Organizational Change and Stress Management Essay

Organizational Change and Stress Management - Essay Example WIlis, Stephen D Mastrofski, David Weisburd, and Rosann Greenspan is analyzed. Introduction of COMPSTAT in Lowell As Willis, Mastrofski and Weisburd (2003) point out, department heads conducted regular meetings with their district heads and discussed crime trends. Also, their responses to crimes were collected and future strategies were developed. Thus, it allowed the systematic use of hard data and heightened accountability to reduce crime in society. (Worcester Regional Research Bureau, 2003). However, its implementation in Lowell was not free from errors and hence, after the initial success, the program failed. The program was introduced in Lowell by Superintendent Davis. As a part of the program, there were a number of changes in Lowell. First of all, it divided the entire Lowell into three sectors and each sector captain was solely responsible for the crimes within the area under his control, and the sector captain remained accountable to the top brass. Willis, Mastrofski, Weisb urd and Greenspan (2003) note that according to the plan suggested by the superintendent, the sector captain from one of the three sectors had to submit his report in every biweekly meeting. The biweekly meeting usually contained twenty to thirty members including the superintendent, the top brass of the police department and some invited guests, sergeants and patrol officers. The captain who had to submit the report explained all the details of his area and, had to answer questions and suggestions from the meeting members. Any perceived defect in the strategies he adopted was met with criticism from the superintendent and other members in the meeting. So, instead of improving communication and cooperation, such meetings became ‘pressure cookers’ for the sector captains. In addition, as the COMPSTAT did not suggest any formal way for them to communicate the issues with the officers below them, they found it almost impossible to achieve what the top brass suggested. Behn (2008) reports that COMPSTAT brought autocratic power, orders, close observation, and negative reinforcement in the police force instead of the perceived decentralization of power. The Resistance from Employees Admittedly, COMPSTAT did not come into existence without any resistance. The changes were not acceptable to most of the officers. The first effect of the change was that the middle layer officers, that is, the sector captains, stopped divulging important details to the COMPSTAT as they find it dangerous to their own individual careers. First of all, if they revealed any shortcoming or lack of efficiency from their part, it was met with stiff criticism from the top brass. Secondly, there evolved rivalry among sectors as the improvement in one sector means criticism for the remaining sectors in the COMPSTAT meetings. Barkan and Bryjak (2011) reflect that middle layer officers resisted this move through deficient exchange of information. The second point of resistance came from the rank-and-file as they found themselves out of the decision-making process. Though it was claimed that the decision-making power goes to the lower end of the system, what happened in practice was quite the opposite. Only the top brass possessed the power to take decisions, and the ones taken by middle order were highly criticized if went wrong. Thus, the rank-and-file category found it unimportant to cooperate with the innovative system and

Story Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Story Analysis - Essay Example In Araby, this corruptible nature of women is also depicted. The narrator, a young boy, believes that in order to get the attention and love of Mangan’s sister, he needs to buy her gifts. In addition, the stories show that women are servants of the men. For instance in The Dead, the story opens b showing that Lily helped the men remove their coats. The two stories also depict women as symbols or figures of love and beauty. This is one aspect used by women to control men. In The Dead, Gabriel is attracted to Lily’s beauty, and this forces him to ask her about her love life. In addition, during the dance, Gabriel is attracted o his former love, Gretta. In both cases, the author shows that women can gain some form of control or influence in men through their beauty. In Araby, the narrator is attracted to Mangan’s sister to the extent that these feelings take control of him. For instance, he says that the image of Mangan’s sister accompanies him to places most hostile to romance and her name sprang to his lips during times of prayers and praises. He literally followed her every morning to

After high school Essay Example for Free

After high school Essay As we get older, more and more problems begin to form. When we reach our teenage years though, it becomes worse. One problem I think the hardest is for young adults is deciding what we want to do for the rest of our lives when we are so young. You can go to college, military or the working field depending on your preference. When we’re in high school, we have to raise our hand and ask to use the restroom, go to the office to make any phone call no matter how important it may be and have ridiculous dress code rules. You are treated like a child from kindergarten all the way up to senior year and yet they expect you to make the most important decision of your life then. One thing that people do straight out of high school is go directly to the work field. Although its normally in most people’s best interest not to, not everyone is made for college. Unless you are extremely lucky, it has been found that people who didn’t advance to other education after high school make 85% less than those with a college diploma. My brother has a roommate in college and his dad dropped out of college after his first year or two and he makes more money than most people will ever see. His wife doesn’t have to work and his kids have it made when it comes to the materialistic things in life. He owns his own real estate company in Pittsburgh and sells and rents houses to people. He does most of his own work so he doesn’t have to pay people to do it, which is very convenient for him. Although most people do not get as lucky as him, that’s okay for some people because money isn’t everything though. Sometimes it’s better to take time off of school instead of wasting all that money when you don’t even know what you are planning on doing for the rest of your life and going straight to college. There are many reasons why people decide to not go to college, not because they just don’t think that they can do it. Sometimes people have kids before they plan, family problems or even they just can’t get help to pay for it so it holds them back from attending. College is an expensive thing that most people don’t want to pay for. You have years of loans to pay back and for a lot of people; they end up miserable at their jobs after a few years. It is also very hard to get help to pay for you college education. When my cousin tried getting help for college, because she had a full time job and no kids she could get barely any money even though she wasn’t getting any help from her parents. If college still isn’t the right thing for you but you don’t want McDonalds to be your only  definite in for a job, the military is a great option. Although you have to work your butt off for it, the military gives awesome benefits. Of course it’s nothing that the NBA players make, which is ridiculous, but it is still a lot just for being in the military. A player in the NBA averages about $5.15 million per year and all the do is dribble and shoot a basketball for a living where people in the military have to work their tails off every single day to fight for our country and they only get about $70 thousand per year. There is a lot of schooling that they will pay for you so you can still get an education while being in the military. Not only will you get your schooling paid for, but also you can even get paid for going. Also, they have programs like ROTC where you can still train for the military but you are in an actual college getting your education. As well as getting your education paid for, you also get free medical care, financial security and you can retire around 20 years before other people do. If you get all of that stuff paid for, is there even anything left to buy? Food and housing. No worries, in the Army, you receive a regular paycheck and free housing including meals. If you live off of base, you will still receive a housing allowance. Even if the amount of free meals and the checks don’t cover all of the food you want, some restaurants and grocery stores offer military discounts, which will also save a lot of money. My dad owns houses and rent them out to people and the first thing he looks at is what kind of job they have to make sure they can keep up with rent. Last summer there was a guy from the Army that tried to rent of my dad and he told him that the monthly paying isn’t going to be a big deal because he gets checks from the Army specifically for his housing so it is totally free for him. Although college isn’t everyone’s best option, I believe it’s more worth it than working forever at a job that barely gets you by. Colleges can really help you out when you aren’t exactly sure what you want to do. Some even make you take a full year of general education classes just so you are sure that you want to be in that major. Nobody should waste thousands of dollars just to change their mind like 50-70% of college kids end up doing. Also, most colleges have classes that help you transition from high school to college and help get good study habits and things like that. For most kids, what they do for the school like sports, music, theatre and clubs is the most important part of high school. Proceeding to college gives you the opportunity to further  your career in things like that where there are plenty of sports, clubs, different bands and also sororities and fraternities. Although that would be going to college for the wrong reasons, a college education in general expands your knowledge base, makes you more organized and exposes you to a whole new world of learning. There are also so many different types of colleges though. Depending on your preference, you can go to school for a few months or 12 years. There are community colleges, tech schools, four-year schools and also schools that are totally based on what you want to do. At the four-year schools, you have to take a certain amount of general education courses where as a college with a certain amount of month program, all of your classes are dedicated for your major. Every school that you go to has a variety of majors to choose from which also make the college option hard. There are some things that people will never even hear of until they go to college and even then, there are thousands of jobs you can do with most majors that people will probably never even know throughout their entire life. A lot of people don’t realize that a really big benefit of going to both college and the military is the life long friends that you make. Of course you’ll always have your friends from high school, but college and the military both give you the opportunity to start over and make new friends. As you can see, there are benefits to every option you decide to do when you graduate high school. There are also a lot of cons to the option that you decide. It all depends on the person and what they are like. It’s just a very hard decision to make when you are barely old enough to stay outside past 11pm. We are very uneducated about the all the different majors in college and the benefits of or other options if we decided to not go to college. We have only lived about a quarter of our life and we are expected to decide what we want to do for three more quarters of our life. This decision is the one that is going to affect you for the rest of your life and I just don’t think that we are educated enough to make it.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Positivism

Advantages and Disadvantages of Positivism Q. Discuss the advantages, strengths, disadvantages and weaknesses of a  positivist approach to the social sciences. The profusion of use and multifariousness of meaning of the word positivism results in a need for any essay on the subject to first give its own precise definition for its use of the term, distinguishing its particular context from its use in other contexts. The term positivism, first coined by the philosopher Auguste Comte in the nineteenth-century, was first originally confined to the boundaries of philosophy and natural science; by the present, the term has spread its meaning to cover fields as diverse as law, political theory, the social sciences, philosophy and even literature. In all of these fields the dictionary definition of positivism as ‘. . . a system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or logically proved, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism’ (Oxford, 1989: pp. 385-386) remains broadly true of most of its uses, though it does little to reveal the subtle distinctions of use of the word positivism in each of these disciplines. For instance, legal positivism is ‘. . . a view which, in contrast to the natural law view, claims that a legal system can be defined independently of evaluative terms or propositions is the view that in law’ (Hugh-Jones, S. Laidlaw, J, 2000: p88); in literature positivism refers to a specific period of Polish literature where writers were inspired by the nascent achievements of science and technology; and in philosophy the term logical positivism meant the scientific investigation of the philosophy of language — as in writers such as Wittgenstein. All in all then, the term positivism has an umbrella use designated by the dictionary definition, but then has several further and more individualistic uses depending upon the context in which it appears. ‘Positivism is the view that serious scientific inquiry should not search for ultimate causes deriving from some outside source but must confine itself to the study of relations existing between facts which are directly accessible to observation’ (Hugh-Jones, S. Laidlaw, J: 2000: p.3) The definition of positivism chosen for use in this essay, its particular domain being the social sciences, is that stated above by Hugh-Jones and Laidlaw. According to this version of positivism, data gathered from sense perceptions is the only possible data that may be used as a foundation for knowledge and thought. Hence, all data and phenomena taken from beyond sense perceptions or the properties of observable things is banished — thuds a priori metaphysics and theology dismissed in toto. Science alone sets the perimeters for human knowledge, and, accordingly, positivism maintains the expectation that science will ultimately attain to solve all human problems. As such, a social scientific definition of positivism regards the research of social scientists as identical in importance to that of natural scientists; that is, social scientists, like natural scientists, employ theories and explanations for phenomena, inferred from sense data for the purpose of social benefit. Wit h respect to political science as a social science Popper thus says ‘We get the particular definition of one of the social sciences — political science — which tries to separate the subject from the values we apply to it, and argues that it is possible to develop value-free knowledge’ (Popper, 1983: p. 75). This quotation shows the extent to which one particular social science’s use of the term positivism has mutated from its general umbrella use. For the purposes of this essay, positivism will be regarded as having four essential characteristics (King, 1994: p. 204). (1) It is concrned with the search for the unification of scientific method, that is, with the notion that logic and inquiry are universal principles extending across all scientific domains. (2) That the ultimate end of scientific inquiry is to gives explanations of social phenomenon and to make predictions about their behaviour as according to discernable laws of society. Thus positivism in the social sciences seeks also to develop a ‘general law of social understanding’, by discovering necessary and sufficient conditions for any phenomenon. (3) Positivism maintains that social scientific knowledge must always be subject to proof through empirical experimentation. All subjects of reaseach and investigation in the social sciences should be based upon observations derived from sense-perceptions. (4) Social sciences must seek to free themselves of valu e-judgements as far as possible, and of moral, political, and religion ideas that might contaminate their research. Thus, in short: social sciences must seek to dicover universal conditions behind social phenomena;all social scientific empirical statements must be asolute truthes which are true at all times and true in all places; finally, research can proved only by empirical experimentation. In There Is More Than One Way To Do Political Science Marsh Smith (2001), while debating whether the social sciences might legitimately have both a positivist and realist approach to science, argue that one of the principal strengths of positivism is that it is ‘foundationalist’: that is ‘. . . in ontological terms it argues that there is a ‘‘real world’’ out there, that it is independent of an agent’s knowledge of it’ and that ‘. . . it is possible, using the proper ‘‘research methods’’ for an observer to discover these real relationships between social phenomenon’ (Marsh Smith, 2001: p. 529). Thus the great strength and advantage of a positivist approach to the social sciences is that it grounds anthropology, sociology, political science and so on upon a hard and definite ‘foundation’ of empirically testable data, and makes theories out of this data from which absolute laws of social behaviour may be attained. A second distinct advantage then of positivism is that it permits an analysis of the causal relationships between phenomena. Positivism thus allows the social sciences to make certain predictions about the phenomenal world. Thus Dowding states ‘. . . all good political scientists produce models with definite predictions . . . which they can then test one way or another against data gathered from the actual world’ (Dowding, 2001: p. 92). A chief strength then of a positivistic approach, is that it brings to the social sciences the desire to emulate the excellence of the natural sciences in respect of their rigorous experimentation, precisely stated hypotheses, definite laws, and thus prediction of behaviour. By approaching its investigations thus, social scientists attain a high level of accuracy in their results and in their predictions, and thus come closer to a total description of the behaviour of social phenomenon. By approa ching the social sciences from a positivist position, social scientists are able to cut away from existing ‘knowledge’ many prejudices, suppositions, superstitions and other non-scientific opinions that have gathered about these social phenomena (Marsh Smith, 2001). In other words, positivism, by declaring valid only those things which conform to its vigorous standards of investigation, strips social phenomenon of their perceived nature and reveals them as they really are. A second key advantage of taking a positivist approach to the social sciences is that such a move solidly roots the social sciences in the accomplishments of the natural sciences over the past four hundred years. Early positivists like Comte, Spencer and Saint-Simon understood their theory and work as something growing directly out of the experimental and theoretical achievements of the great natural scientists like Newton, Spinoza, Darwin and others. Comte knew that the natural sciences and natural scientists, were essentially positivist: that is, they appealed to the perception and measurement of objective sense-data from which to make experiments, analyze results and make theory, predictions and laws. Comte and the other early positivists thus understood their work as an act of ‘making explicit’ the theory which natural scientists had adhered to for centuries. When, in the twentieth-century, social positivists like Ernst Laas, Friedrich Jodl and Eugen Duhring began to establish the theoretical and experimental parameters of the social sciences, they also understood their work as a branch of the natural sciences and as a continuation of its discoveries. Anthropologists, sociologists, social scientists of the early twentieth-century faced a choice: they could orientate their subjects within the sphere of natural science and its immense harvest of the past two decades, or they could orientate it in the sphere of theology and the liberal arts which had dominated all human history before the advent of natural science. Laas, Jodl, Duhring and later Marsh, Smith and others have all agreed that the social sciences must be built upon the platform established by the natural sciences. These sciences have been the predominant intellectual authority for Western Europe for nearly four hundred years, and social scientists think that the positivist approach to the natural sciences offers greater objectivity, certainty of prediction, and deeper insight into thei r subjects than could achieved by any other method of inquiry. Further, the allegiance of the social sciences to the natural sciences, through a shared conviction in the positivist philosophy, means that the social sciences can constantly draw upon the fund of new empirical material daily unearthed by these natural sciences. In other words: if the social sciences have an exchange of knowledge between themselves and the natural sciences, then every refinement of experimental method, theory, or analysis achieved by the natural sciences may be immediately seized upon and utilized by the social sciences also. And, vice-versa, this interchange allows the social sciences to more freely disseminate their discoveries within the world of the natural sciences. Moreover, by sharing a positivist philosophy with the natural sciences, the social sciences may draw from its authority in the presentation of their results to the wider scientific and academic community. That is, the employment of positivism by the social sciences, dispels and neutralizes the accus ations from some quarters of the scientific and outside world, for instance those of Karl Popper, that such sciences are ‘pseudo-sciences’. This claim can hold no weight if it is seen that the natural and social sciences share alike the same methodology and principles of operation. Nonetheless, it should be made clear that whilst the social sciences derive authority and knowledge from the natural sciences, that they do not depend upon it exclusively for authority. Indeed, the social sciences have made their own refinements to positivism, and thus their methods of experimentation and analysis, quite independently of those achieved in the natural sciences. The social sciences have adapted the positivism they received from the social sciences to conform to their own empirical material and the idiosyncratic and diverse domains encountered in societies and the human world. In short, the social sciences have moulded positivism to the world of empirical human affairs, thus ent ering a territory that the natural sciences had previously not trodden. Historically, perhaps the greatest weakness and hence disadvantage of positivism generally, and with respect to the social sciences in particular, has been its insistence upon methodological absoluteness. Since the time of positivism’s foundation in the philosophy of Auguste Comte, positivists have persistently sought to use its scientific methods to explain every conceivable aspect of social phenomenon; that is, they have wanted to observe an object in its totality, tracing its entire phenomenological casuistry, its material composition, and thus produce a absolute theory of knowledge about that phenomenon. According to this scientific philosophy positivism must produce absolute laws to describe the behaviour and nature of phenomenal objects. The naivety of this search for the perfection of methodology and absoluteness of social scientific laws was exposed in the second half of the twentieth century, firstly by the advent of post-modernism (Popper, 1989: p.109-128), which sho wed the epistemological difficulties — impossibilities? — of extending science to such extreme levels; secondly, positivism’s applicability in all instances was increasingly undermined by the new theories of social scientists themselves. The various discoveries of anthropology, sociology, political science and other social sciences led researchers to an ever clearer conclusion: the phenomena of social science are far too sophisticated and involve the intimate interaction of too many separate objects, people and processes to be scientifically observed in their totality. Sociologists for instance, in their investigations into the mechanisms of the smallest of social units, the family, soon realized that no absolute and all-encompassing laws could be applied to the behaviour of these units (Gerrad, 1969: pp. 201-212); the great complexity coming from the need for the axioms and paradigms which are true of one family unit must, according to pure positivism, be shown to be true of all family units in all places and at all times. Pure positivism states that the laws of social science are of the same type and significance as the laws of physics, biology and chemistry; but for these laws to attain this equality, the laws of social science must be easily expressible and as rigorously testable as those of the natural sciences. The difficulty of attaining such equality is easily demonstrated by Gerrard’s (Gerrard, 1969) experiments, where he discusses the complexity of social issues involved in a four member family unit in America, and then postulates the near impossibility of scientifically demonstrating that family units in Northern France, in Thailand, in Hawaii and in all other places can be shown to obey the same exact rules as those affecting the family in America. Thus social scientists from the 1950’s onwards, confronted with the sheer vastness of ethnic, racial and community diversity, began to question the possibility of producing social laws that would be universally and ubiquitously binding. And in 2006 when even natural scientists have no certainties even about the exact behaviour and nature of a single atom; how can social scientists hope to prove laws for something as complex as a city? Another weakness of extreme positivism has been its inability to accurately prove its hypotheses through empirical experiments (Popper, 1983: p. 12 also: Dowding, 1995: p. 138). Whereas experimentation in the natural sciences usually involves the investigation of inanimate or relatively simple objects such as metals, stars, chemicals and so, these having the same properties constantly, in contrast, social phenomenon — people, communities, organizations etc., — are animate and are compositions of vast complexly intertwining feelings, emotions, thoughts, volitions, passions, motives, associations and so on. Thus, to undertake a social experiment, a social scientist has to be sure that he can separate the single mental or behavioural element, say ‘a criminal tendency’ that he wants to investigate, and then to exclude or control the influence of the other mental and social factors that will otherwise affect the accuracy of the experiment. In many instances suc h exclusion is nearly impossible to the degree of purity demanded by extreme positivists; a human being cannot be put in a test-tube or a vacuum and so shielded from external influences in the way that magnesium or atoms can. Thus social scientists have become ever more conscious that a major limitation of the positivist approach in respect to their discipline is its insistence upon perfect conditions for experimentation and for the accuracy of hypotheses and predictions (Dowding, 1995). Further, other discoveries in the social sciences have begun to place an ever greater emphasis upon the life of the individual and upon subjective experiences as vital factors in the constituency of societies (Marsh Furlong, 2002). The hermeneutic or ‘interpretive’ approach has come to assume ever greater importance within the social sciences, setting up for itself an area of investigation of phenomenon quite different from positivism, and therefore undermining the legitimacy of positivism’s claims to describe the totality of social phenomenon. Positivism is, according to this view, the outcome of a particular culture and particular history (Western European); what legitimacy then does it have to proclaim its results as of universal validity, as it must, to meet its own standards of scientific investigation? Moreover, social scientists themselves bring to their experiments their own subjective experiences, their own thoughts, volitions, prejudices etc., and these all affect experimentation and thus the security of results — just as surely do these things in the subjects of analysis. Thus David Marsh and Martin Smith have stated, in their powerful metaphor derived from Marsh’s earlier article, that ‘In the social sciences . . . subjective ontological and epistemological positions should not be treated like a pullover that can be ‘‘put on’’ when we are addressing such philosophical issues and ‘‘taken off’’ when we are doing research’ (Marsh Smith, 2005: p.531). That is, they should not be treated as a ‘pullover’, as temporary measure, as they have been by positivists to date. In the final analysis, it seems clear that neither the extreme positivism once advocated in the wake of Auguste Comte’s first philosophical writings, nor extreme anti-positivism nor anti-foundationalist positions as have recently been taken by some hermeneutists and realists, can lead to significant future progress in the social sciences. The chief strength and advantage of a positivist approach is the vigorous process of setting hypotheses, of empirical experimentation to test these hypotheses, of deep analysis to measure the results, and then the ability to codify the results in a set of laws and predictions. Claiming for themselves, in this sense, a parallel certainty of laws and predictions as and laws demanded by the natural sciences, positivism reveals to the social sciences phenomenal objects as they really are — as they are when stripped of superstitions, fallacious theories, prejudice and so on. Positivism demands a definite residue of facts and ‘truthsâ €™ that are universally applicable to social groups and communities irregardless of time, place or environment. In striving so vigorously for such ideals, positivism gives the social sciences a high degree of authority and respectability within the wider scientific and academic community as a whole. Further, a positivist approach in the social sciences affords a ready means of comparison and exchange of knowledge between other disciplines such law, philosophy, literature and so that employ positivism also. Indeed, in seminal respects, such is the importance of positivism for the social sciences that it is difficult to see how they could justify being ‘sciences’ without it. The two principal disadvantages of a positivist application to the social sciences are these: firstly, that its search for ideal and perfect standards of scientific methodology and analysis are too unrealistic when set beside the extreme complexity of social phenomenon; the second weakness, is positivism’s lack of empathy and consideration of the subjective, individual and hermeneutic aspects of social phenomenon. Dealing with the first objection, critics of positivism argue that it cannot — working as it does in the outside world, in cities and in companies, in villages and mass organizations — attain the same standards of empirical excellence, either in experimentation or in verification of results, as can natural scientists working in the controlled conditions of a laboratory and deriving principles mostly from inanimate matter of slighter sophistication than human beings. Moreover, social scientists have a nearly insuperable difficulty in codifying laws of so cial phenomena with the precision that physics or chemistry allow for material phenomena. Thus positivism in the social sciences attains a lower level of prediction and accuracy with respect to the phenomenon it observes, than do the natural sciences. The second major weakness of a positivist application is its failure to take sufficient account of the subjectivity of individual life and to interpret the meaning of that phenomenon for the subject and the community of the subject. On these matters positivism has nearly nothing to say, and thus it is barred from a whole hemisphere of human social experience. As the first sentence of this conclusion suggested: neither an extreme positivist not an extreme subjective or hermeneutic attitude can dominate the future of the social sciences. Rather, social scientists must learn to join positivism with subjectivism, thus fusing the two halves of social phenomenal experience. If positivism can be brought into union with the subjective in the social sciences, and if positivists can learn to tolerate something less than perfection in their methodological approach, then positivism must still be said to have a large contribution to make to the future of social science. In might be said then, in our final words, that positivism is simultaneously an advantage and disadvantage for the social sciences; whether one or other of these qualities is dominant remains to be seen. BIBLIOGRAPHY — Dowding, K. (2001). ‘There Must Be An End To Confusion: Policy Networks, Intellectual Fatigue, and the Need for Political Science Methods Courses in British Universities, in Political Studies, Vol 1., pp. 89-105. — Dowding, K. (1995). Model or Metaphor? A Critical Review of the Policy of Network Approach. Political Studies, Vol. 45, Issue. 1, pp. 136-158. — Green, D. P. Shapiro, I. (1994). Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory : A Critique of Applications in Political Science, pp. 89-95. New Haven, London. — Gerrard, James. (1969). The Sociology of the Family, pp. 303-316. Ford Press, Pittsburgh. — King, G. (et al.). (1994). Designing Social Enquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp 201-208. Princeton University Press, Princeton.  ­Ã¢â‚¬â€ Hugh-Jones, Steven Laidlaw, James. (2000). The Essential Edmund Leach, p163. New Haven, London. — Marsh, David Smith, Martin. (2001). ‘There Is More Than One Way To Do Social Science: On Different Ways To Study Political Networks’ in Volume 49, Number 3, pp. 528-541. — Marsh, David Furlong, Paul. (2002). ‘A Skin Not a Sweater: Ontology and Epistemology in Political Science’ in Marsh, David and Stoker, Jerry (Eds.). Epistemology in Political Science, pp. 17-41. Palgrave, Basingstoke. — Popper, Karl R. (1983). Realism and the Aim of Science, pp 1-13. Routledge, London. — Popper, Karl R. (1989). Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 69-76. Routledge, London. — Quirk, Randolph (et al.) (Eds.). (1989). The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Belly Dancing Essay -- Art, Dancing

Hate doing crunches? Do they strain your back and neck muscles? Try belly dancing, it gives you better benefits than the average crunch with less pain. In addition to the physical and emotional benefits, belly dancing also has an impact on child birth and ones creativity in an entertaining manner. The physical benefits of belly dancing are, being able to become healthier, and in better shape. Being out of shape can also affect a person’s emotional-state. Participating in belly dancing can benefit ones self-esteem, and help their emotional well-being. Ones emotional-state can take a toll for the worst or the best when trying to become pregnant. Belly dancing is said to help the chances of a woman trying to become pregnant. Belly dancing also helps the birthing process, and can also help your pelvic muscles after pregnancy. Being pregnant can affect ones choice in attire. Belly dance allows one to become creative through the choreography and also their attire. Belly dancers bri ng out the most of their creativity while performing on stage. Belly dancing is very beneficial to ones physical and emotional state and could also help with the birth process; therefore it should be applied as a creative and entertaining form of daily exercise. Belly dance has physical and health benefits, remember; â€Å"A healthy heart is a happy heart†. According to Pina Coluccia â€Å"Belly Dancing strengthens the heart muscle and stimulates circulation† (Coluccia 84). Belly dancing is considered an aerobic or cardiovascular exercise. â€Å"Belly dancing can be considered a cardiovascular exercise, because it has similar effects as jogging or cycling† (Coluccia 84). Kanina says â€Å"Most of the students that attend my belly dancing classes, use belly dancing as a form o... .... The creativeness of belly dancing is brought out by what the women or men wear, and also where they are performing, and what style of belly dancing they are performing. If a woman is pregnant and is performing she could wear a dress and hide her belly, or she could emphasize her belly and wear a bra and a skirt. Belly dancing depends on the person; if they want to be more physically fit it is a good form of exercise. If a person wants to boost their self-esteem level practicing belly dancing will allow them to come in touch with their spiritual self. Also if a woman wants the birth process to be an easy belly dancing practices the birthing dance or movement. Belly dancing is very beneficial to ones physical and emotional state and could also help with the birth process; therefore it should be applied as a creative and entertaining form of daily exercise.

Essay on the Character of Caleb Trask in John Steinbecks East of Eden :: East Eden Essays

The Character of Caleb Trask in East of Eden Cal Trask is one of the most complex characters in John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Through Cal's childhood experiences, his personal motives, and his internal conflict, Steinbeck shows the development of Cal's character. First of all, the most important childhood experience which affects Cal's life is Adam's 12 year abandonment of his sons. Since Cathy ran away, the twins have no mother figure to give them tenderness as they grow up. This absence of open affection leaves Cal unable to express his needs for love and attention. Only Lee, the Chinese servant, is there to guide Cal and Aron. Since Cal is the more dominant of the two brothers, he learns to manipulate Aron and others around him. He takes this role because, while "no one liked Cal very much... Aron drew love from every side"(Steinbeck 551). Lee observes that "he's [Cal] fighting for his life and his brother doesn't have to fight [for his father's love and affection]"(386). Cal's well-intentioned motives are mostly aimed at winning his father's love. He sacrifices his pride and asks Will Hamilton to help him raise money to replace the money Adam lost in the lettuce adventure. When Adam rejects the money, he in effect rejects Cal, which is "brutal, and unfeeling, and this after he had begun a cordial relationship with his son"(Fontenrose 375). Cal is so distraught that he lashes out at Aron, his father's favorite son, by telling him the truth about their mother. This act is a contrast to a similar crossroad earlier in the novel when Cal doesn't tell Aron the truth about his mother because "he didn't think Aron could handle it at all" (586). Cal also withholds the information in an effort to be "good," and because Cal knows that the revelation of his knowledge of this secret would bring pain to Adam, the man he loves the most. Finally, Cal is faced with his internal struggle of good versus evil. This struggle is partly caused by his traumatic child experiences. He struggles with the question of whether his evil actions are the result of his own evilness or his mother's wickedness. He tries to combat this wickedness that he sees within himself by trying to acquire affection, especially his father's, through good deeds and being more pleasant towards other. However, he strikes out at others whenever he feels rejected by Adam, and he fights the urge to strike out at Aron, who Cal believes is Adam's favorite son, by using his most devastating weapon---the truth about their mother.

Mahindra & Mahindra in South Africa Essay

In May 2011, Pravin Shah, the CEO at Mahindra & Mahindra, was evaluating four possible options of company’s growth strategy in the South Africa. Those options included: entering into agreement with the local vendor for the contract assembly of M&M vehicles, investing in its own manufacturing plant in South Africa, using South Africa as a hub for the further export of the other countries and lastly waiting and watching until enough vehicles are sold for the sustainable long term growth. Once those options were evaluated, Shah needed to present the final chosen one to the board of directors for the final approval on the best strategy for company’s growth in the South African Market. 1) Which option should Shah chose? Based on the information presented in this case (and not based on the class discussion and video presented), I would advise Shah to exercise the wait and watch strategy at a given period of time. Shah was faced with this decision in 2011, which was only a few years after the global recession took place. Even though they had an outstanding result in 2010 showing the growth of sales at 24% and making the projections for the further sustainability, that was only one year of the positive outcome compared to the years before that. During the time of the recession and specifically in years 2007 through 2009, an automotive market suffered dramatically. It was mainly due to the flow of credit and the passing of the law by the local South African government to limit further availability of credit. Solely based on the case information, it would make sense to make a projection plan for the next 3-5 year to watch the growth of the automotive market and then take additional necessary steps to further grow the company’s overall expansion in the local market. Even though this option has some negative sides such as higher import duty and losing some of the market share to its competitors, in case of the declining auto market situation it could financially benefit the company. 2) What is your assessment of M&M’s experience with its South African subsidiary to date? To date, Mahindra & Mahindra shows a very strong entry-level presence in the local market. In short 6 years period, they were  able to capture the trust and loyalty of the local populations. Their strategy to manufacture and export vehicles that were suitable for local roads and, at the same time affordable for the locals, made it possible to secure the market share of 1.2% of the SUV and medium range SUV vehicles. Their localization of dealers in nine South African provinces made it possible for customers of all regions to have the direct access to the vehicle inventory. On the other hand the company faced a challenge of losing sales because of the time it took to process vehicles orders from India. 3) How attractive is the South African auto market for the growth and profitability? In the past decade or so, South Africa showed a stable economic growth among the population. Even though the growth rates are somewhat low compared to the other developing countries, it didn’t have any decline. With economic growth, more locals are able to afford to own a vehicle. As research study presented in the case shows, the buying power of the black African consumers, making the largest segment of the middle-income market, was rising. To the benefit of companies such as Mahindra & Mahindra, unlike white South African population, black African consumers were more open and inclined to purchase newly introduced brands to the markets. The research showed that they did not trust the local brands rather than preferred any specific European or Japanese/Korean brand. This presents a colossal opportunity for M&M’ to enter the local South African market and continue its growth and profitability by securing the trust of local population. As long as company considers the growing need and affordability of the vehicle introduced in the future, they have a strong potential in further securing the larger auto market segment in the local market. 4) What potential roles can M&M’s South African subsidiary play in the company’s global network? With the globalization growing it is very important for international companies to be able to secure the brand within local markets. In this particular case, a South African subsidiary could potentially mean a large growth for the M&M. They would be able to shorten their delivery time and secure additional market segment by signing with the government. It would also be easier to export vehicles to other locations. The parent-subsidiary operating structure allows for greater diversification  and increased efficiencies, partly because senior management at the parent company does not have to be involved in the operational details of its subsidiary. It would also isolate certain financial risks because the two companies are separate legal entities. 5) What should be Shah’s recommendation to M&M’s board of directors? Shah should advise the board of directors that at the current time it would be beneficial for the company to monitor the growth/decline of the automotive market on the global scale as well as in the South African market. With the reasonable proposal to monitor for the next 3-5 years it would allow company to receive securer results for the industry. Further on, based on the collected results, the company should consider moving on to the one of the other three options: contract assembly, own manufacturing plant or use South Africa as a hub.