Research Topics: Practitioners

Sample Essay Practitioners Theorists and Futurists alike Concur that the Challenge for Business

Introduction Practitioners, theorists, and futurists alike concur that the challenge for businesses that want to maximize their global presence involves structuring relationships in such a way as to ensure that the right information is delivered to the right people at the right time. In all these views, information technology (IT) and e-commerce initiatives play critical roles in the strategy of global competition. If there is a common denominator to the global view of IT initiatives and e-commerce, it is that companies reap the biggest benefits not by superimposing computers on top of old work processes but by restructuring those processes and the corporate culture (Karake-Shalhoub, 2002). This strategy, over time, develops entirely new business capacities. E-commerce encompasses all business-to-business and business-to-customer transactions that involve the buying and selling of goods and services and the transfer of funds through digital communication. It also includes all the inter- as well as intra company functions such as manufacturing, marketing, finance, and selling that enable commerce and electronic data interchange, file transfer, facsimile, and interaction with a remote computer (Karake-Shalhoub, 2002).   Recently, the scope of e-commerce has expanded to the business-to-customer relationship, including trade through the Internet as well as all other ways of doing business over digital networks. Historically, e-commerce evolved from electronic data interchange EDI) that facilitated electronic exchange of ordinary business documents in grocery and transportation industries in the 1970s. It has expanded through other industries driven by the cost-saving requirement that resulted in development of data transmission conventions enabling computer-to-computer exchange of data (Karake-Shalhoub, 2002). Although employment of EDI originally only replaced paper documents with their electronic copies, substantial savings have been achieved by reducing the number of people who handled purchase orders and communication with suppliers. As producers and members of the first tier suppliers continued to expand their reliance on EDI by implementing multiple related transaction sets, many secondary and tertiary suppliers didn’t follow their example and were not in a position to answer with appropriate transactions (Karake-Shalhoub, 2002).   Despite these problems, companies have started to feel the benefits of real-time information sharing and transactions. Generally, trading partnerships evolve over time, usually starting with transactional exchanges and moving toward information sharing. All estimates concerning the growth of e-commerce have one thing in common: they point to phenomenal growth over a very short period of time (Karake-Shalhoub, 2002). As the world ages so thus the changes in business and technology, one change is E-commerce. E-commerce is creating various changes in the environment of Hong Kong. It provided a new way for Hong Kong business to improve on their service to clients. E-commerce has continuously widened its range. The paper will discuss about the growth of e-commerce. The paper will critically examine e-commerce trends and it will identify an e-commerce opportunity that can be taken advantage of. E-commerce trend Internet Banking Electronic banking is one of the first things that come to mind when one thinks about the future of banking. It includes automated teller machines (ATMs), automated call centers, digital cash, Internet banking, screen telephones, and so on. These channels of delivery can be used for presenting and paying bills, buying and selling securities, transferring funds, and providing other financial products and services.  In 1999, only 20 percent of the largest national banks offered Internet banking services (Gap, 2003).However, they accounted for 90 percent of the national banking system assets. Few very large banks were the most active in offering Internet services. These banks served a small but growing number of their customers (Gap, 2003).The low percentage of customers and the modest cost of setting up an Internet banking web site make it unlikely that Internet banking is having a major influence on the profitability of most institutions, with the exception of the largest ones (Gap, 2003).   This may help to explain why some small banks, particularly new banks, are unprofitable. Those banks that rely primarily on Internet banking must absorb the full cost, making that cost disproportionately large when compared to that of the large banks (Gap, 2003). Although virtual banks can provide a wide range of financial services, they are at a disadvantage compared with brick and mortar banks when it comes to customers making deposits and withdrawing cash which raises the issue of convenience. Nevertheless, advocates of Internet banking claim that it is faster, better, and cheaper than brick and mortar. Four basic characteristics are quite unique to e-banking and help to explain why it has become such an important part of the banking strategic planning process. First, the customer has anonymity when making transactions over the Internet, forcing banks to find methods to authenticate who the users are (Gap, 2003).Speed of transactions, access to global markets, and strong reliance on third parties to develop and maintain the technology-based systems are the other important components of e-baking’s popularity and success.   In addition, e-banking is made up of a broad category of systems and devices, including one of its first and perhaps most common forms that include credit and debit card development (Gap, 2003). Unfortunately most customers do not want to totally relinquish use of the branch and phone. Thus, banks have been unable to close as many branches as they had originally anticipated. Added to this is the cost of hiring technologically astute personnel capable of running the more advanced operating systems, not to mention the need for additional advertising promoting the Internet banking system (Gup,2003). E-banking provides clients with the capability to do business with a Hong Kong bank even after working hours and the clients can do it in places they deem comfortable to use the computer and the internet. In this e-commerce trend no specific software is needed by the client in operating the internet banking technology but there are major risks in terms of security of the information divulged by the client since the internet can at times be prone to attacks and hacking. Secure electronic transaction The combination of technology and commercial self-interest is normally able to overcome most problems and so it is likely to be with delivering the above requirements. The first development to provide a technical foundation upon which electronic commerce can be built is reaching the point of entering widespread implementation. The Secure Electronic Transaction specification (SET) has been created to define the way that credit card transactions will be processed (Stroud, 1998). Unless the consumer is convinced that they can entrust their personal credit card information to be transmitted via the Internet it is unlikely that electronic commerce will move beyond first base. If someone were selecting a group of companies to devise and implement a standard for processing credit card transactions via the Internet then a consortium including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape and the other major payments and computing companies would be a good starting point (Stroud, 1998).   These companies have declared their support for the SET standard. By creating a set of standards that are open to any organization to use it has been possible to stop the processing of credit card transactions from becoming an element of competition. Ensuring electronic commerce becomes a reality far outweighs any of the short-term competitive advantage that a single company might gain from creating a proprietary standard. The purpose of SET, as described in the official specification, is to provide confidentiality of information, ensure payment integrity and authenticate both merchants and cardholders (Stroud, 1998).  Any information that is transmitted must remain confidential and only be accessible by the intended recipient. SET provides the standards for encrypting the transaction to retain its confidentiality. The content of any transaction must remain unaltered during transmission. By using the SET standards to produce digital signatures it makes it possible to detect if any part of the message has been changed. Merchants need to be able to verify that a cardholder is the legitimate owner of the payment card account number (Stroud, 1998).   In the same way the cardholder must be able to confirm the identity of the merchant and be confident that they can conduct the financial transaction in a secure manner. SET provides the standards to generate ‘electronic certificates’ to authenticate the identity the members involved in the electronic transaction. There must be a wide range of devices capable of processing electronic commerce and no one type of hardware or software should be particularly favored. The SET standards must be capable of being implemented over a wide range of electronic devices (Stroud, 1998). SET is an e-commerce trend that provides a secure transaction over the internet. SET makes use of various techniques that helps in making sure that HK clients and businesses have the ability to identify themselves and conduct business transactions in a secure way. SET makes sure that the information sent from one person to another person will be done in the safest and most practical way possible. Electronic Learning A critical component of a business or academic organization’s distance learning imitative, an electronic learning environment is a distributed network system, a corporate electronic campus, where knowledge workers and learners gain and share information from and among each other. It typically and most currently employs digital media, such as multimedia and hypermedia for Web-based knowledge transfer and Web-based training to provide an enterprise-wide knowledge management system for all of the employees within the organization, whether they are located in Tennessee or Tibet. Within a corporate electronic learning environment, interactions occur between experts and novices across multiple locations over a wide access information and communicate with each other via chat, e-mail, and mail lists (Leonard, 2004). Often an important component of the electronic learning environment is a digital library, where the knowledge objects of the organization are stored. Within current knowledge management circles, enterprise-wide learning is a much-touted, much-repeated reference to building a Web-based knowledge transfer system, to building an electronic learning environment that promotes business transformation, organizational learning, and the achievement of a state of corporate Meta cognition (Leonard, 2004).   Through agents, electronic performance support systems, and other just-in-time training approaches, organizations can move from the industrial age educational paradigm to the digital age educational paradigm. With the advent of the Internet, organizations can now build and maintain a distributed network system for enterprise-wide learning, which includes a digital library that contains multimedia and hypermedia components to support the learning organization. As such, organizations create an infrastructure for a virtual learning environment that is used by internal employees, customers, and even the public, while being entirely separate from the brick-and-mortar organization. With the rise of the digital economy and the Web, organizations are better able to disseminate and share information within and outside of the corporation on a global scale by means of the knowledge base (Leonard, 2004).   In so doing, these organizations become more cognizant of who they are and who their customers are. They achieve a state of Meta cognition. Knowledge managers, industry trainers, and school educators are focusing more and more of their attention on the evolution of knowledge objects from analog to digital, from paper-based information to electronic information that is indexed and cataloged in order to facilitate knowledge sharing by means of the corporate knowledge base (Leonard, 2004).  Through electronic learning system HK business can acquire the information they need about a certain product.  Aspects of the business located in places that are far away from the main branch can use the electronic learning to gather the information they need from the main branch for them to use in their daily operations. E learning also provides additional information and skills to employees from different branches and it assists in making business operations be done in the fastest way possible. Opportunity of E-commerce Companies can determine which elements of e-commerce are core to their business strategy and often keep these elements from becoming commoditized. Most companies may find some low-value processes to be potential candidates for commoditized e-commerce solutions. Many hardware and software packages have come into the market recently to help with the transition and maintenance of e-commerce. However, companies should not rely on these purchases for their e-commerce solution. Businesses with significant e-commerce aspirations must continually reevaluate the efficacy even of previously implemented e-commerce solutions (Epstein, 2004). They must determine whether or not newer e-commerce solutions might better fit the firm’s e-commerce strategy and whether or not the company might be better served by an in-house replacement for the commoditized solution. Without such considerations, companies run the risk that commoditized solutions will dictate their business structure, by limitations in design. Some have argued that the short-term advantages afforded by technological advances and unique uses of technology are not worthwhile, as they can easily be copied at a lower cost at a later time. However, such short-term advantages are often important for market positioning (Epstein, 2004).   Although other companies may be able to mimic such advantages, waiting for the technology to reach an acceptable price level permits the first mover the opportunity to further establish itself with its customers, thereby turning a short-term advantage into a longer-term customer base. The long-term advantages afforded by unique uses of e-commerce are less dependent on finding uses of technology that could potentially benefit any similar company in the market. Rather, long-term advantages are derived from finding unique applications of e-commerce to the company’s specific business strategies (Epstein, 2004). The e-commerce strategies of companies such as Dell, Cisco, and Wal-Mart are known to the business community. However, their long-term success has not relied solely upon e-commerce. Rather, their previous business strategies were already uniquely suited to the advantages they were able to derive from e-commerce (Epstein, 2004).   Not many e-commerce success stories have relied entirely upon commoditized solutions. It is the ability to recognize the complexities of the opportunities, and the threats, afforded by e-commerce for their business that has enabled some companies to excel at e-commerce. E-commerce opportunities, while numerous, need to be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of particular company characteristics (Epstein, 2004). E-commerce can still be improved for it to provide better services to clients from Hong Kong. E-Commerce can use more precautionary measures to ensure that people in Hong Kong who use it will be sure that information they divulge will be kept private. Hong Kong businesses who use e-commerce should be protected from hackers that intends to gather data they can abuse. Through an improved internet system the hackers cannot gather information. Conclusion E-commerce is the technology that is creating various changes in the environment. E- Commerce provided a new way for Hong Kong business to improve on their service to clients. In e-commerce business can be transpired without personal meetings or conferences of the buyer and the seller. In e- commerce paying can be done through the use of the internet and no personal relationship is needed for it to prosper. E-commerce is something that is constantly evolving. As time goes by E-commerce is changing its different techniques in providing service to the clients and in making business transactions be done in the shortest time possible. Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Sample Essay Practitioners Theorists and Futurists alike Concur that the Challenge for Business

Introduction Practitioners, theorists, and futurists alike concur that the challenge for businesses that want to maximize their global p...

EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE FOR SOCIAL WORKS

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE: INFUSION OF PRACTICE AND THEORY IN SOCIAL WORK   Table of Contents   I.      Introduction.. 3 II.     Evidence-Based Practice.. 3 A.    Systematic Practice. 4 B.    Validity. 4 III.        Importance of Research.. 5 A.    Quantitative. 6 B.    Qualitative. 6 IV.       Empirically Based Practice.. 6 A.    Grey Literature. 7 B.    Boolean operators. 7 V.    Conclusion.. 8 VI.       References.. 8   I.                    Introduction The integration of theory and practice has always been the holy grail of any professional field. The actual application of the sciences learned in the four corners of the classroom has incessantly encountered failure as it is implemented in the practical setting. In the field of social work, a new approach has been publicised as the process that will be able to realise this long standing chasm between science and practice. This process is coined as the evidence based practice. This paper will be discussing the elements surrounding the approach by relating it to the process done in the completion of a group project. Basically, the group is tasked to carry out a research project that seeks to establish whether group assertive training serves better outcomes as opposed the therapeutic one-on-one approaches. In any case, the focus of this paper is to be greatly acquainted with the evidence-based practice approach and establish a clear understanding of the process. For clarity and coherence of the discussions, the researcher will be consulting scholarly articles and academic journals on social work to provide clear arguments and observations on the implementation of evidence-based practice. II.                  Evidence-Based Practice As indicated in the introduction of the paper, evidence-based practice is considered as “the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and client values.” ( 2005, ) The following discussions will provide an analysis of the approach with reference to its systematic practice and validity.   A.    Systematic Practice The evidence-based approach is considered as a systematic practice as indicated in the recent works. Specifically,  (2005, ) indicated that the approach is held through a series of steps before realising its ultimate goal. Some of these steps include “locating empirical evidence about an intervention, carefully appraising the validity and utility of this evidence, and applying the results of such an appraisal in an ethical fashion.” () However, this does not indicate that the process is limited to that set of pre-determined steps alone. For instance, the group project that the researcher and the group worked on was unable to acquire data from government institutions which thus limited the group to web research. Specifically, the group have made full use of Google and Questia.com to acquire the necessary literature. B.    Validity Moreover, given that the approach is considerably reliant on the use of data, one of the most important elements is the validity of the said information. As indicated in the work of  (2005, ), for the approach to be effective, the practitioners should have “an adequate knowledge base about the efficacy of interventions for selected client populations and problems.” This is the reason why the group has chosen to answer a comparative question regarding the group assertiveness training and 1:1 therapeutic approach. The problem in this regard is that studies have continually maintained that the “full adoption and implementation of EBP by social work practitioners remains elusive.” (, , , ,  2006, ) This means that in the realm of social work, barriers to the effective implementation of evidence based practice is still in existence. For instance, the same study has recognized the difficulty encountered by the approach in organising and disseminating new data into manageable units for its potential users. In the same regard, , , , ,  (2006, ) also realised that there is scant material that social workers could actually use in practicing this evidence based approach. In the group project, the group was unable to acquire a quantitative data that confirms the effectiveness of group assertive training or counselling. This shows that potential users of the evidence based practice model would constantly, more often than not, encounter the same set of problems. III.                Importance of Research As indicated in the previous part of this paper, previous research is imperative in a successful evidence based practice. Specifically, valid and pertinent data is deemed crucial in this juncture. There are two types of research which the social worker could consult in making vital analyses and decisions using the evidence based approach: quantitative and qualitative research. In the case of the project, the group have to consider both qualitative and quantitative research to address the research question. With the numerous search outcomes, the group have to manually consider whether a particular search result is relevant or valid for the study. At a certain point, the group have limited the relevant data from five sources: two academic journals, one book, and two state reports. A.    Quantitative Quantitative research is normally used in sciences to effectively measure and test a particular hypothesis. Researchers have constantly employed this approach because “quantitative data can be analyzed statistically, it is possible to examine complicated theoretical problems.” ( 1992, ) This indicates that the data presented in these types of research could be considered as free from any form of bias as the data are treated mathematically and through statistical tools for interpretation. B.    Qualitative Qualitative research, in its simplest explanation, is a mode of research that attempts to explain the behaviours that lies behind every phenomenon. As indicated in the study of  and  (2005, ), the purpose of qualitative is mainly to establish a clear and unambiguous understanding of specific phenomenon and not to create models and theories based on tested hypothesis.   IV.               Empirically Based Practice A closely related model to evidence-based practice is empirically-based practice. This model basically compels the field of social work to operate based on scientific evidence. ( and  2005, ) In this type of model, reliance to data is imperative in as much as it is required in the context of evidence based practice. The following parts are examples on which practitioners of empirical based approach could acquire information.   A.    Grey Literature This type of information comes from documents like white papers and other texts made by the state or any cause-oriented organisation. ( 2004, ) Basically, the key characteristic of this source of information is its limited distribution. In relation to the group project, there were two pieces of grey literature acquired in the search process, both of which came from US government authorities containing statistical information pertaining to the rate, incidence, and frequency of domestic violence and infliction of harm from an intimate partner. B.    Boolean operators Another source of information is through the web. The use of search engines and online libraries, like what the group employed, has been quite the trend among researchers as the web offers vast sources of information. It is in this data acquisition method that Boolean operators come in. Examples of these operators include AND and OR which serve different purposes in the search process. ( and  2000, ) For instance, the insertion of AND in between keywords gives sites that have the exact keywords placed in the search. On the other hand, the use of OR essentially makes the search broader. This means that the search outcomes will provide sites that contain any, but not all, of the inscribed keywords in the search.    V.                 Conclusion The group project have given us lessons aside from actually learning on whether group activeness training or 1:1 therapeutic sessions would be more beneficial for the victims of domestic violence. More importantly, the group have been given the chance to be acquainted with the specific aspects of the evidence based practice in social work. Essentially, the study made the group realised that doing research before taking on interventions could provide a higher level of success for the social workers. Basically, employing the evidence based model significantly reduces the level of uncertainty that every social worker encounter in every case he/she handles. Overall, the infusion of both theory and practice in the form of the evidence based practice allows the individual social worker to improve the welfare of those who badly needs assistance in society. VI.               References Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE FOR SOCIAL WORKS

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE: INFUSION OF PRACTICE AND THEORY IN SOCIAL WORK Table of Contents I. Introduction .. 3 II....

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