...Introduction This case study Luotang Power: Variances Explained is mainly concerned with a study of variances that will show the changes in performance in the company and the external environment that is not within the power plant’s control. The Luotang Power Company (Luotang) is a 600 Mega Watt (MW) coal fired power plant located in the Hubei Province, China. Luotang first started in 1997, when the Provincial Planning Commission, working on behald of the Hubei Provincial Government, had solicited bids from international power developers to finance, design, build, and poerate a 600MW coal-fired power plant. The project was contracted on a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) Basis, that meant that the power plant would be given to the Hubei Provincial Government after 20 years of operation at no cost. Luotang was mainly rural in nature but development quickly increased when the power plant opened. Luotang is wholly owned by an American independent power producer. Luotang’s parent company is known as China Hua Tong Power (HT Power). It’s primary customer is the Hubei Provincial Power Company (HPPC) and their main coal supplier was the Pindingshan Coal Company (Pindingshan). Tan Min Yi has been the general manager of the Luotang Power Company since 2002. In this case study, it talks about how Tan has to make a presentation to the Board of Directors of Luotang’s parent company, that is HT Power about the results received in the 2011 Report of Operations. He is concerned about what...
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...CRAIG CHAPMAN Luotang Power: Variances Explained Introduction As soon as Tan Min Yi received the 2011 Report of Operations for the Luotang Power Company, he called company Controller Fiona Zhu and Sales Manager Ricky Wang into his office to discuss the results. Tan was general manager of the Luotang Power Company, a 600 Mega Watt (“MW”)1 coalfired power plant, located in Hubei Province, China. He was scheduled to make a presentation to the Board of Directors of his parent company, China Hua Tong Power (“HT Power”), the following week about the most recent results and was concerned about their reaction to the disappointing results.2 Tan knew his company had performed well during the year. Both plant availability3 and fuel economy had improved over the previous year. Additionally the plant’s primary customer, the Hubei Provincial Power Company (“HPPC”), had met its contractual electricity purchase obligations for the year. However, there had been limited opportunity to sell energy above the contractual minimum, either to HPPC or others. Still, Tan felt that these factors were outside his control. His team had performed well—it just didn’t show up in the financial results. The scheduled presentation to the Board was important for two reasons. First, HT Power was considering a 2,000 MW expansion at Luotang. However, on a more personal note for Tan, he had been general manager of Luotang since 2002, and he hoped it would be time for a promotion. He hoped that HT Power would consider...
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...Case Analysis Luotang Power Company Background Luotang Power Company is a 600 Mega Watt coal-fired power plant, located in Hubei Province, China, the parent company of which is China Hua Tong Power (HT Power). The major business is to generate electricity by coal burning and sell it to Hubei Provincial Power Company (HPPC), the major customer which is the only power transmission and distribution company in Hubei Province. Whereas the coal is purchased from Pindingshan Coal Company who is required to supply low sulfur bituminous coal that meets certain quality specifications. Regardless of the improved plant availability and fuel economy, the company wasn’t performing well for the financial result. A variances analysis indicated that the poor performance was due to a combination of shrinking revenue, increasing price of the coal and decreasing quality of the coal. Company analysis Macroeconomic analysis A PESTE framework including political, economic, social, technological and environmental factors is used to contextualize the company in an industry framework. Economic aspect: China is the world second largest energy consumer behind the United States. The energy consumption has been boosted by strong economic growth over the past two decades. Its electricity consumption is influenced by fluctuations in the GDP growth. (Appendix1) Hubei led the four provinces fed by the central China grid with a 13.8% rise in economy and is said to be doubled in the next five years...
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...agenda. China wants to be rich and thus powerful. It certainly follows a clear-cut strategy already in place for over 30 years. This helps increase its prestige and power. Its performance in the field of “new” international agenda items (direct human, environment, etc.) lags behind its economic might. China will continue to be the manufacturing plant of the industrial world for many years. Investment in China will be driven primarily by the creation of local infrastructure focused on trade for export markets, whilst Chinese capital markets will still remain inchoate for many years. India wants to be powerful and hence enjoy global prestige. Its competitive edge resides in low labor costs (wages) in certain sectors (textiles, outsourcing, information technology). It has no coherent project of prosperity. Investment will continue to flow from companies wishing to reduce their labor and other production costs by “offshoring” their plant, call-center or web-center operations. Investment will be strong in areas of value-added products, such as chemicals, software and other IT-related industries, but on an insufficient scale to make it boom across all socioeconomic structures. Moreover, capital markets will remain incipient when compared to international counterparts. Russia wants power, prosperity and prestige, but it is uncertain on how to get it. Sometimes it talks and behaves as a superpower. The population of scientists is immense. The Europeanization...
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...The Power of Knowledge Knowledge can be approached in different ways and numerous interpretations are considered. Knowledge can be stimulated through humility or ignorance. I have selected three separate texts that illustrate the connection human aspirations and knowledge has in common and the impact hierarchy rankings have on one’s insight. The literary analysis essay interprets and defines the term “knowledge”. The meaning focuses around learning, instruction, insight, philosophy, and proficiency. The texts that will be used throughout the essay as sources are: Beowulf translated by Michael Swanton, The Wife of Bath’s Tale and the author is Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Tempest which is a product of William Shakespeare. Characters from the chosen texts demonstrate their perception of knowledge and wisdom based on the significance of superficial existence. People’s assumed power and privilege promote certain actions they could partake in when trying to fulfill personal desires. Acts of knowledge can be either appropriate or inappropriate gestures. It is difficult to distinguish right from wrong deeds the overall circumstances has to be examined and the answer lies in the outcome of the decision when wisdom was applied. There is good and evil in everyone, selfless or self-centered choices formulate one’s character and the observed perception others have. The texts educate the reader that karma usually constructs challenges or rewards depending on if your knowledge was practiced...
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...seeking for leadership, however in different community. In consequence, leadership they gained was different from each other in all three aspects; importance, scarcity. Power of influence was also used by both candidate. Those are, reward, coercive, legitimate and referent power. Leadership Importance For Booker, he was important to people, especially those who living in poor areas, because the changes he going to make can alter their standard of living. In the other hand, James also has a group that recognize him as important. Those are business owners who earning benefit by his urban area development. Development of new business and redevelopment of old area will revitalize their new business, and James was the Mayor who supported it. In consequences, Booker earned the dependency from people by giving them future expectation, while James giving his supporter actual tangible benefits. Scarcity During the mayoral race James created the sense of low substitutability of himself. He appealed he is the only one who can provide “experienced leadership”. Since he has a longest assumption as a state mayor, his experience is irreplaceable by new candidates. This was the key issue in the first election, because Booker was new to voters and there was no previous achievement he could for appeal. Influence power Reward power Xiaowei Brian Liu 2/20/2014  Sense of reward was one of the key issue trough out the election. Both James and Booker distributed many food and goods during gathering...
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...Variable | Range of Values Found | Values selected for project | Speed of Bullet | 1055-3054 Feet Per Second** | 3054 feet per second | Power of locomotive | 3000-6000horse power | 6000 horse power | Height of a very tall building | 859-2716ft | 2716 feet | Chose the highest value for each area because I figured it would be best to compare the top amounts. Speed of bullet – 4122.9 watts Power of locomotive – 4474200 watts Height of building – 2716 feet **Bullet speed varies greatly depending on size/shape/weight of bullet and distance from muzzle (wind resistance and gravity). Volume for water = ((3.1417 * Radius^2) *Depth) * 7.47 = gallons *8.35lb = weight 97,001,173.49175lb’s E=10^(1.5(9)+4.8) = 10^(18.3) = 1.995262315x10^18jouls 1515.428229m/second .941643154 miles per hour 5500 miles My bullet goes 930 meters per second. The power is astronomically higher then that of the locomotive. The height of the building I chose is 827 meters which is a lot larger then 10 meters however when you compare it to the 15 mile dept while in the ocean iits much smaller. Hawks, Chuck. "Rifle Ballistics Summary." Rifle Ballistics Summary. N.p., 2003. Web. 6 May 2013. <http://www.chuckhawks.com/rifle_ballistics_table.htm>. "Power of a Train." Power of a Train. Ed. Glenn Elert. N.p., 2001. Web. 6 May 2013. <http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/RadmilaIlyayeva.shtml>. "World's Tallest Buildings1." N.p., 2013. Web. 6 May 2013. <http://www.infoplease...
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...being rude. When your boss skips a few rules, he's being original. When you please your boss, you're arse-creeping. When your boss pleases his boss, he's being co-operative. When you're out of the office, you're wandering around. When your boss is out of the office, he's on business. When you're on a day off sick, you're always sick. When your boss has a day off sick, he must be very ill. When you apply for leave, you must be going for an interview. When your boss applies for leave, it's because he's overworked. Daily Prayer of Employee Give me the wisdom to UNDERSTAND my BOSS Give me the Love to FORGIVE him Give me the Patience to UNDERSTAND his deeds But Dearest GOD……………. Don’t give me the POWER because if you give me POWER I’ll BREAK his head Who cares for the BOSS??? For more than 75 percent of employees, dealing with their immediate boss is the most stressful part of the job. They set the tone for their followers and organizations. 95 percent of all people in the workforce have bosses, are bosses, or both. WHO MATTERS MOST IN AN ORGANIZATION...
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...Brittni Menard A Brawl in Mickey's Backyard 9/9/2013 In Anaheim, California protestors gathered to put on a skit. They showed their support for a developer's plan to build affordable housing near the theme-park, which Disney opposed. Statistics show that housing was very high priced around the theme-park, and with the minimal wages the employees were making, they were unlikely to even be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment. This meant long commutes by bus or car for them. A developer called SunCal had arranged to buy 26-acres of land in the resort district, which needed approval by the city council. While the employees and other individuals and groups supported the idea, Disney wanted the land to be used only for tourism purposes. 1. The focal organization in this case is SunCal. A focal organization is the organization from whose perspective the analysis is conducted. The main issue SunCal faces is having to go through the council in order to get their intended proposition approved. 2. The relevant market stakeholders are employees & customers. The relevant nonmarket stakeholders are communities, the general public, & business support groups. 3. The employees are in favor of SunCal's proposed development and are interested in the lower rent/affordable housing options it would provide them. It would help them to find a place to stay that would eliminate long commutes or highly priced apartments. The customers would be opposed to this proposition for the fact that...
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...LET 1 Task 3 Thomas Pepper 195297 Introduction: Corporation A was founded in 1989 and focuses on creating marketing programs for the real estate industry. The corporate mission of Corporation A is to help clients improve their real estate sales. The Corporation A team is comprised of professionals with varied backgrounds and experience levels. The company prides itself on fostering a team environment throughout the organization. Given: Employee 1 has worked in the marketing department at Corporation A for 12 years. In the marketing department, employees who earn a superior rating on their yearly performance evaluation receive a large bonus at the end of the year. Employee 1 often comes into the office on weekends or stays late to ensure the work is complete and accurate. The marketing manager encourages employees to work beyond the requisite 40 hours a week by reminding them of the yearly bonus for receiving a superior rating on their next evaluation. Employee 1 is planning to use the bonus for a well-deserved vacation that would be unaffordable without the bonus. Employee 2 is the only certified public accountant (CPA) in the accounting department at Corporation A. Employee 2 has negotiated with the accounting manager to work a four-day work week and is the only person in that department allowed to work a compressed work week. The accounting manager agreed to the shortened work week because Employee 2 is the only employee who can prepare the company’s financial...
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...wireless sensors are becoming an active topic of research. Advances in hardware technology and engineering design have led to dramatic reductions in size, power consumption and cost for digital circuitry, wireless communications and Micro ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS). This has enabled very compact, autonomous and mobile nodes, each containing one or more sensors, computation and communication capabilities, and a power supply. The missing ingredient is the networking and applications layers needed to harness this revolutionary capability into a complete system. We review the key elements of the emergent technology of “Smart Dust” and outline the research challenges they present to the mobile networking and systems community, which must provide coherent connectivity to large numbers of mobile network nodes co-located within a small volume. “Smart Dust.” It is certainly within the realm of possibility that future prototypes of Smart Dust could be small enough to remain suspended in air, buoyed by air currents, sensing and communicating for hours or days on end. At least one popular science fiction book has articulated just such a vision [12]. In this paper, we are concerned with the networking and applications challenges presented by this radical new technology. These kinds of networking nodes must consume extremely low power, communicate at bit rates measured in kilobits per second, and potentially need to operate in high volumetric densities. These requirements dictate the need...
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...There are five bases of power that are divided into two separate group. The two groups are formal power and personal power. Formal power are powers that are based on one’s position in an organization. These powers include coercive, reward, and legitimate. Personal power is power that is driven by a persons individuals characteristics. The personal powers include expert power and referent power. Along with the five bases of power there is a behavior known as dependency. Dependency can be described as Person A having a relationship with Person B although Person B has something that Person A requires. Coercive power in an organization is having the ability to instill fear into someone of a lower rankings position because you can bring disciplinary actions on them. Most people in a workplace fear being fired or demoted from their position. Although negative results for Employee 1 aren’t expressed, the thought of not achieving the goal of earning a yearly bonus can impact behavior. Employee 1 knows without a great evaluation from the manager the yearly bonus will not be offered. Since the manager promotes employees to work additional hours the employee is going to do everything in his power to seem like the likely candidate for the bonus. The employee has planned to take a vacation using the money from the yearly bonu and without it the vacation will have to be cancelled. Reward power is when someone can sway another to achieve a goal in order for something to be gained. Basically...
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...The Five Forces Framework and Competitive Strategy In this framework due to Michael Porter there are two high-level stages in the creation of competitive strategy, each stage corresponding to a high-level determinant of profitability mentioned in the previous section. The first stage is the assessment of the attractiveness of the industry in which a given company is embedded based on a structural analysis of the industry. In this stage, called the five forces framework, five forces that influence industry attractiveness are identified, as well as the factors (e.g., number of competitors, size of competitors, capital requirements) that determine the intensity of each force and therefore the cumulative intensity of the five forces. The purpose of the five forces framework is to relate the degree (or intensity) of competition in a given industry, as qualitatively measured by the combined strength (or intensity) of five forces, to the attractiveness of the industry, defined as its ability to sustain profitability. Based on the structural analysis, a particular company may be in a very attractive industry (e.g., pharmaceuticals) or in an unattractive industry (e.g., steel). However, though a firm exists in an unattractive industry, it can still be highly profitable by choosing the proper competitive position within the industry, for example, e.g., a mini-mill such as Nucor in the steel industry in the nineteen-eighties. The second stage of strategy creation addresses the competitive...
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...INTRODUCTION Luthans (1995) stated that organizational behaviour is about the study of human’s behaviour in an organization which included the understanding, prediction and control of human behaviour. In any organization, individual members made up the whole organization structure. So, individual is the most important element that influences the organizational behaviour. No matter individual acting alone or in the group, how they behave may affect the whole organization. Therefore, it is important for a manager to understand the behaviour of individuals, groups and patterns of structure within an organization in order to enhance organizational effectiveness. INDIVUDUAL CHARACTERICTICS IN AN ORGANIZATION Individual Differences Iindividual differences are the basis of diversity in an organization which forms different individual behaviour. It can forms creativity and satisfaction at work but can also be the root of conflict and frustration. Manager has the responsibility to understand different individual characteristics in order to determine whether he or she matches the requirement of the organization as well as for the purpose of rewards and punishments towards their performance. First of all, Individual can be differs in the form of personality, ability and intelligence. Other than that, some biographical characteristics also form individual differences. These different attributes and characteristics shape one’s values and performance in an organization. Biographical...
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...Organization conflict resolution Lecture 6 Date: 2 December 2013 1 Learning Objectives 1. 2. 3. 4. Understand the nature and sources of organizational conflict Know the mechanisms to obtain power, influence decision making and resolve conflict Identify sources of organizational power and tactics for playing politics Evaluate the costs and benefits of organizational politics 2 What is Organizational Conflict? • • • • Stakeholders compete for the resources that an organization produces. Shareholders want dividends, employees want raises. An organization must manage both cooperation and competition among stakeholders to grow and survive. All stakeholders have a common goal of organizational survival, but not all goals are identical. 3 What is Organizational Conflict? • The clash that occurs when the goaldirected behavior of one group blocks or hinders the goals of another Some conflict can actually improve organizational effectiveness – Can overcome inertia and lead to learning and change • 4 Cooperation and Competition Among Stakeholders 5 What is Organizational Conflict? • Beyond a certain point, conflict becomes a cause for organizational decline – Conflict leads to inability to reach consensus and indecision – Too much time spent on bargaining rather than acting rapidly to resolve problems • On balance, organizations should be open to conflict and recognize its value 6 Relationship Between Conflict and Organizational Effectiveness ...
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