The National Target Program For Sustainable Poverty...

Analysis of the National Target Program for Sustainable Poverty Reduction (NTP-PR) The NTP-PR has contributed substantially to the reduction of poverty in Vietnam. Between 2006-2010 the program gave out 6.2 million preferential loans, and between 2007-2009 the program provided vocational training to roughly 100,000 poor workers, resulting in roughly 60 percent of those trained gaining employment or becoming self-employed. Between 2006-2010, 10 million students received total exemption of tuition, and 2.8 million impoverished ethnic minority children received free textbooks for school. What is more, an estimated 62 million individuals, 90 percent of whom were poor, received free health insurance cards in the same five-year period. The†¦show more content†¦The rationale of focusing on education is that, as demonstrated by Banerjee and Duflo’s work, improving education tends to create numerous positive externalities manifest both in health outcomes and in national economic growth. Policy 1: Implement a CCT program to increase school attendance among the rural poor. You should implement a CCT program, based on Columbia’s successful Familias en Accià ³n, in towns with fewer than 100,000 people, with strict conditions placed on both participating towns and families. First, towns must contain educational and health infrastructure to support individuals to meet the conditions of the program detailed. Towns also must include a bank, and an official with whom the central government can communicate. Second, parents must bring participating children to regular development check-ups, enabled by the health infrastructure mentioned above. Moreover, school-aged children must attend 80 percent of classes for the household to receive an additional monthly transfer. Transfers should be based on estimates of basic nutritional costs per person in each of the qualifying towns. Additional education transfers should be based on a fraction of this initial nutritional transfer, commensurate with the costs of living in each town. Under this program, household consumption will increase, school attendance will increase, and healthcare check-ups will

Bronze Age Mesopotamia Leadership Free Essays

The Epic of Gilgamesh Bronze Age Mesopotamia had a distinct culture and tradition; their rich cultural heritage was passed down by some incredible fictitious and non-fictitious writings like the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’. There are many inferences that can be made about Bronze Age Mesopotamia by reading the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’. It’s clear from this document that the dichotomy between a tyrannical and a just leader existed in the society where the leaders were expected to be courageous, bold and adventurous. We will write a custom essay sample on Bronze Age Mesopotamia Leadership or any similar topic only for you Order Now The importance of the role of religion on leadership cannot be overlooked and religion seemed to mingle with and govern the lives of the leaders. One of the most powerful deductions that can be made about Bronze Age Mesopotamia is the constant struggle between a tyrannical ruler and a just ruler. In fact one can go as far as claiming that the entire document highlights the need for a leader who rules well over his people. In the end of the tale we see Gilgamesh, a tyrannical barbaric ruler, repent by pledging to become someone who loves the people he rules (Kovacs). This shows that perhaps corrupt tyrants who thrived at the expense of the common people marred the Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Similarly another key deduction on leadership is the apparent divine mandate to rule. The Persian Empire is known to have solidified the ‘divine mandate to rule’ and it seems that the Bronze Age Mesopotamia wasn’t too far off from the same notion. In the story we see Gilgamesh as a ‘hero’ mandated by the Gods to rule and after he displeases the Gods we see the birth of another ‘hero’ once again mandated by Gods to challenge Gilgamesh (Kovacs). This intricate relationship between heroes and Gods is something that seems to be a key feature of leadership as no ordinary person could simply become a leader. The Bronze Age Mesopotamian society had somewhat unique expectation from their leaders. The most important expectation dealt with courage and strength, which is to clear from the numerous incidents during the ‘Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of Heaven! † We see Enikdu and Gilgamesh fight off ‘the bull of heaven’ as well as fight each other with courage, passion and determination. A leader who did not ave the courage to fight and the strength to win was considered no leader at all during the Bronze Age Mesopotamia (Kovacs). Similarly, the leaders were also expected to have a sense of adventure to test out their courage. During the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ we see Gilgamesh and Enikdu travel to the dark cedar forest to fight the great monster called Humbaba. There seemed to be no reason for both these leaders to fight this monster but in order to prove their worth and win over the love of their people they had to embark upon this journey and prove their courage as seen in this quote, â€Å"I am Gilgamesh, I killed the Guardian! I destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest†¦ I slew lions in the mountain passes! † (Kovacs) . During the course of the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ we also find out about interesting and intricate relationship between Gods and leadership. The Bronze Age Mesopotamian notion of God was very different from our modern notion and God’s often had physical form and interacted with men and other beings. Its clear from the tale that Gods were deeply concerned about who rules and it what manner. As seen in tablet VI, after Gilgamesh rejected Ishtar’s proposal to her father, â€Å"the god of creation, brings about a curse upon the city of Uruk (Kovacs). Even though the Gods do not have complete control over how the leaders behave they seem to be the ones who ultimately decide their fate as is evident from the death Enkidu. The Gods also seem to decide the creation of leaders and their qualities. The leaders can be seen as ‘appointed officials’ and whenever a leader is doing what the Gods would have him do the God’s can create a new one to bring about balance and harmony. To conclude, the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, one of the few surviving works of the ancient literature, provides with wonderful insights into the hidden world of leadership in the Bronze Age Mesopotamia. From this tale we find out that the Mesopotamian society had experienced tyrannical rule but at the same time people seemed to have realized a way forward where rulers needed to be just. We also find out that Bronze Age Mesopotamian culture recognized courage, passion and a sense of adventure as important virtues in their leaders. Similarly a lot can be said about the close connection between leaders, Gods and the ultimate power of the Gods over the leaders. Works Cited Kovacs, Maureen. The Epic of Gilgamesh. N. p. , n. d. Web. 14 Sep 2012. http://www. ishtartemple. org/epic. htm. How to cite Bronze Age Mesopotamia Leadership, Essay examples

LiFung free essay sample

Fung, which is a long-standing Hong Kong based company, has evolved from an export trading company to a coordinator of value-added services across the whole supply chain in a global, open manufacturing circumstance. Its corporate culture has enabled it to keep pace with the current trend of global business. The successful acquisitions and the venture capital make the company grows stably and rapidly. However, the company now faces some challenges coming from Asian financial environment and related policies. High sensitive of the change in macro environment is essential for the company to success. At the same time, keeping Asia in an important position could take long time competitive advantages. Finally, the update of information and technology may bring more efficiency and effective within the organization. Introduction Li amp; Fung was the first export company that solely funded by Chinese capital in Chinese trade history. Fung Yiu-hing and Li To-ming founded it in 1906 in Guangzhou, China. We will write a custom essay sample on LiFung or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The firm grew to be a limited company in Hong Kong on December 28, 1937. The company expanded quickly to globalize by the leading of the second generation from the Fung family. The high-speed growth of Li amp; Fung Limited started when the third generation of Fung’s family took over the organization. The core parts of the company’s business are foreign trade, logistic, distribution and retail. Victor and William tried to restructure the company, use the modem human resource management, and utilized professional management skills to control the company without eliminating the Chinese style management. Li amp; Fung Limited made use of acquisition to take over the competitors and expanded their suppliers and clients all over the world. The most famous and successful one is the acquisition of Inchcape Buying Services (IBS), which helped Li amp; Fung Limited to open the European market. At the same time, the brothers establish a venture capital corporation to accompany the suppliers and stable its supply chain. According to one anonymous (1999), Li amp; Fung is the world’s largest trade sourcing company and it pioneers a new model for multinationals. By now, William and Victor want to expand the company from Asia based company into a region closer to their target market. With the new trend of the global economy, Li amp; Fung Limited will encounter more challenges and find a way out of a difficulty. Since its foundation, the company has establishes a culture that incorporates pragmatism and innovation. According to Msmith (2008), the progressive corporate culture, which blends traditional pragmatic reasoning with entrepreneurial innovation, has enabled adaptability and growth in a dynamic market. Additionally, it combines the Chinese business culture (â€Å"Chineseness†) with the foreign operations. Not only is it expects loyalty and reward diligent, but it also has a reasonable and transparent bonus system, where bonuses were based solely on profit performance. Generally, the company is employee-concerned, where the workers and managers are treated as family. As is the vision of the corporation, they strive to use resources efficiently; to add business value for our customers and their suppliers; to focus on the health and wellbeing of our colleagues; and to positively impact our communities and societies (2013). Analysis of Li amp; Fung Li amp; Fung’s outsourcing matrix suits particularly well to its global position and activity: To begin with, outsourcing teams are firstly divided into two main product categories: soft and hard goods. Since they â€Å"specialized† in a certain kind of good, they develop a certain expertise, which is an asset in their discussions with external agents. Besides, inside each category, the teams are divided depending on their geographical market. This organization displays an advantage in satisfying specific local needs. Furthermore, connection and communication is established and fostered between the divisions, which know exactly whom to contact for each particular issue. Finally, Li amp; Fung is able to efficiently master the â€Å"4Cs† (connections, communications, control of quality, and consolidation of shipments), and obtain a competitive advantage because of their organizational chart. In terms of Li amp; Fung’s business model, it is â€Å"a virtual factory† or â€Å"private label manufacturing program†. This means that it specializes in providing product itself, not brand or promotion. Although there is big scale merit in production of textile industry, it is difficult that each company has a big factory as there are lots of competitors and fashion of the clothes are always changing, as is thought by Swan (2008). As to company which has a talent of designing or marketing, it is better not to have its manufacturing and outsourcing. Maybe this is why Li amp; Fung is always required from many customers. Also, Li amp; Fung has developed the relationship through its network so that it can get such soft goods as textiles at high speed and excellent quality with the lowest cost. Successful acquisition Li amp; Fung’s mergers have been the main way of expending their business. Among all the mergers, the biggest merger during 1994 to 1997, which is acquiring IBS, is the most successful and famous one even in the global range. The main reason why Li amp; Fung can get so many benefits from merger is based on the following reasons. The first reason is that, Li amp; Fung knows which company to merge. When Li amp; Fung choose companies, they will look for what the company is having at that time, the sourcing, the customers and the employees. In this way, Li amp; Fung can complement the blank its current business. For example, although the margin of IBS was only 0. 8% and the combined average was 2. 2%, the sourcing supplement brought by IBS has make up the blank of Li amp; Fung’s South Asia, Europe, the Mediterranean and Latin America. The second reason is that Li amp; Fung knows how to merge. At that time Li amp; Fung is the largest world’s supplier of retailers and IBS was the second largest. So the merge was very difficult and was treat as an elephant eat elephant merger. Especially for the huge difference between the two companies, Li amp; Fung was a U. S. style Chinese-family business, While IBS was a British company. There would be a lot of unaccustomed and conflicts as expected. So Li amp; Fung created a transition team to review organizational processes and implement a unit-by-unit transition. Instead of doing the transition after the merger, Li amp; Fung did it ahead of the merger, in order of saving accustoming time. When the scale of the company increases, the operational mode of the company has to keep changing as well. After the merger, Li amp; Fung’s scale is twice as big. Li amp; Fung changed its mode into a more efficient and suitable one. It assigned managers to customer groups and not countries. This has made the management to be more professional and make the production more efficient. The merger has made the sourcing matrix of Li amp; Fung more mature. The margin of Li amp; Fung was higher than those of other companies due to their regionally coordinated sourcing services. Small Venture Capital Arm In 1986, Li amp; Fung established a small venture capital group in order to improve and perfect the whole supply chain. LFI invested in companies, which could assist the Li amp; Fung’s sourcing services. Magretta (1998) indicates that Victor said â€Å"A big piece of our corporate development is plugging those holes-the phrase we use is filling in the mosaic and we use venture capital to do it. † LFI pay the same attention on the companies’ management system as the product when they were choosing the company to invest. Biers (2000) said, â€Å"Its venture activity has remained modest by industry standards, with just two or three new investments a year, each typically of just a few million dollars or less. The CEO of LFI mentioned that they only invested in companies that had at least $3 million profit, lack of resource and kept the control of the company. At the same time, they were looking for the young and creative companies that owned by people with design and marketing talent. The most successful capital injection is the investment to a promotional company; Cyrk Inc. LFI spe nt $200,000 in order to take 30% shares in Cyrk Inc. during 1990. At the very start, Cyrk Inc. provided service of T-shirt print. Three year after the capital injection, the sales volume raised 20 times more than before through capitalized on its logo and promotional design capabilities. In this case, they made contract with Philip Morris to produce a full line of promotional clothing. Five years later, LFI sold their shares of Cyrk Inc. for about $65 million. After spending a great deal of investment in America, LFI transferred their sight to the European market. As a result of diverse culture and language, it was more difficult to invest in several companies to cover the whole European market. The complex situation required the managers in European have more experience and different strategies for different countries. During the process of helping these companies, they gain experience about the selection of the collaborate companies and create more opportunities to broaden their business fields. At the same time, Li amp; Fung can gain high reputations among the growing companies, because the goal of the LFI is not acquire these companies. In this case, these companies could unconstrained develop themselves. And Li amp; Fung could not only maintain the good relationship with both potential partners and current partners. Challenges amp; Recommendations For Li amp; Fung, although it is already the largest export company in the world, it is still facing a lot of challenges. According to the trend of international Economics, Asian Financial Crisis will be gone. By then, the labor cost of Li amp; Fung will not be as low as now. So margin will be lower in the coming future. But even if the Asian market has recovered, its labor cost is still lower than other countries; also the gap between the wealthy and poor is huge. Most of people are living under average level, which will bring a low cost of labor. Also Asian has a large population, which will involve a large number of rich people, whose price sensitivity is low and needs are high. They can purchase the products, which have been produced in Asian. So Li amp; Fung could give more attention to Asian Market, instead of giving it up. Policies of trade protection, which have been published by governments in different countries, will also be a huge challenge to Li amp; Fung. Under this circumstance, all that Li amp; Fung can do is to prevent before it or actively adjust after the coming of policies. Li amp; Fung should do market research and macroeconomics analysis regularly in order to choose the very best sourcing places. Also, it ought to try to find outstanding suppliers in different economic regions and different fields, so that the risk will be shared. Thereby, Li amp; Fung should closely monitor the changes of economics and adjust it in time. With the development of technology, information system is playing an important role in supply chain management. In this case, Li amp; Fung could establish a proprietary information network that enabled clients to view the status of an order. This will improve their customer relationship management. At the same time, they could set up a powerful database to do data mining, which could collect the data of suppliers and consumers, in order to calculate the shortest time and distance and lowest cost in operation. Also they can collect the data of customers, so that they can know better of market needs and offer better service. Overall, for Li amp; Fung, challenges and chances are coexisting. If it could continue to reflect, to improve, it would keep up with the trend of world economics and update information and technology timely. References 1. Biers, D. (2000). Thinking small. Far Eastern Economic Review, 163(46), 48-48. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/208225120? accountid=9744 2. Li amp; fung pioneers a new model for multinationals. (1999). Strategic Direction, 15(6), 24-25. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/218626878? accountid=9744 3. Li amp; Fung: Beyond â€Å"Filling in the Mosaic†, 1998-1998(HBS Case 9-398-092). 4. Magretta, J. (1998), Fast, global, and entrepreneurial: Supply chain management, hong kong style: An interview with victor fung. Harvard Business Review, 76(5), 102-114. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/227758445? accountid=9744 5. Mismith068 (2008, 12). Li and Fung Case Analysis. StudyMode. com. Retrieved 12, 2008, from http://www. studymode. com/essays/Li-Fung-Case-Analysis-185365. html 6. Swan (2008, 9). Agri-Future; trendspotting amp; future thinking. Retrieved 9, 2008, from http://swan-futurethinking. blogspot. ca/2008_09_01_archive. html 7. Sustainability (2013, 3). Retrieved March 14, 2013 from http://www. lifung. com/eng/csr/csr1. php