Baseball Is The Same Way Of Life - 1212 Words

Merrian Webster’s definition of baseball is, â€Å"a ball game played between two teams of nine on a field with a diamond-shaped circuit of four bases.† In reality baseball is so much more than that. The movies Bull Durham, The Natural, and Field of Dreams exemplify the metaphysical meaning of sport. Baseball is a metaphor for the American way of life; it unites people. It can even bring back the dead. The lessons learned in baseball illuminate the core tenants of American society. The metaphysical meaning of baseball represents Americas pulse and has the ability to even bring back the dead. A defining factor of American Life has been how you handle failure. As Rocky Balboa once said, â€Å"It’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how†¦show more content†¦He even sets the minor league record for career home runs. After all of this he still fights with all his energy to make the majors, he is one of the team’s leading hitters and mentors the team’s star pitcher, Nuke. Again, despite his efforts the team decides to send him down. At first, he is heartbroken, but then he bounces back on his feet and decides to become a manager. Even though he does not get to achieve his dream of being a major leaguer he adapts and makes the most of his situation. By all measures he fails in almost every aspect of becoming a major leaguer, but in the end he is happy and is doing what he loves. This is a key to the American lifestyle. Nowadays more than ever, people have to change their careers to pursue new found interests. Look at Hank Nichols for example, he wanted to play baseball, but ultimately became a world renowned basketball official. As he said when he talked to us, he did not put his head down and pout rather he learned from his failure and used it to help him in the future. This is analogous to what Crash ultimately decides to do. This ability to adapt is also exemplified by Roy Hobbs. He is a small town boy who has to strike out The Whammer on three pitches to even get a chance at the big leagues. After mounting the pressure he is shot by a conniving mistress wearing a black veil and is hospitalized for multiple years. While most would

Coca-Cola Company Free Essays

Strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next year or more, how it’s going to get there and how it’ll know if it got there or not. The focus of a strategic plan is usually on the entire organization, while the focus of a business plan is usually on a particular product, service or program. There are a variety of perspectives, models and approaches used in strategic planning. We will write a custom essay sample on Coca-Cola Company or any similar topic only for you Order Now The way that a strategic plan is developed depends on the nature of the organization’s leadership, culture of the organization, complexity of the organization’s environment, size of the organization and expertise of planners. Coca-Cola Company My organisation is ‘Coca-Cola’ and my organisation make strategic plans by their mission statement: ‘To refresh the world – in mind, body and spirit, To inspire moments of optimism – through our brands and actions, To create value and make a difference everywhere we engage’, their value statement: ‘Our shared values that we are guided by are: Leadership, Passion, Integrity, Accountability, Collaboration, Innovation and Quality’, their aims and objectives: The aim and objective of Coca-Cola Enterprises is ‘to be the best beverage sales and customer service company’. To them ‘best’ means being the number one or second brand in every category in which they compete, being their customers most valued supplier and establishing a winning and inclusive culture corporate values and aims – meeting stakeholders expectations. Their organisational structure ensures that all the people of the same skills are grouped together; the main advantage of this type of management is that it allows the members of the team to share any information more freely across boundaries which would otherwise have existed. This type of organisational structure is called a matrix structure and it primarily helps Coca Cola company to achieve their aims and objectives because they’re able to cross section information from different departments of the company, so for example if they’re not selling their beverages so well then they can communicate with the managers to either take them off stock or reduce the price for a bit whilst more customers are attracted to it. This can be attained by their structure. Today, the intelligent organisation recognises that its own future well-being is, to a certain extent, dependent on the well-being of the communities within which it operates at a local, national and global level. It is important that investments which take place in the community, in terms of education, the environment, training, art and cultural institutions and many other causes are carefully thought through throughout the company. Decisions related to corporate citizenship are rather more difficult than the traditional business decisions which managers are used to making. Clear aims and objectives need to be established which fit well with an organisation’s corporate values and aims. The intelligent organisation today takes these issues seriously and seeks to design careful, flexible, comprehensive strategies to guide their decisions. Organisations such as The Coca-Cola Company therefore have established strategies for corporate citizenship. Coca-Cola’s strategy recognises that the well-being of communities is inextricably linked to the well-being of the business environment. A healthy business climate cannot co-exist for long with an ailing social environment. Strengthening both is therefore a goal for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is planning to increase international distribution and target international consumers with Japanese customers by maintaining a consistent strategy overseas, this structure helps the business to achieve their overall purpose and aims by making them more popular throughout more countries and promote them. This then makes more people aware of them and so a lot of their products are sold out more recently. Their organisational structure also helps them to achieve their purpose and aims as the structure allows all the employees to communicate with each other and so allows them to come out with more ideas as a whole group. Marks and Spencer’s company Marks and Spencer’s is my other organisation and the structure of the organisation and the strategic planning helps each business including the Marks and Spencer’s business organisations achieve their overall purpose and aims. There are many ways in which the business organisations do to accomplish this: their vision statement- ‘Our Vision’: To be the standard against which all others are measured. Their mission statement- ‘Our Mission’: To make aspirational quality accessible to all. Their value’s statement- ‘Our Values’: Quality, value, service, innovation and trust. Whether we’re working at home or abroad, within our own stores or in partnership with our franchisees, our Vision, Mission and Values remain the same. Ensuring we meet our customers’ needs with appealing, superior quality products at attractive prices’ and their aim’s and objectives- ‘Our aims and objectives’: To make money for the shareholders, and improve profit margins wherever possible. They do this by- Designing appealing products for its customers, innovating products and selling at prices that their customers are prepared to pay. The organisational structure for Marks and Spencer’s displays the hierarchy design, which shows how the people included rank from most important to least important. This type of structure is a functional structure and is useful for relatively large companies. Employees within the functional structure are differentiated to perform a specialized set of tasks. This helps Marks and Spencer’s to achieve their aims and objectives as for instance the marketing department would only be staffed with marketers responsible for the marketing of the Masks and Spencer’s products. The structure also helps this company to achieve it’s aims and objectives because as a result it does end up making money for the shareholders and can improve profit margins wherever possible by knowing who’s in charge of who, and who are the most important people for the job, which can make the decisions if needed to either reduce stock or raise stock as they’d be experienced. They have a commitment called ‘Plan A’ which is all about environmental issues within the business. Things like, not sending waste to landfill and cutting carbon emissions. Although this is a good thing, it is mainly to improve its image and again, encourage people to shop with them. ‘We launched Plan A in January 2007, setting out 100 commitments to achieve in 5 years. We’ve now extended Plan A to 180 commitments to achieve by 2015, with the ultimate goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable major retailer’. This is Marks and Spencer’s strategic planning and they will achieve this by working with their customers and suppliers to combat climate change, reduce waste, use sustainable raw materials, trade ethically, and help their customers to lead healthier lifestyles Marks and Spencer’s are currently providing their customers with food and cloth services and they are aiming to continue investing in and grow with providing service to their retail business. They are now introducing new clothing items for all ages and gender. This will help them meet their long term objective of growing and investigating within the UK retails. The cascading of goals and objectives should be motiving the entire workforce. The employees have to work together to implement the strategy and objectives and this also includes supporting organisations and to achieve a greater cascading of goals and objectives the organisations must try to enforce balance among its customer relationship, financial aspect and having better objectives to focus on the growth outlook. How to cite Coca-Cola Company, Papers

Ethics Essay Example For Students

Ethics Essay Some people feel that ethics only has to do with the individual who does wrongdoing and has nothing to do with the organization beliefs of a company as a whole. This has been found to be completely false and these ethical wrongdoings reflect the core values of an organization and can be influenced strongly by management. Two specific examples of corporate wrongdoings involve Sears automotive and Beach-nut Nutrition. In both cases, the companies lacked a system that encouraged honesty and fair dealings. Management at these companies encouraged their employees to ignore their own moral attitudes and to adopt the attitudes the firm felt would best help their bottom line. This is why it is important not to place the blame on one persons actions but to focus on the companys philosophies of what is right and wrong. Sears, and Beach-Nut are just two examples of companies that instilled the values of unfair dealing in their employees but this is really a widespread problem in a very competitive capitalistic society. I have worked part-time in restaurants through college and I can reflect first hand why employees are often trained to do what is in the interest of the company and not necessarily to do what they believe would be best for the customer. The primary function of any business is to make money; this is the motivating force that drives many decisions. For example, if a cook drops a piece of filet mignon on the floor and continues to cook it and then serve it, he is not doing this because he feels it is fair to the customer. He is doing this because he knows that it is the profitable thing to do. Even though the cook acted alone with his decision not to throw it away, it wasnt a personal decision but a company decision. For this reason it is important for employees in a company to know where the firm stands morally. Often times these things arent discussed but transferred through leadership leading by example. If the company is comprised with leaders who have a strong moral and ethical make-up this will be reflected into their employees make-up. A company needs to have a shared belief in right action. The only way to have an organization with genetic characteristics of high moral standing is to start at the top. Managers have to let their beliefs be known and lead by example. Many benefits can be derived from an organization that instills high morality. A company operating morally also will have employees with high moral that can feel good about themselves with the work they are doing. This trade off between having employees do the right thing and saving a few dollars is easily offset by the increased productivity employees will have when they can feel good about what they do.