Strategic Human Resource Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Strategic Human Resource Management - Essay Example Recently, the strategic role of the HR field and linkages between business and Hr strategy have been the subject of extensive discussion. Jim walker (1980), with his classic book on Human resource planning, was the first writer to suggest considering the corporate business strategy while developing and executing HR plans. Since then, in just over a greater of a century, a plethora of research, theory and cases examining research on aligning HR policies and practices with business strategies has become the focus of management studies (Wright et al 2005). Strategic HRM: The field of HRM has under gone significant changes in scope, functions and activities over the years, with the rise in professional maturity in the field; Personnel management has become HRM, which in recent years has become strategic HRM. Strategic HRM is the explicit link HRM has with the strategic management process of the organization. Strategic HRM is viewed as strategic as it involves the managerial personnel of the organization and regards: People as the single most important asset of the organization" (Poole & Jenkins, 1990). It is proactive in its approach to people. It seeks to enhance organizational performance, employee needs and societal well being. The key difference therefore between traditional and strategic concepts with extent to which management of HR is integrated into the strategic decision making processes that direct organizational efforts towards coping with the environment (Guest, 1990). Strategic HRM practitioners are now considering human r esources to be a major source of competitive advantage and a growing body of research supports this view (Arthur 1994; Guest, 1997; Tyson, 1997; Wright et al. 2005; Youndt et al. 1996). SHRM theory is based upon the recognition that organizations can become more effective, if their human resources are managed with HR policies and practices, which can help the right number of people, acquire the appropriate behaviors, the needed HR competencies and the feasible levels of work motivation. The relevant external and internal environment or components of the organizations and the relevant stakeholders are thus important to the practice of strategic HRM (Schuler & Jackson 1999). The 1980's and the 1990's have witnessed a great deal of emphasis being placed on a strategic implementation of the HRM policies and practices all over the world. Shift in strategic HRM perspective have changes the orientation of HR managers world over. The last two decades saw major shift in people management approaches and practices as SHRM becomes more proactive in approach, people oriented, and people as investment, key player in competitive advantage and integrated role in company's goals and planning. The fields of HRM, HRD and organizational development (OD) have converged into the new strategic HRM. As Ruona and Gibson (2004) remarked "Twenty-first-century strategic HRM lay more emphasis on increased centrality of people for organizational success, importance of whole systems and integrated solutions in strategic alignment and impact and lastly, has a tremendous capacity for change". The concept of HRM has generated a lot of attention from researchers since it first emerged in the 1980's. The

Pan-arabism and Pan-islamism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Pan-arabism and Pan-islamism - Essay Example Pan-Arabism is a political theory of adopting unity of the North Africa and West Asia countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Ocean. This portion is known as the Arab World. Pan-Islamism on the other hand is a political movement recommending the unity of Muslims under one Islamic state, command, or leadership that is similar to International Organization. One common factor between Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism is the fact that Islam as a religion is founded on Arabic as a language. Most of the Pan-Arabic countries have Muslims as their occupant and they uphold the religion’s doctrines as part of the constitution of the countries. Arabic language is also the national language in the Pan-Arabic countries. However, there are some countries, which have Muslims but do not uphold Arabic as a national language. The two ideologies are completely different. Pan-Arabism has belief that there should be one nation in the Arabic world; similar to Umayyad Caliphate as in was in 750 C. E. when it had no Persia or Southern Spain. (Schmid) They believed that Turks, Europeans, and greedy rulers artificially drew Arab borders from Arab and that Arab people had a nature of being in a large nation like the United States.

CanGo Corporation Essay Example for Free

CanGo Corporation Essay CanGo does not seem to have any legitimate process flow charts, especially for its operations facility. Two floor plan layouts were drawn up. One for the current operation processes and one which shows the operation facility if CanGo invests and implements an ASRS (automated storage and retrieval systems). These two floor plans were referred to as flow charts. Flow charts consist of shapes and connectors which are labeled stating the flow of the processes, the decisions that can be made at specific stages, and outcomes of those decisions. Accompanying a flow chart would be the floor plan and written documentation outlining and explaining the entire process. Recommendation Classes Consulting recommends that CanGo draws up an actual flow chart, as well as the floor plans and written documentation explaining the processes in their operations facility. In addition, costs, financial effects (both current and future), and other details should be included for both the current operations system and the proposed ASRS and barcoding system. Having all of this documentation will show where improvements can be made and where costs can be cut. It will show and explain in detail the actual processes used for receiving, picking, and shipping. A floor plan will not take into account the actual details such as how long it take to pick books, how crowded it is on the operations floor, nor how the employees feel about the possible change. If, after creating this documentation, CanGo decides to go ahead with the new barcode and ASRS the flowchart will help in the creation and setup of the new systems. In addition, if financing is needed to install the new systems, having this documentation will show the lenders that CanGo has thought it through and can give details.

Study On The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky History Essay

Study On The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky History Essay The short story The bride comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane, tells the story of a Marshal, Jack Potter; who brings his new wife home to the frontier town of Yellow Sky in Texas. The story takes place in the early 1890s, in what used to be the Old West but which now is slowly and inevitably being civilized. The climax of the story is the stereotypical gunfight which the readers, through remarks like: He goes out and fights Scratchy when he gets on one of these tears, are being led to believe will take place between the local gunman and the Marshal. When Potter averts the gunfight, the reader senses that Stephen Crane not only confirms that such gunfights are a thing of the past, but that he is in fact describing the end of an era. The last frontier To understand the significance of the changes in Yellow Sky its essential to take a closer look at the influence the frontiers had on the people living there. The word frontier was borrowed from the French in the 15th century and means borderland, and normally applies to the region of a country that borders to another country. It is a North American phenomenon to give the word frontier the meaning of a region at the edge of a settled area. People living in the West had to be brave, tough and resourceful. The hard life in the frontiers changed the people. Frederick Jackson Turner made a Frontier thesis where he claims that it was the countrys westward expansion, the recurring frontiers, that forged the rugged and unique American identity. The American identity was forged in the junction between the savagery of wilderness and the civilization of settlement. The settlers developed the power to tame the wild, and the frontier environment promoted nationalism, individualism and democracy. Marriage When Potter comes home with his new bride, he feels that he have committed an extraordinary crime by not warning the town of his decision to marry the girl. He knows that the arrival of his new bride will bring about changes in the town, and is sure that the burning of the new hotel is the only thing that can exceed it. The bride is a symbol of the East and represents change, the transition from the Old West to the New West. Another sign of change is the fact that Potter has gotten married in the first place. Marshals in the Old West apparently did not marry. This was most likely a result of their need to be free of such domestic entanglements. In frontier towns, such as Yellow Sky, being a marshal was a dangerous job and not the kind of job a family man would like to have. The marshal was supposed to keep law and order in the town, and would have to deal with gunmen like Scratchy. Potters decision to marry shows that times have changed and his subconscious tells him that its safe to marry now. The last frontier is closed and the Indians are put in reservation. The West is settled and civilization has reached the Old West. The gunfighter A gunfighter is often described as a person who has got a reputation as being dangerous with a gun. Gunfighters, or gunslingers as they were also called, could be a bank robber, an outlaw or a murderer who took advantage of the frontier and tried to hide in the wilderness. From there they would take periodic raids. Some of the most know gunfighters from the Old West are Billy the Kid, The Dalton brothers, Jesse James, Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. A gunfighter could also be an agent of the state, a lawman. Some of the most famous lawmen are Wyatt Earp, Pat Garret and William Barclay Masterson. Scratchys description as a perfect wonder with guns leads the reader to understand that he is a gunfighter. This is confirmed when he further on is described as the last one of the old gang that used to hang out along the river. The fact that Potter usually goes out and fights Scratchy when he has turned loose with both hands, and lives to tell about it, indicates that Potter too is a gunfigh ter. Even though Scratchy is determined to preserve the good old days, his clothes reveal the extent to which even hi has been influenced by the East. Hi is described as a man in a maroon-coloured flannel shirt, made by some Jewish women on the east side of New York, and he is wearing boots that have red tops with gilded imprints, made by little sledding boys on the hillside of New England. His clothes are purchased for purpose of decoration rather then utilitarian value. The railroad The railroad played a major role in the civilization of the West. They moved the settlers and their supplies far into the wilderness, and provided what the region could not have had without it, the basis for a durable economy and for a permanent population to grow. From lonesome cowboys to sheep herders The building of the railroad also made way for a new business, the open-range cattle industry. In the period from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, about two decades after the Civil War, an open-range cattle industry flourished, originating in Texas and Spanish Mexico. The Spaniards had in the 18th century been bringing cattle into Texas where they had been allowed to run wild and to multiply. At the end of the Civil War the cattle numbered about five millions. Texas ranchers learned that while the cattle only sold for as much as three or four dollars in Texas, they could get 35-40 dollars in northern markets. They decided to make the long journey north to the railroad towns where the cattle would be hauled into train wagons and driven to larger cities. The route from Texas to Abilene was 1.000 miles long and became known as the Chisholm Trail, named after Jesse Chisholm. It could take the cowboys up to two months to move the cattle from Texas to Abilene. If they moved them to fast the cattle would loose weight and it would be difficult to sell them. The most important cow towns in the West were Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City and Caldwell. Many of the cowboys were former soldiers from both the Confederacy and the Union, who came home to ruined hometowns and found no future there. They went west to seek work. By 1870 cattle ranches had spread northward into present-day Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana. Between 1860 and 1880, the cattle population in these areas increased from 130,000 to 4.5 million. In some of the cow towns the citizens got nervous when the cattlemen stayed to long, due to delays in the shipping or other herd conditions, so the town councils hired gunmen as a police force to keep order. Despite its huge success the cattle kingdom came to an end in the late 1880s. There were several factors that lead to the end of the open range. Two disastrous winters and a blistering summer in 1886-1887 killed many cattl e and the once that made it to the market were in such a bad shape that the prices plummeted. The open range were also being settled by farmers, and the fact that the farmers had started using barbed wire around their properties also made it hard for the cattlemen to find water and food enough for the herds. The cattle kingdom never recovered. The West was being settled and the time of the lonesome cowboy was over. Code of the West The further west the frontier came the more the people gave up their identity as Europeans and became Americans. This change made way for a new code of behaviour, The code of the West. This code came as a result of that there were no laws on the rangeland. The lack of written laws made it necessary for the people to make their own laws. These laws were never written down but they were respected everywhere on the range. The code represented a way of life that had its base in hospitality, loyalty, respect for the land and fair play. Earlier the people had followed the British common law that said you had to have your back to the wall before you could use deadly force to protect yourself. This changed and when threatened you no longer had a duty to retreat. In 1876 an Ohio court said that if you were attacked you no longer were obligated to fly. Some of the guidelines in the code were: Dont inquire into a persons past. Take the measure of a man for what he is today. Never order anything weaker than whiskey. Dont make a threat without expecting dire consequences. Always fill you whiskey glass to the brim. Never shoot an unarmed or unwarned enemy. This was also known as the rattlesnake code: always warn before you strike. However, if a man was being stalked, this could be ignored. Never shoot a woman no matter what. Honesty is absolute your word is your bond, a handshake is more binding than a contract. When approaching someone from behind, give a loud greeting before you get within shooting range. The code of the West, online Scratchy is clearly a person used to living by the code. He is expecting dire consequences when he walks around the town yelling ferocious challenges at the townspeople. He has been drinking his whiskey and is looking for a fair fight. When Potter rounds the corner Scratchy immediately accuses him of sneaking up on him, and thereby violating the code. Potter is abel to avert the gunfight when he says he is not armed, and as the code says: honesty is absolute. The code prevents Scrarhy from shooting, as he is not supposed to shoot an unarmed man. The townspeople also demonstrate that they to a certain point still honour the law by measuring Scrathy by what he is today and not by his past. They know he used to be a gunfighter, and yet the town seems to accept him, like a remnant from the past. As the frontier closed and the Cowboys had lost their position as rulers of the open range, the written laws caught up with the West, and the code became of less importance. The town seems to hav e realised this, but Scratchy clings to the life of the Old West.

Shooting an Elephant Essay -- Literary Analysis, Orwell

In the essay, Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell illustrates his experiences as a British police officer in Lower Burma, and reflects it to the nature of imperialism. Since â€Å"anti-European feeling was very bitter† due to the British Empire’s dictatorship in Burma, Orwell is being treated disrespectfully by the Burmese (12). This allows him to hate his job and the British Empire. However, the incident of shooting of an elephant gives him a â€Å"better glimpse †¦ of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic government act† (13). Through his life experiences as a British man, Orwell efficiently demonstrates the negative effects of imperialism on individuals and society. With the usage of effective diction in his essay, Orwell excellently conveys his emotions and message to his readers. He often uses the word â€Å"natives† for the Burmese: â€Å"Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd† (15). By doing so, he shows his emotions and respect towards the Burmese because calling them â€Å"natives† suggests that he agrees on the fact that they are the true owner of Burma and not the British Empire. Also, by frequently using the word â€Å"natives†, Orwell reminds his readers the existence of imperialism in Burma so that the readers do not simply hang on to the elephant but also get the message incorporated in the essay. The body of the elephant is compared to machinery as Orwell thinks that killing an elephant â€Å"is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery† (15). This comparison makes the readers realize that the British Empire is also like a huge pie ce of machinery, so the death of it would be a serious matter to both oppressor and people being oppressed. When Orwell wa... ...Shooting an Elephant. According to what Orwell is trying to impose, his target audience seems to be youth, adults, and politicians as imperialism is more reflected off of people under these categories. As a police officer, Orwell teaches his readers that imperialism is the worst way to govern a country as it is harmful to an individual’s way of thinking and value of morality in society. He proved that in an imperialism based system, no one is actually dominant over one another as they all end up being slaves of each other. This results in demolished and demoralized society. Orwell achieves his goal outstandingly by playing with rhetorical devices, tone, diction, and sentence structure to generate the feeling in the audience the way he desires. In result, Orwell brilliantly uses the incident of killing an elephant to describe the negative effects of imperialism.

Dyslexia :: essays research papers

DYSLEXIA AND THE PHONOLOGICAL MODEL Over one hundred years ago, in November 1896, a doctor in Sussex, England, published the first description of the learning disorder that would come to be known as developmental dyslexia. "Percy F.,... aged 14,... has always been a bright and intelligent boy," wrote W. Pringle Morgan in the "British Medical Journal," "quick at games, and in no way inferior to others of his age. His great difficulty has been--and is now--his inability to learn to read.† (Sec 3) In that brief introduction, Morgan captured the illness that has intrigued and frustrated scientists for a century. In 2000 as in 1896, reading ability is taken as a substitute for intelligence; most people assume that if someone is smart, motivated and schooled, he or she will learn to read. But the experience of millions of dyslexics, like Percy F., has shown that assumption to be false. In dyslexia, the relation between intelligence and reading ability breaks down. Early explanations of dyslexia in the 1920s, held that defects in the visual system were to blame for the reversals of letters and words thought to typify dyslexic reading. Eye training was often prescribed to overcome these alleged visual defects. Later research has shown, however, that children with dyslexia are not unusually prone to reversing letters or words and that the deficit responsible for the disorder is related to the language system. In particular, dyslexia reflects a deficiency in the processing of the distinctive linguistic units, called phonemes that make up all spoken and written words. Current linguistic models of reading and dyslexia now provide an explanation of why some very intelligent people have trouble learning to read and performing other language-related tasks. Over the past twenty years, a consistent model of dyslexia has emerged that is based on phonological processing. The phonological model is consistent both with the clinical symptoms of dyslexia and with what neuroscientists know about brain organization and function. To understand how the phonological model works, one first has to consider the way in which language is processed in the brain. Researchers theorize the language system as a hierarchical series of modules or components, each devoted to a particular aspect of language. At the upper levels of the hierarchy are components involved with semantics (vocabulary or word meaning), syntax (grammatical structure) and discourse (connected sentences). At the lowest level of the hierarchy is the phonological module, which is dedicated to processing the distinctive sound elements that constitute language.

A Good Essay Or Term Paper Essay

1. Answers the question No matter how interesting or well-written an essay, you will not be given any credit for your efforts unless it answers the question that was set. Your argument and evidence must be relevant to the question. This is the most important feature of what makes a good essay. It must deal with the subject or the topic(s) posed in the question rubric. Your answer should demonstrate that you have understood what the question is asking for, that you have grasped its key terms, and that you have followed all its instructions. 2. Clear structure An essay should be like a good piece of architecture – built on firm foundations to carefully made plans. The points of your argument should be arranged in some structure which is logical and persuasive. If you are dealing with a number of issues, the relation between them should be clearly explained. The connections between each stage of your argument and the original question should be evident throughout the essay. 3. Appropriate style For an academic essay the third person (‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’) rather than the first person (‘I’) is a more preferable style. Occasional use of ‘I’ may be acceptable if a personal opinion has been specifically requested. You should keep your audience in mind. Try to imagine that you are addressing someone who is intelligent and reasonably, but not necessarily well-informed in the subject. Remember that your writing should be grammatically accurate. Poor punctuation and weak sentence construction will create a bad impression. Mixed tenses and metaphors should be avoided. Spelling mistakes should be corrected. 4. Arguments supported by evidence Essays should not be just a series of unsupported assertions. You need to provide some evidence to support them – either in the form of factual details, your own reasoning, or the arguments of others. In this latter case, you should always reveal the fact that you are using someone else’s ideas. Provide attribution by using a system of footnotes or endnotes and accurate referencing. Never try to pass off other people’s written words as  your own. This is called plagiarism – a form of intellectual dishonesty which is severely frowned upon in academic circles. 5. Clarity of thought One of the hallmarks of a good essay is that it demonstrates clarity of thought. This may be your ability to identify different issues and discuss them in a logical manner. It may mean organizing materials into a coherent structure for the essay. It could be showing that you are able to make important distinctions and insights. This may not come easily at first, but with practice it should be possible to gain greater clarity through discipline, selection, and planning. 6. Evidence of wide reading and understanding Essays are often set to encourage and direct your reading in a subject. If you show that you have read widely and thoroughly understood the subject you are discussing, you will be demonstrating your competence. The best essays are often produced by people who have taken the trouble to acquaint themselves both with the principal ‘set books’ and with secondary works of commentary and criticism as well. They will often show evidence of intellectual curiosity which has taken them beyond the bounds of what has been prescribed as a minimum. 7. Originality An essay will be rewarded with a good mark if it competently reviews all the well-known arguments in a subject and reaches a balanced conclusion. The highest grades however are often given – deservedly – to essays which display something extra. This may be a demonstration of original ideas or an unusual, imaginative approach. Such essays usually stand out because of their freshness and the sense of intellectual excitement they convey. But remember that you are not usually required to be original. Your tutor(s) will be perfectly satisfied if you simply answer their essay questions in a sensible and competent manner.