Love DISABILITY & PHYSICAL ACTIVITY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Love DISABILITY & PHYSICAL ACTIVITY - Essay Example This report discusses the major barriers that restrict disabled people in accessing and progressing within the available sporting infrastructure in Darlington Borough, in United Kingdom. Bone and Meltzer (1999, p14) define disability as â€Å"any physical or mental state that limits movements, activities or senses of the affected person†. According to Arthur and Finch(1999, p41), persons with disabilities includes â€Å"people afflicted by long term mental, physical, intellectual, or sensory malfunctions, which limit their ability to participate fully and effectively in society like other able people†. Disability could be temporary, permanent or it could recur periodically within the life span of the affected person. Darlington Borough has an estimated population of 99,475 (PMP, 2009). Elderly persons aged 65 years and above account to 17% of the total population in the region, compared to national average of 16%. The proportion of people aged below 40 years in the borough is less than the national average. About 31% of people in the area do not have private cars for transport (PMP 2009, p16). This limits access to available sporting facilities, especially among the disabled persons. The region has unemployment rate of 4%, which is above the national level in the United Kingdom (PMP 2009, 37). According to PMP (2009) disabled persons account to 10.6 % of the entire population in the borough. Most of the disabled are elderly persons aged over 65 years. Darlington borough has an estimated 107.5 hectares of land for playing pitches, but only 39% of this area is available for public use (PMP, 2009, p65). In spite of economic prosperity in various regions, people with disabilities encounter higher levels of social, economic and political isolation compared to those without the condition (Andreasen, 1995, p 17). These challenges permeate into sports across different regions and Darlington is not an exception. Although factors such as age, ethnicity, gender,

Business organisation and policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Business organisation and policy - Essay Example ............................................. 6 5. Discussion of Merger Seeking...................................................................... 7 6. Conclusion..................................................................................................... 9 References / Bibliography Business organisation and policy 1. Introduction Many businesses attempt to improve their revenue stream or maintain a higher competitive advantage through the process of acquiring or merging with other successful companies. Corporations believe that they can gain a considerable growth potential, improve overall service delivery or produce better and more innovative products by consolidating talents that exist within the business being acquired and amidst the new business entity acquired. However, many board members and executives at these companies do not fully understand the realities of what affects successful acquisition and merger philosophy, with most of these driven by the external marke tplace and external stakeholders. In order to understand what causes failures in merging and acquiring other firms, it is necessary to explore real-life case histories of two different companies with radically different success and failure outcomes after merger. Air France merged with KLM and found a considerable growth potential and synergy development, whilst Daimler-Chrysler suffered substantial loss of business competitiveness and capital growth after the merger. It is likely that board members and executives, despite such a high margin of failed mergers and acquisitions, continue to seek out these opportunities for a variety of financially-based rationales, for the potential benefits achieved with shareholders and stakeholders, and as a generalised strategic methodology to improve efficiency, productivity, and cultural development. This report examines the two merged company case studies and comes to a determination as to why businesses continue to seek merger and acquisition o pportunities despite numerous failures in this process. 2. The case of Air France and KLM Air France and KLM were both highly successful airline carriers that found independent revenue growth in their home markets of France and the Netherlands respectively. Both airlines agreed that a merger would improve their competitive position in the airline marketplace and could develop long-lasting synergies that would ultimately lead to sales growth and cost reduction in key divisions of operations. The Air France and KLM merger should be considered a significant success in merger philosophy. Why is this? In key markets, Ryanair and other low cost carriers were beginning to expand their fleets by using lean models of operations that allowed for cost reduction to be passed on to consumers in the price of lower fares. This was impacting the profitability bottom line of both major carriers which had higher overhead costs and administrative costs associated with labour payments to maintain their broad hub networks. These low cost carriers were using dynamic pricing and were able to reduce marketing and advertising costs; thus, it was becoming more attractive to multiple target market consumers (Malighetti, Paleari and Redondi, 2009). Because of regulatory restrictions, Air France and KLM, separately and in their host countries and markets, could not adjust their costs of operations to successfully compete with Ryanair and other growing low cost carriers using penetration or dynamic pricing models. Together, however, it gave