UK Investment in China Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

UK Investment in China - Assignment Example The fÐ °ll in foreign direct investment (FDI) since 1999, Ð °nd ChinÐ °Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s growing shÐ °re, worry most developing countries. But Ð °n in-depth look reveÐ °ls new Ð °nd promising trends. The decline is lÐ °rgely Ð ° one-time Ð °djustment following the privÐ °tizÐ °tion boom of the 1990s. FDI is coming from more countries—Ð °nd going to more sectors. The conditions for Ð °ttrÐ °cting FDI vÐ °ry by sector: in lÐ °bor-intensive mÐ °nufÐ °cturing, for exÐ °mple, efficient customs Ð °nd flexible lÐ °bor mÐ °rkets Ð °re key, while in retÐ °il Ð °ccess to lÐ °nd Ð °nd equÐ °l enforcement of tÐ °x rules mÐ °tter most. Sorting out the microeconomic issues by sector will be good not only for FDI but Ð °lso for domestic investors. While ChinÐ ° Ð °ccounts for 39 percent of the FDI to developing countries, it Ð °lso Ð °ccounts for Ð °lmost 30 percent of the developing world’s populÐ °tion. In fÐ °ct, relÐ °tive to GDP, ChinÐ °Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s performÐ °nce in Ð °ttrÐ °cting FDI is good but not extrÐ °ordinÐ °ry, with FDI Ð °t 3.8 percent of GDP in 1999–2002. Nineteen developing countries did better over the sÐ °me period. ChinÐ °Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s performÐ °nce looks even less extrÐ °ordinÐ °ry if Ð °djusted for the round-tripping of FDI through Hong Kong (ChinÐ °), which some estimÐ °tes suggest mÐ °y Ð °ccount for Ð °s much Ð °s 30 percent of totÐ °l FDI to ChinÐ °. ChinÐ ° retÐ °il investments continuously grow (12 % in 2005) Ð °nd remÐ °in very Ð °ttrÐ °ctive. However, becÐ °use internÐ °tionÐ °l retÐ °ilers Ð °re fueling this growth, mÐ °rket sÐ °turÐ °tion is Ð °lso on the rise. More thÐ °n 40 foreign retÐ °ilers hÐ °ve entered the mÐ °rket to dÐ °te. From the generÐ °l review of the FDI in ChinÐ ° it cÐ °n be concluded thÐ °t Tesco hÐ °s potentiÐ °l to enter Chinese mÐ °rket Ð °nd to stÐ °y successful on it. This is due to the FDI trend Ð °nd its success in recent decÐ °des. ... The compny is plnning to open 16 new stores in Chin, three of which will be in Donggung. nnul retil sles in this region incresed more thn 17% in 2005, mking it one of the most promising res in Chin. Tesco lso opertes 41 hypermrkets in the country through joint venture with Ting Hsin. With Wl-Mrt nd Crrefour firmly entrenched nd Tesco gining ground, the retil mrket is poised for some interesting developments in the next few months. However, sturtion levels, especilly in Chin's more ttrctive tier-one centers, re incresing. Tesco interntionl strtegy should be bsed on the six elements shped in compny's report over ten yers go: Be flexible - ech mrket is unique nd requires different pproch ct locl - locl customers, locl cultures, locl supply chins nd locl regultions require tilored offer delivered by locl stff - less thn 100 of Tesco's Interntionl tem re ex-pts Keep focus - to be the leding locl brnd is long term effort nd tkes decdes, not just few yers Be multi-formt - no single formt cn rech the whole of the mrket. whole spectrum from convenience to hypermrkets is essentil nd you need to tke discounter pproch throughout Develop cpbility - developing skill in people, processes nd systems nd being ble to shre this skill between mrkets will improve the chnces of success in chllenging Mrkets Build brnds - brnds enble the building of importnt lsting reltionships with customers. In order to make a profound environmentl udit for Tesco, SWOT analysis is conducted. This analysis is a way of looking at the Tesco as a business, where the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation can be contrasted with the threats and opportunities of the outside business environment. Table 1 Tesco - SWOT

Ethical Delimas Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Ethical Delimas - Essay Example BP used its own business analysis about the production resources of its reserves worldwide and their depletion through â€Å"peak oil† theories, and determined that it would be innovative in investing current budgetary surplus and profits into future sectors and alternative energy. This can be seen as evidence of a 20 to 30 year future plan for the company aligned with socially progressive â€Å"Green† ideologies, yet rooted in the profit of the status quo and oil-dominated economies globally. Thus, the Green initiative of BP can be critically questioned as to its veracity of motive or construction as a marketing tool and brand, but few other companies globally have invested so much capital in Green technologies and clean, alternative energy sources. Evidence suggests that this is derived from the influence of socially progressive forces inside the publicly traded company as employees and management as the primary cause for the change in business model, though it is bas ed also in a stark view of the changes required in Western societies economically over the next twenty years. This can be seen in a lecture given by Dominic Emery of BP in London in March of 2011, where he shows how BP’s policy on renewable energy was developed out of its own research into global economic trends: â€Å"Renewables, including biofuels, are projected to account for 18% of the growth in energy to 2030 – compared to 5% of the growth since 1990 - and the rate at which renewables penetrate the global energy market is similar to the emergence of nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s. The projected shift from higher to lower carbon energy is driven in large part by the anticipated trend of increasing policy support. So even in our base case – what we see as the most likely outcome - we see a change in the fuel mix that projects a strong future for renewables, gas and nuclear. Wind, solar, biofuels and other renewables all look set to grow their share in primary energy, from less than 2% now to over 6% by 2030. The same is true of nuclear and hydropower.The use of renewable energy will grow strongly – we believe at around 8.2% per year to 2030 which is almost four times the 2010 level by 2030.† (Emery, 2011) Focusing on cleantech and renewable energy is not simply a marketing ploy or lip-service for BP to mask its environmental destruction in oil drilling or the inordinate profits, salaries, and benefits of its executives & owners. Rather, BP has actually some of the most highly respected market analysts in the oil and gas industry looking at internal production numbers related to peak oil, and sees the development of cleantech in a society as proceeding at an accelerated rate over the next twenty years. In this business analysis, BP management decided to form a venture capital affiliate (AE Ventures) to invest profits from current operations in future business opportunities in cleantech. â€Å"AE Ventures is the strat egic corporate venture capital arm of BP Alternative Energy. The team is focusing on three investment activities: investing in highly innovative cleantech companies and funds; investing in next generation carbon offsets; incubating proprietary cleantech R&D. The team was set-up in 2006 and has since invested around $100m in 20 different cleantech and carbon ventures and funds. The aim is to invest a total of $150-200m by 2013.† (BP, 2011) An excellent example of this is the company’

Barriers To Effective Supply Chain Management

Barriers To Effective Supply Chain Management supply chain management Abstract Purpose -The aim of this paper is to have a qualitative analysis of benefits,barriers and bridges to effective strategic supply chain management. Design/methodology/approach The author use a case study approach .Interview was conducted from Supplier, SC manager and retailer . Findings- Results shows that customer satisfaction is consider as the primary benefits by all chain partners. And primary barrier and bridge is adequate information system and human factors. Research limitations/implications Due to the resource and time constraint the findings of this research are only based on supply chain of a single organization. Practical implications -This paper provide a understanding of how managers ,suppliers and retailers view benefits .barriers and bridges of SCM. Originality/value Keywords Supply chain management, Strategic management, Relationship marketing Paper type Research paper Introduction In todays business world competition is very fierce. Due to the Globalization, advance technology, and Increase customer demand , organizations need to raise there bar of performance continuously. As Thomas Edison said, If there is a better way, find it. So managers must keep his advice in mind. And supply chain management is a better way to compete in market. Supply chain management is the management of activities from availability and procurement of raw material , their processing into finish goods and then distribution of these goods. The purpose of this encompassing process is to enhance the business of the company and satisfy customers. By Sandra Maria Stammberger Christopher argues that the real competition is not company against company, but rather supplies chain against supply chain. For example, Wal-Mart and its suppliers will battle Carrefour and its suppliers in consumer markets around the world. This study has looked at benefits and barriers to supply chain integration. Vital bridges to supply chain success are also explored. SCM can reduce inventory, improve productivity, enhance quality, and reduce both product development and fulfillment cycles. As attractive as the potential benefits of supply chain management appear; the barriers or roadblocks to achieving them appear equally ominous such as internal external turf protection, inadequate information system, poor collaboration among the chain partners etc. And bridges/solutions are the mirror image of the most of the barriers (e.g., poor management leads to barrier; careful management is the bridge). The purpose of the study is to provide an understanding of the benefits, barriers, and bridges to successful SCM. For this purpose data is collected from the supplier ,SC manager and retailer of PEPSI (Gujranwala). We conclude that there are numerous benefits of SCM but to achieve these benefits we have to overcome two main barriers that is technology and human barrier. Focus of managers and scholars must not be on any specific barrier, but rather consider these two in combination for strategic supply chains to be successful . We hope that the research methodology given in this study provide some useful insight to help managers and their companies as they make headway along the arduous journey to supply chain leadership This research article is comprised as follows: literature of SCM in terms of benefits, barriers, and bridges followed by research methodology.And the main part of article includes findings from in-depth interviews , and conclusion with some suggestions for future research. In this way this article provide valuable insight into the state and direction of supply chain practice research. Background: benefits, barriers, and bridges An enormous amount of material has appeared in current years about supply chain management in both academic journals and trade press. Driving forces of supply chain management The driving forces of SCM stem from two sources: external pressures and potential benefits from strategic SC alignment. External pressures include such forces as advances in technology and increased customer demand across national borders (Mehta, 2004); maintaining lower costs while meeting these diverse needs (Cook and Garver, 2002); and intensified competition utilizing relationships among vertically aligned firms (Togar and Ramaswami, 2004). These pressures have begun shifting the focus of individual firms vying for market presence and power to supply chains competing against supply chains (Bhattacharya et al., 1995). Top ten benefits ,barriers and bridges have been identified by Top ten benefits ,barriers and bridges Benefits Barriers Bridges Increased inventory turnover Internal and external turf wars Information transperancy Increased revenues SCM cost reductions Poor SCM planning Collaborative planning Product availability Lack of SCM vision IT architecture /internet Responsiveness Executive commitment Formal performance tracking Economic value added IT deficiencies Adopt strategic SCM vision Capital utilization Organizational structure /culture Attention to human factors Decreased time to market Lack of SC measures Suppply base reduction Reduced logistics costs Lack alliance guidelines Segmented customers: Poor SCM understanding Shared investment/benefits Benefits of strategic supply chain managemen Increased inventory turnover: Inventory turn reflects how frequently a company flushes inventory from its system. In SCM company has relations both with supplier and customer so they receive material on time and deliver goods to customer on time. So inventory turnover increases. . (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Increased revenues SCM cost reductions: Main source of cost saving is inventory management. Through SCM it is possible to reduce your inventory level and leads to cost saving. Other ways of reducing cost: Better trade relations and lower transaction cost Enhance asset utilization via shared resources Better product design that cost less (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Product availability: Involvement of supplier in new product development process can solve many problems like communications and new ideas are generated in collaborative design efforts rather than non-colleborative. In todays marketplace there is a need to have the right product available at the right time and right place at a lower cost than the competition. . (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Responsiveness: Responding to customers in a courteous, personal and understandable way is vary important.Quickly response to customers requests is possible through collaboration with chain partners.Close relationship with partners enables them to foresee their collaborators needs and handle unexpected events.Supply chain responsiveness requires exceptional/outstanding manufacturing and logistical flexibility to meet unique or special requests.And it is possible through integration. . (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Economic value added: There are two view points from which share holder value can be measured. 1) Internal view point (Economic value is used) 2) External view point (Market capitalization is used) EVA is calculated by deducting the cost of capital from its operating profit. Drivers of shareholder value are : Operating cost reduction ,fixed capital and working capital efficiency and revenue growth. There is no doubt that supply chain strategy affects all these drivers directly or indirectly. These are some of the strategies: Lead time of all incoming products is reduced by having partnership with the suppliers . By integrating processes .internal lead time can be reduced. By having a strong relation with distributor information flow from demand size is improved. (Christopher, M., Ryals, L. (1999)). Capital utilization: Capital utilization refers to how a companys assets are best used. Capital utilization is dollars of revenue generated in relation to dollars invested in assets such as account receivables, inventory etc. Examples of supply chain management connection: Demand planning Transportation management Inventory management Accurate forecasting (Timme, S.G. and Williams-Timme, C. (2000) Decreased time to market Successful companies create supply chains that respond to the sudden changes in market. Effective supply chain enables a firm to respond to the short term changes in demand and supply in the market because of collaborative relationship with suppliers and distributors. (lee(2004) Reduced logistics costs: In an integrated supply chain ,efficiency and effectiveness of operations can be improved by managing the movement of material throughout the firm in an organic and systematic way. This allow the firm reducing their purchase cost ,transportation cost and inventory and warehousing cost.( La Londe, B.J. and Masters, J.M. (1994), Emerging logistics strategies: blueprints for the next century, International Journal of Physical Distribution Logistics Management, Vol. 24 No. 7, pp. 35-47. La Londe, and Masters,). Barriers to effective supply chain management Internal and external turf wars: Conflicts within the departments and within organizations are fundamental barrier to SC collaboration. In most of the companies all departments such as marketing, finance , operation work independently. But when managers make decisions they only consider their own department and ignore the impact of their decision on other departments and on whole organization. And same is the case with supply chain partners each partner work only for its own interest. So A tug of war begins as each department and partner pull the organization in their favor. (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001) Poor SCM planning: Supply chain management is a way to combine process and entrepreneurship. The concept of SCM begins with customer and integrates all activities from raw material procurement to finished product distribution. In many organizations SCM fails due to insufficient forecasting and poor planning process. For correct forecasting, planning process must involve appropriate players and relevant information. Andraski, J.C. (1998). Lack of SCM vision: One of the major barriers to SCM collaboration is that chain partners dont have clear and common vision of SCM. They hold different beliefs and values and supplier and customer dont share common goal. (Akkermans, H., Bogerd, P. and Vos, B. (1999), Lack of SCM vision: Lack of trust is one reason that channel partners are not willing to share information openly .because they have fear that if they share their weaknesses with their chain partners then they might use their weaknesses against them in near future. So Trust is pre-requisite in effective supply chain management. (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001), Executive commitment: Top management should here be understood as the group of people that together constitute the highest management executive authority in a company. Top management is in a position to play an important role in successful SCM collaboration. A prerequisite for performing SCM is top management support. Almost all of the barriers such as incompatible technology ,conflict among supply chain members ,lack of employee willingness to share information can only be overcome with top management support. According to (Moberg et al., 2003) training and education are Important factors for top management to encourage and intensify. (Sandberg, Erik1; Abrahamsson, Mats(2010)) IT deficiencies: As because of globalization suppliers and customers are located all over the world so integration has become a major challenge .Lack of integrated information system is a major barrier as sharing of information is not possible without integrated information system. IT is like a nerve system of SCM. ( E.W.T. Ngai a,*, A. Gunasekaran b ,(2004) Organizational structure /culture: Organization culture and structure are also very crucial barrier to SC collaboration. If an organization is working independently for a long time then its very difficult for it work in collaboration with other chain partners. Lack of SC measures: In order to have a strong collaboration among the supply chain partners it is crucial to measure the supply chain performance.(Brewer and speh ,2001;) Measuring supply chain performance Lack alliance guidelines: Each channel partner in the supply chain has a separate plan for activities such as production plan and schedules. If an organization only have understanding of their on process and they dont have understanding of their customers and suppliers processes then there is a gap exist and organization cant improve their processes as external processes have an influence on internal processes. Lack of same performance measures across different departments and across the channel partners leads to conflicting behaviors both internally and externally. ( Barratt, M. (2004a) Poor SCM understanding: Employee dont have understanding of how SCM is beneficial for the organization and how it will benefit their job .This poor understanding is one reason they are not willing to contribute in SCM implementation. Bridges to effective supply chain management Information transperancy: ( yu zhenxin (2001) Each member of the supply chain should have complete information about the other members. If members are willing to share information then this leads to the improve performance of the whole system . Collaborative planning: Planning should be made with the involvement of all parties involve in the supply chain. Such as demand forecasting, production schedules etc may not be effective without the involvement of all partners. IT architecture /internet: With the passage of time SCM is becoming more and more complex and require online communication system .In order to enhance the buyer- supplier relationship different information technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange ,Internet And World Wide Web Are Used. Formal performance tracking: In order to have a strong collaboration among the supply chain partners it is crucial to measure the supply chain performance. (Brewer and speh ,2001;). Measurement of supply chain performance can help in Reducing cost ,Identify and target those segments of market which are more profitable((Lambert and Pohlen, 2001),better and improves decisions and test and employ new strategies Adopt strategic SCM vision: Chain partners should have clear and common vision of SCM. They should hold same beliefs and values and supplier and customer share common goal. (Akkermans, H., Bogerd, P. and Vos, B. (1999), Attention to human factors: A fundamental factor for the successful SCM collaboration is the human factor . People resist changes and they dont want to share information with others .So attention must be paid to human factors first as their willingness to implement effective SCM is the key to success. . (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Suppply base reduction: Supply base reduction is use by the firms to enhance quality , increase responsiveness , and reduce cost . Coke has adopted N+1 rule of thumb for determining maximum number of supplies. It means they have just 1 more supplier then required. (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Segmented customers: Organization should collaborate only with those suppliers and customers who are strategically important for the business. This segmentation play a very important role in successful collaboration.(Tang and Gattorna, 2003). Segmentation of customers is done on the basis of their buying behavior and services needed. Different supply chains are made for different segments. A different strategy and supportive culture and leadership style is required for different supply chains. To serve the segmented supply chain a further step is to segment the suppliers according to their abilities. Shared investment/benefits: For SCM to be more effective and successful there is a need to share benefits resulting from integrated SCM. Benefit sharing is as much important as information sharing . even though reliable and trust worthy information is available ,there should be a need to fairly allocate benefits among members otherwise it weakens their relationship. (Fawcett, S.E. and Magnan, G.M. (2001)). Methodology SCM removes the boundaries of the organization therefore it is known as boundary spanning activity (Bowersos et al,1999) . To Have a macro picture ,information is collected through channel analysis. In this way more generalized view about the benefits ,barriers and bridges can be obtained. Case studies The case study method is used for answering questions regarding what, why, and how related to SCM implementation. This method put emphasis on in detail qualitative analysis. In order to have a cross-channel analysis interview is conducted from supplier ,SC manager and retailer. A structured ,face-to-face interview was conducted and Confidentiality was ensured .Structured interviews are those conducted when it is known at the outset what information is needed. The interview has a list of predetermined questions to be asked. The interview guide was divides into general questions and questions about the benefits ,barriers and bridges faced by the organization. Average interview duration was 1 and half hour. And face-to-face interview helps in repeating and rephrasing questions if not understood by respondents, and clarify doubts. Interview consist of Open-ended questions. Results and discussion Top five benefits ,barriers and bridges Benefits Barriers Bridges Customer satisfaction Inadequate information system Adequate information system On time delivery Lack share risk and reward Sharing of risk and reward Response to customer request Lack willingness to share information Willingness to share information Order fulfillment lead time Lack employee empowerment Senior management interaction Cost reduction Measuring customer demand Supply chain training Benefits Customer satisfaction: Company customers are satisfied because company is in a position to fulfill their needs, deliver goods on time and at low cost through integrated SC. On-time delivery: The development of closer, cooperative relationships with chain partners together with the establishment of integrated systems and processes make it possible to consistently deliver goods and services to customer at the right time and at the right place. Respond to customer requests: Business analysts have been saying for years-that customers matter most. So response to customers need as quickly as possible is very important for the success of business. One way of doing this in todays competitive market is to develop strong relationship with suppliers, retailers and distributers. This collaborative supply chain enables all parties to respond to their customer speedily. Order fulfillment lead times: Supply chain integration also reduces order fulfillment lead times by having exact quantities on-hand when needed . Cost reduaction: One way of cost reduction is to reduce cost of inventory. Another is sharing of resources with your chain partners and also by reducing product development cost through integrated process. Some other benefits includes: Handle unexpected challenges More open and trusting relationships enable more accurate information to be shared on more timely basis. This helps in making Supply chain partners better able to foresee their collaborators needs and handle unexpected events (e.g unique or special requests ) Productivity One of the most important benefit due to which organizations are adopting SCM is to increase revenues and decrease costs. Productivity is the ratio of Outputs/inputs. if planned and managed correctly, changes in supply chain relationships can help in producing same outputs with low cost of inputs and ultimately revenue increase . This doubleimpact of supply chain management is motivating factor for organizations to build strong relationship with chain partners in order to constantly reduce the costs of purchased items and to work with them to improve their processes in ways that increase productivity. Product innovation lead times, Collaborative product development help to minimize product innovation lead time. Involvement of all the partners results in higher quality,lower cost and less time to market. To gain these benefits there should be a need to build strong relationship base on trust and communication is necessary to share technology, co-locate personnel, and accept supplier-generated design improvements. Overall product quality Through supply chain integration it is possible to shift the responsibity of quality to the supplier. Better quality is assured by supplier certification programs . Barriers Inadequate information system: Inadequate information system is that lack in quantity and quality of information if not enough information is shared or the information shared is of little value strategic SCM may fail. Lack of willingness to share risk and rewards: As employee dont have clear understanding of what SCM is and how will benefit their job so they are not willing to share their risk and reward. Lack willingness to share information: Lack of trust is one reason that people are not willing to share information openly .because they have fear that if they share their weaknesses with their chain partners then they might use their weaknesses against them in near future. So Trust is pre-requisite in effective supply chain management. Lack employee empowerment: Lack of employee empowerment is a barrier to SCM to be successful. As employee empowerment is one way to motivate employees to participate in making SC collaboration successful. Employee empowerment is a form of decentralization it means giving employees the power to make decisions regarding their job and tasks. One of these decisions includes making purchasing decisions .i.e. when and how much is to be purchased..This will leads to successful implementation of Just-in Time manufacturing concept. Measuring customer demand: Accurately forecast customer demand is very important for successful SCM integration . In case manufacturers and distributers fails to accurately forecast customer demands then there are chances of stock outs and organizations face difficulties in maintain adequate inventory level. Some other barriers includes: Organizational boundaries There are two kind of boundaries in any organizarion intra and inter-organizational boundaries. These boundries should be removed for successful supply chain integration. For successful supply chain integration intra and inter -organizational boundaries should be removed. inter -organizational boundaries overcoming the company boundaries and working closely with suppliers and customers. (i.e., functional, business process, information/materials flows, and information/communication technology integration) intra -organizational boundaries Integration between different discipline and functions, such as manufacturing, distribution, marketing, accounting, information, and engineering. Measuring SC contribution, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. Measuring Supply chain contribution is very important . these four measures can be used to measure supply chain contribution. Delivery: percentage of entire order deliver to the customer when he or she wanted it. Quality: for this purpose Customer satisfaction and customer loyaty is checked. Customer satisfaction includes giving customer what they expects. Customer loyaty is the percentage of customers who still purchase their products after purchasing once. Time: order fulfilment lead time is effected by inventory level. For total order-fulfilment lead time, first The time spent in inventory should be computed for each part of the supply chain (supplier, manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer) and then added. Cost: measure cost along the supply chain is to measure efficiency in value added or productivity. One measure of efficiency is as follows: Efficiency = sales cost of materials / labor + overhead Lack resources for SCM Resource constraints represent Serious hurdle in supply chain integration efforts Although companies are trying to best utilize the people resources that they have, but due to their nature of always trying to do more with less, create problem of lack of resources. e.g The managers who are Conside to be best for handling supply chain initiatives because of their experience, work ethic, creativity, technical knowledge, and personal credibility are always in high demand. interviewed managers identified other critical resources constraints including capital and technology Bridges Adequate information system: EDI LINKAGES: ERP system is a single unified system in which several computer hardware and software components are used . This unified system helps in cross functional integration (e.g between all departments , accounting departments, as well as marketing, strategic management, and human resources, in addition to warehousing, Information Technology, logistics, and production. ). Organizations adopt ERP system in order to integrate data and process into a single unified unit rather than trying to synchronize data and process across different systems Sharing of risk and reward: Interview manager also highlighted the point that in order to build closer relationship they share both Risk and reward with their chain partners. Frequent communication: Open and clear broad line of communication should be develop (Mohr and spekman (1994)) Senior management interaction: Top management is responsible for integrated supply chain management. Only senior manager can remove the walls between the organization and between the organizations. Supply chain training: As supply chain is becoming more popular and technology focused ,the individuals directly involve with it are required to give additional training. Some ways of giving training to individuals are On the job training Take classes out of work Online training Some other bridges includes: Suppply base reduction, Vendor managed inventory (vmi), Use of total cost analysis, Common goals and shared mission statement, Use of cross-functional teams and cross-functional processes Suppply base reduction: Supply base reduction is use by the firms to enhance quality , increase responsiveness , and reduce cost . Coke has adopted N+1 rule of thum for determining maximum number of supplies.It means they have just 1 more supplier then required. VENDOR MANAGED INVENTORY (VMI). Supplier is responsible for managing inventory at customer s location .Customer is not required to reorder .Its the duty of supplier to maintain the stock of customer at optimum level. Use of total cost analysis As we all know that Competition in todays markets is much more then before.so in order to compete in market , organizations need to offer products at low price and high quality. Through SC collaboration it is possible to reduce Total production cost . by having long term relationship with supplier, supplier reduce the cost of their supplies.in this way total production cost is reduced. Common goals and shared mission statement For SCM cooperative efforts to be successful, increase understanding and respect for partners businesses is very important. This process involves common golas and shared mission statement.When they all have a common goal , combine efforts are made to achieve that goal .And decisions are made for the success of each party. Use of cross-functional teams and Cross-functional processes Effective supply chain requires coordination across businesses and within the business. Coordination within the business is possible through Cross-functional teams and process. . For example, a cross-functional team is often used to plan and control the master schedule for manufacturing. The team consists of representatives from marketing/ sales, production, human resources, and accounting/ finance. The team develops a forecast of future expected orders, plans the capacity of manufacturing, and schedules customer orders. Everyone then agrees to work toward executing this plan. Without a cross-functional team of this type, marketing makes a forecast, production uses a different forecast to plan production, and the capital is not made available to provide the capacity needed. Clear Alliance management guidelines. alliance management techniques, none of the interviewed firms have every one in place. Clear roles and responsibilities are defined and communicated. Risks and rewards are shared on a mutually acceptable basis Technology linkages can be used to routinize information exchange. Overall product quality Through supply chain integration it is possible to shift the responsibity of quality to the supplier. Better quality is assured by supplier certification programs . Conclusion and Limitations This article attempts to identify potential benefits ,barriers and bridges of successful implementation of SC integration . Results shows that all chain partners are enjoying many benefits from SC collaboration. Primary benefit mentioned by all chain partners is Customer satisfaction. In supply chain ,Supplier want to satisfy their customer (i.e. manufacturer) and manufacturer want end user to be satisfied. So for this purpose they must be aware of what customer expects from the product or service and then make efforts to meet their expectations . SC manager ,supplier and retailer do not share the same values and beliefs regarding the primary barrier and bridges of supply chain management. SC manager identify human factors as the primary barrier to SC collaborati

Muscular Dystrophy :: essays research papers

Discovered in 1861 by Guillaume B.A. Duchenne, muscular dystrophy is a very unfortunate disease to inherit. Muscular dystrophy is a group of heredity disorders characterized by progressive muscle weakness and wasting. The trait for muscular dystrophy may be transmitted as an autosomal dominant. In this case, if some original carrier of the disease had children, the children would have a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the disease. It is also carried as an autosomal recessive trait, in which case the offspring of the original carrier would have a very small chance of inheriting the trait. Muscular dystrophy is also a sex-linked trait. If someone carrying the trait for the disease conceived a male, the newborn boy would have a very high risk of later on developing the disease. Incidence of muscle dystrophy is estimated to be one in 3-4,000 male births. There are also about 15,000 muscular dystrophy patients in the United States at any given time. Those who have muscular dystrophy are missing the protein called ?dystrophin.? Before scientists ever discovered the missing protein, the tested carriers for the disease had a high presence of elevated serum levels of creatine and phosphokinase. The disease can now be found for a prenatal diagnosis. Individuals who inherit this disease will have a rapid progression of symptoms. Walking becomes difficult, and skeletal contractures and muscle atrophy follows. They also usually need wheelchairs by adolescence. Half of the receivers of the disease unfortunately develop some form of mental retardation and most never make it past there teenage years. Currently, options for a treatment of muscular dystrophy are limited. Physical therapy may slow down the progression of deformities. Such devices as wheel chairs, crutches, or secondary orthopedic limbs may permit mobility. There are also a few medications that can help relieve pain and stiffness in the muscles. The Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Parent Project Muscular Dyst rophy Research and the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh helped fund a research project for the disease. The research, carried out by Johnny Huard, Ph. Muscular Dystrophy :: essays research papers Discovered in 1861 by Guillaume B.A. Duchenne, muscular dystrophy is a very unfortunate disease to inherit. Muscular dystrophy is a group of heredity disorders characterized by progressive muscle weakness and wasting. The trait for muscular dystrophy may be transmitted as an autosomal dominant. In this case, if some original carrier of the disease had children, the children would have a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the disease. It is also carried as an autosomal recessive trait, in which case the offspring of the original carrier would have a very small chance of inheriting the trait. Muscular dystrophy is also a sex-linked trait. If someone carrying the trait for the disease conceived a male, the newborn boy would have a very high risk of later on developing the disease. Incidence of muscle dystrophy is estimated to be one in 3-4,000 male births. There are also about 15,000 muscular dystrophy patients in the United States at any given time. Those who have muscular dystrophy are missing the protein called ?dystrophin.? Before scientists ever discovered the missing protein, the tested carriers for the disease had a high presence of elevated serum levels of creatine and phosphokinase. The disease can now be found for a prenatal diagnosis. Individuals who inherit this disease will have a rapid progression of symptoms. Walking becomes difficult, and skeletal contractures and muscle atrophy follows. They also usually need wheelchairs by adolescence. Half of the receivers of the disease unfortunately develop some form of mental retardation and most never make it past there teenage years. Currently, options for a treatment of muscular dystrophy are limited. Physical therapy may slow down the progression of deformities. Such devices as wheel chairs, crutches, or secondary orthopedic limbs may permit mobility. There are also a few medications that can help relieve pain and stiffness in the muscles. The Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Parent Project Muscular Dyst rophy Research and the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh helped fund a research project for the disease. The research, carried out by Johnny Huard, Ph.

New England vs. Chesapeake Paper Essay

The New England and Chesapeake regions varied in many ways. They varied economically, socially, and religiously. At first there were many small colonies but then they grew into two distinct regions, the New England and Chesapeake areas. The New England region was a more superior place to live in than the Chesapeake region because the people in New England developed swifter and better. The Chesapeake region suffered because it had social, climatic, and religious problems. Even though the southern area is known for their blossoming fields and enormous plantations, the climate is scorching and the area suffered from many diseases. (Jamestown Settlement: Primary Sources New Brittannia). As a result, a large part of the population actually ended up dying due to these harmful diseases like the disease of smallpox. Yes, the southern colonies had a thriving economy due to the growing of tobacco and rice, but they lacked diversity. In this area they mainly had only one type of religion, Anglican. They absolutely had no religious tolerance. The social structure was also way off during this time period. It consisted with the majority of the population being poor indentured servants and slaves and then a small portion being wealthy plantation owners. The plantation owners were white men and they held all the power to vote in the society. That is why this region was so underdeveloped. They had a moist and blistering climate, and they had no diversity religiously or socially. However, The New England colonies developed better than the Chesapeake region because they had a better climate, and were more diverse socially along with religiously. Firstly, it was colder in this region so the people there did not have any destructive illnesses lingering around. Secondly they had more of a mixture in religion like Quakers and Catholics. The people in these colonies focused on religion and they wanted close- knit families (Document A). They did not just have one sole religion but several. The area also had more of a diverse social system with many different levels. They had poor people, middle-class working people, and than the rich. The people in this region believed that they should struggle and win together as a team. (City upon a Hill). The main reason they had a diverse social class is because they did not need to only depend on farming for their economic income. They had a fishing industry and the New England colonies were placed in an urban area so the people had more choices for jobs, although some people still farmed. They also had many technological advances in the New England Colony with Benjamin Franklin making many machines and inventions during this era. That is why the New England area was more developed and had a better chance of surviving. In Conclusion, the New England area was a much better place to live. They were not as prone to diseases because of the colder climate, they were more diverse socially and religiously, and they had economic opportunities because they were an industry. This difference in development needed to occur because without it America wouldn’t be as diverse as it is today because everyone would just have conformed together.

The Overcoat

Meanings and Indeterminacy in Gogol's â€Å"The Overcoat† Author(s): Victor Brombert Reviewed work(s): Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 135, No. 4 (Dec. , 1991), pp. 569-575 Published by: American Philosophical Society Stable URL: http://www. jstor. org/stable/986817 . Accessed: 25/01/2012 04:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www. jstor. org/page/info/about/policies/terms. sp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email  protected] org. American Philosophical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. h ttp://www. jstor. org Indeterminacy Meanings and in Gogol's The Overcoat* VICTOR BROMBERT Henry Putnam University Professorof Romanceand ComparativeLiterature Princeton University kaky Akakyevich is the central characterof Gogol's story TheOvercoat. Although Dostoyevsky gave common currency to the term â€Å"antihero† in Notes from Underground,it is Gogol's Akaky Akakyevich who is the genuine, unmitigated, and seemingly unredeemable antihero. For Dostoyevsky's anti-heroic paradoxalist, afflicted with hypertrophia of the consciousness, is well-read, cerebral, incurably bookish, and talkative. Akaky Akakyevich is hardly aware, and almost inarticulate. Gogol's artistic wager was to try to articulate this inarticulateness. The story, in its plot line, is simple. A most unremarkable copying clerk in a St. Petersburg ministry-bald, pockmarked, short-sighted, and the scapegoat of his colleagues who invent cruel ways of mocking himdiscovers one day that his pathetically threadbare coat no longer protects him against the fierce winter wind. The tailor he consults categorically refuses to repair the coat which is now beyond repair, and empts Akaky Akakyevich into having a new overcoat made, one totally beyond his means, but which by dint of enormous sacrifices, he manages to acquire and wear with a newly discovered sense of pride. But his happiness lasts only one short day. Crossing a deserted quarter at night, he is attacked by two thieves who knock him to the ground and steal his coat. Drenched, frozen, deeply upset, brutally reprimanded by a superior whose help he dared seek, A kaky develops a fever, becomes delirious, and dies. One can hardly speak of an interesting plot line. Yet this simple story lends itself to orgies of interpretations. In fact, there may be as many interpretations as there are readers. The Overcoatcan be read as a parable, a hermeneutic puzzle, an exercise in meaninglessness. But to begin with, there is the temptation to read it seriously as satire with a social and * Read 9 November 1990. PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. 135, NO. 4, 1991 569 570 VICTOR BROMBERT moral message. In The Nose, Gogol had already made fun of the rankconsciousness and venality of civil servants. In The Overcoat, he seems to deride systematically the parasitical, lazy, phony, world of Russian officialdom, whose members are the impotent mediators of a hierarchy of ineffectual power structure in which every subordinate fears and apes his superior. Early Russian critics, convinced that literature must have a moral message, read such a denunciatory and corrective satirical intention into the story even though it is clear that Gogol constantly shifts his tone, defends no apparent norm, and systematically ironizes any possible â€Å"serious† message. There is of course the temptation to read The Overcoatas a tale of compassion, as a plea for brotherhood. The pathetically defenseless little clerk, taunted and persecuted by the group, remains blissfully oblivious to the cruel pranks of which he is the butt, intent on his humble copying activity. Only when the jokes become too outrageous, or interfere with his work, does he protest ever so mildly. But here the tone of the story seems to change. For Gogol introduces a young man, recently appointed to the same office, who is on the point of sharing in the general fun, and who is suddenly struck by the strange notes in Akaky's voice which touch his heart with pity and make him suddenly see everything in a very different light. A true revelation emanating from an â€Å"unnatural† (neestestvennyi) power allows him to hear other words behind Akaky's banal entreaty to be left alone. What he hears are the deeply penetrating, unspoken words echoing with poignant significance: â€Å"I am thy brother. And with this voice from behind the voice comes the shocked awareness of how much â€Å"inhumanity† there is in human beings, how much brutality lurks in what goes as civilized society and civilized behavior. The apparent lesson in humanity given by the scapegoat victim seems, in the immediate context, to have an almost religious character, especially if one relates it to the narrator's comments, after Akaky's death, on ho w a man of meekness who bore the sneers and insults of his fellow human beings disappeared from this world, but who, before his agony, had a vision of the bright visitant (svetluy gost). The man of meekness, the man of sorrows, like the unspoken but clearly heard â€Å"I am thy brother,† seems to have a Christian, if not Christological, resonance. But we forget Akaky's name, and that we are not allowed to do. For the patronymic appellation not only stresses the principle of repetition (Akaky's first name being exactly the same as his father's), but the funny sound repetition is even funnier because the syllable kak = like (tak kak = just as) embeds the principle of sameness in Akaky's name, determining, it would seem, his single-minded, life-long activity of copying and implicit condemnation to sameness. Regarding the many years Akaky served in the same department, Gogol observes that he â€Å"remained in exactly the same place, in exactly the same position, in exactly the same job, doing exactly the same kind of work, to wit copying official documents. † But there is better (or worse) especially to Russian ears, for kakatj GOGOL'S THE OVERCOAT 571 (from the Greek cacos = bad, evil) is children's talk for defecate, and caca in many languages refers to human excrement. To be afflicted with such a name clearly relates to the garbage being regularly dumped on Akaky as he walks in the street, and to his being treated with no more respect by the caretakers than a common fly. The cruel verbal fun around the syllable kak extends beyond the character's name, and contaminates Gogol's text. Gogol indulges in seemingly endless variations on the words tak, kak,kakoi,kakoi-to,kakikh-to,vot-kak,neekak,takoi, takaya,kaknibut, (just so, that's how, in no way, somehow, and so on) which in the translation disappear altogether. The exploitations of sound effects or sound meanings clearly correspond to a poet's fascination with the prestigious cacophonic resources of ordinary speech. 1 One last point about the choice of Akaky's name, specifically the Christian act of â€Å"christening†: according to custom, the calendar was opened at random and several saints' names (Mokkia, Sossia), including the name of the martyr Khozdazat, were considered, only to be rejected by the mother because they sounded so strange. Akaky was chosen because that was the name of the father. But Acacius, a holy monk of Sinai, was also a saint and martyr, and we find ourselves-especially since the Greek prefix a (Acacius) signifies: not bad, therefore good, meek, humble, obedient-back to the religious motif. If Akaky continues to copy for his own pleasure at home, this is in large part because the bliss of copying has a specifically monastic resonance. Gogol does indeed refer to his copying as a â€Å"labor of love. † Here a new temptation assails the reader. Should The Overcoatnot be read as hagiography in a banal modern context, or at the very least as a parody of hagiography? A number of elements seem to lend support to such a reading of the story in or against the perspective of the traditional lives of the saints: the humble task of copying documents, reference to the theme of the martyr (muchenik),salvational terminology, sacrificial motifs or communion (â€Å"I am thy brother†), Akaky's visions and ecstasies, his own apparitions from beyond the grave. But the most telling analogy with hagiographic lore is the conversion-effect on others, first on the young man who has a revelation of a voice that is not of this world (svet), and toward the end he self-admiring, domineering, Very Important Person on whom Akaky's ghost-like apparition makes a neverto-be-forgotten impression. 2 The overcoat itself can take on religious connotations because clothing, in the symbolism of the Bible and orthodox liturgy, often represents righteousness and salvation. The only trouble with such an interpretation-and Gogol has written Meditations on the Divine Liturgy wh ich 1 Boris Eichenbaum speaks of Gogol's â€Å"phonic inscriptions† and â€Å"sound-semantics† in â€Å"How ‘The Overcoat' is Made,† in Gogol from the Twentieth Century, ed. Robert A. Maguire, Princeton University Press, 1974, p. 280. 2 See John Schillinger, â€Å"Gogol's ‘The Overcoat'as a Travesty of Hagiography,† Slavic and East EuropeanJournal, Spring 1972, 16, 1: 36-41. 572 VICTOR BROMBERT refer to the priest's robe of righteousness as a garment of salvation3-is that the coat can have an opposite symbolic significance, that of hiding the truth. Hence the traditional image of disrobing to reveal the naked self. In addition, there are many other possible meanings quite remote from the religious sphere: the metonymic displacement of the libido (the Russian word for overcoat- shinel- is appropriately feminine), the effects of virilization (in his new coat, Akaky surprises himself in the act of running after some woman in the street! ), loss of innocence and loss of â€Å"original celibacy. â€Å"4 The coat itself thus turns out to be a form of temptation (material acquisition, vanity, pride), and the devilish tailor is the agent of this temptation just as the writer or narrator (who in fact is he? â€Å"tempts† the reader into a succession of vacuous and mutually canceling interpretations. This provocative writer-reader relationship, sustained throughout the narration, casts a special light on Akaky's fundamental activity of copying- the act of writing in its purest form. It does not take much imagination (our modern critics discover self-referentiality everywhere) to see in Akaky's c opying an analogue of the writer's activity. And like the proverbially absorbed writer or scholar, he is obsessed by his writing to the point of finding himself in the middle of the street while thinking that he is in the middle of a sentence. This self-absorbed and selfreferential nature of Gogol's act of writing might be seen to imply a negative attitude toward the referential world, toward all that which is not writing. Much like Flaubert, who dreamt of composing a â€Å"book about nothing,† and whom contemporary critics like to view as an apostle of self-referential, intransitive literature, Gogol yearns for monastic withdrawal. Flaubert was haunted by the figures of the monk and the saint. Similarly, Gogol explained in a letter: â€Å"It is not the poet's business to worm his way into the world's marketplace. Like a silent monk, he lives in the world without belonging to it . . . â€Å"5 Pushed to a logical extreme, this sense of the radical deceptiveness of life calls into question worldly authority, and leads to a destabilizing stance that challenges the principle of authority, a subversive gesta of which the real hero is the artist himself. There is indeed something devilish about Gogol's narrative voice. It has already been suggested that the devil makes an appearance in the figure of the tailor who tempts Akaky into buying the coat. This caricature of the sartorial artist who quite literally is the creator of the overcoat, this ex-serf sitting with his legs crossed under him like a Turkish pasha, has diabolical earmarks: he is a â€Å"one-eyed devil† living at the end of a black staircase; he has a de3 See Anthony Hippisley, â€Å"Gogol's ‘The Overcoat':A further Interpretation,† Slavic and East EuropeanJournal, Summer, 1976, 20, 2: 121-129. Hippisley points out (p. 123) that Gogol, in his Meditations on the Divine Liturgy quotes Psalms 132:9: â€Å"Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness .. † 4 The expression is Charles Bernheimer's, in his fine essay â€Å"Cloaking the Self: The Literary Space of Gogol's ‘Overcoat,†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ PMLA, January 1975, 90, 1: 53-61. 5 Letter to Pogodin, quoted by Charles Bernheimer (op. cit. , p. 53) and Donald Fanger, The Creationof Nikolai Gogol, Harvard University Press, 1979. GOGOL'S THE OVERCOAT 573 formed big toenail, hard and thick as a tortoise shell; he handles a thricereferred-to snuff box on which the face of a general has been effaced (the devil is faceless); he seems to be nudged by the devil and charges â€Å"the devil knows what prices. 6 This verbal playfulness seems to extend to the narrator himself, who undercuts his own narration in truly diabolical fashion by means of grotesque hyperbolizing, mixtures of realistic and parodistic elements, sudden shifts from the rational to the irrational, and elliptical displacements from epic triviality to unrestrained fantasy. Indulging in a game of mirages and fog-like uncertainties, the narrator subverts the logical progression of his story. Ultimately, even the ghost is debunked, and we are back in the blackness of quotidian reality. In the Russian text, these shifts in tone and textual instabilities are even more insidious, since everything seems to blur into the undifferentiated flow of seemingly endless paragraphs. This merging of discontinuities undermines any sense of plot, undercuts the notion of subject, and suggests at every point that what is told is another story, thereby teasing the reader into endless interpretations that can neither be stabilized nor stopped. Some of this is the inevitable result of a mimesis of inarticulateness, a narrative style that is the imitative substitute for Akaky's manner of communicating mostly through prepositions, adverbs, and â€Å"such parts of speech as have no meaning whatsoever. † But the strategy of destabilization and fragmented diction also has a deeper subversive purpose. The non sequiturs and hesitations reveal the arbitrariness of any fictional structure, and in the last analysis subvert any auctorial authority. The concluding page of The Nose represents an authorial critique of the story as incomprehensible and useless. The mediating self-negator is the fictionalized narrator identified in The Overcoat as the raskazyvaiushyi-the narrating one. And this narrator, occasionally pretending to be ignorant or semi-ignorant (like Cervantes's narrative voice as of the very first sentence of Don Quixote) does not know in what town, on what day, on what street the action takes placein fact, complains of loss of memory. All this, however, only accentuates the possible importance of the unknowable and the unsayable, while protecting the protagonist's sacred privacy. The narrator clumsily speculates on what Akaky might or might not have said to himself as he stares at an erotic window display in the elegant quarter of St. Petersburg, and he concludes: â€Å"But perhaps he never even said anything at all to himself. For it is impossible to delve into a person's mind [in Russian, literally: to creep into a person's soul]. The Overcoat is thus marked by conflicting and enigmatic signals, pointing to oxymoronic textures of meanings. Inversions hint at conver6 Dmitry Chizhevsky, who stresses the presence of the Devil in â€Å"The Overcoat,†writes: â€Å"As someone who was well read in religious literature, as a connoisseur and collector of folklore materials-from popular songs and legends-Gogol of course knew about the Christian and folk tradition that the Devil is faceless† (â€Å"About Go gol's ‘Overcoat,†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ in Gogol from the Twentieth Century, p. 20). 574 VICTOR BROMBERT sions. What is seemingly up is in fact seen to be down, while the reverse is equally true. The downtrodden creature turns out to be capable of heroic sacrifices, while the powerfully constituted VIP with the appearance of a bogatyr(hero) is cut down to human size by fright. On the other hand, when Akaky's fall is likened to a disaster such as destroys the czars and other great ones of this earth, one may well feel that Gogol is ironic about all heroic poses, heroic values, and heroic figures. When Akaky wears the new coat, his pulse beats faster, his bearing seems to indicate a newly discovered sense of purpose (tzel), his eyes have an audacious gleam, he appears somehow to have almost become virile. Yet the overcoat is also the emblem of false values, of trivial passion, of a silly reason for a human downfall. One might wish therefore to read a deeper significance into these mutually canceling interpretations. In English, the word passion is fraught with a multiple significance: in the ordinary sense, it denotes intense and even overwhelming emotion, especially of love; yet etymologically, it signifies suffering. Love and suffering are of course linked in a grotesque manner in The Overcoat. Whether such love and such suffering are commensurate with any objective reality remains unresolved in this story which seems to say that any love is great no matter what its object, that love is all-powerful; and conversely, that any passion can drag one down, that the more intense it seems, the emptier it is. Gogol's style is in itself an admirable instrument of ambivalence: enlarging trivia, and thereby trivializing what we may for a moment be tempted to take as significant. What complicates Gogol's text for the reader is that it is not a case of simple ambivalence. It will not do to praise Gogol as a compassionate realist with an ethical message or to see him as a playful anti-realist indulging in overwrought imagery and in the reflections of distorting mirrors. The hard fact is that Gogol is a protean writer whose simultaneity of possible meanings allows for no respite and no comfortable univocal mess age. If the narrator is center stage, it is because ultimately he becomes a performer, a buffoonish actor mimicking incoherence itself. Intelligent readers of Gogol-Boris Eichenbaum, Vladimir Nabokov, Victor Erlich, Charles Bernheimer, Donald Fanger8-have in varying degrees and with different emphases, understood that rather than indulging in a feast of ideas to be taken seriously, Gogol delighted in verbal acts as a game-a game that implied the autonomy of narrative style, a declaration of artistic independence, and a thorough deflation of l'esprit de serieux. I am largely indebted to Dmitry Chizhevsky who has admirably shown how the repeated and incongruous use of the adverb â€Å"even† (daje) breaks up the logical train of thoughts, enlarges trivia, and frustrates the reader by making the insignificant seem significant, and vice versa. Such a narrative strategy is related by Chizhevsky to the semantic oscillations of the text (â€Å"About Gogol's ‘Overcoat,'† in Gog ol from the Twentieth Century, pp. 295-322). 8 Boris Eichenbaum, op. cit. Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, New Directions, 1944; Victor Erlich, Gogol, Yale University Press, 1969; Charles Bernheimer, op. cit. ; Donald Fanger, op. cit. GOGOL'S THE OVERCOAT 575 Perhaps there is an underlying autobiographic urge in The Overcoat, and the verbal clowning and narrative pirouettes are telling a story in which the irrational takes on an exorcising and liberating virtue-much as the idiosyncrasies of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Undergroundpresent a vehement protest against spiritually deadening rationality. What is certain is that Gogol needs to wear a mask. Haunted by the monsters born of his imagination, afraid to be unmasked, Gogol literally disappears in his writing by becoming a multiplicity of voices. 9 But there is a danger in depicting Gogol as an escape artist struggling against his own demons at the same time as he struggles against the repressive reality he wishes to deny. Similarly, there is the risk of considerable distortion in the determination of formalist and post-structuralist critics to draw Gogol to the camp of radical modernity by seeing him exclusively concerned with speech acts and sheer rhetoricity. Polyvalence does not mean the absence of meaning. The real problem, much as in the case of Flaubert, who complained of the plethora of subjects and inflationary overfill of meanings, is that over-abundance and multiplicity become principles of indeterminacy. Excess is related to emptiness. Similarly, Gogol seems torn between the futility of experience and the futility of writing about it, between the conviction that writing is the only salvation, and that it is powerless to say the unsayable-aware at all points of the gulf between signifier and signified. Nabokov may have come closest to the heart of Gogol's dark playfulness when he wrote: â€Å"The gaps and black holes in the texture of Gogol's style imply flaws in the texture of life itself. . 10 To this one might add, however, that the hollowness of the gaps, the terrifying absence, is also an absence/presence: a void that asks to be filled by the interpretive act. The dialectics of negativity, so dependent on the antiheroic mode embodied by Akaky, displace the production of meaning from the almost non-existent character and undecidable text to the creative reader. Victor Erlich has very convincingly discussed Gogol's motif of the mask and tendency to â€Å"speak in somebody else's voice† in his chapter â€Å"The Great Impersonator† in Gogol, op. cit. , pp. 210-223. Gogol himself writes: â€Å"If anyone had seen the monsters that issued from my pen, at first for my own purposes alone-he would certainly have shuddered† (quoted by Valery Bryusov in his essay â⠂¬Å"Burnt to Ashes,† reproduced in Gogolfrom the Twentieth Century, p. 111). 10Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, op. cit. , p. 143.