4.13.2 Example: an ‘intelligent’ email system Let us work through an email example of making a system ‘smarter’. We are all familiar with the standardised fields in an email system: From, To, Subject. The computer needs the To/From information, expressed in a standard format, to direct the message to its addressees and allow them to reply. It has no concept of who the sender and recipient are, or what the Subject field means. We can imagine simple knowledge-level email categories which add status information to t
4.3.1 Product leadership Its practitioners concentrate on offering products that push performance boundaries. Their proposition to customers is an offer of the best product, period. Moreover, product leaders don't build their positions with just one innovation; they continue to innovate year after year, product cycle after product cycle. (Treacy and Wiersema, 1996) For product leaders, competition is not about pric
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should: appraise your own skills in asking for contributions; identify ways of sustaining and developing donor involvement; make recommendations on how your organisation might most appropriately acknowledge contributions; contribute to thinking on the actual or potential role of ‘big gifts’ in your organisation's approach to fundraising; enhance your approach to legacy fundraising.
2.1 Unique problems and constraints In an ideal world, projects would be completed on time, within specified budgets and to the standards set out in the plans. In practice, any project involves a set of unique problems and constraints that inevitably create complexity and risk. Plans are liable to change as work progresses, and each stage in the process may have to be revisited several times before completion. Projects do not exist in a vacuum: they often take place in rapidly changing contexts, and the impact of the changing e
1.3 Motivating and preparing staff Motivation is important. In resourcing the project it may be worthwhile to build in a reward system that helps to motivate. This depends on the availability of the resources to make this possible. Even if the material rewards are good, the conditions in which staff work and the relationships between them always affect performance. A project manager is often able to influence conditions and culture. The tasks allocated to staff must be realistic and achievable, and it is helpful to agree these
2.8 Network analysis One of the weaknesses of simple charts for planning and control is that they do not show how tasks are dependent on each other. Network analysis (or critical path analysis) seeks to overcome that drawback, particularly where large or specialist projects are concerned. The critical path is found as a result of the analysis of the network. There are many computer software packages which can help a manager to carry out a network analysis.
3.7 Interest rate risk This has to be seen in conjunction with the previous comments about the secondary market in shares and debt instruments. An efficient secondary market can ensure that there is always a ready buyer for an investment, but the price at which the investment can actually be sold will depend entirely on market conditions at the time of sale. The secondary market price will not necessarily bear any relation to the price originally paid by the investor. The following example illustrates the general p
6.3 Identifying the critical path The critical path describes the sequence of tasks that would enable the project to be completed in the shortest possible time. It is based on the idea that some tasks must be completed before others can begin. A critical path diagram is a useful tool for scheduling the dependencies and controlling a project. In order to identify the critical path the length of time that each task will take must be calculated. 5.4 The pursuit of legitimacy Social institutions affect which actions are seen as legitimate. As we make decisions in organisations it is common to be concerned not just with economic outcomes but also with ‘legitimacy ’: ‘How will this decision be seen by X ’?; ‘Does this fit the way things are done around here?’; ‘What would happen if the press got hold of this?’; and so on. Some of this can be quite unconscious; the conceptual frameworks and notions of cause and effect that are available to decis 1.5.1 A true community of Europeans? Ray Hudson (Hudson and Williams, 1999) has maintained that the formation of a true community of Europeans is important and desirable, and that it will not follow automatically from the converging of linguistic and cultural practices. It is difficult to envisage the disappearance of national differences, though they may be less pronounced in the future. What seems to be clear for Hudson is that only by looking at the future can a European identity be created; the past, unless highly sanitised, 1.6.1 Introduction Of course, there is another problem hovering in the background in respect to the Euro's international role: namely that of the enlargement of the EU. In the light of the analysis so far two areas are picked out here: monetary implications and fiscal policy implications. These are obviously closely related. Both of these raise questions about the costs involved for the new members and those set to join somewhere down the line. We concentrate on the monetary issue of joining the Euro-zone first 8.8 Finding information in society This unit will help you to identify and use information in society, whether for your work, study or personal purposes. Experiment with some of the key resources in this subject area, and learn about the skills which will enable you to plan searches for information, so you can find what you are looking for more easily. Discover the meaning of information quality, and learn how to evaluate the information you come across. You will also be introduced to the many different ways of organising your 3.5 The incredible shrinking chip This unit focuses on the creation of a semiconductor transistor – a versatile tiny transistor that is now at the heart of the electronics industry. In video clips the history of the incredible shrinking chip, its Scottish connections and an explanation of the physics that make chips work are accompanied by a reconstruction of the making of a transistor using the crude techniques of yesteryear. In this unit we follow two Scottish computer engineers with little or no physics knowledge a Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: The content ackno 2.5 Looking ahead: understanding economic change Section 2 has looked at different ways of understanding the new economy, of understanding what is actually happening. Look back over the different understandings of the new economy. Is there really a new economy – ju 2.4 Information and communication technologies The new economy is much more than a shift from manufacturing to services and the increased integration of economies on a global scale. It is also strongly linked to the development of ICT, which has facilitated the development of new processes and products, especially ‘knowledge goods’ which are described below. The internet has increased the ‘connectivity’ or interconnectedness between economies by making textual communication possible in real time as well as providing a new me Introduction This unit explores questions about New Labour's approach to welfare reconstruction. This is linked to the unsettling and remaking of the old Welfare State by the New Right. The material is primarily an audio file, originally 27 minutes in length, and recorded in 1999. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Social Policy: Welfare, Power and Diversity (D218) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wi Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. This extract is taken from D218: Social policy: welfare, power and diversity, produced by the BBC on behalf of the Open University. © 2007 The Open University. Dominik Golenia: [Details correct as of 13th December 2.4 Northern Ireland Ireland was long considered a de facto province of England, a colonial possession dominated politically and militarily by its more powerful neighbour to the east. The English divided Ireland into counties for administrative purposes, introduced English law and established a Parliament in England and Ireland in 1297, within which only the Anglo-Irish were represented. By the fourteenth century Irish discrimination by the English had prompted widespread protests, which had resulted in a revival 3.4 Input and output considerations CCDs are not inherently able to detect colour, only brightness. So it is necessary to rely on the fact that any colour of light can be made up from the three primary colours of light: red, blue and green. (Note that the three primary colours of light are different from the three primary colours of pigments.) Each CCD in the array is therefore overlaid with a red, blue or green filter and so detects the brightness of, respectively, the red light, the blue light or the green light falling on it
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