Business environment challenges or trends that threaten the long run Essay

Business environment challenges or trends that threaten the long run performance and survival of the company. Develop a coheren - Essay Example The businesses are also tasked with corporate social responsibility issues and the same time expected to observe business ethics in their daily operations. Facebook Company Case Analysis This company is situated in the United States and it serves over a billion clients in the internet, making it the largest social networking site. Its an internet corporation company that runs the social networking site whereby people express their views and communicate all over the work. By the year 2012, the company had over 4500 employees working on various capacities in the company. The main competitors of Facebook are MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, IGLOO, among other companies that offer internet social services (Strategic Management Insight, 2013). STEEPLE Analysis of Facebook SOCIAL TECHNOLOGICAL ECONOMICAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL LEGAL ETHICAL Lifestyle changes New inventions and development Economic growth Sustainable energy Trade polices Employment laws Reputation Career and leisure attitudes I ndustrial focus on technological effort Taxation Global warming International trade regulations Contract laws Business ethics Labour and social mobility Rate of technological transfer Competition Threats from natural causes Political stability Consumer protection Client confidentiality From the STEEPLE Analysis, the challenges facing Facebook range from social, technological, economical, environmental, political, legal, and ethical problems. The users and the governments have been expressing privacy concerns leading to legal suit against the company (Marketing Mix, 2013). The privacy issues have made most consumers to question the business ethics of the company resulting to reduced confidentiality. Facebook being the market leader in social networking services enjoys the benefits that come with economics of scale, but the company profits are also subjected to global economic performance. The lifestyle changes and social mobility of most users is also affecting the company since some begin to see Facebook as a social interaction site for the younger generation. Facebook pays tax from their businesses with rates changing from time to time thus largely consuming their profits. There is stiff competition from related companies like Twitter and MySpace who have launched aggressive campaigns and products to outshine Facebook. Facebook was a result of technological invention and others are also exploiting the same to come up with other related services that are likely to give Facebook a strong competition. Facebook being a company with global footing is vulnerable to problems with corporate social responsibility being a major concern facing most companies and Facebook is not exempted. All businesses are expected to practice business ethics in their daily operations to avoid conflicts and hence Facebook must abide by it. Competition is a major threat to all businesses as Facebook is facing competition from MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Challenges facing Facebook Cor porate Social Responsibility (CSR) The role of the business is critical in ensuring that the corporate social responsibility is well taken care of since businesses can only flourish when the communities around them and their ecosystems are well taken care of (Hart, 1995). There is growing recognition that everything we do has a positive or negative impact on

Tools of Monetary Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Tools of Monetary Policy - Essay Example We consider these one by one in what follows. i) The required reserve ratio To understand the operational mechanism of this particular monetary policy tool, it is imperative to understand what the monetary base of an economy is. Essentially, the monetary base of an economy is defined as being the sum total of all cash holdings and reserves in the economy, i.e., the monetary base MB = C+R where C = currency/checkable deposits and R = total reserves. Further, R = RR+ER where RR is the required reserves and ER is the excess reserves. Required reserves are determined through the required reserve ratio (r) which is set by the central bank. The central bank sets the ratio of total deposits that commercial banks and other financial lending institutions have to hold as reserves. The excess reserves are the reserve holdings maintained by these banks for liquidity concerns or prudence over and above the stipulated required reserve holdings. The required reserve ratio is the policy tool by regu lating which the central bank can control the amount of excess reserves and thus loanable funds of the banks. Thus by controlling these reserves the money supply in the economy can be regulated. If the central bank intends to undertake expansionary monetary policy it can do so by relaxing the reserve requirement and consequentially increasing the amount of loans that can be made in the economy. If on the other hand it needs to conduct contractionary monetary policy, it can do so by making the reserve requirement more stringent. ii) The discount policy The discount rate is one of the monetary policy tools of the central bank of an economy. It is the rate of interest that the central bank charges for short term loans that it forwards to other banks that require such loans to cover shortages in their liquidity requirements. Discount policy affects the money supply of an economy through two channels: first, by affecting the discount rate on loans and thus in turn affecting the amount of loans indirectly and secondly, by altering the amounts of the short term loans directly. In case of the first channel, that is changing the discount rate, this may or may not have an impact on money supply depending on the position of the demand for reserves (RD). The effect of increasing the discount rate on the money supply is shown below in diagram 1. In part (a), the demand for reserves is not high enough and as a result there are no changes in the equilibrium reserve holdings. In part (b) there is a high demand for reserves and as a consequence, there is a decline in the equilibrium reserve holdings. Figure 1: Impact of increases in the discount rate In the diagram above, there is an increase in the discount rate from to . Consequentially the supply of reserves schedule rises from to . However, observe that in part (a) the demand for reserves are lower than in part (b). In particular the demand for reserves schedule is not high enough in part (a) to substantiate any efficacy o f increasing the discount rate. In fact in such a scenario, a decline in the discount rate could have an impact by increasing the equilibrium reserve holdings if the rate is lowered below the bank rate. However, this will make sense if the resulting effect of increased money supply is the desired result. As a result, albeit the increase in the discount rate leads to a rise in the supply of reserves, there is no change in the equilibri

Conceptual Art: Responses to Capitalism

Conceptual Art: Responses to Capitalism When Situationism evolved from the Letterist movement, in the middle of the last century, it set itself up in opposition to two other two other politically motivated groups: Dadism and Surreallism. Situationism, however, was only incidentally political, and rather than subverting the art world, aimed only to redesign its context, including the attitudes of the public, so that art could become something anyone could do or enjoy- something integrated into everyday life. Historically, arts efforts to bring down capitalist structures from within have been very ill-fated, with artists finding themselves ignored, scorned, crushed or – perhaps worse- accessories to political agendas. Artists and writers must work harder than ever to devise means of opposing or exposing capitalisms deceptions, but many commentators appear to have reached the conclusion that the battle is barely worth fighting. As we shall see, Jean Baudrillard argues that criticism of the status quo is no longer possi ble through art or literature and that the only efficient way of dissenting from capitalist society is to commit suicide, Modern art wishes to be negative, critical, innovative and a perpetual surpassing, as well as immediately (or almost) assimilated, accepted, integrated, consumed. One must surrender to the evidence: art no longer contests anything. If it ever did. Revolt is isolated, the malediction consumed. Thus the avant-garde movements in Europe put the artist under pressure to exhibit a certain individuality, while also – rather contradictorily- being a producer, and as prolific, political and reactionary a producer as possible, There is a lot of talk, not about reform or forcing the Enlightenment project to live up to its own ideals, but about wholesale negation, revolution, another new sensibility, now self- affirming or self-creating, rather than a universalist or rational self-legitimation. This in turn suggests a tremendously heightened role for the artist, the figure whose imagination supposedly creates or shapes the sensibilities of civilization. In a sense, the avant-garde has been socially commissioned to forecast the future, to scouting out new intellectual terrain, Aesthetic modernity is characterized by attitudes which find a common focus in a changed consciousness of time The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured Early Attempts to Overthrow Capitalism In many ways, Dada and Surrealism represent the most successful artistic rebellions against capitalist norms, as they have attacked the conventional assumption of meaning itself, and in doing so drew attention to the ridiculous fact that such an assumption existed at all, Dada has often been called nihilistic and its declared purpose was indeed to make clear to the public at large that all established values, moral or aesthetic, had been rendered meaningless by the catastrophe of the Great War Dada preached nonsense and anti-art with a vengeance It is as though the Artist jumped before she was pushed. With its effort to close the gap between producer and produced by making everything equally alien, Surrealism also sought to negate its creator, using, pure psychic automatism intended to express the true process of thought free from the exercise of reason and from any aesthetic or moral purpose . Habermas, too, asserts that Surrealism poses a threat to arts existential rights, but still fails in two ways, First, when the containers of an autonomously developed cultural sphere are shattered, the contents get dispersed. Nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured form; an emancipatory effect does not follow. Habermas draws attention to the levelling affect of contemporary communication networks: networks which challenge the hierarchical assumptions of classical Marxism, and which have, in scale, surpassed what any postmodern commentator – even in the 1980s- could have imagined. More so than ever, our media are democratic and interrelated, A rationalized everyday life, therefore, could hardly be saved from cultural impoverishment through breaking open a single cultural sphere art and so providing access to just one of the specialized knowledge complexes. Any active dissent can be transformed into a commodity, a product to assist the perpetuation of capitalism. Catchy slogans devised by revolutionaries are used to sell mortgages, paintings that challenge conventional assumptions about beauty and form are written about in books to be sold, and bought by galleries where their beauty and form can be admired and valued- bought and sold. As the â€Å"Anti-Naturals† recently wrote, on the subject, â€Å"It is the nature of the Spectacle to transform all experience into a consumer commodity. It is no surprise, then, that so much of modern capitalist production should be focused on the authenticity swindle. It is not merely that we are told that our authentic self is only a credit card order away. We must be told what and how to purchase. Since, in the midst of the Spectacle, all experience is real only when it can be consumed, it is natural to follow the guidance offered by the array of products engineered to address each particular need. In reality, it is quite easy to mass market to hundreds of millions of individuals,‚ since each quest is identical in its basic features.† Any words spoken against can be turned into rallying support. Art, like any powerful weapon, can always be turned against those who use it. Whatever doesnt kill power is killed by it. In this way the Dadaists watched their anti-art works being systematically categorised as works of art, and were forced to focus their whole project completely on the evasion of this recuperation. Five years of agitation against capital, war and morality, brought them to an impasse of suicide or silence. Everything the Dadaists made, said, wrote or performed seemed to be turned against its critical purpose and used against them- and they abandoned the project. Effectively, they went on strike. The Dadaists left a legacy in the form of recuperated, commodified art works, and in multiple imitations of their style and attitude. Their advocation of collage and photomontage is now everywhere in advertisements, their paradoxically anti-art art surely at the very heart of current post-modernist critical theory. They were correct in their belief that this capitalist appropriation was inevitable while they were merely producing, and not controlling the means of production, but in some ways, they did in fact constitute a challenge to bourgeois morality. Dadaism questioned the philosophical assumptions which justified smug bourgeois attitudes, and uncovered the hypocracy of World War 1s brutality legitimising propaganda. In the end they felt that their subversions of established values were merely contributing too much to the culture they had been trying to undermine. The Situationist Asger Jorn was emphatic about the failure of Marxist theory, to liberate of art from commodification , â€Å"Instead of abolishing the private character of property, socialism does nothing but augment them as much as possible, rending humans themselves useless and socially non-existent. The goal of the development of artistic liberation is the liberation of human values by the transformation of human qualities into real values. Here begins the artistic revolution against socialist development, the artistic revolution that is tied to the communist project . . .† Debord and the Situationist Reaction to Capitalism Debords 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle, represented an attempt to articulate as fully as possible the Situationist philosophy. The term spectacle refers to the colonization of everyday life by commodity in late capitalism, an extension of alienation experienced between production and consumption. The spectacles subjective, one-directional effect requires a kind of non-participation, eventually resulting in a breakdown of communication between people. Situationism distinguishes between classical and modern forms of capitalism. Where classical capitalism demanded that wasted time describes any time not spent at work, modern capitalism actually reverses that, using advertising and other spectacular means to declare that it is the time spent at work that is wasted, and work is justifiable only because it provides the monetary ability to consume. Marx wrote that, the worker feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home The Situationists describe the spectacular society as a place where, the spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere . As Debord himself explains, So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is guardian of that sleep . However, the spectacle was not unique to capitalist society; the Situationists worked on a theory of the concentrated spectacle that would incorporate individual influences on capitalist regimes. This was principally contrived as a rhetorical framework to include the cult of personality in the dictatorships of places such as Cuba, the Soviet Union and China. The Situationists argued that the same tricks that society used to sell fast cars and kitchen appliances were used to promote and deify figures such as Chairman Mao. In anarchic efforts to subvert the spiritual and fiscal poverty of urban life under the tyranny of the spectacle, the Situationists developed a revolutionary art, departed from artistic convention. In their article Preliminaries Toward Defining a Unitary Revolutionary Program, Debord and the Marxist theorist Pierre Canjuers, assert, â€Å"At one pole, art is purely and simply recuperated by capitalism as a means of conditioning the population. At the other pole, capitalism grants art a perpetual privileged concession: that of pure creative activity, an alibi for the alienation of all other activities (which makes it the most expensive and prestigious status symbol). But at the same time, this sphere reserved for free creative activity is the only one in which the question of what we do with life and the question of communication are posed practically and in all their fullness. Here, in art, lies the basis of the antagonisms between partisans and adversaries of the officially dictated reasons for living. The established meaninglessness and separations give rise to the general crisis of traditional artistic means a crisis linked to the experience of alternative ways of living or the demand for such experience. Revolutionary artists are those who call for intervention; and who have themselves intervened in the sp ectacle in order to disrupt or destroy it.† Initially, the work the Situationist International produced was aimed at ridiculing formalist conceptions of the art object: Asger Jorn bought amateur paintings at flea markets and painted over them, subverting notions of authority and value. Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio invented a style of â€Å"industrial† painting where the canvas was over a hundred metres long, then cut strips off for potential buyers, thereby subverting traditional preconceptions of arts autonomy. In reality these processes were eventually absorbed by a capitalist art market bought, sold, exhibited, written about, and for the most part, politically neutered. In his 1974 book Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Burger points out that the avant-garde artists main goal is to shock the viewer, typically accustomed to organic or formalist works of art, in the hope that such withdrawal of meaning will direct the readers attention to the fact that the conduct of ones life is questionable and that it is necessary to cha nge it He goes on to state that, Paradoxically, the avant-gardist intention to destroy art as an institution is thus realized in the work of art itself. The intention to revolutionize life by returning art to its praxis turns into a revolutionizing of art. This is the kind of logic that prompted the Situationists to agree to stop producing art in 1961, when they decided to cease considering themselves artists. Any remaining members unwilling to abandon traditional forms of art, including Jorn, Pinot-Gallizio, and Constant found themselves either being forced into ideological resignation or expulsion. â€Å"It is a question not of elaborating the spectacle of refusal, but rather of refusing the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to be artistic and authentic in the new and authentic sense defined by the SI, the elements of the destruction of the spectacle must precisely cease to be works of art. Once and for all. . . . Our position is that of combatants between two worlds one that we dont acknowledge, the other that does not yet exist.† In The Situationist City, Simon Sadler write that, in abandoning early Situationism, the Situationist International abandoned its imagining of utopia a devastating decision, surely unprecedented in the history of the avant-garde, and yet at the same time surely the situationists greatest contribution to that history: the recognition that in changing the world, avant-garde art cannot be a substitute for popular redistribution of power It seemed that the SI recognized that for any avant-garde to succeed, it would do best striving to produce artists, and not art. The Dadaists, too, were aware that both art and artist are part of the capitalist system, and consequently as guilty in their participation as any other commodity or worker. Marcuse and Adorno, in contrast, argued that the Dadaist project was misguided for its attacks on conventional art. They saw art as an autonomous entity, separate from capitalist interests, and something intrinsically apolitical that must be preserved rather than aggressively undermined. For Adorno, art bears an essential negativity derived from its peculiar Form; its rearrangements of reality are conducted according to a system quite alien to those of capitalism. This â€Å"Form† grants art a: refuge and a vantage point from which to denounce the reality established through domination. While Adorno and Marcuse criticised the anti-artists for attacking artistic Form, they agreed with the avant-gardists in their slightly utopic aspiration of abolishing the distinction that existed between art and the rest of reality. In fact, Marcuse wished to see a society organised around the aesthetic principles he believed resided only within art. Both argued that this integration could not be achieved if artists were allowed to participate. Art should be kept apolitical and protected, in a realm conducive to calm reflection that might remind us of the truth an authentic life can afford us after the revolution. So, although they expressed their rejection of this view in different ways, the Dadaists, Surrealists and Situationists all aspired to a collapse of the distinction between art and the rest of life in present: â€Å"everyday life†. Instead of waiting for the revolution, all three argued that the integration of art and life was in fact necessary for the achievement of revolution, a revolution made possible only by a combined cultural, ideological and economic assault on capitalism. Asger Jorn, again, on the failure of the socialist revolution, â€Å"The capitalist revolution was essentially a socialization of consumption. Capitalist industrialization brought humanity a socialization as profound as the socialization proposed by the socialists that of the means of production. The socialist revolution is the fulfillment of the capitalist revolution. The one element removed from the capitalist system is saving, because consumptions richness has already been eliminated by the capitalists themselves†¦ Real communism will be the leap into the domain of freedom and of value, of communication. Contrary to utilitarian value (normally known as material value), artistic value is the progressive value because, by a process of provocation, it is the valorization of humanity itself. Since Marx, economic politics has shown its impotence and its cowardice. A hyperpolitics will need to strive for the direct realization of humanity.† Walter Benjamins Authentic Opposition: Crisis of Reproduction Walter Benjamin is probably Adornos most established opponent, particularly since The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, a work that concentrated upon defining the aura of traditional art preceding 1900, and assessed the decay of this aura under the impact of new media and cultural technologies. Benjamin argues that art has lost its authenticity because of mechanical mass reproduction in our capitalist-orientated culture industry. He is concerned about shifting attitudes to art, which came about as a consequence of the introduction of mechanical means of reproduction. Formerly unique objects, located in a particular space, lost their singularity as they became accessible to many people in diverse places. Lost too was the aura that was attached to a work of Art which was now open to many different readings and interpretations Unlike his Frankfurt School colleagues, however, and especially unlike Adorno, Benjamin argues, this loss of authenticity is actually a positive thing, because it democratizes and politicizes art. Benjamins claim that arts loss of authenticity might actually help free people, not enslave them in a capitalist culture industry starkly opposes Adornos ideas. In addition, each stage of reproduction of an original work of art also contributes to its loss of aura. According to Benjamin, then: culture has been transformed into an industry; thus art has become commodified; contemporary culture is the machinery by which oppressive ideologies are reproduced and disseminated; new media technologies such as phonographs, film and photography, serve to destroy arts aura and effectively demystify the process of creating art, making available radical new access and roles for art in mass culture; the spectator has become a collaborator and participant, who joins the author in determining the meaning of the production of the work of art. Art is successful only when it enables the critical contemplation of a viewer. Benjamin happily equates authenticity with authority- the authority of oppressive institutions such as the church or the state- and history. As Benjamin explains, the work of arts authenticity is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced Until the 20th century, artworks retained their aura, their â€Å"authenticity† precisely because of their inability to be mass-reproduced, whether religious artifacts or one-off paintings commissioned by individual wealthy patrons. This conception clearly presents aura and authenticity as profoundly undemocratic, as the means of artistic production remain in the control of the rich and powerful, then able use such art to maintain control over the masses. The introduction of mechanical means of reproduction of art, particularly photography and film, caused the very foundations of this setup to be radically altered. For the first time it was possible for anyone to acquire the means to take photographs of a work of art, or at purchase an image of the work. However hard cultural elites in the late 19th century had tried to protect the aura of art works, the social advance of the masses and the invention of media such as film, which depends upon distribution to the masses, had led to the inevitable decay of the aura in the 20th century. Benjamin marks the distinction between manual and machine reproduction of art, The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical, and, of course, not only technical reproducibility, he states, Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis a vis technical reproduction Benjamin states two reasons this occurs. Firstly, machine reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction; secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. So mass-produced copies are able to engage with the wider world in a manner not possible for the original or one-off copies. Benjamin summarises his ideas concerning reproduction by asserting the technique detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. Many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.† So to allow the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, is to reactivate the object reproduced, â€Å"It is these processes that lead to the tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind In Benjamins conception, then, state and religious authorities have steadily lost the ability to control general access to such works of art, particularly since the 20th century began. This is most apparent in relation to the cinema, which destroyed the traces of aura with which art had been traditionally imbued; Benjamin cites arts historical value as a fundamental part of magical and religious rituals. In the process, capitalism strips art of its the idealistic, theological halo- to some extent a happy consequence and restorative, as it returns the art object to its non-utilitarian presence, its everyday reality. For Benjamin, an artworks â€Å"aura† refers to its uniqueness and the phenomena of distance, however close [an object] may be. He uses gives the example of distant mountains and a trees bough over head, both contain aura because they are images have not been effectively reproduced mechanically . Beyond the concepts of aura and authenticity, Benjamins concepts of reproduction and reversibility represent the core of his concerns about way in which arts role in society has been fundamentally altered in the 20th century. Benjamin proposes that the artworks aura of authenticity has withered away because of its reproduceability, and the process of reproduction brings art into closer proximity with a mass audience. However, paradoxically, as the authenticity erodes, the works essence becomes forefronted in the process, as it starts to become designed for reproducibility. As Benjamin describes it, â€Å"for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. . . . From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for an authentic print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics†. Benjamins commentaries on the effects of reproduction inspired other writers, such as Lechte, â€Å"it is the process of reproduction as such which is revolutionary: the fact, for instance, that the photographic negative enables a veritable multiplication of originals. With the photograph, therefore, the spectre of the simulacrum emerges, although Benjamin never names it as such. The photograph as simulacrum by-passes the simple difference between original and copy† Barbara Krugers Situationism and the Irresistible Collage of Society Barbara Kruger addresses the negative aspects of capitalist society as an artist, writer, curator, lecturer and graphic designer. Her art is displayed both inside and outside museums and in a range of different forms. Occasionally her prints are framed and hung on the walls of museums and galleries in the traditional fashion, but Kruger is endlessly inventive, and often writes text to be printed or projected directly on the walls or floors of a museum. In Picturing Greatness, a photography exhibition curated by Kruger in 1987 for The Museum of Modern Art in New York, text was printed in large black type across a central partition. Kruger selected photographs for this exhibit from the museums collection, and according to the words on the partition, the photographs were mostly of mostly famous artists† who happened to be predominantly white and male. The text on the partition claimed the works can show us how vocation is ambushed by clichà © and snapped into stereotype by the camera, and how photography freezes moments, creates prominence and makes history. Krugers work continually questions the definition of art, artists and the ways in which â€Å"great art† should be exhibited. In this work, Kruger challenges the overwhelming dominance of male artists and draws attention to the females apparent invisibility in western art history. Just like the Situationists under Guy Debord, she has altered the meaning of art by rec ontextualising it. Crucially, the visitor to Krugers exhibition does not need to be familiar with the original photographs before seeing the show- even the uneducated viewer could read Krugers text, look at the original images and come to their own conclusions about the meaning. Thus the work achieves a kind of unique political democracy. Kruger has a background as a graphic designer, and as such creates effective bold images which are in many ways visually indistinguishable from advertisements, but rather than trying to sell a product, appeal directly to our social conscience. The subject of her text is always I, me, we, or you, as though Kruger engages in conversation with the viewer. Her messages probe the assumptions of the capitalist status quo: You are seduced by the sex appeal of the inorganic, When I hear the word culture, I take out my checkbook and We have received orders not to move. Similarly, Constant, of the COBRA group, proposed a city as a kind of physical expression of his utopia of â€Å"free play† which, in parts, bears striking resemblance to representations of the Internet, in books such as Mapping Cyberspace (with wild lines pouring out of the metropolis perhaps representing bandwidth and site traffic). Made with perspex and bike parts, Constants models and his diagrams for New Babylon demonstrate his yearning for future as something mobile, organic, animated, and self-celebratory. For Constant the city was a sort of perpetual festival of leisure. With its intricately connected wires suspending clear circular layers, ramps and walkways, Constants New Babylon recalls some kind of tensile organism. As Constant describes it, â€Å"The unfunctional character of this playground-like construction makes any logical division of the inner spaces senseless. We should rather think of a quite chaotic arrangement of small and bigger spaces that are constantly assembled and dissembles by means of standardized mobile construction elements like walls, floors and staircases. Thus the social space can be adapted to the ever-changing needs of an every changing population as it passes through the sector system.† Analogues with the Internet are irresistable. Equally, he could have been referring in a general way to those unique social structures which have grown from the anti-globalisation movement – structures which, although provisional, pragmatic and short term, are nevertheless ideologically committed to social change and serve as emblems of the ongoing struggle against capitalism, a battle fuelled entirely from reserves of creativity. Constants is city as collage, similar to that celebrated by the less politically motivated group, Archigram, in the UK (many of whose members now design massive architectural features for megaband stadium concerts). In this time of desperate connectivity and complicated layering of urban cultures, with invisible webs of communication engulfing us, the need to understand the city as a place beyond work and production seems more pressing than ever. The Situationist reaction to capitalism is also excellently expressed through anti capitalist collage: for example that of the General Lighting and Power group, whose slick mock-advertising images of soft focus female forms in leotards and computer graphics of office interiors and car accidents, wryly annotated with entertaining aphorisms such as: Aerobics is necessary: progress implies it (I see you baby, shaking that ass) and God is in the retailing Comparisons to Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger are obvious. Charles Rice, too, has observed the oversized billboard signs now proliferating in major cities, arguing convincingly that they serve to perpetuate the distance between the real and the impossible,these spatial fantasies effectively deliver identification with the distant and the unattainable† Many writers have noted the similarities between the Situationists idea of the derive (that is, the navigating of a city via means and routes other than those originally intended) and the experience of â€Å"surfing† the internet. Colin Fournier, architect and educator makes some potent observations on this area. It would seem that many of the characteristics of the internet reflect the S.I.s utopic city. The things considered prerequisite for their utopia: an ephemeral, negotiable type of city, where uses were determined by the population, surfing the web is like the idea of drifting or â€Å"deriving†, flaneur-like, through a city. The Situationist city and the web are uniquely flexible, anarchically dynamic: spacial relations secondary on any given route. The internet always seems to somehow recall the old Surrealist idea of using a map of one city to find ones way around another. Art as Capitalism: the Medias Re-appropriation of Images Increasingly, the media is becoming governed by imagery, and the average consumer is overwhelmed by visual information on a daily basis. Through sheer competition, the commercial sphere has been forced to use stranger, scarier, more extreme imagery to earn the attention of bewildered customers. Magazines such as Vogue have lured artists to their pages, where they are seen as innovative, visionary powers for re-inventing a complacent visual vocabulary. Thus, the traditional hierarchy of photography, in which the commercial and conceptual worlds were segregated, has been broken down into a fluid, integrated world- mutual respect has ensured that crossing the boundary either way no longer carries the taint or disrespect it once did. A new generation of artists have grown up with the rather cynical and postmodern idea that all things are commercially viable. Contemporary art school graduates are less likely to see their ventures into the commercial realm as contamination, and more as a necessary aspect of their endeavor. Commerce is incorporated into art at every level, from the means to the ends to the theme. That the common thread of art and fashion- the human body- has become such a commodity, seems like an obvious extension of this. Fashion spreads frequently borrow art photographers for their pages and mimic, in the case of Diesel and others, with considerable irony- the current art world trend towards narrative ambiguity and deliberately theatrical tableaux that recall â€Å"theoretical† artists like Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman. Russel Wong is one such new generation artist, his work strongly informed by todays cultural fascination with celebrity. Wong has become famous through striking portraits of personalities from sports to music and movies, famous for capturing moments of vulnerability, warmth and humor. A number of Wongs photos have been used on the covers of international magazines. My photos are never confrontati

The Genesis of a Backcountry Identity :: Colonial America Colonization Essays

The Genesis of a Backcountry Identity In the North American English[1] colonial experience and in the subsequent post- revolutionary American Republic, the ability to assimilate either individually or collectively into the hierarchy of power represented a continually evolving process. Previously, throughout Europe’s ancient rà ©gime, a ridged hierarchy had dominated the social interaction of every facet of life and dictated that social positioning was a product of one’s birth and not open to unwarranted acts of social promotion. With the opening of English colonization efforts in the new world during the seventeenth century, the ridged social hierarchy of the old world was transplanted to North America. Although the Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Area and the settlers at Jamestown came to North America with wildly divergent intentions, the two different groups nevertheless brought with them the social behaviors of the dominate English identity that they had both been accustom to. The geographica l distance between England and North America, however, generated a logistically challenged environment that increasingly compelled colonial Americans to integrate their dominant English customs within the practical realities of living three thousand miles away from London. Maintaining traditional social order in the English North American colonies was therefore particularly problematic the farther west that English colonial expansion reached in North America. Consequently, in the ensuing one hundred and fifty plus years before colonial America entered the pre-revolutionary period in 1763[2], a gradual weakening of the traditional English hierarchical order of colonial life facilitated the development of a sectionalist conflict that would characterize the western expansion of North America. The loosening of traditional social controls in the English North American colonies affected nearly every aspect of colonial society, but along the expanding frontier regions of colonial America the effects of the weakening hierarchy’s authority allowed a distinct frontier or backcountry identity to develop.[3] At the forefront of the backcountry’s collective identity lay the singular importance of land ownership because, as historian Alan Taylor suggests, â€Å"the distribution of †¦property would determine what sort of society would be reproduced over time as Americans expanded across the continent.†[4] Because property ownership ultimately represented the defining element for entrance into the governing ranks of early American society, some marginalized groups of white frontier settlers that were typically comprised of recently arrived immigrants, squatters, and tenant farmers, occasionally were compelled to rebel against the eastern colonial centers of authority. The Paxton

Professionalism in the Workplace Essay

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This article deals with concepts such as incivility in the workplace and â€Å"incivility spiral.† The authors describe how the incivility spiral could occur and offer research propositions for further study. Moreover, they explain the implications that workplace incivility pose for practitioners and researchers alike (Andersson & Pearson, 1999).  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The authors trace the literature on the importance of civility in society. Such literature is rich with conclusions that state that civility offers functions and moral implications. Literature on the matter likewise describes the workplace as the last bastion of civility. However, they perceive a change in this opinion, brought about by many factors, such as employee diversity, autocratic environments, and hiring of part-time workers, which affect the trend of incivility and aggressiveness in the business world (Andersson & Pearson, 1999).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The authors described workplace incivility as actions that are characterized by rudeness or discourtesy. They represent violations of the norms of an organization. One form taken by workplace incivility is aggression, which is manifested in acts like physical abuse, harassment, and sabotage. These acts are bound by the characteristic of intent to injure another (Andersson & Pearson, 1999).  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Incivility in the organization has a spiraling effect, where secondary spirals result from primary ones. This tendency requires managers to correct their actions that may contribute to the growth of incivility as an organizational norm. Moreover, there should be efforts at curtailing incivility within the organization (Andersson & Pearson, 1999).  Church, A. H. & Waclawski, J. (1999). The Impact of Leadership Style on Global   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Management Practices. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 29(7), 1416-1443.             This article is concerned with the trend in businesses today to go global. Church and Waclawski describe how the trend has influenced schools into studying and implementing strategies relative to the new global economy. More importantly, they describe how the trend pushes corporations to adopt a global approach in their businesses (Church & Waclawski, 1999).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In this light, the authors noted the work of other researches, which suggest that great competitive advantage in the new global market could be achieved if a corporation has a good value system and corporate culture. This could only be achieved if a corporation’s leaders and managers acquire a broader perspective that involves progressive ideas such as change management and cultural flexibility. Thus, the new trend of globalization led to another trend, consisting of the focus of organizations to hire people with international experience or background (Church & Waclawski, 1999).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The authors then focused on leadership style, which they believed was a good predictor of managerial behavior. They categorized the types of leaders according to their key characteristics. Thus there is a group of transformational leaders who concentrate on new directions and new goals, and transactional leaders who focus on getting the job done by maintaining the status quo. For these authors, transformational leaders are more likely to manifest globalization behaviors, given their tendency to focus on change (Church & Waclawski, 1999).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   After collecting data from 391 senior managers and reports within a global organization, Church and Waclawski found that there were better reports and ratings for transformational leaders. These leaders are those who â€Å"engage in behaviors relating to systems thinking, change management, relationships, and learning.† Thus, they concluded that there is a significant relationship between leadership style and actual practice of global leadership (Church & Waclawski, 1999). Fairholm, M. R. (2004). Different Perspectives on the Practice of Leadership. Public   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Administration Review 64(5), 577-590.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This article presents the position that public managers need to learn about leadership in order to be effective. They need to have a clear understanding of the concept of leadership, and not merely â€Å"practical and intellectual permission† to exercise it. The authors believe that since public managers are involved in leadership activities, it is useful to accept the nature of public administration as involving the practice of leadership (Fairholm, 2004).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Fairholm explains that issues on leadership often get ignored by public administration academics. However, there are now certain people who appreciate the need to focus as a practitioner would. Since there is a link between leadership training and public sector management, then it is important that public managers receive training on leadership (Fairholm, 2004).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Fairholm also explains leadership through the leadership perspectives model, which utilizes four encompassing leadership perspectives. This model views leadership as (1) (scientific) management; (2)excellence management; (3) values-displacement activity; (4) whole-soul (spiritual) leadership. The theory holds that while these different perspectives are distinct from each other, they are related hierarchically. In addition, they all help achieve a complete notion of leadership. (Fairholm, 2004). Johnsrud, L. K., Heck, R. H., & Rosser, V. J. (2000). Morale Matters: Midlevel Administrators and Their Intent to Leave. The Journal of Higher Education 71(1),   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   34-59.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This paper focuses on the concept of morale, which refers to the â€Å"level of well-being that an individual or group is experiencing in reference to their worklife.† The authors feel that while there are intuitive guides that tell people that morale affects the performance of an organization, there are no clear measures to support such intuition. Thus, this article deals with the problem of accurately defining and measuring morale within an organization. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between morale and its effect on midlevel administrators (Johnsrud, Heck & Rosser, 2000).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   There are many factors affecting the morale of midlevel administrators. These include the feeling that they have no power to make decisions for the organization, and yet they are held responsible for the outcomes of such decisions. Moreover, they do not have tenure and they have limited opportunity for professional development. All of these factors affect the morale of midlevel managers (Johnsrud, Heck & Rosser, 2000).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Finally, the authors established the construct validity of morale, using three dimensions, namely, quality of work, mutual loyalty, and institutional regard. All of these were selected because they represent attributes associated with morale (Johnsrud, Heck & Rosser, 2000). Knights, D. & McCabe, D. (2003). Governing through Teamwork: Reconstituting   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Subjectivity in a Call Centre. Journal of Management Studies 40(7), 1587-1619.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This article is a study of the various factors at play in a call center, which is a workplace that is governed by distance. Thus, it focuses on the concept of teamwork, and the technique of appealing to employees’ personal motivations to reach organizational goals. Among those personal motivations include sociability, unity, autonomy, and the desire for an enriching work experience (Knights & McCabe, 2003).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The authors note a crucial element of team playing, which is individual responsibility. This implies that employees should have a certain degree of autonomy or self-determination, rather than simply follow directions of superiors. They agree with the literature on the matter that a certain degree of staff autonomy could be good for the organization. However, they feel that the effect could be that the work becomes â€Å"simultaneously more rewarding and more demanding.† Thus they believe it was necessary to further study the factors that influence the various effects of autonomy to staff members (Knights & McCabe, 2003). Makkai, T. & Braithwaite, V. (1993). Professionalism, Organizations, and Compliance. Law & Social Inquiry 18(1), 33-59.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This article is concerned with factors that affect organizational compliance. This concern stems from the observation that organizational compliance with the law is very important, considering the potential of an organization to affect large number of people. However, an organization is not made up of a single person, but many individuals with different mindsets. Hence, it is important for an organization’s chief executive officer to learn how to control the attitudes and performance of the organization in order to ensure compliance with state regulations (Makkai & Braithwaite, 1993).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Makkai and Braithwaite reviewed literature on the professionalism and organizational compliance, and opined that professionalism is a complex concept that requires further investigation. More particularly, they aim to concentrate on three aspects of professionalism and their effects on organizational compliance. These aspects are values, professional autonomy, and role orientations (Makkai & Braithwaite, 1993).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   After deriving relevant data from the Australian nursing home industry, the authors found no significant direct relationship between organizational compliance and professional orientations. Since there was little support for the hypothesis that role orientations and values affect organizational compliance, the authors suggested further studies on the matter (Makkai & Braithwaite, 1993). Sabet, M. G. & Klingner, D. (1993). Exploring The Impact of Professionalism on   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Administrative Innovation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   J-PART 3(2), 252-266.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This paper reports a study of three major conceptual areas vis-à  -vis organizational theory. These three areas are professionalism, innovation, and drug-testing policies. For professionalism, the authors seek to determine the relationship between professionalism and innovation from the organizational perspective (Sabet & Klingner, 1993).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The authors review the literature on the three conceptual areas. For professionalism, they discuss how professionalism â€Å"has been viewed as a structural and attitudinal variable.† They note that the literature define professionalism through five attitudinal variables, such as autonomy, belief in self-regulation, belief in service to the public, â€Å"use of professional organization as a major referent, and a â€Å"sense of calling to the field (Sabet & Klingner, 1993).†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   After sending questionnaires to personnel directors with a study population of 209, the authors found that managers with higher professionalism are more likely to implement policies, such as drug-testing, that affect the tendency of the organization to innovate. Furthermore, they found a significant relationship between the degree of professionalism of a personnel director and the character of the policies he implements. (Sabet & Klingner, 1993). Sarros, J. C., Tanewski, G. A., Winter, R. P., Santora, J. C. & Densten, I. L. (2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Work Alienation and Organizational Leadership. British Journal of Management   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   13, 285-304.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This article describes a study conducted to determine the relationship between a leader’s behavior and organizational structure and work alienation. The authors studied factors that alter workplace structure and culture. Moreover, they are concerned about understanding how to reduce alienation or the feeling of powerlessness at work (Sarros, Tanewski, Winter, Santora & Densten, 2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The authors noted that throughout the literature of work alienation, the concept, meaning and measurement of the term had been vague or ambiguous, which led to the variance in interpretations of the concept. Thus, they quote both the earliest and latest interpretations of alienation. They quote Marx and Weber, who believe that â€Å"alienation is a state (or feeling) in which the job is external to the individual,† and such feeling is caused by lack of autonomy in the workplace. They also cite Seaman who described alienation by enumerating its five components, namely, powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness and isolation, and self-estrangement (Sarros, Tanewski, Winter, Santora & Densten, 2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   After taking a survey using questionnaires distributed to more than 600 officers of fire departments, the authors concluded that employee behavior and attitudes, such as work alienation, could be affected and mitigated by actions taken by organizational leaders. For example, such could be accomplished by mitigating the rigidity extant in hierarchical structures within the organization and thereby reduce the tendency for work alienation (Sarros, Tanewski, Winter, Santora & Densten, 2002). Thamhain, H. J. (2003). Managing innovative R&D teams. R&D Management 33(3),   Ã‚  Ã‚   297-311.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This paper involves a study of the subject of innovation vis-à  -vis project performance in a technological environment. The author observed that innovation is an effective tool in business, particularly in ensuring superior performance, good products and services, and lower cost. The author likewise notes that interdisciplinary teamwork could make the difference between the success and failure of a business. Such teamwork is perceived to be more crucial than mere generation of innovative ideas at the R&D stage. Thus, it is posited that a team has more chances at success if it is able to â€Å"facilitate a team environment conducive to market-orientation innovation† (Thamhain, 2003).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In order to determine the factors relevant to innovative R&D performance, the author sought to understand the barriers and drivers to good performance. The study led to the understanding of the type of managerial leadership and organizational environment that is conducive to innovative performance. The author chose the research format of an exploratory field research, due to constraints caused by complexities or the absence of theories on the subject. Thus, he utilized questionnaires and qualitative methods, such as participant observation and in-depth retrospective interviewing in order to understand the challenges involved in the R&D process within a company. The interviews and questionnaires he used were previously used in other field studies related in the subject of R&D management (Thamhain, 2003).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Data gathered from 74 project teams and 935 professionals were analyzed using standard statistical methods. The author found that team members’ perception of reality affect their behavior. Actions of a manager could affect and stimulate team behavior. This finding relative to perceptional measures is important because it guides managers into acting towards the encouragement of a project environment that is conducive to the needs of the team (Thamhain, 2003).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The author then discusses the various influences to innovative team performance, and classified them into three, namely, â€Å"(a) people, (b) organizational process, tools and techniques, and (c) R&D work/task.† As to the first group of factors, he found personal interest, professional challenges and recognition, and pride as significant drivers. As to the second group, he found effective communications, stable priorities and goals, effective support systems, and cooperation as important elements of effective performance. Finally, he found certain personal aspects of work, such as job skills, experience, and interest, to be relevant drivers for effective performance. Proper understanding of these factors lead to better innovative performance (Thamhain, 2003). Vance, C. & Larson, E. (2002). Leadership Research in Business and Health Care.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Journal of Nursing Scholarship 34(2), 165-171.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This article is a summary and analysis of the literature on the subject of leadership, particularly in the fields of health care and business. Vance and Larson noted that the concept of leadership had evolved over the years that it had been the constant subject of research. Thus, it has been subject of various conceptualizations and has been viewed as both a behavioral and perceptual phenomenon.   Vance and Larson likewise believe that it would be pointless to endeavor to reach a single definition of leadership, because it could take various definitions, depending on the various aspects of leadership concerned (Vance & Larson, 2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In order to arrive at the outcomes of leadership on organizations, groups, and individuals, the authors conducted a study by reviewing studies spanning thirty years, from January 1970 through December 1999. After screening articles and categorized, the authors analyzed the data using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). They found that most studies focused on the topic of leadership characteristics, training and measures. They also found that leadership in the business setting had been treated with more frequency than in health care literature (Vance & Larson, 2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Given their findings, the authors concluded that there is a need to change the focus of research on the subject of leadership. They noted that there are now many indicators of this need, such as the increasing demand for leaders in health-related fields and the globalization of organizations. The authors likewise focused on certain aspects of leadership with little literature, such as the relationship between leadership and organizational outcomes, causal relationships, intervening factors, and leadership intervention styles (Vance & Larson, 2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Finally, the authors criticize how the literature on leadership in the business and health care literature is limited to descriptive treatment of the subject. The fields of health care and business provide fertile ground for research on causal relationships and leadership styles, which could yield vital findings for the subject’s literature (Vance & Larson, 2002). References Andersson, L. M. & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   the Workplace. The Academy of Management Review 24(3), 452-471.   Church, A. H. & Waclawski, J. (1999). The Impact of Leadership Style on Global   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Management Practices. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 29(7), 1416-1443. Fairholm, M. R. (2004). Different Perspectives on the Practice of Leadership. Public   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Administration Review 64(5), 577-590. Johnsrud, L. K., Heck, R. H., & Rosser, V. J. (2000). Morale Matters: Midlevel   Ã‚   Administrators and Their Intent to Leave. The Journal of Higher Education 71(1),   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   34-59. Knights, D. & McCabe, D. (2003). Governing through Teamwork: Reconstituting   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Subjectivity in a Call Centre. Journal of Management Studies 40(7), 1587-1619. Makkai, T. & Braithwaite, V. (1993). Professionalism, Organizations, and Compliance. Law & Social Inquiry 18(1), 33-59. Sabet, M. G. & Klingner, D. (1993). Exploring The Impact of Professionalism on   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Administrative Innovation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   J-PART 3(2), 252-266. Sarros, J. C., Tanewski, G. A., Winter, R. P., Santora, J. C. & Densten, I. L. (2002).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Work Alienation and Organizational Leadership. British Journal of Management   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   13, 285-304. Thamhain, H. J. (2003). Managing innovative R&D teams. R&D Management 33(3),   Ã‚  Ã‚   297-311. Vance, C. & Larson, E. (2002). Leadership Research in Business and Health Care.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Journal of Nursing Scholarship 34(2), 165-171.   

Vsepr Lab

Molecular Geometry A. Natural Orientation of Volumes about a Central Point. You will need 20 round balloons for this experiment. Join them together as indicated in the Balloon Arrangement column and then describe the shape in the space provided. Balloon ArrangementDescription of the Shape Two-Balloon SetLinear Three-Balloon Set Trigonal Planar Four-Balloon Set Tetrahedral Five-Balloon Set Trigonal Bipyramidal Six-Balloon Set Octahedral B. Valence Shell Pairs: Single Bonds Fill in the table below for the corresponding compounds.Reference the tables provided in the introductory comments for Lab #16 VSEPR Theory. Molecular ShapeNumber of Bonds About Central AtomShape Description BF3 3Trigonal planar BeCl2 2Linear CH4 4Tetrahedral PF5 5Trigonal bipyramidal SF6 6Octahedral C. Valence Shell Pairs: Single Bonds and Non-Bonding electron pairs Fill in the table below for the corresponding compounds. Reference the tables provided in the introductory comments for Lab #16 VSEPR Theory. Molecular FormulaNumber of Bonds and Non-Bonding PairsShape Desrciption NF3 ,1Trigonal pyramidal H2S 2,2Bent H3O+ 3,1Trigonal pyramidal PH3 3,1Trigonal pyramidal ClO2 2,1Bent D. Valence Shell Pairs: Single and Double Bonds and Non-Bonding electron pairs Fill in the table below for the corresponding compounds. The shapes and other information on pages three and four of your lab will be helpful. FormulaNumber of Bonds and Non-Bonding Electron PairsShape Description CO32- 3,0Trigonal planar SO2 2,1Bent H2CO 3,0Trigonal planar SO3 3,0Trigonal planar SO32- 3,1Trigonal pyramidal NO2- 2,1Bent PO33- 3,1Trigonal pyramidal

Essay on International Relations in East Asia Japan-China RelationsEssay Writing Service

Essay on International Relations in East Asia Japan-China RelationsEssay Writing Service Essay on International Relations in East Asia: Japan-China Relations Essay on International Relations in East Asia: Japan-China RelationsWill there be second Sino-Japanese war in Northeast Asia?The war is unlikely to occur in a long-run perspective. In light of the emerging globalization, China and Japan will rather shift toward cooperation than open confrontation. The current economic cooperation reveals ways for further integration and cooperation between two countries. In fact, China and Japan may follow the lead of European countries, which used to be the major rivals, such as France and Germany or Germany and the UK.What will be the cause of war?The war between China and Japan can occur because of disputes over Senkaku Islands or the wider support of Taiwan by Japan. However, the conflict over Senkaku Islands and Taiwan is unlikely to transform into the open military conflict. On the other hand, Senkaku Islands and Taiwan may become formal causes of the war. In addition, there may be informal causes, such as the rise of Japanese militarism, enhan cement of the economic power of China in Asia and the world, and possible retrieval of the US as the third power that appeases the region.What will be the most important factors for cooperation?The most important factors for cooperation will be the economic cooperation and integration; recognition of existing borders and retaining of the status quo of borders; the presence of the US in the region and its foreign policies in the region; the situation in North Korea and Chinese policies in relation to North Korea. The economic cooperation may become the major driver for the establishment of peaceful and pragmatic international relations between China and Japan. The recognition of existing borders will prevent possible conflicts between Japan and China for disputable territories. The US can remain the power, whose position will be determinant to prevent the war. North Korea can destabilize the entire region.

Weep Not Child Essays

Weep Not Child Essays Weep Not Child Paper Weep Not Child Paper Essay Topic: Literature As I read through the novel Weep Not Child, by Ngugi wa Thiongo, I realized that there was a clear message of hope. As we progress through the novel we get an impression of a gradual loss of hope. In this essay I will discuss the possible message of hope that the book leaves us with. My first impression as I read through the first chapter is Njoroges dreams and hopes through education, Education for him, as for many boys of his generation held the key to the future. Njoroge was offered to go to school by his mother. It is a real privilege for him, because he is the first one out of his family, who is able to go to school. He knew that by going to school, he could provide a better future for himself and his family. As we read on we see that education starts to decay, and as we reach the end of this novel, Njoroge has been forced out of school, and is forced o work at an Indian Shop, which it was really bad for him, because when he was younger he said he would never work for an Indian Shop. As it was consider to be shameful. This demonstrates to the reader, that one of the main sources of hope has been destroyed. As we reach chapter 2, we get another sence of hope, the Prophecy. According to this prophecy, it tells us that a man will rise and give the land back, that once belonged to the black people. To the reader this seams improbible as it may not happen. And when you reach the end of the novel, you see this prophecy is very far from happening. Njoroge has very strong religious beliefs, we see this throughout the book, when he prays and asks God for help, with his problems. The rest of the African people are also religious in the way that they compare their situation with the situation of Moses and the Hebrew slaves. As we move on the novel, Njoroge starts to doubt his faith, when two military officers killed Isaaka his schoolteacher and preacher. This was the end of his education. He had lost his faith in god. Politics also gave Njoroge some hope. The strike made him along with many other black kids believe that they could gain independence. But as strike fails, Ngotho the father gets into constant conflicts with Jacobo, Father of Mwihaki. The fact that Jacobo is a traitor to the black people, gives me a feeling of hopelessness to any political solutions to the problem of freedom. Also Jomo a political leader who was fighting for black people independence, a man whom Njoroge compared with Moses, was also arrested. After we read this we get sense of despair. As they lose all their hope on independence. Most of Njoroges hopes and dreams have turned into despair. All he had was his family. But it gets slowly destroyed, Njoroges brother called Kamau has also been imprisoned for lifetime. His father Ngotho got into constant conflicts with his other Jacobo. He only had his 2 mothers which would support him, this could be said to be a glimpse of hope however I believe that the fact that Njoroge had to leave school and go to work to support the family, wipes out any possibility that this a message of hope. Ngotho would not come back. The death of Ngotho was of great shock to the whole family, and him being the piller of hope, on his death day, the hopes vanished and a feeling of despair grew.

Campaign Advertising Essay -- Advertising

(Local monthly glossy magazine): This magazine targets 31% of the local population making it an ideal media outlet for a local event like the Fitness-Challenge kick off. Since the Fitness Challenge focuses on eliminating childhood obesity, parents will be the main target audience. According to the U.S. census bureau 32% of American families with a child under the age of 12 have a stay at home mother. Only 3% of American families with an elementary age child have a stay at home dad. Taking these statistics into account our campaign will cater towards behaviors and needs of the â€Å"stay at home mom†. Out of the local population that reads â€Å"Our community†, 70 percent are women ages 31-60 years old. This age range and gender covers our target audience therefore making advertisements through this media outlet very effective. A half page ad would cost the campaign 4,000 dollars, a small price for so much exposure. Since the magazine only prints every month, readers tend to flip through the pages mul tiple times, maximizing frequency. $4000 KABC (NBC affiliate) With 40 percent of the local population as regular viewers, advertisements on this program will significantly increase awareness of the Fitness Challenge. Women ages 35-55 represent an astounding 72 percent of viewers. Awareness of the challenge requires introduction of the event concept and benefits. Running at least 30 non-primetime ads two months before the Challenge will familiarize the target audience with the event without bombarding them with information. Thirty prime-time ads will run the month before the event to maximize advertising exposure of the Fitness Challenge Kick off. Cost: Non-primetime-$3750\ Prime-time- $9000 WPTG (urban ra... ... middle of paper ... ...as targeted stay at home moms, dads also hold decision power when it comes to their children’s health. Billboards displaying advertisements for the Fitness Challenge kick off, offer an enormous amount of exposure for the event. Boards strategically placed a long high traffic roadways catch the eyes of interested fathers on their way home from the workplace. Most working individuals drive the same route to and from work meaning that they encounter the same billboard messages twice daily. Therefore the frequency that one individual encounters the ad on a daily basis must equal or surpass two. Multiply this by 2 months and the number of impressions falls well over 100. Cost: 2 months- $ 5000 Total Cost: $31,205 Even after creating a campaign media plan that encompasses multiplatform advertising our budget of $50,000 remains $18795 higher than required funds.

African Diaspora 3 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

African Diaspora 3 - Research Paper Example The first conference of the Association was held in 1900 by Williams and it was a three day conference which comprised of men and women of the African blood. There were many speakers who attended it and the most important message that was addressed to the nation was that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line. This was the defining statement of the conference and many of the issues related to the injustice and racism suffered by the Africans were raised. With the support of the French Parliament, a conference was held in 1919 in Paris. It included many members representing the Africans and they came to the suggestion of drafting a law for the rights of the Africans internationally. Further more, the conference discussed the need for supervision of colonies to survive the economic exploitation and to abolish capital punishment of the colonial subjects. The right to education was also raised and self government was stressed upon. It was also suggested that more conferences should be organized for further success (Adi,  Sherwood 13). In 1921, the Pan African conference was held in London and after a month in Brussels. Both the conference stressed upon the racism in America and demanded for local self government. It also discussed the economic and political status of the colonial powers and the need for increased contacts between the interracial groups. In 1923 the conference reaches Lisbon where the representatives addressed the conditions and the exploitations of the black workers and the suggestions to try to demolish racism. Following the conferences, the Pan African delegates held their fifth congress in New York. The conference held delegates from states of America and ten foreign countries. The delegates were mostly blacks and women and the conference was funded by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. The conference

Business Law and Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Business Law and Ethics - Essay Example The next question will be what should be the ideal state with respect to working condition, and quality assurance. The next question involves what is the minimally accepted state with respect to working condition and quality assurance. The Next question I will ask is what steps and procedures should we put in place to ensure that we significantly improve our present situation to the minimally accepted state. The last question is what procedures we should use to raise from the minimally accepted state to the ideal state. I will use utilitarian theory of business ethics. I prefer utilitarian theory because it lays high emphasis on ethical decisions that advance the most value to all the stakeholders while at the same time limiting amount of damages to the minimal number of participants as possible. Because I want well for the majority, my ethical decision should cause less harm to the stakeholders of Delectables Corp. while at the same time increasing value for everyone. The decision o f whether to blow the whistle or not is one of the most challenging because it involves a lot of thinking. I will first thinking about the impact of blowing the whistle on the future performance of the company. ... The stakeholders’ model recognizes the role and contribution of different individuals towards success of the organization especially the customers, employees, suppliers, government, and creditors. It is undoubtedly that a wide range of risks is associated with blowing the whistle. The first risk associated with whistle blowing is loss of employment (Trimborn). I will not only put my job at risk but also of other employees. This claim can be justified by the fact that boycott of company products- peanut butter in the market will force the company to reduce its production, which in turn translates to job cuts to allow the company from insolvency owing to large salary and wages payout. The next major risk associated with whistle blowing is dissolution of the company. A company can lose its competitive edge owing to unethical and illegal practices, which can consequently lead to closing down of the company. Whistle blowing also put the company at the risk of losing its revenue. Th is can happen when the company is charged hefty fines for illegal practices or when the company loses its market share owing to unethical practices in manufacturing of peanut butter. Customers tend to shy away from companies that do not observe stipulated ethical and legal standard by industry the regulators, bylaws, or laws. Whistle blowing is not only risk as it also comes with a wide range of benefits. The first benefit of whistle blowing is the fact that it brings sanity in the operations of Delectables Corp. by ending wrongdoings such selling of peanut butter with questionable quality. Whistle blowing also protects the interest of key stakeholders especially customers especially if consumption of the service or product can lead to bodily harm or chronic

Stages of Grief Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Stages of Grief - Essay Example He pours his emotion and tears out of his heart; it was felt as one read through pages, though we also got to see him take one step forward. The author who is also a father went through all the five stages of grief. Most people who have lost their loved one, it is always the beginning of a grieving process, which begins with the denial phase, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (Axelrod, 2015). Wolterstorff found joy after acceptance the loss of his son, after going all the four other stages of grief he finally accepted the death of his son. His acceptance was as a result of his strong faith in God. As much as he regrets the things that were unsaid and undone, he considered the death of his son to have made him grow and change. He was agonized by the death of his son; he could not understand how he lost his son after twenty-five years of guiding and encouraging him. He thought he had not done enough or maybe he loved him more than the others. However, at this point he was in a state of bargain, a point where he was wrighling with God. Through his faith, he considered the glory of God to be revealed to us through our suffering, and we later find hope in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus (Wolterstorff, 1987). He was greatly encouraged, and that was a progression of his healing through acceptance. The book assumes Christian audience. However, as much as everything that is written with God in mind, in some way we see the narrator is wrestling with God asking questions as to why his son had to be the one Dead. It is through God that Wolterstorff was able to regain his strength. In some instance a bitter friend asks him why he does not reject God. The narrator, however, the sees the glory of God around him and have no reason to stop asking God to continue protecting his family. As a Christian death has a positive meaning, for one to live in Christ and to die in

Maison Bouygues Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Maison Bouygues - Assignment Example It is irrefutable that amidst the effort of companies to deliver the value which they have chosen to impart, there have been discrepancies with these two. The tactical aspect of marketing often does not fully embody what has been strategically formulated. In line with this, this paper looks at the value creation within MB, identifying the value that it chooses and how it provides this value to its clientele. At the end, this paper will give further recommendations on how value creation can be enhanced through the alignment of strategic and tactical marketing. As with any business organization, MB's strategic aspect of marketing is comprised of its segmentation, targeting, and positioning. The company's identification of the value that it wants to provide is rationally through identifying its customers and their specific needs and wants and specifically pinpointing what image the company wants to build in the mind of its customers. Among these client groups, the New Anxious represents approximately 25% of the company's customers. This segment, having the least income (average is FF12, 700), demands the most value for their hard-earned money for their first homes. It should also be noted that MB has a relatively high presence in this group indicated by the 138 MB presence index reported. The Wealthy Savers comes next with approximately 24% of MB's clientele. Directly opposed to the New Anxious, this group generates high income which averages FF18, 100 and have owned their previous homes. MB also has a high presence in this segment relative to the industry (MB presence index is 123). Autonomous Independents represents 19% of the MB's total market. Having an average income of $16, 500, this group occupies high social level and desires to own their home after renting for some time. Relative to its competitors, MB has a relatively low presence in this market indicated by MB's presence index which is reported at 53. Wealthy Spenders and New Responsible both share approximately 16% of MB's entire market. Wealthy Spenders have the highest average income at FF19, 700. However, MB's presence in this sector is only limited compared to the whole industry. New Responsible group has a low average income of FF14, 400 who demands more value and quality from MB's products because they would want to leave their house to their children. The company has a very high presence in this segment (MB's presence index is 123). The conducted market segmentation above clearly distinguishes the targeting strategy employed by MB. Furthermore, looking at the history of the company shows how it has alters and augments the particularly markets that it intended to serve: "Initially MB focused on building small, basic homes for middle and lower-income households. During the mid-1980s, the company shifted its focus to the higher end of the single family market." This shift in targeting strateg

Euthansia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Euthansia - Essay Example Seeing a smoking sixty year old grandfather die is different from seeing a newborn with underdeveloped lungs turn blue. Both are surely dying in a few days, don't they deserve equal chances of a decent death The Netherlands as been practicing euthanasia legally for quite some time now and it has gone relatively smoothly. Some are concerned with the increase in the number of cases as well as some gray areas. One of which is its administration to newborns and this lead the Groningen Protocol for Euthanasia in Newborns to be written. The Groningen Protocol helps doctors, or even parents, to administer euthanasia to babies based on the provided information so as to avoid interrogations by the authorities. The babies who are candidates for euthanasia are put into three categories according to Verhagen. First are infants with zero chance of survival. These are babies who are expected to die soon after birth even with upmost care and the latest medical technologies. The next group consists of infants with conditions which require intensive care. This group is delicate and even with great medical attention shows a grim future. And the third group is of infants who do not require intensive care but shows signs of intense suffering. They may survive but are believed to have a poor quality of life onwards. Among the three groups, the third one posts the most troubling decisions.

Stages of Grief Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Stages of Grief - Essay Example He pours his emotion and tears out of his heart; it was felt as one read through pages, though we also got to see him take one step forward. The author who is also a father went through all the five stages of grief. Most people who have lost their loved one, it is always the beginning of a grieving process, which begins with the denial phase, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (Axelrod, 2015). Wolterstorff found joy after acceptance the loss of his son, after going all the four other stages of grief he finally accepted the death of his son. His acceptance was as a result of his strong faith in God. As much as he regrets the things that were unsaid and undone, he considered the death of his son to have made him grow and change. He was agonized by the death of his son; he could not understand how he lost his son after twenty-five years of guiding and encouraging him. He thought he had not done enough or maybe he loved him more than the others. However, at this point he was in a state of bargain, a point where he was wrighling with God. Through his faith, he considered the glory of God to be revealed to us through our suffering, and we later find hope in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus (Wolterstorff, 1987). He was greatly encouraged, and that was a progression of his healing through acceptance. The book assumes Christian audience. However, as much as everything that is written with God in mind, in some way we see the narrator is wrestling with God asking questions as to why his son had to be the one Dead. It is through God that Wolterstorff was able to regain his strength. In some instance a bitter friend asks him why he does not reject God. The narrator, however, the sees the glory of God around him and have no reason to stop asking God to continue protecting his family. As a Christian death has a positive meaning, for one to live in Christ and to die in

Euthansia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Euthansia - Essay Example Seeing a smoking sixty year old grandfather die is different from seeing a newborn with underdeveloped lungs turn blue. Both are surely dying in a few days, don't they deserve equal chances of a decent death The Netherlands as been practicing euthanasia legally for quite some time now and it has gone relatively smoothly. Some are concerned with the increase in the number of cases as well as some gray areas. One of which is its administration to newborns and this lead the Groningen Protocol for Euthanasia in Newborns to be written. The Groningen Protocol helps doctors, or even parents, to administer euthanasia to babies based on the provided information so as to avoid interrogations by the authorities. The babies who are candidates for euthanasia are put into three categories according to Verhagen. First are infants with zero chance of survival. These are babies who are expected to die soon after birth even with upmost care and the latest medical technologies. The next group consists of infants with conditions which require intensive care. This group is delicate and even with great medical attention shows a grim future. And the third group is of infants who do not require intensive care but shows signs of intense suffering. They may survive but are believed to have a poor quality of life onwards. Among the three groups, the third one posts the most troubling decisions.

Grandfathers Journey by Allen Say Essay Example for Free

Grandfathers Journey by Allen Say Essay Question 1. Describe how the story is structured to influence your response to the text. Question 2. Describe one of the storys major settings. How is it constructed and what is its significance to the story and its ideas? North America is the major setting in this book. North America holds a lot of new technology and everything is new and spectacular to him, the trains, the enormous rock sculptures and an endless farming field are examples of this. There is also a bad side to this place; there are huge cities of factories and tall buildings with thick smoke coming out of each building. But above all, best place was California, where there were a strong sunlight, the Sierra Mountains and the seacoast. Along the way he had met and shook hands new people, which had different cultural backgrounds to him. This setting is constructed in a way that the more the grandfather travels the more he liked it and wanted to make the New World his home. This setting shows that the cultural barrier can be broken and people should go out and see the world and meet new people to develop more familiarity of the world they live in. Question 3. How are you positioned to respond to the major character/s of the story? What values are represented through them? Question 4. Describe the extent to which language and graphics are successfully used together to shape your response. Discuss with close reference to at lease two examples. In the Grandfathers Journey, there are a few pages where the graphics and the text connect together to give the reader a better understanding of situation. At the beginning (on page 4) the text was My grandfather was a young man when he left his home in Japan and went to see the world. On this page it shows the grandfather in Japanese clothes and the background had very dull colours because he is still in the Old World. On the next page it shows the transition to the New World. The background colours have changed from dull to bright and he had changed into European clothes. The wave that looks very unsteady shows the New World. All this happens when you want to see the world. On page 17, there is a picture of the grandfathers daughter holding a pram with a European doll sitting in it. The text that goes with the page was As his daughter grew, my grandfather began to think about his own childhood. He thought about his old friends. In the picture the author shows the contrast between the Asian girl and the European girl using different clothing and the cultural difference (seen through the colours of the hairs). When compared, the grandfather began to remember how his old friends in Japan were when they were little. This illustrates think about his own childhood. He thought about his old friends. Question 5. Discuss the attitudes and values of the text and your personal response to these. Question 6. Describe at least one link you can make between this book and another/other texts you have read or viewed. How do the texts compare in terms of the ideas presented and how do you respond to these ideas? One of the pages in this book makes us realise that we often label Japan as the enemy in World War II, whilst they were also the victim and had also suffered a large amount of devastation. In the film Pearl Harbour, one of the scenes was Japan bombing Pearl Harbour. This only shows the negative side of Japan, where they were attackers, but it did not show them as the victims suffering from the disaster. This movie is persuading the audience to blame Japan for the damages of the war, where Japan had to go through the emotional breakdowns and physical injuries. Even though the book tells us not to blame Japan for the damages and the movie shows us that Japan was the enemy in World War II, there is still a link between the two texts and that is after a war majority of the participating countries will have, no matter large or small, havocs. I think, because of this, we should not blame a certain country for the occurrence of the war, and should not blame any country since the countries that participated are both enemies and victims of the war.

Management Practices Traditional vs Modern Innovative

Management Practices Traditional vs Modern Innovative In last many years, few management accounting innovations has been developed. Managers have to make decision on a daily basis as well make decisions regarding the future and how to survive and grow in an energetic market place with ever growing uncertain circumstances. Traditional or modern management accounting system give relevant information to all levels of management, financial and other information to make decisions about planning, control of operations and identifying opportunities to add value. The modern management accounting practice are typically different from that of traditional management accounting as they enable managers to make sound decisions to minimize cost as well in the same time add value to the products and services by improving the quality of products, which is required by the customers, and reduce waste. In addition, the modern management accounting systems allow the organisation as whole to develop the innovative capacity of the organisation and flexibility so that it can continually change and improve performance financially as well in its non financial areas of performance. Traditional vs. Modern Innovative Traditional will focus on cost control and, in particular, what is recognized as variance analysis and which involves evaluating forecast outcomes with real outcomes for example for costs such as materials and labour. The types of activity, therefore, that management accountants have traditionally involved themselves with include: †¢ Cost analysis †¢ Cost control †¢ Budget preparation †¢ Budgetary control processes †¢ Cost/benefit analysis †¢ Investment appraisal. More modern, innovative approaches include initiatives such as: †¢ Business process re-engineering: This is about rethinking and re-designing business processes as a means of reducing costs and improving delivery †¢ Zero-based budgeting: re-thinking budgets in a way that engage justifying and prioritising all items of expenditure †¢ Activity-based management: looking at what actually causes costs to be incurred, and being better able to forecast and control costs †¢ Life cycle costing: considering a products costs over its entire life cycle (rather than just, for example, the initial building costs) †¢ Total quality management: the process of continuous quality improvement †¢ beyond budgeting: a challenge to traditional budgeting techniques via the use of more flexible and wide ranging processes †¢ Balanced scorecards: the use of key performance indicators within four different perspectives financial, customer, internal business process and learning/growth. Non financial performance measurement approached gained momentum as a result of dissatisfaction with the traditional techniques such as balance sheets and income statement, as technology increasing and increasing global competition, companies able to recognize better their fault and might to improve their existing capabilities and create new ones the most successful of these being Economic Value Added (EVA). Initially Return on Investment (ROI) was used to enhancement the intuition and insight of managers. It was used to send down the goal for division managers to meet from corporate office. Since managers reward and endorsement prospects depended on the ability to meet targets, these core managers has a strong incentive to adjust their information accordingly. Some businesses have built accounting teaching modules for their managers that help them recognize the detailed information they get. Management accountants have a vital responsibility in preparing and distributing training materials. Nowadays multifaceted managerial surroundings technical functions, particularly accounting, need to become more than suppliers of information. They must turn into a kind of an educating where managers can obtain training. So far in numerous organizations, accountants are too hectic to turn out to be instructors and internal reward systems likely depress such performances. As the range of management accounting messages enlarge to contain non-financial presentation indicators, management accountants get an additional challenge. Many managers have complexities visualizing the cause and result relationships that connect cost drivers to financial returns. Yet this is the key information needed to manage value, and education is regularly required to help managers recognize improved the reason and result relations that cause shareholder value. Increasing functional area means that managers are ever more detached from shareholder values. Many managers are powerfully devoted to the association without being dedicated to the financial aim that drives it. Management accountants have a responsibility to take part in instilling financial control and assigning financial values to non-financial managers. One technique is to need operating managers (rather than accountants) to systematically organize and present the financial study of their industry unit. At the similar occasion that the management accounting role must pay great amount of attention to the efficiency of its inner infrastructure processes, other demands are occurring. There is rising pressure to decrease on the whole cost of the finance function as a fraction of revenues. There are gradually more time consuming demands for more comprehensive external reporting. While these final goals are vital and must be achieved, setting the precedence there only boost the risk that internal accounting communications will be unsuccessful to get their objectives and that management accounting system modify will be further postponed. Conclusion As discussed above, the modern  management  accounting  relevant to modern organizational  management  issues as well rectify and reform the   traditional management   accounting  practices  to make decisions and specialized decisions based on relevant financial and non-financial information depending on the nature of activities, size, external circumstances and market conditions, customer profiles, organizational human resource issues, structural issues. Even the modern  management  accounting  is not additional but can be entirely different. As well, some are more appropriate to various organizations and some are not, given the internal  management  practices, size of organizations, top management  support, human resource  practices. Organizational structural issues, employee motivational factors, centralization decentralization issues. In other words, before considering implementing modern  management  accounting practices  the  management  must have a feasibility study considering the above issues and evaluate the cost and benefit of the systems in financial and non-financial terms. Otherwise the benefits are applied  without through evaluation and commitment by top  management, therefore the benefits of these  practices will not be realized fully. If carefully considered based on enough facts and not on emotions, then the modern  management  accounting  with other strategies will certainly help ful for  management  to make sound decisions and therefore contribute to the success of the organization than the  traditional  management accounting  practices.

Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women Essay -- Gender

A woman’s job is to cook, clean, and bear children. Although it may not remain true now, many thought this for most of history. A woman had her duty to her husband and that served as almost all of her worth. During the Enlightenment, some women began to question this norm and to voice their unhappiness. The Enlightenment period was an intellectual movement that sought to reform society and advance knowledge (â€Å"Age of Enlightenment†). Even with all of the Enlightenment’s great advancements, women still did not possess many rights. Women continued to be â€Å"oppressed and kept to the private sphere,† separated from men (â€Å"Women in the Enlightenment†). Few women challenged these social norms, but a few existed such as Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft changed European thought on women through the writing of her essay â€Å"A Vindication of the Rights of Women.† Her essay proposed controversial ideas on a womanâ€⠄¢s position as a wife, right to education, and rights in society. During the Enlightenment, a pamphlet war began called the Revolution Controversy. Edmund Burke started the Revolution Controversy when he published an essay that sparked debate over the French Revolution. After the publication, many authors such as Wollstonecraft responded and disagreed with Burke’s views. Wollstonecraft’s response was titled â€Å"A Vindication of the Rights of Men† (â€Å"Revolution Controversy†). Two years later, she also responded to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Pà ©rigord’s report to the National Assembly of France. His report stated that women â€Å"should only receive a domestic education† (â€Å"A Vindication†). Wollstonecraft became infuriated at this claim and quickly began to write her essay â€Å"The Vindication of the Rights of Women.† She set out... ...pedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 11 Oct. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. . "Timeline of Women's Rights (other than Voting)." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 7 Oct. 2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2011. wiki/Timeline_of_women's_rights_(other_than_voting)>. Van Doren, Charles. A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future. New York, NY: Ballantine, 1991. Print. Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindication of the Rights of Women. Boston: Peter Edes, 1792. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Bartleby Books, 1999. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. www.bartleby.com/144/>. "Women in the Enlightenment." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 17 Nov. 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. Enlightenment>.