1 Economic function of the entrepreneur Broadly, entrepreneurs have two vital roles to play in the economy (1) to introduce new ideas and (2) to energise business processes. Strictly speaking, the term entrepreneur, which derives from the French words entre (between) and prendre (to take), referred to someone who acted as an intermediary in undertaking to do something. The term was originally used to describe the activities of what today we might call an impresario, a promoter or a deal maker. The entrep
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should: understand the nature of entrepreneurship; understand the function of the entrepreneur in the successful, commercial application of innovations; confirm your entrepreneurial business idea; identify personal attributes that enable best use of entrepreneurial opportunities; explore entrepreneurial leadership and management style; identify the requirements for building an
7.2.3 Sticking to one good argument While it may seem better to use as many arguments as possible to support a case you are trying to make, skilled negotiators tend to rely on fewer stronger arguments. This is because a weak argument does not add to a strong one, but has the opposite effect of diluting and weakening it.
1.1 A definition One definition is ‘A project is a one-off, non-repeated activity or set of tasks which achieves clearly stated objectives within a time limit.’ Most managers work on projects, often small or short-term projects, rather than large ones that take several years to complete. Size or length of time do not indicate that one project is more important than another – often small projects pave
Introduction Many managers find that they are required to manage projects. In this unit we aim to help you to take an overview of the features of a project and the issues that arise in managing a project. Once you have identified a piece of work as a project, you are able to use a number of management approaches that have proven effective in managing projects. A project is a one-off, non-repeated activity or set of tasks that achieves clearly stated objectives within a time limit. Most projects are goal-o
1.8.1 Discursive practices are flexible In general terms, then, the interaction order is not a set of hard and fast rules which people follow like social dopes. Rather, discursive practices are flexible and creative resources. Genres may be mixed together and new genres can emerge. Part of the task of ethnographers of communication is to try to describe the diversity across social situations. In effect, they are charting what they call communicative ecologies (Gumperz, 1999): the variable and dynamic discursive practices fou
1.1 Introduction In this reading I focus on a piece of data to introduce some of the main themes and issues in discourse research. The material I have chosen to examine has historical interest. It is a public text of some import for British society and yet it also has a curiously private and confessional aspect. I am going to look at extracts from Princess Diana's interview with Martin Bashir which was screened in 1995 on Panorama – a British news-documentary television programme. What was stri
References 1.5.2 Consequences of introducing the Euro into the international system The jump in the Euro as currency of choice for bond denomination in 1999 in part reflects the advent of the Euro as a common currency across the Euro-zone. But is has also encouraged those countries in the EU who are not in the Euro-zone, or those not in the EU at all, to borrow in Euros as well. The point about the consolidation and integration of the Euro bond market discussed in Author(s): 1.2.2 Summary The EU-15/25 is a large and prosperous player on the world economic stage. It represents a continental-sized economy, able to compete with the USA and Japan (and China and India, somewhere down the line). The new EU members who joined in 2004, and those lining up to join later, are at a different level of development to the EU-15. This will pose considerable challenges for those managing and governing the n 1.1 Managing the European economy after the introduction of the Euro In many ways the introduction of the Euro both begged the question of an integrated financial system for Europe (or the Euro-zone in the first instance) and was stimulated by its own success. This success can be measured in terms of a relatively low-inflation economy and, after a shaky start, the Euro's emergence as an international currency of some repute. Thus one of the first issues to deal with in this unit is the background to the institutional changes that Economic and Monetary Union (E 2.2 The challenge of methods The methodological challenges facing the social sciences are best outlined in the form of a series of questions about how we should engage in research and what kind of research attitude is appropriate. Should social scientists look to the assumptions and methods developed in the natural sciences or develop their own assumptions and methods? Do the objects which we study in the social sciences, such as the self, society, the economy, i 10 Further resources A very useful overview of ‘migration’ can be found in Lewis (2003). A special issue of Critical Social Policy (2002, vol.22, no.3) on ‘Asylum and welfare’ focuses on refugees, asylum seekers and migration. Kushner's The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination (1994) and London's Whitehall and the Jew (2000) provide comprehensive analyses of UK approaches to refugees in the 1930s. In such a rapidly changing area of social policy, up-to-date information and anal 9 Conclusion In this unit we have explored the mutual constitution of personal lives and social policy through an analysis of the implications of different aspects of citizenship on the lives of refugees and asylum seekers. We have seen that legislation, social policy and practice concerned with asylum have profound effects on personal lives. Crucially, we saw that the very words used to describe people, their access to welfare, rights to work, legal status and the procedures for becoming a British citize 8.1.1 What kind of evidence has been used in this unit? We have used personal stories as evidence to support arguments about the mutual constitution of personal lives and social policy. The people in our stories all came to, or stayed in, the UK primarily because they saw it as a place of safety, not because of the welfare benefits or services they hoped to receive, and we have contrasted this with dominant discourses about (bogus) asylum seekers for whom welfare in the UK is said to act as a magnet. These dominant or official discourses, echoed b 3.3 Reasons for – and effects of – nationalisms and federalisation Most of these regions had their own distinctive history and culture, often including their own ‘minority’ languages. However, there were contemporary reasons for the nationalist or regionalist resurgence, including economic and cultural problems and changes in the power and authority of central state administrations. In some cases (for example, in Ireland and the Basque Country) inspiration was derived from the example of anti-colonial liberation struggles and newly independent (often sma 8.6 Poverty in Scotland Poverty in Scotland 2007 is the fifth in a series of books which, since the mid-1990s, have provided a comprehensive picture of the extent of poverty in Scottish society. Each of these books has been charged with making accessible what is often a complex world of figures, diverse measurements, competing definitions and contrasting interpretations of poverty – and identifying what should be done to address poverty. This book is presented as a pdf and was first produced in 2006. 8.5 Who belongs to Glasgow? There are many different ways of interpreting and representing the character and identity of a place – many different geographical imaginations. Identities of places are a product of social action and of how people construct their own representations of particular places. Thus this unit explores ideas about place and identity using the concept of ‘geographical imagination’. This is achieved by examining the images that represent a place, to reveal how those images came about and d 8.4 A Europe of the regions? What role will the ‘regions’ play in the emerging governance structures of the European Union? This unit examines the rise of the regions and regionalism in Western Europe. You will look at the possible development pathways for Europe: will it become a Federal super-state or a decentralised ‘Europe of the Regions’? The unit discusses the future of Europe, and it looks particularly closely at what may happen to the smaller political units presently existing below the level of the 1.1.1 Culture and society in Scotland Scotland has a rich and distinctive cultural heritage based on many aspects including language, history, music and literature. For a small country whose population has never been much in excess of five million, Scotland can be justifiably proud of its past achievements. However there have been significant changes in Scotland over the last decade, principally arising from devolution in 1999. This section of OpenLearn Scotland introduces learners to a wide range of topics reflecting both Scotla
