Impact of Emoticons on Commerce

Impact of Emoticons on Commerce Emoticons the essential tool for emotion in commerce Emojis serve a very particular role in business communication and therefore need to be employed for specific situations where a sense of connection between the communicating parties is required to boost the outcome of an organisation. Emoticons, another word for emojis, are a set of symbols that have begun to replace words in messaging services and are being slowly implemented in written business communication methods. Whilst they were once simply childs play, a newfound purpose has surfaced and their introduction into the commercial world has seen an increase of success, despite their initial unprofessionalism. They can provide the lacking emotional connection in written business communications, which involve that between internal and external parties for purposes such as marketing and leadership, management and knowledge transfer, in electronic forms of verbal messaging. Hence there is definitive time and place for emoticon use in written business communication. Before the surge of social media, businesses looked down upon technological communication, leading the workforce to develop face to face communication techniques. Now, emojis have risen to provide a similar experience for communicators of technology, to that of a face to face conversation. Face to face communication allows for display of immediate behaviour, which describes the communication behaviour that psychologically brings the receiver of the message closer to the one who is sending the message (Kelley and Autman 2014, p. 49). This improves or furthers the connection between the two communicating parties, elevating the level of understanding between them and therefore better the communication of messages. This induces a range of positive effects for specific circumstances. In a marketing setting, the increasing understanding between two parties such as that of a brand and a customer develops trust and credibility. No matter the type of marketing, there is a need for trust and c redibility to be engendered in the customers, by the brand (Lynch and de Chernatony 2004, p. 408). As society moves towards a new era of technological advancement, verbal communication becomes more necessary, as companies are resulting in the ability to expand themselves past any physical restrictions, to increase their customer pools. This has also led to the distancing of communicators because of the gradual loss of immediate behaviours such as observable emotions and gestures, causing communication to appear increasingly vague and easily misunderstood. Hence, it is now absolutely crucial for marketing professionals to search for ways to re-establish the lost emotional connection during verbal communication. The use of emoticons open a new window for marketers to portray their ideas with a slightly more accuracy as to when only verbal communication was used. Emojis have now begun to find their way into the lexicon of the technological society (Walther and DAddario 2001, p. 327). The significance of non-verbal communication is still being studied today, but the pervading idea tha t verbal communication does not build as strong of a relationship or understanding between the two sides of a conversation. Many researchers have come to conclusions that emoticons have been adopted to make up for the absent nonverbal social cues (Skovholt, Gronning and Kankaanranta, 2014). There is an inherent increase in discussion about the relevance of emotion to leadership roles. Walther and DAddario (2001, p. 324) found that Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire (1984) observed the traditional forms of communication, head nods, smiles, eye contact, distance, tone of voice, and other non-verbal behaviour give speakers and listeners information they can use to regulate, modify, and control exchanges. Managerial roles heavily depend on the ability to communicate with others in their team, and the need for emotional intelligence is extremely significant as without the understanding of non-verbal behaviour can hinder the efficiency of any team and could possibly provoke disagreements or other unnecessary conflict. As most employees primary source of social interaction is with their work group, the communication that takes place must allow them to release emotional expression of feelings and fulfil social needs. Kelley and Autman (2014) found in a research that leaders who used social media and emoticons to communicate with their team members were seen as more immediate or engaged with their members, improving their connections and productivity levels with their team members. Knowledge transfer is described as a combination of the processes of transmission and reception of knowledge as Nylund and Raelin (2015, p. 532) found from Grant (1996). It involves verbal, non-verbal and tonal emotional signals expressed between the individuals who are communicating (Nylund and Raelin 2015, p. 533) and for individuals to be able to receive the full message, all signals must be expressed. Therefore, it is questionable of whether emails and memos are sufficient in passing the exact message between leaders or managers and their team members. Despite the fact that email and memorandum and quick methods of communication, they are not necessarily the most accurate. In fact, all forms of written communication are just as lacking in comparison to face to face communication. Emojis can provide more depth to the message, adding specificity of the subject, tone, mood and many other aspects of speech to the written message. Even though emoticons were not initially designed for businesses use, recent updates to emoji packages on operating systems keyboards have added icons such as clocks, pens and briefcases for corporal use. So perhaps developers of these packages have begun to consider purposes outside casual conversations. Emoticons can also evoke a conversational tone, allowing individuals to speak on a more casual basis. Spinks, Wells and Meche (1999) have explored the professionalism of emails. Some have said that emails were meant for efficient and informal means of communication or for more conversational instances than traditional paper communications (Spinks, Wells and Meche, 1999). This remains a constant debate, even today, in corporate companies, and though most companies remain open to the use of emails, some companies have chosen to limit the use of communication via such means.  ­ There has always been a focus on the need for members of teams to understand each other and can communicate and connect with each other but today, this is not merely a throwaway idea or concept. In a world where businesses are deep in a period of technological evolution, professionals may or have noticed that there has been a loss or decrease in those qualities as a result of implementing computer based and mobile based verbal communication systems to create a more modern environment and work culture. Whilst researchers continue to look into the greater potential and impacts of the newly developed and viral, image-based language within written business communications, businesses are continuing to adapt their face to face communication habits into that of computer mediated communication. Bibliography Kelley, S. and Autman, H. (2014). EFFECTIVE COMPUTER-MEDIATED BUSINESS COMMUNICATION: FOSTERING IMMEDIACY. The Journal of Research in Business Education; Reston, [online] 56(2), pp.48-58. Available at: https://search-proquest-com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/docview/1764323101?accountid=12763 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2017]. Skovholt, K., Grà ¸nning, A. and Kankaanranta, A. (2014). The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E-Mails: :-). Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, [online] 19(4), pp.780-797. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12063/full [Accessed 13 Mar. 2017]. Nylund, P. and Raelin, J. (2015). When feelings obscure reason: The impact of leaders explicit and emotional knowledge transfer on shareholder reactions. The Leadership Quarterly, [online] 26(4), pp.532-542. Available at: http://dx.doi.org.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.06.003 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2017]. Lynch, J. and de Chernatony, L. (2004). The power of emotion: Brand communication in business-to-business markets. Journal of Brand Management, [online] 11(5), pp.403-419. Available at: https://search-proquest-com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/docview/232487806?accountid=12763 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2017]. Walther, J. and DAddario, K. (2001). The Impacts of Emoticons on Message Interpretation in Computer-Mediated Communication. Social Science Computer Review, 19(3), pp.324-347. [Accessed 16 Mar. 2017]. Spinks, N., Wells, B. and Meche, M. (1999). Netiquette: a behavioral guide to electronic business communication. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, [online] 4(3), pp.145-155. Available at: https://search-proquest-com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/docview/214191666?accountid=12763 [Accessed 17 Mar. 2017].

Philosophy of Education Essay -- Philosophy of Teaching Statement

Philosophy of Education Ever since I was a little girl I had this dream of being a teacher. Whether it was making up â€Å"pretend† tests or having my younger brother sit through my instruction, I knew that I was a born teacher. And now that I have grown and matured into a responsible young woman, I feel that my place in this world is in the classroom. I feel that the children are our future and we should teach them everything we know to the best of our abilities. Every summer since the age of 13, I have been babysitting for local families in my small hometown of Pineville. In fact, 2 years ago I had been babysitting for a Optometrist and his wife and they were expecting their second child. As an honor, they asked if they could name their second daughter after me. Kara Nicole was born in June of 2001. As a matter of fact, I have found that my feelings on education often reflect the song The Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston. She states in her song that she feels that the c hildren are our future and I must say that I agree completely with her sentiments on the education of our youth. When I came of age to enter college, there was no question in my mind as to what field I wanted to enter. Elementary education was the only option for me. One of my favorite quotes, although I do not know the author, says that â€Å"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world† and I must say that this reflects my philosophy on education. To me, this quote reveals every compassionate thought I have on education alone. Teachers in some small way or another can be the sunshine in a child’s life. In my opinion, teachers, play many roles; mentors, confidants, sources of inspiration, and disciplin... ...Concord College. I wish to enter a masters program at some other institution of higher education. However, at this time, I am unsure where that institution may be. I know for sure, that I do plan on doing something with the Special Education department. Along with these added classes, I will always be open for Summer classes or workshops that teachers often attend to keep themselves updated on current trends. In my role as an educator, I feel that I should welcome each and every form of change that occurs during my time. Whether I agree with it or not, the point is that one must give it a chance. I feel that our state and local governments, as well as national governments, will continue to do the best for our educational system as possible. Reform, to me, is just a transition from old to new. You should welcome the change no matter how difficult it may be.

The Blackstone IPO

Q1. What are the built-in tensions with a public private equity firm? How does Blackstone's structure attempt to reconcile them? 1. Transparency (disclosures of financial statements) The reason why investors are willing to let the required rate of return decrease is the lower concerns about asymmetric information due to the disclosures of financial statements. In the past, in order not to be subjected to Investment Company Act of 1940, Blackstone once analyzed its operations and concluded that it was not an investment company.The SEC subsequently reviewed the conclusions and did not object. However, if it goes public, it will face problems such as its financial reporting, which should compliant with the GAAP. Therefore, Blackstone hired Jasvinder Khaira and tried to consider the business scope and to create the best business model. Nevertheless, we think that as an IPO company, Blackstone must fully disclose its financial statements and it is also the must-pay and tradeoff to lower t he costs of capital.This is also the problem that Blackstone couldn't wholly resolve from purely adjusting the financial structure. 2. Risk of employees resigning triggered from the change of compensation package Before going IPO, underwriters raised the concerns from unitholders: ‘though it will bring benefits to the existing LPs as the managing of closed deals from employees, it may also let them neglect the growth of company from developing new deals. ’ Part of carried interests, as proposing closed deals, should be converted into units and withdraw in the coming eight years.As a result, the benefits of both unitholders and employees can be adjusted into the same direction. However, the lock-up eight years of the units will face the volatility risk of stock price, which will also trigger the possibility of resigning trend. Therefore, the management team came up with the idea that the other part of closed deals should be converted into unpaid carried interests, which can be converted into shares immediately without withdrawing in the coming eight years.Then, employees can both care about the benefits of unitholders and LPs. [Note] Additionally, in order to compensate the shares dilution of the existing partners when going public, Blackstone established a pool of unissued shares and kept the shares in the pool at the 15% level of shares outstanding. Whenever employees get promotion in the future, shares will be taken from this pool as rewards and motivation for employees to work hard with the company and lowering the resigning risk. [Note]The risks of professionals resigning mainly come from the following two parts: (i) Locking up for eight years of all carried interests will let them face the volatility risk of stock price and consider of quitting jobs; (ii) If converting all carried interests into units and vested immediately, employees will cash all of them out from the market and quit jobs as well. In order to get the balance, the hybrid way as mentioned above was adopted. 3. Volatility of stock price After going public, stock price will be influenced by not only the disclosure of quarter financial reports but also the macroeconomic environment.It may cause the panic to investors as well. Investors may overweight the short-term performance and ignore the long-term value of the company. Blackstone still targeted on the benefits of Limited Partners, which meant it still cared more about the long-term rather than short-term performance. This investment strategy made its short-term profitability more volatile, which could be explained by the essence of private equity. That is, if there is a significant business/case done in one specific season, the earnings of the season will be much higher that the others. As a consequence, the stock price might volatile significantly.To reassure unitholders who might be disconcerted by the unevenness of private equity returns, and the resulting volatility in the stock price, Blackstone of fered a guaranteed annual dividend of $1. 20 per unit through 2009. The firm would pay more if possible, and the dividend would occur before any distributions were made to other equity owners. As our point of view, though IPO will lead to short-term ups and downs of stock price, it will eventually reflect the real values of the company in the long run, consisting the stock price with its long-term performance.4. Short-term losses from the change of compensation package after going public With the shares vesting in the future, Blackstone expected to face deferred cost approximated $13 billion. It may record significant net losses for a number of years following without paying any interests or dividends hereafter. As a result, Blackstone developed a metric called â€Å"economic net income,† which excluded the impact of income taxes, noncash charges related to the vesting of equity-based compensation, and amortization of intangible assets.By using the economic net income metric, the Blackstone‘s executive team argued that this metric was justified, as the future noncash charges reflected an extraordinary situation, incurred only because of the one-time event of the firm’s listing. Moreover, the stream of income against which these expenses would be offset was uncertain but highly likely to be more than enough to cover these costs. Furthermore, the management team also thought that this $13 billion expenses was based on the extreme assumption that all the employees would not leave their jobs in the coming eight years.If they left the firm before their vesting period was up, they would forfeit unvested shares. Therefore, the current assets were very likely to produce more than enough futures revenues to cover the costs. 5. Two-tiered taxation problem Take limited company as an example, profits taxed at the corporate level and then again at the level of the recipient when paid out as dividends. As a consequence, Blackstone decided to adopt the Ma ster Limited Partnership (MLP) structure.In this way, the taxation at the corporate level can be wiped out and profits will only be taxed at the recipient level based on the units he/she gets. 6. Interference of management If Blackstone had adopted the limited company structure, investors (i. e. , shareholders) would get voting rights and have the chance to influence the company’s strategies. The MLP structure retained the limited partnership form of governance, allowing the existing management tame to continue to run the firm. Unitholders had only limited voting rights and could not elect the general partner or directors.That is, the MLP structure would permit Blackstone a governance structure that resulted in minimal change from that currently in place and minimized its ability to continue to focus on the best interests of the LPs in its investment funds. Therefore, Blackstone can ease the tensions about interference of management and governance after going public. Q2. If y ou were an LP in Blackstone, how would you view the structure Blackstone has put in place to go public? We think that there are some advantages and disadvantages after the changes in corporate structure worthour concerning: Advantages: 1. The Reputation Of The Company A public offering company can easily raise their reputation and earn the investor's awareness, and regular disclosure of financial statement will make the outsider have more comprehensive understanding about how the company operates. Therefore, we can likely receive more cases and stand a leading position in the market. 2. Acquisition Of Cheaper Capital Companies expect the P/E ratio to be around 20 after the public offering, this also implies that you can use 5% interest rate for financing.Comparing with those companies in history with ROI hovering around 30% to 35%, we can earn the significant spreads and increase our capital scale, which also help us win more cases. Disadvantages: 1. Losing Talented People Under the current operation structure, the company can successfully combine employee's effort and pay in the Fee and Carry Interest framework. However, in the open market, professional managers can choose when to sell their own stock shares and it will decrease the incentive that they will do their best for the stockholder's interest.It might also bring to the result with the decline in investment performance and negative influences on the limit partner's interest. 2. Transparency There are quite a few matters required by the government after the company was public offered. While the companies must act in line with a number of related laws and regulations , they may have to comply with these requirements and make adjustments to the company's operations. In addition, the financial statements should also be published to both the public and the competitors. 3. Whether The Management Echelon Is Still Under ControlAfter the public offering of the company, we have to take active shareholder issue into consideration when the investors are selling their shares or executing their right to vote. The company must take the cost of solving problems between the shareholders and the management echelons as well. 4. Still Focus On The Long-term Investment Or Not Since the company has set its orientation as a long-term investment target, will the company adjust their operation strategy to meet those investors who prefer the stock's short-term performance?Q3. Would you rather be a unitholder in Blackstone or a limited partner? As a financial supporter, Limited Partner mainly profit from the performance of the fund handled by the company. Also, Limited Partner would distribute related fee and carry interest, according to the performance of the fund, to the company. On the other hand, Unitholder plays a role similar to that of a stockholder, except that Unitholder has neither the right to participate in direct decision-making, nor the right to vote.Unitholder, however, has the claim to the fee and carry interest, granted by the Limited Partner, of the company. Given the difference between this two roles and the reasons listed below, we'd rather be a limited partner of Blackstone in the short term: 1. Outstanding achievements of Blackstone: Considering that the limited partner's profit is highly dependent on the performance of the fund, compared to the profit of the unitholder, we believe that if we are to directly take part in the excellent returns of Blackstone, our best choice is to become a limited partner instead of a unitholder.Inevitably, the IPO of Blackstone would, in some degree, alter the structure of the company, however, we believe Blackstone, can still retain its operating-flexibilities through modification of policy. Simply put, we think Blackstone possesses the competence to maintain, or even surpass, its current performance, and by becoming its limited partner, we can gain a share of the profit, maximizing the value of our mutuality with Blackstone. 2 . Option of transforming into another formIn terms of the by-laws of Blackstone, a limited partner would be endowed with the right to switch him/herself to a unitholder, even in several years. That is, we can choose to turn ourselves into a unitholder if we'd like to carry our claims with less liquidity risk. This system would grant us the option of transforming ourselves, so is our asset and the risk we'd be bearing in another form. In other words, it would be like holding an option, which offers us the right, but not the obligation to exercise our contract.As a result, we'd be able to manage our asset in a more flexible way than we could otherwise have. Q4. As a potential employee, how do you evaluate the Blackstone compensation package against a commensurate offer from a similar large-scale private equity firm that was not public? With IPO, the stock price will reflect value of Blackstone more efficiently and objectively. The MLP employees of Blackstone can get not only salaries but also carried interests depending on their performance and promotion, which could transfer to units after a lock-up period.This compensation package will encourage their employees to work harder because the value of the units they hold on hand are bounded with the performance of company. Furthermore, the number of employees in Blackstone is fewer than that of similar large-scale equity firm which was not public, the unit’s gain of per employee is larger. Last but not the least, when Blackstone went IPO, not only does it mean that Blackstone would face more regulations than before, it also pointed out that Blackstone, heading to become a well-known public listed company, would face more potential pressure from outside investors.To abide by the regulations of the state, and keep investors’ confidence toward Blackstone, the company itself would be less likely to exploit the right of its employees. If it does any harm to workers under their roof, the negative impression s toward the company would soon be spread around the financial market, causing damages to itself. Hence, by working under the public listed company such as Blackstone, employees could be more confident that their rights and benefits would be partly, if not all, guaranteed. These factors make Blackstone an attractive choice to workers.

A Look at Feminist Utopia and Dystopia Literature