Women in the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle A brief history of Essay

Women in the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle A brief history of zimbabwe, status of women in precolonialism in zimbabwe, nature of colonialism in zimbabwe, the - Essay Example The Portuguese were then overpowered by the consolidation of several states called Shona that led to emergence of Rozwi empire covering most of the present Zimbabwe. This state of peaceful coexistence of native kingdoms lasted for the next two centuries. By the middle of 19th century Rozwi empire fell due to the entry of British South Africa company to whom rights for mining of gold were given by the Ndebele rulers in 1888 by way of treaty. The treaty later paved way for aggressors from Europe mostly British who fought with the Ndebele kingdom and established colonies there. (Zimbabwe History) Colonization was started in 1890 by the English settlers led by founder Cecil John Rhodes. Thus Rhodesia was named after its founder. The English thought they were the first race in the world and hence assumed wherever they settled, it was for the benefit of the human race. (Nyangoni) With this feeling of supremacy over the rest of the human race, English started colonies in other parts of the world and dominated the local race. Thus native Africans in Rhodesia were not allowed to participate in an all-white Government. The whites alone assumed right to vote and the land laws they passed prevented native Africans' presence in many public places reserved exclusively for the whites. The ordinances they passed left native Africans with lands just for sustenance. About 6000 whites occupied half of the fertile and otherwise potential lands, leaving the worst lands for 600,000 native African farmers.(Chung P 211) This state of affairs lasted till 1979 characterized by domination of white minority over the native population who were denied rights to their own lands. Ever since the colony started, there had been civil unrest among the natives of Rhodesia who first initiated revolution demanding changes in the imperial constitution which would facilitate equal job opportunities and participation in Government. But by 1960, situation radically changed with nationalism gaining momentum requiring to overthrow the minority white rule. In the process, National Democratic Party (NDP) was started by native Africans with the ultimate aim of Pan African rule in due course. The party activists evoked violence against the minority rulers to attract the attention of England for its intervention and help handing over of power to the locals. (Gann, p 42) The minority rulers retaliated by banning the NDP in 1961. Then came a newly formed party in 1962 led by Joshua Nkomo under the name of Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) through reconstitution of the NDP. The ZAPU wanted to bri ng one-man-one vote rule, unite all Africans against imperialism and colonialism, eliminate all forms of oppression of its local Africans, and to establish a new order of African tradition. ZAPU members also believed force by violence and bloodshed was the only solution. Hence looking at ZAPU's objectives, the minority Government banned it also. ZAPU members went

Scan Of The Airline Industry For Flydubai Tourism Essay

Scan Of The Airline Industry For Flydubai Tourism Essay Dubai is considered one of the most important trading hubs in the Middle East region. Its rapid growth in its major infrastructure elements had attracted many multinational companies across the world to open their regional offices in the city. This had its positive effects on Dubai economical growth as it became a golden gate for regional Middle East businessmen to trade with other international companies. As a result of this, the need for a low cost airline that provides its services for business men within the region had increased. The city experience with the airline industry is not new as it is the home city of Fly Emirates, which is considered one of the best airlines in the region. This industry had its great effect on Dubai economical growth in the past 20 years and will have its strong impact in shaping the emirate future. In March 2008, the second low cost airline was lunched under the name of Flydubai and started its operations in Dubai International Airport Terminal 2 in J une 2009. (For more information on Flydubai and its operations, please refer to Appendix 1). We have defined our relevant market for Flydubai as a low cost carrier (LCC) within the product form level. Being positioned as a low cost national airline carrier, its facing a high competition from other national airlines which force the relevant market to be within the product form. (For more information on the relevant market please refer to appendix 2). This paper will focus on presenting an environmental scan of the airline industry within the Middle East region during the time frame of 3 years (2009-2012). In order to do so, we will identify the significant trends and their consequent implications on Flydubai relevant market. This report will include an in depth review of the macro, micro analysis and its implications of Flydubai relevant market in the next three years. Body: In identifying the major key trends in the macro environment of Flydubai, we have addressed several issues that include the political, social and economical trends. Flydubai was established by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Prime Minister and Vice-President, and Ruler of Dubai orders in march 2008 and started its operation in its first flight to Lebanon on June 1st 2009.Being fully owned by Dubai government and enjoy the full facilities offered in terminal 2 at Dubai International Airport, the company is having a competitive advantage compared to its rivals in the market as it enjoy the full government support and airport services. Furthermore, the current government trend in the labor force is towards emiratization and protecting labors rights. Being a part of the Fly Emirates Group, the organization will face no problem in emiratization as it will follow Fly Emirates emiratization strategy. The major challenge that Flydubai will face is being able to offer high paid jobs and reduce its operational costs as it is considered a low cost airline company. Living in the current financial crises era, Flydubai was established in one of the most difficult time the country economy had faced in the last 25 years. Falling oil prices, cooling real estate and construction markets, together with a slowdown in the tourism sector, especially in Dubai, means the UAE is expected to post low or possibly negative GDP growth in 2009, according to analysts (Arabian Business, 2009). This information may be considered negative to many airline companies but it may be positive to a low cost airline like Flydubai as people are now focusing more in reducing their expenses as the incomes are reduced. This means their tendency of consumers focusing more on prices is increasing. Furthermore, consumer behavior is changing towards low cost airlines especially in the Middle East region as consumers are persuaded by low prices and a better service offered by low cost airlines. According to a study done by Arabian Business website, it was found that 83 percent of the respondents would switch their preferred airline carrier, for a cheaper price, while 17.6 percent believed they would consider alternatives and trade off between the discount and lost air miles. It can thus be inferred that pricing plays a significant role in consumer behaviour and the decision making process especially in the current economic downturn era (Glass, 2008). According to Dubai department of Tourism and commerce marketing 3.85 million tourists had visited the emirate in the first half of 2009, a five percent increase on the same period of 2008. This figure strongly shows the current tourism industry market and how attractive it became even though of the current economical downturn. Other figures expect that the number of tourists will fall compared to 2008 figures but most figures have stated that there will be a positive growth in 2010. This figure shows that Flydubai will see a future growth rates in the coming 3 years as terrorism sector restore its high figures after overcoming the current downturn. As observed by Andrew Cowen, CEO of SAMA Airlines, the market is shifting from the traditional major airlines business travel towards low cost carriers for trips within the GCC. Business travelers are changing their perception of low cost carriers, supported by the current economic downturn and the increase number of foreign businesses within GCC countries entering the UAE. This shows a trend of an increasing demand for low cost carriers in the next three years (High time for low cost carriers, 2008). (For in depth information on the analysis of the macro environment of the airline industry please refer to Appendix 3) In identifying the major key trends in the micro environment the following aspects that includes, Customers, Employees, media, shareholders, competitors and suppliers. Customers who are price conscious are concerned with low cost airlines. Flydubai has focused on pricing strategy and flexibility because these two factors play a big role in determining the customers decision process on which airlines they choose to travel with. Moreover, the number of tourist from around the world including the region will grow more than 40% in the next 3 years in Dubai (www.realtyna.com). This shows that there will be increased number of customers who will use Flydubai airlines within the next three years due its successful use of pricing strategy and flexibility. The Employees of Flydubai have good experiences and they were carefully selected from twelve different nationalities. According to Kenneth Gile, chief operating officer of Flydubai said: We are extremely pleased with the talent of the pilots we have on board. On average, they each have more than 4,000 hours serving as captain in similar aircraft and a total experience of more than 8,000 flying hours this is impressive by any standard (Sambidge, 2009). Flydubai is fully owned by the government of Dubai and its considered as a part of its mother company the Emirates Group. The main strategy that Flydubai is willing to use for their marketing strategy is through word of mouth (buzz). This is because Flydubai is a low cost airline; they tend to set low budgets for their advertisements to keep their prices low. The direct competitors of Flydubai are Air Arabia and Al Jazeerah airlines because these two airlines are also low cost airlines in the same country as Flydubai. However, the major competitor of Flydubai is Air Arabia because, first of all, they are the first to claim about low cost airlines in the Middle East region. Moreover, they hold the highest market share in the relevant market as identified before. Our market share comparing to those two carries are low because Flydubai just recently launched to the market. But, within the next three years we expect rapid growth in the market share because Dubai is a destination for tourists. The major indirect competitor is Fly Emirates which stands as the leader in airline industry in the relevant market and it will keep its performance in the next three years. The second indirect competitor is Etihad Airlines which is growing fast because of the unlimited support from Abu Dhabi government. In addition, those airline carriers make low price offers for the same destination that we have flight lines to. The supplier of Flydubai is Boeing. Flydubai announced an order of 50 next generation 737 aircraft from Boeing. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al Maktoum said: The Boeing Next-Generation 737 is ideally suited to our mission to bring some two billion regional inhabitants affordable, efficient and flexible travel options to and from Dubai.(For more information on the micro environment analysis, please refer to Appendix 4). Implications: Primary demand: Low cost airlines are focusing on customers who are price conscious. The number of customers using the LCC airlines is increasing and it will continue growing in the next three years (www.gulf-daily-news.com). This is because, first of all, the percentage of tourists will increase by 40% within the next three years which shows that the market share of LCC will increase as well. Secondly, because of the economic condition, many people tend to save money and spend it on low cost airlines to travel more to the desired destinations. Users of Low cost airlines contain all different ages and nationalities. Moreover, cost is one of the main factors that affect customers ability to buy. The costs of these carriers are low and will continue to remain low in the next three years. This will increase customers ability and willingness to buy. Selective demand We can define the consumer decision making process as an extensive problem solving level, where they are introduced to a complete new brand with low brand knowledge. So, Flydubai should infusive more on their brand identity through the media and other communication types in order to enrich consumers knowledge. Once Flydubai had increased the level of consumer knowledge, we expect huge increase in market share in the next three years because the decision making process is going to shift from extensive problem solving to routine which is low information search about the company. Therefore, we expect major change within the next three year upon the factors we mentioned above. Segmentation: As for segmentation we expect to see a rise in the population of the UAE in the following 3 years. According to the electronic portal of Gulf News the population of UAE is approaching six million as of now and it is expected to escalate even further by the end of this year. An increase in construction in the coming years requires more labor to be imported from foreign countries, thus increasing the number of potential customers (low income and middle-class lifestyles) who might want to use our services. Moreover, economic boom can also be a factor for businessmen to travel to and from Dubai more frequently. In addition, the number of students travelling to the UAE for education is expected to increase in the near future; this implies that they will most probably select Flydubai as their primary mode of transport to travel to and from the UAE, since the economic condition shows very little signs of improvement in the near future. More tourists are expected to arrive in the UAE within the near future out of which a section of them are extremely price sensitive travelers. Another scenario would be that the current economic downturn continues to effect economies world-wide within the coming three years increasing the number of price-sensitive customers in the eight markets we operate in. To keep up with the projected demand, Flydubai is planning to increase its fleet size from 5 (currently) to 54 aircrafts in the coming years. An increase in fleet size would allow Flydubai not only to accommodate a large number of clients but also expand its reach in terms of destinations. Conversely, the announcement of the new GCC rail network which is the new transportation class in our relevant market is expected to have a slight negative effect on Flydubais operations in terms of loosing clients that fall in our target segmentation. The GCC rail network and Flydubai have one common destination which is Qatar. Once the GCC rail network begins its operations there is a high possibility of losing out on our current and potential clients. (For more information on segmentation please refer to appendix 5). Competitor analysis Our major competitive in our relative market is Air Arabia and then Al Jazeera Airlines. Air Arabia is holding major market share because they are the first to claim about launching first low cost airlines in Middle East region. However, Flydubai can compete with those two direct competitors when we focus on our competitive advantage which is price leadership. Also, location is another important factor due the number of travelers that are using Dubai Airport comparing to Sharjah Airport. In addition, being part of the Emirates Group will add more value to Flydubai brand equity which will make it easier to make customers shift toward our company within the next three years. (For more information on competitor analysis, please refer to Appendix 6) Conclusion: In conclusion after analyzing the environmental micro and macro trend for Flydubai, we observed that there are two major changes in our relevant market. First, the increase of the tourism level in Dubai as we expect the current economic downturn era to change its direction towards positive figures in the next three years. Also, the companies holders and businessmen attitude towards low cost airlines is changing by using it as these airlines are providing business men services aboard such a business class and wireless internet connection. The number of competitors within the low cost airline industry is going to increase in the coming years as new airlines such as Bahrain Airlines starts its operation this year. Secondly, full service airlines are expanding their market towards low cost airline by introducing low price tickets that attract price sensitive consumers. We expect that within the next ten years a new class level will enter the market in the GCC region which is trains trans portation. Also, a new form level will emerge in the relevant market which is a combination between full services and low cost carriers. Finally, within the next three years we expect those changes in the relevant market to be reshaped affecting the primary and selective demand. Bibliography (2009, October 18). Flydubai airline. Retrieved from http://www.dubaifaqs.com/Flydubai.php McKechnie, D, Grant, J, Katsioloudes, M. (2008). Positions and positioning: strategy simply stated. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 9(5), Retrieved from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/3300090502.html doi: 1751-5637 (2009). Environmental scanning. Wikipedia. Retrieved (2009, October 17) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_scanning (2009). Flydubai. Wikipedia. Retrieved (2009, October 17) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flydubai (n.d.). flydubai, who we are. Retrieved from http://www.Flydubai.com/whoweare/fleet.aspx (2009, June 8). Two more tough years for the airlines. Retrieved from http://www.eturbonews.com/9675/two-more-tough-years-airlines Nagraj, A. (2009, September 16). Gloomy skies for the airline industry. Retrieved from http://www.kippreport.com/2009/09/gloomy-skies-for-the-airline-industry/ Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, Initials. (2009, October 15). Middle East LCC wrap: Air Arabia, Jazeera, Flydubai, nasair, sama and Bahrain Air. Retrieved from http://www.centreforaviation.com/news/2009/10/15/middle-east-lcc-wrap-air-arabia-jazeera-Flydubai-nasair-sama-and-bahrain-air/page1 Riaz, D, Kapadia, S. (2007). Air Arabia, Priced so that you can fly [5-14]. (Adobe Digital Edition Version), Retrieved from http://ae.zawya.com/researchreports/efg/20070701_efg_110604.pdf Schewe, , Charles, D, Hiam, A. (n.d.). market segmentation. Retrieved from http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/market-segmentation/ (2009, 10 07). UAE population reaches six million. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j24H1v8s1BWuNXEwptqRIiB_-OOA (2009, 10 07). Expat numbers rise rapidly as UAE population touches 6m. Retrieved from http://uaeinteract.com/docs/Expat_numbers_rise_rapidly_as_UAE_population_touches_6m/37883.htm (2009, April 7). FlyDubai opens for business with flights to Beirut and Amman. Retrieved from http://www.ameinfo.com/191649.html (2009, October 8). Number of tourists in Dubai set to grow by 40 per cent . Retrieved from http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:EPQhPUeolAEJ:www.realtyna.com/dubai_real_estate/dubai-rss-news/number-of-tourists-in-dubai-set-to-grow-by-40-per-cent.html+http://www.realtyna.com/dubai_real_estate/dubai-rss-news/number-of-tourists-in-dubai-set-to-grow-by-40-per-cent.htmlcd=1hl=arct=clnkgl=ae Sambidge, Initials. (2009, March 18). flydubai appoints pilots, cabin crew. Retrieved from http://www.arabianbusiness.com/549994-Flydubai-appoints-pilots-cabin-crew Sambidge, A. (2009, August 11). Dubai tourists up 5% in H1 official. Retrieved from http://www.arabianbusiness.com/564508-dubai-tourists-up-5-in-h1official (2009, 10 07). UAE population. Retrieved from http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/09/10/07/10355378.html Redpath, H. (2009, June 16). Dubais First Low Cost Airline Takes Off. Retrieved from http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/Flydubai/38830/ Redpath, H. (2009, June 16). Dubais First Low Cost Airline Takes Off. Retrieved from http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20090616081711 Appendix 1 Back Ground information on Flydubai: Flydubai is the UAE second low cost airline that was established in March ,3rd 2008 on the orders of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Prime Minister and Vice-President, and Ruler of Dubai. The company first flight was in June 1,2009 to Beirut in Lebanon followed by flights to Amman, Jordan, on June 2, Damascus, Syria, on June 8 and Alexandria, Egypt, on June 9, giving the new airline a total of four destinations in just nine days. (Redpath, 2009). The company had ordered 50 Boeing 737 and is going to receive 10 airplanes each year for the next five years. (Flydubai,2009) Currently the company runs its operations in Dubai International Airport terminal 2 that was redesigned for the new airline. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of Flydubai said: This region is very dependent on air transport. It is a great credit to the vision and leadership of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, that this airline has now taken off, thereby ensuring residents and visitors alike will be able to travel to more places more often. (Redpath, 2009). The Flydubai model is simple, with customers only paying for the services they want. The ticket price includes all taxes and one piece of hand baggage, weighing up to 10kg, per passenger. Passengers have the option to purchase checked-in baggage in advance at just 40AED for the first piece and 100AED for the second, weighing up to 32kgs, subject to availability. Checked baggage is strictly subject to availability and passengers are advised to book early to secure the space, as only pre-purchased baggage can be guaranteed. (Redpath, 2009) Flydubai aims to make travel a little less complex, a little less stressful and a little less expensive, explained Flydubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith. Our passengers have the option to customize their travel experience depending on what services they want and how much they want to pay. (Redpath, 2009) We plan to stimulate the markets in which we operate and encourage people to travel to more places more often. Flydubai aim is not to drive traffic away from the other carriers but to help grow these markets. When you consider that low cost travel in this region could be as little as 2% of all air travel, as opposed to more than 20% in Europe and America, it is clear that there is a lot of untapped potential in these markets. (Redpath, 2009) In addition, Flydubai will fly to airports that are currently underserved by the traditional carriers. In a region which is so dependent on air transport, we are looking forward to providing the reality of accessible, low cost, uncomplicated travel (Redpath, 2009). Appendix 2: Product Market Structure: The above market structure was used to identify Flydubai relevant market within the airline industry in the Middle East region. We started the structure with the most basic need which is the need to travel in the region. This provided us with three alternatives that include airplanes, buses and cars. The product form is divided between full service carriers and low cost carriers as they differentiate in prices and services being offered to customers. From this structure we can identify Flydubai relevant market within the product form level. This is because the degree of competition and substitutability within the brand suppliers are high, as they all offer low prices with similar routes within the region. This push the relevant market upwards towards the product form level. Furthermore, Flydubai indirect competitors include Fly Emirates, Etihad airlines and Saudi airlines. These full service airlines are competing with Flydubai indirectly by providing low prices with full services. O n the other hand our direct competitors include Air Arabia and Al Jazerra airlines that are both low cost airlines that perform within the region. Further explanation on competition will be provided in the Micro analysis in the competitors section. Appendix 3 Macro Environment: In studying the external environment of Flydubai in the next three years we will focus on the Macro and Micro environment. This study will help us in finding out the effect of these external factors on the company in the next few years. The Macro environment factors will include Political, economical, social and technological aspects under which Flydubai will be affected by. 1) Political Analysis: A) Government Regulations: Flydubai was established with orders of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Prime Minister and Vice-President, and Ruler of Dubai. Being owned by the Dubai government the company faces no difficulties in laws and regulations as the airline industry in the Emirates is booming through the process of liberalization the airline industry that the United Arab Emirates is adapting. B) Political Analysis: In studying the overall political environment of the United Arab Emirates, we find it one of the most stable countries within the region. Such political approach of peace seeking had made the country a trading hub in the region. This will certainly have its positive effect on flydubai operations as to perform in stable political environment. C) Employment Laws: Protecting labors rights and Emiratization is considered the main aspect that the UAE government is taking into consideration now a days. Companies are now forced to have a certain percentage that of emirates locals that will increase in the following years as there is more emphasis on employing locals in the private sector. Being a part of Emirates Airlines Group, Flydubai will certainly adapt its mother company in hiring and training locals in suitable jobs. The challenge that Flydubai will going to face is to decrease costs in one hand and provide well paid jobs in the same time . 2) Economical Analysis: A) Inflation Rate: The inflation rate in the UAE is predicted to fall from last years 11.1 percent level to seven percent in 2010, according to a new report. (Sambidge, 2009). This is considered a positive aspect for Flydubai as it will have its positive effects in reducing the company costs in oil and ground operations. High inflation rates reaching to 11 percent last year was a threat to low cost airlines such as Air Arabia and Al Jazerra Airlines that faced a problem of high oil prices. This good news will make Flydubai compete even stronger on prices as inflation rates goes down. B) Economical Analysis: Falling oil prices, cooling real estate and construction markets, together with a slowdown in the tourism sector, especially in Dubai, means the UAE is expected to post low or possibly negative GDP growth in 2009, according to analysts. (Sambidge, 2009). Living in the current World Financial Economic Crises the UAE economy in general and Dubai in specific faced a hard time in 2009 but analysts forecast that there will be more positive figures in 2010. This information is considered a negative too many airline companies but may be positive to Flydubai as people are now more focus in reducing their expenses as the incomes are reduced. This means their tendency of consumers focusing more on prices which is a positive thing for a low cost airline. Additionally, analysts forecast that the economy will grow in 2010 again and this will certainly have its effect on the company growth. 3) Social Analysis: A) Demographics: More than 300,000 people will be added to the UAE population this year to record the highest growth of 6.3 per cent in five years and Dubai would likely emerge as the fastest growing emirate, official figures show. The rise rebuffs reports that the global financial turbulence has triggered a mass exodus of expatriates out of the country, mainly Dubai. From 4.75 million in mid 2008, the UAEs population is projected to increase to 5.066 million in mid 2009, showed the figures by the Ministry of Economy. This figure are going to increase in the next few years which will certainly have its positive effects on the airline industry in UAE considering that expatriates make an approximate percentage of 80.1 of the above figure in 2009 according to the ministry of economy. Furthermore, the figures show that the 25-29 year age group was the largest in the UAE in mid 2008, standing at 777,186. It was followed by the 30-34 age groups, which was estimated at 754,289 and 35-39 groups of 588,505. This clearly indicates that most of the population is young and is going to shape the tourism and aviation market in the next couple of years. B) Consumer Behavior: According to a study done by Arabian Business website, it was found that 83 percent of the respondents would switch their preferred airline carrier, for a cheaper price, while 17.6 percent believed they would consider alternatives and trade off between the discount and lost air miles. It can thus be inferred that pricing plays a significant role in consumer behaviour and the decision making process especially in the current economic downturn era. Furthermore, customer loyalty in the low cost carriers is low as its directly related to price. Flydubai should consider this into account and introduce customer loyalty programs in order to maintain a higher level of customer loyalty. (Glass, 2008). C) Leisure Interests: 3.85 million tourists had visited the emirate in the first half of 2009, a five percent increase on the same period of 2008 According to Dubai department of Tourism and commerce marketing . This figure strongly shows the current tourism industry market and how attractive it became even though of the current economical downturn. Other figures expect that the number of tourists will fall compared to 2008 figures but most figures have stated that there will be a positive growth in 2010. D) Career Attitude: Business travelers are changing their perception of low cost carriers. As observed by Andrew Cowen, CEO of Same, the market is shifting from the traditional major airlines business travel towards low cost carriers for trips within the GCC. This changing attitude, supported by the current economic downturn and the increase number of foreign businesses within GCC countries entering the UAE, shows a trend of an increasing demand for low cost carriers in the next three years. (High time for low cost carriers, 2008). E) Technological Development Analysis: Following its mother company Emirates Airlines, we expect that Flydubai become a market leader in providing advanced technological solutions to its passengers by using the large experience that emirates airline have. If such direction was adapted, it will certainly provide the needed strength that Flydubai need in competing with its direct and indirect competitors. Appendix 4 Micro Environment: Stakeholder Analysis: This means to analyze the micro environment which includes the following factors: the customers, employees, shareholders, media, and the competitors. A) Customers: Customers who are price conscious are concerned with low cost airlines. Flydubai has focused on pricing strategy and flexibility because these two factors play a big role in determining the customers decision process on which airlines they choose to travel with. Price strategy and flexibility of Flydubai include low pricing strategy and easy booking with increased choices. As Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, Chairman of Flydubai said: As a true low cost airline we are geared towards providing our passengers with the best price and increased choice. We will operate efficiently and continually evolve to deliver the best possible product to our customers. (Flydubai opens for, 2009). The cost of Flydubai from Dubai airport to Doha airport would cost 200DHS, whereas other major airlines such as; Emirates or Qatar airlines would cost approximately 1000 or more for a one way ticket (Flydubai home page, 2009). This shows that Flydubai is much cheaper and has managed to keep prices low due to the successful use of their pricing strategy. Moreover, the number of tourist from around the world including the region will grow more than 40% in the next 3 years in Dubai (Number of tourists, 2009) .This shows that there will be increased number of customers who will use Flydubai airlines within the next three years due its successful use of pricing strategy and flexibility. B) Employees: Flydubai airline has received more than 11,500 applications from flight and cabin crew. There are 18 first officers, 61 captains, and almost more than 8000 candidates for pilots were selected from twelve different nationalities (Sambidge, 2009). The staff has good experiences and was carefully selected. According to Kenneth Gile, chief operating officer of Flydubai said: We are extremely pleased with the talent of the pilots we have on board. On average, they each have more than 4,000 hours serving as captain in similar aircraft and a total experience of more than 8,000 flying hours this is impressive by any standard (Sambidge, 2009). Furthermore, employee and staff hospitality is very important. This is because the employees and staff were selected from twelve different nationalities and they need to feel comfortable with the new culture they are facing in order to work efficiently. D) Shareholders: Flydubai is fully owned by the government of Dubai and its considered as a part of its mother company the Emirates Group. The company has no other shareholders currently as there its 250 million dirhams capital is completely raised by the government. E) The media: Obviously, through observations, Flydubai has made many advertisements through publicity such as; Newspapers (e.g. gulf news) and internet websites. However, the main strategy they used

Essay --

There is no question that obesity is a national epidemic. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate nearly 36% of U.S. adults more than 20 years of age were considered obese in 2009 through 2010, with 18.4% of adolescents following closely behind (Krieter). However, while obesity is a growing problem, labeling it as a disease is a formidable approach to what is considered a lifestyle choice for many American citizens. Scientists have made great advances in understanding significant environmental causes of obesity as well as identifying several genetic factors that may be implicated. Many efforts are now directed toward evaluating the interactions between these factors and understanding how this relationship interplays into major roles of the problem. Obesity is an end result of human response to biology and the environment. Recent hypotheses made by scientists suggest that the current obesity problem is largely due to environmental factors, such as fast food consumption, television watching, and large portion sizes (Brantley). Americans live in the era of eating unhealthy fast food, and the notorious ‘supersizing.’ Television, radio, and print advertising bombard the population with enticements to eat food high in calories and fat (Gunderman). Furthermore, the physical and mental demands of today’s societies are relentlessly changing, resulting in unbalanced energy intake and consumption. A study, published in the journal, Pediatrics, emphasize on specific environmental aspects on children and teen lives that contribute to their unhealthy, fat-filled lifestyles (Haelle). Researchers found that the link between increased television time and obesity rates among adolescents has grown stronger in the p... ...rtant contributors to obesity. Gain in body weight can be achieved through accumulative positive energy balances; these could form through adjustments in energy expenditure or fuel utilization and the types of the food that the consumer eats. The interaction between the two factors leads to a positive energy balance, eventually turning into body fat and weight gain. However, while previous investigations have found a clear association between high fat intake and risk of obesity the relationship does not establish a biological certitude. Further research must be done to form a more clear and reliable explanation for the affiliation between the genetic and environmental aspects of the epidemic. While the biological basis of the interaction is uncertain, cultural changes in society and the genetic makeup of the human body are clearly significant causes of obesity.

Women and Depression

Depression is currently the fourth most common cause of disability worldwide (Culbertson, 1997). With depression being such a large issue in society, it cannot be looked at as a â€Å"one size fits all,† particularly when it comes to examining gender differences associated with mental health disorders (Smith and Jaffe, 2012). There are many social causes prevalent in society, varying by gender, which contributes to the risk of being diagnosed with depression or the rate to which they experience depression.Depression is the leading cause for disability in women and they are roughly twice as likely to experience depression as men. Some reasons for this may be that women tend to dwell on their problems, they experience victimization and they also must deal with the effects that estrogen has on the stress hormone and menstrual cycle. Men’s experiences with depression have not been as well understood as women’s. Although women may be diagnosed more then men, it does n ot mean that men suffer any less; they often suffer in silence.With the social constructions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, it has created an atmosphere in which it negatively affects the willingness to seek help or treatment and the diagnosis of mental illnesses relating to health and health care. There is evidence to suggest that men are just as vulnerable as women to depression and for the same reasons that make women depressed but they remain undiagnosed and untreated (Zartaloudi, 2011). Men on average are less willing to seek help but are more reluctant to seek help in the case of depression.There are a larger number of men compared to women who suffer from problems closely related to depression such as alcohol and drug abuse and the suicide rates in men are very high. According to Real, â€Å"women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression than men because many health professionals, as well as family members and friends, may find it easier to diagnose women with depression more than men because of the fear of the stigma and shame surrounding depression for men, a disorder which is regarded as emotional and not a manly illness. (Real, 1997) So in society it is hard to diagnose depression in men because they have a harder time admitting that they have it. With that being said, the social roles that we have created for both men and women create the need for different treatment options and care that will ultimately lead to the same result; successfully treating depression. The social conditions of life and the differences that are presented for individuals create different health care needs for everyone. The health care system often fails to address these differences and in doing so, it can often reinforce the inequalities (Payne & Doyal, 2010).It is important to recognize the different social processes present in society if the health care system is going to respond to the needs of individuals. Men are known to use heal th care services less than women, which can relate to men’s shorter life expectancies. So this leads to the problem of men not wanting to seek health care, as they want to look masculine and adhere to the gender role that society has created. These generalizations can be very harmful to both men and women as they can often affect the action one may take.For example, men also tend to wait longer to seek health care, as they do not use the services as much as women (Payne & Doyal, 2010). So in the case of depression, if men tend to wait longer, it could lead to alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide. One is held accountable for every action they perform to be appropriate to the sex category they adhere to. Because the rate of depression is about two times greater for women than men, depression can often be framed as a ‘women’s issue’ and therefore men do not want to admit to being depressed.Women also react differently as they are more likely to change their app etite, become emotional and lose weight where as men tend to turn to alcohol and drugs which can lead to further complications (Zartaloudi, 2011). Although women are more likely to attempt suicide and there are more reported cases of women attempting to kill themselves, men are reported to have a higher death rate by suicide than women. Men have a very high rate of suicide; they are about three to four times more likely to kill themselves regardless of their age.Men are also more likely to commit suicide because they tend to act quicker on their thoughts and use more lethal methods such as guns (Mayo Clinic, 2011). Men often times will try to live up to the standards of masculinity that society has created. It has been hypothesized that men can experience a loss of psychological well-being while trying to achieve the masculine goals related to the gender roles that have been created. Men may also make themselves feel better by relying on avoidance and coping in ways such as distract ion, social diversion, denial and disengagement (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1999).Men often fail to recognize depression, not realizing that some of their symptoms are those of depression. They also down play their sign and symptoms of depression and often do not want to talk about what they are feeling where as women are more likely to seek medical help or turn to family and friends (NIMH, 2011). When looking specifically at women and depression, it can be noted that women suffer in different ways then men due to different social causes they experience.Looking at the cultural roles and how they affect both men and women, women have always been viewed to have unequal power and wealth. With lower incomes, women are more likely to live in poverty and stress about housing and access to health care resources (Mayo Clinic, 2010). Minority women face racial discrimination as well which can lead to lower self-esteem and can contribute to feelings of depression. As well, women who were emotionally, se xually or physically abused as children are more likely to be depressed as adults.Women are also more likely to be sexually abused (Weiss, 1999). Overall depression will continue to affect both and men and women in different ways and it is important to address this issue to ensure that both men and women are getting the correct diagnosis and treatment that is necessary. Although there are many factors that contribute to an increased risk of depression such as death, divorce, job loss or any major changes, it is important to look at social causes that affect women differently than men.There are many specific risk factors for mental disorders that disproportionately affect women which include gender based violence, socioeconomic disadvantage, low income and income inequality, low or subordinate social status and unremitting responsibility for the care of others (WHO, 2012). The high rate of sexual violence present in our society which women are exposed and the correspondingly high rat e of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder result in women being the largest group of people affected by depression.According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, â€Å"Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16,† (CWF, 2012). Having experienced sexual or physical violence can lead to an increased risk in experiencing depression for both men and women, although women are at a higher risk due to a higher rate of experiencing violence. Often, the social construction of gender leads to the view of women being inferior to men and so men view themselves as having control over women and can often result in physical or sexual violence.Some often wonder if men are at the same risk for experiencing violence but the Canadian Women’s Foundation states that 83% of all police-reported cases of domestic violence are against women and that remains the same throughout every province in Canada, (CMF, 2012). It ha s also been reported that one in five women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, (WHO, 2012). Living with the fear of being raped or experiencing rape also contributes to the increased risk of depression among women. Women often are humiliated to share their experience with anyone and often do not disclose information unless asked directly by a doctor.Men too are reluctant to share their experiences of violence as we have created a social stigma in which men are not to express such emotional feelings and so the violence goes unreported. Violence against women then, may contribute to the reason as to why women are the largest single group affected by depression. Another social cause of depression among both men and women but specifically women is low socioeconomic standing. The higher prevalence of depression among women can be associated with their socioeconomic position, stress processes and role of social support (Warrell, 2012).Reports continue to show that women that live in poverty or with a love economic status show higher rates of depression than women who live in a higher economic standing. The stress of struggling economically can often times play a big role in the emotional toll it takes on a person, specifically women. A reason why women are at a higher risk of depression and suffering long-term is that they are exposed to greater amounts of stress (Warrell, 2012). Women often have responsibilities both at work and within the home as they are often stereotyped as the ‘house-wife’, responsible for most of the duties within the home.Socioeconomic status and the struggle for women to deal with major stressors that relate contribute to the high rate of depression among women. Society has created many stereotypes around gender and how males and females should act. Men are seen as the powerful, dominant type who should have the control and the power within society. Men who show emotions and express feelings associated with the fem ale stereotypes are often looked down upon. Women are seen as the emotional, fragile beings that are emotional and as a result are inferior to men.Although we are working as a society to break down these stereotypes, they are still prevalent and we must find ways to cope with them. Looking specifically at depression, women often feel as though they are inferior to men and that they are unequal within society; this may contribute to feelings of depression. There are many ways for the issue of depression to be addressed. One of the most important ways for this issue to be addressed is for it to be talked about and have fewer stigmas attached to it. Many people view depression and mental illness as a negative thing and therefore much stigma comes attached to the diagnoses of depression.Men, who already have a hard time going to get help when they need it, are even less likely to reach out for help if they will be labeled as weak and treated differently if their condition becomes public knowledge. As mentioned above, if society would take a step back and not put so much emphasis on hegemonic masculinities and make it more socially acceptable for men to show emotion and not have negative repercussions when coming to terms with their mental illness, more men would feel comfortable speaking out about their illness and hopefully actively seek treatment.One way that this stigma is approached is how Bell Canada has created a campaign to help eliminate the stigma attached to depression and mental illness. They offer some interesting statistics that are quite troubling in regards to the problem of mental health and its funding: mental health does not receive the funding relative to the need because mental illness represents 15% of health care troubles; however, they only receive 5% of funding.Another startling statistic provided was that only one-third of Canadians who need mental health services actually receive them. (http://letstalk. bell. ca). Another initiative that has been created to help spread awareness about mental health issues is the Canadian Population Health Initiative. This initiative has seen very positive outcomes in how mental health is treated, promoted and viewed in Canadian society. Many new initiatives and policies have been created in the past 20 years to help address the issues that are faced in the public sector of mental health.Some of the positive changes that have been made include: The creation of the Mental Health Promotion Unit in 1995 to promote health public policy for mental health, in 1996 a new holistic definition of mental health was created to demonstrate that mental health is a â€Å"multi-faceted nature of health and moved beyond disease-oriented understandings† (Ottawa: CIHI, 2009) and in 2007 the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada that was to help people living with mental illness get treatment as well as promote positive mental health promotion across the nation (Ottawa: CIHI, 2009).B y the creation of these old and new initiatives and policies, there is more attention being given to the issue of mental health and a reduction of the stigma attached to it. Education is the best way to understand something and if the country is educated on the issues, they will be less likely to rely on old stereotypes to categorize people who suffer from mental illness. I believe that depression is a major issue present within society and we must find ways to break down the gender stereotypes in order for both males and females to feel comfortable talking about it.I believe that it is important to look at how we can address this issue as women are suffering at a higher rate than men while men are suffering in silence, without help from anyone. Depression must be viewed as an illness that is okay to talk about and okay to get help for. Depression is common in society and no one is ever alone when dealing with depression and the feelings associated with it. It is scary to think that two thirds of people suffering are not receiving any help.People suffering need not be ashamed of what they are going through and should be eager to seek the proper treatment when needed. As a society, we must break away from the gender stereotypes associated with gender and understand that depression is an illness that both men and women suffer from. We need to continue to use campaigns and initiatives to show people that they are not alone and that it is nothing to be ashamed of. Women are at a higher rate of experiencing depression as they are affected differently by social causes that are present within our society.In recent times, we have been trying to put to rest the idea that men are superior to women as every human being should be considered equal and capable of doing the same things within society. If everyone is considered as equal, it may lead to a decrease in violence against women and people of color may not feel oppressed by other members of society. If this is possi ble, women’s risk of experiencing depression may decrease and it may no longer be viewed as a women’s illness.It can be concluded that although men and women both suffer from depression and feel some of the same emotions, the way they experiencing depression differs greatly due to the social causes we see in society today. Bibliography References Canadian Institute of Health Information, Improving the Health of Canadians: Exploring Positive Mental Health (Ottawa: CIHI, 2009). Canadian Women’s Foundation, The facts about violence against women. 2012. Retrieved on November 20th, 2012 from < http://www. canadianwomen. org/facts-about-violence> Culbertson, F. (1997).Depression and Gender; an international review. American Psychology, 25-35. K. , B. B. (2012). Diagnosis and treatment rates for depression in older adults have grown overtime, with medication edging out therapy. AHRQ Research Activities, (379), 21-22. Logan, J. , Skopp, N. A. , Karch, D. , Reger, M. A. , & Gahm, G. A. (2012). Characteristics of Suicides Among US Army Active Duty Personnel in 17 US States From 2005 to 2007. American Journal Of Public Health, 102S40-4. doi:10. 2105/AJPH. 2011. 300481 Mayo Clinic Staff. (2010). Depression in women: Understanding the gender gap.Mayo Foundation for medical Education and Research, 1-3. Nolen-Hoeksema, S. , Larson, J. , Grayson, C. (1999). Explaining the gender difference in depressive symptoms. Social Psychology. 77(5): 1061-72. Payne, S. , & Doyal, L. (2010). Re-visiting gender justice in health and health care. In E. Kuhlman, and E. Annadale (Eds. ), The Palgrave handbook of gender and healthcare (pp. 21-35). Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Smith, M. , & Jaffe, J. (2012). Depression in Women: Causes, Symptoms and Treatment. The Help Guide. Waller, E. 2012) Socioeconomic Position and Major Mental Disorders. Oxford University Press. Retrieved on November 19th, 2012 from: < http://epirev. oxfordjournals. org/content/26/1/53. full> Weiss e t Al. (1999). Childhood sexual abuse as a risk factor for depression in women. American Psychiatry, 816-28. World Health Organization, Mental Health: Gender and women’s mental health. 2012. Retrieved on November 20th, 2012 from: < http://www. who. int/mental_health/prevention/genderwomen/en/> Zartaloudi, A. (2011). What is men’s experience of depression? Health Science Journal, 182-187.

Depreciation Methods

Depreciation Methods Depreciation is the accounting process of allocating the cost of tangible assets to expense in a systematic and rational manner to those periods expected to benefit from the use of the asset. Factors Involved in the Depreciation Process 1. What depreciable base is to be used for the asset? 2. What is the asset’s useful life? 3. What method of cost apportionment is best for the asset? Depreciable Base for the Asset The base established for depreciation is a function of two factors: the original cost, and the salvage or disposal value.Salvage value is the estimated amount that the company will receive when it sell the asset or removes it from service. It is the amount to which the company writes down or depreciates the asset during its useful life. Example: An asset is purchased for $10,000. The company believes that it has a salvage value of $1,000. Original cost $10,000 Less: Salvage value 1,000 Depreciation base$ 9,000 Methods of Depreciation The accounti ng profession requires that the depreciation method employed be â€Å"systematic and rational. † The following are examples of depreciation methods: 1. Activity method (units of use or production) . Straight-line method 3. Decreasing charge methods (accelerated): a. Sum-of-the-years’ digits b. Declining-balance method The following information will be used to illustrate each of the above methods: Stanley Coal Mines recently purchased an additional crane for digging purposes. Cost of crane$500,000 Estimated useful life5 years Estimated salvage value$50,000 Productive life in hours30,000 hours Activity Method The activity method (also called the variable-charge or units-of-production approach) assumes that depreciation is a function of use or productivity, instead of the passage of time.A company considers the life of the asset in terms of either the output if provides (units it produces), or an input measure such as number of hours it works. The crane Stanley purchased poses no particular depreciation problem. Stanley can measure the usage (hours) relatively easily. If Stanley uses the crane for 4,000 hours the first year, the depreciation charge is: (Cost less salvage value) X hours this year Total estimated hours ($500,000 – $50,000) X 4,000 30,000 = $60,000 Straight-Line MethodThe straight-line method considers depreciation a function of time rather than a function of usage. Companies widely use this method because of its simplicity. The straight-line procedure is often the most conceptually appropriate, too. Stanley computes the depreciation charge for the crane as follows: Cost less salvage Estimated service life $500,000-$50,000 5 =$90,000 Sum-of-the-Years’-Digits The sum-of-the-years’-digits method results in a decreasing depreciation charge based on a decreasing fraction of depreciable cost (original cost less salvage value).Each fraction uses the sum of the years as a denominator (5+4+3+2+1=15). The numerator is the n umber of years of estimated life remaining as of the beginning of the year. In this method, the numerator decreases year by year, and the denominator remains constant. At the end of the useful life, the balance remaining should equal the salvage value. YearDepreciation BaseRemaining life in yearsDepreciation FractionDepreciation ExpenseBook Value, End of Year 1$450,00055/15$150,000$350,000 2$450,00044/15$120,000$230,000 3$450,00033/15$90,000$140,000 4$450,00022/15$60,000$80,000 $450,00011/15$30,000$50,000 Totals:1515/15$450,000 For assets that have a long life span, the following formula can be used to determine the denominator: n(n+1) 2 For example, if an asset has a useful life of 51 years, you would calculate the denominator: 51(51+1) 2 =1,326 YearDepreciation BaseRemaining life in yearsDepreciation FractionDepreciation ExpenseBook Value, End of Year 1$450,0005151/1,326$17,308$482,692 2$450,0005050/1,326$16,968$465,724 3$450,0004949/1,326$16,629$449,095 4$450,0004848/1,326$16,290 $432,805 5$450,0004747/1,326$15,950$416,855 Etc†¦Declining-Balance Method The declining-balance method utilizes a depreciation rate (expressed as a percentage) that is some multiple of the straight-line method. For example, the double-declining rate for a 10-year asset is 20 percent (double the straight-line rate, which is 1/10 or 10 percent). Unlike other methods, the declining-balance method does not deduct the salvage value in computing the depreciation base. For example, if Stanley chose to use the double-declining-balance method, the crane would depreciate at twice the rate of the straight-line rate.See below: YearBook Value of Asset First YearRate on Declining Balance (a)Depreciation ExpenseBalance Accumulated DepreciationBook Value, End of Year 1$500,00040%$200,000$200,000$300,000 2$300,00040%$120,000$320,000$180,000 3$180,00040%$72,000$392,000$108,000 4$108,00040%$43,200$435,000$64,800 5$64,80040%$14,800 (b)$450,000$50,000 (a)Based on twice the straight-line rate of 20% ($90,000/$450,000 = 20%; 20% X 2 = 40%) (b)Limited to $14,800 because the book value should not be less than the salvage value.

The eNotes Blog Home Is Where the Art Is The Childhood Homes of CelebratedAuthors

Home Is Where the Art Is The Childhood Homes of CelebratedAuthors Ever wondered where some of your favorite authors grew up? Last week Flavorwire investigated the childhood homes of twenty famous writers. Looking through the collection, its entertaining to imagine how each one might have spent their formative years, and how their respective neighborhoods, from the Cornish countryside to the deep South, might have influenced their writing. Certainly, from some of the stories that accompany these old buildings its plain to see that personalitiesand possibly writing stylesare formed at a young age. Below is a small sample. The full list can be found here. William Faulkners childhood home in Oxford, Mississippi, built in 1855. The writer moved here just before his fifth birthday and lived in Oxford on and off for the remainder of his life. Heavily influenced by his Southern surroundings, Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to family histories and began writing poetry in his adolescence. Hunter S. Thompsons surprisingly idyllic home in Louisville, Kentucky was far less peaceful on the inside: apparently, during a later remodel, workers found and had to scrape up a stubborn black circle in the middle of the house. After asking the neighbors it was discovered that the circle had been drawn by a young Hunter S. Thompson, who referred to it as his own portal to hell. The house in which Franz Kafka was born and spent a troubled childhood, in the Old Town Square of Prague, is now the permanent home to an exhibition in his memory.   F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in this St. Paul, Minnesota building in 1896 and lived there until the age of two. From there the Fitzgeralds moved to New York. The writers two older sisters sadly died of influenza in this house shortly before his birth. Virginia Woolfs summer home of thirteen years in St. Ives, Cornwall. She describes her childhood there briefly, saying, The pleasantest of my memories†¦ refer to our summers, all of which were passed in Cornwall There we bought the lease of Talland House: a small but roomy house, with a garden of an acre or two all up and down hill, with quaint little terraces divided by hedges of escallonia, a grape-house and kitchen-garden and a so-called ‘orchard’ beyond. Mark Twains childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. The building is now the Mark Twain Boyhood Home Museum. Tennessee Williams ornate Southern home in Columbus, Mississippi. It seems to adequately fit Williams mother, the  archetype of the ‘Southern belle’, whose social aspirations tilted toward snobbery and whose behavior could be neurotic and hysterical. The future playwright was confined to this house for the better part of a year due to an illness. The women who surrounded him there have been said to have greatly influenced his writing and inspired many of his female characters. J.R.R. Tolkiens Fern Cottage, tucked away on the outskirts of Birmingham. I love this oneyou can just imagine the future fantasy novelist flexing his imagination in the secluded gardens of this 250 year old house.

Danny Masterson Loved on Television, Hated in Real Life Professor Ramos Blog

Danny Masterson Loved on Television, Hated in Real Life Growing up, I was obsessed with â€Å"That 70’s Show.† I was so obsessed that I remember wanting to leave school early everyday, so I could get home and watch it. My favorite character in the show was Steven Hyde, I thought everything he said on the show was hysterical. â€Å"Hyde† played the role as a funny, sarcastic teenager and seemed like a fun and loving guy in real life. He was the farthest thing from a fun, loving guy. Daniel Peter Masterson or â€Å"Danny† Masterson, is an American actor, Scientologist and Disc Jockey (a person who introduces and plays recorded popular music). Masterson landed his first role in the movie Beethoven’s Second, but we all know him as Steven Hyde on the television comedy, â€Å"That 70’s Show.† Danny also has a long history in the Church of Scientology, but most recently Masterson played a major role in the netflix show: ‘The Ranch’, playing Colt Bennett’s (Ashton Kutcherâ€℠¢s) brother Rooster Bennett. Danny was fired from the Netflix series after being accused of raping five women in the early 2000’s.   In December of last year, one of Mastersons alleged victims confronted Netflix’s executive producer, Andy Yeatman. Masterson denied any association with the woman and told her that Netflix wouldn’t believe her rape claims. The next day, Masterson was fired from Netflix. Masterson then hired lawyer Thomas Mesereau, the same lawyer Bill Cosby hired for a retrial of sexual assault charges in Pennsylvania. The news of the alleged incidents surfaced publicly in March 2017, when the Los Angeles Police Department started looking into reports of women claiming they were sexually assaulted by Masterson in the early 2000’s. Soon after he was fired, another one of his victims, Chrissie Carnell Bixler, told The Daily Beast that she believes â€Å"Netflix ought to be ashamed of their actions, We get it, You don’t believe us† and â€Å"You knew you had to fire him, but you did a bunch of reshoots so you can finish our rapist’s storyline up and give him a respectable send off† (Bixler). United Talent Agency (UTA), announced they will also no longer be working with Danny Masterson, the management company made the decision not to represent the star because of the accusations brought against him. Danny has also since been replaced on his latest hit show â€Å"The Ranch.† After being fired from â€Å"The Ranch,† Masterson released a statement saying â€Å"I am obviously very disappointed in Netflix’s decision†¦ I have never been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. In this Country, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, in the current climate, it seems as if you are presumed guilty the moment you are accused. I understand and look forward to clearing my name once and for all.† Just because Danny has not been officially charged with a crime, there is a sufficient amount of evidence against him. Five women accusing the same person of the same horrible actions does not seem like just a coincidence and should be a very important factor to consider when determining his guiltiness. All of the women involved with accusing Masterson are Scientologists or former Scientologists. The women had reported the incidents to the Church of Scientology which intervened with the women filing police reports. The Church of Scientology wanted to cover up what Danny had done to these women so they submitted over 50 affidavits denying the women’s allegations. Danny has denied all accusations as well, but the Los Angeles Police Department has conducted an on-going investigation on the actor. The events and intriguing evidence against Masterson and the allegations brought against him provide a solid foundation that he should be found guilty. Danny has claimed that the woman who are accusing him of rape, are only making these accusations for â€Å"personal gain† on the AE television series, ‘Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath’. The accusers have reportedly been involved in Scientology and they claim that the Church of Scientology pressured them to not contact authorities regarding Masterson sooner. One of the alleged victims, Bobbette Riales, said that the incidents involving Masterson occured in the middle of their six year relationship and many other times and she claims that at the time of these horrible events she was too afraid to say anything. In Scientology, reporting another Scientologist to law enforcement is considered a â€Å"suppressive act†. The church is known for attacking accusers and demanding that the members of the church take action against accusers. I think this had played a huge role in the girls waiting so long to finally speak up about what Danny had done to them . Some of the Scientology churches Masterson has been involved with have been investigated for human trafficking. All of these victims have had encounters with actress Leah Remini who is involved with the Scientology Celebrity Centre although Leah had nothing to do with the allegations. Remini used to be involved with Scientology and is now an Anti-Scientology Activist. Masterson’s first victim had apparently been drugged at an April 2003 party at Masterson’s house, another victim said Masterson got very violent with her after she had told him no multiple times, she then says she had also been drugged by Masterson. Another victim says â€Å"I said no like 50 times.† Masterson laughed over these allegations. Masterson is facing life in prison if found guilty of these charges, a person can be charged under penal code 667.61 for multiple rape charges and that means life behind bars. I hope Masterson comes to find that this is not a laughing matter and realizes what he has done to these women. Masterson’s accusers were â€Å"handled† by the Church of Scientology a fter trying to come forward about their stories. Remini has interviewed some of the women accusing Masterson on her show but was asked not to air it because of the on-going investigation against him.    You can argue both sides on this matter but with the countless claims and accusations along with the evidence against Masterson, I believe he will be found guilty of all charges he is facing and end up spending his life in prison, which he deserves. Although the Los Angeles DA is reportedly not ready to charge Masterson, there is adequate evidence against him. Masterson has not been charged with any of these crimes yet but once he goes to trial He will more than likely be found guilty. The Church of Scientology has kept these victims quiet for too long, Masterson would have been in prison already if it weren’t for the Church of Scientology trying to save his skin and cover up the horrific things he has done to these women. The truth will come out when Danny goes to trial and I believe he will finally pay for what he has done. Amy Zimmerman, â€Å"Danny Masterson’s Rape Accuesers slam Netflix over ‘The Ranch’ Return†, June 15 2018, Retreived from https://www.thedailybeast.com/danny-mastersons-rape-accusers-slam-netflix-over-the-ranch-return-you-rub-salt-in-our-wounds Stephanie Scholz, â€Å"Scientologists Taking Stand Against Discrimination†, article, Retreieved from https://www.standleague.org/bigotry-and-hate/stop-hate-dont-discriminate.html# Ryan Schwartz, TV Line, June 15 2018, Retreived from https://tvline.com/2018/06/15/danny-masterson-fired-the-ranch-rooster-bennett-leaving-explained-part-5/ Llana Kaplan, â€Å"Independent†, January 5 2018, Article, Retreived from https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/danny-masterson-rape-allegations-dropped-management-uta-a8144006.html%3famp â€Å"The Underground Bunker†, Retreived from https://tonyortega.org/2018/02/14/prosecutors-prepare-charges-carrying-life-sentence-for-danny-masterson/ Yashar Ali, â€Å"Despite Overwhelming Evidnece Against Actor Danny Masterson, Case has been Stalled†, News Article November 2 2017, Retreived from https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59fa8410e4b01b474048242a Danny Masterson Adresses Rape Charges, News article, Retreived from, https://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/danny-masterson/credits/146133/

Sample Essay on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Sample Essay on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Sample Essay on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is an advanced research projects agency. This agency functions as a part of the Department of Defense for the United States. They are responsible for developing new technologies primarily for the use by the US military. It was under President Dwight D Eisenhower that the organization was created at the beginning of 1958. This organization was founded in order to research and develop projects which expanded what we knew of science and technology, something which was designed to go beyond our immediate military needs. The administration created the organization in response to the Soviet launching Sputnik, with the overarching goal of making sure the United States military would have more sophisticated technology than any potential enemies. In spite of the fact that the organization name has been changed multiple times the internal structure with this sole mission remains the same. As time has moved forward the projects overseen by this organization have changed their focus on hypersonic research, aerospace planes, and strategic computing programs. Interstellar travel has become the main point of discussions of more recent symposiums. This branch is independent from any other research associated with the military; rather than responding to the military chain of command it responds directly to the Department of Defense. As of right now, there are 240 personnel working for the entity and the budget is set at 3 billion dollars. Some of the projects funded by this organization have offered significant technological advances in things such as graphical user interfaces as well as computer networking. The branch has many program offices all of which report to the director. Each program office covers a different project area. There is the Information Office, the Micro Systems Technology Office, the Tactical Technology Office, the Strategic Technology Office, the Adaptive Execution Office, the Defense Sciences Office, and the Biological Technologies Office. Over the course of this nearly six decades long history, this organization has successfully completed many advanced research projects such as the wearable jetpack where soldiers could run at faster speeds, cancer research, a humanoid robots, technologies for the 6th generation jet fighters, anti-submarine warfare vessels, acoustic gunfire locators, combat zone surveillance cameras, reusable space transport, long-range anti-ship missiles, battery powered human exoskeletons, higher producing computer systems, lightweight autonomy, and ground technology. This of course is only a very limited list of all of the projects overseen by this organization. Overall, what was started as a response to a potential Soviet threat has quickly become one of the most relied upon organizations for any scientific and technological related developments. With the overarching goal of remaining technologically advanced in comparison to potential enemies, the United States military has been able to successfully complete a multitude of projects under the 3 billion dollar budget for this branch all of which have garnered a great deal of success and even those which were not necessarily successful themselves offered information and insight essential to pursue additional avenues. This organization is something President Dwight D Eisenhower would be really proud of. References: Belfiore, Michael P. The Department Of Mad Scientists. [Washington, D.C.]: Smithsonian Books, 2009. Print. Buehler, Martin, Karl Iagnemma, and Sanjiv Singh. The DARPA Urban Challenge. Berlin: Springer, 2009. Print. DARPA Neural Network Study. Fairfax, Va., USA: AFCEA International Press, 1988. Print. Drezner, Jeffrey A, Geoffrey Sommer, and Robert S Leonard. Innovative Management In The DARPA High Altitude Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Program. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999. Print. Jacobsen, Annie. The Pentagons Brain. Print. Roland, Alex and Philip Shiman. Strategic Computing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. Print. Rouff, Chris and Michael G Hinchey. Experience From The DARPA Urban Challenge. London: Springer-Verlag London Limited, 2012. Print.

Existentialism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Existentialism - Essay Example Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno is a philosophical work that borders on the doctrines of existentialism. The author believes the philosophy of life should be based on the experiences of a person. This suggests there is a need to cultivate one’s personality and character as espoused in the writings. On that account, the author considers himself a man of contradiction because while he values the sense of individuality, he also supports the existence of God. This is in support of the creation theory and the primitivism of man to rely on a nature and consciousness (Unamuno 159). Additionally, he views himself as a man of contradiction because he supports both aspects of individuality and religious fanaticism towards a deity called God. Therefore, the contradictory, opposing elements in this case entail indoctrination of man toward nature and alienation toward God. Furthermore, it is important to prove the existence of God if one has to understand the being of God. Those philosophical elements are contradictory in terms of disputing the existence of God and the use of faith and reason to evaluate matters. There are also many rational reasons why he feels the opposition is the source of his life’s unity. For example, the unity of man emanates for the deep belief in a god that is in control of both humanity and nature (Unamuno 158). Similarly, there are guiding principles of faith and the reason that influence the choice of an individual in terms domination over personality and character. That is why it is a paradox that Miguel de Unamuno has total belief in the intricacies of the universe. In the same context, the paradoxical contradiction is because the divinity of man and human consciousness is not in harmony with nature. Alternatively, the feelings of God and external consciousness conflicts with the moral logic of a common man in terms of sustenance. The statement ‘we think because we live’ has several meanings according to th e context it is used the book. First, he begins by castigating the primitive man for overreliance in the forces that surround him such as nature and other fellow men. This suggests that both animate and inanimate things appeals to man without any reason or faith in the choice. That is why according to Miguel, humanity structures their lives depending on the given existence (Unamuno 152). Alternatively, the possession of the consciousness of nature ensures man does not break away from the confines of nature. In other words, divinity is not associated with rationale because there are objective and subjective point of views. This suggests that the decisions of man in the universe are guided by a supernatural being with divine powers. In other words, the thoughts and existence of man are controlled by one God. That is why ‘we think because we live.’ There are various relationships between theory, and practice (the practice of living) and it relates to action. In terms of th eory, there is the inherent attachment of the primitive man to both nature and fellow human being. On the other hand, in practice, man still possesses the consciousnesses of faith rather reason in the belief of a deity who is in control of the universe. This means the acceptance of a divinity is paramount in order to accept the infinite powers of God. Another fundamental relationship involves the humanization of God in order to counter paganism (Unamuno 161). In other words, it helps in

Homework Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Homework - Assignment Example The article is intended for handicapped hunters so they can continue hunting with the use of the Liberator. As reported, the Liberator â€Å"contains a movable mount that can be fitted with a single shot rifle, shotgun, or a cross bow. Odland and Schafer modeled the joystick control which moves the gun or bow up and down or side to side after the joystick found on modern wheelchairs. There is a tiny camera mounted behind the scope of the gun which projects the image of crosshairs and the target onto a video monitor the hunters can easily view from their wheel chairs† (Yankovich, 2010, par. 6). The author is actually an entrepreneur who owns a jewelry shop in Lowell, Michigan. He had first hand access to the information knowing Pete Odland personally from their common demographic location. The article provided relevant information as a unique and useful design to assist handicapped hunters in regaining mobility to enjoy what they love most. The innovative design was able to hel p hunters regain â€Å"the freedom for physically challenged people to â€Å"do it themselves†.

Experiment 2 Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Experiment 2 - Lab Report Example Equation for Archimedes buoyancy force is; Fb = g(mobject – mair), where Fb = buoyancy force, g = gravitational acceleration, and m = mass. On the other hand, Avogadro’s laws allows for the determination of a gas’ volume at a given density. Equation for Avogadro’s law is; molar mass/densitySTP = 22.415L/mole. By determining the volume and mass of any gas, it becomes easy to deduce a gas’ molar mass (Peck 68). This experiment involved determining the molar masses of hydrogen and helium; gases that are less dense than air. Prior to commencement of the experiment, appropriate safety requirements were performed. First, use of safety goggles and lab coats was prioritized. Secondly, water spilled on the floor was wiped in order to prevent slippage of students during the experiment. Finally, any chance of hydrogen ignition was considered, especially adherence to the use of fumed hood and prevention of static electricity. After the safety considerations, procedural steps of the experiment were performed. The volume of the pitcher was measured using a graduated cylinder. Simultaneously, the balloon was prepared by inflating it with either hydrogen or helium and subsequently weighed. Either excess balloon was cut off or additional pieces of strings added to the balloon setup until the balloon could float in air. Next, the pitcher setup was performed by immersion into water and the balloon gas transferred into the immersed pitcher. Finally, the gas’ volume was measured together with other relevant parameters like air pressure and environmental temperature. As a means of facilitating consistency and precision, three trials were performed for both hydrogen and helium. Data and results from each step of the experiment were recorded in the sheet below. Based on the data collected during the experiment, the calculated average molar mass of hydrogen is 2.107 g/mol while that of helium is 1.14 g/mol. The

The Educational Research Framework Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

The Educational Research Framework - Essay Example Therefore, it is important to integrate technological innovation into this new emphasis on science education. At present, schools in Saudi Arabia still use traditional ways to teach science subjects. This makes science learning very hard and boring to students. The education of science in Saudi Arabia should include many ways to learn science, such as the internet. Using the internet in education can lead to many benefits for the students and teacher because it impacts on education and training systems by revolutionizing education in all levels and offering increased interaction and effectiveness in learning (Al-Sadan, 2000). In addition, these new technological tools such as the Internet, virtual classrooms forums, and discussion boards as well as up-to-date laboratory facilities will enable science students and professionals to share information and knowledge with ease and have significant impacts on science education. The Journal of Science Education and Technology offers many articles detailing the ways that science education can benefit from technology. Also, the ICT Impact Report explains the way that education in the European Union uses new technology. It will provide many examples of how new technology could be applied in Saudi Arabia. I will use personal interviews of some of the subjects in the survey to add details to the survey answers and determine why they find certain technologies useful and why they think other specific technologies should be added to the teaching of science in secondary schools in Saudi Arabia. This will give me a clear view to understand the problems. Third I will use a two part literature review. I will review literature about the use of technology in teaching science in other countries. For this I will review Journal of Science Education and Technology and document like The ICT Impact Report. Also, I will review Kingdom

Seeking An MBA From The University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Essay

Seeking An MBA From The University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Business - Essay Example Although I have a highly technical background, I have competitively assumed the positions of a vendor, client and service provider. Despite the tough times I had while starting, I believe that my management skills have substantially helped me efficiently perform various tasks at hand and led me to where I am now. However, I often wonder how I would have played these roles if I had been equipped with a management degree. I always believe that one will be in much more confident if he/she has the necessary skills for any position before taking it. Bearing these in mind, here I am seeking admission into one of the best schools in the world, aiming to make a substantial contribution to the organization and further hone my skills for the years to come. Pondering upon my career history, I have come to realize that learning experientially is invaluable. Experience enhances critical thinking and propensity for self-direction in learning. The roles I have played are quite challenging for these stints are unique and demand a great deal of thought and hard work. As I have grown in the organization from a programmer to program manager to product manager, I have imbibed all aspects of product management.

Judge Making the Decision Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Judge Making the Decision - Case Study Example If the court discovers it does not have jurisdictional rights to hear the case it will not be accepted or it will eventually be dismissed. The requirements stand thus: No divorce shall be granted unless the plaintiff has resided in this state for sixty (60) days immediately preceding the time of filing the complaint, or the marriage was solemnized in this state and the plaintiff has resided in this state from the time of the marriage until the filing of the complaint. A married person who at the time of filing a complaint for divorce resides in this state is a resident although his spouse may reside elsewhere. A divorce may be filed in the district court of the county in which either party resides. (Wyoming Statutes - Title 20 - Chapters: 20-2-104, 20-2-107 and 20-2-108). The Complaint for Divorce must declare the appropriate Wyoming grounds upon which the divorce is being sought. The appropriate lawful ground will be that which the parties agree upon and can substantiate, or that which the filing spouse desires to prove to the court. The divorce grounds are as follows: To obtain a No-Fault divorce the plaintiff must allege Irreconcilable differences in the marital relationship. To obtain a divorce based upon Fault, the plaintiff must allege that defendant is incurably insane and the insane person has been confined in a mental hospital of this state or of another state or territory for at least two (2) years immediately preceding the commencement of the action for divorce. (Wyoming Statutes - Title 20 - Chapters: 20-2-104, 20-2-105) Here, plaintiff merely alleges a homosexual affair. Assuming arguendo that the allegations are true, they amount to nothing more than a charge of adultery which is not grounds for divorce in this state. Furthermore, plaintiff has not alleged in her complaint the requisite jurisdictional predicates for this court to take jurisdiction of this matter. She merely alleges that the parties own land in this state. The record reflects no reason for this court to presume that the plaintiff resides in this state or that she has for the past sixty days. Accordingly, and based upon the foregoing the complaint is dismissed without prejudice.

Seeking An MBA From The University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Essay

Seeking An MBA From The University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Business - Essay Example Although I have a highly technical background, I have competitively assumed the positions of a vendor, client and service provider. Despite the tough times I had while starting, I believe that my management skills have substantially helped me efficiently perform various tasks at hand and led me to where I am now. However, I often wonder how I would have played these roles if I had been equipped with a management degree. I always believe that one will be in much more confident if he/she has the necessary skills for any position before taking it. Bearing these in mind, here I am seeking admission into one of the best schools in the world, aiming to make a substantial contribution to the organization and further hone my skills for the years to come. Pondering upon my career history, I have come to realize that learning experientially is invaluable. Experience enhances critical thinking and propensity for self-direction in learning. The roles I have played are quite challenging for these stints are unique and demand a great deal of thought and hard work. As I have grown in the organization from a programmer to program manager to product manager, I have imbibed all aspects of product management.

What are the Impediments to Restoring Peace in Post-Saddam Iraq Term Paper

What are the Impediments to Restoring Peace in Post-Saddam Iraq - Term Paper Example In and after several stages over the next 12 years or so, Iraq attained its independence in the year 1932. Iraq was proclaimed as a republic in the year 1958, but in actual a series of military strongmen ruled the country until 2003. The last one known of them was Saddam Hussain. Iraq also had territorial disputes with Iran that led to an inconclusive and costly war for almost an entire decade from the year 1980 to 1988). In the year August 1990, Iraq captured Kuwait with the sole reason of capturing the major chunk of oil trade in the Middle East but was later on expelled by the US-led, UN coalition forces during the Gulf War that happened during January-February 1991. It followed in the liberation of Kuwait, the UN Security Council (UNSC) put stringent conditions on Iraq to scrap all its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. (Tripp) The UNSC also pressurized Iraq to allow UN verification inspectors to inspect it's suspected nuclear facilities and centers for making of weapons of mass-destruction like biological weapons. Iraq didn't cede to and complied with the UNSC resolutions over a period of 12 years that in turn led to the US-led invasion of Iraq in the year March 2003 and the permanent ouster of the Saddam Hussain regime from Iraq. Under a UNSC mandate, the coalition forces are keeping a vigil in Iraq trying to keep the democracy alive and helping to provide security to the common people and to support the freely elected democratic government. (Frontline) Iraq's economy is dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. Although looting, insurgent attacks, and sabotage have undermined economy-rebuilding efforts, economic activity is beginning to pick up in areas recently secured by the US military surge. Oil exports are around levels seen before Operation Iraqi Freedom, and total government revenues have benefited from high oil prices. (CIA The World Fact Book, Iraq)It is true that there has been a lot of rebuilding effort in Iraq with the intervention and aid of quite a few International Institutions and Countries and Iraq has made some progress to rebuild the institutions that it needs to implement and reap the rewards of the new economic policy. In this direction, Iraq has also negotiated an agreement for the reduction of debt with the Paris Club and also a new Stand-By Arrangement with the IMF. Iraq has also received pledges for $13.5 billion in foreign aid for the period span ning 2004-07 from outside of the US, and also more than $33 billion in total pledges from all the aid givers. An understanding was reached with the current regime in Iraq in May 2007 to integrate Iraq into the regional and global economy without any apparent prejudices.

Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies

Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies 1.0 Introduction and motivation of study The issues of ownership and corporate governance have been discussed broadly in the prior literature especially in developed markets. However, in emerging economies like Malaysia, the issues received a vigorous impetus when the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) hit Malaysia with severity in 1997/98. The AFC had depressed the economy to negative 7.5% in 1998, around 84,000 people lost their job and Malaysian capital market lost estimated USD200 billion in term of market capitalization during the crisis (Series of Malaysia Economic Reports). At the same time, the value of Malaysian currency had been decrease dramatically from 2.52 ringgit to the US dollar in June, 1997 to a lowest of 4.50 ringgit to the US dollar in January, 1998 (Tourres, 2003), plunging the country into its first recession for many years. Weak financial systems, excessive foreign borrowing and lack of transparency were among factors that contributed to the crisis (Fischer, 1998). Following the AFC, the Malaysian government introduced several reform measures to enhance transparency and accountability to restoring market confidence and encourage more stable and long term international investment. Example of these are the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) in 1998, the introduction of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) in March 2000  [1]  which codified the principles and best practices of good governance and the launched of Malaysias Capital Market Master Plan in 2002 as a comprehensive plan that identifies the strategic positioning and future of the Malaysian capital market. The Minority Shareholders Watchdog GROUP (MSWG) was also setup in 2001 as respond to the AFC. This study focuses on Malaysias capital market mainly because of the confidence shown by the international business community concerning investments in Malaysia especially after the economy has fully recovered from the AFC. Based on The Productivity and Investment Climate Survey, World Bank 2009, which reports firms perceptions of the business environment, suggests that Malaysia is a relatively attractive place for investors. Meanwhile, Report on Doing Business 2010 ranked Malaysia 23rd out of 183 economies for ease of doing business and recently the World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2010 placed Malaysia 10th of the most competitive economy in the world, up from 18th place in the previous year. The achievement of Malaysia economy to date partly contributing through the active roles plays by the government-linked companies (GLCs) that form the backbone of the structure of the Malaysian economy. GLCs and their controlling shareholders, government-linked investment companies (GLICs), constitute a significant part of the economic structure of Malaysia. GLCs employ an estimated 5% of the national workforce, account for approximately 49% of market capitalization (Ringgit Malaysia 235.5 billion) of Bursa Malaysia Securities, contributes about 17 percent of the nations gross fixed capital formation and account for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (Malaysia Economic Report, 2009/2010). More than that, GLCs also plays an important role in executing government policies and initiatives especially in key sectors and new growth sectors. Even with active divestment and privatization, GLCs remained as the main service providers to the nations key strategic utilities and services including electricity, telecommunications, airlines, airports, public transportations, banking and financial services. On top of that, GLCs also on forefront in implementing recommendations of the best practices affirmed in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance for Malaysian Public Listed Companies (Corporate Governance Survey Report, 2008). In the meantime, Corporate Governance Watch 2007, an annual collaborative study of corporate governance landscape of Asian market undertaken by independent stockbroker CLSA Asia Pacific Markets and the Asian Corporate Governance Association noted general improvement at the GLCs, a function of GLCs reforms and greater openness. Finally, the research on GLCs performance in Malaysia is also very important in order to investigate the real achievement of GLCs Transformation Program, the special program that was launched in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve the performance of GLCs. Recently, the total shareholder return of a selection of top 20 GLCs, has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compounded annual growth rat e of 2.4 percent since the launch of the program (Business Times, 2009). Motivate by the above reason, part of this study attempts to examine whether or not government ownership lead to better company performance by focusing on the unique characteristics of government ownership in GLCs. The research is an attempt to extend the literature in this field and to provide new insight and understanding on the roles of state in emerging market considering the limited number of research in this area. Hence, the first part of this study attempts to answer the following primary research question: Is there any significant relationship between ownership structure of government- linked companies in Malaysia and firm value? 2.0 Theoretical Foundations of the Study There are number of different theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze corporate governance. Difference frameworks approaches corporate governance in different way, for example; the agency theory arises from the fields of finance and economics and the stakeholder theory arises from social-orientated perspective on corporate governance. According to Mallin (2010, p.14), the main theories that have affected the development of corporate governance are agency theory, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory and stewardship theory. All these theory from difference disciplines have contributed to the development of theoretical aspects of corporate governance and its frameworks. However, the main theory that generally associated with ownership of the firm is agency theory that widely used in previous researches around the world. Theoretical and empirical researches on the relationship between ownership and firm value was originally motivated by the separation of ownership from control (Berle Means, 1932) and more recently, by agency theory (Jensen Meckling, 1976; Fama Jensen, 1983). In this theory, the basic assumption is that the goals and objectives of the principals (owners) and managers (agents) conflict. The central problem in corporate governance is to construct rules and incentive to effectively align the behavior of managers with the desires of principals (Hawley and Williams, 1996). The problem of agents being responsible to principals is that it compounds the agency costs identified by Jensen and Meckling (1976) with the basic assumption is that managers will act opportunistically to further their own interests before shareholders and one of the main reasons that the desired actions of principal and agent diverge is their different attitude towards risk (Shankman, 1999). Under the circumstances, in Malaysia where there is a high concentration of government ownership in firms (Tam and Tan, 2007) and high percentage of firms affiliated to government (La Porta et al., 1999), the government ownership actually has capacity to provide a control mechanisms to align management personal objectives with firm objectives and eventually increase the firm value. Parts of GLCs in Malaysia are privatized firms during Malaysian Privatization Policy in 1990s. Hence, the firms always related to political variables and in that stance the political view of GLCs conceive that the high level of government interferences resulted of inefficiency to the firm rather than facilitate the operation. 3.0 Literature Review and Research Gaps In Malaysia context, GLCs are defined as companies that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian government has a direct controlling stake via the GLICs. The GLICs are investment arms of the government that allocate government funds to the GLCs (Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance, 2004; Lau and Tong, 2008). Meanwhile, the controlling stake here refers to the governments ability (not just percentage ownership) to appoint board members, senior management and/or make major decisions. The Ministry of Finance (1993) classify GLCs as one in which the Malaysian government had an effective ownership interest of at least 20 percent of equity shares. Twenty percent voting rights in one particular company is considered to be sufficient for effective control and is employed in previous studies on ownership (La Porta et al.,1999; Faccio et.al., 2001 and Setia-Atmaja, 2009). Majority of GLCs under the federal government are under Khazanah Nasional Berhad, one of the most active GLICs in Malaysia  [2]  . Empirical studies on the relationship between government ownership and firm performance on the whole produced inconclusive results. Study by Ang and Ding (2005) on the relationship between ownership structure of Singaporean GLCs and performance found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs. In a related study, Ke and Issac (2007) report that governments shareholding is positively related to corporate performance of Chinas listed property companies, suggested that the economy sector is matter in the country. The findings however inconsistent with other empirical studies on the government ownership in China where in overall found the negative relationship between these two variables. For example, Sun and Tong (2003); McGuiness and Ferguson (2005); Gunasekarage, Xu and Wang (1999) and Li, Sun and Zou (2009) find that on average, the firms performance is negatively influenced by the governments ownership. Research in Malaysia on the relationship between government ownership and performance is lacking and also show mixed findings. Recently, Lau and Tong (2008) conducted a research on the impact of government intervention on firm value by employed 15 listed GLCs under Khazanah Nasional Berhad from year 2000 to 2005 (90 firm-year observations). They reveal a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership and firm value. However, this study has shortcomings as the selected data sets of 15 GLCs a year under Khazanah Nasional Berhad are too small and not robust enough to represent the overall GLCs performance. In fact, there are many more listed GLCs under the controlled of federal government GLICs  [3]  as well as GLCs under the state government jurisdiction. This research aims to address this issue by providing in-depth examinations and comprehensive study on all GLCs both at federal and state level. In a related study in Malaysia, Tam and Tan (2007) find that the performance of firms associated to government ownership is poor compared to others ownership types namely; individual-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and trust fund-owned firms. The study involved the top 150 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia Securities based on their ranking according to their market capitalization in 2000. The similar results also found in research by Ming and Gee (2008); and Chu and Cheah (2006) that show the negative relationship between government ownership and firms corporate performance. However, those studies also have limitations as they fail to properly identify the unique characteristics of GLCs ownership in Malaysia. In their studies, they group together all types of GLCs in one group in an attempt to find its relationship to performance without addressing issues of (i) the different type of GLCs controlled by federal government and GLCs controlled by states government and (ii) the differe nt type of shares in GLCs. With regard to the first issue, distinctions should be made between GLCs controlled by federal government (GLCFGs) and those controlled by state governments (GLCSGs) predominantly because they are difference in aspects of monitoring by federal government machineries and GLICs. GLCFGs subjected to strict supervision and monitoring not only by its GLICs but by ministries concerned under federal government. For example, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a GLCFG is the largest electric utility company in Malaysia with one governments special share and majority of it ordinary shares owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad . The Ministry of Finance responsible to the issues pertaining to the corporate matters of the company such as the approval entity for appointment of CEO/board of directors, their contract extension or termination, company performance etc. The selection of company chairman or CEO is carefully chosen based on their capability and suitability to head the organization. In the meantime, matters pertaining to policy such as approval for electric tariff increment and monitoring of company obeying to energy policy of Malaysia are under the responsibility of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water as a guardian ministry. In addition, National Audit Department also conducting an annual auditing or special auditing to this company to be reported in Auditors General Report that eventually to be presented in Parliament. Furthermore, Public Accounts Committee, a committee under Parliament also have right to investigate whatever issues surrounding the company such as mismanagement or issues highlighted in Auditors General Report. With all these stringent monitoring systems, the GLCFGs are more cautious in their actions and eventually lead to good corporate performance in the long run. On the other hand, the extent of monitoring and supervision of GLCSGs by respective state governments is weaker. All issues pertaining GLCSGs are to be monitor and solve by State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a controlling agency cum main shareholder of GLCSGs. As contended in Agency Theory, lack of monitoring efforts will increase the agency costs that eventually lead to poor firm performance. Furthermore, GLICs at federal government have more systematically systems and incentives in monitoring and improve its GLCs performance compared to its counterpart in state government. For example is the establishment of a special program aims to transform GLCs to high performers entity called GLCs Transformation Program (GTP) that was launched in May 2004. Under this program, 20 larger GLCs (G-20) that controlled by different federal government GLICs has been selected to be transformed into high performance entity and become regional or global champions. Since the launch the programme, G-20 have made significant improvement especially on their financial aspects with operating cash flow for non-financial G-20 firms grew by 42% from RM14 billion in 2004 to RM20 billion in 2008. At the same time, aggregate earnings for 2008 also 53% higher compared to performance in 2004 and total shareholder returns has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compo unded annual growth rate of 4.8% since the launch of the program (GTP Mid-Term Progress Review, 2009). With regard to this issue, based on above motivations the current study argue that the performance of listed GLCs controlled by federal government are better than it counterparts under the controlled of state government. On the second issue, previous studies with concerned to government ownership and performance have ignored the very important characteristic of GLCs in Malaysia which is GLCs with governments one special share or golden share. As a background, to stimulate economic growth and reduce Government financial burden, privatization policy was introduced in 1983 and a lot of government entities as well as hundreds of government projects had been implemented by private sector. From 1983 until 2003, 474 projects and 457 government entities had been privatized from 1983 until 2005 involving assets sale of RM1.54 billion and equity sales of RM4.94 billion (Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department). Various type of privatization such as sale, leased, management contract and build-lease-transfer have been used. However, in some strategic entities such as ports, main utilities provider (e.g. Tenaga Nasional Berhad) and national carrier (Malaysian Airlines Systems Berhad), Malaysian governme nt directly retained one special share or well known as golden share on top of ordinary shares that possess by GLICs on behalf of the government. In this type of GLCs, the degree of Government interference is excessively. The golden share grant government not only right to control companys direction including the appointment/dismissal of Chairman, Board member, CEO and senior management but also make major decisions such as restructuring exercise, mergers and acquisition, assets disposal and even cancel whatever decision make by the firms for the interest of government  [5]  by the government in 2001 with cost closed to Ringgit Malaysia one billion (Jalleh M., 2005) was a good example of how this type of GLCs being protected by the government. Another prominent case was the bailout of national car company Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional or Proton by state-owned oil company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (known as Petronas) during the AFC through cash injected by instruction of the gove rnment (Restall, 2000). Based on the arguments, the present study believed that, this type of firms should be treated separately from other normal GLCs to moderate the impact of government interventions. By group them together into one group of GLCs as carried out by previous studies in Malaysia is inappropriate and may have distorted their studies result. This research basically will address both of these issue by differentiate all GLCs in Malaysia into groups according to their controlling agency at federal or state level and also based on their type of shares to observe their impact to firms corporate performance. This study expected to form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and provide new facts on some elements of the government ownership in emerging economies by providing in-depth analysis on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no particular researcher so far focuses on examining government ownership and firm value by make use of these proposed approaches. In addition to that, others variable that related to government ownership such as the role of politicians, government official and ex- government officials as board members in GLCs and also the influence of degree of government ownership in GLCs will also be tested. 4.0 Hypotheses development This present study ultimately intended to test for any association between ownership structures of GLCs and firm value. A total of seven aspects have been identified and the hypotheses developed as to their probable effect and firm performance. 4.1 GLCs under federal and state government and firm performance There were not studies specifically relate this variable with performance in Malaysia, but study by Chen, Firth and Xu (2009) on Chinas listed company revealed that the performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to central government or in Malaysian context is federal government is outperformed their counterpart which are related to state and local government. They also argued that different form of government ownership have different motivation and objectives on investment and it lead to different performance outcomes for the companies they have invested in. According to Loh (2008), the Malaysias constitutional design clearly favors the federal over the state governments, both in term of legislative jurisdictions as well as in terms of revenue assignments. Based on this argument and motivations on the effectiveness of monitoring systems by federal government as discussed in 3.0, the proposed hypothesis is: H1: The impact of GLCs controlled by federal government on firm performance is stronger than GLCs controlled by states government 4.2 GLCs with governments special share and firm performance As explained in Section 3.0 above, governments golden share providing the government will unlimited power to control company directions and sometimes lead to misallocation of resources by the companies itself or by the government in order to assist them. The holding agency of this share is Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the entity under Ministry of Finance, Malaysia.  Although there is no empirical study so far that investigate the relationship between governments special share and performance in Malaysia, but study by Sun, Tong H.S, and Tong (2002) from Chinas privatization experience shows that too much government interference and control of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was among the reasons of SOEs poor performance. Another argument is that, as of the perspective of minority shareholders, too much intervention from government will jeopardize the companys development and resulted poor performance in the long run. Hence, this type of company is not attractive for investo rs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: H2: The impact of GLCs without governments golden share on firm performance is stronger than GLCs with governments golden share 4.3 Degree of government ownership and firm performance Like many others East Asian countries, Malaysias corporate sector also experiencing a high level of ownership concentration (Liew, 2007; La Porta et al., 1998). Gunasekarage et. al (2006) in their study on influence of the degree of state ownership on the performance of listed Chinese companies conclude that firms performance is significant at high levels of government ownership and a balanced ownership structure enhances the firm performance. Study by Ke and D.Isaac (2007) in China listed property companies from 2000 to 2002 also reveals that the government shareholding is positively related to corporate performance. In Malaysia context, Lau and Tong (2008) in their study of 15 listed GLCs in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2000 to 2005 find a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership  [6]  and firm value. However, this study has limitation in term of selected data sets as laid out in Section 3.0. Therefore the variable will be re-testing with more comprehensive data sets in order to have more concrete and robust evidence on the influence of this variable to firm performance. In line with agency theory that concentrated ownership in more effective in reducing managerial agency cost, the proposed hypotheses are: H3: There is a significant relationship between governments ownership degree in GLCs and firm performance 4.4 Politicians as director and firm performance GLCs traditionally has some of its boards of directors that had affiliations with the ruling party especially those GLCs that previously under government control and later on involved in privatization. Johnson and Mitton (2003) noted that as of October 1999, 15.8% or 67 out of 424 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities are politically connected to the ruling party. Empirical evidence on the association between politicians as director and its impact to firm value is inconclusive. Study by Xu, Zhu and Lin (2005) on state owned enterprises in China revealed that politicians have incentives to control the firms to achieve economically inefficient objectives for political purposes. In a related study, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) exposed that excess employment and wages are common in public enterprise that control by politicians. This unhealthy phenomenon could lead to wrong managerial investment decisions and result in misallocation of companys resources that eventuall y reduce the firm value. Boubakri, Cosset and Saffar (2008) investigate the association between political connections of newly privatized firms and the impact to performance. The study involved 245 privatized firms in 27 developing and 14 industrialized countries and the existence of political connections is based on whether the particular firms have a politician or an ex-politician on their boards. They find that the politically-connected firms exhibit a poor performance compared to their non-connected counterparts. The similar result also found in Fan et. al (2007). Meanwhile, Fisman (2001) in his study in Indonesia and Faccio (2006) in analysis of 47 countries find a significant relationship between these two variables. In the context of Malaysia where business and politics are inter-related (Gomez and Jomo, 1997) indicated that, participation of politicians in GLCs might have effects on firm value as they act as a link between the governments and companys management. Therefore, it is hypothesized that, H4: There is a significant relationship between politician as director and firm performance 4.5 Government officials as board member in GLCs and firm performance GLCs are created partly to implement government policy objectives especially those established as a result of privatization exercises in the early eighties. Hence, most of their board of directors are civil servants either still in-service or formal government officials that act as eyes and ear of government as well as communication bridge between the management and the government. Agrawal and Knoeber (2001) in their study found that the politically experience directors that comprises former government officials benefits the company they served and noted that they are more prevalent in firms compare to others outside directors. In a related study in Singapore that involved 25 GLCs and 204 non-GLCs for the period from 1990 to 2000, Ang and Ding (2006) found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs in the area of profitability, efficiency and firms financial performance. Like Malaysian GLCs, Singapore GLCs also comprises government officials in their board. At suc h, it is hypothesized that, H5: There is a significant relationship between in service government official as director and firm performance H6: There is a significant relationship between former government official as director and firm performance 5.0 Research design and methodology 5.1 Data and sample design The first model in this research is designed to examine the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance of all GLCs listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Securities for the period of five years (2004 until 2008). To ensure that the sample clearly represented the population intended for the research and to harmonious the selected sample to the GLCs definition, the sample selection is based on the following criteria: At any time, one specific GLICs either at federal or states government level must be the single largest shareholder with at least 20% share ownership in one particular company on Main Board of KLSE and; The financial and unit trust companies are excluded as they are governed by different set of rules and acts that could affect the end findings of this study. In addition, all required financial data for the study period are to be available in databases (Datastream or Thomson Research) and information on ownership and corporate governance structure from companies respective audited annual report. The study constructs an unbalanced panel data of all GLCs during the study period. This approach has the advantage of attrition biases in correlation (Hu and Izumida, 2008). The observations period of 2004 to 2008 is chosen mainly because the period was the phase of economic stability in Malaysia when the countrys economy and capitals market activities fully recovered after the Asian Financial Crisis. The performance chart in Figure 2 below reveals that prior to AFC, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) in average has been trading in an upward trend. However, the AFC push down the KLCI to below 600 during the peak of the crisis. The post-crisis period has seen steady increase in the value of the KLCI even though until 2006 Bursa Malaysia Securities still has some 200 companies trading at more than 50 percent discount to their book values (James, 2006). Another reason for the chosen period is to evaluate the impact of GLCs Transformation Program that launch in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve performance of GLCs. 5.2 Methodology 5.2.1 The proposed model The following base model will be used to test the hypotheses that have been defined in the previous section: PERFORM = ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ²1FG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²2SG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²3GOLD + ÃŽÂ ²4GOV_OWN + ÃŽÂ ²5POL + ÃŽÂ ²6GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²7EX-GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²8LOG_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²9LEV + ÃŽÂ ²10BOD_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²11BOD_MEET + ÃŽÂ ²12BOD_IND + ÃŽÂ µi Where; PERFORM = the dependent variables: proxy by ROA, ROE and Tobins Q; Independent variables: FG_GLC = GLCs under federal government (equal to 1 if a firm is under federal government, and 0 otherwise) SG_GLC = GLCs under state government (equal to 1 if a firm is under states government, and 0 otherwise) GOLD = GLCs which government owned one golden share (equal to 1 if a firm has governments golden share, and 0 otherwise) GOV_OWN = captures the percentage of government ownership in a GLC POL = captures the percentage of politician on the board GO_BOD = captures the percentage of government official in-service on the board EX-GO_BOD = captures the percentage of ex-government official on the board Control variables: LOG_SIZE = natural log of total assets as proxy of firm size LEV = firm leverage (total liabilities to total assets) BOD_SIZE = number of board of directors during the year BOD_MEET = number of board of directors meetings during the year BOD_IND = captures the percentage of independent directors on the board ÃŽÂ µi = error term 5.2.2 Operationalization of variable selection 5.2.2.1 The dependent variable The dependent variable in this study is firm performance that comprises accounting and market based performance namely return on assets (ROA)  [8]  and Tobins Q. They are to be employed in this study to measure the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance. The accounting-based performance is the most common types of performance measurement in assessing business performance. In this approach, annual report, which comprises income statements, balance sheets and statements of changes in financial position are the source of information to analyze companys financial performance for one particular financial year. This approach is very important for companys stakeholders such as potential investors since the indicator can help them in making investment decisions. It also vital in helping the companys shareholders to assess how well the company performed in market place in order to make decisions on management and employees rewards, setting suitable plans to sustain the goo d momentum or even take drastic approaches for company to remain in business. The accounting-based performance also helps manager to effectively plan and control in order to achieve the objectives of the company. For example, according to Thompson Yeung (2001), return on equity as one of the accounting-based measurements can accommodate the effect of different accounting procedures across industries and can minimize the multi-linearity between companys specific characteristics such as size, age and profitability. Both ROA and ROE are the most common measurement used in analyzing financial performance of companies and have been used widely in previous studies (Vafeas,1999; Abdullah,2004; Bhagat Black, 2002; Rahman Haniffa 2006; Ang Ding, 2006; Bhagat Bolton; 2008 and Chu, 2009). Since accounting-based performance measures the past and current performance of the firm, m Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies 1.0 Introduction and motivation of study The issues of ownership and corporate governance have been discussed broadly in the prior literature especially in developed markets. However, in emerging economies like Malaysia, the issues received a vigorous impetus when the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) hit Malaysia with severity in 1997/98. The AFC had depressed the economy to negative 7.5% in 1998, around 84,000 people lost their job and Malaysian capital market lost estimated USD200 billion in term of market capitalization during the crisis (Series of Malaysia Economic Reports). At the same time, the value of Malaysian currency had been decrease dramatically from 2.52 ringgit to the US dollar in June, 1997 to a lowest of 4.50 ringgit to the US dollar in January, 1998 (Tourres, 2003), plunging the country into its first recession for many years. Weak financial systems, excessive foreign borrowing and lack of transparency were among factors that contributed to the crisis (Fischer, 1998). Following the AFC, the Malaysian government introduced several reform measures to enhance transparency and accountability to restoring market confidence and encourage more stable and long term international investment. Example of these are the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) in 1998, the introduction of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) in March 2000  [1]  which codified the principles and best practices of good governance and the launched of Malaysias Capital Market Master Plan in 2002 as a comprehensive plan that identifies the strategic positioning and future of the Malaysian capital market. The Minority Shareholders Watchdog GROUP (MSWG) was also setup in 2001 as respond to the AFC. This study focuses on Malaysias capital market mainly because of the confidence shown by the international business community concerning investments in Malaysia especially after the economy has fully recovered from the AFC. Based on The Productivity and Investment Climate Survey, World Bank 2009, which reports firms perceptions of the business environment, suggests that Malaysia is a relatively attractive place for investors. Meanwhile, Report on Doing Business 2010 ranked Malaysia 23rd out of 183 economies for ease of doing business and recently the World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2010 placed Malaysia 10th of the most competitive economy in the world, up from 18th place in the previous year. The achievement of Malaysia economy to date partly contributing through the active roles plays by the government-linked companies (GLCs) that form the backbone of the structure of the Malaysian economy. GLCs and their controlling shareholders, government-linked investment companies (GLICs), constitute a significant part of the economic structure of Malaysia. GLCs employ an estimated 5% of the national workforce, account for approximately 49% of market capitalization (Ringgit Malaysia 235.5 billion) of Bursa Malaysia Securities, contributes about 17 percent of the nations gross fixed capital formation and account for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (Malaysia Economic Report, 2009/2010). More than that, GLCs also plays an important role in executing government policies and initiatives especially in key sectors and new growth sectors. Even with active divestment and privatization, GLCs remained as the main service providers to the nations key strategic utilities and services including electricity, telecommunications, airlines, airports, public transportations, banking and financial services. On top of that, GLCs also on forefront in implementing recommendations of the best practices affirmed in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance for Malaysian Public Listed Companies (Corporate Governance Survey Report, 2008). In the meantime, Corporate Governance Watch 2007, an annual collaborative study of corporate governance landscape of Asian market undertaken by independent stockbroker CLSA Asia Pacific Markets and the Asian Corporate Governance Association noted general improvement at the GLCs, a function of GLCs reforms and greater openness. Finally, the research on GLCs performance in Malaysia is also very important in order to investigate the real achievement of GLCs Transformation Program, the special program that was launched in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve the performance of GLCs. Recently, the total shareholder return of a selection of top 20 GLCs, has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compounded annual growth rat e of 2.4 percent since the launch of the program (Business Times, 2009). Motivate by the above reason, part of this study attempts to examine whether or not government ownership lead to better company performance by focusing on the unique characteristics of government ownership in GLCs. The research is an attempt to extend the literature in this field and to provide new insight and understanding on the roles of state in emerging market considering the limited number of research in this area. Hence, the first part of this study attempts to answer the following primary research question: Is there any significant relationship between ownership structure of government- linked companies in Malaysia and firm value? 2.0 Theoretical Foundations of the Study There are number of different theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze corporate governance. Difference frameworks approaches corporate governance in different way, for example; the agency theory arises from the fields of finance and economics and the stakeholder theory arises from social-orientated perspective on corporate governance. According to Mallin (2010, p.14), the main theories that have affected the development of corporate governance are agency theory, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory and stewardship theory. All these theory from difference disciplines have contributed to the development of theoretical aspects of corporate governance and its frameworks. However, the main theory that generally associated with ownership of the firm is agency theory that widely used in previous researches around the world. Theoretical and empirical researches on the relationship between ownership and firm value was originally motivated by the separation of ownership from control (Berle Means, 1932) and more recently, by agency theory (Jensen Meckling, 1976; Fama Jensen, 1983). In this theory, the basic assumption is that the goals and objectives of the principals (owners) and managers (agents) conflict. The central problem in corporate governance is to construct rules and incentive to effectively align the behavior of managers with the desires of principals (Hawley and Williams, 1996). The problem of agents being responsible to principals is that it compounds the agency costs identified by Jensen and Meckling (1976) with the basic assumption is that managers will act opportunistically to further their own interests before shareholders and one of the main reasons that the desired actions of principal and agent diverge is their different attitude towards risk (Shankman, 1999). Under the circumstances, in Malaysia where there is a high concentration of government ownership in firms (Tam and Tan, 2007) and high percentage of firms affiliated to government (La Porta et al., 1999), the government ownership actually has capacity to provide a control mechanisms to align management personal objectives with firm objectives and eventually increase the firm value. Parts of GLCs in Malaysia are privatized firms during Malaysian Privatization Policy in 1990s. Hence, the firms always related to political variables and in that stance the political view of GLCs conceive that the high level of government interferences resulted of inefficiency to the firm rather than facilitate the operation. 3.0 Literature Review and Research Gaps In Malaysia context, GLCs are defined as companies that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian government has a direct controlling stake via the GLICs. The GLICs are investment arms of the government that allocate government funds to the GLCs (Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance, 2004; Lau and Tong, 2008). Meanwhile, the controlling stake here refers to the governments ability (not just percentage ownership) to appoint board members, senior management and/or make major decisions. The Ministry of Finance (1993) classify GLCs as one in which the Malaysian government had an effective ownership interest of at least 20 percent of equity shares. Twenty percent voting rights in one particular company is considered to be sufficient for effective control and is employed in previous studies on ownership (La Porta et al.,1999; Faccio et.al., 2001 and Setia-Atmaja, 2009). Majority of GLCs under the federal government are under Khazanah Nasional Berhad, one of the most active GLICs in Malaysia  [2]  . Empirical studies on the relationship between government ownership and firm performance on the whole produced inconclusive results. Study by Ang and Ding (2005) on the relationship between ownership structure of Singaporean GLCs and performance found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs. In a related study, Ke and Issac (2007) report that governments shareholding is positively related to corporate performance of Chinas listed property companies, suggested that the economy sector is matter in the country. The findings however inconsistent with other empirical studies on the government ownership in China where in overall found the negative relationship between these two variables. For example, Sun and Tong (2003); McGuiness and Ferguson (2005); Gunasekarage, Xu and Wang (1999) and Li, Sun and Zou (2009) find that on average, the firms performance is negatively influenced by the governments ownership. Research in Malaysia on the relationship between government ownership and performance is lacking and also show mixed findings. Recently, Lau and Tong (2008) conducted a research on the impact of government intervention on firm value by employed 15 listed GLCs under Khazanah Nasional Berhad from year 2000 to 2005 (90 firm-year observations). They reveal a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership and firm value. However, this study has shortcomings as the selected data sets of 15 GLCs a year under Khazanah Nasional Berhad are too small and not robust enough to represent the overall GLCs performance. In fact, there are many more listed GLCs under the controlled of federal government GLICs  [3]  as well as GLCs under the state government jurisdiction. This research aims to address this issue by providing in-depth examinations and comprehensive study on all GLCs both at federal and state level. In a related study in Malaysia, Tam and Tan (2007) find that the performance of firms associated to government ownership is poor compared to others ownership types namely; individual-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and trust fund-owned firms. The study involved the top 150 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia Securities based on their ranking according to their market capitalization in 2000. The similar results also found in research by Ming and Gee (2008); and Chu and Cheah (2006) that show the negative relationship between government ownership and firms corporate performance. However, those studies also have limitations as they fail to properly identify the unique characteristics of GLCs ownership in Malaysia. In their studies, they group together all types of GLCs in one group in an attempt to find its relationship to performance without addressing issues of (i) the different type of GLCs controlled by federal government and GLCs controlled by states government and (ii) the differe nt type of shares in GLCs. With regard to the first issue, distinctions should be made between GLCs controlled by federal government (GLCFGs) and those controlled by state governments (GLCSGs) predominantly because they are difference in aspects of monitoring by federal government machineries and GLICs. GLCFGs subjected to strict supervision and monitoring not only by its GLICs but by ministries concerned under federal government. For example, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a GLCFG is the largest electric utility company in Malaysia with one governments special share and majority of it ordinary shares owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad . The Ministry of Finance responsible to the issues pertaining to the corporate matters of the company such as the approval entity for appointment of CEO/board of directors, their contract extension or termination, company performance etc. The selection of company chairman or CEO is carefully chosen based on their capability and suitability to head the organization. In the meantime, matters pertaining to policy such as approval for electric tariff increment and monitoring of company obeying to energy policy of Malaysia are under the responsibility of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water as a guardian ministry. In addition, National Audit Department also conducting an annual auditing or special auditing to this company to be reported in Auditors General Report that eventually to be presented in Parliament. Furthermore, Public Accounts Committee, a committee under Parliament also have right to investigate whatever issues surrounding the company such as mismanagement or issues highlighted in Auditors General Report. With all these stringent monitoring systems, the GLCFGs are more cautious in their actions and eventually lead to good corporate performance in the long run. On the other hand, the extent of monitoring and supervision of GLCSGs by respective state governments is weaker. All issues pertaining GLCSGs are to be monitor and solve by State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a controlling agency cum main shareholder of GLCSGs. As contended in Agency Theory, lack of monitoring efforts will increase the agency costs that eventually lead to poor firm performance. Furthermore, GLICs at federal government have more systematically systems and incentives in monitoring and improve its GLCs performance compared to its counterpart in state government. For example is the establishment of a special program aims to transform GLCs to high performers entity called GLCs Transformation Program (GTP) that was launched in May 2004. Under this program, 20 larger GLCs (G-20) that controlled by different federal government GLICs has been selected to be transformed into high performance entity and become regional or global champions. Since the launch the programme, G-20 have made significant improvement especially on their financial aspects with operating cash flow for non-financial G-20 firms grew by 42% from RM14 billion in 2004 to RM20 billion in 2008. At the same time, aggregate earnings for 2008 also 53% higher compared to performance in 2004 and total shareholder returns has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compo unded annual growth rate of 4.8% since the launch of the program (GTP Mid-Term Progress Review, 2009). With regard to this issue, based on above motivations the current study argue that the performance of listed GLCs controlled by federal government are better than it counterparts under the controlled of state government. On the second issue, previous studies with concerned to government ownership and performance have ignored the very important characteristic of GLCs in Malaysia which is GLCs with governments one special share or golden share. As a background, to stimulate economic growth and reduce Government financial burden, privatization policy was introduced in 1983 and a lot of government entities as well as hundreds of government projects had been implemented by private sector. From 1983 until 2003, 474 projects and 457 government entities had been privatized from 1983 until 2005 involving assets sale of RM1.54 billion and equity sales of RM4.94 billion (Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department). Various type of privatization such as sale, leased, management contract and build-lease-transfer have been used. However, in some strategic entities such as ports, main utilities provider (e.g. Tenaga Nasional Berhad) and national carrier (Malaysian Airlines Systems Berhad), Malaysian governme nt directly retained one special share or well known as golden share on top of ordinary shares that possess by GLICs on behalf of the government. In this type of GLCs, the degree of Government interference is excessively. The golden share grant government not only right to control companys direction including the appointment/dismissal of Chairman, Board member, CEO and senior management but also make major decisions such as restructuring exercise, mergers and acquisition, assets disposal and even cancel whatever decision make by the firms for the interest of government  [5]  by the government in 2001 with cost closed to Ringgit Malaysia one billion (Jalleh M., 2005) was a good example of how this type of GLCs being protected by the government. Another prominent case was the bailout of national car company Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional or Proton by state-owned oil company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (known as Petronas) during the AFC through cash injected by instruction of the gove rnment (Restall, 2000). Based on the arguments, the present study believed that, this type of firms should be treated separately from other normal GLCs to moderate the impact of government interventions. By group them together into one group of GLCs as carried out by previous studies in Malaysia is inappropriate and may have distorted their studies result. This research basically will address both of these issue by differentiate all GLCs in Malaysia into groups according to their controlling agency at federal or state level and also based on their type of shares to observe their impact to firms corporate performance. This study expected to form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and provide new facts on some elements of the government ownership in emerging economies by providing in-depth analysis on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no particular researcher so far focuses on examining government ownership and firm value by make use of these proposed approaches. In addition to that, others variable that related to government ownership such as the role of politicians, government official and ex- government officials as board members in GLCs and also the influence of degree of government ownership in GLCs will also be tested. 4.0 Hypotheses development This present study ultimately intended to test for any association between ownership structures of GLCs and firm value. A total of seven aspects have been identified and the hypotheses developed as to their probable effect and firm performance. 4.1 GLCs under federal and state government and firm performance There were not studies specifically relate this variable with performance in Malaysia, but study by Chen, Firth and Xu (2009) on Chinas listed company revealed that the performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to central government or in Malaysian context is federal government is outperformed their counterpart which are related to state and local government. They also argued that different form of government ownership have different motivation and objectives on investment and it lead to different performance outcomes for the companies they have invested in. According to Loh (2008), the Malaysias constitutional design clearly favors the federal over the state governments, both in term of legislative jurisdictions as well as in terms of revenue assignments. Based on this argument and motivations on the effectiveness of monitoring systems by federal government as discussed in 3.0, the proposed hypothesis is: H1: The impact of GLCs controlled by federal government on firm performance is stronger than GLCs controlled by states government 4.2 GLCs with governments special share and firm performance As explained in Section 3.0 above, governments golden share providing the government will unlimited power to control company directions and sometimes lead to misallocation of resources by the companies itself or by the government in order to assist them. The holding agency of this share is Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the entity under Ministry of Finance, Malaysia.  Although there is no empirical study so far that investigate the relationship between governments special share and performance in Malaysia, but study by Sun, Tong H.S, and Tong (2002) from Chinas privatization experience shows that too much government interference and control of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was among the reasons of SOEs poor performance. Another argument is that, as of the perspective of minority shareholders, too much intervention from government will jeopardize the companys development and resulted poor performance in the long run. Hence, this type of company is not attractive for investo rs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: H2: The impact of GLCs without governments golden share on firm performance is stronger than GLCs with governments golden share 4.3 Degree of government ownership and firm performance Like many others East Asian countries, Malaysias corporate sector also experiencing a high level of ownership concentration (Liew, 2007; La Porta et al., 1998). Gunasekarage et. al (2006) in their study on influence of the degree of state ownership on the performance of listed Chinese companies conclude that firms performance is significant at high levels of government ownership and a balanced ownership structure enhances the firm performance. Study by Ke and D.Isaac (2007) in China listed property companies from 2000 to 2002 also reveals that the government shareholding is positively related to corporate performance. In Malaysia context, Lau and Tong (2008) in their study of 15 listed GLCs in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2000 to 2005 find a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership  [6]  and firm value. However, this study has limitation in term of selected data sets as laid out in Section 3.0. Therefore the variable will be re-testing with more comprehensive data sets in order to have more concrete and robust evidence on the influence of this variable to firm performance. In line with agency theory that concentrated ownership in more effective in reducing managerial agency cost, the proposed hypotheses are: H3: There is a significant relationship between governments ownership degree in GLCs and firm performance 4.4 Politicians as director and firm performance GLCs traditionally has some of its boards of directors that had affiliations with the ruling party especially those GLCs that previously under government control and later on involved in privatization. Johnson and Mitton (2003) noted that as of October 1999, 15.8% or 67 out of 424 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities are politically connected to the ruling party. Empirical evidence on the association between politicians as director and its impact to firm value is inconclusive. Study by Xu, Zhu and Lin (2005) on state owned enterprises in China revealed that politicians have incentives to control the firms to achieve economically inefficient objectives for political purposes. In a related study, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) exposed that excess employment and wages are common in public enterprise that control by politicians. This unhealthy phenomenon could lead to wrong managerial investment decisions and result in misallocation of companys resources that eventuall y reduce the firm value. Boubakri, Cosset and Saffar (2008) investigate the association between political connections of newly privatized firms and the impact to performance. The study involved 245 privatized firms in 27 developing and 14 industrialized countries and the existence of political connections is based on whether the particular firms have a politician or an ex-politician on their boards. They find that the politically-connected firms exhibit a poor performance compared to their non-connected counterparts. The similar result also found in Fan et. al (2007). Meanwhile, Fisman (2001) in his study in Indonesia and Faccio (2006) in analysis of 47 countries find a significant relationship between these two variables. In the context of Malaysia where business and politics are inter-related (Gomez and Jomo, 1997) indicated that, participation of politicians in GLCs might have effects on firm value as they act as a link between the governments and companys management. Therefore, it is hypothesized that, H4: There is a significant relationship between politician as director and firm performance 4.5 Government officials as board member in GLCs and firm performance GLCs are created partly to implement government policy objectives especially those established as a result of privatization exercises in the early eighties. Hence, most of their board of directors are civil servants either still in-service or formal government officials that act as eyes and ear of government as well as communication bridge between the management and the government. Agrawal and Knoeber (2001) in their study found that the politically experience directors that comprises former government officials benefits the company they served and noted that they are more prevalent in firms compare to others outside directors. In a related study in Singapore that involved 25 GLCs and 204 non-GLCs for the period from 1990 to 2000, Ang and Ding (2006) found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs in the area of profitability, efficiency and firms financial performance. Like Malaysian GLCs, Singapore GLCs also comprises government officials in their board. At suc h, it is hypothesized that, H5: There is a significant relationship between in service government official as director and firm performance H6: There is a significant relationship between former government official as director and firm performance 5.0 Research design and methodology 5.1 Data and sample design The first model in this research is designed to examine the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance of all GLCs listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Securities for the period of five years (2004 until 2008). To ensure that the sample clearly represented the population intended for the research and to harmonious the selected sample to the GLCs definition, the sample selection is based on the following criteria: At any time, one specific GLICs either at federal or states government level must be the single largest shareholder with at least 20% share ownership in one particular company on Main Board of KLSE and; The financial and unit trust companies are excluded as they are governed by different set of rules and acts that could affect the end findings of this study. In addition, all required financial data for the study period are to be available in databases (Datastream or Thomson Research) and information on ownership and corporate governance structure from companies respective audited annual report. The study constructs an unbalanced panel data of all GLCs during the study period. This approach has the advantage of attrition biases in correlation (Hu and Izumida, 2008). The observations period of 2004 to 2008 is chosen mainly because the period was the phase of economic stability in Malaysia when the countrys economy and capitals market activities fully recovered after the Asian Financial Crisis. The performance chart in Figure 2 below reveals that prior to AFC, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) in average has been trading in an upward trend. However, the AFC push down the KLCI to below 600 during the peak of the crisis. The post-crisis period has seen steady increase in the value of the KLCI even though until 2006 Bursa Malaysia Securities still has some 200 companies trading at more than 50 percent discount to their book values (James, 2006). Another reason for the chosen period is to evaluate the impact of GLCs Transformation Program that launch in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve performance of GLCs. 5.2 Methodology 5.2.1 The proposed model The following base model will be used to test the hypotheses that have been defined in the previous section: PERFORM = ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ²1FG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²2SG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²3GOLD + ÃŽÂ ²4GOV_OWN + ÃŽÂ ²5POL + ÃŽÂ ²6GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²7EX-GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²8LOG_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²9LEV + ÃŽÂ ²10BOD_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²11BOD_MEET + ÃŽÂ ²12BOD_IND + ÃŽÂ µi Where; PERFORM = the dependent variables: proxy by ROA, ROE and Tobins Q; Independent variables: FG_GLC = GLCs under federal government (equal to 1 if a firm is under federal government, and 0 otherwise) SG_GLC = GLCs under state government (equal to 1 if a firm is under states government, and 0 otherwise) GOLD = GLCs which government owned one golden share (equal to 1 if a firm has governments golden share, and 0 otherwise) GOV_OWN = captures the percentage of government ownership in a GLC POL = captures the percentage of politician on the board GO_BOD = captures the percentage of government official in-service on the board EX-GO_BOD = captures the percentage of ex-government official on the board Control variables: LOG_SIZE = natural log of total assets as proxy of firm size LEV = firm leverage (total liabilities to total assets) BOD_SIZE = number of board of directors during the year BOD_MEET = number of board of directors meetings during the year BOD_IND = captures the percentage of independent directors on the board ÃŽÂ µi = error term 5.2.2 Operationalization of variable selection 5.2.2.1 The dependent variable The dependent variable in this study is firm performance that comprises accounting and market based performance namely return on assets (ROA)  [8]  and Tobins Q. They are to be employed in this study to measure the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance. The accounting-based performance is the most common types of performance measurement in assessing business performance. In this approach, annual report, which comprises income statements, balance sheets and statements of changes in financial position are the source of information to analyze companys financial performance for one particular financial year. This approach is very important for companys stakeholders such as potential investors since the indicator can help them in making investment decisions. It also vital in helping the companys shareholders to assess how well the company performed in market place in order to make decisions on management and employees rewards, setting suitable plans to sustain the goo d momentum or even take drastic approaches for company to remain in business. The accounting-based performance also helps manager to effectively plan and control in order to achieve the objectives of the company. For example, according to Thompson Yeung (2001), return on equity as one of the accounting-based measurements can accommodate the effect of different accounting procedures across industries and can minimize the multi-linearity between companys specific characteristics such as size, age and profitability. Both ROA and ROE are the most common measurement used in analyzing financial performance of companies and have been used widely in previous studies (Vafeas,1999; Abdullah,2004; Bhagat Black, 2002; Rahman Haniffa 2006; Ang Ding, 2006; Bhagat Bolton; 2008 and Chu, 2009). Since accounting-based performance measures the past and current performance of the firm, m