At the opening of Patrick Bermingham’s Cross MacKenzie Gallery show, “Midnight in the

Clearing,” the attendees were plunged briefly into darkness. With the lights switched off, the
Canadian artist discussed his technique and humans’ underappreciated ability to see at night.
Artificial illumination is so widespread, he said, that “we’ve forgotten we have these
primeval skills.”

Bermingham’s pictures are far from primeval, but they’re not exactly trendy. The artist paints
with oils, most often on wood panels, in a nocturnal palette of gray, black and hushed greens,
sometimes set off by a deep-blue sky. The show’s largest piece even forgoes the greens. Ten
feet wide and monochromatic, “Study for Midway on Our Path” immerses the viewer in both
night and woodland.

The artist hauls panels large enough to make such pictures into the forest, where he paints
from the vantage point he wants the spectator to experience. Many of the locations are in
Ontario — Bermingham doesn’t seem drawn to the topographical drama of the mountain
West — but this selection also includes smaller-scale pictures made in Guatemala.

The Guatemalan landscapes depict villages and their environs, also at night. They’re
unpopulated, the painter explai

 Section 75 protection demands credit card provider and the seller of goods to be different parties
 Consumer’s right to cancel the order extends from the moment they place the order to 14 days from the
day they receive the goods
 If the seller fails to provide required information to the consumer- as intended in the act, then
cancellation right can be extended upto an year
 You should get a refund within 14 days of either the trader getting the goods back, or you providing
evidence of having returned the goods (for example, a proof of postage receipt from the post office),
whichever is the sooner.
 A refund should be provided within 14days of the trader getting back the goods sold or providing
evidence by the consumer for returned goods, whichever is earlier.

Lagos (city)-Nigeria

 Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa and Lagos plays a major role here. It is a
 major financial centre in Africa with the highest GDP in African cities
 and also houses one of the largest and busiest ports o
 Music and film industry – The music anf film industry
 Tourism and hospitality
 Lagos features a number of sandy beaches
 The Lagos Jazz Series music festival features high quality live music
 Lagos has a variety of hotels like Eko Hotels and Suites, Federal Palace Hotel. This include local
as well as five star hotels
 Number of festivals are conducted here e.g Festac Food Fair held in Festac Town, Eyo Festival,
Lagos Black Heritage Carnival, Lagos Carnival, etc.,
 Healthcare - Lagos has many hospitals and medical facilities and is growing to be medical hub in Africa
 Educated employees – due to the presence of numerous education institution, Lagos serves to be the
talent pool in Nigeria.

 Most of the country's financial institutions,banks and corporation headquarters are situated in Lagos and
is a major financial centre in Africa.
 Accra - Ghana

Accra is a major centre for manufacturing, marketing, finance, insurance, and transportation inn Africa

Financial sector

Includes a central bank, nine commercial banks four development banks), four merchant banks , , one home
finance mortgage bank, , Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), foreign exchange bureaus, finance houses, insurance
companies,

Accra also boasts of burgeoning real estate with industrial sites, commercial and residential developments

Categories of sectors

Primary- fishery and urban agriculture- manufacture of processed food, lumber, plywood

secondary - manufacturing, electricity, gas, water, construction, textiles, clothing, and chemicals

Tertiary sectors - supermarkets, shopping malls, hotel, restaurant, transportation, storage, communication,
financial intermediation, real estate service, , education, health etc

Accra has a well developed infrastructure international airport, Kotoka International Airport,

Education and infrastructure- Accra features a good number of institutions for higher studies and serves as
the education hub in Ghana

Tourism

Accra is the preferred tourist destination in West Africa,

It is furthermore a centre of a wide range of nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels

Accra features the National Museum, and National Theatre

Oxford Street in Osu – Accra is the place for night life in Accra.

Nicoli of the U.K.'s United Biscuits is another CEO who manages people
from his heart, but instead of giving them the kind of ultimate freedom allowed
at SHV, he has installed the most detailed human resource management system we
encountered in our interviews. It includes frequent performance reviews,
feedback sessions, and a people-management "godfather," among other initiatives.

Nicoli, the gregarious son of Italian immigrants, is remarkably open when it

comes to why he focuses his attention on people instead of on strategy.

"Ultimately, I think the performance of a business is a function of

 strategic choices that are made years before," he says, "and no one should
underestimate the importance of good fortune in all this.

"Basically, when it comes to strategy, you make your choices based

on insufficient information, and you make them when you have to make them.
We have chosen some categories, and we've chosen some geographies. Five years
from now, some will look like great choices, some will look like fantastic choices,
and some . . ." Nicoli smiles in the silence of what is left unsaid. "Sometimes
circumstances change completely," he adds after a moment passes, "for reasons
beyond your control, and your choices turn out to be bad. Some of the things that
most influence our business aren't predictable-economic trends, the value of the
pound. These things make a huge difference, and yet we have no control over
them. That's the nature of our business."

Nicoli's business is food-in large part, cookies and snacks such as McVitie's biscuits,
Keebler cookies, and KP snacks. The company has a presence throughout Europe and in the
United States, as well as in Australia and China. Nicoli, forty-four, took over in 1991, after a
career with another food company-an unlikely path for a man with an advanced degree in
nuclear physics. (He switched to food marketing as a young man, after deciding that
academia was too obscure for him. "I knew I was only a sports fanatic who happened to be
good at taking exams," he admitted once in a newspaper interview.) Today, Nicoli is happy
to be running a company with 40,000 employees, and he wants his employees to feel the
same way about working for him. He calls his approach

"structured informality." Its goals are manifold, including planning and budgeting and
other traditional controls; but in the final analysis, Nicoli believes his best shot at success is
to get talented people working at United Biscuits, and then keep them there.

"There are lots of companies that spend a lot of time recruiting excellent people
and very little time worrying about how to retain them," he says. "The truth is, it's
an awful lot harder to retain and motivate people than it is to

hire them. The hardest thing is to keep good people, because the better they
are, the more likely you are to
 j

lose them if you don't make an effort."

United Biscuits' effort on this front is expansive. Nicoli and his top ;

staffers know the top hundred managers "all fairly intimately," he

says and spend "quite a lot of time" thinking about their careers. But, he adds, it
doesn't stop with them. "It goes a long, long way down. We have a three-zone grading system
that covers hundreds of managers, and we review zones one and two regularly, and the high
flyers in zone three.

"We spend most of our time discussing the people with potential, rather than
the people without it, although when it comes to those people, we do spend time
discussing their needs."

The content of these meetings is quite specific, Nicoli says. "We have a well-
honed appraisal system that is the basis of our assessment of all these people. We
don't discuss things like, 'The problem with old Stan here is that he's pretty
bright, but he's intellectually arrogant and a bit of a jerk.' There is no point in
having that kind of conversation. Instead we have a full-year appraisal and a half-
year appraisal that has on it your personal objectives, and your business
objectives, and how you perform against them. We have an assessment of your
potential year after year, and we see how that is developing, and we know what
your aspirations are, and whether you have the qualities to be a general manager,
or a manager across functions if not a complete general manager, or we will
know if the best thing is for you to stay in a function and become a .function
specialist. We would know if you were mobile or not, and we would discuss you
in those terms, and we would identify potential roles for you." This system also
includes input from a senior executive that Nicoli calls a "godfather-not
surprising, I, suppose, given my Italian heritage." This executive is assigned
to

knowing all there is to know about United Biscuits employees, from how
satisfied they are in their jobs to what additional training they might need. This
information is fed into the formal appraisal system.

"The important thing," Nicoli adds, "is to keep an open mind in this process. I
am constantly surprised at how people change and improve, and sometimes we
find people were simply in the wrong job or improperly motivated."

Motivation, in fact, is another topic of importance to Nicoli in his role as

a human assets CEO.
 "There are a lot of companies where they attempt to motivate people by
paying them a lot," he says. Nicoli doesn't dismiss this method's efficacy, but he
asserts that people are likewise

motivated when they enjoy coming to work, when they like the people
they work with, when they can have a good laugh at the office, and when
they are part of a caring environment.

"You can fire people in a caring way, or you can just fire people," Nicoli
says. "I think one of the attractive characteristics of our company is genuine
concern. There is a price for that, of course. It's cheaper not to care in the short
term. But that is one of the reasons, I suspect, why we don't lose good people."

And besides keeping good people, caring about them has another positive
impact on the organization, Nicoli says; it creates "synergy" between divisions,
the kind of cooperation that gets people to talk, share information, and
cooperate in difficult situations.

But ultimately, Nicoli makes people his top priority because he wants to enjoy
every day of his working life, not every tenth day. And the way he sees it, his
cheerfulness begets cheerfulness in everyone around him "It's chemistry," he
explains, "and chemistry makes a hell of a difference when it comes to success in
our business. I truly believe that.

1. What type of leadership style is Mr. Eric Nicoli using? Explain.

Not a laissez faire-, because he provide regular feedbacks

Not an autocratic system because he listens to them, tries to understand them and does not
create a climate of fear.

Not paternalistic - In this type, the leader supplies complete concern for the employees and is
based on trust, loyalty

Not democratic- because Nicoli puts a lot of emphasis feedbacks and performance reviews – the
line ‘but instead of giving them the kind of ultimate freedom allowed at SHV,’ reveals that.

Democratic Nicoli makes sure that employees are motivated, taken care of and optimistic. Such
members are identified and rewarded. He understands that the CEO simply cannot be everywhere or
know everything.

Transactional

Transactional leaders focus on motivating employees through rewards and punishments.

 Here the leader finds the needs of their followers and gives rewards to satisfy those needs in
exchange for performance.
  Focus on increasing the efficiency of established routines and procedures.
 Established and standardized practices that will help the organization attain efficiency and
productivity

Nicoli, though has paternalistic touch, predominantly follows a transactional relationship. He takes
care of their but expects performance and is not biased – as in paternalistic style and is ready to fire
them if they don’t meet performance.

2. Regarding the three categories of needs that Mc Clelland identified in his theory,
which categories of needs does Mr. Nicoli try to satisfy in his employees?

 He primarily tries to satisfy the need for achievement and need for affiliation

Need for achievement

The need to feel satisfied accomplished and receive feedback on performance.

 Such people are motivated and personally satisfied by accomplishments

 Employment hierarchy with promotions
 Achievement is more .revered than material reward
 Achieving the aim or task gives greater personal satisfaction
 Feedback is essential, as it helps in measurement of success.

Need for affiliation

 People love to create and maintain social relationships, enjoy being in a group, and desire to be
loved and accepted.

Shown by the lines

‘motivated when they enjoy coming to work, when they like the people they work with, when they can
have a good laugh at the office, and when they are part of a caring environment.’

happy to be running a company with 40,000 employees, and he wants his employees to feel the same
way about’

3. Identify the motivating factors described by Herzberg which are used to motivate
the

employees. -

In this text, Nicoli uses motivating factors like

  Recognition – sensing their needs and valuing the employee’s performance
 Sense of achievement –
 The presence of a appraisal system and regular feedbacks.
 Presence of three-zone grading system
 Responsibility
 Meaningfulness of the work – Nicoli says the company involves in identifying potential roles for
employees, finding a job fit and making work more meaningful for employees.
 He offers growth and potential oppurtunities

4. Douglas McGregor identified two types of managers: Theory X and Theory Y

managers.

What type of leadership role did Mr. Nicoli adopt?

Assumptions of theory X managers

Employees are lazier, try to escape work

Employees are less intelligent

So, he must be persuaded, compelled, or warned with punishment to achieve organizational goals. A close
supervision is required. The managers adopt a more dictatorial style.
Employees prefer job security to aspiration/ ambition. Employees generally do not prefer responsibilities.

Assumptions of Theory Y managers

 Employees can be motivated

 but they can use self-direction and self-control
 If the job is rewarding and satisfying employees will offer loyalty and commitment.
 An average employee is ready to take responsibility.

Clearly Nicoli follows theory Y. He tries to understand their needs, motivate them, offer feedbacks
and in turn tries to get loyalty and performance.