Women and Advertising Essay -- Advertisements Ads Stereotypes essays p

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the year 1999, $120 billion was spent on marketing products to consumers (Killing Us Softly 3). Along with products, the advertising industry sells the intangible: â€Å"Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success of worth, love and sexuality, popularity, and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions† (Kilbourne, Beauty and the Beast). When the average person is bombarded by 2,000-3,000 ads a day (Kilbourne, address), it is impossible to remain unaffected by the aforementioned concepts and stereotypes (Still Killing Us Softly, video). Ads use insecurities to promise betterment with the purchase of a certain product. They are breeding grounds for stereotypes; most, if not all, are negative. They provide impossible body images for women to strive towards, and sadly, many women do. The repercussions of these images and stereotypes are quite serious. The female body image is distorted, and many women and girls, in effort to reach the distorted image, develop serious eating disorders. The perpetuation of sex in ads creates a casual attitude towards sex. Sex is used to sell almost anything: from lingerie to makeup, perfume to food and household items. Advertising tells viewers that if they aren’t sexy, they are not acceptable. The female body is repeatedly objectified in advertising, and whenever a human is turned into a thing, violence is going to follow. Rapes and beatings often result from the dehumanization of women (Still Killing Us Softly, video). Advertising creates unhealthy and even dangerous stereotypes and mindsets in the people of today’s society.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Advertisements play upon people’s insecurities, promising the viewer that, with the help of the product in question, the viewer can become a better person. There are many insecurities taken advantage of, but the most obvious and frequent is beauty. Women are strongly affected by this. After all, how could they not be when media is promoting a body type thinner, taller, and sexier than their own? Less than 10% of the female population is genetically able to be as thin and tall as the women used in the ads (about-face.org). Advertising sells an impossible image for most women. Many times there is an indirect message such as a beautiful woman wearing the makeup the ad is selling, but sometimes it’s more blatan... ...ols to combat media’s flippant use of sex in ads, and media literacy classes to teach young people, girls especially, how to see through the techniques of the advertising industry. Friedrich, Abby. â€Å"All of Your Insecurities Wrapped Up In a Thirty Second Spot.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Giedrys, Sally Anne. â€Å"Creating a Curriculum To Help Girls Battle Eating Disorders.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Harvard University Gazette. Harvard University. 11 February 1999.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Kilbourne, Jean. Address. Viterbo Presentation. April 22, 1996. Kilbourne, Jean. â€Å"Beauty†¦and the Beast of Advertising.† Media & Values Winter   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  1990. Center for Media Literacy. Issue 49. 3 March 2004.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  . â€Å"Killing Us Softly 3†. Video. Cambridge Documentary Films. 2000. â€Å"Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women.† Video. Cambridge   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Documentary Films. 2000. Thomas, Jennifer. â€Å"Websites Promote Anorexia and Bulimia as a ‘Lifestyle’.† HealthScoutNews. Udovitch, Mim. â€Å"A Secret Society of the Starving.† New York Times Magazine. 8 September 2002. Zarchikoff, Rebecca. â€Å"Sexual Images of Women to Sell Products- ‘Fascism’ and  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Bodyism’†. University of Victoria.

Abortion Essay -- Pregnancy Papers

Abortion Abortion has been an issue since 1820. In the beginning the problem was more about protecting doctors who have licenses. â€Å"Regular doctors thus had an incentive to ban abortion as part of an effort to drive irregular doctors many of whom were women out of business† (Straggenborg, p.211). The AMA (American Medical Association), which was the group that the regular doctors made, started a campaign that made the people believe that the white population was getting smaller and the population of the immigrants was rising. Abortions were made illegal to insure the stability of the population of American citizens. It seems odd that the only reason that abortions were made illegal at one point was because of money issues and a lust for white supremecy. It seemed to have nothing to do with the rights of a child or a woman. One of the reasons why abortion came into question in the beginning of the 1950s was due to the fact that a lot of doctors and lawyers were seeing many case s of illegal abortions and it was becoming a large social problem. Since there was a lack of competition for legal abortions, doctors found no problem making them legal again -- â€Å"They felt that abortions were justified under certain circumstances, and they begun to see the laws against abortion as an infringement on their own medical discretion† (Straggenborg, p.212). And so the issue arose again with many pro- choice groups speaking up. Then with court cases like Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, abortion again became legal in the United States. When looking at a topic like abortion, there are many things that one must take into account. Yet before we look at both sides of the issue, lets look at exactly what the issue is. If we were to s... ...ernet,authoritative} Lee, Dr. Ellie, â€Å" Is Abortion a Health Risk?† 2001 {popular news, print via internet, reputable} Katz, Nikki, Abortion Statistics, 2002 { unrestricted, internet publication only, apparently credible} Low Income Uninsured Children by State 2000, 2001, 2002. 2002 { scholarly primary, print via internet, authoritative} Vital Statistics of the U.S. 1998, Vol 1, Natality. 1998 { scholarly primary, print via internet, authoritative} Feinberg, Joel. â€Å"Abortion.† Random House, Inc, 1986. [Scholarly primary source; print; not used for evidence] Rosenblatt, Roger. â€Å"How to End the Abortion War.† The New York Times Company, 1992. [Scholarly primary source; print; not used for evidence]

Supporting School Uniforms Essay -- essays research papers

Socialization and You: Students in Uniform Uniforms have helped develop many children socially into the people they are today. Presented in argument form is how the role expectations, social control, and values of being in uniform have helped me succeed. Being in school uniforms at an early age has centralized me to this idea. High school was the first time without being in uniform for me. It was a culture shock. People made fun of what you wore some days, or would look at you wrong. You were no longer on the same level as your peers. It was difficult to fathom for me. Uniforms have their own subculture and are an excellent idea. "The uniform dress required of all students is one of the most important features of the college. It insures economy, democracy, and equality of opportunity"(Bodine) School uniforms are beneficial because students do not feel self-conscious about what they wear, feel comfortable with their financial status, and perform better academically. The school uniform is the single-most visible element of any school. Children in school uniform are walking advertisements for a school, giving an impression of the school whether it is good or for bad. Uniforms were originally thought to be an accurate reflection of a school's discipline standards and discipline. In England’s small towns, it was proof that the school had structure and could function (School Uniform). Although England originated the idea of school uniforms, America and many other places adapted to this idea very quickly. School is a second home for children and one needs to feel comfortable in that setting. â€Å"About a third of the day is spent at school and about half of a child's waking hours†(School Uniform). With a need for comfort in the schoo... ...e majority of children’s lives. This could be easily argued saying that the hundreds of dollars spent on extra curricular activities such as a basketball uniform could not be worn for anything other than basketball. Everything has its reason and purpose, a school uniform is the last thing a parent should be worried that their kid would get use out of. These are just a few of the many arguments presented by the opposing side of the argument. In any case, school uniforms, establish a resounding unity in schools and centralize a child’s focus on to what is important. The â€Å"team member† image is presented proudly and students are normally more than willing to accept the uniforms once they’ve tried them. Uniforms have helped develop me into the person I am today and clearly help academically. With all the benefits its been proven to have, uniforms are the best choice.

Tracka History

Tracks are the bars that chain every life-full and lifeless life. It is the reason of being and not being and yet it has no reason to its own being! The Journey of human life Initiates on an aching track Inside a human life. It Is by this way that every track is born from an existing track to give birth to a new track: with the pain and strive for its survival. The birth of a new track, the birth oaf human life continues the agony of Its Journey under Its crafting and being crafted. The track hen widens and branches into various phases that life has to undergo.Every life possesses its own track which lays a unique awe of colors, flavors, and aromas. The human elite begins with the fetal pain and enters the cheerful, merry phase to childhood which is the enlivening arrival of the tracks among other tracks. It chirps with hues of innocence and freedom and the sweet flavor of inexperience and gullibility. Then the phase to adolescence is hoot-marked by the tracks with hues of upcoming m aturity and yet instability, impulsiveness, and sentimental blows, lush and gleam, Inquisitiveness and irresistibility and the sweet fragrance of a fascinating sense of growing up and yet being juvenile.It is all because of the tracks that change their routes and shapes. Then the youth spreads its golden wings with the flavor of velour, passion, potency, piquancy, gallantry. It Is also with beauty and might and the vigor that love adores in; it pours in its thrilling attraction towards other tracks, perception to mingle with another track to beat as one and to produce another out of Its existence. It Is these tracks that bloom relationships as hey connect each other. It is also a sense of belonging, a sense of disparity amalgamated with hot enthusiasm that also leads to confrontations between lives and hence tracks.It Is then that tracks bring human life to adulthood with compassion and ripened maturity with parenthood and sympathy, with Indulgence. Perception and harmony towards ot her beings. It is here that the tracks start to ripen, to make a realization of responsibilities, the ultimate goal of tracks. Then the tracks wrinkle and decolonize, they meager, leaving as much residual wisdom as Seibel; drooping off the lives, growing old, fragile and shaky and finally hand over the bunch to experiences to other tracks to lay hints tort lives to go on and on, however hopeless it may seem to be.The scrawny tracks shed but are yet immortal, as they lay behind evergreen generations†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Similarly, the Journey of a seed begins in DARK TRACKS, deep beneath the earth with immense trepidation and yet hopes to have an acquaintance with light, knowing not of the slaughtering and exterminating heat that accompanies It. The suffocating seed striving for growth ruminates, Witt the branching up to its painful track to soar high above earth yet remain anchored and grounded to its roots. The tracks stimulate its germination to the seedling phase, consuming the resourc es and the efforts to lead its formation.It grows with traits of tenderness, softness, and delicacy. The seedling, along with the widening of tracks; widens and blooms into a plant and then into a kind tree. It is then that the tracks take them to places where they have to pay the returns and much more than that utilized. They shed and regret endlessly, with heir fruits given happily or rather taken happily! They serve their master tracks- the human beings as givers. And perhaps sacrifice their lives by letting us brutally cut off their tracks. And then the tracks fall as the life falls.A non-living being also has an expedition of its own, often unnoticed. The pencil enters its expedition with a sense of completeness, wholeness, vividness, originality and totality unlike the living ones. It then enters a phase of sharpening that sets its Journey on until it sheds itself. The tracks gradually become narrower and shrink as they succeed. The pencil harpers itself, hoping to improve the marks it leaves, to paw mark itself to serve its master-the human being, who though is the creator of the pencil, is not the creator of its tracks!It then feeds marking and blackening and writing lives losing its own! And then as it feels it's growing the precedence of tracks deteriorate its existence. The only difference between Journey of a life-full and a lifeless one is that tracks make the former grow up as they change, whereas the latter shrinks down. The formers life is so simply started that it makes it complicated whereas the latter's life s so complicatedly started that it ends simply. It is the beauty and magnificence of tracks that though they lose significance without a traveler, they are not created by the travelers.Although they provide choices to go on, they bind us in chains somewhere in time; of which we realize when we've lost the assumed control. They also depict and bring correspondence to all ‘prisoners' despite their uniqueness and disparity. It dissolv es the boundary of poor and rich, masculine and feminine, black and white, strong and feeble, animals and plants and to an extent- living and non-living! Every track has a Journey- whether a Eng one or a short one, a complete one or an incomplete one.The Journey though different, is always amongst and with all tracks. Every Journey has a purpose and the tracks are those which chain them to it, and so it fulfils its being. Be it Journeys of living beings or of non living beings, all tracks mingle in one point Just as they are born out of the hands of one single creator- the almighty. Here, I remember of a very famous truth, â€Å"Dust thou art, to dust returnees. † They circle around one single destination- death, closure, end†¦ . Every track ends, what differs is Just the pace of ending, it is Just the fate of

On the Road by Jack Kerouac Essay

â€Å"On the Road† by Jack Kerouac is largely autobiographical work attributed to the genre of stems of consciousness creation. The novel is based on the author’s spontaneous trips with his friends across mid-century America. The novel is deeply inspired by poetry, jazz and drug experiences. The author has changed many of the names, but most references are claimed to be real-world counterparts. In the five parts and sixteen chapters the author describes restless and crazy journeys of Dean, Sal and his friends across the country. Dean Moriarty plays important role in the novel progression as he symbolizes the changeable nature of human relations and the dark side of society. Nevertheless, he pushes and inspires other to act towards their destinies symbolizing changes and shifts. Dean is certainly negative character, though he has positive impact of Sal – one of the protagonists – as he makes his stronger and more confident. Dean lives in San Francisco, travels across the country. Kerouac defines Dean as â€Å"the perfect guy for the road because he actually was born on the road†. (p. 0) However, he presents Dean as wild and mad character stressing that it is his craziness and energy that affects others to act. Dean drinks a lot, uses drugs and has many women. Moreover, he is a father of four children from two different women. Dean manages to change the life values of Sal. For example, before Sal meets Dean, he had â€Å"just gotten over a serious illness that†¦had something to do with†¦my feeling that everything was dead†. (p. 10) Dean’s character can be defined as embodiment of the whirlwind day and as Sal’s shifts from the East to the West Coast. Dean symbolizes changes acting as mechanism for movement beginning. Dean is zealous and wild personality, though he is captivating as well. Sal says about Dean: â€Å"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything†¦Ã¢â‚¬ . (p. 14-15) Therefore, Dean’s character plays crucial role for Sal’s development as personality, as well as he is the embodiment of passion for life and constant activity.

Beer Et Al’s (1984) Harvard Model of Hrm Notes Essay

Despite almost two decades of debate in the mainstream literature around the nature of human resource management (HRM), its intellectual boundaries and its application in practice, the field continues to be dogged by a number of theoretical and practical limitations. This book is intended to provide students with a relatively advanced and critical discussion of the key debates and themes around HRM as it is conceptualized and operationalized in the early part of the twenty-first century. Thus the current contribution is intended to be in the tradition of Storey (2007) and Legge (1995) and aims to provide students with a well-grounded and critical overview of the key issues surrounding HRM from a theoretical and practical perspective. In doing so we draw on contributions from the leading scholars in the field who provide detailed discussions on key debates in their respective offerings. In this introduction we provide the context for the book though considering a number of overarching themes within which key debates in the field of HRM are situated. Specifically, we provide a summary discussion of the theoretical and intellectual boundaries of HRM, consider its emergence in historical context and identify some of the pervasive contradictions and limitations which prevail in the literature. Finally we provide a short outline of the structure and content of this volume. HRM defined Our discussion begins by considering what HRM actually means. Given the importance of definition in understanding the boundaries of a field, this issue is clearly an important point of departure. However, this question is more difficult to answer than one would expect, since from its emergence HRM has been dogged by the still largely unresolved ambiguity surrounding its definition. As Blyton and Turnbull (1992:2) note ‘The ways in which the term is used by academics and practitioners indicates both variations in meaning and significantly different emphases on what constitutes its core components’. One of the dominant definitions (in the UK at least) has been to define HRM as a contested domain, with rival soft and hard approaches. The soft approach to HRM is generally associated with the Harvard School and in particular the writings of Michael Beer and colleagues (see Beer et al., 1984; Beer and Spector, 1985; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). The soft school emphasizes the importance of aligning HR policies with organizational strategy; it emphasizes the role of employees as a valuable asset and source of competitive advantage through their commitment adaptability and quality (Legge, 1995; D’Art, 2002). It stresses gaining employee commitment to the organization through the use of a congruent suite of HRM policies. Soft HRM draws on behavioural sciences in particular, with strong resonance with the human relations school, while the concept of human growth, which is central to its theory, echoes ‘all-American’ theories of motivation, from McGregor’s Theory Y to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Legge, 1995). Hence it is sometimes conceptualized as ‘developmental humanism’ (Storey, 1989; Legge, 1995). HRM is operationalized in terms of strategic interventions designed to develop resourceful employees and to elicit their commitment to the organizational goal (Storey, 1992). However, sceptics have conceptualized soft HRM as the ‘iron fist in the velvet glove’, arguing that the theory of soft HRM ‘reduced †¦ the complex debate about the role of people in work organizations to the simplistic dogma of an economic model which even its â€Å"creator† Adam Smith would probably not have wished applied in such an indiscriminate manner’ (Hart, 1993:29–30). Another uncharitable definition of soft HRM is that it constituted a desperate rearguard action by liberal academics and practitioners, mostly writing in the United States, to sell more humane forms of managing people to essentially conservative owner interests that have in increasing numbers ruthlessly pressed for a maximization of short term profits, regardless of the cost to both employees and the long term good of the organization. In other words, soft HRM is about trying to encourage firms to be ‘nicer’ to their people, on the basis that such ‘niceness’ is likely to translate into greater commitment and productivity, and hence, even more profits. Soft HRM stands in contrast with the hard variant. Hard HRM is generally associated with the Michigan School (Forbrun et al., 1984). Its emphasis is on the use of human resource (HR) systems to ‘drive’ the attainment of the strategic objectives of the organizations (Forbrun et al., 1984). While sof t HRM emphasizes the human element of HRM, the emphasis of the hard approach is very much on the resource as a means of maximizing shareholder value over the short term. The duty of managers is quite simply to make money for owners, and a focus on other issues such as employee rights is simply a distraction: rather, by focusing on returns, the organization will perform most efficiently, which ultimately is in the interests of all. It has been argued that, in the tradition of Taylorism and Fordism, employees are viewed as a factor of production that should be rationally managed and deployed in quantitative and calculative terms in line with business strategy (Tyson and Fell, 1986; Storey, 1992). However, rather different to classic Taylorism or Fordism, job security in the new hard HRM is seen as an unnecessary luxury, whilst pay rates are to be kept to the lowest level the external labour market would permit: there is little mention in the literature illustrating how hard HRM echoes Henry Ford’s famous commitment to a 5 dollar/day wage. Human resource policies in the hard variant are designed to be both internally consistent and externally ali gned with the organizational strategy. These interventions are designed to ensure full utilization of the labour resource (Storey, 1992). It is legitimized and finds its impetus from a market-responsive frame of reference (Storey, 2007). At the extreme, implicit contracts regarding pensions and tenure are seen as hampering effective management: these should, if possible, be jettisoned, with employee rights being pared back as much a possible. Critics of this point of view have argued that such a focus is likely to make for higher staff turnover rates, with the inevitable loss of job specific skills and accumulated wisdom, low trust, low levels of organizational commitment, and hence, higher transaction costs (see Marsden, 1999). In other words, hard HRM is likely to make organizations less efficient. It could be argued that most successful incrementally innovative high value added manufacturing firms have shunned hard HRM. In contrast, it has been more widely deployed in more volatile areas of economic activity, such as f inancial services. A second and simpler way of viewing things is that HRM in the narrow sense can be defined as a strategic approach to managing employees, which came to the forefront in the liberal market economies, particularly the US and the UK, in the 1980s. Whilst having both soft (‘people friendly’) and hard (‘people as a resource to be deployed, utilized, and, if need be disposed of’) variations, common to this approach was an emphasis on optimal shareholder outcomes, with enhancing outcomes for other stakeholders being at the best a secondary objective, and at worst, an unnecessary distraction. This ‘two sides of the same coin’ point of view argues that, since the end of the long boom that lasted from the post World War II period up until the 1970s, there has been a period of erratic and unstable growth and recession. This period has been characterized by employers gaining the upper hand over employees, on account of the very much weaker bargaining position of the latter (cf. Kelly 1998). Given this, managers – particularly in the liberal market economies, such as the US and UK, where workers have historically had fewer rights under both law and convention – have taken the opportunity to fundamentally change the way they manage people. This has taken the form of systematic attempts to undermine collective bargaining with unions, replacing this with weak forms of consultation with individual employees. Collective employment contracts – where workers performing similar jobs are rewarded according to a pre-agreed pay scale – are replaced with individual ones, with employees being rewarded on the basis of regularly appraised performance, and/or through pay rates simply being linked to outputs. In other words, the role of the employee in the firm is not a dynamic and, in som e sense, negotiated relationship, but rather simply the deployment of a resource, in the same way a firm would deploy other physical resources, such as raw materials. A third way of looking at things is to simply conceptualize HRM as little more than a renaming of personnel management. In this vein, writers such as Armstrong (1987) describe HRM as ‘old wine in new bottles’, while Guest (1987) pointed to the fact that many personnel departments changed their names to HRM departments, with little evidence of any change in role. In practice, this would suggest that much HR work really concerns the administration of systems governing the administration of pay, promotion and recruitment procedures, etc. In turn, this would imply that HR managers are likely to lack power within the organization and have little say in setting real organizational strategies. Finally, HRM may be defined broadly in terms of including all aspects of managing people in organizations and the ways in which organizations respond to the actions of employees, either individually or collectively. The value of this catch all term is that it describes the wide range of issues surrounding both the employment contract, situations where an employment contract has yet to be agreed on (recruitment and selection), and ways in which employees may be involved and participate in areas not directly governed by the employment contract to make working life more agreeable and/or to genuinely empower people. In other words, it goes beyond simply ‘industrial relations’ or ‘employment relations’. The terms ‘personnel administration’ or ‘personnel management’ would not provide a totally accurate label, given their administrative and non-strategic connotations. Some insights into the different ways HRM has been conceived have been provided by the Keele University affair in 2007–2008. A conservative university administration resolved to restructure business and management studies in the university through the simple device of making acade mics that had formally specialized in ‘industrial relations’ redundant. In many respects, this was a surprising decision, given robust student numbers, and the fact that industrial relations research was one area where Keele had gained an excellent reputation. Backed up by the findings of a committee of external ‘experts’, university administration implied that industrial relations academics were likely to be less capable of teaching HRM, and, by implication, had skills sets not relevant to modern business education. Tellingly, a petition signed by many leading HRM and industrial relations academics in Britain, in response to this decision, included a statement that HRM could not be separated from industrial relations, and that the skills necessary to teach industrial relations could broadly be applied to understanding HRM. In other words, HRM was simply a collective noun describing work and employment relations in the broadest possible sense, and was not really about special new skills, or a new and different agenda (see www.bura.org.uk). The preceding discussion highlights the ambiguity around the boundaries of HRM. These differences are summarized in Table 1.1. The tension around definition persists in the literature and a central theme in this volume is highlighting the contradictions between these two broad understandings of HRM. We argue that for ethical and sustainability reasons, more stakeholder orientated approaches to people management are preferable, with shareholder dominant approaches facing both quotidian micro-crises at firm (encompassing problems of human capital development and commitment) and at macro-economic (encompassing problems of excessive speculation-driven volatility, industrial decline, and chronic balance of payments problems) levels. HRM and personnel management compared As noted above, a key point of reference in definitions on HRM is through comparing it with its predecessor – personnel management. Although this debate is somewhat dated, it remains important. Thus it merits summary discussion. During the early days of HRM’s emergence as a mainstream approach to people management a number of commentators were sceptical about the extent to which it represented something different to its predecessor – personnel management. Over time it has become apparent that there are substantive differences between the two, Table 1.1 Definitions of HRM†¦ Definition | Implication | Contested domain | HRM is a contested domain, with two rival paradigms, hard and soft HRM | Two sides of the same coin | Whether hard or soft, HRM is about the management of people in a particular, new way. This may involve the use of strategy to manage people, or simply reflect structural changes that have strengthened management at the expense of employees | ‘New wine in old bottles’ | HRM is little more than the extension of traditional personnel management | Collective noun | HRM is a commonly reflected description for a range of practices associated with managing work and employment relations | At least at a theoretical level. In illuminating these differences a brief discussion on personnel management is merited (for a full discussion, see Legge, 1995). While there are a number of accepted definitions of personnel management, some of which in the US context are closer to accepted definitions of HRM (see Kaufman, 2001; Strauss, 2001), there is a degree of consensus as to its key characteristics. First, personnel management is largely conceived as a downstream activity with a limited strategic role. And, despite the rhetoric, HRM is often not that strategic: after all, both hard and soft HRM ultimately depict HRM as a transmission belt, passing down an agenda of shareholder value. Further, personnel management is generally considered to be reactive and piecemeal with little integration between its various elements. One of the greatest management thinkers – if popular management writing can be considered thought at all – of the last century, Peter Drucker (1961:269), neatly summarized the personnel role as ‘a collection of incidental techniques with little internal cohesion. As personnel administration conceives the job of managing worker and work, it is partly a file clerk’s job, partly a house keeping job, partly a social worker’s job and partly fire-fighting to head off union trouble or to settle it’. This limited role is alluded to by Legge’s (1995:88) observation that ‘in the UK â€Å"personnel management† evokes i mages of do-gooding specialists trying to constrain line managers, of weakly kowtowing to militant unions, of both lacking power and having too much power’. Indeed it has been argued that the perceived welfare role of the personnel function was one aspect of it that limited its credibility as a managerial function. It also resulted in females playing a key role in personnel in its formative years in the UK context (Legge, 1995). A scrutiny of the gender composition of classes at many Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development approved training centres provides some corroboration for the gendered nature of much HR work. A further dimension of the broad personnel role in the UK was its key role in negotiating with trade unions, a characteristic which points toward the fire-fighting role of personnel. Indeed, it was this element of the role that bought increasing numbers of males into the profession (Gunnigle et al., 2006). However, more recent evidence in the UK points to a shift in the balance towards a greater feminization of the HR function (Kersley et al., 2006:69). This engagement with trade unions points to a collectivist orientation and, owing to the historical prominence of trade unions, particularly in the UK and Ireland, personnel management became infused with a pluralist frame of reference (Flanders 1964). Given the importance of bargaining, managing the industrial relationship gained a distinct identity: it is worth noting that the divide between basic personnel management and industrial relations persists in the academic literature, with, as a general rule, those academic journals focusing on the former having low prestige, and on the latter, high prestige. Newer explicitly HR journals represent something of a cross over and incorporate aspects of both, as well as insights from, other disciplines. The preceding discussion suggests that HRM and personnel management – and industrial relations – may differ in a number of substantive ways. The first is that HRM is conceived as having a more strategic role and hence elevated t o the top management table, suggesting a more upstream role, even if, in practice, this has been little more than wishful thinking. Nonetheless, HRM does concern attempts to develop an integrated and congruent set of HR policies as opposed to the piecemeal approach apparent in the traditional personnel role. Furthermore, HR policy and practice is also targeted at the individual level. This is reflected in the preference for individual performance related pay, individual communication mechanisms, employee opinion surveys and the like. A final key distinguishing factor is that, reflective of the individualist orientation, HRM is premised on a unitarist understanding of conflict. Unitarism suggests that there are no intrinsic conflicts of interest in the employment relationship as all within the organization are working toward a common goal for the success of the organization. The common goal is reflected in the idea that there is a single source of authority within the organization – management. Given that there are argued to be no conflicts of interest within the organization – conflicts are caused b y breakdowns in communication or by troublemakers. Conflict should be suppressed by improving communication or removing troublemakers from the organization. Unions are opposed on two grounds: (1) there are no conflicts of interest within the workplace and thus they are unnecessary and (2) they would represent an alternative source of authority. Alternatively, unions may be co-opted to the managerial agenda, through ‘partnership’, with unions trading off militancy for continued recognition, and the benefits that would arguably flow from greater organizational competitiveness. More critical strands of the HR literature suggest that this focus is mistaken, that employees often retain a collective identity, and that managerial power will inevitably continue to be challenged in ways that would make new accommodations necessary if the organization is to work in the most effective way. http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=223448&src=0#

Comparative Religions Project Essay Essay

The encounters between the Islam and Christian religions were always violent towards each other. Even from the beginning both of these religions used violence and conversion, making them two religions that wouldn’t mix well. Their first encounters were very aggressive, but Islam with more violence toward Christianity and better connection to the political world had always seemed to come out on top. Then ruling over the Christian believers, they would outlaw certain practices of their religion and give them much higher taxes. Thus forcing many true Christians to converse over to the Islam religion just because they couldn’t take it anymore. In the year 1008 al-Hakim outlawed the celebrations of Palm Sunday, and the following year he ordered that Christians be punished and all their property confiscated. In that same year, he demolished multiple Christian churches all around the city. This was not it, al-Hakim also managed to destroy the Constantinian basilica of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, known as the Holy Sepulcher. Records say that he said in quote: â€Å"to obliterate ant symbol of Christian faith, and provide for the removal of every reliquary and object of veneration.† As Christianity began to spread the stronger and more popular it became. With this religion being North America’s number one, Muslims had a harder time keeping in charge. One thing that didn’t change though was the Islam’s need for violence. As Christianity spread they never stopped trying to sabotage their religion. Now technology starts to play a part in their war for religion, Muslims give up their lives using the violence that has not yet gone away. And not only are these conflicts uprising from where they originally came from, as the religions spread so did the conflict with them. Today there still are existing conflicts between Christianity and Islam, but not as much as there were in history. Muslims don’t have much control over Christians as they used to, now after 9/11 we are more controlling them. Muslims are more keeping their distance away from the Christians not only because this Christianity was growing but also because of things like Hollywood and television. This causes Muslims to stay away because they see them as immoral, corrupt and decadent. Muslim women will say they are wearing their veils as a form of protection and a refusal to be caught up in fashion, which they see as a way of using women. The history of these two religions was not accepting, and both felt the need to use violence and conversion against each other. Both Christianity and Islam felt the need to be number one and have power over the other, or even completely wiping the other religion out. As time continued on so did they, still many conflicts arise and choosing violence and war as the way out. New and more advanced technologies came to be an option for more destruction and the Muslims chose to use them against the Christians who fought back then yet another war has started. The Christians who were pushed around in the beginning, aren’t so vulnerable anymore now that they have become the most common religion all over the world.