MGE Papers

With temperatures expected to drop well below freezing tonight into tomorrow and high winds expected, we wanted to take this opportunity to remind you of a couple winter safety tips: Heaters -When no one's home, make sure your thermostat always stays above 64 degrees in cold weather. -Keep all items, especially holiday trees and gifts, away from the heater. -If using a real Christmas tree, be sure to keep it well watered. -If your apartment heat is not working or appears to be malfunctioning in any way, call the Leasing Office and we'll send a member of the Service Team out to service the heater, so there's no need to attempt to clean or fix it yourself. -Make sure your chimney flue is closed when not using the fireplace. Watch Your Step -In many areas, winter means snowfall and ice forming on outdoor surfaces when temperatures drop, especially overnight. Please, watch your step, drive defensively and be careful carrying Christmas trees and gifts.

  DeBeers is a member of a cartel and many other cartels have collapsed. Running a diamond business is not as easy as anyone thinks. De Beers enhances the partnership in worldwide by recruiting the skilled workforce. Inside the organization, it is responsible for creating passion and maintaining corporate rapport. It maintains policies like vision, worth and purpose and they are strategic. DeBeers – Relevant Facts De Beers is considered to be the world’s largest diamond mining and trading company in the world. At one time, it was said to be controlling more than 45% of the worldwide production and had been selling over 80% of all diamonds globally. It used monopolistic practices and by being a member of a cartel, it used massive size and control of the market to financially punish smaller miners and retailers who tried to break away from the De Beers cartel diamond “empire". Only DeBeers controlled most of the diamond cutting and polishing industry thus creating a mo

PESTEL analysis Political aspect: In 1994 the DeBeers operation was prohibited in the United States territory because of antitrust legislation. These facts complicate the DeBeers operation and shake the whole company. Economic aspect: Although in 1990s DeBeers ruled the whole industry, after several events such as Soviet Union collapse and Alrosa’s appearing, DeBeers lost its control over the market. In addition, Canada’s appearing in the diamond market forced DeBeers to hold back a large portion of its diamonds from the market and purchase much of the excess supply from these producing countries often at inflated prices (McAdams, Reavis, 2008, p.7). Social aspect: In the mid-1990, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic Congo were outflanked by rebel forces opposed to the government. DeBeers sponsored this military conflict by “blood diamonds” purchasing. Technological aspect: The main threat is the synthetic diamonds grown is the lab-conditions. This tec

DeBeers is the leader in selling diamonds. Natural diamonds are mined from countries like south Africa, Congo, Sierra Leone, Canada, Australia, India etc.   While we saw Kendall Lee wanted to propose his girlfriend with a diamond ring, he was not entirely convinced a natural diamond is the best choice. In 1990s a civil war broke out in western and central parts of Africa. The Rebel groups in Angola, Congo and sierra Leone were mining rough diamond and selling those directly to merchants or smuggling those to neighboring countries and mixing them up with legitimately mined rough diamonds. This way the rebel groups were funding the war against government. In 1990s global share of blood diamond was 15%, it fell to 1% by 2010 (Curley, n.d.). Lee was aware of blood diamond, and he was in dilemma whether he should buy diamond from DeBeers and help these exploitations. We are going to Perform a PESTEL analysis on DeBeers. While natural diamonds have its charm, the youngest diamond is 9

Introduction: According to Hart, M. “De Beers and its sister corporation — Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, a gold-mining powerhouse — accounted for about half of South Africa’s economy, measured as a share of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s total listed capital. The Oppenheimers, who controlled De Beers and Anglo American, were the country’s richest family. South Africa’s banks and insurance companies, the backbone of its financial life, were enmeshed in the fortunes of the Oppenheimers’ gold-and-diamond empire. The diamond sector of the business, worth billions of dollars a year, maintained profitability by operating a cartel. It kept tight control of supply, which gave it mastery of the price. If the price showed signs of weakening, the cartel had only to cut back the flow of diamonds to the market for the price to recover. The power of the cartel lay in managing supply. Supply was its strength, but its weakness too” (2001) But we need to get a bit deeper to

·        Select three key ideas or facts from the article which you believe are most important for a firm competing in a global market. Why are they the most important to the process? 1.      Mission and vision are really significant thing I am convinced that mission and vision are the strategic tools, not just formal phrases. According to Ketchen and Short, “vision is what the organization hopes to become in the future”; “mission is the reasons for an organization’s existence” (Ketchen, Short, 2012, p. 43). If an organization perceives such a meaningful thing as its future as a formality, what future will happen then? In my opinion, vision and mission must be stated even before an organization started its functioning, this process should be simultaneous with the business planning, because someone, who does not know where he or she goes and why, who does not have a plan, will reach nowhere. I can give you my personal example, I am the owner of the shop of Korean cosmetics. I h

The Significance of Vision and Mission Development for Enterprises in Slovak Republic  Vision and mission (Papulova, 2014) often forms an integral aspect of strategic management for many organizations in the world today. It is more like what drives the leaders of organizations to guide their followers to deliver on goals, tasks and optimal solutions. This is also used to communicate the present and future direction of the company as it pertains to all the stakeholders. Simply put, vision (Hofstrand, 2016) is like having a large picture of what you would like to envisage in an organization while mission is like a follow up statement on how the vision will be brought to life. Companies without a vision and mission statement tend to barely coexist with other competition and this is not desirable as the employees might hardly be motivated to perform beyond expectations in their duties. The article in this case study talks about how research was carried out in the Slovak Republic

Benefits—Tangible and to the Culture of an organization that undertakes the adoption of policies designed to help employees with work-life balance?  What does an organization stand to gain if it can work through the growing pains of implementation?    Employers who choose to adopt some work-life policies may find that the candidate pool of applicants increases since employee are always interested in balancing their work and personal lives.  Clearly, a benefit is being able to attract the best possible candidates.  Absenteeism may decrease if employees are able to better structure their lives because of time, or a day, to be taken may not need to be taken if the employee is able to use a flexible schedule, (Kossek, 2009).  Additionally, those employees who wish to start a family may feel at ease knowing that as circumstances in their life changes, their employer has mechanisms for employee flexibility.  This means that there may be less absenteeism.  Responsiveness to critical problems

What are the benefits—both tangible and to the culture of an organization that undertakes the adoption of policies designed to help employees with work-life balance?    As explained on the  Asure Software webpage,  “A good work/life balance can enable employees to feel more in control of their working life and lead to: Increased productivity Lower absenteeism A happier, less stressed workforce Improvements in employee health and well-being A more positive perception of you as an employer Greater employee loyalty, commitment and motivation” (“How Work-Life Balance Can Benefit Your Organization”, 2017).  Structural work–life support modifies human resource strategies and practices  as well as job structures—in order to enhance flexibility to spread worker control over the location, place an amount of work, or offer additional instrumental properties such as data and direct assistance to facilitate individuals to be able to combine employment with caregiving or other important non-work re

what are the benefits—both tangible and to the culture of an organization that undertakes the adoption of policies designed to help employees with work-life balance?    For an employer to invest in the promotion of work/life balance, the outcomes showcase real possibilities. These include, greater employee retention, improved health, reduced absenteeism, increased productivity and reduce burnout. Miller from the HR Daily Advisor (2016) suggests that employers can achieve the goals fo work-life balance in multiple ways including:- promoting and demonstrating a workplace culture that supports a work-life balance. This can be achieved when management are seen to follow this policy also. Providing childcare benefits. This can reduce the financial stress on parents. allowing employees to work from remote location, this can be on a daily basis to reduce travel time and increase productivity Promote breaks throughout the day. This will encourage employees to have a lunch break away from their

Work-life balance talks about the idea of splitting one’s time and energy between work and other important aspects of their life which can include, making time family, friends, community participation, spirituality etc. (Heathfield, 2018). Establishing work life balance on employee approach and observation include job satisfaction, employee time saved, organizational commitment, job stress, turnover intention and all these factors in turn affect job performance, direct and indirect absenteeism costs, costs associated with the loss and replacement of valued employees, customer satisfaction and organizational productivity (Yadav & Rani, 2015). Organizations benefit by the implementation of work-life balance policies because they can retain their old employees which in turn reduce or help them avoid the cost of hiring and training new employees for that same position. Studies and research have shown that employees are motivated, and their productivity increases when organizations impl