stpmax

ISSUE TOPIC Today, more so than ever, corporate transparency is a necessity for a well functioning society. After the financial calamity of the 2008 recession more focus than ever has been cast upon the corporation, both domestically in the US and abroad. In light of this, the idea of corporations acting on high moral standing and contributing to society, also known as corporate social responsibly (CSR) has been juxtaposed with anachronism idea that the sole drive for a corporation is to turn profit. While corporations must create profit and foster optimism from the investors, there is also something to be said about a corporation that creates profit and does with the utmost of moral duty. To begin, most figures that go into assessing value of a company are profit, loss, and costs of doing business. While these numbers may leave investors with a seemingly keen idea of how the business is being conducted, there may be value outside that books that can prove profitable as well. I am referring to CSR. It has been proven time and time again that corporations that involve themselves in CSR have been able to foster confidence in investors and have been able to create lasting community partnerships due to their high moral standing and how they are perceived by society. With support in the community and throughout society, a corporation can reap massive financial gain. Being seen as the “nice guy” can lead to increased sales and investment due to trust in the corporation. Therefore a corporation that participaites in acts of good CSR can increase business, which can lead to signifigant financial gain. Secondly, corporations that act only on the grounds of turning a profit and ignore CSR can indeed make lots of money, albeit not in the most savory of ways. Corporations that do not participate in any forms of CSR appear alienating to members of society and consequently prove caustic to society as a whole. This often leads to lack of trust from investors and a general unpopularity. While they may be making lots of money, it is proven that after a length of time, due to unpopularity and lack of trust, they will see a declination of profit. Using, arguably the most prolific hedge fund today, Berkshire Hathaway, as a case study we see that when large donations are made to various philanthropic groups, their stock rises due to increased admiration from the public. If they were only on track to make money and not practice and CSR there is high probability that they would not have the impact in the market place they currently have. Therefore, I believe that there is a sublime balance that a corporation can have to maximize profit and also be cast as a noble corporation. A corporation like McDonalds for example is a near perfect case study for a corporation that maximizes profit and also redeems themselves through huge acts of CSR. McDonalds is one of the largest food corporations on the market today, making profit hand-over-fist and in the meantime, alienating a large part of society by their rather aggressive marketing and pricing. Consequently they are seen by many as a company that, if not due to their charity, the Ronald McDonald fund, would be out right evil. They make money, often and the cost of health and safety standards, but due to their massive philanthropic arm and redeemed in the eyes of investors and large parts of the investment community. In conclusion, for a company to be successful both financially and in the eyes of the investing public they have to be both profitably and advantages as well as acting members of the CSR community. If a corporation were to only follow one path, either totally socially responsible or totally advantages, they would find themselves in fincaial straights. ARGUMENT: Currently the Movies Galore movie rental chain is in the midst of a financial down swing. The leaders of Movies Galore see the only way to save the chain is to reduce operating costs, which is a simply way to raise profits. The company leaders use one of their stores as a case study in which they see that by eliminating older movies (5 years or older) and closing at 6PM (previously 9PM) the store was able to significantly lower their operating costs and thus, raise profits. They idea at first may seem easy to execute and a sure fire way to raise profits but to me, there are some glaring holes in the logic. They claim that one of their market advantages is their reputation in having great movies, yet they plan on taking all movies older than 5 years off the shelf, many great movies were made more than 5 years ago. Secondly they plan on closing the store earlier in the evening, which yes, will lower operating costs but will no doubt restrict the possibility in making money. I believe that between those two points they are a track to losing their market share to other video outlets, at the hand of lowering operating costs. To begin, the store they use as a case study for lowering operating costs was able to do so by eliminating movies older than 5 years off their shelves. To me this seems like a totally arbitrary method in removing movies. Say for example there is a movie that was made 6 years ago that is rented out almost every weekend, they movie is making them money, but because they are eliminating moves based on date not popularity, that movie will no longer be able to be rented. If they want to take movies out of inventory they should first conduct a study and see which movies on their shelves rarely, if ever, get rented. Those movies should be taken out first. I am sure there are movies that were produced in the last 5 years and gather dust that will stay due to this arbitrary method of clearing inventory. If they take away a movie that is very popular, based on the date is was produced, this may upset customers who in turn will have to turn to another video rental outlet to find it. So yes, this would lower operating costs but it would restrict rental opportunities in a very arbitrary way. Secondly, they propose closing early as a way to save money. We having the lights off and not paying any wages will save money, but it also wont make any money. Rather that close earlier in the evening, when most people watch movies, I would like to know at which hour they open. Say for example they are opening at 7AM. I doubt there are many people rushing to video store to rent a movie at that hour, but I am sure that at 9 PM people are speeding in their cars trying to get that nights movie while they still can. Thus I think it would make much more sense to lower the operating costs by opening later in the day and staying open to their normally 9 PM. Again, if customers want to rent a movie at 8:30, while they previously could have gone to Movies Galore, they would now have to turn to another outlet to satisfy their needs. Again, closing earlier would lower their costs, but at the risk of not making any rentals. Thirdly, the managements idea that the only way to turn around their loss in profits is by lowering operating costs is very pedestrian. Lowering operating costs does have an effect of profit but before the management starts implementing these changes there needs to be a full understanding of how their profits and operating costs. Lowering operating costs can also be done in less intrusive ways. Say for example they reduce their number of staff, or are closed on Wednesday and open later on Friday and Saturday. In conclusion the management of Movies Galore, if they do intend of lowering operating costs, need to first take a study of how their stores operate. Which movies are being rented and when? Movies more than five years old can also be good and popular and moves that were made just one year ago can be a total flop. To simply remove inventory in an arbitrary manor and shortening hours in the evening will in turn lead to distrust from the consumer and consequently less rentals and customers, furthering their financial woes.

Start by determining what your thesis or main argument might be. Once that is a problem solved work on creating the meat around it. Check out the lessons at Magoosh. They're pretty rad.

To kick off the thread I will post two essays I just wrote doing a practice GRE. They may be a little rough on the edges and I am direct copy pasting here. Issue: Universities should require students to take courses only within those fields they are interested in studying. Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position Today, modern day education is at a major crossroads. Never before in history has education been so carefully mesaured and the importance of higher education been stressed to todays youth. Univeristies nation wide are facing major dillemas as they try to raise enrollement and keep costs under control. Thus the modern day university is ran more like a corporation and less like the high institutions of yesteryear. With universities become more and more streamlined, that mentality is being passed along to students who are being preasured to take classes only within their interests or majors. Consequently students are not being exposed to the same liberal arts type education that was praised by our fathers and the greeks alike. Students should be able to use university as a time of mental exploration and should be permitted to take any and all classes that thier minds fancy, without limitations from the adminstration. As our higher learning institutions in the US begin to adapt and modernize themselves to attract new students every fall, it seems that education, their once main selling point, is falling to the way side. Prospective students today are looking less at education and more at what sport facilities a school offers, what the dormatories look like, and what extracurlicar activies a certain university offers, consequently universities, in an attempt to court new students, have invested millions of dollars into these sports complexes and other, previousely extranious, investments. But this does not all come without a cost. When univerities spend millions outiside of classrooms, teachers and programs feel the hit most. With teachers being more maligned than ever and programs that were once staples of higher education like languages and the arts on their way out, students are being corralled into taking only the classes necessary to fulfill major requirements to graduate. The once imaginative empire that was the university is today a place for sports, parties, and a diploma. Secondly, beyond courses and teachers being widdled down to acheive higher productivty per student per teacher univerisites and being compartmentalized like the biggest corporations of America. While one might say that schools have always been seperated among departments, with department heads and such, I want to talk about how teachers, inside their departments, are being forced to strive towards greating productivty, like that of an assenbly line. What I mean by this is that with programs being cut and teachers also being cut, and enrollment climbing, teachers and departments are stressed to the maximum. As someone who whent through the United States university system I can personally recall how hard it was to get classes inside of my major let alone outside of my major. This is due in part the narrowing of teachers and programs. Less classes, less space, but more students. Not only are schools not encouraging students to learn outside of their field of study but there is simply no way to do it. There are not enough classes and teachers to accomadate students. Altough the university has traditionally been a place of higher learning exploration I do see incentives to keep students inside their fields of study. For one it enables univeristies to streamline a students learning and enables more teachers to take on more classes as they would only be teaching within one group of kids. Secondly it would allow students and teachers to create real lasting relationships becuase in theory, a teacher would be with a student throughout their entire stay at a university, and thirdly it would be a way for universities to increase their student body and thus increase enrollment and more tuition money. If you can have more students and more money that as a university you can mondernize facilites and create sports complexes and top notch student dorms to attract even more students. In conclusion, universities are transforming and become lean like so many corporations in the US. They slimming down departments and boosting marketing efforts in an attempt to attract more students and increase revenue. While this may seem great for the higher leaning community it comes at a great cost to both the students and the faculty. Teachers are stretched thin and students are not getting the cerebral freedom once offered at higher learning institutions in America. Argument: Recent incursions by deep-sea fisherman into the habitat of the Madagascan shrimp have led to a significant reduction in the species population. With the breeding season fast approaching, the number of shrimp should soon begin to increase. Nonetheless, the population should not return to the levels before the fishing boats arrived. Because this trend is expected to continue over the next several years, the Madagascan shrimp will quickly become an endangered species. Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument Today the world is seeing species of animals on their last legs. Being forced from healthy species, to endagered, and ultimatly extinct. In the world today there are more and more species become extinct everyday, NASA scientests have even gone as far to conclude that we are on the crest of another mass extinction. The Madagascan shrimp are an animal that is not empervious to the ever insatiable appetite of man. As a species we are growing at an alarming rate and thus, our appetite is growing. Our hunters and fisherman are moving further and further into the farthers corners of the ocean, harming more and more species of search for food. In the argument read, it is argued that the Madagascan shrimp are the next victims to lay prey to the human feeding machine. As fishing boats move further and further into their breeding grounds their numbers are falling sharply, without intervention towards extinction. The evidence presented, or lack there of, does make me question some of the authors claims. While the fishing boats are inside of the shrimps breeding grounds now, and with breeding season fast approaching, how do the boats affect breeding of the shrimp? There is a lack of clarity towards teh activity of the boats and how they exaclty harm the shrimp. The deep see fisherman, it seems, have exhausted their old fishing grounds and have moved onto more profitable claims, mainly the shrimp ground. But what about the boats harms the shrimp? The author does not present in which way the boats or fisherman are impacting the population levels due to the fact that we, as the reader, are not sure if it is nets or envirmental impacts that are causing a steep decline in the shrimp population. Furthermore with breeding season fast approaching and shrimp level to increase, how many years would it take for the shrimp to be back to normal poplulations? there seems to be a lack of data about the shrimp population. As we know with the salmon of the pacific northwest whos habitat has been encroached upon for decades mainly by the building of dams that shut from the their breeding grounds, an animals poplution is mighty resiliant. In the Pacific Northwest many salman runs were impacted drasitcally and poplution numbers in one season dropped by as much at 75%, but, hovered around that number for many years. In recent years, due to enourmous efforts from envirmontal lobbiests those restriciting dams have come down, once again opening salmon to thier traditional breeding grounds. With a few years their population was restored and now, through enormous amounts of studying and data collection it is known that when half a salmon poplution is taken for food consumption, the next year the salmon will replenish the numbers and be full again. It does appear that the authors of the Madagascan shrimp study know too much about the popultion of thier shrimp. They say the numbers decreasing, but by how many? Will the shrimp, like the salmon, remain at low numbers but be able to survive? If the boats were to leave today would the shrimp be able to replinish their numbers? While I have many issues with the passage to the right, there is devestation of biblical porporations happening in the oceans today. One might argue that there are simply not enough scientests to document in detail all the populations being widdled down by mans lust to feed from the ocean. It would seem that the Madagascan shrimp are facing the same plight that so many other species have. Fisherman are moving into their territory and fishing, using invasive and enviromentally devasitating tenchniques to profit from the ocean. Without enviromental invervention in the coming years the ocean might have to bid adieu to yet another species. In conclusion the passage seems to raise more questions than it answers. There is without a doubt plundering of the oceans resources for profit happeing today but the link to the Madagascan shrimp populations stabilty and the fishing boats is simply not clear enough to convince. Marine species have proven time and time again to resiliant and their determination to thrive is unrivaled, I hope that with enviromentalist intervention the shrimp can one day be like the King Salmon of the Pacific Nortwest and reaclaim their breeding grounds and thrive again.

Hey there, It seems there are a bunch of us who are looking to have our essays reviewed by each other. With that let us start a peer review forum. You review me and I review you. The more reviewers the better. Please see below the scoring guide for a level 6 and 5 essay. Level 6: articulates a clear and insightful position on the issue in accordance with the assigned task develops the position fully with compelling reasons and/or persuasive examples sustains a well-focused, well-organized analysis, connecting ideas logically conveys ideas fluently and precisely, using effective vocabulary and sentence variety demonstrates superior facility with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage and mechanics), but may have minor errors Level 5: presents a clear and well-considered position on the issue in accordance with the assigned task develops the position with logically sound reasons and/or well-chosen examples is focused and generally well organized, connecting ideas appropriately conveys ideas clearly and well, using appropriate vocabulary and sentence variety demonstrates facility with the conventions of standard written English, but may have minor errors

You did not finish... Why not post when you have a final product?