Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 16

Psychology - Essay Example Learning can broadly be defined as ‘relatively permanent change in behaviour’ (Burns, R., 2002) through observable activities and internal processes of perception. The comparative perspective of psychology of learning primarily relies on the observation of behavioural activities of others that prompt others to improve and improvise one’s actions to optimize the performance outcome. When the observations provoke some mental processing to come to some inference, the approach is defined as cognitive approach. Thus, the varying reactions of the observations and behavioural pattern due to external objects give rise to theories to explain learning processes. The two major psychological approaches of learning are behaviourism and cognitive approach which would be compared to understand the wider implications of the approaches that are used at various levels of interaction. Theory of Behaviourism asserts that the one sees and experiences the world in its physical entirety and one responds as per the law of the nature which is constant for everyone. The principles of natural laws are based on cause and effect. Grippin and Peters claimed that this approach focuses on three vital ingredients of behaviour: observation of behaviour; environmental paradigms that influence the behaviour; and the principles of continuity and reinforcement that facilitate learning process (Grippin & Peters, 1984). Cognitive approach is basically an amalgamation of philosophical thoughts and scientific theories that try to rationalize the working of conscious and unconscious thoughts of a man and co-relate them with his subsequent actions and reactions. The theory of cognition, thereby, tries to explain why and how the events take place and subsequent pattern of behaviour of man under certain condition involving emotional and metaphysical reaction. The role of brain and conscious and unconscious activities of the mind are seen to be the responsible for the

GM Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

GM Strategy - Essay Example The emergency of the low cost Japanese made cars compounded the difficult situation of competition which was already taking a toll on General Motors. Various global changes also took place in the motor industry such as new technological innovations, new marketing strategies that specifically focused on meeting the interests of the customers among other factors. In response, GM invested heavily in its endeavour to keep pace with these global changes. However, the major setback that hampered its efforts was the aspect of bureaucracy resulting from hundreds of divisions within the company which made it difficult to have focused, well coordinated operation systems. During its heydays, GM used to pay very high benefit packages since it was very profitable especially during the mid 1970s when it dominated the US markets. However, due to changing global trends especially the emergency and ultimate dominance of other rival competitors such as Toyota and Nissan, GM has lost some of its competitive advantages to these rivals. Compared to Toyota, GM pays as much as $35 for pension benefits whilst Toyota pays around $11, which gives it a cost advantage of about $1500 a car contrary to GM’s position. GM has to charge less premium than its strongest competitors hence it sells its vehicles at a loss. GM is now in a predicament of continuing paying high benefits to its workers against the backdrop of losses owing to the union laws that are a bit stringent such that it cannot abruptly cut these benefits to meet the global trends nor simply layoff some of the workers. It seems GM’s revenues are higher than those of Toyota but at the end of the day Toyota has higher earnings as a result of the fact that GM spends more money on operating costs and other expenses. GM makes more cars than it can profitably sell which means that it would end up selling at a loss. In fact it is no longer getting profits from its