Germany Competitiveness The Porters Diamond Context Economics Essay

Germany Competitiveness The Porters Diamond Context Economics Essay Context for firm strategy and rivalry: Germany can be considered center of Europe both for its geographic and political position. This gives to Germany the possibility to lead the European market and to manage a relevant diversification of its internal economy; it means to create a hugely competitive business environment for German companies. The efficiency rate in German large and small companies is higher than international standards due to the great amount of off shoring and outsourcing practices so that it makes this economy the most competitive in Europe. Throughout last years, German small and medium enterprisers performed better than the large ones, overtaking even the US competitive standards, as shown by the Work Competitiveness Yearbook 2010. Those small enterprisers are the so called hidden champions because they are little known to the public even if they are world market leaders. In contrast to the practice of the other European countries to develop economies related on large state-owned industrial champions, Germany could be considered such as a private driven economy in which the small and medium enterprises are playing the most important role in boosting investments and employment rate. They also make the success of German export with the 80% of the production sold abroad; the Machinery and Equipment Cluster, for instance, holds almost 20% of world export market share. These companies successfully compete on innovation processes and on improving efficiency, getting a great benefit from both the excellent European and German intellectual property protection. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), Germany represents one of the worlds best location in planning and operating security and it is one of the leading Nations in the field of propriety rights protection and contracts protection. This excellence let Germany to grant over 12,500 patents at the EU Patent Office only in 2010 and to be the European leader in triadic patents, registered in the three most important worlds patent offices: the European Patent Office, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and the Japan Patent Office. The German legal system itself can be considered one of the most efficient and independent of the entire world. Moreover, the social and political stability of the country and the Germans culture based on the total respect of the laws principles make this country a greatly attractive places for corporate investments projects even for foreign firms in almost all the industries. In addition to the high quality of the legal organization, Germany has developed a very internationally competitive taxation system: in 2008 an ambitious reform was made in order to decrease the corporate tax burden by around the 25% and the corporate income tax down to 15% on all corporate taxable earnings. Eventually, Germany has developed a unique corporate governance system that makes possible a virtuous match between workers and employers in order to avoid time-consuming and value-destroying disputes: it becomes a key success factor to rise up during recession periods. As a matter of fact, core decisions are taken through Job Alliances that enable flex-security on job market in order to keep companies competitive while maintaining job positions. Great importance is given to the role of federal government which gives big support to this system promoting grants and self-regulation policies. Factor conditions: Germany benefits from a huge number of natural resources such as building materials, natural gas, wood and other strategic natural elements. Its wide land gives to the country a lot of space that can be exploited focusing on clean energy production. Moreover, the climate represents an important factor in producing energy with the key role played by the wind that constantly flows in the northern part of the country. The prevalence of lowlands in northern regions makes Germans able to take the most possible advantage of the wind, becoming part of the Northern Power Cluster for wind energy production. The pretty big population of Germany can be considered little diversified in culture and tradition with a big prevalence of German native speakers over the other cultures ( almost 91% of the entire population, as the CIA World Factbook points out ). The German position on human capital point of view is strongly influenced by the unique education system that represent a best practice in all over the world. This is focused on the importance given to the professional training in order to provide people, since earlier age, with a set of skills useful to join the job market. Parallel to the professional-oriented approach there is also a very good and selective university system for the large number of young people that decide to longer dedicate themselves to study activities: mechanical engineering, with more than 400,000 matriculate students, ranks second in the top 20 of the most in-demand study programs and provides the highest skilled workers for the main sectors of the country such as automotive, machinery, electrical and electronic. This dual track allows enterprises to reduce dramatically the labor costs in term of training programs and young people to enter in the job market already with a high productivity rate. Germany can be considered extremely attractive as a location for investments due to high productivity rates and stable wages. In addition, in recent years the overall labor cost has been the lowest in Europe with an annual increase rate of less than 2%; this job market context contributes to enhance strong competitive business relations. Unskilled workers represent almost the 20% on the total workforce; this evidence reflects the attention paid to education and emphasizes the companies ability to attract skilled workforce from other countries. Germany Important concerns from governments point of view remain the unemployment rate (at the 6% in 2011, as said in CIA World Factbook) and the pretty low participation in work force, compared with countries such as US, UK or Japan. In addition, Germany is one of the worlds leaders in RD investments, both in terms of budget and percentage of GDP, reaching the 2.8% and overlapping the EU average of 2.1%. The high regard to investments is coming both from the public and the private sector and the great number of PPPs (Private and Public Partnership) is playing a key role in German competitiveness and in planned development. The high level of RD investments impacts positively on the dynamicity of German economy: over 27% of the manufacturing turnover is generated from innovative products. Eventually, Germany derives its economic power also from its important and well organized grid of transportation infrastructures: the 2009-2010 Global Competitiveness Report of the WEF ranked Germany at the first position in terms of infrastructures. The rail system, which connects the country with all the neighbors by high speed rail, is gaining more efficiency thanks to the open access to the market given to privates that make the sector much more competitive than the state monopoly. This makes Germany the 6th position for railways infrastructure in comparison with the other states of the world (CIA World Factbook ). Water ways and harbors are extremely well developed too and the airports system is ranked 13th in the CIAs comparison between countries as stated in the CIA World Factbook. By the way, governments biggest challenge is to continue to increase the already large flow of foreign direct investments and to improve, as much as possible, the venture capital system by the adoption of specific policies. Today, German legal framework makes no distinction between national and foreign investments promoting principles such as freedom in trade and payments and the reduction of barriers. Moreover, there are special treatments and opportunities for young entrepreneurs and start-ups: on one hand, special conferences and events like the German Equity Forum, and, on the other one, proposals of venture capital partnerships through development banks and the German Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. Further financial assistance is given at regional, national and European level through a wide number of instruments: cash incentives, interest reduced loans, public guarantees, labor-related incentives and RD grants. Demand conditions: Domestic demand is therefore becoming a more significant driver of Germanys economic expansion (from   CIA World Factbook). Due to the Euro financial crisis the export rate to EU cover the loss in term of exports. In this perspective, a key role is played by the government in boosting investments and supporting internal demand: there are available some governments loans made up for enterprises in order to enable them to borrow new capital at a lower interest rates and, in turn, be able to offer lower prices to the consumers market. A great influence on the demand is played by the high level of quality and environmental standards that characterize German regulation. Germany has a virtuous regulation history, starting with the Deutsches Institut fà ¼r Normung (DIN) during the 20s until today: a huge number of innovations has been introduced in this field such as self-regulation processes related to the new public governance system. German standards and their regulation are also much influenced by EU, which is trying to homogenize the regulation of the Common Market and to stimulate cleaner manufacture and energy production (EU 20/20/20 Program): this affects Germans big industrial sectors such as machinery, chemical and power clusters. This context originates a more complex supply and demand structure which express the need to assess the high level of constraints due to the global environmental challenges. Related and supporting industries: the important number of local suppliers are strongly supported by the efficient system of German scientific infrastructures set up both at the federal and local level . Germany has various types of research locations such as universities, laboratories, non-university institutes, companies and Federal as well as Là ¤nder institutions. Moreover, the German Federation of Industrial Research Associations (AiF) is a great example of how German companies themselves cooperate to research and innovation activity contributing directly to the country competitiveness. The AIF mostly contributes to the technology transfer process and research activity in the growing market of renewable energies such as solar and wind power. Germany is home to several research infrastructures with global significance in physics, earth science, climate research or the humanities. Examples of research infrastructures are: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the German Cli mate Computing Centre (DKRZ). In addition, Germany has a greatly developed Machinery and Equipment industry which provides the supply of power transmission engineering, material and air-handling technology and machine tools. This is the most innovative sector within the country and heavily influence German economy supporting all the other strategic sectors such as chemical, electronic, automotive and renewable energy, providing the sub-components needed for production processes. Da inserire nel diamante sul cluster: GREEN ECONOMY, INVESTMENTSà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦(clean power) Germany is the world leader in green technologies Æ’Â   leader in sustainable industries (wind energy, photovoltaic, bioenergy industry, Electricity (demand, import, exports, quanto produce il solare, il vento..) WIND ENERGY: p.6 PORTERS FORCES (Porters book) Role of Government: Public demand, self-regulation, promoting networks and clusters. Public RD support and PPP P.11 and others (ig. Website) Role of Federal Government in green energy P.5

Comparing William Blake and William Wordsworth

Sonnet 18 In Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare begins by considering what metaphorical comparisons would best reflect the young man, in fact a typical convention of Renaissance poems is to compare beauty and youth with aspects of nature. In the first and in the second stanza he develops the idea of summer: in the first stanza (the introductory part) he wants to compare the young man to a summer day, but he also says that the man is more beautiful and more lovely than a summer day; in fact, he knows, summer can be very short and the weather is changeable: sometimes it’s too hot and sometimes the sun has disappeared, but he can’t be obscured.Then the poet adds that it is also true that, like a real summer, the young man’s youth will not last forever, because it is how nature goes (it’s temporary). The third stanza starts with an adversative, here the poet concentrates in the man’s beauty and he says that his beauty won’t disappear; not even death can take his beauty, because in poetry the poet is able to preserve the idea of beauty and youth. It is something like a promise: in the world of the poem, the young’s man beauty will never die, but it will go on growing in the minds of readers; Shakespeare wishes to preserve the young man’s beauty against the effects of time.The poem carries the meaning of an Italian or  Petrarchan Sonnet (Petrarchan sonnets typically discuss the love and beauty of a beloved). The theme is the transience of beauty, the poet tries to immortalize the young man’s beauty through his own poetry. Sonnet 130 This is a sonnet written for a dark lady, in which Shakespeare criticizes the idealising tendency of the most Elizabethan love poetry to compare the beloved with nature. Sonnet 130 is clearly a parody of the conventional love sonnet, made popular by Petrarch.In describing his dark lady, he is careful to emphasise how little she corresponds to the conventional idea of beauty of h is time; in fact from the sonnet we can understand that the woman is not beautiful: she doesn’t have soft hair, instead she has got black wire hair, she doesn’t have brilliant eyes and red lips , she has dark skin (breasts), moreover he can’t see the colour of the roses in her cheeks and her breath can’t be compared to perfume, her voice is not as pleasant as music and she doesn’t walk like a goddess.For him, however, the fact that she is not conventionally beautiful is an indication of her â€Å"natural† beauty; what fascinates the poet in his lady are the things that make her unique in his eyes, these things make her rare in a world in which the women have to correspond to an ideal notion of beauty. So Shakespeare ends the sonnet by proclaiming his love for his mistress, so he does finally embrace the fundamental theme in Petrarch's sonnets: total and consuming love.Romeo and Juliet (balcony scene) After seeing Juliet at the Capuletâ€℠¢s house during the feast, Romeo secretly return to see her again: Romeo, hidden amongst the shadows outside Capulet’s house, sees Juliet in the balcony; Juliet, believing that she is alone, professes her love for Romeo and her profound sorrow that he is a Montague. Romeo reveals himself and the lovers speak to each other.Romeo is very poetic when he speaks about Juliet, he is a platonic lover, in fact he describes Juliet as a perfect woman (he idealizes Juliet): he says Juliet is the sun and the moon is jealous, her eyes are far more brighter than the sun, they are so brighter that the birds sing all the time. He describes her using some of the conventions of courtly love and Neo-Platonism found in sonnets of the time.Instead Juliet, even if she has the passion, goes right into the problem, which is the name; she is more realistic and she’s worried because Romeo shouldn’t be there and if someone sees him he could die. The dominating image in Romeo and Juliet is light: Romeo associates Juliet with sunlight and stars and the light emanating from angels. Shakespeare's works are written in Early Modern English; the language used by Romeo and Juliet, particularly Romeo, is often lyrical.

Definition of motivation Essay

Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job, role or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal. Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors such as the (1) intensity of desire or need, (2) incentive or reward value of the goal, and (3) expectations of the individual and of his or her peers. These factors are the reasons one has for behaving a certain way. An example is a student that spends extra time studying for a test because he or she wants a better grade in the class. Motivation is the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal and elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal directed behaviors. It can be considered a driving force; a psychological drive that compels or reinforces an action toward a desired goal. Motivation elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal-directed behaviors. For example, hunger is a motivation that elicits a desire to eat. Motivation has been shown to have roots in physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and social areas. Motivation is conceptually related to, but distinct from, emotion and may be rooted in a basic impulse to optimize well-being, minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure. It can also originate from specific physical needs such as eating, sleeping/resting, and sexual reproduction. Motivation can be divided into two types: intrinsic (internal) motivation and extrinsic (external) motivation. Intrinsic motivation  Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on any external pressure. Intrinsic motivation is based on taking pleasure in an activity rather than working towards an external reward. Intrinsic motivation has been studied since the early 1970s. Students who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to engage in the task willingly as well as work to improve their skills, which will increase their capabilities.[1 ] Students are likely to be intrinsically motivated if they: * attribute their educational results to factors under their own control, also known as autonomy, * believe they have the skill that will allow them to be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are  not determined by luck), * are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades. Extrinsic motivation Extrinsic motivation refers to the performance of an activity in order to attain an outcome, which then contradicts intrinsic motivation. It is widely believed that motivation performs two functions. The first is often referred to as the energetic activation component of the motivation construct. The second is directed at a specific behaviour and makes reference to the orientation directional component.[clarification needed] Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the individual. Common extrinsic motivations are rewards like money and grades, and threat of punishment. Competition is in general extrinsic because it encourages the performer to win and beat others, not simply to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the activity. A crowd cheering on the individual and trophies are also extrinsic incentives. The concept of motivation can be instilled in children at a very young age, by promoting and evoking interest in a certain book or novel. The idea is to have a discussion pertaining the book with young individuals, as well as to reward them. Comparison of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation Social psychological research has indicated that extrinsic rewards can lead to overjustification and a subsequent reduction in intrinsic motivation. In one study demonstrating this effect, children who expected to be (and were) rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less time playing with the drawing materials in subsequent observations than children who were assigned to an unexpected reward condition.[2] While the provision of extrinsic rewards might reduce the desirability of an activity, the use of extrinsic constraints, such as the threat of punishment, against performing an activity has actually been found to increase one’s intrinsic interest in that activity. In one study, when children were given mild threats against playing with an attractive toy, it was found that the threat actually served to increase the child’s interest in the toy, which was previously undesirable to the child in the absence of threat.[3] For those children who received no extrinsic reward, self-determination theory proposes that extrinsic motivation can be internalised by the individual if the task fits with their values and beliefs and therefore helps to fulfill  their basic psychological needs.

Essay on Inclusion of Students with Disabilities - 2995 Words

Schools in today’s society are rapidly changing and growing striving to implement the best practices in their schools. Nonetheless, before a school can implement a program in their school, they need reliable evidence that the new program will work. A new program that schools are aiming to implement is inclusion in the classroom because of the benefits inclusion could bring. The implementation of inclusion is strongly connected by people’s attitudes whether they are positive or negative. However, while inclusion is being widely implemented, there is comparatively little data on its effectiveness. It may be that inclusion benefits some areas such as reading and social skills, more than it does others. In order for inclusion to be†¦show more content†¦Orr (2009) conducted interviews with special education teachers and the attitudes they have seen in their schools since inclusion was implemented in their schools. Orr (2009) chose fifteen teachers, which included fourteen female and one male teacher who agreed to participate in the study so it was a purposive criterion sample. Twelve of the fifteen teachers taught in a suburban area, two in a rural area, and one in an urban area; but they varied in the age they taught and school. Seven of the fifteen teachers taught in a self-contained classroom while the remaining eight taught in a resource room, where they only saw a student for less than an hour or two a day. Another pattern that showed was that many teachers found that they did not receive any classes that focused on differentiation or inclusion while completing their undergraduate work (Orr 2009). These results are important when considering the implementation of inclus ion because it may mean that there is a need to reteach teachers. It is important to consider professional development classes district-wide before implementing inclusion in the classroom. While it is important to consider the attitudes of current teachers, it is also important to be informed of future teacher’s perception of inclusion because they will be the driving force of a school or classroom. Forlin and Chambers (2011) wanted to see the attitudes of pre-service teachers and theirShow MoreRelatedInclusion Of Inclusion For Students With Disabilities Essay1533 Words   |  7 PagesIt is imperative that inclusion techniques be implemented in the classroom. Studies and research show that implementing inclusion techniques in the classroom have immense positive impacts on all students. As a result of these findings there is a rise in legislation being passed that fosters inclusion on a broader scale. Furthermore, it is necessary to apply inclusion techniques from a young age in order to ensure the greatest success. In my opinion the application of inclusion technique’s in classroomsRead MoreInclusion For Students With Disabilities834 Words   |  4 Pag es Inclusion Position Paper Valerie Simmons University of West Alabama SE 506 Dr. Nichols July 1, 2015 Inclusion in the classroom is a widely debated issue in education today. Inclusive education means that students with disabilities are supported in chronologically age appropriate general education classrooms in schools near their home. These students also receive the specialized instruction outlined by their individualized education programs (IEP s) within the context of the coreRead MoreInclusion Of Students With Disabilities2882 Words   |  12 Pages in the American Public School, is the move toward full inclusion of students with disabilities. There has been a rapid rise in the number of students with disabilities who are spending their school day in a general education classroom under the guise of full inclusion. 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There are many who see this as a solution to the problem of how to best educate children with disabilities. Is includingRead MoreInclusion Of Students With Mental Disabilities1551 Words   |  7 Pagesis a term that expresses a commitment to teaching children with physical, mental, and learning disabilities in the classroom they would attend otherwise (to the greatest exten t possible). In inclusive schools, support services are brought to the students as opposed to them leaving class to receive the help they require. This paper is going to focus on the inclusion of students with mental disabilities who are usually separated in special education classrooms. For parents and educators alike, theRead MoreInclusion For Students With Disabilities And Benefits For The Students Essay1987 Words   |  8 Pageshave inclusion in an early childhood classroom. There are benefits for the students with disabilities and benefits for the typically developed student. 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The purposeRead MoreInclusion Of Special Needs For Students With Disabilities1173 Words   |  5 Pageseducation system to include students with disabilities, there has being an ongoing research topic of inclusion. Inclusion, in this area, means the full inclusion of students with special needs in the general education classroom. The research and the debates about the issue of whether or not there should be full inclusion of Special Education students in all general education classrooms in all public schools throughout the United States rages on. The number of students with special needs that are