Starbucks Strategic Analysis

Starbucks is a multinational chain of coffee shops and roasteries that was founded in 1971. Starbucks has continued to grow for the past 51 years and continues to dominate the coffee industry. This strategic analysis evaluates the general environment using a PESTEL analysis, the industry using Porter’s Five Forces, and the company’s overall strategy and competitive advantages. This paper will evaluate Starbucks’ position in the industry and the strategic choices that have led the company to its extraordinary success

Tools for Nonfiction Developmental Editors

While works of fiction allow for a great deal of flexibility and creativity, they are, for the most part, narratives written for an audience unfamiliar with the characters and world contained within. Nonfiction on the other hand comes in a variety of forms, from narrative nonfiction, to instruction-based texts, to peer-reviewed research. The audience for nonfiction varies more significantly, too, from a general public with no assumed knowledge of a subject to experts in a field wanting to further their skills. Through surveys of contemporary editors and analysis of books and published correspondence from years past, this paper catalogues and investigates the tools and techniques most useful to editors as they navigate specific types of nonfiction fiction projects. It explores the theory and thinking behind the use of tools such as expert reviewers, reference texts, narrative conventions, and display elements and the different ways editors today and in the past have implemented them

Informal hierarchy:an investigation into the antecedents and consequences

Informal hierarchies are a ubiquitous feature of groups and teams. Drawing from prior literature on informal hierarchies, this dissertation highlights two key problems that restrain our theoretical understanding of informal hierarchies. First, little is known about when and why groups develop weaker or stronger informal hierarchies. Second, both theory and findings on the consequences of in informal hierarchy strength are contradictory with studies showing both positive and negative effects on performance outcomes. The present dissertation addresses both these issues, by identifying antecedents of informal hierarchy strength; and studying its conditional relationship with team performance and team creativity. In doing so, this dissertation enriches our understanding of the nomological network and will help organizations to more effectively deal with issues around hierarchical organization

Participative management in academic information services

M.Inf.Enterprises are in the midst of some revolutionary changes in how people are managed in work situations. The major premise underlying work-force management traditionally has been that efficiency can be achieved best by imposing management control over workers' behaviour. Today, in response to massive evidence that control-oriented management models can produce outcomes that subvert the interest of both enterprises and the people who work in them, a new work-force management model is appearing - that of participative management. The premise of the emerging model is that enterprises must elicit the commitment of their employees if they are to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in contemporary markets. Rather than relying on a "retain and control" management, enterprises in the future will apply a "share and learn" management where they will heavily rely of member self-management in pursuing collective objectives. This study intends to stress the fact that employee potential needs to be mobilised by management and can only show up as performance when employees are given opportunity to contribute to decision-making with the minimum interference of management. This study calls for a transformation of leadership willing to empower staff to participate fully and freely in the creation of the future. The time has come to transform the way in which leaders work with and provide leadership to staff in academic information services. Leaders in academic information services need to realise that employee participation will enhance commitment and performance for both employees and management. A review of literature revealed that participative management is more than only a willingness to share influence - formal patterns of participation need to be truely implemented where employees have a right to contribute on all levels of decision-making. Participation is not an absolute term - there are various degrees of participation and types of involvement programmes to apply. Participative management is more complex than simply allowing employees to make some of the decisions. It involves formal programmes which need to be effectively implemented. The empirical survey which was done through a twenty-item questionnaire distributed to seven academic information services in Gauteng, revealed that participative management is applied at these institutions but more in low-level decisions. This indicated that participation is still limited and controlled by management and is not yet experienced as a right by employees. This study also clearly showed that self-regulation occurs most effectively through self-managed work-teams. These teams offer the highest degree of decision-making autonomy to all levels of staff and are a unique and viable alternative to traditional forms of work design in academic information services. Directors and leaders of modern academic information services need to encourage and facilitate self-regulation among employees of all levels. This will help to cope more effectively with future challenges of rapid change and technological complexity that now threaten efforts to create more responsive academic information services

Phosphorylation of the androgen receptor in a human prostate tumor cell line

The aim of the study described in this thesis was to deterntine whether the androgen receptor is a phosphoprotein, resembling in this respect the other members of the steroid/vitamin D /thyroid hormone receptor fantily. Furthermore, it was investigated whether the androgen receptor undergoes a hormone-dependent phosphorylation For all studies described in this thesis, the human LNCaP (Lymp Node Carcinoma of the Prostate) cell line was used. The androgen receptor in these cells was characterized with respect to molecular mass and ligand-binding properties (Chapter 3). The characterization of androgen receptor-specific polyclonal antibodies, which are useful tools for the phosphorylation studies, is described in Chapter 4. Studies on androgen receptor phosphorylation are presented in the Chapters 5 and 6. In addition to polyclonal antibodies, an androgen receptor-specific monoclonal antibody has been used for these studies. The preparation of the monoclonal antibody has been described briefly in Chapter 5. A detailed description of the generation and characterization of this antibody has been presented elsewhere (Zegers eta!, 1991)