Saturday, October 12, 2019

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Mississippi Burning :: Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry Essays

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Mississippi Burning Prejudice is just a word until a book or movie puts pictures in your mind. In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Mississippi Burning, there are several scenes that have an impact on me. Both stories tell how badly the black families of Mississippi were treated, and they show how they suffered through it and came out the other end with courage and honor. It also tells how unfair the white men were to the blacks, inside and outside of the courtroom. Prejudice is an ugly subject, and is still taught today. The horrible things that the white man did to the colored man make me realize how ignorance certainly is bliss. In both Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Mississippi Burning, the black people were tortured and tormented for no reason other than that they were black. The black families in the book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry live in constant fear of the nightriders. The nightriders would kill a man for looking at them the wrong way in those days. It is for this reason that the black people tried to have as little to do with the white men as possible. In the book, Papa tries to explain to Stacey why it's not such a good idea to get involved with Jeremy. "We Logans don't have much to do with the white folks. You know why?" Papa says, " `Cause white folks mean trouble" p. 158. In Mississippi Burning, the FBI agent Mr. Anderson tries to explain to his partner how prejudice the white men of Mississippi are. In this movie, the members of the Ku Klux Klan kill black men because they stepped out of line. When trying to explain this to his partner, Mr. Anderson tells him " Down here, things are different; here, they believe that some things are worth killing for." He also tells how thirty years ago, a black man could be hung for stealing a watermelon. After all the bad things that the white man did to the black man, I wouldn't be surprised if they still didn't forgive us. When comparing the book and the movie, I can't help but notice the honor and confidence that the black people possess.

Friday, October 11, 2019

Culture Jamming

Since the 1980s, large corporations released their success lies in generating brands, rather than manufacturing products. Large corporations use global markets to move manufacturing from rich countries to poor countries, where labour is low and there are no regulations. Large corporations use globalization to build their own brands, but failed to release that globalisation can be used to harm the brand. A brand is away of life, an attitude, set of values, and ideas. Corporations use branding as marketing strategy to sell products and services. The Nike brand is one of the most successful brands in the world, and it depicts the power of large corporations. Some of the practices done by Nike encouraged people to launch anti-Nike campaign: working condition, using child labour, and moving manufacturing to low wage countries. Culture jamming is the practice of using the media to alter the meaning of one message into another. The aim of culture jamming is to uncover the deeper truth behind the techniques that are used by corporations to dominate people’s way of life. Many jammers believe that corporations’ dominance of the media has devalued the right to free speech. Rodriguse de Gerada argues that the ability of corporations to dominate the media has allowed corporations to occupy all public spaces and spread their messages. De Gerada argues that culture jamming is the only way people can use to counter these messages. Culture jamming techniques and practices can be understood within three aspects: semiotic terrorism; branding; and recuperation. Semiotic terrorism refers to individual culture jamming such as pictures on billboards. Branding refers to the ability to attack a brand in order to undermine corporations’ influence in the public sphere. Recuperation is the ability of corporations to utilize culture jamming practices for their benefits. From the mid 1980s, a war â€Å"brand war† emerged between large corporations and culture jammers. Large corporations see brands as key to their success; in contrast, culture jammers see brands as a symbol of subjection. Naomi Klein described the brand war as a war about the loss of public space, corporate censorship, and unethical labour practices. One of the best examples that depicts the brand war is the anti Nike campaign, that has been running since the 1990s. Activists campaigned against different issues such as using child labour, work conditions in overseas factories, investment in inner cities, and low wages. At the beginning of the campaign, activists started to demonstrate outside shops that sell Nike’s products in the USA. The campaign succeeded in persuading local and international media to send correspondents to investigate the issues raised. In 1997, some activists released that the only way to undermine Nike’s influence is by attacking the source of Nike’s brand power. They found that Nike’s image is made in inner cities and intertwined with black American heroes such as Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Tiger Woods. The activists decided to engage black American and Latino; who live in inner cities, and made connection between what happens in overseas factories and conditions at home. Also, activists started to convince kids that Nike’s products are not worth buying, and Nike causes poverty in inner cities. As a result of the campaign, in 1998 Nike was forced to withdraw its offer to build swoosh gymnasium in Ottawa city: after the issues of child lab our was raised. In the same year, Nike accepted to improve working conditions in Indonesian factories, allow independent monitors to visit overseas factories, and not to hire children. In September 1998, the San Francisco human right group global demanded Nike to increase the wages of Indonesian workers. After three weeks, Nike increased the wages by twenty five percent. However, some argue that the increase is due to the devalue of local currency. In addition to that, the campaign succeeded in forcing Nike to allow health and safety monitors to inspect working condition in Vietnamese factories. However, there is a limit to what culture hammers can achieve. In 2000, a series of billboard advertisement appeared in Australia for a new football boot made by Nike. What Nike did is to cut the work of culture hammers by jamming it’s own advert through the use of slogans that read â€Å"I am not/A target market/ I am an athlete†. In the same year, Nike launched anti Nike web site. Kate Coyer argues that the jamming of adverts by Nike shows there is no anti commercial gesture which cannot be commercialized. Also, Coyer argues that advertising agencies see anti corporate activities no more than a street trend, and there always be an ad that will persuade even sincere consumers. According to Tim Jordan, protesting against working conditions and the use of child labour in overseas factories have limited effect on corporations: corporations like Nike have the ability to uitilise culture jamming techniques, which undermine the work of culture jammers. There is no arena of life that corporations do not touch, therefore, culture jamming should be abandoned. Corporations may be the real author of culture jamming work. Therefore, Jordan argues activists should protest against bombarding people with imageries, instead of raising emotional feelings. Despite the limitation of culture jamming, the anti Nike campaign has shown that activists can force corporations to re-consider some of their practices. For example, the anti Nike campaign has succeeded in highlighting some issues and forced Nike to consider its practices. First issue, the use of child labour has damaged the reputation of Nike. As a result, some schools in the USA refused to accept donations from Nike. Second issue, the working conditions and low wages in overseas factories. The persistent campaign has forced Nike to improve working condition, increase wages, allow independent monitors, and appoint vice president for corporate responsibilities. The campaign has generated bad publicity for Nike; as a result, Nike lost some of its supporters in inner cities. In addition to that, Nike’s competitors like Reebok used the scandal to gain some of Nike’s market share. The success of the anti Nike campaign in highlighting some issues; clearly, cannot be used to study the impact of the brand war on Nike’s power. Naomi Klein argues that culture jamming will not change people’s behavior: public space is safe for commercial advertising and commercial messages are unable to awake us. In addition to that, most of the literature did not address how many people are welling to adopt culture jamming argument, if they are offered alternative. In brief, culture jamming techniques do have an impact upon corporations such as reputation, but it is difficult to measure the impact on other areas.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

How are decisions in real world organizations actually made? Essay

There are various decision making models in the real world. These decisions are made in different situations which can be stressful or normal business situations. Those who take decisions in an organization are individuals. There are various factors in any organization or group of people that have impact on their development and growths. One of such factors is conflict. This paper discusses various aspects of conflict management and negotiation at workplace. Conflict can be dues to various factors. These factors can be individual factors like attitude, perception, cultural and gender differences and it can be organizational factors like inappropriate allocation of resources, management styles, leadership and type of communication. Figure 2 Decision making processes Bounded Rationality There are various reasons to bounded rationality. These are as follows: common Biases and Errors, anchoring Bias, overconfidence bias, confirmation bias, availability bias, representative bias, escalation of commitment error, randomness error and hindsight bias. Intuition: Intuition can be defined as â€Å"Unconscious decision making process based on experience of the same job or industry. † Individual Differences: Individual differences contribute to individual decision making styles. Organization Constraints: There are various kinds of organizational constraints which are influenced by perception of an individual or group. These are as follows: Performance Evaluation Reward Systems System-imposed Time Constraints Historical Precedents Formal Regulation Cultural Differences This plays very important roles in multi-location or multinational environment. Every place on the earth has some kind of variety and difference attached to it. These differences grow stronger with the distances. These differences can be in appearance, social structure or behavior of an individual. This also contributes to decision making process. How can our perceptions shape ethical or moral decisions? Perceptions shape our ethical and moral decisions. An individual who perceives that dealing unfair with someone is unethical and not right thing to do will take decision in such a way that it benefits its employee. On the other hand a person with self centric approach will think about himself first and will justify it by saying himself a professional. Social capital in an economic sector is determined by the quality and frequency of the relationships between its members, which, some evidence indicates, can vary from region to region according to the socio-cultural evolution of each location. The quality of the relationships, in turn, is affected by the perception of the individuals about their capacity to establish good working relationships with others and perform adequately. Reference: Holloway, R. E. (1977) Perceptions of an innovation: Syracuse University Project Advance. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Syracuse University. Hutcheson, P. , Pearson, A. W. and Ball, D. F. (1996) Sources of technical innovation in the network of companies providing chemical process plant and equipment. Research Policy 25, No. 1, 25-41. Julie Gatlin, Allen Wysocki, and Karl Kepner2, Understanding Conflict in the Workplace1 retrieved on 21 June 2007 from http://edis. ifas. ufl. edu/HR024 Robbins, Stephen P, 2005 Organizational Behavior, Eleventh Edition, Prentice-Hall

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Analysing The Queens Received Pronunciation English Language Essay

Analysing The Queens Received Pronunciation English Language Essay The purpose of this project is to identify if the Queen speaks with the same polished Received Pronunciation (RP) accent today as she did 50 years ago and whether there have been any generational variations to the RP spoken within the Royal Family. Firstly this project will introduce the subject of sociolinguistics with a focus on the differences between accents and dialects and the history and rules pertaining to RP. Secondly, current opinions and attitudes will be discussed along with recent research that has been carried out examining the decline of RP. Lastly it will analyse findings from my own comparisons of three Royal Family dialogues. Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society, and how society influences or affects the way in which language is used by individuals or groups (Crystal, 2008). When a person talks it is easy to recognise regional differences in their speech as everyone has an accent or dialect and this can often lead to assump tions about their background, education and even their place in society. It is important to understand the difference between an accent and a dialect as they are two very different aspects of speech. An accent refers to the differences in pronunciation only (Crystal, 2008), for example, a speaker with a southern accent would pronounce /a/ using long vowel /a:/ whereas a speaker with a northern accent would pronounce /a/ with a short vowel /à ¦/: Long vowel, Southern Short vowel, Northern Bath /bÉ‘:ÃŽÂ ¸/ /bà ¦ÃƒÅ½Ã‚ ¸/ Grass /gra:s/ /grà ¦s/ Demand /di:ma:nd/ /di:mà ¦nd/ A dialect however refers to the features of pronunciation along with grammar and vocabulary such as sentence structure and use of verbs. For example: Standard English Regional Dialect She is a good girl She’s a canny lass (Geordie/Newcastle) How are you? Ow bist old butt? (Forest of Dean) He is frightened He’s feeling frit (Lincolnshire) I’ll visit in the Autumn I’ll visi t in the fall (American English) An accent and a dialect can both give an indication as to the speaker’s geographical origin (Crystal, 2008). Due the growing variety of accents and dialects in the UK, a ‘Standard English’ (SE) has emerged that is taught in schools and used in print and broadcasting. It is also the standard taught to speakers of foreign languages. The phrase Received Pronunciation was initially coined in 1869 by the linguist A J Ellis but the phonetician, Daniel Jones, was the first person to adopt it to describe the accent of the social elite (British Library). Received Pronunciation (RP) is an accent that is associated with being typically British and is also known as ‘The Queens English’ or ‘BBC English’ as it is seen as a prestige accent (Graddol, Leith & Swann, 1996). No specific authority gave the accent its special status but as RP is spoken mainly in the south east it is generally associated with that area but it is found all over the country. It is a non specific accent as it gives no indication of a speaker’s geographical origin however it does reveal information about their social and educational background.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Fake Brands Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Fake Brands - Case Study Example As promulgated in different copyright laws in various countries, intellectual property rights ought to be observed. In terms of the right to produce and distribute certain products, only firms with patents have the right to do so (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010). Essentially, the aim of each business is to make profits and the interests of different businesses can only be protected by different copyright and intellectual property laws that are designed to protect the interests of individual companies. These laws help to prevent other unscrupulous people from reaping profits where they did not sow in the first place. The sale of counterfeit products is regarded as a form of high degree fraud and also classified as a serious offence. Luxury brands are in most cases the victims of counterfeit trade mainly as a result of the fact that they have premium prices that are beyond the reach of many people. In most cases, counterfeit trade is intentional but it has spiral impacts on the original producers of goods that are imitated. The companies will end up failing to realise their envisaged profits as a result of the fact that the consumers will prefer to buy affordable copycats at the expense of the producers of original brands. On the other hand, unsuspecting consumers can also be defrauded since they are hoodwinked into believing that they are buying original brands only to realise that they are fake when they have been delivered. Counterfeit trade is a problem of serious concern across the whole globe. According to The Gurdian (28 April, 2014), â€Å"A specialist police unit has shut down more than 2,500 websites selling counterfeit goods believed to be worth tens of millions of pounds.† This shows the extent to which this problem is a serious cause of concern in different parts of the globe. Trade of counterfeit goods is a bad product though some people may justify it

Monday, October 7, 2019

Employment-At-Will Doctrine Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Employment-At-Will Doctrine - Research Paper Example Legally, an organization has the right to terminate the services of an employer if he or she proves incompetent. A manger or an employer has a fundamental role of solving performance issues in the organization. In essence, the best way to handle an employee’s productivity or performance is through creating a performance evaluation system. This system cultivates a culture where collaboration and communication will assist in addressing such problems. In the first case of Jenifer, since she is a new recruit to the company, I will ensure that she receives more training on computer packages even though she has had training already (DelPo & Guerin, 2011). In addition, as a manager, my responsibilities include ensuring that all employees fully gratify their job descriptions. In this regard, I would institute a probation period for Jenifer, during which her skills, abilities and competence would be evaluated and monitored to fit to the company’s employment environment (DelPo & Guerin, 2011). The results of the analysis during the probation period would mark the conclusion of the work contract or the termination of the employment contract. Since all the employees in an organization were employed through a competitive process of recruitment, they all were hired according to their skills and abilities. Needless to say, all the employees submitted documents which were too used in the process of recruitment. As a manager, I would also go back to assess the documents submitted recorded during the interview of not only Jenifer but also all the employees. After reviewing the information, I would notify all the employees of a periodical evaluation. This would offer a platform where the employees can express their worries or proposals to enhance the working environment. In addition, this will provide the company with an opportunity to document and evaluate worker’s performance. As an accounting manager, my role entails ensuring that the firm offers outstandi ng services to the clients above all when it is about their tax and finance preparations. If after the evaluations Jenifer will not have improved, then I will express my worries regarding her lack of ability to carry out simple computer tasks (DelPo & Guerin, 2011). In the second case, Jenifer seems to do whatever she feels and does not care about anyone else in the organization or whatever they feel. In addition, she seems to express her threat on termination of her employment contract. Jenifer’s behavior is unacceptable and sustaining such a behavior in the organization may be a virus to the company. Her attitude may not only kill the morale of her immediate team but also the employees around her. This will kill the morale of the employees and result in low worker productivity and performance. In reference to Perry (1997), motivation is an internal driver in the organization whose direction is directed by behavior. As a manager, I would set up measures that addresses and de als with her behavior once it happens. I would not wait to an hour or a day later or arrange a meeting to discuss that matter. Chances are, this will just worsen the situation. Jenifer acts in such a manner because she feels that she is being criticized and insulted. Giving her time to brood about the argument will only offer her adequate time to give good reasons for her attitude before I can have the

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Confinement Assignment Personal Statement Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Confinement Assignment - Personal Statement Example Since the deadline was fast approaching, I thought I should be brave enough to plunge into this adventure. And finally on 2nd of April, I combated my reluctance and fear. Since my family members were sick and tired of hearing my plans to start this project, they were relieved that finally I am doing it. My ten hours of confinement seemed a huge relief for them especially after they had to face the wrath of my desperation in the last couple of days. I began this project at 10 in the morning after my breakfast. I strongly felt the urge to have a quick shower, but stopped myself thinking that it would not be a good beginning to cheat in the first step itself. I switched off my cell and left it out of my room and strictly instructed others to not disturb me until half past two, when I will be out for lunch. I took lots of books and magazines to read. To be precise there were 12 of them. The number of magazines was more than books because I hardly get any time to read them. In fact, the only positive outcome that I could think of before this project began was that I would get plenty of magazines to read leisurely. Keeping this leisure in mind I had even bought latest editions of a couple of new magazines. The lure of reading them was the single most reason that was pushing me towards this project. Since I was not supposed to take a shower I changed into a very light and comfortable piece of clothe and applied a generous amount of deo spray to keep me as fresh as possible. I also spoke to my friends and informed them about my adventurous project so that they do not call me during the project time frame. I told them that I would inform them about my unique experience once the project is over. I feared that I would start feeling hungry before half past two. Hence I ate more than what I normally eat for breakfast. Needless to say I was feeling very heavy and sleepy when I entered my (confinement) room. How did I feel before the project I had initial inhibitions about this project. I felt that only a very strong person would be able to abide by all the instructions that have been given. We have taken different types of media for granted. The thought of spending time without these modern day habits was worrying me. On a lighter note, I have a habit of drinking lots of water so just going thrice to the bathroom within 10 hours was not looking a convincing idea at all. How did I feel after the project To be honest I was relieved that the project was over. I was also happy that I did a good amount of quality reading. I was longing for this kind of reading since a very long time. I think I have never concentrated on reading as much as I was able to concentrate during this project. I learnt a lesson of discipline. I learnt that if one controls oneself and tries to abide by a routine then a lot could be achieved in lesser time. I have a habit of switching on the TV or talking on the cell phone whenever I get bored. I have become so accustomed to these gadgets that the feeling of boredom strikes too frequently. Now, I think I would be able to get rid of this overindulgence of mine pretty fast. Without this experience I would not have realized how much precious time I am wasting. After this project I feel that I have become a wiser person. I have also