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Family and Social Structure
Family and Social Structure
Name:
Institution:
A family is a place where people always find it secure to explore their individuality. They also train on how to make individual sacrifices for the benefit of the whole. It is common for parents to engage their children in different activities so that they can easily recognize their interests. Parents also encourage their children to participate in various activities which can benefit the entire family. In the long run, this is what constitutes to a reputable society. Being a father with two children, I have to ensure that my children are on the right course according to the family and societal cultures respectively. Therefore, my position as a father has been influenced by a number of factors. For instance, it has been influenced by my culture, community, religion, and social hierarchy (Lee, 2005). According to our culture, men are required to marry when they are still young to ensure that they take good care of their families before they die.
In addition, they are also considered to be the head of the family hence taking responsibility. These have greatly influenced my position since I had already attained the required age to marry. I am also required to take charge of family. A lot of pressure came from the community who wanted to see my generation. People would constantly ask when I would get married. This served as an encouragement to have my own family as I did not want to go against the wishes of the community who had brought me up. Religion has also influenced who I have become. According to the Christians’ religious beliefs, men are encouraged to marry and have children as they are considered to be a special gift from God. Therefore, every man would always want to receive God’s gift. Social hierarchy has influenced my position in that men are always considered to be the head of the family followed by their wives and children respectively.
As a result of this socialization process, I have a number of roles and statuses. My status as a father in the family requires me to play certain roles like taking care of the children by ensuring that they receive better education, protection, and guidance. My role as a father is also to provide companion to my wife and children. This implies that I have to be available whenever they are in need of my assistance (Pattnaik, 2013). This is expected to continue even after my children shall have moved out. As always believed, fathers are supposed to take care of their children even if they also have their own families.
Since my parents are Africans, I was also forced to marry an African so as to retain the lineage. My culture does not encourage intermarriages especially between blacks and whites. Therefore, I also had to marry an African. Previously, I had considered it as a challenge since we stayed in America, a country with more whites than blacks. The social process I have undergone is believed to be common to most men. However, things have greatly changed as men are currently forgetting their roles as fathers. The legalization of gay marriage has also affected the normal socialization process. For instance, it would not be easy to recognize the statuses and roles of a father in gay marriage.
References
Lee, J. W. (2005). Gender roles. New York: Nova Biomedical Books.
Pattnaik, J. (2013). Father involvement in young children’s lives: A global analysis. Dordrecht: Springer.
External Environment and Internal Strategic Audit Analysis
External Environment and Internal Strategic Audit Analysis
Name:
Lecturer:
Course:
Date:
Part 1
Analysis of external environment
Introduction
An organisation’s environment consists of a set of interest groups and actors, such as the shareholders, owners, customers, managers, competitors, suppliers and industry regulators. They directly or indirectly affect the organisation’s operation. This section critically evaluates how firms may seek to analyse their external environment.
While reviewing policy options, firms have to consider external environment threats, opportunities and competitive advantage. Much of the need to analyse the external environment is prompted by opportunities and uncertainties presented by the external environment (Voiculet et al. 2010). In the contemporary business environment, this has been pushed by e-commerce. For instance, Amazon.com based its strategy on online books sales for close to a year before Barnes & Noble had even considered the use of websites. Accordingly, Barnes & Noble witnessed tremendous success with its bookstore concept despite the lost opportunities in using e-commerce in its early attempt. Despite committing some US$100 million to compete against Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble’s Barnesandnoble.com managed to sell only 15 percent of books online compared to Amazon.com’s 75 percent. In such a case, proper analysis of its external environment could have given Barnes & Noble due advantage ahead of Amazon.
Essentially therefore, the external environment is infinite and comprises everything that is outside the organisation, and which influence the organisation either directly or indirectly (See Figure 1). The external organisation can be better understood through analysis of its domain with external sectors, or selected field of operation (Gupta 2009; Anon n.d.). For instance, Barnes & Noble had overlooked a critical component of its domain when the book selling environment had changed by e-commerce started to gain shape. This gave Amazon huge competitive advantage.
Figure SEQ Figure * ARABIC 1: External environment (Gupta 2009).
Analysis of the competitive environment would therefore have required Barnes & Noble to explore the features and extent of competitive forces and in return positioning them to attain sustainable competitive advantage over Amazon.com. The competitive forces in the external environment include the competitive forces and organisation confronted including, suppliers, industry, customers, products, and potential entrants (Grundy 2006). In such as case, organisations can use Porter’s 5 Forces model to analyse their competitive environment. The model enables organisations to understand the strength of their existing competitive position.
Figure SEQ Figure * ARABIC 2: Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis
The model proposes 4 factors for determining an organisation’s competitive advantage. These include the bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, threat of substitutes and threat of new entrants (See Figure 1). In using the Porter’s Five Forces model, organisations can analyse their entry competitors, or how easy or convenient it is for new competitors to begin competing and the barriers they need to place (Grundy 2006). For instance, Barnes & Noble could have discovered the potential of Amazon.com to enter the industry since there was no barrier placed in online retail.
Organisations also get to understand the threat of substitutes how easy it is for their products to be substituted or replicated with other products (Grundy 2006). Barnes & Noble overlooked the idea that online sales could substitute its physical book delivery service. Firms also get to understand the bargaining power of buyers, or the strength of the position of buyers and how they can work collaboratively to order larger volumes. Hence, firms get to understand the level of concentration of customers and standardization of the products. It also becomes aware of its buyers.
Using Porter’s Five Forces model, organisations also get to understand the supplier’s bargaining power, or the strength of the position of sellers and whether the supplier has monopoly or many potential suppliers. Firms also get to understand the rivalry existing among the existing competitors, or whether there is a strong competition between the players.
Conclusion
Overall, effective running of an organisation requires harmonising the external environment of the organisation and the internal environment. The external organisation can be understood better through analysis of its domain with external sectors, or selected field of operation. This is achieved by using Porters Five Forces model to assess the competitive forces, which consist of the external environment factors, such as suppliers, industry, customers, products, and potential entrants.
Part 2
Internal strategic audit
Introduction
Internal strategic audit is a process of independent evaluation, directed at examining and assessing a firm’s internal control system’s adequacy, effectiveness and efficiency, in addition to the quality performance of its key operational areas. Performing internal audit allows organizations to understand their strengths and weaknesses in a variety of ways (Pinto et al. 2014). This section identifies how an internal strategic audit can result in better understanding of an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses.
Strategic audit allow the management to take a critical view of the environment in which they operate as well as the organisation itself. It allows an organization to assess the qualities that enable it to attain the organizational goals and objectives. The list of possible strengths and weaknesses is significant in initiating strategic thinking and focusing on areas where the firm is adding or losing value (Duncan et al. 1998).
An organisation is also able to understand the weaknesses and strengths it has compared to competitors and the type of internal strategies its needs to set up to achieve a competitive edge. According to the resource-based theory, the key to achieving sustained competitive advantage is adopting strategies that are valuable and yet cannot be replicated (Aldehayyat et al. 2011).
Internal strategic audit also enables an organisation to understand the source of its competitive advantage. Once the strategic strengths and weaknesses have been transformed in terms of capabilities and resources, the capacity to create competitive advantage is attained using systematic categorisation (Duncan et al. 1998).
The strategic strengths and weaknesses allow businesses to evaluate the competitively relevant capabilities and resources in respect to the likely broad strategies that are the business’ most competitive means to attaining competitive edge (Anon 2009).
An organization also becomes better placed to understand its beneficial aspects or capabilities, such as process capabilities, human competencies and financial resources. It also gets to understand certain aspects that prevent it from attaining its goals and organizational growth. This makes it easy to minimize and eliminate these weaknesses (Clardy 2013).
It enables an organization to determine its ‘strategic advantage factors’, which consist of the competitive advantage within the functional areas of an industry, such as research and development, marketing, human resources, management structure operations management and production.
Auditing each functional areas of the organization also enables it to identify its core competencies in executing particular task thus developing a profile of its skills, resources and capabilities. These can be leveraged to improve performance (Arasa & K’Obonyo 2012).
With the available data on, the internal audit goes forth to identify the strengths and weaknesses by assessing the attributes of strategic factors essential for success or using comparative assessment based on different standards such as through historical comparison, where past results are compared with the present ones, or comparing the performance with that of the competitors (Clardy 2013).
Conclusion
In sum, internal strategic audits consists of an independent evaluation, directed at examining and assessing a firm’s internal control system’s adequacy, effectiveness and efficiency, in addition to the quality performance of its key operational areas. It allows the management to take a critical view of the environment in which they operate, as well as the organisation itself. An organization is also able to assess the qualities that enable it attain the organizational goals and objectives.
Reference List
Aldehayyat, J &, Twaissi, N & Jordan, M 2011, “Strategic Planning and Corporate Performance Relationship in Small Business Firms: Evidence from a Middle East Country Context,” International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 6, No. 8, pp.255-260
Anon 2009, Strategic analysis and choice, viewed 24 June 2014, <https://www.icsa.org.uk/assets/files/pdfs/BusinessPractice_and_IQS_docs/studytexts/stratandoppsmanagement2/e_SOM_5thEd_StudyText_Chapter3.pdf>
Anon n.d., The External Environment, chapter 4, viewed 24 June 2014, http://www.swlearning.com/management/daft/Pepperdine/ch04_032402097x.pdf
Arasa, R & K’Obonyo, P 2012, “The Relationship between Strategic Planning and Firm Performance,” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 22, pp.201-209
Clardy, A 2013, “Strengths vs. Strong Position: Rethinking the Nature of SWOT Analysis,” Modern Management Science & Engineering vol. 1, no. 1, pp.11-107
Duncan, J, Ginter, P & Swayne, L 1998, “Competitive advantage and internal organizational assessment,” ‘ Academy al Managemsnl Executive, vol. 12, no. 3, pp.7-12
Gupta, A 2009, Organisation’s External Environmental, viewed 24 June 2014, http://practical-management.com/Organization-Development/Organization-s-External-Environment.html
Grundy, T 2006, “Rethinking and reinventing Michael Porter’s five forces model”, Strategic Change vol. 15 no. 5, pp.213-229
Pinto, J, Pereira, A, Imoniana, J & Reinaldo, M 2014, “Role of internal audit in managerial practice in organisations,” African Journal of Business Management, vol. 8 no. 2, p.68-79
Voiculet, A, Belu, N, Elena, D & RIzeam C 2010, The impact of external environment on organizational development strategy, MPRA Paper No. 26303, 2010
Draft policy for the non-profit organization,SNPO,MC
Draft policy for the non-profit organization, SNPO-MC
Name:
Number:
Course:
Lecturer:
Purpose
The aim of this policy is to offer guidance to SNPO-MC managers, executives, and cloud computing service providers on matters of information and IT infrastructure security. This fresh policy will replace the existing Enterprise IT Security Policy which focuses completely upon enterprise safety needs for organization owned equipment which consists of database servers, Web and email servers, file servers, remote access servers, desktop computers, workstations, and laptop computers, licensed software applications among others. The IT security policy also tackles incident reaction along with disaster revival.
Policy review requirements
The Office of chief information officer (CIO) and the office of finance will be responsible for facilitation of this policy review with the support of executives. Thorough assessment of the existing system infrastructure will be required for informed evaluation prior to any correction.
Review procedure and amendment
The process of policy review will be based on the assessment result of the existing policy guidelines. The weakness(s) found within the guidelines becomes the starting point of policy amendment through the help of IT team led by the chief information officer and with the help of cloud service providers.
I. Scope
As part of policy development task the following issues list which was developed during brainstorming sessions by executives and managers in the three operating locations for the non-profit organization will be taken into consideration. The issues include content ownership, private and confidentiality, enforcement, penalties for violation of policy, use by sales and marketing, customer service/outreach, teleworkers, advertising and e-commerce as well as use by the public relations and corporate communications. Other issues brainstormed include review requirements, use of content and service monitoring tools and content generation and management among others as described below.II. Statement of policy
The ICT system resources are basic assets of SNPO-MC. The whole organization staff shall be responsible for ensuring the ICT infrastructure facilities are effectively and efficiently used in a lawful and ethical way. This policy document recognizes several responsibilities and staff roles for securing ICT resources. Nevertheless, the policy cannot probably cover all circumstances or prospect development. Consequently, these policies are to taken as flexible document that can be modified according to the requirements of the organization. The document shall be revised after at least three years for purposes of correction and to guarantee compliance with the existing regulations and rules.
III. Definitions
Employees: Are the employees of SNPO-MC organization.
Loaned staff members: These are executives and other staff who are “on loan” from fortune 500 companies. The loaned staff members do telework for SNPO-MC for one to two days per week for a year.
Volunteers staff members: These are volunteers who carry out their duties or work for SNPO-MC. Volunteer staff members also telework from their homes for one to two days per week.
Individual users: An authorized connection with SNPO-MC organization is needed to get the right of entry into the network system. This authority of access is to be shown by the availability of user credentials within the organization’s network system. The users shall have to agree to put up with all relevant policies, cooperate with the procedure of registering every ICT device used to access the network, with laptops and desktop computers all inclusive. The users will also have to know the procedures of operation and special needs of the devices together with the software applications used.
IV. Policy
Application of policy
The policies in this document shall apply to every staff member of SNPO-MC organization, including volunteers, service provider consultants and any other individual who have access to SNPO-MC ICT resources. The policies also apply to all resources of electronic systems of information for the organization in plus every ICT hardware, licensed, leased or owned software used for processing, storage, retrieval and transmission of data. The hardware and software equipment which are personally owned such as laptops are also covered by the policy as long as they are used to access the resources of SNPO-MC. However, the organization will not alter the software or even information contained in the personal equipment unless given permission by the owner.
Responsibilities and security roles
All staff shall have the responsibility of securing ICT resources. Therefore, any individual or person who uses the SNPO-MC resources shall keenly observe these ICT security policies and processes during and after their time at the organization. It will be the responsibility of the information security specialist to develop these policies. The new Chief information officer to be recruited by the organization will be responsible for the implementation of the policies together with the assistance of other personnel with responsibility of system security in the organization. The chief information officer will also be responsible for speaking with authority for the organization. Both the chief information officer and the chief security specialist will be responsible for managing compliance with laws and regulations.
Content ownership and users
The website content will be owned by SNPO-MC organization but managed by the cloud service providers. The cloud service providers offer information as a service, platform as a service and software as a service (NSA, 2009, SANS, 2010). These three services will be provided to the SNPO-MC organization by the providers. The users will include public relations and communication individuals such as shareholders, customers/clients which are mainly charities and non-governmental organizations and the general public. The teleworking employees, SNPO-MC executives and volunteers will also use the content mainly for advertising and e-commerce. The content will also be used by sales and marketing individuals a s well as by customer service persons to reach to clients. The content generation shall include documents, email and cloud storage to be managed by the cloud service providers
Requirements for privacy and confidentiality
User names and passwords shall be employed, verification of usernames and passwords, hardware device registration (whether personal or organization owned), assignment of network identities, disposal of equipment, registration of servers as well as security of third party services (services offered by cloud computing service providers). Other means of enforcing privacy and confidentiality shall include software configuration which in turn comprises of antivirus installation, firewall installation and configuration; use of licensed software, software patch updates use of safe data transmission across the channel as well as using secure approach of data storage. All these requirements are meant to ensure that access to sensitive data in for the organization are restricted or minimized. As a result, the cloud service provider will configure various user levels within the organization.
Enforcement
In the case where there is any violation of any part of this policy, the matter shall be reported to the chief information officer. The chief information officer shall be responsible for investigating the occasion and then take the suitable action to the solution. The actions to be taken shall include but not limited to temporary or permanent loss of privilege for access, education remedy, prosecution under the probable violation of local, federal or state civil or criminal laws may be transferred to the suitable authorities. SNPO-Mc shall take necessary action(s) to assess and tackle violations of these policies which may include temporary or permanent termination of computer or network access privileges, waiting for the result of investigation process
To make sure that compliance is achieved, the information security specialist together with the IT team of the organization shall keep constant monitoring of network traffic in order to detect or recognize any illegal activity and network intrusion effort by either internal or external attackers. They will also examine any software or file stored on the organization’s system or any transmitted file across SNPO-MC network. They will conduct and examine results of network system security scan and devices on the organization’s network for the purpose of detecting familiar vulnerabilities. They will also report the same result found to the suitable manager or executive in the organization. Consequently, steps will be taken to disable the access to the SNPO-MC network to the systems affected in case the security vulnerability is significant in nature. The enforcement of privacy policy will also need suitable controls to be put in place, especially where data is stored in the infrastructure of the cloud service providers like is expected in this case( Security, 2012).
Access to SNPO-MC records
The limited access shall be provided by the SNPO-MC to its employees, volunteers and executives for the sections of data or information that they need in order to carry out their job operations. A number of access levels are available which are depends on the type or kind of position that an individual holds. Since cloud computing consists of both server and client side, this will also ensure that the environment of client computing meets the security and privacy requirements of the organization for cloud computing (Jansen & Grance, 2011). This will also make sure that restriction of access on data is consistent and depends on legal, ethical and practical concerns. The rights to access data shall be assigned automatically depending on the role of the staff or individual within the organization.
Security breach reporting
Any security breach on the organization’s information and other resources shall be reported to the information security specialist who will in turn report to the chief Information officer.
Backing up and Recovering of data
The servers and other computers used in the organization to offers shared resources of the network shall be used to regularly back up information. Much of the information shall be backed up by the cloud service providers at their data center. Backing this information at the provider’s data center will be very helpful in ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery during and after downtime. In fact, the policies and procedures for backing up and recovery of data using cloud providers can be more superior as compared to those that can be adopted by the organization itself and hence can be extra robust. As a result, the data stored within cloud can be extra available when needed and can be faster to recover and more so dependable in many situations as compared to conventional data centers. Therefore, disaster recoveries capabilities are inbuilt in the environment of cloud computing (Wayne & Timothy 2011). The information as a service (IaaS) services offered by the cloud providers provides backup and recovery of file systems including raw data stores on servers and systems of desktops (Liu et al., 2011).
A awareness and training
All the basic aspects of ICT security, privacy, confidentiality as procedures connected to access of the system shall be incorporated within formal staff employees and volunteers through the orientation and training processes which shall be mandatory for all.
References
Jansen, W., & Grance, T. (2011). Guidelines on security and privacy in public cloud computing. NIST special publication, 800, 144.
Liu, F., Tong, J., Mao, J., Bohn, R., Messina, J., Badger, L., & Leaf, D. (2011). NIST cloud computing reference architecture. NIST special publication, 500, 292.
Opportunities. Retrieved on 19th/04/2015, from, http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/support/Cloud_Computing_Guidance.pdfSANS Institute InfoSec Reading Room: Cloud Security and Compliance: A Primer.(2010). Retrieved on 19th/04/2015 from, http://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/analyst/cloud-security-compliance-primer-34910Security for Cloud Computing 10 Steps to Ensure Success.(2012). Retrieved on 19th/04/2015 from, http://www.cloud-council.org/Security_for_Cloud_Computing-Final_080912.pdfWayne Jansen Timothy Grance.(2011). Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing. Retrieved on 19th/04/2015 from http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-144/SP800-144.pdf