The Cyclic Relationship Between Culture And Technology :: Environment Environmental Pollution Preservation

Trying to determine the effect of culture on technology is a difficult task. This is due to the cyclic nature of the relationship between culture and technology. Working with the general notion of culture (1), it is easy to see why the task of analyzing the effect of culture on technology is hard. This is because technology itself is part of this definition of culture, â€Å"all other products of human work and thought† (2). In a sense, we are trying to find the effect of culture on culture itself, which initially sounds strange. However, considering technology as one of the venues that a given culture utilizes to transform itself, the challenge to examine the effect of culture on technology can be narrowed down to the investigation of the cyclic relationship between culture and technology. Thus, this paper discusses, what we will label, ‘technology-induced cultures’ and ‘culture-induced technologies’, in order to show the feedback loop between cultur e and technology. The class readings provide several instances of how technology affects and transforms its encompassing culture (i.e. the culture that was responsible for bringing forth the very same technology). One such technology is agriculture. The hunting and gathering way of life was already being saturated when the world population was about 4 million. With human population reaching 200 million by 200 B.C., it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to survive by just gathering and hunting. (3). Even though it is hard to claim that early man consciously pursued agriculture as the solution to this problem, it is uncontested that the hunter-gatherer society is the culture that was responsible for the invention of agriculture, as Ehrlich points out, â€Å"agriculture was thus invented gradually, piecemeal, and quite probably sometime reluctantly as groups changed time-honored lifestyles†(Ehrlich 15/26). The effect of this technology on the hunter-gatherer society was phenomenal, as it â€Å"put humanity on the road to sociopolitical complexity†(Ehrlich 17/26). The constant mobility as well as the scarce resources involved with the hunting and gathering way of life did not allow for the development of a complex society, as Ehrlich explicitly mentions, â€Å"Without the ensuring agricultural revolution and the sedentary life and divisions of labor it eventually made possible, cultural evolution could never have produced our complex modern civilization. Without farming, which freed some people of the chore of wrestling nourishment from the environment, there would be no cities, no states, no science, and no mayors†(4).

Reynolds Construction Case Study Essay

1. Ben Lawson’s Custom Fabricators, Inc., creates value for Orleans by making the custom control panel for the elevators. Later on, the business has grown bigger. Ben’s company provides special brackets and panels for the plant. Since â€Å"outsourcing†, Ben also makes the entire control panel, complete with the buttons and the wiring harness. 2. Ben Lawson has some big competitive advantages in keeping the Orleans business. They have been working together for a long time so Ben‘s company could easily understand what the customer need like delivering in time, great quality products. After few changes, Ben still provide good products for Orleans so that help Ben to gain trust in doing business, which strengthens their relationship. 3. In the past, Orleans’ priorities were only about quantity, doing the same business with familiar suppliers. Now Orleans has change that. They want to make profit, reduce cost associated with the elevators by cutting raw materials cost, and  that would affect Ben’s business. 4. Ben should change his business model so that it would have him gain advantages. Even though Ben has long relationship doing business with Orleans, it may not help much with Orleans’ new priorities. 5. In the value chain, Ben’s company is an efficient manufacturer because they build a factory that has full of tools to bring out the best products. Besides, those products are always delivered in time since Ben understands Orleans’ business. 6. Ben’s company has to prove that they will always bring high quality products that in Orleans’ need. Compared to a loyal customer as Ben, it would be safer to doing business with, both relationship and physical distance. Besides, Ben has to prove that hiring Mexican labor could help cutting cost but cannot compare with Ben’s company of experiences. Case: Lasik Vision Corporation 1. Lasik Vision’s competitive priority is to offer the lowest price of eye surgery and high volume at the same time. They also run advertisement of big discounts to attract customer, which is â€Å"$1,475 per eye† and then â€Å"$1,598 for both eyes†. 2. As showed in the case, Lasik Vision did attract lots of customers and helped them gain profit but only in short-run. Because they cut out the fees for expensive equipment, it may not good care enough for the patients. Besides, their high volume of surgery may gain big profit but also bring higher risk, which is unsatisfied patients filing lawsuit. 3. If Lasik has chosen to be in this market, they have to guarantee their quality service to the customers. Also, they need to invest in some expensive equipment or train the employees. With that, they could grow their business in reliability of customers.

Eva -Economic Value Added - 10189 Words

9-206-016 REV: JULY 11, 2006 MIHIR A. DESAI FABRIZIO FERRI Understanding Economic Value Added EVA is based on something we have known for a long time: what we generally call profits, the money left to service equity, is usually not profit at all. Until a business returns a profit that is greater than its cost of capital, it operates at a loss. Never mind that it pays taxes as if it had a genuine profit. The enterprise still returns less to the economy than it devours in resources . . . it does not create wealth; it destroys it.1 — Peter Drucker This note explores the concept of Economic Value Added (EVA)2 and its practical applications as a management control system for performance measurement and incentive compensation. The†¦show more content†¦In short, the firm has paid its operating and capital costs and created additional wealth. Negative EVA, instead, suggests that the firm â€Å"devours resources† (in Peter Drucker’s terms) without providing a commensurate return for their use. The key feature of EVA is that it incorporates a charge for the use of both debt and equity capital. Accounting earnings, on the contrary, only deduct the (after-tax) cost of debt capital (i.e., the interest expense subtracted in the computation of net income). This difference has important implications in terms of motivating managerial behavior. Firms focused on earnings growth will end up investing in any project yielding a return greater than the (after-tax) cost of debt, rather than investing only in projects with returns greater than the overall cost of capital—the basic rule of Net Present Value (NPV) analysis. By explicitly identifying and incorporating the cost of equity capital, EV A raises the bar and makes managers more cognizant of the costs of the capital employed, thereby promoting more efficient allocation of capital. Other available measures also reflect the use of capital. 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