The Symbolic Meaning of the Radio in The Enormous Radio Essay -- Enorm

The Symbolic Meaning of the Radio in The Enormous Radio  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚   Many authors use the personification of inanimate objects to symbolize the feelings and expressions of their characters. One example of this is in John Cheever’s short story, "The Enormous Radio." Although critics argue that the characteristics of the radio are the opposite of those of Jim and Irene Westcott, the radio actually reflects the couple’s life. Even though in the beginning of the story the Westcotts’ old radio is outdated and constantly malfunctioning, it has the same innocence and simplicity as the couple. The radio, being "an old instrument" (817), and the couple, resembling "statistical reports in college alumni bulletins" (817), are both average and uncomplicated. Neither Jim nor Irene "understood the mechanics of the radio" (817), just as the radio, a machine, did not understand the human music and language it transmitted. Eventually the couple’s life begins to fall apart. This happens as the old radio get worse and finally "the music [from the radio] faded away all together" (817). When the ...

Development Theory Essay

This coursework tends to analyze the case why Sally, a certain researcher, seems to lose her working will which caused her to be dull on her job. This paper discusses the applicable development theory which could explain the reason behind her said behavior towards her job. The development perspective or theory which could be applied to Sally’s case is the Contextual theory. Contextual theory explains the development wherein the recent or various context of a certain person’s life influences her behavior. There are two major views in this development, the first one is the ecological theory and the second one is the life course theory (â€Å"Contextual Theories,† 2007). Sally’s case can be applied in the Life course theory which explains that the present life context of a certain person is a result of his or her historical time and place, timing of lives, link lives, and human agency and social constraints (â€Å"Contextual Theories,† 2007). These major themes under the life course theory major view explains why Sally experiences her loss of mood towards her job. Historical time and place theme could explain the theory that maybe since Sally already worked for fifteen years in the small corporation and contributed lots of achievements, she might be feeling that she already did all she has to do with her job and that she does not have to further give major contributions to the company. Timing of lives theme could explain Sally’s behavior towards her work because maybe there had been lots of distressing events that happened to her, link lives theme could provide the theory that maybe Sally loss her mood towards working because she is having a relationship problem within her family or even friends. Lastly, human agency and social constraints could explain that maybe; Sally’s behavior is caused by some of her decisions in life such as deciding to resign on the future since she had been working for the company for a long time already. View Certain events that happen on a person’s life do indeed influence or affect a person’s present and even future behavior towards her life aspects such as work, relationship, and even decision-making. Therefore, the present behavior of a person is shaped by her life’s events from the past and even from the present as much as the social environment and/or place influences or impact’s a certain person’s behavior. Cultural Event and Analysis A certain and considered major cultural events that shaped the lives of families and children is the event when the world trade center had been bombed (â€Å"TERRORISM – WORLD TRADE CENTER † 2001). It causes families and children to experience trauma, loss of job, and even fear which as the time passed, were still a part of their everyday lives. Like for example, those children whose parents died because of that event are presently not studying or working but instead they became an addict of a certain substance such as alcohol because of the depression they were not able to contain. This case could be studied so as to why and how its result turned out that way by simply knowing the past events and influences on the children’s social environment. The present behavior of those who where affected by that certain event can be figured out by researching about that certain person’s past experiences, places he or she was living, and also knowing the other events that may have contributed on shaping that person’s behavior. References Contextual Theories [Electronic (2007). Version] from http://www. mc. maricopa. edu/dept/d46/psy/dev/Fall98/Theories/Context. html. TERRORISM – WORLD TRADE CENTER [Electronic (2001). Version] from http://www. greatdreams. com/trade. htm.

Barbara and Electra Case Study

Question(1):How might top management have done a better job changing Elektra Products into a new kind of organization? What might they do now to get the empowerment process back on track? Analysis of the case study Main issues – 1. Declining of Market shares 2. Few new product ideas or far between 3. Poor staff relationship 4. Low staff morale Weaknesses- 1. approach in change management 2. Organizational culture 3. creating problem solving team 4. the process of employee involvement and empowerment 5. the facilitation by Martin GriffinThe attempt to do staff empowerment is a nice try but it alone is not the complete solution for the root cause of the problems. In order to reach to the solution of all these issues, they have to find out what are the underlying causes of these issues. The newly hired Martin Griffin mentioned in the opening speech that â€Å"As we face increasing competition, we need new ideas, new energy and new spirit to make this company great. And the sourc e for this change is you—each one of you. † Though he mentioned that each of the staff is important, he failed to allow everyone actively participates and play important role in the program.He neglected the importance of each and everyone’s contribution and effort to the program. He should have made understand what does it means by employee involvement and empowerment; how it will help the company solves the issues and, the ways to do and requirements for the staff involvement and empowerment program. It was worsen when the main facilitator, Martin Griffin, had excused from the session at the time Barbara and team enthusiastically presented their innovative ideas to department heads. The facilitator also fails to aim what kind of outputs he expects at the end of the session.For the successful empowerment program, the organization structure and its enabling environment is very critical. Trust building is very important part of the program especially in this situat ion where staff relationship and morale is poor. It is not only important for the top management level but also the department heads or managers from all other departments are important to accept the concept of staff involvement and empowerment. As the company is on its way of changing to a new era, every staff will have different perspective of interest on how it will affect their current roles, responsibilities and job security.All of which are worth to take in consideration in managing the change process. The managers are not so sure why they require these changes as they have been doing well in the past and they believe they can do it again. On the other hand, every staff has a different management theory and surely they are not on the same page with other management staff or with the company’s current management. It is quite critical to ensure that every management staff equipped with relevant knowledge and skills that will contribute the company’s strategic goals .The staff must have a common understanding of the organizational value, culture, strategic goals and how the empowerment process will add on the success of the organization. Instead of creating problem solving team with managers selected by top management, allow all managers to voluntarily work as cross-functional teams and come up with innovative ideas and opinions. By doing so, each team will have a representative from each specialized departments who has his or her own perspective and issue on the ideas.Contribution from different expertise and background will provide the ideas reach wider scope and reality. Then, each team should discuss the ideas with other teams which may require some modification and negotiation process. If everyone satisfies with the ideas, the staff involvement will be improved and the ideas will become action. It is natural that someone could resist the ideas or changes made by others. But if they are put in a position to be part of a cross-functional tea m that needs to come up with an innovative idea, the discussion environment among the team will tend to be more constructive.In addition, since the company is to undergo a big change, the top management should have implemented a good change management strategy and plan. They should also prepare a communication strategy and plan to inform the staff accordingly. So that it will be clear what is going to happen, why, how and who will be responsible in the change process. The communication strategy and plan is also important as the staffs are very concerned with the change and restructuring process.If the staffs are not well communicated about the changes, the restructuring with many rumors will encourage the staff leaving the organization and looking for a new job which will be a lost the trained and skillful human resources of Elektra. Recommendation to top management in changing Elektra to a new kind of organization and to get back empowerment process on track: * Ensure all staff und erstands what are the vision, mission and strategic goals of Elektra. * Recruit or train staff to ensure the organization is equipped with necessary skills for change management. For eg.Hire a skillful and experienced facilitator who can give time and have a sound facilitation plan. A good facilitation plan must aim some specific objectives, processes of facilitation and expected results * Make sure that everyone understand what empowerment is and why it is important and how it will contribute to the vision, mission and long-term strategic goals * Remove the process of selected problem solving team in an attempt to change Elektra and instead make them voluntarily participate in the cross-functional team which includes representative from each department, different backgrounds etc. Facilitate the department heads/managers to address the underlying causes of each problems in their sector from their perspective and reflect their past experiences * Group the causes and brainstorm all th e managers what should they do to reach a solution to these problems so that they understand and practically involve in the change process * Create an organization structure that will encourage enabling environment and culture for the staff so that they can use their abilities and energies which can then lead to job satisfaction, motivation, commitment by employee. Implement a change management strategy and plan that will ensure the process is on track ( what, why, how and by who throughout the change process) and how it will be sustained. * Identify the transformation leadership team to steer the change and operational leadership team to manage the day-to-day deliverables. * Set a time frame for the change process to reach its goal as to ensure the urgency of the change and effectively response to the continuously evolving environment and available opportunities. * Make your strategy and plan be flexible, daptable, acceptable by all stakeholders and suitable for your company and op erational environment so that the plan will be realistically implemented. * Implement a communication strategy and plan to ensure staff received relevant information with regards to the changes which will reflect their interests. * Ensure that the road map and milestones are carefully prioritize and aligned to reach strategic goals so that the manager can monitor and manage the success or failure in each step towards the strategic goals. Set your operating values in trying to achieve the goals that employee understand what the organization expect and values what kinds of behavior and attitude. * Organize programs and trainings that could enhance the leadership, shared value, cooperate culture and trust building * Build capacity of the staff to gain necessary skills and knowledge in implementing staff involvement and empowerment program Questions (2): Can you think of ways Barbara could have avoided the problems her team faced in the meeting with department heads?The problems with th e department heads are due to the lack of cross-functional contribution, communication, mind-set, role and planning. It could be possible for Barbara to handle the situation by; Barbara and her team should have considered the impact of their ideas and possible response by concerned departments. If Barbara has carefully analyzed what could be the challenges of their ideas, she would have prepared for a back-up or contingency plan to negotiate the departmental heads. By this way her team will have full confident on their own ideas and the department heads will feel confident that the plan was crafted carefully.Barbara should open her mind by accepting for their active feedback with thanks as this is a good opportunity to turn the different department heads in the process. She should have faced the resistance and brought up the concern from each department heads. So that and she can start a cross-functional team to brainstorm the more realistic ideas looking from different perspective. Barbara should explain that the ideas shared by her team are only part of the solution to these problems within their scope and the team requires feedback and opinion in a wider scope from other departments.And before Martin Griffin leaves the workshop, she has to confirm with him that when will be the next workshop to hear feedback from Martin griffin about her team’s presentation. So that when the department heads resist and debate on the new ideas, she can note down the issues raised and let that the feedback from the department heads will be thoroughly discussed in next workshop. By doing so, the department heads will feel they also have a role in the process and Barbara got time to do a plan and consider possible solution to the issues so as to move forward the process.Questions (3): If you were Barbara Russell, what would you do now? Why? If I were Barbara Russell, I will work out to keep motivate my team. I will appreciate the team for their effort and contribution to ward the company. I will make sure the team understands that for our ideas to be stronger, more realistic and practical for all of us, we need to look our ideas from various aspects as we have experienced that various departments have their own issues on our ideas.So, in order to successfully implement our ideas, we need collaboration and commitment from all other departments that we must find ways to solve the concerns of other departments. As working within our own team will limit our expertise and other resources, we require contribution of expertise from different sectors. We must find out a way to get support and collaboration from different departments. I will encourage my team to revisit our ideas, gather information from all departments, try to open our mind to accept, and respect the others’ perspective and ideas.I will discuss with Top management and Martin griffin about our team’s ideas, several issues raised by the department heads. I will reflect my experi ence during the presentation of our team’s ideas, expectation of other staff, feeling and concerns of other departments. I will discuss ways to allow all departments to work together as a whole and discuss what specific strategy and plan should we implement to manage the change process to ensure achievement of our strategic goals.

Binomial Distributions in Public Health

According to Gerstman (2007), a binomial event is that which has only two outcomes, and therefore if the probability for one of the outcomes is known, then the probability that the other outcome will occur is simply the difference of the known probability from 1. Treating repeated trials as independent events, the compilation of results of a binomial experiment altering the number of desired successes while keeping the number of trials fixed forms a binomial distribution.The binomial probability distribution thus gives an idea of how likely it is that successive successes can occur over a given number of trials. For say a simple experiment of throwing a fair coin 4 times, the probability of getting a heads in any toss is 0. 5. Thus, the probability of getting no heads at all in the four tosses is 0. 5^4 while the probability of getting exactly 1 heads is 0. 5^2, and the probability of getting 2 heads is 0.5 and then the probability of getting more than 2 heads decreases in the same m anner that the probabilities increased in the progression described. If the probabilities are altered in such a way that success is much more likely in a single event than failure, then given five trials it would be expected that having successive successes would be more probable than successive failures. The binomial distribution also allows probabilities for multiple events to simply be added in order to give an idea of the total probability for that event.For example when determining what the probability of getting at most 2 heads in four tosses of a coin, the probabilities of getting exactly 0 heads, 1 heads, and 2 heads can simply be added to give the correct probability for getting no more than 2 heads. Give this nature of the binomial probability distribution, its applications to public health becomes apparent. Villeneuve (2002) states that the binomial distribution can be used â€Å"to describe the number of times an event [such as a disease] will occur in a group of [peopl e]† if the probability concerning the occurrence of that event is known.For example, if the probability of getting infected by rabies if you were bitten by a particular animal is known, then given a certain number of people who were all bitten by that particular animal in an area it would be possible to reasonably determine how many of those people are likely to be inflicted with rabies. Public health practitioners need to be well briefed with what binomial probabilities and distributions are so that they will be able to make sound decisions based on data that they have on hand.Oftentimes, public health practitioners that have responsibilities at the macro-level are placed with decisions involving prioritization wherein the one responsible needs to make a decision that would concern the division of a limited amount of resources. With information that can be modeled using a binomial distribution, the public health practitioner would be able to have a more reliable idea on how t o allocate such resources.Going back to the example of rabies, if several outbreaks occurred at the same time in different areas with a different animal causing each outbreak, then based on the probability of getting rabies from each particular animal and the number of patients bitten in each area, a public health practitioner can use binomial distributions as a good basis for allocating a limited number of personnel, equipment, and medicine for each of the areas. Many diseases such as cancer or AIDS can be described as a binomial experiment. That is, one either has cancer or does not and one either has AIDS or does not.In such cases, knowledge of the binomial distribution can be very useful to public health officers in enabling them to predict the likelihoods associated with the condition occurring on a certain population. References Gerstman, B. (2007). Basic Biostatistics: Statistics for Public Health Practice. Jones & Bartlett Villeneuve, P. (2002). â€Å"Binomial Distribution. † Encyclopedia of Public Health. Ed. Lester Breslow. Gale Cengage. Retrieved December 26, 2008 from eNotes. com: http://www. enotes. com/public-health-encyclopedia/binomial-distribution

Prada Case Essay

From the financial point of view, the Italian luxury brand- Prada, which was known for its design innovation, can’t claim itself successful. Although it has the ability to keep its revenue over 1.5 billion euros for three consecutive years, it also contains more than 1 billion euros of debt maturing within 12 months sitting on its balance sheet. One of the best solutions for Prada to solve this problem is to raise capital in the stock market, which we could refer as IPO. Given the current market conditions, listing in Hong Kong might appears to be the best choice after all. But, before we go further in details about the pros and cons about listing in Hong Kong, we should first discuss the reasons why we choose IPO over Debt and Strategic partnership. Compare to issuing debt, an IPO will not add any more burden to the company’s balance sheet, which for Prada, was already showed a sign of insolvency and over leveraged. Another issue is that no firms in this industry have ever raised money in US bond market. Although â€Å"dim sum bond† – a Chinese Yuan denominated bonds issued in Hong Kong could be the best alternative to this situation, however, the short life and the exchange risk it involved are its most disadvantages. How about sale some portion of the firm to the private equity firms to raise capital? For this deal, it seems that they will not only offer a sizeable premium to the family, but also to offer some important positions on the board too. But, compare to IPO, it will not increase Prada’s publicity through this method. And also, an IPO in Hong Kong will give the company more opportunity to expand their Asia market, especially in China and Japan. Choosing a Strategic Partnership would be just like giving that huge potential profit away. So, the next question is how do we actually apply the IPO strategy?

The effectiveness of pelvic circumferential compression devices Term Paper

The effectiveness of pelvic circumferential compression devices - Term Paper Example considered as one of the most common injuries that can result from the different forms of accidents and traumas that can lead to high amount of hemorrhage from any of the following injuries namely, the venous plexus lesion, arterial injury, and localized bleeding of the specific fracture sites (Knops et al. 101). The said condition has high incidence of mortality and recorded as the third leading cause of death in vehicular accident cases specifically motor vehicles (Wayne 39). Pelvic circumferential compression device is defined as an apparatus commonly in the form of a belt with a mechanism for tightening that is put around the pelvis that had been fractured. It works by constricting and preventing any form of movement, thus, it stabilizes the fractured pelvis. The Pelvic Binder, T-POD and the SAM Sling are the most common types of PCCDs (Knops et al. 101; Spanjersberg et al. 1031). Due to the need for immediate method to manage pelvic fracture or trauma, studies on the application of the pelvic circumferential compression devices are prevalent while studies that are focused on the effectiveness of the said devices are scarce. This can be attributed to the fact that applications of new development in PCCDs are immediate due to the need e.g. in emergency cases or emergency medical services (EMS). This can be observed in the data presented in references and guidelines in cases of pelvic injuries. One example is the Advanced Trauma Life Support wherein PCCDs are indicated to be the main method to manage unstable pelvic fracture (Spanjersberg et al. 1031). The role of the PCCDs in managing pelvic fracture specifically in EMS can be considered essential on the basis of the need of such cases for immediate care. If the pressure on the skin exceeding 9.3 kPa continuously affects a person for 2 to 3 hours, the safety of the patient is affected and the effectiveness of the procedure is affected (Knops et al. 101). The objective of the paper is to present the

Slave Labor In India Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Slave Labor In India - Essay Example The political and social systems during the prehistoric times did not see slavery as forced labor, but as beneficial relationships between the nobles and the peasants. In addition, in most of the Indian society, the caste system was practiced and could not be termed as slavery per se as the working class was pooled and specialized without much consideration of the system (Mander, 2012). The caste system is said to be one of the root causes of the modern day slavery, human trafficking and bondage. The system denies equal rights, privileges and dignified treatment to some individuals, with people being differentiated based on their social status and gender. The practice has survived due to feudalism, which is a concept whereby, the nobles held land for the crown in exchange for military services, and the laborers worked to acquire protection and a share of the produce from them. The concept of feudalism has existed in the Indian society even before they were colonized by the British. After the country gained independence, it sought to be a more democratic state, but in the very nature of democracy, the practice still exists. One of the reasons for its existence is that most regions in the country were introduced during the times the country was fully feudalistic and as religion has not evolved much, the people still have the notion and concept integrated in their society (Katju, 2013). In 1975, India introduced a law banning debt bondage including a fine of 37 dollars to those found guilty of the crime. In the years that have followed, very few people have been jailed for the crime with the fine being a laughable amount. People are forced to work in farms to pay debts, with their employers imposing arbitrary interests and fines to make it impossible for them to be able to pay. In addition, girls are being forced to work for people in farms and textile mills as payment for dowry. The influence of