OLS Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

OLS - Case Study Example According to Carrel et al (1995), organisations should always consider ethics and values since they are primarily concerned with upholding the principles of honesty and truthfulness in the company’s endeavour to satisfy the needs of the customers. Ethics are very important because strategic operations in an organisation that are premised on lies are bound to fail as they would be doubtful in the eyes of the potential customers. 2) Leadership can be defined as the ability by an individual to influence the other people in an organisation to follow a course of action that is specifically designed to achieve the goals of the organisation. Leadership is primarily involved in the attainment of the vision of the organisation. Leadership in an organisation is very important since it focuses on the attainment of organisational goals. 3) A service can be defined as an offering that is intangible but able to satisfy the needs of the consumers. A service is exchanged for something valuable such as money or any other kind of payment. This definition is very important in the understanding of decision making since it affects the quality of services offered by an organisation as well as the general service delivery 4) Character can be defined as the personal attributes that form and shape the behaviour of an individual person. Whilst character is something that is in born, it can as well be noted that it can as well be influenced by external forces. This definition is very important in the knowledge of decision making as it is enlightening about how an individual person can conduct himself. a) Prejudicial employment practices posit to the effect that organisations should not discriminate the other employees on the basis of race, gender, age, physical ability as well as religion among others (Carrel et al 1995). The most

The Reform Movement Essay Example for Free

The Reform Movement Essay 1: Temperance: moderation of self, restraint in action, statement and self-control or PROHIBITION. Americans were worried about the effects of alcohol. 1st. This movement first urged people to stop drinking hard liquor and limit drinking beer and wine to small amounts. Later the movement wanted to ban the sale of alcohol-banning became a major goal, it was banned in the 18th Amendment, which was later repealed by the 21st Amendment. 2: Women’s Rights: women couldn’t vote in many states and had little control over own property; could not get a higher education; didn’t get equal pay for equal work; weren’t allowed to enter traditional male professions. Declaration of Independence: signed by 100 people began to shape the future of women’s rights movements. Fight turned into a political movement many women were arrested and jailed in 1860 states gave women rights of ownership, but many reforms (right to vote) weren’t achieved. Lucretia mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized Seneca Falls Convention wrote Declaration of Sentiments for Convention. Susan B. Anthony had organized skills that further helped the movement. Led campaign for equal pay for equal work, allowing women to enter traditional professions, and for changing laws regarding women’s property. Organized petitions for new laws that were passed. 3: Public Education: families did not expect formal schooling because they needed children to work to help support the families. Common-School Movement: which wanted all children educated in a common place, regardless of class or background. It set the standard for education reform and brought children out of factories. Horace Mann: leading voice of education reform in mid 1800’s. He explained the idea of the Common School. 4: Abolitionism: Slavery in America. a movement was formed (ABOLITION) to completely end slavery in U.S. Did this through news papers, articles and pamphlets, speeches. PROPAGANDA use written word and pictures to get sympathy. Eventual end of slavery: North outlawed, South refused because they needed help with the economy. William Lloyd Garrison: published abolitionists newspaper, The Liberator. Frederick Douglass: former slave who became one of the most important African American leaders of the 1800’s. Sojourner Truth: African American who became famous from her dramatic and fiery speeches. Harriet Beecher Stowe: wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. the most powerful anti-slavery novel ever written. 5: Prisons: terrible prison conditions. 2 and 3. state hospitals for mentally ill were created. Reform schools were established for children in prison. Houses of correction were established, which tried to change prisoners’ behavior through education. 4. Dorothea Dix: middle-class reformer who helped change the prison system by reporting on terrible prison conditions.

Femininity And The Female Body Cultural Studies Essay

Femininity And The Female Body Cultural Studies Essay The stereotypical gender roles given by the society are female being feminine and male being masculine. The social expectations of male masculinity and female femininity are described by Mc Cubbin and Blum Dahl, former professors at the University of Minnesota, as Men should be brave, strong, ambitious and aggressive, while keeping their feelings under control; Women should be gentle, nurturant, passive, dependent, and expressive of their feelings (Mc Cubbin and Blum Dhal, 2005, 189). The term femininity involves a social process in which a female sex is recognized with certain traits and characteristics. These traits are marked by the society the moment she is born hence, creating a sexual difference of being a woman. The construction of gender identity by our surroundings if further described by Bornstein as, Then theres gender attribution, whereby we look at somebody and say, thats a man, or thats a woman. And this is important because the way we perceive anothers gender affects the way we relate to that person. (1995, p. 26). A woman meant to be feminine and the degree of femininity she possesses is evaluated by the way she dresses up, the way she speaks, the way she walks, her body language and most importantly her beauty. Paintings, fashion photographs, news photographs, pornographic images, magazines differ in the way they are utilized but, they all interconnect in the representation of femininity and the female sexuality. The photograph by a renowned photographer Horst P. Horst (See Appendix, Figure 1) will be analysed to discuss the feminist issue of measuring a females value through her appearance and the feminism, the feminist theories against it and also representing women as surreal objects. Horst P. Horst was a German American photographer who is famous for his fashion and women photography. The Mainbocher corset is regarded as one of his iconic photographs created for Vogue in1939 (Koetzel, 2003). The image consists of a woman sitting on a bench seen from behind. She is wearing a back lacing corset and looking down through her right arm. The whole image encompasses a feel of a power less woman. However, when seen in different angle, it can give a different meaning altogether. The corset, a piece of underwear, which has a long history connected to it had long been part of a female body. A female wore tight-laced corset in order to define her waist more blatantly. Fontanel depicted the transformation of a female body as a great silky insect with outspread wings (1997, p. 49). In addition to making the waist line more evident, corsets cause breasts to heave and make buttocks stand out creating a slender and seductive silhouette. Therefore, a female wears a gracious instrument of torture so as to transform into a desired shape. Moreover, in the nineteenth century the tightly laced corsets were outrageous and lunatic and caused hindrance in the movement. Dubios in his book An Examination of five plagues regarded corset as one of the plagues as it causes terrible physical damage; deformation, breast sagging etc, when worn for longer duration (Fontanel, 1997). Likewise, it lends a female her femininity but, not a healthy one. Feminists argue that the act of theorizing the body is especially pertinent to women (Carson, 2001, p. 117). Moreover, the bodies of women are controlled by men and are idealized for male consumption. Beauvoir (1997) describes woman as the Other and writes, No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature (p. 295). In other words, the culture has created an idealized female body image and is represented in Horsts image. On the contrary, the unravelled corset is recuperating the depiction of the female body from stereotyping. It is portraying womens; freedom from corset, freedom of movement and freedom from conventional gender role. The image also surfaces the notion of surrealism. The word surreal is defined as characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions. Surrealism was an artistic movement founded at the beginning of the 18th century. Andre Breton, the founder of the movement wrote a Surrealist Manifesto and described surrealism as, based in the belief in the superior reality of certain previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested play of thought (Mikics, 2007, p. 292) . In other words, surrealism eradicates the borderline between real and unreal and conscious and unconscious. It is a new way of seeing the world. Hence, moving out of the ordinary and getting into the imaginary world. Surrealism: decontextualizing an everyday object and transposing it to an unusual or socially unacceptable place in order to highlight its status as sign. Women have always been the primary subjects of criticism and display and so they are in surrealism. Horsts image focus on one of the most persistent notion of surrealism that is fetishization. The corset is a fetish object creating erotic and provocative image, thus, arousing sexual desire for the object being displayed. According to Freud, it is as though the last impression before the uncanny and traumatic one is retained as a fetish pieces of underclothing which are so often chosen as a fetish, crystallize a moment of undressing, the last moment in which women could still be regarded as phallic (As cited in Wood, 2007, p.32). In other words, the corset accentuates female body parts and shapes her body into an hour glass figure. The less natural her appearance, the more seductive she [] looks (Fontanel, p. 52). This brings up the idea of transforming womens bodies for mens pleasure. In addition, the image also seizes the moment where women is submissive and have no control over m ens desires. Feminists are against the objectification of the female body and representing it as fetishised object as seen in the image. A more modern concept however, is that the corset allows a woman to express her sexual freedom. Women feel more sexy in a corset. It is no longer considered part of a Victorian era dress code, but simply as sexual leisure-wear. the female control over male desires, and the males control over the female body. Conclusion:othing is so lively, so lovely, as deathly pallor: Embracing the body, the corset frames a story to stir the emotions and set the imagination free.

High Definition Television (HDTV) Essay example -- Expository Essays

High Definition Television (HDTV) High Definition Television, also known as HDTV, is a technological advancement compared to the analog television most Americans have now. High definition was a marvel that was bound to come. It seems that every time a new technology emerges, it is a must have, but is high-definition television worth buying? This is the question I have posed to myself and will try to answer. High definition started in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. It was a simple experimental research project that did not hold much weight. Once the Federal Communications Commission heard of the news, the proposed a competition to see who could come up with a higher quality television. There was no real winner for the contest, but because of the efforts of developers and the technology being pushed, high-definition television had been developed. There are three main reasons that high-definition television is not worth buying in the year 2004. 1) The Technology is Young Infancy is one word to describe the technology of high-definition and is still being worked on a deve...

Identify how you would beta test a multimedia project for delivery Essay

Beta testing is a test for a computer product prior to commercial release may it be an application software, an operating system or a multimedia product. It is a stage where in the product is put into a larger community after a rigorous in house test. To some, it is also a way of knowing how well the community responds to the product. Beta testing is the last stage of testing, the last possibility to correct errors that would render a product priceless to customers. And because of this, beta testing of multimedia products is in essence a difficult task. PURPOSE The purpose of this document is to present a strategy to beta test a multimedia product. It presents possible alternatives that would yield the best result. BETA TESTING STRATEGY In the past, beta testing is used to be a secret. Beta testing is given to a group carefully selected by the company who owns the product to be tested. The fear that finding a considerable amount of bug might diminish customer interest was the old belief. Now, the perspective has changed. Beta testing is already considered an important marketing tool (Nelson & O’Connor, 2004). It increases the popularity of the multimedia product. The best strategy therefore is to make it available for free in the beta testing phase. The first step is to advertise the beta software and provide links to beta version download. Then provide a feedback center for them to comment on observable bugs. Providing the beta version free has many advantages. First, it is very cost effective because you do not have to spend money for hiring a group of people to beta test the software. You may have to spend a certain amount to accelerate interest by providing rewards to people with most important bugs found or by advertising the beta download locations, but these are small compared to hiring an entire group. Second, it is the best way to reach the most number of beta testers. The number of beta testers is directly proportional to how effective the beta testing would be. Third, providing it for free is a way of advertising the software to gain more users. The finding of bugs is just one part of beta testing, there should also be a way for users to provide suggestions. Suggestions are very important to make the multimedia product more acceptable to the market. The suggestions and reported bugs should be monitored on daily basis. Suggestions should be evaluated of whether there is a plan to include it or not. Reported bugs should also be evaluated of whether it is connected to some other bugs or it is really a bug. Then an update release should be available on a periodic basis, for example a monthly update until the reported bugs are already tolerable or it is already completely bug free. The end result of this methodology should produce a very robust multimedia product. If the multimedia product gains public acceptance, the number of users who will beta test this product would also be many. This will give the developer an early view of whether the multimedia product would become profitable. Although there are some possible drawbacks, the beta software should also be given some licensing limitations to prevent users from simply using the beta version instead of the final version. An example would be a pop-up of the reminder to purchase license when the beta period expires. CONCLUSION Multimedia products undergo beta testing to ensure good quality. The best approach in beta testing is to make it free and available for public download at the beta version stage. This would increase its popularity and the cost of beta testing would be minimal. References Nelson, T. and O’Connor, M. (2004). Beta Software: Get In the Development Process. Retrieved from the PC Today website: http://www. pctoday. com/Editorial/article. asp? article=articles/2004/t0205/20t05/20t05. asp&guid= , on January 24, 2007

The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976

The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976 The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Tangshan, China on July 28, 1976, killed at least 242,000 people (the official death count). Some observers place the actual toll as high as 700,000. The Great Tangshan Earthquake also rocked the seat of Chinese Communist Party power in Beijing - both literally and politically. Background to the Tragedy - Politics and the Gang of Four in 1976 China was in a state of political ferment in 1976. The Party Chairman, Mao Zedong, was 82 years old. He spent much of that year in the hospital, suffering several heart attacks and other complications of old age and heavy smoking. Meanwhile, the Chinese public and the western-educated Premier, Zhou Enlai, had grown weary of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Zhou went so far as to publicly oppose some of the measures ordered by Chairman Mao and his coterie, pushing for The Four Modernizations in 1975. These reforms stood in marked contrast to the Cultural Revolutions emphasis on a return to the soil; Zhou wanted to modernize Chinas agriculture, industry, sciences, and national defense. His calls for modernization incurred the wrath of the powerful Gang of Four, a cabal of Maoist hardliners headed by Madam Mao (Jiang Qing). Zhou Enlai died on January 8, 1976, just six months before the Tangshan Earthquake. His death was mourned widely by the Chinese people, despite the fact that the Gang of Four had ordered that public grief for Zhou should be down-played. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of defiant mourners flooded into Tiananmen Square in Beijing to express their sorrow over Zhous death. This was the first mass demonstration in China since the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949, and a sure sign of the peoples rising anger against the central government. Zhou was replaced as premier by the unknown Hua Guofeng. Zhous successor as the standard-bearer for modernization within the Chinese Communist Party, however, was Deng Xiaoping. The Gang of Four rushed to denounce Deng, who had called for reforms to raise the living standards of average Chinese, allow more freedoms of expression and movement, and end the rampant political persecution that was practiced at that time. Mao fired Deng in April of 1976; he was arrested and held incommunicado. Nevertheless, Jiang Qing and her cronies kept up a steady drumbeat of condemnation for Deng throughout the spring and early summer. The Ground Shifts Beneath Them At 3:42 am on July 28, 1976, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Tangshan, an industrial city of 1 million people in northern China. The quake leveled about 85% of the buildings in Tangshan, which had been built on the unstable soil of the Luanhe Rivers flood plain. This alluvial soil liquefied during the quake, undermining entire neighborhoods. Structures in Beijing also sustained damage, some 87 miles (140 kilometers) distant. People as far away as Xian, 470 miles (756 kilometers) from Tangshan, felt the tremors. Hundreds of thousands of people lay dead after the quake, and much more were trapped in the rubble. Coal miners working deep underground in the region perished when the mines collapsed around them. A series of aftershocks, the most powerful registering 7.1 on the Richter Scale, added to the destruction. All of the roads and rail-lines leading into the city were destroyed by the quake. Beijings Internal Response At the time the earthquake struck, Mao Zedong lay dying in the hospital in Beijing. As tremors rippled through the capital, hospital officials rushed to push Maos bed to safety. The central government, headed by the new premiere, Hua Guofeng, initially knew little of the disaster. According to an article in the New York Times, coal miner Li Yulin was the first to bring word of the devastation to Beijing. Dirty and exhausted, Li drove an ambulance for six hours, going right up to the party leaders compound to report that Tangshan had been destroyed. However, it would be days before the government organized the first relief operations. In the meantime, the surviving people of Tangshan desperately dug through the rubble of their homes by hand, stacking the corpses of their loved ones in the streets. Government planes flew overhead, spraying disinfectant over the ruins in an effort to prevent an epidemic of disease. Several days after the earthquake, the first Peoples Liberation Army troops reached the devastated area to aid in rescue and recovery efforts. Even when they finally arrived at the scene, the PLA lacked trucks, cranes, medicines, and other necessary equipment. Many of the soldiers were forced to march or run for miles to the site due to the lack of passable roads and rail lines. Once there, they too were forced to dig through the rubble with their bare hands, lacking even the most basic tools. Premiere Hua made the career-saving decision to visit the affected area on August 4, where he expressed his sorrow and condolences to the survivors. According to London University professor Jung Changs autobiography, this behavior contrasted starkly with that of the Gang of Four. Jiang Qing and the other members of the Gang went on the air to remind the nation that they shouldnt allow the earthquake to distract them from their first priority: to denounce Deng. Jiang also publicly stated that There were merely several hundred thousand deaths. So what? Denouncing Deng Xiaoping concerns eight hundred million people. Beijings International Response Although the state-run media took the unusual step of announcing the catastrophe to Chinas citizens, the government remained mum about the earthquake internationally. Of course, other governments around the world were aware that a significant earthquake had taken place based on seismograph readings. However, the extent of the damage and number of casualties was not revealed until 1979, when state-run Xinhua media released the information to the world. At the time of the quake, the paranoid and insular leadership of the Peoples Republic refused all offers of international aid, even from such neutral bodies as the United Nations aid agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Instead, the Chinese government urged its citizens to Resist the Earthquake and Rescue Ourselves. Physical Fallout of the Quake By the official count, 242,000 people lost their lives in the Great Tangshan Earthquake. Many experts have since speculated that the actual toll was as high as 700,000, but the true number will probably never be known. The city of Tangshan was rebuilt from the ground up, and now is home to more than 3 million people. It is known as the Brave City of China for its swift recovery from the catastrophic quake. Political Fallout of the Quake In many ways, the political repercussions of the Great Tangshan Earthquake were even more significant than the death toll and physical damage. Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. He was replaced as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, not by one of the radical Gang of Four, but by Premiere Hua Guofeng. Buoyed by public support after his show of concern at Tangshan, Hua boldly arrested the Gang of Four in October of 1976, ending the Cultural Revolution. Madam Mao and her cronies were put on trial in 1981 and sentenced to death for the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Their sentences were later commuted to twenty years to life in prison, and all were eventually released. Jiang committed suicide in 1991, and the other three members of the clique have since died. Reformer Deng Xiaoping was released from prison and politically rehabilitated. He was elected Party Vice Chairman in August of 1977 and served as the de facto leader of China from 1978 through the early 1990s. Deng initiated the economic and social reforms that have allowed China to develop into a major economic power on the world stage. Conclusion The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976 was the worst natural disaster of the twentieth century, in terms of loss of life. However, the earthquake proved instrumental in ending the Cultural Revolution, which was one of the worst man-made disasters of all time. In the name of the Communist struggle, the Cultural Revolutionaries destroyed the traditional culture, arts, religion, and knowledge of one of the worlds most ancient civilizations. They persecuted intellectuals, prevented the education of an entire generation, and ruthlessly tortured and killed thousands of ethnic minority members. Han Chinese, too, were subject to hideous mistreatment at the hands of the  Red Guards; an estimated 750,000 to 1.5 million people were murdered between 1966 and 1976. Although the Tangshan Earthquake caused tragic loss of life, it was key in bringing an end to one of the most horrific and abusive systems of governance that the world has ever seen. The quake shook loose the Gang of Fours hold on power and ushered in a new era of relatively increased openness and economic growth in the Peoples Republic of China. Sources Chang, Jung.  Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, (1991). Tangshan Journal; After Eating Bitterness, 100 Flowers Blossom, Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times (January 28, 1995). Chinas Killer Quake, Time Magazine, (June 25, 1979). On This Day: July 28, BBC News Online. China marks 30th anniversary of Tangshan quake, China Daily Newspaper, (July 28, 2006). Historic Earthquakes: Tangshan, China U.S. Geological Survey, (last modified January 25, 2008).