Challenges in ERM implementation

In business, enterprise risk management (ERM) includes the methods and processes used by organizations to manage risks (or seize opportunities) related to the achievement of their objectives. ERM program provides a framework for risk management, which typically involves identifying particular events or circumstances relevant to the organization's objectives (risks and opportunities), assessing them in terms of likelihood and magnitude of impact, determining a response strategy, and monitoring progress. By identifying and proactively addressing risks and opportunities, business enterprises protect and create value for their stakeholders, including owners, employees, customers, regulators, and society overall.

ERM can also be described as a risk-based approach to managing an enterprise, integrating concepts of strategic planning, operations management, and internal control. ERM is evolving to address the needs of various stakeholders, who want to understand the broad spectrum of risks facing complex organizations to ensure they are appropriately managed. Regulators and debt rating agencies have increased their scrutiny on the risk management processes of companies. Various consulting firms offer suggestions for how to implement an ERM program. Common topics and challenges include:

• Identifying executive sponsors for ERM.
• Establishing a common risk language or glossary.
• Identifying and describing the risks in a "risk inventory".
• Implementing a risk-ranking methodology to prioritize risks within and across functions.
• Establishing a risk committee and/or Chief Risk Officer (CRO) to coordinate certain activities of the risk functions.
• Establishing ownership for particular risks and responses.
• Demonstrating the cost-benefit of the risk management effort.
• Developing action plans to ensure the risks are appropriately managed.
• Developing consolidated reporting for various stakeholders.
• Monitoring the results of actions taken to mitigate risk.
• Ensuring efficient risk coverage by internal auditors, consulting teams, and other evaluating entities.

Does leasing agent help you in your apartment search?

Are you planning to stay in las vegas apartments, to search for an apartment can be a time-consuming and sometimes overwhelming experience? Trying to sort through all of the different apartment listings can be quite tedious and deciding which ones are truly worth your while can be difficult. Since so many of us are dealing with busy schedules, it is difficult to find the time to look at different apartment listings and to try to coordinate your schedule with the schedules of various landlords. Therefore, if you are looking to simplify the process while also increasing your chances of finding your dream apartment, it is a good idea to enlist in the services of a leasing agent.

Who is a Leasing Agent?
A leasing agent is a person that actually works for the landlords of apartment complexes, shipping centers, and office buildings. The primary job of a leasing agent is to help the landlord find tenants. When the leasing agent successfully finds a tenant for the landlord, he or she receives a commission. The leasing agent also takes care of finalizing the leases. As such, the landlord relies upon the leasing agent to find good tenants that are willing to pay a fair price for the apartment.

What Should I Expect from a Leasing Agent?
Just as a real estate agent is hired to represent the person selling the home, a leasing agent is hired to represent the landlord. Therefore, you are responsible for trying to negotiate the best deal possible. After all, the leasing agent is going to try to get the best deal for his or her client as possible because this will result in a larger commission. In order to guarantee that you are properly represented, you might want to hire an agent who should represent you. You need to clarify all the doubts that you have regarding your sacramento apartment or any other apartment rental or purchase.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is when people engage in an activity, such as a hobby, without clear external incentives. Intrinsic motivation has been studied by educational psychologists since the 1970s, and many studies have found it to be linked with high educational accomplishments and enjoyments by students. There is at present no universal theory to explain the origin or elements of intrinsic motivation, and the majority of explanations combine elements of Fritz Heider's attribution theory, Bandura's work on self-efficacy and other studies relating to locus of control and goal orientation. Though it is thought that students are more likely to be essentially motivated if they:

• Attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control.
• Believe they can be efficient agents in reaching desired goals.
• Are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.

In organizations and knowledge-sharing communities, people regularly cite altruistic reasons for their contribution, including contributing to a common good, a moral duty to the group, mentorship or 'giving back'. In work environments, money may provide a more powerful extrinsic factor than the intrinsic motivation provided by an enjoyable workplace. The majority obvious form of motivation is coercion, where the avoidance of pain or other negative penalty has an immediate effect. Extreme use of coercion is considered slavery. While coercion is considered morally reprehensible in many philosophies, it is extensively practiced on prisoners, students in mandatory schooling, within the nuclear family unit, and in the form of mobilization. Critics of modern capitalism charge that without social safety networks, wage slavery is predictable. However, many capitalists such as Ayn Rand have been very vocal against coercion. Successful coercion sometimes can take priority over other types of motivation. Self-coercion is infrequently substantially negative, however it is interesting in that it illustrates how lower levels of motivation may be sometimes tweaked to satisfy higher ones.

Identity Management from Microsoft: Forefront Identity Manager

Forefront Identity Manager (formerly ILM “2”) changes the present state of identity management by providing powerful end-user self-service capabilities. IT professionals are also provided additional tools to solve everyday tasks such as empowering administration and creating workflows for common identity management tasks. Added to that, Forefront Identity Manager is built on a .NET and WS-* based foundation for software programmers to build more customized and extensible solutions. End-users can easily self-serve tasks such as group and distribution list management with self-help tools integrated into a Share Point-based console as well as directly in Microsoft Office Outlook.

It provides IT professionals with the applications they need to manage identities through a SharePoint-based policy and workflow management console. Developers access extensibility features through extensive public APIs. Integrates enterprises' heterogeneous infrastructure, includes line of business applications, directories, and databases. Allows management of heterogeneous strong authentication systems, such as third-party certificate authorities. Forefront Identity Manager helps organizations integrate their policies across the organization and helps them secure the enterprise. Integrated management tools allow organizations to beneficiate from the policies of strong authentication.

Differences Between Functionalism and Physicalism

There is much uncertainty about the sort of relationship that is claimed to between the general thesis of functionalism and physicalism. It has frequently been claimed that functionalism somehow "disproves" or falsifies physicalism tout court. On the other hand, the majority philosophers of mind who are functionalists claim to be physicalists indeed, some of them, such as David Lewis, have claimed to be strict reductionist-type physicalists. Functionalism is basically what Ned Block has called a broadly metaphysical thesis as opposed to a narrowly ontological one. That is, functionalism is not so much worried with what there is as with what it is that characterizes a certain type of mental state, e.g. pain, as the type of state that it is. Previous attempts to answer the mind-body problem have all tried to resolve it by answering both questions: dualism says there are two substances and that mental states are characterized by their immateriality; behaviorism claimed that there was one substance and that mental states were behavioral disposition; physicalism asserted the existence of just one substance and characterized the mental states as physical states.

On this considerate, type physicalism can be seen as incompatible with functionalism, since it claims that what characterizes mental states is that they are physical in nature, while functionalism says that what describe pain are its functional/causal role and its relationship with yelling "ouch", etc. but, any weaker sort of physicalism which makes the simple ontological claim that everything that exists is made up of inorganic matter is perfectly compatible with functionalism. Moreover, most functionalists who are physicalists require that the properties that are quantified over in functional definitions be physical properties. Hence, they are physicalists, even though the common thesis of functionalism itself does not commit them to being so. In the case of David Lewis, there is a distinction in the concepts of "having pain" (a rigid designator true in all possible worlds) and just "pain" (a non-rigid designator). Pain, for Lewis, stands for something like the definite description "the state with the causal role x". The referent of the description in humans is a type of brain state to be determined by science. The referent among silicon-based life forms is something else. The referent of the description among angels is some immaterial, non-physical state. For Lewis, therefore, local type-physical reductions are possible and compatible with conceptual functionalism. There seems to be some uncertainty between types and tokens that needs to be cleared up in the functionalist analysis.