Contemporary HR and Management Practices Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Contemporary HR and Management Practices - Essay Example Therefore, it is the firm's workforce that provides the competitive advantage for companies, using its knowledge, commitment, skills and training. This is where the Human Resource Management's inevitable role comes to play. It devises policies that not only aim to improve organizational performance fostering innovation and flexibility, but also to improve employee well being. The human resource management uses mechanisms to build healthy two-way communication; provides healthy compensation, fair treatment and employee securities and career development and growth opportunities for all employees. Such HR activities deal with areas like employee morale, motivation, and performance; and workforce recruitment, retention, and turnover, which in turn increases various aspects of employee well being. As mentioned in the beginning, the changing scenario of working conditions and increasing competition due to globalization and rising awareness in customers, firms have to take decisions that not always end up in the best interest of the employees. Despite the capable policies of human resources and management in favor of the employees, contemporary HR and management practices do not succeed in meeting the promises of assuring well-being of the employees. Instead, the de-layering, restructuring and downsizing efforts of the HR and management of the firms are leading to work intensification. Work intensification is the extent to which employees are being forced to work faster and harder than they have been before. Where these decisions and policies cut financial and operational costs substantially, these are having inevitable impact on work intensification. In order to save their jobs and work up to the expectations of the management, employees have to perform more than they ever did before. The workforce has to get multi skilled in order to perform multiple tasks and give improved productivity. Not just to save jobs and survive in the organization, the workforce has to bear with the work intensification because of the performance related pay systems. The HR and management practices the productivity related compensation, which is originally intended to improve motivation and satisfaction amongst employees. Although such practices alongside add to the intensity of work and tasks and adversely affect the employee well being. A report specially made by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Job Insecurity and Work Intensification, says that work uncertainty amongst professional workers has become more severe in the 1990s. More than 60 percent of employees assert that the speed of work and the effort they have to put into their jobs has amplified over the past five years. Fright of joblessness is not the only facet of work uncertainty. Although many workers are not unjustifiably anxious about losing their jobs, they are particularly concerned about the loss of esteemed job features, such as their rank and prospect for promotion. The report concludes that the core reason of work uncertainty and work intensification happens to be the decreased recruitment levels pursued by

Western Hemisphere Essay Example for Free

Western Hemisphere Essay In the novel, Michele Wucker shows lots of events from the history of the island. She starts from the conquest of the Taino Indians to the colonial skirmishes between the French and Spanish for possession of the island. After that the author goes to the United States occupation of Haiti in 1915 and to the invasion of the US of the Dominican Republic in 1965. Throughout this panoramic history Michele Wucker inserts lively portraits of Haitians and Dominicans struggling in Hispaniola and abroad: she shows displaced peasants on the outskirts of Santo Domingo and immigrants who came to look for a happier life in New York. The author reports on the struggles between Dominicans and Haitians and depicts the events which happened around 60 years ago when the Dominican dictator Trujillo ordered 30,000 Haitians to be killed. The author also describes Vodou rituals in Dominican sugarcane fields where Haitians were working like slaves. She does her best to show the fights between the nations and also devote lots of attention to policies of the United States towards every nation. Michele Wucker finds it very important to analyze the often contradictory policies of the United States towards each other nations inhabiting Hispaniola which continue to influence the density of two important countries and of tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans living in the United States. The policy of the United States towards the discussed nations should be trying to settle the conflicts between them and overcoming contradictions but never putting more oil into the fire of their conflict. It’s a very interesting approach how Michele Wucker moves from one strongman and atrocity to another, e. g. conquering Spaniards complain about the noisiness of natives when they are punished by being roasted alive; Trujillo massacres at least 15,000 Haitians residing from the Dominican Republic in 1937; and the Duvaliers arrogantly loot their own country which is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. One of the major themes of the novel is the role of racism in the island’s history and its influence on the life of the nations inhabiting the island. Haiti came to be dominated by light-skin elite and a series of Dominican leaders, especially Trujillo, who sympathized with Nazi race ideology demonized Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans. As we all know, the problem of racism has always been very important in history and was the reason of lots of fights, so there is no wonder it was also the reason of different conflicts in Hispaniola. Another important theme covered in the novel is the theme of migration. Michele Wucker interviews a cutter who originally came from Haiti to the Dominican Republic to work and who has lived on a plantation for almost the entire life and finds out about the unbearable conditions in which he was working and about all the tortures and sufferings which he had to go though all the time while he was working in the plantation. Lots of people like him had to work like slaves in the plantations for pennies an hour and the Dominican Government was literally purchasing thousands of workers each year from the Haitian Government through annual contracts. Those people had no rights and they had to work day and night in the plantations. Migration was playing an important role beyond the island, too and the million Haitian immigrants in Miami and New York were a major influence in forcing Clinton Administration to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the power in 1994. Returning to the fight which goes on between fighting cocks and which is the main theme of the novel, we have to mention that the leaders, like the Duvaliers and Balaguer who were staging bloody fights in the arenas, while the players on the sidelines- the armed forces, the bourgeoisie- were wagering on the outcome. Michele Wucker even enlisted St. Augustine who was watching cockfight which he happened to see and wrote of the deformity of a blooded, defeated cock that ‘by that very deformity was the more perfect beauty of the contest in evidence’. It is also important to analyze the final scene in the novel which takes place during the carnival on the outskirts of the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, where Haitian immigrants reside. The scene shows Haitians and Dominicans dancing together during the carnival and this scene means that there are lots of situations in which even those people who were fighting with each other can find a way to understand each other and be friends and forget about the previous fights. According to the words of Michele Wucker, ‘During the carnival, the festival that flaunts limits and rules and real conflicts disappear as Dominicans and Haitians celebrate their differences and their common roots’. This means that no matter what the color of skin of people inhabiting the Hispaniola island is, what history the nations inhabiting it have, they still have to overcome all the distinctions and do their best to live in peace. As long as people realize that it’s much better to live in peace and that distinctions between nations should never result in conflicts, they can always hope for a happy future. Bibliography: http://wucker.com/

Wake Up Willy :: essays research papers

Wake Up, Willy "He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine †¦ A salesman is got to dream, boy." (Requiem, page 138) Willy Loman longs for the success of his brother Ben, but refuses to accept the drudgery in the work of his friend, Charley. Essentially, Willy wants the freedom that Ben has – leaving for Alaska on a whim, ending up in the wrong place, and still succeeding on his own – without the responsibility and hard work that Charley puts in to be modestly and stolidly successful. The incongruity in Willy’s wishes – that Willy wants all the glory without any of the guts – leaves him in a place where, truly, he is still a child. And, like a child, Willy could never live like Ben because he needs the security of a job and life like the one Charley has. As the play winds on, Willy cannot wake up from his fantasized version of true American success and, ultimately, allows Miller to illustrate the shallowness of the American Dream. Ben represents success based on the benchmarks Willy has created: that if a man has a good appearance and is well-liked, he will thrive in the business world. Yet, the amount of truth in Ben’s character is questionable. More likely, Ben has been idealized in Willy’s mind to become a mix between truth and fantasy – one who exemplifies the principles that Willy lives his life by and bestows on the Loman boys. "William, when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And, by God, I was rich!" (Act 1, Page 52) In fact, either Ben leaves out the part of the story where he worked tirelessly for four years in the jungle to make his fortune or this is another example of Willy nurturing his fantasies in his own idealized hallucination of Ben. Either way, Willy cannot wake up from the dream world his head is in involving the seemingly effortless success that comes about his brother Ben, nor can he realize that, at least in his world, success is based on more than projecting a good, confident appearance and being well-liked: it involves hard work and effort. And, while he idealizes Ben and raises him to the point of symbolic greatness, he idolizes Dave Singlman (single-man), who, at the age of eight-four, can â€Å"go into any city, pick up the phone, and†¦ [make] his living,† because he represents the only solid example of success under Willy’s principle – and even then, Singleman is alone.

Parenting Styles and Prosocial Behavior Essay

Parents often play a large role in the development of their son’s or daughter’s morality, social behavior, education, habits, and many other areas. Therefore, parents contain tremendous power when it comes to shaping their offspring. Due to this tremendous amount of power, researchers had an inclination that certain parenting styles have effect on their child’s BMI. The evidence found in the study suggests that there is a possible relation between the type of parenting styles and the fluctuation of their children’s BMI. The researchers of this article, based upon past studies, hypothesized that the four major parenting styles they presented would should greater increases in BMI than other styles (Fuemmeler, 2012). The researchers funded by several government grants such as the National Cancer Institute Grant and National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Grant found an effective way to carry out this study. First, the researchers gave the individuals (ages11-21) being tested a survey about their parents to determine the style the parent used. The survey was broke down into tests. One test determined acceptance of the parent, while the other determined control. Based on the answers given by the child, the parent’s styles were determined and were broken up into four categories. These four categories were permissive, authoritarian, disengaged, and balanced. As a result, the categories would serve as the independent variables in the study. Once the child’s parenting type was established, the researchers monitored the kids BMI over an eleven year span to watch for any increases or decreases. The BMI, the dependent variable in the study, showed greater increases in the kids who had a balanced style parenting. This result surprised the researchers because they believed that the authoritarian and disengaged parent types would show greater increases. Although, the authoritarian and disengaged parent types didn’t show increases in BMI more than the balanced style, they did associate to lees leveling off of trajectories over time (Fuemmeler, 2012). This study showed relation between the parenting styles and BMI’s of their children, but this study does not present a causal relationship between the two. It cannot show a causal relationship for a number of reasons. One reason is due to the fact that the study refuses to acknowledge factors causing association between parenting styles and BMI. For example, a parent that practices a disengaged style and lives in an obese home environment may encourage poor eating and exercise habits in their kid’s lives. Also in order for the study to demonstrate causation, the researcher would have had to alter the parenting styles and make greater changes to the weight and diet of the individuals being studied (Fuemmeler, 2012). Some things that should have been changed in the study would be the way the measurements were recorded. Instead of having a self-reported height and weight, the researchers should have had their own workers record the measurements for more accuracy. Another flaw in the study was that the style of parenting before adolescence was never examined. Which leaves the question of whether parenting styles in adolescence or pre adolescence has more of an effect on BMI. Fuemmeler, B. F., Yang, C., Costanzo, P., Hoyle, R. H., Siegler, I. C., Williams, R. B., & Østbye, T. (2012). Parenting styles and body mass index trajectories from adolescence to adulthood. Health Psychology, 31(4), 441-449

The Eighth Amendment

The eighth amendment is defined as â€Å"excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (Lectlaw, 2010). This amendment was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791. The eighth amendment serves the purpose of protection of those who are innocent until proven guilty and to ensure that all persons are treated fairly in the criminal justice system. Defendants who are not released on bail are being denied the opportunity to prepare their defense. Also, denying bail or having excessive bail imprisons the defendant without being properly convicted. There are cases, however, where bail must be denied or set excessively high. If an unconvicted defendant is feared to be a danger to the community or a flight risk, the constitution permits the denial of bail (FindLaw, 2010). The â€Å"no excessive fines clause of the eighth amendment presides fines directly imposed by, and payable to the government and in civil forfeiture cases† (Onecle, 2009). The term â€Å"excessive† still has not been defined by the United States court system. Asset forfeiture, however, has become a key element in the war on drugs as the government has the power to seize property of persons that have not yet been convicted of a crime (Hornberger, 2005). The law â€Å"there shall not be cruel and unusual punishment† under the eighth amendment means that society will deem what is cruel and unusual. The standards of society transform over time as citizens â€Å"do better when they know better†. Medevil practices such as cutting off the hand of a theif are obviously unacceptable forms of punishment in today’s modern society. While the death penalty is used in some states for those who commit the most heinous of crimes, not all states impose such a severe sentence. The first known execution within the United States occurred in the year 1607 in Jamestown. Captain George Kendall was shot to death by a firing squad for allegedly spying against the British (Justice, 2009). Since then, there has been a struggle among society and lawmakers attempting to decide if the death penalty falls under unusual and cruel punishment. In the late 1960s, â€Å"all but 10 states had laws authorizing capital punishment† (Justice, 2009). During Furman v. Georgia in 1972, the U. S. Supreme Court decided against capital punishment on federal and state levels. The majority ruled in a five to four vote that the death penalty violated the rights of the eighth amendment (Justice, 2009). Over 600 inmates sitting on death row had their sentences overturned between the years 1967 and 1972. This suspension of the death penalty continued until 1976. During the Gregg v. Georgia case in 1976, the court decided to uphold a procedure in which the trial of â€Å"capital crimes was bifurcated into guilt-innocence and sentencing phases† (Wikipedia, 2010). These proceedings entailed a jury to first decide if a defendant is guilty. Based upon that decision, then a jury decides whether any aggravating and mitigating factors in assessing the ultimate penalty: life in prison or capital punishment (Wikipedia, 2010). In 2002, the United States Supreme Court decided that the execution of criminals who are mentally ill to be cruel and unusual punishment. Also, in 2005, it was decided that the execution of criminals under the age of 18 to be cruel and unusual as well. As of the year 2008,†the death penalty is authorized by 37 states, the federal government and the U. S. Military† (Clarkprosecutor, 2008). Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, North Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Rhode Island do not support capital punishment (Clarkprosecutor, 2008). If the past has any influence on the future, the laws governing the death penalty will probably change time and time again. Society must do the best they can with the knowledge they acquire. Who is to say that the death penalty will be abolished forever or that possibly the death penalty might become usual punishment for crimes less than heinous? The future, in regards to the death penalty, may hold some surprises for us. Only the future will reveal what is to come. ClarkProsecutor. Org, 2008. The death penalty. Retrieved on January 31, 2010 from http://www. clarkprosecutor. org/html/death/dpusa. htm FindLaw (2010). The eighth amendment. Retrieved on January 30, 2010 from http://www. findlaw. com/ Hornberger, Jacob. G. The bill of rights (2005). Retrieved on January 30, 2010 from http://www. fff. org/freedom/fd0503a. asp Justice (2009). History of the Death Penalty. Retrieved on January 30, 2010 from http://justice. uaa. alaska. edu/death/history. html LectLaw (2010). The eighth amendment. Retrieved on January 30, 2010 from http://www. lectlaw. com/def/e082. htm Onecle (2009). Excessive Fines. Retrieved onJanuary 30, 2009 from http://law. onecle. com/constitution/amendment-08/02-excessive-fines. html Wikipedia (2010). The eighth amendment. Retrieved on January 30, 2010 from http://www. wikipedia. org