We feel we know the self to be an equivocal commodity Essay Example For Students

We feel we know the self to be an equivocal commodity Essay Although he does abandon any morals he has he has more scruples over doing so than Cromwell clearly, as we can see from his performance when with the Mores when his guilty conscience suspects that he is no longer welcome there; later we see him showing his conscience to Cromwell; Im lamenting. Ive lost my innocence. (page 44) However, Cromwell quickly brings him into check and so seems to dissolve the last trace of Richs ever fading conscience. Thomas Cromwell was clearly a follower of pragmatic political thought, we can see this through the fact he advised Rich to read works Machiavellian literature. We will write a custom essay on We feel we know the self to be an equivocal commodity specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We see him labeled by the boatman as the coming man, this is because he is a very pragmatic politician, and it is his pragmatism that brings about his success as nothing holds him back; When the King wants something done, I do it. (page 21) Cromwell is a schemer, is ambitions are clearly very powerful ones. He is a suspicious character, this can be seen through the agitation on stage at the mere mention of his name, he certainly is not a well liked character. He uses people, notably Rich in order to achieve what he desires. He has no scruples in knowingly setting up an innocent man, clearly he is not a man of conscience. He is a rather sadistic character and we see this side of him as we see him hold Richs hand in the candle flame, this incident also serves to demonstrate Richs weakness as even after this Rich continues to follow Cromwell in order to progress. His attitude could be well summed up in the following phrase, which gives an insight into his lack of conscience and moral standards; so much wickedness purchases so much worldly prospering. (page 43) Cromwell is jealous of more and his success and relationship with the King, and resorts to Richs perjury in order to defeat More. Clearly, Cromwell is a character lacking in morality and any sense of human decency. More describes him as threatening like a dockside bully. Ambition can lead to moral downfall. Since the power that drives on ambition is great enough to push aside any signs of conscience if it achieves the seemingly greater cause, we see this in the actions of both Rich and Cromwell. The Common Man too is guilty of finding fewer and fewer things, which he is willing to stand up for. He will keep his quiet about anything and everything if it keeps him out of trouble and out of the spotlight.

How and why has Windsor Castle developed since 1080 Essays

How and why has Windsor Castle developed since 1080 Essays How and why has Windsor Castle developed since 1080 Paper How and why has Windsor Castle developed since 1080 Paper A social change is a change that happened to do with society / people and example of this is the reason why William built the castle in the first place; to stop them revolting, Windsor was also changed because Charles I was beheaded there, this still effects the castle today as there are many kings queens buried there, adding to the things that people come to see. Finally some examples of technological changes are Windsor being changed to stone (as well as a political change) as it went from being wooden to stone, Henry VIII added murder holes to the Norman gateway, George IV added the cone shaped roof and the rectangular tower being changed to what it now. Windsor castle has undergone many changes over the nearly 1000 years since its construction, from a Motte Bailey, to a stone keep from a prison to a fairytale castle as now a partial royal residency and world famous tourist attraction.

Public Pension Replacement Rates Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Public Pension Replacement Rates - Essay Example In pension systems where workers get substantially different payouts due to their differing incomes,  replacement rate is a common measurement which can be used to determine the effectiveness of the pension system† (Investopedia, 2011, par. 1). In the United States, the pension replacement rate is revealed as 40% (Reno and Lavery, 2007, 1) compared to 70% - 80% in Greece (Nelson, Belkin and Mix, 2010, 4). There is a variance in replacement rates which is caused by interplay of factors such as wage rates and profiles, broken career, and length of active life, among others. Variance in Replacement Rates According to the Indicators Sub-Group (ISG) of the Social Protection Committee (SPC) (2006), â€Å"variants include different lifetime earning profiles (linear profile from 80% to 120% and from 100% to 200% and concave profile) as well as one low wage variant (flat 66% of the average), but also the variants also include a calculation for a broken career† (9). Other varian ts that cause disparities in pension replacement rates are age of retirement and career length, as well as the level of rate of return (ISG of SPC, 2006, 10).

Analytical Essay Using Realist Theory Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Analytical Using Realist Theory - Essay Example The recent past has revealed that countries like China have consequently developed strong economy that has threatened your country’s stability at the helm of super power. In addition to this, convergence by European countries to form the European Union is also a sign of power struggle in the world. In addition to this, there has been considerable rise in uprisings in many countries in the Middle East leading to what is commonly known as the Arab Spring. Mr. President, I would also wish to bring to your attention about the current Ukraine crisis with Russia not forgetting that Russia is the largest supplier of oil and gas in the world. The recent outbreak of Ebola disease in Africa that has also seen the spread of the disease in your country Mr. President is also an indication that there is a lot of power imbalance in the current world according to realists. Moreover, Mr. President, I would like also to draw your attention to the recent conflict in Syria that indicates the concept of statism that simply implies that the State is premier and hence any other actors involved in world politics are of no significance. I would also like to bring into your attention the manner in which the Syrian conflict was resolved. China and Russia influenced in a huge amount on UN sanctions that a imed at reducing violence in Syria. From the scenario, it is evident that Russia and China can greatly influence UN decisions hence illustrating that no international bodies may govern sovereign countries.

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun Essay Example for Free

My Life had stood a Loaded Gun Essay Emily Dickinson’s â€Å"My Life had stood a Loaded Gun† is a powerful poem that takes into account various thematic expressions. Its comprehensiveness in brevity is another essential feature of this poem. It symbolizes power and unconventional feminist urges on the art of the poetess. In this poem, Emily Dickinson finds an instrument adequate enough to render her need for fulfillment through absolute commitment to love’s service. The poem begins with a brilliant conceit. Fused from the ambiguous abstraction of life and the explicit concretion of loaded gun, it expresses the charged potential of the human being who remains dormant until â€Å"identified† into a conscious vitality. And after hat identification, we observe the start of a new poem i. e. the start of a new life. Historically, it was written in age when American society was torn with civil war. The symbol that Emily Dickenson has used is an essence of an experience. It is quite obvious that a universal insight that the poet tries to express in not obtained merely by imaginative wandering, it is based on concrete experiences. Emily Dickinson presents the same insight into the historical experiences of her time. The very first stanza symbolizes the paradox of finding oneself through losing oneself. It is rendered in the poem by one word: identity is claimed when someone claimed the gun as her own. The American civil war was also the process of finding ones own identity by losing ones own identity. The internal rivalries and petty identities were to be removed to achieve a national reconciliation. This national reconciliation ultimately brought the national identity. Although this process was on halt and stayed â€Å"in corners† for many decades till a day came. Now they â€Å"roam in Sovereign Woods†. So Emily Dickinson has epitomized a national experience. Now this â€Å"gun† is â€Å"foe of His Im deadly foe†. â€Å"His can be described in various connotations. â€Å"His† is emblem of nation state that is fully sovereign. â€Å"His† is an integrated society or the one who longs to be integrated after the pathos and miseries of Civil war. Poetess further emphasize that â€Å"None stir the second time -/ whom I lay a Yellow Eye -/ an emphatic Thumb†. All these gestures are for those who are internal or external antagonists to the new national experience. This poem has also captivated the feminist attention who has given it a new evaluative dimension. Some critics are of the view that thorough this poem, Emily has tried to present a woman that she was not primarily in the second half of the 19th century whereas other feminist critics holds the view that poem totally negates the feminine qualities and the main metaphor considers â€Å"everything [that]woman is not: cruel not pleasant, hard not soft, emphatic not weak, one who kills not one who nurtures. † (Bennet, 1986) But Emily Dickinson has provided a framework of power i. e. feminine power and established certain pattern on which women power can grow and has shown certain direction where women power can direct itself. It must be kept in mind that all the action verbs in the poem are not destructive or of insidious nature. It expresses powers to hunt speak† smile guard and kill. So this power has paradoxical nature and a balance mix of these powers is necessary as shown and done by Emily Dickinson. Furthermore, Miss Dickinson does show a longing for deadliness but in actuality it is only for safeguarding. Wrath is a part of her being but she does not let it go if not invoked or incited. So her aggression and anger and the consequences as a result of it (killing and deaths) are not unwomanly but are an extension of her very personality. These feelings are not uncommon but are surely unpredictable. In the second half of the poem, she is only providing guard to one who has helped her to get rid of her alienation and had blessed her with intimacy. Here Emily Dickinson seems conventional in her feminist approach that a woman can do everything unwomanly for the one who is her companion in true sense of the word. Christine Miller (1987) says in this regard that â€Å"In the second instance, the speaker prefers guarding the master to having shared his pillow, that is, to having shared intimacy with himprimarily sexual, one would guess from the general structure of the poem. † On the other hand, this poem expresses the agonies of a female poet that was restricted by her family and society to a narrow life devoid of any intellectual and/or literary independence. These social and familial compulsion produced rashness in Emily’s attitude. She was forced to produce art in seclusion and to it keep to herself only. So language becomes her only mean and tool to bear the torments of her intellectual beings. She embodies language as gun and is of the view that this loaded gun accompanied with her literary beings is fatal for socio-cultural compulsion against women. It provided her a sense of power and control. She further eulogizes language and considers it a safeguard to her literary being. And her language is enemy to al those traditions, norms, people and things who are against her poetical endeavors. This poem can further illustrate the conflicts between two classes with their interest. Although this conflict is not materialistic or monetary but it exists in the socio-cultural domain. One class adheres to the conventions and does not allow female members to express their view on any issue especially in the form of poetry whereas other lass are comprised of the intellectual beings who consider it their right to create and disseminate their thoughts and ideas in the literary form. This poem symbolizes the struggle of the latter class and demonstrates that they are more powerful than the convention-ridden society. The poem starts with an individual quest for his/her identity but it changed into a capitalized â€Å"We†. Now the concern of the poetess is no more individualistic and sentimental, rather it has been transformed into something collective, societal and concrete. The identities have been mingled up with each other. Both owner and the â€Å"owned† perform the same masculine activities. They are no more individual but become a part of the larger whole i. e. society. Overall the poem captures a variety of themes through various thematic expressions. Although the conclusion is disturbing but it has relevance to the thematic expressions as it tries to resolve the problem initiated in the first half. Powerlessness or even fear of that is death to the poetess has no other option but â€Å"to die† without powerlessness. Last stanza is not a moralistic commentary but is identification of a wider truth. Bennett, Paula. My Life a Loaded Gun: Dickinson, Plath, Rich, and Female Creativity. Boston: Beacon Press. 1986. Gilbert, Sandra M Gubar, Susan. The madwoman in the attic: the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1979. Miller, Christanne. Emily Dickinson, a poets grammar. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. 1987. Smith, Martha Nell Loeffelholz, Mary. A companion to Emily Dickinson. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pubishers. 2008.

Slavery in Aristotles Works Essay example -- Aristotle Philosophy Sla

Before a serious investigation of any aspect of Aristotle’s political theories is undertaken, we must take a moment to acknowledge that many of the institutions and doctrines he defends have been repudiated in modern political thought. In fact many such institutions are appalling and simply morally wrong. One such institution is slavery. Aristotle argues in the Politics that slavery is just. No argument is needed to conclude that Aristotle made a terrible ethical and moral error in defending slavery. Further we must accept that the argument of the abolition of slavery was available to him as his defense of slavery is in response to critics who claim slavery is unjust. What sparks intriguing debate is questioning why Aristotle defended slavery, and whether there is a flaw in Aristotle’s logic in his defense of slavery, or if it is in fact internally consistent with the rest of his writings on justice and virtue. Some scholars have claimed that Aristo tle’s defense of slavery is a â€Å"battered shipwreck† of an argument. Yet, others maintain that the argument is in fact internally consistent. Any argument in favor of Aristotle’s defense of slavery is not in any way meant to morally support the institution of slavery; only that Aristotle used proper or unflawed logic in that argument. Likewise any argument against Aristotle’s defense is not a moral judgment toward slavery by this author. I am only concerned in how Aristotle builds his argument, and where flaws or contradictions may be located. Consideration of the context of slavery within Greek life of Aristotle’s time is also of importance. Any investigation or commentary on Aristotle’s slavery argument must first begin with the context of slave... ...s two separate, distinct entities. As intimated above, he more likely viewed them as a duality, that is, that they are part of one another. They were also, in the larger sense, part of the life of the household, as the household was part of the polis. However, this duality was strictly one way. It seems clear that he perceived the slave to be part of the master, not the other way around. But again, this was justified by Aristotle’s ultimate virtue, reason. To the extent that the master is seen as imbued with superior intelligence and understanding, it was his duty if not right to provide guidance to those less fortunate by birth. It is perhaps ironic that the justification of the benevolent dictatorship, so prevalent during imperialistic adventures by colonial countries, perhaps found its philosophical roots in the so-called democratic city-states of ancient Greece.

Japanese Hrm Essay

International Journal of Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Journal, Organizational Dynamics and Asian Business and Management. In 2005 he co-edited a book entitled â€Å"Japanese Management: The Search for a New Balance between Continuity and Change† with Palgrave. Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor in International Management at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include international HRM, expatriate management, HQsubsidiary relationships, cross-cultural management and the role of language in international business. She has published about these topics in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Strategic Management Journal, Human Resource Management, and Organization Studies. Her books include Managing the Multinationals (Edward Elgar, 1999) and International Human Resource Management (Sage, 2010). Since 1999 she also maintains an extensive website (www. harzing. com) with resources for international and cross-cultural management as well as academic publishing and bibliometrics. Abstract The objective of this chapter is to develop suggestions as to how Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) might best make use of foreign, here specifically American and German, HRM practices in order to reform their own HRM model. These suggestions are based on a large scale empirical study, encompassing responses from more than 800 HR managers. The learning possibilities for Japanese companies from abroad are analyzed on two different levels: at headqu arters and at subsidiary level. One obvious difficulty we are presented with if we wish to answer the question what Japan can learn from ‘the West’ is the selection of countries that are representative of ‘the West’. In this study we limit our empirical research to the inspirations Japan might receive from the USA and Germany. This selection has some merit, in representing the largest and the third 2 3 largest developed economies in the world (with Japan being the second largest economy), and the economically dominant nations of North America and Europe (with Japan being the leading economy in Asia). In addition, the USA and Germany each embody the prime example of two of the three main varieties of market economies: the USA representing the free market economy of Anglo-Saxon countries and Germany the social market economy of continental Europe (with Japan embodying the third main variety of market economies, the government-induced market economy of East-Asia). Furthermore, according to Smith & Meiksins (1995: 243) the USA, Japan and Germany are most frequently referred to as role models, â€Å"as they provide ‘best practice’ ideals from which other societies can borrow and learn. Consequently, these country models have been subject to numerous comparative analysis (Thurow, 1992; Garten, 1993; Yamamura and Streeck, 2003; Pascha, 2004; Jacoby, 2005). As economic performance and growth paths vary over time the role of a ‘dominant’ economy also rotates among countries. In the 1950s, 1960s and most of the 1970s the American management style clearly was domi nant and a common expectation was that it would spread around the world, gaining application in many foreign countries. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, this argument increasingly was applied to Japan (Mueller, 1994), and to a lesser extent and limited to the European context, to Germany (Albert, 1991; Thurow, 1992). Since the implosion of the Japanese economy, the stagnation of the German economy, and with the advent of globalization, the conventional wisdom over the last one and a half decades up to the current economic crisis has been that the American management model is particularly well suited to provide the necessary flexibility to cope with rapidly evolving economic and technological conditions. Consequently, the USA became again the dominant role model (Edwards et al. , 2005). This study employs a very carefully matched design in which we investigate the same three countries (Japan, the USA and Germany) as home and host countries. We not only study HRM practices at headquarters (HQ) in each of these three countries, but also the practices of the subsidiaries of MNCs from each of the three countries in the two other respective countries. As a result, we re able to compare the HRM practices of nine different groups of companies: HQ in Japan, the USA and Germany, subsidiaries of Japanese and German MNCs in the USA, subsidiaries of Japanese and American MNCs in Germany and subsidiaries of American and German MNCs in Japan. This design will enable us to disentangle the inspirations companies seek from abroad to a far greater extent than has been possible in other studies. 3 4 The structure of our analysis is separated into two main sections. The first main section describes empi rical results from HQ and the second main section depicts the situation at subsidiary level. For each of the two main sections, first the context of existing research is summarized. Subsequently, the methodology of the empirical research is described. Findings are then presented and subsequently discussed. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the Japanese might best make use of foreign HRM policies to reform their own HRM practices and ultimately improve competitiveness. Research context As mentioned above, the Japanese HRM model has often been recognized as a key factor to the rise of the Japanese economy, particularly during the 1980s (see for example Inohara, 1990). However, the same Japanese HRM which until recently has been much celebrated in the West, and presented as a role-model to be learned from (see for example Vogel, 1979; Ouchi, 1981; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Bleicher, 1982; Hilb, 1985), is now increasingly viewed as outmoded, and necessitating substantial reform (Frenkel, 1994; Smith, 1997; Yoshimura and Anderson, 1997; Crawford, 1998; Horiuchi, 1998; Ornatowski, 1998; El Kahal, 2001; Pudelko, 2005, 2007). Others, however, continue to stress its inherent strengths and warn against significant change (Kono and Clegg, 2001; Ballon, 2002; Ballon, 2006). On the other hand, American understanding of HRM has traditionally been viewed by Japanese managers with skepticism. It is regarded as contradicting in many ways the broad concept of ‘respect for people’ (Kono and Clegg, 2001) and the aim of ‘human resource development’ (Ballon, 2002) that is ingrained into the Japanese management philosophy. In particular, the idea of defining the employees of a company as ‘resources’ (instead of members of the company ‘family’) that need to be managed (instead of ‘developed’) runs contrary to the key concepts of traditional Japanese HRM. However, in response to the deep crisis of the Japanese economy and management model, which has lasted for more than a decade now, it is clear that some shift toward Western management principles is taking place 4 5 (Frenkel, 1994; Ornatowski, 1998; El Kahal, 2001; Matanle, 2003). Thus, mirroring the economic growth patterns, adoption of Japanese HRM principles seems in the USA to be largely an issue of the past, whereas the question of adoption of American HRM policies is more current in Japan than ever. The key issue in Japan seems to be to find a new balance between the continuation of traditional (human resource) management principles and changes inspired largely by Western or more specifically American strategies. Regarding finally the specific German understanding of (human resource) management, it has to be concluded that this is a subject of no significant importance in Japanese business research, if it is considered at all (Pudelko, 2000a). Methodology Data collection and sample It may be noted from this brief review that existing literature in this field is in some respects inconclusive or somewhat contradictory. Nor has it generally been informed by empirical examination of HR managers’ own views on cross-national adoption processes. As this group might be expected to constitute the chief change agent, empirical insight appears in this context all the more important. Accordingly, this chapter provides data on the perceptions of HR managers from three different countries on the possibility of learning from each other. In this task, a quantitative approach seemed to be the most appropriate. The analysis is therefore based on empirical data which have been drawn together from an extensive survey (Pudelko, 2000a-c). The heads of HR departments from the 500 largest corporations of Japan – and for comparative reasons – the USA and Germany were selected as units of investigation. It was assumed that the heads of HR departments would have the highest degree of experience, knowledge and vision with regard to the issues being investigated, due to their senior positions within corporate hierarchies.