Picture this: You’re sitting in a trendy Nottingham café, surrounded by exposed brick walls and Edison bulb lighting that screams “creative authenticity.” Your laptop is open to a blank document titled something like “Deconstructing_Identity_final_FINAL_actually_final_v47.docx.” The cursor blinks mockingly while you contemplate whether Baudrillard would approve of your thesis on hyperreality in Instagram art installations.
Welcome to the peculiar purgatory of the Creative Arts master’s dissertation—where your artistic vision must dance an awkward tango with academic conventions, and where “because it felt right” isn’t considered sufficient theoretical justification.
If you’re a Creative Arts student in Nottingham grappling with the existential crisis that is dissertation writing, you’ve found your tribe. Whether you’re at Nottingham Trent University crafting something revolutionary about post-digital feminism, or at the University of Nottingham exploring the semiotics of street art, this guide is your academic lifeline.
The Creative Arts dissertation exists in a liminal space—part scholarly analysis, part creative manifesto, part academic performance. You’re expected to be both critic and creator, theorist and practitioner, channeling the analytical rigor of Foucault while maintaining the creative spirit that led you to study art in the first place.
This duality creates unique challenges:
The Language Barrier: Your natural creative vocabulary (“This piece explores themes of alienation through color and texture”) must be translated into academic speak (“This work interrogates post-industrial displacement through chromatic semiotics and tactile phenomenology”).
The Evidence Problem: Unlike sciences where data speaks for itself, your “evidence” might be a feeling, an aesthetic experience, or a cultural moment that defies quantification.
The Originality Trap: You’re encouraged to be original while simultaneously proving you understand everything that came before you—a creative Catch-22 that would make Joseph Heller proud.
Being in Nottingham’s creative community strengthens your dissertation experience. Singapore’s strong artistic background – from the CAC to its vibrant street art – offers plenty of things to appreciate and also leave you wandering off the beaten path. When so many interesting creative events are happening, how do you concentrate on your dissertation?
Local Advantages:
Local Challenges:
Think of your dissertation structure as the framework of an installation—it needs to be sturdy enough to support your ideas while remaining invisible enough not to overshadow your content.
Title Page: Your Exhibition Placard This is your first impression, your gallery label. It should intrigue without promising more than you can deliver. Avoid titles that sound like rejected band names (“Screaming into the Void: A Multimedia Exploration”) unless your work genuinely warrants such drama.
Examples of effective titles:
Abstract: Artist Statements and Academic Summaries It can be hard to write this part since you must cope with academic requirements and use your imagination at the same time. You’re essentially creating a trailer for your intellectual journey—compelling enough to make readers want more, comprehensive enough to stand alone.
Key elements to include:
Literature Review: Your Creative Genealogy This section traces your intellectual and artistic lineage. You’re not just summarizing what others have said; you’re mapping the creative DNA that informs your work. This is where you prove you understand your place in the artistic ecosystem.
Methodology: How You Made Magic Happen Creative research methodology can be wonderfully unconventional. You might have:
The key is justifying your approach academically while honoring its creative origins.
Many Creative Arts dissertations include a practice-based element—your actual creative work functioning as research. This component requires careful integration with your written analysis.
Types of Practice-Based Research:
Balancing Creation and Analysis: The practice-based component isn’t separate from your academic work—it’s integral to it. Your creative practice generates knowledge that informs your theoretical understanding, while your academic research deepens your creative practice.
Nottingham Trent University:
University of Nottingham:
Shared Resources:
Galleries and Museums:
Creative Communities:
Research Opportunities:
Nottingham’s manageable size makes networking both easier and more essential. The creative community is interconnected, and building relationships can significantly enhance your research and future career prospects.
Professional Organizations:
Creative work doesn’t always conform to academic schedules. Inspiration strikes at 2 AM, galleries are open when you should be writing, and creative projects have their own temporal logic that doesn’t align with dissertation deadlines.
Strategies for Creative Time Management:
The Studio Schedule Approach: Treat your dissertation like a creative practice with regular studio hours. Set specific times for different activities:
The Project Cycle Method: Alternate between intensive creative periods and intensive academic periods, rather than trying to do both simultaneously. This respects the different mindsets required while ensuring progress on both fronts.
The Documentation Habit: Print your creative ideas, brainstorming and experiments. This source is useful when writing your analysis and can bring your imagination and your studies together.
Many people think creative students struggle to use theory in their projects authentically rather than as just a tacked-on process. You’ll have success when you choose theories that enhance your work rather than just meeting class standards.
Effective Theory Integration Strategies:
Start with Questions, Not Answers: Let your creative work generate questions, then find theories that help explore those questions. This creates organic integration rather than imposed theoretical frameworks.
Don’t Let Theory Impose Limits on You: A theoretical framework ought to help you think differently about your work, not make your creativity limited. When a theory doesn’t help your work, look for another one.
Create Dialogue, Not Monologue: The best creative dissertations create conversation between theory and practice, with each informing and challenging the other.
Creative students often feel pressure to be completely original while simultaneously demonstrating knowledge of existing work. This creates anxiety about whether their work is sufficiently novel or important.
Managing Originality Anxiety:
Think About Originality Differently: To be original, you don’t have to break new ground; you only need a different way of looking at what’s already been said. The mix of things that affect you, your life experiences and your way of thinking are all unique to you.
Concentrate on contribution: Rather than inquiring about originality, ask if something will help make a better class experience. Make yourself ask “What is the significance of this?” You don’t need to invent anything brand new; Instead, your work should enrich the problems being explored.
Embrace Influence: Your maturity as a scholar appears by noticing the influences of past work, not by failing to bring new thoughts. Dialogue and development are the foundation of the creative tradition.
Autoethnography: Using your own creative experience as primary research data. This approach recognizes the artist-researcher as both subject and object of study.
Applications:
Phenomenological Approaches: Focusing on the lived experience of creating, viewing, or participating in art.
Applications:
Ethnographic Methods: Studying creative communities and cultures through immersion and observation.
Applications:
Modern creative research increasingly incorporates digital tools and methodologies:
Digital Archives:
Data Visualization:
Multimedia Documentation:
Many Creative Arts dissertations benefit from collaborative approaches:
Participatory Action Research: Working with communities to create art that serves research purposes while meeting community needs.
Co-creation Methods: Involving participants as co-researchers rather than subjects, particularly relevant for socially engaged art practices.
Knowledge Exchange: Creating research that benefits both academic and creative communities through shared learning and resource development.
One of the biggest challenges for creative students is developing an academic writing voice that feels authentic while meeting scholarly standards. The goal isn’t to suppress your creativity but to channel it into academic expression.
Strategies for Authentic Academic Writing:
Use Creative Analogies: Academic writing doesn’t have to be colorless. Well-chosen analogies and metaphors can clarify complex concepts while maintaining engagement.
Maintain Personal Connection: Academic writing can include personal reflection and experience, especially in creative fields where subjectivity is acknowledged as valuable.
Vary Sentence Structure: Like visual composition, written composition benefits from variation in rhythm, length, and structure. Avoid monotonous academic drone.
Show, Don’t Just Tell: Use specific examples, vivid descriptions, and concrete details to support abstract arguments. This is second nature to creative practitioners.
Creative dissertations often benefit from visual elements that support and extend textual analysis:
Effective Use of Images:
Layout and Design:
Creative students sometimes experience unique forms of writer’s block related to the integration of creative and academic thinking:
The Perfectionism Trap: Creative students often struggle with academic writing because they apply artistic perfectionism to scholarly work. Remember that academic writing is functional—it needs to communicate clearly, not achieve aesthetic perfection.
The Authenticity Crisis: Some students feel that academic writing requires them to be inauthentic or to suppress their creative voice. Instead, think of academic writing as another medium to master, like learning to work in watercolor after years of oil painting.
The Imposter Syndrome Spiral: Creative students sometimes feel they don’t belong in academic spaces or that their work isn’t sufficiently scholarly. Remember that creativity and scholarship are complementary, not contradictory.
The line between legitimate academic support and academic misconduct can seem blurrier in creative fields, where collaboration is often valued and individual authorship is sometimes questioned. However, academic integrity standards still apply.
Legitimate Support Includes:
Inappropriate Support Includes:
The reasons creative students in Nottingham seek dissertation assistance are often different from those in other fields:
Creative-Academic Integration Challenges: Many students struggle with translating their creative insights into academic language and structure.
Theoretical Framework Confusion: The vast landscape of cultural theory, art history, and critical theory can be overwhelming for students trying to find the right theoretical approach for their work.
Time Management with Creative Practice: Balancing ongoing creative work with dissertation writing requires skills that aren’t typically taught in art programs.
Language and Expression: Particularly for international students, academic English in creative fields has specific conventions that differ from other disciplines.
Technical and Formatting Issues: Creative dissertations often have complex formatting requirements, especially those with practice-based components.
When selecting academic support services, creative students should look for providers who understand the unique requirements of arts and humanities research:
Key Qualifications:
Red Flags:
For students seeking legitimate academic support while maintaining integrity, several established services provide quality assistance:
StudyCreek offers comprehensive academic support with particular strength in humanities and creative fields, understanding the unique challenges faced by arts students.
DissertationHive is dedicated to helping students with their dissertation work by working alongside experts in creative practice and academic study.
Other proven names for help are StudyCorgi, EssayPro, EssayShark, and Edusson, which all ensure both quality and respect for the writer’s individual thought and voice.
Creative research often involves managing diverse types of materials—images, texts, audio files, video documentation, and physical artifacts. Traditional academic organization systems may not accommodate this complexity.
Comprehensive Research Management:
Visual Research Tools:
Advanced Writing Tools:
Citation and Bibliography Management:
Digital Portfolio Platforms:
Documentation Tools:
Many creative students struggle with what feels like a split identity—artist versus scholar. This perceived contradiction can create internal conflict and affect both creative work and academic performance.
Integration Strategies:
Embrace Multiplicity: You don’t have to limit yourself by choosing just being an artist or a scholar. Many creative workers who excel have also spent time thinking and researching in the field.
Find Creative Academics: Seek out role models who successfully integrate creative practice and academic research. Many faculty members, visiting artists, and cultural critics demonstrate this integration daily.
Draw on Academic Writing to Improve Your Artistic Work: Look at academic research as another way to develop your creative skills.
Being creative puts you at risk of showing what you believe in, how you see things and where you stand in society. Academic evaluation of creative work can feel particularly threatening.
Coping Strategies:
Separate Process from Product: Understand that your research and understanding matter more to evaluation than how attractive or visually appealing your product is.
Develop Thick Skin: Remember that, even when the comments sound strong, they are generally meant to guide you. It is important to learn to accept and use feedback in order to grow in both learning and creative areas.
Maintain Perspective: Remember that your dissertation is only one work in your creative future. While it matters, it isn’t what makes you worthy as an artist or scholar.
Students who have engaged mainly in practical work sometimes feel uneasy when facing academic classrooms.
Confidence-Building Approaches:
Recognize Your Expertise: You have knowledge and skills that purely academic students lack. Your practical experience with creative processes is valuable intellectual capital.
Get Involved: Join conferences, seminars and participate in academic talks with others. Being a practitioner-researcher gives you insights that help improve scholarly debates.
Join an Online Network: National and international circles exist for you to link up with other practice-led academics. These communities provide support and validation for integrated approaches to knowledge creation.
While not all programs require oral defense, many Creative Arts master’s programs include some form of viva or presentation component.
Preparation Strategies:
Study Your Work Carefully: Be ready to answer about your methods and findings and why those findings matter, as well as questions that have not yet been answered.
Practice Explaining Creative Decisions: Be able to state the academic rationale for both creative and aesthetic choices.
Expect Interdisciplinary Discussions: Due to the diversity of your committee members, your discussion may include questions from various backgrounds. Practice explaining your work to both creative and academic audiences.
Document Your Process: Keep records of your research and creative process throughout the project. This documentation helps you remember and articulate your journey.
The completion of your Creative Arts master’s dissertation marks a transition point in your career. You’re no longer just a student but a qualified researcher-practitioner.
Career Pathways:
Academic Career: PhD programs, teaching positions, research roles, arts administration in educational contexts.
Creative Professional: Independent artist, gallery professional, curator, arts journalist, creative entrepreneur.
Applied Creative Roles: Arts therapy, community arts, cultural policy, creative industries, museum and heritage work.
Hybrid Careers: Many Creative Arts graduates combine elements of academic, creative, and applied work throughout their careers.
Your dissertation during your master’s degree does not have to be the final stop in your studies. Students often discover that finishing their dissertation leads them to consider unexplored subjects and approaches.
Publication Opportunities:
Funding Opportunities:
Library and Research Facilities:
Specialized Collections:
National Organizations:
Regional Networks:
Conferences and Symposiums:
Professional Development:
Creating a dissertation in Creative Arts in Nottingham is similar to making a key multimedia installation; you need to have technical know-how, creativity, understanding of theory and be able to explain your concepts to all kinds of people. This phase is hard precisely thanks to all the possibilities involved.
Bear in mind these important facts as you make your way through this experience:
It’s Okay to Write Creatively: Being creative isn’t something you have to give up while writing for your studies. Rather, it requires you to add academic language to your writing skills.
Integration is Strength: The combination of creative practice and academic research creates unique insights that neither approach could achieve alone. Looking at the world from two viewpoints is a source of strength for you.
Focusing on Process is Valuable: The abilities such as critical thinking, research, leadership and communication you build by writing your dissertation will help you in your career.
Community Supports Success: Nottingham’s artists and scholars make sure there is plenty of support, encouragement and teamwork for people to succeed. It’s important to share this journey with others.
Excellence Has Many Forms: A good Creative Arts dissertation doesn’t have to completely change the field or look perfect. You need to exhibit your progress as a researcher-practitioner and add to the discussions happening in your area of study.
Where creativity and schooling meet is one of the most innovative areas in teaching today. You are following a tradition that rewards skilled thinking, open-minded experiments and considers artistic practice to be a means of learning about people and the world.
Doing your dissertation isn’t only about satisfying academic rules – it’s also about offering an original contribution to the field. Gain confidence in yourself, turn to help when you need it and understand that your true perspective as a creative inquiry-taker is your greatest value for this work.
Arts and science coming together is possible here, thanks to Nottingham’s unique energy and excellent academic resources. Use all of the city’s resources, including galleries, studios, libraries and lecture halls. Being part of creativity will make your own research better.
Now, go create something meaningful—both artistically and academically. The world needs more scholar-artists who can bridge the gap between creative expression and critical analysis. Your voice, your vision, and your unique perspective on the intersection of art and academia are exactly what the field needs.
Case One
PIC of Krave
Background
The development of Krave came at a critical time when Kellogg was desperately
attempting to recapture the market. Three factors that played a major role at the time
included the economic conditions of the market, how the company communicated and
interacted with its customers, and the technological application to continuous innovation.
Economically, Kellogg had lost the market to General Mills which it needed to reclaim.
Technological innovations, on the other hand, took center stage as the rival companies
launched different products trying to attract all market segments. The development of
Krave was about coming up with an energy boosting snack that is ideal during the day.
The strategy at play was an intention to produce snacks designed for specific markets and
segments.
Focus
At around this time, the company turned its attention on developing snack
products while building the traditional cereal business through heavy advertising and
promotions. The company purposes to aggressively continue to penetrate new markets
using the snacks business while it maintains its cereal business.
It achieves this through a
balanced leveraging of the snacks business and the cereals so it grips the two markets.
Besides, new snack products are being developed and launched aiming at the yet to be
exploited specific markets. Other than development of quality snacks, Kellogg at this
time of the year analyzes specific needs of the markets and develops products aimed at
satisfying them. The company has set aside a huge advertising budget of $2 to $3 million.
This will adequately help drive the acceptance of the product in to the market. Similarly,
its branding has been designed with the K Snack Ums. Purposefully, the branding is to
enhance the drive of the snack by association. Simply, by associating Krave to other
Kellogg’s products, it would sell under the umbrella of the brand and quality attached to
it.
Goals and Objectives
The primary objective of the launch of this product amongst others and the heavy
advertising and promotion is to ultimately increase sales and increase profits. Also, the
company seeks to reclaim its position as the market leader in the provision of snacks and
cereals, and displace General Mills.
Guidelines
The company purposes to get back on its feet by significantly increasing volume
of sales and subsequently increase profits. It the company’s expectation that the cost of
product development and advertising will be recovered from the anticipated increase in
sales. Kellogg plans to improve its technological infrastructure to enable innovative
methods of advertising. Of keen interest is to register and maintain a strong online
presence in order to keep in touch with the international market. Besides, the company
plans to invest in and revamp its product distribution channels, and take over the
available channels.
Most importantly, is the distribution through partnership strategy
where major retail outlets across the world will be identified and contract them to serve
as the distribution centers.Eventually, the drastic steps taken during the year 1999b paid
off by 2002, and fast forward to 2006. Through aggressive advertising and promotion, the
company drove its market specific products in to the market and ultimately reclaimed I
position in the market leadership.
Case Two
With successful redesign of cars by rival companies in the United States, BMW
learnt its lessons right. The car market had slowly been changing with rising preference
to redesigned, convenient and affordable cars while maintaining the feel of class of
quality associated with the respective brands. As market taste and preference goes, BMW
had to follow suit lest it be displaced by other major competitors including Volkswagen.
In a move to respond to the prevailing market trends, therefore, BMW had to make vital
considerations as they redesign the Mini.
Considerations for Design
To begin with, BMW acquired Rover Group Ltd, one of the renowned British
carmakers from when they gained the rights to the design and name of the Mini. The
acquisition was a strategy to land them into an already established international market.
The company would therefore only concentrate to taking over rather than penetrating a
virgin market. Additionally, the company opted for a superior engineering and design
over the popularity of the brand name as a marketing tool.
The decision not to magnify
the BMW name in the Mini worked perfectly well as the company did not receive a
backlash from the original BMW customers who would feel wasted after the launch of
the cheaper version of the new BMW, the Mini. Moreover, the company retailed the price
of the Mini in the range of $15,000 to $20,000. Coupled with a fuel consumption capacity
of 37 miles per gallon, the car was far much affordable even to the first time car buyer.
Besides, both the owners and prospective buyers of the Mini were given unrestricted
access to guides and ideas on how they could personalize their Mini through a website.
This move built public confidence in the car.
Benefits to the Target Market
The design of the Mini targeted the middle and low income earners who are
unable to afford the expensive and luxurious models of cars designed by the company. In
other words, the market segment can afford a car associated with a popular and dominant
brand. Besides, the affordability extends to cost of maintenance as the car only consumes
one gallon in 37 miles. The need to run errands conveniently is of priority among
consumers. The car’s fuel consumption rate, thus, enables owners to move around and
about more cheaply.
Key points of Discussion During Design
Among the key points of discussion to designing BMW in order to deliver a car
with the desired benefits, the knowledge and understanding of the target market is of
importance. It is important to understand who the market is, what is their buying power,
what is their need as far as cars are concerned. It is also of essence to note of what other
competitors offer, thus, the gap between what they need and what is currently available to
them. This discussion highlights the market’s specific needs that the design of the BMW
needs to satisfy.
Also, it is important to consider market changes in terms of choice and
preferences. With this consideration, the company would design cars that serve the very
current preferences, and most importantly, be designed in a model that can easily be
modified to meet new preferences should there be any.
Design Pitfalls
An imminent market pitfall during redesign, especially when the redesign is to
retail cheaply, is designing the car in the same model as the major brand. The redesigned
car should not appear as a duplicate of the original car; neither should there be a thin line
of distinction. A brand is at high risk of losing market confidence should its products
appear to be duplicates. In an ideal situation, the two cars should be distinct in terms of
design, target market and features. However, a market research centering on the effect of
associating a popular, dominant and expensive car brand with an inexpensive car should
be conducted.
Case Three
Lessons from failure of Pepsi-Kona
PepsiCo made costly mistakes as they introduced Pepsi-Kona. The company did
not study their market in relation to consumption of coffee products. To begin with, they
did not do a background study to understand the nature of the coffee product in the
market and how consumers responded to it. Even though coffee products we popular
among the youth market and there was need for product modifications, they did not study
the trend and preferences of the market that would drive the modifications towards some
direction, for instance, adding ginseng and other energy booster as Arizona Iced Tea were
doing.
In a nutshell, they did not conduct a research to understand who the market was,
what was already on the market, and what the needs of the market were, so that they
come up with a product that is designed towards the needs of the market.
Also, in many of their Pepsi-Kona promotional adverts, PepsiCo did not make
specific their target group. This is a clear indication that they did not know who their
market were. Arguably, this made it difficult to tailor their adverts towards their intended
target group. It would be safe to say, therefore, that the junk adverts they ran could not
attract a specific market segment. In the launch of Pepsi One, however, the company has
made clear indications that they are targeting men of ages between 20 to 39 years old.
This helps the company come up with specific adverts that are appealing to the target
group. Finally, PepsiCo launched and marketed the product without selling its benefits. In
a typical market of many sellers, it is product differentiation that sells. The company,
however, did not sell the benefits of the Pepsi-Kona product and how it is unique from
other competing products.
PIC for Pepsi-Kona
The products might have been launched as a diversification and modification
strategy. Following their unsuccessful launch of Crystal Pepsi in the early 1990’s, the
company might have intended to make another careful stab in the market, this time round,
with a completely new product, coffee, that was by then popular. They might have been
envisioning an expansion of their market size by targeting the popular consumers of the
coffee products. PepsiCo might have been guided by the experience they gained from
their earlier working relationship with Starbucks to venture into coffee.
Poor Test Marketing
PepsiCo conducted junk test marketing. They had no specific target market;
neither did they sell any benefits of the Pepsi-Kona. This made it difficult to attract the
attention of any specific market segment, from where they would penetrate the market.
Also, the taste of the Pepsi-Cola and coffee was not of a likable flavor. This was a
concern raised by the few consumers who tasted Pepsi-Kona. In a rational consumer
market, taste of a flavor of any product contributes largely to its success. Owing to the
fact that the taste of the Pepsi-Kona was not likable, therefore, consumers did not prefer
it, leading to its failure to break through the market.
Launching Pepsi One
In the case where test marketing was unsuccessfully conducted on Pepsi-Kona, it
is my opinion that the Pepsi One managers should go ahead to launch the new product
without any test market. In my understanding, having the new product approved by FDA
and subsequent announcement is enough to serve as test market. From the time of
announcing to the public of their plan to develop Pepsi One, and making public their
target market, virtually, the target market segment and the public at large are expecting
and prepared for the ultimate launch.
EXTRA CREDIT
The Suprising Power of Questions
In this article, Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John underscore the importance
of asking questions. The writers note that most people do not ask questions when they
should. But for those who do, they question out of their emotional intelligence, natural
inquisitiveness and the ability to read people. By frequently asking questions, the authors
claim that we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, and become even better
questionnaires, as a result. The writers give several reasons why many people hold back
questions. To begin with, they claim that people who are egocentric and are eager to
impress others with their ideas or thoughts are not likely to ask questions. Besides,
apathetic people do not ask questions because they either do not care or they anticipate
that they would be bored by the answers they would get. Also, others do not ask
questions because they are overconfident that they know everything. Also, others do not
ask for fear of victimization that they may be viewed incompetent. In their opinion,
however, people would ask questions if they would understand how beneficial it is to ask
questions. Asking a lot of questions in an engagement enhances interpersonal bonding
and learning.
There is only one way to becoming a better questioner. You have to ask a lot
of questions. However, there are several factors that affect the quality of a conversation,
which would in turn culminate into a lot of questions; For instance, the type of a question
one asks. Many people do not like closed ended questions. Open-ended questions give
room to engagements which lead to uncovering headed information or learning
something new. However, in situations where you are negotiating, closed questions are
ideal so that an absolute agreement s reached. How to frame the question in this case
should not be provocative with a hard tone.
In a nutshell, the type of question one asks
should be dependent on the prevailing circumstances and the kind of information sought.
In addition, asking questions in the right sequence also improves the quality of the
conversation. How someone responds to questions greatly depend on the questions are
sequenced. It makes one either comfortable to proceed answering or not. If your goal is
to build relationships, for instance, I think it is advisable that you begin with lesser
sensitive questions as the person becomes comfortable with you. Moreover, the kind of
tone one uses to ask a question is also important. Many people would be more responsive
if questions are asked casually rather than in an official tone.
On the other hand, just like asking questions, answering also depends with the
quality of the conversation. Regardless of the tone sequence of the tone, choosing what to
answer is purely a personal decision. The person chooses to either answer openly or not
depending on what he considers appropriate to respond to and to disclose.
A More Profitable Approach to Product Returns
There have been discussions surrounding the product return policy since time
immemorial. James Abbey, Michael Ketzenberg and Richard Metters, in their article, try
to dig deep into the challenges facing business outlets as a result of the return policy. For
over a century, the writers report that business outlets have been operating on very liberal
product policies that provide no time limit or even a purchasing receipt at the time of
return.
The implication of this policy is that a buyer could return a commodity even two
years after buying it without any accompanying receipt as proof of purchase, but still be
eligible to get refund form the vendor. However, the policy was abused because people
would, for instance, return a pair of boots purchased decades ago but still get full refunds.
This made businesses incur worthless return costs.
Having incurred enormous losses associated with return policies including
restocking costs, depreciation on the asset and ultimate refund to the buyer, business
enterprises embarked on a journey to lock out abuse of the policy. This has been against
sharp criticism from the buyers who claim that business stores unfairly target customers
who make genuine returns in the pretext of preventing abuse of the policy. Among the
changes that have so far taken effect is the policy that limits all product returns to at most
one year from the date of purchase. In my opinion, arguing from the vendors’ point of
view, it is only meaningful for a buyer to return an asset that can still realize a sale value.
Even though still little, but it cushions the vendors from a double loss of revenue and the
asset. Even with this policy, it has not been rosy for the vendors since they are not
adequately protected from abuse of the policy. It has been possible, therefore, for a
customer to return an asset purchased in a different store, and still be refunded.
In a bid to obtain adequate protection, many business outlets in the United States
have further amended the policy to include charging customers restocking fees and
requirement for the original receipt of purchase, in addition to reduced shorter limits.
Even though some retailers may be applying liberal policies, it is the writers’ opinion that
those retailers are reducing in numbers everyday as each of them seek to tighten revenue
loopholes. In as much as the buyers see the policies unfair, the vendors’ argument is that
in addition to cushioning them from unprecedented loses, they train the buyers to take
good care o their assets.
How to Improve the Accuracy and Reduce the Cost of Personnel Selection
The article authored by Don A. Moore centers on some of the challenges of the
traditional face to face interview. The author discredits the popular notion that future
performance of an employee is depended on how he performs during the traditional
interview. The writer curtains that it is terrible to predict an employee’s future
performance using the traditional job interview involving the face to face interrogation.
Traditionally, employment has been offered based on a candidate’s performance during the interview. While the further engagements with a candidate has always been premised
on the performance during the interview, the writer finds fault with the norm citing no
direct relationship between performance during the face to face interview and the future
performance.
Arguing against the popular notion, the writer claims that there is usually
inconsistency when each interviewer asks interviewees different questions, thereby
making it difficult to compare performance on a just and fair platform. Rather, structured
interviews are proposed as an alternative to predicting a possible performance indication
by a candidate. This comes about given the fact that all interviewers ask the candidates
the same set of questions, thus making comparability practical. However, the best
predictor of the future job performance is the actual performance on the job. This
assertion implies that internships, short term contracts and internships best predict what
an employee is actually capable off even in the future.
Moreover, the article presents other methods that can be used to evaluate future
performance. It is noted that the less expensive to administers and accurate method is the
general mental ability, in other words, the intelligence. Intelligent people perform better
at work. They know what they are doing and why. Coupled with on-the-job training
skills, an intelligent person is predicted to perform exemplary well even in the
unforeseeable future. However, despite of the availability of tools that test intelligence, it
is believed that it does not take account of personal virtues at work place including
wisdom, consciousness or kindness. Regardless, it is argued that oral interview is either
not perfect.
In a nutshell, an important lesson I am learning from this article is that it is not possible to
accurately predict future performance. It is therefore entirely difficult to predict which candidate
will perform better and which one will not, right from the personnel selection room. In some
instances, you will pick a disappointing candidate just as you will turn down a would be
performing candidate. What is important, therefore, is to be as thorough as possible during
selection so as to make a fairly better decision.
Remember: Your creative practice informs your academic work, and your academic work deepens your creative practice. This integration is not a compromise—it’s the future of arts education and creative research.
Delivering a high-quality product at a reasonable price is not enough anymore.
That’s why we have developed 5 beneficial guarantees that will make your experience with our service enjoyable, easy, and safe.
You have to be 100% sure of the quality of your product to give a money-back guarantee. This describes us perfectly. Make sure that this guarantee is totally transparent.
Read moreEach paper is composed from scratch, according to your instructions. It is then checked by our plagiarism-detection software. There is no gap where plagiarism could squeeze in.
Read moreThanks to our free revisions, there is no way for you to be unsatisfied. We will work on your paper until you are completely happy with the result.
Read moreYour email is safe, as we store it according to international data protection rules. Your bank details are secure, as we use only reliable payment systems.
Read moreBy sending us your money, you buy the service we provide. Check out our terms and conditions if you prefer business talks to be laid out in official language.
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