Introduction
Abraham Lincoln is remembered as the 16th President of the United States of America and the first president of the country ever to be murdered. As the history tells us, “he was mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth, who was a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, in the Presidential Box of Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., while watching the comedy, Our American Cousin” (Burlingame 31). The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln has become an important historical event, which had its severe consequences. The chronicle of the American nation and the United States itself would be entirely different if the President lived.
The post-war period and Andrew Johnson
When the Civil War ended, the American Society was proposed with two rather contrasting strategies for its rebuilding. The murder of the sixteenth president led to the change in the authority of the country, leaving Andrew Johnson for a new candidate for the President. He was a simple Southerner, had a history of slavery in his family, did not receive any development of knowledge and was rather defenseless and exposed by the time of Lincoln’s death. There were no expectations of him to follow and fulfill the ideas of the former president.
The post-war assembly was under the command of the Radical Republicans. Abraham Lincoln managed to regulate their actions; moreover, he had established a strategy for a reconstruction, where the Southern territories were viewed as a lost brother coming back. The Lincoln’s rebuilding was considered to be a potential healing of a country. The Radical Republicans, on the contrary, observed the rebuilding of a nation as an excuse to penalize the South for the civil war. “In 1866 Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill which called for rather draconian Reconstruction measures. Lincoln vetoed the bill, but the debate raged” (“How Did the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Affect Reconstruction?” par. 3).
The current president of a time, Andrew Johnson did not have both the ability and the opportunity to hold back the Radical Republicans the way Abraham Lincoln could. The death of the sixteenth president left a breach in the authority of the country. Moreover, as a Southerner, Andrew Johnson had suggested a strategy that was very much alike with the Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction. However, he lost the support of not only the Radical Republicans but the Congress as well.
The infringement of the rights of Blacks
Almost instantly after the Civil War, the Radical Republicans began to establish numerous laws, also called ‘the Black Codes’ that were diminishing the privileges of the black people. For example, in some states it was forbidden for a black man to marry a white woman; otherwise he would be punished with a death sentence. Moreover, many others laws established by the Congress led to enacting wide-ranging regulations within the time of Reconstruction. “Congressmen Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens led the fight and first passed an act to establish the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its purpose was to provide education and training for Blacks in their transition from slavery to freedom” (“How Did the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Affect Reconstruction?” par. 4).
The new President has made numerous attempts towards banning all regulations concerning the black people; however, a few critical codes were enacted. The Congress was able to act as its members were willing to, armed with the support of military Southerners. For the same reason, there had been a sufficient quantity of votes to abrogate the prohibitions of the current President, for example, as it happened in the case of the Civil Rights acts in 1866. The consequences of the Lincoln’s death did not end there, but they escalated into more serious issues.
Works Cited
Burlingame, Michael. Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2013. Print.
How Did the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Affect Reconstruction? 2014. Web.
Procurement Process Improvement: Supply Chain’ Data Transfer
To be represented in the global market and attain impressive success, a company needs to make sure that the quality of its services is top-notch. However, when growing increasingly large and entering a big number of markets, an organization may lose the track of some of its vital processes. To create a sustainable environment, in which the company could function and prosper, the Company X had to redesign its information management strategy so that the data could be transferred more efficiently and with fewer errors across the supply chain.
The procurement process in the Company X needs a significant improvement due to a poor choice of the transportation services, which resulted from the necessity of the company to save for the promotion campaign. The drop in the firm’s revenues made 1.6% in the first two weeks and has only been going down the slope since. The adoption of a sustainable strategy aimed at reconsidering the current allocation of resources, however, can be viewed as a sensible step to make in the current situation (Pyzdek & Keller, 2014b).
A closer look at the current procurement process will reveal that the lack of consistency in the transfer of information often leads to delays in the transportation of raw materials and products. As a result, the production process is slackened significantly, which affects customer satisfaction rates negatively. Therefore, it is imperative that the process of procurement should be updated; otherwise, the firm is likely to face a rapid and untimely demise.
When defining the nature of the problem, one must admit that it is rooted deeply in a range of issues, the communication-related ones being the primary problem to address. The lack of proper tools for facilitating a connection between the participants has contributed to the increase in the number of misinterpretations and misunderstandings occurring in the process of materials and products transfer. The fact that the company has expanded into the global market and started using the assistance of partners, including suppliers, only aggravated the issue as the communication tools left much to be desired. Consequently, the speed of data transfer is also impaired significantly, which affects the quality of the services and, thus, brings the rates of customer satisfaction down (Pyzdek & Keller, 2014a).
Another issue that the specified concern suggests resolving is linked closely to the use of modern technologies. Despite the fact that the global supply chain is a large network where one needs time to process the necessary data and transfer it to every single member of the firm involved, modern information tools allow for a significant improvement of the current data management strategy.
Last but definitely not least, the information security issue needs to be addressed as one of the factors that affect the process of procurement and jeopardizes the well-being of the entrepreneurship. Working in the environment of the global economy means keeping the company data as well as the information regarding the stakeholders involved (e.g., the transportation, customers’ personal data, financial reports, etc.). As long as the firm is exposed to the threat of its information being stolen or revealed to the third party, the quality of the procurement process is highly likely to drop, not to mention other complications, including legal ones.
It is, therefore, suggested that a more sensible approach to information management should be created. As a result, the procurement processes will improve significantly. Moreover, the quality of the end product is likely to rise after the redesign of the existing knowledge management tools.
Reference List
Pyzdek, T., & Keller, P. (2014a). Building the responsive Six Sigma organization. The Six Sigma handbook (4th ed.) (pp. 3-62). New York City, NY: McGraw Hill Professional.
Pyzdek, T., & Keller, P. (2014b).Project management using DMAIC and DMADV. The Six Sigma handbook (4th ed.) (pp. 213-244). New York City, NY: McGraw Hill Professional.
Operations And Supply Chain: Management Course
While being a seemingly simple concept, the phenomenon of operations management implies that a range of complex tasks including the internal (teamwork, production, etc.) and the external (outbound logistics customer relationships, etc.) ones should be carried out. The course, therefore, has served as a real eye-opener in terms of what gravity the choice of the operation strategy and framework has on the overall efficacy of an organization. In addition, the fact that companies are represented by supply chains in the context of the global economy was a surprise.
Detailing the valuable information retrieved when attending the course, I must mention that the concept of operations management finally became clear to me. I finally realized that the issue of quality assurance should be deemed as the aspect of operations management that has the highest priority rate along with the production process. Particularly, the identification of tools for quality control such as reports, audits, etc., should be viewed as data crucial to improving the corporate performance (Taylor & Russell, 2013).
Furthermore, the course shed some light on the way, in which quality management can be promoted when addressing the operations carried out in the company. As a result, it became possible to identify the link between the product quality and the customer loyalty rates. The tools suggested for improving the quality management process that were described during the course should also be viewed as an essential addition to my professional development and will serve as efficient tools in advancing in my career (Tetteh & Uzochukwu, 2014).
In other words, the course not only provided extensive information required to manage supply chains in the realm of the global economy but also served as a boost for acquiring new skills and learning more about the SCM-related operations in the designated area. In some way, the course both raised awareness regarding the contemporary issues in the SCM and promoted the concept of unceasing self-development.
The latter is, in fact, an indispensable element of the global economy realm at present. Studies show that it is crucial for an SCM expert to be ready to gain new knowledge, train new skills and evolve in the professional domain. The course, in its turn, has provided a sufficient amount of motivation for excelling in the target area and prompted the idea of consistent update of skills as a way of remaining relevant in the target market.
It could be argued that the course could have incorporated a larger number of discussions of the communication processes occurring during operations management. The issue of conflict management is especially important to me. It would have been fascinating to learn about different negotiation techniques that help promote understanding and cooperation in the workplace, thus, making the operations flawless. However, as it is, the course offers a plethora of information on communication that can be used as a platform for further self-guided learning (Sheeler, 2015).
Although being rather challenging and requiring numerous efforts to learn new information and train recently acquired skills, the course can be considered an essential stage of my professional development. The knowledge gained in the process can be deemed as timeless as it shows how one may improve one’s competency and build a strong supply chain in the environment of increasingly high competition rates. The operations and supply chain management course, therefore, should be credited as an essential stage in my professional development.
Reference List
Sheeler, C. L. (2015). Equity value enhancement: A tool to leverage human and financial capital while managing risk. New York City, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Taylor, B. W., & Russell, R. S. (2013). Operations and supply chain management (8th ed.). New York City, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Tetteh, E. C., & Uzochukwu, B. M. (2014). Lean Six Sigma approaches in manufacturing, services, and production. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.