McDonalds in Kazakhstan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

McDonalds in Kazakhstan - Essay Example McDonald's generates revenues through company operated restaurants and franchisee restaurants. Of a total of over 31,000 restaurants, over 8000 are operated by the company and over 18,000 are operated by franchisees. The remaining restaurants are operated by affiliates. The company's revenue comprises sales from company operated restaurants and fees as well as rent from franchisees and affiliates. Under the franchise arrangement, the franchisees invest in the equipment, signage, seating and dcor, while the company owns or leases the land and building. Franchisees pay the company service fees and rent for premises. Service fees are set as a percentage of sales, while rent and other terms of occupancy are stipulated in the franchise agreement, which is drawn for a period of 20 years. The company and its franchisees as well as affiliates purchase food, packaging, equipment and other goods from approved suppliers. The company maintains quality standards through assurance labs around the world. A quality assurance board, including the company's technical, safety and supply chain specialists, provides guidance on all aspects of food quality and safety. The McDonald's business model is slightly different from that of most other fast food chains. In addition to ordinary franchise fees, supplies and percentage of sales, McDonald's also collects rent. As a condition of the franchise agreement, McDonald's owns most properties. Since rent is a fee that is not linked to sales, this practice allows McDonald's more control over its franchisees (Rumbelow, 1 February 2001). As the world's largest fast food company, McDonald's was the target of criticism on many grounds over the review period. It has been accused of the exploitation of entry-level workers and ecological damage caused by agricultural production and industrial processing of its products with high levels of packaging waste. Critics claim it sells unhealthy or non-nutritious food with exploitative advertising targeted at children and contributes to the suffering and exploitation of livestock. McDonald's has also been criticised for its litigious and heavy-handed approach to preserving its image and copyrights. Consequently, McDonald's recorded its first ever global loss in the last quarter of 2002 and in Europe sales plunged 3.8% in January 2003. To combat this, McDonald's underwent a fundamental revolution in its approach to menus, marketing and consumers in 2003. In the UK, McDonald's is improving its standards and continued to work with government and health officials to investigate impro vements (Euromonitor, 29 November 2005). On the other hand, Kazakhstan is a relatively new nation as it gained independence from Soviet Union in 1991. McDonald's has is one of the countries it has to conquer. Kazakstan's 1,052,100 square miles (2,724,900 square kilometres) make it by far the largest state in Central Asia and the ninth largest in the world. Between its most distant points Kazakstan measures about 1,820 miles (2,930 kilometres) east to west and 960 miles north to south. While Kazakstan was not considered by authorities in the former Soviet

Managing Information 2 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Managing Information 2 - Assignment Example If considering the enterprise government, focus on executing management actions is required to support the strategic goals of the organization (JOHNSTON et al. 2009). It has been calculated approximately half of the breaches to the security of the information systems are made by the internal staff or employee of the organization (Spears et al. 2010). Security incident management facilitates the development of security incident handling and planning including preparation for detection and reply to information security issues. The standard of the incident management primarily relates to ensure the existence of processes rather than the contents of these procedures. The security incident of different computing systems will have dissimilar effects and escort to different consequences, bureau, departments the organization need to tailor the security incident handling plan according to specific operational requirements. Organizations invest enormous money to buy and install computing e quipments for securing their networks. Information systems security is a challenge for executives and the information technology professionals (Dhillon et al. 2006).Organizations focus on performance and efficiency of the security equipments. This is not enough, as human intervention and a proper plan need to be defined. The information technology professionals are not only responsible for securing the information systems, all the employees of the organization are responsible (Rotvold 2008). One needs to know what an incident is, before making a plan for dealing with the computer incidents. A simple definition is available in network dictionary which says â€Å"An incident as an adverse network event in an information system or network or the threat of the occurrence of such an event.† For organizations to be competitive with network incidents, they must lay a foundation within the organization for incident handling. The incident handling procedure refers to an action pla n associated with security breaches, thefts, distributed denial of service, fire, floods etc. Incident handling consists of six-step process: research, classification, restraint, purge, revival, and lessons learned. The information security should be handled internally and externally by the employees of the organization. They will be supported by the security teams with high-powered information security officers. The employees who do not have insufficient skills in dealing with information security, they can perform well in reducing risk factors (Bulgurcu et al. 2010). In each major business unit, an employee with a skill set of solid risk management and project management can be a good choice to be an information security officer. Likewise, the primary objective is to enforce policies and train the end users for following the procedures made for each policy. Moreover, acceptable use for networks and data on information systems must be communication, as end users can download susp icious codes or emails from the Internet etc. furthermore, if the company decides to outsource its security operations to another company, this will save cost but at the same time increase risks to critical information if no care has been taken for choosing a reliable business partner. Non disclosure agreement must be signed by the service organization and skill evaluation of the staff should also be considered. Furthermore, service level agreements