Practice based learning - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages In Ethiopia, there is a coffee growing region called ‘Yirgacheffe’ where these farmers start their work from the early hours of the day. The raw coffee cherries that enclose the coffee bean grown by the hard work of the farmers are sold by them in a local farming cooperative market. The farmers are paid in accordance with the weight of the raw coffee beans they have brought in their sacks. If the farmer happens to be selling the coffee cherries many times to the local farming cooperative market, the cooperative then advances the farmer’s capital to invest before the harvest. Sometimes the farmer accepts advance cash from a middleman who is willing to buy his harvest below market price. The farmer does that in order to be able to invest on his farming activities and also be able to feed his family with that amount of cash. When the farmers have harvested the coffee cherries, the cherries are taken to his home and kept for drying outside. The pulp on the coffee cherries are removed in order to get the enclosed coffee beans out. This task is done by the female workers. The coffee bean is fermented in water and then scoured. After that it is kept outside for getting dried and become ready for further processing. The farmers’ main concern is to harvest and sell quality coffee to Starbucks so that their customers remain satisfied. They involve themselves in the careful picking out of coffee cherries from their farms which meet the criteria put forth by Starbucks in order to maintain the standard of quality coffee that Starbucks has always provided to their customers. When Starbucks purchases coffee beans from the farmers, they first critically evaluate the beans in order to make sure that they meet the quality benchmark. Starbucks work with farmers who are consistently providing them with quality coffee beans and secure their jobs. Community of Practice Concept in Business Functions A Community of Practice (coP) concept is a collection of people sharing a common interest or a profession. The group can have a variety of purpose. It can also include just the goal of gaining knowledge related to their area of interest or it can grow as time passes by and with experience. The main idea of this concept is that the members of the group help each other to grow and develop. A coP can exist online also. In case of the Starbucks farmers’ issue, a coP can be established in order to help the farmers learn more about quality standards. Kim, Park and Prescott (2003) in their book discuss about business functions. They discuss about the manner in which multi-national companies’ businesses are assimilated, how global industries synchronize and monitor research and development (R&D), marketing as well as manufacturing functions across the borders that have high potential for performance. According to their recommendation, global industries should use definite integrating modes as it will be more operative than other modes in comprehending and incorporating a business function globally. Each business function has a different combination of integrating modes. Taking example of global R&D, people based and information based modes are more operational than formalization based and centralization based modes. Such involves the coP concept as in R & D, people based an ...Download file to see next pagesRead More