Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Effective Use Of Employee Voice And An Increase Of...

EFFECTIVE USE OF MANAGERS’ ENCOURAGEMET OF EMPLOYEE VOICE CAN LEAD TO A LIFT IN WELL-BEING AND PRODUCTIVITY. Managers’ encouragement of employee voice can result in an overall increase of productivity and well-being. First of all, a fundamental term which must be understood is the definition of ‘Employee voice (EV)’. Wilkinson and Fay (2011) summarise ‘voice’ as how much say an employee has in regard to decision making in the workplace. Furthermore, in this essay a range of arguments will be developed in order to determine whether or not managers’ encouragement of EV can lead to an increase of productivity and well-being. In particular, this essay will focus mostly on how managers utilise EV and how it contributes to overall well-being†¦show more content†¦In circumstances where employees’ feel as if they cannot express opinions, criticism and suggestions, it is commonly due to the expected outcome with the manager (Detert Burris, 2007). Furthermore, if there were to be an issue within the organisation which effected the employee, the employee has one of two options; leave the workplace or express their opinions (Detert Burris, 2007, p.872). As a result, if EV is not encouraged by a manager it can lead to employees’ feeling discouraged to express their opinions, overall reducing wellbeing and psychological security within that organisation (Detert Burris, 2007). Detert and Burris (2007) suggests that employees, â€Å"lack the courage to†¦ challenge mangers who have signalled unwillingness to accept input† (Detert Burris, 2007, p.872). Furthermore, it can be concluded that due to unwelcoming use of EV, employee’s well-being (confidence within the workplace) is drastically reduced. Walumbwa and Schaubroeck (2009) explains that when mangers’ openly accept and encourage employees to speak their mind, psychological safety and wellbeing increase, allowing employees to express their ideas, concerns and conflicts. More so, while the

Monday, December 16, 2019

Concerns of Ethics in Management Free Essays

What is the status of ethics in management? This is a very hard question to address in a three to four page paper because there is no definite answer. As with many society-wide concerns, ethics runs the entire spectrum of behaviors; from Wal-Mart being very customer oriented and a friend of charity to those fly-by-night repair scams that tend to prey on the elderly. When does a business cross the line from making a profit to stealing a profit? That is a hard line to gauge. We will write a custom essay sample on Concerns of Ethics in Management or any similar topic only for you Order Now Laws are designed to make that line a little clearer but laws can’t out think the mind of man. If a way can be thought of to make money it already has been or is being thought of. It’s where people are taken advantage of that we need to worry. There are many business in place that simply prey on the people who don’t know any better. Whether its the feature on Prime-Time that shows elderly people tricked into phony home repairs or the local business that offered a friend of mine a computer at an inflated price with an outrageous financing plan, some business practices are unethical. What I will focus on today is not the clearly right or the clearly wrong but that vast amount of items that are in the middle. Looking at more of a gray area, Wal-Mart is generally viewed as an ethical company but even they have a reputation for unfair competition. Wal-Mart has a marketing plan that targets smaller cities with large-volume discount stores. While this may not appear to be unfair on its face, many people have felt it’s negative effect. When Wal-Mart moves into a market, many of it’s smaller competitors go out of business. Small business in small towns can’t compete with the prices, availability, or selection of a huge conglomerate like Wal-Mart. People in the towns don’t have much of a choice. Pay more for less or pay less for more? Not are hard decision. But the ultimate effect is that many small business can’t survive the competition. Is that ethically wrong? That is a very hard call to make. I recently had an experience of buying a new car. I shopped around Coos Bay and also in Roseburg while on a recent trip. I was in the market to buy a Dodge Ram. The prices seemed to be about the same in these two markets. My father and I decided to drive to Portland to look further. When we got there, the first dealership that we saw had over thirty Dodge Rams on the front lot with a recent shipment of more in the back. Compared to the Coos Bay dealership which had nine. Immediately, I noticed that the price at that dealership was $1,300 less than the same model with the same package in Coos Bay. Both stickers said the price quoted was the manufacturers suggested retail price. Already over $1,000 to the good, we decided to look further. We found six Rams that had an additional mark down of $2,000. This was because of an engine style in the process of being phased out that had an additional rebate. Looking at the two different models from Portland and Coos Bay we would save $3,300 by buying here. We decided to look no further. We selected the color and bought my truck. Overall, we had a very pleasant experience but what about the people who buy from the Coos Bay dealership and spend over $3,000 more? Are they being unethically taken advantage of? That’s a hard call as well. I took an equal opportunity class in High School and during that class someone inevitably brings up car prices in Coos Bay as being unfair. Are these prices unfair or is it just the law of supply and demand? Was the two thousand dollars that I saved in Portland because that model car wasn’t available to the dealership in Coos Bay? That difference can be easily excusable. The other $1,300 I have a harder time with. I took detailed notes and both stickers were basically identical with the exception of price. Each indicated a different manufacturers suggested retail price. Ethically, I think the line has been crossed. There can’t be two different manufacturers suggested retail prices for the same car. One has to be wrong. I had a good experience buying this car but not everyone will. I’ve been to the dealerships in the past that have used those high pressure tactics to coerce people into buying or spending more than they can afford. Those are the kind of ethical issues that can’t be legislated. Thinking through the ethics issues reminded me of my car buying experience because just like in the ethical issues, there is no clear cut answer. In ethics, one would think that there is right and wrong but in real life cases of ethics in business there is not. There is no black and white answer only millions of shades of gray. Think about junk faxes, what is so wrong about sending an unsolicited advertisement to someone. People get them almost every day in their mailbox. It seems like a reasonable response but the differences are great. The junk fax ties up an important communication tool of the company and the costs are split between the sender and the recipient without the recipient’s permission. The cost to the sender is simply the cost of a telephone call. While the cost to the recipient is the cost of paper, ink, and power to receive the call in addition to the loss of use of the machine during reception. I wouldn’t want to get junk mail in my mailbox, if I had to pay for it!. I don’t like it much even when I don’t have to pay for it. But is this practice of junk faxing wrong? I say no. Ethically, I feel that it’s not wrong if the faxes are reasonable in length and company has a process to quit sending faxes if a recipient requests. I was the recipient of one junk fax. It came into my mailbox here in Talent at the Anjou Club. It was an advertisement to buy office supplies. Now there is no law, either civil or military, that prohibits this but I realized this isn’t something that the Apartment complex should pay for. I took the fax to the manager’s office and they drafted a letter to request that it be stopped. They stated that if any more faxes were received, Anjou Club apartment’s would no longer do business with this company. This was motivation enough for them not to do it. I never received another fax. With business, that is how the system must work. If the pursuit of the bottom line goes to far, then the bottom line must be threatened. I don’t think there is anything ethically wrong with many business practices. It’s all a matter of people being satisfied with the product that they are getting. If they are satisfied, the business will flourish. If not, it will suffer. That is probably the best way to measure ethics in management. Overall, I think the status of ethics is management needs some work. There are very good companies out there that charge a fair price to make a reasonable profit but there are many business in place that prey on the weak and poor. How to cite Concerns of Ethics in Management, Essay examples

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Arts Description Essay

Question: Write about theArts Description Essay. Answer: Introduction The glorious Bronze Age had its onset in China in around 2000 B.C and this period marks the beginning of magnificence and expertise in bronze art. The period began with growth of urbanization and gradually, bronze acted as a cohesive force in establishing social order. With time it became a cardinal part of reutilization among the Haves of the society. The era of the Shang Dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty is marked as the Bronze Age of China and the earliest method that was exercised to make bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, was the piece-mold casting method. This technique helped to achieve high degree of sharpness while carving delicate and intricate designs. The most popular among the Shang Dynasty bronze vessels had been the taotie which is protruding animal like mask with a pair of eyes and nostrils at the base (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004). Imagination of the carving artiste often adorned the taotie with a jaw, fangs earlobes and eyebrows. It was also found with a tail o r a pair of legs. The taotie came with myriads of variations like motifs of bovine and avian creatures and sometimes even dragons (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004). Varieties also included geometric patterns and sometimes an entire beastly body with each flank on either side of the mask. For the Shang and Zhou rulers, ritual bronze vessels were not only just elegant objects of status, but were also the symbols of power that demanded respect from the subjects and viewers (Shang dynasty ritual bronze vessels, 2015). The Shang styles of decoration, especially the ritual bronze mask decoration continued into the early Western Zhou period (Wang et al., 2011), paving the way for the development of unique pieces of art. Max Loehr was the first to understand the nature and sequence of the bronze dcor, from Anyang period which dates back to 1300 1038 B.C. This was the period of late Shang dynasty and it was this particular period when the scholastic approaches began to bifurcate. One group proposed the idea that these animal masks represented the pre existent system of beliefs as they laid focus on the iconographic connotations. The other group had a firm faith on the nature and gradual evolution of the taotie and to them it was an outcome of artistic sophistication in respo nse to any external stimulation which might very well be religious faiths. The real or mythical animals depicted on these motifs might have represented spiritual and political empowerment. The use of jade and bronze vessels was often a part of sacred rituals as an instrument of sovereignty in political power, the design tended to be more sophisticated (Lopes, 2014). The Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament from the Late Shang period (c. 1300-1100 BCE) that had its provenance in Pit 2, Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Sinchuan Province, and has been exhibited in Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Sichuan Province, is a perfect example of the taotie. Certain features of the mask are embodiments of the features that thoroughly constitute and characterize a typical taotie. The interesting repertoire of shapes of the ritual bronze masks that were developed during the Shang and Zhou dynasties made the productions unique ones (Shang dynasty ritual bronze vessels, 2015). The unique characters are to be fo und in the concerned mask that symbolizes many of the characteristic features of the ritual bronze masks of the concerned period. The first characteristic that one may notice in the Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament is its intricate design covering its surface. The design is precise, sharp, and edged. It seems that the shape of the bronze mask had been developed from ceramic prototypes, and as a part of the experimentation process used to build the mask, the shape was hammered and then carved out to provide particular sharp-edged and blunt features. The eyes of the unique face depicted as the mask are protruded, and this is one significant feature of a taotie. Another important feature that has to be observed in the Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament is that; the face resembles the face of a monster, and representing the design of a typical taotie, the concerned mask had been designed in such a way that today for many viewers it seem to be a monster mask in which the face of the half-human monster seems to be divided and then splayed across. Interestingly, the design makes the mask look the amalgamation of dual profiles in a single projection. Moreover, a close observation of the Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament from the Late Shang period is going to reveal the fact that it had been developed from a cast with the use of ceramic piece molds that was, as it seems, developed on the basis of a clay model. It is noteworthy that the Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament from the Late Shang period would have been imprinted with several designs from the concerned model, and then the model would have been carved down to allow for the met al to be poured into the empty space that usually is there between a model and a mold (Shang dynasty ritual bronze vessels, 2015). Furthermore, it must be noted that the Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament is an explicit example of animal imagery, and the image of the strange symmetrical monster, that has been actually embodied by the concerned bronze ritual mask, points towards the predominance of mythological aspects in the sphere of Chinese religious practices dating back to the Shang and Zhou periods. The staring eyes of the monster, the gaping jaw, and the sharp features render a ferocious, yet interesting, look that symbolizes insatiable greed that characterized many of the mythical Chinese beasts. Also, embodying the mythical lore, the Bronze mask with hooked cloud ornament from the Late Shang period has, till date, been one of the precious archaeological findings that have made it easier for todays scholars to understand the cultural practices of the Shang and Zhou period s in China. References Lopes, R. O. (2014). Securing the Harmony between the High and the Low: Power Animals and Symbols of Political Authority in Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes.Asian Perspectives,53(2), 195-225. Shang dynasty ritual bronze vessels (2015). Retrieved February 24, 2017, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-asia/imperial-china/shang-dynasty/a/shang-dynasty-ritual-bronze-vessels The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2004). Shang and Zhou Dynasties: The Bronze Age of China. HeilbrunnTimeline of Art History. Retrieved February 24, 2017, from https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shzh/hd_shzh.htm Wang, Q., Priewe, S., Chen, K., Niece, S.L. (2011). A Chinese bronze gui vessel: genuine Western Zhou object or fake? The British Museum Technical Research Bulletin, 5. Retrieved February 24, 2017, from https://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/BMTRB_5_Wang_et_al.pdf