International electronic cash

There exist to ways to predict the potential success or failure of emerging technologies: 1) to look at the organisations, which are pushing the use of such technologies and 2) to evaluate the worldwide acceptance of such technologies. Those ways certainly hold true for electronic commerce cash. If big financial institutions don’t support e-cash, it probably won’t succeed. And, if the worldwide financial community does not support e-cash, its acceptance and use in the United States only may not be enough to define it as a truly standard technology.

With those issues in mind, it seems that e-cash will someday become a standard technology. Currently, organisations such as Citibank, MasterCard International and Deutsche Bank (in Germany) are actively pursuing the use of e-cash on the Internet. Those organisations are definitely big and they have a tremendous worldwide presence and influence. With support from those organisations, e-cash does indeed seem destined to become a standard technology.

Task 5. Read the text “Creating an Internet-Exclusive Bank” and translate it.

Task 6. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. How do banks use the Internet?

2. What is a group of bankers and entrepreneurs busy with in Atlanta?

3. What will the bank look like?

4. What can the AIB offer you?

CREATING AN INTERNET-EXCLUSIVE BANK

There are currently many obstacles to overcome before electronic cash is widely accepted over the Internet. But banks haven’t hesitated to exploit the Internet to provide financial products and services. Many “traditional” banks today offer some services on the Internet; others have chosen to use the Internet as the sole distribution channel for financial services.

In Atlanta, a group of bankers and entrepreneurs are creating one such Internet bank called the Atlanta Internet Bank (AIB). The AIB will have no drive-up windows and no lobbies in which you can get a bank representative’s help. Instead, you’ll perform all your banking transactions through the Internet. Initially, the AIB plans to offer checking and money market accounts and bill payment services; later it will add brokerage services and credit products.

Can you imagine that? Some day you may never see a bank building. Instead, all banks will exist in virtual cyberspace on the Internet.

Task 7. Read the text “Ski Aspen” and translate it.

Task 8. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. What does Aspen Skiing Co. do to make certain you ski Aspen?

2. What can help you in deciding where to ski?

3. What kind of information can you find when connected to Aspen’s Web site?

4. Can you reserve a room?

SKI ASPEN

Aspen Skiing Co. wants your business and it’s using IT in innovative ways to make certain you ski Aspen when you’re in Colorado. For people already on the slopes Aspen has set up four multimedia touch-sensitive kiosks that can show you views from the tops of local mountains and give you up-to-the-minute weather reports.

And if you’re trying to decide where to ski, try connecting to Aspen’s Web site at http://www.aspenonline.com. Once there, you can check current ski conditions, shopping area, dining places, cultural festivities or directions to Aspen, local banks and ATMs. You can even view skiing video clips.

While you’re online with Aspen, you can also reserve a room at the lodge. Aspen even plans to add photos to show you exactly what your room looks like and the view you’ll have from your balcony. Now that’s an innovative use of IT.

Task 9. Read the text “Customer Integrated Systems” and translate it.

Task 10. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. What does the term “customer integrated system” mean?

2. What task can you perform with the aid of ATMs?

3. Where else are CISs used?

4. What are the ways to order any product you want?

CUSTOMER INTEGRATED SYSTEMS

A customer integrated system (CIS) is the system that places technology in the hands of an organisation’s customers and allows them to process their own transactions. Automated teller machines (ATMs) are perhaps the most common example of a CIS. ATMs provide you with the ability to do your banking anywhere at any time. Banking by ATM, you can check your account balance, transfer money from one account to another, and even withdraw money from virtually anywhere in the world. You can perform these tasks because the worldwide ATM network structure handles all the communication between you and your financial institution.

Banks aren’t the only organisations that are taking advantage of CISs. Colleges and universities are using CISs to allow students to register for classes by touch-tone telephone. Convenience stores use them to allow customers to pay for gas at the pump instead of inside. You may even be able to pay your utility and telephone bills electronically from your home computer.

If you need a good example of a customer integrated system, just cruise the Internet for a while. There, you’ll find the ability to order almost any product imaginable, from automobiles to clothes and numerous ticket-selling agencies.

Task 11. Read the text “Quaker Oats Hopes to Move Snapple Electronically” and translate it.

Task 12. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. What does Quaker Oats deal with?

2. How does the company hope to increase the sales of Snapple?

3. Why does Quaker plan to create an interorganisational system?

4. What is the function of IOS?

QUAKER OATS

HOPES TO MOVE SNAPPLE ELECTRONICALLY

Over the past several years, Quaker Oats has been on a beverage buying spree, buying both Gatorade and Snapple. Today, Quaker is the third-largest beverage company after Coke and Pepsi and it’s the largest vendor of noncarbonated beverages.

But being the biggest today doesn’t mean that you’ll always be that way. So, Quaker hopes to sell even more Snapple through technology. Quaker plans to create an interorganisational system that will connect it to the top 50 distributors of Snapple. Then Quaker will tap into the distributors’ databases, monitor their inventory levels and replenish Snapple supplies at a moment’s notice.

This sort of IOS that supports information sharing between organisations is not uncommon.

UNIT 11

Task 1. Read the text “Get on the Right Track” and translate it.

Task 2. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. Why is it important to write a good resume?

2. What are most of hiring managers mainly concerned about?

3. What should you do before writing down your skills?

4. Why is it advisable to use numbers?

5. Why do you have to use jargon from your industry?

6. Why is it better to be honest when writing your resume?

7. What is the use of someone proofreading your resume?

Task 3. Write your own resume taking into account pieces of advice given below.

GET ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Resume Writing from the very beginning can be enormously tiring and even worse, very wrong! Many people are experiencing this and it can happen to you as well. How?

You will not know what you are doing! You will definitely persuade yourself you are making the right thing, but at the same time you will be wasting a lot of energy and personal time! Why? Because, most people are making a common mistake when they try to improvise in resume writing. Up to 92% of the people who will “take things into their own hands” will never get the interview! We believe you don’t want to be in this group.

We have selected 25 Tips and Tricks to write a Winning Resume! The word “winning” explains that your resume will be spotted!!! And when it is spotted, you achieve your half way through towards a scheduled appointment with the hiring manager. And this is the most important outcome of your resume!

TIPS TO CREATE A WINNING RESUME

TIP 1: Leave good first impression! This is the most important! Most hiring managers have in average less than 30 seconds to see who you are, what is your objective and first couple of achievements. In general all of them are more concerned about career achievements than education. In order to leave good first impression write the most interesting and persuasive facts about you right at the beginning in order of relevance.

TIP 2: Make your opening statement strong and effective. Write a clear and powerful opening statement summarising your skills and pointing out your strengths. This summary will carry a focused message throughout the resume helping you to stay on the right track.

TIP 3: Point out your skills. To write a list of your capabilities first revise the job position that you are applying for. When you seize all required tasks, make a list of specific abilities and skills you have or that are at least easy for you to accomplish. Writing an excellent statement of this kind is gathering experience and skills into phrases that demonstrate your qualifications for the new job position.

TIP 4: Concentrate on bringing benefit to the employer. Write how you have used your abilities and your skills making positive results and achieving success highlighting accomplishments, which will arouse the interest of employers who read your resume. Keep these statements concise, result-oriented and measurable.

TIP 5: Emphasise your experience using numerology. Use numbers to qualify your experience. Include percentages, values and other terms to evaluate success. Numbers are very powerful. They will give precise measurement of your achievements. Numbers will represent your experience in the best possible light.

TIP 6: Make your recent information as priority. Your working experience sections should be generally focused on the last 10 to 15 years. Apart from writing them in chronological order, try to focus on placing them according to the experience you gained and summarise older with less experience. Use experience that is relevant to the position you are seeking.

TIP 7: Watch over your strengths. Apart of having two different types of skills, there are two different groups of strengths such as professional and private. When you are writing about your strengths and experience, remember: do not underemphasise them. Always describe yourself in relevant and the best possible light.

TIP 8: Review your information. Do not waste a lot of space to present your qualifications. You should always focus on writing your resume, being the one who is concise, succinct and clear.

TIP 9: Always use key words. Key words are very important to emphasise your punch lines. Describe your skills and experience, using words such as analyzed, approved, built, completed, composed, conceived, defined, delivered, demonstrated, established, estimated, evaluated, instituted, launched, managed, performed, planned or tested.

TIP 10: Emphasise sections using key phrases. Describe yourself as “active with ability to manage, increase and develop” and “specialising in…”, “…business background with extensive knowledge”, “highly motivated…”, “results-focused…”, “bring quick resolutions to challenging situations…” etc.

TIP 11: Do not forget jargons from your industry. All the companies are using their specific jargon from that particular industry. Use that jargon to mirror your familiarity with the employer’s business. Try not to overdo it by making your resume hard to read or understand. Do not use acronyms if they are not obvious. Try to spell them out in the brackets.

TIP 12: Emphasise key points highlighting them. When marking the most relevant information on your resume always use bold, italics and underlining to highlight specific key points. Do not overdo it! You may also use quotation marks, capital letters and even asterisks to emphasise important parts in section titles.

TIP 13: Use ordinary headings. General section headings are: Personal Information, Objectives, Summary, Accomplishments, Capabilities, Employment, Education, Skills, Training, Licenses, Honours, Publications, Talent, Affiliations, Personal, Volunteer Work, Other, References.

TIP 14: Combine sections when possible. This is widely accepted tip to make your resume even more powerful and compact. Summarise two similar sections, like “Affiliations and Volunteer Work” or “Education and Training.”

TIP 15: Do not use personal pronouns. Avoid using personal pronouns in your resume such as “me” or “I”. Your resume should always be written in the third person. Use short action-result statements instead of writing long and complicated essays. Use sentences like: “Managed and coordinated between production departments which resulted in 37% increase in sales.”

TIP 16: Avoid information about salary. Information about past or future income sometimes can give impression of being not flexible, cheap or expensive for future company. Better save this information for the interview dealing directly with facts about employer’s intentions and budget.

TIP 17: Omit debatable subjects. Do not use personal information such as age, marital status, race, religion or political party. Try not to dispose your personal views. On the other hand, it is illegal for the employer to judge such issues. If it’s not required do not use humour in your resume.

TIP 18: Personal qualities. Try to include personal qualities in your resume. Rather than just listing qualities, demonstrate your individuality using examples from your personal experience. In reality, instead of “Responsible”, “Self-motivated” or “Highly-organised” use the following sentence “As an Executive Director organised different production departments, never missed an important deadline and consecutively improved company’s budget.”

TIP 19: Be personal and professional. Try to build the resume that mirrors your positive attitude and your best personal characteristics. A level of professionalism should always be present as well.

TIP 20: Present yourself as the best possible candidate. To achieve this try to decrease the importance of any possible gaps in your working history. If this is the case you should focus more on your skills and accomplishments rather than progression of your experience. This format of resume is usually called Functional Resume.

TIP 21: Always be honest. Do not exaggerate! If you are lying about your abilities, this may come back to haunt you. Do not forget that most of employers usually check serious candidates. Try to check each and every detail before including it in your resume.

TIP 22: Be methodical, rational and succinct. Employers usually go through your resume to feel whether you are methodical, rational and succinct. Looking at your experience, make sure your resume is unprejudiced, tidy, stands out visually and runs fluently.

TIP 23: Be clear in your vocabulary. Do not use extraordinary, exorbitant or exquisite vocabulary. Try not to impress employers with the complexity of your vocabulary. Instead use words and sentences everyone can understand.

TIP 24: Be optimistic showing incentive. Do not use pessimistic comments or negative feelings in your resume. Try to avoid previous unconstructive employment experiences. Present yourself in a positive, can-do attitude.

TIP 25: Avoid grammar errors and low quality paper. Before you send your resume make sure some of your family, friends or colleagues proofread it. The best proofreaders are people who are attentive to details. Make sure to avoid all typing mistakes, because even the smallest error could make your resume not acceptable. When you are printing your resume, always use best quality paper. Do not use glossy paper! Use only mat paper. Keep your printed version away from damages.

Task 4. Read the text “A Psychological Contract” and translate it.

Task 5. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. What does a psychological contract represent?

2. What was the main reason for emerging of trade unions?

3. Why do employers consider it better for them to respect equal opportunities and employment rights?

4. What kinds of contracts does Feldhiem talk about?

5. What does the psychological contract determine?

6. What can a negative psychological contract result into:

1. for employers;

2. for employees?

Task 6. Compose a summary of the text in 80 words.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT

A psychological contract represents the mutual beliefs, percep­tions and informal obligations between an employer and an employee. It sets the dynamics for the relationship and defines the detailed practicality of the work to be done. It is distinguishable from the formal written contract of employment which, for the most part, only identifies mutual duties and responsibilities in a generalised form.

As commercial organisations grew in size and complexity, there was a tendency to standardise rather than individualise the treatment of labour. Trade unions emerged to offer protection to larger groups of employees. The result was collective bargaining to define pay and conditions by reference to grades across industries and trades and in public service. More recently, unions have lost some of their significance, leaving management in more direct control. But societies have developed expectations of a better work/life balance, reinforced by legislation, and employers have found it in their own best interests to develop practices that respect equal opportunities and employment rights through professionalized human resource services because: the workforce has become more feminised; the workforce is better educated, less deferential of authority and less likely to remain loyal; the workforce is required to be more flexible to meet new challenges quickly and effectively, but this need to change can be a source of insecurity; and automation has both empowered a greater percentage of the workforce and allowed the emergence of teleworking which fragments the old social orders of a single location workplace and generates greater freedom and flexibility in an ever increasing global workforce.

During the recruitment process, the employer and interviewee will discuss what they both can offer in the prospective relationship. If agreement is reached, most employers will impose a standard form contract, leaving the detail of the employee's duties to be clarified “on the job”. But some of the initial statements, no matter how informal and imprecise, may later be remembered as promises and give rise to expectations. Whether they are incorporated into the parallel psychological contract will depend on whether both parties believe that they should be treated as part of the relationship. The better organised employers are careful to document offers to reduce the risk of raising false expectations followed by disappointment.

As the Common Law states, the law implies duties requiring the employees to be loyal and trustworthy. These are imprecise in their definition and uncertain in much of their operation. But, in psychological terms, issues as to whether promises and expectations have been kept and met and whether the resulting arrangements are fair, are fundamental to the trust between the employee and the employer. The first year of employment is critical as actual performance by the employee can be measured against claims and promises made during the interview and the management has begun to establish a track record in its relationship with the employee at the supervisor and manager level. Feldhiem (1999) reflects these two strands by dividing the psychological contract into: transactional (this is the economic or monetary base with clear expectations that the organisation will fairly compensate the performance delivered and punish inadequate or inappropriate acts); and relational (this is a socio-emotional base that underlies expectations of shared ideals and values and respect and support in the interpersonal relationships).

The reality of employment rights and duties emerges through the interpersonal relationships formed in the workplace. How employers, supervisors and managers behave on a day-to-day basis is not determined by the legal contract. Employees slowly negotiate what they must do to satisfy their side of the bargain, and what they can expect in return. This negotiation is sometimes explicit, e.g. in appraisal or performance review sessions, but it more often takes the form of behavioural action and reaction through which the parties explore and draw the boundaries of mutual expectation. Hence, the psychological contract determines what the parties will or will not do and how it will be done. When the parties' expectations match each other, performance is likely to be good and satisfaction levels will be high. So long as the values and loyalty persist, trust and commitment will be maintained. The map followed by the parties is the development of an individualised career path that makes only reasonable demands on the employee, with adequate support from managers and co-workers, for a level of remuneration that is demonstrably fair for a person of that age, educational background and experience. Motivation and commitment will be enhanced if transfers and promotions follow the agreed path in a timely fashion.

If managed effectively, the relationship will foster mutual trust between the parties, matching the objectives and commitments of the organisation to those of their employees. But a negative psychological contract can result in employees becoming disenchanted, demotivated and resentful of authoritarianism within the organisation. This will result in an increasingly inefficient workforce whose objectives no longer correspond to the organisation they work for. The main cause of disappointment tends to be that middle managers are protective of their status and security in the eyes of their superiors, and this can introduce conflicts of interest when they are required to fulfil their obligations to their subordinates.

If those in power breach the psychological contract by not paying a fair rate or failing to make fair evaluations of performance or treating the employee with a lack of respect, it rapidly causes disillusionment, dissatisfaction and exit. This may arise shortly after the employee joins the company or after years of satisfactory service. The impact may be localised and contained, but if morale is more generally affected, the profitability of the organisation may be diminished. Further, if the activities of the organisation are perceived as being unjust or immoral, e.g. aggressive downsizing or outsourcing cause significant unemp­loyment, its public reputation and brand image may be damaged.

UNIT 12

Task 1. Read the text “Ivan Vernadskyy“ and translate it.

Task 2. Find answers to the following questions in the text and write them down:

1. What scientific school did I. Vernadskyy represent?

2. What relation was I. Vernadskyy to Volodymyr and George?

3. When and where was he born?

4. Where did I. Vernadskyy get his education?

5. What fields of knowledge was he competent in?

6. Where did his career begin?

7. What was the subject of his Doctoral thesis?

8. What posts did I. Vernadskyy hold during his life?

9. What economic doctrine was he famous for?

10. What were the circumstances of his meeting with P. Kulish?

11. What other prominent figures did I. Vernadskyy make friends with at that time?

12. What innovative ideas did I. Vernadskyy suggest for the improvement of the economic situation?

13. When and where did he die?

Task 3. Pick up and write down all the international words you can find in the text.

Task 4. Find in the text English equivalents of the following Ukrainian sentences:

1. Йому запропонували стипендію для вивчення політичної економії.

2. Він отримав звання доктора економічних наук і посаду професора.

3. Він також видавав та був редактором газети “Економічний довідник”.

4. Його роботи відзначалися прихильністю до підходу невтручання в економіку та лібералізмом у соціальних питаннях.

5. Публікації І. Вернадського були тим епіцентром, що схиляли владні кола до думки про скасування кріпацтва.

6. Він вважав, що щойно звільненим кріпакам необхідно надати повну економічну та соціальну свободу.

7. Він відстоював права жінок на рівну оплату праці.

8. I. Вернадський вірив у можливість покращання умов прожи­вання людей.

Task 5. Compose a summary of the text in 80 words.