Strategic management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 11000 words - 1

Strategic management - Essay Example Corporate culture describes and governs the thinking, feeling and actions of owners of companies and employees. It does not matter whether corporate culture is written as a mission statement or merely understood by organisational publics. Corporate culture may be founded on the beliefs spelled out in the mission statement or be consisted in the part of a corporate symbol. For example, Apple’s corporate culture is reflected in its rainbow-coloured apple. Contemporary managers are always keen on the corporate culture of their organisations. According to Johnson, Whittington, Scholes, Angwin and RegneÃŒ r (2014), corporate culture has a critical role to play as far as determination of organisational performance is concerned. Fundamentally, how well a business performs is contingent upon the ways through which people behave in organisations. Behaviours, as contended by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel (2009), comprise of the actions that lead to production of results. Corporate culture is a subset of these actions; this is why corporate culture is directly proportional to the performance of a business. Capon (2008) believed that all organisations have a developed set of assumptions, understandings, and implicit rules that govern the daily behaviours in the workplace. All businesses have their own cultures that determine the relationships between them and external stakeholders. Corporate culture is not constant and fixed within an organisation. Volberda (2011) posit that all aspects of organisations should feature flexibility in order to enhance adaptability across time, place, and circumstances. If a company is not happy with the current corporate culture, the management can begin looking for ways of changing it into what they want. The management can find alternative symbol, believes, attitudes and even values that can change the direction of behaviour. The management, in this case, should ensure

United States Court System Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

United States Court System - Research Paper Example In spite of the belief that the adversarial system is a contest between two rivals, in reality a complex system of collaboration between judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers is usually present. In the U.S. court system, members of the courtroom work team create guidelines about how specific kinds of cases must be dealt with and what type of petitions is legitimate for particular kinds of offenses (May et al., 2007, 159). At present, the United States implements a dual system of state and federal courts that often work autonomously, even though state cases are often petitioned to the federal courts. The dual court system developed from the belief of the founding fathers that every state has to have substantial judicial sovereignty and legislative power (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2012, 105). The federal court system emerged after the nation gained its independence from England. The existing federal court system emerged as a concession between the founding fathers who preferred a powerful federal government and those who supported the rights of the states with a restricted federal government. At present, there are several independent court systems in the United States. Even though some American Indian communities and the military have their own court systems, the general U.S. court systems are the state court systems and the federal court systems (May et al., 2007, 161-162). Figure 1. Structure of the federal court system (May et al., 2007, 162) Even though state court systems emerged with almost no interaction with other states’ court systems, the state court systems that ult imately progressed noticeably resemble one another in structure and organization. Almost all court systems at present are structured in a hierarchical way (Cole et al., 2012, 363). The first major characteristic to remember when looking at state court systems is the difference between courts with appellate jurisdiction and courts with original jurisdiction. Because cases come from them, trial courts are usually called ‘courts of limited jurisdiction’. These courts handle cases of misconduct or less serious offenses, cases of small claims, family disputes, and traffic disobedience. These courts seldom conduct jury trials and rely greatly on the judge for the final resolution (Neubauer & Fradella, 2010, 95). Courts of general jurisdiction handle both felonies and misconduct cases and function as a round-table for major civil actions. Courts of general jurisdiction, in numerous states, facilitate the first appellate level and give the accused who came from a court of limit ed jurisdictions the opportunity to open up another trial. These courts employ prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses, juries, and all the other players usually connected to American courtrooms (Walston-Dunham, 2008, 147). These courts are more formal than courts of limited jurisdiction. They operate under the adversarial framework. The intermediate appellate court level—court of appeals-- is the subsequent level in state court systems. The main task of these courts is to evaluate petitions that came from resolutions given in the courts of general jurisdiction. The topmost court level in every state system is the court of last resort—the Supreme Court (Cole et al., 2012, 364-365). A petition can progress no further after the Supreme Court gives