DuPont An Investment Analysis :: essays research papers

DuPont makes a variety of high-value products for industry today, including polymers, chemicals, fibers, and petroleum products...products for agriculture, electronics, transportation, apparel, food, aerospace, construction, and health care. DuPont serves customers in these and other industries every day, offering "better things for better living" as the company prepares to begin its third century of scientific, technological, commercial, and social achievement. DuPont is a research and technology based chemical and energy company with its annual revenue exceeding $39 billion. Eleuth‚re Ir‚n‚e du Pont de Nemours, a French immigrant, established DuPont in 1802 in a small Delaware town. E.I. du Pont was a student of Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, and when he came to America he brought some of the new ideas about the manufacturing of consistently reliable gun powder. His product ignited when it was supposed to, in a manner consistent with expectations. This was greatly appreciated by the citizens of the growing nation, including Thomas Jefferson, who wrote thanking du Pont for the quality of his powder, which was being used to clear the land at Monticello. Many other heroes of early America owed their success, and their lives, to the dependable quality of DuPont's first product. This represents a good, strong start for a company. DuPont, which is moving through the last decade of the twentieth century and toward its third century, emphasizes several things; competing globally; sharpening its business focus; increasing productivity; committing to safety, health, and environmental excellence; and continuing to extend its significant science and technological achievement. One of DuPont's major strategies is to focus on businesses in which DuPont has core competencies, where DuPont can build competitive advantage. The most notable example of this focus was the 1993 transaction in which DuPont acquired ICI's nylon business and ICI acquired DuPont's acrylics business. This strengthened the company's position in the global nylon business while divesting a business that no longer fit its portfolio. Another major factor in the transformation of the company in the1990s was the focus on reducing costs and improving productivity. This was necessary to give the company the flexibility for competitive pricing and to grow market share and earnings. DuPont had strong plants in several countries around the world for many years, and their globalization trend continued in the 1990s. New plants opened in Spain, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, and China, and a major technical service center opened in Japan. In 1994, a Conoco joint venture began producing oil from the Ardalin Field in the Russian Arctic--the first major oil field brought into production by a Russian/Western partnership since demise of the Soviet Union.

Assess Reasons

Assess the reasons why Thatcher's economic policies were controversial There is little which unites Thatcher's passionate supporters, and equally passionate critics. However, both camps would agree that she was, without question, one of the most controversial prime ministers the UK has seen, and her economic policies were at the heart of that controversy. She instituted an economic revolution in the KICK, bringing the post-war consensus to a crashing halt, and replacing it with a free-market ideology which remains in place today.So there is surprisingly little controversy over whether she was successful in implementing her policies, but rather the controversy is whether her economic policy successes were either necessary or desirable. There is no answer to this conundrum, as any answer must be dependent upon the values of the beholder. All of her individual policies, such as monetarism, prevarication, and trade union reform, generated their own controversies, but perhaps the greatest controversy was over the sort of nation which those reforms created.The first, and perhaps most controversial, economic policy Thatcher imposed was monetarism. This theory, described as â€Å"crazy† by revises Tory Chancellor, Reginald Maudlin, envisaged controlling inflation through restricting the money supply, and Thatcher moved quickly in her first term to implement it, through a squeeze on public spending and an increase in interest rates to a high of 17% to restrict borrowing. The first controversy was whether monetarism even worked. Supporters argued that it was responsible for bringing inflation down from 19% in 1979, to 5% in 1983.Opponents, on the other hand, argued that this had more to do with the descent of the UK economy into recession during Thatcher's first term, and a crease in the price of oil following the Iranian revolution in 1979. Perhaps a clue as to the correct answer can be found in Thatcher's quiet abandonment of any attempts to control the money su pply early in her second term. Nevertheless, almost irrespective of whether monetarism directly lowered inflation, what is not in dispute is that it did cause a rapid growth in unemployment, from 5. 7% in 1979 to 13% in 1982.As unemployment topped mm, higher than at any time since the great depression of the sass, riots broke out in major cities, with particularly severe violence in Text and Britton. The depth of the controversy over the economic choices Thatcher was making can be illustrated not only by burning barricades in the inner cities, but also by the arguments within her own Cabinet, with the â€Å"wets†, led by Jim Prior, urging her to change course. Ultimately, the most significant controversy over monetarism was that all governments since the war had seen the maintenance of full employment as their primary economic policy goal.Thatcher saw unemployment, even mass unemployment, as a price worth paying for controlling inflation, which she saw as a greater evil. The fact that monetarism inspired riots, furious public opposition, and internal dissent, might imply that it was the most controversial of her economic policies. Nevertheless, even after the abandonment of monetarism, Thatcher's next flagship economic policy was to inspire yet more controversy : the crushing of the trade unions.Thatcher saw the Unions as â€Å"the enemy within†, and blamed them for the defeat of the last Conservative government in 1974. Again breaking with the post-war consensus, she saw trade unions not as partners to work as part of a troika with Government and employers, UT as implacable foes of the free-market. She gambled that the Winter of Discontent had undermined support for unions, and set out to destroy their influence. First she passed three Employment Acts in 1 980, 1 982 and 1 984, and then she defeated both the miners and the print-workers in their respective strikes.Even her opponents would concede that she was extremely successful in achieving he r goals, as union membership fell from 50% of the workforce in 1979 to less than 35% in 1 990, while strike days lost fell from 29. Mm in 1979 to 1 -mm in 1990. However, it was those goals which ere controversial, and again, that controversy was based on different views Of what a Government's priority should be. Other post-War Governments had accepted the concept that improving terms and conditions, and seeking to obtain increases in real wages for employees, was a desirable goal.Thatcher and her supporters, however, took the view that such aims were impediments to the functioning of a free-market, in which employers could only compete effectively if they had the right to hire and fire at will, and if employees could be forced to accept lower wages and less secure terms and notations. If previous Governments had seen their role as a neutral arbiter between workers and managers, Thatcher placed the government very firmly behind managers and owners of businesses, while arguing that th is was also in the interests of employees.At the time, the controversy centered on the immediate struggles of the Miners' Strike and the Yapping Dispute, with whole communities in mining areas laid waste. However, perhaps the real controversy is over the impact of the policy in the longer term. Thatcher's supporters argue that breaking the unions led to more efficient businesses, deter able to compete in the global marketplace, and point to such evidence as in increase in growth rates from an average of 1. % in the period 1950-79, to 2. 1% in 1979-90. The opposing argument, however, is that while the GAP of the UK rose by 108% in the thirty years after Thatcher's election, the proportion of GAP paid in wages has declined from 65% to less than 50%, with a far higher proportion of GAP going to the wealthiest in society through non-wage income such as dividends and bonuses.

Gender Roles Should Not Exist - 1462 Words

Gender roles should not exist and the stigma behind them should disappear because they interfere with people’s freedom of self-expression and being themselves. In recent times, gender roles have been changing, but they still exist in today’s society. There, also, is still a bad stigma towards people who break gender roles, and this should be changed. Gender roles create restrictions on people’s expression of themselves and do not allow people to be themselves without the presence of judgment. This can greatly diminish the self-confidence and self-worth of people. Gender roles are a set of societal norms that dictate what types of behaviors are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on their actual of perceived sex (wikipedia). Traditional gender roles have existed in the world throughout the history of human kind. These traditional roles consist of men being the dominant gender compared to women. Men typically were considere d head of the household, provided for the family, held jobs in the community rather than in the home, and were generally seen as more important. Women, on the other hand, were deemed more as submissive and weak. They were responsible for the domestic work, such as cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children. Society has had these traditional gender roles for most of human life. However, gender norms have changed recently with the empowerment of women, especially in more developed countries. Women now haveShow MoreRelatedRace And Gender And Race1409 Words   |  6 PagesThe idea of race and gender is an idea that has been socially constructed. Society has created roles for race and gender, they are determined by what society thinks is appropriate for the gender or race. Some people argue that certain behavior roles are based on gender where as others may believe that it is based on race. 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