Monday, September 30, 2019

Of Mice and Men Scene Analysis Essay

1. Re-read p. 49 from â€Å"George followed to the door and shut the door†¦Ã¢â‚¬  until â€Å"George shuffled the cards noisily and dealt them.† on p. 50. How does Steinbeck create tension in this extract? Remember to use Point-Evidence-Explanation (referring to language techniques and effects), giving the reader’s personal response. The section between â€Å"George followed to the door and shut the door†¦Ã¢â‚¬  until â€Å"George shuffled the cards noisily and dealt them† is a particularly tensed scene because the reader and the characters are waiting for a specific event to happen. Carlson has taken Candy’s dog to shoot him. In the scene, everyone is waiting for the shot, which is the climax point of the tension, and the waiting makes the tension worse. The scene comes after we have viewed the argument of the men about Candy’s dog. Candy doesn’t want to kill his dog, so Carlson takes the dog outside to put it out of its misery. The reader might think that the men are being selfish, because they aren’t thinking about Candy who loves his dog, but about themselves. â€Å"Candy looked a long time at Slim to try to find some reversal. And Slim gave him none.† We can see that even Slim, who isn’t selfish, doesn’t try to stop Carlson. The scene starts with George closing the door and setting â€Å"the latch gently in its place†. The word â€Å"gently† suggests that he doesn’t want to draw any attention on him, so he tries not to make any noise. The fact that he shuts the door suggests that he doesn’t want Candy to hear the shot. â€Å"Candy lay rigidly on his bed staring at the ceiling.† His position shows how anxious he feels. Slim tries to start a conversation, but instead of an answer, â€Å"silence came into the room.† The word â€Å"silence† is repeated many times in this section, and it emphasizes the tension in the bunk. The phrase â€Å"silence came into the room† suggests that it’s an unwanted invader. The characters don’t really want to sit in silence, because this means that they will be able to hear the shot and that will upset Candy. But the fact that they are silent makes the reader think that even though they seem tough, they are capable of sensitivity. â€Å"It was silent outside. Carlson’s footsteps died away. The silence came into the room. And the silence lasted.† These are short sentences which create suspense. They make the reader stop and think about what’s happening. The pauses slow down the pace, and it moves slowly towards the inevitable conclusion, the shot. The use of short sentences might also suggest that the reader wants to read faster and finish this depressing scene. There is another unsuccessful attempt for conversation, by George: â€Å"I bet Lennie’s right out there in the barn with his pup.† George mentioning Lennie’s puppy reminds everyone that Candy’s dog is about to get shot and increases tension. Slim tries to comfort Candy: â€Å"you can have any one of them pups you want.† The reader here feels sorry for Candy and is wondering if another puppy can replace his dog. The personification later on highlights the tension in the bunk. â€Å"The silence†¦invaded the room.† However, George interrupts it by suggesting â€Å"to play a little euchre.† This shows that he’s trying to keep the attention of the others focused somewhere else. â€Å"He rippled the edge of the deck nervously, and the little snapping noise drew the eyes of all the men in the room.† We can see that George is nervous, because he is waiting for the shot and also for Candy’s reaction. In addition, we can see that the men are aware of the sounds going on in the room. The â€Å"little snapping noise† wouldn’t be so noticeable under normal circumstances, and this emphasizes, again, the tension. â€Å"A minute passed, and another minute.† Things seem to be happening in slow-motion. They take longer than usual. Whit suddenly exploded: â€Å"What the hell’s takin’ him so long?† It can’t take long to shoot a dog, but because they are anticipating hearing the shot, everything seems to take longer. This sudden explosion suggests that they want this awkwardness to end as soon as possible. â€Å"Candy lay still, staring at the ceiling.† The fact that he hasn’t moved suggests that he is anxious. Slim â€Å"subdued one hand with the other and held it down.† Slim until this point is portrayed as calm, but we can see that he is also affected by the tension in the bunk. The reader is now curious about what will happen next, even though they know what that is. â€Å"A little gnawing sound† came â€Å"from under the floor and all the men looked down toward it gratefully.† The word â€Å"gratefully† suggests that they feel relieved by the interruption. These interruptions make the scene more dramatic and suspenseful. Steinbeck’s preoccupation with tiny noises makes the atmosphere full of tension. These noises contrast the silence the reader encounters during the scene. Despite the interruptions, â€Å"Candy continued to stare at the ceiling.† This makes the reader feel sorry for him, because he can’t do anything now. The fact that the characters don’t move a lot makes the tension even worse. The reader feels that they are unmoving in anticipation of what is about to happen. However, Whit tries to get the place ‘alive’ and tells to George to â€Å"lay out some cards.† Suddenly, â€Å"a shot sounded in the distance.† The shot is almost a relief to everyone. â€Å"Every head turned toward him.† The men looked at Candy to see his reaction. â€Å"He rolled slowly over and faced the wall and lay silent.† Candy’s reaction suggests that he doesn’t want to show his emotions to the others. The reader is now wondering what Candy’s thoughts are and feels empathy for him, because all of this was out of his control. â€Å"George shuffled the cards noisily and dealt them.† This suggests that after the shot everything is back to normal, the silence and tension left like they had come. The tension in this scene is achieved by the author in a variety of ways, from the choice of words to the description of the time passing. It engages the reader and makes them feel sorry for Candy and his dog, his only true companion. The reader has now a lot of questions: Where will this incidence lead? Will Candy get another puppy? Will something similar happen further on? Next time the victim might even be a human.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Acceleration

In this lab, my group and I main focus was to find out the acceleration of an object that is dropping while thinking that there are no force acting on it due to gravity. Guess what? Galileo was the first famous philosopher that had experience and observe acceleration due to gravity back in the 1700s. Acceleration is an increase in the rate or speed of something. For instance, in this experiment my job was to measure the value of the acceleration of an object in â€Å"free fall†. To be specific a free fall is a falling object that is falling under the sole impact of gravity. A free-falling object has an acceleration of 9.8 m/s/s, downhill. According to experiment 2, there were two different steel balls that was getting tested. One steel ball was bigger than the other one. First, we used the large steel ball to measure trial 1,2 and 3 with a balance scale, then we used the smaller steel ball for trial 4 and 5. The procedure for both was the same. The total mass for the big ball had a mass of 28.4 grams while the smaller one had a mass of 16.4 grams. Next, the height was measured from the release mechanism to the target pad. According to the data sheet the height was provided for us. For trial 1, we had to release the ball from the height of 0.75(m), 1.0(m) for the second trail, 1.5(m) for the third and fourth, and 1(m) for the last trial. Before anything the elapsed time must be on zero while the ball is grip on the release mechanism because I noticed that if the number was different from zero, that means that there's a bad contact between the ball and the mechanism. To avoid that situation, it is important to tighten the ball with the release mechanism. we had to release the ball four times before calculating the average time of flight. When the ball dropped on the time pad, I had received the time of .390 secs on my next three tries we had acquired an estimation close to the amount of seconds as my first try. When we calculated the average by adding all the numbers and dividing it by 4. The average time came up to 0.389 secs. This shows that the time of flight wouldn't change as bad. As we continued the process with the rest of the trails, I notice that the average for the small ball was actually comparable with the big ball. That was really shocking and exciting to me. Once we were finish with the average for 1-5 trial, the most interesting part was finding the calculation for each trial combine. Now I know you wondering, how would you do that? Well it's really not difficult. All you have to do is multiply 2 from the height of your measurement than divide it by the total average than multiply the total average number twice to get the average â€Å"g† g=2s/t^2. The average came up to 9.8 grams.

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Wrting assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Wrting - Assignment Example As per the China Daily report, for the same period, the nominal GDP was $1.87 trillion and PPP GDP was $5.07 trillion for India, another emerging economic power from Asia (â€Å"Top 10 countries..†). As per the report of Institute for Economic Competitiveness, the world’s largest economy United States posted a nominal GDP of $16.8 trillion in 2013, but the country’s GDP growth was only 2.3% for the first quarter of 2014. Official government data also indicate that the Chinese economy’s GDP per capita (nominal $6,747 and PPP $9,844) for 2013 assisted the country to strengthen its economic position in the global economy (â€Å"China GDP..†). China is a communist country, and hence it follows the communist principle of equal distribution of wealth and money among the people. As a result, income inequality is not a big problem in China as compared to capitalist countries like the United States and United Kingdom. However, some recent reports indicate that income inequality is turning out to be a growing concern in the current Chinese market economy despite the country’s status as a communist economic system (Lecture notes, ‘Education’). The Asian Development Bank Institute indicates that implementation of reform and open door policies in China in 1978 significantly contributed to the emergence of income inequality issues in the country. The Economist reported that the China’s official Gini coefficient was 0.474 as of 2012, but many economists argue that the country’s real inequality is far greater (â€Å"Inequality. Gini out of the bottle†). China, officially People’s Republic of China, is a communist country or single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. Key positions in the state structure and military are occupied by the members of Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party is controlled

Friday, September 27, 2019

Commercial Agreement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Commercial Agreement - Essay Example (Ogola, 1999) It follows from the above that an agent is a mere connecting link, bringing about a contractual relation between his principal and third parties. The acts of an agent, done within the scope of his authority, bind his principal. Once an agent has brought his principal into contractual relations with another, he drops out, and his principal sues or is sued on the contract. (Emanuel, 2004) Lopez had very strict instructions not to sell any other product other that tropical fruity juices produced by Fruity Limited Company. Using the company fund, he went ahead and bought cartons of bottled water from the local store at a discount and sold them to Danny making a profit of 100 from the deal which he failed to disclose to the company. Under the agency law, the agent must not make any secret profit or accept bribes. Where he does so, he is forced to refund all such amount to his principal and lose the right of receiving commission. Apart from this, the principal can, if chooses, repudiate the contract with the third party. For the case, Lopez makes secret profit which he was supposed to have disclosed to the company. Lopez as an agent for the company had very strict instructions on the specific products that were to be sold at the outlet. As an agent, he had not taken his duties seriously according to the agency law. According to the agency l... For this case, since Lopez undertook his duties against the company's instructions, the company had a right to terminate his agency without paying him for the work he had done. (Ogola, 1999) Advice to Lopez On the other hand, Lopez as an agent contract by the company to head the outlet, he should have kept proper accounts which he was supposed to produce them to his principal. He should not have mixed his principal's money with his own money unless the terms of the agency had permitted him to do so. For the case, Lopez had mixed his money with those of the company when he made secret profits. (Emanuel, 2004) Danny had ordered 10 boxes of tropical fruity juice from Lopez which he settled with Lopez previous personal debt owed to him. For the case, Lopez mixed his principal's money with his own against the agency agreement. For this case, Lopez was not supposed to settle personal debts with the company's money. Advice to Danny For the case of Danny whereby they settled personal debts with Lopez and also sold bottled water to Lopez, he has no case to answer. This is so because, an employee who has been placed in a position of responsibility may be assumed to have such authority as normally matches with the position, irrespective of what is his actual authority. This means that if a third party enters into a contract with such a person believing him to have proper authority of his employer, he will succeed directly against the employer. This is what is referred to as ostensible authority. For the case of Danny, he believed that Lopez being the manager of the outlet, had the authority to purchase on behalf of the company and also he could mix his money with the principal's money in the case

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Virtual Reality Endangers Our Future Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Virtual Reality Endangers Our Future - Essay Example Virtual reality could be considered dangerous, as this simulation could cause decline of ethics and traditional values, as well as transition to absolutely new ways of life, where the existence of people will lose its entire meaning. The technology itself has been a source of great use in the recent world as can be clearly witnessed in the use of the technology in different realms of life. Virtual reality is of great significance in the spheres of medicine, business, law, and design. Doctors are starting to use virtual reality devices for conducting medical operations, as well as creating suitable conditions for the faster recovery processes (for instance, for patients with mental disorders). Thus, virtual reality assists in the development of medical industry and moves it to a new level. Besides, this equipment gives an opportunity to reconstruct crimes, hold conferences, or model buildings. Virtual reality becomes a new dawn for entertainment industry, especially in the field of video-games and 3D movies. Headsets could improve realistic and engaging effects to plunge the player or spectator into an artificial environment. Therefore, virtual reality devices are crucially important in the advancement of technol ogy and scientific progress, and its importance should not be overestimated. The other benefit of the concept revolving around virtual reality is the development of the Internet as a new platform which will constitute a major part of the online networking centers. Nowadays, social media has already replaced real-life communication by creating a platform through which people can easily carry out their tasks by using the internet. The existence of public institution websites and online stores abolish the need to leave one’s house. Virtual reality devices expand the borders of the Internet, breaking the fourth wall between a user and the entire system. The borders of

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Analysis of Jelly Belly Candy Company Assignment

Analysis of Jelly Belly Candy Company - Assignment Example Proof-of-concept, as used in the paper refers to the necessity to proof or ascertain that a system under consideration is viable (Blount and Lamm 356). Jelly Belly management had a plan to improve their sales and marketing practices through adoption of an appropriate customer relations technological system. As a result, they acquired a CRM system but few months after its integration, the system even failed to form a viable interface with the Enterprise Resource Planning (EPR). Consequently, Jelly Belly approached Microsoft for a new CRM system. This time, they need a preliminary certainty that this new system will serve the intended purpose. Therefore, Jelly Belly consulted Webfortis to establish a proof-of-concept that the new system met all standards required for optimal performance. Jelly Belly can now manage its current customer base using information obtained from the new system. In the past, the company could lose any type of customer within their selling and purchase processes . However, the new customer relations package enables managers to identify speciality customers responsible for the voluminous purchase of their products (Blount and Lamm 357). Consequently, this new package allows sales managers to develop longer relations with speciality clients; hence reducing customer defection. As a Jelly Belly human resource manager, I would consider selecting hiring and training skilled and productive sales persons into the company’s sales team. The reason is that Jelly Belly has the requisite information on customers; hence skilled salespersons could utilize this information in improving sales through actions like direct marketing. The main reason why Jelly Belly failed in accounting for undesirable customer patterns was as a result of inefficient customer relationship culture. Jelly Belly had not employed the use of technological tools in acquiring relevant information concerning the nature of their client base. In the past, the company could lose any type of customer within their selling and purchase processes. However, the new customer relations package enables managers to identify speciality customers responsible for the voluminous purchase of their products.  

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Education. What is your philosophy of Assessment Essay

Education. What is your philosophy of Assessment - Essay Example Still, it’s worth noting that teaching professionals must attend to the varieties of students, cultures, and grade levels when considering assessment strategies. As a high school chemistry and physics teacher, I have developed a number of assessment strategies that have formed my own philosophy to the assessment process. This essay considers my personal philosophy of assessment. One of the primary considerations I recognize in terms of assessment is developing a means of judging student participation and effort throughout the semester and course. One of the primary challenges I had when originally considering assessment was the nature of developing assessment strategies that are student specific, or measure objective standards of comprehension. While ideally classrooms are constituted by students of the same level of achievement, in reality this is not always the case. Early in my teaching career I recognized that I would have to make the difficult decision of requiring all st udents to achieve the same level of achievement.

Monday, September 23, 2019

Political Political science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Political Political science - Essay Example After 1979 revolution, Iranian government started to stop United Nations to inspect Iranian nuclear program by saying that Iranian nuclear program is for electricity purposes so there is no need for the United Nation inspection team to visit the nuclear sites. The US government thinks that Iran should stop working on its nuclear program because it does not need to develop its own nuclear capacity. If we read the latest news dossier regarding Iranian nuclear program and threats to the world’s peace, we come to know that in March 2006, United Nations Security Council discussed the issue of Iranian nuclear program to set up Iran’s conformity with the terms and conditions of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In July 2006, Security Council said that International Atomic Energy Agency was not able to provide any assurances regarding peaceful use of nuclear technology by Iran. Therefore, in December 2006, Security Council made a resolution to block Iran’s import and export of sensitive nuclear material. Looking at the behavior of Iranian government, the world’s powerful nations pressurized Iran and urged that it should reveal the nature of its nuclear program during six-party talks in Geneva. In November 2009, the hea d of the United Nations nuclear agency urged Iran to be as much cooperative as possible and suggested that it should send uranium abroad for enrichment purposes. â€Å"Tehran initially accepted but then rejected an offer for an interim solution under which it would ship some uranium out of the country for enrichment† (New York Times). Iran suggested to review the deal and said that it will continue enrichment of uranium in Iran instead of sending it abroad. In December 2009, US warned Iran of new significant sanctions in case of not sending the uranium outside for enrichment purposes. In February 2010, UN inspectors declared that they have evidences related to Iran’s suspicious nuclear activities. Despite of all warnings and sanctions,

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Theories of Motivation in Organization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Theories of Motivation in Organization - Essay Example Greater the satisfaction level less will be turnover rate and thus, greater employee retention. One of the most important factors, that govern the employee retention within the organizations, is motivation level of the employees. There are many other factors such as pay, compensation packages and good environment but motivation is the one that serves the purpose. Employees work with innovation and uniqueness only when they are motivated to do so. Successful completion of the tasks depends not only upon the intrinsic rewards but extrinsic as well, such as appreciation by the supervisor that ultimately leads to employee satisfaction and makes them motivated. There is an old saying ‘you can take a horse to the water but you cannot force it to drink’; it will drink only if its thirsty - so is the case with people. Organizations operating in strong economies like UK and USA have considered employee motivation as their foremost and important task to carry out. Their focus is to motivate the employees to such an extent that they work in the best interest of the organization and towards the successful completion of tasks. Human resource department is trying their level best to introduce such policies and strategies that are coherent with the needs and demands of the employees in order to keep them motivated. This paper will shed light on motivation theories with their practical implications in the organization and on the literature dealing with motivation in organizations. One of the most important theories related to motivation is Goal Setting theory proposed by Edwin Locke in 1960. Findings made by Edwin said that intention to work towards a common goal is a major source of work motivation (Robbins, S. and Timothy, J., 2001), however, in order to understand the motivation in the work place there are several dimensions of goal setting theory that explains the motivation. Supervisors in contemporary times motivate

Saturday, September 21, 2019

International Journal of Business and Management Essay Example for Free

International Journal of Business and Management Essay As one of the most successful fast food chain in the world, throughout the development of McDonald’s, we could easily identify many successful business strategy implementations. In this paper, I will discuss some critical business strategies, which linked to the company’s structure and external environment. This paper is organized as follows: In the first section, I will give brief introduction to the success of McDonald’s. In the second section, I will analyze some particular strategies used by McDonald’s and how these strategies are suitable to their business structure. I will then analyze why McDonald’s choose these strategies in response to the changing external environment. Finally, I will summarize the approaches used by McDonald’s to achieve their strategic goals. Keywords: Strategy, McDonald’s structure Introduction McDonald’s, originated in California, USA, 1954, has become one of the most recognized and respected brands in the world. The success achieved includes that they have established more than 30,000 franchising stores in 119 countries, serving more than 47 million people each day, and generating about $15 billions revenues annually. McDonald’s also continuously enhances its brand imagine through different social activities and the sponsorship of special events and sports i.e. as a major sponsor of the world cup since 1994 and the Champions League football in England from 1996 to 2000.(www.McDonalds.com) How can McDonald’s achieve such success? There are many formulating strategies, which we could use for our analysis of their recipe of success such as Porter’s competitive strategies model, which includes differentiation and low-cost leadership; or Miles and Snow’s ‘strategy typology’, which defined prospector, defender, analyzer, and reactor strategy. Obviously, it is extremely important for McDonald’s to choose the most appropriate strategy to be successful. From my personal point view, to be an Analyzer is the most suitable strategic position for them to develop their business as a whole especially when they facing an extreme complex continuously changing world. As Miles and Snow defined that â€Å"The analyzer tries to maintain a stable business while innovating on the periphery. It seems to lie midway between the prospector and the defender. Some products will be targeted toward stable environment in which an efficiency strategy designed to keep current customers is used. Others will be targeted toward new, mor e dynamic environment, where growth is possible.† (Richard L.Daft) It is also very important to consider how McDonald’s applies these strategies and how their strategies interact with their business structure and the external environment. 1. How McDonald’s business structure influences its strategy? The McDonald’s business structure is based upon a geographic structure. When log on their website, you will be asked to choose the country that you are interested in. Actually, McDonald’s divided its operations into five geographical divisions. (www.McDonalds.com) International Journal of Business and Management November, 2008 As shown in above pie charts that around 65% of McDonald’s restaurants and approximately 75% of its revenues are generated in the United State and Europe. So, to McDonald’s, the most important strategic approach for maintaining its leading position is to keep their major markets at the same time expanding their business into the other emerging markets. However, different consumer groups in different countries may have very different tastes and/or requirements. So each full functional geographic unit of McDonald’s was required to wholly response for producing and marketing its products in that region. Through this regional structure, McDonald’s could not only satisfy the local consumers’ needs in different geographical areas but also pursuing ‘maximum local development’. Actually they produce and market slightly different types of products in different areas, and they even have different prices. As Jim Skinner, the vice-chairmen of McDonald’s illustrated that ‘if you are looking for a command center with one push button that operate our restaurant in every corner of the world, you won’t find it’. However, their philosophy of QSCV-quality, service, cleanliness and value is same for everywhere. And McDonald’s targets the similar consumer segments that need fast service, affordable price and good standard hygiene. So their main products are similar in most countries, where they provided service, including beef, chicken, bread potatoes and milk. As the consumers in different countries having different foods requirements, McDonald’s keep launching new products for their regional consumers. In this case China and France can be very good examples. 2. McDonald’s in China: In 1990, McDonald’s opened their first store in shenzhen (near HongKong). But before they actually started their business, McDonald’s had already carried out 5 years business research and all sorts of information gathering such as the income level of the Chinese people, the kind of foods they enjoy etc. Moreover, their re-design of the counter, chairs and desks also reflected their considerations of the height and body shape of Chinese people. They made lots of efforts to promote their American burgers, and wanted to repeat the same success in China market as they has done elsewhere. Unfortunately, they are not as successful as KFC, their biggest rival, in China now. There are lots of reasons to explain it, one important issue which has once been ignored by McDonald’s is that Chinese people are more prefer chicken dishes than beef burgers, which are their main products. After identified this problem, McDonald’s has tried to adapt more Chinese tastes by adding more chicken meals into their menu for attracting more customers.(Chinese website) 3. McDonald’s in France: In France, where customers has been resentful of the fast-food chain’s incursion, McDonald’s has boosted it sales by remodeling restaurants i.e. hardwood floors, wood-beam ceilings, comfortable armchairs, and also by adding new menu items such as espresso, brioche and more upscale sandwiches. Actually they have successfully responded to the preferences of the local area. (Richard L.Daft) In the other countries the situation is the same. For example, in Canada, McDonald’s has introduced new Canadian feature breakfast. In Belgium, the McCicken Premiere has been added to the menu. Although McDonald’s has been regarded as the ultimate example of standardization for the world market. 4. How the strategy is influenced by external environment? The external environment can be divided into several sectors. In this section, I will only discuss two important parts: competitors, social concept (healthy problem) and uncertainty situation, which can greatly influence McDonald’s strategies. Then at the last part of this section, I will discuss one particular strategy they used which served for their future development purpose. Competitor: It’s unlikely that McDonald’s can always be No.1. In an annual consumer satisfaction survey, McDonald’s has been scored dead last among fast-food restaurants since 1992. In the fourth quarter of 2002, McDonald’s disclosed its first-ever quarterly loss, one reason why McDonald’s is struggling is that the consumers began to switch to its competitors, such as Burger King, Wendy’s, and Subway. These companies emphasized on offering fresher, hotter, high-quality foods at lower price with faster service. On the other hand, McDonald’s decided to close 719 poorly performing restaurants around world. All of these simply proved that McDonald’s might no longer be competitive in the fast-food market. And if McDonald’s cannot adapt external environment change, they might be gradually diminished and even replaced by other competitors. In order to keep their market share, increasing sales and profits. McDonald’s has to respond to the threat of competitors. In 2003, McDonald’s offered the McGriddles sandwiches in the US and the Canada feature breakfast. Meanwhile, McChicken Premiere and a zesty chicken have been introduced in the UK, France, Italy and Belgium. McDonald’s was trying to satisfy customer’s desire for premium products at affordable prices. Furthermore, McDonald’s is providing more choice with respond to offer ‘ Happy Meal’ to keep the children. For example, Happy meal now including chicken selects, and no-sugar –add fruit drink (juice and low-fat drink) and also to produce McDonald’s coffee which appeals to adult. Those products have been made to attract existing customer and develop new customers.(www.McDonalds) Moreover, in addition to the innovative menu, McDonald’s is also rebuilding and even relocating some of their restaurants to make the environment more attractive. At the same time, McDonald’s is differentiating itself by creating 73 Vol. 3, No. 11 International Journal of Business and Management more relevant experiences such as allowing the customers to access the Internet with the wireless technology platform. This innovative way not only attracts the teenagers, but also perfectly fitting the modern professionals’ requirements. Social problem –healthy issue With the economic development, people’s living standards have increased dramatically these years. People are becoming more concerned about their health issues. It cannot be denied that McDonald’s has attempted to make itself more convenience for the people. However, people also believe that such kinds of fast food are not good for their health. The world health organization‘s report presented that those food not only can cause the obesity of children, but also is part of the reason of causing cancer. Healthy issues became the biggest stumbling block to the development of McDonald’s. Customers were switching to healthier offering, such as Subway’s sandwiches, or KFC’s mashed potato instead of fried potato. McDonald’s has responded to this healthy trend. In order to compete, McDonald’s has added salads and other lighter options into their menu. If a mother comes in, she is not only buy the happy meal for her children, she will also be likely to buy herself a meal too .the lighter options also encourage existing customers to come back more often, because there is a greater variety of choices. Focus on Children No matter how different the tastes and the local needs are, McDonald’s has paid considerable attention to the children in every country. They built ‘happy land’ for them, offering fantastic â€Å"happy meals† with novelty toys to them. Furthermore, McDonald’s has just launched computers with games that were designed to inspire the children’s imagination at the same time shape their personal characteristics. There are three main reasons for McDonald’s to focus on the children: (1) Children are one of the biggest consumers groups to McDonald’s. And McDonald’s has been regarded, as their favorite place to go .The brand culture â€Å"happiness† is known by children. (2) McDonald’s believe that focusing on children can build the stable business, and will provide the best engine to encourage the whole family to come to McDonald’s. For example, one happy meal for a child only cost $ 5 but McDonald’s can produce more new products in addition to happy meal to offer the whole family. (3) By Building a brand loyalty with the children, McDonald’s more likely to be successfully today and in the future. In my opinion, McDonald’s is not just selling the happy meal to children; it is selling the American culture to the children – the enjoyable individual life. Actually this strategy with focused children segment is fully worked for their future development purpose. Whatever how the environment changes this strategy can always develop future generation customers’ loyalty. And the â€Å"happy children† can also bring in the whole â€Å"happy families†. Conclusion To sum up, there is a strong possibility that if the company fails to recognize the new competitions, shifting of consumer interests, and the social trends or innovative technologies, it will loose its market share. Previously, McDonald’s emphasis on adding new restaurants for near 5 years, more than 50% of increase in new restaurants opened. Unfortunately, there was only 2% of increase in the sale of the food. So, in the year 2003 McDonald’s decided to change its focus on increasing sales at existing restaurant and reduced capital spending which allows for a sizeable amount of cash be returned to shareholder. For achieving their objectives, the McDonald’s strategy should be attract more new customers, encourage existing customers to visit McDonald’s more often, build brand loyalty and, ultimately, create enduring profitable growth for the company. References Edstrà ¶m. A., Galbraith, J.R. (1977). Transfer of managers as a coordination and control strategy in multinational organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22, June, 248-263. Egelhoff, W.G. (1984). Patterns of control in U.S., U.K. and European multinational corporations. Journal of International Business Studies, Fall, 73-83 Fatehi, K. (1996). International Management, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Geringer, J.M. Hebert, L. (1989). Control and performance of international joint ventures. Journal of International Business Studies, Summer, 235-253 Hodgetts, R.M., Luthans, F. (1994). International Management, New York: McGraw-Hi Richard L.Daft,(2005).Organization Theory and Design, 8th edition, Thomson ,south-western(Chapter 10) Mead, R. (1994). International Management. Cross Cultural Dimensions, Oxford: Blackwell. http://baike.baidu.com/view/4676.htm

Friday, September 20, 2019

Freudian and Jungian Literary Analysis: Under Milk Wood

Freudian and Jungian Literary Analysis: Under Milk Wood Exploration of dreams, symbols and archetypes in Dylan Thomas play for voices Under Milk Wood This paper seeks to assert that Dylan Thomas play Under Milk Wood can be successfully viewed using Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic techniques. It will attempt to not only isolate and highlight many instances of typical psychical symbolism in the work but also what could be thought of as psychoanalytic mechanisms; especially as they relate to Freuds notions of the Dreamwork in his The Interpretation of Dreams (1997) or Jungs archetypes and collective unconscious. By doing this I hope to not only subject Thomas work to a rigorous psychoanalytical exegesis, uncovering hidden personal symbols, structures and images, but also highlight the psychosocial depth of Under Milk Wood; a depth that has hitherto been overlooked by some critics. Through this I hope to assess the notion that Thomas was every bit as influenced by Freud and Jung as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were a generation before. I will begin, in my Introduction, to give an outline of the importance of Freud and psychoanalysis to post-World War One literature and what Dylan Thomas place within that was; paying particular attention to Thomas own assertions on the importance of psychoanalysis in his work and the ways that it was greeted by the literati of the 1930s and 40s. The first chapter will be dedicated to a discussion of Under Milk Wood and its creation, looking at such areas as plot construction, the structural nature of the piece and its creative aetiology. From here I will go on to discuss the notion of the Freudian dreamwork and its manifestations in Under Milk Wood. The dreamwork, exemplified by such concepts as condensation, displacement and secondary revision, is a central concept in the Freudian cannon and, as such, has become an important interpretive tool for both psychoanalysts and literary critics. It is with this in mind that I shall attempt to isolate instances of all four of the major mechanisms of the dreamwork in Thomas play whilst relating them to the wider issues of poetic creativity and narrative structure. I will also offer a brief discussion of how Jungs interpretation of dreams differed from Freuds before going on to examine how both can be used to inform us of Thomas play. The third chapter will be dedicated to Jungian archetypes. I will isolate and discuss the many instances of archetypal imagery in the play, paying special attention to the way in which they fit in with Thomas over all poetic sense as it is displayed in his use of language, narrative and plot. This chapter will also examine the role of the collective unconscious and relate it to the Modernist technique of the stream of consciousness novel and the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. My conclusion will attempt to answer the main hypothesis of this paper, that indeed psychoanalytic techniques and knowledge can be used to understand Dylan Thomass play and also what that says about the playwrights role as a modern day bard. Introduction: â€Å"The Analytic Revelation† Thomas Manns paper â€Å"The Significance of Freud† published in 1936 gives us some indications as to the importance of early psychoanalysis on the literary life of Europe and America: â€Å"The analytic revelation is a revolutionary force. With it a blithe scepticism has come into the world, a mistrust that unmasks all the schemes and subterfuges of our own souls. Once roused and on alert, it cannot be put to sleep again. It infiltrates life, undermines its raw naà ¯vetà ©, takes from it the strain of its own ignorance†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Mann, 1965: 591) As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane assert in their study Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 (1991), this â€Å"revolutionary force† was a large constituent of early twentieth century notions of, not only Modernism in literature and the arts but also, what it meant to be a modern man or woman. The early Modernist writers of the inter-war period not only embraced Freud and psychoanalysis as heralding a new paradigm of self-sufficiency and ontological autonomy but also, as a journal entry by Andre Gide exposes, thought themselves part of an existing groundswell of thought that was, above all, quintessentially new: â€Å"Freud†¦Freudianism†¦For the last ten years, or fifteen, I have been indulging in it without knowing.† (Gide, 1967: 349) The connection between psychoanalysis and literature has always been problematic. Freud, himself asserts in the opening paragraphs to his essay â€Å"The Uncanny† (2005) that â€Å"only rarely (does) a psycho-analyst (feel) impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics† (Freud, 2000: 1), however writers, critics and even Freud himself have made extensive use of the interpretive similarities between the two disciplines . Not only are there are a whole host of studies devoted to the use of psychoanalysis in literary criticism but in the Introduction to his novel The White Hotel (1999), D.M. Thomas draws attention to the extraordinarily literary quality of Fr euds case studies; each containing many of the tropes and leitmotifs one would normally associate with a creative work. For Freud, the psychical mechanisms of creative writing and dreaming are in, some senses at least, inextricably linked. Both are based in a tripartite system of ideational fantasy formation consisting of: a current situational issue or concern that provokes the memory of a childhood incident or trauma which, in turn, shapes some future action in the guise of a wish fulfilment. Freud sets out the relationship between this system and literature in his essay â€Å"Creative Writers and Day Dreaming† (Freud, 1986): â€Å"We are perfectly aware that very many imaginative writings are far removed from the model of the naà ¯ve daydream; and yet I cannot suppress the suspicions that even the most extreme deviations from that model could be linked with it through an uninterrupted series of transitional cases.† (Freud, 1986: 150) Freud continues to explain the disparity between the mind of the creative writer and the ordinary day-dreamer, asserting that whereas the latter results in a self-conscious repression of desire (the wishes of the day-dreamer being best left unspoken) the former revels in and promulgates such desire, translated as it is by artistic skill and temperament: â€Å"The writer softens the character of his egoistic day-dreams by altering and disguising it, and he bribes us by the purely formal – that is aesthetic – yield of pleasure which he offers us in the presentation of his phantasies.† (Freud, 1986: 153) This essay, perhaps more than any other work of Freuds, highlights for us the attraction of psychoanalysis to early twentieth century writers. Metaphysically and spiritually sceptical after the mass slaughter of the First World War and the alienation engendered by rise of the industrial paradigm, Freudian theory offered (as testified by Manns essay) a distinctly human, non-metaphysical and wholly scientific explanation for the place of the artist within society. For Freud, the artist was distinct from the rest of the populous but this had a purely psychical aetiology, leaving no imperative for notions of religious or supra-human inspiration. This is undoubtedly some of the attraction of Freudianism for Dylan Thomas who, throughout his letters and early work makes both use and reference to writers and critics that were, themselves, heavily influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis. Francis Scarfe, in the essay â€Å"Dylan Thomas: A Pioneer† (1960) cites Freud as a major influence on the formation of Thomas early poetic voice, derived in the main from his experiences with what Scarfe calls â€Å"Sitwellism† (Scarfe, 1960: 96): â€Å"The dominant points of contact seems to be James Joyce, the Bible and Freud. The personal habits of language and mythology of Dylan Thomas can readily be identified through these three sources.† (Scarfe, 1960: 96) If Joyce lent the young poet some of the lyricism and sense of narrative and the Bible some of the rich cadence and verbal poetics, Freud enabled Thomas to look within his own unconscious and find images and leitmotifs that would find resonance with the rest of humanity as, firstly, personal then increasingly Bardic and archetypal symbols formed the basis of his work. An early poem of Thomas clearly mirrors the hyperbole of Freuds first lectures on psychoanalysis; the poet and the analyst both evoking the image of the journey into an unknown by an antonymous but courageous individual: â€Å"The midnight road, though young man tread unknowking. Harbouring some thought of heaven, or haven hoping. Yields peace and plenty at the end. â€Å" (Thomas, 1990: 119) We can compare this to Freuds famous analogy that is evoked throughout his work: â€Å"The interpretation of dreams is in fact the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious; it is the securest foundation of psycho-analysis and the field in which evey worker must acquire his convictions and seek his training. If I am asked how one can become a psycho-analyst, I reply: â€Å"By studying ones own dreams†Ã¢â‚¬  (Freud, 1957: 60) Interestingly, Thomas himself was reluctant to acknowledge his debt to Freud, choosing instead to suggest a notion that we have already posited here; that Freuds influence is paradigmatic. He says in the collection of interviews â€Å"Notes on the Art of Poetry† (1963) that his writing is influenced by Freud only through the work others , itself a testament to the extent that Freudian theory and, indeed, the whole of psychoanalytic thought has permeated the very fabric of modern literature. Thomas notebooks poems, his earliest poetic statements, are suffused with what we shall see are Freudian images, inspired perhaps not by psychoanalysis itself but by the poets interest in Surrealism and their early antecedents the 18th century Metaphysical poets. Works such as: â€Å"Where once the waters of your face Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows, The dead turns up its eye†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Thomas, 1990: 217) And â€Å"In wasting one drop from the hearts honey cells. One precious drop that, for the moment, quells Desires pain†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Thomas, 1990: 133) Clearly reflect the artistic tenants set out in Bretons Manifestoes of Surrealism (1972) that sought to combine Freudian concepts of the dreamwork with aesthetic creation . As we shall see in the first chapter of this paper, this delight in the surreal as it relates to the Freudian image remained with Thomas throughout all of his working life and, most certainly, manifests itself in Under Milk Wood. The analytic revelations then, of Freud , have not only influenced those writers such as Breton, Auden and Woolf who are were intimately acquainted with his writing but also writers like Dylan Thomas who, by his own admission, came to psychoanalysis through other creative writers works. This paper, like many others, uses psychoanalytic theory as a methodology with which to uncover latent symbols, patterns and structures within Thomas work. It will not only relate such symbols to the poets own poetic vision but will, through Jungian theory, expand these so that they encompass universal archetypes and concepts such as the collective unconscious that structures the unconscious and, inevitably finds its way into works of a creative nature . Chapter One: â€Å"To Begin at the Beginning† Dylan Thomas play for voices Under Milk Wood began life as a small radio broadcast Quiet Early One Morning (Sinclair, 1975, Jones, 1963) and this short piece is easily recognisable as the genesis for the larger work. There are, for instance, many of the same basic characters – the milkman â€Å"still lost in the clangour and music of Welsh-spoken dreams† (Thomas, 1992), the sea captain, the lonely lady â€Å"Miss May Hughes† and even the tragic-comic Mrs Ogmore Pritchard. There is the same sense of poetic cadence that constantly adds to the somatic quality of the writing, lulling the reader into a musical trance as sibilance and assonance is combined with Thomas particular inner rhythms, such as in this extract: â€Å"The sun lit the sea-town, not as a whole, from topmost down reproving zinc-roofed chapel to empty-but-for-rats-and-whispers grey warehouse on the harbour, but in separate bright pieces.† (Thomas, 1978: 15) The story, recited by Thomas himself in 1944 on the BBC, describes the still sleeping town of New Quay in Cardiganshire (Maud, 1992) and weaves external description with internal monologue as the narrator flits in and out of the dreaming consciousnesses of the towns inhabitants. In the story, each paragraph brings a new image or a new perspective but what we are ultimately presented with is the stream of consciousness of the narrator; in the story, unlike in Under Milk Wood, an impersonal but altogether discernable â€Å"I†: â€Å"Quite early one morning in the winter in Wales, by the sea that was lying down still and green as grass after a night of tar-black howling and rolling, I went out of the house, where I had come to stay for a cold unseasonable holiday†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Thomas, 1978: 15) It is this point, this appearance of the personal pronoun that, as we shall see, makes Quite Early One Morning markedly different to Under Milk Wood. Thomas, however, retains the sense of dreamy absurdity, as images are juxtaposed for comic effect amid the repeated refrain of â€Å"The town was not yet awake†. Under Milk Wood grew out of this humble beginning and is both markedly similar and surprisingly different . Both works reflect, as Derek Stanford (1954) suggests, the cadences, characterisation and plot construction of Joyces Ulysses (1979), being as they are the collective narratives of a whole town in the same time period. Both works, however, are also embryonic, Quite Early One Morning obviously being a blueprint for Under Milk Wood but this also being merely a fragmentary snapshot of a larger planned work that was never finished (Jones, 1986: ix). Under Milk Wood also resembles the cyclical structure of Joyces other great work Finnegans Wake (1992). Thomas play abounds with references to beginnings and commencements; we have, for instance, the famous first lines: â€Å"To begin at the beginning: It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless And bible-black†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Thomas, 2000: 1) That not only evokes the biblical â€Å"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth† (Gen, 1:1) but also the creational sense of Joyces reference to the beginnings of mankind in the opening lines of his novel: â€Å"riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth castle and Environs.† (Joyce, 1992: 3) In Under Milk Wood, the cyclical nature of the day is metonymous with the seasonal nature of the year and this with the life of a human being as Thomas juxtaposes images of beginnings, babies and births with ageing, infirmity and death; as in this passage: â€Å"All over town, babies and old men are cleaned and put into their broken prams and wheeled on to the sunlit cockled cobbles or out into the backyards under the dancing underclothes, and left. A baby cries.† (Thomas, 2000: 27) As we shall see, this notion of the circle, of repeating is important to both Freud and Jung; Freud through his insistence on the importance of the return in notions such as repression and the death drive and Jung, through his concept of the mandala as a recurring symbol. Like Joyce, Thomas displays circles within circles, as the plot and structure of the work as a whole mirrors the framework of the characters lives and psyches. We see this reflected in many of the plays most successful characters, witness for instance the constant iteration of Mrs Ogmore Pritchard, as she repeats her life over and over again with different husbands, only to have them revisit her after their deaths: â€Å"Mr Ogmore, linoleum, retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum cleaner and the fume of the polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a dream and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr Pritchard, ghostly on either side.† (Thomas, 2000: 10) The same can be said, of course, for Captain Cat, whose dreams and waking life are characterised not by the dead per se, but by their return as he witnesses the phantasmatic manifestations of either his repression or the collective unconscious (whether one is citing Freud or Jung). The sense, in Under Milk Wood, is that of a blithe acceptance of the passing of time and the knowledge that things return; the sunrise, the Spring and the dead. This is reflected in many of Thomas poems, for instance in the closing lines of â€Å"I See the Boys of Summer†: â€Å"I am the man your father was. We are the sons of flint and pitch. Oh see the poles are kissing as they cross!† (Thomas, 1990: 219) In this, also, as Karl Jay Shapiro asserts in his study In Defense of Ignorance (1960), Thomas work clearly reflects what was a seminal poem for the young poets generation W.B. Yeats â€Å"The Second Coming† (1987) which contains images of both beginnings and circles within circles. In the next chapter I will look at how these aspects of Under Milk Wood can be interpreted through the psychoanalytical work of Freud and Jung, paying attention specifically to their concepts of dreams and dreaming; again another leitmotif of Thomas play that can be seen to come from Joyces Finnegans Wake. Chapter Two: The Dreamwork, the Symbol and Captain Cat Freud On Dreams As Richard Wollheim suggests, Freuds theories on dreams are the â€Å"most remarkable single element† (Wollheim, 1971: 66) of his psychoanalytical project and Freud himself in his essay â€Å"On Dreams† (1991) stresses the primacy of dream interpretation in his system: â€Å"The transformation of the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream-content deserves all out attention, since it is the first instance known to us of psychical material being changed over from one mode of expression to another.† (Freud, 1991: 89) For Freud, dreams serve as symptoms of unconscious repression in the same way as parapraxes (slips of the tongue) and instances of forgetfulness. The content of dreams can, he said, be split into the latent and the manifest; the one providing a shield for the other as the Unconscious gives up its fissures and problems that have been repressed by the Ego during waking hours. Freuds work The Interpretation of Dreams attempts to provide a full scale, largely scientific study of not merely the symbolism of dreams but also their mechanism; a mechanism that he termed the ‘dreamwork. The dreamwork can be thought of as a process (Wollheim, 1971) that transcribes the latent content of dreams into the language of the manifest. Freud is clear in The Interpretation of Dreams that psychoanalysis does not deal with the simple ‘translation of images or primitive notions of symbol exchange that sees dreams as merely scripts that can be easily interpreted using a universal dictionary, although he does acquiesce to the point that some symbols recur on a universal level. Instead, Freud sees dreams as the return of repressed desires and their attendant wishes that find a voice in the psychical economy through a process of disguise. The desire, as Richard Stevens (1983) suggests, â€Å"will be fused with experiences and thoughts from the previous day or even events occurring during the course of the night† (Stevens, 1983: 30). The dreamwork, in the Freudian system, is both the mechanism of disguise and the tool of interpretation because it contains an internal logic that can be used by the analyst to trace the source of repression and, through the process of transference, brought into the conscious and rendered harmless (Freud, 1997). Perhaps the most important concept within The Interpretation of Dreams is the four-fold dreamwork mechanism that can be used, not only in dream interpretation but as we shall see, in the critical appreciation of literature. Freud termed these mechanisms condensation, displacement, representation and secondary revision and before I go to look at how each one fits into Under Milk Wood specifically I would like to, briefly, offer up an explanation as to how each effects the manifest dream-content and ergo the literary image or trope. Condensation This is, perhaps, the most common dream feature and is what gives dreams their sparse, confusing quality. For Freud, dream-thoughts are many and varied, each bombarding the dreamwork simultaneously: â€Å"The dream is meagre, paltry and laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the dream-thoughts. The dream, when written down fills half a page; the analysis, which contains the dream-thoughts requires six, eight, twelve times as much space.† (Freud, 1997: 170) Condensation manifests itself as images laden with meaning, as the unconscious overlays and condenses two or more dream-thoughts into one motif. Part of the skill of the analyst according to Freud is the extent that such condensation can be unravelled and successive layers of unconscious meaning and repression peeled back and revealed (Freud, 1965: 313). Whereas Freud was dubious as to the possibility of ever reaching a definitive dream interpretation because of the very nature of condensation, he also asserted that the ways in which dream-thoughts are condensed gives the analyst a clue as to their psychical meaning. Freud cites his own dream of the Botanical Monograph as an example of the way in which different dream-thoughts can be condensed into one dream-image; the latent meaning only becoming apparent when this relationship is exposed . Displacement Displacement refers to the substituting of elements within dreams. Due to the nature of the unconscious, elements and images that have a similar psychical economy invariably end up being displaced, one for the other. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud characterises displacement as constituting a de-centring of the dream-thoughts: â€Å"We may have noticed that these elements which obtrude themselves in the dream-content as its essential components do not by any means play this same part in the dream-thoughts.† ( Freud, 1997: 190) Displacement, like condensation, arises from the synchronous nature of the unconscious and manifests itself in two ways; firstly, through the substituting of dream-thoughts, so that dreams can appear absurd and illogical and, secondly through shifting meanings – an image may possess one meaning in one nights dream and another on a different night. Melanie Klein, for instance, in her essay â€Å"Psychological Principles of Early Analysis† (1991) offers us some interesting insights into how displacement works in something other than the dream; the child at play. â€Å"My analyses again and again reveal how many different things, dolls for example, can mean in play. Sometimes they stand for the penis, sometimes for the child stolen from the mother, sometimes for the little patient itself etc.† (Klein, 1991: 134) Both condensation and displacement have been used as the basis for theories of Surrealist aesthetics, as Carrouges and Prendergast assert in their study Andre Breton and the Basic Concepts of Surrealism (1974: 192) which uses seemingly disparate images juxtaposed in order to create an illogical, dream-like tableaux. Representation Representation refers to the dreamworks tendency to present feelings, repressions and notions as images and symbols. Unlike many pre-Freudian systems of dream interpretation such symbolisation is centred, to a very large extent, around the dreamers own personal history and psychology. However as I have already stated there are, due to the inter-subjective nature of the psyche, recurring symbols and motifs that can be found in a great many peoples dreams. Richard Stevens in his Freud and Psychoanalysis (1983) mentions just a few of them: â€Å"small boxes, chests, cupboards and ovens correspond to the female organ; also cavities, ships and all kinds of vessels. The actions of climbing ladders, stairs, inclines or flying may be used to symbolise sexual intercourse; having a haircut, tooth pulled or being beheaded, castration.† (Stevens, 1983: 33) Secondary Revision Secondary revision refers to the mental processes that occur after the dreamer awakes and that organises and places the otherwise absurd and disparate images and themes into a, relatively, cohesive narrative. Wollheim points to there being doubt in Freuds later work as to the place of secondary revision within the dreamwork (Wollhein, 1971: 69) but, as a concept, it has been important in many neo-Freudian systems of aesthetics especially, as Charles Altman points out in his essay â€Å"Psychoanalysis and Cinema† (1986: 526), by the French school of film critics who saw it as, not so much an integral part of the dreamwork, but as the main constituent in narrative formation and the audience/film dialectic. Jung On Dreams Dreams play as important a role in the work of Carl Jung as Sigmund Freud (Fordham, 1964) however the former not only sees their place in the psychical economy differently but has, as he explains in Man and his Symbols (1964), created an entirely separate process of interpretation and translation. Jung disagreed with Freuds notion of the dreamwork and his method of free association whereby the analysand recalls a dream and lets their mind wander through the myriad of different unconscious connections only to be unravelled and assessed by the analyst. For Jung, this process is likely to uncover neuroses and repression but is unlikely to uncover them connected with the dream. For Jung, the further away from the central motifs of the dream-image one gets the further away one travels from the locus of their meaning. Therefore, under a Jungian system, dreams consist not of personal motifs of repression returning through the dreamwork but as expressions of either the personal or collective unconscious. The method of extracting the meaning from dreams is centred around the correct reading of such symbols and an evaluation of how they relate to either the dreamers personal or their phyllogenetic background, as Jung himself asserts: â€Å"Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature, they show us unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature.† (Jung, 1989: 55) Jung viewed the waking, conscious perceptions as having a penumbra of associated psychical meanings (Jung, 1964: 28), even the very simplest of actions, for instance seeing or hearing, can involve a gamut of other ideational and experiential relations and it is this that we witness in dreams; the whole of our unconscious unfettered by the ordering, the siphoning and the categorisation of the conscious mind. For Jung, then, the absurd quality of dreams, their surreal nature comes not from intervention of the dreamwork but from the cultural and personal associations attached to perceptions and experiences. Thomas On Dreams Both Freuds and Jungs systems of dream interpretation offer us important critical tools with which to view Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood both in terms of the images and symbols the playwright uses in order to convey the sense of the somatic and the dream-like and his use of surrealism as a semi-comic trope throughout the piece. The play begins in the collective dream of the town. Just like the short story Quite Early One Morning, the audience is taken on a journey through the consciousnesses of the sleeping townsfolk as they dream their separate dreams, shaped (as both Freud and Jung assert) by their individual consciousnesses and personalities. Captain Cat, for example, experiences the return of the repressed guilt he feels towards his long dead shipmates: â€Å"Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best cabin of Schooner House dreams of Second Voice: never such seas as any that swamped the decks of the S.S. Kidwelly bellying over bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark† (Thomas, 2000: 2) Thomas, here, reflects both Freudian and Jungian dream analysis as Captain Cats dreams abound with symbols of his past and are unmistakably suffuse with the characters own visual lexicon, what Jung calls the â€Å"dream language† (Jung, 1986: 33). The same can be said of Dai Bread who dreams of â€Å"harems†, Polly Garter who dreams of â€Å"babies† and even Nogood Boyo who dreams of â€Å"nothing†. However, within the very text of Under Milk Wood we notice each one of the four elements of the Freudian dreamwork. The dense language is a clear instance of condensation: the vital elements of the imagistic leitmotifs are extracted and pile one on top of another, as adjective combines with adjective to form the quintessentially Thomasian poetics, such as here where the playwright draws a finely tuned portrait of Mrs Dai Bread One, the wife of the baker: â€Å"Me, Mrs Dai Bread One, capped and shawled and no old corset, nice to be comfy, nice to be nice, clogging on the cobbles to stir up a neighbour. Oh, Mrs Sarah, can you spare a loaf, love? Dai Bread forgot the bread. Theres a lovely morning! Hows your boils this morning?† (Thomas, 2000: 22) Thomas both describes the sense of a dream here and, through condensation, utilizes its mechanism. Words and phrases are juxtaposed and their meaning condensed in a way that mirrors almost exactly the workings of Freuds dreamwork. We see this reflected many times throughout the narrative of Under Milk Wood, as the author evokes in a linguistic sense what Freud saw in a psychoanalytic sense. We see, for example a clear literary rendering of displacement in the absurd portrait of Cherry Owen as described by the Second Voice: â€Å"Cherry Owen, next door, lifts a tankard to his lips but nothing flows out of it. He shakes the tankard. It turns into a fish. He drinks the fish.† (Thomas, 2000: 13) Here the incongruous image of a fish replaces or displaces the tankard that Cherry Owen drinks from adding to the dreamy quality of the early passages of the play. As a cultural symbol, the fish also mirrors the third of the Freudian mechanisms, representation, whereby a linguistic notion â€Å"He drinks like a fish† is rendered in a quasi-comic symbolic form. Of course, the ultimate use of dreams and dreaming in Under Milk Wood is the plot itself. Both Freud and Jung rely heavily on the concept of the return within their respective dream philosophies (Stevens, 1983; Fordham, 1964) and this is reflected in the very structure of the play that could, after all, be thought of as merely the manifest dream-content of the First Voice, or perhaps even Thomas himself. Like a dream, the text iterates, as we shall see in the next chapter, the same basic images and archetypes; the symbols are at once full of meaning in themselves and signifiers for other things. The First Voice can be seen as the voice of God but also of secondary revision, knitting disparate elements together to form a narrative that can be followed and engaged with. As the characters awake, their lives, as they are described by the First and Second voice, are shown to be no less absurd than the irrationality of their dreams. This is perhaps because the entire play can itself be seen as a dream of the authors in which he creates, as he states in a letter to A.G. Prys Jones, â€Å"a never-never Wales† (Thomas, 1985: 848) that, like its Peter Pan counterpart, is as much a manifest wish of its author as anything else. Chapter Three: The Shadow, T

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Chapter Account Manager :: essays research papers

Ankit Fadia, 19 years old, is an independent computer security and digital intelligence consultant with definitive experience in the field of Internet security. He has authored seven internationally best-selling books on numerous topics related to Computer Security that have been widely appreciated by both professionals and industry leaders the world over. His books have sold a record 120,000 copies across the globe, have been translated into Korean, Portuguese and Polish and are also being used as reference textbooks in some of the most prestigious academic institutions in Asia and North America. Fadia is also a widely recognized computer security guru and Cyber terrorism expert. Fadia is however, more well known for his significant work in the field of digital intelligence, security consultancy and training. In November 2001, Fadia was consulted by a classified intelligence agency for breaking an encrypted message sent by one of Osama Bin Laden’s men. Since then Fadia has been involved in numerous classified projects pertaining to International Security and Computer Networks. He handles the Asia Operations of the classified intelligence agency.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Widely traveled, Fadia provides customized cyber security training and consulting solutions to clients all across Asia, Australia, North America and the Middle East. He has also conducted more than a 120 different training sessions on various topics related to cyber security to an audience comprising of CEOs, CIOs, top level management, entrepreneurs, technical specialists, defense personnel and students. With a strong belief in the integration of security and education, Fadia closely works with the School of Information Systems at Singapore Management University and the Management Institute of Malaysia and advises them on the design and structure of the course material of their computer security courses. Widely celebrated in international media publications, Fadia is also regularly invited by BBC Radio World News, London to share the latest updates on virus outbreaks, loopholes and cyber crime trends. For his outstanding contributions in the field of computer security globally, Fadia has been honoured with numerous awards namely: Person of The Year 2002, Limca Book of Records, Hall of Fame Award, Outstanding Young Achiever’s Award, Silicon India Person of the Week, Embassy State Award, Best Speaker Award (4 occasions), Student of the Year 2002-03 and many more. Many industry leaders like Mr. Ganesh Ayyar (Vice President, Hewlett Packard SE Asia, Singapore), Mr. Kiran Karnik (President, NASSCOM), Mr. Azim Premji (Chairman, Wipro Corporation), Mr. Phiroze Vandrewala (Chairman, Tata Consultancy Services) and research pioneers like Dr.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

The Woods Essay -- Descriptive Essay Examples, Observation

I am sitting in the passenger side as my dad is driving, and we are on our way to my grandpa's land which is located about 25 minutes east of Dubuque. First thing we do when we get there is to finish putting on our coats, and then to grab our bows out of the back, then I close my door softly. Walking through the open field I have dead weeds and tall grass crunching under my boots, and at the end of the field we reach a barbed wire fence that we crawl under. Then we cross under a bunch of pine trees and go about 30 yards into the woods to where my tree stand sits. Then my dad tells me good luck and he heads down into the gully where his stand is located. So I then climb the 12 foot ladder and sit on the seat and put on my safety belt and get my arrow ready on the bow string. I survey the land and look for any movement, so I look to the left where there is another set of pine trees, then I look in front of me into the first set of pine trees don't see anything yet. Then I hear a sound of crunching leaves and immediately look to my right and sure enough there is a big doe getting ready to cross the fence 15 yards away. Â   Being out in the woods is meaningful to me because, of the excitement I get out of observing deer in their habitat and the challenges that are presented by the sport of hunting. Once that deer is close enough that I can see it my adrenaline starts to pump and my heart starts to beat a little faster. The excitement that comes with seeing a deer is great, but it is even better if the deer is in shooting range. I have been bow hunting for two years and am already hooked on it because of the anticipation of getting a shot off at a big buck, but watching the deer and how they react in their own habitat is ne... ... shared experience to talk about and to enjoy helping each other with our techniques. Â   To a beginner in this sport it may not seem as relaxing as I said it is because, I know that when a person starts at something it may get frustrating. As a person goes along and gets better at these activities, it gets to be more fun and more relaxing. Two years ago when I first started I really was bored the first couple of days because I didn't see any deer, and didn't really talk to my dad a whole lot. Then as the next week came I saw my first deer, and it was out of my shooting range but it still got my heart pumping, and ever since then I have been hooked on it. That also gave me the chance to tell my dad what it was like, and he said the same thing happened to him when he first started out, and now we make the best out of that time and talk together. Â  

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Sociopolitical Philosophy In The Works Of Stoker And Yeats Essay

Sociopolitical Philosophy in the Works of Stoker and Yeats   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Around the turn of this century there was widespread fear throughout Europe, and especially Ireland, of the consequences of the race mixing that was occurring and the rise of the lower classes over the aristocracies in control. In Ireland, the Protestants who were in control of the country began to fear the rise of the Catholics, which threatened their land and political power. Two Irish authors of the period, Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats, offer their views on this â€Å"problem† in their works of fiction. These include Stoker's Dracula and Yeats' On Baile's Strand and The Only Jealousy of Emer, and these works show the authors' differences in ideas on how to deal with this threat to civilization. Stoker feels that triumph over this threat can only be achieved by the defeat of these â€Å"demonic† forces through modernity, while Yeats believes that only by facing the violent and demonic forces and emerging from them could Ireland return to its ancient and traditional roots and find its place in society.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The vampire was a common metaphor used by many authors in an attempt to portray the rising lower class and foreign influence as evil and harmful to modern civilization. The Irish Protestant author Sheridan Le Fanu uses vampires to represent the Catholic uprising in Ireland in his story Carmilla. Like much of gothic fiction, Carmilla is about the mixing of blood and the harm that results from it. When vampires strike, they are tainting the blood of the pure and innocent, causing them to degenerate into undead savages who will take over and colonize until their race makes up the condition of the whole world. This was the fear the Protestants had of the rising Catholic class. They were seen as a lowly people and the fear was that they too would colonize and degenerate Ireland, and perhaps the rest of Europe, back into a primitive land of savages. This fear of the breakdown of civilization by dark forces is also what Dracula is about.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In Dracula, Stoker sets up the heroes and victors of the novel as civilized people, while the foreign villain is ancient and demonic. The book begins with the journal of Jonathan Harker, a stenographer from London who is sent to Transylvania to close a land deal with the mysterious Cou... ...rk forces that threaten it, and removing itself from these forces, in addition to simply delaying the inevitable, will only lead to further tragedy.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The works of these two Irish authors are fine pieces of fiction that effectively employ the elements of horror and tragedy which are common in gothic literature, but they also serve as valuable insights into the philosophies that were shared by many Europeans during these times of anxiety and change. It is difficult to say which philosophy is superior to the other. Stoker's Dracula   was published in 1897, while Yeats' works were written later, with The Only Jealousy of Emer  written in 1919, giving him the advantage of witnessing the Easter Rising of 1916. The turmoil of the period was not as simple as modern versus primitive or good versus evil, and certainly not everyone in Europe shared their views or anything close to them, thus making it virtually impossible to judge the superiority of one philosophy over another. While readers may not agree with either of the authors, these works are still entertaining and serve as a testament to the power of literature as a platform for social and political opinion.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Marketing and Buying Decision

Principles of Marketing Principles of Marketing 2012 Name: Robert Barnes Student Number: 21154021 Institution: University of West London Word count: 1455 2012 Name: Robert Barnes Student Number: 21154021 Institution: University of West London Word count: 1455 Table of Contents 1. 0 Introduction2 2. 0 Question 1 3 2. 1 Personality 3 2. 2 Motivation6 2. 3 Conflict6 3. 0 Question 2 8 Bibliography9 1. 0 Introduction The case study I have chosen to cover is â€Å"Breezing out for a night on the tiles†. It discusses the rise of the premium pre-mixed drinks industry between 1995-2000, in particular the Bacardi Breezer brand.It looks at the marketing activity which has taken place and the brand association the marketers aimed to achieve. In this report I will be exploring the buying process involved when purchasing an alcoholic beverage, the influencing factors when making a decision and the role that marketing plays, in these decisions. The definition of marketing is â€Å"The manag ement process which identifies anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably. † Adrian Palmer 2004 Personality noun (plural personalities)The coon of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character: – Oxford Dictionary 2012 ENTJ Frank, decisive, assume leadership readily. Quickly see illogical and inefficient procedures and policies, develop and implement comprehensive systems to solve organisational problems. Enjoy long-term planning and goal setting. Usually well informed, well read, enjoy expanding their knowledge and passing it on to others. Forceful in presenting their ideas. – Introduction to Type, Sixth Edition by Isabel Briggs-Myers 1998 2. 0 Question 1Q. Give an overview of how the buying decision-making process might work for purchasing an alcoholic drink in a pub or club. How would this differ when purchasing alcohol in a supermarket or off licence? A. The Theory To answer this question we first need to look at the theories in marketing associated to the buying process, influences and behaviours. Diagram 2. 0 is the structure of the buying process based on the â€Å"Cognitive Paradigm† theory (Pickton and Broderick 2001) which focuses on the individuals thought process, during a buying decision.It assumes that the buying decision is approached as a problem solving activity and that the consumer is being rational throughout the process. It is widely used as the default theory by marketers and sales professionals when structuring campaigns. It does not however accurately describe the process that occurs during extreme impulse or irrational purchases, which are both, almost intangible processes. For the purpose of this exercise, we will assume that the responsible purchase of alcohol is approached, both rationally and thoughtfully. Diagram 2. 0 – The Buying Process. Source: Marketing Communications, by John Egan. 2007) Step 1 of the process is the â€Å"P roblem Recognition†. This is the identification of a need, such as â€Å"I am hungry, therefore I need to eat†. It can however be very complex and the consumer may require education or informing before recognising a problem exists, such as a dentist telling you, you need a filling, even though you hadn’t felt any pain in that tooth. Marketers can exploit this step by feeding information to consumers for goods and services, they hadn’t realised they needed. Step 2 of the process is the â€Å"Information Search†.This is when an individual has identified a need but may need to research to find the right solution. For example, if a student identifies a need for a computer, but has a limited budget, he or she might research information to identify the best option for the budget they have. This step can skipped if the consumer has enough knowledge, regarding the possible solutions. Step 3 of the process is â€Å"Evaluation†. This is when more than one option is available to solve the identified need, and the consumer wants to experience these before purchasing. An example would be someone test driving multiple cars before purchasing one.Effectively they will all satisfy the same need, but the consumer wants to know what the experience is, before making the decision. This step can skipped if the consumer has previous experience or is happy with a certain product or service beforehand. Step 4 of the process is â€Å"Decision†. This is simply the final choose for a solution to the identified need, after weighing up all options. Again, a consumer can move directly to this step from â€Å"Problem Recognition† if enough prior knowledge exists. Step 5 of the process is â€Å"Purchase†. This is when the decision is executed and the goods or services are acquired.Step 6 of the process is â€Å"Post-Purchase Evaluation†. This is when you access you satisfaction with your product or service after you have acq uired it. If a great experience is had, it will lead to a higher likelihood that you will purchase that product or service again. Applying the theory Table 2. 0 is an application of the above theory, for an individual going through the buying process at both a club and supermarket. Buying Process Step| Nightclub or Pub| Supermarket| Problem Recognition| * A want to let loose. * A need for confidence. * A desire to fit in or stand-out. An aspiration to impress. | * Alcohol for cooking. * Thoughts of a night in. * A desire to relax and unwind. * Drinks for guests and friends. * Cheap drinks before going out. | Information Search| * Advertisement around the club. * Bottles behind the bar. * Drink & cocktail menus. * What others are drinking. * Peer and/or social pressure. | * The label on the bottle. * Prices and special offers. * Staff knowledge. | Evaluation| * Tasting a friends drink. * Design of the bottle. * Recognition of a brand. | * Description on label. * Design and quality of bottle. Alcohol percentage. * Brand recognition. | Decision| * Information processed and decision made. | * Information processed and decision made. | Purchase| * Majority of exchanges in cash. | * Majority of exchanges by credit card. | Post-Purchase Evaluation| * Did that get me drunk? * Did I like the taste? * Do I want another one? * Did it give me a hangover? | * Did I like the taste? * Was it good value? * Will I buy it again? * Did it get me to the desired level of drunkenness? | Table 2. 0 – The Buying Process of Alcohol in Different Environments.What this application of theory shows, is that there are different factors in play when buying alcohol in a club or pub compared to a supermarket, but the process remains the same. These factors are different mostly due to the environment, information availability, the individual’s intent and marketing strategies. If selling a drink in a club or pub it is more important for your drink to be seen as â€Å"cool† socially and price is less of a factor whereas if selling in a supermarket, your drink needs to be competitively priced yet still demonstrate a level of quality. 3. 0 Question 2 Q.Detail the individual and group influences that are likely to affect someone’s choice of drink brand? A. The Theory Diagram 3. 0 demonstrates the individual and group influencing factors when making a buying decision. Diagram 2. 1 – Factors affecting buying decisions. (Source: Marketing Communications, by John Egan. 2007) Our strongest influences when making a buying decision are our internal beliefs and values. These include Attitude, Perception, Learning, Memory and Motivation. The next in terms of influencing power are Primary Groups. Primary groups are made up of close friends, family and people who you respect.You are affected by these groups by the opinions and values they hold. The next group in terms of influencing power is the Secondary Group. This group is made up of people you know but not closely, or people who you may aspire to be like. Lastly there are influences depending on your Culture, Race or Religion, that will affect your decision when buying something. There are also External factors that include things that are beyond your control, such as Fashion, Law, Time ect. So how do these factors affect someone when buying an alcoholic drink?Well if I was out with my family, I would be unlikely to order shots, as they would not approve, whereas if I was out with close friends, then this would be the opposite. The secondary group has the same effect, but is less powerful in its influence. 4. 0 Question 3 Q. Explain the roles of the various marketing activities described in this case in influencing consumer behaviour. A. In 2000 Bacardi spent ? 14m on a campaign to promote their brand â€Å"Bacardi Breezer†. The reason to do this is to influence people decisions when making a buying decision. Bacardi’s first large campaign was in 1999 when they spent ? 5. 6m.The campaign was headlined with the slogan â€Å"there’s Latin spirit in everyone† aimed at the 18-24 year old market. This campaign was created to give the brand an exotic, cool to be seen drinking appeal and was aimed at the demographic that would most likely be drinking in an environment where these factors we important in their buying decision. This campaign established Bacardi Breezer as one of the major players in the alco-pop industry. Bibliography * John Martin, 2010. Organizational Behaviour & Management. 4th Revised edition Edition. South Western Educational Publishing. * John Martin, 2004. Organizational Behaviour And Management. Edition. Thomson Learning. * Laurie J. Mullins, 2006. Essentials of Management and Organisational Behaviour. Edition. FT Press. * Isabel Briggs Myers, 1998. Introduction to Type: A Guide to Understanding Your Results on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. 6th Edition. Center for Applications of. * Adrian Furnham, 2008. Pe rsonality and Intelligence at Work: Exploring and Explaining Individual Differences at Work. 1 Edition. Routledge. * Stephen P. Robins, 2010. Organizational Behaviour. 1 Edition. Pearson Books. * John Ivancevich, 2010. Organizational Behavior and Management. 9 Edition. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Regarding History vs. When Death Comes

Regarding history/ when death comes Luisa A. Igloria's, â€Å"Regarding History† is a very intriguing poem. Initially it seems to be a very straight forward poem, she beings by speaking of two trees that she can see from her window that lean into the wind, and goes on to describe a certain meat that she is cooking. At first glance this poem seemed to just be a description of an afternoon, but as the poem progresses it gets more complicated, which lead me to start to question if her earliest descriptions where literal, or a representation of something else entirely.A key turning point in my interpretation of this poem is when she said: â€Å"Tell me what I'll find, in this early period at the beginning of a century. Tell me what I'll find stumbling into a boat and pushing off into the year's last dark hours. † It is obvious that she is searching for something, but what? After I reread the poem I began seeing more of a love aspect to it when I noticed her speaking of a pe rson, who she wants to take the person's face in her hands and â€Å"Grow sweet from what it tells†.This once more brings me back to the begging of the poem, and my initial question, what do the trees represent? I came to the conclusion that the two trees represented her and this person that she adores, and that she is not necessarily observing them, but rather the trees make her think of the relationship with this person she adores and herself, which by the description of the how the trees are: â€Å"leaning now into the wind in a stance that we'd call involuntary-† shows to me that there is a struggle of sorts that they are facing together. Another aspect of the poem that peaked my interest was the title.After reading it and rereading it there seemed to be no logical conclusion to be made of the title until I had focused on the ending when she talks about â€Å"the beginning of a century†. It made me think that she was about to embrace something new, and this struggle that is present may have been a repeat of the past, therefore bringing about the entire poems purpose, her questioning the future while regarding the past, or as the poem states, history. â€Å"When Death Comes†, This poem by Mary Oliver was simple, but the way she used imagery and depicted her thoughts upon death was brilliant and extravagant.When I say simple, I meant that there seemed to be no hidden meaning of what the poem was really about. After reading over the material more than a few times is was clear that death meant death, and her position on it was firmly established. At the beginning of the poem she starts off by describing death, how it is vicious, swift, unbiased and unforgiving. â€Å"When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades†¦ Then she begins to question about what death will be like when it is her time. Her reflection of death and its characteristics provokes thoughts on how she values all life and her personal relationships. She describes her relationships a brother and sisterhood, stating that she is very close to those she loves and highly values their relationship. She describes all life as a flower, but as common as a field daisy, but none the less beautiful, and any life that dares venture towards and endure life a body of courage, like a lion, and she ends the poem describing how she wants to exit this world.She wishes to die never having stopped being amazed by creation and never having stopped exploring new things and ideas, She wishes to have no questions or doubts. She wants to have experienced the world, not only have had visited it. Her take on the ideas and life and death themselves are very respectable, and something that I believe should be modeled, I believe that they are setup for well being, satisfac tion, and a full life. In this poem, she had many literay devices.To me, the most interesting one is on stanzas three and four: † when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut†¦ † Its obvious that when you die you lose all of your possesions, but in ancient Greece, the culture believed that when you died you had to pay a toll to Charon, a demi-god whose only purpose is to ferry people in to the after life. These coins were mostly gold or other precious metals and were usually owned by the person who died and placed on the eyes as their final payment to the Charon, which is represented by the adjective she uses, â€Å"Bright†.

Madam Cj Walker Essay

Madame C.J. Walker was America’s first self-made female millionaire. She amassed her fortune through hard work, innovative ideas, and a fierce dedication to her craft and her people. Contrary to most historical accounts, Madame C.J. Walker did not invent the pressing comb. Per her own words, Madame Walker started the â€Å"hair-growing† business, borne out her desire to remedy her own hair loss. In 1910 Madame C.J. Walker moved her ever expanding â€Å"Special Correspondence Course† business, founded on her System of Beauty Culture, to Indianapolis. There she purchased and paid for her home adjoining which was a factory and laboratory. On September 2, 1911 she petitioned the Indiana Secretary of State to become incorporated and on September 19th, 1911, said petition was granted, marking the genesis of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana, Inc. wherein Madame Walker was the President and sole shareholder of all 1,000 shares of stock. She was also an early civil rights advocate on behalf of Black people, and an avid financial supporter of what today we call HBCU†s or Historically Black Colleges and Universities. By the time of her passing in 1919, Madame C.J. Walker had built one of the largest black owned manufacturing companies in the world, an international network of over 15,000 Madame Walker agents, beauty schools in three states, and a 32 room mansion at Irvington-on-the-Hudson, New York. Madame’s only child, A’Lelia Walker became President of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana upon her mother’s passing. Per Madame’s will, two-thirds of the stock of the Company was placed in a Trust, over which were five Trustees. The other one-third of the stock of the company was bequeathed to her only child. When A’Lelia died, the one-third share of stock she owned was â€Å"split† between two people, each receiving onesixth share. The majority two-thirds remained in the Trust. Over six decades later, in 1985, the Trustees petitioned the Marion County Probate court to allow them to sell the stock and assets of Madame Walker’s company, including inventory and historical documents, to a man named Raymond Randolph. The owners of the remaining shares of stock also agreed to sell their shares to Raymond Randolph. Thus, on December 20th, 1985, Raymond L. Randolph became the first person since Madame C.J. Walker herself to own all 1000 shares of stock in the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana, aka the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Hawthorne Studies: Impact on Modern Management Essay

The Hawthorne Studies is one of the most frequently debated phenomenons in modern work management. Evolved in the 1930’s this represents a progression from pure scientific management determined by Taylor to introduction and influence of behavioral sciences in the management of work, workers and work places. Given the long time that the theory has been in vogue and the intense research in management sciences, Hawthorne effect has provided varying interpretations briefly summarized in three main streams of thought. One group of researchers considers that the Hawthorne effect has an impact on productivity due to the effect on people’s behavior when they know they are a part of an experiment. (Champoux, 2003) (Nelson & Quick, 2003). Some others deem this to be the changes brought about due to special attention to behavior at the work place. (Jewell, 1998) (Newstrom & Davis, 2002). While yet another interpretation is that it is an effect caused by a novel change in the work environment.  (Jex, 2002) (Schultz & Schultz, 2000). These however appear to be limited explanations of the Hawthorne effect. The most significant impact of the experiments is in establishing correlation between human psychology, behavioral sciences and scientific management. (Franke & Kaul, 1978). This integration has resulted in overcoming the overly simplistic principles of scientific management by Taylor (1911). In as much as modern management is concerned the Hawthorne experiments established principles for organizing small group processes which remain relevant to this day. (Franke & Kaul, 1978). Thus the impact of these experiments have to be examined in relation to linkages established between worker productivity and social groups at work, attention to individuals and groups and finally creation of a conducive work environment within the group. These three key parameters can be applied effectively in modern management practices in concurrent spheres which results in improvement in work output once workers feel that management is interested in their welfare and devotes attention to them, increased productivity through a sense of responsibility and discipline which comes from within a group rather than from higher authority, and finally production enhancements resulting from an ideal social environment for the work group. (Mayo, 1933). Welfare of the worker through greater involvement of management is an important derivative of the Hawthorne Experiments which has applicability in modern management. The focus of the Hawthorne studies in worker welfare was determined by factors such as providing adequate breaks for rest, manipulating work hours and creating ideal environment for productivity through control of humidity and temperature. (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). The implied meaning of such measures was that the management was concerned about and interested in the welfare of the worker. The workers were not as much concerned of the issue of genuineness of interest or productivity related needs of the management in their welfare. In the modern management context however large scale mobility of the work force is related to two spheres, availability of greater opportunities and a perceived sense of selfish rather than proportionately altruistic interest of the management in welfare of the work force. Where workers feel that the management is interested in their welfare only as a measure of productivity, it may not have a singular impact. Creating intrinsic sense of responsibility within a group is one of the prime motivators at work which can result in increased productivity. The Hawthorne experiment proved this dictum by manipulating experiments in various ways and also by creating a sense of permanency in the work groups. The groups seem to select themselves and enhance their commitment and productivity. (Mayo, 1933). In modern management creating sense of responsibility may be considered a function of effective group formation as well. This will result in a sense of purpose creating accountability of individuals to the group. Ironically the John Henry effect, frequently considered as the opposite of the Hawthorne effect supports this premise. Here a control group which is devoid of interventions enhances its efficiency by benchmarking performance based on the experimental group. (Zdep & Irvine; 1970) Thus implying that creation of group cohesion and a sense of responsibility towards productivity may lead to incremental improvements independent of interventions per se. However mere creation of a group may not sustain productivity, this will have to be supported by a conducive community atmosphere within the group. Social environment of the work group surely has an impact on worker productivity. (Mayo, 1933) (Gillespie, 1991). While work place manipulation has become a norm for greater productivity in modern production houses, it is the management of groups which is critical to the same rather than provision of physical improvement of work place beyond a certain limit. Social environment of the work group has impact at two stages in the modern work place. One is the repetitive nature of work performed by groups similar to those in Hawthorne studies. The other more complex form is work frequently carried out in a series, where an error in the chain could compound or negate the entire process. Thus the need may be to build much deeper social networking amongst groups to support not just productivity but also creativity and emotional bondage. Some of the areas which could be envisaged in this sphere are software development where relay chain nature of work would imply need for positive social environment within the work group for completion of the task with minimum errors. A critical examination of the study would reveal that most examinations have focused on the nuances of conduct of experiments rather than the overall impact of these trials. While Elton Mayo had good reason to deliberate on the experiments as this was the first time such scientifically controlled experiments were being undertaken linking behavioral sciences with industrial management, there is a tendency in subsequent works to focus more on the experiments per se rather than findings of the research derived from manipulating the processes of work. Thus critics are restricted to the integrity of the process of experiments thereby missing the essence of the argument of Hawthorne Experiments. This anomaly would be evident in the argument of novelty at the work place. (Jex, 2002) (Schultz & Schultz, 2000). The case of innovation is seen by some writers as incongruent with the conclusions as it was considered difficult to maintain novelty over a period of two years. Yet recycling newness could create conditions in the experiment which to the workers could bring about change thereby resulting in productivity improvements brought about by transformations in small work groups. A second critique of the Hawthorne experiments involves political interpretation of exploitation of workers by capitalists. (Rice, Nd). The argument that the management was interested in workers welfare has been interpreted in a way that it was not interest in the employee per se that had involved the management but the need to increase productivity. This may have relevance when attempting to understand the phenomenon of industrial polity in the modern workplace; but will not be relevant to the issue of application of the conclusions as given above in improving worker productivity. However given the extensive interpretation of the Hawthorne experiments over the years, it can be assumed at this stage that the political bias if any has been removed through the rigor of analysis by a vast body of researchers. One final critique of the Hawthorne studies in relation to modern management would be the underlying lack of importance to the group leader which is implicit in the experiments. The small group was allowed to manage through processes which do not seem to have entailed evolution of a group leader. This appears highly unusual given the natural proclivity of a primate to emerge in a group of people. In a modern setting of say software development, given the serial nature of work and equity in capability, yet importance of nominating a group leader for work group coordination has been highlighted. Nonetheless despite these and other infirmities, Hawthorne studies will continue to remain significant in modern management for the linkage provided for the first time between scientific managing, behavioral sciences and development of potential through principles of human resources.