The Inner Human Beast in Lord of the Flies by William...

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses symbolism and parables to illustrate and define the human inner beast. There are some main ideas that William Golding sets forth in Lord of the Flies. These main ideas are impulses of mankind and they exist within all human beings in the world. The author talks about how mankind and society gives us rules and duties. Like to act peacefully, have moral standards, and how to accept others and their views. The story can be told as if it were civilization versus anarchy. In Lord of the Flies, Golding introduces a group of young English boys. The boy’s names are Ralph, Jack, Simon, Piggy, Sam, Eric, and Roger. This group of boys happen to be stranded on a desert island. The boy’s transition has challenged them with uncivilized behavior. However each boy has his own personality and with each personality gives more distinguished ability to the group of boys. As the novel progresses, Golding explains how different people feel and act because of the influences of the instincts of civilization and chaos through different levels and strategies. Different characters in the novel are created to represent different inner beats of an individual. Ralph is elected to be the group’s leader. Ralph is the order, civilized and productive. The other boys are concerned with having fun and avoiding work. Ralph has his mind set on survival and civilization. Ralph thinks about building shelter and constantly thinking of ways that they can be saved fromShow MoreRelatedLord Of The Flies Symbolism Essay1080 Words   |  5 PagesLord of the Flies Essay â€Å"Maybe there is a beast†¦ maybe its only us.†(Golding [Page 50]) The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a novel that goes much deeper than a group of 12 year old boys stranded on an island. Throughout the book Golding portrays symbols and constant themes which show how he feels about the human race; that there is an inner beast inside everyone and no matter who you are, it will eventually get exposed. Golding also shows symbols throughout the book which represent theRead MoreGood Versus Evil in Lord of the Flies by William Golding Essay1235 Words   |  5 Pagesyears ago, Charles Darwin introduced a theory that we humans are a species which evolved from animals that have inhabited the Earth for many years, and he believed that we were civilized, intelligent, and logical life forms for these very reasons. In the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding there is a prominent theme of good versus evil which reveals that maybe humans are not the civilized hum an beings that they were said to be. William Golding carefully netted this theme with his utilization ofRead MoreLord of the Flies by William Golding754 Words   |  4 PagesIn the novel â€Å"Lord of the Flies† there are several symbols of interpretations in terms of meaning. The beast within the novel, â€Å"Lord of the Flies† by William Golding was never a monster, however neither was it really human (Shmoop). On a stranded island alone with no adults to look below the bed or look within the closet, there are sure to be ghosts and monsters roaming amongst the forest woods, and from the very start this belief of some monster hiding within the darkness is unfolded around theRead MoreSymbols in Lord of the Files by William Golding 779 Words   |  3 PagesIn the long story â€Å"Lord of the Flies† there are several symbols of interpretations in terms of meaning. The beasty that was mentioned a number of times in the novel, â€Å"Lord of the Flies† by Wi lliam Golding was never really a beast, however it was never really human either (Shmoop). When kids are stranded on an island alone with no adults to look below the bed or look within the closet, there are sure to be ghosts and monsters roaming amongst the forest woods. From the very start this belief of someRead MoreMorals vs. Instinct in The Lord of the Flies by William Golding728 Words   |  3 PagesThe Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is an allegory that connects the boys’ behavior in the novel to the basic behavior of human nature. In the novel, the boys fear a wild beast that has the potential to kill them off. However, Simon, a quiet boy, finds that the beast is not an animal that everyone should fear, but is a part of each boy himself. As Simon wanders back to a beautiful meadow that he had traveled to before, he finds that it has changed. Instead of the peaceful meadow that SimonRead MoreLord Of The Flies Allegory820 Words   |  4 Pagesallegorical novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the innocence of schoolboys deserted on an island is tested and broken. In a failed attempt to reach safety in the midst of World War II, these boys are stranded on an island to fend for themselves. Golding uses Simon, the archetypal innocent character, in the text to demonstrate the corruption the boys face, as well as the loss of their innocence. Thus, through the characterization of Simon in Lord of the Flies, William Golding symbolizes innocenceRead MoreLord of the Flies Descriptive Good or Evil1070 Words   |  5 PagesLord of the Flies The novel The Lord of the Flies is based on one significant question that philosophers have been puzzled by for centuries – are humans essentially good, or are they evil? Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a famous French philosopher, theorized that humans are instinctively good, however, when given an aggravating situation, then their minds become warped and are set into a bad state. Thus, humans are naturally good, but it is society that demeans them.Read MoreWilliam Golding s Lord Of The Flies1603 Words   |  7 Pagestechniques often used by authors to portray in-depth analyses of major characters, storylines, and central themes, which take place in a story. These analyses help readers understand a message the author is trying to convey. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses different literary devices in order to demonstrate the boys’ struggle against the lack of society and law on the island, as well as the consequences that have transpired due to this loss. This conflict is evident through the differentRead MoreSummary Of Lord Of The Flies 1186 Words   |  5 PagesAlex Nguyen Mrs. Black, Period 5 26 May 2016 An Island of Savagery Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a book set during World War 2 about a group of young boys having to fend for themselves on an island with no signs of civilization. Within the novel, there are many different themes, most conveying the ingrained evil within all human beings and the malevolent complexions of humanity. As the story advances, Golding manifests the continuous conversion of the boys from being civilized and methodicalRead MoreThe Immortality Of Man s Heart1579 Words   |  7 Pagesevil. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding a group of young, British schoolboys become deserted on a mysterious island after their plane crashes down at a time of war. As they fight for survival, they are also constantly conflicted by their own inner beings. One of Golding’s most significant themes throughout the book is that man is essentially corrupt and animalistic. In his book, he uses hunting, the beast, and the Lord of the Flies to symbolize the savagery that lives within every human being

Were Black Americans Made Free and Equal by the Abolition...

While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state. After the black Americans were freed from their slave masters they did not have ‘a cent in their pockets’ and ‘without a hut to shelter them’ . This obvious lack a home, and the monetary funds needed to support them [the freed slaves] and their families, together with the lack of widespread Government†¦show more content†¦While this economic destitute directly affected most ex-slaves directly in a physical manner, its indirect effects of encouraging prejudice had a far deeper impact on society. The negative attitudes towards black Americans, influenced by racism, wealth (the lack thereof), violence, and white supremacy, ensured that black inequality would remain. While there was ‘no racial prejudice in the American dollar , the obvious lack of economic support for most black Americans, meant that there already low acceptance among the primarily white American population, shrunk further due to enhanced prejudice because of their [the ex-slaves] economic destitute. The social hierarchy created during the time of slavery in America meant that equality for black, newly freed slaves was very hard to achieve, because (almost) century old traditions needed to be changed. The belief in white supremacy was encouraged by philosophies, like Social Darwinism pioneered by Herbert Spencer, which meant that ‘attitudes towards black people were reinforced’ . The prejudice against black Americans meant that they would become the subject to violence from racist white group s, like the Ku Klux Klan. This ‘made the creation of equal citizens, regardless of their colour, more difficultShow MoreRelatedWacquant - From Slavery to Mass Incarceration - Critique and Reflection1394 Words   |  6 PagesFrom Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Necessary Extremes Of the supplementary readings provided, I found â€Å"From Slavery to Mass Incarceration† by Loà ¯c Wacquant the most intriguing. This particular article is based on â€Å"rethinking the ‘race question’ in the US† and the disproportionate institutions set apart for African Americans in the United States. The volatile beginnings of African Americans presented obvious hardships for future advancement, but Wacquant argues that they still suffer from a formRead MoreAfrican Americans from 1865 to the Present2215 Words   |  9 PagesAfrican Americans from 1865 to the Present HIS 204 Instructor Cheryl Lemus 2014 The United States have come along way in terms of making society what it is today. These ground that we walk on have been the pot in which many different races brew. From the beginning of the development of the United States, there have always been at least two or three different types of races talked about in almost every historical event. The United States would not be what it is today without unity, and the combinationRead MoreBibliographic Essay on African American History6221 Words   |  25 PagesBibliographic Essay on African American History Introduction In the essay â€Å"On the Evolution of Scholarship in Afro- American History† the eminent historian John Hope Franklin declared â€Å"Every generation has the opportunity to write its own history, and indeed it is obliged to do so.†1 The social and political revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: AnRead MoreA History of African Americans after Reconstruction Essay2543 Words   |  11 PagesHistory of African Americans after Reconstruction During reconstruction the United States was divided on social issues, presidential campaigns were won and loss on these issues during this period. The struggle for development of African Americans and how they initiated change in political, economic, educational, and social conditions to shape their future and that of the United States. (Dixon, 2000) The South’s attempts to recover from the Civil war included determining what to do with newly freedRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagesand Richard Moser, eds., The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., History and September 11th John McMillian and Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited David M. Scobey, Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography Allida M. Black, ed., Modern American Queer History Eric Sandweiss, St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking

Literature Essay One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest by K Kesey Free Essays

string(177) " bad when they overloaded him in the Shock Shop†¦Ã¢â‚¬  \(18\) When McMurphy enters the ward, he assumes the role of a leader over all of his fellow patients in the ward\." It is suggested that Ken Kesey†s One Flew over the Cuckoo†s Nest contains examples of behaviour and attitudes displayed by characters within the clinical environment of the psychiatric ward which can be compared to behaviour found within contemporary American society. These include examples of leadership and hierarchy within a class or caste system, sexism and crime and punishment. In the text, the theme of leadership is very prominent and important to the story. We will write a custom essay sample on Literature Essay: One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest by K Kesey or any similar topic only for you Order Now Arguably it is more important theme of the book, than the issue of mental illness, which forms the setting and the core of the novel. The leader figure in the ward is Big Nurse, who has complete control over the ward. Any decisions that are made over a patient or with regards the running of the ward must go through Big Nurse first. She is seen by the Chief as being almost mechanical in her approach to her running of the ward: She†s got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties today-wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter†¦(10) The ward is run by her to a very strict daily routine, which is almost fanatically neurotic in it†s precision and dedication. Chief describes Big Nurse†s devotion to her daily routine: ‘The slightest thing messy or out of kilter in any way ties her into a little white knot of tight-smiled fury† (27) When McMurphy enters the ward, the delicate equilibrium which the nurse has created is upset. This is because, like the nurse, McMurphy is a natural leader-figure. He takes over the control of the ward by manipulating the patients; seemingly for their own good, but it may be argued that he gets a feeling a control from being a leader over a large group of people. This may be a feeling of control and power which has previously been absent in his life for some reason. We are told, early in the book, of McMurphy†s admission to the ward doctor about his conviction for raping a fifteen year old girl, and his unwillingness to acknowledge that he had committed a crime: ‘Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ so willin†, in fact, I took to sowing my pants up† (40) This could also be argued for Big Nurse; What is her motive for her total dedication to the job? It is possible that she also relishes the feeling of control over the patients in her care which her job allows. She knows that she has absolute power over every patient in her ‘care†; The power to change any of her patient†s lives immediately wherever she might see fit. Such behaviour can also be seen in contemporary society in an environment such as a school; The school is a good example because it has a central leader in the position of the head teacher. The head teacher has full responsibility over every person within the school, and also sets the rules and regulations which everyone in that particular school must obey. If a member of the school breaks any of the rules, the head teacher will decide an appropriate punishment. While the head teacher is answerable to the Governing Board of the school, they still have the most ‘power† and authority over the school. It can also be shown within a large corporation with the position of a Managing Director. All other staff in the company are directly answerable to him. The Managing Director has the power to hire new staff, and also to make staff redundant. But, again, he is answerable to the owner of the company and perhaps the shareholders; so he can never have total power in his position This can be contrasted with Big Nurse; She is, in theory, answerable to the Management Board of the hospital, and even to the doctors who work on the ward. But she appears to have the most control over the daily running of the ward, as if she were senior to the doctors, even though, in fact, she is only a nurse. She seems to have total and complete authority over every person in the ward. The theme of leadership does not mirror the outside world very accurately, as in contemporary society a leader of a society or an organisation is almost always accountable to a person senior to him. This is not seen in the novel, as Big Nurse seems to be answerable to no one, in fact, it is arguable that everyone answers to her. A hierarchy or class system operates inside the ward which can be clearly seen throughout the course of the novel. Patients living within the ward are ‘classed† according to the state of their mental health or to the condition of which they suffer from. Chief describes the method of discriminating patients from one another: ‘Across the room from the Acutes are the Chronics†¦ Not in the hospital, these, to get fixed, but to keep them walking the streets†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (17) Patients are divided into two categories of Acutes Chronics: Chronics are those patients who have a condition which is untreatable, â€Å"machines with flaws which cannot be repaired† (17) and can only be controlled with medical methods. They will spend the rest of their lives inside the ward of the hospital. Patients who are seen as being likely to recover from their illness, and will return to society. Acutes are those patients e.g. Harding, who are seen as being likely to recover from their illness, and will return to society. Chronics can either have full use of their bodies or can be again sub-categorised into Wheelers and Vegetables; Those whose movement is impaired to such an extent, they can only move by being pushed around in wheelchairs. Vegetables are patients who, through excessive ECT ‘Shock Shop† (18) or through the overperscription of tranquillising medications: ‘Ellis is a chronic came in an Acute and got fouled up bad when they overloaded him in the Shock Shop†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (18) When McMurphy enters the ward, he assumes the role of a leader over all of his fellow patients in the ward. McMurphy has a strong, intelligent character and so he is able to manipulate others who are more vulnerable than he is. An example of his manipulation is when he shows some playing cards with pornographic photographs on them to Cheswick: ‘I brought along my own deck†¦Fifty-two positions†. Cheswick is pop-eyed already†¦those cards don†t help his condition. (16) Personality types which can be seen in contemporary society can also be seen very clearly with regard to the characters in the ward setting: McMurphy†s character is a rebel character who hates authority and authoritative figures. This is, perhaps, why he clashes so fiercely with Big Nurse. Chief is the veteran of the ward. He has been there the longest, since the start of World War II, with the exception of Big Nurse. He has the mutual respect of everyone in the ward. Billy Bibbit is insecure and has a stutter. His name is ironic in that it resembles a stutter when said. His problems have probably been caused by his overbearing mother, who was very protective and spoke for him whenever possible. In a large group of individuals, these personalities are often seen; A rebel character who goes against the system is almost always present in a class inside a school; A veteran who has gained the respect of everyone in that particular grouping; A person who is lacking in confidence, often reluctant to speak out. Today, in contemporary society, a class system is still very much a part of everyday life. People are classed on wealth, status and employment. Discrimination can also exist between classes; lower classes finding higher classes snobbish and elitist; higher classes perhaps seeing lower classes as ‘common† and uneducated. The book mirrors hierarchy in contemporary society very well, as it shows different personality types and differentiates between the different classes of people within it very clearly and accurately. However, it does not show discrimination between the different classes which exists today in contemporary society and is quite important to the structure of modern societies. The issues of Sexism and Sexuality are also raised within the book. Although they do not feature so prominently as the themes of Leadership and Hierarchy, they are nevertheless very important to the behaviour of the characters. Taking the theme of sexism in the text, women are placed into two distinct stereotypical types. They are portrayed as either whores, sluts or nymphomaniac wives; or the book goes to the other extreme where women are held as asexual ‘machines†. This view is very important when referring to Big Nurse. The prostitutes that appear during McMurphy†s fishing trip are a good example of the first way the book describes women. They are shown as amoral, trivialising sex so that it is seen only as a meaningless business transaction. It is also made clear of the loss of McMurphy†s at the age of nine: ‘The first girl ever drug me to bed wore that same dress. I was about ten†¦Taught me how to love, bless her sweet ass (201)† Ruckly†s wife is another example of this such view of women as adulteresses. Ruckly has had an unsuccessful lobotomy, making him rather mentally unstable. The text portrays him very sympathetically, so the reader empathises with his character from the outset: ‘They brought him back to the ward two weeks later†¦you can see by his eyes how they burned him up in there† (18) Ruckly had found out that his wife had been seeing other men; Every time she is mentioned he remembers what she did to him: ‘Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery†¦He turns red and veins clog up†¦Fffffffuck da wife! Ffffffuck da wife!† (19) This is not the only unfavourable way women are portrayed in the novel. Big Nurse is shown as a hardened and rather sterile asexual character. ‘ ‘A mistake was made in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on her†¦and you can she how bitter she is for it† (11) Whenever she is described by Chief, her attributes are likened to a piece of machinery which is cold and unfeeling. It appears that she is so dedicated to the ward that she is ‘married† to the job and sexual relationships have no place in her ‘plan†. It is arguable that this is why she becomes so enraged when she discovers McMurphy†s relations with the prostitutes towards the end of the book. Today, in contemporary society, the view sometimes is still held that women inferior to men. They can be seen as incapable of carrying out work, and should stay at home to look after the children. Although the advent of feminism has almost vanquished these ‘male chauvinist† attitudes, women can still be stereotyped as above; as whores or nymphomaniacs or, like Big Nurse; ‘frigid†, asexual and cold. It can be seen, thus, the text of One Flew over the Cuckoo†s Nest shows sexism in contemporary society accurately. Finally, the issues of crime and punishment are raised throughout the book and are very important from the outset and ultimately to the ending of the story. The ward, like the society outside, is run on a system of sanctions and rewards which are allocated according to a patient†s behaviour. Punishments may be issued, by Big Nurse, for unwillingness to co-operate with the daily routine or with the staff. Punishments included ECT , the removal of privileges such as cigarettes or more serious, repeat offenders as a last resort, a lobotomy. A patient could also be sent to Disturbed, in effect a ‘hospital within a hospital† where a patient could be sent to recover from an outburst and they will return to the ward when Big Nurse sees fit. A lobotomy is a surgical procedure in which the pre-frontal lobes of the brain are either removed or destroyed. This was thought to pacify aggressive patients, but in practise, it transformed them into inactive individuals: â€Å"The installations they do these days are usually successful†¦a success they say†¦like Ruckly fumbling and drooling all over his picture† (18-19) Rewards were also issued to by the establishment of the ward; Patients were give a ‘ration† of cigarettes every week, but this was stopped when McMurphy arrived in the ward as he used to win the others† cigarettes from them in gambling card games. It is arguable that the security of the hospital could be seen as a reward. Patients, who through the result of their ‘mental illness † could not cope in the outside world and require the constant daily routine to feel secure and safe. Contemporary society has a system of rules, laws and legislations which must be followed to be a member of that society. Society also has the power, like the ward to issue sanctions for those who break the rules. Although many countries have abolished the use of corporal or capital punishment for serious crimes, North America is one such a country where, depending on the state, a person may face capital punishment by lethal injection, electric chair or gas chamber. The ward applies corporal punishment in the form of the ECT and it may be argued that a lobotomy is a form of capital punishment because the patient has little or no quality of life left after the procedure, so they might as well have been killed. Ken Kesey†s One Flew Over The Cuckoo†s Nest mirrors, in the behaviour of it†s characters, contemporary society very accurately and can still be relied on, as a contemporary text, an accurate display of the treatment of patients within a mental hospital today. How to cite Literature Essay: One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest by K Kesey, Essay examples

Extra Terrestrial Civilization

Questions: 1.Is it possible for an extra-terrestrial civilization having a SETI project that is similar to ours to detect signals from the earth?2.How do people know if the signal is a message? How do they understand the message?3.Will the alien senders know that we are receiving their signal?4.Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using the transit method for detecting planets. Provide an example for each. Answers: 1. The electronic signals from the earth can only travel at the speed of light. Thus, the reach of our signal is roughly 100 light years in radius, with the earth at the center of the sphere. Also, Frank and Sullivan (2016) argues that at some point the signal from the earth would degrade to a level that an extra-terrestrial civilization at a similar technology to ours would not be able to distinguish between background noises and our signal. Moreover, Griffiths, (2016) argues that despite the fact that the magnitude of our Radio signal is strong enough to be detected beyond the cosmic background radiation, there is a problem with locating the signal in the first place because cosmic background radiation is everywhere and other radio sources are stronger than ours. Thus, it is possible for other extra-terrestrial civilization with similar technology to ours to detect signals from the earth. However, scientist argues that there is no intelligent life similar to ours because there are no potential places for it to thrive. 2. According to Brabaw (2016) communication with extra-terrestrial civilization (CETI) is a branch of SETI that deals with transmission and reception of messages between alien civilization and our world. Scientists have been trying to detect signals from alien civilization since the 1960s with no success (Mosher, 2016). Thus, this makes it hard to determine a framework that can be used to decipher the message once received. 3. It is hard to realize if a signal sent in space has been received because there are many signals in space. However, if there were a direct communication line where the message can be replied, the alien senders can know their message has been received (Hall, 2016). 4. Advantages It is effective and sensitive; this is because it has already detected thousands, planetary candidates. It can provide valuable information about the detected planet because it can deduce the size of a planet from the degree of the dims during transit. Transit Photometry can operate on different scales because it can surpass all other methods in the number of planets detected ("Transit Photometry," 2016). Disadvantages It is entirely dependent of transit that is for a planet to be detected it must travel between its start and the earth. It produces falls positive that is, a star can be mistaken for a planet orbiting a star ("Transit Photometry," 2016). References Brabaw, K. (2016). Hubble Telescope Captures Sharpest Image yet of Mysterious Red Rectangle. Space.com. Retrieved 26 January 2017, from https://www.space.com/32655-mysterious-red-rectangle-hubble-telescope-sharpest-image.html Frank, A. Sullivan, W. (2016). A New Empirical Constraint on the Prevalence of Technological Species in the Universe. Astrobiology, 16(5), 359-362. https://dx.doi.org/10.1089/ast.2015.1418 Griffiths, J. (2016). Can you hear me now? 'Strong signal' from star sparks alien speculation. CNN. Retrieved 26 January 2017, from https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/30/health/seti-signal-hd-164595-alien-civilization/ Hall, S. (2016). Mysterious SETI signal sends alien-hunting telescopes scrambling. New Scientist. Retrieved 26 January 2017, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2102970-mysterious-seti-signal-sends-alien-hunting-telescopes-scrambling/ Mosher, D. (2016). Astronomers have detected an 'interesting' and possibly alien radio signal coming from a sun-like star. Business Insider. Retrieved 26 January 2017, from https://www.businessinsider.com/alien-signal-seti-hd164595-2016-8 Transit Photometry. (2016). Planetary.org. Retrieved 26 January 2017, from https://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/transit-photometry.html

Periods of English Literature Essay Example

Periods of English Literature Essay For convenience of discussion, historians divide the continuity of English literature into segments of time that are called periods. The exact number, dates, and names of these periods vary,but the list below conforms to widespread practice. The list is followed by a brief comment on each period, in chronological order. 450-1066 Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period 1066-1500 Middle English Period 1500-1660 The Renaissance (or Early Modern) 1558-1603 Elizabethan Age 603-1625 Jacobean Age 1625-1649 Caroline Age 1649-1660 Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum) 1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period 1660-1700 The Restoration 1700-1745 The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope) 1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson) 1785-1830 The Romantic Period 1832-1901 The Victorian Period 1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites 1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence 1901-1914 The Edwardian Period 1910-1936 The Georgian Period 1914- The Modern Period 1945- PostmodernismThe Old English Period, or the Anglo-Sa xon Period, extended from the invasion of Celtic England by Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) in the first half of the fifth century to the conquest of England in 1066 by the Norman French under the leadership of William the Conqueror. Only after they had been converted to Christianity in the seventh century did the Anglo-Saxons, whose earlier literature had been oral, begin to develop a written literature. (See oral formulaic poetry. A high level of culture and learning was soon achieved in various monasteries; the eighth-century churchmen Bede and Alcuin were major scholars who wrote in Latin, the standard language of international scholarship. The poetry written in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon, known also as Old English, included Beowulf (eighth century), the greatest of Germanic epic poems, and such lyric laments as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Deor, all of which, though composed by Christian writers, reflect the conditions of life in the pagan past.Caedmon and Cy newulf were poets who wrote on biblical and religious themes, and there survive a number of Old English lives of saints, sermons, and paraphrases of books of the Bible. Alfred the Great, a West Saxon king (871-99) who for a time united all the kingdoms of southern England against a new wave of Germanic invaders, the Vikings, was no less important as a patron of literature than as a warrior. He himself translated into Old English various books of Latin prose, supervised translations by other hands, and instituted the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, a continuous record, year by year, of important events in England.See H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age (1912); S. B. Greenfield, A Critical History of Old English Literature (1965); C. L. Wrenn, A Study of Old English Literature (1966). Middle English Period. The four and a half centuries between the Norman Conquest in 1066, which effected radical changes in the language, life, and culture of England, and about 1500, when the standard literary langu age (deriving from the dialect of the London area) had become recognizably modern English—that is, similar to the language we speak and write today.The span from 1100 to 1350 is sometimes discriminated as the Anglo- Norman Period, because the non-Latin literature of that time was written mainly in Anglo-Norman, the French dialect spoken by the invaders who had established themselves as the ruling class of England, and who shared a literary culture with French-speaking areas of mainland Europe. Among the important and influential works from this period are Marie de Frances Lais (c. 1180—which may have been written while Marie was at the royal court in England), Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meuns Roman de la Rose (12257-75? , and Chretien de Troyes Erec et Enide (the first Arthurian romance, C. 1165) and Yvain (c. 1177-81). When the native vernacular—descended from Anglo-Saxon, but with extensive lexical and syntactic elements assimilated from Anglo-Norman, and known as middle English—came into general literary use, it was at first mainly the vehicle for religious and homiletic writings. The first great age of primarily secular literature—rooted in the Anglo-Norman, French, Irish, and Welsh, as well as the native English literature—was the second half of the fourteenth century.This was the age of Chaucer and John Gower, of William Langlands great religious and satirical poem Piers Plowman, and of the anonymous master who wrote four major poems in complex alliterative meter, including Pearl, an elegy, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This last work is the most accomplished of the English chivalric romances; the most notable prose romance was Thomas Malorys Morte dArthur, written a century later. The outstanding poets of the fifteenth century were the Scottish Chaucerians, who included King James I of Scotland and Robert Henryson.The fifteenth century was more important for popular literature than for the artful lit erature addressed to the upper classes: it was the age of many excellent songs, secular and religious, and of folk ballads, as well as the flowering time of the miracle and morality plays, which were written and produced for the general public. See W. L. Renwick and H. Orton, The Beginnings of English Literature to Skelton (rev. , 1952); H. S. Bennett, Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century (1947); Edward Vasta, ed. , Middle English Survey: Critical Essays (1965). The Renaissance, 1500-1660.There is an increasing use by historians of the term early modern to denote this era: see the entry Renaissance. Elizabethan Age. Strictly speaking, the period of the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603); the term Elizabethan, however, is often used loosely to refer to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, even after the death of Elizabeth. This was a time of rapid development in English commerce, maritime power, and nationalist feeling—the defeat of the Spanish Armada occurred in 158 8. It was a great (in drama the greatest) age of English literature—the age of Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe,Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and many other extraordinary writers of prose and of dramatic, lyric, and narrative poetry. A number of scholars have looked back on this era as one of intellectual coherence and social order; an influential example was E. M. W. Tillyards The Elizabethan World Picture (1943). Recent historical critics, however, have emphasized its intellectual uncertainties and political and social conflicts; see new historicism. Jacobean Age. The reign of James I (in Latin, Jacobus), 1603-25, which followed that of Queen Elizabeth.This was the period in prose writings of Bacon, John Donnes sermons, Robert Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy, and the King James translation of the Bible. It was also the time of Shakespeares greatest tragedies and tragicomedies, and of major writings by other notable poets and playwrights including Donne, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Lady Mary Wroth, Sir Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Webster, George Chapman, Thomas Middleton, Philip Massinger, and Elizabeth Cary, whose notable biblical drama The Tragedy of Mariam, the Faire Queene of Jewry was first long play by an Englishwoman to be published.See Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (1934); Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (1945); C. V. Wedgewood, Seventeenth Century English Literature (1950). Caroline Age. The reign of Charles I, 1625-49; the name is derived from Carolus, the Latin version of Charles. This was the time of the English Civil War fought between the supporters of the king (known as Cavaliers) and the supporters of Parliament (known as Roundheads/ from their custom of wearing their hair cut short).John Milton began his writing during this period; it was the age also of the religious poet George Herbert and of the prose writers Rober t Burton and Sir Thomas Browne. Associated with the court were the Cavalier poets, writers of witty and polished lyrics of courtship and gallantry. The group included Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas Carew. Robert Herrick, although a country parson, is often classified with the Cavalier poets because, like them, he was a Son of Ben—that is, an admirer and follower of Ben Jonson—in many of his lyrics of love and gallant compliment.See Robin Skelton, Cavalier Poets (1960). The Commonwealth Period, also known as the Puritan Interregnum,extends from the end of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy under Charles II in 1660. In this period England was ruled by Parliament under the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell; his death in 1658 marked the dissolution of the Commonwealth. Drama almost disappeared for eighteen years after the Puritans closed the public theaters in September 1642, not only on moral and re ligious grounds, but also to prevent public assemblies that might foment civil disorder.It was the age of Miltons political pamphlets, of Hobbes political treatise Leviathan (1651), of the prose writers Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, and Izaak Walton, and of the poets Henry Vaughan, Edmund Waller, Abraham Cowley, Sir William Davenant, and Andrew Marvell. The Neoclassical Period, 1660-1785; see the entry neoclassic and romantic. Restoration. This period takes its name from the restoration of the Stuart line (Charles II) to the English throne in 1660, at the end of the Commonwealth; it is specified as lasting until 1700.The urbanity, wit, and licentiousness of the life centering on the court, in sharp contrast to the seriousness and sobriety of the earlier Puritan regime, is reflected in much of the literature of this age. The theaters came back to vigorous life after the revocation of the ban placed on them by the Puritans in 1642, although they became more exlusive ly oriented toward the aristocratic classes than they had been earlier.Sir George Etherege, William Wycherley, William Congreve, and John Dryden developed the distinctive comedy of manners called Restoration comedy, and Dryden, Thomas Otway, and other playwrights developed the even more distinctive form of tragedy called heroic drama. Dryden was the major poet and critic, as well as one of the major dramatists. Other poets were the satirists Samuel Butler and the Earl of Rochester; notable writers in prose, in addition to the masterly Dryden, were Samuel Pepys, Sir William Temple, the religious writer in vernacular English John Bunyan, and the philosopher John Locke.Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her living by her pen and one of the most inventive and versatile authors of the age, wrote poems, highly successful plays, and Oroonoko, the tragic story of a noble African slave, an important precursor of the novel. See Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (1934); L. I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (1932). Augustan Age. The original Augustan Age was the brilliant literary period of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid under the Roman emperor Augustus (27 B. . -A. D. 14). In the eighteenth century and later, however, the term was frequently applied also to the literary period in England from approximately 1700 to 1745. The leading writers of the time (such as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Joseph Addison) themselves drew the parallel to the Roman Augustans, and deliberately imitated their literary forms and subjects, their emphasis on social concerns, and their ideals of moderation, decorum, and urbanity. (See neoclassicism. A major representative of popular, rather than classical, writing in this period was the novelist, journalist, and pamphleteer Daniel Defoe. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a brilliant letterwriter in a great era of letter-writing; she also wrote poems of wit and candor that violated the conventional moral and i ntellectual roles assigned to women in the Augustan era. Age of Sensibility. The period between the death of Alexander Pope in 1744, and 1785, which was one year after the death of Samuel Johnson and one year before Robert Burns Poems, Chiefly in Scottish Dialect. Alternative dates frequently proposed for the end of this period are 1789 and 1798; see Romantic Period. ) An older name for this half-century, the Age of Johnson, stresses the dominant position of Samuel Johnson (1709-84) and his literary and intellectual circle, which included Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon, and Hester Lynch Thrale. These authors on the whole represented a culmination of the literary and critical modes of neoclassicism and the worldview of the Enlightenment.The more recent name, Age of Sensibility, puts its stress on the emergence, in other writers of the 1740s and later, of new cultural attitudes, theories of literature, and types of poetry; we find in this period, for exam ple, a growing sympathy for the Middle Ages, a vogue of cultural primitivism, an awakening interest in ballads and other folk literature, a turn from neoclassic correctness and its emphasis on judgment and restraint to an emphasis on instinct and feeling, the development of a literature of sensibility, and above all the exaltation by some critics of original genius and a bardic poetry of the sublime and visionary imagination. Thomas Gray expressed this anti-neoclassic sensibility and set of values in his Stanzas to Mr. Bentley (1752): But not to one in this benighted age Is that diviner inspiration given, That burns in Shakespeares or in Miltons page, The pomp and prodigality of Heaven. Other poets who showed similar shifts in thought and taste were William Collins and Joseph and Thomas Warton (poets who, together with Gray, began in the 1740s the vogue for what Samuel Johnson slightingly referred to as ode, and elegy, and sonnet), Christopher Smart, and William Cowper.Thomas Percy published his influential Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), which included many folk ballads and a few medieval metrical romances, and James Macpherson in the same decade published his greatly doctored (and in considerable part fabricated) versions of the poems of the Gaelic bard Ossian (Oisin) which were enormously popular throughout Europe. This was also the period of the great novelists, some realistic and satiric and some sentimental: Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne. See W. J. Bate, From Classic to Romantic (1946); Northrop Frye, Toward Defining an Age of Sensibility, in Fables of Identity (1963), and ed. Romanticism Reconsidered (1965); F. W. Hilles and Harold Bloom, eds. , From Sensibility to Romanticism (1965). Romantic Period. The Romantic Period in English literature is dated as eginning in 1785 (see Age of Sensibility)—or alternatively in 1789 (the outbreak of the French Revolution), or in 1798 (the publication of Wil liam Wordsworths and Samuel Taylor Coleridges Lyrical Ballads)—and as ending either in 1830 or else in 1832, the year in which Sir Walter Scott died and the passage of the Reform Bill signaled the political preoccupations of the Victorian era. For some characteristics of the thought and writings of this remarkable and diverse literary period, as well as for a list of suggested readings, see neoclassic and romantic. The term is often applied also to literary movements in European countries and America; see periods of American literature. Romantic characteristics are usually said to have been manifested first in Germany and England in the 1790s, and not to have become prominent in France and America until two or three decades after that time.Major English writers of the period, in addition to Wordsworth and Coleridge, were the poets Robert Burns, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Walter Savage Landor; the prose writers Charles Lamb, William Hazlit t, Thomas De Quincey, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Leigh Hunt; and the novelists Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley. The span between 1786 and the close of the eighteenth century was that of the Gothic romances by William Beckford, Matthew Gregory Lewis, William Godwin, and, above all, Anne Radcliffe. Victorian Period. The beginning of the Victorian Period is frequently dated 1830, or alternatively 1832 (the passage of the first Reform Bill), and sometimes 1837 (the accession of Queen Victoria); it extends to the death of Victoria in 1901.Historians often subdivide the long period into three phases: Early Victorian (to 1848), Mid-Victorian (1848-70), and Late Victorian (1870-1901). Much writing of the period, whether imaginative or didactic, in verse or in prose, dealt with or reflected the pressing social, economic, religious, and intellectual issues and problems of that era. (For a summary of these issues, and also for the derogatory use of the term Victorian, see Victori an and Victorianism. ) Among the notable poets were Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Gerard Manley Hopkins (whose remarkably innovative poems, however, did not become known until they were published, long after his death, in 1918).The most prominent essayists were Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Arnold, and Walter Pater; the most distinguished of many excellent novelists (this was a great age of English prose fiction) were Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, George Meredith, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and Samuel Butler. For prominent literary movements during the Victorian era, see the entries on Pre-Raphaelites, Aestheticism, and Decadence. Edwardian Period. The span between the death of Victoria (1901) and the beginning of World War I (1914) is named for King Edward VII, who reigned from 1901 to 1910.Poets writing at the time included Thomas Hardy (who gave up novels for poetry at the beginning of the century), Alfred Noyes, William Butler Yeats, and Rudyard Kipling; dramatists included Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero, James Barrie, John Galsworthy, George Bernard Shaw, and the playwrights of the Celtic Revival such as Lady Gregory, Yeats, and John M. Synge. Many of the major achievements were in prose fiction— works by Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Henry James, who published his major final novels, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl, between 1902 and 1904.Georgian Period is a term applied both to the reigns in England of the four successive Georges (1714-1830) and (more frequently) to the reign of George V (1910-36). Georgian poets usually designates a group of writers in the latter era who loomed large in four anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry, which were published by Edward Marsh between 1912 and 1922. Marsh favored writers we now tend to regard as relatively minor poets such as Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare, Ralph Hodgson, W. H. Davies, and John Masefield. The term Georgian poetry has come to connote verse which is mainly rural in subject matter, deft and delicate rather than bold and passionate in manner, and traditional rather than experimental in technique and form.Modern Period. The application of the term modern, of course, varies with the passage of time, but it is frequently applied specifically to the literature written since the beginning of World War I in 1914; see modernism and postmodernism. This period has been marked by persistent and multidimensioned experiments in subject matter, form, and style, and has produced major achievements in all the literary genres. Among the notable writers are the poets W. B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, and Seamus Heaney; the novelists Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Doroth y Richardson, Virginia Woolf, ?. ?.Forster, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer; the dramatists G. ?. Shaw, Sean OCasey, Noel Coward, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Brendan Behan, Frank McGuinness, and Tom Stoppard. The modern age was also an important era for literary criticism; among the innovative English critics were T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, Virginia Woolf, E R. Leavis, and William Empson. (See New Criticism. ) This entry has followed what has been the widespread practice of including under English literature writers in the English language from all the British Isles. A number of the authors listed above, were in fact natives of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.Of the Modern Period especially it can be said that much of the greatest English literature was written by the Irish writers Yeats, PERSONA, TONE, AND VOICE 21 7 Shaw, Joyce, OCasey, Beckett, Iris Murdoch, and Seamus Heaney. And in recent decades, some of the most notable lite rary achievements in the English language have been written by natives of recently liberated English colonies (who are often referred to as postcolonial authors)/ including the South Africans Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, and Athol Fugard; the West Indians V. S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott; the Nigerians Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka; and the Indian novelists R. K. Narayan and Salman Rushdie. See postcolonial studies. The Postmodern Period is a name sometimes applied to the era after World War

How to Take Good Biology Notes

How to Take Good Biology Notes One key to succeeding in biology is having good note-taking skills. It is not enough to just come to class and listen to the instructor. You must be able to take accurate, detailed notes in order to perform well on exams. In fact, most instructors use their lecture notes to come up with at least half, if not more, of their biology exam questions. Below are some good biology note-taking tips that are sure to help you learn how to take biology notes. Follow the Guidelines Some instructors provide course or lecture guidelines. Study these guidelines before class so you will be familiar with the material. Read any assigned materials before class as well. If you know what is going to be discussed beforehand, you will be better prepared to take notes. Get the Main Points An important key ​to success in biology note taking is the ability to focus on and write down the main points. Dont try to write down everything your instructor says, word for word. Its also a good idea to copy down anything the instructor writes on the chalkboard or overhead. This includes drawings, diagrams, or examples. Record the Lecture Many students find it difficult to take good biology notes because some instructors present information very quickly. In this case, ask the instructor for permission to record the lecture. Most instructors dont mind, but in case your instructor says no, you will have to practice taking notes quickly. Ask a friend to read an article quickly while you take notes. Review your notes to see if they are accurate and detailed. Leave Some Space When taking notes, be sure that you have enough space so that you can decipher what you have written. There is nothing more frustrating than having a page full of cramped, illegible notes. You will also want to be sure that you leave extra space in case you need to add more information later. Textbook Highlighting Many students find it useful to highlight information in textbooks. When highlighting, be sure to only highlight specific phrases or keywords. If you highlight every sentence, it will be difficult for you to identify the specific points that you need to focus on. Ensure Accuracy An effective way to ensure that the notes you have taken are accurate is to compare them with the information in your biology text. In addition, speak with the instructor directly and ask for feedback on your notes. Comparing notes with a classmate can also help you to capture the information you may have missed. Reorganize Your Notes Reorganizing your notes serves two purposes. It allows you to rewrite your notes in a format that helps you understand them more clearly, and it helps you to review the material you have written. Review Your Notes Once you have reorganized your biology notes, be sure to review them before the end of the day. Be certain that you know the main points and write a summary of the information. Reviewing your notes is also advantageous when preparing for a biology lab. Prepare For Biology Exams Your biology note-taking skills are essential for preparing for biology exams. You will find that if you follow the instructions above, most of the work in preparing for the exams will have already been done.

How should we use the public space Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

How should we use the public space - Essay Example This essay deals with public spaces and private interests, which clash to abridge our rights. Let us look for a meaning of the two words ‘public space’. Word ‘Public’ is an adjective which connotes ‘open to all / accessible to all / not private, and, the word ‘Space’ is a noun meaning in this context, ‘an area / expanse’. So in essence, a public space is an expansive area, open to all and one which is not private. Or so, as most of us would like to think. Historically speaking public spaces always existed. The agoras of the ancient Greeks, the chaupals of the northern India and the temple premises of the southern India, the Hyde Park in London are some of the examples of public spaces where people gathered to participate in public discourses. Public interaction and free exchange of opinions and ideas have always resulted in progress of social, political and economical awareness, for the good of the humanity. Modernization and migration of rural populations to urban areas had a significant impact on the traditional meaning and purpose of public spaces. Rampant commercialization is encroaching more and more into our open spaces. Large open spaces with natural endowments like trees, brooks, hills, green fields and meadows are now confined to countryside only and are non-existent in cities, towns and suburbs. While the populations are shifting to suburban areas for reasons of cleaner air and peaceful environs, the natural open spaces even in those areas are also being converted to shopping malls, manicured gardens, water sport centers or walking tracks with a toll gate! These are the neo-public spaces with a private fee, like the neocons with an axe or two to grind. The fast pace of life leaves us practically no time for a stroll round the corner for a quiet chat. With the electronic media blaring its ‘breaking news’ every

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The Impact of Workplace Diversity on Job Performance. (Walmart case study) - Essay Example Findings revealed that workforce diversity has both positive and negative impacts on job performance in Walmart and that current diversity-related issues are not that damaging yet to the strategic objectives of the company. Results also showed that the most effective strategy to counter the potential negative impact of workforce diversity in the organization is to implement evidence-based initiatives which are to be introduced in several phases. Moreover, there are multifarious benefits of workforce diversity to the company. Recommendations forwarded include continuously reinforcing positive impacts, neutralizing the negative impact, evaluating diversity profiles, revisiting policies, and soliciting feedback NOW to make sure that the gap between diversity requirements and the mechanisms that address these are limited at tolerable levels. More importantly, Walmart should sustain the momentum of its diverse workforce in bringing value to the company. Introduction: Strategic human resource management (HRM) is an integral approach aimed at reaching organizational goals. It correlates about how an institution directs the performance of its officers and workers within a targeted period to perfect the company’s relation with the market and to ensure that it’s able to achieve shareholders’ expectations based on the confluence and influential factors driven by the state of the economy. Russu (1993) posited that HRM is achieved if an organization has nurtured a formal structure of organization using its human capital in the perfection of desired performance. As such, the company must be able to (a) develop strategic approaches to motivate them in order to engage them in all necessary tasks; (b) permit the organization to function for efficiency and effectiveness of services; (c) adhere to objectives using standards and performance control or systems; (d) make some essential decisions about employment in relation to organizational effectiveness; (e) appreciation of diversity to gather leverage in the market and to make the services harmonious to market; and to nurture high productivity in its economic and corporate activities. Russu (1993) pointed that HRM is therefore about defining strategies to assure concordance in business strategy and human resources strategy. It is also interested about developing a comprehensive process in the application of policies and workplace ethics or practices by setting down the integrated human resources’ desired behaviours and nurturing commitments from workforces. The objectives of this research are to broadly investigate the

John Kenneth Galbraith Biography

John Kenneth Galbraith Biography Archibald Galbraith, a Canadian schoolteacher, once climbed onto a platform atop a  steaming pile of manure to address a group of Liberal party voters before the coming Ontario  elections. â€Å"Before I begin,† he said, â€Å"I must apologize for speaking from the Tory platform.†Ã‚  Later on, his teenage son, John Kenneth, would congratulate him on the dig, to which he  [Archibald] would respond, â€Å"It was good. But it didn’t change any votes.† (Arthur Scheslinger,  1984, p. 7) So, from an early age, John Kenneth Galbraith was between the world of politics and  pragmatism.   John Kenneth Galbraith was born in 1908. His father’s involvement in politics had a  profound impact on the young John Kenneth, politicizing him at an early age. He originally  studied Agricultural Economics at the Ontario Agricultural College, but would eventually say  that he took his first â€Å"real† economics course at UC Berkeley, and that the economics instruction  in Canada was â€Å"very poor† (Dunn, 2002, p. 350). As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, he  continued his study of agricultural economics and worked as a research assistant for a â€Å"very zany  old man by the name of Edwin Voorhies† (Kreisler, 1986). He stated that it was his study of  agricultural economics that left him with a strong feeling that â€Å"social science should be tested by  its usefulness,† an idea inspired by Veblen’s dichotomy between exoteric knowledge (knowledge  that is valuable and applicable) and esoteric knowledge (knowledge tha t has no practical  application, but because of that, is considered more â€Å"prestigious†). Galbraith believed that social  sciences should be exoteric, not esoteric. In his book Economics and The Public Purpose,  Galbraith develops this idea further, saying, â€Å"The ultimate test of a set of economic ideas is  whether it illuminates the anxietes of the time† (Galbraith, 1973, p.198). In the 1930’s, while Galbraith was studying to receive his Ph. D, it was clear that  economic theory was not addressing the anxietes of the time. Economists were struggling to  explain how free markets had led the United States to economic ruin. One in four Americans  were jobless. Production had all but ground to a halt. Obviously, there were egregious errors in  the accepted dogma, which stated that free markets left to their own devices would bring about  efficiency and employment. Galbraith said that his method of coming to an understanding was to  Ã¢â‚¬Å"for years†¦start with [Alfred] Marshall, see the world as it is, and make the requisite  modifications† (Dunn, 2002, p. 351). Upon graduating, Galbraith traveled to Washington D.C.  and took a position assisting with the implementation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, before  taking a position as a tutor at Harvard. At Harvard, he made speeches supporting the reelection of Roosevelt, cement ing his initial ties with the Democratic party. Not long after, he was offered  a fellowship at Cambridge, where the discussions centered around Keynes, who had just published his General Theory of Employment, Money, and Interest (Dunn, 2002, pp. 350-355).   Galbraith returned from England to his tutor position at Harvard a confirmed Keynesian. He spent a few more years tutoring at Harvard (where he met John F. Kennedy) and then took a  job as resident economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington. Galbraith’s  observation of the farm industry solidified his belief in the power of government to move  industries forward. In 1930, farm households accounted for a quarter of the population, whereas  today they account for only 1% of the population and yet on the whole, they now produce more  than they did in 1930. This is due to strong government support of the farming industry. That  national planning could â€Å"transform a weak, disorganized, and poverty prone sector of the  economy into America’s most spectacular productive success†¦preserved his political concerns†Ã‚  (Arthur Schlesinger, 1984, p. 8). Galbraith became head of the Office of Price Administration in  1941 during World War II, and at the same time began his long career as a ghostwriter, penning  spe eches for Samuel Rosenman and Robert Sherwood (Arthur Schlesinger, 1984, p. 8). Galbraith then became editor of Fortune magazine, where he worked directly for Harry  Luce, founder of Time Inc., whom he called â€Å"one of the most ruthless editors I have ever known,  or anyone has ever known† (Kreisler, 1986). Galbraith has credited Luce with dramatically  improving his writing via ruthless editing. Galbraith credited Fortune with giving him a  Ã¢â‚¬Å"marvelous introduction to the corporate mind,† because the focus of the magazine at the time  was â€Å"the anatomy of the big corporations† (Dunn, 2002, p. 353). The decision making processes  of major corporations would be a recurring phenomenon that he would write about in many of  his publications. Galbraith returned to Academia in 1948, having spent five years as editor of Fortune. He  was nominated to a position teaching economics at Harvard. However, members of Harvard’s  board of overseers regarded him as a â€Å"dangerous Keynesian,† and as a result, â€Å"took the step,  almost unprecedented in modern times, of blocking the appointment† (Dunn, 2002, p. 353). However, Galbraith had many political allies, and among them was Harvard’s president, James  B. Conant. Conant was such a fan of Galbraith that he threatened to resign unless the board of  overseers backed down. Eventually they did, and Galbraith became a tenured professor at  Harvard. It was then that he began work on his first major bestseller, American Capitalism: The  Concept of Countervailing Power. Galbraith begins his discussion of capitalism in America by pointing out the following  conundrum: Mainstream economic theory asserts that in the case of monopoly, prices will rise,  business will screw consumers, fail to innovate, and as a result, the economy will be in bad  shape. He then notes the work of Joan Robinson in developing the idea of monopolistic and  oligopolistic competition, noting that oligopolistic industries behave in the same way as  monopolies would, and through informal agreements can have the exact same effect. Then, using  the actual data collected by the American government, he shows that the majority of industries  are in fact oligopolistic. But he goes even further than that, saying that almost all industries will  eventually become oligopolistic for the following reasons: At the birth of an industry,  competetion is necessary and possible, as no firms have clear and significant advantages yet. But  over time, it will become increasingl y difficult to enter the industry because of the barriers to  entry created by high capital requirements and increasing returns to scale. At the same time that  increasing returns to scale start to set in (as they inevitably do), existing firms will also gain the  advantage of experience and prior organization. The convergence of these factors leads, in most  cases, to an industry with a few power players and a larger but still relatively small number of  hangers-on, who exist by filling niches that aren’t worth the time of the large firms. Galbraith poses a question in American Capitalism, and before getting to that question, it  is important to get a sense of the context in which he asks it. After World War II, America was  experiencing incredible prosperity. But underlying this prosperity was the fear of depression. The  Great Depression was still fresh in the collective consciousness, and the average man’s faith that  capitalism would bring about efficiency and full employment was shaken. And yet, as the years  after the war progressed, things were stable and employment was plentiful. It is also important to  note that the era of non-depression Keynesianism was beginning, and much to the chagrin of the  business community, government was becoming a much more participatory force in markets. The business community was reacting violently against this expansion of government, claiming  that it was a complete disaster, wasteful to the very extreme and bound to cripple growth. The  state of the American economy in the 1950’s then was that of big government, near-ubiquitous  monopoly or oligopoly, and an underlying fear of depression. Yet, by almost any measure, the  economy was a success. The problem, according to Galbraith, was that, â€Å"in principle, the economy pleased no  one; in practice it satisfied most. Social inefficiency [government spending], unrationalized  power [monopoly and oligopoly], intrusive government [regulation], and depression were all  matters for deep concern. But neither liberal nor conservatives, neither the rich nor all but the  very poor, found the consequences intolerable† (Galbraith, 1954, p. 85). What fascinated  Galbraith was how an economy which was so flawed in theory could work so well in practice. The question he asked was: Why are things so†¦well†¦good? Thus, he states that his aim in  American Capitalism is to â€Å"examine in turn the circumstances that have kept social inefficiency,  private power, government intervention, and unemployment from ruining us in the recent  present† (Galbraith, 1954, p. 85). The first answer that he gives is that oligopoly is much more conducive to techonological  innovation than classical competetion. â€Å"There is no more pleasant fiction than that technical  change is the product of the matchless ingenuity of the small man forced by competition to  employ his wits to better his neighbor. Unhappily, it is a fiction,† he says. â€Å"Technical  development has long since become the preserve of the scientist and engineer† (Galbraith, 1954,  p.86). His argument is that due to the costliness of development, it can only be undertaken by a  firm with considerable resources. In highly competitive industries, no one firm has considerable  resources. Moreover, because innovations can easily be imitated, it is not economical for a small  competitive firm to bear the research and development costs for an entire industry. Galbraith then turns his keen eye to the idea of inefficiency. He deals with this issue by  asserting that America’s relative opulence shields us and is moreover a cause of such  inefficiency. At the time that the classical economists were writing, an opulent economy had yet  to be observed. For Malthus and Ricardo, â€Å"inefficiency was, indeed, an evil thing. It denied  bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked† (Galbraith, 1954, p.102). The true power of  Galbraith’s insight is his ability to point out the obvious. He criticizes his fellow economists for  bringing the mentality of the nineteenth century, with all its poverty and degradation, to the  opulent twentieth century. Galbraith finds this error both amusing and absurd, saying, â€Å"He [the  mainstream economist] worries far too much about partially monopolized prices†¦for tobacco, liquor, automobiles, and soap, in a land which is already suffering from nicotine poisoning and   alcoholism, which is nutritionally gorged with sugar, which is filling its hospitals and cemeteries  with those who have been maimed or murdered on its highways, and which is dangerously  neurotic about body odors† (Galbraith, 1954, p.102). His point is that these inefficiencies are in  fact a sign of the wealth of America. They are the symptom of a wealthy economy, and thus we  ought not to worry so much about them. He also discredits the idea of intrusive government,  noting that, â€Å"alarm over pending action by government on economic matters, which frequently  reaches almost pathological proportions when the decision is pending, almost invariably  evaporates completely once the action is taken. One of the profound sources of American  strength has been the margin of error provided by our well-being† (Galbraith, 1954, p.106). But the most significant reason that monopoly has failed to capsize the American  economy, according to Galbraith is the exercise of what he calls countervailing power. The  assumption always made by economists, when they would consider the case of markets, was that  the check on an individual firm’s power wold come from the supply side of the industry. Galbraith disagrees. He admits that the existence of monopoly power in a competitive market  does in fact encourage the entry of more producers to appropriate some of that power for  themselves. â€Å"In other words,† he says. â€Å"Competition was regarded [and is] a self-generating  regulatory force† (Galbraith, 1954, p. 112). But in a market that is not competitive, the incentive for some economic agent to  approptiate that power still exists. But it need not come from the supply side. That power is, in  practice, usually appropriated by strong buyers or coalitions of buyers, who can sometimes take  even more than their share. Because of the tendency of power to be organized in response to  existing power, â€Å"countervailing power is also a self-generating force† (Galbraith, 1954, p. 113). According to Galbraith, it is the large retailers who, by way of their absolute power over  manufacturers, bargain for the consumer and protect the consumer from the high monopoly  prices that would otherwise result. Likewise, the considerable market power of large firms is  checked by trade unions for a simple reason, there is something to be bargained for Galbraith  notes that trade unions are most powerful in the least competitive industries. This is because the  surplus that a company derives from monopoly power acts as an incentive to unions. In the very  competitive industries, producers and workers are operating at bare minimum profit and the  incentives to organization insignificant. These are the basic ideas laid out in American Capitalism. The book in many ways lays  the framework and tone for the books he would publish in the sixties and seventies. But while  American Capitalism was Galbraith’s first major bestseller, it was The Affluent Society that  skyrocketed him to fame. The Affluent Society builds on many of the concepts introduced in his  first book, but with several key differences. Though Galbraith could not suppress his urge to  social commentary, The Affluent Society is a much more prescriptive book, growing out of his  chapter on technical development in American Capitalism. To his original analysis he adds a  significantly moral component. The Affluent Society concerns itself with the policies that ought  to be undertaken once the basic needs of the people have been met. Galbraith’s main argument is  that our ratio of private good (cars, televisions, automobiles) to public goods (schools, roads) is  inequitable an d ridiculous. The premise of his argument is that once our basic desires such as  food, clothing, and shelter have been satisfied, large corporations employ advertising to concoct  new demand for products. The traditional economic and utilitarian argument for goods qua  goods falls on its face if consumer demand is not sovereign. What is really necessary is the use  of society’s productive resources in the public realm in juxtaposition with growth in the private  realm. He calls this idea â€Å"social balance,† saying, â€Å"the problem of social balance is ubiquitous,  and frequently it is obtrusive. As noted, an increase in the consumption of automobiles requires a  facilitating supply of streets, highways, traffic control, and parking spaces† (Galbraith, 1958, p.  193). He also confronts the existence of poverty in an affluent society as being the result of  outdated nineteenth century attitudes. â€Å"A poor society,† he says,  "had to enforce the rule that  someone who did not work could not eat. An affluent society has no similar excuse for such  rigor† (Galbraith, 1958, p. 251). But he admits that, â€Å"nothing requires such a society to be  compassionate. But it no longer has a high philosophical justification for its callousness†Ã‚  (Galbraith, 1958, p. 251). In the 50’s, America was in the midst of the cold war and attempts at engineering a better  society were very suspect. Galbraith throughout The Affluent Society understands the inherent  and ideological opposition to big government and social policy, but he is adamant in stating,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"that cities’ residents should have a nontoxic supply of air suggests no revolutionary dalliance with socialism† (Galbraith, 1958, p. 191). In fact, Galbraith eventually finds socialism and central planning to be in many ways  similar to the kind of capitalism that developed in America in the latter half of the 20th century. 9 In The New Industral State, Galbraith focuses his effort on understanding what he calls the  Ã¢â‚¬Å"technostructure.† In an era when the division of intellectual labor is so overwhelming, the  management or even management team of a powerful corporation doesn’t actually make most of  the decisions. The decisions are instead made collectively by teams of experts. Galbraith coins  the term technostructure as, â€Å"embracing all who bring specialized knowledge, talent or  experience to group decision-making. This,† he says, â€Å"not the management, is the guiding  intelligence, the brain, of the enterprise† (Galbraith, 1967, p.71). Many of Galbraith’s ideas resonate to this day. Unfortunately, most do not. It would be  tempting to end this essay optimistically, expounding poetically on the way Galbraith’s ideas  continue to influence national policy. In reality, although he was a well-respected and powerful  man, many of his ideas continue to be ignored by mainstream economists and politicians. Rarely  does one hear a contemporary economist talk about countervailing power, or reference the  Ã¢â‚¬Å"technostructure.† While as a society we owe much to Galbraith and his ideas, the discipline of  economics has for all intents and purposes laid his practical ideas by the wayside. But whether or  not his continued influence on economics is felt by the mainstream, his contribution to the  discipline remains poignant and accessible for those who choose to seek it out on their own. Galbraith’s main contribution to economic thought was his tackling of the problem of  power. He was convinced that the most glaring, most significant, and most ignored problem in  the field of economics was the effect of power on economic activity. Understanding why  Galbraith was so affixed by this idea of power is actually quite simple; he was surrounded by it. Through his political work, Galbraith knew not only Kennedy, but several other presidents and  all the most powerful officials in the democratic party. Through his work at Fortune he became  acquainted with the heads of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world. He saw,  10 clearly, the extent to which the decisions of these men (and the technostructures supporting  them) affected the direction and performance of the economy of the whole. Given that he was an  astute man, for him to ignore the influence of power on economies, in order to advance a series  of aesthetically pleasing models and equations, would have been not only unthinkable but  dishonest. Galbraith wanted badly to be useful, to â€Å"change votes,† as his father would have said. To him, sitting in a room concocting theories did not qualify as usefulness. He longed to be in  the thick of policy-making. Later in life, he wanted badly to avoid what he called â€Å"Belmont Syndrome†1 Thus, his struggle to be relevant was not only ideological but moral. John Kenneth Galbraith died peacefully at home in 2006. He left behind not only an  extensive body of economic work, but two novels. His first novel, The Triumph, written in 1969,  was about U.S. foreign policy disasters in Latin America. His second novel, A Tenured  Professor, written in 1990, was about an eccentric Harvard professor, and lampooned the elite  institution. He lived ninety-seven years, almost all of them (excepting the first few) were  preoccupied with upending the â€Å"conventional wisdom.† He remains one of the most famous and  controversial economists of the twentieth century, and a fine novelist.

Technicolor Research Topic Report: Sound and Image. :: essays research papers

Technicolor Research Topic Report: Sound and Image.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This is a written report where my partner on the topic and I presented a ten minute oral summary of our chosen research topic on Technicolor. We chose Technicolor as we felt it had most to say to us, threw the progression of the technology the problems threw out the years of perfecting the technology, to the ultimate glory of the Technicolor experience. As we didn’t know too much on Technicolor we were quite eager and wanted to broaden our knowledge on the subject.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  We started the research primarily on the internet as we found a lot of informative sites we also confirmed the information using books. The books and sites used were www.technicolor.com, www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicolor1.htm and www.imdb.com. The books are as follows, Glorious Technicolor: the movies' magic rainbow / Fred E. Basten. Barnes, 1980 and Mr. Technicolor / Herbert T. Kalmus with Eleanore King Kalmus. Our intention on the project was to separate the project with Tom doing the early years and I doing the later years in the company’s history. We would share the different information with each other helping each other understand the difficult technological information to hand with the different camera systems that were created threw out the years. Technicolor was the collaboration of Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Comstock and W. Burton Westcott in 1912 with the intention of creating flicker free color films, Technicolor as we know today has produced much success and revolutionized the way we look at cinema but this was not without there many teething problems. Actors and critics criticized the technology every step of the way. There first invention produced was the Technicolor System 1 Additive Color, which I’m sorry to say flopped massively due to the unfortunate screening of The Gulf Between in 1917 which only a few frames remain of this film today. This was the first public premier of the technology and was disastrous. The film was captured through two separate filters red and green and the light through those two filters was captured on a single reel of film, when processed this negative had red and green information captured on a black and white reel, when this was processed the reel was placed into a projector and then threw red and green filters. To project the image an adjustable prism that had to manually lined up by the projectionist as two separate images formed on the projection screen this did not work as planned as the projectionist failed to line up the images correctly.

Principles and practice of Human Resource Management Essay

In 21st century, the organization which considers its employees as an asset rather than cost has competitive advantage. The term suggested for employees is human capital. It refers to productive potential of one’s knowledge and actions. In today’s knowledge economy, efficient management of human capital ensures success for the organization. This tells the importance of human resource management. It is about managing human capital in the same way as asset management or financial management. Actually human resource management acts as a medium of exchange between employees and organization. Employees offer knowledge, abilities, skills, efforts, time, motivation, commitment and performance to the organization in return for job security, empowerment, generous pay for performance, training, promotion and trustful relationship. Thus human resource management is considered as a matching process that is matching organizational goals with employees’ needs in order to satisfy both optimally. The more formal definition of human resource management is the activities undertaken by the organization to attract, develop and maintain an effective workforce within an organization. (Daft, 1982) Thus attracting an effective workforce for an organization, developing it to its potential and finally maintaining it are the three main goals of the human resource management. And all the strategies are developed by the human resource department for attaining these three goals and these strategies tend to be organizational wide in order to support the overall corporate strategy. The skills required for attracting the workforce includes human resource planning, job analysis, forecasting, recruiting and selecting; skills for developing the workforce includes training and performance appraisal; and skills for maintaining the workforce includes wages, salaries, benefits and termination. Organizations especially perform human resource management in order to tackle the issues related to human resource proactively rather than reactively. ( Price , 2007). Having developed the concept of human resource management, we will now talk about the different approaches taken by the organization for pursing HRM. Read more:Â  Managing The Human Resources The first approach is hard HRM developed by Michigan business school and the second one is soft HRM developed by Harvard business school. (Fombrun, Tichy and Devanna, 1984) Both approaches are opposite as they are based on different sets of assumptions. (Storey 1992) Soft HRM has humanistic edge in managing employees while hard HRM considers employees as resources which have to be managed in the same way as capital equipments and raw materials. That is hard HRM is bit more technical and mechanical in its approach which involves in obtaining as cheap labor as possible that should be fully exploited. Soft HRM advocates unitary perspective which means employees and organization needs and interest are coherent which leads to mutual goals, influence, respect, rewards and responsibility. The outcome is therefore employee commitment and organizational success (Walton 1985). On contrary, pluralist perspective sees differences in employee and organization goals as a cause for conflicts and problems. Management’s task is to induce the appropriate behavior in workers so that their actions accomplish the company’s goals, not their own. This paves the way for showing direction and coercion by management. This perspective underlies hard HRM. .( Price , 2007) Mc Gregor in 1960 gave Theory X and Theory Y about the nature of employees. Theory X depicted employees who dislike work and try to avoid it when they can. People have to be coerced to work and have to be closely directed and regulated thus leading to tight managerial control. On the other hand theory Y depicted employees who like to work and exercise self direction and self control if they are committed to the goals and objectives. In this case there is loose managerial control and management’s function is to foster individual growth and development. Apparently soft HRM is associated with theory Y which emphasizes employees’ commitment through trust, open communication, training and development and autonomous work environment. This will produce employee behavior which is self directed and this is the main reason for organization’s competitive advantage. Whereas hard HRM contingent to theory X, focuses on quantitative, calculative and strategic aspects of managing HR as for any other factor of production. The practices of hard HRM consist of strict performance appraisal, supervision and external control over individual’s activities. Now we will examine how soft and hard HRM approaches lead to different kinds of activities and outcomes at different stages of human resource lifecycle. The first stage is of attracting the potential employees. This requires human resource planning by forecasting HR needs and matching the individuals with expected job vacancies. The soft HRM will seek to forecast needed employees in order to complete a work unit or finding the best mix of employees for the team in order to elicit commitment from team members by setting of good team norms and strong cohesiveness. Whereas hard HRM will look to minimize the need for additional employees and will try to reduce the head count. This will lead to incomplete work unit. The job vacancies will not be fully matched with potential employees, which will lead to incomplete work outcomes or delays in achieving goals deadlines. However hard HRM is best suited in condition of financial crisis and economic recession. In these conditions companies are incurring losses and they cannot afford hiring of new employees. Hard HRM is helpful in minimizing external hiring and shifting and relocating existing employees within organization. This will make existing employees loyal because they were not laid off by the organization when downsizing is the only option that remains during financial crisis. (Fombrun, 1984). The recruitment and selection is the most important process in hiring of employees. It requires analysis of both job applicants and job itself. We have to look for desired characteristics in applicants so that he must make a good match with particular job requirements. If his skills, education and experience are not adequate for the specific job then it will lead to frustration and confusion. The result will be poor performance, job dissatisfaction and high turnover. Both soft and hard HRM approach will provide realistic job preview and job description so that employees can judge their potential for a specific job. However soft HRM approach will be more insightful as it will look into the hidden personality traits, attitudes and beliefs of the applicants so that they can be better integrated into overall corporate culture, norms and values. Whereas hard HRM will only look to match the applicant’s skills with the technical specification of the job. Soft HRM give more attention to the human processes such as communication, sharing of knowledge, cohesiveness and trust among employees. Interviews, paper pencil test etc are the most common selection devices and are used by both approaches. However soft HRM approach has additional selection devices such as personality test, psychological test, case studies and different types of surveys. The second stage in HR lifecycle is development of effective workforce which includes training and performance appraisal as the two most important activities. Soft HRM approach will be more inclined towards training for individual advancement and career development. Soft HRM will go for various types of training techniques such as on the job training, class room training, computer assisted instructions, conferences and case discussion groups. Employees will be made to learn multiple skills so that they can be rotated among various jobs in order to reduce monotony and introduce variety. Hard HRM will see training as an expense. It will usually design job which leaves little room for showing discretion and creativity. The job is monotonous and set rules and procedures are there to perform the job. So training is limited to learning those specific job procedures which limits career advancement. This reduces employee motivation and cause job dissatisfaction and high turnover rate because of increase in monotony. The practice of hard HRM is most suitable in assembly line work. However it will fail in work demanding creativity and originality and whose environment is more unstable and uncertain, for example, film industry. While considering the activity of performance appraisal, hard HRM is more stringent in its appraisal process. The poor performance is mostly attributed to individual’s lack of ability and no consideration is given to various external factors influencing the individual’s performance. External factors are outside individual control and includes pathetic work environment, work place conflicts, distrust, no sharing of information and resources, bad relations and poor communication with top management. (Drucker , 1954 ) On the other hand soft HRM gives objective feedback on employees’ performance. It also uses the technique of 360 degree feedback that uses multiple raters and self rating to enhance the reliability and credibility of feedback in the eyes of employees. Multiple raters can include customers, co workers, supervisors and subordinates. Employee is also given a chance to explain his point of view and give explanation if his performance is not up to the standard. At the end of the appraisal top performances are also rewarded with bonuses, recognition and promotion. The feedback style of soft HRM is such that employees are motivated to improve their performance further. It enhances employees’ self efficacy by making clear role expectations and removing role conflicts and role ambiguity. This approach is therefore best suited for organizations whose culture encompasses total quality management. TQM stresses for customer satisfaction by providing better quality product or services through dedication to training, continuous improvement and teamwork. The third and last stage in HR life cycle is maintaining of workforce so that they continue to work for the organization over the long run. This stage consists of four activities such as rewards management, industrial relation, occupational health and safety and termination. In soft HRM approach rewards are such that it recognizes individual’s accomplishment as well as teamwork. Rewards are administered in such a way that it promotes collaboration and cooperation among employees so that they work as a unit for the overall goals of the organization. The focus is on creating the synergy so that different department of organization works coherently and in alignment of corporate strategy. Ivancevich, 2003). Soft HRM approach also gives rewards which increases intrinsic motivation of employees. Intrinsic motivation to work comes from the internal satisfaction and honor one feels when he completes some meaningful work which makes the difference for the organization. These types of rewards increase employees’ sense of meaningfulness, competence, progress and choice. Intrinsic rewards which increase intrinsic motivation are important for increasing employees’ commitment to organization’s goals and mission. The hard HRM has tight control over rewards. Apart from basic salary, less effort is made to recognize individual performance. However calculated yearly bonuses are given when year end profit target is achieved. In other words no effort is made in hard HRM’s reward system to increase employees’ commitment to work. The main problem is that hard HRM follows corporate strategy in rewarding employees and no analysis is done about employee’s needs and desires. Soft HRM is good enough as its rewards system makes a best fit between employees’ needs and rewards. Moreover the other organization dynamics which affects rewards system is employees’ perceived equity of rewards. If the distribution of rewards is not considered equitable by employees then motivating effects of rewards will vanish. There will be feeling of cognitive dissonance in employees and to remove this feeling, he will either alter his inputs to the work or will demand changes in rewards. The soft HRM approach dealing with human processes designs reward system to improve employees’ perceived equity while hard HRM fails to do so. According to Herzberg, working conditions, pay, good company policy and interpersonal relationships are called hygiene factors and their presence removes job dissatisfaction. The hygiene factors are well cared by soft HRM approach. The hard one fails to provide hygiene factors because its main objective is to accomplish a task in most economical terms as possible. It is only the soft HRM approach that has clear and functional policies and procedures about occupational health and safety. (Noe, 2003). Soft HRM approach looks to build long term relationship with employees. It opens all channels of communication such as upward, downward and lateral. Moreover grapevine and management by objective techniques are also used by managers to delve deeper into employees’ problems and requirements. Hard HRM only uses formal and hierarchical communication channel. This is also the cause for many communication breakdown and distortion. The most important feature of soft HRM is of mentoring and socialization which greatly helps in building cooperative and trustful corporate culture and environment.