An examination of the importance of going onto higher education and the impact that has on employability?

I am going to explore to what extent does attending university (higher education) have an impact on the graduate's employability. There are three sub research questions I will be focusing on. Firstly, I will be analysing the benefits and problems there are of going onto university in the hope of increasing employability. In order, to do this I will be identifying the relevant corpus of academic and policy related literature and documentation concerning university and employability. The reason for this is that it is vital to realise that it's still important to assess existing knowledge that's associated with education and compare it with my research. Secondly, I will be focusing on to what extent has investing in a degree and other financial costs such as accommodation for example with going onto university has achieved the desired outcome for degree graduates. To find out this information, I will be looking at degree graduates, and how they believe their employability has affected their employability. Finally, I will be looking at how 18 years not going onto HE, to what extent has that helped their desired outcome. I am now going to briefly explain the structure of my report. I will now provide a critical literature review analysing policy documents and academic literature and review what others have done. This will show how my research fits in with what others have done about my subject. This is my first research objective as I've mentioned earlier. I will then explain my research project and methodology used to gather and analyse data. After, I have decided my methodological approach; I will then report my research results. I will undertake a critical analysis of public perceptions and carry out a small study, and provide evidence in my appendix to verify my research results. I will then discuss my findings in a critical manner and relate my results back to the literature material. In my ethical form under proposed methodology, I mentioned that I would find out information by not only questionnaires and face-to-face interviews, but also surveys. I have decided not to do surveys and face-to-face interviews the reason being is that it is very difficult to access surveys associated to my area of study. Moreover, the time and money spent on getting this information would hinder time being spent on my study. Therefore, as a result I have decided to exclude the use of surveys in my research. I am not doing face-to-face interviews because of the availability of time for other students to be available to answer questions. In order, to resolve this problem I am going to add open-ended questions in my questionnaire to get insight. Progressing onto university (higher education) can greatly enhance wherever you want to go in the future. The reason for this is, that it illustrates to employers the ability to acquire information in a specialised subject. (Directgov. 2005. ‘ The benefits of higher education' [online] Available from http://www. direct. gov. uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/index. htm [Accessed 3 Jan 2007]) Therefore, this stands to reason graduates coming out of university and entering employment will have higher earning potential to those who don't go on to higher education. However, in a report in the telegraph it stated that a third of university graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree in 2004-05. This brings out the question; does it really enhance career prospects? In the same article, Boris Johnson says about a degree. ‘It is a wonderful thing to have irrespective of the kind of job you are doing. ‘ I am very critical of this statement because the main reason of going into higher education is to enhance your career. What is the point of attaining a degree, if it doesn't? (Smith. H {25th July 2006} ‘Third of graduates in non-graduate jobs' Telegraph [online] Available from http://www. telegraph. co. uk/news/main. jhtml? xml=/news/2006/07/23/nuni. xml Accessed 17th December 2006]) Is it right from degree graduates to find difficulty in finding graduate jobs and fall into ‘non-graduate jobs'? In which they could of entered prior going to university and without the associated financial costs? I aim to find out the value of a degree in the economic market and whether it is actually worth it considering the New Labour's target of 50% for 18-25 year olds to enter HE. The more graduates flooding the market, the less graduate jobs would be available? There are contrasting views of going into higher education. The article written by Directgov provides a biased view of higher education, in my opinion. The reason being is that Directgov is a site produced by the Central office of Information, associated with the government. As a result, it will would emphasis the benefits of the HE, and they would do this to reach their target of 50%. In contrast, to the telegraph newspaper, there could be a tendency to over exaggerate words and statistics, in order to engage the ready and boost sales. I have chosen this topic of research as education as it affects not only me but also people around me. I am investing my time and money in a degree in the hope of attaining a qualification, which will enhance my career prospects, but in the current climate, it may not. Therefore, which is the best route for a successful career (a graduate/non-graduate) and does it matter? I will explore and come up with conclusions to these questions later on in my report, by collecting and analysing information. I will be gathering both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data is data in which can be categorised and have a numerical relationship. Whereas, qualitative data the information can't be categorised numerically, the data type is unstructured and may involve long sentences. (Becker S and Bryman A. 2004. ‘Understanding research for social policy and practise' pp 403-4) Quantitative research illustrates indicators to act as a measure that can stand for a point. Therefore, it can show relationships between variables (independent and dependent. ) For example, if the taxes are increased these would mean that there would be more financial muscle for public services. The questionnaires that the people fill in will help provide this type of information and to show correlations between variables. In contrast, to qualitative data where the main aim is to understand people's beliefs, values and behaviour. The qualitative data I will gain from face to face interviews will help me to explain the quantitative data. (Becker S and Bryman A. 2004. ‘Understanding research for social policy and practise' pp 92-7) I am going to ask ten people who are graduates and that are a non-graduate on their views on higher education. This will aid me into find finding some conclusions on this issue. There is a different questionnaire for graduates and non-graduates . The questionnaires are available in the appendix. Prior to giving out my questionnaires I had to pre test these questions to check that they are as clear as possible. I did this by asking the general public on their views and amending any necessary faults in the questions. I have to reassure the sample of respondents that I will not disclose any personal details and that the research details will remain confidential. In my questionnaire, I didn't ask for their name, as I see that it is of no relevant to the study. I am now going to discuss the results I have discovered in my research. In the first section of the questionnaire, I have included a question about the respondent's ethnicity. In my opinion, this is a question worth asking, because of evidence being illustrated that there is a trend. Gary Craig, professor of Social Justice in 2002, interviewed 16-18 year olds about their experiences of not being in education. ‘ Of the 64 young people interviewed, 41 were of African- Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin. Craig G and Britton L. 2002. ‘Missing connexions'? Bristol/York: The policy press 4 (2) p. 39-41) This is backed up by my research as, only 10% of the university graduates I interviewed were black. Despite, the figures the research done by Gary Craig, can't be completely related to my research as he interviewed the 16-18 year old category. Despite, Gary Craig focusing on a different age category to me (18 and onwards), the issue of the high number of African Caribbean not going onto HE, in comparison to other ethnic groups, stems from an early age. An article in the Times shows that only 27% of African- Caribbean achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C. (Baldwin T. {13 March 2005} ‘ It's not race that keeps black boys back' The Times [online] also available from http://www. timesonline. co. uk/tol/comment/article426390. ece [Accessed 2nd January 2008]) In the same article it is mentioned that Trevor Phillips the chairman of the commission for racial equality. He did an experiment and found that black boys performed 12% better from all different races. This has sure to raises eyebrows with comprehensive secondary schools. In 1956, labour politician Anthony Crosland, introduced the idea that the pupils in secondary schools be streamed into separate classes according to their academic ability. ‘ In my opinion, with the influence of Trevor Phillips's findings, I think we should question the way the pupil are ‘streamed. ‘ (Alcock P. 2003 ‘ Social Policy in Britain,' Second edition pp. 44-5) The reasons why graduates decided to go to university were to increase their chances of employability, higher earning potential and enhance personal development, as I expected. Whereas, the non-graduates suggested that they didn't have the discipline and motivation to stay in education any further. They also felt that they weren't getting anything out of the years they had stayed in education before they left. In 2006, a study from the department for education and skills (DfES) found that the earnings between graduates and being educated at A Level is 45%. (Prospects Career Service Desk. ‘ How do graduates and non-graduates salaries compare? ‘ Available at http://www. prospects. ac. k/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Main_menu___Research/Labour_market_information/Labour_market_FAQs/How_do_graduate_and_non_graduate_salaries_compare_/p! elkFpLg;jsessionid=a630e2bd2c3b6b3225f1 [Accessed 2nd January]) The public perception of the benefits of going onto HE still remains and is clearly shown in my research. In the second question, I asked the respondent's to answer on a scale of 1-10 to answer how had a university degree helped their career. The mean answer yie lded a value of 8. 7, in comparison to the non-graduates with a value of 4. 5. This shows that the public are aware of the benefits and importance of HE. The reasons included that the graduates felt they took their education as far as they can, to enable them with to have the best opportunities as possible. One candidate actually mentioned Labour's government target of 50% of 18-25 year olds going into HE, which meant the value of a degree, is still invaluable. In contrast, to the non-graduates they stated that since they didn't follow through with education, they were left with limited opportunities that have affected their career. 60% of the candidates mentioned that they were always going to be second best to those who gone into HE. Despite, all the benefits of going into HE, in the current climate it is difficult to find jobs for graduates. In the article, in the telegraph it mentioned that over a third of graduates were in jobs in which they couldn't see the benefits of being a graduate in the first place. (Smith. H {25th July 2006} ‘Third of graduates in non-graduate jobs' Telegraph [online] Available from http://www. telegraph. co. uk/news/main. jhtml? xml=/news/2006/07/23/nuni. xml [Accessed 17th December 2006]). My research illustrates this point as only 40% of the graduates felt that they have been helped with investing in HE. The remaining felt that their university degree hasn't helped them as yet, but will do in the long run. The graduates have faith with the opportunities of HE, despite being in a current role, in which they couldn't see the benefits of HE. 95% of the total respondents would recommend an 18 year old to enter HE. The graduates felt that it is essential for personal development, two candidates mentioned ‘ to find yourself. ‘ Going onto university does have many benefits, like expanding you social scene, broadening horizons and learning more about the world we live in. These benefits help graduates in choosing the right and suitable path they want to go in terms of a job, because of the job prospects. In my opinion and my research shows this is that HE is important in the economic market. The literature documents I have used, doesn't mention the class of students who got 1st, 2. 1 etc. This could explain why graduates were in ‘ non-graduate' jobs. The research they have provided could have been more extensively. As we all know, the majority of university students are not going to get 1st class degree, as a result, they may not get their desire job. The job market has become such a competitive, as more and more students are going into HE. Therefore, it is becoming increasing likely that graduate jobs are going to be offered to those who have graduated with a 1st class from a top university. This raises the issue, why is the government raising the tuition fees and still wants people to go into HE? Is it right for someone who is attending university with the exception of Oxford pay the same fees? These are issues, which still need to be considered, because of university league tables. The university league tables have enabled employers to judge how well universities are doing. Therefore, is it right that the university which is last in the table be paying the same fees as the university at the top, whilst the job opportunities would be reduced? This area is very broad and brings about different questions, which still need to be looked. When New Labour took over they said their priorities is ‘education education education. ‘ Blair was quoted, as saying he wants to still ‘technocratic values,' in which he wants the country to be as educated as possible, which in turn would have a positive effect on the economy. To what extent does attending university have an effect on the graduate's employability? From my research, I have gathered that HE does help you in terms of employability, to what extent? It depends on the individual, if they are attending at a good university and enter the job market with a good class degree. There is no reason that the HE, can increase employability and the individual's career. The full extensive benefits of HE can be seen, if the individual makes use of this education to the best of their ability. It all depends on the individual.

Coping with Methuselah

In the reading selection â€Å"Coping with Methuselah†, the authors Aaron and Schwartz work well together to convey their ideas using all three principles of argument to their readers. Aaron and Schwartz literally begin with the principle of ethos in their passage titled â€Å"About the Authors† which states their professional accomplishments (articles they have written, major universities they are associated with) individually and together. Immediately this reader is convinced that their knowledge base is extensive and they are a reducible source.Eifel it was especially convincing for these two colleagues to voice the same arguments to its audience together. There is more authority when two professionals with such expertise are voicing the same concerns. They also use the principle of pathos (probably the most) throughout the reading selection. Some examples are the title alone. â€Å"Coping with Methuselah† immediately takes the reader straight to religion whic h can bring to the table a large array of emotions.Another example is Aaron and Schwartz asking the reader open ended questions such as â€Å"Is the age of Methuselah at hand? And if so What does this mean for public policy in the U. S. Or the world? † This allows the reader to feel in control of their own thoughts but these questions are rhetorical. They are followed by information that transform your thoughts. The biggest emotional play here was their questions to the audience about if a patient refuses the extension of their wan life (has a choice).Would this be considered a form of suicide? Wow! Lastly, the authors use the principle of logos throughout the reading selection also. Aside from emotions, a great deal of the audience wants logical justifications as well. They give many ideas to how this will change the costs of Social Security, Medicare, etc. They suggest to the reader that money, stability and global demographics will be negatively affected.

Procter and Gamble

Environmental Factors that affect Global and Domestic Marketing Decisions:- Every company global or domestic has external factors that exist that eventually have an effect on the company’s operations. Some of these external factors can be controlled but a larger portion is uncontrollable and yet they can be managed and or influenced by the company. These specific factors make up the marketing environment in which a company has environmental factors that influence the company’s decisions.In this paper, the author will explore the domestic and global environmental factors that could have an impact on FedEx’s marketing decision. The five environmental factors that the author will be discussing are social, economical, technological, competitive, and regulatory. Political Influence and Litigation from Responsible Shopper: â€Å"Procter & Gamble donated more than $80,000 to the Coalition Again$t the Costly Labeling Law, a group of companies that worked against Oregonà ¢â‚¬â„¢s Measure 27, which would have required the labeling of GMO products sold in that state.The Coalition was successful in defeating the measure. † from Greenpeace: â€Å"Procter & Gamble was among the corporations criticized by Greenpeace for working to weaken European laws governing harmful chemicals in household products. The EU's 2003 draft legislation would have imposed strict safety standards, requiring companies such as P to disclose and reduce the use of harmful ingredients in its consumer products.Greenpeace states that as a result of industry intimidation and intense lobbying, safety regulations were significantly watered down, putting citizens at greater risk of exposure to toxic chemicals from everyday products. † Guided by our Purpose, Values and Principles, P&G participates in the political process to help shape public policy and legislation that helps us touch more lives, in more parts of the world, more completely. This engagement ensures that the in terests of our employees, consumers and shareholders are fairly represented at all levels of government around the world.We are committed to being transparent about our political involvement globally. Technology Technology has created a major impact on the way in which all organizations market their products and services. With the development of the internet, companies are now able to economically market themselves on a global level. Even smaller companies that were once not able to capture international business due to the cost factor can now do just that. The Washington Plaza Hotel is no exception.The hotel industry in DC relies heavily on tourism as a major part of its client base. Many of these tourists who visit the city are of foreign nationality. It is important that the Washington Plaza Hotel targets these people when marketing the company. Not only do they target the tourist but they also target the international business travelers that come to the city on business related trips. The hotel's website, which gives detailed information about the hotel's accommodations and services, can be accessed by potential customers all over the world.In addition, the Air freshener – Febreze Deodorant – Old Spice, Secret Baby & child – Clearblue Easy, Dreft, Luvs, Pampers, UnderJams Batteries – Duracell Soap – Camay, Ivory, Noxzema, Olay, Safeguard, Zest Cosmetics – CoverGirl, Max Factor Dish washing – Cascade, Dawn, Joy Feminine – Always, Tampax Hair – Aussie, Frederic Fekkai, Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Infusium 23, Pantene, Clairol Health – Align, Braun, Fibersure, Metamucil, Pepto-Bismol, Prilosec OTC, PUR water filtration, Vicks Household cleaning – Mr.Clean, Swiffer Laundry – Bounce sheets, Cheer, Downy, Era, Gain, Tide Oral – Crest, Fixodent, Gleem, Glide, Scope Paper – Bounty, Charmin toilet tissue, Puffs Pet food – Eukanuba, Iams Fragrances  œ Anna Sui, Baldessarini, Hugo Boss, Christina Aguilera, Escada, Giorgio Beverly Hills, Jean Patou, Lacoste, Mexx, Puma, Replay, Rochas, Tom Tailor Shaving – Braun, Gillette, SatinCare, Venus Pringles potato chips[1] [pic][pic][pic]

Concept Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Concept Analysis - Essay Example This essay will discuss how technology might account for the increase in the perceived stress. Stress is considered as a situation where an individual is allocated with responsibilities accompanied by pressure which exceeds the control of the person as Sorenson (2007, p. 10) puts it. Technology is a development that has emerged and keeps advancing rapidly. Technology use was limited to large corporations and the wealthy a few decades ago. In the present day technology has become personalized and is used by the corporations as well as individuals. Technology has been adapted at work, schools and in homes. According to Walz (2012, p. 4) technostress is the name given to adverse effects caused by the use of technology on individuals. One of the major effects is information overload. Students using information system technology experience overload because they acquire a lot of information within a limited time. These causes allot of brain tension together with anxiety. Tarafdar et al (2011, p. 113) add that, the student experience invasion consequences. Technology provides connectivity between people through email, text messages, chats and mobile phones. Students feel the constant need to be connected at all times so that they can be reached any time. Time for study can be easily transformed into a chat or connection which may not be academic. The student is aware of different events happening and can react by commenting and replying. Continuous links on the technology stimulates the experience of private time or space being infringed. The result is stress and annoyance. Technology is complex and requires commitment. Students are obliged to learn how to use applications designed for the information system technology. Besides creating time to learn the new applications, students should make an effort to learn every emerging technology and its application to remain updated. The applications

Treasury and Risk Management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Treasury and Risk Management - Assignment Example This form of funds can be termed as being subsidiary and the other fact remains that, multinational corporations are the major investments that are often affected by such foreign exchange risks and economic implications. Multinational corporations are firms that operate in more than one country. It is an enterprise that operates globally with several branches in different countries. The control of the activities and operations of these firms is done at the home country with subsidiary managers given fewer powers to make important decisions. Managers in Multinational Corporations get accessed to global knowledge and skills through training that are important for them in the process of carrying out their global duties. They are well trained in order to compete well in the global environment. These firms lead to transfer of knowledge and technology in several countries in the world especially a case where labour is recruited from the global environment (ENGEL, 2011). A floating exchange rate refers to the countrys exchange rate system whereby its nature of currency is largely set by foreign-exchange institutions through demand and for that specific currency being more comparative to others. Thus, such kinds of exchange rates often transforms freely with the main determinants being the aspect of FOREX trading (BARTH & WONG, 1994).   There is often an overall claim regarding the aspect of floating exchange rates being more preferable to  the fixed exchange rates. This is based on the fact that, floating exchange rates normally makes some automatic adjustments, hence enabling a given country or nation to dampen the effects of   foreign  business cycles and shocks, and the aspect of pre-empting the greater possibility of resulting into a  crisis regarding balance of payments (KLEIN & SHAMBAUGH, 2010).  On the other hand they work towards engendering unpredictability due to their dynamism. The main argument for such a

A summary of the statutory framework within which all recruitment and Assignment

A summary of the statutory framework within which all recruitment and selection at A G - Assignment Example Of course, a number of techniques and instruments will reveal this information about the applicant. The managerial candidate can only tolerate a reasonable amount of intervieweing, testing and disclosure of personal information. Perhaps it is the duty of the managers to exercise prudence and request only information that is essential and relevant to the job. By contrast, where skills are relatively scarce, where recruitment is costly or where it takes several weeks to fill a vacancy, turnover is likely to be problematic from a management point of view. This is especially true of situations in which you are losing staff to direct competitors or where customers have developed relationships with individual employees as is the case in many professional services organisations An organizational structure is composed of various positions designed to accomplish systems, goals, and objectives. Variety of managerial activities is essential to keep those positions staffed with personnel who have the knowledge, the skills, and he motivation to perform the roles effectively. It is becoming clear that considerable confusion emerges in an organization when the activities are performed independently. (Robbins, 2004) What is needed is an integrated system to deal with the total array of personnel activities. These include human resources planning, recruitment, selecting, induction, training and development, the intent of which is to attract in the organization personnel conceptualized in the design of the various positions filled. Organisations are the grand strategies created to bring order out of chaos when people work together. Organizations provide the skeletal structure that helps create predictable relationships among people, technology, jobs and resources. Wherever people join in a common effort, organization must be used to get productive results. Another difficulty in the recruitment and selection process concerns selection and hiring because time and cost are involved in making decisions. It is important to identify the factors that goes with the approach such as advertising expenses, agency fees, cost of testing materials, time spent for preparing test materials, time spent in interviewing applicants, cost for reference follow-up, medical examination, start-up time required for the newly hired candidate to get acquainted with the job, relocation, and orientation about policies of the organization. - A flow chart indicating the steps to be taken and the documents that should be produced, from initial discussions about the vacancy, through to finalisation of the appointment - Copy and layout for a newspaper or web

The Department of Defense Better Buying Power Essay

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Tesla Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Tesla Analysis - Essay Example Tesla continues to decrease limitations and make them better with each new model as envisaged in the Tesla Model S. There has been low allocation of research and development funds by established automobile companies to electric vehicles allowing Tesla a competitive advantage and the success in the market (Hartung, Par. 14). Tesla has the iconic CEO and founder Elon Musk to thank for access to best engineers and access funds easily beating the established brands on this front especially access to talent. Tesla chose a market demographic consisting of wealthy, environmentally conscious, and educated people providing it with reputational advantage over established companies like Ford. The demographic also offers Tesla access to high margins on each car sale owing to the ability of the market segment to pay for high-performance car that sacrifices very little to efficiency. Innovation also allowed Tesla to overcome the above barriers in the market including the introduction of direct sales to the consumers cutting expenses on dealers and the need to have networks. The other benefit of innovation is that the company was in a position to produce high performing electric car and with innovation it is currently continuing the provision of charging stations to meet client needs and concerns as well as develop the electric market

Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Research - Essay Example Therefore the count of blue shirts sold against other colors would be annualized and average taken with the same equation for all other variables.. Median divides the sets of data in half and places half above the median and half below the median while mode pertains to the score that occurs more frequently in a set of data. In each case an entire set of data can be summarized with a single value. There are also three main formulas for the measure of variability and they are Range, Variance and Standard Deviation. Through these measures we can tell how much the data in each set varies. Range measures the distance between the highest and lowest values and gives us an idea of the width of our data set. This is popular although it does not show were the data is grouped in the set. The total amount of variability is taken into account with Variance. To assess the difference in data sets a point needs to be found to which each observation can be compared. As mean takes in every observation in its calculation it would be the best point of comparison. Standard Deviation calculates the square root of a variance. It gives a good measure of variance and shows the average distance each observation is from the

Effects on Businesses as it relates to employee's smoking habits Research Paper

Effects on Businesses as it relates to employee's smoking habits - Research Paper Example This has created a concern for the human resource department. The premiums of the health insurance are seen to rise and now the companies are looking towards shifting this cost towards the employees. Some of the organizations are charging surcharges, while some others have decided not to recruit smoker at the first. This has created hue and cry among the experts and they demand stricter action from the side of the government. Table of Contents Introduction 4 Affect of smoking 4 Discussion 6 Results 9 Recommendations 13 Reference 14 Introduction In recent times the smoking habit of the employees has become a major concern for the employers of United States. It has been seen that when the employees make a positive move towards the lifestyle by leaving their smoking habit both the society and employers benefits at large. Though there is clear evidence of harmful effect of cigarette smoking on the health of the employees; yet there is much debate regarding the matter. Research has also e stablished that there is a reciprocal relationship between smoking and financial stress and social disadvantage. Several researches have also highlighted on the link between various form of social deprivation and high smoking rates (Stobbe, 2013). Rising number of research also focuses on the relationship that intensification and reinforcement of material hardship and financial stress is caused by smoking. ... Affect of smoking Health Hazards The use of tobacco is not only a chief cause of death from non-communicable diseases such as respiratory disease, cancer and heart disease but also from communicable diseases like tuberculosis, which exaggerates and activates the use of tobacco. The use of tobacco causes 600,000 deaths all over the globe and reduces the life expectancy of an individual by 20 to 25 years. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) smoking causes a rise in the risk of infertility, abdominal aortic aneurysm, peripheral vascular disease, chronic obstructive lung diseases, lung cancer, stroke and coronary heart disease. Smoking affects almost every organ in the human body (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). This association can be adjusted through environmental and other exposures and the effect can be moderated via early detection and screening. However the affect of smoking generally increase with age and the burden of chronic and no n-communicable diseases increases (African Union, n.d.). Cost for Employers In 2000 smoking was one of the primary factors that caused death. Apart from mortality the economic burden caused by death is also of significant amount. As per the estimation of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every year the cost of estimation increases by $167 billion in United States. This estimation includes both $92 billion, the cost of loss of productivity resulting from the loss of productive life on the event of premature death and $75 billion resulting from the indirect healthcare cost (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.; NBC News, 2005). There are some addition costs that are bear by the employer of the smokers like effect of second hand

Assess critically the contribution Essay Example for Free

Assess critically the contribution Essay Taylorism is a form of job design, which stresses short, repetitive work cycles; detailed, set task sequences; a separation of task conception from task execution; and motivation linked to pay. Taylor argued that the principal objective of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee (1911). Fredrick Taylor’s five principles of scientific management: 1. A clear division of tasks and responsibilities between management and workers. 2. Use of scientific methods to determine the best way of doing a job. 3. Scientific selection of the person to do the newly designed job. 4. The training of the selected worker to perform the job in the way specified. 5. Surveillance of workers through the use of hierarchies of authority and close supervision. Taylor proposed this by measuring what workers did against the time taken, to develop ‘one best way of working’ (1911). By using quantitative methods a workers output could be accurately measured. At the time of its inception Taylor found that firms who introduced scientific management as he prescribed became the worlds most meticulously organised factories (Nelson, 1980). Managers are responsible for identifying the best cost efficient work practices and training workers to become highly productive and affective in their specific work task. Taylor argued that it stands to reason that an employee becomes more productive when working at their speciality and concluded with stating that there are more benefits gained for both employees and employers from dividing workers. With linking pay to each task performed, Managers can thus control the workforce and output and consistently achieve desired goals. The piece rate pay system  pays workers in parallel to number of items each worker has produced, hence also providing employees with an incentive to work. Henry Ford’s theory (Fordism) referring to mass production in industry (Marcouse, 1996) united the idea of assembly line and Taylor’s theory of division of labour and payment. Fordism focused on dividing jobs into unskilled and semi-skilled tasks. Whilst managers at Ford vehemently opposed any relation to Taylorism, it can be said that Fordism retained the faults of Taylorism of an autocratic work environment with little room for creativity as well as the benefits of the piece rate system relying on financial motivation. Criticisms of Taylorism: 1.Assumed that the motivation of the employee was to secure the maximum earnings for the effort expended; and neglected the importance of other rewards from work (achievement, job satisfaction, recognition), which later research has found to be important. 2. Neglected the subjective side of work-the personal and interactional aspects of performance, the meaning that employees give to work and the significance to them of their social relationship at work. 3. Failed to appreciate the meaning that workers would put on new procedures ad their reaction to being timed and closely supervised. 4. Had inadequate understanding of the relation of the individual incentive to interaction with, and dependence on, the immediate work group. Taylor did attribute ‘underworking’ to group pressures, but misunderstood the way in which these worked. He failed to see that these might just as easily keep production and morale up. 5. Ignored the psychological needs and capabilities of workers. T he one best way of doing a job was chosen with the mechanistic criteria of speed and output. The imposition of a uniform manner of work can both destroy individuality and cause other psychological disturbances. 6. Had too simple approach to the question of productivity and morale. It sought to keep both of these up exclusively by economic rewards and punishments. Incentive approaches under the scientific approach tended to focus on the worker as an individual and ignored their social context. Pay system may result in a worker valuing quantity over quality. 7. Functional foremanship was deemed to be too  complex and an unwieldy mode of supervision. (Huczynski, 2013) Ways to alleviate the negative effects of Taylorism especially to worker motivation and performance and find new ways to job designs came about following the introduction of the American psychologists Fredrick Hertzberg two factor theory of motivation. Hertzberg had the idea that there were two sets of factors that affected motivation and job characteristics: Motivators: These factors refer to the extent to which a job offers opportunities for achievement, creativity, responsibility, opportunities for personal growth. These are intrinsic to the job itself. Hygiene factors: These comprise issue as the nature of supervision and supervisory style, the level of pay, working conditions, and interpersonal relations. These are extrinsic to the job. For Hertzberg it was only the motivator factors that have the potential to generate satisfaction and motivation. If hygiene factors are improved, they do not result in improved motivation, but if removed, will result in demotivation. To raise levels of motivation and therefore performance, following Hertzberg theory of motivation, companies needed to ensure that the hygiene factors were in place, and to also ensure that the ‘motivator factors’ (i.e intrinsic motivators) were incorporated into the jobs. In particular, jobs needed to be designed in such a way that workers could be given opportunities for achievement, responsibility and personal growth. Criticisms of Hertzberg two-factor theory: Can job characteristics fall neatly into two categories of motivators and hygiene factors? Can a job characteristic be both? (Example can pay be a motivator as well as a hygiene factor-?) Blunt and Jones (1992) They point out that some studies from Nigeria have indicated that hygiene factors, in particular pay, supervision and working conditions, acted as motivators. Machungwa and Schmidt (1983) reported on a study conducted in Zambia and found that material rewards and the physical conditions of work appeared to have both motivating and demotivating effects. This was interpreted by Blunt and Jones in the following way: if material rewards were inadequate they were demotivating, but they acted as motivators if they were perceived as reasonable. This appears to directly contradict Hertzbergs theory, but Blunt and Jones consider that this is only likely to be the case in less developed countries, as Hertzberg (1987) himself appears also to argue. However, one study does not refute a theory. Hertzberg did his original work on qualified professionals, such as engineers, whereas the people surveyed in the study above were manual workers. This in itself might be enough to account for the difference. In general, we can expect professional or managerial workers everywhere to be more intrinsically motivated than manual wor kers given the different nature of the work that the two groups undertake, but as we shall see the way work is organized may compensate for such differences in the relative interest value of different types of work The theory is regarded as a Universalistic theory; that it will impact all individuals in the same way in all work situations. It does not take into consideration that some people may not have a desire for personal growth, and are therefore unlikely to be motivated by job enrichment initiatives that give them higher levels of autonomy and responsibility. Hertzberg theory was superseded by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham ‘the Job Characteristics Model’; which argued in a similar respect to Hertzberg theory, that if jobs are enriched this will lead to improvements in attitudinal outcomes (increased satisfaction and motivation) and improvements in behavioural outcomes (higher productivity and lower rates of absenteeism). Three critical psychological states: Hackman and Oldham argued that jobs should be designed in such a way that they are focused on the achievement of three critical psychological states: Workers must experience work as being personally meaningful-something that  they care about. Workers must experience personal responsibility for their work- accountability for their work. Workers must know if their work performance is effective-they must have knowledge of the results of their work activities. If these 3 critical psychological states are achieved, higher levels of satisfaction, motivation and performance will result from the worker. However this theory too has had its criticisms. Current literature now argues the importance and focus on team working, however one should acknowledge that the interest in team working is not something that is new to current times. Autonomous and semi-autonomous work groups were central to earlier theories of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Team working has now re-emerged as part of the lean production flexible working debates. An American Theorist, Harry Bravemen thesis known as the ‘Bravemen thesis argues to counter the popular view in social science and management literature that Taylorism has been superseded by human relations and other more sophisticated approaches; that there is in fact a tendency for workers and their jobs to become de-skilled through fragmentation, rationalisation and mechanisation. This argument of deskilling workers and jobs was continued in the context where it became known as McDonalization a term that came about after the publication of a book by Georg Ritz. McDonalisation is a form of work design aimed at achieving efficiency, calculability, predictability and control through non-human technology, to enhance organisational objectives by limiting employee discretion and creativity. He used the term to refer to the processes used at the growing number of fast food restaurants dominating the American market. McDonalds is a modern example of the Taylorised way of work. The tasks are de-skilled and simplified for an employee at McDonalds and limited by the  sophisticated technology of fast food preparation. Hamburger grilling instructions are detailed and precise, cooking times and the sequence of events dictated to make a burger. Drinks dispensers, French fry machines, programmed cash registers all limit the amount of time required to carry out a specific task and leave little room for the employee to do as they wish, little room for creativity or innovation to processes. This way of working ensures the aims of the organisation to achieve greatest efficiency, calculability, predictability and control all of the key elements described by the Ritzer’s ‘Mcdonalization’. Regardless of the fact that the de-skilling may lead to de-motivated employees, which may result in high absenteeism and high staff turn over; its ability to integrate new workers into the production processes and dismiss employees without losing knowledge form the organization allows the model to still be successful. Taylorism can also be illustrated in modern day call centres. A case study on a customer service call centre run by two British Companies, Martin Beirne, Kathleen Riach and Fiona Wilson found strong continuities with Taylorism, in relation to work design and operation. They found the work to be pressurized and highly paced with managements focus on productivity and cost minimisation. Most of the jobs were narrowly defined and closely monitored. The time duration of each call taken; the content of the conversation with each customer; and the advise also given to the customer was prescribed (from Beirne et al 2004). But modern day illustrations of Taylorism don’t end there. It is also seen in relation to ‘scientific selection training’. We’ve now moved away from an industrial economy towards a knowledge –based economy where an organisations competitive success depends on its talent. Much effort is devoted by contemporary organisations to select and recruit the right person for a role. Taylorism also placed importance and the introduction of scientific selection criteria by management to do a particular task. In line with his emphasis on scientific approach to selection, Taylor advocates scientific training as he argues that â€Å"it is only when business systematically cooperate to train the competent man†¦that it shall be on the road to national efficiency†. (Taylor, 1911: p 98). In the context of the knowledge  economy, organisations are generally encouraged to develop employees’ skills and knowledge. ‘Now one of the very first requirements of man who is to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work to this character. Therefore the work man who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work’. (Taylor 1911/1997 pg 59) â€Å"The task is always so regulated that the man who is well suited to his job will thrive while working at this rate during a long term of years and grow happier and more prosperous, instead of being overworked†. (Taylor 1911) Thus scientific management matched the worker to the job and in the process separated the conceptualization of work from its execution. It also provided safeguards against personal bias and individual favoritism, which is something that can still be applied to the current context of contemporary organisations. Taylorism is also found in the Saudi Educational system, for example metaphorically describing students as the ‘raw material’ of schools; controlling the movement of teachers students through class bells; conceiving of the curriculum as a product; dividing students into grades or dividing curriculum into units and individual lessons; describing the school facilities as a ‘plant’ are a result of a ‘factory model’ schooling that has its roots in the adoption of scientific management principles by educational administrators. Contemporary schools in Saudi are still largely influenced with its teaching and learning deeply rooted in ‘scientific management’ as seen with the following: 1. Schools are large and bureaucratized. 2. Students change teachers every year. 3. Teachers plan and teach alone. 4. Curriculum is fragmented. 5. Tracking students by ability levels. 6. Deskilling of teachers through alignment of teaching mandated curriculum and standardized tests. 7. Emphasis on monitoring /surveillance bureaucratic activity-scripted curriculum and scripted tests. Taylorism does not permit autonomy in work. Input by production workers in the organisation, planning, and direction of the manufacturing process was not allowed, requiring workers to do exactly what they were told to do and no more. This authoritarian approach to work can been illustrated in the schooling: That student’s are excluded from the planning, organisation and direction of the educational process. De-skilling of the teachers as their work is conceptualised by others (Ministry of Education who agrees the standard curriculum to be used in schools) and enforced by the bureaucratic outcome of accountability systems implemented in schools. The other way that Taylorism continues to influence the education system is through the use of individual rewards for individual effort (example the focus on a students individual test results). Taylor developed wage-incentive schemes emphasizing piecework and historically assembly line foremen attempted to stop any sort of worker inter action. Elton Mayo who introduced Human Relations theory based on his research at the Hawthorne electrical factory was to see how productivity will improve if the lighting condition changes and he followed Taylor’s scientific principles by testing the changes against a control, with part of the factory lighting being unchanged, (Kelly 1982). This lead him to conduct further experiments which vast doubts on Taylors assumptions about the importance of money in motivation (Marcouse, 1996). According to Huczynski and Buchan, the conclusions which can be drawn from Hawthorne studies are: 1. People at work are motivated by more than just pay and conditions. 2. Their need for recognition and sense of belonging are very important. 3. A person’s attitude to work is shaped strongly by the group in which that individual  belongs within the company. 4. The ability of the informal group or clique to motivate an individual at work should not be underestimated. (Huczynski and Buchanan 1991) . Another contributor to the Human Relations approach is Abraham Harold Maslow, an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslows hierarchy of needs. They range from physical social to psychological needs. Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that human motivation is based on people seeking fulfilment and change through personal growth. Self-actualized people as those who were fulfilled and doing all they were capable of. The Human Relations models have changed management and how workers are in fact valuable employees and stakeholders of an organisation. The key difference between scientific management and the human relations model is highlighted when analysing the motivational techniques to increase productivity. Scientific management emphasises the use of financial measures in order to secure employers objectives whereas the human relations model argues that management should acquire the insight into the skills that will manipulate social factors in order to harness their employees social needs to managerial ends (Fincham Rhodes, 1999). Thus, behavioural science; motivation theories in combination with the humanistic theories of management, have added to Taylors principles and allowed for contemporary organizations to succeed where scientific management alone failed. Taylorism was an influential management theory of the late nineteenth century. Despite its relevance to its time the influence can still be seen in todays twenty first century: educational institutes, service sector and the manufacturing industries. Though there are limitations to his method, this principle has a considerable profound and lasting influence to all contemporary organizations because of  Taylor’s â€Å"preoccupation with the efficient use of resources†. This philosophy can almost apply to every organization, despite its work structure, such as structures of team working or job enrichment; one of the ultimate goals should be improve efficiency. As Braverman says, â€Å"the principle of scientific management is not a failed system, but a set of guiding principles which continue to inform and influence the role and function of modern management†. Some of the methods he advocates, such as division of labour, scientific selection and training, have become the features of modern society. More primarily, as efficiency is one of the enduring needs of all organizations, his preoccupation with the efficient use of resources thus becomes the driving force behind the evolution of subsequent management theories and the root of management practice. References: Huczynski, A. and Buchanan, D: Organisational Behaviour. Eighth Edition. Pearson 2013. Huczynski, A. and Buchanan, D.,1991. Organizational behaviour An Introductory Text. Second edition. London: Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd. Hertzberg,F., B.Mausner and B.Snyderman: The motivation to work (New york: Wiley 1959). Taylor F.W (1997): The principles of scientific management. Mincola, NY (original work published 1911). Braverman, H (1974): Labour and Monoploy capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York Monthly review press. Kelly, John. (1982), Scientific Management, Job Redesign, Work Performance. Academic †¨Press. Marcouse, I. et al. (1996), The Complete A-Z Business Studies Handbook, Hodder †¨Stoughton. Ritzer, George. (2000) The McDonaldization Of Society. Sage Publications Inc. Taylor, Frederick W (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management, Harper Bros. Fincham, R Rhodes, P (1999) Priniciples of Organisational Behaviours, Oxford Univeristy Press. Nelson, David (1980) Frederick W Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management, The University of Wisconsin Press. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96. Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Row.

Mix Racial and Cultural Groups Are Growing in the United States Essay Example for Free

Mix Racial and Cultural Groups Are Growing in the United States Essay Mixed Racial and Cultural Groups is increased by a marginal number in the United States. The growth of these multiracial groups started to surface through migration of different ethnics and raised most of their families in the United States even through marriage. These are some of the issues that have been raised by individual people of having an entity separation of mixed race and cultural or to considered them as Americans without a hyphen. Thinking about this issue myself, and thinking of my two children who married to a different ethnic rather than Samoans. These questions come to mind about this issue: How, Why, and what the three words that needs a big explanation about this matter. According to multiracial Americans, Americans whose identity as two or more races identifies with just one group culturally and socially. From statistics that I got from online, stated that about 2.9% of the population in the year 2010 are self-identified as multiracial. The identity or the classification of the people’s identification is generally according to the culture they were raised in. Social segregation in many areas of the country is forming interracial unions or cultural group. The diversity of social conditions through migrations brought new groups of people to the United States. Through these migrations, mixed races started to rise when interracial marriage were born and started to increase in the United States. The movement of multiracial identity by more than one ethnicity has taken place and strong. Statistics from the year 2010 census in the United States shows that the largest multiracial groups were white and black which is 1.8 million. The other 1.7 millions are white and some other race, white and Asian is 1.6, white and American Indian and Alaskan Native is 1.4 million. I have learned that the largest growing group in multiracial is white and black which is about 134%. That is more than 1 million people. MIX RACIAL AND CULTURAL GROUP According to Susan Saulny of the New York Times, title Race Remixed, said that â€Å"sea of change is how we think about race, ethnicity and its place in society†. I believe that a challenge to trend towards multiracial from a sociological perspective is a leap that we should take. The understanding of racial and ethnic categories of their boundaries can be a problem to other multiracial groups. I think that ancestry is the biggest influence in identities through a number of generations through migrations. I also believe that each multi mix or racial group should be treated the same regardless of their identity. If they are legally citizens of the United States, they have the right to be treated equally. I believe that they have contributed to the wellbeing and welfare of the United States through their services in employment within the government, military or private companies. Regardless of the race and ethnicity, they should be treated and considered Americans. President Obama is good example of what I mean about treating them the same no matter what color of their skin or where they are from. I know that some of these mix race entities are trying to separate themselves with-in the United States but when they travel to other countries of the world, they considered be call Americans. As a citizen of New Zealand, I am proud to call myself to be an American and I respect the land that my children were born. What can the United States or these multiracial groups gain from wanting to be separated from their identity. Through my search online, I came across Mrs. Karissa Sulliva’s draft and she said that ancestry influences identities. She said that socialization is the crucible of racial and ethnic identity formation. Farley in 2002, construct racial and ethnic classifications which was adopted by the government for each race or reconsidered themselves to either refuse to identify their own race and ethnic category. MIX RACIAL AND CULTURAL GROUP I believe that mix racial and cultural groups are increasing daily by the number throughout the United States. However, research shows that children with an original multiracial identity grow up to be happier than those of single-race identity. Some of the statistics shows that another addition to the growth of mix race is through adoption of children from countries outside of the United States. According to Fact’s for Families 2010, parents are coping with these pressures in having open communications with the families about their culture and race. Encouragement and support in every multicultural group for families to be familiar with their language, traditions and customs within their families. They have to support and try to establish a good relationship by creating a network for their children, parents, family member, relatives and the community. In conclusion, the separation and classifications between mix racial and multicultural groups is not an easy task or thing to do. Two of my children are married to different ethnic. My oldest daughter is married to an African American and my son is married to a girl who is beautiful and white but has about four or five mix blood in her. I believe in democracy and the United States is nowhere in having a separation of any mix race and cultural group who are living in the United States. God Bless America, God bless the people of the United States. References: Perez, Anthony Daniel, Hirschman, Charles. The Changing Racial and Ethnic. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2882688/ The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (March-2011). Facts for Families, no.71 Multiracial Children. http://www.aacap.org/galleries/FactsForFamilies/71_multiracial_children.pdf Dr. Nicole Martinez and Mrs. Karissa Sullivan. May 6, 2013 .docx.

Middle Range Nursing Theory

Middle Range Nursing Theory Contents Introduction Middle Range Nursing Theory Overview of a Nursing Theorist Nursing Meta-paradigm Importance of Middle Range Theory How Will This Theory Improve Nursing Practice? Conclusion References Introduction The nursing theories help in describing the various aspects of the nursing profession and here the middle range nursing theory is discussed which however has a limited scope but provides the best of knowledge for the particular profession. The interest increases in the middle range of nursing theory as the concepts of an individual are been cleared or justified. The practice paper covers range of topics that can be helpful for others and the topics include the succinct description of the middle range nursing theory, then an overview of the nursing theorist is provided to tell what the background is? Following are the perspectives about the health, environment, patients and the nursing. The importance of middle range nursing theories for the new students and the improvement while using this theory clearly states that the students can improve their nursing practice using this theory. And in the end the paper is finally concluded with main key points discussed in the paper (Mary Jane Sm ith, 2008). There are different types of theories, such as, Grand Nursing theory (haves the widest scope and provides general concept but does not allow to do empirical testing and eventually restricts from giving explanation or prediction of situations), Middle Range Nursing Theory (has a narrow scope and connects the two other theories, provide suggestions on a lower level and provides the surety of research based work and nursing practice) and Nursing Practice Theories (has the most limited scope and can be used only for a small range of situations, provides framework, predictions and impact of nursing practice). Middle Range Nursing Theory Middle range nursing theory offers the concrete basis for the handling complex situations. It is narrowly described phenomenon compared to the Grand Nursing theory. It provides less abstract and greater empirical testing along with more specific phenomenon. In this nursing theory, descriptions along with prediction and explanations put forward to answer the queries that are not covered in other theory of nursing practice. This theory provides the perspectives that trains the students to handling the complex and emergency situations and also helps for the nursing interventions. This theory is more applicable in situations where explanations and implementations are needed in nursing practice. Middle range nursing theories are a sub-division of nursing discipline that focuses on potential knowledge of the discipline by expanding the phenomenon related to health care of patients. The middle range nursing theory is defined precisely with the help of ladder of abstraction that states the abstraction level decreases as we come down the ladder and but the conciseness is increased (empirical level), and exactly opposite happens while moving towards the philosophical level. The middle range nursing theory is a sub-division of the empirical level (Sandra J. Peterson, 2009). Overview of a Nursing Theorist Kristen Swanson nursing theory provides the background for the issues related to pregnancy. Kristen Swanson obtained her nursing degree from the University of Rhode Island in the year of 1975 and the master’s degree in the year of 1978. The Swanson theory of nursing takes necessary measures that deal with the miscarriages in pregnancy. The Swanson Theory of Caring encompasses around the counseling for the parents and their families after the miscarriages. The theory involves the combination of techniques that deal with the sociocultural effects which rise after a baby’s loss. This theory provides the overview of aspects which are just beyond to the physical status of the patient. These aspects are considered by the health care professionals to enhance the emotional recovery of the mother and father both, due to miscarriage or abortion. The theory’s basis is laid on the study and research of Dr. Kristen Swanson which focused the issues faced by the parents and families in the women’s pregnancy. The theory provides a platform on which the potential healing of the parents can be done. The researches by the theorist have been incorporating educational models and practices of other physicians all over the country (Ahmed, 2006). Nursing Meta-paradigm The nursing meta-paradigm is the huge models that represent the clear relationship between the current theoretical nursing practices. Presently many of the nursing practices are considered for acquiring the relationship between the four main components of the meta-paradigm. (Parker, 2006). The four major meta-paradigms in the nursing profession are as follows: Person: who are the people that receive the nursing care, this paradigm can be the ill individual who is treated like a subject in the process of treatment. The individual has a constant changing process that takes place between him and his environment. Receivers of the health care from nursing can be a sick person or whole families or any community. Health: that is defined as the level of wellness of an individual. It is dynamic process which is described by the individual all over the life span. The main focuses on the subject’s health are laid on the nature of physical, aesthetic, social and ethical territories. Illness or sickness is defined as the experience of an individual who faced dysfunctions originated due to health care. The level of a person’s health is an expression of the common interacting processes that take place between the individual and their environment. Environment: it corresponds to the internal and external factors that influence the level or degree of health an individual possess. It refers to the impact of geographical and landscape on the individual. Dimensions that may cause harm to the individual include the impact of physiological, psychological, economic and social, cultural, historical, and developmental factors that are prevalent in the society where the individual lives. Nursing: it is the profession that provides the health care facilities in the hospitals. The nursing interventions render care to support the ill patient. These four concepts of the nursing meta-paradigm make up a complete directional understanding of the profession. These four concepts embed the basic knowledge of nursing theory, philosophy, education, research and experience of the nursing profession. Importance of Middle Range Theory Nursing theories provides the principles that underpin the new student’s nursing practices and help generating nursing knowledge (Colley, 2003). The middle range nursing theory is important for the students of nursing because it provides a middle reality view and more specifically generalized practice areas for the nurses. It also provides the nurses with concrete ideas which however are limited but very useful for them. In middle range nursing theory, the characteristics of the propositions are clearly stated due to which a better decision can be made for the health care of patient. The middle range nursing theory provides the level of testability which may generate a test hypothesis. Since the development of middle range nursing theory is from the Grand nursing theory and the nursing practice theory, the theory consists of all the literature review and clinical practices and guidelines that should be followed by the nurses. How Will This Theory Improve Nursing Practice? The middle range theory for nursing is very important for the nurses and therefore, the nursing practice can be improved with this theory. The focuses that are laid by this theory, develops the concrete and conceptual framework of ideas in the nurses with which they can practice their profession efficiently. The scope that is covered by the middle range nursing theory is, however, limited but still the ideas and literature that it consist has concreteness in it which helps in the improvement of the nursing practice. Conclusion By providing nurses with a sense of identification, the middle range nursing theory can help the subjects and the nurses (which are the health care professionals) to identify the particular contribution that should be made to the health care center and the patients too. Providing the nurses with adequate knowledge and guidance according to the principles laid by the middle range nursing theory will help to improve the standards of their practice and also the health of the patient. The four basic components of the nursing meta-paradigm play a significant role, in developing good middle range nurses that tell the relationship between the person, health and environment with the nurses. The middle range nursing theory provides the generalized and conceptual development of the characteristics that lays the basis of the formation of good middle range nurses practicing in the health care centers to provide health care facilities with effective results. References Ahmed, D. S. (2006). Theories and models of nursing practice. Journal of Nursing, 5-7. Colley, S. (2003). Nursing theory: its importance to practice. Journal of National Institute of Health, 33-37. Mary Jane Smith, P. R. (2008). Middle Range Nursing theory. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Parker, M. E. (2006). Nursing theories nursing practice . Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Company. Sandra J. Peterson, T. S. (2009). Middle Range Theories: Application to Nursing Research. Lippincott Williams Wilkins.

Pauls Ministry to Thessalonica Essay examples -- Bible Christianity R

The Apostle Paul was a traveling man. One must simply look at the various places where he preached and established churches to confirm this fact. The letters of Paul found in the canonical Bible establish connections with Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, and Thessalonica. Paul was heavily involved with the formation of the church in the final location, a city now known as Thessalonki, and continued to support it through his letters. The church in Thessalonica dealt with much oppression and persecution during its formative years. That kind of beginning contributed to much uncertainty in the young church, especially considering that Paul, its founder, was not always with them. Paul’s ministry to the church can be found in the recordings of his initial visit to Thessalonica, found in Acts 17, and his subsequent letters, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. These sources show a minister trying to answer the questions of new converts dealing with persecution, the second comin g of Jesus Christ, and what their faith actually meant. The very beginning of the church in Thessalonica was bread in violence and persecution. According to the book of Acts and the apostles first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul and Silas first came into Thessalonica on the heels being beaten and imprisoned in Philippi. Despite such an event, Paul continued to preach once he arrived in the city. The author of Acts states that the apostle found a synagogue And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.[1] Over several weeks, a diverse gro... ...nnotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version. [4] 1 Thessalonians 3:4, New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version. [5] Bridges, Linda McKinnish, 2 Thessalonians, Mercer Commentary on the Bible, (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2005), 1247. [6] 2 Thessalonians 1:4, New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version. [7] Bridges, Linda McKinnish, 1 Thessalonians, Mercer Commentary on the Bible, (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2005), 1245. [8] 1 Thessalonians 4:15, New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version. [9] Bridges, 2 Thessalonians, 1249. [10] Bridges, 1 Thessalonians, 1245. [11] Ibid., 1245. [12] Ibid., 1245. [13] 1 Thessalonians 5:15-22, New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version. [14] 1 Thessalonians 2:17, New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version.

Comparing and Contrasting Hughess Mother to Son and Wilburs The Write

Comparing and Contrasting Hughes's Mother to Son and Wilbur's The Writer Whether life is a steep climb up a shaky stairway or a challenging voyage over rough seas, a parent hopes a child will persevere to the end. In Langston Hughes's poem "Mother to Son" and in Richard Wilbur's poem "The Writer," the poets use the voice of a parent considering a child's future, and both use imagery of struggle and survival to suggest what lies ahead for the child. Although the point of view, context, and language of the two poems differ significantly, the message is the same: a parent wants a good life for his or her child, but knows that many obstacles can block the way. While Hughes and Wilbur share a similar message in their poems, their points of view are very different. Hughes uses a first-person narrator, a mother speaking directly to her son. The title of the poem itself, "Mother to Son," states this point of view. The reader is listening in on a one-on-one conversation. The opening line introduces the mother's monologue: "Well, son, I'll tell you." The point of view stays consistent as the mother describes what life's stairway has been like for her: "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (2 and 20), and urges her son to do as she has done: "I'se still climbin'" (19). She addresses her son directly throughout the poem, calling him "son" (1), "boy" (14), and "honey" (18). The poem is entirely in the mother's speaking voice, with the informalities of someone speaking privately to a close relative and the grammatical errors of someone who is probably not well educated. Richard Wilbur's poem is also written in the first person, but the narrator does not address his daughter directly until the final stanza (31-33). The first thir... ...s her message across in twenty short, simple lines. Both "Mother to Son" and "The Writer" offer a parent's sincere message to a child. However, the poems' points of view, contexts, and language show two parents who have traveled very different paths before offering their messages. The reader sees that parents' hopes and concerns for a child are universal, even though their expression differs. Works Cited Bixler, Frances. Richard Wilbur: A Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall 1991 Hughes, Langston. "Mother to Son." Literature and Ourselves: A Thematic Introduction for Readers and Writers. Eds. Gloria Mason Henderson, Bill Day, and Sandra Stevenson Waller. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2003. Wilbur, Richard. Responses. Prose Pieces: 1953–1976. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1976 – New and Collected Poems. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1988

Communication Technology Essay -- Mobile Phones, Social Network

Introduction: Communication is the exchange of information and feeling or ideas, which allow the majority of people to get the news of all sides. In addition, we are used the communication every day to let people know what we are doing or thinking even feeling which people are received that by voice, picture or chat. Moreover, communication technologies have made it simple to communicate to friends in the other side of the world by calling them using mobile phone, e-mailing them and writing in our web pages using social networks, such as Face book, Twitter or Messenger. Additionally, many other recourses are used by the majority of people to keep in touch with the world, which they can watch television or listen to the radio especially when they go to work. Therefore, communication technologies are considered one of the most important elements in our lives and that is why this essay is going to define the advantages and disadvantages of communications technology in terms of our health, educ ation and relationships. This essay will elucidate firstly, the advantages and disadvantages of communications technology in health. Secondly, the advantages and disadvantages in education. Thirdly, the advantages and disadvantages in relationships. Finally, what scope should people be bothered about our grandchildren’s world if these technologies still run on to develops in the future? Communication Technology in Health: Communication technologies which are played an important part in providing the best healthcare service (European Commission 2011). In addition, there are more advantages and disadvantages from them which this essay will show that. The advantages of communication technology in health: Firstly, give peop... ...unications technology in education is made the education more flexible on other hand one of the disadvantages is teaching by technologies lead to less schools. Furthermore, communications technology can be played an important part to people to contact each other. Otherwise it can be affected and benefited on the relationships for instance, it may be affected communicate face to face and may be benefited help the scholarship students to communicate with their families easily. Finally, communications technology can be affected our grandchildren’s world because using them so much lead to psychological problems. In my opinion, communications technology is very important in our lives whatever the effects of it. In the future the communications technology might be more safety and planned very good to face any problem can be affected to people. Communication Technology Essay -- Mobile Phones, Social Network Introduction: Communication is the exchange of information and feeling or ideas, which allow the majority of people to get the news of all sides. In addition, we are used the communication every day to let people know what we are doing or thinking even feeling which people are received that by voice, picture or chat. Moreover, communication technologies have made it simple to communicate to friends in the other side of the world by calling them using mobile phone, e-mailing them and writing in our web pages using social networks, such as Face book, Twitter or Messenger. Additionally, many other recourses are used by the majority of people to keep in touch with the world, which they can watch television or listen to the radio especially when they go to work. Therefore, communication technologies are considered one of the most important elements in our lives and that is why this essay is going to define the advantages and disadvantages of communications technology in terms of our health, educ ation and relationships. This essay will elucidate firstly, the advantages and disadvantages of communications technology in health. Secondly, the advantages and disadvantages in education. Thirdly, the advantages and disadvantages in relationships. Finally, what scope should people be bothered about our grandchildren’s world if these technologies still run on to develops in the future? Communication Technology in Health: Communication technologies which are played an important part in providing the best healthcare service (European Commission 2011). In addition, there are more advantages and disadvantages from them which this essay will show that. The advantages of communication technology in health: Firstly, give peop... ...unications technology in education is made the education more flexible on other hand one of the disadvantages is teaching by technologies lead to less schools. Furthermore, communications technology can be played an important part to people to contact each other. Otherwise it can be affected and benefited on the relationships for instance, it may be affected communicate face to face and may be benefited help the scholarship students to communicate with their families easily. Finally, communications technology can be affected our grandchildren’s world because using them so much lead to psychological problems. In my opinion, communications technology is very important in our lives whatever the effects of it. In the future the communications technology might be more safety and planned very good to face any problem can be affected to people.

Chem 238 Final Exam

CHEM 238 Winter, 2001 FINAL EXAM Name Prof. Sasaki Please circle your TA: Dirk Schweitzer , Tyan Carter, Carla McDowell 175 points TOTAL Good Luck! Note: Only answers in the box will be graded. _______________________________________________________________________ _ 1. (30) (a) Draw a stepwise mechanism for the following reaction. Use curved arrows to indicate the movement of electrons. O O H3 C H+ HO OH CH3 O H3 C O CH3 O . (b) Briefly explain the fact that, although hemiacetal formation between methanol and cyclohexanone is thermodynamically disfavored, addition of methanol to cyclopropane goes essentially to completion.O CH3OH HO OCH3 O , cyclopropanone cyclohexanone CHEM 238 page 2 Name . 2. (35) A ? , ? -unsaturated carbonyl compound rearranges to a more stable conjugated ? ,? -unsaturated compound in the presence of either acid or base. O H+ or OHO A ! ,†-unsaturated carbonyl compound A #,! -unsaturated carbonyl compound (a) Propose a mechanism for the base-catalyzed rea rrangement. (b) Propose a mechanism for the acid-catalyzed rearrangement. CHEM 238 page 3 Name . 3. (35) Predict the structures of the products or starting materials in the following equations.Show stereochemistry when it is known. (a) O P + CH3 (b) H3 CO 1) BH3 :THF 2) H2 O2 , OH- (c) H3 C 1) Mg, THF H3 CO Br 2) D2 O (d) O H3 C O H N CH3 HNO3 H2 SO4 (e) O O O 1) NH2 -NH2 2) NaOH, heat CHEM 238 page 4 Name . 4. (35) (a) Provide a reasonable synthesis for the following compounds from the indicated materials. You may use any reagents that you wish to use. (a) CH2 OH from CH2 OH CH3 CH2 O O OCH2 CH3 and compounds with 4 carbons or less O (b) O from benzene and any compounds with 2 carbons or less.CHEM 238 page 5 Name . 5. (35) A number of plants produce chemical substances that prevent insects from feeding on them. Some steps in the synthesis of such a compound, called an antifeedant, are shown bellow. Supply reagents for the transformations. (The wavy lines indicate either that stereo chemistry is not known or that a mixture of stereoisomers may exist. ) H3 C O H3 C O O A H3 C H3 C B H3 C H3 CO O OH H C H3 CO O D H3 C H CH2 H3 C H3 CO O EtO- Na+ EtOH H3 C H3 CO O O H O H E H3 C O H3 C H CH2 A: B: C: D: E:

Is Any Body Out There? Essay

‘The machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. ’ (Haraway, 1991: 180) My paper starts with the recognition that Information, Communications and Telecommunication technologies (ICTs) are certain to play a central role in defining who we are, how we think and how we relate to one another. The guiding principle for my work, is that although change is an inevitable result of the conjunction between people and technology, the nature and extent of human intervention profoundly influences its shape and character. What I believe to be important changes in the nature of the body, subjectivity and identity are the key concerns of this paper. I want to explore these terms and the debates surrounding them with particular reference to developments in ICTs. Rather than focus on more esoteric examples of technological development, I will restrict my discussion to the Internet and computer games. My theoretical touchstones for this discussion are feminism and postmodernism, primarily because they have both been implicated and implicit in discussions of cyberculture and the possibility of social change that it represents. Postmodernism, that most polysemic of terms, seems nevertheless to be discussed along a continuum between the utopian and dystopian, particularly when considering the possibilities for social change. Whichever reading is made of the term, notions of profoundly fragmented subjectivities and identities appear almost as constants. This seems particularly apparent in feminist responses to postmodernism. Feminists have broadly read postmodernism as either a threat to feminist social criticism or an opportunity for the questioning and contestation of notions of gender and sexuality (presenting the possibility of re-inscription of the body in post-gender terms). Baudrillarian postmodernism sees the collapse of our referential universe, including its hierarchies and inequalities, as offering little hope for social criticism and change. This is a problematic position for much feminist thought, because of feminism’s identification of clear oppressive structures that can only be changed by unified social action by women. For Baudrillard, the descent into a mediated hyperreality offers us only the politics of refusal (to act) and the pleasures of the spectacle. In a short article, published in Liberation, he suggests that developments in media technologies have resulted only in ‘panic and resentment’, transforming us into ‘free radicals searching for our molecules in a scanty cyberspace’ (Baudrillard, 1995: 2). Here we have a clear sense of our corporeal bodies exchanged for atomised virtual bodies in what we might think of as life behind the screen. Although Baudrillard has not written specifically of the Internet, he has clearly indicated a belief that media technologies have accelerated the transition form the ‘real’ to the ‘hyperreal’. Baudrillard’s assertion that the ‘Gulf War never happened’ is his most memorable and misconstrued example of media induced hyperreality2. Following Baudrillard, Mark Nunes has suggested that an element of this shift to hyperreality has been the erosion of the realm of representation and the establishment of a mode of simulation. This new mode has produced, in cyberspace, an ‘increasingly real simulation of a comprehensible world’ (Nunes, 1995: 5). In The Ecstasy of Communication (1988), Baudrillard outlined the fate of the ‘real’, with particular reference to our corporeal bodies and their associated subjectivities and identities: â€Å"As soon as behaviour is focused on certain operational screens or terminals, the rest appears as some vast, useless body, which has been both abandoned and condemned. The real itself appears as a large, futile body. † (Baudrillard, 1988) For Baudrillard, the virtual world we are coming to inhabit is far from the global village envisioned by Marshall McLuhan in the late 1960s (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967). The rather comforting term, global village, was grounded in the assumption that ICTs would act as ‘extensions of man’ and serve to expand our knowable world and increase global interdependence. Baudrillard’s cyberspace is a colder, more desolate space, where information has no meaning because it has been dislocated from its referential universe. In an article on global debt, Baudrillard claims that information about debt is meaningless because the debt can never be repaid. However, whilst having no financial meaning, the spectre of debt still has a purpose: â€Å"It has no meaning but that of binding humankind to a destiny of cerebral automation and mental underdevelopment. † (Baudrillard: 2) For Baudrillard, both global debt and global media are so pervasive that they deaden any attempts at social change. There is too much to watch and to worry about to lift our heads from the screens and contemplate progressive social change. This pessimistic postmodernism hardly seems to offer a productive base for the re-definition of identities and subjectivities central to feminist theorising. One of the difficulties with this strand of postmodernism is the seemingly totalising belief in fragmentation and alienation which it asserts, whilst dismissing totalising explanatory categories such as race, gender, ethnicity and class. Such categories of inequality have until recently been seen as both the impediments to progressive social change and the means by which to agitate for such change. Baudrillarian postmodernism seems to sweep away these tools for liberation and domination. As Mark Poster has suggested: â€Å"The postmodern position is limited to an insistence on the constructedness of identity. In the effort to avoid the pitfalls of modern political theory, then, postmodern theory sharply restricts the scope of its ability to define a new political interest. † (Poster, 1995: 2). Anyone interested in progressive social change must surely ask if the transition to a simulated virtual world is really so contingent on a loss of value and meaning? To restate the question: is there anything left beyond Baudrillard’s morose fatalism? Many of those staking their claims on the electronic frontier of the Internet see themselves engaged in the construction of value-laden (and decidedly masculine) virtual worlds predicated on existing notions of subjectivity, identity and wider democratic concerns. Few pioneers of the Internet lack a sense of meaning and purpose. For instance, Mitch Kapor, founder of the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation3, has little doubt about the guiding principles of the Foundation’s vision of cyberspace: â€Å"Life in cyberspace †¦ at its best is more egalitarian than elitist and more de-centred than hierarchical †¦ In fact, life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly how Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and commitment to pluralism, diversity and community. † (Kapor in Nunes, 1995: 7) Kapor’s assessment of cyberspace is deeply contradictory. We are first offered a vision of a de-centred and egalitarian virtual space, then this is overlain with a Western (more accurately, North American) view of democracy based solidly on the primacy of the individual (neat shorthand for capitalist social organisation). Kapor’s vision seems to belie the supposedly fragmented and schizophrenic domain of cyberspace, which Baudrillard puts forward. Citizens of the Internet appear to be taking their cultural and social baggage with them on their journey to the other side of the mirror. Although existing structures of inequality are, I would argue, becoming apparent in cyberspace4, they may be even more heavily contested than they have been in ‘real’ space. The Internet, because of its decentralised structure seems to militate against unified concepts of citizenship and community and presents a heterogeneity of subjectivities and identities. Whilst people may wish to transfer the more stable values of the real into the realm of simulation, such attempts are often contested5. Resistance is more likely because virtuality, almost by definition, reveals the constructed nature of subjectivities and identities. The case of Louise Woodward reveals the jarring effect of juxtaposing contradictory identities and positions. In the domain of cyberspace (enabled by the trans-frontier nature of satellite technology), the reduction of Woodward’s sentence was presented simultaneously with celebrations at the Rigger pub in the English village of Elton. Judging from the Internet discussion group provided by the local Boston newspaper, American opinion was deeply offended by the virtual co-presence of the jubilant villagers and their assumption of Woodward’s innocence. For many contributors to the American discussion, the villagers appeared to be ‘dancing on the grave’ of a dead child. Before the advent of instantaneous cross-cultural communication such juxtapositions would not have been possible. Virtuality offers this co-presence, but the reaction to it in this case, seems to support claims that such cultural encounters are replete with struggle and meaning, rather than free of them. A posting by Katie is typical of the angry and mystified response of many American contributors to the clash of co-present cultural identities. Without a Doubt, Louise Woodward *IS* Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! by Katie, 11/6/97 As I said in other postings†¦ Poor Louise Woodward†¦ she loved eight-month old, innocent Matthew Eappen†¦ so she wrote to her family and friends back in England†¦ she did not see Matty hurt his head she testified teary eyed†¦ but smiled broadly and gave a little laugh when next she was asked if she slammed Matty’s head. Poor Louise. Woodward†¦ 27 seconds after the guilty verdict was announced she became hysterical†¦ (aah!how sad, she is just a child, such injustice, cried Geraldo, Gibson, and the like)†¦ her hysterics lasted all of 118 seconds†¦ minutes later she left the courtroom unassisted, composed, and dried eyed. Poor Matthew Eappen†¦ the media decided to focus on poor Louise Woodward. In the realm of cyberspace we become arbiters of the identities and positions paraded before us. Of course, our existing cultural ties have a considerable impact on who we choose to identify with us, but we cannot ignore the co-presence of other identities, which call into question the construction of our own. Texter has identified the Internet as the first stage in the construction of a virtual reality, towards the manufacture of identity without the corporeal body: â€Å"The social construction of the body becomes clear in cyberspace, where every identity is represented [for Baudrillard, simulated], rather than ‘real’. The consensus of cyberspace is a precarious one; identification is entirely contingent, based on a consensual agreement to take one’s word for it. † (Texter, 1996: 3) Texter suggests identity in cyberspace is often about ‘passing off’, offering up a fluid sense of self, projected onto an imaginary virtual body. As a slight corrective, I think it is important not to exaggerate the difference between the creation of real world identities and virtual ones. Judith Butler contends that the constitution of identity (with particular reference to gender) is always something of an unstable and contradictory performance, whether simulated or real: â€Å"Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or a locus of agency from which various acts follow, rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylised repetition of acts. † (Butler in Texter, 1996: 4) Perhaps what the Internet does, by removing the visual cues that partly gender us, is open up possibilities for experimentation and play with existing manifestations of subjectivity. Here, the work of Dona Haraway is particularly important. Haraway’s influential Cyborg Manifesto (1985) has inspired other cyber-feminists, such as Sadie Plant, to foresee a post-gender future where existing boundaries and categories no longer have the profound structuring effects that have resulted in gender inequalities under patriarchy. Haraway’s work marks a profound break with feminist thought that posits a unified category of ‘women’, who can only be liberated by the development of collective consciousness and action. â€Å"There is nothing about being female that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested social-scientific discourses and other social practices. † (Haraway in Keen: 1) Haraway’s profoundly anti-essentialist analysis rests on the notion of the cyborg, an entity based on the conjunction between technology and our selves. Haraway contends that we are ‘all cyborgs now’, because of our immersion in, and dependence on, techno-culture. She does not mean to suggest that we are robots in the Science Fiction sense, but that the relationship between people and technology is so intimate, that it is hard to tell where machines and people end and begin. As an example of our close relationship with technology, try to wrestle the TV remote control away from its regular user (who is also often, coincidentally, the male ‘head of the household’). For Haraway, we have come to see our bodies as high-performance machines that must be monitored and added to by technological innovation. Given that the boundaries between the natural and the technological have collapsed, then so have the assumptions that cluster around these terms. For instance, the belief that women are ‘naturally’ passive, submissive and nurturing can no longer be sustained in the era of the cyborg. The cyborg displays a ‘polymorphous perversity (Haraway in Kunzru, 1997: 4), and in conjunction with technology constructs identity, sexuality and gender as it pleases. Haraway has little time for either techno-utopians or the knee-jerk techno-phobia she sees in some feminist thought. She urges women to become part of networks (such as the Internet) that constitute the cyborg world. However, her ideas of connectivity should not be taken to equate with existing concepts of community based on the model of organic family. For her, the cyborg has no fear of ‘partial identities and contradictory standpoints’ (Quoted in Keen: 2). What is not allowable in the cyborg world, is a call to arms around a unified notion of ‘women’ posed against an equally cohesive notion of ‘men’. Butler’s work on the performative nature of gender reaches many of the same conclusions, regarding the category of ‘women’ central to much feminist thought as limiting and exclusive. She argues that feminist theory â€Å"has taken the category of women to be foundational without realising that the category effects a political closure on the kinds of experiences articulable as part of feminist discourse. † (Butler in Nicholson (Ed. ), 1990: 325) Post-structuralist feminism has long attempted to question the essentialising concept of gender in feminist thought, but some writers have been wary of jettisoning gender as a unifying and explanatory category for the nature of women’s oppression. Angela McRobbie, who is by no means hostile to postmodernism or post-structuralism, has expressed the tension poignantly, in a discussion of the nature of identity: â€Å"On the one hand, it is fluid, never completely secured and constantly being remade, reconstructed afresh. On the other hand, it only exists in relation to what it is not, to the other identities which are its other. † (Quoted in Texter, 1995: 18) I broadly accept McRobbie’s argument that any re-definition of identity needs something to define itself against. I would further argue that our existing tools for the construction of identities are drawn from often narrow and predictable paradigms, particularly when commercial considerations become part of the process. In my concluding section I would like to offer an example of how the structuring effects of gender seem to be still very apparent in the more mainstream sectors of cyberspace. Two computer games have secured huge followings in the last couple of years. Both are touted as offering virtual reality experiences (although without the headsets and gloves of experimental virtual reality). Quake and Tomb Raider are available across a variety of computer and video game platforms and both render quite ‘real’ simulated virtual worlds to explore and three-dimensional adversaries to shoot at6. My first example, Quake, presents us with a subjective view of our virtual world. Screen-shot: the view through your eyes. We, as the heavily armed protagonist, are able to freely roam through this world. All we see of our virtual self is the end of whichever weapon we have selected. In Quake we see the virtual world through our own eyes. When we are low on energy we hear our breathing become laboured. When we are killed we view the world from a prone position (our subjectivity seems to survive death) until the text ‘Game Over’ appears. The sound of our breathing and the grunts that emanate from us are decidedly masculine. Quake offers us an uncomplicated masculine gender identity based on the idea of identification with a male protagonist who drives the narrative towards a possible (although not inevitable) resolution. Quake closely conforms to the observations made by Laura Mulvey on the dominance of the male gaze in narrative cinema. Mulvey, writing in the early 1970s, suggested that Hollywood Cinema routinely places the active male at the centre of the narrative and invites us to identify with this character, which through force of personality, brings about narrative resolution. It is somewhat depressing to note that the virtual reality offered by Quake is such an unreconstructed one. The fit with Mulvey is very close: â€Å"As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the egoistic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. † (Mulvey in Easthope and McGowan, 1992: 163) In Quake identification is aided by the conflation of the male protagonist with our selves, perhaps even intensifying our ‘satisfying omnipotence’. Even if we read Quake ‘against the grain’ in a Barthesian sense (as some of my women friends do), it is hard to argue that this commercial manifestation of virtual reality offers us anything but a very clear, uncomplicated subject position to inhabit. What we do not get with Quake, is much space within the text to contest existing gender categories. My second example, Tomb Raider, offers a much more ambivalent experience. In this game, the main protagonist is a heavily armed female character identified as Lara Croft. Unlike in Quake, Lara is represented on-screen. She is modelled in the Anime style that originated in Japanese ‘graphic novels’ and animations. Lara, as can be seen from the screen shot below, is both attractive and physically powerful. Screen-shot: Lara Croft on-screen A number of my female students raised the issue of Tomb Raider in a discussion on the gendering of video games and said that they regularly played the game and found it an empowering experience (partly because of the novelty of having a female protagonist to identify with). Having played video and computer games since the late 1970s I was interested by the notion of a game that seemed to contradict the usual masculine gendering usually found within this medium. Although Lara does drive the narrative, she is also heavily eroticised. We control her movements and identify with her, but she is also the object of our gaze7. Mulvey suggests that female characters in narrative cinema often halt the narrative flow (Mulvey in Easthope & McGowan, 1992: 163) for moments of ‘erotic contemplation’. Initially, the active narrative role of the protagonist in Tomb Raider seems to defy this, but the game does encourage us to gaze at Lara ‘though male eyes’. We can manipulate our view of the character to see her from a range of angles using movements of the frame that closely resemble cinematic zooms, tracking shots and pans. These features make the game-play rather clumsy but allow us to fetishise the protagonist. As Mulvey comments on narrative cinema: â€Å"[This fetishism] builds up the physical beauty of the object transforming it into something satisfying in itself. † (Ibid. 165) This perhaps explains why, when I first played the game, I spent some time making Lara perform a variety of acrobatic manoeuvres that were far removed from the task of killing adversaries. The ambivalence in Tomb Raider lies in the unusual tension between its basis in the male gaze and its simultaneous identification with an active female protagonist. That my female students felt empowered by, and attracted to, Tomb Raider, suggests it does mark a shift in conceptions of subjectivity and identity. However, this shift is not total and still appears to be rooted in existing gender definitions. Whilst some of the claims of cyber-feminism seem overstated, and rather too willing to claim the existence of a virtual space where traditional dualisms and hierarchies have collapsed, virtuality may offer new sites for contestation and the expression of difference. Indeed, in a recent interview, Dona Haraway has suggested that technology is a value-laden area of contestation rather than a blank screen to be straightforwardly inscribed with new subjectivities and identities: â€Å"Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections and it matters which get made and unmade. † (Haraway in Kunzru: 1997: 6) I am conscious of having steered a fairly delicate and cautious course through the hazards and attractions of structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism throughout this paper. I recognise that the body is becoming an increasingly contested site of theoretical debates and diverse social and cultural practices. The erosion of subjectivities and identities seems to be closely bound up with the heightened sense of mediation and virtuality that inflects the way we view the world, and equally importantly, how it views us. Postmodernism helps us trace the shifts from unified to fragmented subjectivities and identities, but it is a poor tool for investigating the possibilities of social change and identifiying the barriers to it. I have tried to show how the tools of structuralism still have salience, even when applied to the texts of cyberspace. It would perhaps be convenient to wish away the seemingly intractable hierarchies posited by structuralism, but to do so might also lessen the space for cohesive social criticism and unified political action. This is clearly a tension felt by many feminists and certainly not one I have managed to resolve in this paper. What I hope I have done, is to point out the necessity of retaining some existing explanatory categories, whilst recognising the need for constant reflection on, and reaction to, changing subjectivities and identities both in the ‘real’ world and the emerging virtual world. If Baudrillard is proved right, and we do eventually come to exclusively inhabit a rather hyperreal and schizophrenic virtual world, the need for critical engagement will surely be more vital than ever, however difficult and contradictory such critical practice might prove to be. Notes 1 Much writing on subjectivity and identity in cyberspace uses marginal practices as illustrative examples. I think this focus on what might fairly be called an avant-garde often descends into futurology. The mainstream may not be as exotic, but it is where most of us live, and will live, in the future. 2 What Baudrillard seems to have meant was that the Gulf War never happened for those of us in the West, beyond the simulated hyperreality of ‘surgical strikes’ and Cruise missiles with the ability to wait at traffic lights and avoid innocent civilians on the way to their targets. 3 The use of the term electronic frontier indicates powerful myths of male colonisation, the establishment of laws and the hierarchical regulation of behaviour. 4 According to UNESCO 95% of the world’s computers are located in advanced industrial countries and the ten richest countries have 75% of the world’s telephone lines. Networking and poverty seem to be effectively de-coupled at the moment 5 For example, the on-line group Guerrilla Girls are working against the masculine domination of cyberspace, albeit in a playfully aggressive and ironic manner. 6 Quake can be played across computer networks and has been held responsible for jamming up corporate networks in North America. 7 There are a number of Internet sites devoted to Tomb Raider. All of them contain numerous screen-shots of Lara Croft. On one site there were even a collection of images of Lara sans clothing, suggesting that male identification with Lara is rooted largely in objectification. Select Bibliography Note: Where publication dates are not listed this is because the material is drawn from Internet articles where such dates are absent. Internet addresses are given where known. †¢ Baudrillard, J (1988): ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’, Semiotext(e) (trans. Bernard Schutz & Caroline Schutze) †¢ Baudrillard, J (n. d. ): ‘Global Debt and Parallel Universe’, [WWW document] URL , first published in Liberation, Paris (trans. Francois Debrix). http://www. Ctheory. com/e31_global_debt. html †¢ Baudrillard, J (1994): ‘Plastic Surgery for the Other’, [WWW document] URL , Figures de l’alteritie (trans. Francois Debrix). http://www. Ctheory. com/a33-plastic_surgery. html †¢ Butler, Judith (1990): ‘Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse’ in Nicholson (Ed.) op. cit. , pp. 324-41 †¢ Easthope, A and K McGowan (Eds. ) (1992). A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, Buckingham: Open University Press †¢ Haraway, Dona (1990): ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’. In Nicholson (Ed. ) op. cit. , pp. 190-234 †¢ Keen, Carolyn (n. d. ): On the Cyborg Manifesto, [WWW document] URL http://www. english. upenn. edu/~jenglish/Courses/keen2. html †¢ Kunzru, Hari (1997): ‘You are Cyborg’ in Wired, Issue 5. 02 †¢ McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore (1967): The Medium is the Massage. London: Penguin. †¢ Mulvey, Laura (1992): ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. In Easthope and McGowan (Eds. ), op. cit. , pp 158-67 †¢ Nicholson, Linda J (Ed. ) (1990): Feminism/Postmodernism. London: Routledge †¢ Nunes, Mark (1995): ‘Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity’, http://www. dc. peachnet. edu/~mnunes/jbnet. html †¢ Pesce, Mark (n. d. ): ‘Proximal or Distal Unity’, Cyberconference Home Page, http://www. hyperreal. com/~mpesce †¢ Poster, Mark (1995): Cyber Democracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere http://www. hotwired. com/wired/3. 11/departments/poster. if. html. †¢ Sawchuk, K A (1995): ‘Post Panoptic Mirrored Worlds’, Ctheory, [WWW document] URL http://www. Ctheory. com/r-post_panoptic_mirrored. html †¢ Steffensen, Jyanni (1996): ‘Decoding Perversity: Queering Cyberspace’, Parallel Gallery and Journal, http://www. va. com. au/parallel/parallel@camtech. com. au †¢ Steinbach, J (n. d. ): ‘Postmodern Technoculture’, http://omni. cc. purdue. edu/~stein/techcult. htm †¢ Texter, W (1996): ‘†I May be Synthetic, but I’m not Stupid†: Technicity, Artifice and Repetition in Cyberville’, http://www. texter. com/Textual/thesis. html December 1997 †¢ E-mail the author: spittle@uce5. u-net. com.