611 week 10 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

611 week 10 - Essay Example The advantage of the grading systems is that they show a record of achievement and the learning progress and help the teachers and parents to know the student’s capability in academics. A student who scores an A or A minus is student who is doing well. A student who scores C is an average performer. A student with an E is a failure. The limitation of the grading system is that they only tell what a student can do theoretically in class and does not show what the student can do past the class or practically. The guidelines for developing multiple grading and reporting systems: Communication is the main objective for grading and reporting. The grades should be able to communicate to the parents, teachers and the public on performance of the students. The methods of reporting and grading must offer understandable and accurate descriptions of the learning process. The systems must also offer learning and teaching. Considerations in conducting parent-teacher conference: The parents ought to talk to their children before the conference begins. They must know if the child has a favorite subject. They must also ask their children if they would prefer to discuss any topic with the teacher. It is always advisable to discuss before the conference begins. The parents should talk with the teachers before the conference begins. The pre-meeting with the teachers helps the parents in share information about their child’s personality, interests and hobbies. The parents must also set priorities by setting questions that are important to them. The parents must also manage their minds while the head to the school. The parents must remind themselves that the trip is for the benefit of their child. They must also prepare for an opening that is friendly. Listening is important because it helps the parents to get information about their child, the school and the teachers. Sometimes the teacher may have a problem with the child, but it is

Korean-Americans Essay Example for Free

Korean-Americans Essay Korean-Americans are increasingly rising in number and have established their own communities in the different parts of the country (Lee, p. 21). They usually settle in the country as entrepreneurs and prosper in this endeavor. The highest concentration of Korean-Americans can be found in California, in the 1990’s census the Korean population in the state was 32. 5% (Min Pyong, p. 33). The increase in number of Korean-Americans in California can be attributed to the fact that it is geographically closer to their homeland and it has a mild climate, moreover, new immigrants may want to live in areas where there is already and existing Korean community. Koreans migrate to the U. S. hoping that they can provide better futures for their children, to enable them to have a better chance at going to college and better employment opportunities for them. Most of those who come to America are from the upper-middle class in Korea and are well-educated. Initially, Koreans live in apartments where the neighborhood is predominantly Korean, then after a few years, they move out to the suburbs to have their own homes. Owning a home is often equated with the first sign of realizing their American dream. In this connection, the Korean-American group did not differ in their perceptions of home ownership with the Northern California informants of Towsend’s which reported that home ownership symbolizes success and social standing (1999, p. 1). The similarity of their views may be due to the fact that most Korean Americans are generally well-educated and have higher social standing in their own country where they are accustomed to having their own homes. The groups are also similar in their choice of residence, which is in the suburbs. The suburbs according to Towsend have become a physical and moral separation from the city which is considered to be unsafe and full of violence (1999, p. 2), it can be said that the Korean Americans choose to have their homes in the suburbs because it signifies that they are becoming assimilated into the American Housing the good life Page #2 community, where they want their children to have the same opportunities as American children have. Towsend’s informants also revealed that although a home represents independence and self-sufficiency, most of them are in debt and are tied to their jobs in order to pay off their debts (1999, p. 3). However, for the Korean-Americans I interviewed, they emphasized that one must strive first to raise the amount needed to buy a house rather than to incur debts. The two groups may have differed in this respect because the Korean Americans in this particular group are entrepreneurs and they are more financially-wise than their American counterparts. To illustrate, most Korean-Americans run their own stores and family members help in the running of the store without being paid in order to keep labor costs at a minimum. The family is highly valued by Korean Americans and parents desire to send their children to the best schools thus they usually prefer suburbs that are closer to the schools or universities they send their children to, whereas the Towsend group use their time commuting from work to their homes and fail to â€Å"be there† for their children (1999, p. 4). The difference in the groups responses indicate the difference in the values that the group espouse, to the Korean American, education is seen as the best way to be successful while to the American informants, owning a home in a specific neighborhood spells success wherein the good provider outweighs being a more involved father. As Towsend (1999, p. 4) found, home ownership has become an integral part of family life. Having a home is equated to being a good family man, a good provider and hence a good father. But as shown by my interview, there are cultural underpinnings in the perceptions of home ownership and that it warrants further research. Although the group I interviewed is small in number, the ideas they have shared nonetheless offer a new way of thinking about the sociological impact of owning a home. Bibliography Lee, Lauren. Korean Americans. Marshall Cavendish Corporation, New York,. p. 21;1995 Min, Pyong Gap. Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles. University of California Press, Los Angeles, Table 2, p. 33;1996 Towsend, N. Housing the good life. Anthropology Newsletter, 40, 1 pp1-4; 1999 Yu, Eui-Young. Korean Community Profile: Life and Consumer Patterns. Korea Times, Los Angeles, p. 28; 1990.

Waste Land Essay: Love and Sex -- T.S. Eliot Waste Land Essays

Love and Sex in The Waste Land      Ã‚   Attitudes toward love and sex are one of the major themes of the poem. The introduction to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature states that "This is a poem about spiritual dryness," and much of this spiritual dryness relates to the nature of the modern sexual experience (although there are also other aspects of spiritual dryness the introduction also notes that major themes include a lack of a "regenerating belief" that gives "significance and value to people" and a type of death that "heralds no resurrection"). (Introduction 2146) Comparisons of different types between past and present are often used to highlight the nature of this modern sexual experience, which is pictured as empty, as lacking in both romance and passion, and as fruitless. Lil's rejection of her offspring (line 160) has already been mentioned; other examples abound throughout the poem. One example is furnished by the seduction of the typist by the "young man carbuncular," describ ed by Tiresias in lines 230-256. This scene describes a seduction seemingly without any love or passion. The typist seems to have no desire for sex, but no desire to resist seduction, either -- the young man's "caresses are unreproved, if undesired." (lines 236-237) Her single emotion expressed in the passage is a vague relief when the episode ends. Eliot follows the scene of seduction with these lines:    When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone. (lines 253-256)    These lines parody a song from Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, in which a woman who had been seduced earlier... ... life cycle cannot continue and a large context for meaning in life is lost.    Works Cited and Consulted: Abrams, M.H., et al. Footnotes to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Abrams, M.H., et al. Introduction to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Footnotes to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.   

Fundamental Problems with the Catholic Church in 15th Century and How Martin Luther Faced Them

Question: What was Luther’s fundamental religious problem with the Catholic Church? Trace the development of this problem and why Luther solved it. Among the many problems Luther pointed out in the Catholic Church in his 95 theses, the one he had the most problem with was the issue of salvation and the selling of indulgencies. At the time, the doctrine of the church stated that those who did not receive a baptism would spend time in purgatory for their sins. The Church said that acceptance of Jesus took away the blame of the sin but did not clear the sins completely because of the fact that the people were sinners. This was significant because the church was selling indulgences. The Catholic Church once sold indulgences to people who would fight in the Holy Wars to be forgiven of their sins. However, this time, the Church sold indulgences to followers at a certain price so that buyers would be forgiven of past and future sins. According to Luther, this was nowhere to be found in the Holy Bible. Luther preached self morals and on the acceptance of Jesus and complete obedience as the true way to reach heaven as stated in the Bible. This influx of indulgence buying and selling by the people around Luther irritated him to no end. In his sermons he emphasized the true scriptures in the Bible and not doctrine according to the so called â€Å"Holy Church†. The Catholic Church was selling indulgences in an effort to raise money for St. Peters Basilica, which was under construction in the Vatican during this period. It would be a very costly project and therefore the Church needed a means to pay for it and their answer was to sell indulgences at a monetary price. This infuriated Luther because it advocated that people could literally buy their way into heaven without truly accepting Jesus as it states in the Bible. A man by the name of Johann Tetzel was selling the indulgences in Germany at Luther’s time and Luther pleaded to his followers not to buy them but to simply read the scriptures and accept Jesus. The sale of indulgences greatly upset Luther because he felt certain that people were eternally damning themselves by relying on the indulgences instead of the scripture. This drove Luther to write his 95 theses which blasted the Catholic Church from a variety of angles on its policies and the controversies surrounding the Church. Some of these included the sale of indulgences, the flaws and errors in the Church’s doctrine, and in some cases the ignorance by some members of the clergy to even read the scripture. In one case, Luther even inquired as to why the Pope insisted on paying for St. Peters Basilica through the poor people’s money instead of taking money out of his own pocket to pay for the new Church. Luther then nailed this list to a Church door in Germany, as was the tradition, on the day after Halloween. At first, Pope Leo X did not take Luther seriously calling him â€Å"a drunk friar†, however when Luther’s 95 theses began to spread around Germany like wild fire with the help of Gutenberg’s printing press the Church took notice. The 95 theses gained sympathy in Europe because many rulers were sick of the power over the Church over their provinces and used this as an excuse to break away from Catholic Church. Because of this, many new Protestant religions, such as antibaptism and Calvinism, began popping up as more people began to speak out against the church. The church’s own personal attempt to reform was largely unsuccessful and it simply pushed more converts in to Protestantism. At the Edict of Worms where Luther stood trial for heresy, Luther plead his case to the Church. The Church’s verdict however was that one man who has different views than the thousands of clergy men before Luther must be wrong. Luther was to be taken into custody, his books burned, and delivered to the Emperor. Luther, however, was able to escape and hid for brief period before he returned to Wittenberg to build a new Church. The Catholic Church’s unwillingness to reform and it’s continuance of its programs set the stage for the rest of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Although Luther’s true intentions can only be speculated, most historians believe that at the Reformation’s onset he had not intended to break from the Catholic Church. In this area, he failed. He was not able to simply reform the Church from the inside and clean up its practices. Thus, Luther’s solution to this problem was unfortunately to split from the church along with millions of others and to change the Catholic Church forever.

Organizational Culture and Performance Essay

The concept of organizational culture has drawn attention to the long-neglected, subjective or ‘soft’ side of organizational life. However, many aspects of organizational culture have not received much attention. Instead, emphasis has been placed primarily on the cultural and symbolic aspects that are relevant in an instrumental/pragmatic context. The technical cognitive interest prevails. Culture then is treated as an object of management action. In this regard, Ouchi and Wilkins (1985: 462) note that ‘the contemporary student of organizational culture often takes the organization not as a natural solution to deep and universal forces but rather as a rational instrument designed by top management to shape the behavior of the employees in purposive ways’. Accordingly, much research on corporate culture and organizational symbolism is dominated by a preoccupation with a limited set of meanings, symbols, values, and ideas presumed to be manageable and directly related to effectiveness and performance. This is in many ways understandable, but there are two major problems following from this emphasis. One is that many aspects of organizational culture are simply disregarded. It seems strange that the (major part of the) literature should generally disregard such values as bureaucratic-‘meritocratic’ hierarchy, unequal distribution of privileges and rewards, a mixture of individualism and conformity, male domination, emphasis on money, economic growth, consumerism, advanced technology, exploitation of nature, and the equation of economic criteria with rationality. Instrumental reason dominates; quantifiable values and the optimization of means for the attainment of pre-given ends define rationality (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947; Marcuse, 1964). Mainstream organizational culture thinking – in organizations but also in academia – tend to take this for granted. The values and ideas to which organizational culture research pays attention are primarily connected with the means and operations employed to achieve pre-defined and unquestioned goals. A second problem is that subordinating organizational culture thinking to narrowly defined instrumental concerns also reduces the potential of culture to aid managerial action. Organizational culture calls for considerations that break with some of the assumptions characterizing technical thinking, i.e. the idea that a particular input leads to a predictable effect. This chapter thus shows some problems associated with the use of the term culture that does not take the idea of culture seriously enough and presses the concept into a limited version of the technical cognitive interest. It argues for a ‘softer’ version of this interest as well as for thinking following the other two cognitive interests (as sketched in Chapter 1). A basic problem in much management thinking and writing is an impatience in showing the great potential of organizational culture. Associated with this is a bias for a premature distinction between the good and the bad values and ideas, trivialization of culture, overstressing the role of management and the employment of causal thinking. Premature normativity: the idea of good culture Associated with the technical interest of optimizing means for accomplishment of goals is an underdeveloped capacity to reflect upon normative matters. Viewing cultures as means leads to evaluations of them as more or less ‘good’, i.e. as useful, without consideration whether this goodness is the same as usefulness or if usefulness may be very multidimensional. The more popular literature argues that ‘good’ or ‘valuable’ cultures – often equated with ‘strong’ cultures – are characterized by norms beneficial to the company, to customers, and to mankind and by ‘good’ performance in general: Good cultures are characterized by norms and values supportive of excellence, teamwork, profitability, honesty, a customer service orientation, pride in one’s work, and commitment to the organization. Most of all, they are supportive of adaptability – the capacity to thrive over the long run despite new competition, new regulations, new technological developments, and the strains of growth. (Baker, 1980: 10) Good cultures are, according to this author, cultures that incorporate all good things in peaceful co-existence. Also many other authors eager to appeal to practitioners focus on highly positive-sounding virtues, attitudes, and behaviour claimed to be useful to the achievement of corporate goals as defined by management (e.g. Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Trice and Beyer, 1985). They are largely instrumental in character, without considering any ambiguity of the virtue of culture or what it supposedly accomplished in terms of goal realization. The assumption that culture can be simply evaluated in terms of right and wrong come through in embarrassing statements such as that ‘the wrong values make the culture a major liability’ (Wiener, 1988: 536) has already been mentioned. Similarly, Kilmann et al. (1985: 4) argue that ‘a culture has a positive impact on an organization when it points behavior in the right direction†¦. Alternatively, a culture has negative impact when it points behavior in the wrong direction’. According to Wilkins and Patterson (1985: 272): ‘The ideal culture †¦ is characterized by a clear assumption of equity †¦ a clear sense of collective competence †¦ and an ability to continually apply the collective competence to new situations as well as to alter it when necessary.’ Kanter (1983) talks about ‘cultures of pride’, which are good, and ‘cultures of inferiority’, which any sane person will avoid. This type of functionalist, normative, and instrumentally biased thinking is also found in Schein’s (1985) book, in which culture is seen as a pattern of basic assumptions that has ‘proved’ to be valid for a group coping with problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Basically, culture in this literature is instrumental in relation to the formal goals of an organization and to the management objectives or tasks associated with these goals (i.e. external and internal effectiveness). It is assumed to exist because it works – or at least used to work. Of course, changed circumstances can make a culture dysfunctional – calling for planned, intentional change – but the approach assumes that culture is or can be ‘good’ for some worthwhile purpose. As will be shown later ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not, however, self-evident, especially when it comes to complex phenomena such as culture. A bias towards the ‘positive’ functions of culture and its close relation to issues such as harmony, consensus, clarity, and meaningfulness is also implicit in many of these studies (see Martin and Meyerson, 1988). Symbols and cultural aspects are often seen as functional (or dysfunctional) for the organization in terms of goal attainment, meeting the emotional-expressive needs of members, reducing tension in communication, and so on. Instrumental/functional dimensions are often emphasized, for instance, in studies of rites and ceremonies (e.g. Dandridge, 1986; Trice and Beyer, 1984). The typical research focus is on social integration (Alvesson, 1987). Culture is understood as (usually or potentially) useful – and those aspects of culture that are not easily or directly seen as useful remain out of sight, e.g. on gender and ethics. The most common ideas guiding organizational analysis draw upon such metaphors for culture as tool, social glue, need satisfier, or regulator of social relations. Problems include the premature use of moral judgement, in a way hidden behind technical understanding in which culture is viewed as a tool and presumably as easy to evaluate in terms of its goodness as a hammer. But few issues are simply good or bad, functional or dysfunctional. Some things that may be seen as good may be less positive from another angle. A ‘clear sense of collective competence’ – to connect to the citation above – does in itself sound positive and is good for self-esteem and commitment, but a high level of self-confidence may be a mixed blessing as it easily forms a part of, or leads to, fantasies of omnipotence, and may obstruct openness, reflection, willingness to listen to critique and take new external ideas seriously (Brown and Starkey, 2000). Cultural themes thus call for careful consideration, where normative judgement should be applied with great caution. Normative talk easily prevents more nuanced interpretation. Trivialization of culture As argued above, the consequence of the functionalist/pragmatic approach is that culture tends to be reduced to those limited aspects of this complex phenomenon that are perceived to be directly related to organizational efficiency and competitive advantage (see, e.g. Barney, 1986; Kilmann et al., 1985). This means a rather selected interest in organizational culture. But much worse is a tendency to emphasize mainly the superficial aspects of these selected parts of organizational culture. These superficial aspects have the advantage that they are compatible with technical thinking, presumably accessible to managerial interventions. Culture may even be equated with certain behavioural norms viewed as ‘an excellent vehicle for helping people understand and manage the cultural aspects of organizational life’ (Allen, 1985: 334). In marketing, market-oriented culture is frequently defined as the key to strong performances (Harris and Ogbonna, 1999), culture here implying certain behaviours. The problem, of course, is that norms are not the best vehicle for understanding culture. Whereas norms tell people how to behave, culture has a much broader and more complex influence on thinking, feeling, and sense-making (Schneider, 1976). Again, Barney (1986), Pfeffer (1994) and others argue that to serve as a source of sustained competitive advantage culture must be ‘valuable, rare, and imperfectly imitable’. If this statement is to make any sense at all, culture must be interpreted as highly normative, accessible to evaluation in terms of frequency (i.e. quantifiable), and capable of being copied a t will. This conception deprives culture of the richness that is normally seen as its strength. At the same time, any culture may be seen as vital for competitive advantage (or as disadvantage), as it is arguably, highly significant and not easy to imitate. As Pfeffer (1994), among others, notes, many of the earlier identified sources of competitive advantage, such as economies of scale, products or process technology, access to financial resources and protected or regulated markets, become of diminishing significance as a consequence of more fragmented markets with an increasing need for flexibility in production, shorter product life cycle, internationalizations and de-regulations. A company’s competence and ability to manage people – to a considerable degree overlapping organizational culture – are not easy to imitate. Even to describe and analyse culture is difficult, as indicated by all the management texts providing only superficial and trivial descriptions of culture, such as norms about ‘market-oriented’ behaviour. The trivialization of organizational culture is not, however, solely restricted to writings promising the quick fix. Despite an effort to define organizational culture on a deeper level, emphasizing basic assumptions, Schein (1985) in most of his empirical examples tends to address the more superficial aspects. One example concerns the acquisition of a franchised business: The lack of understanding of the cultural risks of buying a franchised business was brought out even more clearly in another case, where a very stuffy, traditional, moralistic company whose management prided itself on its high ethical standards bought a chain of fast-food restaurants that were locally franchised around the country. The company’s managers discovered, much to their chagrin, that one of the biggest of these restaurants in a nearby state had become the local brothel. The activities of the town were so well integrated around this restaurant that the alternative of closing it down posed the risk of drawing precisely the kind of attention this company wanted at all costs to avoid. The managers asked themselves, after the fact, ‘Should we have known what our acquisition involved on this more subtle level? Should we have understood our own value system better, to ensure compatibility?’ (Schein, 1985: 34–5) Here the problem seems to be lack of knowledge on a very specific point – what the company was buying – rather than lack of understanding of the company’s own value system. Most ordinary, ‘respectable’ corporations, whatever their organizational culture, would probably wish to avoid becoming owners of brothels. Prostitution is broadly seen as illegitimate, not only by those who Schein views as ‘very stuffy, traditional, moralistic’ people. Apart from the moral issue, there is of course the risk that bad publicity would follow and harm the company. Managerialization of culture Another aspect of adapting culture to technical concerns, and the reduction of complexity and depth contingent upon such concerns, is the confusion of organizational culture with the firm’s management ideology. Frequently what is referred to as organizational or corporate culture really stands for the ideals and visions prescribed by top management (Alvesson, 1987; Westley and Jaeger, 1985). It is sometimes held that the best way to investigate ‘corporate culture’ is through interviews with top managers, but the outcome of this approach tends to be a description of the espoused ideology of those managers that ‘only skim the culture that surrounds the top executives’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992: 174). Denison (1984) in a survey claiming to study corporate culture, for example asked one manager per company in a large number of companies to fill in a questionnaire. Organizational culture and managerial ideology are in most cases not the same, partly due to the lack of depth of ideology compared to culture, partly due to variation within organizations and discrepancies between top management and other groups. To differentiate between corporate culture as prescribed and manager-led and organizational culture as ‘real culture’ and more or less emergent from below is one possibility (Anthony, 1994). However, management ideology is not necessarily very different from organizational culture – there are cases where management ideology powerfully impregnates cultural patterns (Alvesson, 1995; Kunda, 1992). But this needs to be empirically investigated and shown, and cannot be assumed. Management ideology is but one of several expressions of organizational culture. In most discussions of the relationship between culture and performance, authors focus on values espoused by senior managers, to a higher or lower degree shared by larger groups, while the complexity and variety of culture is neglected.1 From a management point of view, the managerialization of organizational culture immediately appears appealing; but arguably deeper, less conscious aspects of cultural patterns than those managers are already aware of and promote are more valuable, at least in the long run, to focus on. Rather than smoothing over differences and variations in meanings, ideas and values within organizations, highlighting the latter is significant as a basis of informed management thinking and action. Loosening the grip of premature practicality The three weaknesses of much organizational culture thinking reviewed above are related to the wish to make culture appear as of immediate interest to practitioners, and to fit into a predominantly technical cognitive interest in which culture is reduced to a tool. Cultural studies should be permitted to develop unrestricted by, or at least more loosely connected to, concerns for practicality. It is important here is to recognize the contradiction between sophisticated thinking and easily applicable practical concerns: The more rigorously (anthropologically) the term (culture) is applied, the more the concept of organizational culture gains in theoretical interpretative power and the more it loses in practicality. In the effort to overcome this contradiction the danger is that theoretical rigour will be lost in the interest of practicality. (Westley and Jaeger, 1985: 15) Even if one wants to contribute to practicality, rather than to anthropology, this still calls for another kind of intellectual approach than most of the authors cited above exemplify. Oversimplification and promises of ‘quick fixes’ do not necessarily serve narrow pragmatic interests, neither those of managers nor of others. Making things look clear-cut and simple may mislead. Practitioners might benefit much more from the pro-managerial and pragmatic organizational culture literature if it stopped promising recipes for how to manage and control culture and instead discussed other phenomena which managers might, with luck and skill, be able to influence – for example, specific cultural manifestations, workplace spirit and behavioural norms. Learning to ‘think culturally’ about organizational reality might inspire enlightened managerial everyday action rather than unrealistic programmes for culture change or bending patterns of meaning, ideas and valu es to managerial will. Before assuming that culture is functional or good for organizational or managerial purposes, it makes sense to distinguish among possible consequences and to recognize that they may conflict. Critical reflection and learning may be a good thing, consensus facilitating control and coordinated action another, and reduction of anxiety a third; but not all these good things may be attainable at the same time and they may contradict each other. Perhaps more important, contradictory interests – those of professions, divisions, classes, consumers, environmentalists, the state, owners, top management, etc. – may produce different views on what is good, important, and appropriate. Also within complex organizations, corporate goal-attainment may presuppose considerable variation in cultural orientations. Most aspects of culture are difficult to designate as clearly good or bad. To simplify these relationships runs the risk of producing misleading pictures of cultural manifestati ons. Instead, the focus must become the tensions between the creative and destructive possibilities of culture formation (Jeffcutt, 1993). Approaches to the cultureÂâ€"performance relationship There are different ideas regarding to what extent organizational culture can be used as a managerial tool. I will point at and discuss three versions of how managers can work with culture. These represent the relative significance of management versus culture: can management control culture or must management adapt to culture? Cultural engineering: corporate culture as managerial design In the most instrumentally oriented of these formulations, culture is conceived as a building block in organizational design – a subsystem, well-demarcated from other parts of the organization, which includes norms, values, beliefs, and behavioural styles of employees. Even though it may be difficult to master, it is in principle no different from other parts of the organization in terms of management and control. The term ‘cultural engineering’ captures the spirit of this position, which is sometimes called the ‘corporate-culture school’ (Alvesson and Berg, 1992). Kilmann (1985: 354) recognizes that there is considerable disagreement about what culture is but concludes that ‘it is still important to consider what makes a culture good or bad, adaptive or dysfunctional’. He describes culture almost as a physical force: ‘Culture provides meaning, direction, and mobilization – it is the social energy that moves the corporation into allocation †¦ the energy that flows from shared commitments among group members’ (p. 352) and ‘the force controlling behaviour at every level in the organization’ (p. 358). He believes that every firm has a distinctive culture that can develop and change quickly and must be managed and controlled: ‘If left alone, a culture eventually becomes dysfunctional’ (p. 354). The underlying metaphor then clearly comes from technical science. The crucial dimension of culture, according to Kilmann, is norms; it is here that culture is ‘most easily controlled’. More precisely, it is the norms that guide the behaviour and attitudes of the people in the company that are of greatest interest and significance, because they have a powerful effect on the requirements for its success – quality, efficiency, product reliability, customer service, innovation, hard work, loyalty, etc. This is the core of most (American) texts on corporate culture (e.g. Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Sathe, 1985; Wiener, 1988). There are many difficulties with this model. Norms refer to a too superficial and behaviour-near aspect to really capture culture, at least as defined in this book. Norms and behaviours are affected by many dimensions other than culture. Within a culture there are a number of norms related to the enormous variety of different behaviours. The point with culture is that it indicates the meaning dimension, i.e. what is behind and informs norms. A related problem with this behaviour-near view on culture is the tendency to see culture as more or less forcefully affecting behaviour. For example, Sathe (1985: 236) argues that ‘the strength of a culture influences the intensity of behavior’, and the ‘strength’ of a culture is determined by ‘how many important shared assumptions there are’, how widely they are shared, and how clearly they are ranked. A ‘strong’ culture is thus characterized by homogeneity, simplicity, and clearly ordered assumptions. In a ‘complex’ culture – by definition any culture – assumptions will probably be very difficult to identify and rank, and it can even be argued that such a measurement approach distorts the phenomena it is supposed to study. As Fitzgerald (1988: 9–10) has put it: Values do not exist as isolated, independent, or incremental entities. Beliefs and assumptions, tastes and inclinations, hopes and purposes, values and principles are not modular packages stored on warehouse shelves, waiting for inventory. They have no separate existence, as do spark plugs in an engine; they cannot be examined one at a time and replaced when burned out†¦. They have their own inner dynamic: Patriotism, dignity, order, progress, equality, security – each implies other values, as well as their opposites. Patriotism implies homeland, duty, and honor, but also takes its strength from its contrast to disloyalty; dignity requires the possibility of humiliation and sham e.

The Downfall of Nobility of Poe Essays

The Downfall of Nobility of Poe Essays The Downfall of Nobility of Poe Essay The Downfall of Nobility of Poe Essay Essay Topic: The Fall of the House Of Usher The short narratives of Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado shows the ruin of baronial households or persons- The Usher’s in the former and Fortunato in the latter. Both short narratives besides feature eerie vaults and infinites. The death of the baronial household represents the ruin of worlds in general and the eerie puting represents the human consciousness. Downfall and VaultsThe rubric The Fall of the House of Usher foreshadows what would go on in the narrative literally and figuratively. Roderick Usher and his sister Medeline are the last of their baronial household because merely one of the Usher’s household members survives in each coevals. †¦the root of the Usher race. all clip honered as it was. had put away. at no period. any abiding subdivision ; in other words. that the full household ballad in the direct line of descent. ( Poe ) .Making the characters baronial is merely Poe lodging to the guidelines of Aristotle that a calamity must be about characters of aristocracy. What Poe truly wanted to convey is that everybody ( even baronial work forces ) can fall merely like the Usher’s. D. H. Lawrence meanwhile has explained absolutely what Poe is seeking to convey in his changeless usage of vaults as symbols. All this belowground vault concern in Poe merely symbolizes that which tales topographic point beneath the consciousness. ( Lawrence. ch. 6 ) .This meant that the act of burying Fortunato and Medeline alive by Montresor in The Cask of Amontillado and Roderick Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher severally is. on the surface. merely talked approximately lightly but beneath lies the homicidal purpose of the characters with changing motives. Montresor buried Fortunato alive to revenge whatever abuse he has done to him while Roderick Usher may hold allowed his sister to remain buried alive despite hearing her shrieks out of love because he does non desire her anymore to endure.Plants Cited Poe. Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher. Bartleby. com. 28 April 2009. lt ; hypertext transfer protocol: //www. bartleby. com/195/10. hypertext markup language gt ; Poe. Edgar Allan. The Cask of Amontillado. Literature. org. 28 April 2009. lt ; hypertext transfer protocol: //www. literature. org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/amontillado. hypertext markup language gt ; Lawrence. D. H. Studies in Authoritative American Literature: Chapter 6 Edgar Allan Poe. 28 April 2009. lt ; hypertext transfer protocol: //xroads. Virginia. edu/~HYPER/LAWRENCE/dhlch06. htm gt ;

The Rise of Oil and Electricity Price Essays - Economy, Free Essays

The Rise of Oil and Electricity Price Essays - Economy, Free Essays The Rise of Oil and Electricity Price Issues; T he government has declared that fuel price, electricity and telecommunication service rates are increased. This decision was effective since early January 2003. The policy has had good and bad effects and impacts on social situations. Argument pro; On one hand, the government policy on the increase of prices has good impacts on strengthening the national economy, avoiding smuggling and increasing the competitiveness of national economy. Firstly, the policy has strengthened the national economy. Indonesian economy has so far been much dependent on the oil price. The government has subsidized the price of commodity for domestic use. Argument contra; This is prone to crisis. In other words, the huge amount of subsidy so far has put more burden on national economy. The increase of fuel of price is due to the lift or lessening of the subsidy. Secondly, the domestic oil price is much lower than that overseas. The consequence, is that smuggling of the commodity overseas from Indonesia is a common practice, particularly by those who are adjacent to the neighboring countries like Malaysia. Thirdly, the increase of oil price has induced the competitiveness of Indonesian economy. 2. Categorize the whole sentence connector on the discussion text above! T he government has declared that fuel price, electricity and (additional information) , t elecommunication service rates are increased. This decision was effective since (time) early January 2003. The policy has had good and bad effects and impacts on social situations. On one hand (cause and effect) , the government policy on the increase of prices has good impacts on strengthening the national economy, avoiding smuggling and (additional information) , increasing the competitiveness of national economy. Firstly (furthermore or additional information) , the policy has strengthened the national economy. Indonesian economy has so far been much dependent on the oil price. The government has subsidized the price of commodity for domestic use. This is prone to crisis . In other words (contrary cause and effect) , the huge amount of subsidy so far has put more burden on national economy. The increase of fuel of price is due to the lift or lessening of the subsidy. Secondly (furthermore or additional information) , , the domestic oil price is much lower than that overseas. The consequence (emphasis) , is that smuggling of the commodity overseas from Indonesia is a common practice, particularly by those who are adjacent to the neighboring countries like Malaysia. Thirdly (furthermore or additional information) , the increase of oil price has induced the competitiveness of Indonesian economy. 3. Write a Discussion text in at least 400 words on one of the following topics Social effects of social networks on young viewers . How social media affect our children The early of the 21 st century have withnessed an explosion of internet usage. The popularity of this system give us change to keeps interconnected nonstop via media social. Obviously, with the universal acces to interactive and communicate which was offers by in ternet. It is no hard to understand why people on the world are addicted to it especially a teenager. and all of us have less attention to account of social media. there are some hidden danger the negative effect of media social . it is quite ironic that according to the Washinton press about 6% of young user of media social got hurt as a part of bullying in some of media social. Some of the kid may feel insulted or embarrassed because of hars comments or o[pinon.