Organizational Change High School Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Organizational Change High School - Essay Example Kurt Lewin's theory of the change analysis is a widely accepted and analyzed model. Lewin was a social scientist and a change agent and his theories were better recognized due to their practicality of applying to change occurring in organizations. Before organizational change was taken seriously and processes put in place to manage it, change was accepted as something that just occurred and people just battled it out. It was not embraced with enthusiasm and considered as a part of the growth of an organization. Lewin Introduced a three-stage model of change: unfreeze, change, and refreeze. Lewin's Forcefield Analysis defines an organizational environment in need of change as a state of imbalance between driving forces (legislation, economic imperatives, and competitive pressures) and restraining forces (traditional practices, organizational culture, job insecurity). To achieve change, three steps are required: (1) the driving and restraining forces that hold the organization in a state of equilibrium must be unfrozen; (2) an imbalance must be introduced that enables change to take place, preferably achieved by reducing the restraints; and (3) the new elements must be refrozen. Unfreezing is the phase during which an organization is prepared for a change. This phase also will include disconfirmation of expectations, creation of guilt or anxiety and the provision of psychological safety that converts anxiety into motivation to change. Changing is the phase where a planned change actually takes place and moving into a new position is often through identifying a new model or mentor, scanning the environment for new relevant information. Refreezing is the phase at which change is stabilized and the organization is consolidated for the new mode of operation. This model still implies that change is sporadic. Mostly the situation is stable. Every now and then there arises a need for planned change. One does not wait until change is forced upon the organization. One needs to anticipate, strategically plan and implement and be ready to face the change when it does occur. One of the most important consequences is that change is a collective responsibility of the organization. Participation by all the parties involved, which includes, the employees, clients and management, are necessary to achieve successful organization change implementation. The three most commonly recommended strategies are self-explanatory: top down; bottom up; and a combination of these. Restraining forces Changes can be due to a variety of factors. Depending on the internal and external factors, change can be made in the area of tasks, people, culture, technology and structure. Increasing competition, Mergers and Acquisitions, changing legislations and advancing technology can precipitate change. Changing technology is often the harbinger of change. Typically, change of any kind

Human Resource Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Human Resource - Essay Example 1. __False__ Suzy is employed as a secretary in the U.S. Senate. Her supervisor has insinuated that there are negative references in her personnel file. Suzy has demanded to see her personnel file and her supervisor has refused. Her supervisor has violated the Privacy Act. No, he has not violated the privacy Act since it relates mostly to health issues but in this case, Suzy is not authorized to see her personal file .It may be against the company policy to show the personal files of the employees. 4. False Melissa is fired for stealing from her employer, LaMont and Co. She is convicted of the theft, but given only a light sentence. Some time later, a prospective employer calls LaMont for a reference, and is told that the reason for Melissa’s termination was that she had committed theft of employer property. Melissa does not get the new job. LaMont has defamed Melissa According to the labour law the employees shall have the right to self organize and form unions or refrain from it. However, unfair labour practice charges can be brought against an employer on account to wages, hours and other terms of employment if they are not in accordance with the state laws or norms prevailing within the company or industry. False, The Wagner Act identifies the unfair labor practices that the employer can be accused of. The Taft Hartley Act was passed to amend the Wagner Act to restrict mis-use of unionism allowed through the Wagner Act. OSHA allows the workers to refuse to work if they see that the employer is violating their duty of providing a safe workplace. The employer is required to take corrective action but can not replace the workers since it is their right under OSHA to refuse to work in unsafe conditions. 14 TRUE OSHA does not hold employers liable for injuries suffered by employees while working in the employee’s home offices, but employers are responsible for injuries suffered by employees if the employee

Code-based Plagiarism Detection Techniques

Code-based Plagiarism Detection Techniques Biraj Upadhyaya and Dr. Samarjeet Borah Abstract- The copying of programming assignments by students specially at the undergraduate as well as postgraduate level is a common practice. Efficient mechanisms for detecting plagiarised code is therefore needed. Text based plagiarism detection techniques do not work well with source codes. In this paper we are going to analyse a code- based plagiarism detection technique which is employed by various plagiarism detection tools like JPlag, MOSS, CodeMatch etc. Introduction The word Plagiarism is derived from the Latin word plagiarie which means to kidnap or to abduct. In academicia or industry plagiarism refers to the act of copying materials without actually acknowledging the original source[1]. Plagiarism is considered as an ethical offence which may incur serious disciplinary actions such as sharp reduction in marks and even expulsion from the university in severe cases. Student plagiarism primarily falls into two categories: text-based plagiarism and code-based plagiarism. Instances of text based plagiarism includes word to word copy, paraphrasing, plagiarism of secondary sources, plagiarism of ideas, plagiarism of secondary sources, plagiarism of ideas, blunt plagiarism or authorship plagiarism etc. Plagiarism is considered code based when a student copies or modifies a program required to be submitted for a programming assignment. Code based plagiarism includes verbatim copying, changing comments, changing white space and formatting, renaming ide ntifiers, reordering code blocks, changing the order of operators/ operands in expression, changing data types, adding redundant statement or variables, replacing control structures with equivalent structures etc[2]. Background Text based plagiarism detection techniques do not work well with a coded input or a program. Experiments have suggested that text based systems ignore coding syntax, an indispensable part of any programming construct thus posing a serious drawback. To overcome this problem code-based plagiarism detection techniques were developed. Code-based plagiarism detection techniques can be classified into two categories viz. Attributed oriented plagiarism detection and Structure oriented plagiarism detection. Attribute oriented plagiarism detection systems measure properties of assignment submissions[3]. The following attributes are considered: Number of unique operators Number of unique operands Total number of occurrences of operators Total number of occurrences of operands Based on the above attributes, the degree of similarity of two programs can be considered. Structure oriented plagiarism detection systems deliberately ignore easily modifiable programming elements such as comments, additional white spaces and variable names. This makes this system less susceptible to addition of redundant information as compared to attribute oriented plagiarism detection systems. A student who is aware of this kind of plagiarism detection system being deployed at his institution would rather complete the assignment by himself/herself instead of working on a tedious and time consuming modification task. Scalable Plagiarism Detection Steven Burrows in his paper Efficient and Effective Plagiarism Detection for Large Code Repositories[3] provided an algorithm for code -based plagiarism detection. The algorithm comprises of the following steps: Tokenization Figure: 1.0 Let us consider a simple C program: #include int main( ) { int var; for (var=0; var { printf(%dn, var); } return 0; } Table 1.0: Token list for program in Figure 1.0. Here ALPHANAME refers to any function name, variable name or variable value. STRING refers to double enclosed character(s). The corresponding token stream for the program in Figure 1.0 is given as SNABjSNRANKNNJNNDDBjNA5ENBlgNl Now the above token is converted to N-gram representation. In our case the value of N is chosen as 4. The corresponding tokenization of the above token stream is shown below: SNAB NABj ABjS BjSN jSNR SNRA NRAN RANK ANKN NKNN KNNJ NNJN NJNN JNND NNDD NDDB DDBj DBjN BjNA jNA5 NA5E A5EN 5ENB ENBl NBlg BlgN lgNl These 4-grams are generated using the sliding window technique. The sliding window technique generates N-grams by moving a â€Å"window† of size N across all parts of the string from left to right of the token stream. The use of N-grams is an appropriate method of performing structural plagiarism detection because any change to the source code will only affect a few neighbouring N-grams. The modified version of the program will have a large percentage of unchanged N-grams, hence it will be easy to detect plagiarism in this program . Index Construction The second step is to create an inverted index of these N-grams . An inverted index consists of a lexicon and an inverted list. It is shown below: Table 2.0: Inverted Index Referring to above inverted index for mango, we can conclude that mango occurs in three documents in the collection. It occurs once in document no. 31, thrice in document no. 33 and twice in document no. 15. Similarly we can represent our 4-gram representation of Figure 1.0 with the help of an inverted index. The inverted index for any five 4-grams is shown below in Table 3.0. Table 3.0: Inverted Index Querying The next step is to query the index. It is understandable that each query is an N-gram representation of a program. For a token stream of t tokens, we require (t − n + 1) N-grams where n is the length of the N-gram . Each query returns the ten most similar programs matching the query program and these are organised from most similar to least similar. If the query program is one of the indexed programs, we would expect this result to produce the highest score. We assign a similarity score of 100% to the exact or top match[3]. All other programs are given a similarity score relative to the top score . Burrows experiment compared against an index of 296 programs shown in Table 4.0 presents the top ten results of one N-gram program file (0020.c). In this example, it is seen that the file scored against itself generates the highest relative score of 100.00%. This score is ignored, but it is used to generate a relative similarity score for all other results. We can also see that the program 0103.c is very similar to program 0020.c with a score of 93.34% . Rank Query Index Raw Similarity File File Score Score Table 4.0: Results of the program 0020.c compared to an index of 296 programs. Comparison of various Plagiarism Detection Tools 4.1 JPlag: The salient features of this tool are presented below: JPlag was developed in 1996 by Guido Malpohl It currently supports C, C++, C#, Java, Scheme and natural language text It is a free plagiarism detection tool It is use to detect software plagiarism among multiple set of source code files. JPlag uses Greedy String Tiling algorithm which produces matches ranked by average and maximum similarity. It is used to compare programs which have a large variation in size which is probably the result of inserting a dead code into the program to disguise the origin. Obtained results are displayed as a set of HTML pages in a form of a histogram which presents the statistics for analyzed files CodeMatch The salient features of this tool are presented below: It was developed by in 2003 by Bob Zeidman and under the licence of SAFE Corporation This program is available as a standalone application. It supports 26 different programming languages including C, C++, C#, Delphi, Flash ActionScript, Java, JavaScript, SQL etc It has a free version which allows only one trial comparison where the total of all files being examined doesn’t exceed the amount of 1 megabyte of data It is mostly used as forensic software in copyright infringement cases It determines the most highly correlated files placed in multiple directories and subdirectories by comparing their source code . Four types of matching algorithms are used: Statement Matching, Comment Matching, Instruction Sequence Matching and Identifier Matching . The results come in a form of HTML basic report that lists the most highly correlated pairs of files. MOSS The salient features of this plagiarism detection tool are as follows: The full form of MOSS is Measure of Software Similarity It was developed by Alex Aiken in 1994 It is provided as a free Internet service hosted by Stanford University and it can be used only if a user creates an account The program can analyze source code written in 26 programming languages including C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Pascal, Visual Basic, Perl etc. Files are submitted through the command line and the processing is performed on the Internet server The current form of a program is available only for the UNIX platforms MOSS uses Winnowing algorithm based on code-sequence matching and it analyses the syntax or the structure of the observed files MOSS maintains a database that stores an internal representation of programs and then looks for similarities between them Comparative Analysis Table Conclusion In this paper we learnt a structured code-based plagiarism technique known as Scalable Plagiarism Detection. Various processes like tokenization, indexing and query-indexing were also studied. We also studied various salient features of various code-based plagiarism detection tools like JPlag, CodeMatch and MOSS. References Gerry McAllister, Karen Fraser, Anne Morris, Stephen Hagen, Hazel White http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/assessment/plagiarism/ Georgina Cosma , â€Å"An Approach to Source-Code Plagiarism Detection and Investigation Using Latent Semantic Analysis †, University of Warwick, Department of Computer Science, July 2008 Steven Burrows, â€Å"Efficient and Effective Plagiarism Detection for Large Code Repositories†, School of Computer Science and Information Technology , Melbourne, Australia, October 2004 Vedran Juric, Tereza Juric and Marija Tkalec ,†Performance Evaluation of Plagiarism Detection Method Based on the Intermediate Language †, University of Zagreb

Does Islam Cause Violence in the Middle East? Essay -- Islam, religion

Since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, a large focus of the Western Powers, like the United States, has been on the Middle East. Out of this has come a conclusion that this area of the world is prone to be more violent than other parts and this is largely to due to the Islamic religion. This the West has concluded in large part through observation coupled with some qualitative data. However, is this an adequate assertion of the area, and of the religion of Islam? To begin various types of violence will be explored quantitatively and qualitatively to see if there is a difference in the level of violence seen in the Middle East as compared to Western States. Once it has been determined if there exists a difference in the amount of violence in the Middle East, as compared to Western States, it than shall be explored to see what role Islam may play in it. Comparing Violence It has been assumed that while the rest of the world appears to be seeing decreasing levels of violence, it appears the Middle East has yet to experience this same trend. By just watching the news or reading the paper, it has appeared that in the past couple of decades there have been either an increase in violence in the Middle East. In addition, it has also appeared that certain types of violence that the West has not experienced for some time still exist within the region. The question this raises then, is the Middle East more violent? On the other hand, is this nothing more than Islamophobia? To find the correct answer both a quantitative and qualitative approach will be taken. Through this patterns should emerge that will lead to answer whether are not the Middle East is more prone to violence than other Western States (Pinker, 20... ...s Office on Drugs and Crime. (2013). UNODC Homicide Statistics. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html This publication is put out by the United Nations and its office on Drug and Crime. The purpose of this publication is straight forward. It is to the homicide rates of each State. The data is collected by various agencies, some associated with the United Nations and some not. This document is easy to read and to understand. It serves the purpose in which it was created by showing the homicide rates nearly all the States in the world. The underlying issue with it is that not all the data is complete. When it comes to Western, developed, States the data is complete. However, when it comes to less developed states, it is not. This can causes issues if someone is looking for patterns or comparing regions.

Childhood is Not a Fixed Universal Experience Essay

Childhood is seen as a social construct by sociologists, and it is definitely not a fixed universal experience. This is due to many reasons but overall it is easy to see that not all children get to experience the same childhood and each experiences this stage of life for a different length of time. Childhood differs in many ways, in different countries, from the way they act, and the way they are treated. One way in which we can see that childhood is not a fixed universal exerence is the obvious differences between a childhood in rural countries and one in non-rural countries. For example, in rural countries, children have more responsibility. Sociologists found that in countries such as Bolivia once children are around the age of five years old they start to have work responsibilities both within the home, and the community. Another way in which we can see that childhood is not universal is through the presence of child poverty. Over 1/3 of the world’s children suffer from absolute poverty, and over 1/3 of all children in the world have to live in a dwelling with more than five people in each room, and this the stage of life that should be considered childhood ends up having none of the elements that society would link to that word. Even so, this all is difficult to argue because childhood is a social construct, meanng that it has no set definition and thus chages over time. Phillipe Aries (1962) argues that ‘childhood’ as we understand it today is a new invention. For example, in the Pre-industrial times, children were seen as little adults, and they took part in the same work and play activities as the adults. They were seen as a unit of production and thus they had less lesiure time. Even so, that stage of their life was consdered as being childhood, showing us that the definition has morphed over time. Nowadays the interpretation of this would be very different. Overall, there are two different approaches to childhood. These are the Conventional approach and the Alternative approach.

Keep Arts in Public Schools Essay

As I scroll through my Instagram feed I see various types of pictures: food, family, homework and a myriad of other subjects. One thing many of the people I see on Instagram do is take pictures in front of old, beat up homes on the east side of Detroit. Why? Well, they are not just beat up homes. They are part of The Heidelberg Project. The Heidelberg project is a live work of art that not only attempts to make beauty out of ruins, but revives Detroit in a way and also makes a political statement of events of the past and today (â€Å"FAQ†). What’s my point? Well, what has made the creator of this project, Tyree Guyton come into this neighborhood and do this? Art. He has a passion for art, and creatively applied it to his surroundings of what seemed like junk and ruins. Guyton had arts in his education and carried it with him in life. Not everybody has to develop some type of passion or love for the arts and make a career out of it, but some people do. Who would play music at events? Who would create music scores for your favorite video games and movies? Design your clothes and homes? Who would act out our favorite plays, movies and musicals? Sure, some people may not be into The Arts, and they may not be very good at it. But how will they be able to find out if they are not given the chance? The government wants to cut arts programs from public schools to ‘save money’ but it is not a wise action. Students will be less well rounded; will lack the advantage of developing specific problem solving and creative thinking skills, make students less motivated to attend school, and also gives them less of a chance to participate in something positive, prevents cultural renewal and hurts the economy more than helps it (Catherine 16). According to Ann Mary, individuals who have arts incorporated into their education end up being ‘more innovative thinkers’ (28). When students have some type of arts class, the tasks each person completes can usually be interpreted in multiple ways and can also be completed in a variety of ways. Even when playing a musical piece, certain parts are not played exactly as written. People can play based on their interpretation where it is available in the sheets. Also, many popular songs today are arranged for playing on musical instruments. Not all arrangements are the same. They may have minor differences, but they could be equally representative as a rendition of the song. Having this freedom in the creative thought process is important to have because in the real word, problems do not always have a specific and designed answer- they can have hundreds of possible solutions with thousands of ways of approaching them, or one solution with hundreds ways of approaching it. Students need to learn how to ‘think outside the box’. Students have also been proven to perform better in school when involved in arts programs (Benham 8). If the only thing left in schools is standardized testing, students will be harmed instead of helped. Standardized tests discourage any type of individual thinking or further thought on the subjects being studied by students because they are so focused on studying for the test and how it is formatted, what type of questions will be asked and which type of answers, how to decipher which is the trick answer and the obviously wrong; they take what they learn at face value and do not think twice of it or strive to learn more. It’s all about the tests, after all. When the tests are over, the information is forgotten like last seasons questionable latest fashion craze that is now replaced with an even more daring fad. Students are turned into one question, one answer, one method zombies that have nothing to receive from their education but black and white packets that determine their grade (Mary 29). School would become less enjoyable for students and they would be less motivated to attend, affecting their attendance (Catherine 17). Students that receive an arts education in school also have the advantage of being more well-rounded compared to students that go to school yet do not participate in any type of extra-curricular or elective type of classes at school. These art-involved students attract the attention of colleges more. Colleges will more likely accept and offer a scholarship to a student who is involved in music, art, or theater opposed to a student who is not involved in any activity. I know this firsthand by being told time and time again by a handful of different teachers and counselors. One of my close friends received a full-time scholarship for her time at college because of her good grades and the music and theater classes she participated in. she is now studying music. In New York, the mayor decided to cut funding for art programs that take place during and after school due to financial crisis (Taylor). This news was discouraging to parents and children and educators. The children who attend these classes most likely enjoy them and learn more than just how to paint or how to cry on spot. They make friends, learn how to work with different types of people, and discover the way things work. Someone may be participating in these activities to avoid going home to a dysfunctional family and take his/her mind off the troubles. Some find it relaxing and fun (Faraj). Some parents work till the evening and feel safer knowing that their child is engaged in a positive after school activity rather than possibly being involved in illegal or dangerous street activity. The individuals that teach these programs lose their jobs and also increase the unemployment rate which does not help the financial crisis. The government’s main reasoning behind the budget cuts is the lack of funds to continue supporting these programs. What the government does not realize is that this will lose money instead of save money (Catherine 16). The people who receive an arts education and decide to make a career out of it may start projects or businesses that pertain to what they do, and also generate more jobs for more people. This would make more tax dollars for the government and also help decrease the unemployment rate. Students that carry their arts education with them will use its benefits towards their career whether they are musicians, physicists, fashion designers, engineers, and more. Personally, I have always loved the arts, especially music. Whenever it is time for music class, I get excited. In elementary school, the class I learned the most in was music. In high school, I took piano class for two years, and even a semester of band. Piano class was the only class where I devoted the most of my efforts and time into that class and feel like I learned the most. When I took band, I learned that all of the concepts that I learned in while learning how to play piano could be applied to playing other instruments. I feel like I have benefited from learning music because it has helped me focus on a task and I learned not to give up right away. My band/piano teacher Mr. Guthre claims, â€Å"Music is the only thing a person can multitask with all while in time. You play a piece of music; think about what you are playing, what you will play next, what mistake you made, all while playing in ‘real ‘time (Guthre). Some people may not really remember their art, music, or theater classes aside from that weird painting they were shown that makes no sense at all, some old piece by Mozart that they learned about (ugh why am I learning this, its so old! ), or the ‘strange’ activities students had to participate to warm up to act out Shakespeare (yet another old guy that is centuries old, yawn), but it has still helped them subconsciously. And for those students that have stuck with anything art related, they will benefit and have the advantages of being well rounded, possessing creative thinking skills and also being able to work effectively in teams while having exceptional problem solving skills. Students will also be engaged in a positive and keeps them motivated overall. The arts are more important than they seem, and the government should reconsider where to make sacrifices to save money.

Free Essays on Struggle With The UN

Beginning in 1952 the General Assembly of the United Nations took up the issue of South Africa’s racial policies annually. The tone of early UN resolutions and declarations was civil, even conciliatory, reflecting the hope that South Africa might be convinced to reform. The General Assembly at first simply called upon South Africa to recognize its obligations to end racial discrimination under the UN Charter. The assembly subsequently â€Å"regretted† South Africa’s refusal to end apartheid. After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, a UN Security Council resolution blamed South Africa for the shootings, and the UN General Assembly’s first successful sanctions vote against South Africa occurred two years later. South Africa’s unwavering policy of whites-only representation on sports teams resulted in their expulsion from the Olympic Games and a dozen other international sports federations in the 1960s. After World War II the UN made several attempts to control South Africa’s administration of South-West Africa. The UN General Assembly voted in October 1966 to terminate South Africa’s mandate over South-West Africa, which was renamed Namibia, and established a council to assume responsibility for the territory. South Africa rejected all UN actions and proceeded to integrate the territory into its own economy. In June 1971 the International Court of Justice ruled that South Africa’s presence in Namibia was illegal. The situation became critical when the Angola-based South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) stepped up its campaign of guerrilla attacks on targets in Namibia. South Africa responded by building up defenses, attacking Angola, and aiding the rebels who were fighting the Cuban-supported Angolan government. The war continued for almost 20 years until peace talks, sponsored by the United States, resulted in independence for Namibia in 1990. In 1974 South Africa was suspended from the UN General Assembly, ... Free Essays on Struggle With The UN Free Essays on Struggle With The UN Beginning in 1952 the General Assembly of the United Nations took up the issue of South Africa’s racial policies annually. The tone of early UN resolutions and declarations was civil, even conciliatory, reflecting the hope that South Africa might be convinced to reform. The General Assembly at first simply called upon South Africa to recognize its obligations to end racial discrimination under the UN Charter. The assembly subsequently â€Å"regretted† South Africa’s refusal to end apartheid. After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, a UN Security Council resolution blamed South Africa for the shootings, and the UN General Assembly’s first successful sanctions vote against South Africa occurred two years later. South Africa’s unwavering policy of whites-only representation on sports teams resulted in their expulsion from the Olympic Games and a dozen other international sports federations in the 1960s. After World War II the UN made several attempts to control South Africa’s administration of South-West Africa. The UN General Assembly voted in October 1966 to terminate South Africa’s mandate over South-West Africa, which was renamed Namibia, and established a council to assume responsibility for the territory. South Africa rejected all UN actions and proceeded to integrate the territory into its own economy. In June 1971 the International Court of Justice ruled that South Africa’s presence in Namibia was illegal. The situation became critical when the Angola-based South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) stepped up its campaign of guerrilla attacks on targets in Namibia. South Africa responded by building up defenses, attacking Angola, and aiding the rebels who were fighting the Cuban-supported Angolan government. The war continued for almost 20 years until peace talks, sponsored by the United States, resulted in independence for Namibia in 1990. In 1974 South Africa was suspended from the UN General Assembly, ...

Duty vs. Desire Essays

Duty vs. Desire Essays Duty vs. Desire Essay Duty vs. Desire Essay Essay Topic: The Glass Menagerie The road to self-actualization is one filled with forks. One must constantly make decisions that affect character and one’s ultimate destination in life. Some travel this road very consciously, making informed and well thought out decisions that they hope will lead them in the right direction. Others live haphazardly, not taking into account the possible consequences of poor decisions. Often times one of the most major forks is a decision between moral obligation and private passion. Pressing matters of family or work may call one to put personal aspirations on hold for the sake of the whole. But does one necessitate abandonment of the other? Which way will lead to a happier life? Tom Wingfield, the disillusioned narrator of Tennessee Williams’ Depression-era play, â€Å"The Glass Menagerie,† must battle through this specific plight. He struggles to find the answer to the question of when desire overrides duty. All humans are blessed with a plethora of gifts, but all have one in common: life. This being said, there is one common humanistic duty: the obligation to live that life in the most satisfying manner in the hopes of reaching fulfillment. However, the individual decides which manner is most pleasing to himself or herself, and one person’s idea of a life well lived is wholly different from another’s. This fact should not be disdained, but embraced. Diversity is what allows for unique and inspirational perspectives that can create new ideas and changes in society and culture. Nevertheless, there are those that do not share this view, which leads to an all-too-common clash of wishes – between parents and children, subordinates and superiors, students and elders, etc. Tom Wingfield conflicts with his mother, Amanda, in this way. Her only wish is that her children, Tom and Laura, fulfill the classic American Dream of hard work and success. However, Tom has dreams of being a writer, and Laura is too painfully shy to even leave the house. Clearly there will be at least one person displeased at the end of the day. The Wingfields live lives of short fuses hidden under good intentions – Tom and Laura do not wish to disregard their mother entirely, but they have their own wishes that she does not respect. There are daily battles over who has the right to decide the lives of the family. Tom rightfully uncovers the truth that in order to achieve true happiness in self-actualization, one must choose the paths one takes alone. As stated above, some people truly put thought into their decisions, while others do not. This done not imply that the thought-out choice is the superior one. One can reflect upon an important decision for weeks, months, or years, and still make the wrong choice. If this is true, how is one supposed to make the proper choice? How does one settle on the fork leading to the happier life? The answer is blunt and cruel. Sometimes there is no â€Å"happier life. † Many situations present themselves with no clear better choice. Tom debates his ever-growing desire to desert Amanda and Laura and live the life he feels he would enjoy infinitely more. He convinces himself that this would be his happier life, and does leave in the end, but not without some unwanted baggage. Wherever he goes, he is haunted by guilt of leaving Laura behind. It is evident that even when one does all the right things, when one takes into account outcome and consequences, and still makes the decision alone, it is very possible that there is no silver lining. One must simply do one’s best to make the decisions one feels good about and live with them.

Battle of Chattanooga

With the situation worsening, President Lincoln made the Military Division of the Mississippi and placed Major General Ulysses S. Grant in command of all Union armies in the West. Moving quickly, Grant relieved Rosecrans, replacing him with Major General George H. Thomas, and engineer Major General William F. Smith to open a supply line to Chattanooga. After making a successful landing at Browns Landing, west of the city, Smith was able to link up with Thomas and open a supply route in October, which was known as the Cracker Line. On the night of October 28 and 29, Bragg ordered Lieutenant General James Longstreet to sever the Cracker Line. Attacking at Wauhatchie, the Confederate general was very mad. With a way into Chattanooga open, Grant began reinforcing the Union position by sending Major General Joseph Hooker with the XI and XII Corps and then an additional four divisions under Major General William T. Sherman. While Union forces were growing, Bragg reduced his army by sending Longstreets force to Knoxville to attack a Union force that was under Major General Ambrose Burnside. Having consolidated his position, Grant began offensive operations on November 23, by ordering Thomas to go on from the city and take a string of hills near the foot of Missionary Ridge. The next day, Hooker was ordered to take Lookout Mountain. Crossing the Tennessee River, Hookers men found that the Confederates had failed to defend a valley between the river and mountain. Attacking through this opening, Hookers men succeeded in pushing the Confederates off the mountain. As the fighting ended around 3:00 PM, a fog descended on the mountain, which gave the battle the name of The Battle Above the Clouds. To the north of the city, Grant ordered Sherman to attack the north end of Missionary Ridge. Moving across the river, Sherman took what he believed was the north end of the ridge, but was actually Billy Goat Hill. His advance was stopped by Confederates under Major General Patrick Cleburne at Tunnel Hill. He thought that a frontal assault on Missionary Ridge to be suicidal, Grant planned to envelop Braggs line with Hooker attacking the south and Sherman from the north. To defend his position, Bragg had wanted three rows of rifle pits to be dug on Missionary Ridge, with artillery on the very top. Moving out the next day, both attacks met with little success as Shermans men were unable to break Cleburnes line and Hooker was delayed by burned bridges over Chattanooga Creek. As reports of slow progress arrived, Grant began to believe that Bragg was weakening his center to reinforce his sides. To test this, he ordered Thomas to have his men advance and take the first line of Confederate rifle pits on Missionary Ridge. Attacking, the Army of the Cumberland, which for weeks had suffered taunts about the defeat at Chickamauga, succeeded in driving the Confederates from their position. Halting as ordered, the Army of the Cumberland soon found itself taking heavy fire from the other two lines of rifle pits above. Without orders, the men started to move up the hill in order to continue the battle. Though originally mad at what he perceived to be a neglect for his orders, Grant moved to have the attack supported. On the ridge, Thomas men advanced steadily, aided by the fact that Braggs engineers had accidentally placed the artillery on the actual crest of the ridge, rather than the military crest. This mistake stopped the guns from being brought to bear on the attackers. In one of the wars most dramatic events, the Union soldiers surged up the hill, broke Braggs center, and put the Army of Tennessee to rout. This battle finally ended in a Union win, which they were of course happy about, but even happier because of their loss at Chickamauga, so this win made them feel like it made up for their other loss. The victory at Chattanooga cost the Union 753 men that were killed, 4,7220 of the men in their troops were injured and 349 missing. The Confederate’s casualties were listed as 361 killed, 2,160 wounded, and 4,146 captured and missing. The Battle of Chattanooga opened the door for the invasion of the Deep South and the capture of Atlanta in 1864. In addition, the battle destroyed the Army of Tennessee and forced Confederate President Jefferson Davis to relieve Bragg and replace him General Joseph E. Johnston. Following the battle, Bragg’s men went back south to Dalton, GA. Hooker was sent out to pursue the broken army, but was defeated by Cleburne at the Battle of Riggold Gap on November 27, 1863. The Battle of Chattanooga was the last time Grant fought in the West as he moved East to deal with Confederate General Robert E. Lee the following spring. ? Bibliography †¢www. wikipedia. org †¢www. wiki. answers. com/ †¢http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/The_Battle_Of_Chattanooga †¢http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Chattanooga †¢http://www. nps. gov/hps/abpp/battles/tn024. htm †¢http://www. battlesforchattanooga. com/

Investment Appraisal for Miggy and Brothers Co Essay

Investment Appraisal for Miggy and Brothers Co - Essay Example MBC is considering three alternatives as replacements: model A which will be sourced from the United States; Model B which is a British machine; and model C which will be imported from France. All of these machineries cost $100,000 and are seen to improve the production efficiency of the company and reduce the costs incurred in manufacture. As these are new machines, MBC will be hiring and training personnel who will operate the new equipment. Exact amount is not yet determined but Model C, in particular is expected to incur the highest training cost since the machine is least user-friendly. Models A & B have local dealer which agree to maintain and repair the machines for MBC. In the case of Model C, MBC needs to seek French manufacturers to service the machine in case of emergencies. The choice between the three machines under consideration can be justified by utilizing tools which tests the profitability of each investment. Three of the most frequently used assessment tools will be employed in MBC decision making. These are payback period, net present value analysis, and internal rate of return analysis. Aside from the quantitative data given by the management, this report adjusted the figures to enhance the rationale of the choice. In this regard, the salvage value of the old machine to be replaced is reflected as cash flows in Models A, B, and C. It should be noted that as the acquisition of the new machine will entail discarding the old, all options will benefit from the revenue of selling the old one. Due to equity considerations, this report opted to disregard the salvage value of the three machines on the sixth year. Since the salvage value of Models B and C cannot be determined, it is more rational to omit the revenue to be derived from the future sale of the machines. 3.1 Payback Period The payback period is one of the simplest ways in ascertaining the feasibility of an investment. This tool is used to determine the length of time that the company can recoup its cash outlay (Keown, et al, 2005). Table 2 shows the computed payback period for the three options. Table 2. Payback Period Computation From the above computation, Model A has a payback period of 4 years while the company's investment in Models B and C will be recouped within a shorter period of three years. 3.2 Net Present Value Net Present Value (NPV) is the difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows (Keown, et al, 2005). Table 3. Net Present Value Computation Table 2 shows the computation for the NPV of the three machines under consideration. Model A has an NPV of 6,434 while Models B and C generate discounted cash flows of -7,299 and 16,455, respectively. 3.3 Internal Rate of Return The internal rate of return is the cost of capital which equates the NPV to zero (Keown, et al, 2005). Table 4 shows the different IRR for each model as computed by Microsoft Excel. Consistent with the NPV analysis,

Cars Technical Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

Cars Technical - Essay Example After World War I, the United States became a renewal of economic growth, from new inventions to growth of an expanding road infrastructure. This economic growth helped accelerate the need for the automobile. The automobile industry grew quickly because of many innovative inventions. In the 1950's innovation was getting greater speed through the design of more powerful engines. In the 1960's innovation was building a sleek but performance driven auto. In the 1970's, the automobile and gas shortage led many automakers to look for innovative ways to control emission and decrease gas consumption. The convergence of computer and auto industries helped improve gas mileage and cut down on emission. The last 25 years of the car industry has seen technical and design advances that increased standardization, platform sharing, and CAD design. Body styles have changed to include the hatchback, minivan and sport utility vehicle (Consumer Guide p 10). Automotive engines are called internal combustion (IC) engine because the fuel that runs them is burned internally, or inside the engines. There are two types, reciprocating and rotary. Reciprocating means moving up and down, or back and forth. Almost all automotive engines are of the reciprocating type. In these engines, pistons moves up and down, or reciprocate, in cylinders. This type of engine is called piston engine. Rotary engines have rotors that spin, or rotate. The only such engine now used in automobiles is the Wankel engine. 1 )Types of Engine System: 1.1 Car Engine: The main function of a car's engine is to make it move. Engines come in a range of strengths as well as speeds. All recent engines are made of vital parts. Car engines are built around cylinders (generally something from 2-12 of them, however usually 4, 6 or 8) in which the fuel is burnt. Super-strong metal and sealed shut, arte used to make these cylinders however at one end open and closes exactly like bicycle pumps: these consist of tight-fitting pistons (plungers) that may slide up as well as down in them. At the top of every cylinder, there are two valves. The inlet valve permits fuel as well as air to go into the cylinder; the outlet valve lets the exhaust gases loose. At the very top of the cylinder, a sparking plug (or spark plug) is present, this is a device which is controlled electrically as well as makes a spark to put fire to the fuel. At the base of the cylinder, the piston is connected to a continually turning axle that is known as a crankshaft. The crankshaft's function is to powers up the gearbox of the car which then drives the wheels. The capacity of an engine function is depends on the power or the horse power that i t develops. This in turn is reliant on the ability of the engine. 2.)Diesel Engines: In 1892, Rudolph Diesel, a German engineer developed the "diesel" engine. Unlike the gasoline engine, the diesel engine is capable of spontaneous combustion of liquid fuel without requiring spark ignition. "The key advantage of the diesel engine over the gasoline engine is its fuel economy as well as durability" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine). Known as a "workhorse" the diesel engine became the engine of choice for heavy construction machinery, mining

Travel method cost Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Travel method cost - Case Study Example A small section of the analysis dwells on certain suggestions that are likely to bring improvements, especially in the above-identified areas. There are certain variables that significantly determine the achievement of the project’s desired results. Such factors include the entrance fee, entrance fee income, the potential trips to be registered annually, trips to be lost annually. Such variables are analyzed and their respective contributions to the success of the TCM (Parsons 300). In general, the analysis evaluates the Travel Cost Method as technique of providing recreational value of Yeulu Mountain Park. The goal is to provide important data for stating a better entrance fee. The population under target in the analysis is Yeulu Mountain Park visitors. The visitors are very many to incorporate in the study. A representative sample is therefore considered. As discussed above, there are two groups of visitors in the park, the foreign (non-local) visitors and the native (local) visitors. In the questionnaire used being considered for the analysis, 200 respondents were chosen to make the represent the views of the entire population if visitors. Each in the sample represented unit for analysis in the structured questionnaire. The sampling technique used in the analysis is stratified random sampling. It involves sampling every subpopulation separately to increase the estimation accuracy. The data used in the analysis was collected from Yeulu Mountain, Changsha city of China, in July 2007. Direct interviews were the collection method used. It assisted in improving accuracy as no data was left out of the questionnaire. It helped to ensure that the data used in th e case analysis was complete. From experience, it has been confirmed that the entrance fee income obtained is dependent on the set entrance fee. The entrance fee income can be maximized by the amount of the fee placed on, by the National Park’s management. The demand function of the Park’s travel

Sandra Cisneros family and life experiences to themes in his or her Essay

Sandra Cisneros family and life experiences to themes in his or her literature - Essay Example Most of her works are about poor-to-middle class Latinas in the world of modern America. She speaks reality in most of her works. Her works have been featured in periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Elle, Grand Street, The Village Voice, The New York Times and Glamour. Her most popular novel The House on Mango Street earned worldwide applause. It is about a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago experiencing the harsh reality of life with lessons that can benefit the readers. Her work is highly acclaimed in the literary world such that schools included her work in their curriculum as part of required reading materials (Bergolhz, 2007). Cisneros has earned her living through writing for more than 45 years already. She has published more than 35 publications (Cisneros, 2013). But it was after school that Sandra discovered that she would become a writer. After she graduated from Loyola in Chicago in the year 1976, she attended the University of Iowa’s Write rs Workshop. It was this time of her life that she felt alone, isolated and so out of place. She felt different from her well-bred classmates. This feeling did not suppress her, instead, it uplifted her spirit to become who she is right now. As she quoted in Publishers Weekly, â€Å"It was not until this moment when I separated myself, when I considered myself truly distinct, that my writing acquired a voice. That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about† (LaBalle, C. 2002). Sandra has been writing poems and stories while growing up. But it was her feelings of alienation that Sandra felt during her writing workshops that made her realize what she would be writing about. As an American-Mexican living in an Americanized culture, she felt herself unique. Instead of dwelling in her differences, she decided to write about the stories about what she has gone through in life. The encountered conflicts during her growing years su ch as poverty, cultural differences, social alienation and degradation, and her feelings as a Latina writer are the topics of interests in most of her writings (Jufer,J. ,2013). While her well bred classmates wrote about good homes, nice family and good life, Sandra chooses her topic mostly about women finding their strength in life rising as victors in their poor conditions. She mirrors the harshness of life and the reality of pain clearly through her poems, short stories and novels. She develops strong characters carrying stories that can enrich and encourage souls. Washington Post Book World connotes her as â€Å"a writer of power and eloquence and great lyrical beauty† (Gale, 1998). Sandra Cisneros did not have an easy life. She can’t relate with the traditional homes and families. She was brought up in the state of poverty. She was born in Chicago, but her family moved from place to place most of the time. This situation has great impact to her such that she becam e shy, conscious and has no lasting friends. She exposed this side of her in Publisher Weekly quoting â€Å"The moving back and forth, the new school were very upsetting to me as a child. They caused me to be very introverted and shy. I do not remember making friend easily.† (Gale, 1998). The constant movements made her feel unfit and lonely. She resolved into reading books and expressed her melancholy through writing. These experiences she had from her

The Promise and The Blessings Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Promise and The Blessings - Assignment Example I have known many incidents where God provided for him. When God instructed Moses, along with his brother Aaron, to deliver the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh, God assured Moses that he does not have to worry as God will perform all those plagues, and will eventually soften Pharaoh’s heart in the end. When I read the first chapter of Exodus, it says, Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.† Indeed, the Lord fulfilled this promise. He, through Moses, set the Israelites free from slavery. I also read in Exodus 33:14 that, The LORD replied, â€Å"My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.† I read a verse, which fulfilled this promise. In Exodus 13:21-22, it explained how the Israelites were guided by the Lord in the form of pillars of clouds. Surely, God was with Moses and the rest of the Israelites as they traveled into the Promised Land, which God has given. He guided them and provided for their

Travel method cost Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Travel method cost - Case Study Example A small section of the analysis dwells on certain suggestions that are likely to bring improvements, especially in the above-identified areas. There are certain variables that significantly determine the achievement of the project’s desired results. Such factors include the entrance fee, entrance fee income, the potential trips to be registered annually, trips to be lost annually. Such variables are analyzed and their respective contributions to the success of the TCM (Parsons 300). In general, the analysis evaluates the Travel Cost Method as technique of providing recreational value of Yeulu Mountain Park. The goal is to provide important data for stating a better entrance fee. The population under target in the analysis is Yeulu Mountain Park visitors. The visitors are very many to incorporate in the study. A representative sample is therefore considered. As discussed above, there are two groups of visitors in the park, the foreign (non-local) visitors and the native (local) visitors. In the questionnaire used being considered for the analysis, 200 respondents were chosen to make the represent the views of the entire population if visitors. Each in the sample represented unit for analysis in the structured questionnaire. The sampling technique used in the analysis is stratified random sampling. It involves sampling every subpopulation separately to increase the estimation accuracy. The data used in the analysis was collected from Yeulu Mountain, Changsha city of China, in July 2007. Direct interviews were the collection method used. It assisted in improving accuracy as no data was left out of the questionnaire. It helped to ensure that the data used in th e case analysis was complete. From experience, it has been confirmed that the entrance fee income obtained is dependent on the set entrance fee. The entrance fee income can be maximized by the amount of the fee placed on, by the National Park’s management. The demand function of the Park’s travel

The Promise and The Blessings Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Promise and The Blessings - Assignment Example I have known many incidents where God provided for him. When God instructed Moses, along with his brother Aaron, to deliver the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh, God assured Moses that he does not have to worry as God will perform all those plagues, and will eventually soften Pharaoh’s heart in the end. When I read the first chapter of Exodus, it says, Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.† Indeed, the Lord fulfilled this promise. He, through Moses, set the Israelites free from slavery. I also read in Exodus 33:14 that, The LORD replied, â€Å"My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.† I read a verse, which fulfilled this promise. In Exodus 13:21-22, it explained how the Israelites were guided by the Lord in the form of pillars of clouds. Surely, God was with Moses and the rest of the Israelites as they traveled into the Promised Land, which God has given. He guided them and provided for their

St. Thomas Aquinas Essay Example for Free

St. Thomas Aquinas Essay The Five Ways of the Summa Theologica was written by St. Thomas Aquinas. In this writing Aquinas argues against two objections of the existence of a God and provides five arguments in which he believes to solidify the idea that God does exist, further disproving these objections. Aquinas’s first argument for the existence of God is that of motion. To Aquinas, everything is in motion and motion must start from somewhere. He explains that nothing can be moved without something previously causing that movement and thus proves that God is real because God is the initial mover. This argument, however, does not prove the existence of God. If we were to think that this argument proves anything it would be that we do not know the initial mover nor do we know what actually causes these motions. God in this sense is used as an answer to a question that we do not really know the answer to. Aquinas’s second argument for the existence of God is based on cause and effect. Aquinas’s argument is that there is no effect without a cause; God being the cause and the universe being the effect. He also believes that this is not an infinite possibility and that there must be a start and an end and without the middle there will be no beginning or end. Again, he offers an argument that in no way proves the existence of God. Aquinas appears to be filling in the lack of answers with the existence of God and not rebutting the holes that his argument leaves open. When I turn on the light switch in my room, I am essentially the first mover and I am the creator of that light. Does this make me God because I wield the power of light at my fingertips or are there better explanations of how the light came to be? Aquinas’s third argument is simply that nothing can exist from nothing; therefore, there had to be something in existence to create this world and that was God. This argument is based on the pure assumption that nothing comes from nothing and that something can cause something. For one to assume such a thing would be completely absurd because this lacks any evidence. Similarly, Aquinas’s argument assumes a creator and fails to give adequate proof of this creator’s existence. The fourth argument that Aquinas presents is that of gradation. He states that all things have a minimum and a maximum or the worst and the best and uses the example of fire—fire is the maximum of heat. He further concludes that all beings are caused by something and that there must be a greatest of that being of which it was created by and that being is God. â€Å"Therefore there must be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection. † This argument explains why there can be evil in the world because God is the most good of us all and we are lesser than God. What this argument fails to describe is the idea of what is greater than God. Would there not be a more powerful, more good, more perfect being in which created God? The fifth and final argument that Aquinas presents is that all beings are on a path and lack the knowledge of that path. Thus all beings are guided by a greater being with more knowledge who directs them. Regardless if God were to exist or not, all beings are bound to die. Is that the path that God is directing us toward? There are plenty of people in the world who do not believe in the existence of God and they are not immortal, their lives still come to an end. To a non believer or skeptic living a life without guidance or acceptance of God will die just as that of a believer in God. So if God were to show us the way to the end, how can the two parties reach the same ending, one with guidance and one without? While Aquinas does make some very good points on why one should or does believe in the existence of God, he in no why proves anything of the sort. His assertions are all based on the presumption that there is a God and that he is the answer to all things without solid proof.

Vulnerability Of Adults With Learning Disabilities Social Work Essay

Vulnerability Of Adults With Learning Disabilities Social Work Essay Adults with learning disabilities who are vulnerable need support to ensure that they are not denied the right or opportunity to make their own decision and give their own consent (Peate Fearns, 2006). According to Hayes, (1993) states that, adults with learning disabilities who may have had no choice but to accept the labels dingbat or airhead to cover the confusion, memory lapses, misread or misunderstood directions, or the dozens of other mean tricks that adult has played on through the years. People who have much less the ability and capacity to understand new or complex information, either less able learn new skills also has a little ability to dealing independently like-the ability to social work weakness and the requirement that of the beginning before the age of puberty have a lasting effect on development (Scottish Executive,2010). Adults with learning disabilities comprise of a highly vulnerable part of the society, who have limited access to health care facilities /services offered to them. According to Kerr et al., (1996a) he states that, learning disabilities suffer form a similar range of morbidity as the general population, but some conditions are seen with greater frequency within certain syndrome. They are often faced with obstacles and challenges while coping with grave situations such as loss and bereavement of loved ones, personal illness, death etc (Elliott, 1995).They are known to have been ignored persistently in terms of providing services in the need of personal illness, death, and other challenging life situations, thus increasing their vulnerability all the more (Elliott, 1995). Vulnerability Risk: A vulnerable adult is a person who is eighteen years of age or older who is, or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness; and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation. -No Secrets March 2000, p 45. Every human being becomes vulnerable during their lifetime for many of reasons they all respond differently to events that happen to them because of who they are and the lack of support that they have around them (Jacki, 2001). The term vulnerable adult(s) is now use more widely in the social care field than it ever was, but it may be open to interpretation and being vulnerable means different things to different people (Jacki,2001). People with learning disabilities are one of the most vulnerable groups in the society (Department of Health 2001). Learning disabilities may be more at risk not only because their own difficulties in understanding or communication but also because of the way they receive services and the fact that they may be actively targeted or taken advantages (Jean and Anthea, 1997). The broad definition of vulnerable adults is a person: who is or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or disability, age or illness; and who is or may be unable to take care of themselves, or unable to protect him against significant harm, risk or exploitation (DOH 2000, s.2.3). Among the most vulnerable members of society they cant speak up for themselves. For example, if consequences are limited when an adult with learning disabilities abuses another person, the victim may be left with the idea that such behaviour is normal and acceptable, and that services will provide little protection and that their complaints will not be heard. It may also increase their vulnerability to further abuse because abuse can become normalised and more likely to be the victim of abuse physically (McCarthy and Thompson, 1996). The Oxford Dictionary define risk as meaning a hazard, a dangerous, exposure to mischance or peril, as verb it also similar which means hazard, to danger, to expose to the chance of injury or loss( Parsloe, 2005). Risk is closely linked to dangerousness, resulting in harm which seems to be agreed means harm to self or others and extend of harm which constitutes a risk in various situations especially adult with learning disabilities. If you dont know for sure what will happen, but you know the odds thats risk, and if you dont even know the odds, thats uncertainty (Knight, 1921, p.25). Royal Society (1983) states that, risk assessment which axiom as the probability that a particular adverse event occurs and social services has been concerned predominate with risk assessment to prevent harm. They may also suffer further if they have to deal with seeing their perpetrator on a regular basis, and may be subject to further assaults in retaliation of their initial complaint. In addition to the risks to existing victims, poor responses may result in increasing numbers of people being abused. Definition of vulnerable adult in section 80(6) Care Standard Act 2000 states that- (a) an adult to whom nursing and accommodation or personal care are provided in care whom (b) in adult to whom personal care is provided in their under arrangements made by a domiciliary care agency own home (Peate Fearns, 2006). Adults with learning disabilities, and those people who have a less capacity like who have mental illness, old and frail, need protection from potentially abusive situation over which they might have little control (Department of Health, 2000). Learning disability Adolescents obliviously it is not always acted in ways that serve their own best interests, even as defined by them (Fischhoff et al., 2000). Sometimes their perception of their own risks, even of survival to adulthood, is larger than the reality; in other cases, they underestimate the risks of particular actions or behaviours since adults abuse and risk has gain higher profile. According to Kemshall and Pritchard (2001) states that, there has been much debate about a welfare model or a criminal justice model should be adopted. After the recent death Steven Hoskin 22 years young man who has been dead by numbers people. Adults vulnerable protection systems are likely to come under close scrutiny (Jacki, 2001). It is possible, indeed likely, that some adolescents engage in risky behaviours because of a perception of invulnerability-the current conventional wisdom of adults views of adolescent behaviour. Others, however, take risks because they feel vulnerable to a point approaching hopelessness (Fischhoff et al., 2000). In either case, these perceptions can prompt adults to make poor decisions that can put them at risk and leave them vulnerable to physical or psychological harm that may have a negative impact on their long-term health and viability. Learning Disabilities: The concept of learning disability Brumback (2004), people who have development disorder in their language, speech, reading and associated communication skills needed for social interaction also who have sensory handicaps such as blindness or deafness and generalized mental retardation. According to Robert (2009) Learning disability is a neurodevelopment disorder affecting a specific cognitive skill that occurs in the presence of intact skills in most others realms and specific impairments are presumed to be due to dysfunction of the brain and to have been present since birth. And learning disability substantially limits functioning in one or more aspect of persons life (Mapou, 2004). According to Mencap (2010) reports that, in the UK there are 1.5 million people with a learning disability. Most are treated as different and dont have the same control over their own lives as the rest of our society. Over the past century and a half there have been huge changes in the in the labelling of those people presently categorize as having learning disabilities. In social policy terms, they have been variously labelled as vagabonds, idiots, mentally handicapped, learning disabled, and people with learning difficulties among others names (Gordon,2005). Above the definition indicates that, Learning Disabilities is thà Ã‚ µ terminology used to label people that function at an intellectual level that is significantly lower than the average people in society (David and Hinor,2003). Different periods in history have meant different things, depending on the social and economic circumstances of the time, and of course on how long people with learning disabilities lived (Brian, 2006). Risk Assessment Decision Making Process/ Practice Tools: Increasingly responding to the risks of others, preventing risks to vulnerable adults or running risks to themselves is all in days work for the busy practitioners and manager in the field of social care (Brearley, 1982). Every day a lot of risk situation changes rapidly and what applied yesterday but may not today. Those service users who are identified as at risk would be provided highly effective instruction to reduce their risk in the identified area (e.g., language, reading, numeracy/ math, behaviour) (Brown, 2003). David Carson (1988b) points to about risk Risks should be taken to achieve specific goals in the light of possible harms occurring and Taking risks involves deciding that the potential benefits of a proposed act out weight the potential drawback (p.248). Hence risk always should be taking whether or not to act to achieve beneficial results in an awareness of potential harm. To minimize risk and make it useful and meaningful, may risk situations need to be reassessed regularly perhaps daily basis according service users daily need. People with learning disabilities are subject to risk all time due to their vulnerability they sometimes abused by those who have control over them or by those who realize that they are vulnerable because of their disabilities they often find it very much more difficult to assess risk the way most of social carer and services do (Vaughn and Fuchs, 2003). While most of carer don dont asses risk very efficiently they generally make some attempt to do so. Its not easy at all to do risk assessment as it is a complex task and most of the time carer or support worker they do adequately but not very thoroughly (Carol, 2002). In spite of some difficulties, there is an increasing awareness that people with learning disabilities can make choices, moreover they want to do so. Nevertheless its often failed to consider is that, the amount of risk that these choices carry and most of us have grown up accustomed to risk-taking. Many problems about assessing risk that different services user may perceive the different risk. What is acceptable to one person may not be acceptable to another. Main objective of the risk assessment when its possible may sometimes affect decision making in number of different ways (Heilbrun, K.et.al (1999). It is true many adults with learning disabilities who have always facing risk in their everyday life. Significantly about choice decision sometimes its difficult for adult as well carer to make right choice how could be at risk. The difficulty for people with learning disabilities is that carers often do feel often they are expected to make these choices for them. The law of negligence can appear to inhibit decision making personal freedom and choice sit uncomfortably next to the concepts of duty of care and professional liability (Fuchs, 2003). People with learning disabilities may not have done perhaps carers need to be encouraged to help their service users how to make choices with and appreciation of the risk involved. This is more challenging task than just encouraging choice alone it seems that not only should people with learning be allowed to make choices and take risk they should actively be encourage to do (Kemshall Pritchard, 1996). Multidisciplinary Risk Assessment: There are a range of sources where information can be gained for a through risk assessment which include the prospective resident, their relatives or practitioners involve with the person and any written reports; which may be historic or recent (Alaszewski and Manthorpe, 2002). The problem with the right to make choices is that it assumes that adult with learning disabilities are able to make choice about risk in the same way every one does (Heilbrun, K.et.al.1999). It acknowledge that adult with learning disabilities do have real difficulties with many cognitive takes. Most have problems in assessing risk effectively because of the complexity of doing so it is likely that people with learning disabilities will find the particular difficult. An endeavour to make balance the protection of vulnerable adults, as standard in the No Secrets guidance ( DoH, 2000) where different policies that encourage and aid to take more control to service users in their lives which also including to tak e opportunities and manage risks. In 2007, Department of Health established risk assessment and management regulation and various assessment tools for help practitioners and professional to work predominately in the field of social care. According to Jones, 1998 states that, the assessment of ability to consent and the ability to make real choice, especially in relation to understanding the likely consequences of the choices or decision made. It could be helpful when any risk assessment plan to do like-if carer support worker want to take any decision about the service users or any person , is the person are aware about that decision been mad or going take ? Are they communicating their choice decision making? Giving more choice people with learning disabilities especially about taking risk, its mean that carer have to be alert to the extent to which the service users are able realistically to assess the level of risks involved (Sellars, 2003). Many adult with learning disabled the most successful way to avoid and minimize risk to avoid further problem is by effective management. When the person concerned may have been living in a setting where the opportunities for such behaviour have been very limited or absent, carers and professionals are sometimes tempted to assume that because the recent past has been incident-free the problem has disappeared (Carol, 2003) Risk Assessment: Risk assessment is about predicting the future and the likelihood of particular events occurring; these will be both wanted and unwanted events (Pritchard, 2004). Risk assessment is merely the description of good methodical practice to risky situations (Jones, 1998 p.5). In leave to address matters of importance for instance dangers, hazards, and known triggers and how best to keep away from them is a risk assessment. Confirm that they are recognizable with the exacting risks that you have put measures in place to reduce, or eliminate them and that you could face with the person in your care. A multifaceted and time consuming task and a continuous process is Assessment (Pritchard, 1997). Assessment of risk for adult with learning disabilities which should be evolutionary in nature constantly informed and shaped by changes of circumstances upon service users needs (Brown, 2003). The practice of risk assessment and management is the process of data collection, recording, interpretation, communication and implementation of risk reduction plan (Maden, 1996). For the risk of learning disability, clinical model of risk assessment have become the norm. There are two kinds of risk that are relevant to work people with learning disabilities, risk of unnecessary exposure to undesirable events or experience, and risk of negative consequences when possible benefits and desirable experiences are perused ( William, 2006). Above this it is clear that a strategy of prevention should implement, and management is required so that risk and benefit are balanced. In social care and health care there are broadly two main context of risk which are not provided and everyday risk in their life and learning disability have a history of formally documented offence (Thompson, 2000). So far it has been established that different service users have different risk upon their physical and mental health which is major issue for people with learning disabilities and there are large number of people with learning disabilities who suffer from variety of physical and mental health condition (Heilbrun, K.et.al. 1999). However, the true extent of the problem cannot be known, due to difficulties in assessment, and it is estimated that the actual number is high due to the service users being unable to sufficiently communicate their social life. It follow that the more severe the communication problems, sometime its difficult service user are gain true assessment (Priest Gibbs2004). In order to fully appreciate the process of risk assessment, here identify the one of particular service users and consider the kind of life they lead at present. Service users who is Mr M 22 years old young male with complex physical learning disabilities who has Cerebral palsy affecting all four limbs, epilepsy, severe learning difficulties and Migraine which affects him seizure pattern. Who lives in a residential care home with four others service users people with learning disability. However this service user also have gastro feed which need to use for his water and medication as he cant drink and always need someone to assist his food. Deliberate self-harm is relatively common when he feels unhappy and anxiety his verbal language is very limited he can communicate within short sentences and can answer yes/no. Mr M always need to use wheel chair for maintains his everyday life. Assessment of risk The plan should note risk low, medium or high as well as the impact of the child or young person on others. (Guidance on the Child or Young Persons Plan, Scottish Executive. 2007, page 13). Risk assessment is useless unless the results are shared with everyone who is involved in the care of ht client (Sellars, 2003 p.154). There are several risk exist her for this service users as he has Cerebral palsy which is a general term used by doctors to refer to a set of neurological conditions that affect a people movement and co-ordination. Neurological conditions affect the brain and nervous system. Epilepsy is common, he needs to regular medicine and to control this and possibly refer to regular doctor visit due to he has migraine problem as well as. He also has choking difficulties while he eats his meal. Risk can fall of wheel chair if it does not fasten. At risk of being hurt when moved. And at risk of falling off ramp when loading in to resident vehicle while he travelling. Risk to carer/staff: This service user often to risk carer or staff, some risk that he could become aggressive if he is feel hungry or any physical illness. Infrequently he can become aggressive or even violent during the illness so that this behaviour needs to be monitored. Frequency of risk: This service user sometimes settled and had good responded well to medication. It is likely he is vulnerable and sometime faced with stress in his life due his migraine problem. And he has Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG) and need to see doctor every four months. Level of Risk: The level of risk is very high this residential care home has own risk assessment plan. For minimize the risk as vulnerable adult trust has their own policy according to service users need. For health and safety and others physical risks as well as there are recognized health risk associated with the carer and service users. Taking risks daily on occasion, and thus the level of risk that he will come to harm which is quite high. Manual handling risk: To minimize risk during changing of position in bed/on floor, slide sheet to be used and make sure service user is positioned correctly and two trained staff to assist him all times. Staff to use high adjustments on equipment where needed like Hoist. To transfer from bed to chair, chair to bed and chair to chair the level of risk also high staff always hoisted for all transfer using allocated sling. Staff to use height adjustment equipment where available during Changing Bench/ shower/ bath level of risk also high. Due to his physical ability while he travels in transport he need his wheel chair and have to make sure four point clamps to be use while on the vehicle and addition seat belt to minimize risk during his journey. Possible outcome: The immediate outcome is that health needs are constantly monitored by his parents and his career. He has cerebrally palsy which affecting his limbs and also had severe learning disability and epilepsy which is controlled using prescribed medicine that administrated by his concern of his resident/trust. He also sometimes suffers from migraine and takes medication for his migraines appears to be controlled at the present time. He always uses wheel chair for mobility. Seizure and migraines are prone to increase when become too warm and carers are aware of this which is monitor by closely. Managing Risk: From the above analysis it is clear that this service user is a high risk client. However, the key to understanding the level of risk is the acceptance that his behaviour could be change which depends on his medication and close support from his parents/ career and doctor. And it is important in the first instance try keep staff safe and would be wise to ensure that staff work always in pairs, and that vulnerable are not left alone unattended. While assessed others should not be put at risk and violence cant be ignored (Casellas, 2003). Sometimes it would be wise to monitor behaviour it may be possible to discover patterns his behaviour like- When he became agitated is there any time or reason? How about his voice does he react different tones of voice? Why he wants to hit staff is there any communication gape? Are some time or someday difficult? Does he feel uncomfortable or need personal support? Or are there any physical problems which make him unhappy and annoyed? For behaviour assessment by psychologist or doctors recommended, in order to see if any patterns emerge this may allow the behaviour plan to be managed within the existing home. However sometime service users simply exploiting inexperience staff to his advantage, then it may be necessary to move him to another place ensuring that he is supported by staff with experience who knows him well. Thus a review of medication and careful monitoring to ensure that he takes it may improve the situation which he has epilepsy and others physical illness. And staff should be aware environment they are in and hazard that may be present. While proper risk-assessment procedures may be lengthy and complex quality of life for a person with learning disabilities is likely to depend upon them (Kemshall and Pritchard 1996). Conclusion/Recommendation: Risks change constantly and people grow, change, and develop. It is important to review risk assessment regularly, and aim always to increase choice and freedom for the people with learning disability (Sellars, 2003 p.155). People with learning disabilities are beginning to reclaim the lives they lost in the institutions, having choices, jobs, sex lives and even becoming parents unthinkable until even quite recently. Slowly, perhaps far too slowly, the rest of the community is beginning to realize that the majority of people with learning disabilities are not so different from everyone else, and need the same things in their lives that all of us do: work, leisure, partners, and a sense of being part of a social group (Heillbrun, K. Et al 1999). They want to feel useful and valued, as we all do. Life is full of risks. We all take risks all the time, and the more familiar they are the less we tend to recognize the real level of risk involved. It actually takes the greatest risk in our lives every time that we step into a car, but few of us really consider that risk seriously (Daniel, 2003). This is the other side of the coin; we are inclined to believe that it wont happen, even when the objective statistics suggest otherwise the difficulty that now exists for people with learning disabilities, especially those with greater disability, and those who care for and support them, is that the law specifies that many such people are vulnerable, and not able to make this choice for themselves (Daniel, 2003). The onus of assessing risk and making the decision therefore often rests with carers. Because it is such a difficult decision to make for someone else, carers often take the simple way out, and avoid letting situations arise where learning-disabled people in their care have the opportunity to develop sexual relationships: if a person cannot make an informed choice then perhaps it is easier not to offer them that choice (Lindsay 2004). This is the current dilemma for those who work in community care situations. According to David J. Thompson,(2000) the issue of sexual relationships is perhaps the most difficult and complex, but this problem of balancing risk and choice is a constant one for carers and professionals, in relation to many aspects of everyday life. In the background is the ogre of the law (and/or local management), ready to jump on the unwary, should they get it wrong. No wonder, perhaps that many are cautious about enabling such choices to be made. Get higher in the information of vulnerable adults referred to them for the reason that they are at risk of physical and sexual mistreatment, in addition to financial fraud, a study has found in Social services departments have seen (Simon, 1997. So where adult with learning disabilities have more complex problems, such as behaviour problem, mental illness, or others any physical or mental disorder they will need additional care and support to cope with their everyday lives (Hawks, 1998). Sometimes these problems impose additional risks, and these do need to taken into account when assessing and managing risks for each person/adult.

Racial Profiling is Necessary Essay -- Race Racism Prejudice Essays

In order to understand racial profiling, it must first be correctly defined. Although different authors use different criteria for the term racial profiling, Merriam-Webster’s definition for the word racial is â€Å"of, relating to, or based on a race (Merriam-Webster, 2006; p.855).† The definition the dictionary puts forth for profiling is â€Å"the act of suspecting or targeting a person solely on the basis of observed characteristics or behavior (Merriam-Webster, 2006; p.830).† Based on these definitions, racial profiling could be defined for criminal justice purposes as targeting a person based solely on the characteristic of race. Most people, law enforcement officers included, would consider racial profiling based on this definition as ethically wrong. However, a case must be made for the use of profiling based on race in some circumstances. Critics claim that racial profiling has no place within the justice system because it targets minorities who are not necessarily doing anything illegal. They argue that the evidence that shows that racial profiling as a successful tool in the law enforcement arsenal is skewed, and that those targeted are actually less likely to perform illegal acts than others who are not targeted, because those who are not are less likely to get caught, while those who are targeted are much more likely to be caught in an illegal act, so they will perform less illegal activity. The evidence supporting racial profiling states that this argument is invalid because many illegal acts are cited as being done by minorities, specifically in terms of gang activity. Many people feel that racial profiling is ethically sound because in order to obtain a suspect, an officer must be looking for a person with certain chara... ...rian’s perspective and he believed that any profiling based on race is wrong (Fredrickson, 2002; p.166). Conclusion Based on these authors, as well as others, it can be effectively argued that racial profiling is not, in and of itself, an unethical practice. However, it must be used in a precise manner in order to be morally sound. This method includes using it as a tool in the investigative process and not before it has been determined that a crime has been committed. It must also be used in a specific way: to describe an individual suspect and not a group of people who are suspected of possibly committing one crime or another. The witness’s background and bias must be taken into account, and racial profiling must be done equally and without favor to one racial group. After these steps are taken into account, racial profiling cannot be considered unethical.

The Stolen Bacillus by H.G. Wells Essay -- Stolen Bacillus Wells Essay

The Stolen Bacillus by H.G. Wells This is a story set in the 19th century people had dress codes which reflected your status in society. The dress code was formal and quite severe it was almost as if the longer your top hat the higher up the rank you are in importance in society. In this story we meet a man who wants to help the society and quality of living whereas the other wants to destroy order as he is what’s known as an anarchist. This is someone who is feels that people should be responsible for there own actions and decisions meaning they govern their own lives. In the 19th century anarchists were seen as political agitators and sometimes violent. As in this story where we will see a man desperate and willing to go to extremes to get his point heard. While the scientist is talking about the bacteria, H.G Wells makes him talk about it as if it is a human and that it is like us. This is shown when he says, â€Å"he would wait ready to be drunk in the horse troughs†. By comparing the bacteria to humans the author is trying to enforce the point that it is smarter than the average bacteria it is as complex and technically as dangerous as a human. The scientist is an idealistic and when the anarchist paid so much interest into what he was doing he started to show off. He spoke about his new cholera which is very harmful to a man he has just met, which is indeed not a clever thing to do is. The scientist is an idealist and is out to do well in the world and improve living conditions of people. The scientist is not a man out to make money, just simply wants to be famous. When the chase is on it was funny to see the ridiculousness of this rabbit hunt round London. Even though this story had some serious... ... them. She wanted the scientist to put on his coat on a hot summers day. When he refused she became frustrated. The cabbies are another group of people in this story which shows the reality that this story is set in with their harsh cockney accents and they just represent the everyday people in this story. The scientist has to rely on people which would be classed as inferior to save the predicament he put himself in. These cabbies bring a lot of humour to the story. In this story H.G Wells is trying to get the point across those politicians and scientists aren’t as clever as they think they are and they also take themselves to seriously and so therefore make mistakes. In the Victorian era they believed they could improve man though industrial advancement this was achieved by individual successes like the scientist and through agreed religious ideas. The Stolen Bacillus by H.G. Wells Essay -- Stolen Bacillus Wells Essay The Stolen Bacillus by H.G. Wells This is a story set in the 19th century people had dress codes which reflected your status in society. The dress code was formal and quite severe it was almost as if the longer your top hat the higher up the rank you are in importance in society. In this story we meet a man who wants to help the society and quality of living whereas the other wants to destroy order as he is what’s known as an anarchist. This is someone who is feels that people should be responsible for there own actions and decisions meaning they govern their own lives. In the 19th century anarchists were seen as political agitators and sometimes violent. As in this story where we will see a man desperate and willing to go to extremes to get his point heard. While the scientist is talking about the bacteria, H.G Wells makes him talk about it as if it is a human and that it is like us. This is shown when he says, â€Å"he would wait ready to be drunk in the horse troughs†. By comparing the bacteria to humans the author is trying to enforce the point that it is smarter than the average bacteria it is as complex and technically as dangerous as a human. The scientist is an idealistic and when the anarchist paid so much interest into what he was doing he started to show off. He spoke about his new cholera which is very harmful to a man he has just met, which is indeed not a clever thing to do is. The scientist is an idealist and is out to do well in the world and improve living conditions of people. The scientist is not a man out to make money, just simply wants to be famous. When the chase is on it was funny to see the ridiculousness of this rabbit hunt round London. Even though this story had some serious... ... them. She wanted the scientist to put on his coat on a hot summers day. When he refused she became frustrated. The cabbies are another group of people in this story which shows the reality that this story is set in with their harsh cockney accents and they just represent the everyday people in this story. The scientist has to rely on people which would be classed as inferior to save the predicament he put himself in. These cabbies bring a lot of humour to the story. In this story H.G Wells is trying to get the point across those politicians and scientists aren’t as clever as they think they are and they also take themselves to seriously and so therefore make mistakes. In the Victorian era they believed they could improve man though industrial advancement this was achieved by individual successes like the scientist and through agreed religious ideas.

Case Study of Alliance Boots Plc

ALLIANCE BOOTS PLC: INTRODUCTIION: Alliance Boots is a leading international pharmacy-led health and beauty group serving a wide range of products and services to customers over 100 years in the UK. We are trying to identify how the Boots works internally and externally to reach its goal. We are also trying to find out how the Boots motivates its employees to be productive. We will also discuss its organizational structure and design to communicate each other function of the organization. We will discuss its appraisal system and organizational record keeping. We will also find out about its brand image to the stakeholder. Customers are at the heart of their business and they are devoted to providing extraordinary customers and patients care by offering innovative products ‘Only at Boots’ with exceptional values. People are their strength and tell us that Boots is a excellent place to work. They always aim to be the employers of choice by attracting and retaining the most talented and passionate people. BACK GROUND OF THE COMPANY: Boots had established its roots in the mid-19th century by John Boot, an agricultural worker, at Nottingham, in the UK. He opened a small herbalist store on Goose Gate in 1849. After John’s death in 1860, his widow, Mary, continued trading, with the help of her young son, Jesse, who became a full partner when he was 21. The store continued to thrive. In 1877, Jesse took sole control of the Boots. In 1920, he sold Boots to the United Drug Company of America. In 1933, the United Drug Company sold its holding in Boots to a group of British financiers led by John Boot, Jesse’s son. Under John’s chairmanship, the first overseas store opened in New Zealand in 1936; key brands No7 and Soltan was both launched in the 1930s. He also continued his parents’ tradition of staff welfare – improving working conditions, reducing hours and introducing pensions for all employees. More recent decades, the introduction of successful brands such as 17 cosmetics and Botanics and new business ventures such as Boots Opticians are more popular to the customers. A new chapter in Boots history started on 31st July, 2006with the merger with Alliance Unichem, to become part of Alliance Boots, an international pharmacy-led health and beauty group. Their product and services are Health and beauty, Personal care, Cosmetics and toiletries, Baby care, Dental & health care, OTC and Prescription medicines, Perfumes, and Skin care. (www. bized. co. uk,) MISSION: Their mission is to be the world’s leading pharmacy-led health and beauty group. They seek to develop their core business activities of pharmacy-led and beauty retailing and pharmaceutical wholesaling and distribution across the world and become a significant player in many leading international markets. PURPOSE: Their purpose is to deliver products that help people look and feel their best. VALUES: They believe in making a difference for the well being of the communities they serve. The core values are described below. * PARTNERSHIP: It includes respect, understanding and working together. They create and build value through partnerships and alliances, inside and outside the business. * TRUST: The essence of the way they do business. People trust because they deliver on their promises. * SERVICES: They hold high standards of care and service for customers and their people. * ENTREPRENEURSHIP: They are innovators, seeking new challenges and having a winning entrepreneurship. SIMPLICITY: They are proud of being lean and efficient, uncomplicated and easy to do business fairly. (www. allianceboots. com) AT A GLANCE: * Operating over 20 countries. * It has115, 000 employees. * Operating more than 3,250 health and beauty retail stores. * Dispensing more than 245 million items each year. * 1500 Stores in the UK and Irish Republic. * Serving 420 million customers (pa). * Operat ing over 360 pharmaceutical wholesale distribution centers. * Cash generated from operation ? 1130 million. * Revenue is ? 22. 5 billion. * EBITDA is ? 1,360 million. * Trading Profit is ? 1,074 million. www. allianceboots. com) BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT OF THE BOOTS: The organizational environment consists of internal and external environment. Alliance Boots operates in highly attractive markets with potential for significant long term growth. The Company expects to increase life expectancy and product innovation to continue to drive demand for prescription medicines and related healthcare services. At the same time, they believe that a growing customer focus on personal well being will drive demand for health and beauty consumer products and related services. Fig: The Organizational Environment of Boots: Legal Environmental Technological Political Social Economic External Environment Communication External Environment ————————————————- Innovation Strategy Change Internal Environment (Writer’s observation) INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT: In order to sustain an organization, it is necessarily to adapt internal structures, process and behaviors to enable to cope with complexity and the pace of external change. It is concerned about organization’s strategy, teamwork, management, leadership style, working practices, empowerment, employment patterns, etc. * STRATEGY: Johnson et al (2008) say that strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment with the fulfilling stakeholder expectation. The Boot’s strategy is to focus on its two business activities of pharmacy-led health and beauty retailing and pharmaceutical wholesaling and distribution, while increasingly developing and internationalizing product brands to create a third dimension. * CHANGE: According to Mullins (2007), every change becomes welcomed as an opportunity for increasing efficiency and building new organizational success. Boots increased female participation in the workforce and growth of services. It also changed the sophisticated information technology where cognitive skill demands. It has created fast flat and flexible organizational design. The company plans to further increasing the number of Boots stores through new openings and pharmacy acquisitions and have also just commenced a trial with Waitrose to sell selective product ranges in each other’s stores. * INNOVATION: According to Mullins, innovations arise from technological advancements, new processes, and improvements in all major areas of organizational activity. Boots concentrates in expanding their core business in existing markets, continuing to deliver productivity improvements and other cost savings, pursuing growth opportunities in selective new high growth markets. Boots is always launching products in the new markets. * COMMUNICATION: Boots always focus on customers/patients needs and services. Their communication and distribution channel is well updated which improves productivity. EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT: The external environment is the pressures of the organization from outside that can influence and affect the performance of the organization. The significant environmental pressures are the PESTEL which locates for Political, Economic, Social, Technology, Environmental, and Legal factors. * POLITICAL: The political environment of a country predisposes by the political organizations such as philosophy of political parties, ideology of government, legislation, taxation, employment law, trade union policy and activities. Boots are also affected for political decision in the UK. The UK government is cutting the employees from most of the sectors. As a result, people will have no enough money to spend on health and beauty. ECONOMIC: It is mainly concern about total GDP of the country as well as consumers’ expenditures and disposable income. It is also included currency exchange rates, tax regime, wage rates, raw material prices etc. Boots is a multinational company. So, during recession, UK’s currency rates fell down and Boots lost lots of money to exchanged currency from other country to UK. * SOCIAL: It concerns about demographic trends, lifestyle preferences, social values, distribution of incomes, education and health, labor mobility, attitude to work, discrimination trends, skills availability, etc. Boots never discriminates any employee. Boots always tries to adopt different life style in different countries, languages, traditions, people expectations etc. * TECHNOLOGICAL: The technology adopted by the industries determines the type and quality of goods and services to be produced and the type and quality of plant and equipment to be used. The technological environment influences the business in terms of investment in technology. It refers to the innovations of IT, nanotechnology, new production methods and process, level of expenditure on R&D by organization’s rivals etc. Boots uses to invest more money on research and development of its cosmetics and medicines. ENVIRONMENTAL: It links to the ‘Green issue’ of the environment, reducing toxic emissions, pollution, spills, hazard prevention, disposable of wastes or rubbishes etc. Boots dedicates to reducing the carbon intensity of their business and continued to launch specific carbon reduction initiatives. For example, Boots UK launched in August 2009 an awareness campaign aimed at reducing energy use in its retail stores. In February 2010, Boots UK received the Carbon Trust Standard in recognition of recent achievements in reducing its ‘carbon footprint’. Over 50% of the waste, they create as a Group recycles. * LEGAL: It deals with international law, legislation and taxation, human rights concerns, local regulation. It also concerns international trade agreements, employment and safety law, and product safety issues etc. Alliance Boots operates in regulated markets. It could be adversely affected by changes to existing regulation, new regulation such as licensing regimes for pharmacies, prescription processing regimes. www. boots. com) ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES OF BOOTS: Director Director Director Finance Director Chief Executive Health & Beauty Chief Executive Legal Chief Executive Health & Beauty CEO Chief Executive Pharmaceutical Wholesale Division Chairman of the Board Director Director Director Director Chief Finance Director (www. theofficialboard. com) Organizational structure is the formal system of task and reporting relationships that controls, coordinates and motivates employees so that they work together to achieve organizational goals. (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004. P. 874) It is the pattern of relationships among positions in organizations and among members of the organization. Structure makes possible application of the process of management and creates a framework of orders and commands through which the activities of the organization can be planned, organized, directed and controlled. Mullins (2007, p. 564) Alliance Boots has a flat organizational chart. In the structure, we can see that there are eight directors including Board of Chairman and non executive directors. Under Board of Chairman, there are six Chief Executives who are responsible to report to Chairman. All the Executives are the same level in decision making. This structure helps Boots to do better communication between top management and employees as well as increased team spirit too. Hence, we can see less bureaucratic power which helps to make decision easily. It also improves sound coordination and timely passing information among the different department within the Boots which increases productivity. This flat structure is mostly helpful to do faster responses to changing condition. This flat structure has demerits in Boots. Here, workers may have more managers for one job which creates confusions. It is mostly helpful for a small organization but Boots is such a large organization, where it will have demerits. As a result, this will reduce the growth of the organization. (www. learnmanagement2. com) (www. blurtit. com) MOTIVATIONAL FRAMEWORK: MOTIVATIONAL Individual Colleagues The Manager Customers Organization FRAMEWORK (www. ashridge. org. uk) ORGANIZATION: The organization will provide the structure and processes such as performance management and reward schemes, training, interesting work. In the organization, leaders and managers must earn the respect of others, create an appropriate working environment and provide opportunities for people to grow and develop. THE INDIVIDUAL: Individuals need to be more open about share values with colleagues and managers. Organizations need the accurate strategy and processes that make it abundantly clear that individuals have a responsibility for their own development. THE MANAGERS: The Boss provides a crucial role in the motivation process not only acting as a role model but valuing each of colleagues in a way that makes them feel motivated. COLLEAGUES: Colleagues can play a crucial role in motivation at work. By sharing skill and ability, every employee will be motivated in the work place. THE CUSTOMERS: People will be motivated by feedback from both internal and external customers and clients. We should regularly review and share the results of feedback with staff. FACTORS AFFECTING EMPLOYEES PRODUCTIVITY: The proportion that measures the efficiency of the resources concerned in production of products and services is called productivity. It is also the ratio of inputs and outputs of the production. (www. ayushveda. om) The factors that affect the employee productivity are as follow: * TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: If the employees are not trained properly in their particular job role, then the organization cannot get the benefit from the employees. Sometimes Boots cannot get enough time to schedule the training timetable. COMMUNICATION: There will be constant communication among top management, middle management and the em ployees. But sometimes there is miscommunication or take time to communicate within the Boots because of managers’ holiday, Internet break down etc. * WORK LIFE BALANCE: If the husband or wife works together and there are kids, there will be a problem to match the time table. Boots gives priority to those families. * PAY AND BENEFITS: If the employees get under pay, a late payment, or wrong payment, then they will not be encouraged to perform better the job. * REWARD AND RECOGNATION: Sometimes employees are not rewarded for meritorious services which create employees opposition to complete the job. * WORKING ENVIRONMENT: If the working environment is not suitable for employees or the coordination and cooperation is lacking, the productivity will be low. EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY: If there is any discrimination, the productivity will decrease and employees will dissatisfy. Boots strictly follows the rules and regulation about equality. * OTHERS: There are few more factors which affect the productivity, such as poor management, slow decision taking, lack of trust, stress level, conflict, frustration, etc. WAYS OF MOTIVATING KEY EMPLOYEES IN BOOTS An organ ization has many attributes to its success one of which is motivation of staff of the organization. Boots has various ways of motivating their workers leaving them satisfied which encourage them to go ahead and deliver. * TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: Boots provides an online module and training for their staff. This enables them to fulfill their potential at work. The organization makes a significant investment in the development of a range of training. This helps new employees of the organization feel as part of the team and makes them more confident. This year, Boots put additional investment into developing their pharmacists and registered technicians supporting them with their continued professional development. DISCOUNT FOR STAFF PURCHASES: Employees get discounts for purchases on Boots and non-boots products. They obtain 12% discount on Non-boots products and 25% discount for boots products. Every employee, within a year gets double discounts for 2days, which means 25% and 50% for non-Boots and Boots products respectively. This makes them want to stay in the organization. * HEAL TH INSURANCE: Boots believes that their responsibility is to look after their colleague’s health which will help them deliver better customer service. This is particularly beneficial to the employees though this is not compulsory. It encourages them to stay with the organization hence longevity of service, intimate working knowledge and greater output. (www. boots. com) * RETAINING AND PROMOTION: The organization is decidedly particular about recruiting, retaining and promoting diverse employees in the organization. Therefore they strive for this through hard work and hence contribute enormously to the success of the organization. * ATTRACTIVE REMUNERATION: Salary is also another factor that encourages employees to work. If they are well paid they feel like coming to work coupled with a enjoyable working environment at Boots, their employees get an increase in salary every year especially when the economy is stable or growing. * HEALTH AND SAFETY: Boots always provide the right equipment to do the job. All the training regarding health and safety provide every employee to protect them as well as customers. (www. allianceboots. com) APPRAISAL SYSTEMS OF BOOTS: As mentioned above Boots appraises its employees once a year. They are informed when they are going to be appraised and what is expected of them. A form is given to each line manager for every employee just to tick the most suitable one. It describes the employees work performance. Feedback is given to employees, so they will know where to improve. The performance management cycle of Boots Plan for performance appraisal Informing employees about appraisal Feedback and working to achieve goal Performance appraisal of employees Appraisal systems depend upon the individual performance which includes quality of services, customer care knowledge, flexibility of working time, competences, skills, learning achievement, relationships with colleagues etc. ORGANISATIONAL RECORD KEEPING: It is where an organization records information from the time it creates to the time of its disposal. Record keeping is truly essential for an organization because it helps keeps the organization on track and thus achieves organizational goals. Record keeping helps the organization to monitors its financial transaction. In Boots, record keeping uses for verification financial transaction and recording information about employees such as employees personal data, training records, how many times an employee has been absent. Boots keeps its records for two years then at the end of the two the last year records destroyed and a new one is started again. (http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Records_management) Boots always keep employees personal data secretly and maintain the rules and regulation of the Data Act. All employees have personal record file where all the information are stored in secret. (www. 123helpme. com) CONCLUSION: Boots has a outstanding reputation about health and beauty products at the UK as well as all over the world. It is a delightful place to work everyone says. They have to work closely with manufacturers and pharmacists to improve health among the local communities as well as national level. Boots should give priorities about customers’ loyalty, retention, communication and in store marketing. In the current economic recession in the UK, they have to monitor all the financial activities to minimize the cost. There will be commitment and clear indicators from top level to lower level. Motivation is essential to business success. Boots needs to pay more attention about employees’ learning and development to meet the future demands of the organization.