, which in turn reduces the influence of the crisis information. Therefore, the positive prior evaluations of familiar brands create a hypothesis-confirming context in which consumers interpret crisis information, leading to diminished negative impact on brand evaluations (Dawar, and Pillutla, 2000). In this way, Consumers’ existing positive expectations may provide firms with a form of insurance against the potentially devastating impact of crisis (ibid).By linking benefit association with a brand, Dawer and Lei (2006) argue that the perceived seriousness of a cri sis and the impact of the crisis on brand evaluations are a function of the relevance of the crisis to the brand’s key benefit associations. Since benefit association provide a central reason for consumer’s choice of a specific brand over other in the category, consumers may assess how seriously the crisis damages the brand depending on how relevant the crisis is to the key associations (Dawer and Lei, 2006).The less relevant the crisis is to the key associations, the less serious the crisis is perceived, the fewer damages occur to the brand image. In addition, proposed by Coombs and Holladay (2006), a favorable prior reputation can act as halo effect that protects an organization’s reputation during a crisis in two aspects: 1) halo as benefit of the doubt, which means if a consumer holds a general favorable view of the company, the consumer might assign the company less crisis responsibility which in turn result in less reputational damage 9Hamlstad University Feng(2010) from the crisis; 2) halo as shield, which serves as a part of the larger psychological phenomenon of expectancy confirmation, emphasizing that stakeholders will focus on the positive aspects of the organization and ignore the recent negative information created by the crisis. In these ways, a good prior reputation perceived by consumers plays as halo effect that has the potential to reduce its attributed crisis responsibility and dismiss the impact of the crisis on the brand (Coombs and Holladay, 2006).Therefore, the stronger and more positive the organizational image and reputation, the more resilient it may be to potential damage to its reputation. Post-crisis Reputation and Buying Intention On a macro-level, an organization is expected to suffer some loss in reputation capital from a crisis (Coombs and Holladay, 2006). As discussed above, how much reputational damage occur and how about the post-crisis reputation looks like in the mind of consumers may mainly rely on h ow the consumers perceive the company’s prior reputation and brand image, attributed crisis responsibility, and its handling of the crisis (Coombs, 2007).The more positive these aspects they have perceived, the less negative post-crisis reputation they declare, and the more likely they generate positive attitude and behavioral consequences for the company, such as, loyal attitude, buying intentions; vice versa (ibid). Consumers’ overall perceptions towards a company in the context of crisis can affect consumer’s trust in that company and its product and service (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). According to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is one of the most important moderators of long-term relationship; it plays an important role in developing loyalty.Corporate reputation is rooted in trust and ethically shaped over time, and can be a highly visible signal of an organization’s capabilities and reliability providing information about future performance (Dolphin, 2004). When consumers hold good overall perceptions about the affected company, they are likely confident that the company will correct its mistakes from the crisis and has the capability to perform better in the future, on the basis of their trust beliefs.Trusts are developed in relationship, where consumers have direct interactions with the company over times. Such consumers’ experience-based beliefs are powerful, it reinforce and strengthen the brand meaning with existing customers, generate positive word-of-mouth, and stimulate new customer trials (Berry, 2000) TOYOTA CASE FINDINGS Toyota is the one of the world’s largest automakers, based in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. Since its establishment in 1937 in Japan, Toyota has a long history of building safety, reliable and high quality vehicles.Today, the company manufactures vehicles and parts at 53 production sites in 27 countries and regions around the globe, with a variety of sub-brands categories such as Lexus, Yaris, Corolla, Camry, Toyota trucks, and the world’s first gas/electric hybrid Prius, etc. (Toyota website). Its vehicles have been well known for quality, reliability and fuel efficiency. Recent years, Toyota’s fast global expansion made it successfully exceed General Motors in production and sales in 2008 to become the world's largest automaker.Its success has long been regarded as the pinnacle of Japanese innovation, manufacturing quality and industrial strength (The Economist, Feb 13, 2010). Its â€Å"lean† manufacturing techniques and culture of continuous improvement were the envy of the business world (ibid). This pioneering lean manufacturing technique includes continuous process improvement, flexible production with just-in-time principle, and removing waste without removing 10 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) value (Angel, 2008).So far, America has become Toyota’s largest market, where Toyota is rank as one of the top-selling brands (Toyota USA website) . Toyota Crisis Overview However, Toyota’s leading position has changed since the end of 2009. A highly publicized fatal crash of a Lexus ES 350 happening on August 28th, 2009, which killed four passengers of a family inside the car in United States (Los Angeles Times, Oct 25 2009), has triggered Toyota’s largest officially recalls and brought Toyota to the crisis misery.So far, Toyota has announced recalls of approx 9 million vehicles globally across a wide range of its sub-brands (Toyota website), due to problems associated with â€Å"unintended acceleration†. According to Stewart (2010), Toyota has a full-blown crisis on its hands, but the problem has been compounded by a long-delayed and less-than-reassuring response from Toyota. By looking back from the beginning of the horrific Lexus accident, quality complaints and safety problems involved in Toyota vehicles have been brought to light with the increasing investigations by The National Highway Traffic Safe ty Administration (NHTSA) in North America.Toyota American Sales organization (TMS) previously attributed the problem in the Lexus to an incompatible floor mat that may potentially interfere with accelerator pedal (Los Angeles Times, Oct 25th 2009). They issued a public safety advisory on Sep 29th 2009 inform the owners of specific Toyota and Lexus models of the ill-fitting floor mat problem, and then followed by the first large-scale recall announcement in November 2009 for remedy of this problem (Toyota USA Newsroom).However, Toyota’s explanation of ill-fitting floor mats was questioned by NHTSA, stating that the problem was â€Å"related to accelerator and floor-pan design† (Stewart, 2010). Consequently, the problem of gas pedals that get stuck led to Toyota’s second large recalls of 2. 3 million vehicles in U. S. market, as well as the third recall announcement of 1. 8 million vehicles in European markets in January 2010.Meanwhile, Toyota released the decisi on about temporarily suspending production at most of its North American plants and halting sales of eight popular models in U. S. market (Toyota USA Newsroom). These issues put Toyota’s reputation at a high risk. Suspicion and criticism toward Toyota were full of headline among mass media, especially in North America. By late January 2010, Toyota began issuing apologies and promises to do better; its engineers brought up a fix for the accelerator pedals and began rushing it to dealers around the world (Welch, 2010).In face of the blame from mass media presses, Toyota maintained that the recalls and actions were taken voluntarily rather than the insistence from NHTSA, with the intention to â€Å"help ensure the safety of our customers and restoring confidence in Toyota†, according to Group Vice President and Toyota Division General Manager Bob Carter (Toyota USA Newsroom). Subsequently, Jim Lentz, president of Toyota’s U. S. organization TMS, apologized for the recall and acknowledged it was embarrassing for the company that built its reputation on the reliability of its vehicles (Linebaugh, Mitchell and Wakabayashi, 2010).Despite Toyota announced remedy solutions to fix the recalled cars, fresh reports of sudden-acceleration incidents continued to crop up from American Toyota owners involving vehicles excluded in the recalls, raising suspicions that whether the company has identified all of the factors that could cause unintended acceleration, which was closely linked to a failure of vehicle’s heart ‘the vehicle electronic throttle control system’ (ibid). In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Jim Lentz gave explanation that â€Å"these two fixes solve the issues that we know 11 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) f,† and â€Å"we have done exhaustive testing, and we have found no evidence of problems with the electronics† (ibid). Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s CEO, issued his public apology candidly at a news conference in Tokyo on Feb 5th 2010, emphasizing that they will â€Å"go back to the basics of â€Å"customer first† and â€Å"genchi genbutsu†(means ‘go to the source to find the problem’) by improving products quality around the world. He added that he will be the head of a global quality task force newly formed to lift quality standards within the company (Toyota Website). However, bad news seemed not to end up.Toyota’s tragedy were aggravated again with their further recall announcements in February 2010 including: the Hybrid vehicles containing the celebrated Prius with antilock brake problems in Japan and American markets; and the Tacoma trucks with drive shaft problems in American regions (Toyota USA website). After years of being the benchmark for quality, Toyota has been losing its edge even as its rivals catch up (Welch, 2010). Some analysts estimated that the immediate impact of Toyota’s global recalls and sales stoppages could c ost Toyota more than $2 billion USD (Trottman and Mitchell, 2010; Businessweek. om). Meanwhile Toyota could be forced to spend considerable amounts on advertising, sales incentives and legal bills (Linebaugh et al. , 2010). Moreover, Toyota has been blamed for its misreading and mishandling of the crisis. The longer-term damage to the automaker's brand could be much larger, according to Linebaugh et al. (2010). To respond those negative issues, Toyota maintains that they never misled regulators and they properly responded to potential safety problems (Linebaugh, et al. , 2010). We’re committed to doing everything we can – as fast as we can – to restore consumer trust in Toyota, and these recalls are part of this effort,† said Mr. Jim Lentz (Toyota USA website). Toyota President Akio Toyoda also outlined the company’s plans for earning customer trust back, stating that: â€Å"we are taking responsibility for our mistakes, learning from them and acti ng immediately to address the concerns of consumers and independent government regulators† (Toyota website). As BusinessWeek reported on Jan. 9, the company planned to break its silence, with an explanatory newspaper ad, as well as more tools such as the internet, social media, cable TV, etc. (Bush and Thomaselli, 2010). Special recall web pages were created in late January 2010 with latest recall and repairing information, along with posing some updated statements officially released by Toyota. Through various online or offline communicating tools, Toyota has attempt at highlighting its existing goodwill on, for instance, innovative technologies, excellent engineers, brilliant history, as well as its consistent social mission for making contribution to sustainable environment.In the American market, in order to solve quality problems involved in its cars, one area that Toyota has to focus on is how it manages its relationships with suppliers, which as outside firms play a big role in making engineering components for Toyota (Welch, 2010). There are reports pointing out that in recent years Toyota has been demanding that suppliers make parts more cheaply (ibid). Those accelerate pedals which had the potential sticking risk were mainly made by Toyota’s major supplier CTS Corp.Toyota American organization addressed that they have been working closely with supplier CTS on a revised design that effectively remedies the problem associated with accelerator pedals. In addition, an independent North American Quality Advisory Panel consisting of external distinguished group of safety and quality experts has been formed to advise the company’s North American affiliates on quality and safety issues. In retrieving customers, TMS in March 3rd 2010 announced plans to launch the company’s most far-reaching sales promotion programs for American customers 12Hamlstad University Feng(2010) includes 0% APR financing, low leasing rate, and complimentary two-year premium maintenance offers (Toyota USA Newsroom). Although Toyota has working on the crisis, the way they handling the crisis in United State seems not easy to go: they had to confront with three times testimonies in the American Congressional hearing; to pay $16. 4 million civil penalty imposed by NHTSA for accusing Toyota of a deliberate delay in recalling the vehicles by hiding its defects; and Toyota have been withstanding intense investigation from U. S. overnments and extensively keen-edged coverage from mass media. Dealing with the issues after a serious crisis is a long way to go before everything is back again. As Toyota stating, they are now â€Å"working as one, and putting all their efforts into new initiatives aimed at rebuilding consumer trust and contributing to society through our products and services. † (Toyota website). In sum, the following table shows the related events including five times’ major recalls and other issues that lead to the escalating crisis involved in Toyota since August 2009: Table 1 – Toyota crisis events Aug. 8th, 2009 A fatal crash of a Lexus car in USA due to the gas pedal was stuck was highly publicized that brought â€Å"unintended acceleration† problems of Toyota cars to the light with increasing investigations by NHTSA in USA. Toyota attributed the problem in the Lexus to the incompatible floor mat, but their explanation couldn’t convince NHTSA and public in USA. Toyota issued a public safety advisory suggesting owners of specific model about the ill-fitting floor mat issues in North America. 1st large Recall for potential accelerator pedal entrapment problems (ill-fitting floor mat), U.S. market, 4. 2 million vehicles. nd 2 large Recall for sticking accelerator pedal problems, U. S. market, 2. 3 million vehicles covering 8 models. Toyota Temporarily suspends production and sales of selected vehicles in the U. S. market. rd 3 large Recall for potential accelerator pedal issues, European markets; 1. 8 million vehicles. Toyota began issuing apologies and breaking silence with response to the crisis under the tense pressures from public media and governments in America. Toyota’s CEO Akio Toyoda made public apology for the recalls and nnounced global quality task force for focus on quality issues. th 4 Recall for antilock brake system (ABS) software problems on 2010 model-year Toyota Prius and Lesus HS 250, Japan and U. S. markets. th 5 Recall for inspecting the front drive shaft on 2010 model year Tacoma 4WD trucks, U. S. market. Three times testimonies to the Congressional Hearing in USA. Toyota agree to pay $16. 4 million civil penalty imposed by NHTSA in USA related to Toyota’s recall for slow-to-return and sticky accelerator pedals, but Toyota denies NHTSA's allegation that it violated the Safety Act or its implementing regulations.Source: Toyota Website (2010) Late of Sep. 2009 Sep. 29 , 2009 Nov. 25 , 2009 Jan. 21st, 2010 Jan,26 , 2010 Jan,29 , 2010 Late Jan. 2010 Feb. 5 , 2010 Feb. 09 , 2010 Feb. 12th, 2010 Late Feb. to Mar. 2010 Apr. 19, 2010 th th th th th th 13 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) Toyota Crisis in Sweden From the above information we could find that the serious impacts of the crisis on Toyota were mostly coming from the United State. To investigate the influence of the crisis in a more specific way, Halmstad market in Sweden is researched.The following sections present the primary data collecting from interviews with Toyota’s dealer and car consumers in Halmstad city, showing what the Toyota crisis is perceived in Swedish market. Toyota Swedish Dealer’s Reflection Compared the strenuous troubles in USA, it is surprising to find that Toyota has a different situation in Swedish market. The crisis is not a really big deal that influence Toyota brand in Sweden. According to the sale executive in Toyota center in Halmstad of Swden, what recently happened in Toyota is ot a big issue sin ce those quality problems never happen in Toyota’s vehicles in Sweden. He insists that Toyota didn’t have real quality problems with its cars, all the recalls made by Toyota are voluntary for the purpose to reduce potential risks within the affected models as well as reassuring its customers; the recall is normal issues in car industry, there are no repairs in the recalled vehicles but just little modification to make the affected cars even better.Those negative coverage related to Toyota in USA are not consistent with what things really are within Toyota. â€Å"When you became largest, the other competitors envy you and always want to put you down, this would happen in many biggest companies not only in Toyota†, the dealer says. While the recall news were exposed negatively, they would tend to eliminate unnecessary anxieties among customers through clarifying what really happen in Toyota when the customers made calls. We explain to customers and assure them the re are no such problems happen in Sweden; we never want to sell cars with brake problems or something defective; we are always concern about our consumer, concern about the safety quality of our cars. † According to the interviewed sales executive in Toyota Center in Halmstad, they have a head office named Toyota Sweden AB in Stockholm, which is responsible for guiding and communicating with other dealers around Sweden, as well as in charge of the recall issues in Sweden. Swedish dealers can get consultant advices from this head office.Accordingly, when Toyota officially released the recall announcements of affected vehicles involved in Sweden, Toyota Sweden AB in Stockholm is responsible for informing the Swedish owners of the affected cars with mail letters, by suggesting those consumers to contact their local dealer for arranging fix appointments. The interviewed sales executive states that they are satisfied with the interaction process with the head office in Stockholm; t hey are confident that Toyota is taking effective and professional measures in dealing with the problems.As for consumer complaints, he points out consumer complaints could always take place due to different daily indisposition in cars, regardless of the recalls issues happen or not. Since Toyota in Sweden didn’t have the similar issues as exposed in USA, the recall crisis do not have significant impact on the sales of the dealer. â€Å"We don’t have the same problems, but it of course more or less influences our sales when bad things were reported†, the interviewed sales executive says, â€Å"I’m not sure how much he effect occur, but in Sweden that [issues] haven’t affected [us] too much, because now we are selling the same numbers as we did a half of year ago, so I don’t think Toyota’s situation is really bad in Sweden. † 14 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) Swedish Consumers’ Reflection Since the consumer respondents ca n be separated into two distinct groups – the Toyota customers and other brands’ consumers, it is interesting to compare their reflections to see how the both groups’ consumers perceive differently on Toyota crisis as well as the brand.Some typical statements among the consumer respondents are showed in Table 2, which clearly reflects their cognitive and affective opinion toward Toyota crisis and the brand. The Toyota customers. The respondents within this group are mainly found in Toyota’s store. Some of them have owned Toyota cars before, while the others are new customers who didn’t have Toyota cars but visit the dealership store with purchasing intentions. The Toyota customers as observed are mostly in the middle age and elderly people, who usually tend to drive the cars with relatively lower speeds within cities.Being less influenced by news coverage about the crisis, Toyota customers in Sweden are not as sensitive as American stakeholders per ceive toward negative aspects of Toyota, such as quality problems, delayed handling crisis, etc. Being different from the affected American consumers, Toyota owners and new customers in Sweden do not exhibit much anxiety and panic by the recall events. Their attitudes toward the issues are mostly depended on their real past experiences with the brand or friends’ word-of-mouth effects.Accordingly, customers in this group have showed relatively loyal attitude toward Toyota, as well as presenting strong affective bonds to the brand. Their opinions about the brand are kind of positive even though Toyota is undergoing the troublesome crisis. They tend to trust in Toyota’s reputation, without perceiving the crisis as big as what has been reported in American mass media. Although with a little worry about potential safety problem, most of loyal consumers still think that Toyota cars are quality and energy saving with relatively good prices.Despite realizing that Toyota is get ting some troubles with the massive recalls and involving serious problems in USA, they believe that Toyota will solve this out and make it better in the future. Still, when stepping into Toyota dealership store, these customers would be willing to buy Toyota cars according to their own interests and needs, regardless of recall events. The other brands’ consumers. Compared with the above Toyota customers groups, the respondents within this group have shown relatively different opinions toward the crisis issues and Toyota brand.Since the respondents in this group are randomly selected in gasoline stations and parking places in Halmstad city, the backgrounds of the interviewees are mixed across a wide range of age, with different professions and interests. Therefore, their answers are various, depending on their background and the degree of awareness of the recall issues. Those who have little knowledge about Toyota’s troublesome recalls show little interests in talking about the crisis. While, the others who know much about cars are more willing to share their knowledge, which help to increase the opportunity to gain more deepened insights about the case.Since the interviewed consumers of this group are using other brands’ cars, most of them do not have direct experience in driving Toyota cars. Their knowledge about Toyota mainly depend on their awareness of Toyota’s brand image, as well as making evaluation by instinctively comparing Toyota with the brands they are using. Furthermore, most of them admit the situation in Toyota is kind of troublesome in USA but not in Sweden. They think car recalls is normal in car industry, not only happen in Toyota. As for the buying intention, most of the respondents in this group reveal their 15Hamlstad University Feng(2010) Table 2 – Typical Statements of Swedish Vehicle Consumers Toyota customers (owners and new customers) â€Å"I have a Yaris and it is reliable and economical. † Other brands’ consumers â€Å"I think it’s a wide brand with high function. † â€Å"It’s about fuel efficiency and fit for those who want an economical car, but if you enjoy fast driving, Toyota is not that kind. † â€Å"Toyota could be good in sustainable and innovative things, but since I’m Swedish, I more prefer our national brands which also have very quality function and more suitable for my personality. â€Å"I don’t think it is a bigger thing as media and newspaper report†¦it’s serious of course what happen in USA, but it can happen in any cars and I don’t think it’s so important to quality safe. Maybe in USA I don’t’ know, but in Europe I don’t think so. † â€Å"I’m not sure how exactly Toyota is handling this, I didn’t read much about this, but I guess they’ll solve this out with professional. † â€Å"[As being an engineer working in another a utomaker], I know too much [about cars]†¦ I don’t think Toyota should take the full responsibility for the problem.It is always customer complaining accelerate pedal get to stuck, but maybe they press the accelerate pedal as the brake pedal, and they are so sure they didn’t [do wrong]! So it’s hard to handle those issues, and no one trusts the technical specialist from the car manufacturer thing. But I think Toyota should handle this earlier to be clearer to the customers and the governments. However, the picture we have is that Toyota have a long time trying to buy this down and just say we don’t have any problems, and now they have this huge crisis caused by this. â€Å"Handling this serious now, keeping the public informed in time, then I think they may gain reputation again, but it takes time. † â€Å"They have lost some credits from safety point of view right now because of the crisis. In two years, they will recover, but right now, mayb e they have lost sales. They had sales stops [in America] because the recalls. † Prior brand Image Toyota Crisis Crisis handling Post-crisis reputation â€Å"Toyota is my favorite brand,†¦we driving too much, me and my wife, we are saving for much gasoline, saving about 7 thousand SEK per year. † â€Å"Capability, good technology, good service, and you can go with very good quality. â€Å"My friend who works with cars said it is a good car, and you can get a good car for nice money. † â€Å"We have two Toyota cars [which have been] running so many kilometers and just worked perfect. There’re not any such serious problems with my cars at all. I don’t think the problem is really so big, but maybe the news media is more so become reporting problems than reporting good things. † â€Å"[I’ve heard that they have] the problems with the brake and the gas pedal†¦but I don’t think it is a serious problem, because the first I know it is a good brand for years. â€Å"Actually I haven’t heard much about Toyota response†¦ I do care about [quality], I see the news, but since I have good experience with Toyota, I still very trust in Toyota, they will be nice to recall the cars together and fix alright. † â€Å"I got the recall notification letter, the dealer told me there was nothing wrong with it and that is just a voluntary recall for small modification. But since I more care about safety problem, I think Toyota parent company needs to report honestly what has happen, to be more open to the public. Toyota has given me years of reliable service, and I’ve always had respect for Toyota. I believe they’ll be getting better in the future. † â€Å"Perhaps Toyota has some troubles right now due to such big recalls, but I hope Toyota gets this solved correctly and still retains their reputation. † â€Å"Toyota will definitely have my trust as long as they stay honest and avoid the same mistakes happening again. † â€Å"So far it has been good, I want to buy another one. † â€Å"This is the first time we checking Toyota, if the price is suitable, I would consider to buy one. â€Å"Because we drive mostly in the city, it is good to have a car that driven by electricity, not so much by gas. † Buying intention â€Å"It depends on the price, and what it can help to hold money many years a car if it is new or not or whatever and the guarantee as well. † â€Å"Buying a car is a big decision, I’ll consider about price, service, insurance guarantee, quality, living place and other things as a whole, other than to be simply influenced by recall issues. † Source: primary data collection from interviews with Swedish vehicle consumers 16 Hamlstad University Feng(2010) reference in the brands they are using, while pointing out that they would not be influenced so much by a recalled crisis, instead, what can really inf luence their buying intention depend on many factors as a whole, such as the price, the guarantee, the insurance, the design, brand personality, etc. Overall, the perceptions of the Swedish drivers toward the Toyota crisis are quite mixed, but one common thread is that the Swedish respondents do not think the Toyota has so many serious quality problems as what extensively reported in America. Toyota’ crisis situation in Sweden is comparatively less serious.The Swedish consumers all believe that Toyota will recover in the future and regain its reputation. ANALYSIS The analysis will be made on a basis of combination with the pre-understanding of crisis management theory and the empirical data, by answering the three research questions respectively as follows: (1) What are the reasons that force Toyota coming to the troublesome crisis? Crises pose certain risks to an company – potentially affecting critical aspects like reputation, image, brand equity, credibility, public ity, financial viability, legitimacy, community standing, etc. Smudde, 2001). In auto industry vehicle recalls happen all the time and everywhere. However, the Toyota massive recalls show a very different situation and involves more serious consequences. We have seen that almost 9 million of Toyota vehicles around the world had to be recalled within a few months, and the potentially defective quality involved were mainly focused on unintended acceleration problems, which were closely related to the most important thing for drivers – safety driving. It’s thus hard to believe that there was nothing wrong with Toyota’s â€Å"quality† cars.The massive recalls were indeed a disaster for Toyota: not only means that they had to pay for the extensively financial losses due to repairing costs, market and stock share dropping down, production suspending, civil penalty, and other relevant expenses for dealing with the troublesome issues; but also it has heavily hit to Toyota’s intangible assets – its brand image and reputation of quality, which have been ethically shaped over time (Fill, 2006; Dolphin, 2004) and in turn influence the brand value (Wang, 2005).Although Swedish consumers do not blame Toyota itself that much for the crisis, by looking through the whole process it is obvious to find that the sequentially massive recalls were not just a couple of simple faults mechanically in the complicated machine; there should be something ignorant in the their management. Reputational troubles can come in many forms, from a wide variety of causes and from many pu