busysportjob

Private sector

2009-05-18T05:08:00.001-07:00

In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy which is both run for private profit and is not controlled by the state. By contrast, enterprises that are part of the state are part of the public sector; private, non-profit organizations are regarded as part of the voluntary sector.

Legal status :A variety of legal structures exist for private sector business organizations, depending on the jurisdiction in which they have their legal domicile. Individuals can conduct business without necessarily being part of any organization.In countries where the private sector is regulated or even forbidden, some types of private business continue to operate within them.The private sector focuses on the needs of the shareholders. The values of the private sector are to provide excellent equipment for their customers and excellent customer service.

Employment :The private sector employs the majority of the workforce in some countries] However, in some countries such as the People's Republic of China, the public sector employs most of the workers.

What constitutes the voluntary sector may be interpreted widely or narrowly, and may include such diverse groups as advocacy/interest groups, think tanks, social movements, political parties, charitable organizations, volunteer community organisations, and religious organizations.

Public sector

2009-05-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

The public sector is the part of economic and administrative life that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government, whether national, regional or local/municipal.

Examples of public sector activity range from delivering social security, administering urban planning and organising national defenses. The organization of the public sector (public ownership) can take several forms, including: Direct administration funded through taxation; the delivering organization generally has no specific requirement to meet commercial success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government. Publicly owned corporations (in some contexts, especially manufacturing, "state-owned enterprises"); which differ from direct administration in that they have greater commercial freedoms and are expected to operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by government (although goals may be set for them by government). Partial outsourcing (of the scale many businesses do, e.g. for IT services), is considered a public sector model.

A borderline form is Complete outsourcing or contracting out, with a privately owned corporation delivering the entire service on behalf of government. This may be considered a mixture of private sector operations with public ownership of assets, although in some forms the private sector's control and/or risk is so great that the service may no longer be considered part of the public sector. (See Britain's Private Finance Initiative.)

In spite of their name, public companies are not part of the public sector; they are a particular kind of private sector company that can offer their shares for sale to the general publicThe decision about what are proper matters for the public sector as opposed to the private sector is probably the single most important dividing line among socialist, liberal, conservative, and libertarian political philosophy, with (broadly) socialists preferring greater state involvement, libertarians favoring minimal state involvement, and conservatives and liberals favoring state involvement in some aspects of the society but not others.

Job Network

2009-05-18T05:06:00.000-07:00

The Job Network is an Australian Government-funded network of organisations (private and community, and originally also government) that is contracted by the Australian Government, through the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), to deliver employment services to unemployed job seekers on Government income support payments and employers.

Job Network providers are initially selected for the network and allocated business through a competitive public tender process, with contract periods running for varying lengths of time determined by the Australian Government. There are over 1000 sites across Australia delivering Job Network services. These sites are managed by DEEWR.

Job Network began in 1998 after the disolution of the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES). In 1996/7 legislation was introduced into the Australian Federal Parliament to combine the functions of the CES and the Department of Social Security. As a result Centrelink was created to provide monetary welfare support to people across Australia. The delivery of employment services was tendered out to Job Network organisations whose primary responsibility is to assist people into work.

Job Network is a competitive industry with organiations competing for contracts through tenders. Job Network is currently in its 4th contract period:

Job Corps

2009-05-18T05:05:00.000-07:00

Job Corps is a no-cost education and vocational training program administered by the Office of the United States Secretary of the Department of Labor. It serves youth, ages 16 through 24. Job Corps offers career planning, on-the-job training, job placement, residential housing, food service, driver's education, health and dental care, a bi-weekly basic living allowance and clothing allowance. Some centers offer childcare programs for single parents as well.[1] Esther R. Johnson was appointed national director of the Office of Job Corps on March 24, 2006.

Since its inception in 1964, under the Economic Opportunity Act, Job Corps has provided more than two million[citation needed] young people with the integrated academic, vocational, and social skills training they need to gain independence and get quality, long-term jobs or further their education. Job Corps continues to help 60,000 youths annually at 123 Job Corps and Civilian Conservation Centers throughout the country.[3]

Besides vocational training, all Job Corps centers also offer GED programs as well as high school diplomas and programs to get students into college. Job Corps provides career counseling and transition support to its students for up to one year after they graduate from the program.

The Job Corps was initiated as the central program of the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty, part of his domestic agenda known as the Great Society. Sargent Shriver, the first Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, modeled the program on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Established in the 1930s as an emergency relief program, the CCC provided room, board, and employment to thousands of unemployed young people. Though the CCC was discontinued after World War II, Job Corps built on many of its methods and strategies.

Job for a Cowboy

2009-05-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

Job for a Cowboy is an American death metal band, formed in Glendale, Arizona in 2003. They released their second EP, Doom in 2005, and later that year signed with the Metal Blade label. Their official debut album, Genesis, was released in 2007, peaking at #54 on the Billboard 200 and selling 13,000 copies in its first week.

Job for a Cowboy started as a deathcore group, and evolved into a predominantly death metal sound with their full-length debut Genesis. Their influences include mostly extreme metal bands, such as Decapitated, Mastodon and Nile, as well as the rock groups Every Time I Die, Muse and the singer Björk. The band has played in several festivals, including Download Festival, Sounds of the Underground and Wacken Open Air. The current band members are vocalist Jonny Davy, guitarists Al Glassman and Bobby Thompson, bassist Brent Riggs, and drummer Jon Rice.

Job for a Cowboy was formed in Glendale, Arizona in December 2003.[3] The group was founded by vocalist Jonny Davy, guitarists Ravi Bhadriraju and Andrew Arcurio, bassist Chad Staples, and drummer Andy Rysdam.[4] In 2004, they created a MySpace profile, posted songs online, and began to connect with several worldwide fans.[5] Later that year, Staples and Rysdam left Job for a Cowboy and were replaced by Brent Riggs and Elliott Sellers respectively as bassist and drummer.[4] Traffic to the band's MySpace profile increased exponentially in late 2005, when the band released its first EP, entitled Doom.[5] The EP attracted the attention of Arizona independent label King of the Monsters, who distributed the disc after an initial self-released pressing by the band.[4]

Job for a Cowboy extensively promoted their debut EP, including three performances on the Sounds of the Underground tour.[5] By the end of year, the band obtained professional management and signed a deal with Metal Blade Records,[5] who reissued Doom with a bonus track.[4] Also in 2006, Arcurio left Job for a Cowboy, and new guitarist Bobby Thompson joined the group.[4] While Job for a Cowboy was writing material for their first full-length album, Sellers announced that he would be leaving the band to go back to school immediately after recording the album.[5] In search of a permanent drummer, the band then posted a bulletin on Blabbermouth.net,[6] which was seen by Jon "The Charn" Rice. He made a video of himself, posted it on YouTube, and sent the link to the band.[5] Soon after, Rice was announced as the new drummer.

Outsourcing Jobs

2009-05-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company.The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering cost or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of land, labor, capital, (information) technology and resources. Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s. It is essentially a division of labour.

Outsourcing involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function to an external service provider.[The client organization and the supplier enter into a contractual agreement that defines the transferred services. Under the agreement the supplier acquires the means of production in the form of a transfer of people, assets and other resources from the client. Outsourcing are used interchangeably in public discourse despite important technical differences. Outsourcing involves contracting with a supplier, which may or may not involve some degree of offshoring. Offshoring is the transfer of an organizational function to another country, regardless of whether the work is outsourced or stays within the same corporation/company.

With increasing globalization of outsourcing companies, the distinction between outsourcing and offshoring will become less clear over time. This is evident in the increasing presence of Indian outsourcing companies in the United States and United Kingdom.. They are able to complete tax returns across seas for people in America. Multisourcing refers to large outsourcing agreements (predominantly IT).] Multisourcing is a framework to enable different parts of the client business to be sourced from different suppliers. This requires a governance model that communicates strategy, clearly defines responsibility and has end-to-end integration.

Strategic outsourcing is the organizing arrangement that emerges when firms rely on intermediate markets to provide specialized capabilities that supplement existing capabilities deployed along a firm’s value chain (see Holcomb & Hitt, 2007). Such an arrangement produces value within firms’ supply chains beyond those benefits achieved through cost economies As a result of greater information standardization and simplified coordination, clear administrative demarcations emerge along a value chain. Partitioning of intermediate markets occurs as the coordination of production across a value chain is simplified and as information becomes standardized, making it easier to transfer activities across boundaries.

Business process outsourcing

2009-05-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a form of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business functions (or processes) to a third-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain.[ In the contemporary context, it is primarily used to refer to the outsourcing of services.BPO is typically categorized into back office outsourcing - which includes internal business functions such as human resources or finance and accounting, and front office outsourcing - which includes customer-related services such as contact center services.

BPO that is contracted outside a company's country is called offshore outsourcing. BPO that is contracted to a company's neighboring (or nearby) country is called nearshore outsourcing.Given the proximity of BPO to the information technology industry, it is also categorized as an information technology enabled service or ITES. Knowledge process outsourcing(KPO) and legal process outsourcing (LPO) are some of the sub-segments of business process outsourcing industry.

One of the most important advantages of BPO is the way in which it helps to increase a company’s flexibility. However, several sources have different ways in which they perceive organizational flexibility. Therefore business process outsourcing enhances the flexibility of an organization in different ways.

Most services provided by BPO vendors are offered on a fee-for-service basis. This helps a company becoming more flexible by transforming fixed into variable costs. A variable cost structure helps a company responding to changes in required capacity and does not require a company to invest in assets, thereby making the company more flexible.Outsourcing may provide a firm with increased flexibility in its resource management and may reduce response times to major environmental changes.

Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation

2009-05-18T04:59:00.000-07:00

The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 ("JGTRRA", Pub.L. 108-27, 117 Stat. 752), was passed by the United States Congress on May 23, 2003 and signed by President Bush on May 28, 2003.Among other provisions, the act accelerated certain tax changes passed in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, increased the exemption amount for the individual Alternative Minimum Tax, and lowered taxes of income from dividends and capital gains.

There was and is considerable controversy over who benefited from the tax cuts and whether or not they have been effective in spurring sufficient growth. Supporters of the proposal and proponents of lower taxes claimed that the tax cuts increased the pace of economic recovery and job creation. Further, proponents of the JGTRRA asserted that lowering taxes on all citizens, including the rich, would benefit all and would actually ply more money from the wealthiest Americans as they would avoid tax shelters for their money. The Wall Street Journal editorial page states that taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled from $136 billion in 2003 to $274 billion in 2006 because of the JGTRRA.

Critics state that the tax cuts have failed to spur growth, while increasing the budget deficit, shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle and working classes and further increasing already high levels of inequality. Before the tax cuts were signed President Bush was urged by 450 economists, including 10 Nobel Prize Laureates, in the Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts not to implement his tax cuts[ Economists Peter Orszag and William Gale described the Bush tax cuts as reverse government redistribution of wealth, "[shifting] the burden of taxation away from upper-income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the tax cuts would increase budget deficits by $60 billion in 2003 and by $340 billion by 2008. Supporters of the president argue that this analysis ignores the potential growth that the act could encourage. Supporters also argue that this would be further supported by analyzing the effect of the economic shock of the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. The lag between policy making and economic impact suggests the possibility to be remote.

Data Entry Jobs

2009-05-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

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Jobs in banking

2009-05-18T04:57:00.000-07:00

Those interested in the field will find that there are many different jobs in the banking industry. For instance, you could work for a prominent commercial bank or a small regional bank. There are also savings banks, credit unions and online banking institutions that offer employment opportunities. To give you a better idea of what is available, we have listed some of the most common jobs in the banking industry.

Bank Tellers:It’s no surprise that bank teller positions make up 67% of all banking jobs. Aside from the usual tasks of cashing and depositing checks, people working in these positions are currently being trained to sell various banking products to consumers.

Customer Service :As a customer service representative, employees assist consumers with their accounts and resolve complaints via phone or email. The representatives must be thoroughly trained on any products offered by the bank, giving them the knowledge to explain and sell them to customers.

Loan Officers:A loan officer’s job involves reviewing and submitting a lot of paperwork. These employees assist potential borrowers with loan applications and then take numerous measures to verify that information. This may include contacting employers, credit card companies, previous lenders and so forth. While loan officers often sell products to banking customers, they generally specialize in consumer, commercial or mortgage leading areas.

Clerical Workers:Banks employ clerical workers to process transactions and also in collections departments as receptionists and secretaries. Administrative assistants typically manage the clerical workers and report directly to bank executives.

Financial Manager:One of the most lucrative jobs inside of the branch is a financial manager. This position calls for one person to oversee the branch’s operation, assist clients when in need and counsel customers.

Work at Home Jobs – A Commitment Of Creation In Billion Dollar

2009-05-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

The 44th President of most advanced country in this planet, Respected President Obama was elected by spontaneous support of the Americans with the hope and expectation for economic survival fighting against aggressive recession. The President Obama has been trying at his best since he was vested power of presidency on Jan-09. The future of the program is not certain and Wall Street remains agonistic.The huge amount of money will be spent in future. It will create a thrust on the USA as well as world economy. The US Administration will certainly invite MNCs for bidding and this will be benevolent for both.

Tax cuts will give relief to individuals and families, retired persons and job finders
Etc. The extra money save from tax relief will be spent for consumption, purchasing Consumer items, paying loan instilments etc. The seller of retail products will be get Customers for selling the goods used by common people and financial institutions have been suffering from loan recovery will get some sorts of protection. Most of the items purchased by Wal-Mart from china and china will secure 1st position among the list of international beneficiaries.

A big part of package is earmarked for construction purpose such as new highway Construction and maintenance of existing highway, rail, port, water supply etc. The construction industries will get support and laborers of the common people will be valued and by which they can spend more causing economic development of poor and middle section of the society. There is a chance where international companies can share by bagging the contract. The water treatment facilities will be improved and companies supplying items for water sewage and sanitation will get more orders.

This package creates a new hope and opportunity for stay-at-home-moms, students, factory workers, retired people and part-time job seekers who eager to earn money doing work at home. In this program, the govt. of USA wishes to extend the facility of internet access and for which the government. is proceeding to renovate electrical grid. The Govt. will supply households P.C. at a lower price and this will generate a huge home based internet marketing business opportunity for all section of people.

Finance And Business -Top Home Jobs for the Modern Entrepreneur

2009-05-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

Being a web master is not a static job as most people see it as only sitting in front of the computer for countless of hours. In fact, this kind of job is very dynamic because it requires you flexibility, creativity and good managerial skills to pull off this kind of position. Another beauty here is that it pays big, even if you’ll be working from your home or anywhere else that you please.

Self-publishing:This kind of job would involve creation, production, and selling of information products. If you do not know what Information products are, these are basically goods that convey information to other people. They may come in the form of booklets, books, audio cassettes, videos, compact disks (CDs), files, electronic books, private websites, databases, and the like.However, the thing here is that you do not only sell these products, but you would have to be the one to make it yourself too! The beauty here is that the Info products that you’ll be selling are unique, since you were the one who created it. Thus, you also get ownership and exclusive control over these products of yours.

Instant Publishing:If you don’t think that you have what it takes to create your own media and Informational products, then you could always go for instant publishing. Being an instant publisher, you would be selling information products that were created by someone else who would grant you reprint or even resale rights. More often than not, self-publishers usually sell their products to other people so that it could complement their original information products.

International Trading:This kind of home job would involve importing and exporting. If you’re not familiar with this, then importing is basically buying goods or services from vendors that are in another country. On the other hand, exporting would be selling goods or services to people that are in another country. The fun part here is that you get to do all your transactions over the Internet.
Almost anything could be traded internationally, provided that such goods/services are legally accepted in both participating countries.

Home jobs

2009-05-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

Working from home or looking for home jobs are very popular these days. Finding the right system or a geniune home job is the toughest job. I find lots of people searching for home jobs and getting cheated. I get lots of email from people searching for home jobs most of them looking for jobs like Data entry, Data conversion, Paid to read emails, Paid to click links, etc.

But let me tell you, its very difficult to find any such job which are real time work. I have seen many projects which ask for registration fees promising data entry work, but finally the member gets cheated.

Data entry work or data coversion work can be done by automated system or there are good software which does these kind of work. Its very much time consuming to do these kind of work and then to finally do the moderation work becomes very costly. So most of the work are done using software which can do these kind of work in no time. “Start your own blog ,Write for other blogs ,Do online marketing work for others, Build your social media network , Affiliate programs”.

If you are really looking forward to work from home or searching for so called Home Jobs then you can look into the following system. The best way will be to start your own blog and use your blog to earn from home.

Oracle Business

2009-05-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.

It does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve it by citing reliable sources. Tagged since June 2008. It is written like an advertisement and needs to be rewritten from a neutral point of view. Tagged since June 2008. It may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.Tagged since June 2008. Its introduction may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines. Tagged since June 2008.

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus, also known as OBI EE Plus, is Oracle's set of business intelligence tools consisting of former Siebel business intelligence and Hyperion business intelligence offerings. The former Siebel products were initially marketed by Oracle as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition while the "Plus" was added along with the Hyperion tools in 2007.

Today, the products can leverage a common BI Server providing a level of integration among the tools. Integration provided includes: acommon service-oriented architecture,common data access services,a common analytic and calculation infrastructure,common metadata management services,a common semantic business model,a common security model and user preferences,common administration tools.

JDE

2009-05-18T04:42:00.001-07:00

J.D. Edwards, also called JDE, is a software company founded in March 1977 in Denver, Colorado by Jack Thompson, C.T.P."Chuck" Hintze, Dan Gregory and Ed McVaney. The company made its name building accounting software for IBM minicomputers, beginning with the System/34 and /36, focusing from the mid 1980s on System/38 minicomputers, switching to the AS/400 when it became available. Their main AS/400 offering was called JDEdwards WorldSoftware and is popularly called World. In 1996, J.D. Edwards also launched a client-server version of their software called OneWorld.

The company's official name was J.D. Edwards World Solution Company and it is located at One Technology Way, in Denver, CO 80237. JDE was bought out by PeopleSoft in 2003. PeopleSoft, in turn, was purchased by Oracle Corporation in 2005.Ed McVaney was originally trained as an engineer at the University of Nebraska. Upon finishing his MBA from Rutgers and taking a job with Western Electric in mid-1964, and working applied mathematics schemes theory McVaney first came into contact with both computers used for operations research using mathematical modeling programs.

Self-taught in machine language, but discouraged by computer and software limitations, McVaney took a position with Peat Marwick in New York City in 1964. From NYC he was transferred to Denver, Colorado in 1968. He continued with Marwick until 1970 when he took a position with Alexander Grant, which subsequently became Grant Thornton. While at Grant Thornton, McVaney met Jack Thompson who was working an IBM 1130 in Billings, Montana, and he was making $630 a month. Thompson was lured to Grant Thornton for $750 a month which brought him from Billings to Denver.

McVaney had worked closely with Thompson going back to the time they had spent as consultants at the Great Western Life Insurance Company. At that time McVaney also met Dan Gregory, a college MBA student from University of Denver. McVaney hired him out of the MBA program at Denver University. McVaney describes that time as a period in which he was developing his personal concept of integrity from a "high school level" to a much more mature business-related notion of absolute reliability. At the same time he was coming to the realization that, in his words,

PeopleSoft

2009-05-18T04:41:00.000-07:00

PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided human resource management systems (HRMS), customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing, financials, enterprise performance management, and student administration software solutions to large corporations, governments, and organizations. PeopleSoft was also the name of the company's product suite.

Founded in 1987 by David Duffield and Ken Morris, PeopleSoft was originally headquartered in Walnut Creek, California before moving to Pleasanton, California. PeopleSoft was formed when Duffield envisioned a client-server version of Integral Systems' popular mainframe HRMS package. Once Integral declined development, Duffield was released to pursue this endeavor on his own, and PeopleSoft was born.

PeopleSoft version 1, released in the late 1980s, was the first fully-integrated, robust client-server HRMS application suite.[1] PeopleSoft expanded its product range to include a Financials Module in 1992-3, Distribution in 1994-5, and Manufacturing in 1996 (via the Red Pepper Acquisition).

In 2003, when the company acquired J.D. Edwards, it decided to differentiate its former product line with those of Edwards by renaming both products. In January 2005, PeopleSoft was acquired by Oracle Corporation. PeopleSoft products continue to be used.

Baan

2009-05-18T04:40:00.001-07:00

Baan was a vendor of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that is now owned by Infor Global Solutions. Baan or Baan ERP was also the name of the ERP product created by this company.The Baan Corporation was created by Jan Baan in 1978 in Barneveld, Netherlands, to provide financial and administrative consulting services. With the development of his first software package, Jan Baan and his brother Paul Baan entered what was to become the ERP industry. The Baan company focused on the creation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Baan gained its popularity in the early nineties. Baan software is famous for its technical architecture and its 4GL language, which nowadays is still considered to be one of the most efficient and productive among database application development platforms.

Baan became a real threat to market leader SAP after beating SAP in the Boeing deal. However the fall of the Baan company began when it went public and became listed in the stock market. The management exaggerated company revenue by booking "sales" of software licenses that were actually transferred to a related distributor. The discovery of this "creative" revenue manipulation led to a sharp decline of Baan's stock price at the end of 1998.

In June 2000, facing worsening financial difficulties, law suits and reporting seven consecutive quarterly losses and bleak prospects, Baan was sold at a price of US$700 million to Invensys,[2] a UK automation, controls, and process solutions group to become a unit of its Software and Services Division. Laurens van der Tang was the president of this unit. With the acquisition of Baan, Invensys's CEO Allen Yurko began to offer "Sensor to Boardroom" solutions to customers.

Today Baan ERP software is still used by thousands of mid-range companies in the world, the majority on version BaanIVc4 and most of the rest on Baan5c. Sales of ERP LN have since been slow until a pickup Q4 2008 that has so far continued.

SAP business intelligence

2009-05-18T04:39:00.000-07:00

SAP has launched BusinessObjects Explorer, which it says brings business intelligence analysis capabilities to all business users.SAP launched the new product at its Sapphire customer and partner event in Orlando, where it also announced that it had finished integrating its 2007 BusinessObjects purchase with the rest of the SAP portfolio.

"We have traditionally been focused on technology that was targeted at technology experts," said BusinessObjects chief executive John Schwarz."We need to break out of the high priest of analysis and allow everyone in the organisation, even the CEO, to have the ability to click and search. We need to become more Google-like to give a generic term."Schwarz said that the launch of BusinessObjects Explorer had been driven by the introduction of new employees into the workforce that had just graduated and had a very different attitude to IT tools. Schwarz said that they are used to sites like Facebook that allow users to collaborate and share.Meanwhile, the way data is being consumed is also changing the business intelligence landscape, according to Schwarz

"It was traditionally looked at in databases but now data comes from everywhere. All of this needs to be made available to people to allow them to make good decisions," he said.BusinessObjects Explorer will bring together the search and navigation capabilities from Business Objects with the in-memory capabilities and compression technology from SAP's Netweaver.Marge Breya, SAP Netweaver Intelligence Platform Group vice president, told conference attendees that the combination "delivers something that neither product could have done on its own".

Breya demonstrated in a presentation that, without any training, business users will be able to enter key words into a search box to find data they need, then drill down into specific areas for further investigation. Users will also be given virtualisation features to draw up charts or reports that best represent the information.Breya claimed that this offers IT departments a compliant and controllable infrastructure.Analyst firm Forrester Research questioned what resources IT will need to make the solution work for the business.

Breya explained that SAP would first make the new business intelligence experience work on Business Warehouse data. 'Wave Two', which SAP plans to rollout later this year, will allow customers to use the analysis tool on all information from their enterprise.

Strategic planning

2009-05-18T04:38:00.001-07:00

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis involving Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal)

Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions: "What do we do?" , "For whom do we do it?" , "How do we excel?"

In business strategic planning, the third question is better phrased "How can we beat or avoid competition?". In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organization is going over the next year or more -typically 3 to 5 years, although some extend their vision to 20 years.

In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan".It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.

Strategic management

2009-05-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

Strategic or institutional management is the conduct of drafting, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives[1]. It is the process of specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and programs.

A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives.Strategic management is a level of managerial activity under setting goals and over Tactics. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about "strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency".

According to Arieu (2007), "there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the context."

“Strategic management is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the business and the industries in which the company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reassesses each strategy annually or quarterly [i.e. regularly] to determine how it has been implemented and whether it has succeeded or needs replacement by a new strategy to meet changed circumstances, new technology, new competitors, a new economic environment., or a new social, financial, or political environment

Sole proprietorship

2009-05-18T04:33:00.001-07:00

A sole proprietorship, or simply proprietorship (British English: sole trade) is a type of business entity which legally has no separate existence from its owner. Hence, the limitations of liability enjoyed by a corporation and limited liability partnerships do not apply to sole proprietors. All debts of the business are debts of the owner.

The person who sets up the company has sole responsibility for the company's debts. It is a "sole" proprietorship in the sense that the owner has no [[partnership|partners)]. A sole proprietorship essentially refers to a natural person (individual) doing business in his or her own name and in which there is only one owner.

A sole proprietor may do business with a trade name other than his or her legal name. In some jurisdictions, for example the United States, the sole proprietor is required to register the trade name or "Doing Business As" with a government agency. This also allows the proprietor to open a business account with banking institutions.

A sole proprietorship is not a corporation; it does not pay corporate taxes, but rather the person who organized the business pays personal income taxes on the profits made, making accounting much simpler. A sole proprietorship also does not have to be concerned with double taxation, as a corporate entity would have to.

Partnership

2009-05-18T04:32:00.001-07:00

A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners (owners) share with each other the profits or losses of the business undertaking in which all have invested.

Partnerships are often favored over corporations for taxation purposes, as the partnership structure does not generally incur a tax on profits before it is distributed to the partners (i.e. there is no dividend tax levied).

However, depending on the partnership structure and the jurisdiction in which it operates, owners of a partnership may be exposed to greater personal liability than they would as shareholders of a corporation.Partnerships may be formed in the legal forms of General Partnership (Offene Handelsgesellschaft, OHG) or Limited Partnership (Kommanditgesellschaft, KG).

A partnership can be formed by only one person. In the OHG, all partners are fully liable for the partnership's debts, whereas in the KG there are general partners with unlimited liability and limited partners whose liability is restricted to their fixed contributions to the partnership. Although a partnership itself is not a legal entity, it may acquire rights and incur liabilities, acquire title to real estate and sue or be sue

Marketing

2009-05-18T04:31:00.002-07:00

Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

Marketing practice tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research. Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering views marketing as a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions, whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches.

Marketing is influenced by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Anthropology and neuroscience are also small but growing influences. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Manufacturing

2009-05-18T04:31:00.001-07:00

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to make things for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished goods may be used for manufacturing other, more complex products, such as household appliances or automobiles, or sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them to retailers, who then sell them to end users - the "consumers".

Manufacturing takes turns under all types of economic systems. In a free market economy, manufacturing is usually directed toward the mass production of products for sale to consumers at a profit. In a collectivist economy, manufacturing is more frequently directed by the state to supply a centrally planned economy. In free market economies, manufacturing occurs under some degree of government regulation.

Modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required for the production and integration of a product's components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead.The manufacturing sector is closely connected with engineering and industrial design. Examples of major manufacturers in the United States include General Motors

In its earliest form, manufacturing was usually carried out by a single skilled artisan with assistants. Training was by apprenticeship. In much of the pre-industrial world the guild system protected the privileges and trade secrets of urban artisans.

Management information system

2009-05-18T04:30:00.000-07:00

A management information system (MIS) is a subset of the overall internal controls of a business covering the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures by management accountants to solving business problems such as costing a product, service or a business-wide strategy. Management information systems are distinct from regular information systems in that they are used to analyze other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization.

Academically, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making, e.g. Decision Support Systems, Expert systems, and Executive information systems.

At the start, in businesses and other organizations, internal reporting was made manually and only periodically, as a by-product of the accounting system and with some additional statistics, and gave limited and delayed information on management performance.In their infancy, business computers were used for the practical business of computing the payroll and keeping track of accounts payable and accounts receivable.

As applications were developed that provided managers with information about sales, inventories, and other data that would help in managing the enterprise, the term "MIS" arose to describe these kinds of applications. Today, the term is used broadly in a number of contexts and includes (but is not limited to): decision support systems, resource and people management applications, project management and database retrieval application.

Investment

2009-05-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in business management, finance and economics, related to saving or deferring consumption. Investing is the active redirection of resources: from being consumed today, to creating benefits in the future; the use of assets to earn income or profit.

An investment is the choice by the individual, after thorough analysis, to place or lend money in a vehicle (e.g. property, stock securities, bonds) that has sufficiently low risk and provides the possibility of generating returns over a period of time.[3] Placing or lending money in a vehicle that risks the loss of the principal sum or that has not been thoroughly analyzed is, by definition speculation, not investment. In the case of investment, rather than store the good produced or its money equivalent, the investor chooses to use that good either to create a durable consumer or producer good, or to lend the original saved good to another in exchange for either interest or a share of the profits.

In the first case, the individual creates durable consumer goods, hoping the services from the good will make his life better. In the second, the individual becomes an entrepreneur using the resource to produce goods and services for others in the hope of a profitable sale. The third case describes a lender, and the fourth describes an investor in a share of the business.In each case, the consumer obtains a durable asset or investment, and accounts for that asset by recording an equivalent liability. As time passes, and both prices and interest rates change, the value of the asset and liability also change.

An asset is usually purchased, or equivalently a deposit is made in a bank, in hopes of getting a future return or interest from it. The word originates in the Latin "vestis", meaning garment, and refers to the act of putting things (money or other claims to resources) into others' pockets. See Invest. The basic meaning of the term being an asset held to have some recurring or capital gains. It is an asset that is expected to give returns without any work on the asset per se.

International trade

2009-05-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

International trade is exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories.[1] In most countries, it represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). While international trade has been present throughout much of history (see Silk Road, Amber Road), its economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries. Industrialization, advanced transportation, globalization, multinational corporations, and outsourcing are all having a major impact on the international trade system. Increasing international trade is crucial to the continuance of globalization.

International trade is a major source of economic revenue for any nation that is considered a world power. Without international trade, nations would be limited to the goods and services produced within their own borders.International trade is in principle not different from domestic trade as the motivation and the behavior of parties involved in a trade does not change fundamentally depending on whether trade is across a border or not. The main difference is that international trade is typically more costly than domestic trade.

The reason is that a border typically imposes additional costs such as tariffs, time costs due to border delays and costs associated with country differences such as language, the legal system or a different culture.Another difference between domestic and international trade is that factors of production such as capital and labor are typically more mobile within a country than across countries. Thus international trade is mostly restricted to trade in goods and services, and only to a lesser extent to trade in capital, labor or other factors of production.

Then trade in good and services can serve as a substitute for trade in factors of production. Instead of importing the factor of production a country can import goods that make intensive use of the factor of production and are thus embodying the respective factor. An example is the import of labor-intensive goods by the United States from China. Instead of importing Chinese labor the United States is importing goods from China that were produced with Chinese labor. International trade is also a branch of economics, which, together with international finance, forms the larger branch of international economics.

Workplace conflict

2009-05-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

Workplace conflict is a specific type of conflict that occurs in workplaces. The conflicts that arise in workplaces may be shaped by the unique aspects of this environment, including the long hours many people spend at their workplace, the hierarchical structure of the organization, and the difficulties (e.g. financial consequences) that may be involved in switching to a different workplace. In this respect, workplaces share much in common with schools, especially pre-college educational institutions in which students are less autonomous.

The issue of "personality clashes" is controversial. According to the Australian government, the two types of workplace conflicts are "when people's ideas, decisions or actions relating directly to the job are in opposition, or when two people just don't get along." Turner and Weed argue, "In a conflict situation, don’t ask ‘who’, ask ‘what’ and ‘why’. Managers should avoid blaming interpersonal conflicts on “personality clashes”.

Such a tactic is an excuse to avoid addressing the real causes of conflict, and the department’s performance will suffer as a result. Managers must be able to recognize the signs of conflict behaviors and deal with the conflict in a forthright fashion. Approaching conflicts as opportunities to improve departmental policies and operations rather as ailments to be eradicated or ignored will result in a more productive work force and greater departmental efficiency."

Office romances can be a cause of workplace conflict. 81 percent of human resource professionals and 76 percent of executives said workplace romances are dangerous because they can lead to conflict within the organization. Public displays of affection can make co-workers uncomfortable and accusations of favoritism may occur, especially if it is a supervisor-subordinate relationship. If the relationship goes awry, one party may seek to exact revenge on the other.

Right-to-work law

2009-05-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

Right-to-work laws are statutes enforced in twenty-two U.S. states, mostly in the southern or western U.S., allowed under provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibit agreements between trade unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues or "fees" a condition of employment, either before or after hiring.

The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the "closed shop." The Act, however, permitted employers and unions to operate under a "union shop" rule, which required all new employees to join the union after a minimum period after their hire. Under "union shop" rules, employers are obliged to fire any employees who have avoided paying membership dues necessary to maintain membership in the union; however, the union cannot demand that the employer discharge an employee who has been expelled from membership for any other reason.A similar arrangement to the “union shop” is the “agency shop,” under which employees must pay the equivalent of union dues, but need not formally join such union.

The Taft-Hartley Act goes further and authorizes individual states (but not local governments, such as cities or counties) to outlaw the union shop and agency shop for employees working in their jurisdictions. Under the "open shop" rule, an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can the employee be fired if he or she joins the union. In other words, the employee has the right to work, regardless of whether he or she is a member or financial contributor to such a union.

The Federal Government operates under "open shop" rules nationwide, although many of its employees are represented by unions. Conversely, professional sports leagues (regardless of where a team is located) operate under "agency shop" rules. Twenty-six states do not have right-to-work laws. If no union is formed in an employee's workplace the lack of a right-to-work law does not mean an employee has to join a union.

Sexual harassment

2009-05-18T04:25:00.000-07:00

Sexual harassment is unwelcome harassment of a sexual nature, or based upon the receiving party's sex or gender. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment may be illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and annoyances to actual sexual abuse or sexual assault. Sexual harassment is a form of illegal employment discrimination in many countries, and is a form of abuse (sexual and psychological) and bullying. For many businesses, preventing sexual harassment, and defending employees from sexual harassment charges, have become key goals of legal decision-making.

In contrast, many scholars complain that sexual harassment in education remains a "forgotten secret," with educators and administrators refusing to admit the problem exists in their schools, or accept their legal and ethical responsibilities to deal with it (Dziech, 1990).

The term sexual harassment began coming to public attention in the 1970s, starting at a "Speak Out" in 1975 in Ithaca New York, USA. In her book In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999), journalist Susan Brownmiller quotes the Cornell activists who in 1975 thought they had coined the term sexual harassment: "Eight of us were sitting in an office ... brainstorming about what we were going to write on posters for our speak-out. We were referring to it as 'sexual intimidation,' 'sexual coercion,' 'sexual exploitation on the job.' None of those names seemed quite right.

We wanted something that embraced a whole range of subtle and un-subtle persistent behaviors. Somebody came up with 'harassment.' 'Sexual harassment!' Instantly we agreed. That's what it was." (p. 281). These activists (Lin Farley, Susan Meyer and Karen Sauvigne) went on to form Working Women's Institute which, along with the Alliance Against Sexual Coercion, founded in 1976 by Elizabeth Cohn-Stuntz, Freada Klein and Lynn Wehrli, and were among the pioneer organizations to bring sexual harassment to public attention in the late 1970s.]

Span-of-control

2009-05-18T04:24:00.002-07:00

Span of control is a term originating in military organization theory, but now used more commonly in business management, particularly human resource management. Span of control refers to the number of subordinates a supervisor has.

In the hierarchical business organization of the past it was not uncommon to see average spans of 1 to 10 or even less. That is, one manager supervised ten employees on average. In the 1980s corporate leaders flattened many organizational structures causing average spans to move closer to 1 to 100. That was made possible primarily by the development of inexpensive information technology.

As information technogy was developed capable of easing many middle manager tasks – tasks like collecting, manipulating and presenting operational information – upper managers found they could hire fewer middle managers to do more work managing more subordinates for less money.The current shift to self-directed cross-functional teams and other forms of non-hierarchical structures, have made the concept of span of control less salient.

Theories about the optimum span of control go back to V. A. Graicunas. In 1933 he used assumptions about mental capacity and attention span to develop a set of practical heuristics. L. F. Urwick (1956) developed a theory based on geographical dispersion and the need for face to face meetings. In spite of numerous attempts since then, no convincing theories have been presented. This is because the optimum span of control depends on numerous variables including organizational structure, available technology, the functions being performed, and the competencies of the manager as well as staff.

Cross-functional team

2009-05-18T04:24:00.001-07:00

In business, a "cross functional team" is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. It may include people from finance, marketing, operations, and human resources departments. Typically, it includes employees from all levels of an organization. Members may also come from outside an organization (in particular, from suppliers, key customers, or consultants).

Cross-functional teams often function as self-directed teams responding to broad, but not specific directives. Decision-making within a team may depend on consensus, but often is led by a manager/coach/team leader.

A non-business, yet good example of cross-functional teams are music bands, where each element plays a different instrument (or has a different role). Songs are the result of collaboration and participation, and the goals are decided by consensus. Skills to play all the instruments involved are not required since music provides a standard language that everybody in the team can understand. In short, music bands are clear examples of how these teams work. The Movie maker is the best example to show the relation between the team members from different experiences, The director actually is the team leader but if he said action and at the same time the the sound manager found some distortion or noise or any thing which he is not convinced within his job he can take the decision to stop until this problem is solved, So In every expert is the leader or the manager of the whole operation when there is a problem related to his speciality.

Cross-functional teams require information from all levels of management. The teams may have their origins in the perceived need to make primarily strategic decisions, tactical decisions, or operational decisions, but they will require all three types of information. Almost all self-directed teams will need information traditionally used in strategic, tactical, and operational decisions. For example, new product development traditionally ranks as a tactical procedure. It gets strategic direction from top management, and uses operational departments like engineering and marketing to perform its task. But a new product development team would consist of people from the operational departments and often someone from top management.

Bureaucracy

2009-05-18T04:22:00.000-07:00

Bureaucracy is the structure and set of regulations in place to control activity, usually in large organizations and government. As opposed to adhocracy, it is represented by standardized procedure (rule-following) that dictates the execution of most or all processes within the body, formal division of powers, hierarchy, and relationships. In practice the interpretation and execution of policy can lead to informal influence.

Bureaucracy is a concept in sociology and political science referring to the way that the administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules are socially organized. Four structural concepts are central to any definition of bureaucracy.

A well-defined division of administrative labour among persons and offices.A personnel system with consistent patterns of recruitment and stable linear careers.

A hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are differentially distributed among actors, and a formal and informal networks that connect organizational actors to one another through flows of information and patterns of cooperation.

Organizational commitment

2009-05-18T04:21:00.000-07:00

Organizational commitment in the fields of Organizational Behavior and Industrial/Organizational Psychology is, in a general sense, the employee's psychological attachment to the organization. It can be contrasted with other work-related attitudes, such as Job Satisfaction, defined as an employee's feelings about their job, and Organizational Identification, defined as the degree to which an employee experiences a 'sense of oneness' with their organization.

Beyond this general sense, Organizational scientists have developed many nuanced definitions of organizational commitment, and numerous scales to measure them. Exemplary of this work is Meyer & Allen's model of commitment, which was developed to integrate numerous definitions of commitment that had proliferated in the literature.

The individual commits to and remains with an organization because of feelings of obligation. These feelings may derive from many sources. For example, the organization may have invested resources in training an employee who then feels a 'moral' obligation to put forth effort on the job and stay with the organization to 'repay the debt.'

It may also reflect an internalized norm, developed before the person joins the organization through family or other socialization processes, that one should be loyal to one's organization.

Organizational studies

2009-05-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

Organizational studies, organizational behaviour, and organizational theory is the systematic study and careful application of knowledge about how people - as individuals and as groups - act within organizations.

Organizational studies encompasses the study of organizations from multiple viewpoints, methods, and levels of analysis. For instance, one textbook [1] divides these multiple viewpoints into three perspectives: modern, symbolic, and postmodern. Another traditional distinction, present especially in American academia, is between the study of "micro" organizational behavior which refers to individual and group dynamics in an organizational setting and "macro" organizational theory which studies whole organizations, how they adapt, and the strategies and structures that guide them.

To this distinction, some scholars have added an interest in "meso" -- primarily interested in power, culture, and the networks of individuals and units in organizations -and "field" level analysis which study how whole populations of organizations interact. In Europe these distinctions do exist as well, but are more rarely reflected in departmental divisions.Whenever people interact in organizations, many factors come into play. Modern organizational studies attempt to understand and model these factors. Like all modernist social sciences, organizational studies seek to control, predict, and explain.

There is some controversy over the ethics of controlling workers' behaviour. As such, organizational behaviour or OB (and its cousin, Industrial psychology) have at times been accused of being the scientific tool of the powerful.[citation needed] Those accusations notwithstanding, OB can play a major role in organizational development and succe

Organizational learning

2009-05-18T04:19:00.002-07:00

Organizational learning is an area of knowledge within organizational theory that studies models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts.
In Organizational development (OD), learning is a characteristic of an adaptive organization, i.e., an organization that is able to sense changes in signals from its environment (both internal and external) and adapt accordingly. (see adaptive system). OD specialists endeavor to assist their clients to learn from experience and incorporate the learning as feedback into the planning process.

A large part of the knowledge used by managers, however, does not assume this form. The complexities of a manager’s task are such that applying A may result in B, C, or Z. A recipe or an idea that solved very well a particular problem, may, in slightly different circumstances backfire and lead to ever more problems. More important than knowing a whole lot of theories, recipes and solutions for a manager is to know which theory, recipe or solution to apply in a specific situation. Sometimes a manager may combine two different recipes or adapt an existing recipe with some important modification to meet a situation at hand.

Managers often use knowledge in the way that a handyman will use his or her skills, the materials and tools that are at hand to meet the demands of a particular situation. Unlike an engineer who will plan carefully and scientifically his or her every action to deliver the desired outcome, such as a steam engine, a handyman is flexible and opportunistic, often using materials in unorthodox or unusual ways, and relies a lot on trial and error. This is what the French call ‘bricolage’, the resourceful and creative deployment skills and materials to meet each challenge in an original way. Rule of thumb, far from being the enemy of management, is what managers throughout the world have relied upon to inform their action.

In contrast to the scientific knowledge that guides the engineer, the physician or the chemist, managers are often informed by a different type of know-how. This is sometimes referred to a ‘narrative knowledge’ or ‘experiential knowledge’, the kind of knowledge that comes from experience and resides in stories and narratives of how real people in the real world dealt with real life problems, successfully or unsuccessfully. Narrative knowledge is what we use in everyday life to deal with awkward situations, as parents, as consumers, as patients and so forth. We seek the stories of people in the same situation as ourselves and try to learn from them. As the Chinese proverb says "A wise man learns from experience; a wiser man learns from the experience of others."

Meeting

2009-05-18T04:19:00.001-07:00

In a meeting, two or more people come together for the purpose of discussing a (usually) predetermined topic such as business or community event planning, often in a formal setting.

In addition to coming together physically (in real life, face to face), communication lines and equipment can also be set up to have a discussion between people at different locations, e.g. a conference call or an e-meeting.

In organizations, meetings are an important vehicle for personal contact. They are so common and pervasive in organizations, however, that many take them for granted and forget that, unless properly planned and executed, meetings can be a waste of time and resources.

Because of their importance, a career in professional meeting planning has emerged in recent years. In addition, the field of Meeting Facilitation has formalized with an internationally-recognized "Certified Professional Facilitator" designation through the International Association of Facilitators (IAF)

Wage

2009-05-18T04:18:00.000-07:00

A wage is a compensation, usually financial, received by a worker in exchange for their labor.Compensation in terms of wages is given to worker and compensation in terms of salary is given to employees. Compensation is a monetary benefits given to employees in returns of the services provided by them.

Depending on the structure and traditions of different economies around the world, wage rates are either the product of market forces (Supply and Demand), as is common in the United States, or wage rates may be influenced by other factors such as tradition, social structure and seniority, as in Japan.

Wage derives from words which suggest "making a promise," often in monetary form. Specifically from the Old French word wagier or gagier meaning to pledge or promise, from which the money placed in a bet (wager) also derives. These in turn may derive from the French gage to wager, the Gothic wadi, or the Late Latin wadium, also meaning "a pledge".

In the United States, wages for most workers are set by market forces, or else by collective bargaining, where a labor union negotiates on the workers' behalf. Although states and cities can and sometimes do set a minimum wage, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires a minimum wage at the federal level. For certain federal or state government contacts, employers must pay the so-called prevailing wage as determined according to the Davis-Bacon Act or its state equivalent. Activists have undertaken to promote the idea of a living wage rate which would be higher than current minimum wage laws require.

Labour economics

2009-05-18T04:15:00.000-07:00

Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the market for labour. Labour markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labour economics looks at the suppliers of labour services (workers), the demanders of labour services (employers), and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income.

It is an important subject because unemployment is a problem that affects the public most directly and severely. Full employment (or reduced unemployment) is a goal of many modern governments. Other often studied markets are financial market and product market.

In economics, labour (or labor) is a measure of the work done by human beings. It is conventionally contrasted with such other factors of production as land and capital.
There are theories which have created a concept called human capital (referring to the skills that workers possess, not necessarily their actual work), although there are also counter posing macro-economic system theories that think human capital is a contradiction in terms.

Labour demand is a derived demand, in other words the employer's cost of production is the wage, in which the business or firm benefits from an increased output or revenue. The determinants of employing the addition to labour depends on the Marginal Revenue Product (MRP) of the worker. The MRP is calculated by multiplying the price of the end product or service by the Marginal Physical Product of the worker. If the MRP is greater than a firm's Marginal Cost, then the firm will employ the worker. The firm only employs however up to the point where MRP=MC, not lower, in economic theory.

Quality Business

2009-05-18T04:08:00.001-07:00

Quality in business, engineering and manufacturing has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something. Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people.

Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly.

Numerous definitions and methodologies have been created to assist in managing the quality-affecting aspects of business operations. Many different techniques and concepts have evolved to improve product or service quality. There are two common quality-related functions within a business.

One is quality assurance which is the prevention of defects, such as by the deployment of a quality management system and preventative activities like FMEA. The other is quality control which is the detection of defects, most commonly associated with testing which takes place within a quality management system typically referred to as verification and validation.

Change management

2009-05-18T04:05:00.000-07:00

The Change Management process in Systems Engineering is the process of requesting, determining attainability, planning, implementing and evaluation of changes to a system. It has two main goals : supporting the processing of changes – which is mainly discussed here – and enabling traceability of changes, which should be possible through proper execution of the process described here.

There is considerable overlap and confusion between change management, change control and configuration management. The definition below does not yet integrate these.Change management is an important process, because it can deliver vast benefits (by improving the system and thereby satisfying "customer needs"), but also enormous problems (by ruining the system and/or mixing up the change administration). Furthermore, at least for the Information Technology domain, more funds and work are put into system maintenance (which involves change management) than to the initial creation of a system.[2] Typical investment by organizations during initial implementation of large ERP systems is 15-20% of overall budget.

In the same vein, Hinley [3] describes two of Lehman’s laws of software evolution: the law of continuing change (i.e. systems that are used must change or automatically become less useful) and the law of increasing complexity (i.e. through changes the structure of a system becomes ever more complex and more resources are needed to simplify it).The field of manufacturing is nowadays also confronted with many changes due to increasing and worldwide competition, technological advances and demanding customers.[4] Therefore, (efficient and effective) change management is also of great importance in this area.

It is not unthinkable that the above statements are true for other domains as well, because usually, systems tend to change and evolve as they are used. Below, a generic change management process and its deliverables are discussed, followed by some examples of instances of this process.

Unorganisation

2009-05-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

Unorganisation is an approach to organisational structure and design that consciously removes or avoids layers of management and bureaucracy, eschews job titles, and instead attempts to operate with the minimum of formal structure so as to become as flexible and effective as possible.

Unorganisation is not the same disorganisation (which is a chaotic environment in which little can be easily or quickly achieved); neither is the same as being disorganised, a term usually applied to industries with non-unionised labour (or just being personally untogether).

Whilst the idea of unorganisation has been a common theme among management theorists (see Tom Peters, for example), the term itself was apparently coined by Simon Buckingham, who wrote extensively about unorganisation on his web site www.unorg.com (now defunct) from 1996 through to 2004. The ubiquity of distributed networks, mobile communications technologies and team based project approaches to work have brought many of the ideas that he wrote about to fruition, to the extent that they now seem passé and dated. His term for what has now become common never really caught on, yet it remains an excellent catch-all for those who reject large corporate bureaucracy as a necessity (evil or not), and instead see a future of autonomous individuals contributing their skills and effort to a shifting set of projects according to their interests and/or current requirement for remuneration.

Buckingham’s writing had a particularly revolutionary flavour, looking forward to a ‘globally unorganised world of freedom, diversity and instability’, in contrast to the certainty and convention that he saw as characterising the orderly organised world. He looked forward to the rise of ‘technological capitalism’, as the next step away from communism, socialism and capitalism.

Training and development

2009-05-18T04:02:00.002-07:00

In the field of human resource management, training and development is the field concerned with organizational activity aimed at bettering the performance of individuals and groups in organizational settings. It has been known by several names, including employee development, human resource development, and learning and development.

Harrison observes that the name was endlessly debated by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development during its review of professional standards in 1999/2000. "Employee Development" was seen as too evocative of the master-slave relationship between employer and employee for those who refer to their employees as "partners" or "associates" to be comfortable with. "Human Resource Development" was rejected by academics, who objected to the idea that people were "resources" — an idea that they felt to be demeaning to the individual. Eventually, the CIPD settled upon "Learning and Development", although that was itself not free from problems, "learning" being an overgeneral and ambiguous name. Moreover, the field is still widely known by the other names.

Training and development encompasses three main activities: training, education, and development. Garavan, Costine, and Heraty, of the Irish Institute of Training and Development, note that these ideas are often considered to be synonymous. However, to practitioners, they encompass three separate, although interrelated, activities:
Training:This activity is both focussed upon, and evaluated against, the job that an individual currently holds. Education:This activity focusses upon the jobs that an individual may potentially hold in the future, and is evaluated against those jobs. Development:This activity focusses upon the activities that the organization employing the individual, or that the individual is part of, may partake in the future, and is almost impossible to evaluate.

The "stakeholders" in training and development are categorized into several classes. The sponsors of training and development are senior managers. The clients of training and development are business planners. Line managers are responsible for coaching, resources, and performance. The participants are those who actually undergo the processes. The facilitators are Human Resource Management staff.

Process improvement

2009-05-18T04:02:00.001-07:00

In organizational development (OD), Process improvement is a series of actions taken to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives. These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy to create successful results. A sampling of these are listed below.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing the cost, cycle time, productivity, or quality of a specific process or method to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard or best practice. Essentially, benchmarking provides a snapshot of the performance of your business and helps you understand where you are in relation to a particular standard.

The result is often a business case for making changes in order to make improvements. The term benchmarking was first used by cobblers to measure ones feet for shoes. They would place the foot on a "bench" and mark to make the pattern for the shoes.

Benchmarking is most used to measure performance using a specific indicator (cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure) resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others.

Performance improvement

2009-05-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Performance improvement is the concept of measuring the output of a particular process or procedure, then modifying the process or procedure in order to increase the output, increase efficiency, or increase the effectiveness of the process or procedure. The concept of performance improvement can be applied to either individual performance such as an athlete or organisational performance such as a racing team or a commercial enterprise.

In Organisational development, performance improvement is the concept of organizational change in which the managers and governing body of an organisation put into place and manage a programme which measures the current level of performance of the organization and then generates ideas for modifying organisational behavior and infrastructure which are put into place in order to achieve a better level of output. The primary goals of organisational improvement are to improve organizational effectiveness and organizational efficiency in order to improve the ability of the organisation to deliver its goods and/or services and prosper in the marketplaces in which the organization competes. A third area of improvement which is sometimes targeted for improvement is organisational efficacy which involves the process of setting organizational goals and objectives.

Performance improvement at the operational or individual employee level usually involves processes such as statistical quality control. At the organisational level, performance improvement usually involves softer forms of measurement such as customer satisfaction surveys which are used to obtain qualitative information about performance from the viewpoint of customers.Performance is a measure of the results achieved. Performance efficiency is the ratio between effort expended and results achieved. The difference between current performance and the theoretical performance limit is the performance improvement zone.

Another way to think of performance improvement is to see it as improvement in four potential areas. First, is the resource INPUT requirements (e.g., reduced working capital, material, replacement/reorder time,and set-up requirements). Second, is the THROUGHPUT requirements, often viewed as process efficiency; this is measured in terms of time, waste, and resource utilization. Third, OUTPUT requirements, often viewed from a cost/price, quality, functionality perspective. Fourth, OUTCOME requirements, did it end up making a difference.

Skills management

2009-05-18T03:58:00.000-07:00

Skills Management is the practice of understanding, developing and deploying people and their skills. Well-implemented skills management should identify the skills that job roles require, the skills of individual employees, and any gap between the two.
The skills involved can be defined by the organization concerned, or by third party institutions. They are usually defined in terms of a skills framework, also known as a competency framework or skills matrix. This consists of a list of skills, and a grading system, with a definition of what it means to be at particular level for a given skill. (For an example of a mature skills framework, see the Skills Framework for the Information Age,, a technical IT skills framework owned by a British not-for-profit organization.)

To be most useful, skills management needs to be conducted as an ongoing process, with individuals assessing and updating their recorded skill sets regularly. These updates should occur at least as frequently as employees' regular line manager reviews, and certainly when their skill sets have changed.Skills management systems record the results of this process in a database, and allow analysis of the data.

In order to perform the functions of management and to assume multiple roles, managers must be skilled. Robert Katz identified three managerial skills that are essential to successful management: technical, human, and conceptual*. Technical skill involves process or technique knowledge and proficiency. Managers use the processes, techniques and tools of a specific area. Human skill involves the ability to interact effectively with people. Managers interact and cooperate with employees. Conceptual skill involves the formulation of ideas.

Managers understand abstract relationships, develop ideas, and solve problems creatively. Thus, technical skill deals with things, human skill concerns people, and conceptual skill has to do with ideas. A manager's level in the organization determines the relative importance of possessing technical, human, and conceptual skills. Top level managers need conceptual skills in order to view the organization as a whole. Conceptual skills are used in planning and dealing with ideas and abstractions. Supervisors need technical skills to manage their area of specialty. All levels of management need human skills in order to interact and communicate with other people successfully.

Leadership development

2009-05-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

Leadership development refers to any activity that enhances the quality of leadership within an individual or organization. These activities have ranged from MBA style programs offered at university business schools to action learning, high-ropes courses and executive retreats.

Traditionally, leadership development has focused on developing the leadership abilities and attitudes of individuals.People are not all born with the same potential to lead well anymore than people do not all have the same ability to play football like Zinedine Zidane or sing like Luciano Pavarotti. Different personal characteristics can help or hinder a person's leadership effectiveness[1] and require formalized programs for developing leadership competencies [2] Yet, everyone can develop their leadership effectiveness. Achieving such development takes focus, practice and persistence more akin to learning a musical instrument than reading a book.

Classroom style training and associated reading is effective in helping leaders to know more about what is involved in leading well. Yet knowing what to do and doing what you know are two very different outcomes, as highlighted by management expert Henry Mintzberg. It is estimated that as little as 15% of learning from traditional classroom style training results in sustained behavioral change within the workplace.

Officer training academies such as the US Military Academy at West Point, go to great lengths to only accept candidates who show the highest potential to lead well [6]. Personal characteristics that associated with successful leadership development include leader motivation to learn, a high achievement drive and personality traits such as openness to experience, an internal locus of control, self-monitoring.

Management Development

2009-05-18T03:51:00.000-07:00

Management Development is best described as the process from which managers learn and improve their skills not only to benefit themselves but also their employing organizations.

In organisational development (OD), the effectiveness of management is recognised as one of the determinants of organisational success. Therefore, investment in management development can have a direct economic benefit to the organisation.Managers are exposed to learning opportunities whilst doing their jobs, if this informal learning is used as a formal process then it is regarded as management development.

Structured informal learning: work-based methods aimed at structuring the informal learning which will always take place.Formal training courses of various kinds: from very specific courses on technical aspects of jobs to courses on wider management skills.Executive education: which might range from courses for (perhaps prospective) junior managers or team leaders.

The term 'leadership' is often used almost interchangeably with 'management' Leadership which deals with emotions is an important component of management which is about rational thinking. The Management Charter Initiative (MCI) originally set out management competencies for management S/NVQ’s, these competencies are now part of the National Qualification Framework (NQF), it is from these competencies that managers can be assessed and development needs determined.

Human resources

2009-05-18T03:43:00.000-07:00

Human resources is an increasingly broadening term with which an organization, or other human system describes the combination of traditionally administrative personnel functions with acquisition and application of skills, knowledge and experience, Employee Relations and resource planning at various levels. The field draws upon concepts developed in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and System Theory.

Human resources has at least two related interpretations depending on context. The original usage derives from political economy and economics, where it was traditionally called labor, one of four factors of production although this perspective is changing as a function of new and ongoing research into more strategic approaches at national levels. This first usage is used more in terms of `human resources development', and can go beyond just organizations to the level of nations
This article addresses both definitions.

Modern analysis emphasizes that human beings are not "commodities" or "resources", but are creative and social beings in a productive enterprise. The 2000 revision of ISO 9001 in contrast requires to identify the processes, their sequence and interaction, and to define and communicate responsibilities and authorities. In general, heavily unionized nations such as France and Germany have adopted and encouraged such job descriptions especially within trade unions.

The International Labour Organization also in 2001 decided to revisit, and revise its 1975 Recommendation 150 on Human Resources Development . One view of these trends is that a strong social consensus on political economy and a good social welfare system facilitates labor mobility and tends to make the entire economy more productive, as labor can develop skills and experience in various ways, and move from one enterprise to another with little controversy or difficulty in adapting.

Public ownership

2009-05-18T03:42:00.002-07:00

Public ownership (also called government ownership, state ownership or state property) refers to government ownership of any asset, industry, or corporation at any level, national, regional or local (municipal); or, it may refer to common (full-community) non-state ownership. The process of bringing an asset into public ownership is called nationalization or municipalization. In primarily market-based economies, government-owned assets are often managed and run like joint-stock corporations with the government owning a controlling stake of the shares. This model is often referred to as a state-owned enterprise.

A government owned corporation (sometimes state-owned enterprise, SOE) may resemble a not-for-profit corporation as it may not be required to generate a profit. Governments may also use profitable entities they own to support the general budget. SOE's may or may not be expected to operate in a broadly commercial manner and may or may not have monopolies in their areas of activity. The creation of a government-owned corporation (corporatization) from other forms of government ownership may be a precursor to privatization.

According to the theory of public goods, some services, such as defence, cannot be provided by the private sector directly—only a government system of taxation can finance them. Others (merit goods), such as education, can be under-provided by the private sector (according to social standards concerning access to them).

Employees may be more inclined to view their work positively if it is directed by a management appointed by a government that they have a say in electing, rather than a management representing a shareholding minority. Also, they may gain intrinsic satisfaction knowing their work is important and essential for society as a whole. There has been discussion of a public service ethos which makes public sector workers work harder than they would for a private employer.

Franchising

2009-05-18T03:42:00.001-07:00

Franchising refers to the methods of practicing and using another person's business philosophy. The franchisor grants the independent operator the right to distribute its products, techniques, and trademarks for a percentage of gross monthly sales and a royalty fee. Various tangibles and intangibles such as national or international advertising, training, and other support services are commonly made available by the franchisor.

Agreements typically last from five to thirty years, with premature cancellations or terminations of most contracts bearing serious consequences for franchisees.The term "franchise" is used to describe business systems which may or may not fall into the legal definition provided above.

For example, a vending machine operator may receive a franchise for a particular kind of vending machine, including a trademark and a royalty, but no method of doing business. This is called "product franchising" or "trade name franchising".

Cancellations or terminations of franchise agreements before the completion of the contract have serious consequences for franchisees. Franchise agreement terms typically result in a loss of the sunk costs of the first-owner franchisees who build out the branded physical units and who lease the branded name, marks, and business plan from the franchisors if the franchise is canceled or terminated for any reason before the expiration of the entire term of the contract (Item 15 of the Rule of the Federal Trade Commission requires disclosure of terms that cover termination of the franchise agreement and the terms substantiate this statement)

Entrepreneurship

2009-05-18T03:41:00.001-07:00

Entrepreneurship according to Onuoha (2007) is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking, as a vast majority of new businesses fail. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is being started.

Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high-profile" entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding in order to raise capital to build the business. Angel investors generally seek returns of 20-30% and more extensive involvement in the business.

Many kinds of organizations now exist to support would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs. The acts of entrepreneurship is often associated with true uncertainty, particularly when it involves bringing something really novel to the world, whose market never exists. Before the Internet, nobody knew the market for Internet related businesses such as Amazon, Google, YouTube, Yahoo etc.

Only after the Internet emerged did people begin to see opportunities and market in that technology. However, even if a market already exists, such as the market for cola drinks (which has been created by Coca Cola), there is no guarantee that a market exists for a particular new player in the cola category. The question is: whether a market exists and if it exists for you.

Electronic business

2009-05-18T03:40:00.001-07:00

Electronic Business, commonly referred to as "eBusiness" or "e-Business", may be defined as the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of all the activities of business. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups and individuals and hence can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Hence, electronic commerce or eCommerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups and other businesses .

Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers.In practice, e-business is more than just e-commerce. While e-business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on the functions that occur using electronic capabilities, e-commerce is a subset of an overall e-business strategy.

E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the World Wide Web or the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners and to improve efficiency using the Empty Vessel strategy. Often, e-commerce involves the application of knowledge management systems.

E-business involves business processes spanning the entire value chain: electronic purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, handling customer service, and cooperating with business partners. Special technical standards for e-business facilitate the exchange of data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the integration of intra and inter firm business processes. E-business can be conducted using the Web, the Internet, intranets, extranets, or some combination of these.

Electronic commerce

2009-05-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

Electronic Commerce, commonly known as (electronic marketing) e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com.

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.

Business school

2009-05-18T03:38:00.000-07:00

A business school is a university-level institution that confers degrees in Business Administration. It teaches topics such as accounting, finance, information systems, marketing, organizational behavior, public relations, strategy, human resource management, and quantitative methods. They include schools of business, business administration, and management. There are four principal forms of business school.

Most of the university business schools are faculties, colleges or departments within the university, and teach predominantly business courses.

In North America a business school is often understood to be a university graduate school which offers a Master of Business Administration or equivalent degree.Also in North America the term "business school" can refer to a different type of institution: a two-year school that grants the Associate's degree in various business subjects.

Most of these schools began as secretarial schools, then expanded into accounting or bookkeeping and similar subjects. They are typically operated as businesses, rather than as institutions of higher learning.In Europe and Asia, some universities teach only business.

Business broker

2009-05-18T03:37:00.002-07:00

A business broker is a person or firm who/which acts as an intermediary between sellers and buyers of small businesses.Business brokers, also called business transfer agents, or intermediaries, assist buyers and sellers of privately held small business in the buying and selling process. They typically estimate the value of the business; advertise it for sale with or without disclosing its identity; handle the initial potential buyer interviews, discussions, and negotiations with prospective buyers; facilitate the progress of the due diligence investigation and generally assist with the business sale.

Agency relationships in business ownership transactions involve the representation by a business broker (on behalf of a brokerage company) of the selling principal, whether that person is a buyer or a seller. The principal broker (and his/her agents) then become the agent/s of the principal, who is the broker’s client. The other party in the transaction, who does not have an agency relationship with the broker, is the broker's customer.

Traditionally, the broker provides a conventional full-service, commission-based brokerage relationship under a signed agreement with a seller or "buyer representation" agreement with a buyer. In most states this creates, under common law, an agency relationship with fiduciary obligations. Some states also have statutes which define and control the nature of the representation and have specific business broker licensing requirements.

Agency relationships in business ownership transactions involve the representation by a business broker (on behalf of a brokerage company) of the selling principal, whether that person is a buyer or a seller. The principal broker (and his/her agents) then become the agent/s of the principal, who is the broker’s client. The other party in the transaction, who does not have an agency relationship with the broker, is the broker's customer.

Service Business

2009-05-18T03:37:00.001-07:00

The tertiary sector of economy (also known as the service sector or the service industry) is one of the three economic sectors, the others being the secondary sector (approximately manufacturing) and the primary sector (extraction such as mining, agriculture and fishing). Sometimes an additional sector, the "quaternary sector", is defined for the sharing of information (which normally belongs to the tertiary sector).

The tertiary sector is defined by exclusion of the two other sectors. Services are defined in conventional economic literature as "intangible goods".The tertiary sector of economy involves the provision of services to businesses as well as final consumers. Services may involve the transport, distribution and sale of goods from producer to a consumer as may happen in wholesaling and retailing, or may involve the provision of a service, such as in pest control or entertainment.

Goods may be transformed in the process of providing a service, as happens in the restaurant industry or in equipment repair. However, the focus is on people interacting with people and serving the customer rather than transforming physical goods.Economies tend to follow a developmental progression that takes them from a heavy reliance on agriculture and mining.

Toward the development of manufacturing (e.g. automobiles, textiles, shipbuilding, steel) and finally toward a more service based structure. Whereas the first economy to follow this path in the modern world was the United Kingdom, the speed at which other economies have later made the transition to service-based, sometimes called post-industrial, has accelerated over time.

Shipping Business

2009-05-18T03:36:00.001-07:00

Mayan Global Logistics, India’s foremost global logistics partner, delivering excellence across industries, through an integration of empowered people, processes and technology. We enable our client’s businesses by aligning the strategic and the operational perspectives. We take tremendous pride in offering our Customers unparalleled personalized service.

We make a special effort to understand their unique business needs and provide innovative and cost conscious alternatives to their shipping requirements. Working on the principles of Partnership, Proficiency and Quality management, Mayan Global Logistics has created a win-win situation where its customers get one stop solution for any sea, land and air cargo transportation, direct outbound and inbound services to & from major cargo destinations worldwide and honored us by symbolizing as most reliable and trusted Freight Forwarder in the Indian market.

To provide its clientele safe, reliable, efficient and economic shipping services. To be an optimally profitable, viable, commercial organisation and contribute to the national economy by securing a reasonable return on capital. To own or acquire through options like leasing, demise charter, joint ventures and other innovative financial measures an adequate fleet to cater to a significant portion of India`s overseas trade, particularly in items of strategic importance like crude oil and petroleum products.

To increasingly participate in India`s offshore and other marine activities, and to continue to explore opportunities for diversification to ensure overall and steady growth of the Company. To develop internal Human Resource with a view to achieving higher productivity.

Distribution Business

2009-05-18T03:34:00.000-07:00

Distribution (or place) is one of the four elements of marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations (go-betweens) involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.Frequently there may be a chain of intermediaries, each passing the product down the chain to the next organization, before it finally reaches the consumer or end-user. This process is known as the 'distribution chain' or the 'channel.' Each of the elements in these chains will have their own specific needs, which the producer must take into account, along with those of the all-important end-user.

Selling direct, such as with an outbound salesforce or via mail order, Internet and telephone salesAgent, who typically sells direct on behalf of the producer.Distributor (also called wholesaler), who sells to retailers.Retailer (also called dealer or reseller), who sells to end customers.

Advertisement typically used for consumption goods
Distribution channels may not be restricted to physical products alone. They may be just as important for moving a service from producer to consumer in certain sectors, since both direct and indirect channels may be used. Hotels, for example, may sell their services (typically rooms) directly or through travel agents, tour operators, airlines, tourist boards, centralized reservation systems, etc.

There have also been some innovations in the distribution of services. For example, there has been an increase in franchising and in rental services - the latter offering anything from televisions through tools. There has also been some evidence of service integration, with services linking together, particularly in the travel and tourism sectors. For example, links now exist between airlines, hotels and car rental services. In addition, there has been a significant increase in retail outlets for the service sector. Outlets such as estate agencies and building society offices are crowding out traditional grocers from major shopping areas.

Retailing Business

2009-05-18T03:33:00.000-07:00

Retailing consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by post, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be individuals or businesses. In commerce, a "retailer" buys goods or products in large quantities from manufacturers or importers, either directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells smaller quantities to the end-user.

Retail establishments are often called shops or stores. Retailers are at the end of the supply chain. Manufacturing marketers see the process of retailing as a necessary part of their overall distribution strategy. The term "retailer" is also applied where a service provider services the needs of a large number of individuals, such as a public utility, like electric power.

Shops may be on residential streets, shopping streets with few or no houses or in a shopping mall. Shopping streets may be for pedestrians only. Sometimes a shopping street has a partial or full roof to protect customers from precipitation. Online retailing, a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions and mail order, are forms of non-shop retailing.

Shopping generally refers to the act of buying products. Sometimes this is done to obtain necessities such as food and clothing; sometimes it is done as a recreational activity. Recreational shopping often involves window shopping (just looking, not buying) and browsing and does not always result in a purchase. The pricing technique used by most retailers is cost-plus pricing. This involves adding a markup amount (or percentage) to the retailer's cost. Another common technique is suggested retail pricing.

Manufacturing

2009-05-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to make things for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale.

Such finished goods may be used for manufacturing other, more complex products, such as household appliances or automobiles, or sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them to retailers, who then sell them to end users - the "consumers".Manufacturing takes turns under all types of economic systems. In a free market economy, manufacturing is usually directed toward the mass production of products for sale to consumers at a profit. In a collectivist economy, manufacturing is more frequently directed by the state to supply a centrally planned economy.

In free market economies, manufacturing occurs under some degree of government regulation.Modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required for the production and integration of a product's components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead.

The manufacturing sector is closely connected with engineering and industrial design. Examples of major manufacturers in the United States include General Motors Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Chrysler, Boeing, Gates Rubber Company and Pfizer. Examples in Europe include Airbus, Daimler, BMW, Fiat, and Michelin Tyre.

Real estate Business

2009-05-18T03:31:00.000-07:00

Real estate is a legal term (in some jurisdictions, notably in the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia) that encompasses land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings, specifically property that is fixed in location.Real estate law is the body of regulations and legal codes which pertain to such matters under a particular jurisdiction. Real estate is often considered synonymous with real property (also sometimes called realty), in contrast with personal property (also sometimes called chattel or personalty under chattel law or personal property law).

However, in some situations the term "real estate" refers to the land and fixtures together, as distinguished from "real property," referring to ownership rights of the land itself.The terms real estate and real property are used primarily in common law, while civil law jurisdictions refer instead to immovable property.Thus the law broadly distinguishes between "real" property (land and anything affixed to it) and "personal" property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money).

The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. The oldest use of the term "Real Estate" that has been preserved in historical records was in 1666.The use of "real" to refer to land also reflects the ancient preference for land, and the ownership thereof (and the owners thereof).

This, in turn reflects the values of the medieval feudal system, which is the ultimate root of the common law.Some have claimed that the word Real is derived from "royal" (The word royal—and its Spanish cognate real—come from the related Latin word rex-regis, meaning king. For hundreds of years the Royal family / King owned the land, and the peasants paid rent or property taxes to be on the Royal's land.

Finance Business

2009-05-18T03:30:00.002-07:00

The field of finance refers to the concepts of time, money and risk and how they are interrelated. Banks are the main facilitators of funding through the provision of credit, although private equity, mutual funds, hedge funds, and other organizations have become important. Financial assets, known as investments, are financially managed with careful attention to financial risk management to control financial risk. Financial instruments allow many forms of securitized assets to be traded on securities exchanges such as stock exchanges, including debt such as bonds as well as equity in publicly-traded corporations.

An entity whose income exceeds their expenditure can lend or invest the excess income. On the other hand, an entity whose income is less than its expenditure can raise capital by borrowing or selling equity claims, decreasing its expenses, or increasing its income. The lender can find a borrower, a financial intermediary such as a bank, or buy notes or bonds in the bond market. The lender receives interest, the borrower pays a higher interest than the lender receives, and the financial intermediary pockets the difference.

A bank aggregates the activities of many borrowers and lenders. A bank accepts deposits from lenders, on which it pays the interest. The bank then lends these deposits to borrowers. Banks allow borrowers and lenders, of different sizes, to coordinate their activity. Banks are thus compensators of money flows in space.

A specific example of corporate finance is the sale of stock by a company to institutional investors like investment banks, who in turn generally sell it to the public. The stock gives whoever owns it part ownership in that company. Of course, in return for the stock, the company receives cash, which it uses to expand its business; this process is known as "equity financing". Equity financing mixed with the sale of bonds (or any other debt financing) is called the company's capital structure.

Commercial law

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Most commercial transactions are governed by a very detailed and well-established body of rules that have evolved over a very long period of time, it being the case that governing trade and commerce was a strong driving force in the creation of law and courts in Western civilization.

As for other laws that regulate or impact businesses, in many countries it is all but impossible to chronicle them all in a single reference source. There are laws governing treatment of labor and generally relations with employees, safety and protection issues (OSHA or Health and Safety), anti-discrimination laws (age, gender, disabilities, race, and in some jurisdictions, sexual orientation), minimum wage laws, union laws, workers compensation laws, and annual vacation or working hours time.

In some specialized businesses, there may also be licenses required, either due to special laws that govern entry into certain trades, occupations or professions, which may require special education, or by local governments. Professions that require special licenses range from law and medicine to flying airplanes to selling liquor to radio broadcasting to selling investment securities to selling used cars to roofing. Local jurisdictions may also require special licenses and taxes just to operate a business without regard to the type of business involved.

Some businesses are subject to ongoing special regulation. These industries include, for example, public utilities, investment securities, banking, insurance, broadcasting, aviation, and health care providers. Environmental regulations are also very complex and can impact many kinds of businesses in unexpected ways.

Mining Business

2009-05-18T03:29:00.000-07:00

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or (coal) seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash. Any material that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or created artificially in a laboratory or factory, is usually mined. Mining in a wider sense comprises extraction of any non-renewable resource (e.g., petroleum, natural gas, or even water).

Mining of stone and metal has been done since pre-historic times. Modern mining processes involve prospecting for ore bodies, analysis of the profit potential of a proposed mine, extraction of the desired materials and finally reclamation of the land to prepare it for other uses once the mine is closed. The nature of mining processes creates a potential negative impact on the environment both during the mining operations and for years after the mine is closed.

This impact has led to most of the world's nations adopting regulations to moderate the negative effects of mining operations. Safety has long been a concern as well, though modern practices have improved safety in mines significantly. Mining today is able to profitably and safely recover minerals with little negative impact to the environment.

The process of mining from discovery of an ore body through extraction of minerals and finally to returning the land to its natural state consists of several distinct steps. The first is discovery of the ore body, which is carried out through prospecting or exploration to find and then define the extent, location and value of the ore body.

Agriculture Business

2009-05-18T03:27:00.000-07:00

Agriculture refers to the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants (i.e. crops) creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies.

The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science (the related practice of gardening is studied in horticulture).Agriculture encompasses a wide variety of specialties and techniques, including ways to expand the lands suitable for plant raising, by digging water-channels and other forms of irrigation. Cultivation of crops on arable land and the pastoral herding of livestock on rangeland remain at the foundation of agriculture.

In the past century there has been increasing concern to identify and quantify various forms of agriculture. In the developed world the range usually extends between sustainable agriculture Modern agronomy, plant breeding, pesticides and fertilizers, and technological improvements have sharply increased yields from cultivation, and at the same time have caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects.

Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry such as intensive pig farming (and similar practices applied to the chicken) have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal cruelty and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, and other chemicals commonly used in industrial meat production.

Capital

2009-05-18T03:26:00.000-07:00

When businesses need to raise money (called 'capital'), more laws come into play. A highly complex set of laws and regulations govern the offer and sale of investment securities (the means of raising money) in most Western countries. These regulations can require disclosure of a lot of specific financial and other information about the business and give buyers certain remedies. Because "securities" is a very broad term, most investment transactions will be potentially subject to these laws, unless a special exemption is available.

Capital may be raised through private means, by public offer (IPO) on a stock exchange, or in many other ways. Major stock exchanges include the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq (USA), the London Stock Exchange (UK), the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Japan), and so on. Most countries with capital markets have at least one.

Business that have gone "public" are subject to extremely detailed and complicated regulation about their internal governance (such as how executive officers' compensation is determined) and when and how information is disclosed to the public and their shareholders. In the United States, these regulations are primarily implemented and enforced by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Other Western nations have comparable regulatory bodies.

As noted at the beginning, it is impossible to enumerate all of the types of laws and regulations that impact on business today. In fact, these laws have become so numerous and complex, that no business lawyer can learn them all, forcing increasing specialization among corporate attorneys. It is not unheard of for teams of 5 to 10 attorneys to be required to handle certain kinds of corporate transactions, due to the sprawling nature of modern regulation. Commercial law spans general corporate law, employment and labor law, healthcare law, securities law, M&A law (who specialize in acquisitions), tax law, ERISA law (ERISA in the United States governs employee benefit plans), food and drug regulatory law, intellectual property law (specializing in copyrights, patents, trademarks and such), telecommunications law, and more.

Organizing

2009-05-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

The major factors affecting how a business is organized are usually:
The size and scope of the business, and its anticipated management and ownership. Generally a smaller business is more flexible, while larger businesses, or those with wider ownership or more formal structures, will usually tend to be organized as partnerships or (more commonly) corporations. In addition a business which wishes to raise money on a stock market or to be owned by a wide range of people will often be required to adopt a specific legal form to do so.

The sector and country. Private profit making businesses are different from government owned bodies. In some countries, certain businesses are legally obliged to be organized certain ways.

Limited liability. Corporations, limited liability partnerships, and other specific types of business organizations protect their owners from business failure by doing business under a separate legal entity with certain legal protections. In contrast, unincorporated businesses or persons working on their own are usually not so protected.

Disclosure and compliance requirements. Different business structures may be required to make more or less information public (or reported to relevant authorities), and may be bound to comply with different rules and regulations. Different structures are treated differently in tax law, and may have advantages for this reason.

Classifications

2009-05-18T03:23:00.000-07:00

There are many types of businesses, and, as a result, businesses are classified in many ways. One of the most common focuses on the primary profit-generating activities of a business:
Agriculture and mining businesses are concerned with the production of raw material, such as plants or minerals.Financial businesses include banks and other companies that generate profit through investment and management of capital.Information businesses generate profits primarily from the resale of intellectual property and include movie studios, publishers and packaged software companies.

Manufacturers produce products, from raw materials or component parts, which they then sell at a profit. Companies that make physical goods, such as cars or pipes, are considered manufacturers.Real estate businesses generate profit from the selling, renting, and development of properties, homes, and buildings.Retailers and Distributors act as middle-men in getting goods produced by manufacturers to the intended consumer, generating a profit as a result of providing sales or distribution services. Most consumer-oriented stores and catalogue companies are distributors or retailers. See also: Franchising

Service businesses offer intangible goods or services and typically generate a profit by charging for labor or other services provided to government, other businesses or consumers. Organizations ranging from house decorators to consulting firms to restaurants and even to entertainers are types of service businesses.

Transportation businesses deliver goods and individuals from location to location, generating a profit on the transportation costsUtilities produce public services, such as heat, electricity, or sewage treatment, and are usually government chartered.

Basic forms of ownership

2009-05-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

Although forms of business ownership vary by jurisdiction, there are several common forms:

Sole proprietorship: A sole proprietorship is a business owned by one person. The owner may operate on his or her own or may employ others. The owner of the business has total and unlimited personal liability of the debts incurred by the business.

Partnership: A partnership is a form of business in which two or more people operate for the common goal of making profit. Each partner has total and unlimited personal liability of the debts incurred by the partnership. There are three typical classifications of partnerships: general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships.

Corporation: A business corporation is a for-profit, limited liability entity that has a separate legal personality from its members. A corporation is owned by multiple shareholders and is overseen by a board of directors, which hires the business's managerial staff.

Cooperative: Often referred to as a "co-op business" or "co-op", a cooperative is a for-profit, limited liability entity that differs from a corporation in that it has members, as opposed to shareholders, who share decision-making authority. Cooperatives are typically classified as either consumer cooperatives or worker cooperatives. Cooperatives are fundamental to the ideology of economic democracy.

Business

2009-05-18T03:21:00.000-07:00

A business (also called a firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers.Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk.
Notable exceptions include cooperative businesses and state-owned enterprises.
Socialist systems involve either government agencies, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses.The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work.

The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the singular usage (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services.

However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate.Business Studies, the study of the management of individuals to maintain collective productivity in order to accomplish particular creative and productive goals (usually to generate profit), is taught as an academic subject in many schools.

Kite

2009-05-18T03:12:00.001-07:00

A kite is a flying tethered aircraft that depends upon the tension of a tethering system. The necessary lift that makes the kite wing fly is generated when air (or in some cases water) flows over and under the kite's wing, producing low pressure above the wing and high pressure below it. This deflection also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind. The resultant force vector from the lift and drag force components is opposed by the tension of the one or more lines or tethers.

The anchor point of the kite line may be static or moving (e.g., the towing of a kite by a running person, boat, or vehicle). Kites are usually heavier-than-air, but there is a second category of lighter-than-air kite called a helikite which will fly with or without wind. Helikites work on a different stability principle to normal kites as helikites are helium-stabilised as well as wind stabilised.

They are a stable combination of a helium balloon and kite-sail to create a single aerodynamically sound kite. When flown in wind a helikite will lift far more than its helium alone, and it will fly very well if weighted down to be considerably heavier than air.

Kites may be flown for recreation, art or other practical uses. Sport kites can be flown in aerial ballet, sometimes as part of a competition. Power kites are multi-line steerable kites designed to generate large forces which can be used to power activities such as kite surfing, kite landboarding or kite buggying. Kites towed behind boats can lift passengers which has had useful military applications in the past.

Tennis polo

2009-05-18T03:11:00.000-07:00

Tennis polo (or toccer) is a unique field sport played with racquets and a ball similar to those used in tennis, which is how it acquired its name. The sport can best be described as an amalgamation of racquet sports and team sports such as football (soccer), field hockey and lacrosse. The sport that best resembles tennis polo is the gaelic sport of hurling.

In tennis polo, two teams of eight players play on a grass (or grasslike) surface attempt to score goals, with the team scoring more goals after the end of regulation being declared the winner.

The sport is also referred toccer and is interchangbly referred to by players as "tennis polo" or "toccer" at different times. There are players in 18 countries including Canada, Mexico, United States, India and France. Tennis polo players use racquets similar to those used in tennis. Each player must have a racquet and the minimum head size is at least 85 square inches, though standard head sizes are well over 95-100 square inches on most player racquets.

One player is designated as the Goalkeeper. Three of the players are designated as Defensive backs and generally play solely defense. The MidWing (or Halfback), is a hybrid offensive player who may play between the defensive and offense ends, depending on the scheme the team is running. The primary offensive players are the three wing players (left wing & right wing) and the attacker (or center).

Association football

2009-05-18T03:10:00.002-07:00

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players, and is widely considered to be the most popular sport in the world. It is a football variant played on a rectangular grass or artificial turf field, with a goal in the centre of each of the short ends.

The object of the game is to score by manoeuvring the ball into the opposing goal. In general play, the goalkeepers are the only players allowed to use their hands or arms to propel the ball; the rest of the team usually use their feet to kick the ball into position, occasionally using their torso or head to intercept a ball in midair. The team that scores the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time and/or a penalty shootout, depending on the format of the competition.

The modern game was codified in England following the formation of The Football Association, whose 1863 Laws of the Game created the foundations for the way the sport is played today. Football is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football), commonly known by the acronym FIFA. The most prestigious international football competition is the FIFA World Cup, held every four years. This event, the most widely viewed in the world, boasts an audience twice that of the Summer Olympic Games.
The primary rule is that players (other than goalkeepers) may not deliberately handle the ball with their hands or arms during play (though they do use their hands during a throw-in restart). Although players usually use their feet to move the ball around, they may use any part of their bodies other than their hands or arms.[5] Within normal play, all players are free to play the ball in any direction and move throughout the pitch, though the ball cannot be received in an offside position.

In typical game play, players attempt to create goal scoring opportunities through individual control of the ball, such as by dribbling, passing the ball to a team-mate, and by taking shots at the goal, which is guarded by the opposing goalkeeper. Opposing players may try to regain control of the ball by intercepting a pass or through tackling the opponent in possession of the ball; however, physical contact between opponents is restricted. Football is generally a free-flowing game, with play stopping only when the ball has left the field of play or when play is stopped by the referee. After a stoppage, play recommences with a specified restart.

Snooker

2009-05-18T03:10:00.001-07:00

Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a large baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regulation (full-size) table is 12 ft × 6 ft (3.6 m x 1.8 m). It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white cue ball, 15 red balls worth one point each, and six balls of different colours yellow (2 points), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6) and black (7). A player (or team) wins a frame (individual game) of snooker by scoring more points than the opponent(s), using the cue ball to pot the red and coloured balls. A player wins a match when a certain number of frames have been won.

Snooker, generally regarded as having been invented in India by British Army officers, is particularly popular in many of the English-speaking and Commonwealth countries, with top professional players attaining multi-million pound career earnings from the game.

It is commonly accepted that snooker originated in the latter half of the 19th century. Billiards had been a popular activity amongst British Army officers stationed in India, and variations on the more traditional billiard games were devised. One variation, devised in the officers' mess in Jabalpur during 1874 or 1875, was to add coloured balls in addition to the reds and black which were used for pyramid pool and life pool. The word snooker also has military origins, being a slang term for first-year cadets or inexperienced personnel. One version of events states that Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain of the Devonshire regiment was playing this new game when his opponent failed to pot a ball and Chamberlain called him a snooker.[6] It thus became attached to the billiards game now bearing its name as inexperienced players were labelled as snookers.

The game of snooker grew in the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, and by 1927 the first World Snooker Championship[4] had been organised by Joe Davis who, as a professional English billiards and snooker player, moved the game from a pastime activity into a more professional sphere. Joe Davis won every world championship until 1946 when he retired. The game went into a decline through the 1950s and 1960s with little interest generated outside of those who played.

Freestyle football

2009-05-18T03:09:00.001-07:00

Freestyle football, also known as freestyle soccer in North America, is the art of juggling with a football using feet, knees, lower legs, chest, shoulders, and head while simultaneously performing creative, skillful moves and keeping the ball airborne. Similar in style to keepie uppie and kemari, it has become a widespread sport across the world and is played by many people.

Freestyle football has existed for some time, but it has seen a surge in popularity as a result of global advertising campaigns and digital media sharing. In the early 21st century, Nike began an advertising campaign which relied heavily on the freestyle form of football, including video clips of freestyle performances. These advertisements featured famous players such as Ronaldinho and Edgar Davids. Many link such mass media attention to the start of the freestyle craze. In the YouTube era, however, many previously non-famous players have risen to prominence, and internet searches easily yield thousands of videos by amateur "freestylers" around the world.

Some of the more notable freestylers include; Hee Young Woo (Mr. Woo) of South Korea, Craig Dobson, Abbas Farid and John Farnworth all from the United Kingdom. Shortly after, Nike launched a freestyle football competition on the internet "Nike Football", in which participants could submit their own clips and receive feedback from a worldwide audience.

In December 2006 the "Masters of The Game" competition, held in Amsterdam and was won by John Farnworth. Nutmeg or Panna and other street football competitions have been held featuring street soccer players such as Edward Van Gils 'Edje', Issy Hitman, Jermaine Vanenburg 'Vaantje'. In 2007 there was a competition in Latin America called Red Bull Reaccion. Also in 2007 Redbull futbol de calle was held in NYC's Webster Hall.
The French Arnaud "Séan" Garnier is the first world champion of Street Style Soccer, with an impeccable performance. The final of the Red Bull Street Style competition was held in Brazil In November 2008. Arnaud Garnier "Séan" beat out the other 42 competitors to win the competition.

Land windsurfing

2009-05-18T03:08:00.000-07:00

Land windsurfing is similar to windsurfing but performed on land. Boards with wheels and a mast base attachment are used. It is often called land boarding , streetsailing or dirt windsurfing.

Mountain boards are commonly used, a hole is drilled into the board and a mast base is inserted. A french company produce a mountain board with an already drilled hole. The footstrap setup on these boards only allow normal riding on one tack, it is possible to sail on the other tack switch stance.

Another board is available from a UK company, TurfDog. These boards with a full set of footstraps (allowing riding on both tacks like when windsurfing) are designed to ride specifically like a windsurf board. Swivel wheels on the front of the board combined with conventional trucks on the back enable the board to steer and perform the same way as a windsurf board on the water. Windsurfers use these boards to learn the skills of windsurfing and also freestyle tricks are learnt on the boards. Because the boards work like windsurf boards the manoeuvres learnt on land can be quickly performed on the water. Manoeuvres commonly learnt on TurfDog land windsurf boards are carve gybes, tacks, heli tacks, duck gybes, upwind 360s, carve 360's, vulcans and spocks.

In the US, a California based company has been custom building streetsailors for years. By bringing some of the best built parts already available on the market into their designs without re-inventing the wheel so to speak, they have been able to keep a small renegade sport alive for the past 20 years. It is an all season sport and requires a minimum amount of wind and space. A 5mph breeze on hard surfaces will do with an average sail size of 5.0 square meters. A 10mph average is required on hard packed sand with the same sail size. Protective gear is recommended for beginners as well as advanced sailors. Land is definitely harder than water

Endurance

2009-05-18T03:07:00.002-07:00

Endurance exercise or endurance training consists of performing low- to medium-intensity exercise for long periods of time. E.g., jogging or running several miles to hundreds of miles; cycling dozens of miles to thousands of miles; swimming hundreds of yards or meters to dozens of miles or kilometers.

Physical endurance is differentiated from other forms of physical stress in that in endurance exercise it is not solely fatigue of the muscles and cardiovascular system that force the effort to end. The need for sleep, the buildup of non-recyclable waste chemicals, the depletion of convertible energy stores and other needed chemicals (e.g., water, sodium), physical injury, or psychological failure can also bring the effort to an end.

Hence, endurance athletes try to prevent this by the use of isotonic products and energy sources whilst exercising or before exercise, and by appropriate attire and training.In equestrian sport, endurance riding refers to long distance races (often 100 miles) by one horse-rider pair. Endurance races were part of military history and also have a place in the history of the American West.

The Tevis Cup is a famous race from the east to the west side of the Sierra Nevada. It is an international sport and is governed at the international level by the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI). The Shahzada is an Australian National Event With Riders Travelling from all over the Country to compete, it is a 400-mile (640 km) ride consisting of 160 km (or 100 miles) per day for 4 days . In the UK the official equestrian Endurance Group is called 'Sport Endurance.'

Parachuting

2009-05-18T03:07:00.001-07:00

Parachuting, also known as skydiving, is the sport of jumping from enough height to deploy a fabric parachute and land safely. The history of parachuting appears to start with Andre-Jacques Garnerin who made successful parachute jumps from a hot-air balloon in 1797. The military developed parachuting technology first as a way to save aircrews from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, later as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Early competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1951.

In the early days, a trained skydiver (or jumper) and a group of associates met at an isolated airport, sometimes referred to as a "drop zone." (DZ) A fixed base operator at that airport usually operates one or more aircraft, and takes groups of skydivers up for a fee. It was common for an individual jumper to go up in a Cessna light aircraft such as C-172 or C-182. These days, it is common for busier DZs near populated areas to use multiple, larger aircraft such as the Cessna Caravan C208, De Havilland Twin Otter DHC6 or Short Skyvan.

A typical jump involves individuals jumping out of an aircraft (usually an airplane, but sometimes a helicopter or even the gondola of a balloon), at approximately 4,000 meters (around 13,000 feet) altitude, and free-falling for a period of time before activating a parachute to slow the landing down to safe speeds. Once the parachute is opened, (usually the parachute will be fully inflated by 2,500 ft). the jumper can control his or her direction and speed with toggles on the end of steering lines attached to the trailing edge of the parachute, and so he or she can aim for the landing site and come to a relatively gentle stop in a safe landing environment. By manipulating the shape of the body—as a pilot manipulates the shape of his aircraft's wings—a skydiver can generate turns, forward motion, backwards motion, and even lift. Experienced skydivers say that in freefall one can do anything a bird can do, except go back up.

When leaving an aircraft, for a few seconds a skydiver continues to travel forwards as well as down, due to the momentum created by the plane's speed (known as throw-forward). The perception of a change from horizontal to vertical flight is known as the "relative wind", or informally as "being on the hill".

Dragon boat

2009-05-18T03:06:00.000-07:00

A dragon boat or "dragonboat" is a very long and narrow, canoe style human-powered boat now used in the team paddling sport of dragon boat racing which originated in China over 2000 years ago. While competition has taken place annually for more than 20 centuries as part of folk ritual, it emerged in modern times as an international "sport" in Hong Kong in 1976. Like running, horse racing and marksmanship, the racing of dragon boats is among mankind's oldest organized competitions.

For competition events, dragon boats are generally rigged with decorative Chinese dragon heads and tails. At other times the decorative regalia is usually removed, although the drum often remains aboard for training purposes. In some areas of China, the boats are raced without dragon adornments.

Dragon boat races are traditionally held as part of the annual Duanwu Festival observance in China. 19th century European observers of the racing ritual, not understanding the significance of Duan Wu, referred to the spectacle as a "dragon boat festival". This is the term that has become known in the West.

Dragonboat festival racing, like Duanwu, is observed and celebrated in many areas of east Asia with significant populations of ethnic Chinese living there e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, and Greater China. The date is referred to as the "double fifth" since Duanwu is reckoned as the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which often falls on the Gregorian calendar month of June, but also rarely May or July. This is because Duanwu is reckoned annually in accordance with the traditional calendar system of China, which is a combination of solar and lunar cycles, unlike the Gregorian calendar system. In December 2007, the Chinese government added Duanwu, Qingming and Mid-Autumn festivals to the schedule of national holidays observed in the People's Republic of China, such is the importance of dragonboating to the Chinese today.

Whitewater kayaking

2009-05-18T03:05:00.000-07:00

Whitewater kayaking is the sport of paddling a kayak on a moving body of water, typically a whitewater river. Whitewater kayaking can range from simple, carefree gently moving water, to demanding, dangerous whitewater. River rapids are graded like ski runs according to the difficulty, danger or severity of the rapid. Whitewater grades (or classes) range from II or 2 (the easiest) to VI or 6 (the most difficult/dangerous). Grade/Class I can be described as slightly moving water with ripples but for that reason is not considered 'Whitewater.' Grade/Class II/2 can be described as moving water providing some small degree of challenge. Grade/Class VI can be described as extremely severe or almost unrunnable whitewater, considered almost certain death, such as Niagara Falls.

Paddling on rivers, lakes and oceans is as old as the Stone Age. The raft, the catamaran, the canoe and the kayak evolved depending on the needs and environment of the indigenous peoples in different parts of the world. The modern day kayak most likely originated about 8,000 years ago along the Siberian coast line by the Yupik and then transformed from the open canoe, via the Aleut and Inuit, into an enclosed kayak. Simplified, all the ethnic groups of the entire polar region are called Eskimos and their various boat versions Eskimo kayaks/canoes.

The Greek, Herodotus, 484-425 BC, wrote in his travel diaries about boats with which merchandise was brought from Armenia to Babylon. The boats were made of a wooden framework that was covered with animal skins. Mules hauled the precious skins back to Armenia.

The Russian, Grigori Ivanovitch Langsdorff, reported from his trip around the world (1803-07) on the ease and elegance of paddling Eskimo kayaks/canoes. The Scot, John MacGregor, came back from his North American trip full of excitement about the kayak/canoe and in 1860 started building six boats that closely resembled Eskimo canoes/kayaks, weighing app. 80 lb (36 kg). In 1866 he published the book A Thousand Miles in the Roy Rob Canoe. The timing was right and the book became a resounding success. With the Industrial Revolution leading to more leisure time in the middle of the 19th century, people in Europe started to enjoy floating down rivers in all kinds of contraptions taking in nature previously only available to a selected few.

Outrigger canoeing

2009-05-18T03:04:00.002-07:00

Outrigger canoeing is a sport in which an outrigger canoe (vaʻa, waʻa, and waka ama in Tahitian, Hawaiian, and Māori languages, respectively; similar words are used in other Polynesian languages) is propelled by means of paddles. Its umbrella organisation is the International Vaʻa Federation (IVF, formerly International Polynesian Canoe Federation or IPCF). Outrigger canoeing has grown from its roots in Polynesia to become a very popular paddling sport, with numerous sporting and social clubs located around the world. Sporting clubs are also often involved with dragon boat racing.

A variety of boat types exist, including the OC1, OC2, OC3, OC4 and OC6 (with the respective number of paddlers using a single hull outrigger canoe), and the DC12 or OC12 (with twelve paddlers using a double hull outrigger canoe, two six person canoes rigged together like a catamaran). The shorthand form is also commonly written as V1, V2, V6, etc. (where V refers to vaʻa).

Single hull outrigger canoes have an ama (outrigger float) connected to the main hull by spars called ʻiako (Hawaiian), ʻiato (Tahitian), or kiato (Māori). The ama, which is usually rigged on the left side, provides stability. The paddlers need to be careful to avoid leaning too far on the opposite side of the ama, as that may cause the canoe to capsize (huli or lumaʻi).

There are also outrigger sailing canoes ranging from smaller three or four person canoes to large voyaging canoes. Sailing canoes may have one ama, two amas (one on each side, but only one side is normally in contact with the water), or a double hull configuration (like a catamaran).

Amateur radio direction finding

2009-05-18T03:04:00.001-07:00

Amateur radio direction finding (ARDF, also known as radio orienteering and radiosport) is an amateur racing sport that combines radio direction finding with the map and compass skills of orienteering. It is a timed race in which individual competitors use a topographic map, a magnetic compass and radio direction finding apparatus to navigate through diverse wooded terrain while searching for radio transmitters. The rules of the sport and international competitions are organized by the International Amateur Radio Union.

ARDF events use radio frequencies on either the two-meter or eighty-meter amateur radio bands. These two bands were chosen because of their universal availability to amateur radio licensees in all countries. In the UK events with somewhat different rules are run on 160 meters. The radio equipment carried by competitors on a course must be capable of receiving the signal being transmitted by the five transmitters and useful for radio direction finding, including a radio receiver, attenuator, and directional antenna. Most equipment designs integrate all three components into one handheld device.

The sport originated in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe in the late 1950s. Amateur radio was widely promoted in the schools of Northern and Eastern Europe as a modern scientific and technical activity. Most medium to large cities hosted one or more amateur radio clubs at which members could congregate and learn about the technology and operation of radio equipment. One of the activities that schools and radio clubs promoted was radio direction finding, an activity that had important civil defense applications during the Cold War. As orienteering became more popular and orienteering maps became more widely available, it was only natural to combine the two activities and hold radio direction finding events on orienteering maps.

Interest in this kind of on-foot radio direction finding activity using detailed topographic maps for navigation spread throughout Scandinavia, Eastern and Central Europe, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. The first World Championship was held in 1980 in Cetniewo, Poland, where competitors from eleven European and Asian countries participated. World Championships have been generally held in even-numbered years since 1984, although there was no World Championship in 1996, and there was a World Championship in 1997. Asian nations began sending national teams to international events in 1980, and teams from nations in Oceania and North America began competing in the 1990s.

Track racing

2009-05-18T03:03:00.002-07:00

Track racing is a motorcycle sport where teams or individuals race opponents around an oval track. There are differing variants, with each variant racing on a different surface type.

The most common variant is Speedway which has many professional domestic and international competitions in a number of countries.Administered internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), the sport became popular in the 1920s and remains so today.

Track racing involves between 4 and 8 competitors riding around an oval track in an counter-clockwise direction over a set amount of laps - usually 4 - with points being awarded to all but the last finisher on a sliding scale.These points are accumulated over a number of heats, with the winner being the team or individual who has scored the most overall.

The machines used are customised motorcycles, these have no brakes and are fuelled with methanol. Speedway also uses motorcycles with no gears or rear suspension. The use of methanol provides an increased compression ratio to the engine resulting in higher speeds (approx 80mph when cornering) although the skill of Track Racing lies in the overall ability of the rider to control his motorcycle when cornering and thus avoid losing places through deceleration.This has resulted in powersliding or broadsiding being used as a technique in most variants of the sport to progress around the track.

Supermoto

2009-05-18T03:03:00.001-07:00

Supermoto is a cross-over or evolution of motocross and road racing. Races are commonly held on road racing or medium sized go-kart tracks with an off-road section in the infield. Most supermoto race tracks are typically configured with approximately 70% tarmac and 30% dirt with small jumps but a dirt section is not required. The motorcycles used are frequently custom-created combinations of off-road motorcycles and road-racing rims/tires, known as 'supermotard' bikes. Riders also wear a combination of road race and offroad equipment, normally leathers and a motocross helmet and boots.

Unlike normal motorcycle racing, the emphasis lies on slower (<100 mph / <161 km/h), short and twisty tracks, where rider skill matters far more than outright machine performance. Supermoto has its origins in the 1970s where ABC’s Wide World of Sports was the highest-rated sports show in the United States. In 1979, ABC commissioned a made-for-TV event to be included in the series, named Superbikers, whose intention was to find the ultimate all-around motorcycle racer. Superbikers was then manifested as a yearly event run at southern California's Carlsbad Raceway.

The show's tarmac-and-dirt courses were intended to draw on talent from the worlds of off-road, flat-track and road-racing. World and National Championship-winning motorcycling greats such as Kenny Roberts and Jeff Ward, whose respective sports at the time were road-racing and motocross, participated in the races. The Superbikers quickly became a huge Nielsen rating contender, running until 1985, at which point ABC was forced to cancel the show due to new management and cuts; its cancellation also initiated a long sabbatical of the sport in the USA.

The European racers who participated in the sport at Carlsbad, however, brought it back to Europe with them, where it quickly gained popularity in countries such as France.2003 signalled the resurrection of the sport in the United States with the birth of the AMA Supermoto championship and with the ESPN X-Games Supermoto championship.

Drag boat racing

2009-05-18T03:02:00.002-07:00

As the name suggests, drag boat racing is a form of drag racing which takes place on water rather than land. As in drag racing, contests take place between two vehicles over a straight quarter mile (1320 feet) course but unlike drag racing on land the boats begin from a short rolling start rather than a standing start.

Many classes are present on race day with the premier category of drag boat racing being the Top Fuel Hydroplane class which is a water based equivalent to Top Fuel Dragsters capable of covering a quarter mile (1320 feet) of water in less than five seconds with a terminal speed of around 250 mph (400 km/h).

There are numerous other categories of drag boats based on various engine configurations (marine and automotive) and hull designs such as Top Alcohol Flatbottoms.

The biggest event on the drag boat calendar is the IHBA World Finals which takes place at Firebird Raceway Phoenix, Arizona.

Decathlon

2009-05-18T03:02:00.001-07:00

The decathlon is an athletic event consisting of ten track and field events. Events are held over two consecutive days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all. Performance is judged on a points system in each event, not by the position achieved. The decathlon is contested mainly by male athletes, while female athletes contest the heptathlon.

Traditionally, the title of "World's Greatest Athlete" has been given to the man who wins the decathlon. This began when King Gustav V of Sweden told Jim Thorpe, "You, sir, are the World's Greatest Athlete" after Thorpe won the decathlon at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912. The current holder of the title is American Bryan Clay, the gold medal winner of the event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, who took the title from Athens Olympics champion Roman Šebrle.

The event developed from the ancient pentathlon. Pentathlon competitions were held at the ancient Greek Olympics. Pentathlons involved five disciplines – long jump, discus throw, javelin, sprint and a wrestling match. Introduced in Olympia during 708 BC, the game was extremely popular for many centuries. By the sixth century BC, pentathlons had become part of religious games. Gorgos, from Elis, a town near Olympia, was a four-time pentathlon winner during the period. Another key player was Lampis, a young Spartan who was the first Olympic winner. Automedes was also a known player of the time. The last recorded game winner was Publius Asklepiades of Corinth in AD 241. Roman Emperor Theodosius I officially put an end to the game in AD 393 by closing down all the sanctuaries including Olympia.

From the mid 1700s various versions of the competition emerged. The 1948 Olympics endorsed a new implication to the game. Seventeen-year-old Bob Mathias emerged as the then decathlon winner, banishing the myth that decathlon was a game for the old and the experienced. Mathias still remains the youngest decathlon sports champion in Olympic history.

Beagling

2009-05-18T03:01:00.001-07:00

Beagling is the hunting of hares, rabbits, and occasionally foxes with beagles. A beagle pack (20-40 hounds) is usually followed on foot. However, there is one pack of beagles in the U.S. which are distinguished as being the only hunting pack to hunt fox and be followed on horseback. Beagling is often enjoyed by 'retired' fox hunters who have either sustained too many injuries or lost the agility to ride horseback, or who enjoy the outdoors and the camaraderie of the hunt. It was also traditionally a way for young men to learn how to handle hounds on a smaller scale before they went on to hunt with foxhounds, and many famous public schools and universities had a pack of beagles. Now, however, only four schools (Ampleforth, Eton, Radley and Stowe) have a pack, whilst only three university packs remain (the Christ Church and Farley Hill Beagles, which are no longer officially affiliated with Christ Church, Oxford, and the Trinity Foot and South Herts Beagles, which are no longer officially affiliated with Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as the Royal Agricultural College Beagles).

When beagling on foot, the traditional quarry is the hare. Beagles are admired by some for their "music" which they emit when in full pursuit. Beagling, like fox hunting, was banned in England and Wales by the Hunting Act 2004. The Act bans the hunting of wild mammals with certain strictly limited exemptions, none of which permit the chasing of hares with beagle packs. Hunts are managed very similarly to fox hunting packs - generally governed by one or more Masters, who typically take much of the financial responsibility for the overall management of the hunt. Hunts typically employ a huntsman who is responsible (in conjunction with assistants, known as "whippers-in" or "whips") for directing the hounds in the course of a hunt. However, more beagle packs than foxhound packs are 'amateur' hunts, where the master hunts hounds himself.

Beagle packs that hunt fox offer educational opportunities to young riders who may not be ready for the regular hunt field. As such, children and young people learn the rules and traditions of fox hunting, but in a more relaxed atmosphere. They enjoy special privileges such as being allowed to follow directly behind the huntsman, and are often recruited to 'whip in' for the day.

The attire for traditional beagling on foot consists of a green coat and stockings, white breeches and a cap (similar in style to those worn when riding a horse). For following on horseback, the usual attire is 'ratcatcher' (tweed jacket, light breeches) for the formal season, and polo shirts and breeches for the cubbing season.

Shinty

2009-05-18T03:00:00.002-07:00

Shinty (or camanachd or iomain in modern Scottish Gaelic) is a team sport played with sticks and a ball. Shinty is now played almost exclusively in thbal do balh ]] of Scotland, and amongst Highland migrants to the big cities of Scotland, but it was formerly more widespread, being once competitively played on a widespread basis in England and other areas where Scottish Highlanders migrated.

Whilst comparisons are often made with field hockey, the two sports have several important differences. In shinty, a player is allowed to play the ball in the air and is allowed to use both sides of the stick. The stick may also be used to block and to tackle, although a player may not come down on an opponent's stick, a practice called hacking.

A player may tackle using the body as long as this is shoulder-to-shoulder as in football.The sport was derived from the same root as the Irish game of hurling but has developed different rules and features.

These rules are governed by the Camanachd Association.Shinty is also one of the forebears of ice hockey: in 1800, Scottish immigrants to Nova Scotia played a game on ice at Windsor. In Canada, informal hockey games are still called shinny.

Hockey

2009-05-18T03:00:00.001-07:00

Hockey is any of a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball, or a hard, round, rubber or heavy plastic disc called a puck, into the opponent's net or goal, using a hockey stick.

Field hockey is played on gravel, natural grass, sand-based or water-based artificial turf, with a small, hard ball. The game is popular among both males and females in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe, Asia, Australia, and South Africa. In most countries, the game is played between single-sex sides, although they can be mixed-sex. The governing body is the 116-member International Hockey Federation (FIH). Men's Field hockey has been played at each summer Olympic Games since 1908 (except 1912 and 1924), while Women's Field Hockey has been played each summer Olympic Games since 1980.

Modern field hockey sticks are J-shaped and constructed of a composite of wood, glass fibre or carbon fibre (sometimes both) and have a curved hook at the playing end, a flat surface on the playing side and curved surface on the rear side. While current field hockey appeared in the mid-18th century in England, primarily in schools, it was not until the first half of the 19th century that it became firmly established. The first club was created in 1849 at Blackheath in south-east London. Field hockey is the national sport of India and Pakistan.

Europe and in many other countries around the world to varying extent. It is the most popular sport in Canada, Finland, the Czech Republic, and in SwedenThe governing body is the 64-member International Ice Hockey Federation, (IIHF). Men's ice hockey has been played at the Winter Olympics since 1924, and was in the 1920 Summer Olympics. Women's ice hockey was added to the Winter Olympics in 1998. North America's National Hockey League (NHL) is the strongest professional ice hockey league, drawing top ice hockey players from around the globe. The NHL rules are slightly different from those used in Olympic ice hockey: the periods are 20 minutes long, counting downwards. There are three periods.

Goalball

2009-05-18T02:59:00.000-07:00

Goalball is a team sport designed for blind athletes. It was devised by Hanz Lorenzen (Austria), and Sepp Reindle (Germany), in 1946 in an effort to help in the rehabilitation of visually impaired World War II veterans[1]. The International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA), responsible for fifteen sports for the blind and partially sighted in total, is the governing body for this sport.

The sport evolved into a competitive game over the next few decades and was a demonstration event at the 1976 Summer Paralympics in Toronto[1]. The sport's first world championship was held in Austria in 1978 and goalball became a full part of the Paralympics from the 1980 Summer Paralympics in Arnhem onwards.

Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it, into the opponents' goal[2]. They must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball. Games consist of two 10 minute halves[2]. Blindfolds allow partially sighted players to compete on an equal footing with blind players . International Blind Sports Federation rules require the field of play to be 18m long by 9m wide (about 19.7 yards by 9.8 yards).[3] Goals span the width of the pitch.[4] The ball weighs 1.25kg (about 2.76 pounds) and has eight holes and noise bells contained within. The ball's circumference is around 76cm (about 30 inches).

Up to three substitutes are allowed in addition to the three starting players: one Center and two Wingers. Men and women compete separately. Eyeshades must be worn at all times during the match. In tournament play, patches cover the eyes beneath the eyeshades to prevent any player seeing if the eyeshades are inadvertently knocked off during the game. If eyeshades are knocked off, then play is stopped, and eyeshades are put back on. You cannot play goalball with eyeshades off.

Netball

2009-05-18T02:58:00.002-07:00

Netball is a non-contact team sport originating from the United States similar to, and derived from, basketball. Invented in 1895 by Clara Gregory Baer,[1] a pioneer in women's sport, netball is now pre-eminently played as a women's team sport in Australia and New Zealand and is popular in the West Indies, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom. Over 20 million people play netball in more than 70 countries.

In 1895, Clara Baer, a gym teacher from New Orleans, asked Naismith for a copy of the basketball rules. Baer identified Naismith's unclear pencil markings showing the areas players should best patrol as the areas within which women players could move, and consequently introduced "zoning areas".[3] This was the start of netball’s formalization. These zoning rules, along with many other provisions (such as elimination of the dribbling rule), were all included in the first draft of Rules for Women’s Basketball. In 1901, this set of rules was ratified and netball officially became a competitive sport. However, it was several years before regular competitions were held.

On the 6th June 1907 an exhibition of "Net Ball" was organised between the "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" of the Regent Street Polytechnic as part of a garden party to celebrate the opening of their sports ground in Chiswick (West London). Poly Netball Club can trace an unbroken heritage back to this match and are therefore seen as the world's oldest netball club.

Netball was first played in England in 1895 at Madame Osterburg's College[4] and soon spread throughout Australia, the then-British colonies of Jamaica and Antigua, and indeed most British Commonwealth territories. It did not yet have hard-and-fast rules. So loose were the regulations, in fact, that some games were played by nine players in each team, while some were played with only five players in each. The nets used were also ineffective—they were not open at both ends, so after each goal was scored, the umpire had to retrieve the ball from the top of the post. Netball has been played at the Commonwealth Games since 1998 after becoming a recognised Olympic sport in 1995.

Volleyball

2009-05-18T02:58:00.001-07:00

Volleyball is an Olympic team sport in which two teams of 6 active players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.[1] This article focuses on competitive indoor volleyball; numerous other variations of volleyball have developed, most notably the Olympic spin-off sport beach volleyball.

Play proceeds as follows: a player on one of the teams begins a rally by attempting to serve the ball (tossing or releasing it and then hitting it with a hand or arm), from behind the back boundary line of the court, over the net and into the receiving team's court. The receiving team must not let the ball touch their court; they may touch the ball as many as three times, typically using the first two touches to set up for an attack, an attempt to direct the ball back over the net in such a way that the serving team is unable to prevent it from touching their court. The rally continues in the same manner, with each team allowed as many as three consecutive touches, until either (1): a team makes a kill, grounding the ball on the opponent's court, thus winning the rally; or (2): a team commits a fault, thus losing the rally. The team that wins the rally is awarded a point, and serves the ball to start the next rally.

The complete rules are extensive; a few of the most common faults include: causing the ball to touch the ground outside the opponents' court or without first passing over the net; catching and throwing the ball; double hit: two consecutive contacts with the ball made by the same player; four consecutive contacts with the ball made by the same team.

The ball is usually played with the hands or arms, but players can legally strike or push (short contact) the ball with any part of the body.A number of consistent techniques have evolved in volleyball, including spiking and blocking (because these plays are made above the top of the net the vertical jump is an athletic skill emphasized in the sport) as well as passing, setting, and specialized player positions and offensive and defensive structures.

Four square

2009-05-18T02:54:00.000-07:00

Four square is played with a rubber ball on a court made of four adjacent squares. The objective is to advance yourself to the highest square on the court by eliminating other players. Four square is played on a court (or, if a court is not readily available, concrete will usually suffice). The court is divided into four smaller squares of equal size. Each of the four squares has a rank and is inhabited by one player. The ranks are arranged so that the highest ranking square is positioned diagonally across the court from the lowest ranking square.

The lines on the court are boundaries. The interior lines separating player squares are out of bounds. The ball may not touch any portion of an inside line or the player who hit the ball is in error. The lines marking the outermost edges of the court are considered in-bounds. If a ball lands on our touches the outside lines then play continues as normal.Sometimes the highest ranked square (King) faces the lower ranked square (danger). The Jack square is located the left of danger and queen is on top of jack.

Four square is played with an 8.5-inch rubber playground ball. During regular play, the ball may be legally hit with any part of a player's hands from wrist to fingertip. The hit may be open- or closed-fisted, forehand or backhand. The ball may also be hit with one hand, or two hands at the same time, much like the rules of volleyball. Carrying, catching, or holding the ball during play is illegal because prolonged contact with the ball can give players unfair control over the play. The ball must be struck once and for a single instant only.

The player in the highest square begins the game by serving the ball. The ball is bounced in the server's own square and hit with the hands into the lowest square on the court. Players let the ball bounce in their square once and the occupant of that square must then return the ball to any other player's square by hitting or striking the ball with the hands. Once the ball touches the ground or floor in a new player's square that player must return it. Play continues this way until a player makes an error and is eliminated.

Basketball

2009-05-18T02:53:00.002-07:00

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five active players each try to score points against one another by placing a ball through a 10 feet (3.048 m) high hoop (the goal) under organized rules. Basketball is one of the most popular and widely viewed sports in the world.

Points are scored by throwing (shooting) the ball through the basket above; the team with more points at the end of the game wins. The ball can be advanced on the court by bouncing it (dribbling) or passing it between teammates. Disruptive physical contact (foul) is not permitted and there are restrictions on how the ball can be handled (violations).

Through time, basketball has developed to involve common techniques of shooting, passing and dribbling, as well as players' positions, and offensive and defensive structures. Typically, the tallest members of a team will play center or one of two forward positions, while shorter players or those who possess the best ball handling skills and speed, play the guard positions. While competitive basketball is carefully regulated, numerous variations of basketball have developed for casual play. In some countries, basketball is also a popular spectator sport.

While competitive basketball is primarily an indoor sport, played on a basketball court, less regulated variations have become exceedingly popular as an outdoor sport among both inner city and rural groups.

Acrobatic gymnastics

2009-05-18T02:53:00.001-07:00

Acrobatic gymnastics (sometimes called Acro-Airs or Sport Gymnastics) is a competitive sport involving gymnastics and acrobatics that is choreographed and rated by judges. There are five types of events (women's and men's pairs, women's and men's group, involving three and four partners respectively, and mixed pairs). The sport combines dance, tumbling and partnering skills that involves dynamic (aerial) and balance (posed) movements.

The first use of acrobatics as a specific sport was in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the first world championships were in 1974.

In addition to the current five categories, two additional categories for tumbling (men's and women's) were included until the 1999 World Championships, though some groups still involve tumbling events.

Acrobatic gymnastics events form part of the World Games as well as having a dedicated Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships (known as World Sports Acrobatics Championships prior to 2006). The acro competitions take a score out of 30.

Rugby football

2009-05-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

A ball-game resembling rugby football was a game played by ancient Greeks called episkuros (Greek: επίσκυρος). In Wales such a sport is called cnapan or "criapan," and has medieval roots. The old Irish predecessor of rugby may be caid. The Cornish called it "hurling to goals" which dates back to the bronze age, the West country called it "hurling over country" (neither should to be confused with Gaelic hurling in which the ball is hit with a stick called a hurley or hurl, not carried), East Anglians "Campball", the French "La Soule" or "Chole" (a rough-and-tumble cross-country game).

English villages were certainly playing games of 'fute ball' during the 1100s.
English boarding schools would certainly have developed their own variants of this game as soon as they were established - the Eton Wall Game being one example. The invention of 'Rugby' was therefore not the act of playing early forms of the game at Rugby School or elsewhere but rather the events which led up to its codification.

The game of football which was played at Rugby School between 1750 and 1859 permitted handling of the ball, but no-one was allowed to run with it in their hands towards the opposition's goal. There was no fixed limit to the number of players per side and sometimes there were hundreds taking part in a kind of enormous rolling maul. The innovation of running with the ball was introduced some time between 1859 and 1865. William Webb Ellis has been credited with breaking the local rules by running forwards with the ball in a game in 1859. Shortly after this the Victorian mind turned to establishing written rules for the sports which had earlier just involved local agreements, and boys from Rugby School produced the first written rules for their version of the sport in 1870.

Around this time the influence of Dr Thomas Arnold, Rugby's headmaster, was beginning to be felt around all the other boarding schools, and his emphasis on sport as part of a balanced education naturally encouraged the general adoption of the Rugby rules across the country, and, ultimately, the world.[cita

Football

2009-05-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

Football is the word given to a number of similar team sports, all of which involve (to varying degrees) kicking a ball with the foot in an attempt to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer".

The English language word "football" is also applied to "gridiron football" (a name associated with the North American sports, especially American football and Canadian football), Australian football, Gaelic football, rugby football (rugby league and rugby union), and related games. Each of these codes (specific sets of rules, or the games defined by them) is referred to as "football".

These games involve:Two teams of usually between 11 and 18 players; some variations that have fewer players (five or more per team) are also popular a clearly defined area in which to play the game; scoring goals and/or points, by moving the ball to an opposing team's end of the field and either into a goal area, or over a line; goals and/or points resulting from players putting the ball between two goalposts; the goal and/or line being defended by the opposing team; players being required to move the ball—depending on the code—by kicking, carrying and/or hand passing the ball; andplayers using only their body to move the ball.

In most codes, there are rules restricting the movement of players offside, and players scoring a goal must put the ball either under or over a crossbar between the goalposts. Other features common to several football codes include: points being mostly scored by players carrying the ball across the goal line and; players receiving a free kick after they take a mark/make a fair catch.Peoples from around the world have played games which involved kicking and/or carrying a ball, since ancient times. However, most of the modern codes of football have their origins in England.

Cluster ballooning

2009-05-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

Cluster ballooning is an uncommon form of ballooning in which a single balloonist is attached by a harness to a cluster of relatively small helium-inflated rubber balloons. Unlike traditional hot-air balloons, which possess vents for easy altitude control, cluster balloons rise uncontrollably, expanding as they go. Cluster balloonists must periodically cut balloons loose to maintain altitude and descend. Bottled water is a common ballast, and can be partially emptied to slow descent.

One of the most notable cluster balloonists is Larry Walters, who, in 1982, without any prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium filled weather balloons to a piece of patio furniture (a lawn chair) and lifted off. He intended to rise just a few hundred feet (about 100 metres), but vastly underestimated helium's lifting power and as a result, he quickly rose nearly 3 miles (5 km) into the air (over 50 times his intended maximum altitude).

The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes the highest altitude attained via cluster ballooning to be that achieved by Mike Howard (UK) and Steve Davis (USA), who on August 4 2001, over Los Lunas, NM, USA, used 400 helium balloons to reach a height of over 18,300 feet (5,600 m). Larry Walters is estimated to have reached 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in 1982. His record is not recognized, however, because he did not carry a proper altimeter. Yoshikazu Suzuki departed from Lake Biwa in Japan on 23 November 1992 with helium balloons. He was found by a Japanese coast guard airplane on 25 November 1992, located about 800 km offshore over the Pacific Ocean, at altitude between 2,500 and 4,000 m. He became missing.

In April 2008, in Brazil, Roman Catholic priest Adelir Antonio de Carli suspended himself via 1000 balloons. Ground observers lost track of him when he floated out above the ocean, and he was missing until his body was found by an offshore oil rig support vessel on 5 July 2008. Carli at one point reached an altitude of 6,000 metres (19,685 ft) before losing contact with authorities; his altitude may have indeed been the record for cluster ballooning, but it cost him his life.

Air racing

2009-05-18T02:47:00.000-07:00

The first event in air racing history was held on May 23rd, 1909 - the Prix de Lagatinerie, held at the Port-Aviation airport south of Paris, France. Four pilots entered the race, two actually started and nobody completed the full race distance. Léon Delagrange, who covered more than half of the ten 1.2-kilometre laps was declared the winnerSome other minor events were held before the August 22-29 1909 Grand Week of the Champagne at Reims, France. This was the first major international air race, drawing many of the most important plane makers and pilots of the era, as well as celebrities and royalty. The premier event — the Gordon Bennett Trophy — was won by Glenn Curtiss, who beat second place finisher Louis Blériot by five seconds. Curtiss was named "Champion Air Racer of the World". This event was held yearly at different locations.

Between 1913 and 1931 the Schneider Trophy seaplane race was run, which was significant in advancing aeroplane design, particularly in the fields of aerodynamics and engine design, and would show its results in the best fighters of World War II. In 1921, the United States instituted the National Air Meets, which became the National Air Races in 1924. In 1929, the Women's Air Derby became a part of the National Air Races circuit. The National Air Races lasted until 1949. The Cleveland Air Races was another important event. That year, pilot Bill Odom suffered a crash during a race, killing himself and two other people in a nearby house. In 1947, an All-Woman Transcontinental Air Race (AWTAR) dubbed the "Powder Puff Derby" was established, running until 1977.

In 1964, Bill Stead, a Nevada rancher, pilot, and unlimited hydroplane racing champion, organized the first Reno Air Races at a small dirt strip called the Sky Ranch, located between Sparks, Nevada, and Pyramid Lake. The National Championship Air Races were soon moved to the Reno Stead Airport and have been held there every September since 1966.

The five-day event attracts around 200,000 people, and includes racing around courses marked out by pylons for six classes of aircraft: Unlimited, Formula One, Sport Biplane, AT-6, Sport and Jet. It also features civil airshow acts, military flight demonstrations, and a large static aircraft display. Other promoters have run pylon racing events across the USA and Canada, including races in Mojave, California in 1978; at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1984; at Hamilton, California, in 1988; in Phoenix, Arizona in 1994 and 1995; and in Tunica, Mississippi in 2005.