Resource Project (Motivation) Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 7250 words

Resource Project (Motivation) - Assignment Example Carrefour is listed as the Europe’s leading retailer and the second-largest in the world followed by Wal-Mart. It was selected for this study because of its success and achievements in the world retail industry. In fact, more than 10 million customers annually visit Carrefour stores and 25,000 suppliers provide fresh food, grocery and other items such as small house-hold goods, textiles, home appliances (photo equipment, DVDs, sound and multimedia equipment) to these stores. Annual net sales at Carrefour amounts approximately 76,789million Euros of which forty-six percentage, proportion is generated in France and the rest from abroad. Fournier, Badin and Defforey founded Carrefour in France in 1959 with the purpose of â€Å"creating, acquiring and operating, in France and abroad, stores for the sale of all items, products, food and merchandise and, secondarily, providing within the said stores all services that may be of interest to the customers† (Carrefour 2012 p.272) . Now Carrefour is a multi-format, multi-channel and multi-local group, comprising of 9,994 stores in thirty three different countries in the Europe, America, Middle-East and Asia. Employee motivation is viewed traditionally as the â€Å"struggle to get more for less† because more the performance of individual employees, less the cost of salaries for the company (Perry & Porter 1982). Cutting down the number of employees however helped sustain some businesses during the last economic recession. It suggests the importance of improving the workforce productivity rather than hiring new labour. In a study conducted in Germany revealed the economic recession in 2009 affected employment in many companies. Some employers had modified employees’ working conditions and pay in addition to the employment levels and staffing measures. Example, 67% of respondents in metalworking and electrical industry, 53% of respondents in chemical industry, 47% of respondents in financial

Omnivores Dilemma - A Natural History of Four Meals is a Nonfiction Essay

Omnivores Dilemma - A Natural History of Four Meals is a Nonfiction Book by Michael Pollan - Essay Example The book illustrates the American way of living from the source to the final meal that is eaten. From an economic viewpoint, there are many shortcomings of the book worth noting, such as in the Pollan’s self financed meals; he only focuses on what is before his eyes and ignores the macroeconomic factors that influence the transparency of the cost of foods, which is not attainable within the interconnectedness of the markets. Essentially, Omnivore’s Dilemma is a book about the state of America’s food production, consumption, regulation and distribution (Tyler, 2006). Food Chain Food chains are usually applied in ecological modelling, which provides a continuous variable for measuring passage of energy through various linear linkages from the lowest to the highest trophic feeding levels. Long food chain lengths are unstable with increasing length increases with the ecosystem size and reduction of energy at every successive level. Food chain lengths vary from three to six or even more levels. For example, a four-level food chain will consist of a flower, a frog, a snake and an owl. A five-level food chain may consist of the grass, a grasshopper, a rat, a snake and an owl. The organisms that use solar energy or heat energy to synthesize starch are the producers, such as plants. Consumers are those organisms that feed on other organisms, whereas, all food chains begin with the producer then progresses to the consumer. Therefore, all organisms within a food chain except the first one are all consumers. This fascinating journey through the food chain does not make Pollan a preacher, but he is engrossed in his thoughtfulness and so much dogged a researcher to let ideology take over him. He is surely not a writer who is afraid of soiling his hands in the quest for a better understanding on the manner in which modern food is produced. For example, he does everything from buying his cow to the slaughterhouse, then ultimately to the dinner table. Polla n really capture how Americans eat today from the fast food to the big organic to the locally sourced, ultimately to foraging for dinner armed with a rifle. This idea examines the human diet from capitalism to consumption (Pollan, 2006). National Eating Disorder Americans have changed the way they eat and the usual question that arises daily is based on what will be taken for dinner. This is a simple question that can evolve to be very complex as one tries to figure it out. The evolution of human culture has a great influence on how peoples’ native wisdom about eating, such that the way people eat is riddled with confusion and anxiety. Most ancient and venerable staple foods have abruptly disappeared from the American dinner tables and have made Americans to change the way they eat. This condition can be described as carbophobia. This was supplanted by lipophobia around 1977 when Americans were warned against loving the red meat during the Carter reign, which forced the Senat e committee to issue a set of dietary goals.