Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Obesity Epidemic Its Link with Physical Inactivity and Lack of Research Paper

Corpulence Epidemic Its Link with Physical Inactivity and Lack of Exercise - Research Paper Example This paper Weight Epidemic †Its Link with Physical Inactivity and Lack of Exercise depicts how dormancy or absence of activity added to the corpulence scourge in our nation. Overviews have demonstrated that more than 1 of every 3 Americans have abundance muscle to fat ratio (Collins). Not exclusively are the paces of stoutness high yet additionally are the measures of physical idleness and stationary conduct. Information from CDC (2014) shows that in 2013, just 29% of kids from secondary school had taken an interest in physical movement for at least an hour out of every day on every one of the seven days before the overview was led. The information likewise indicated that about 15.2% understudies from secondary school had not taken an interest in any sort of phsycial movement for at least 60 minutes on any day during the seven days preceding the overview. The CDC (2014) states that with age, the investment of youngsters in physical action decays. Moreover, its overview has demon strated that not exactly 50% of the understudies from secondary school went to physical training classes in a normal week. Studies have indicated that relaxation movement and sports levels have stayed stable worldwide yet these recreation exercises speak to just a minor bit of the complete degrees of day by day physical action. The physical action related with transportation, home and work has diminished because of social changes, innovative headways and financial turn of events (Harvard School of Public Health). While in 1950 in the USA, 30% Americans worked in occupations including high action, the rate dropped to 22% in 2000.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

What personal responsibility do Ferdinand and Isabella bear for the Essay

What moral duty do Ferdinand and Isabella bear for the removal of the Jews from Spain in 1942 - Essay Example So as to manage this issue, they presented the Inquisition, however reports from the Inquisitors just affirmed their feelings of trepidation that changes over to Christianity couldn't be viewed as secure in the confidence until they could be kept from having any contact with Jews. Not long after the fall of Granada, with the Muslim danger suppressed, and Christian feeling running high, they chose to move for ejection. In this manner, they bear extraordinary moral duty, however it ought to be noticed that they were intensely affected by the Inquisition, and by political turns of events. It has frequently been recommended that in the period paving the way to the ejection order, more noteworthy prejudice and hostile to Semitism had been creating in Europe by and large. From the thirteenth century onwards, what Gavin Langmuir named ‘chimeric antisemitism’ ostensibly made itself felt in Europe (Peters, 17). Proof of well known hatred against Jews, as the apparent adversaries of Christendom, is abundant. For instance, there were slaughters in the Rhineland in 1096, as the First Crusade started. Spanish society, which had up to this point been described essentially by its serene concurrence, was not absolved from this pattern towards hostile to Semitism. Altabã © surely receives this perspective, as he expresses that ‘Muslim caliphs and Christian lords frequently alluded to themselves with satisfaction as rulers of the three religions’ (728). Until the fourteenth century, as Peters takes note of, the open existence of the Iberian states was usua lly named convivencia, or ‘peacefully living together’ (9). Castile and Aragon were one of a kind cases in Western Europe, as far as their strict and social decent variety. They had the most significant populaces of Muslims and Jews in the area, and regardless of the limitations set on the last mentioned, Jews were as yet ready to ascend to places of influence, riches and conspicuousness. Jews were to be found among the consultants of the rulers and masters, and a considerable lot of the most commended

Sunday, August 16, 2020

4 Strategies for Getting Yourself off the Waiting List

4 Strategies for Getting Yourself off the Waiting List 4 Strategies for Getting Yourself off the Waiting List and into Your Dream School 4 Strategies for Getting Yourself off the Waiting List and into Your Dream School The unimaginable has occurred. You have been waitlisted at the school of your dreams. Even Frank Bruni’s lighthearted jibes about plunging Ivy League admission rates don’t soften the blow of Yale and Harvard’s record low acceptances this year. The class of 2020 at each of these esteemed institutions comprises just slightly more than 5% of the applicant pool, leaving the vast majority of applicants to cope with rejection or â€" worse â€" the uncertainty of being placed on a college waiting list. Even though Yale waitlisted roughly as many students as they accepted, and it can be hard to know your status on any college waiting list, we are here to tell you not to give up hope. We’ve been through this before, and we want to remind you that getting placed on a waiting list doesn’t mean you aren’t good enough or qualified enough. It means that the world is crazy, and every year schools look at larger and larger selections of equally qualified and talented applicants. In the unfortunate limbo of the waiting list, you still have a chance of getting in. You’ve just bought yourself a little extra time to sell yourself to admissions by writing a stellar letter. Of course, you want to make sure to highlight the right qualities and accomplishments, so we made you a guide: 1. Show off your latest accomplishments. Did you boost your GPA since you submitted your transcript? Receive any awards? Start any new and exciting projects? These are all relevant details that will demonstrate your continued academic achievement and motivation. Admissions officers want to know that you are an intellectually curious soul, and that you didn’t just tune out once you submitted your application. Plus, this is a great opportunity to fill any gaps that may have been in your original application, especially grades. A general progress update will help you showcase your ability to follow through on commitments and give admissions officers the most accurate picture of who you will be when you exit high school and enter college. 2. Be specific. Getting placed on the waiting list could mean that admissions officers are waiting to see if you really are a good fit for their institution. So, revisit your notes, any emails exchanged with students or professors, and any other memorabilia that will help you tap into your genuine excitement about the school. Do some more research about the latest developments at the school and think honestly about how this school suits your intellectual, academic, and social needs. Fill your letter with details that show your that continued engagement and enthusiasm for the school are more than just blind obsession. 3. Let your genuine passion shine through. Be vulnerable. Maybe your application was incredibly polished and creative. Now is the time to show another side of yourself, and to wax poetic about what this opportunity really means to you. Writing an honest and heartfelt message may be a challenge during a time when you are feeling rejected and maybe even angry at the people to whom you are addressing your letter, but your mature resilience will ultimately set you apart from the pack. 4. Don’t go overboard. Your thoughts, feelings, and achievements are what will ultimately get you off the waiting list and into the school of your details. Tactics that will likely land you in the permanent reject pile include: camping out at the admissions office; bribery of any kind; denigrating other applicants; sending a barrage of emails; having your parents send a barrage of emails; claiming a school is your first choice when it really isn’t; or questioning the judgement of the admissions department in any way. You’re better than these dirty tactics, and chances are, they will hurt you more than they help. The best way to pursue a school that has waitlisted you is simply to continue to be your awesome self. One way or another, things will work out. About Thea HogarthView all posts by Thea Hogarth » Need help writing your letter? We're here to help. CONTACT US »

Sunday, May 24, 2020

A Guided Epiphany By Mary Joyce - 997 Words

A Guided Epiphany In â€Å"Eveline† the main character, Eveline, lives a terrible life with a stern father, a miserable job, and a dreary home. When she is given the opportunity to leave her awful life and start a new life with her partner Frank, she rejects the offer and stays in Ireland. Immediately this presents the reader with an apparent paradox. Why did Eveline stay? Wasn’t her life terrible? It is not until the reader digs a little deeper into â€Å"Eveline† does the paradox solve itself. Joyce uses various literary techniques to justify why Eveline did not leave with Frank. In order to solve the paradox of Eveline, Joyce uses sentence structure to show the importance of various characters to Eveline. The father in Eveline is given a lengthy amount of the story and longer sentences. Sentences such as â€Å"He said she used to squander the money, †¦ he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night.† (Joyce 65-68), and â€Å"When they were growing up he had never gone for her †¦ for her dead mother s sake.† (55-58) contain forty words and forty eight words respectfully. Frank at the beginning is given slightly longer sentences at his first introduction. The third sentence in Frank’s introduction, â€Å"She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her.† (80-82), is thirty words long. As the story progresses Frank’s sentences becoming increasingly shorter and shorter. After Eveline remembers her father caring forShow MoreRelatedWilli am Joyce s Eveline - A Guided Epiphany1014 Words   |  5 PagesA Guided Epiphany In â€Å"Eveline,† the main character, Eveline, lives a terrible life with a stern father, a miserable occupation, and a dreary home. When she is offered the chance to leave her abysmal life and start a new one with her lover Frank, she rejects this proposition and remains in Ireland. Immediately this presents the reader with a paradox. Why did Eveline stay? Wasn’t her life terrible? It is not until the reader digs a little deeper into â€Å"Eveline† does the paradox solve itself. JoyceRead MoreSmugging in the Square: Homosexuality as a Literary Device in James Joyces A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.3689 Words   |  15 Pagessaid of the menacing literary masterpiece that is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is that the gender issues Joyce so surreptitiously weaves into Stephan Dedalus’s character create sizable obstacles for the reader to overcome. Joyce expertly composes a feminine backdrop in which he can mold Stephan to inexplicably beco me innately homosexual. As Laurie Teal points out â€Å"†¦ Joyce plays with gender inversion as a uniquely powerful tool of characterization.†(63) Stephan’s constant conflict with himself

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Current Global Financial Crisis And Islamic Financial System - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 16 Words: 4733 Downloads: 5 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Statistics Essay Did you like this example? The entire world is now in the grip of financial crisis which is most severe since the Great Depression 1930s. It has taken about $3 trillion of bailout and liquidity injecting by number of countries to lessen the intensity of the crisis. Hence, there is a need to restructure the financial world that would help in minimizing the frequency and severeness of such crises in future (Chapra, 2009). It could not be possible to build a new system without determining the primary causes for this financial crisis. The most important cause of all financial crises has been imprudent and excess lending by banks over many years, which has also been acknowledged by many financial institutes. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Current Global Financial Crisis And Islamic Financial System" essay for you Create order This raises the question that what make it possible for banks to involve in such devastating practice which is not only unstable the financial system but also not in their own long-term best interest. There are three main elements which make it possible. First of all inadequate market discipline in the financial system resulting from the absence of profit-and-loss sharing (PLS). The second is the huge expansion in the size of derivatives, especially credit default swaps (CDSs) and the third is assurance to big banks from the central bank that it will definitely come to their rescue and will not allow them to fail. Therefore, bank and financial institute have not undertaken a careful measure against risk, which has led the whole financial system in the excessive volume of credit, excessive leverage and to a volatile rise in asset prices and speculative investment. One of the foremost objectives of Islam is to realize greater justice in human Society. According to the Quran (57:25) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“a society where there is no justice will ultimately head towards decline and destructionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. The financial system may be capable to promote justice if it meets at least two conditions. Firstly, the finance should also share the risk and not only shift the whole burden of losses to the entrepreneur and secondly an equitable share of finance resources should become available to the poor people of community to help eliminate poverty, consequently, expand employments opportunities and hence reduce inequalities of wealth. (Chapra, 2009). To meet the first condition, Islam requires both the financer and entrepreneur to share equally in profit and loss. This will help in introducing greater discipline into the financial system and motivate financial institutions to evaluate the risks prudently and monitor the use of funds by the borrowers. This assessment of risks by the financiers and as well as by the entrepreneur should help in putting greater discipline and reducing excessive lending. Islamic finance should ideally help raise significantly the share of equity and PLS in businesses; even mainstream economist supports the greater reliance on equity financing. Rogoff (1999) states that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"in an ideal world equity lending and direct investment would play a much bigger roleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢. On the debt side, Islamic financials system doesnà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t permit the creation of debt through direct lending and direct borrowing but it allow the creation of debt through the sales / lease of real assets which means Islamic debt modes of financing (murabaha, ijara, salam, istisna and sukuk), but, it has, nevertheless, put down number of conditions. The asset sold or leased must be real à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" this will eliminate a huge number of derivatives transactions which involving gambling by third parties who are mostly concerned to claim for compensation for losses which not actually been suffered by them but by principal party The goods being sold or leased must be owned / possessed by seller/lessor- this condition ascertain that the seller (lessor) also take a part in risk to get a share in the return The sale / leased transaction must be real trade transaction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" this ensure that the creditor take extra measures to evaluate the credit risk but also prevent unneeded explosion in the value and volume of transactions. The risk associated with sales / leased must be borne by lender / seller himself as debt canà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t be sold- this prevent the debt from growing above the size of the real economy and also discharge significant volume of financial resources for real sector, hence expanding employment and production of goods and services. History is full with evidence of instability of the conventional financial system. Many prominent economists have argued that this system is inherently unstable and tends to severe financial crisis. They have regarded the interest rate the main cause of huge fluctuations in commodity and asset prices, a source of financial instability, cumulative inflation, and detrimental to long-term economic growth. They have also called for a separation of deposit and investment banking. (Mirakhor, 2009). The main objective of this study is three-fold; firstly understand the global financial crisis and what determinants have caused it; secondly understand Islamic finance in context of global financial crisis and some of its major differences with conventional financial system and thirdly built up a model to assess the compare the financial stability of Islamic and conventional financial system. LITERATURE REVIEW To analyze the determinants which have caused current global financial crisis: a) The TED Spread: Global Finances Thermometer   TED spread is the difference between the LIBOR (The London Interbank Offered Rate at which banks lend to each other) and short-term U.S. government debt (T-bills). It indicates a perceived credit risk in the economy. As T-bills are regarded as risk-free an LIBOR are riskier than T-bills, so LIBOR always exceed the T-Bills. The TED spread, often used as a measure of the general credit risk of an economy is used to decide which date to divide the time series. The original TEDà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?spread was the difference between US Treasure bills and Eurodollar contracts represented by Libor (Brown and Smith, 2005). Marquardt (2008) says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“TED Spread measures market stress by revealing the willingness (or reluctance) of banks to lend money to one anotherà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“A jump in the spread shows how panicky banks are, in that they are charging each other a bigger interest-rate premium than  money  lent to the U.S. government, (CNN Money, 2008). Realized and Expected Writedowns or Loss Provisions for Banks By Region (in billions of U.S. dollars) Source: IMF Global Financial Stability Report Oct 2009. TED speed has always been under 1%, however, it rocketed in 2007 to about 2.5% and in late 2008 moved to highest level of 4.5%. Mid of 2007, newspapers reported Northern Rock, UK Bank, collapsed because liquidity had disappeared and banks were reluctant to lend money to another bank because of the high risk of market after the rise in the TED spread to unprecedented level in the history, then an historical phrase à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"credit crunchà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ emerged; an environment, where even a creditworthy borrower are unable to find funds. Consequently, the central banks had to supply a massive amount of money to the interbank market, but the limited impact of TED spread chart, that in September2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed and filed bankruptcy protection with massive reduction in assets ever. b) US sub-prime mortgage There is no consensus on the exact definition of subprime mortgages. The term subprime is often used to describe certain characteristics of the borrower. For example, a FICO score (a standard industry model to evaluate creditworthiness of a borrower) less than 620 is a common definition of a subprime borrower. Another definition is that a subprime mortgage does not usually need any down-payments and that little documentation is required. However, a broad definition is that a subprime loan entails a high risk of default (Demyanyk et al (2008)). The housing mortgage market in the U.S. has been well functioning over the past two centuries, enabling millions of people to fulfil the dream of home ownership. During this time there has been several periods of disruption in these markets, but none of them as severe as the episode, sometimes referred to as the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“subprime mortgage market meltdownà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? that begun around the summer of 2007, with falling real-estate prices and increasing defaults. Today, economists fear that more than 2 million or more Americans might lose their homes to foreclosure in 2009 (Barth et al (2008)). The banking industry is facing huge losses as a result of the sub-prime crisis. Already banks have announced $60bn worth of losses as many of the mortgage bonds backed by sub-prime mortgages have fallen in value. The losses could be much greater, as many banks have concealed their holdings of sub-prime mortgages in exotic, off-balance sheet instruments such as structured investment vehicles or SIVs. Although the banks say they do not own these SIVs, and therefore are not liable for their losses, they may be forced to cover any bad debts that they accrue. (BBC News, 2007) Many years of strongly rising house prices caused lenders to relax their lending criteria. Loan-to-value ratios rose and low starter-interest rates were introduced (typically for the first two years of the mortgage) to be recouped by higher interest rates for the remaining 28 years of the typical 30 year US mortgage. In many cases the borrowers knew that they could not afford the monthly payments after the initial two-year low interest period expired; they were relying on rising house prices to enable a profit on sale or refinancing The mortgage default rates on these sub-prime mortgages were much higher than predicted by the lendersà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ credit models. These models were based upon the historical behaviour of prime borrowers, not sub-prime borrowers who behaved differently. (Amin, 2009) c) Securitisation Securitization is often stated to be part of the originate-to-distribute model, where institutions that originate assets (in this example, mortgages) move them away from their balance sheet by distributing them to purchasers of ABSs (asset-backed securities). The advantages for institutions conducting in securitization is mainly that they are able to free up capital and liquidity by moving the assets away from the balance sheet. Furthermore, securitization is a way of providing liquidity and funding to mortgages à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" by investing in an ABS, a Japanese asset manager (for example) might finance the real-estate mortgages of U.S. home owners (Criado and Rixtel (2008)). US mortgage market had moved away from a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"lend and collectà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ model (the bank lends on a mortgage and collect it back over 30 years) to an à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"originate to distributeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ model (the bank makes a mortgage loan in order to sell it on.) Originating loans and selling them on means that banks make profits from lending as much as possible, provided that the loans can be sold on; once the loan has been sold the bank is relatively indifferent to its collectability. d) Collateralized Debt Obligations CDOs are ABSs that are constructed by pooling and securitizing in particular higher risk assets such as risky loans or tranches of other ABSs (Criado and Rixtel (2008)). There are different types of classifications for CDOs and one of the most common is cash flow CDOs, a term relating to the scenario where the trust (special purpose vehicle or special purpose entity) involved in the securitization owns the underlying debt posted as collateral in the CDO. A synthetic CDO refers to the scenario where the trust does not own the underlying debt, and instead invests in CDSs (credit default swaps) to synthetically track their performance. The hybrid CDO combines cash flow CDOs and synthetic CDOs. There is also the CDO squared (CDO2) which is a CDO that has securitized the tranches of another CDO. ABS CDOs and CDOs squared thus consist of a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“double layered securitizationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? (Criado and Rixtel (2008)). Here CDO securities created by Bank 1 and Bank 2 selling their customer loans are purchased by Special Purpose Entity (SPE) 3 which pays for them by issuing CDO securities to investors. As these are CDOs based on other CDOs, they are called CDO2. The challenge with such complex structures is that it becomes almost impossible to accurately project likely defaults on the original customer loans to the likely defaults on the securities issued by SPE 3. In many cases, complex CDO structures involved some sub-prime mortgages being blended with prime mortgages to boost the yield of the overall package of assets. Accordingly, once defaults started happening in the relatively small sub-prime market, that led to a collapse in the market value of a much larger amount of CDOs. The creation of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) by mixing prime and subprime debt made it possible for mortgage originators to pass the entire risk of default of even subprime debt to the ultimate purchasers who would have normally been reluctant to bear such a risk. Mortgage originators had, therefore, less incentive to undertake careful underwriting.   Estimates of Global Bank Writedowns by Domicile, 2007-10 (in billions of U.S dollars) Source: IMF Global Financial Stability Report Oct 2009. e) Credit Derivatives The credit default swap originally thought as a way for bondholders to protect against a bond default can also be used for speculation on the creditworthiness of a company. One key difference between a regular insurance policy and a CDS contract is that the buyer of credit protection does not have to own the underlying instrument. Like most derivative instruments credit default swaps can be used for hedging, speculation and arbitrage. Under a credit default swap contract (CDS) the seller is paid a regular amount each year by the buyer of the CDS. If a credit event occurs in relation to the underlying asset which is referenced by the CDS, the seller pays the buyer for the fall in value of the reference asset. However, the buyer does not need to own the reference asset; in that case the CDS buyer is simply speculating that the reference asset will fall into default. When there is excessive and imprudent lending and lenders are not confident of repayment, there is an excessive resort to derivatives like CDSs to seek protection against default. The buyer of the swap (creditor) pays a premium to the seller (a hedge fund) for the compensation he will receive in case the debtor defaults. If this protection had been confined to the actual creditor, there may not have been any problem. What happened, however, was that hedge funds sold the swaps not to just the actual lending bank but also to a large number of others who were willing to bet on the default of the debtor. These swap holders, in turn, resold the swaps to others. The whole process continued several times.   While a genuine insurance contract indemnifies only the actually insured party, in the case of CDSs there were several swap holders who had to be compensated. This accentuated the risk and made it difficult for the hedge funds and banks to honour their commitments. The notional amount of all outstanding derivatives (including CDSs of $54.6 trillion) is currently estimated by the BIS to be over $600 trillion, more than ten times the size of the world economy. No wonder George Soros described derivatives as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"hydrogen bombsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, and Warren Buffett called them à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"financial weapons of mass destructionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢. The well known American economist Joseph Stiglitz has summarised the role of credit default swaps in the crises: With this complicated intertwining of bets of great magnitude, no one could be sure of the financial position of anyone elseà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?or even of ones own position. Not surprisingly, the credit markets froze. (Stiglitz, 2009) f) General over-leveraging   The economies of the UK and US had not suffered a serious recession for many years. In these benign business conditions, companies had gradually increased their gearing, as interest on debt is tax deductible whereas dividends on share capital are not tax deductible. The high gearing was particularly striking in companies owned by private equity firms, which were typically very highly leveraged. If economic conditions worsened, such firms would risk insolvency. To assess the difference between Islamic and conventional finance in context of global financial crisis: Islamic finance is defined as a financial system based on Islamic law known as Sharià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ah Islamic finance is limited to financial relationships involving entrepreneurial investment, subject to the moral prohibition of following (i) interest earnings or usury (riba) and money lending, (ii) haram (sinful activity), such as direct or indirect association with lines of business involving alcohol, pork products, firearms, tobacco, and adult entertainment, (iii) speculation, betting, and gambling (maysir), including the speculative trade or exchange of money for debt without an underlying asset transfer, (iv) the trading of the same object between buyer and seller (bayà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ al-inah), as well as (v) preventable uncertainty (gharar), such as all financial derivative instruments, forward contracts, and futures agreements. As opposed to conventional finance, where interest represents the contractible cost for funds tied to the amount of principal over a pre-specified lending period, the central tenet of the Islamic financial system is the prohibition of riba, whose literal meaning à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“an excessà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? is interpreted as any unjustifiable increase of capital whether through loans or sales. The general consensus among Islamic scholars is that riba covers not only usury but also the charging of interest and any positive, fixed, predetermined rate of return that are guaranteed regardless of the performance of an investment (Iqbal and Tsubota, 2006; Iqbal and Mirakhor, 2006; Iqbal and Llewellyn, 2000). Since only interest-free forms of finance are considered permissible in Islamic finance, financial relationships between financiers and borrowers are governed by shared business risk (and returns) from investment in lawful activities (halal). Islamic law does not object to payment for the use of an asset, and the earning of profits or returns from assets are indeed encouraged as long as both lender and borrower share the investment risk together. Profits must not be guaranteed ex ante, and can only accrue if the investment itself yields income. Any financial transaction under Islamic law assigns to investors clearly identifiable rights and obligations for which they are entitled to receive commensurate return. Hence, Islamic finance literally à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“outlawsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? capital-based investment gains without entrepreneurial risk. In light of these moral impediments to à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“passiveà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? investment and secured interest as form of compensation, shariah-complian t lending in Islamic finance requires the replication of interest-bearing, conventional finance via more complex structural arrangements of contingent claims (Mirakhor and Iqbal, 1988). The permissibility of risky capital investment without explicit interest earning has spawned several finance techniques under Islamic law. We distinguish among three basic forms of Islamic financing methods for both investment and trade finance: synthetic loans (debt-based) through a sale-repurchase agreement or back-to-back sale of borrower- or third party-held assets. lease contracts (asset-based) through a sale-lease-back agreement (operating lease) or the lease of third-party acquired assets with purchase obligation components (financing lease), and profit-sharing contracts (equity-based) of future assets. As opposed to equity-based contracts, both debt- and asset-based contracts are initiated by a temporary transfer of existing assets from the borrower to the lender or the acquisition of third-party assets by the lender on behalf of the borrower. Islamic à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“loansà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? create borrower indebtedness from the purchase and resale contract of an (existing or future) asset in lieu of interest payments. The most prominent form of such a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“debt-basedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? structural arrangement is the murabaha (or murabahah) (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“cost-plus saleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?) contract. Interest payments are implicit in an installment sale with instantaneous (or deferred) title transfer for the promised payment of an agreed sales price in the future. The purchase price of the underlying asset effectively limits the degree of debt creation. A murabaha contract either involves (i) the sale-repurchase agreement of a borrower-held asset (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“negative short saleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?) or (ii) the lenderà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s purchase of a tangible asset from a third party on behalf of the borrower (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“back-to-back saleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?). The resale price is based on original cost (i.e., purchase price) plus a pre-spe cified profit markup imposed by the lender, so that the borrowerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s repurchase of the asset amounts to a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“loss-generating contract.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? Different installment rates and repayment and asset-delivery schedules create variations to the standard murabaha cost-plus sale. The most prominent examples are salam (deferred delivery sale), bai bithaman ajil (BBA) (deferred payment sale), istina (or istisna, istisnaà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢a) (purchase order), quard al-hasan (benevolent loan), and musawama (negotiable sale). As opposed to the concurrent purchase and delivery of an asset in murabaha, asset purchases under a salam or a bai bithaman ajil contract allow deferred delivery or payment of existing assets. Salam closely synthesizes a conventional futures contract and is sometimes also considered an independent asset class outside the asset spectrum of murabaha (Batchvarov and Gakwaya, 2006). An istina contract provides pre-delivery (project) finance for future assets, such as long-term projects, which the borrower promises to complete over the term of the lending agreement according to contractual specifications. A quard al-hasa n signifies an interest-free loan contract that is usually collateralized. Finally, a muswama contract represents a negotiable sale, where the profit margin is hidden from the buyer. Analogous to conventional operating and finance leases, al-ijarah leasing notes (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“asset-basedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?) provide credit in return for rental payments over the term of the temporary use of an (existing) asset, conditional on the future (re-)purchase of the assets by the borrower. The lease cash flow is the primary component of debt service. The lessor (i.e., financier) acquires the asset either from the borrower (operating lease or à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“sale-leasebackà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?/à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“lease-buybackà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?) or a third party at the request of the borrower (financing lease or à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“lease-purchaseà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?) and leases it to the borrower (or a third party) for an agreed sum of rental payable in installments according to an agreed schedule. The legal title of the asset remains with the financier for the duration of the transaction. The financier bears all the costs associated with the ownership of the asset, whereas the costs from the use of the asset have to be defrayed by the lessee. If the ijarah transaction is a financing lease (ijarah wa iqtina), such as an Islamic mortgage, the repayment through lease payments might also include a portion of the agreed resale price (in the form of a call option premium), which allows borrowers to gradually acquire total equity ownership for a predetermined sales price.15 If the lessee does not exercise the call option at maturity, the lender disposes of it in order to realize the salvage value (put option).16 In an operating lease with a repurchase obligation, the asset is returned to the borrower for the original sale price or the negotiated market price17 unless otherwise agreed.18 In this case, the lenderà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s put option represents a repurchase obligation19 by the borrower (at the current value of outstanding payments), which is triggered upon certain conditions, such as delinquent payments or outright default. In Islamic profit-sharing contracts (equity-based), lenders (i.e.,, investors) and borrowers (i.e.,, entrepreneurs) agree to share any gains of profitable projects based on the degree of funding or ownership of the asset by each party. In a trustee-type mudharaba (or mudarabah) financing contract, the financier (rab ul maal) provides all capital to fund an investment, which is exclusively managed by the entrepreneur (mudarib) in accordance with agreed business objectives. The borrower shares equity ownership with the financier (i.e. a call option on the reference assets) and might promise to buy-out the investor after completion of the project. At the end of the financing period, the entrepreneur repays the original amount of borrowed funds only if the investment was sufficiently profitable. Profits are distributed according to a pre-agreed rate between the two parties. Investors are not entitled to a guaranteed payment and bear all losses unless they have occurred due to misconduct, negligence, or violation of the conditions mutually agreed by both financier and entrepreneur. The equity participation and loss sharing in a musharakah contract is similar to a joint venture, where both lender/investor and borrower (or asset manager/agent) jointly contribute funds to an existing or future project, either in form of capital or in kind, and ownership is shared according to each partyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s financial contribution. Although profit sharing is similar to a mudharaba contract, losses are generally borne according to equity participation. Overall, the different basic types of Islamic finance combine two or more contingent claims to replicate the risk-return trade-off of conventional lending contracts or equity investment without contractual guarantees of investment return or secured payments in reference to an interest rate as time-dependent cost of funds. Such arrangements may become complicated in practice, once they are combined to meet specific investor requirements under Islamic law (El-Qorchi, 2005). Although both Islamic and conventional finance are in substance equivalent to conventional finance and yield the same lender and investor pay-offs at the inception of the transaction, they differ in legal form and might require a different valuation due to dissimilar transaction structures (and associated legal enforceability of investor claims) and/or security design (Jobst, 2006d). Most importantly, Islamic finance substitutes a temporary use of assets by the lender for a permanent transfer of funds to the borrowe r as a source of indebtedness in conventional lending. Retained asset ownership by the lender under this arrangement constitutes entrepreneurial investment. The financier receives returns from the direct participation in asset performance in the form of state-contingent payments according to an agreed schedule and amount. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: Z-score for Emerging Markets The z-score measures the degree of vulnerability of a particular business or an industry segment by categorising firms into two distinct clusters, namely strong and vulnerable firms, based on the historical default experience. The construction of the z-score used by the Bank is referenced on the model developed by Altman for emerging markets and employs the multiple discriminant analysis as an underlying statistical tool to derive a linear combination of financial ratios that best discriminate between the two categories. The multiple discriminant analysis improves on the traditional approach of individual or sequential analysis of financial ratios by reducing the reliance on rules of thumb and subjective judgment in determining the threshold levels and relative importance of the ratios. Selected key financial ratios are subsequently consolidated into a composite score to provide a snapshot of a firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s financial health. The discriminant function for the z-score for em erging markets based on the study conducted by Altman is given by the following equation: Z = Based on the z-score, both strong and vulnerable firms can be identified, whereby a higher z-score indicates a lower likelihood of the firm encountering financial distress. Working Capital/Total Assets (WC/TA) The working capital/total assets ratio is a measure of the net liquid assets of the firm relative to the total capitalization. Working capital is defined as the difference between current assets and current liabilities. Liquidity and size characteristics are explicitly considered. This ratio was the least important contributor to discrimination between the two groups. In all cases, tangible assets, not including intangibles, are used. Retained Earnings/Total Assets (RE/TA) Retained earnings (RE) is the total amount of reinvested earnings and/or losses of a firm over its entire life. The account is also referred to as earned surplus. This is a measure of cumulative profitability over the life of the company. The age of a firm is implicitly considered in this ratio. It is likely that a bias would be created by a substantial reorganization or stock dividend, and appropriate readjustments should, in the event of this happening, be made to the accounts. In addition, the RE/TA ratio measures the leverage of a firm. Those firms with high RE relative to TA have financed their assets through retention of profits and have not utilized as much debt. This ratio highlights the use of either internally generated funds for growth (low-risk capital) or OPM (other peopleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s money)à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ higher-risk capital. This variable has shown a marked deterioration in the average values of non-distressed firms in the past 20 years and, in subsequent model updates, we utilized a transformation structure in order to make its negative impact less dramatic on current Z-Scores. Earnings before Interest and Taxes/Total Assets (EBIT/TA) This is a measure of the productivity of the firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s assets, independent of any tax or leverage factors. Since a firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s ultimate existence is based on the earning power of its assets, this ratio appears to be particularly appropriate for studies dealing with credit risk. We have found that this profitability measure, despite its reliance on earnings, which are subject to manipulation, consistently is at least as predictive as cash flow measures. Market Value of Equity/Book Value of Total Liabilities (MVE/TL) Equity is measured by the combined market value of all shares of stock, preferred and common, while liabilities include both current and long-term obligations. The measure shows how much the firmà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s assets can decline in value (measured by market value of equity plus debt) before the liabilities exceed the assets and the firm becomes insolvent. (Altman and Hotchkis (2006))

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Marriage †Argumentative Essay Free Essays

Marriage is a social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitment, religious ceremony, etc. This is the kind of marriage that we are all used to. Nowadays, in reality, there are some people who found love not to someone that are the opposite sex, but to those who are the same sex. We will write a custom essay sample on Marriage – Argumentative Essay or any similar topic only for you Order Now A lot of people have been debating about the legality of gay marriage. From relating it to religion and its affect on the traditional family values, there are a lot factors that can make this into a controversy. Even though gay marriage is still an illegal action in the majority countries there are some factors that should be considered to make it become legal. Opponents of gay marriage claim that homosexuality is a sin in most religion. However, this statement violates the First Amendment of Constitution about the free exercise of religion on a person’s religious views must be protected. Which means that the government cannot make a law that is based on a certain religion rule. Additionally, the civil marriage and the religion marriage are a total different institution; therefore a law in the government that is based on a religion rule should not be made. Moreover, legalizing gay marriage also consistent with the Equal Right Amendment on the first text about the Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Therefore the legalization of gay marriage will make an equal marriage for all in the eye of the government based on those two Amendments. The other arguments that the opponents mentioned is that the Institution of Marriage will get less respect and the definition will become unclear. They said that the purpose of marriage which is to pro-create, hence the marriage between a man and women is the possible one. However, when we see the divorce rate in America for the past decade, the number is stable at 50% for the first marriage. This gives the impression that even the straight marriages give less respect to the institution it self. Moreover, if we look into the simple, deeper of marriage it self, marriage is a constitution between two people that are brought together by love. So, love is the basic aspect in this Institution of Marriage. Therefore gay marriage won’t give less respect or make the definition become unclear because basically they already fulfill the ground aspect of marriage, which is love. The final argument from the opponents of gay marriage is that family contains a mother and father. However, this meaning of family has become biased since in reality there are a lot of other families that doesn’t have a mother and father but we can still call them a family. So basically the meaning of family has changed due to the different things that occur in the reality. For instance, single mother and single father families are a common thing nowadays, with this one parent cover the two different role of two parents. Therefore there is no exception for the gay couple if they want to extend their family. As long as they will provide their kids with love, support, shelter, and things that the kids will need. Additionally there are a lot of kids that have been waiting to have their own family, so adoption in gay marriage will help both the kids and the gay couple in creating their own family. In conclusion, gay marriage is just like any other marriage with a twist of the same sex between the couple. Therefore the legalization of gay marriage will make an equal marriage for all in the eye of the government based on those two Amendments. Additionally, gay marriage won’t give less respect or make the definition become unclear because basically they already fulfill the ground aspect of marriage, which is love. Moreover there is no exception for the gay couple if they want to extend their family. As long as they will provide their kids with love, support, shelter, and things that the kids will need because there are a lot of kids that have been waiting to have their own family, so adoption in gay marriage will help both the kids and the gay couple in creating their own family. Furthermore, in my opinion everyone deserve an equal right to marry someone they love because everyone deserves to be happy. SEKAR RINDANG FASHION MANAGEMENT 1401125124 REFERENCES Dictionary. com 5 December 2011 Messerli, Joe. â€Å"Should Same-Sex Marriages be Legalize? † balancedpolitics. org 19 November 2011. 5 December 2011 Tsivkin, Roman. â€Å"Marriage Laws In The USA. † livestrong. com 8 April 2010. 5 December 2011 Wikipedia. com 5 December 2011 Wikipedia. com 5 December 2011 divorceguide. com 5 December 2011 How to cite Marriage – Argumentative Essay, Essays

Monday, May 4, 2020

Demon Days by Gorillaz free essay sample

For Damon Albarn, Blur’s extended hiatus wasn’t the end of his musical career. In fact, once teamed up with cartoonist Jamie Hewlett and studio wizard Dan the Automator, it proved to be the beginning of what is most likely the strangest, most ambitious â€Å"group† to ever grace the music scene: Gorillaz. Literally the world’s first virtual band, Gorillaz instantly trailblazed a unique, slightly edgy image for themselves both with their four animated â€Å"members†: 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle, and Russel Hobbs, who were all completely animated by Hewlett; and their self-titled debut, which unbelievably went platinum in several countries and managed to sell seven million copies after it was released in 2001. Listening to this album now, in this day and age of tasteless, lifeless, and boring pop and hip-hop music, frankly comes as a real shock. Within its entire 53-minute running time, the album manages to include Blur-esque rock (â€Å"5/4†), lean punk (the appropriately named â€Å"Punk†), surreal trip-hop (the unlikely hit â€Å"Tomorrow Comes Today†), sample-looping hip-hop (â€Å"19-2000†), and even party music (â€Å"Rock The House†). We will write a custom essay sample on Demon Days by Gorillaz or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, the real standout here is the vibrant â€Å"Clint Eastwood†, which expertly mixes a mournful Albarn-voiced chorus with light background instrumentations and superb rapping delivered by Del the Funky Homosapien to result in what would deservedly become the album’s biggest hit ever. In short, if you only listen to one song on this album, this is it. â€Å"Gorillaz† isn’t exactly the most consistent album on the hip-hop scene. In fact, it could very well confuse or even baffle those who were expecting an hour or so of straightforward rap tunes to bop your head to repeatedly. Indeed, if you’re sick of constantly hearing music on the radio that repeat the same old melodramatic cliches and beats, then this is the album for you. However, the strangest part of the entire package is not its weird genre-hopping or experimentations, or even that the odd â€Å"Latin Simone† is entirely sung in Spanish. It’s that aside from Hewlett’s animations and Automator’s production, this â€Å"band† is really a Damon Albarn solo project. Whether you choose to view that as a mad stroke of genius or a ridiculously ambitious attempt at elevation is up to you to decide. Despite that, if you’re looking for something fairly enjoyable and teen-friendly (despite the Parental Advisory label, there are actually very few profanities to worry about) you could certainly do worse than hanging out with these Gorillaz.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

A Critical Analysis of Amador Daguio’s Wedding Dance free essay sample

There is indeed a lot to know and learn about culture. Knowing its definition alone is futile, for there is much about it, and even more when brought out to the surface. Basically, culture affects every part of people’s lives. The ways they act, think, and perceive things are grounded from certain cultures they grew up in. Indeed, to understand people is to know how their culture works, such as its function in the society, and how it shapes their minds and beliefs. In Keywords, Raymond Williams points out that â€Å"culture† is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language, with a long, complex etymology. It was originally used to define that which undergoes a process of tending or cultivation — like a crop or domesticated herds — and was thus initially associated with agriculture. Then during the 18th century, the French started to use the term as a synonym for â€Å"civilization†. We will write a custom essay sample on A Critical Analysis of Amador Daguio’s Wedding Dance or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page With this, many scholars have tried to define what culture is, and how it works. In his essay, Stephen Greenblatt begins by dealing with the idea of culture itself. He quotes anthropologist Edward B. Tylor: â€Å"that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society†. Greenblatt, though, immediately questions Tylor’s definition of culture. As how he puts it, culture has a vague, hardly useful definition; a â€Å"dimly perceived ethos†. However, he offers two factors that may help one’s understanding of it: constraint and mobility. He explains constraint as, â€Å"the ensemble of beliefs and practices that form a given culture function as a pervasive technology of control, a set of limits within which social behavior must be contained, a repertoire of models to which individuals must conform†. Such is true for most cultures. Those beliefs and practices, whether written or not, enforce kinds of behaviors and compel models of practice for their groups. Mobility, on the other hand, encompasses culture as a network of negotiations for the exchange of goods, ideas, attitudes, and even people. Another definition of culture that is worth considering is Matthew Arnold’s in his essay Culture and Anarchy. He defined culture in idealist terms, as something to strive for, and in this respect his theory differs from its anthropological counterpart. Anthropology views culture not as something to be acquired but rather as â€Å"a whole way of life,† something people already have. Just like Greenblatt, Arnold considers the difficulty in defining culture. In fact, it is, according to him, considerably better to explain what not culture is. For Arnold, the opposite of culture is â€Å"doing as one likes,† his term for individuals who act out of self-interest, without regard for the greater good. As early as 1949, T. S. Eliot, who succeeded Arnold redefined the latter’s definition of culture. Culture for Eliot is evidently not the cultivation of the individual mind, or even the canon of its great achievements, as Arnold held, but a common way of life embodied in social institutions, involving moral standards and practices with a tradition behind them. He said, â€Å"Just as man is more than the sum of his body parts, culture is more than the assemblage of its arts, customs, and religious beliefs. All these parts act on one another and to fully understand one you have to understand them all. † The definition of culture, as what Greenblatt and Arnold said, is complex in its own sense, but it has paved way to many scholarly redefinitions of it, and thus, helps to understanding of not just people, but arts and literature as well. Philippine culture may be considered a unique of its kind. Having been colonized by different foreign cultures both from east and west, the blending of many diverse traditional heritages makes its culture multi-faceted. Through a long span of being colonized most especially Spain and America, one can glimpse the Filipino soul trying to express its unique, cultural identity through creativity. In fact, most provinces have their own ways of taking pride of their traditions, and such are evident in how they do things, like folk dances and music, and even arts and literature. Philippine culture is rich in traditions. Even before the Spaniards came, its people already had their own laws and beliefs, most of which are still in practice up to now. A best example will be the indigenous people, who are able to preserve the culture and traditions of their â€Å"ethnos† or â€Å"tribe† as reflected in their communal views on land, their cooperative work exchanges, their communal rituals, their songs, dances, and folklore. Instead of having their own hierarchical governments, each of these communities has its own council of elders who customarily settle clan or tribal wars to restore peace and unity. Such elders rule the tribe and they make sure that the prescribed laws and traditions of the group are implemented and performed religiously. One of the Philippines’ known indigenous tribes is the Ifugaos of the Mountain Province. This group of people, just like most indigenous groups, is said to be untouched by the Spanish colonialism. Their sets of beliefs and practices are innately their own. Furthermore, their culture is known for its legal system, using one of the worlds most extensive oral legal traditions specifying the offense depending on the use of custom law trial by elders (influenced in part by public opinion), or trial by ordeal. Such tradition is evident in Amador Daguio’s short story, Wedding Dance. The story itself stands up and shows how rich Filipino culture is. The tribe where the main characters Lumnay and Awiyao belong in shows how simple, yet rich their way of living is. Their everyday life usually depends on manual labor; men plant and plow the fields while women keep the house clean. Basically they get their food from their surroundings. They don’t have extravagant houses, nor did they have fancy clothes and jewelry. The tribe people live as one. They help one another and they take part in the promotion of common good for all. They are bound together by their customized laws and traditions. Some would be amazed how strong their tradition’s foundation is. However, their tradition being dominant is put into question; whether the tradition itself has done much good to serve its people, or it has gone too far to take away its people’s consciousness and free will. Looking at its title, Wedding Dance has something to do with tradition. In most Filipino ethnic festivities and celebrations like that of a wedding, a dance is indispensable. It stands for a tradition being sacred and essential, something that should never be defied nor questioned. The story revolves on how the characters’ tradition can be an instrument to the preservation of their culture and the promotion of peace, but on the contrary, it also shows how this tradition can demolish the privilege that make one decide for his or her own self, and how it can take away one’s rights to act according to his or her own freewill. More often, women are greatly affected by the imposing rules of traditions. It is because traditions themselves are constructed by the society, and as most people are aware of, the society is created and ruled by men. The Wedding Dance tells about the story of Awiyao and Lumnay who were then happy couples. They had built a life of their own. Awiyao had been a good husband to her, and Lumnay the best wife he could ever have. But such union needed to fall apart as the two were not blessed with a child, Lumnay being regarded as incapabable of bearing a child. In their tribe, to bear a child was a very important element in creating a family and establishing a better relationship between husband and wife; but it is something which Awiyao and Lumnay would never achieve. According to their unwritten law, a husband may divorce his wife and take another if the latter fails to bear a child. No matter how Awiyao loved Lumnay, he could not set aside the fact that a man like him should have a child to carry his name and follow his footsteps. More importantly, if he would not have a child, the other men in tribe would question his masculinity and would even mock him behind his back. Such is pointed out here: â€Å"Lumnay, he said tenderly. â€Å"Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The men have mocked me behind my back. You know that. † Because having a child was an obligation of a married couple, Awiyao had no other options but to leave Lumnay for another woman, Madulimay. This shows how non-negotiable traditions can be. As how Greenblatt explains it, â€Å"if people do something unacceptable, something counter to these ideals, then they suffer the consequences: everything from stares, sarcasm, contempt, or laughter to legal sanctions like imprisonment. The beliefs and values of a culture discourage people from going outside what is appropriate for that society; they are constrained by societys expectations. At the same time, a cultures boundaries are enforced more positively as well. † Lumnay tried her best to bear a child. For seven years, she prayed and sacrificed many chickens to Kabunyan just to please the deity. Lumnay represented the women in their tribe. She was a good wife for she did her house work impressively; but just because of her incapacity to bear a child, all her good qualities as a woman were set aside. Just like Awiyao, she was conformed to their tribe’s unwritten laws, but her situation was even worse compared to that of Awiyao; that is, because she’s a woman. Lumnay’s depressing situation only proves how the society has put women behind men, and how the law gives them more restrictions than freedom. Lumnay portrays a woman who is weak and subordinating; someone who gives in to a man’s authority. She may have wanted to speak up and complain; to go to elders and tell them it was not right, â€Å"Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take a woman. † but at the end, she realized she did not have the courage to do so. The gleaming brightness of the bonfire, their tradition, and her fears commanded her to stop. â€Å"The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast. † Daguio had written a great love story with a great sense of ethnicity. Since he himself grew up in the Mountain Province, he had seen through his very eyes the Ifugao culture. The story Wedding Dance more specifically shows how personal love and interest are defeated by culture. Lumnay’s actions and words make the readers feel pity for her and for those whose deep attachment to their tradition makes them a prisoner of it. There is much sympathy in the character of Lumnay. Daguio made sure to point out the prevailing power of culture, that its superiority dominated nature. â€Å"What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? † Daguio illustrated the possible ill effect of the influence of a tradition. He was able to stir the hearts of his readers on the unfortunate situation of Lumnay brought about by their prevailing culture. Such portrayal showed how culture would always find its way to triumph, and how it maintained beliefs and traditions that evolved in the society. The plot technique that Daguio used in his story is quite impressive. His deviation from the traditional plot structure is a different, yet interesting way of creating a style of his own. Unlike the usual flow of a story where it starts with the introduction until it reaches the problem, Daguio in the beginning of the story already revealed the conflict. What is more interesting about his technique is it (the story) still allows a sense of suspense despite the fact that the conflict is already introduced in the beginning. Furthermore, the setting itself fits the story perfectly. There can’t be more realistic or valid story of a culture than this of which the setting really illustrates such, and the author witnessed such. The use of ethnic objects to stand for something makes the story more realistic and representational. For instance, the sound of the gong, far yet sonorous, spreads throughout the tribe, reaching Lumnay in the deepest corner of her home. The gong sounds triumphant; it is culture that calls for her adherence, inviting her to come, to accept what is about to happen. In addition, the dance, which Lumnay refused to take part in, represents their tradition, for somehow Lumnay felt like denouncing it. Lumnay’s idea of standing against their tradition gives the very impression that culture did not completely prevail on her. If it did, Lumnay wouldn’t even think of standing up against their tribe law, denouncing it for its being unreasonable. In this, Daguio may have shown how imperative and overbearing culture is, and how it seeks to promote order and peace in the society, but it doesn’t prove that it always triumphs. Even Awiyao at one part of the story questioned the urgency of their culture, thinking who or what could have made such notion of the necessity of having a child. It may have shown, through Lumnay’s portrayal, Daguio’s attempt to uncover women subordination and oppression in the society in general. Women’s roles such that of Lumnay’s are often stressed as those concerning with being modest, tender, and submissive. As the story progresses, he gives Lumnay a voice; that of which stands for a woman finding her own way out of the box where she is kept and locked in. Daguio celebrates the innate strength of a woman who can actually stand for what she believes in, and who can fight for what is right. However, such attempt fails as Lumnay’s portrayal is inadequate and blurred. There’s not so much description of Lumnay that can actually put her in the right limelight. His descriptions of Lumnay are vague; they just show how good she is as a wife – a general image that the society created as an important role of a woman. Furthermore, her strengths are not brought out the surface. In fact, the last part of the story confirms how feeble she is; for she has still chosen to heed what is expected of her. Lumnay’s backing out from her judgment only proves that the culture, dominated by men still has taken her a prisoner. Another character that contributes to Daguio’s misrepresentation of women is Maludimay. The reader might not even consider her for she is just mentioned once; but in fact, she has a big role to play. Maludimay is just presented as another Ifugao woman whose only hope is to give her husband a child, just like Lumnay’s. The story does not really focus on how Lumnay is treated unfairly and fights against it, but rather how she is mistreated by such tradition, and how she permits it in doing such. Daguio only gives the readers a false and a shattering hope of women liberation. So much is made of male authors difficulties writing good female characters. Since 1983 in Showalter’s time, there have emerged male critics who self-identified themselves as feminists. Since then, debates on the â€Å"possibility† of men’s relation with feminism have become a recurring issue in the realm of gender studies. In an early version of Men in Feminism, Stephen Heath writes, â€Å"Men’s relation to feminism is an impossible one. † As Heath puts it, â€Å"the point after all is that this is a matter for women, that it is their voices and actions that must determine the change and redefinition. Women are the subjects of feminism, its initiators, its makers, its force . . . Men are the objects, agents of the structure to be transformed, carriers of the patriarchal mode; and my desire to be a subject there too in feminismto be a feministis then only the last feint in the long history of their colonization. † Heath made a point that men who enter the discourse of feminism may attempt to colonize it. Furthermore, men who try to be feminists cannot take away from them the patriarchal moves that women denounce. In Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism, Laura Claridge and Elizabeth Langland offer a central insight of patriarchy that one has to consider – it is a gender-complicated term that initially defines a male writer’s resistance to and defiance of an ideology as â€Å"feminist†. That is, their unexamined assumption was that antipatriarchal activity would necessarily encompass feminism. In other words, criticisms offered by men are inevitably patriarchal, and that they will always carry with them no matter how they work their way out of a constricting male language. To add further, Claridge and Langland mentioned, â€Å"Although many male writers are interested in a space or possibility for expression coded as â€Å"feminine,† they are not necessarily interested in particular women and their plights – or even the general plight of the generic â€Å"woman†. A male writer may simply need the space of what he or his culture terms the feminine in which to express himself more fully because he experiences the patriarchal construction of his masculinity as a constriction. † Daguio failed to liberate Lumnay from her tribe’s gender bondage because, in the first place, he himself belonged to, and a member of the patriarch. Although he had been a witness of such tradition, he would never be able to effectively portray Lumnay as a victim because he was not a woman; and therefore wouldn’t realize how it felt to be a woman, resulting to his one-sided portrayal of Lumnay. More importantly, since he belonged to the discriminating group, he would not be able to portray any female character properly. Cultural practices have given an enormous impact on gender roles. They influence how men and women think about themselves within their gender roles. For instance, men are expected to be independent, assertive, and competitive; women are expected to be more passive, sensitive, and supportive like Lumnay who is bound to do her duties and responsibilities in the tribe imposed by what they call â€Å"the elders†, the lawgiver, and the male leaders of their tribe. Women are forced to behave in the way the society considers appropriate. It is therefore a struggle for women to be fully liberated; and to do such, the society itself must do it. But there have been ways to make others aware of women’s depriving situation. In fact, literature has done quite well, if not best, to reveal the issues concerning women. However, only female writers can do best in discussing issues that their gender group experiences, for there’s no better way of making these issues known than doing it themselves, for they are the inferior and the oppressed. References Books Boone, Joseph and Cadden, Michael. Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism. Routledge. 1990 Claridge, Laura and Langland, Elizabeth. Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism. The University of Massachusetts Press. 1990 Electronic Journals Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism. Oxford University Press. 1878. Greenblatt, Stephen. Culture. Critical Terms for Literature Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. University of Chicago Press. 1995.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Organizational Metaphor Definition and Examples

Organizational Metaphor Definition and Examples An organizational metaphor is a figurative comparison (that is, a metaphor, simile, or analogy) used to define the key aspects of an organization and/or explain its methods of operation. Organizational metaphors provide information about the value system of a company and about employers attitudes toward their customers and employees. Examples and Observations [M]etaphor is a basic structural form of experience by which human beings engage, organize, and understand their world. The organizational metaphor is a well-known way in which organizational experiences are characterized. We have come to understand organizations as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, instruments of domination, etc. (Llewelyn 2003). The metaphor is a basic way in which human beings ground their experiences and continue to evolve them by adding new, related concepts that carry aspects of the original metaphor.(Kosheek Sewchurran and Irwin Brown, Toward an Approach to Generate Forward-Looking Theories Using Systemic Concepts. Researching the Future in Information Systems, ed. by Mike Chiasson, Ola Henfridsson, Helena Karsten, and Janice I. DeGross. Springer, 2011)What we may discover in analyzing organizational metaphors are complex relationships between thought and action, between shape and reflection.(Dvora Yanow, How Does a Pol icy Mean? Georgetown University Press, 1996) Frederick Taylor on Workers as Machines Perhaps the earliest metaphor used to define an organization was provided by Frederick Taylor, a mechanical engineer interested in better understanding the driving forces behind employee motivation and productivity. Taylor (1911) argued that an employee is very much like an automobile: if the driver adds gas and keeps up with the routine maintenance of the vehicle, the automobile should run forever. His  organizational metaphor for the most efficient and effective workforce was the well-oiled machine. In other words, as long as employees are paid fairly for their outputs (synonymous with putting gas into a vehicle), they will continue to work forever. Although both his view and metaphor (organization as machine) have been challenged, Frederick Taylor provided one of the first metaphors by which organizations operated. If an organizational employee knows that this is the metaphor that drives the organization, and that money and incentives are the true motivating factors, then this e mployee understands quite a bit about his organizational culture. Other popular metaphors that have surfaced over the years include organization as family, organization as system, organization as circus, organization as team, organization as culture, organization as prison, organization as organism, and the list goes on. (Corey Jay Liberman, Creating a Productive Workplace Culture and Climate: Understanding the Role of Communication and Socialization for Organizational Newcomers. Workplace Communication for the 21st Century: Tools and Strategies That Impact the Bottom Line, ed. by Jason S. Wrench. ABC-CLIO, 2013) Wal-Mart Metaphors The people-greeters give you the feeling that you are part of the Wal-Mart family and they are glad you stopped by. They are trained to treat you like a neighbor because they want you to think of Wal-Mart as your neighborhood store. Sam [Walton] called this approach to customer service aggressive hospitality. (Michael Bergdahl, What I Learned From Sam Walton: How to Compete and Thrive in a Wal-Mart World. John Wiley Sons, 2004)Lawyers representing these women [in the court case Wal-Mart v. Dukes] . . . claimed that Wal-Marts family model of management relegated women to a complementary yet subordinate role; by deploying a family metaphor within the company, Wal-Marts corporate culture naturalized the hierarchy between their (mostly) male managers and a (mostly) female workforce (Moreton, 2009).  (Nicholas Copeland and Christine Labuski, The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream. Routledge, 2013)Framing Wal-Mart as a kind of David in a battle with Goliath is no accident al moveWal-Mart, of course, has worn the nickname of the retail giant in the national media for over a decade, and has even been tagged with the alliterative epithet the bully from Bentonville. Attempts to turn the tables of this metaphor challenge the person-based language that otherwise frames Wal-Mart as a behemoth bent on expansion at all costs. (Rebekah Peeples Massengill, Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century. New York University Press, 2013) Think of Wal-Mart as a giant steamroller moving across the global economy, pushing down the costs of everything in its pathincluding wages and benefitsas it squeezes the entire production system.   (Robert B. Reich, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. Knopf, 2007)After experiencing the flaws of having someone in Bentonville make decisions about human resources in Europe, Wal-Mart decided to move critical support functions closer to Latin America.The metaphor it used for describing this decision is that the organization is an organism. As the head of People for Latin American explains, in Latin America Wal-Mart was growing a new organism. If it was to function independently, the new organization needed its own vital organs. Wal-Mart defined three critical organsPeople, Finance, and Operationsand positioned them in a new Latin American regional unit. (Kaihan Krippendorff, The Way of Innovation: Master the Five Elements of Change to Reinvent Your Products, Services, and Organization. Platinum Press, 2003) The Big Tent Metaphor In what many observers will see as the de facto expression of mainstream U.S. Jewrys outlook on J Street, members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted 22-17 (with three abstentions) to reject the membership application of the self-labeled pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby. . .   J Street said in a statement, This is a sad day for us, but also for the American Jewish community and for a venerable institution that has chosen to bar the door to the communal tent to an organization that represents a substantial segment of Jewish opinion on Israel. Jewish leaders have used a big tent metaphor to describe which views on Israel and U.S. foreign policy are encompassed within the communitys consensus. Since its formation in 2008, J Street has been a frequent subject of debates on how far that tent stretches, and the groups bid to join the Conference of Presidents proved no different. Alina Dain Sharon and Sean Savage, J Street Rejected by Umbrella Group. (Heritage Florida Jewish News, May 9, 2014) Football as a Flawed Organizational Metaphor for Fire Fighting A metaphor seeps deeply into organizational narratives because the metaphor is a way of seeing. Once established it becomes a filter through which participants both old and new see their reality. Soon enough the metaphor becomes the reality. If you use the football metaphor you would think that the fire department ran a series of set plays; finite, divisible, independent actions.You could also assume that at the end of these short segments of violent action, everyone stopped, set up the next plan and then acted again. A metaphor fails when it does not accurately reflect core organizational processes. The football metaphor fails because fires are extinguished in one, essentially, contiguous action, not a series of set plays. There are no designated times for decision making in firefighting and certainly no timeouts, though my aging bones might wish that there were.(Charles Bailey, Metaphors Mask Realities of Firefighting. FireRescue1, Feb. 16, 2010)

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Employee Assistance Program Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Employee Assistance Program - Essay Example The EAP can be the place where a grieved employee could approach and seek advice on family issues that nag him or her. Also find ways to set right their own thoughts on the happenings in the company; whether these are for the good or the bad. As a matter of fact, the supervisors in the company should encourage EAP and resorting to EAP when behavior of a person is not in line with his usual performances. Since the advice given is from professionals in the trade and they do not cost to the company or to the employee, the EAP will stabilize and produce the expected results over a period of time (Dept of Employee Relations, 2004). One, EAP will be a place where people could go for any of their not so obvious problems. Many times, men and women are bogged down by problems that come out of mental stress. This created either by an event or sometimes by presumptions. One of my friends, who was married for nearly two years, had a kid out of the marriage, suddenly found herself at a loss when her husband died suddenly in an accident. She used to be young and agile. She was a qualified computer programmer but mentally she was shocked at the turn of events. Her own working performance shattered in face of this personal calamity. To make matters worse, the company could not appreciate the reason behind her lack of performance and found that she was not worthy of what they were paying her. She was shunted out of the company nine months after her husband’s death. Jobless and with no heart to hunt for one, kid to take care, she was really in a soup. Good that some of her friends could spend time with her, counsel her and put her slowly back to normalcy. It took almost another year for her to get back to work in full swing and produce results in a different company. Another incident of importance happened with one of my friends. He became an addict; I am not sure what drugs he employed. But it was certainly spoiling his high flying career.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

HP SL5 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

HP SL5 - Essay Example When Carly Fiorina replaced Lew Platt as CEO and president of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, the company had become a gigantic bureaucracy with business units doing their own thing. Profits had fallen along with employee productivity and customer satisfaction. In short, HP had become a technology laggard and was weak in marketing as well. Fiorina, the first female CEO of a Dow Jones-listed company, set out to transform HP from an engineering company to a leading technology solutions company focused on the marketplace. Hewlett-Packard Company was a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services with total revenue of $45.2 billion, per its 2001financial report. The new CEO immediately went to work to reduce operational costs and to put in place a new strategic direction for the company. In September 2001, Hewlett Packard and Compaq, after months of negotiation, concluded a horizontal merger agreement to create a global technology leader, providing a complete set of IT products and services for both businesses and consumers, worth $87 billion in revenues. It was intended to compete with and perhaps edge out competitors Dell and IBM and become the foremost global player in servers, imaging and printing, and would belong to the top 3 in IT services, storage and management software. Fiorina said that recession and bitter competition from main rivals Dell and IBM left the two competitors HP and Compaq no choice but to consolidate to cut costs and streamline product categories, adding that the merger would result in a cost synergy of $2.5 billion a year. It was, she said, an effective way to deal with the cost pressure caused by Dell Computer. Inasmuch as the NT server business was doing poorly, the merger should address the problem of loss of revenues and momentum in generating sales and profits. The combination was to catapult the new company into industry leadership role with customers and

Monday, January 27, 2020

Theories of Motivation Comparison and Analysis

Theories of Motivation Comparison and Analysis Most contemporary theories recognize that motivation begins with individual needs. Needs are deficiencies that energize or trigger behaviors to satisfy those needs. At some point in your life, you might have a strong need for food and shelter. At other tomes, your social needs may be unfulfilled. Unfulfilled needs create a tension that makes you want to find ways to reduce or satisfy those needs. The stronger your needs, the more motivated you are to satisfy them. Conversely, a satisfied need does not motivate. In this section, we will look at the four content theories of motivation that dominate organizational thinking today Maslows theory: According to Maslow, human needs from hierarchy, starting at the bottom with the physiological needs and reaching to the highest needs of self actualization. He says when one set of needs are satisfied, then they try to full fill the next need from hierarchy. physiological needs: these are the basic necessities of human life like food, clothing, shelter etc.He says until these needs are satisfied to the required level , man does not aim for the satisfaction of next higher level needs. As for a organization is concerned these needs include basic needs like pay, allowance, incentives and benefits security safety needs: these refer to the needs to be free of physical danger or the feeling of loss of food , job or shelter these needs as far as organization is concerned include conformity, security plans, membership in union, severance pay etc. Social needs: physiological and security needs are satisfied these social needs begin occupying the mind of man. This is exactly why he looks for the association of other human beings and strives hard to be accepted b its group; social needs at work place include human relations, formal and informal work group. Esteem needs: these needs are power, prestige, status and self confidence. Every man has a feeling of importance and he wants others to regard him highly. These needs make people aim high and make them achieve something great. These needs for employees include staus symbol, awards, promotions, titles etc. Self actualization: this is the highest need in hierarchy. This refers to the desire to become what one is capable of becoming. Man tries to maximize his potential and accomplish something, when these needs are activated in him. As said earlier the individuals processed from physiological needs to safety needs and so on and so forth only when each need is satisfied. If any need is not satisfied, the individual sticks to that need and strives to fulfill that need. MASLOWS HIERARCHY Herzberg theory(1959) Maslows theory has been modified by herzberg and he called it two factor theory of motivation. According to him the first groups of needs are things such as company policy and administration, supervision, working conditions, interpersonal relations, salary, status, job security and personal life. Herzberg called this factor as dissatisfiers and not motivators. These are also refered to as hygiene factors. Maintenance factors or dissatisfiers motivation factors or satisfiers Job context job content Extrinsic factor   intrinsic factor Company policy and administration   achievement Quality of supervision recognition Relations with supervisors   work itself Work conditions   responsibility Pay   advancement Peer relations   possibility of growth Personal life Relations with subordinates Status Job security Second group are satisfiers, in the sense that they are motivators. These factors are related to job content. He included the factors like achievement, recognition, challenging work, advancement and growth in this category. Presence of these factors will yield feelings of satisfaction. Herzberg theory is also called as motivation hygiene theory. Herzberg conducted a study by asking questions. What do the people want for a job? He asked the respondents to describe situations are events when they feel exceptionally good and bad about their job. Herzberg did not the cover the relationship between job satisfaction and productivity, though he assumed that there is a relationship between these two factors. Alders ERG theory(1972) Alder also feels that needs should be categorized and that there is a basic distinction between lower order needs and higher order needs . alder identified three groups of needs Existence, Relatedness and Growth and that is why his theory is called ERG theory.the existence needs are based with survival, or physiological well being.the relatedness talk about the importance of interpersonal and social relationship. The growth needs are concerned with the individuals intrinsic desire for personal development. This theory is some what similar to maslows and herzberg theory . but unlike maslows and herzberg he does not assert that lower needs has to be satisfied before higher level needs . so a persons background and culture environment may make him think of relatedness needs or growth needs though his existency needs are unfulfilled. Alders simplification of maslows need hierarchy: Needs are arranged in order of importance Unsatisfied needs motivate individuals Alders theory suggests that individual needs can be divided into three groups existence (physiological and safety) relatedness (social) growth (esteem and self actualization) alders theory differs from maslows theory in a number of important respects. Alderfer argued that it was better to think in terms of continuum rather than a hierarchy. From concrete exixtence needs to least concrete growth needs and argued that you can move along this in either direction. Maslow argued that when satisfied a need becomes less important to an individual, but alderfers argues that relatedness or growth needs become more important when satisfied . this means that team working arrangements can continue to motivate employees and are not necessarily superseded by growth needs. Mc Clellands theory: this theor was developed by David McClelland a Harvard physiologist and his associates.the theory focuses on three needs In his acquired-needs theory, David McClelland proposed that an individuals specific needs are acquired over time and are shaped by ones life experiences. Most of these needs can be classed as either achievement, affiliation, or power. A persons motivation and effectiveness in certain job functions are influenced by these three needs. McClellands theory sometimes is referred to as the three need theory or as the learned needs theory. 1. Need for achievement: (n Ach) need for achievement refers to the drive to excel, to achieve in relation to set standards and and to strive to succeed McClelland from his research that high achievers differentiate themselves from others by doing the same work in different ways . they perform best when they perceive their probability of success as being 0.5. they seek quick feed back on their performance in Order to improve or correct the action before it goes wrong. They accept personal responsibility for success or failure. Want to take personal responsibility for solving problem Goal oriented set moderate, realistic, attainable goal Seek challenge, excellence and individuality Take calculated, moderate risk Willing to work hard and desire concrete feedback on their performance Need for power (n pow) need for power refers to the desire to make others behave in a way that they would not otherwise have behaved in. In other words need for power is the desire o have impact, to be influential and control others. Want to control the situation and want control over others Enjoy competition and winning, do not like to lose willing to confront others Need for affiliation: (n Aff) seek close relationship with others and to be liked by others enjoy lots of social activities seek to belong, join groups and organization PROCESS THEORY: Process theories are concerned with the thought processes that influence behaviour. Two such theories are Expectancy theory and Equity theory A) Vrooms expectancy theory: Vrooms formula: motivation=expectancy X value According to this theory motivation of any individual depends on the desired goal and strength of his expectation of achieving goals. A vrooms model is built mainly on three concepts valency, instrumentality and expectancy. Valency: The value a person places on the outcome or reward vroom says that valency is the strength of individuals preference for a particular outcome. it can be taken as an equivalent of value, incentive, attitude and expected utility . for the value to be positive the person must prefer attaining the out come to not to attain the outcome. A valency of zero occurs , when the individual is indifferent towards the outcome. the valency is negative when the individual prefers not attaining outcome to attaining it . Expectancy: A person perception of the probability of accomplishing an objective the third major variable in vrooms theory is expectancy. though expectancy and instrumentality appear to be the same at the first glance they are quite different . Expectancy is a probability (ranging from 0 to 1) or strength of a belief that a particular action or effort will leave to a particular first level outcome. Instrumentality refers to the degree to which a first level outcome will lead to the second level outcome. vroom says the sum of these variables is motivation. Expectancy theory works best with employees who have n internal locus of control. To motivate using the expectancy theory: clearly define objectives clearly define necessary performance needed to achieve them tie performance to rewards be sure rewards are of value to the employees Make sure your employees believe you will do as you promise. Vrooms theory also suggests: Both internal (needs) and external (environment) factors affect behaviour Behaviour is the individuals decision People have different needs, desires and goals People make behaviour decisions based on their perception of the outcome. Adams Equity Theory: based on the comparison of perceived inputs to outputs. People perceive themselves in one of three positions Both the inputs and outputs of person and others or based upon the persons perceptions. Age, sex, education economic and social status , skill, experience, training, effort, education, past performance, present performance ,level of difficulty , position in the organization etc, are examples of perceived input variables . Outcomes consist of rewards like pay status promotion and intrinsic interest in the job. Equitably rewarded:( they are satisfied that there inputs and outputs are equal) Inputs and outputs are perceived as being equal. Under rewarded: (they perceive there inputs exceed their output) Efforts to reduce inequity by trying to increase outputs Reducing inputs(working less, absenteeism) Rationalizing(creating an explanation for the inequity) Changing others inputs or outputs Leaving Changing the objective of comparision Over rewarded: people dont usually get upset when they are over rewarded , but they may increase inputs or reduce outputs to maintain equity) Increasing inputs (working more, longer hours, etc) Reducing output(taking a pay cut) Rationalizing (Im worth it) Increasing other outputs Inequity occurs when : Persons outcomes others outcomes Persons inputs others inputs Persons outcomes others outcomes persons inputs others inputs Equity occurs when: Persons outcomes others outcomes - = Persons inputs others inputs INPUTS: Time Effort Loyalty Hard Work Commitment Ability Adaptability Flexibility Tolerance Determination Enthusiasm Personal sacrifice Trust in superiors Support from co-workers and colleagues OUTCOMES: Outputs are defined as the positive and negative consequences that an individual perceives a participant has incurred as a consequence of his/her relationship with another. When the ratio of inputs to outcomes is close, than the employee should have much satisfaction with their job. Outputs can be both tangible and intangible (Walster, Traupmann Walster, 1978). Typical  outcomes include any of the following: Job security Esteem Salary Employee benefit Expenses Recognition Reputation Responsibility Sense of achievement Praise Forming equity perceptions: Step 1: a person evaluates how he or she is being treated by the firm. Step 2: the person forms a perception of how a comparision other is being treated Step 3: the person compares his or her own circumstances with those of the comparision other Step 4: on the strength of this feeling , the person may choose to pursue one or more alternatives. It is important to also consider the Adams Equity Theory factors when striving to improve an employees job satisfaction, motivation level, etc., and what can be done to promote higher levels of each. JOB SATISFACTION: Job satisfaction, a workers sense of achievement and success, is generally perceived to be directly linked to productivity as well as to personal wellbeing. Job satisfaction implies doing a job one enjoys, doing it well, and being suitably rewarded for ones efforts. Job satisfaction further implies enthusiasm and happiness with ones work. For the organization, job satisfaction of its workers means a work force that is motivated and committed to high quality performance. Increased productivity-the quantity and quality of output per hour worked-seems to be a byproduct of improved quality of working life. It is important to note that the literature on the relationship between job satisfaction and productivity is neither conclusive nor consistent. However, studies dating back to Herzbergs (1957) have shown at least low correlation between high morale and high productivity, and it does seem logical that more satisfied workers will tend to add more value to an organization. Unhappy employees, who are motivated by fear of job loss, will not give 100 percent of their effort for very long. Though fear is a powerful motivator, it is also a temporary one, and as soon as the threat is lifted performance will decline. Creating job satisfaction: Flexible work arrangements, possibly including telecommuting Training and other professional growth opportunities Interesting work that offers variety and challenge and allows the worker opportunities to put his or her signature on the finished product Opportunities to use ones talents and to be creative Opportunities to take responsibility and direct ones own work A stable, secure work environment that includes job security/continuity An environment in which workers are supported by an accessible supervisor who provides timely feedback as well as congenial team members Flexible benefits, such as child-care and exercise facilities Up-to-date technology Competitive salary and opportunities for promotion

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Sat Math Test

What is the probability that Scott wins? 5. Maria is 6 times as old as Tina. In 20 years, Maria will be only twice as old as Tina. How old is Maria now? 6. If a. ND c are positive numbers with a=b/ca, what is the value of c when a=44 and b=275 7. In thro figure above, all of the line segments meet to form right angles. What Is the perimeter of the figure? 8. A car going 40 miles per hour set out on an 80 miles trip at 9:00 a. M. Exactly 10 minutes later, a second car left from the same place and followed the same place and followed the same route. How fast, In miles per hour, was the second car going if it caught up with the first car at 10:30 a. M. ? 9. Five people shared a prize of $100.Each one received a whole number of dollars, and no two people received the same amount. If the largest share was $30 and the smallest share was $1 5, what Is the most money that the person with the third largest share could have received? 10. There are 12 men on a basketball tea, and In a game 5 of them play at any one time. If the game Is 1 hour long, and If each man plays exactly the same amount of time, how many minutes does each man play? 5 8 10 . A square, not shown, has the same perimeter as the quadrilateral above. . What is the length of the side of the square? 250 12. In the figure above, if AS bisects REST. What is the value of W ? 13. If it is now 1:15, what time will it be when the hour hand has moved through an angle of 100 ? ICC 14. In the figure above, rectangle ABACA has been partitioned into four triangles. If UDF= BEEF , what is the value of x+Y ? 15. Jean spent $125 for a camera and some film. The camera cost $100 more than the film. What percent of the cost of the two items did Jean spend for the camera?