Gap Inc. is a leading international clothing retailer offering attire, accessories and personal care products for men, women, children and babies. They produce under brands such as Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy. Also Gap brand includes Gap, GapKids, babyGap, GapBody and Gap Outlet. They have their headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, the product development offices are located in New York City, while distribution operations and offices dealing with sourcing activities can be found around the globe.
Gap Inc. has created a "Code of business conduct" in which essential issues of conducting a business, employees’ behaviors and corporate culture are outlined. It contains the letter to employees which states the main principles that operate in Gap Inc. The company was originally founded and to this day is maintaining the principle of conducting business in a responsible, honest and ethical manner. Currently Gap Inc. remains committed to setting and meeting the highest standards of business conduct, because for them nothing less will do. They also make such commitments to their shareholders, neighbors, customers and one another not only because it is a legal duty, but because it's the proper thing to do. The company claims that their reputation depends on the integrity and excellence in everything they do. Clearly such statements shape company’s overall vision of how they operate and what they expect from their employees. This code was designed to promote an ethical work environment, with all the necessary issues descried in it such as reporting the violations, responsibilities, laws that apply to different countries in which the company operates.
Gap Inc. was founded in 1969 by Donald and Doris Fisher in San Francisco, California. When they started there was only one store and a couple of employees. Today, they are one of the world's largest specialty retailers, with fiscal 2004 revenues of $16.3 billion. They are producing and selling clothes to men, women, kids and babies all over the world. Such brands as Gap and Banana Republic are aimed at customers with higher incomes who are willing to buy high quality clothes, although it is not priced too high. Old Navy brand was created to fit the niche of customers such as families willing to have good looking and quality attire, but pay less for it. Many people shopping at Gap are customers in Old Navy as well, because the company’s signature in making clothes can be easily traced. In recent years the company has began production of colognes and other toiletries which are suitable for different seasonal collections and can be matched with certain clothes. Thus Gap stores, offer a full range of products from underwear and perfumes to sports apparel and winter clothes.
As already was mentioned the Gap Inc. customers are successful people who are looking for high quality and reasonable prices. With Old Navy brand it is more of a younger audience with less income to spend, Gap itself aims at middle class buyers wanting a stylish look and excellent customer service treatment. Banana Republic brand is the most expensive and the most chic one out of all presented by Gap Inc. People shopping at Banana Republic are looking for latest styles, comfort and still reasonable prices for the quality they receive. Generally company’s customers are young and middle aged people eager to try something new every season, enthusiastic about color and inspirational design.
Gap’s competitors for apparel, accessories, and personal care products are such famous American brands as Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, DKNY, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger. Those companies are manufacturing similar products, although they are targeting a slightly different customer market. Gap however has to take a lot of effort to stay aloof among them with pricing policies, quality and design in order to retain their customers and try to gain new ones. The external threat from the new entries is a minor one because of number of reasons. The clothing/accessories market is quite difficult to enter, and it takes time to establish a brand name and gain customer loyalty and trust, so in this instance Gap is almost safe at least for some time.
Gap Inc. has stores around the globe and naturally employs people from many foreign countries. While manufacturing and distributing its products, Gap Inc.'s Sourcing and Logistics group, along with their buying agents, draw up production schedules and place orders with approved third-party factories. This process takes place in more than 50 countries where Gap products are made. Clearly Gap involves many intermediaries in making its product, designating much power and responsibilities to the factories and suppliers. It purchases from more than 1,000 vendors in 3,600 factories in more than 50 countries and approximately 13 percent of its products is sourced from China alone. The company also has a comprehensive and publicly available Code of Vendor Conduct and has instituted excellent internal monitoring programs with vendor compliance officers. Gap company was the first U.S. apparel manufacturer that developed an independent monitoring program by agreeing to let representatives of local nongovernmental groups monitor its supplier factories in El Salvador. Gap also supports human rights initiatives through its supplier education programs and a number of other projects and is a participant in the UN Global Compact. Social responsibility for Gap Inc. is a big concern and it engages in many practices to help solve environmental problems. It has number of helpful environmental projects, including a unique, environmentally efficient designed building at its headquarters. Their programs incorporate recycling initiatives for stores, use of wood from certified-sustainable forests for the flooring at its stores, as well as energy efficiency in lighting. Company’s considerations with environmental issues are also addressed in store design and construction; Gap Inc. also does not conduct or endorse animal testing on its products.
Company’s internal policies are accordingly well designed and suited to meet their employees’ expectations. It offers paid volunteer time for headquarters employees, and ensures full medical and dental benefits for domestic partners, as well as a various family-oriented benefits. Throughout the company women hold a considerable number of management positions, including the two women who are among the company’s top eight executives; there are also four women on the 15-member board of directors. Among programs supported by Gap are those focusing on helping unappreciated youth, with an emphasis on academic achievement. Health and human services, including HIV/AIDS prevention and education, community services and the arts are areas of company’s interest and sponsorship.
Bob Fisher became new Chairman of Gap Inc. in 2004 and Paul Pressler was named CEO in 2002 after Millard Drexler retired. The overall leadership style of the company may be characterized as participative leadership where all people are taking active part in building company’s future. Responsibilities are strictly outlined although can be delegated to other people in case of their approval to do so; ethical and lawful approach to conducting business and treating employees are major necessities outlines in the company policy.
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Learning Theory and Conditions of Learning
J.B. Watson, the father of Behaviorism, defined learning as a sequence of stimulus and response actions in perceptible cause and effect relationships, thus the focus of Behaviorism is on the training of observable human behavior. Major scholars associated with this learning theory are J.B Watson, E. L Thorndike, and B.F Skinner. According to the last, voluntary or automatic behavior is either reinforced or weakened by the immediate presence of a reward or a punishment, he claimed that, "The learning principle behind operant conditioning is that new learning occurs as a result of positive reinforcement, and old patterns are abandoned as a result of negative reinforcement". So we can easily track the applied character of this theory to the learning/teaching process as teaching is the arrangement of possibilities of reinforcement under which students learn. They learn without teaching in their natural environments, but teachers arrange special incidents which advance learning, speeding up the appearance of behavior which would otherwise be acquired slowly or making certain of the appearance of behavior which would probably never be realized. Another behavioral theory example could be the use of exams to measure observable behavior of learning, the use of rewards and punishments in our school systems, and the breaking down of the instruction process into "conditions of learning".
The concept of the directed instructions made by teacher is where he/she provides knowledge (information) directly or through some set of episodes is a Behaviorist model of teaching, and consequently, learning. Another important learning theory is Constructivism model, which was mainly introduced by John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, and Jean Piaget. Constructivists believe that all humans have the ability to construct knowledge in their own minds through a process of discovery and problem-solving, through acquiring knowledge from experiences of trials and errors rather than in the classroom. The extent to which this process can take place naturally, without structure and teaching is the defining factor amongst the followers of this learning theory. According to Constructivists children and learners have a natural curiosity for new information, but schools are too structured and overall designed unnaturally, which in turn shifts natural desire to learn. Children perceive their roles as of passive spectators rather then of participants, and this fact lowers their motivation in constructing meaning from the information instructed. To Constructivist point of view children should be given an opportunity to become motivated learners, critical thinkers, problem-solvers. It could be achieved through educational reform that provides the learner with the necessary tools to participate in learning process. According to Papert (one of the Constructivism researcher), the computer is suitable method to come to desired results. Constructivists believe that a lot of changes should take place in our educational system in order to change people’s understanding of learning and what’s essential to make people motivated to learn. They suggest to make learning a life long process, to make it a fun process instead of a torture (as most children perceive it), and to make it so called "customized" learning, which would not necessarily fit all students.
As one can conclude the two theories are very different from each other. In essence the Behaviorists theory means a systematic approach to learning, with a reward/punishment structure. It has served North Americans for a long time a good deal, but it is now believed that it became outdated with the emergence of Constructivists, more liberal theory. I personally believe a Constructivist theory to be much more meaningful in modern schools and colleges as it implies a free will approach and a possibility of choice. It also says that if a teacher motivates children in a correct manner, they will be willing to learn and information will stay longer with them as it will be a result of logical and creative thinking.
Both theories nowadays suggest to apply computers as the major learning tool; and I would suggest to use games and groups projects to facilitate desire to learn. I also think that a reward/punishment system be used in extreme case when it is absolutely needed, otherwise it is not necessary as it does not usually motivate anyone. Moreover, teachers would succeed more when employing multiple approach system, thus combining different theories on practice, which will make the learning process more natural and easy going.
Certainly many theories exist, all focusing on different aspects of our composition as humans. And each theory attempts to explain how we learn, act and behave: Sigmund Freud focused on our sub-conscious, Skinner on our observable behavior (as a Behaviorist), cognitive psychologists on our mental processes and thinking, humanistic psychology on our social and interpersonal development. I believe that all of known theories are more or less dependent on the empirical evidence each one of us acquires throughout life no matter which theory we support.
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Migration Problems
As the term "global village" becomes a key definition of the modern world most of developed countries open their doors to professional immigrants from developing countries. Consequently, developing countries experience the lack of skilled people that could rise up the economic levels of their home countries. Recently, African countries have become the leaders of those states that significantly suffer from migration of its citizens to more developed countries. Although, African nations are even more than partially responsible for the "brain drain" they face as they encourage their citizens to receive experience in developed countries; after finishing training programs abroad and experienced better quality of life African citizens simply do not want to come back to their home countries. It is crucially important for the governments of African countries to stop such mass migration from Africa in order to have their home countries developing.
This issue turns out to be very controversial when we start looking for who is actually responsible for the effect of "brain drain" in Africa. If we view the problem from one side we might think that it is very simple to keep skilled, talented and well-educated people in Africa and let them develop their countries. From the other side African countries do not have a great number of higher-level learning institutions to prepare a desired quantity of professionals. A bad thing is that most of African countries do not posses money to create these facilities and besides they will have to dedicate a lot of time in order to create and develop decent educational system. Besides, in order to attract investment African states have to reduce the level of corruption that they presently have. Corruption greatly scares away investors, especially foreign. High crime rate in most African cities also has a negative effect on foreign investments as it makes investors feel unsafe about their capital and results then to seek other investment alternatives. To decrease the level of corruption, for example, South African government implemented "turn around" strategy in 2003. Barry Gilder, the director-general of home affairs, very often makes surprised visits to department’s regional offices to see if the subordinates are implementing the new strategy to life.
We can argue on and on who is responsible for the fact that well-educated people leave Africa, however, it will not solve the problem. What should be done is actually finding ways to decrease a number of emigrants from Africa. In order to accomplish that task the possible causes of mass migration from Africa have to be found and eliminated to the possible extend.
The most obvious cause for migration from African countries is high unemployment rate and a possibility to have a greater monetary income in the destination country. To resolve that problem Africa simply needs a lot of time and investments. However, what can be done right away is toughening of emigration rules in African countries and toughening of immigration rules in the developed destination countries. For example, make it mandatory for all the students that go studying abroad to come back to their home countries after some period of time. Developed foreign countries have to encourage African students to return to their home countries, although, it might be difficult for students to readjust to home conditions as they are exposed to higher living standards.
Another cause of mass migration from Africa is fairly poor living conditions in many African countries. The governments have to improve living standards by increasing economic growth and skilled labor absorption into the economy. The governments have to create favorable conditions for investments in their economy. (I have already mentioned above in my paper what should be done by the governments in order to attract investments.) Instead of spending about four billion dollars annually to recruit and pay foreign professionals African governments should spend this money on training their own professionals.
Africa is an immense developing region that has a great potential. It is logical that to continue the growth in the variety of fields Africa needs high quality workers. Unfortunately, the tendency for migration of African native professionals, mostly to northern more developed countries, increases every year. To keep up with the pace of development African governments’ primary task is to keep the “golden youth” in there home countries because the very same generation will be running African countries on the peak of their developing. It is vitally important to create beneficial and promising conditions for native smart young people in order to keep them enthusiastic about the developing of their region. Only then Africa can have promising future.
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