Reasons for Globalization

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Most companies move their business operations to foreign countries by going global. They take their business overseas for different reasons. These companies adopt the reactive or defensive approach to stay ahead of the competition. A few of them take the proactive or aggressive approach to accomplish the same purpose. A majority of them choose to adopt both approaches to avoid a decrease in their competition. In order to remain competitive, companies move as quickly as possible to secure a strong position in some of the key world or emerging markets with products customized for the need of the people in such areas in which they plan to establish. Most of these world markets are attracting companies with new capital investments with very good incentives. Some of the reactive or defensive reasons for going global are:

(1) Trade Barriers

(2) Customer Demands

(3) Globalization of Competitors

(4) Regulations and Restrictions

In the case of trade barriers, companies move from exporting their products to manufacturing them overseas in order to avoid the burden of tariffs, quotas, the policy of buy-local and other restrictions that make export too expensive to foreign markets. Companies respond to customer demands for effective operations and product assurance and reliability, or/and logistical problem solutions. Most foreign customers, who seek accessibility to suppliers may request that supply stay local in order to enhance the flow of production. Companies usually follow that request to avoid losing the business. For the globalization of competitors, companies are aware that if they leave companies overseas too long without challenge or competition, their investments or foreign operations in the world market may be so solid that competition will be difficult. Therefore, they try to act quickly. Most companies’ home government may have regulations and restrictions that are so inconvenient and expensive, thus limiting the expansion, encroaching in the companies’ profits, and making their costs uncontrollable. Hence the reason for the companies moving to different market environment with few foreign restrictive operations. The proactive or aggressive reasons for going global are:

(a) Growth opportunities

(b) Economies of Scale

(c) Incentives

(d) Resource assess and Cost Savings

Many companies will prefer to invest their excess profits in order to expand, but sometimes they are limited because of the maturity of the markets in their area. Therefore, they seek the overseas new markets to provide such growth opportunities. So, these companies, in addition to investing their excess profits, also try to maximize efficiency by employing their underutilized resources in human and capital assets such as management, machinery, and technology. Companies seek economies of scale in order to achieve a higher level of output spread over large fixed costs to lower the per-unit cost. They also, want to maximize the use of their manufacturing equipment and spread the high costs of research and development over the product life cycle. Some of the developing countries that need improvement and development through capital infusion, skills, and technology voluntarily provide incentives such as fixed assets, tax exemptions, subsidies, tax holidays, human capital, and low wages. These incentives seem attractive to these companies due to their increase in profits and reduction of risks. Caution: The repatriation of profits and foreign exchange risks due to instability in leadership of these developing countries should be put into consideration in negotiation. Access to raw materials and low operational costs in financing, transportation, low wages, lower unit costs, and power are attractive in terms of resource access and cost savings. Most companies move their headquarters to overseas to avoid their respective home countries’ high taxes and other costs associated in business operation in those countries.

Companies need to develop strategies, design and operate systems, and also work with people, different companies, and countries around the world in the form of strategic alliance to ensure sustained competitive advantage. Global management and management functions are usually formed by the prevailing conditions and ongoing stable and unstable developments in the world. A few countries take advantage of these companies, but when companies become aware that they are being used, they should then learn how they can be useful in that different cultural environment in order to make a lot of profits.

Creating an RSS Feed Personal Dashboard

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Now that RSS feeds have become standard for most websites or blogs that provide regularly updated content, it’s very easy to aggregate the content of many websites in one centralized “dashboard.” RSS stands for really simple syndication. WordPress and other blogging platforms lead they way in automatically creating an RSS feed, which is a simple text file that follows open web standards for identifying a piece of content by its title, description, date of publication, and other information. Essentially, websites and blogs are publicly posting a list of their latest content. This is the feed. You can grab the feed, which include hyperlinks to the actual content. You don’t have to visit the website to read the title of an article, or even the opening sentences, because this information is included in the RSS feed. However, if your interest is peaked, you can then easily click through on the hyperlink and go to the website where the content resides.

Understanding how RSS feeds works isn’t important. What matters is knowing how to grab them and display content in an easy to scan format.

Popular RSS tools include Netvibes, iGoogle, and My Yahoo. There are of course, hundreds of tools to choose from, but these three are robust and easy to use. Here’s how they work.

Let’s say you work for a design firm. You want to keep up on the latest trends for designers, any design news, and any opinion a blogger might have about design. Now, you could bookmark a whole bunch of sites and regularly visit them to see what’s new, or you could grab the RSS feeds from all of those sites and see a long list of the content headlines. You could list them by date to see what is new. A long list of course would not be as valuable as some way to organize all those headlines. This is where an RSS tool comes in. You can create categories of information, and then cluster the relevant RSS feeds under those category headings. For example, you might want to have a category for magazines, and a separate one for blogs. In Netvibes or iGoogle, you can create tabs for each of these sections. Then, when you click on a tab, you can see four or five or a dozen feeds listing several articles all on one page. At a glance, and by clicking on all of your tabs, you could quickly read hundreds of article headlines and then click on just the ones that interest you. In this way, you can save a tremendous amount of time.

These RSS feed aggregation sites include drop and drag tools that let you move the feeds around in your browser, until you are satisfied with how they are laid out. Time is precious these days, so if you want to track 20 or 30 sites in just a few minutes, you really need to aggregate the new content. Sometimes a site doesn’t make it easy to find the new content, but with an RSS feed, you can actually bypass the webmaster’s ineptitude and simply find the latest updates in the site’s feed.

If I had to choose my favorite RSS feed aggregator, I would pick Netvibes, which lets you quickly skin a template based on whatever colors appeal to you. If you get tired of the design, you can pick a new skin.

Texas Artists and Art Movements

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Edgar Byran Davis – Philantropist

From “Texans Always Move Them: A True History of Texas”

When Texas wildcatter, Edgar Byram Davis struck oil near Luling, Texas, everyone benefited. After making profits on his discovery, he used his funds to improve Texas. Davis celebrated by hosting a huge free barbecue. He invited friends, employees and associates in Luling, Texas. He shared his profits by contributing to charitable organizations, purchased golf courses for Luling, improved hospitals and supported the arts. Among his patronage was supporting the Broadway play, “The Ladder” for two years and the controversial figure Edgar Cayce. Davis personally paid for tickets to the play due to his belief in reincarnation which the play emphasized and that it was written by a friend of his.

Texas Impressionism

Edgar B. Davis also underwrote the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions of art. The $5,000 prize money awarded in the competition was the richest art award offered in the United States. Prizes were given for national and state-wide competition. Davis liked the Texas wildflowers, and had possibly been inspired by Texas artist Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922), who was known as the “Bluebonnet Painter” and “Father of Texas Painting”. His paintings of the Texas landscapes often portrayals of areas near his home in San Antonio gained him a national reputation. His father, Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1852-1917) was also an established artist.

These art competitions brought painters to Texas along with encouraging native born artist to pursue painting. These competitions almost single handedly brought about a painting style known as “Texas Impressionism”. Texas Impressionism sought to portray the effects of sun and light on outdoor subjects. The Impressionist movement, which began in France, was brought to Texas through this movement. Texas born artists Jose Arpa (1858-1952), Robert Wood (1889-1979), Rolla Taylor (1871-1970), and Porifirio Salinas (1919-1973). and Dawson-Dawson Watson (1864-1939) was born in England, yet his close association and similar style with the Texas painters lumps him in with the Texas impressionists.combined the popular painting style of impressionism with Texas landscapes. The artist Porifirio Salinas met fellow artists Robert Woos and Jose Arpa by selling them art supplies. From them he learned their unique style, even cooperating with them on some paintings. From those lessons, he mastered his own style. One of his later students, Palmer Chrisman (1913-1984), became an acclaimed artist.Chrisman provided medical services in trade for art lessons. Chrisman’s paintings were given out as gifts by President Lyndon Johnson during his presidency. This new style encouraged painters to come to Texas, with the Dallas area becoming a center of the new Texas school of artistic painting.

Modern Texas artists whose paintings reflect this style are Dalhart Windberg and Larry Dyke.Dyke’s work has hung in the White House and other prominent locations. Larry Dyke’s paintings have his signature Bible passage reference on each work, which is one of his unique markers.

Lone Star Regionalism

Davis’ financial patronage was one of the bright spots during the economic hardships of the depression in Texas of the 1930’s. Between his patronage and WPA projects encouraging the development of artists and writers, a new style developed known as “Lone Star Regionalism”. This new style gradually gained dominance over the previous movement of Texas Impressionism. The new style used darker colors to portray subjects unique to Texas. Some critics may claim that the dark colors reflected the dark mood of the times. The artists attempted making their subjects easy for the common man to understand. The ‘regionalists’ chose everyday life as subjects for their art and writing. This increased emphasis on regionalism occurred in art and literature. Writers like J. Frank Dobie were part of this regionalism movement. J. Frank Dobie and Texas native, Tom Lea pooled their talents in joint ventures during this time. Artists in the movement included Clinton King (1901-1979),Thomas Hart Benson, Jerry Bywaters (1906-1989), Alexandre Hogue, Henry Nash Smith and David R. Williams. These artists were inspired by writers such as John Dewey, George Santayana and Constance Rourke. A group of the more prominent artists living in Dallas became known as the “Dallas Nine”. The regionalist artists were influential on art throughout the United States. At the 1939 World’s Fair held in New York City, after seeing the work of the Texas artists, the President of the exhibition commented, “The exhibition indicates that New York is still the art center of the nation, but it shows clearly that during the recent years there has been a marked decentralization, and that a number of cities and towns throughout the country have risen to challenge the leadership of the eastern metropolis.”

Artists during these harsh times resorted to many creative techniques and mediums. They painted on railroad cars, burlap, and almost any surface that paint would adhere to. In their resourcefulness, they made their own frames and canvas stretchers. The government program of WPA employed artists to paint murals for public buildings such as post offices. The post office and court house works often used murals to convey Texas and historic themes. Among the leading mural painters were Texas born artists Tom Lea (1907-2001) and Ruth Monro Augur.

Tom Lea’s work was featured on federal buildings and post offices throughout the nation. He also served as a military artist during World War II. At the 100th anniversary of his birth, President George W. Bush requested the Tom Lea painting of Rio Grande from the EL Paso Museum of Art would hang in the oval office. The work was eventually purchased and is currently on display in the oval office of the White House.

Texas Still Lifes

There were some Texas regionalism artists who were grouped into a subgroup of Texas Still Lifes. These are still a part of Texas regionalism, yet with works focused on still life subjects. Among this group were Lloyd L. Sergeant (1881-1934),Robert J. Onderdonk, Alexandre Hogue, Florence McClung, H. D. Bugbee, Olive Vandruff, Emilio Caballero and Isabel Robinson. Many of these artists were located in North Texas or the Panhandle sections of the state. They shared a common theme of still life painting within the Texas Regionalist style and painted their works in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Modern Artists of Note

Another modern Texas artist of note is Bruce Marshall. Marshall is known for his portrayal of Texas historic events and persons. His depictions of military uniforms and the accuracy of his detailing has earned high praises. He has written and published books on early Texas history and uniforms. His art was renowned enough to be knighted for his accomplishments, so that he is now known as “Sir Bruce Marshall”. He and his wife reside in the Austin, Texas area on land that has been in his family since colonial Texas.

JOHNNIE LILIEDAHL is another Texas artist with an international reputation. Her instruction and art are in demand around the world. People from Europe, Australia and Asia attend her classes to learn how she captures her subjects in a classic realistic stye reminiscent of the European masters. Johnnie continues teaching art classes at her studio in La Porte, Texas.