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Answer Six Questions

1.When Walmart decided to incorporate grocery stores into some locations and created “supercenters,” was this a business-level strategy of differentiation or a corporate strategy of diversification? Why? Explain your answer.

3.Franchising is widely used in the casual dining and fast-food industry, yet Starbucks is quite successful with a large number of company-owned stores.In 2014 Starbucks had over 7,000 companyowned stores in the United States. How do you explain this difference? Is Starbucks bucking the bandwagon effect, or is something else going on?

1.The chapter identifies three governing mechanisms for strategic alliances (non-equity, equity, and joint venture). Provide the benefits for each of these mechanisms.

4.The alliance purpose can affect which governance structure is optimal. Compare a pharmaceutical R&D alliance with a prescription-drug marketing agreement, and recommend a governing mechanism for each. Provide reasons for your selections.

1.Professor Pankaj Ghemawat delivered a TED talk entitled “ Actually, the World Isn’t Flat.” Do you agree with his assessment that the world is at most semi- globalized, and that we need to be careful not to fall victim to “ globalony”? View the talk at:http://www.ted.com/talks/pankaj_ghemawat_actually_the_world_isn_t_flat.html

4.”Licensing patented technology to a foreign competitor is likely to reduce or eliminate the firm’s competitive advantage.” True or false? Write a short paragraph defending your answer.

use your own words

Classifying Music

each student will find an online recording of three primary forms of modern music: folk music, popular music and art music (which represents “high culture” in this course).  While each of these differs in terms of form, audience, and technology used for recording and transmission, all three have a fundamental role in modern American culture.

Students are expected to comprehend the essential characteristics of each of these three musical forms, find an example of each form, and briefly discuss (in roughly 75 words per example) why each example is an appropriate representation of the musical form. 

 you will provide a link to song files or videos of each musical style, followed by your explanation of why it is a good example. 

To be clear, you are required to accomplish the following: 

  1. Go on the Web and find examples of folk music, art (classical) music and popular music.
  2. Each post should contain three 75-word explanations of each musical example found online. These explanations include why the song is an example of the type of music assigned to it. 

Here are some abbreviated characteristics of each music form, as described in Oxford Music Online, which contains more lengthy descriptions.

Art Music

“The story of American art music chronicles the rise of the composer in the United States. At no time have such composers controlled or dominated American concert life, however. Their historical role has been to take Old World practices as a starting point and to complement repertories that are chiefly European with works of their own. Although some 20th-century American composers have opened up fresh artistic territory, art music in America, even into the later years of the 20th century, has continued to revolve around the performance of European classics.”

Folk Music

“This concept has been defined and developed in multiple ways by collectors, scholars and practitioners, within different geographical locations and in different historical periods. Widely used in Europe and the Americas, it has been used both covertly and overtly in the construction and negation of identities in relation to class, nation or ethnicity and continues to be the source of controversy and heated debate. At its root lie questions about the identity and identification of the ‘folk’, the delimitation of musical repertories, how these repertories are transmitted and the assessment of sounds.”

Popular Music

“A common approach to defining popular music is to link popularity with scale of activity. Usually this is measured in terms of consumption, for example by counting sales of sheet music or recordings. Another common approach is to link popularity with means of dissemination, and particularly with the development and role of mass media. It is true that the history of popular music is intimately connected with the technologies of mass distribution (print, recording, radio, film etc.); yet a piece that could be described as ‘popular music’ does not cease to be so when it is performed live in public, or even strummed in the amateur’s home, and conversely it is clear that all sorts of music, from folk to avant garde, are subject to mass mediation. A third approach is to link popularity with social group – either a mass audience or a particular class (most often, though not always, the working class). In the first case, the theory is usually ‘top-down,’ portraying the group as undifferentiated dupes of commercial manipulation; this tends to accompany pessimistic scenarios of cultural decline. In the second case, the theory is ‘bottom-up’, representing the group as the creative source of authentic (as opposed to ersatz) popular music; this tends to accompany populist scenarios of leftist opposition.”

Other definitions

You are likely to use Google to further investigate what exactly constitutes these musical forms.  Wikipedia’s discussion on folk music <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music#Definitions>, art music <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_music#Definition>, and popular music <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music#Overview> are helpful.

Finding the music

To find examples of each of these, you are welcome to use Google or another search engine.  Your search terms may be broad (“art music example”) or narrow (“Beethoven”) but in either case, attempt to verify that the song is properly titled.  One means of doing this is to search for the song title and see if other similar or identical examples of the song exist online.  If so, you’re most likely listening to a correctly labeled performance.

Defining the music

I expect you to associate your example with a musical form to the best of your ability, and you will receive full credit if you meet all assignment requirements.  You will find that not even scholars agree on the essential characteristics of these three types of music, so the main thing is to try your best. You might think about it this way:  After reading about and listening to the different forms, consider what you believe the essential characteristics to be. Then, tell me how your example fits that criteria. 

Objections To Utilitarianism

Discussion: Objections to Utilitarianism to ensure that your initial post starts its own unique thread, do not reply to this post.  Instead, please click the “Reply” link above this post. Please read the general discussion requirements above, as well as the announcements explaining the discussion requirements and answering the most frequently asked questions.  If you are still unsure about how to proceed with the discussion, please reply to one of those announcements or contact your instructor.In the course of the week’s discussion, you will need to do the following (not necessarily in this order):

  1. Engage with the text: 

Using at least one quote from one of the required readings, briefly explain the ethical theory of utilitarianism. Ethical theories have core ideas, principles, and assumptions.  For any ethical theory, there are objections that can be raised against those core ideas, principles, and assumptions.  Several objections to utilitarianism are discussed in Chapter 3, Section 3.5 of the textbook, and John Stuart Mill (2017/1863) discusses 8 objections in Utilitarianism (in Chapter 3 of the textbook, the text can be found under “Primary Sources” and the objections under the section, “Objections and Replies”).  Choose one of these objections and briefly explain the core idea in your own words. 

  1. Reflect on the theory: 

Present a scenario (real or imagined) in which a committed utilitarian would probably make one choice, but someone who finds this objection compelling would probably make a different choice.  (In other words, put yourself in the mind of someone making that objection, and you’re imagining a scenario in which that person would likely make a certain ethical judgment but a utilitarian would make a different ethical judgment.)2 Reflect on yourself: In your view, does considering this situation strengthen and support the objection (thus showing a weakness to utilitarianism), or does it help strengthen utilitarianism by showing how a utilitarian could respond to that objection? 
Should be at least 600 words.
TEXT: Thames, B. (2018). How should one live? An introduction to ethics and moral reasoning (3rd ed.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu