Tuesday, April 28, 2020

The Sedition Act Of 1798 For The First Few Years Of Constitutional Gov

The Sedition Act of 1798 For the first few years of Constitutional government, under the leadership of George Washington, there was a unity, commonly called Federalism that even James Madison (the future architect of the Republican Party) acknowledged in describing the Republican form of government-- ? And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.? Although legislators had serious differences of opinions, political unity was considered absolutely essential for the stability of the nation. Political parties or factions were considered evil as ?Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not acc ording to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority Public perception of factions were related to British excesses and thought to be ?the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.? James Madison wrote in Federalist Papers #10, ?By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.? He went on to explain that faction is part of human nature; ?that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.? The significant point Madison was to make in this essay was that the Union was a safeguard against factions in that even if ?the influence of factious leaders may kindle a fla me within their particular States, [they will be] unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.? What caused men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to defy tradition and public perceptions against factions and build an opposition party? Did they finally agree with Edmund Burkes' famous aphorism: ?When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle Did the answer lie in their opposition with the agenda of Alexander Hamilton and the increases of power both to the executive branch as well as the legislative branch of government? Hamilton pushed for The Bank of the United States, a large standing Army raised by the President (Congress was to raise and support armies,) a Department of Navy, funding and excise taxes, and, in foreign policy, a neutrality that was sympathetic to British interest to the detriment of France. Many legislators, especially those in the south, were alarmed to t he point that a separation of the Union was suggested as the only way to deal with Hamilton's successes. Many were afraid that the army would be used against them as it had during the Whiskey Rebellion. Southerners saw the taxes to support a new treasury loan favoring ?pro-British merchants in the commercial cities,? and unfairly paid by landowners in the South. These issues as well as neutrality issues between France, England, and the United States were the catalyst for the forming of the Republican Party. The French and English conflict caused many problems with America's political system. The English ?Order of Council? and the French ?Milan Decree? wreaked havoc with America's shipping and led to Jay's Treaty of 1794. Jay's Treaty was advantageous to America and helped to head off a war with Britain, but it also alienated the French. The French reacted by seizing American ships causing the threat of war to loom large in American minds. President Adams sent three commissioners to France to work out a solution and to modify the Franco-American alliance of 1778, but the Paris government asked for bribes and a loan from the United States before negotiations could even begin. The American commissioners refused to pay the bribes and they were denied an audience with accredited authorities and The Sedition Act Of 1798 For The First Few Years Of Constitutional Gov The Sedition Act of 1798 For the first few years of Constitutional government, under the leadership of George Washington, there was a unity, commonly called Federalism that even James Madison (the future architect of the Republican Party) acknowledged in describing the Republican form of government-- ? And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.? Although legislators had serious differences of opinions, political unity was considered absolutely essential for the stability of the nation. Political parties or factions were considered evil as ?Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not acc ording to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority Public perception of factions were related to British excesses and thought to be ?the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.? James Madison wrote in Federalist Papers #10, ?By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.? He went on to explain that faction is part of human nature; ?that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.? The significant point Madison was to make in this essay was that the Union was a safeguard against factions in that even if ?the influence of factious leaders may kindle a fla me within their particular States, [they will be] unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.? What caused men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to defy tradition and public perceptions against factions and build an opposition party? Did they finally agree with Edmund Burkes' famous aphorism: ?When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle Did the answer lie in their opposition with the agenda of Alexander Hamilton and the increases of power both to the executive branch as well as the legislative branch of government? Hamilton pushed for The Bank of the United States, a large standing Army raised by the President (Congress was to raise and support armies,) a Department of Navy, funding and excise taxes, and, in foreign policy, a neutrality that was sympathetic to British interest to the detriment of France. Many legislators, especially those in the south, were alarmed to t he point that a separation of the Union was suggested as the only way to deal with Hamilton's successes. Many were afraid that the army would be used against them as it had during the Whiskey Rebellion. Southerners saw the taxes to support a new treasury loan favoring ?pro-British merchants in the commercial cities,? and unfairly paid by landowners in the South. These issues as well as neutrality issues between France, England, and the United States were the catalyst for the forming of the Republican Party. The French and English conflict caused many problems with America's political system. The English ?Order of Council? and the French ?Milan Decree? wreaked havoc with America's shipping and led to Jay's Treaty of 1794. Jay's Treaty was advantageous to America and helped to head off a war with Britain, but it also alienated the French. The French reacted by seizing American ships causing the threat of war to loom large in American minds. President Adams sent three commissioners to France to work out a solution and to modify the Franco-American alliance of 1778, but the Paris government asked for bribes and a loan from the United States before negotiations could even begin. The American commissioners refused to pay the bribes and they were denied an audience with accredited authorities and

Friday, March 20, 2020

Read and Understand Measurements in House Plans

Read and Understand Measurements in House Plans Its easy to purchase house plans from a website or house plan catalog, but they hardly ever come with directions for reading floor plans. What are you buying? Will the completed house measure up to your expectations? The following hints come from an architect who designs luxury house plans and custom homes. He wants you to know about measuring. - ed. Key Facts About Measuring area: measured in square feet (or square meters), the rectangular length times the width; the area of a triangle is one-half the base times the heightvolume: the length times the width times the heightarea of a composite: for an irregularly shaped room, divide the room into regular shapes (rectangles and triangles) and sum the areasgross area: measured from the exterior wall foundation, so the area includes wall thicknessnet area: measured from interior walls; area of the living spacearchitect scale: a three-sided measuring device with six measuring edges (described as prism-shaped), similar to a ruler, but used to interpret the true size of a line drawn to scale on a floor plan or blueprint Size Up Your House Plan When you compare house plans, one of the more important characteristics you’ll consider is the area of the floor plan - the size of the plan - measured in square feet or square meters. Heres a little secret. Square feet and square meters are not measured the same on every house plan. Any two house plans that appear to be of equal area may not really be. Does this make much difference when you’re choosing a plan? You bet it does! On a 3,000 square foot plan, a difference of only 10 percent might unexpectedly cost you tens of thousands of dollars. Question the Measurements Builders, architects, real estate professionals, bankers, auditors, and appraisers often report room sizes differently to better suit their particular needs. House plan services also vary in their area-calculation protocols. In order to compare floor plan areas accurately, you’ve got to be sure that the areas are counted the same. Generally, builders and real estate professionals want to show that a house is as big as possible. Their goal is to quote a lower cost per square foot or square meter so that the house will appear more valuable. In contrast, appraisers, assessors, and county auditors usually measure the perimeter of the house - a typically very rough way to calculate area - and call it a day. Architects break the size down into components: first floor, second floor, porches, finished lower level, etc. To arrive at an apples-to-apples comparison of house areas you’ve got to know what’s included in the totals. Does the area include only heated and cooled spaces? Does it include everything under roof? Even garages? What about closets? Or do the measurements include only living space? Ask How Rooms Are Measured But even when you’ve discovered exactly what spaces are included in the area calculation youll need to know how volume is counted, and whether the total reflects the net or the gross square footage (or square meters). Gross area is the total of everything within the outer edge of the perimeter of the house. Net area is that same total - less the thicknesses of walls. In other words, net square footage is the part of the floor that you can walk on. Gross includes the parts you can’t walk on. The difference between net and gross can be as much as 10 percent - depending on the type of floor plan design. A traditional plan (with more distinct rooms and therefore more walls) might have 10 percent net-to-gross ratio, while a contemporary plan may have only six or seven percent. Likewise, larger homes tend to have more walls - because larger homes generally have more rooms, rather than simply larger rooms. Youll probably never see the volume of a house plan listed on a house plan website, but the number representing the area of a floor plan often depends on how the volume is counted. Typically, the upper area of two-story rooms (foyers, family rooms) isnt counted as part of the floor plan. Likewise, stairs are only counted once. But not always. Check how volume is counted to be sure you know how big the plan really is. Plan services that design their own plans will have a consistent policy on area (and volume), but services that sell plans on consignment probably dont. How does the designer or plan service calculate the size of the plan? Sometimes that information is found on the services website or book, and sometimes you have to call to find out. But you should most definitely find out. Knowing how area and volume are measured can make a very big difference in the cost of the house you ultimately build. Conclusions Leave the Building to Builders. Damian Gillie/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images The guest writer, Richard Taylor of RTA Studio, is an Ohio-based residential architect who creates luxury house plans and designs custom homes and interiors. Taylor spent eight years designing and renovating homes in German Village, an historic district in Columbus, Ohio. He has also designed custom homes in North Carolina, Virginia, and Arizona. He holds a B.Arch. (1983) from Miami University and is an active blog writer on social media. Taylor says: I believe that above all, a home should create a quality living experience as unique as the people that live in it, shaped by the owners heart, and by his image of home - thats the essence of custom design. Construction designs can get complicated, so let your building crew decipher the symbols the way they are trained to do. A couple of things for the homeowner to keep an eye on include the orientation of the building on the lot (where is south and the sun? where are the doors and windows?), the HVAC symbols (where is the ductwork?), and for future reference its good to know where your load-bearing walls will be located. And how big will your new house measure out to be? According to the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Construction, the average new single-family American house was 2,392 square feet in 2010 and in 1973 it was 1,660 square feet. A small home is considered 1,000 to 1,500 square feet. And tiny homes? Could you live in less than 500 square feet? Thats the plan!

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Give It Up vs. Applaud

Give It Up vs. Applaud Give It Up vs. Applaud Give It Up vs. Applaud By Maeve Maddox A reader asks, Lately, I hear announcers introducing acts by saying GIVE IT UP FOR, rather than   LETS HAVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR. Is this a new expression? The verb give/gave/given has been in the English vocabulary for more than a thousand years. The earliest OED citation is from Beowulf: Beowulf 1719 Nallas beagas geaf Denum à ¦fter dome. Note: The reference is to Heremod, a Danish king who did not honor his men by giving them treasure as custom required. A literal translation of this example is â€Å"Not at all rings gave [he] to the Danes for honor.† The OED entry for give requires more than a hundred items to clarify the various ways in which this verb is or has been used throughout the centuries. The expression â€Å"give it up for so-and-so† is just one of the verb’s more recent uses. The earliest OED citation for â€Å"give it up† in the sense of â€Å"applaud,† dated 1990, is from a Web source: Hey folks, lets give it up for Andy! One huge round of applause please!- Re: ShrinkIt 3.0 in comp.sys.apple2 (Usenet newsgroup). The basic meaning of give is â€Å"to make another person the recipient of something in the possession of the giver.† When an audience is asked â€Å"to give it up† for a speaker or performer, they are being asked to show appreciation by applauding. In this way, they give their approval. An earlier expression referring to the act of applauding links give with hand. At the end of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck (aka Robin Goodfellow) asks for applause this way: Give me your hands, if we be friends: And Robin shall restore amends. Audiences are said to â€Å"give a hand† to performers. Performers hope to â€Å"get a big hand† from their audiences. No one seems to mind such established circumlocutions for applaud, but the latest expression provokes annoyance: Does anybody else hate the expression, â€Å"give it up† for whoever it is instead of just clapping? It drives me mad. Oh, I must say that I  hate  the recent,  Put your hands together for. Or the even more egregious,  Lets give it up for â€Å"Give it up† annoys me too. I hate this new age talk, it just sounds lazy. I hate â€Å"give it up for [so-and-so]† when announcers introduce entertainment acts. Love it or hate it, â€Å"give it up for† in the sense of â€Å"please applaud† has caught on with large numbers of speakers. Note to ESL learners: In some contexts, â€Å"give it up† or â€Å"give up† can also mean surrender, abandon, and quit: The house is completely surrounded. You might as well give it up. Eventually he took a huge risk and  gave himself up to  the Chicago  police. Unable to overtake the planes,  he gave up  the chase three miles from his own lines. How  many  people do something just once and are  ready to give up?   Give it up! You can’t win. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Slang Terms for Money75 Idioms and Expressions That Include â€Å"Break†Drama vs. Melodrama

Sunday, February 16, 2020

I'll cook for you Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

I'll cook for you - Essay Example You will also need time and money to look for the best advertising agency to suit your business needs (Grow and Altstiel, 2006). Since you have a career in nutrition and perhaps you do not have sufficient knowledge about advertising or marketing, then you need to hire an advertising agent. The second thing that you need in your business is to grow it. It is just a start-up, so you need to devote all resources to make it grow. At this initial stages there could be some constraints of money; hiring an advertising agent will drain your money instead of using them to grow your business since it is just a start-up. However, it may also be necessary to hire an advertising agency once the business grows because you will need to establish the business first before you can get enough money to hire skilled in-house advertising or marketing team. On the other hand, in-house advertising agency requires online advertising and marketing resources because it is the best way to communicate with potential customers at the start-up stage in which you will be busy handling your food service operations. Furthermore, if you are familiar with the advertising and marketing, then you may handle the advertising work in-house but you will need to sacrifice some time out of your food service operations and deal with advertising services. As small as the business is currently, you will need to devote a lot of time to your business in order to make it grow. There are also various advantages and disadvantages of in-house advertising and hiring an advertising agency. One of the advantages of an advertising agency is that it brings advertising and marketing expertise and specialized knowledge into the business. Agencies have resources to provide advertising knowhow that your small business does not have. Another advantage of an advertising agency is that it saves time for the business. While you

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Diffrenece between living in usa and uae Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Diffrenece between living in usa and uae - Essay Example Need I say more? The UAE like the United States is a country made up of states that are largely independent. The seven states of the United Arab Emirates are: Ras al Khaimah, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Umm al Qaiwain, Dubai, Fujairah and Sharjah. However, unlike the US, the UAE is governed by a Supreme Council of Rulers made up of the seven emirs, who appoint the prime minister and the cabinet. I know this is not the democracy that the US purports to be practicing but I can assure you that of all the countries in the Gulf, the UAE is the most liberal. The UAE government promotes moderate Islam and permits all other religions. However, I believe that freedom and democracy like everything else needs to be moderated and I am of the opinion that this concept is deeply lacking within the American society. In America I could find people outside a shopping mall cursing the president at the top of their voices. You won’t see that in the UAE. Whichever way you view it, I dont think this is a good thing. In UAE a culture of respect is cultivated for the blue-bloods and other figures of authority. That is the proper thing to do. The UAE has a free modern health care system and education, a booming economy and political stability in the midst of an unstable region. It does not cost its citizens an arm and a leg to obtain medical care as is the case within the US healthcare system. This could probably explain why life expectancy has rapidly caught up with and will soon surpass that for Americans. 99 percent of UAE nationals work in the state sector because of its attractive benefits while in the US the civil service is considered the least attractive employer. Furthermore, if getting a job in Dubai is accompanied by a tax free salary. Yes, you are not going to drown in taxes like in the US plus all shop goods can be bought at tax free prices. Job opportunities are diverse and plentiful. In comparison to America, the

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Major Internet Applications

Major Internet Applications It is traditionally the most significant and remains the most commonly employed. This illustrates the simple structure in which client processes cooperate with individual server process in separate host computers in order to access the shared resources those they mange. Servers may in twist be clients of other servers, as the figure indicates. For example, a web server is frequently a client of a local file server that manages the files in which the web pages are store. For the applications discussed in Exercise 2.1 state how the servers cooperate in providing a service. Web servers and most other Internet services are clients of the DNS service, which translate Internet Domain Names to network addresses. Also, search engines, which enable users to look up summary of information obtainable on web pages at site all over the Internet. A search engine is a web server that responds to client requests to search in its stored indexes and (concurrently) runs several web crawler tasks to build and update the indexes. What are the requirements for synchronization between these concurrent activities? What happen are the server tasks (respond to user queries) and the crawler tasks (making request to other web servers) are completely independent because there is small need to synchronize them and they may run concurrently. In reality, atypical search engine would normally include many concurrent threads of execution some serving its clients and others running web crawlers. The host computers used in peer-to-peer systems is often simply desktop computers in users offices of homes. What are the implications of this for the availability and security of any shared data objects tat they hold and to what extent can any weaknesses be overcome through the use of replication? List the types of local resource that are vulnerable to an attack by an untrusted program that is downloaded from a remote site and run in a local computer. Network communication the program might attempt to create sockets, connect to them, and send messages .Access to printers. It may also impersonate the user in various ways for example: sending receiving email Objects in the file system for example files, directories can be read/written/created/deleted using the rights of the local user who runs the program. Mobile agent is a running program (including both code and data) that movements from one computer to another in a network transport out a task on someones behalf, such as collect information, finally returning with the results. A mobile agent can make many invocations to local resources at each site it visits for example, access individual database entries. Give some examples of applications where the use of mobile code is beneficial. Applets one example of mobile code which means: the user running a browser selects a link to an applet whose code is stored on a web server so the code is downloaded to the browser and runs there Accessing services which mean: running code that can invoke their operations. What factors affect the responsiveness of an application that accesses shared data managed by a server? Describe remedies that are available and discuss their usefulness. When the client accesses a server, it makes an invocation of a process in a server running in a remote computer. These things that affect the responsiveness: Server overloaded, Latency in exchanging request and replies, Load on network. The use of reserve helps with all of the above problems. In fact client reserve reduces all of them. Proxy server reserve helps with duplication of the service also helps with the use of lightweight communication protocols helps with. Distinguish between buffering and caching. Buffering: a method for store data transmit from a sending process to a receiving process in local memory or disk storage until the receiving process is prepared to use it. For example, when reading data from a file or transmitting messages during a network, it is useful to handle it in huge blocks. The blocks are held in buffer storage in the receiving process memory space. The buffer is free when the data has been used by the process. Caching: a technique for optimizing access to isolated data objects by hold a copy of them in local memory or disk storage. Accesses to parts of the remote object are translated into accesses to the related parts of the local copy. Unlike buffering, the local copy may be retained as long as there is local memory obtainable to hold it. A cache management algorithm and a release policy are wanted to run the use of the memory allocated to the cache. Give some examples of faults in hardware and software that can/cannot be tolerated by the use of redundancy in a distributed system. To what extent does the use of redundancy in the appropriate cases make a system fault-tolerant? Hardware faults processors, disks, and network connections can use redundancy for example: run process on multiple computers, write to two disks, have two separate routes in the network available. Software bugs, crashes. Redundancy is not high-quality with bugs because they will be replicated. Replicated processes help with crashes which may be due to bugs in unrelated parts of the system. Retransmitted messages help with lost messages. Redundancy makes faults less likely to occur Consider a pair of processes X and Y that use the communication service B from Exercise 2.14 to communicate with one another. Suppose that X is a client and Y a server and that an invocation consists of a request message from X to Y (that carries out the request) followed by a reply message from Y to X. Describe the classes of failure that may be exhibited by an invocation. An invocation may suffer from the following failures: Crash failures: X or Y may crash. Therefore an invocation may suffer from crash failures. Omission failures: as SB suffers from omission failures the request or reply message may be lost. Describe possible occurrences of each of the main types of security threat (threats to processes, threats to communication channels, denial of service) that might occur in the Internet. Threats to processes: not including authentication of main and servers, a lot of threats exist. An enemy could access other users files or mailboxes. Threats to communication channels: IP spoofing sending requests to servers with a false source address.

Friday, January 17, 2020

Analysis of Dynacorp Case Essay

The strategic design lens assumes organizations are deliberate, goal-achieving entities. In this view, managers can achieve organizational goals by understanding the fundamentals of design and fitting design to strategy, as well as to the larger organizational environment. In this paper, I discuss the five major elements of strategy – environmental fit, strategic intent, strategic grouping, strategic linking, and alignment – and identify two specific elements as causes of the problems Dynacorp is experiencing with its redesign. These elements are strategic linking and alignment. Fit with the Environment In the 1980s, Dynacorp was an excellent fit with the environment; it produced high-quality, innovation products. As result, its customers were happy to wait months or even a year for the company to bring out a new product and to â€Å"do some of their own applications work and figure out how to integrate Dynacorp’s products with the rest of their operations†. In the 1990s, however, the company lost the technological advantage it had maintained over the competition. According to Carl Greystone, executive vice president of the U. S. Cus-tomer Operations Group, â€Å"Both foreign and domestic competitors have been cutting into our market share, and our gross margins are way down,†. Indeed, Dynacorp was finding that many of its customers needed more than hardware, but want-ed ‘complete solutions’ to problems. Customers were â€Å"looking for systems solutions, more cus-tomized software, and more value-added services†. Dynacorp’s senior managers recognized that the firm’s existing functional structure was seriously inhibiting the organization from creating effective cross-functional responses to its external environment. Strategic Intent Dynacorp’s senior management thus moved to redefine the firm’s strategic intent, a no-tion that Ancona et al. define as â€Å"setting the strategy or mandate of the organization†¦Ã¢â‚¬ . Instead of continuing to think of itself as a company merely selling hardware, the firm reorganized with the intention of providing customers with the integrated solutions they were demanding, and, where necessary, to do all this on a global basis. Strategic Grouping To implement its strategic intent, Dynacorp executives first had to make decisions about how to regroup tasks and functions. According to Ancona et al. , strategic grouping is a process of deciding â€Å"how the necessary activities are to be allocated into jobs, department, divisions, and other units, and how people are assigned to each†¦Ã¢â‚¬ . The textbook describes five possible methods by which grouping of functions can be organized: activity; output; user, customer, or geography; matrix; and business process. At Dynacorp, the decision was made to move away from grouping by activity. Instead, the development, manufacturing, and marketing functions were grouped together into an output-oriented set of â€Å"‘end-to-end’ business units† in which all the functions would be ex-pected to contribute to the success of a product or a family of products or services. Within the sales area, executives decided to group by geography (U. S. , Europe, Latin America/Asia, with each of these areas further subdivided into regions) rather than to create multiple sales forces for each business unit. â€Å"Since products overlapped,† the interviewer was told, â€Å"the purchasers of different products were frequently the same people, and the cost inherent in replicating the field structure several times was prohibitive,†. Within each sales region, management created account teams with each team focusing on customers within market segments and industries. Greystone asserts that such a restructuring will result in industry specialists, rather than salespersons who were only knowledgeable about particular products. Greystone seemed optimistic: â€Å"You see, we feel that by targeting our investments toward growth of sales in specific industries and developing solutions to fit their needs, we’ll rebuild our market share and increase margins,† Strategic Linking Ancona et al. describe strategic linking as both formal and informal processes and posi-tions that would integrate units and subunits which are interdependent in tasks. The text identifies a wide array of linking mechanisms, including formal reporting structures, liaison roles, permanent or temporary cross-unit groups, integrator roles, information technology systems, and planning processes. Strategic linking at Dynacorp was to be accomplished, in the first instance, by linking development, manufacturing, and marketing within each Business Unit through a change in the formal reporting structure. Carl Greystone expressed his conviction that a â€Å"tremendous amount of progress† has been made since these changes were instituted and that his personnel are â€Å"thinking about the business in new terms†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Even Greystone, however, was forced to admit that his group had been â€Å"consistently behind plan in both revenue and profit† for the past year and a half and that the â€Å"Business Unit presidents have expressed some frustration with the performance of his group. †Martha Pauley, a Branch Manager in Greystone’s division who supervised six teams that â€Å"handle financial institutions, insurance, and education in the Northeast Region,† was considerably quite disillusioned about the absence of effective cross-functional relations between sales and the Business Units. Specifically, Pauley was finding it difficult to compete because of business decisions in which she had been given no role. She had several complaints: â€Å"Our prices are still higher than our competitors’, and technical support services are way too slow. The new plant in Indonesia was supposed to help bring prices down, but they’re having problems getting the factory up and running. Since I have no control over unit manufacturing costs or the availability of technical support resources, I can’t help the team’s effectiveness in these areas†. A second way in which strategic linking was to be accomplished was to establish multi-function Account Teams focused on â€Å"selling customized solutions based on integrating our products, rather than on selling fancy hardware. †These permanent cross-unit groups were comprised of â€Å"account managers, product specialists, solution consultants, service technicians, customer administration specialists, and systems specialists. † Describing the actual functioning of these new teams to the interviewer, Martha Pauley confessed that â€Å"everyone has been so busy trying to understand their new responsibilities while still keeping up with our customers that we have communicated only through e-mail messages. We haven’t had time for the off site meeting that I had planned. Anyway, we’re still getting modifications on the job guidelines from the staff group. † The time pressures reported by Pauley were evident when she takes the interviewer into a meeting of one account team; there, they found â€Å"about half† of the members missing because of other obligations. As the meeting progressed, it also became apparent that this account team was struggling to meet its goals. The team had just been outbid for a contract with a Boston bank because its competitor had been able to offer â€Å"lower prices and a much more comprehensive package† . With regard to planning as a means of strategic linking, there too Pauley’s teams were struggling. Pauley admitted to the interviewer that she â€Å"hadn’t had a chance to develop a cohe-sive sales plan to show you†. Alignment The last of the strategic design processes is alignment: â€Å"that is, assessing the implica-tions of strategic grouping and linking patterns for the rest of the organization’s structures and processes, and making changes to ensure that the grouping and linking patterns can be implemented effectively†. suggest that each of the following be considered as elements of alignment: organizational performance measurement systems, individual rewards and incentives, resource allocation, human resource development, and informal systems and processes. One obvious alignment problem in this case concerns individual rewards and incen-tives. Ben Walker, VP of the Northeast Region, notes that the new reward system compensates branch managers in sales and product managers in the Business Units on â€Å"performance against revenue and margin goals,† but Walker worries that â€Å"no one in these jobs has the skills to be a team player. † Soon thereafter, Martha Pauley complained to the interviewer about precisely this problem. Although she shared revenue goals for her teams with the product team’s general managers in the Business Units, her own performance was being hampered by the fact that â€Å"different product team leaders in the Business Units are pushing different types of sales, depending on their particular product lines. † Something similar was happening to Pauley’s Account Teams, whose sales performance depended, in part, on their ability to get adequate Technical Support to their clients, yet they had no control over this support unit. Dynacorp’s turnaround also was being hurt by the company’s failure to give appropriate support to human resources development. Ben Walker is convinced that the company has â€Å"too many people who know how to sell products but not solutions† and projects that â€Å"at least 25 percent of the current staff needs to be replaced. † Right now we have the customer teams functioning under new guidelines that force them to collect information on customer needs and develop solutions. But too many team members are still operating under the old attitude that the equipment sells itself and the customers will do the work of integrating our products into their operations. The notion of helping the customer from initial call through implementation and use of the system is still quite alien to many of our people. The fact that Sales Team Member 2 soon was seen expressing a desire for more customers who want â€Å"standard off-the-shelf equipment† suggests that Walker’s concerns have merit. And Martha Pauley, to her credit, does not hide the fact that her teams lack training. â€Å"You see,† Pauley says, â€Å"moving from a product salesperson to a provider of solutions in a big change. It involves knowledge of the industry and the company, the full line of products, our various software applications, and concepts of systems integration. Exactly who handles all the pieces of a sale like this is still unclear†. Finally, there is some evidence of dissatisfaction with Dynacorp’s resource allocation practices, given the perceived high cost of manufacturing and the problems with Technical Support. As we have seen, at least one account team is having difficulty competing on price; and Martha Pauley complains that Dynacorp’s prices â€Å"are still higher than our competitors’, and technical support services are way too slow†.   Dynacorp appears to have done a good job of analyzing its fit with the environment and crafting a strategy that is likely to be responsive to that environment. The strategic groupings are well-suited to the strategic intent, positioning Dynacorp to be a geographically-focused, industry-specific organization that is organized to bring cross-functional talent to bear on the service as well as hardware needs of its customers. Dynacorp fails, however, to give adequate attention to strategic linking processes. There is evidence of a lack of planning, particularly as it involves product and branch managers and their staffs, apparently resulting in a lack of widespread commitment at all levels of the organization to the new mission. There also are problems of coordination between branch managers in sales and the Business Units and between the Account Teams and the Technology Specialists. Finally, the new cross-functional sales teams have had little opportunity to work out their methods of operation. Dynacorp also fails to give adequate attention to alignment. Individual reward systems and incentives work at cross-purposes with unit goals, and manufacturing costs are too high for sales teams to compete effectively. Finally, there is almost a complete absence of training—both for product and branch managers and for the various functional specialists who are now expected to work as members of teams. The senior managers at Dynacorp have made impressive efforts to respond to their highly competitive environment. However, unless careful attention is given to the strategic linking and alignment processes, this organizational redesign effort is destined to fail.