Ethics and Financial Services Essay

Question A1 Outline the frauds identified in the case and explain the inconsistencies with proper accounting treatment. Relate your answer to broad accounting concepts and accounting standards where relevant. (8 marks; approximately 800 words) Answer: Livent Inc. is a theatre production corporation registered in Toronto, Canada. Therefore, all the accounting behaviours were subject to the General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) of Canada. In a broad sense, the GAAP imposes four main constraints on the accounting behaviours of companies – objectivity, materiality, consistency and conservatism. In the case of Livent Inc., there are several behaviours that was inconsistent with the proper accounting regulations in general. Large kickback scheme At the very beginning of the entire fraud by Livent, the two executives, Drabinsky and Gottlieb, fabricated transactions that did not exist at all, in order to transfer the revenue of the company secretly to their own pockets. They made the fake transaction on their balance sheet by colluding with their vendors. Drabinsky and Gottlieb received the money from vendors and asked them to fabricate evidences of charging fees. Manipulation of accounting records The kickback scheme sacrificed the net profit of the company, and as a result, Drabinsky and Gottlieb started manipulating the records. There were evidence from later investigation that Livent was exaggerating its revenue from the box office to show that it kept good income statement with good  profit. Also, they asked the accountants at Livent to modify the financial statements to hide the potential financial problems Livent had and to exhibit good operating performance to attract more investment. Drabinsky even used special software to manipulate the financial statements to make them as if they were the original record and hard to be detected. Keeping the fraud as secret to auditors With the help of the special software, Livent Inc. was able to keep two records of their financial performances, the phony one and the real one. And the outside auditors did auditing of Livent based on the phony financial records Livent provided. Therefore, the Deloitte, Livent’s outside auditing company, could hardly see signs of fraud during annual auditing. Significantly, the fraud of Livent Inc. broke the accounting principle of objectivity, which is also the primary standards companies should stick to. The objectivity principle basically requires that all kinds of financial statements the companies offer should be based on the facts. That is to say, every transaction and item recorded in the financial statements should be supported by unbiased and objective information. Under no circumstances are the managers, shareholders and accountants allowed to fabricate or distort any accounting reports and materials of the company. However, what Drabinsky and Gottlieb did at Livent went against the accounting standards. The fact that the two partners urged the internal accountants to modify the seasonal expenses and liability is definitely away from the proper professional behaviours. Livent benefited from manipulating its performance with additional investment and bank loans, which boosted aggressive expanding plans of Livent. It is even intolerable that the company invented the special software, which allowed unlimited arbitrary modification of all the accounting records of the company. This made the fraud much easier and less likely to be discovered because it enabled the manipulation looked as if they were the original data. Elrod and Gorhum (2010) made quantitative research on the way of detecting fraud by examine the extent to which the cash flow from operation and the earnings from continuing operations are correlated. Livent Inc. forced the accounting staff in the company to comply with the fraud behaviour without any doubt. The executives showed a â€Å"matter-of-fact† attitude toward the fraud. The accountants, independent auditors were not working independently and objectively as required by GAAP. On the contrary, they have been coerced or instructed to make fake accounting records, and did not show cooperation with the independent outside auditors. GAAP intends to ensure auditor independence. But Messina used her previous influence at Deloitte to disturb the independency of Deloitte auditors in examining the financial performance of Livent. The objectivity principle additionally restricts unreliable reports, materials and sheets offered to the auditors for annual auditing. Under the current accounting principles and standards in Canada and the United State, the auditors are responsible only for ensuring the preparation of all the accounting documents of the company align with the GAAP. But the outside auditors do not have access to the detailed daily record of the company. Therefore, the annual auditing is unable to prevent managerial collusion if the company provides counterfeit accounting materials. Livent was giving the fake balance sheet, income statement and other reports to Deloitte, which is not allowed by the accounting standards to a broad extent. Some companies correct their cheating behaviour when the situation improves, which makes it even harder to be detected. Nonetheless, such behaviours done by Livent are inconsistent with the standard professional ethics and regulations. Moreover, the aggressive developing strategy Livent had taken also violated the conservatism principle that the GAAP requires. This principle asks the accountants to exclude the uncertain income or revenue, while include the possible losses and risks in the financial statement. The conservative accounting behaviors are necessary because they can effectively prevent the shareholders and investors from potential losses. But in this case, Drabinsky is in such a haste to pursue aggressive development of the company, and obviously was exaggerating its revenue as well as concealing its losses. Question A2 Describe the corporate ethical culture at Livent Inc. How did this culture affect employee behaviour? Explain and justify your answer. (12 marks; approximately 1,200 words) Answer: Several researches supported the argument that the corporate ethical culture had large influences on the behaviours of the employees and their ethical judgements. The company does not have to have a specific code of ethics for the employees to constraint their ethical behaviours. The corporate environment in itself is enough for influencing the ethical behaviours inside the company. Nwachukwu and Vitell (1997)’s research found that the ethical culture in corporate has certain impact on the moral conviction of the employees upon what is right and wrong. Fraudulent behaviour was a very significant issue in the development of companies. It was because that it had tremendous impacts on the corporate, the employees as well as the public. Also, the difficulties in preventing such behaviours were to define, prevent and detect it. Schwartz (2013) made research and emphasized the three key factors in maintain an ethical corporate culture in the company. They are the set of ethical beliefs or values throughout the company, establishing â€Å"formal ethics program† and the ethical leadership throughout the development of the company. However, in the case of Livent’s fraud, all the three factors were lack in the system of the company. They had no clear ethical values, as the self-regulation mechanism, set and administrated inside the company to constraint the behaviours of not only the employees, but the senior executives as well. The unethical culture set by the top executives had not only influenced, but also forced all the staff, especially the accountants, to cooperate and to help conceal the fraud from being detected by the outsiders. This caused the company running under a set of very unethical corporate culture. It seemed to be routine to manipulate the financial records in Livent Inc. for quite a long time. As early as the year of 1990, Drabinsky, together with his best partner Gottlieb, began the kickback scheme to illegally create fake transactions to transfer money from the company to their own pockets. Then later Dranbinsky and Gottlieb had to tell even bigger lies and got more people involved in in order to make up for the expense losses from the kickback plan. The company lacked ethical leadership from the very beginning. To make the financial performance of Livent look promising,  Drabinsky and Gottlieb meddled in the daily accounting records as well as the preparation of the annual financial statements that were handed in and were examined by the auditing company, Deloitte. The executives and the senior level staff were not establishing positive example inside the company so as to maintain a positive ethical corporate culture. What’s even worse, they acted as the leading role in such fraudulent behaviours and arbitrarily got the other employees into the serious fraud scheme. Drabinsky and Gottlieb shouted at and coerced the staff and even the senior level managers to fulfil their ambition. They developed a specific computer software inside the company’s accounting system, so that they were able to take control of the financial status of the company. They could adjust any amount and transaction records in the system to make the quarterly, semi-annually and annually report of financial performance of Livent look promising to invest in. Even worse, by applying the software, Livent was able to cheat on the accounting records as if they were the raw figures, and avoid being discovered. It had also facilitated the fraudulent behaviours and motivated the employees and the executives to fraud continuously. Another serious issue inside Livent, besides the manipulation of the accounting records and financial statements, is the overwhelming attitude of viewing fraud as a matter of fact among executives as well as the employees. Even if some of the accounting staff including Messina and Webster questioned the unethical behaviours they got involved in, they were influenced by the overall environment and paid no attention to the fraudulent behaviours in Livent. They took for granted that what they did was to follow the instructions of the executives so as not to get fired. The employees would see Drabinsky shouting and bullying the accountants and even the senior level staff in the company if they had any different opinions against him. This was in fact establishing bad example for the employees and was to warn the other staff to just accept the deviant behaviours as a matter of fact. For a long time, employees were aware of the fraud happening, but were unwilling to avoid it. Llopis et al. (2007) argued that â€Å"effective communication is essential for the ethical message to be properly assimilated†. However, in Livent, the top two executives, Drabinsky and Gottlieb, were much too autocratic in the way of managing the company. There  were barely any information about the ethical culture passed to the employees, and the staff had little freedom to do their job but to listen to Drabinsky’s instructions. Last but not least, Livent Inc. lacked proper self-regulation mechanism to prevent the non-ethical behaviours. More often than not, self-regulation are considered as the last prevention of bad corporate ethical culture. Schwartz (2013) pointed out that the set of ethical value of the company was critical for making ethical decisions. Real self-regulation should not be independent of the public interest. Instead, the behaviours under self-regulation should be compatible with the social values and principles. In addition, as the ethical value of the company should not be arbitrarily decided by the executives or a few people in the company; instead the set of ethical value should gain the consent of the majority of the employees (Llopis et al. 2007). Yet, what the set of value acquiesced by the employees in Livent went against the public’s interest, and thus led to the unethical corporate culture overall. Formally, inside Livent, they did not have complete ethical programs including regulations on the professional operation of each position to prevent fraud. The ethical value of the company should be clearly stated in the policies and regulations, or even set incentive mechanism to encourage the employees to follow and to form good habits. In conclusion, there were three factors causing the unethical corporate culture inside Livent. The first is the long-standing fraudulent behaviours from the top executives, which were then passed down to the employees of lower levels arbitrarily. Second element of the unethical culture was the attitude of taking committing fraud as a matter of fact, and thus no one in the company were willing to discourage it. Finally, the lack of internal ethical corporate regulations or values established throughout the company accelerated the forming of unethical corporate culture. Working under such environment, the employees got involved in the fraudulent behaviours willingly or unwillingly forced by their boss. Moreover, their original ethical judgement became vague as they got used to the prevalent fraudulent working culture after a long time. They loss the sense of justice to judge the right and the wrong things. They might even rationalize what they had  done to be just and necessary. PART B Question B1 Why do you think Maria Messina become complicit in the fraud(s)? Explain your answer using the fraud triangle. (15 marks; approximately 1,500 words) Answer: The fraud originally started with the large kickback scheme by Drabinsky and Gottlieb, and finally Maria Messina, as the chief financial officer of Livent, got involved and helped in the huge fraud. Messina’s motivation to become complicit in the fraud can be explained by the theory of fraud triangle, which reveals much of the psychology of committing a fraud. The three key factors in the fraud triangle, considered as prerequisites of fraudulent behaviours, are the pressure, the opportunity and the rationalisation of doing it. Pressure The pressure of committing the fraud, according to the theory of fraud triangle, is more often than not â€Å"non-shareable† (Dellaportas 2013). The type of pressure may be related to financial issues, or may come from the job and working atmosphere. Dellaportas (2013) pointed out that the evil ideas can also be the source of pressure that causes fraud. People in Livent who joined in the fraud had different reasons of incentive to do illegal things as they had different kind of pressure. For example, for the two executives, Drabinsky and Gottlieb, they shared financial pressure. At first, their greed for money stimulated them to design the large kickback plan to secretly transfer money from the company to their own pockets. And later, just as Brenna and McGrath (2007) described in the paper, the executives had the motivation to fraud to keep the company at good performance so that they could gain high bonus as well as keep continuous outside investment for the company. But the motivation and pressure for Messina was a little different. Although as CFO of Livent, her bonus was linked with the performance of the company, the evidences in the  case and in the trial were insufficient to decide whether her fraudulent behaviour was directly motivated by financial pressure. However, it is clear that she was forced to involve in the fraud, like many other accountants at Livent, because of the coercion of Drabinsky and Gottlieb. Messina testified that the executives including Drabinsky would shout at the accountants and force them to cooperate in work. She worked under the pressure of the executives in the company. Messina would be at the risk of losing her job if she did not follow the instruction of Drabinsky. The financial situation was negative long before Messina joined Livent, meaning the fraud had already started before Messina was able to stop it. Taking over the responsibility of managing the financial performance of the company, she was faced with the situation out of her control. The environment of fraud and routine to manipulate the financial records had long been formed. The frequent use of software that enabled Drabinsky to easily manipulate the financial records and financial statements as much as he wanted was a common behaviour in Livent, acquiesced by everyone in the company. Under the threat of Drabinsky, Messina thus had no choice but to try her best to manage the fraud from being detected, making herself really exhausted by the daily work. The pressure Messina faced as the chief financial officer was unable to share with other colleagues and she was forced by the financial pressures to involve in the fraud. She could feel the threats from Drabinsky and the already very troublesome financial situation. And she could perceive that her subordinates and other staff in Livent were suffering the bully and coercion from their executives as well. Opportunity The factor of opportunity in the fraud triangle refers to the ability to commit the fraud and in the situations like the one in the case, such opportunity mainly results from having specific professional skills or knowledge. That is to say, the person was able to manipulate skilfully and knew how to avoid being discovered by his supervisors or regulations. In addition, the trust that the person is able to accomplish the job in accord  with laws also contributes to the opportunity. The trust existing in the relationship between the supervisor and the employees may contribute to getting authorized without careful screening. The trust caused the space of opportunity to fraud expanded. In case of Livent, Messina was an experienced accountants as well as a Chartered Accountant, who had been promoted to partner of the Deloitte &Touch, LLP in Canada. Her previous experience in the industry enabled her to have a good knowledge both in accounting and auditing. That is to say, Messina potentially knew how to manipulate the accounting records daily and prepare the fraudulent financial statement annually. Also, she understood the normal practice of outside professional auditors, who were responsible for examining the financial performance of the company and avoiding inconsistency with the GAAP. Thus, Messina could give professional advice to Drabinsky and Gottlieb so that their manipulation of the accounting records would not be detected in the annual auditing. Besides her professional knowledge and skills in assisting in the fraud in accounting, the opportunity for Messina to get involved also includes the trust on her and her influence in her previous company. Messina had worked at Deloitte Canada for quite a long time and had been promoted to position as partner before she left the company and became CFO of Livent Inc. She had therefore built broad relationship within Deloitte, who was the outside auditing firm for Livent at that time. As Dellaportas (2013) pointed out in the research, insufficient internal regulation and supervision upon such fraudulent behaviours prompted the fraud to continue without being detected by others. However, in the specific case of Livent, there was no self-regulation mechanism at all, since the entire company, from the executives to the employees of the lowest-level, got involved in the fraud. Thus, it was hopeless to discover and discourage such deviant behaviours by the people inside the company. This caused the fraud of Livent to continue to expand and to be very serious. Rationalisation The rationalisation is not rational, instead it is an excuse for the person  who commits the fraud to justify the behaviour to himself. Coleman (1987) discussed this factor of fraud within the context of white collar crimes, and he argued that rationalisation is not an â€Å"after-the-fact† excuse. In fact, people who commit the crime do not realize that their behaviours are deviant. A large number of white collar crime criminals argued that they considered the laws to be unjust or unreasonable, causing them to break the rules (Coleman 1987). The factor of rationalisation is more risky than the other two factors because the people who have violated the laws believed that they had the right reason to do so. He also mentioned other common argument of the fraudulent behaviours. They claimed that such behaviours were the only way for them to achieve the goal or to â€Å"survive† (Coleman 1987). Based on the research results from Dellaportas (2013), he identified the three most common way of denial that people think to justify their fraudulent behaviours. People would rationalize their behaviour as they deny the â€Å"responsibility, injury and victim†. First, the offenders will shirk responsibility and say someone else are supposed to be in charge of the fraud. Secondly, they justify what they have done by arguing that there is no victim in this situation. Finally, if there is victims, the offenders may consider that the victims deserve the sufferings. Thus, they are free from taking responsible or even committing their fraud is illegal. Definitely, there were rationalisation inside Messina that made her behaviour â€Å"just† according to her own value. After quitting the partner position at Deloitte, Messina believed it to be right or rational for her to help Drabinsky in the fraud. Or otherwise, she would lose her job and would be unable to survive. And the overall atmosphere inside the Livent, considering what they were doing as â€Å"matter of fact†, alleviated the employee’s sense of responsibility for the fraud. Messina could hardly feel guilty and never considered about the consequences of helping the company’s fraud. She might rationalize her efforts in the fraud as under the instruction of Drabinsky, instead of out of her own willingness. The above analysis clearly dissected the reasons why Messina became complicit in the fraud from the perspective of psychology. However, as Dellaportas (2013) discussed, the influence of each factor in the fraud triangle varied  from case to case, and was not often equally impacting the fraud behaviours. Recent researches intend to improve the fraud triangle by considering additional factors into the model to better understand the behaviour of fraud in current times. What Messina had done assisted the fraud in Livent to continue for quite a long time after she joined Livent. Messina became the complicit in the serious fraud due to the pressure she was facing, mainly financially, the opportunity she was able to take advantage of and the rationalisation she found for herself to justify her deviant behaviours. Dellaportas (2013) discovered, through case study from ten accountants’ committing fraud, that the opportunity of committing fraud was a much more important factor in dete cting fraud and to take control of it. The motivation and rationalisation contributed less in this kind of accounting fraud cases. Question B2 Comment on the adequacy of the disciplinary action taken against Messina. (5 marks; approximately 500 words) Answer: Finally, Messina was fined for $7,500 and was suspended from doing accounting practice for two years. It is adequate but not enough punishment for Messina’s violation to the accounting standards according to the facts already known. After joining Livent, what Messina did in the Livent’s case of fraud went against the code of professional ethics, which discourages cheating and manipulations. Also, her behaviours broke the securities law in the United States, where the trial of Livent was held. Her involving in the fraud conflicted the interest of the public, especially the investors, who were unable to judge the real performance of Livent from their financial reports. Messina abused her authority in Livent and her influence on Deloitte, for the interest of her own and the executives at Livent. At the very beginning of joining Livent, Messina faced coercion and threats from Drabinsky to keep decent records by manipulation. However, she did not take positive action to resolving the conflict of interest between Drabinsky and herself. Proper ways when one faces conflict of interest is to  quit the job or decline to do the fraud. Messina could have turned to a confidential counselling firm for advice so that she did not have to get involved further in the fraud. On the one hand, it is enough punishment for her involvement in the fraud. She helped the accounting department at Livent to conceal the manipulation of financial statements. Also, as former partner at Deloitte, she abused her influence on the outside independent auditors to comb the financial reports of Livent before they filed to ensure the fraud undetected. What she did violated the standard professional codes for accountants and auditors, and thus she should be subject to penalty. According to the documents from Securities and Exchange Commission (1999), Messina was involved in discussion and approval of every manipulated records. She helped to hide these materials from the auditors so as not to be discovered the inflation in the company’s revenue. On the other hand, the SEC is conservative in judgement because of lack of evidence in proving Messina’s role in the fraud. First, it requires further investigation of the case to identify what she really did and her attitude in the fraud supported with evidence. Moreover, Messina, according to the case material, did show adversarial attitude toward Drabinsky’s fraud plan at first. It means that she still sticked to professional discipline in the beginning, though she yielded to Drabinsky’s bullying later. Also, Messina showed humble attitude in investigation and trial, and cooperated with the commission to investigate the case. It is adequate that the judges punished Messina both financially and professionally. She not only has to give back the illegal money she gained from the fraud, but also should be prevented from doing the practice until she can finally reflect on her mistakes before returning to the business as chief financial officer. However, the amount of fine is too little for Messina to realize her improper behaviours, considering the massive consequences of the fraud and the amount of money they benefited from manipulation. But the judgement should after all based on the evidences and regulations. The judge should take the good and bad things Messina had done  throughout the fraud into account to decide. Also, the punishment against Messina requires further investigation of her role in the fraud, which is disputable. References Coleman, J W 1987, ‘Toward an integrated theory of white-collar crime’, American Journal of Sociology, vol 93, no. 2, pp. 406-439. Dellaportas, S 2013, ‘Conversations with inmate accountants: Motivation, opportunity and the fraud triangle’, Accounting Forum, vol. 37, pp. 29-39. Elrod, H & Gorhum, M J, ‘Fraudulent financial reporting and cash flows’, Journal of Finance and Accountancy, vol. 11, pp. 56-61. Llopis, J, Gonzalez, M R & Gasco, J L 2007, ‘Corporate governance and organisational culture: The role of ethics officers’, International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 96–105 Nwachukwu, S LS & Vitell, S J 1997, ‘The influence of corporate culture on managerial ethical judgments’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 16, no. 8, pp. 757-776. Schwartz, M S 2013, ‘Developing and sustaining an ethical corporate culture: The core elements’, Business Horizons, vol. 56, pp. 39-50. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1999, Securities and Exchange Commission versus Garth H. Drabinsky, Myron I. Gottlieb, Robert Topol, Gordon C. Eckstein, Maria M. Messina, Diane J. Winkefein, D. Grant Malcolm and Tony Fiorino, 99 CIV.0239, Litigation Release No. 16022, retrieved 15 Aug 2013, .

The Evil Sides of Esteban Trueba – A commentary on Allendes The House of Spirits pages 65-67

n this particular passage from pages 65-67 of Isabela Allendes book The House of Spirits, Allende presents Esteban Truebas dark sides of his character. She does this by showing the reader what Trueba did but she also presents her views on the society that he lives in, Chile, the early 1900's. In this passage, the author tries to reveal how Esteban Trueba is evil in his actions towards other people. Allende speaks about Trueba as a representative of the whole wealthy male society in that time. She tries to emphasize how the thoughts of the people in that time evolved around politics, family matters and society. In the first part of the passage Allende talks about how the protagonist (Trueba) took care of his family. He did actually support his family financially but, the author emphasizes that he didn't bother too see them and using a flashback she mentions his explanation on why he couldn't visit his dying mother, â€Å"He was so busy in the fields, (†¦ ) that he had no time to waste at the bedside of an invalid†(65). Saying that about his own mother doesn't really make the reader feel sympathy for Trueba. Allende shows Trueba's dark sides by writing about his rapes and that he didn't confess to anyone about that the many children are his, his children. Allende comments on this by using a very negative tone, â€Å"It was better to think that they were not†(66). This wasn't all that the author mentioned about Trueba's sins concerning his rapes, she further mentions how Trueba threw the poor women out, †he would send her flying with his wip†(66). The author shows that Trueba only respected the people in his own class, by using a euphemism, she mentions Truebas opinion that if everyone would be born with the same rights then, â€Å"everybody would go to hell and civilization would be thrown back to the Stone Age†(66). Allende shows Truebas quest to marry a women of high status, â€Å"when he was ready to have children he would find a women of his own class†(66). This actually shows that Trueba would do everything to achieve his goal, to become rich, wealthy and highly ranked in the society, he would even marry a woman just because of her high status in the society and big wealth. Both these quotes show also how Allende presents Trueba full of disgust towards poorer people although he had belonged to the lower part of society for a big part of his life. Allende tries to show the reader how evil and selfish Trueba is by mentioning his comments on Niveas fight for woman rights, â€Å"That woman is sick in the head†. To further get Trueba viewed as a evil man, Allende shows Trueba's bad sides of his character by presenting his sarcastic views on women's rights, â€Å"If women don't know that two and two are four, how are they going to be able to handle a scalpel? (67). This quote shows that Trueba doesn't joke when he puts the woman down, he just is a man with no respect or imagination to the woman suffering during that time. The author uses a hyperbole when she mentions Truebas exaggeration on women's pleads, â€Å"At the rate they're going, the next thing you know they'll be asking to be deputies, judges-even President of the Republic! â€Å"(67). She clearly shows how Trueba is pessimistic to any changes in society and intolerant towards woman. By making comments like, â€Å"It would go against the nature†(67), Allende shows Trueba's hubris which will lead him to a misery later on in the book. She also shows how one-way minded Trueba is by saying that and the reader can clearly see that Allende tries to present Trueba as intolerant as possible. She clearly marks the point that Trueba isn't a happy man, he is rotten from inside and that people with the kind of view on society similar to Trueba's are bad. Allende shows that Trueba isn't a happy man, he does everything to achieve his economical goal, but that he never finds peace in his soul. In this passage, Allende really shows us Trueba's neagaitve views on the society. While the author shows all these dark sides of Trueba's character, she also makes one thing relevant, Trueba's harsh involvement in politics later in his life. She foreshadows this by using the quote, â€Å"What these cases really need is a strong hand†(67). One might wonder how a one-way-minded man like Esteban Trueba is going join the ruling part of society and still be able to stay in power? That does for sure not work in a â€Å"democratic country†. It's up to Trueba to be able to controll his evil sides and bad habits and still live a successful life, both politically and privately. In this passage Allende presented Trueba as not only an evil man but also as an intolerant, ignorant and selfish character. She did this by talking a lot about his bad relations with his family, his many rapes and also his narrow-minded views on the society involving woman rights. The author also expresses Trueba not only in his character but as an representative of the whole upper-class male society of that times.

Overview of Qualitative Research Essay

What have sampling and data collection got to do with good qualitative research? My current research project is a mixed phenomenological and meta-analysis of declining membership and participation in the church. Operating on the presumption that sampling and data collection are critical to a study (Gibbs, 2007). Like Gibbs (2007) I want to be guided by the research goal developing theoretical outcomes Gibbs (2007), covering intrinsic participant cognitions, and clearly explaining any limitations (Gibbs et al, 2007). I have decided to reduce the scope of my study to the a case study approach with a Pastor and five Associate Ministers within a single church to which I happen to belong, in the Midwest. I believe these five observers are in the best â€Å"position† to observe this phenomenon and its effects. The information obtained in this first week has led me to the following conclusions concerning sampling and data collection. According to the work of Gibbs, Kealy, Willis, Green, Welch, & Daly (2007), sampling and data collection are intrinsically germane to generalizability (Gibbs et al, 2007). These authors, in agreement with other exceptional researchers, use designs like those of Daly, Willis, Small, Green, et al (2007) who also note that generalizable studies provide a comprehensive analysis of experience (Daly, et al, 2007). There is an imperative for the allowance of immersion to investigate context and population, along with practical constraints operating against sampling and data collection (Gibbs et al, 2007). Qualitative research begins with justification of the research problem with reference to the literature (Gibbs et al, 2007). Qualitative research then according to Willis, Daly, Kealy, Small et al (2007) provides theoretical framework to identify the theoretical conc epts relevant to and employed in the study Willis, et al, 2007). Data is then collected according to a sampling plan, as suggested by Green, Willis, Hughes, and Small, et al, (2007), thus the most acceptable evidence possible, through data analysis  (Green, et al, 2007). The hierarchy of evidence model proposed by Gibbs, et al (2007), offers studies that differing evidences such as the single case study, the descriptive study, the conceptual study, the generalizable study and the interview study (Gibbs et al, 2007). Accordingly transcribed data from verbatim recordings is the most common method of data collection (Gibbs et al, 2007). In these instances individual case studies, are limited by small samples but, capable of provide more information on setting (Gibbs et al, 2007); and Descriptive studies, describe experiences or activities but do not describe their differences (Gibbs et al, 2007). Case and descriptive studies provide good information as long as their limitations are clearly acknowledged (Gibbs et al, 2007). According to Suri (2011), informed decisions concerning sampling are necessary to improving the quality of research (Suri, 2011). Suri additionally points out that data may be retrieved through group discussion, personal journals, follow-up in-depth interviews and researcher field notes (Tuckett and Stewart 2004a, 2004b; Suri, 2011). According to Tuckett, et al 2011 and in agreement with Rubinstein (1994), no rules governing the numbers in sampling apply; however, experiential methods have been used for choosing samples from 1 to 100, with clustering. Some have suggested as few as 12-20 data sources, for the best variation, because no definite rules apply (Baum 2002). Suri notes that according to Patton (1990), some research relies on small samples aiming to study provide depth and thoroughness (Miles and Huberman 1994, Patton 1990). Purposeful sampling is seen as a means for developing rich data, derived non -randomly (Ezzy 2002, Mays and Pope 1995, Reed et al, 1996), Also, accordin g to Lincoln and Cuba (1985) and Higginbotham et al (2001), the desired sample size may unfold, depending on previous studies, allowing the support of emerging theory (Baum 2002, Kuzel 1992, Miles and Huberman1994, Reed et al, 1996). Another issue in data analysis is presented by Sandelowski (2011), when he suggests alternative interpretations of data do not conform to the parameters between methods (Sandelowski, 2011). Sandelowski suggests that taking a view of inquiry as dynamic and flexible rather than static and unchangeable might prevent researchers from succumbing to that follow (Sandelowski, 2011). Sandoelowski also notes that Alvesson and Skoldberg (2009) coined extreme terms such as grounded theory ‘‘dataism’’ (p. 283), the hermeneutic ‘‘narcissism’’, and  critical theory â€Å"reductionism’’ (p. 269). Sandelowski further suggests that data analysis and presentation do not have to be considered as discrete independent operations (Sandelowski, 2011). Recognizing Spalding and Phillips (2007, p. 961), Sandelowski proposed that the use of vignettes will reveal the often concealed author’s vision which Phillips expects will produce do ubt’ (p. 961), inevitably serving to enhance the validity of interpretations (Phillips, 2007, p. 961; (Sandelowski, 2011). Sandelowski finally concludes that recognizing the need to account for problems associated with cognitive flexibility validating qualitative or quantitative inquiry Sandelowski, 2011). In addressing the issue of â€Å"presentation†, I found an article by Simundic (2012), concerning some â€Å"Practical recommendations for statistical analysis and data presentation†. The table below gives a suggestion for what should be included in any presentation of data. In working on the definition of â€Å"saturation† I was able to find the differentiation between the various qualitative methods. The following table is a representation of my findings based on the article by Walker (2012). I was impressed with the definitions provided by this author as he explained the different methods of determining saturation. I found the definitions of to be succinct and to the point, and very helpful in making a decision about which methods to use and when.

Design And Positioning Schools Of Strategy Essay

Design And Positioning Schools Of Strategy - Essay Example According to the research ten schools of strategy have different perspectives on the subject of strategy. These represent different schools of thought on strategic planning and formulation. The ten schools of strategy are design school, planning school, positioning school, entrepreneurial school, cognitive school, learning school, power school, cultural school, environmental school, and the configuration school. The design school of strategy defines strategy formation as a process of conception. Design school of strategy proposes a strategy that matches external opportunities with internal capabilities. The position school of strategy defines strategy as positions in the economic marketplace which are generic and common. Strategy should also be designed, keeping in mind existing and future competitors. The entrepreneurial school of strategy sees strategy making as a visionary process. Also this school makes the chief executive officer as the main formulator of the strategy. The plann ing school of strategy identifies strategy making as a formal process which calls for a mechanical and systematic process of strategy formulation with no or little creativity. The cognitive school sees strategy making as a mental process and takes input from different concepts of psychology. This school is largely conceptual in nature. The learning school stresses on learning from past experience and therefore sees strategy making as an emergent process. The power school of strategy argues that negotiating between different power holders within the organization is an important part of strategy formulation. ... The position school of strategy defines strategy as positions in the economic marketplace which are generic and common. Strategy should also be designed, keeping in mind existing and future competitors. The entrepreneurial school of strategy sees strategy making as a visionary process.( Mintzberg, et al, 2002). Also this school makes the chief executive officer as the main formulator of the strategy. The planning school of strategy identifies strategy making as a formal process which calls for a mechanical and systematic process of strategy formulation with no or little creativity. The cognitive school sees strategy making as a mental process and takes input from different concepts of psychology. This school is largely conceptual in nature. The learning school stresses on learning from past experience and therefore sees strategy making as an emergent process. The power school of strategy argues that negotiating between different power holders within the organization is an important p art of strategy formulation. The environmental school sees strategy making as a reactive process that is dependent on the external environment. The cultural school of strategy calls for group work in formulation of strategy. Finally, the configuration school of strategy sees strategy making as a process of transformation. The different schools of strategy can be grouped into three larger groups (Mintzberg, et al 2002). The first group is prescriptive in nature and consists of design, planning, and positioning schools. This group tells how a strategy should ideally be made. The second group tells how strategy is made and comprises of entrepreneurial, cognitive, learning, power, cultural, and environmental

Risk of Nuclear Power Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Risk of Nuclear Power - Essay Example For power generation, nuclear reactors use radioactive materials as fuel. From fuel enrichment stage its waste and even after that the radioactive materials remain active in emitting radiation. During fuel enrichment, transportations, handling, reactors operation and waste storage process a minor leakage of nuclear radiation brings sever health and environmental issues. The exposure from low to medium radiation badly damages the biological cells resulting different types of cancer and genetic diseases in progeny. Very high radiation exposer severely damages the most of human body systems stopping all functions that leads to an immediate death (Cohen n. d). A major risk associated with nuclear power generation is nuclear reactors core or fuel meltdown due to extremely high temperature. Though they are very few incidents of nuclear reactor meltdown yet they result number of casualties along with sever environmental consequences. Also, in case of natural calamity, the issues to control and shut down of nuclear reactors also impart another risk associated with nuclear power. Additionally, improper storage and handling of used reactors fuels also pose a threat both to humans and environment (Cohen n. d). The information given in article is relevant to the information presented by Trfil and Hazen in their book; The Sciences: An Integrated Approach in many respects. Both the works highlighted the radiation, its types, applications and the risks associated with radiation. Also detail discussion about the nuclear reactors, their structure and construction and types of nuclear reactions has been given in article just similar to the course work given in above mentioned book written by Trefil and Hazen (2007). The importance of above cited article is attributed due to fact that it gives detail information about nuclear radiation, the nuclear power generation and

Did Jesus Really Die Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 6

Did Jesus Really Die - Essay Example â€Å"That Jesus really died on the cross needs to be established for various reasons. If Jesus did not die—which is a necessary prelude to rising physically—there can be no forgiveness of sins and eternal life for all who believe in Him† (Rom. 6:1–23; 1 Cor. 15:12–23 cited ion Miller, p.209). The question is how we could explain the empty tomb. Bible testifies to this fact and we do not have any reason not to believe it. The explanation stating that the friends of Jesus took his body and brought it to a safe place in order to protect from outrage is rather convincing. An empty tomb is not a proof of the bodily resurrection. However, Miller doubts that â€Å"Besides, this theory is full of problems. Could the disciples have overpowered Roman guards and stolen the body? Not a chance. Just hours before, they were all scared and abandoned Jesus; and the most fearless, Peter, became fearful and denied Him three, In addition, how could the guards know w ho took the body since they were sleeping?† (Miller, p 19). It is possible to state that the resurrection of physical body does not correspond to the Laws of Creation (Knight, 2001). These Laws are reflected in perfect and unchangeable Will of God. Everything happens in the framework of these laws even if they are not completely studied by the science. Thus, we talk about the cure of an illness as about a miracle only because we still can’t identify the laws, which are the basis of this event. Science is not less than the attempt to understand the Laws of God and use them. Religion and science should be united, they should not contradict each other. However, there are the facts about the life of Christ-like â€Å"The Immaculate Conception† or â€Å"the bodily resurrection of Christ†, which do not correspond to the Laws of Creation and, thus, need reconsideration.  

Consumer behavior Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 2

Consumer behavior - Essay Example can be defined as â€Å"the broad concept that businesses are more than just profit-seeking entities and therefore also have an obligation to benefit society† (Werther & Chandler, 2006: 6-7). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer attitudes about green and ethical marketing translating into their purchasing behaviour. Further, the impact of green and ethical consumerism on companies adopting corporate social responsibility measures, will be determined. During the 1980s, ethics started affecting purchasing habits due to increase in environmental awareness on the part of consumers, development of green products and the availability of green consumer guides (Doonar, 2005). The concept of green consumerism is related to environmental sustainability in which environmental quality and the conservation of nature’s assets are of prime importance. From the wise use of resources for the sake of future generations, the concept of sustainability evolved to include a focus on nature preservation for intragenerational distribution of nature’s bounty. Sustainability is a continuing process that needs careful planning and implementation to confront the problems facing â€Å"modern agriculture, natural resource management and land use† (Gunning & Holm, 2005: 129). Sustainability takes into account the human factors of production, manufacture and use along with environmental and ecological concerns such as global warming, acid rain, deforestation, ozone depletion and other occurrences (Strong, 1997). Consumers may opt for one product over another because of political, religious, social, spiritual, environmental or other motives, and may differ in opinion from one another. One common factor among ethical consumers is that they are concerned about the â€Å"effects that a purchasing choice has not only on themselves, but also on the external world around them† (Harrison et al, 2005: 2). Choosing organic foods because of a concern that pesticide use

BME0006 Emerging and Alternative Financial Markets Essay

BME0006 Emerging and Alternative Financial Markets - Essay Example Firstly, it should give a first priority to the needs of the consumer. It has to ensure that the consumers are provided with the best services in a given market as they necessarily dictate the success of every business organization (McVea, 2002, p.6). The mechanism should also ensure high degree of integrity and accountability. Some of the events that are witnessed in the economic study are those that follow certain cycles and need to be studied chronologically so that their adverse effects are not felt repeatedly. Others may not follow any definite patterns and corrective procedures need to be adopted whenever such events are recorded. The regulatory measures that are to be adopted in the financial services should be those that respond differently to each of the emerging situations as per the specific requirements of the situation (Consumer Focus, 2010, p.4). The regulatory approach that is to be adopted after a given financial crisis should be different from the previous approaches and it depends on the current situations that are experienced. A good regulatory procedure on financial services thus responds to the prevailing financial crisis and mitigates the occurrence of future crises (Consumer Focus, 2010, p.2).It should be aimed at developing a competitive market that attracts more investors and focuses solely on the needs of the customers. The anticipated market should be that which allows for the invention innovation by the investing organizations. There are various financial regulatory bodies in the United Kingdom. The main regulatory body is the Financial Services Authority and which provides various regulatory provisions (Great Britain, 2005, p.37; Jaffer, 2005, p.134). The problem that arises is then how to collect the divergent views of the regulatory agencies ad channel them towards the same statutory objective (Consumer Focus, 2010, p.5). The UK Financial Services has had various developments that are geared towards the regulating the provision of financial services in the region. The UK Financial Services Authority has put more emphasis on regulatory measures based on policies and principles. The authority issued a policy statement in July 2007 that was in line with the policy that it had developed the previous year in regard to the principles and rules that govern business conduct by various investment companies (London Update, 2007, p.1). The revised policy would ensure the implementation of the ‘the relevant provisions of the EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) as well as non MiFID Conduct of Business Rules’ (London Update, 2007, p.1). The issue of corporate governance is another approach towards the regulation of the provision of financial services that have been applied in the UK. The investment companies in the UK need to learn and adopt a code of corporate governance in an attempt to comply with the rules and provisions given. The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) gave out a gui de on Corporate Governance to its members in June 2007 that included both the AIC code and the UK combined code on Corporate Governance (London Update, 2007, p.1). Deceptive misstatements in the regular disclosure to the market have also been another issue in the UK financial sector. There have been various legal provisions that govern who are to be held responsible for such misstatement in the market. Section

Historical Homes in Natchez Mississippi Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Historical Homes in Natchez Mississippi - Essay Example Natchez is one of Mississippi’s oldest cities and was founded in 1716. It is also famous as the southern terminus of the National Trace Parkway, located along the River Mississippi. Due to its strategic location, the city became famous in American history for the role it played in the development of the Old South West. Lorenz, Karl G. (2000). Natchez is the county seat (National Association of Counties. 2008) of and the largest and only incorporated city within Adams County, Mississippi, in the United States. According to a census taken in 2000, Natchez has a population of about 18, 464 people. According to archaeological findings, the original site of Natchez was the chief ceremonial village that was occupied by an Indian tribe since the 8th century. The society of Natchez was segregated according to matrilineal descent into nobles and commoners and their chief was called the â€Å"Great Sun.† At Natchez, the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians is well preserved as a great National Historic Landmark, and is maintained by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Natchez Mississippi is very famous for some of the most interesting historical landmarks in the world. Our study would also cover this aspect of investigating the different important historical landmarks and make a detailed study of each one of them. Some of these important landmarks include Natchez National Historical Park, Fort Rosalie and many other interesting landmarks. Natchez National Historical Park celebrates the rich and interesting cultural history of Natchez, Mississippi and gives us an interpretation of the pivotal role that the city exhibited in the settlement of the Old Southwest, the Cotton Kingdom and the Antebellum South. The Park comprised of three different units and Fort Rosalie is the location of an 18th Century fortification built by the French which was

Mesopotamians Polytheism and The Epic of Gilgamesh Essay

Mesopotamians Polytheism and The Epic of Gilgamesh - Essay Example Nippur city state for example, was dedicated to the god of the wind known as Enlil. Occupying a number of acres was a temple complex at the heart of each city-state. It comprised of a ziggurat and a temple dedicated to the god or goddess of the city at the top. The god or goddess placed at the top of the temple was in the form of a statue. The construction of temples and other buildings such as priests and priestesses residents always consumed a lot of wealth. A close relationship between the culture and religion of the Mesopotamians could be seen in the way temples were dominating structures in their commercial and personal lives. The Mesopotamians view of the world or universe was impacted by their physical environment. Their local climate consisted of a disturbing climate, heavy downpours, ferocious floods and scorching winds. Famines and such conditions were convincing factors to the Mesopotamians that supernatural powers controlled the world and the life of human beings in it we re short. These can be clearly seen in the laments of the epic of Gilgamesh where the Mesopotamians always felt helpless in the presence of nature. Some words from the poem are as follows; â€Å"The rampant flood which no man can oppose, Which shakes the heavens and causes earth to tremble, In an appalling blanket folds mother and child, Beats down the canebrake’s full luxuriant greenery, And drowns the harvest in its time of ripeness.† (qtd. in Spielvogel 11). Because of the many gods and goddesses that controlled the universe, Mesopotamians had a religion of polytheism. The greatest god was An, god of the sky, he was the source of all authority followed by Enlil, god of the wind. The god of the earth was known as Enki, he was in charge of all canals, wells and rivers as well as waters of creativity. Ninhursaga, the goddess was initially associated with mountains, soil and vegetation but eventually became a mother goddess. The relationship between the Mesopotamians an d their gods was that of subservience since they believed they were created to work for their gods. Since they were unsure of what the gods would do they developed arts of divination. Divination took various forms with the most common being that of priests and kings. They would kill animals like sheep and analyze their organs to foretell events. Predicted events served as a means of guiding people to act wisely. The Mesopotamians viewed death with horror and fear. Death and disease were viewed in a spiritual perspective. They believed that the gods ordained immortality for themselves and death for man. They also believed that death and sickness were the results of sin. According to their mythology, man was made of clay which was then added blood and flesh of a god; therefore, God was present in all human beings. The main purpose why man was created was to serve the gods. When humans offended the gods, they would get angry and withdraw their support allowing demons to take over. The souls of dead people went to the underworld where according to the Mesopotamians was a dark land from which no one returned. However, offended spirits could find their way back to the living and inflict misery on them for their wrongdoings. To avoid such wrath, the Mesopotamians gave daily sacrifices to the spirits of the dead to appease them. The story of Gilgamesh is similar to the story of Noah in the Bible. The story deals with issues surrounding mortality and immortality. Gilgamesh was Sumerian king

CE Marking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4750 words

CE Marking - Essay Example Whenever in a conflict between any of the social responsibility and their responsibility to their employer they are quite clear about the strategy they should opt. The project too suggests a few guidelines to resolve any such conflict. Among various responsibilities of the engineers a few are to look into the EU Documentation and Standards, technical consultation, compliance testing, technical documentation, product registration, company-internal self-certification process and many more. Then there are various CE marking related issues, its objectives and the difficulties faced by the manufacturers in the process or due to any of the discrepancies. So, the project caters to all the above mentioned issues as well as the role of engineers employed by the manufacturers in the whole procedure. CE Marking, also known as CE mark, is a mandatory conformity mark to be put on the products which are placed on the single market in European Economic Area (EEA). The affixation of the CE Marking on the product which is placed on the market or put into service means that the product meets all the necessary requirements of the relevant European Directives. ... A few examples of European Directives requiring CE Marking include toy safety, low-voltage equipment, machinery, terminal equipment and EM compatibility. And there are about 25 directives requiring CE Marking. If you are planning to export a product to one or more markets in any member states of EU or EEA then it becomes essential to apply for CE Marking of your products. "CE Marking is a mandatory mark for most (around 70%) of the products sold on the EU market (totalling 28 countries.)"1 it can be crucial to your success if the new product directives apply to your product and you also want to continue exporting it to the European market. It becomes very necessary to seek the professional help and advice to assist the manufacturers in conforming and acquiring the CE Marking. It is very essential for business and is a very swift and straightforward process if you seek genuine advice. It is very important to understand the amount of resources and the time that companies spend on a product and to obtain a smooth approach for CE Marking. And if your company is outside the EU, the process becomes all the more challenging but the capable engineers can do the job well. And as the process is essential for business it is better to have knowledgeable engineers to do the job and to ensure that your products comply with all basic requirements. They know well how to get the products CE marked understanding all the safety issues that are important to address.2 Responsibility and Actions taken by Engineer for CE Marking As it is very crucial to acquire CE marking, it becomes necessary for the firms to seek the help of some consultancy or engineer to guide them to do so and to ensure that their product complies with all European Directives. For CE Marking there are

Religious participation and religious organisations Essay Example for Free

Religious participation and religious organisations Essay While it is difficult to know precisely whether or not religious beliefs differ in relation to males and females, it is evident that religious practice and participation does show relatively clear gender differences. This is true across all forms of religious organisation. Almost two-thirds of churchgoers are women. However, as with social factors like class and age, it is clear that there is no overall pattern of male / female religious attendance, since there are evident differences between denominations. For example: For the Anglican Church, the male to female ratio is approximately half and half. For all Christian churches the male female ratio is approximately twenty to eighty percent. While women are more likely than men to be involved in religious organisations, it is relatively clear that, in hierarchical terms, men tend to dominate the most significant positions in any religious organisation. This tends to hold true across the majority of the worlds major religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. In most religions, women tend to be portrayed in terms of their traditional social characteristics. The Virgin Mary in Christian religion is a good example here. Although a powerful figure as the Mother of Christ, her power, is ideological rather than political, the virtues of purity, chastity, motherhood and so forth are personified through her as ideals for womanhood. In relation to non-Christian religions, Giddens Sociology notes: Females appear as important figures in the teachings of some Buddhist ordersbut on the whole Buddhism, like Christianity, is an overwhelmingly male-created institution dominated by a patriarchal power structure in which the feminine is most closely associated with the secular, powerless, profane and imperfect.. An obvious example drawn from Christianity might be Mankinds expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the result of female duplicity. According to the book of Genesis, God first created man. Woman was not only  an afterthought, but an amenity. For close on two thousand years this Holy Scripture was believed to justify her subordination and explain her inferiority for even as a copy she was not a very good copy, there were differences. She was not one of his best efforts. While women, as has been noted above, feature strongly in both religious participation and, to a certain extent, imagery, it is evident that there has tended to be a very marked inequality between males and females in terms of positions of power and authority within religious organisations. Although some sects have allowed women to preach and teach, the majority of the worlds major religions have tended to relegate women to relatively minor roles in their organisation. In relation to Christianity, the decision, in November 1992 by the Church of England to ordain women as priests is a significant development to note. This decision was not taken lightly and has lead to a great deal of conflict within the Church. While the Church of England has traditionally been more liberal regarding the position of women within its organisation, the Roman Catholic Church has resisted pressure to ordain women, tending to fall back upon the argument that to do so would be blasphemous. Christ ordained twelve disciples, none of whom were women, therefore, women should not be allowed to be ordained. Once again, within a wide variety of sects, women tend, in the main, not to feature in the highly at the top of organisational hierarchies, although there are exceptions to this general rule. The diversity of sects perhaps makes it difficult to generalise about participation along gender lines. However, given that women tend to become involved in all types of religious activity with greater frequency than men, there is little reason to suppose that, in broad terms, sect membership does not conform to this norm. If it is difficult to estimate the numbers involved with New Age cults, it is doubly difficult to estimate with any degree of certainty the ration of male to female involvement. The private sphere of cult activity relates to traditional forms of gender roles for women, motherhood, the home, and child  rearing. New Age philosophy contrasts the concept of Nature unfavourably with a modern technological world, which tends to be characterised as masculine. Historically, where concepts of Nature have been employed, the role of women has tended to be seen in terms of their essential femininity; that is, as naturally different creatures to males, more attuned to the supposed natural rhythms of life and so forth. Thus, within New Age cults, women tend to be afforded a much higher status than men in terms of the various philosophies on which these cults are based, which is one reason that explains higher female involvement.

Face recognition

Face recognition Face recognition are processes involved in recognition of faces. Explanations of face recognition include feature analysis versus holistic forms. Remembering and recognising faces are an important skill one applies each day of their lives. It is important to the social interactions, to work and school activities, and in peoples personal family lives. Although most of the research in this area has been undertaken on faces it is in fact rare in real life that we need to identify someone from their face alone. Information from a persons clothes, voice, mannerisms etc, and the context in which we encounter them all help in the identification process Sometimes we fail to recognise someone because they are not wearing the clothes we normally see them in or because they are in an unexpected context. Holistic form theory is an unconventional to feature analysis approach to face recognition. Although features are important in describing faces and therefore do have some role to play in face recognition, dependence only on bottom up processing for such a complex activity is very unlikely. Bruce and Young (1986) proposed a top down approach to face recognition in which they argued that recognising a face is a highly complex process involving stored knowledge of semantic and emotional information and is therefore much more than adding together the sum total of a faces features. According to the Holistic approach a face is recognised as a whole, analysing not just the separate features but also the configuration of the face, the relationship between the individual features, feelings aroused by the face and semantic information about the face. Such an approach is sometimes referred to as a template model (Ellis 1975) whereby we have a stored template or pattern for each person as we k now and when presented with a face try to match this stimulus to our mental template. Several studies illustrate how recognition depends on the layout or configuration of the face as a whole. Young and Hay (1986) demonstrated the importance of configurable processing of faces. They cut pictures of famous faces horizontally and ensured the participants could recognise the two separate halves. Then they combined two separate halves together and measured time taken to and accuracy of, naming the top and bottom halves of the composite figures. This proved very difficult for participants as the composite seemed to produce a new holistic face in which it was difficult to perceive the separate halves. A particularly intriguing find was that if the composite faces were inverted participants could name the to half much better than when the faces were the correct way up, despite the fact that inverted faces are normally much harder to recognise. Similar research involves disrupting the configuration of the faces in other ways, either by scrambling the facial features or by inverting the face. Haig (1984) showed how recognition times increased for faces of famous people where the spacing between features or the configuration of features had been altered. Yin (1969) found that inverted faces are much harder to recognise. Although errors are found when attempting to recognise any object that has been inverted, faces seem to produce particular difficulties. Cohen (1989) suggests that this demonstrates that faces are normally recognised holistically, and inversion destroys the global pattern relationships between features. Thus, such findings could be interpreted as evidence for the holistic approach to face recognition.Mohammad A consensus has developed that the process underlying face identification (meaning the process by which a person recognizes a visual stimulus as being Aunt Bertha, my mail carrier, or Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the process underlying most forms of basic-level object recognition (Meaning the process by which a person recognizes a visual stimulus as being a table, a boat, or a human face) are different. A number of lines of evidence showing dissociations between face identification and basic-level object recognition support this conclusion. For example, faces are more difficult to identify in photographic negatives than are basic-level objects (Bruce Langton, 1994; Galper, 1970; Galper Hochberg, 1971; Phillips, 1972), and faces show greater recognition costs when turned upside down than do basic-level objects (Carey Diamond, 1977;Scapinello Yarmey, 1970; Yin, 1969; see Valentine, 1988, for a review). Additional evidence that face identification and basic level object recognition are accomplished by different processes comes from work in neuroscience. Sergent, Ohta, and MacDonald (1992), using positron emission tomography (PET), found regions of the right hemisphere that become active during face identification that are not active during basic-level object recognition. Further, a righthemisphere advantage for identifying faces is well documented (for reviews, see Davidoff, 1982; H. D. Ellis, 1983), whereas the evidence for hemispheric specialization during basic-level object recognition is far less clear, with some studies finding a left-hemisphere advantage (Bryden Rainey, 1963; McKeever Jackson, 1979; Wyke Ettlinger, 1961; Young, Bion, Ellis, 1980), others finding aright-hemisphere advantage (Schmuller Goodman, 1980), and still others finding no advantage for one hemisphere over the other (Biederman Cooper, 1991; Kimura Durnford, 1974; Levine Banich, 1982). Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that basic-level object recognition and face identification are accomplished by different processes comes from studies of brain-damaged patients showing a neurological double dissociation between the two processes. Farah (1994) found 27 cases in the literature in which patient showed impaired face identification but intact basiclevel object recognition and 16 cases in which a patient showed impaired basic-level object recognition but intact face identification, arguing strongly that different neural subtract underline with two tasks Given that face identification and basic-level object recognition occur through different processes, the next logical question to consider is how the memory representations used for the two processes might differ. The most common speculation in the current literature is that faces use configured or holistic representations, whereas basic-level objects use featural representations. Unfortunately, this method of characterizing the differences in the representations is rather vague, and as OToole, Abdi, Deffenbacher, and Valentin (1995) and Bruce and Humphreys (1994) pointed out, it has different meanings for different researchers. When researchers say that face identification uses Further support for a holistic model of face recognition comes from studies investigating the superiority of recognition over recall. People have been found to be consistently better at recognising faces seen before than they are at recalling them. A study by Ellis et al (1975) illustrates the difficulties involved in recalling faces. Participants were shown six photographs of male faces for ten seconds and then asked them immediately to recall the face so that it could be reconstructed using photo fit materials. When judges attempted to pick out the target face from the photo fit reconstructions only an average of 12.5% identifications were correct indicating that the reconstructed faces did not closely resemble the original stimulus face. It seems that in order to describe a face we need to convert our stored mental representations of that face into words. The fact that this seems to be so difficult and so ineffective as illustrated in this study would indicate that we do store faces as wholes rather than as sets of separate features. According to Bruce and Youngs Holistic model of face recognition there are different types of information that can be obtained from faces, some of which are used for familiar faces and others for unfamiliar faces. When firstly we see a face it is encoded structurally, meaning that we encode the visual information, processing the look of the face. If this matches an existing face recognition unit (FRU) then this will be activated. The FRU contains not just physical information but also semantic knowledge. Activation of the FRU triggers activation of the person identity node which enables access to a wealth of information about the person including their occupation, interests, where we normally encounter them, whether we are comfortable with them or not, whether we have friends in common or not. The final stage in the recognition process allows for name generation. According to Bruce and Young names are stored separately to the FRU and person identity nodes but can only be accessed via the identity nodes. This would explain the frustrating and embarrassing experience of knowing lots of details about a person we meet but not being able to think of their name. Young, Hay and Ellis tested the Holistic model in 1985. They asked participants to keep a diary and record problems experienced in face recognition every day. Out of 1008 incidents there were no reports of naming an individual without knowing other information about them. But in 190 cases the opposite occurred, participants reported knowing information about individuals but could not name them. These findings are consistent with the sequence of events proposed by the holistic model where by names can only be accessed if semantic information been accessed first. Further analysis of the diary data showed that of the 1008 incidents there were 233 reports of experiencing familiarity without any personal information being available. Again this supports the sequential nature of the model as these would be cases where an FRU has been triggered causing the feeling of familiarity, but the identity Node has failed to activate, hence the lack of availability of any further information about the person. Holistic form theory is an alternative to feature analysis approach to face recognition. Although features are important in describing faces and therefore do have some role to play in face recognition, reliance only on bottom up processing for such a complex activity is very unlikely. According to the Holistic approach a face is recognised as a whole, analysing not just the separate features but also the configuration of the face, the relationship between the individual features, feelings aroused by the face and semantic information about the face. There is also another theory called feature analysis theory which is an example of a bottom up theory in which it is suggested that analysis if individual facial features plays a crucial role in face recognition.

Back Pain Causes And Effects Health And Social Care Essay

Back Pain Causes And Effects Health And Social Care Essay Back pain is considered to be the most common reasons for physician visits; it is the largest cause of work-related absence. Back pain is known as Lumbago and can be defined as mild to severe pain or discomfort in the area of the lower back. The pain can be acute (sudden and severe) or chronic if it has lasted more than three months. Strains or sprains of the muscles and ligaments of the back are the most common cause of acute back pain. Injuries, degenerative diseases and Functional back pain due to imbalance are other reasons of back pain. First of all, according to (Chambers R., 2007, p.41) Most of the back strains and sprains occur after a sudden movement associated with bending or twisting, and lifting heavy objects. Therefore, jobs involving lifting, carrying ,pushing, pulling, lowering and holding moving objects have a high risk of getting back pain. For instance, children with their school books or postmen who carry weight on one side may develop great back pain. P.Fysh (1995), citied in his study Back Pain in School Children that in (1994) a Scandinavian study, by Trousler identified the prevalence of back pain in a group of 1,174 school children at 51 percent was due to backpacks. This study also found significance in the risk factors like age and genders those children. Furthermore, back pain that results from job nature is highly reported among workers who have to left a weighty objects. According to Kincla Davis (2009) Carpenters and other construction workers who install drywall have high rates of strains and sprains to the low back and shoulder(p.305). Moreover, muscle strain can occur in the back just like anywhere else in the body, and most likely to affect people in their forties, although it can happen at any age. Straining the back muscles is characterized by sever pain and inability to move. Since strain has several impacts on the body, it can cause the muscles to overstretch or move in such a way that they sustain terrible tears. Also it might lead the tendons and the ligaments that attached the muscles to loss its elasticity, by pulling too far on a muscle, and the area around it can become inflamed which leads to muscle pain. The second major cause of back pain is pregnancy. Usually back pain and pregnancy together. Unfortunately this type of back pain last for several weeks to few months with pregnant women. Its reasons can vary. It can be due to body changes for example, hormonal changes, or it might be due to extra weight the women may gain during the pregnancy period. The body hormones in the pregnant woman tend to relax the ligaments and the muscles that attached to pelvic, to allow fetus and uterus growing may cause many changes in the body and back pain can be a side-effect of these changes. Also A difference in hormone levels can cause muscles and ligaments to become more relaxed, especially during the last few months as the body is getting ready for labour from (Back Pain and Pregnancy, 1999., para, no). Additional to that , the effect of the extra weight and body posture adds extra strain on the pregnant women by pulling the muscles. This means if the pregnant women is holding twins it is definitely the attraction on muscles will be great. Silva A.(2004) loudly echoed that : The weight of the baby can result in a higher degree of curvature of the lower spine, meaning ligaments and muscles must adapt and sometimes can feel strained. The centre of gravity will be slowly changing also, keeping a firm base with feet shoulder width apart will help to counteract this ( p.34-5). and pregnancy period may develop what know as Pregnancy-Related low Back Pain (PLBP), this type of Back Pain often lead to other problems with Significant physical, psychological, and socioeconomic implications, according to Silva(2004, p.39). In addition to that the sleep habit disturbances often associate with such pain. Beside all these effects, fear of abortion always is a pregnant women concern; related to long courses pain killer medicine is used and prescribed or worries of havening child with congenital problems. However pregnancy back pain can be minimized and avoided, standing up straight and straight the muscle by exercise such as swimming are good example of minimizing the back pain. Although, the primary prevention is by not sitting in one position for long time, but massage therapy would be the best technique to use as it is emphasized by Silva Therapeutic massage for low back massage is thought to provide low back pain relief by improving blood flow, reducing muscle stiffness, increasing range of motion, and raising endorphin levels in the body (2004, p.51). The third major cause of back pain is related to the degenerative disk diseases in the back; as part of the natural process of growing older. In fact, it is not an actual disease thus it affect an elderly and retired people. It starts with the disk (shock absorber) that consists of the jelly and lays between the vertebras in the back bone. Over the time this disk slips out and leads the jelly inside the disk to leaks and loses its ability to absorb shocks. Pressing on the nerve and leading into sever pain that may radiate to hip and legs are the majors consequences of disk prolapsed. This problem is widely spread among young men who performer a heavy work, but it is still consider to be ageing process disease. R. Windsor (2008) stressed on this point when he stated in his article that Low Back Pain secondary to degenerative disk disease is a condition that affects young to middle-aged persons with peak incidence at approximately 40 years also he pointed that the prevalence of disk de generation increases with age. Moreover, depression, isolation and restriction in activities are effects of degenerative Disk disease. It is well documented that physical pain can lead to feelings of depression, but a new study from the University of Alberta shows the reverse can be true, as well. When Dr. Linda Carroll, a professor in a Department of Public Health Sciences, led the study that shows Depression is a risk factor for onset of severe neck and low back pain(2003, p.3). The study is published in the Journal Pain. Besides this, people who suffers from pack pain may tend to be isolated from others due to fear of further injury and frustration regarding their condition . This mental status can also indirectly damage the back. Mental stress, dissatisfaction at work, depression and distress can all play a role in back pain. These factors may re-enforce relatively minor pain signals resulting in a much more present pain sensation(Carroll L. 2003, p.5). So, there is a strong connection between stress and back pain, when the tension created by emotional stress can give you a back pain. Also Stress causes the muscles to tighten up. The muscles may tense up so much and they go into painful spasms. Then it followed by reduce blood flow to the tissues and finally the back is less capable of tolerating even mild workload. However, this type of back pain can be also avoided by controlling and reducing the amount of exposure to tensions and stressful life situations. Yoga is a very popular form of relaxation therapy that increases muscle strength as it calms and works out stress. In addition to that exercise is important to reducing stress, by doing early morning walk and implemented as a weekly routine in the person life. Lastly, there are almost as many ways to prevent back pain as there are bad behaviors that cause it. Socioeconomic is another side effect of degenerative or disk diseases. People who suffers back pain have to pay a lot of medical expanses that includes physician fees which is typically high, medication cost and physiotherapy. Eventually this treatment costs are often difficult to be afforded by them. Additional to this, back pain lead to work absenteeism, statistic shown by (Parthan A. 2005, p.14) estimated the annual loss in productivity due to back pain in the United States to be approximately $28 billion. The loss in productivity is primarily due to absenteeism from work. Despite previously discussed causes of back pain, there are still many reasons need to be reviewed like, injury where all the types injures results several back problems, started with strains and end with back bone fracture and never damages. ( Windsor, 2008) has written It is commonly acknowledged that back injury is the most serious health problem experienced by most of the worlds workforce. However, Injury results from fall, road traffic accidents, and sports injury. or even arise from direct blunt impact Objects. Any injury to the back can cause damages to surrounded soft tissue of the spine, bruised and inflamed. And also, some time damages exceed the tissue to reach the bony and nerve structure. Later on the spine becomes stiffer. These injuries may varies can be range from mild, moderate to sever. A good example of midland moderate back pain injury is strain, very treatable in its tow forms. But sever injury may lead to paralyses or even death at the injury onset. To sum up, aside from the usual side effects of back pain, like the disturbance of your sleeping habits and the difficulty in sitting still during extended periods of time, the real concern should be addressed to the causes for back pain. Unfortunately since back muscles are the hardest working muscle group in the body, back pains are a frequent occurrence which indirectly effects it being the hardest to identify condition. It is a good investment to learn all about back pain, the causes and the side effects of back pain, and how it is prevented or if the condition is occurring, how best to relieve the effect.

William Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream :: William Shakespeare Midsummer Dream Essays

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream The stage production of William Arden Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by a British director Tim Supple was one in a million-that everyone talked about it and questions rode questions, on how the performance went. ‘It is the best production I have ever seen. What grapples me most, is the cast, ravaging with a rich choreography’, this was said by the British Ambassador to India in a chat with Times of India. The almighty dramatist play was sponsored for production by the British Council, India. Staged at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, on Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi, on the 3 of March, the old, but became-new play was performed by what Mr. Supple described as ‘an all Indian and Sri Lankan cast’, spoken in many languages, from English to Hindi and Bengali. It was free. But one has to get a pass to be admitted in. All and sundry came for this mesmerizing production-and all came and went, but only one person never went from my memory. The one and only Arundhati Roy-the world acclaimed author of The God of Small Things. She was there. She was there for good and praises poured on her. Her presence sweetened the sweet production, as well as heightened emotions. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, written sometime in the mid-1590s. It depicts the adventures of four young lovers and a group of amateur actors in a moonlit forest, and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit it. Today, the play is one of Shakespeare's most popular and is performed across the world. When the production came to an end with a big coctail and wide applauds, I realised that I have never read this acclaimed bestseller. And so, I wobbled into a bookshop around and got a copy. It is cheap here in India. Everything is cheap. And I read this book in three days. Unbelievable? That is the truth. Because the story line is straight and sweet. But before then, the writer-activist who lives in New Delhi spoke about life as a writer. ‘You have to be yourself. No pretence. And if any pretence, that should be embedded in your characters. Think like your characters and see what this life is all about’, Ms Roy said, intoned. There is something surreal about her. Her benevolence and non-descriminative wit and candour. India has bestselling authors like Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses), Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies), Chetan Bhagat (One Night @ the Call Centre), the Nobel Laureates and more.

Children and Video Game Violence :: Entertainment Papers

Video game systems are the basis for much discussion and argumentation in today’s society. They have been around since the 1970’s and have allowed children to pass the time with an interactive way to leave this world and enter a new realm of imagination, where the creators of the games set the only guidelines. Children are allowed to see themselves as characters with amazing powers and the ability to do many things. Many critics, however, worry children are not physically capable of understanding that games are not reality, and, therefore, cannot realize, in the real world, one cannot commit the acts they do while playing video games. Violence, for example, is found in more than half of all video games. People worry that children who constantly view violence in this manner will learn to see violence as a proper action without any consequences. My paper is organized in a manner which allows you, the reader, to view and understand the points of many authors and their works without having to read them in a boring, straight information, textbook form. First is the dinner meeting, in which all of the authors of my sources came to my house for dinner and discussed much of their thoughts about these games. Following the dinner is my summary and analysis of their works, and, finally, my input and beliefs on the subject of the negative effects of video games on children. The table was set, and the food was out. The lights were low in my dining room as the chairs were set around my hardwood, darkly stained table with a burgundy tablecloth. The light reflected off of the side of the turkey breast, and the light rays bounced around inside the glass bowl containing green beans. No, it is not Thanksgiving dinner, but a nice meal for the writers of several sources on the topic of the effects of video games on children. Although the dark green walls of my rectangular dining room do not echo any sounds now, I know the room will soon be filled with loud debates and harsh discussions on a topic with which I am becoming more familiar. As the guests began to arrive, I did not know what to expect. The representatives from ABCNews were dressed like reporters: the women in business suites and the men in ties.

A Case Study Depicting the Importance of Ethics in Medicine Essay examp

To protect the individual’s right and confidentiality, the client involved would be referred to as ‘Marge’. Introduction ‘Work for health requires moral commitment’ (Seedhouse, 2009 p. xiviii). Therefore, the obligation rests on healthcare professionals faced with ethical dilemma in their practice to make moral decision which should promote and enhance health ( Rumbold, 1999; Sim, 1997). Ethics is concerned with the basis on which an action is determined as either right or wrong (Rumbold, 1999; MacIntyre, 2005). Therefore, ethics is the study of morality which is also known as moral philosophy (Sim, 1997; Thompson et al, 2006). When one moral principle conflicts with another, it is referred to as a moral or ethical dilemma (Sim, 1997). Hence, ethics provides a framework for addressing dilemmas (Rumbold, 1999). Thus, Thompson et al (2006), highlights that clients are presented as consumers rather than recipients of care. As a result, there seems to have been changes and challenges in health and social care in recent years (Thompson et al, 2006). More than ever before healthcare professionals have to act in the best interest of clients irrespective of their cultural backgrounds, values or religion (Thompson et al, 2006). This essay highlights the Hippocratic Oath as it is translated into principles which inform the modern code of ethics (Preston, 2009). Furthermore, these principles may not be enough in undertaking moral reasoning. Therefore professionals may have to employ some of the ethical theories which include theory of justice, teleology and deontology in deciding the best possible action for Marge in the case study. Marge has been diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, and the multidisciplinary ... ...s (RMO), Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Social Worker and Psychologist were alerted at the deterioration in Marge’s mental health in the hospital. Marge’s mood has now altered to a manic state. She was constantly laughing and doing Irish dance in the ward. She had also been abusing alcohol and acting in a very flirtatious manner. This behaviour was completely out of character for Marge who is a devout Christian with a reserved persona. Marge also neglected herself- not eating or washing. In the past when depressed, she has made suicide attempts and did not allowed health professionals into her high rise flat. During her last manic episode, she gave away large sums of money. Her judgement was impaired and did not comply with prescribed medication. Marge wants discharged but has no insight into her current manic episodes. So also, her children wanted her home

How Organizations Can Learn from Failure Essay

Even though there is a no precise definition for failure in organizations, there is a general agreement to what failure means and could lead to. Failure is broadly defined as a condition of not meeting the intended objective or end. Failure could result in the depletion of finance, shrinking market, exit from the market, loss of market share, project failure and loss of legitimacy. We can assume that failure has negative consequences even though the final outcome may be positive, with firms learning from failure. Understanding the need for learning from failure is unquestionable; however it is tough for organizations to put this into practice. It is crucial that organizations understand failure and think about it in the right way before they can go about implementing procedures to prevent such failures from happening in the future. Learning from failure involves understanding that failure is not always bad and that learning from failure is no straightforward task. An organization cannot simply reflect on what they did wrong and expect to not make the same mistakes again. Organizations have to understand about the different degrees of failure which occur on a scale ranging from blameworthy to praiseworthy. They fall into three broad categories which are 1, failures which occur in predictable operations which could be prevented. 2, unavoidable failures which occur in complex organizations which can be managed to prevent snowballing. 3, unwanted outcomes†¦. To learn from failure, we require different strategies for each setting. It is key to detect them early, analyze failures with depth, develop hypothesis, experiments and projects to product them. In order to minimize failure employees first have to feel safe to report these failures. In the article titled strategies for learning from failure the author Amy C. Edmondson talks about http://hbr. org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure/ar/1 First the organization has to go about understanding failure in the right way as well as all the possible side†¦ Important for managers to think about failure in the right way. Failure is not always bad. It is sometimes bad and sometimes inevitable and sometimes good. Learning from failure is not a straightforward task. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyze failures are in short supply in most companies and the need for context-specific learning strategies is underappreciated.? Organizations need new and better ways to go beyond lessons which are superficial( procedures which weren’t followed) or self serving ( The market just wasn’t ready for our great new product) That means jettisoning old cultural beliefs and stereotypical notions. The blame game? A spectrum of reasons for failure? http://www. uk. sagepub. com/upm-data/10989_Chapter_9. pdf Failing to learn from failure reasons? -Simply experiencing a negative event is not sufficient for learning. – Learning can be a complicated process, the acquisition of knowledge and the shifts in behavior must occur at all levels of a highly complex system. â€Å"Bazerman and Watkins (2004) contend that, when organizations fail to learn failures, they become susceptible to predictable surprises. What is the difference between predictable and unpredictable surprises? Predictable surprises occur when an organization leadership ignores or fails to understand clear evidence that a potentially devastating problem to occur. There are different sort of failures and not all failures are created equally. Bazerman and Watkins( 2004) identify four ways in which organizations fail to learn from failures that occur around them: Scanning Failures: failure to pay close attention to potential problems both inside and outside the organization; this failure could be due to arrogance, a lack of resources, or simple inattentions? Intergration failures: failure to understand how pieces of potentially complicated information fit together to provide lessons of how to avoid crises. 3. Incentive Failures: failure to provide sufficient rewards to people who report problems and take actions to avoid possible crises 4. Learning Failures: failure to draw important lessons from crises and preserve their memory in the organization Organizations who face these failures potentially could damage their organizational integrity. Eg Mitroff and Anagnos 2001, Managing Crises before they happen: what every manager needs to know about crisis management. 1982, Johnson and Johnson could respond to an external crisis with their product being linked to cyanide poisoning and thus the company responded quickly by pulling their stock of capsules from the shelves and having great PR work. J and J knew how to handle their PR well and their product managed to get back to the top seller. J and J however became a victim of its previous succ ess and had not done well with ‘Predictable surprises’ where crises occurred within the company. J and J had failed to do proper product scanning and had been a different sort of failure. failure of a different type? Failure of Success. Problem 1 and 4. Learning from failure: Sitkin 1996- Mittelstaedt (2005) – Failure is an essential part of learning for many organizations. Failures, should not be hidden or avoided. Making mistakes is essential to success, a company which appears to be free from disruption may be operating unrealistically and from a uniformed perspective. â€Å"learning to identify mistakes analytically and timely is the difference between failure and success. † Too often employees and managers are unwilling to admit small failures for fear of reprisal. The unwillingness to recognize and embrace failure is also a failure to recognize and respond to potential crises. The longer these small crises build up the higher likelihood it could escalate into a major crisis. In successful organizations, failure creates recognition of risk and a motivation for change that would not exist otherwise. Describes this recognition as a â€Å"learning readiness† without failure, very difficult to produce in most organizations. Sitkin cautions that not all failures are equally effective in fostering good risk management. Organizations learn best from intelligent failures, which have these characteristics, result from planned actions, uncertain outcomes, modest in scale, and take place in domains that are familiar enough to permit effective learning. Organizations need to recognize risks by accepting and acting on failures. Learn the best when failure results from competent actions, not major crises. Still within the comfort zone and employees are eager and experienced enough to respond. These opportunities arise: Vicarious Learning – learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behavior observed in others. Organizations need not fail as an entity in order to learn. Successful organizations engage in vicarious learning in order to recognize risk, organizational leaders observe the failures or crises experienced by similar organizations and take action to avoid making the same mistakes. Examples of Vicarious Learning- Give!!! Organizational memory: Without learning from their own and other’s mistakes organizations stagnate and fail to respond to potential threats in an ever-changing world. Learning has no use if the knowledge is not retained. An example of failure in organizational memory is the Union carbide plant in Bhopal, India in 1984. Early in December morning, the plant leaked a deadly cloud of gas that settled over part of the sleeping city of a million residents. Within two hours 2000 of them were dead with thousands left injured? Part of the reason for the disaster was a loss in organizational memory. The plant had been slated for closure and many experienced staff had been transferred out, leaving minimal crew with little work experience, with the training for remaining crew at a minimum. The crisis was traced to staff reductions and oversight failures. Much of the blame for the tragedy rests with a rapid reduction in experienced staff that took with them a large share of organizational memory. Organizational memory comprises of, a) Acquiring knowledge, done by recognizing failures within the organization and by observing failures of similar organizations. b) Distributing knowledge is the key to organizational memory. Highly experienced employees will leave the organization and these people should be given an opportunity to share their knowledge around or those departing personnel will go along with their experience. ) Acting upon knowledge, is important for organizational memory to serve an organization. New employees need to learn from those departing ones.! New employees cannot do things their own way or else it will lead to repeat failures†¦.!!!! Employees have many opportunities to discard the hard-earned knowledge. Because organizational memory depends on exchanging information from one person to another perception change , mistreatment and stubbornness to learn can disrupt preserving organizational memory. Organizations need to learn and build from previous experiences. Unlearning: Effective organizational learning depends on an organizations ability to unlearn practices and policies that have become outdated by environmental changes. Example of Unlearning 1. Expanding Options: When organizations are unwilling to forego routine procedures during crisis or potential crisis situations, they lose the capacity to react to unique circumstances. Unlearning enables the organization to expand its options. 2. Contracting Options: In some cases, organizations may respond to a crisis with a strategy that has worked well in the past. In the current situation, however, the strategy from the past may actually make matters worse. In such cases, organizations must be willing to reject some strategies in favor of others. 3. Grafting: In the previous section, we discussed the need for organizations to hand down existing knowledge to new employees. If the socialization of new employees is so intense that they cannot bring new knowledge to the organization, however, the organization is doing itself a disservice. Although organizational memory is essential, some degree of unlearning Opportunity 1: Organizations should treat failure as an opportunity to recognize a potential crisis or to prevent a similar crisis in the future. Opportunity 2: Organizations can avoid crises by learning from the failures and crises of other organizations. Opportunity 3: Organizational training and planning should emphasize the preservation of previous learning in order to make organizational memory a priority. Opportunity 4: Organizations must be willing to unlearn outdated or ineffective procedures if they are to learn better crisis management strategies Bazerman, M. H. & Watkins, M. D. (2004). Predictable surprises: The disasters you should have seen coming and how to prevent them. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Huber, G. P. (1996). Organizational learning: The contributing processes and the literatures. In M. D. Cohen & L. S. Sproull (Eds. ), Organizational learning (pp. 124-162). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mitroff, I. I. , & Anagnos, G. (2001). Managing crises before they happen: What every executive and manager needs to know about crisis management. New York: AMACOM. Mittelstaedt, R. E. (2005). Will your next mistake be fatal? Avoiding the chain of mistakes that can destroy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton. Sitkin, S. B. (1996). Learning through failure: The strategy of small losses. In M. D. Cohen & L. S. Sproull (Eds. ), Organizational learning (pp. 541-578). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tompkins, P. K. (2005). Apollo, Challenger, Columbia: The decline of the space program. Los Angeles: Roxbury. Organizations who face these failures potentially could damage their organizational integrity. It is important for an organization to identify these failures and act on them while the company is still in operation. Having a crisis management team to prepare, respond and recover from a crisis is paramount in ensuring that the organization recovers and continues. Preparation must happen before a crisis occurs. In times of crisis, organizations need to systematically analyze its errors, acknowledge the errors and limits of the organization as well as address the issue with a level of sophistication. When an organization continually fails to differentiate and neglect crisis and failures it could lead to detrimental problems for the organization. Failure/ Crisis Management Case Study 1 A hypothetical example would be the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (BP oil spill) that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico from 20 April 2010 to 15 July 2010. The estimated 185 million barrels of oil first made landfall in Louisiana. By June 2010, the tar balls and oil mousse had reached the shores of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. By August, it had smeared tourist beaches, washed onto the shorelines of sleepy coastal communities, oozed into the marshy bays that fishermen have worked for generations as well as killed millions of wildlife in the process. Instead of dealing with the failure in a professional way, BP inadvertently created a PR situation synonymous with herding cats. It’s had to fight to clear up two quagmires – its oil mess and its tarnished image. (Please Refer to Appendix- New York Times, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill) In times of crisis or failure, it is important for an organization to understand the need for a comprehensive risk analysis. Should the failure be environmentally or socially threatening, impressions demonstrations of empathy and competence are vital. BP was not prepared to successfully deal with such a catastrophe. To minimize the damage, BP should have immediately accomplished five tasks: 1. Issue regular, frequent progress reports 2. Control the pictures (even some on the Web site appeared to be canned or generic) 3. Transparency 4. Display empathy as a concerned corporate entity comprised of authentic people diligently making a good-faith effort to solve the problem Failure/ Crisis Management Case Study 2 Failure, if properly attended to and rectified is a great plus. It gives the much needed confidence to the public, client or stakeholders in the product and organization. Furthermore, with proper management, the organization will be able to assess its capacity to deal with the systemic and circumstantial deficiencies leading to failures and work out a way forward. A great example would be the Johnson and Johnson Tylenol poisoning crisis in 1982. When the Tylenol scare occurred, Johnson and Johnson responded immediately and positively, taking the analgesic off the shelves, keeping the public apprised of the investigation, and their instituting new tamper-proof seals to make their product more secure. An organization needs to be upfront and out front with their communication about the situation and what they are doing to correct it and protect the public. The organization has to keep the public’s best interests at heart when communicating the issue effectively, clearly, accurately, and promptly upon discovering the problem. Having a crisis management plan in place before a crisis occurs puts an organization in a solid position to handle it more effectively and responsibly. Detecting failure, analyising failure, promoting experiementation? Deviance Inattention Lack of Ability Process Inadequacy Task Challenge Process Complexity Uncertainty Hypothesis Testing Exploratory Testing Blameworthy Praiseworthy Violating a prescribed practice or process by choice Straying away from specifications Does not possess the necessary qualifications or skills for the task Adhering to a prescribed but faulty or incomplete task Task too difficult to be executed reliably each time Process comprises of element breaks when encountering interactions Lack of clarity causes actions which seem reasonable but produces undesired results An experiment to prove and idea, fails Experiment to increase knowledge and understand possibilities leads to an unwanted result