2.1 The importance of sine waves For much of the rest of this unit we shall be concerned with the properties of a type of sound wave that when represented as a graph has a characteristic shape known as a sine wave. Figure 1 shows you what a sine-wave graph looks like. For the moment you need not be concerned with what this grap
6.4 Prospect theory Kahneman and Tversky (1979) developed ‘prospect theory’ to describe this combination of risk and loss aversion. This suggests that whether an individual is risk seeking or risk averse will depend on where they are in relation to a personal reference point. The reference point divides the area where they feel as if they are in loss from the area where they feel they are in gain. This point is not usually zero, and will change over time. For example, a professional financial trader who is p
6.2 A rational-economic perspective on risk A rational-economic perspective generally represents risk as a combination of the expected magnitude of a gain or loss, combined with some probability distribution of anticipated outcomes. Economic ideas of risk behaviour are founded largely on expected utility theory. Expected utility theory predicts that investors will always be risk averse. The shape of the utility curve (utility plotted against increasing wealth) is such that utility increases with wealth, but at a declining rate. This is
5.6 A way of dealing with social pressures: decoupling Organisations often deal with these social pressures by decoupling responses to these different pressures. The need to appear legitimate in the eyes of important constituencies is met by actions and practices which have a purely ceremonial character: they are done for the sake of appearances and not with any real engagement. The example in Author(s):
Introduction ‘Environment’ is one of the more popular words in the management lexicon, most generally understood to be referring to ‘something outside’. But common usage today often interprets the Environment (with or without the capital ‘E’) as referring to the planetary ecosystem. On that basis the Environment includes such things as global warming, the state of the ozone layer, deforestation and the means of energy generation. Organisations need to coexist with their environment, responding
1.4.1 PROMPT There is so much information available on the Internet on every topic imaginable. But how do you know if it is any good? And if you find a lot more information than you really need, how do you decide what to keep and who to discard? In this section we are going to introduce a simple checklist to help you to judge the quality of the information you find. Before we do this, spend a few minutes thinking about what is meant by information quality. Introduction This unit, which contains material from the current Open University second level Politics course DD203 Power, Equality and Dissent, is pitched at the intermediate level. It should take you about 8 hours to study if you attempt the recommended exercises and make summary notes of its key points. Doing so will allow you to practise the crucial academic skill of summary and précis – extracting the gist of an argument – which will be of particular help if you go on to study in related 4.1 Legacy technology The aim of Section 5 is to examine some of the issues and problems which affect the devekopment of Internet, e-commerce and e-business applications. The World Wide Web was developed as a way of dispensing documentation within the large research laboratory at CERN in Geneva. I am sure that the originator of the technology, Tim Berners-Lee, did not realise at that stage how it would expand and become a major component of our economic infrastructure. Because many of the developers o 3.3 Stage 2: Gathering the course material together You will need to gather all your course material and lecture notes together, and organise them properly. Your course material or texts should contain an overview of your course. Keep this to hand, as it will prove invaluable in you come to identify the topics you will need to revise. There are also other sources of information that you can draw on when gathering information for your revision. 1 Revision and exams Most likely, you are reading this unit because you feel unsure about your ability to do yourself justice in exams. You may never have taken an exam and are wondering how to prepare yourself. It may have been a long time since you took an exam, and you feel a need to refresh your technique. You may be looking for reassurance and advice because you may have had a bad exam experience in the past. Whatever your reason, we hope that this unit will help. This unit is a practical one, and we w 10.1 Further reading OU books Other boo 7.1 Reviewing This phase takes place after a period of study and an assignment have been completed. It is when you focus on reviewing your performance on your assignment as well as the whole cycle of study you have just completed. The two activities of this phase are: Introduction Learning how to learn is a process in which we all engage throughout our lives, although often we do not realise that we are, in fact, learning how to learn. Most of the time we concentrate on what we are learning rather than how we are learning it. In this unit, we aim to make the process of learning much more explicit by inviting you to apply the various ideas and activities to your own current or recent study as a way of increasing your awareness of your own learning. Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material: The following material is Proprietary, used under licence (see terms and conditions) This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence References 4.1 Underlining and highlighting To be able to make sense of what you are reading, you need to read actively. One method that can help is to use a pen. Did you underline or highlight any words as you read the Layard article? If not, go back over the 3.1 Skimming Did you read the Layard article quickly enough, or perhaps too quickly? Reading speed is a persistent worry when you study. There always seems to be much more to read than you have time for, so you feel a tremendous pressure to read faster. But then, if you go too fast, you don't learn much. So what is the ‘right’ speed? The answer is – it depends on what you are trying to achieve. It's surprising how much you can pick up if you push on quickly through a few pages. 2.5 Poor environment Were you held back at all in your reading by the environment you were reading in? Were you reading in bed, in the bath, sitting at a desk, on the bus, or in the park? Any of these could be a good time and place, but did it actually work for you?
Were you able to maintain your concentration fo 2.4 Disagreeing with the author It is clear from Kate's responses that from the outset she felt hostile to Layard's article and to Layard himself. As she later explained in a seminar, she felt that he looked down on people with low incomes, such as herself. She felt she was being told that she wasn't happy with her life and that she envied people with lots of possessions. In her philosophy, she said, happiness had nothing to do with wealth. She was just as capable of being happy as the richest people in the country. Because 2.3 Coping with difficult parts Salim and Lewis mentioned that they found some sections of Layard's article difficult. So did I; for example, anyone without a background in economics would have difficulty grasping the arguments in paragraphs 13 and 14. So what should you do when you can't make sense of what you read? Should you search online to find out about taxation theory? For my own satisfaction I searched for a definition of ‘marginal rate of taxation’ just to get the gist of it. I also tried to write down th
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Activity 2
