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

Outline and assess the major changes to journalism over the past 40 Essay

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The Impact of Workplace Diversity on Job Performance. (Walmart case Essay

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. 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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.

Division of Labor essays

Division of Labor essays The division of labor inside and outside the home is a major issue when it comes to both married and non-married couples. If handled incorrectly this power struggle can fuel many arguments. However, if handled successfully this can prevent future breakups as well. If the man in the household offers some extra help this will in turn make the women more open towards granting the mans wishes. This extra support will in turn help the woman gain steps when it comes to her professional and social responsibilities. I believe that this division of labor can break or make a relationship. If one or the other feels the need to act selfish or lazy this will in turn put extra pressure on the counterpart in the relationship. This is most apparent in relation to dual-earner households. If both partners are working full-time this management of labor becomes a major issue. This is even more compounded when children are in the picture. Sure their combined income will be greater but the press ures at home will also increase. This problem wasnt as apparent when the traditional family role was in place. Mom stayed home and her work was taking care of the family and the household chores. This was her nine to five job with an occasional help here and there from her husband. But as the times have changed things are no longer as simple as this. With the direction things are heading the problems with division of labor will undoubtedly only get worse. To understand this division of labor you have to understand the roles and the history behind them. In a society where the norm was to have a Leave It to Beaver lifestyle dual-earner households were not to be accepted and wouldnt be understood. The family, especially the wife, would be considered to be irresponsible towards not only her role as a mother but that as a wife as well. Whereas now-a-days the traditional roles are quickly fading into the past and duel-earne...

Competitive advantage and relationship marketing

Competitive advantage and relationship marketing Introduction The ability of an organization to generate and maintain a competitive advantage forms one of the most critical elements in supporting its internal and external mechanisms for further growth and expansion. Benderly posits that high market competitiveness acts as an indicator of an organization’s progress and assessment in comparison to others dealing with same products (30). Besides, as this paper analyzes using Cirque du Soleil, relationship marketing is an effective means of maintaining, developing and establishing market relationship with consumers. It has been hailed as one of the most effective ways through which businesses can achieve and sustain competitive advantage. Competitive advantage The concept of competitive advantage has its roots well entrenched in the historical era of industrial revolution when demand for markets and increasing focus on quality became critical.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Competitive advan tage and relationship marketing-Cirque du Soleil specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More However, Suliyanto and Rahab indicate that the concept became more profound with the development of globalization and intensification of international trade which further diversified its overall scope in view of production and consumption of different products and services (136). The concept of market competitiveness has further been intensified by the onset of information technology which strongly links market with the management and production units in the society. In his article Anatomy of competitive advantage: a select framework, Ma points out that â€Å"competitive advantage arises from the differential among firms along any dimension of firm attributes and characteristics that allows one firm to better create customer value than do others† (709). His argument hinges on the view that consistent provision of superior value and high quality products to consumers is an attribute determined by a firm’s ability to establish strategic business decisions as well as strategic capabilities. Due to intensive competition and increasing uncertainty, companies that have sustainable advantage make tremendous gains because they have competencies and resources that are non-substitutable and unique that their competitors lack. Agha, Alrubaiee and Jamhour concur with Ma’s argument and posits that through these, successful organizations have maintained customer satisfaction, achieved overall strategic goals and increased their production processes (200).Advertising Looking for critical writing on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Additionally, capabilities have these companies have been witnessed in the manner in which they have combined organizational knowledge, integrated technology and coordinated production skills in provision of value. Aremu and Bamiduro point out that the affect of relationship marketing in developing and sustaining competitive edge has from ancient times grown to become hyper-competitive through established relationships between suppliers, buyers and sellers (211). Different businesses have for along period of time developed unique and different customer relationship capabilities that have aided them in gaining a competitive edge over their competitors. This relates with Ma’s argument in the sense that the uniqueness of a firm in carrying out relationship marketing is an attribute which adds customer value. However, it is imperative to note that an inception of great directional change has been witnessed in the past decade in both marketing practice and theory. David and Motamedi point out that this genuine paradigm shift has been termed by marketing analysts as a move towards relationship marketing which as a concept encompasses relational marketing, working partnerships, relational contracti ng, co-marketing alliances, strategic alliances, symbiotic marketing and internal marketing (369). Their argument, which adds another angle to Ma’s position, indicates that competitive edge can also be attained through partnerships. In fact, currently in global business, the practice of predatory and flat out competition is over and has been replaced by collaboration between companies both at local and multinational level as gaining a favorable competitive edge requires that businesses cooperate. Lyndall Urwick, an influential thinker and consultant in business management argued from the business reengineering theory’s perspective that relationship marketing is a shift adopted by businesses intending to establish long-term relationships that are mutually satisfying with key-parties such as distributors, suppliers and customers for mutual gain and to retain them in their businesses.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Competitive advanta ge and relationship marketing-Cirque du Soleil specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More His argument echoes Ma’s argument on competitive advantage in the sense that relationship marketing creates a mutual bond that connects a company with suppliers, distributors and customers while ensuring that they all benefit. However, the uniqueness of attributes and characteristics must not be different for a company to gain a competitive edge because relationship marketing also extends to partnerships with other business to gain resources and boost performance. Gilaninia, Shahi and Mousavian point out that effective relationship marketing companies have arisen within functionally specialized organizations, and have networks whose interrelationships are not only driven by norms, but are coordinated and held together by organizations whose marketing methods are based on trust, commitment and sharing. Cirque du Soleil Cirque du Soleil is one of the fastest growing entertainment companies in Canada based in Quebec (David Motamedi 369). Its unique attribute in relationship marketing has been one of the most notable core competencies that have made it successful since its inception in 1984. As an entertainment company, it has been able to achieve some stable competitive edge via building of its customer loyalty through provision of quality shows, products and services. It is worth noting that building customer loyalty and retention has been identified by many scholars and practitioners in relationship marketing as a major requirement in successful selling and building of brand or image of a business. David and Motamedi points out that Cirque du Soleil has invested in developing strategies for creating customer loyalty and retention through its effective leadership properly so that it does not miss out on significant marketing share against other market competitors (370). The latter explains why it is putting more emphasis in building e ffective communication strategies for the purpose of developing customer confidence, retention as well as loyalty.Advertising Looking for critical writing on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It has been able to retain its customers by developing an effective and efficient visionary planning as well as strategic customer relationship management in order to eliminate weak customer relations which often lead to dysfunctional organizational behavior and low profitability. In their publication, Patsioura, Malama and Vlachopoulou point out that recognizing factors that motivates customers to buy products or services is an important step in understanding the brand switching behavior of customers as well as their loyalty (80). Most customers of Cirque du Soleil have shown their loyalty to this company through repeat purchase of their entertainment services, preference and commitment to their shows. Kaj Storbacka, Tore Strandvik, and Christian Grà ¶nroos point out in their loyalty business model that when there is lack of relationship marketing, customers may fail to be satisfied by products and services and hence be unsuccessful in showing important components such as an inten tion to re-buy, a liking towards a brand preference due to superior qualities of a brand (Croteau, Rivard Talbot 1). However, customer loyalty and retention can be realized in a business environment where strategic relationship marketing is unique and differentiated and where it is being done with the help of effective communication to obtain feedback. Cirque du Soleil has been very effective in applying various unique relationship marketing methods which include the use of technology and social media marketing as a viable relationship marketing tool largely due to its flexibility and viability in reaching out targeted market (Croteau, Rivard Talbot 1). Relationship marketing through improved quality of goods and services Attainment of a competitive edge has been considered to have massive implications on products and services being released to consumers in the market. As Dickinson indicates, the notion of market competitiveness is laden with a sense of high quality products in the society (10). With the notion of increased products value being progressive, consumers enjoy high quality products and services at all times and at the correct prices. Due to the need to maintain high quality services in the nation, Cirque du Soleil has sought to expand to other regions in the world as part and parcel of seeking new markets and expanding its level of operations and therefore improve the degree with which the various needs of its customers can be met. It has also done this with an intention of maintaining its status amidst the fast growing industry (Croteau, Rivard Talbot 1). Relationship marketing assists in building greater customer loyalty In their view, Aghoubi, Doaee and Ardalan observe that the relationship marketing practice of a business in the global market acts as a critical tool for maintaining loyalty of the customers on products and services an organization offer (903). The ability of an organization to initiate, effect, and maintain market competitivene ss in its different areas of operation act as one of the most critical elements in supporting growth of loyalty by consumers through continuous services improvement. As indicated earlier, gaining competitive advantage is a notion that goes hand-in-hand with provision of high quality that consumers seek association with. Most management teams in organizations often seek to generate high customer loyalty in their products (Roy 80). Following its long time competitive advantage in Canada, Cirque du Soleil has assimilated sound customer loyalty from its entertainment customers. Its management team emphasizes that its ability to remain at the top has been anchored on high customer loyalty in all of its global operations (Croteau, Rivard Talbot 1). To recap it all, it is imperative to reiterate that the discussion in this paper has been based on the thesis statement that â€Å"the ability of an organization to generate and maintain a competitive advantage forms one of the most critical e lements in supporting its internal and external mechanisms for further growth and expansion†. From the discussion, it is evident that developing unique and differentiated competitive advantages such as effective relationship marketing, customer responsiveness, influence and communication are generic and vital for an organization that wants to succeed in the global competitive market. It is also clear from the discussion that other capabilities which companies should develop to lead in the market include innovative capacity, strategic flexibility, organizational learning and effective technology among others. It is worth noting that different authors have stated that a business needs to have a unique and differentiated capability to gain competitive advantage over others. However, as indicated by authors with different views, market trends have massively changed and businesses are going into partnerships and networks to augment their competitive advantages over others. The pape r has also examined Cirque du Soleil relationship marketing practice and noted that successful adoption of relationship marketing in the organization has enhanced its ability to establish long term relationships with its customers. Agha Sabah, Alrubaiee Laith Jamhour Manar. Effect of core competence on competitive advantage and organizational performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 7.1 (2012): 192-204. Aghoubi Nour-Mohammed, Doaee Habibollah Ardalan Argavan. The effect of emotional intelligence on relationship marketing. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 3.5 (2011): 901-905. Aremu, Mukalia Bamiduro, Joseph. Marketing mix practice as a determinant of entrepreneurial business performance. International Journal of Business and Management 7.1 (2012): 205-213 Benderly, Beryl. Staying number 1. ASEE Prism, 21.5 (2012): 30-33. Croteau Anne-Marie, Rivard Suzanne and Talbot jean. Visioning information technology at Cirque du Soleil. Int ernational Journal of Case Studies in Management 1.3(2006): 1. David, Robert Motamedi, Amir. Cirque Du Soleil: Can It Burn Brighter? Journal of Strategic Management Education, 1.2 (2004): 369-382. Dickinson, Barry. The role of authenticity in relationship marketing. Journal of Management and Marketing Research, 8 (2011): 1-12. Gilaninia Shahram, Shahi Hasanali Mousavian Seyyed. The effect of relationship marketing dimensions by customer satisfaction to customer loyalty. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research In Business, 3.4 (2011): 74-84. Hao, Ma. Anatomy of competitive advantage: a select framework, Management Decision, 37.9(1999): 709 – 718. Patsioura Fotini, Malama Eleonara-Ioulia Vlachopoulou, Maro. A relationship marketing model for brand advertising websites: an analysis of consumers perceptions. International Journal of Management, 28.4 (2011): 72-92. Roy, Martin. Sustainable design for circus big top. ASHRAE Journal, 48.9 (2006): 78- 81. Suliyanto, Sul iyanto Rahab, Rahab. The role of market orientation and learning orientation in improving innovativeness and performance of small and medium enterprises, Asian Social Science 8.1 (2012): 134-145.

Business Law Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Business Law - Assignment Example Answer two- The father’s agreement with Smith Barney mandated arbitration and this was a signed dated customer agreement. Even though other firms had not honored similar agreements that had issues occur older than six years, the agreement as signed and dated represents the final contract and as such should be binding regardless, unless a length of time was stipulated upon signing. In this instance, the courts found in favor of the brothers for the reasons mentioned above. It is noted that upon review of the case, the court initially found in favor of Smith Barney, however, reconsidered its original decision based on the lack of a stipulated length of time. Answer three- It would be my opinion that the court would possibly agree with his argument in that this particular instance of the production of child pornography would in fact not substantially affect interstate commerce. However, even if the court agreed that he was in fact correct in this argument the original charges of possessing and manufacturing the pornography would be cause to have local pornography charges leveled against him. It is my opinion that the courts would likely dismiss the federal charges and would send the case back to a local jurisdiction.

Globalization and Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Globalization and Culture - Essay Example In my opinion, globalization is a modernizing force than can nurture local cultures and allow them to spread across the world. Globalization is not a destroyer of local cultures and traditions. It is an opportunity for local, regional, and ethnic cultures and traditions to spread and grow. Owing to cultural globalization, cross-cultural contacts have significantly increased. These interactions have shaped the world to be what it is today. For example, religion may be considered a cultural practice. On that note, religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam all began in specific places of the world (Fu and Chiu 637). Today, thanks to globalization, these religions are practiced in almost every corner of the world. These common religions have been embraced and accepted by different people from all over the world because of globalization. Globalization has enabled the crossing of international boundaries, therefore, allowing cross-cultural contacts that have led to the spread of these religions. This shows that globalization is not a destroyer of cultures and traditions. It is, in fact, a promoter of cultures and traditions (Fu and Chiu 638). Other cultural practices such as traditional music from Africa, for example, have been able to reach the Western world because of globalization. Globalization has allowed locally recorded music to reach audiences from all over the world (Fu and Chiu 639). Also, Anglo-American pop music has been able to spread everywhere through mediums such as MTV. These cultural practices have not been destroyed. In fact, globalization has helped to spread them all over the globe, and they are constantly being accepted by more and more people. Traditional recreational practices such as sports, games, and other leisure activities have also gained popularity in regions that they never used to be practiced before. Football is a good example (Fu and Chiu 640). Language, being part of culture, has also benefitted from